These had not yet taken their seats, when the priest entered with his companion, whom he at once took up to Sir William Baird.
"By Saint Andrew! Monk, I have seen no finer figure, for many a day.

A pity that a monk's gown should clothe such limbs as yours." "That has always been mine own opinion," Roger said, with a heartiness that raised a smile on the hard faces of the men standing round.
"You look as if you had carried arms." "I did so, in my wild youth," Roger said, "and had no thought of ever donning monk's hood; but I was grievously wounded, in a foray in Northumberland, and when I reached my home at Lauder, I well nigh died of the fever of the wound; and I swore that, if my life was saved, I would become a monk.

I got well, and I kept my vow; but methinks, had I but known how dull the life was, I would rather have died of the fever." As this story was perfectly true, save the name of his birthplace, Roger spoke so heartily that no one doubted his story.
"And your monastery is at Dunbar?
"You have been at Dunbar, Rotherglen.

Ask him where the convent stood." As Roger had stayed there, when with Oswald he was at Dunbar, he was able to answer this, and other questions, satisfactorily.

The party then took their places at table, the priest and Roger sitting at the bottom of it.