as we know, is greatly in want of money, should have fixed your ransom
at a low sum. How much was it, Sir Oswald?"

"I will tell you the story, Sir Henry, though I would tell no one else;
for my freedom is due to something that happened, nigh two years ago,
when I was first with Sir Edmund Mortimer. I failed in what was my
strict duty, although I disobeyed no orders that I had received, and my
conscience altogether acquits me of wrong."

"You may be sure, Sir Oswald, that the matter will go no further; and
knowing you as I do, I feel sure that, whatever the matter was, it was
not to your discredit."

"So I trust, myself, my lord; but it might have cost me my head, had
the king come to know it. I will first tell you that my ransom was
fixed at a crown, and that of Roger at a penny."

Hotspur, who had been looking a little grave, laughed.

"Surely never before was so much bone and sinew appraised at so small a
sum."

"It was so put, simply that I might, with truth, avow that I was put to
ransom. However, I paid the crown and the penny, and have so discharged
my obligations.

"This was how the matter came about;" and he related the whole
circumstances to Sir Henry; and the manner in which the little chain,
given to him by Glendower's daughter, had been the means of saving his
life.

"I blame you in no way, Sir Oswald," Hotspur said cordially, when he
had heard the story; "though I say not that the king would have viewed
the matter in the same light. Still, you held to the letter of your
orders. You were placed there to give warning of the approach of any
hostile body, and naught was said to you as to letting any man, still
less any women, depart from the place. But indeed, how could I blame
you? Since heaven itself has assoiled you. For assuredly it was not
chance that placed on your arm the little trinket that, alone, could
have saved your life from the Welsh.

"Now to yourself, Sir Oswald. You will, I hope, continue my knight, as
you have been my squire."

"Assuredly, Sir Henry, I have never thought of anything else."

"Very well, then; I will, as soon as may be, appoint to you a double
knight's feu. I say a double feu, because I should like to have you as
one of the castle knights, and so have much larger service from you,
than that which a knight can be called upon to render, for an ordinary
feu. I will bid Father Ernulf look through the rolls, and see what feus
are vacant. One of these I will make an h