“I do not doubt you do, but we shall see. The citizens will give him a short shrift if they find him a rogue. But I had liked to see such zeal as befits one who commands a city, and would not be taken unprepared. When the regiments arrive from England they will find their entertainment of the poorest. If empty magazines and disordered companies are evidence of loyalty you might find a sign to hang up before every house in the city. But Ulster hath a proud heart and a stiff neck and will fight when she is pushed.” “The Kingdom´s safety and the Protestant religion depend upon her stoutness; she will die hard.” “It may come to that. Now, young gentleman, get you gone. He that would be early afoot should be early abed, and see that you get to rest betimes. Let there be no late revelling. We meet at three.” Gervase Orme who had been lately an ensign in Mountjoy´s regiment of foot, had been quartered with his company in Londonderry, when his Colonel was appointed Governor of the City. Like other gentlemen of his faith he had not wavered in his allegiance or dreamed of taking up arms against the House of Stuart, till loyalty had become a crime and resistance an imperative duty. His own slender patrimony was in peril; his faith was threatened and in danger of being proscribed; his friends, whose safety and honour were his own, were placed at the mercy of their bitter and hereditary foes. Civil war was imminent and he could not hesitate as to the course he should adopt. James had broken faith with his people; the native Celtic population, steadfast in this, while they were wayward and fickle in all else, were determined to drive the English garrison into the sea, and the instincts of religion and of race intensified their hatred of the dominant caste. When Colonel Lundy took the oath of allegiance to William and Mary, Gervase Orme willingly followed the example of his Colonel, and embarked with enthusiasm on the impending struggle. To him it was the one course left open, and he felt, like the other simple gentlemen of his time, that when he drew his sword it was for fatherland, for faith, and even for life itself. Nor did he very much doubt the result. The descendent of a Saxon colonist he looked down on the men of Munster and of Connaught as a race fit only for hewing wood and drawing water, for Fontenoy and other stricken fields had yet to be fought in which the Irish proved their splendid qualities as fighting men. And he had the Saxon´s profound faith in himself and his people.