Now good night to you--but stay! You, Norman Leslie, you will have quarrels on your hand.
Wait not for them, but go to meet them, if they are with the French men- at-arms, and in quarrel see that you be swift and deadly.

For the townsfolk, no brawling, marauding, or haling about of honest wenches.
Here we are strangers, and my men must be respected." He bowed his head: his words had been curt, no grace or kindness had he shown me of countenance.

I felt in my heart that to him I was but a pawn in the game of battle.

Now I seemed as far off as ever I was from my foolish dream of winning my spurs; nay, perchance never had I sunk lower in my own conceit.

Till this hour I had been, as it were, the hinge on which my share of the world turned, and now I was no more than a wheel in the carriage of a couleuvrine, an unconsidered cog in the machine of war.
I was to be lost in a multitude, every one as good as myself, or better; and when I had thought of taking service, I had not foreseen the manner of it and the nature of the soldier's trade.