“Red Eve has other foes in Avignon besides the pest,” muttered Grey Dick, adding:  “still, let us have faith; it is a good friend to man.  Did not yonder Helper chide us for our lack of it?”

They forced a way down the dead-cumbered tower stair, crawling through the darkness over the bodies of the fallen.  They crossed the hall that also was full of dead, and of wounded whose pitiful groans echoed from the vaulted roof, and climbed another stair to their chamber in the gateway tower.  Here from a spark of fire that still smouldered on the hearth, they lit the lamps of olive-oil and by the light of them washed off the stains of battle, and refreshed themselves with food and wine.  These things done, Dick returned to the hall and presently brought thence two suits of armour and some cloaks which he had taken either from the walls or from off the slain.  In these they disguised themselves as best they could, as de Noyon had disguised himself at Crecy.

Then, having collected a store of arrows whereof many lay about, they departed by the back entrance.  The great front doorway was so choked with corpses that they could not pass it, since here had raged the last fearful struggle to escape.  Going to the little stable-yard, where they found their horses unharmed in the stalls, although frightened by the tumult and stiff from lack of exercise, they fed and saddled them and led them out.  So presently they looked their last upon the Bride’s Tower that had sheltered them so well.

“It has served our turn,” said Hugh, glancing back at it from the other side of the deserted square, “but oh, I pray heaven that we may never see that charnel-house again!”

As he spoke a figure appeared from the shadow of a doorway, and ran toward them.  Thinking it was that of some foe, Dick lifted his axe to cut him down, whereon a voice cried in English: 

“Hold!  I am David!”

“David!” exclaimed Hugh.  “Then thanks be to God, for know, we thought you dead these many days.”

“Ay, sir,” answered the young man, “as I thought you.  The rumour reached the Jews, among whom I have been hiding while I recovered of my hurts, that the Mad Monk and his fellows had stormed the tower and killed you both.  Therefore I crept out to learn for myself.  Now I have found you by your voices, who never again hoped to look upon you living,” and he began to sob in his relief and joy.

“Come on, lad,” said Grey Dick kindly, “this is no place for greetings.”

“Whither go you, sir?” asked David as he walked forward alongside of the horses.

“To seek that house where we saw Sir Andrew Arnold and the lady Eve,” answered Hugh, “if by any chance it can be found.”

“That is easy, sir,” said David.  “As it happens, I passed it not much more than an hour ago and knew it again.”

“Did you see any one there?” asked Hugh eagerly.

“Nay, the windows were dark.  Also the Jew guiding me said he had heard that all who dwelt in that house were dead of the plague.  Still of this matter he knew nothing for certain.”