At the small town where they stopped, next night, they learned that many complaints had been made, by travellers from the south, of how they had been stopped by a party of armed men on the border, closely questioned, and searched, and in some cases robbed. This had been going on for some weeks, and the sheriff of the county had twice collected an armed force, and ridden in search of the robbers, but altogether without success. It was believed that they were strangers to the district, and the description given of them had not agreed with those of any noted bad characters, in the neighbourhood. "Certainly, Master Oswald," the monk said, "all this seems to support your idea. Money and valuables are soon found; but by what these men say of the way in which the clothes and belongings of these travellers were searched, it would seem to show that money was not the object of the band, but rather the discovery of correspondence, and that money was only taken as a cloak." "I have no doubt that they were there to intercept someone, Roger, though it may not have been Percy's messengers; still, we are well rid of them, and I hope that we shall meet no more, on our way." The hope was fulfilled, and they reached Dunbar without further interruption. Here they deemed it better to separate. The monk went to a convent, and gave out there that he was on the way to Edinburgh, being on a journey thither to see his aged father, who was in his last sickness. Oswald went to a shop, and bought clothes suited for the son of a trader in a fair position; and, changing his things at the inn where he had put up, made his way to the castle. "I would have speech with the earl," he said, to the warder at the gate. "I have his orders to wait upon him." "What is your name and condition?" "That matters not. I am here by the earl's orders. He sent me a ring, by which it might be known that I am authorized to have access to him." On seeing the ring, the warder at once called to one of the servitors, and bade him conduct Oswald to the earl's apartment. "Whom shall I say?" he asked, when he reached the door. "Give this ring to him, and say that the bearer awaits admittance to him." The man entered the room and then, opening the door again, motioned to Oswald to enter. The earl, a tall and powerfully-built man, looked with a keen scrutiny at him. "From whom come you, young sir?" "From the holder of that ring, my Lord Earl," Oswald said, presenting the ring that Percy had given him. "My name is Oswald Forster, and I have the honour to be one of Lord Percy's esquires." "Come you alone?" the earl asked. "I came with a companion, a monk. I was in the disguise of a young servitor of his convent. We came on foot from Roxburgh." He then unscrewed the handle of a dagger Percy had given him, for the purpose, and pulled out a small roll of paper, which he handed to the earl. It contained only the following words: