twelve o'clock
`` The help you gave those maidens might have brought your head to the block ; but it turned out well , and was the saving of your life , so I will say nought against the deed ; especially as you owed no allegiance either to Mortimer or to Talbot , and were , save for the orders that Hotspur had given you , your own master . '' Two days later , having sent over , on the morning after his arrival , a message to the tenants to present themselves at Stoubes to take their oaths to him , Oswald , accompanied by his father , rode into Reddesdale . He found the castle a much stronger place than Yardhope , which was but a fortified house ; while this was a moated building , with strong walls and flanking towers , and a keep that could be held successfully , even if the walls were captured by a sudden assault . At twelve o'clock the tenants assembled . Oswald read to them the two parchments , and they then took the oaths to him . They were well satisfied to have a young knight as their lord ; for the feus had been held by a minor , who had died two years before ; and had not been at the castle since he was taken away , as a child , to be brought up at the town of Alnwick , where he had remained under the eye of the Percys . It had long been understood , however , that the feu would not be granted to him ; for he was weakly from his birth , and wholly unfitted for the charge of a castle , so near the Scottish border .