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:
"Do not intrust undue confidence in the bearer. The matters you wot of are in good train; of them my messenger knows nothing."
"This was so writ by Sir Henry Percy," said Oswald, "in order that, if I were detained and searched on the way, and this paper found on me, I might not be forced, by torture, to say aught of my message."
"But this signet ring would have shown to whom you were coming."
"It was concealed in my staff, my lord, and could not have been discovered, had not that been split open. Had it been so, I should have admitted that Lord Percy had indeed committed the signet and the writing to me to carry, and had bid me travel as the servitor of a monk on his journey north; but that, more than that these were to be delivered to you, I knew nothing. Lord Percy selected me as his messenger partly because, from my youth, I should not be likely to be suspected of being a messenger between two great lords; and in the second place because, if arrested, and these matters found on me, the statement in the letter would be readily believed. It would not be supposed that important state secrets would be committed to a lad, like myself."