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.

The latter was in a good humour.

He himself had not taken part in the raid on the Armstrongs, which had been led by Thomas Baird, a cousin; but the fact that the latter had been entirely successful, and had burned down Armstrong's house, and brought back his daughters, had given him the greatest satisfaction.