"You must don your best costume tomorrow, Oswald," his uncle said, when he returned from the banquet.

"Sir Henry Percy's first question, after asking as to the health of the garrison, was: "'Has this nephew of yours, of whom you were speaking to me, come yet ?' "I told him that you had been here well-nigh four months, that you had been practising in arms with my best swordsmen, who spoke highly of you, and that the whole of your spare time had been spent at the monastery, where you had been studying to acquire the art of reading and writing, thinking that such knowledge must be useful to you in his service.

I told him that brother Roger had reported that you had shown marvellous sharpness there, and could already read from a missal, barring only some of the long words.
"'Oh, he had the fighting monk for his master!' Sir Henry said, laughing.

'Truly he must have been a good pupil, if he has come out of it without having his head broken, a dozen times.

The friar is a thorn in the abbot's flesh, and more than once I have had to beg him off, or he would have been sent to the monastery of Saint John, which is a place of punishment for refractory monks.