"I'll not tell you, master," answered ****, "lest you should think me madder than I am, which to-night would be very mad indeed. Stay, though, I'll tell David here, that he may be a witness to my folly," and he called the young man to him and spoke with him apart.
Then they unlocked the courtyard gate and entered the house by the kitchen door, as it chanced quite unobserved, for now all the servants were abed. Indeed, of that household none ever knew that they had been outside its walls this night, since no one saw them go or return, and Sir Geoffrey and his lady thought that they had retired to their chamber.
They came to the door of their room, David still with them, for the place where he slept was at the end of this same passage.
"Bide here a while," said **** to him. "My master and I may have a word to say to you presently."
Then they lit tapers from a little Roman lamp that burned all night in the passage and entered the room. **** walked at once to the window-place, looked and laughed a little.
"The arrow has missed," he said, "or rather," he added doubtfully, "the target is gone."
"What target?" asked Hugh wearily, for now he desired sleep more than he had ever done in all his life. Then he turned, the taper in his hand, and started back suddenly, pointing to something which hung upon his bed-post that stood opposite to the window.
"Who nails his helm upon my bed?" he said. "Is this a challenge from some knight of Venice?"
**** stepped forward and looked.
"An omen, not a challenge, I think. Come and see for yourself," he said.
This is what Hugh saw: Fixed to the post by a shaft which pierced it and the carved olivewood from side to side, was the helm that they had stripped from the body of Sir Pierre de la Roche; the helm of Sir Edmund Acour, which Sir Pierre had worn at Crecy and **** had tumbled out of his sack in the presence of the Doge before Cattrina's face. On his return to the house of Sir Geoffrey Carleon he had set it down in the centre of the open window-place and left it there when they went out to survey the ground where they must fight upon the morrow.
Having studied it for a moment, **** went to the door and called to David.
"Friend," he said, standing between him and the bed, so that he could see nothing, "what was it that just now I told you was in my mind when yonder Murgh asked me at what target he should shoot with my bow on the Place of Arms?"
"A knight's helm," answered David, "which stood in the window of your room at the ambassador's house--a knight's helmet that had a swan for its crest."
"You hear?" said **** to Hugh; "now come, both of you, and see. What is that which hangs upon the bed-post? Answer you, David, for perchance my sight is bewitched."
"A knight's helm," answered David, "bearing the crest of a floating swan and held there by an arrow which has pierced it through."
"What was the arrow like which I gave this night to one Murgh, master?" asked **** again.
"It was a war shaft having two black feathers and the third white but chequered with four black spots and a smear of brown," answered Hugh.
"Then is that the same arrow, master, which this Murgh loosed from more than a mile away?"
Hugh examined it with care. Thrice he examined it, point and shaft and feathers. Then in a low voice he answered:
"/Yes!/"
