“So be it,” said Hope. “I shall not propose to you, Neal, that we ride and tie as the custom of the country is for travellers who have only one horse between them. You shall lead the horse, and so we shall be able to talk to each other.” Neal agreed to the plan gladly. He was greatly attracted by James Hope, and glad to spend some hours with him. The girl came running into the room, her face flushed with excitement. “Come, come,” she cried, “the soldiers are riding down the street in their braw red coats. Oh, the bonny men and the bonny horses!” The three travellers went to the door of the inn. Four companies of dragoons were passing through the town at a trot. It was Neal’s first view of any considerable body of troops. He stared at them, fascinated by the jingling and clattering of their accoutrements. These were very different from the yeomen he had seen at Dunseveric. Everything about them, the uniformity of their appearance, the condition of their arms and horses, the regularity of their march, expressed the fact that they were highly disciplined men. Donald Ward smiled grimly as he watched them. “There are the men we’ve got to beat,” he said. “Fine fellows, eh, Neal? They look as if they could sweep you and me and Jemmy Hope here, and a crowd like us, out of their way; but I’ve seen men in those same pretty clothes glad enough to turn their backs on troops no better organised nor drilled than ours will be.” “Poor fellows!” said Hope “poor fellows! Paid to fight and die in quarrels which are not their own. To fight for their masters, that their masters may grow rich and great. And yet they are of the people, too. It is just starvation, or the fear of it, that led them to enlist.” “Where are they going now?” asked Neal. “To Belfast,” said Hope. “I heard that the garrison there was deemed insufficient and that a fresh regiment of dragoons had been ordered in from Derry.” “Look at them well, Neal,” said Donald. “Look at them so that you’ll know them when you next see them. You’ll meet them again before long.” James Hope and Neal started on their walk soon after the dragoons had passed. Just outside the town they turned aside to view the round tower, the most famous of the buildings of its kind in the north. “None knows,” said Hope, “who built these towers, or why, but it seems certain to me that they were built by men with lofty thoughts, by men who looked upward rather than to the earth. Some say that it was to other gods they looked up and not to the true God. What does it matter? Their hearts, like their towers, rose clear of earthly hamperings and reached towards heaven.” He asked Neal many questions about his way of life and education, about the books he had read, and the periods of history he found specially interesting.