Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV AN UNEQUAL JOUST " T7OU must don your best costume to-morrow, Oswald," his JL 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 thor n 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 St. John, which is a place of punishment for refractory monks. But in truth he is an honest fellow, though he has mistaken his vocation. He is a valiant man-at-arms, and the abbot's contingent would be of small value without him. Well, I will see your nephew in the morning. His perseverance in learning, and his quickness in acquiring it, show him to be a youth of good parts and intelligent, but until I see him I cannot say what I will make of him.' " Accordingly, the next morning the lad accompanied his uncle to Sir Henry's private apartment, and found the knight alone. Sir Henry, Lord Percy, was now about forty years old. He had received the order of knig...