They came thus to the market-place, held clear by solid walls of troopers, mailed, and armed to the teeth, behind whom the townsfolk, now heartily of but one opinion, strove to win friends and peep between steel shoulders into the open space. Still unmolested, the boy, bearing his inkhorn and scroll well before him as a badge of craft, passed with his companion to the side of the cross--where workmen toiled with axe and mallet to rear a platform of newly hewn beams and boards--and held his course straight to the Tolzey. "Saw you what they build, there by the cross?" whispered Sir Hereward. "It is a scaffold, where presently axes shall hew flesh and blood, not logs." And then he added, "Whither go we; into the very tusks of the boar?" "Nay, but to get behind him," returned Hugh, in the same sidelong whisper. "Halt you at the Tolzey door; mix there with the throng which idly gapes upon the soldiery, until chance offers to steal through some alley to the open fields." "And you leave me there?" "How shall it be otherwise? And--I say it now--farewell; the saints protect thee!" "A word," the masker whispered. "Art sure it was a knight who ordered the letter to be writ?" "None other. A knight in full battle harness. And--_Oh!_ God save us! _It is he!_" Before the low-browed Tolzey, or Toll-booth, a house of bricks on timber, with projecting gallery reared over open pillars, an urgent throng of citizens swarmed behind two rows of soldiers, to note the uttermost of what was passing. This Tolzey--at once exchange and town hall, court-house and jail--had in its long life seen strange things, but nothing like unto to-day, when the King's brother, Richard of Gloster, and John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, held bloody assize upon the enemies of the King. Above the gable floated, side by side, two standards of deep red stuff, on which were wrought, one the silver boar of Gloster, Lord Constable of England, one the silver lion rampant of Norfolk, Earl Marshal. And at the porch, pushing their way through the press of onlookers under the arches between the pillars, a knot of men-at-arms dragged forward that same strange knight at whose bidding Hugh had written the letter! "Look! It is he!" the boy repeated breathlessly, quickening his pace for the instant, then shrinking back dismayed. Sir Hereward laid a firm hand on his arm. "I quit ye not here!" he swore, between clenched teeth. "Hasten we forward, and into the presence of the court." "But--it means death to thee--" the boy began, as the other hurried him on. "Better a thousand deaths--by fire and molten lead--than that _this_ should happen," the other gasped. "Up with thy chin! They _must_ not say us nay!"