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 was the only house that escaped
scot free, for thirty miles round.
"But indeed, 'tis generally but parties of pillagers who trouble this
part of the country, even when they invade England.
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