an hardly believe that this tall fellow is my Oswald. But otherwise
you are in no way changed."

"I think, Mother, that you are looking better than when I saw you
last."

"I am well, dear," she said. "We have had a quiet year, and no cause
for anxiety, and things have gone well with us; and it has been
pleasant, indeed, for us to have received such good news of your
doings, and to know that you stood so well with Hotspur."

Oswald now ran up the steps to greet his father, who was already
talking with Alwyn, who had slipped off his horse and run to speak to
his brother, while Oswald was occupied with his mother.

"Well, lad," John Forster said, laying his hand upon his shoulder, and
looking him up and down, "you have grown well nigh into manhood. I
always said that you would over top me, and though methinks that I have
still three inches of advantage, you have yet time to grow up to look
down on me.

"Well, you have done credit to us, boy, and your monkish reading and
writing has not harmed you, as I was afraid it would. Alwyn tells me
that no man of Percy's troop did better than you, in that fight with
the Welsh; save, mayhap, that big man-at-arms down there, who, he tells
me, cracked the skulls of four Welshmen who were trying to stab you,
besides those he disposed of on his own account."

"I owe him my life, indeed, Father. He is a man after your own heart,
strong and brave and hearty, even jovial when occasion offers. He can
troll out a border lay with the best, and can yet read and write as
well as an abbot. His name is Roger."

"Come up, Roger," John Forster shouted, "and give me a grip of your
hand. You have saved my son's life, as he tells me; and, so long as you
live, there will be a nook by the fire, here, and a hearty welcome,
when you are tired of soldiering."

"In truth, you are a mighty man," he went on, after he and Roger had
exchanged a grip that would have well nigh broken the bones of an
ordinary man. "I have been looked upon as one able to strike as hard a
blow as any on the border; but assuredly, you would strike a heavier
one. Why, man, you must be five or six inches bigger, round the chest,
than I am."

"You have been an active man from your youth," Roger replied, "ever on
horseback and about, while I spent years with nought to do but eat and
drink, and build up my frame, in a monastery."

"Oswald told us, in his letters, that you had been a monk; but had,
with the consent of the abbot,