Then Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock, his friend, and Robert Raket, had answered for the other bondsmen that they would think upon it. Then the three of them had ridden to Lucker, where there was a lawyer called Shurstanes, and had taken counsel with him. So when, upon the morrow, the bailiff of that Castle came again, those three cunning ones had met him courteously, and said that, for a suit of sorcery, a Warden’s Court could not foul or find a bill. It must go before a court of the Bishop Palatine. They had great respect for the Lord Warden, but so it was and his court was only for raidings in the Marches. And for the dispossession of a barony that could only be tried (after the Bishop’s Court in Durham had found a true bill of sorcery) in an assize of the King’s justices travelling, Alnwick or wheresoever it might be. And any such finding of the assize court must be ratified by the most dreadful King of England in council before ever the Young Lovell could be dispossessed of his lands. And those three cunning men had further answered the bailiff that they were very willing to pay rent-hens and tythes and heriots and pence and whatever was rightfully to be had of them. But first they must be assured of what the King said in his council. Else the Young Lovell, coming again, might have it all of them a second time, and that, being poor men, they could not well abide. Then the bailiff went back to the Castle—he was not the old bailiff of the Lord Lovell who had been cast out of his dwelling in the King’s Tower and had gone to live at Beal—but it was a new bailiff that Sir Walter Vesey had brought from Haltwhistle, where he had been a surveyor’s clerk. But, in three days, the bailiff had issued again from the Castle and had gone to the byres of the poor widow of Martin Taylor, having about him ten pikemen for his protection. Then Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock and Richard Raket considered that if this thing were done, even upon the poorest of them, it might well serve as a precedent. They had called together all the bondsmen and their sons, and the number of sixty-seven men and all the women had come, being ninety in number, and the more noisy because it was a woman and a widow that the bailiff sought to oppress. So they had thrown stones at the pikemen who were bearing off the widow’s donkey, and had broken out the bailiff’s teeth, and driven them all back to the Castle. And, in expectation that the bailiff should come again with a greater force, they had fetched from their hiding-places all their arms, and had them ready. But the people from the Castle never came again; without doubt they thought they were not strong enough; the bondsmen of Castle Lovell were all very notable reivers and fighting men.