So Sorley Boy departed discontented, like a man robbed.
All this I heard, and more than ever chafed at the slackness of our laggard steeds.

How I wished that, looking round, I might but see Ludar spurring at my side! Alas! I saw him not.

But one day, as we neared Chester, I did see a face in a troop that had joined ours on the road, that made me rub my eyes, and wonder if ghosts truly walked on earth.
If it was not Peter Stoupe, my old fellow 'prentice, it was as like him as one pea is to another.

Nay, once, when, to satisfy myself, I made a pretext to ride near him, I could have sworn I heard the humming of a psalm-tune amid the clatter of the hoofs.
Our troops parted company a day after, and I was left marvelling if all this world and the next were marching towards Ireland.
Early next day I had no leisure left me to cogitate more on that; for Tom Price reined his horse in beside mine, and said: "Humphrey, here is a message come from the Captain in hot haste, to prevent our going north, and ordering us to Dublin." I let my reins fall with a groan on my steed's neck.

Tom heeded it not, but continued: "The Spaniard, it is said, has been gathering in the northern seas, and is coming down on the western Irish coast, where he counts on the papists of the country to further him.