At length, however, Hugh and Dick came there safe and sound.

Having landed and bid farewell to the captain and crew of the ship, they waited on the head of a great trading house with which Master de Cressi had dealings.
This signor, who could speak French, gave them lodging and welcomed them well, both for the sake of Hugh's father and because they came as messengers from the King of England.

On the morrow of their arrival he took them to a great lord in authority, who was called a Duke.

This Duke, when he learned that one was a knight and the other a captain archer of the English army and that they both had fought at Crecy, where so many of his countrymen--the Genoese bowmen--had been slain, looked on them somewhat sourly.
Had he known all the part they played in that battle, in truth his welcome would have been rough.

But Hugh, with the guile of the serpent, told him that the brave Genoese had been slain, not by the English arrows, for which even with their wet strings they were quite a match (here Dick, who was standing to one side grinned faintly and stroked the case of his black bow, as though to bid it keep its memories to itself), but by the cowardly French, their allies.