The affair turned out to be easy enough." And he then related, in detail, the manner in which he and Roger had obtained entry into the hold, and had succeeded in rescuing his cousins.
"By the bones of Saint Oswald, from whom you got your name, lad," John Forster exclaimed, when he had finished his story, "you have carried out the matter marvellously well! Hotspur himself could not have contrived it better; and I own that I was wrong, and that that fancy of yours, to be able to read and write, has not done you the damage that I feared it would.

Henceforth I will maintain, with all my might, that these things in no way tend to soften a man; but on the contrary, in some way sharpen his wits, and enable him to carry out matters with plans, and contrivances, such as would scarce be conceived by men who had not such advantage.
"But why do we not go inside ?" "I have been keeping you here, Father, because I doubt not that my mother has been breaking the news to the girls, of their mother's slaughter.

I said nought to them about it.

They knew the hold was burnt, and I told them that Allan was wounded; but I thought that, if I gave them the worst part of the news, it would throw them into such deep grief as to unfit them for the journey.

It might not have been discovered till two hours after we had started that they had escaped, and in that case we should have been mounted before the Bairds overtook us, and it would have been a ride for life, and the girls would have needed all their strength and courage to keep them up." "It was as well so, Oswald, and doubtless your mother will break it more easily to them than you could have done.