"We met on the road, and as I love not solitude, having enough and to spare of it, I accosted him.

He turned out a good companion." "You are a man of sinew yourself, monk, and methinks that you would have made a better soldier than a shaveling." "I thought so sometime, myself," the monk said; "but my parents thought otherwise, and it is too late to take up another vocation, now." "Is that staff yours ?" the soldier asked, taking it up, and handling it.
"Yes, my son.

In these days even a quiet religious man, like myself, may meet with rough fellows by the way; and while that staff gives support to my feet, it is an aid to command decent behaviour from those I fall in with.

I have not much to lose, having with me but sufficient to buy me victuals for my journey to Carlisle; where, as I have just told our host, I am journeying to see a brother, who is prior at a convent there." "This fellow--where did you fall in with him ?" "He overtook me some twenty miles north, on the road to Glasgow." "And are you travelling to Carlisle, too ?" the man said to Oswald.
"Nay," he said, "I purpose not going beyond the border.

I have lost my employment, and have tried, in vain, to find another as much to my liking.