None of them could make anything of the mystery, but as Tomaso of Padua talked with Eloy the goldsmith that same evening they agreed that the price they paid was cheap. In the game the Pope's party was playing against that of the Emperor for the mastery of Europe, it had been deemed advisable to find out whether Henry Plantagenet would rule the Holy Roman Empire if he could. He had refused the offer of the throne of the Cæsars, and it was of the utmost importance that no one should know that the offer had been made. Hence the delivery of the letter to the jeweler. LONDON BELLS London town is fair and great, Many a tower and steeple. Bells ring early and ring late, Mocking all the people. Some they say, "Good provender," Some they sing, "Sweet lavender," Some they call, "The taverner," Some they cry, "The fripperer Is lord of London Town!" London town is great and wide, Many a stately dwelling, And her folk that there abide Are beyond all telling. But by land or water-gate, Aldgate, Newgate, Bishopsgate, Ludgate, Moorgate, Cripplegate, Bells ring early and ring late, The bells of London Town. VIII BARBARA, THE LITTLE GOOSE-GIRL HOW BARBARA SOLD GEESE IN THE CHEPE AND WHAT FORTUNE SHE FOUND THERE Any one who had happened to be traveling along the Islington Road between two and three o'clock in the morning, when London was a walled city, would have seen how London was to be fed that day. But very few were on the road at that hour except the people whose business it was to feed London, and to them it was an old story. There were men with cattle and men with sheep and men with pigs; there were men with little, sober, gray donkeys, not much bigger than a large dog, trotting all so briskly along with the deep baskets known as paniers hung on each side their backs; men with paniers or huge sacks on their own backs, partly resting on the shoulders and partly held by a leather strap around the forehead; men with flat, shallow baskets on their heads, piled three and four deep and filled with vegetables. That was the way in which all the butter, fruit, poultry, eggs, meat, and milk for Londoners to eat came into medieval London. Before London Wall was fairly finished there were laws against any one within the city keeping cattle or pigs on the premises. Early every morning the market folk started from the villages round about,--there were women as well as men in the business--and by the time the city gates opened they were there.