"
"How can I do that, lord?" asked Basil with a sour smile. "Such tricks
might work backward. I might die, or you. Still these men have committed
crimes, and just now there is a prejudice against Jews."
"Ay," said Acour, "the Englishmen are sorcerers. I tell you that in
Venice they were seen in the company of that fiend of the yellow cap and
the fur robe who appears everywhere before the pest."
"Prove it," exclaimed Basil, "and the citizens of Avignon will rid you
of their troubling."
Then they debated long together and the end of it was that Basil
departed, saying that he would return again on the morrow and make
report as to certain matters.
CHAPTER XVII
A MEETING
Hugh, Grey Dick, and David, trudged up and down through the streets of
Avignon. All that long day they trudged seeking news and finding little.
Again and again they asked at the inns whether a knight who bore the
name of Acour, or de Noyon, or Cattrina, was or had been a guest there,
but none whom they asked seemed to know anything of such a person.
They asked it of citizens, also of holy priests, good men who, careless
of their own lives, followed biers or cartloads of dead destined to the
plague pit or the river that they might pronounce over them the last
blessings of the Church. They asked it of physicians, some few of whom
still remained alive, as they hurried from house to house to administer
to the sick or dying.
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