"So I trust, myself, my lord; but it might have cost me my head, had the king come to know it. I will first tell you that my ransom was fixed at a crown, and that of Roger at a penny."
Hotspur, who had been looking a little grave, laughed.
"Surely never before was so much bone and sinew appraised at so small a sum."
"It was so put, simply that I might, with truth, avow that I was put to ransom. However, I paid the crown and the penny, and have so discharged my obligations.
"This was how the matter came about;" and he related the whole circumstances to Sir Henry; and the manner in which the little chain, given to him by Glendower's daughter, had been the means of saving his life.
"I blame you in no way, Sir Oswald," Hotspur said cordially, when he had heard the story; "though I say not that the king would have viewed the matter in the same light. Still, you held to the letter of your orders. You were placed there to give warning of the approach of any hostile body, and naught was said to you as to letting any man, still less any women, depart from the place. But indeed, how could I blame you? Since heaven itself has assoiled you. For assuredly it was not chance that placed on your arm the little trinket that, alone, could have saved your life from the Welsh.
"Now to yourself, Sir Oswald. You will, I hope, continue my knight, as you have been my squire."
"Assuredly, Sir Henry, I have never thought of anything else."
"Very well, then; I will, as soon as may be, appoint to you a double knight's feu. I say a double feu, because I should like to have you as one of the castle knights, and so have much larger service from you, than that which a knight can be called upon to render, for an ordinary feu. I will bid Father Ernulf look through the rolls, and see what feus are vacant. One of these I will make an hereditary feu, to pass down from you to your heirs, irrevocably; the other will be a service feu, to support the expenses caused by your extra services, and revocable under the usual conditions."
A week later there was a formal ceremonial at the castle, and in the presence of the earl, Hotspur, and the knights and gentlemen of their service, Oswald took the oath of allegiance to Sir Henry Percy; and afterwards, as required by law, to the king; and received from Hotspur deeds appointing him to two knight's feus, including the villages of Stoubes and Rochester, in Reddesdale. There were, at the time, six knight's feus vacant; and as Percy had left it to him to choose which he liked, he had selected these, as they lay but a twelve miles' ride, over the hills, from his father's place in Coquetdale.