had they been merely
thieving caterans; besides, you marked that he said you were not the
man they were watching for."

"Whom think you that they are, then, Master Oswald?"

"I think it possible that they may be a party of Douglas's followers,
led by a knight. It may be that Douglas has received some hint of
March's being in communication with England; and that he has sent a
party to seize, and search, any traveller who looked like a messenger
from the south. Of course, this may be only fancy. Still, I am right
glad that you were wearing your monkish robe; for, had I been alone, I
might have been cross-questioned so shrewdly as to my purpose in
travelling, that I might have been held on suspicion, and means
employed to get the truth out of me."

At the small town where they stopped, next night, they learned that
many complaints had been made, by travellers from the south, of how
they had been stopped by a party of armed men on the border, closely
questioned, and searched, and in some cases robbed. This had been going
on for some weeks, and the sheriff of the county had twice collected an
armed force, and ridden in search of the robbers, but altogether
without success. It was believed that they were strangers to the
district, and the description given of them had not agreed with those
of any noted bad characters, in the neighbourhood.

"Certainly, Master Oswald," the monk said, "all this seems to support
your idea. Money and valuables are soon found; but by what these men
say of the way in which the clothes and belongings of these travellers
were searched, it would seem to show that money was not the object of
the band, but rather the discovery of correspondence, and that money
was only taken as a cloak."

"I have no doubt that they were there to intercept someone, Roger,
though it may not have been Percy's messengers; still, we are well rid
of them, and I hope that we shall meet no more, on our way."

The hope was fulfilled, and they reached Dunbar without further
interruption. Here they deemed it better to separate. The monk went to
a convent, and gave out there that he was on the way to Edinburgh,
being on a journey thither to see his aged father, who was in his last
sickness. Oswald went to a shop, and bought clothes suited for the son
of a trader in a fair position; and, changing his things at the inn
where he had put up, made his way to the castle.

"I would have speech with the earl," he said, to the warde