Still, a Baird had been killed, and assuredly William Baird would not
be deterred by any similar scruples. His pitiless ferocity was
notorious, and even his own countrymen cried out against some of his
deeds, and the Earl of Douglas had several times threatened to hand him
over to the English authorities; but the Bairds were powerful, and
could, with their allies, place four or five hundred men in the field;
and, in the difficult country in which they lived, could have given a
great deal of trouble, even to Douglas. Therefore nothing had come of
his threats, and the Bairds had continued to be the terror of that part
of the English border that was the most convenient for their
operations.
Oswald was now past sixteen, and promised to be as big a man as his
father, who was a fine specimen of the hardy Northumbrian race--tall,
strong, and sinewy. He had felt hurt when his father had refused to
allow him to take part in the foray.
"Time enough, lad, time enough," he had said, when the lad had made his
petition to do so. "You are not strong enough, yet, to hold your own
against one of the Bairds' moss troopers, should it come to fighting.
In another couple of years it will be time enough to think of your
going on such an excursion as this.
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