News was brought to the Earl of Derby, that Auberoche was besieged; but he did not imagine his friends were so hard pushed. When Sir Frank van Halle, Sir Alain de Finefroide, and Sir John Lendal, who were thus besieged, saw how desperate their situation was, they asked their servants if there were not one among them who would, for a reward, undertake to deliver the letters they had written to the Earl of Derby at Bordeaux. One from among them stepped forward, and said he would be the man who would cheerfully undertake the commission, not through lust of gain, but from his desire to deliver them from the peril they were in. The following night the servant took the letters, sealed with their seals, and sewed them up in his clothes. He was let down into the ditches: when he was at the bottom, he climbed up the opposite side, and took his road through the army, for he could not avoid passing through it. He was met by the first guard, but was not stopped, for he understood the Gascon language well, and named one of the lords of the army, as if belonging to him; so he was suffered to pass on: but he was afterwards arrested, and detained under the tents of some other lords, who brought him to the main watch. He was interrogated, searched, and the letters found upon him, and guarded until morning, when the principals of the army assembled in the tent of the Count de Lisle, where the letters were read. They were rejoiced to find that the garrison were so much straitened that they could not hold out longer; and, seizing the [Illustration: How the French flung a Servant over the Walls into Auberoche.] servant, they hung the letters round his neck, thrust him into one of the machines, and flung him into Auberoche. The valet fell quite dead amid the other valets of the castle, who were much terrified at it.