.

"No, no, my lad, you have plenty to learn before you come to be a man,
without bothering your head with this monkish stuff. I doubt if
Hotspur, himself, can do more than sign his name to a parchment; and
what is good enough for the Percys, is surely good enough for you."

The idea had, in fact, been put into Oswald's head by his mother. At
that time the feud with the Bairds had burned very hotly, and it would
have lessened her anxieties had the boy been bestowed, for a time, in a
convent. Oswald himself felt no disappointment at his father's refusal
to a petition that he would never have made, had not his mother dilated
to him, on several occasions, upon the great advantage of learning.

No thought of repeating the request had ever entered his mind. His
father had thought more of it, and had several times expressed grave
regret, to his wife, over such an extraordinary wish having occurred to
their son.

"The boy has nothing of a milksop about him," he said; "and is, for his
age, full of spirit and courage. How so strange an idea could have
occurred to him is more than I can imagine. I should as soon expect to
see an owlet, in a sparrow hawk's nest, as a monk hatched in Yardhope
Hold."

His wife discreetly kept silence as to the fact that she, herself, had
first put the idea in the boy's head; for although Mary Forster was
mistress inside of the hold, in all other matters John was masterful,
and would brook no meddling, even by her. The subject, therefore, of
Oswald's learning to read and write, was never renewed.

Chapter 2: Across The Border.

A most vigilant watch was kept up, for the next week, at Yardhope Hold.
At night, three or four of the troopers were posted four or five miles
from the hold, on the roads by which an enemy was likely to come;
having under them the fleetest horses on the moor. When a week passed
there was some slight relaxation in the watch, for it was evident that
the Bairds intended to bide their time for a stroke, knowing well that
they would not be likely to be able to effect a surprise, at present.
The outlying posts were, therefore, no longer maintained; but the dogs
of the hold, fully a dozen in number, were chained nightly in a circle
three or four hundred yards outside it; and their barking would, at
once, apprise the watchers in the turrets on the walls of the approach
of any body of armed men.

Two days later, Oswald started for his promised visit to the
Armstrongs. I