ould need to have his spear ever ready at hand,
and to give or take hard blows.

"Besides," he went on, "though we carry off each others' cattle, and
fetch them home again, we are not bad friends while the truces hold,
save in the case of those who have blood feuds. It was but last week
that Allan Armstrong and his two sisters were staying here with us; and
I promised that, ere long, I would ride across the border and spend a
week with them."

"Yes, but that makes it all the worse. Adam Armstrong married my sister
Elizabeth, whom he first met at Goddington fair; and, indeed, there are
few families, on either side of the border, who have not both English
and Scotch blood in their veins. It is natural we should be friends,
seeing how often we have held Berwick, Roxburgh, and Dumfries; and how
often, in times of peace, Scotchmen come across the border to trade at
the fairs. Why should it not be so, when we speak the same tongue and,
save for the border line, are one people? Though, indeed, it is
different in Kirkcudbright and Wigtown, where they are Galwegians, and
their tongue is scarce understood by the border Scots. 'Tis strange
that those on one side of the border, and those on the other, cannot
keep the peace towards each other."

"But save when the kingdoms are at war, Mother, we do keep the peace,
except in the matter of cattle lifting; and bear no enmity towards each
other, save when blood is shed. In wartime each must, of course, fight
for his nation and as his lord orders him. We have wasted Scotland
again and again, from end to end; and they have swept the Northern
Counties well nigh as often.

"I have heard father say that, eight times in the last hundred years,
this hold has been levelled to the ground. It only escaped, last time,
because he built it so strongly of stone that they could not fire it;
and it would have taken them almost as long, to pick it to pieces, as
it took him to build it."

"Yes, that was when you were an infant, Oswald. When we heard the
Scotch army was marching this way, we took refuge with all the cattle
and horses among the Pikes; having first carried out and burnt all the
forage and stores, and leaving nothing that they could set fire to.
Your father has often laughed at the thought of how angry they must
have been, when they found that there was no mischief that they could
do; for, short of a long stay, which they never make, there was no way
in which they could damage it. Ours