Two months were consumed on the voyage to Ireland: not by any means an unreasonable time, when that period or longer was frequently required between Dover and Calais. They were detained previously at Holyhead, waiting for a south-east wind, only for a fortnight, which was rather a matter for congratulation; as was also the fact that they were only twice in danger of their lives during the voyage. Perils in the wilderness, and perils in the sea, were much more intelligible to our forefathers than to ourselves. Roger was growing dreadfully tired of sea and sky long before the shore of Antrim was sighted. Lawrence was tired of nothing but his own ignorance and incapacity to understand what he saw. He wanted to know—to dive to the bottom of every thing, literally and figuratively: and he did not know how to get there, and nobody could or would tell him. Surely things had an end somewhere—if one could only find it out! The voyage came to one, at any rate; and on a beautiful summer morning, the keel of the Grace Dieu at last grated upon the shingle of Ulster. Half-a-dozen of the crew jumped out into the surf, and twice as many came to help from the land. The great boat was dragged on shore by the help of ropes, a ladder set against her side, and Roger carefully carried ashore by a squire. Lawrence was left to climb down as he best could. Both reached the ground in safety, and found themselves in presence of a crowd of officers and retainers in the Earl of Ulster’s livery; from among whom in a moment the Earl himself came forward, and gave a warm fatherly welcome to his little son. After mutual greetings had been sufficiently exchanged between old residents and new-comers, the Earl mounted his horse, a superb bay caparisoned with a scarlet saddle-cloth, and Roger having been lifted on a white pony beside him, they rode away to the Castle of Carrickfergus. Ulster was in the fourteenth century, as it still is in the nineteenth, in a much more settled, and to English eyes a more civilised condition, than the Milesian parts of Ireland: but even there, that hatred of rent which seems characteristic of the Irish race, flourished quite as luxuriantly as now. Fifty years before this date, Maud of Lancaster, the girl-widow of the murdered Earl of Ulster, and great-grandmother of little Roger, had been constrained to address piteous appeals to King Edward III. for his charity, on the ground that while nominally possessed of large property, she had really nothing to live upon, since her Irish tenants would not pay their rents.