, 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.

"I had no such opportunities when a boy," said Hope, "as you have had.
I am a self-educated man. I never had but fifteen months of schooling in
my life. What little knowledge I have I gained with great difficulty."

This surprised Neal, for it seemed to him that he had never talked to
anyone who possessed more of that sweetness and wide reasonableness of
outlook upon life which ought to be the end of education. He tried to
express something of what he felt, but Hope stopped him and turned the
talk into other channels.

At Farranshane Hope bade him stand still and look at a farmhouse which
stood a