But Geoffrey, with eyes shining, held his breath, and listened to the sounds, which seemed to be coming nearer. First there was a great fanfare of trumpets; then a blare of horns; and then he could hear the clatter as the inn folk hastened across the paved courtyard to the gateway to see what was going on in the street without. In a little while some of them seemed to return, and Geoffrey, who was burning to know, but could not stir for his chains, besought the man-at-arms to ask some one the cause of the commotion; so going over to the window of the room, he called out to a passer-by. “Ho, comrade! what is the meaning of yonder uproar?” “’Tis the king’s heralds,” answered the voice from without; “he hath sent them to proclaim a new law forbidding duels!” Then, before long, the heralds, having made the tour of the Dives streets, came riding toward the inn, escorted by a train of Dives people. Geoffrey heard their horses’ hoofs as they pricked in through the gateway, and also had the great joy of hearing them make the proclamation itself; for having heard that at that very moment a nobleman was lodging in the inn, come there for the purpose of a now unlawful duel, they halted in the middle of the courtyard, and rising in their stirrups, blew their trumpets, and again elaborately announced the royal edict,—this time for the express benefit of their two countships, Hugo and Boni. Hearing this, Geoffrey was wild with delight; it was all working out just as he had counted on! That is, all but one fact, which he all at once ruefully remembered; he himself was at that moment still a prisoner of the cruel Count Hugo. He had not counted on that at all! O, he thought, if he could only get out and throw himself on the mercy of the heralds! They were his only hope; for Count Boni as yet knew not why he had taken the sword, and was perhaps angry with him and would not come at once to help him. So he piteously begged and besought the man-at-arms to take off his chains and let him go only so far as the courtyard. But the man, though he felt sorry for the boy, had too hearty a terror of the consequences to himself if he let him out against Hugo’s orders; so he turned a deaf ear to all Geoffrey’s entreaties, and gruffly told him he could do nothing for him. At this the poor little boy fell to sobbing, and sobbed and sobbed most of the night; for the dark had now fallen, and the little fellow was quite hopeless for the morrow, when he knew Count Hugo meant to take him away.