"
After the others had gone out, Oswald strolled through the village, and
then mounted an eminence whence he could take a view across the valley,
and of some of the hilltops to the northeast. On one of these, two
miles away, he could make out a man standing by a horse. He watched him
for some little time, but beyond taking a few steps backwards and
forwards, the man did not move.
"He is a lookout," he said to himself, "and is no doubt watching some
road from Kelso and Jedburgh. Baird will hardly think that the
Armstrongs can have so soon gathered a force sufficient to attack him,
but he may have thought it as well to place one of his men on the
watch.
"I wonder how Roger is getting on! I think they must have taken him in,
or he would have been back before this."
Roger had walked quietly up the hill on which the Bairds' hold was
perched. A man stepped forward from the gate, as he neared it.
"None enter here," he said, "without permission from the master."
"Will you tell him that a poor monk, of the order of Saint Benedict, on
his way from his convent at Dunbar to one near Carlisle, of which his
brother is prior, prays hospitality for a day or two, seeing that he is
worn out by long travel?"
The sentry spoke to a man behind him, and the latter took the message
to William Baird.
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