d it as a sport, but were compelled by many
ordinances to practise with it from their childhood.

Of other education he had none, but in this respect he was no worse off
than the majority of the knights and barons of the time, who were well
content to trust to monkish scribes to draw up such documents as were
required, and to affix their seal to them. He himself had once, some
six years before, expressed a wish to be sent for a year to the care of
the monks at Rothbury, whose superior was a distant connection of his
father, in order to be taught to read and write; but John Forster had
scoffed at the idea.

"You have to learn to be a man, lad," he had said, "and the monks will
never teach you that. I do not know one letter from another, nor did my
father, or any of my forebears, and we were no worse for it. On the
marches, unless a man means to become a monk, he has to learn to make
his sword guard his head, to send an arrow straight to the mark, to
know every foot of the passes, and to be prepared, at the order of his
lord, to defend his country against the Scots.

"These are vastly more important matters than reading and writing;
which are, so far as I can see, of no use to any fair man, whose word
is his bond, and who deals with honest men. I can reckon up, if I sell
so many cattle, how much has to be paid, and more of learning than that
I want not. Nor do you, and every hour spent on it would be as good as
wasted. As to the monks, Heaven forfend that you should ever become
one. They are good men, I doubt not, and I suppose that it is necessary
that some should take to it; but that a man who has the full possession
of his limbs should mew himself up, for life, between four walls,
passing his time in vigils and saying masses, in reading books and
distributing alms, seems to me to be a sort of madness."

"I certainly do not wish to become a monk, Father, but I thought that I
should like to learn to read and write."

"And when you have learnt it, what then, Oswald? Books are expensive
playthings, and no scrap of writing has ever been inside the walls of
Yardhope Hold, since it was first built here, as far as I know. As to
writing, it would be of still less use. If a man has a message to send,
he can send it by a hired man, if it suits him not to ride himself.
Besides, if he had written it, the person he sent it to would not be
able to read it, and would have to go to some scribe for an
interpretation of its contents