Sir Jasper, sure of his mare, had ridden hard toward Windyhough. He had promised, in good faith, that he would lead Captain Goldstein on the road, but he had not passed his word that he would ride at the pace of heavy cavalry. He heard the bullets singing, right and left and overhead, after Goldstein’s call to fire; but the lean, hill-bred mare was going swiftly under him, and it was only five miles home to Windyhough. There had been a sharp pain in his left shoulder, a stab as if a red-hot rapier had pierced him, in the midst of the crackling musket-din behind him; but that was forgotten.

The mare galloped forward gamely. She was untouched, save for a bullet that had grazed her flank and quickened her temper to good purpose. Sir Jasper’s spirits rose, as the remembered landmarks swept past him on the wind. His mind, his vision, his grip on forward hope, were singularly clear and strong. This was his holiday, after the sickness of retreat.

He had gained a mile by now. His pursuers, riding jaded horses, were out of sight and hearing behind the hump of Haggart Rise. He remembered, once again, the Prince’s figure, riding solitary on the Langton road; and he was glad that these one-and-twenty louts were being led wide of their real quarry. And then he forgot the Stuarts, and recalled his wife’s face, the tenderness he had for her, the peril he was bringing north to Windyhough. Behind him was Captain Goldstein, of unknown ancestry and doubtful morals, and with him a crowd of raffish foreigners, who would follow any cause that promised licence and good pay.

Sir Jasper saw the danger plainly. He was thinking, not of the Prince’s honour now, but of his wife’s. He knew that he must win to Windyhough. And still his spirits rose; for this was danger, undisguised and facing him across the sleety, rugged hills he loved. Windyhough had stout walls, and powder and ball, and loopholes facing to the four points of the compass; Simon Foster would be there, and Rupert could pull a trigger; it would be in the power of this little garrison to hold the house, to pick off, one by one, this company of Goldstein’s until the rest took panic and left it to its loneliness.

It was a hazard to his liking, and Sir Jasper’s face was keen and ruddy as he clattered down and up the winding track. He was a short mile now from Windyhough, and he eased his mare because she showed signs of trouble.

“We’ve time and to spare, lass,” he muttered, patting her neck. “No need to kill you for the Cause.”

And then—from the midst of his eagerness and hope—a sickness crept over the horseman’s eyes. His left shoulder was on fire, it seemed; and, glancing down, he saw dimly that his riding-coat was splashed with crimson. The mare, feeling no command go out across the reins, yielded to her own weariness, and halted suddenly. Sir Jasper tried to urge her forward; but his hand was weak on the bridle, and the grassy track, the hills, the flakes of sleet, were phantoms moving through a nightmare prison.

He had come to the gate of Intake Farm, and the farmer—Ben Shackleton by name—was striding up the road to gather in some ewes from the higher lands before the snow began to drift in earnest.

“Lord love you, sir!” he said nonchalantly, catching Sir Jasper as he slid helplessly from saddle. “Lord love you, sir, you’re bleeding like a pig!”

“It’s nothing, Ben.” Even now Sir Jasper kept his spacious contempt of pain, his instinct to hide a wound as if it were a crime. “Help me to horse again. My wife needs me—needs me, Ben.”Then he yielded to sheer sickness for a moment; and Ben Shackleton, who was used to helping lame cattle, grew brisk and business-like. “Here, William!” he called to a shepherd who was slouching in the mistal-yard. “Come lend a hand, thou idle-bones! Here’s master ta’en a hurt, and he’s a bulkier man than me. We’ve got to help him indoors to the lang-settle.”

Sir Jasper, by grace of long training, was able to keep his weakness off for a space of time that seemed to him interminable. He saw Windyhough at the mercy of these ragabouts of Goldstein’s—saw his wife standing, proud, disdainful, pitiful, while they bandied jests from mouth to mouth.

“It’s nothing, Ben, I tell you!” he muttered testily. “Help me to saddle.”

He staggered forward, tried to mount, fell back again into Ben’s arms. And still he would not yield. And then at last he knew that Windyhough would not see him to-day, if ever again; and the pity he had for his wife, left defenceless there by his own doing, was like a knife cutting deep and ceaselessly into his living flesh.

He was in torment, so that his wound, save that it hampered him, seemed a trivial matter. To Ben Shackleton and the shepherd all passed in a few minutes; they did not guess how long the interval was to Sir Jasper between this going down to hell and the first ray of hope that crossed the blackness.

Sir Jasper passed a hand across his eyes. If only he could understand this sudden hope, the meaning of it—if his wits were less muddled—there was a chance yet for Windyhough. Then he remembered Rupert—his son, to whom he had told a fairy-tale of gunpowder and ball, and the defence of the old house—and a weight seemed lifted from him. He recalled how he had said to the boy’s mother that Rupert was leal and stubborn at the soul of him, however it might be with his capacity for every-day affairs. He smiled, so that Ben and the shepherd, looking on, thought that he was fey; for he was thinking how weak in body he himself was, how, like Rupert, he had only his leal soul to depend upon.

Then, for the last time before he surrendered to the weakness that was gripping him in earnest, he had a moment of borrowed vigour. “Ben,” he said, in the old tone of command, “you’ve your horse ready saddled?”

“Aye, sir!” answered the other, bewildered but obedient.

“Ride hard for Windyhough. There’s a troop of the enemy close behind. Gallop, Ben, and tell my son”—he steadied himself, with a hand on the shepherd’s shoulder—“tell him that he must hold the house until I come, that I trust him, that he knows where the powder is stored. Oh, you fool, you stand gaping! And there is urgency.”

“I’m loath to leave you, Sir Jasper——”

“You’ll be less loath, Ben,” broke in the other, with a fine rallying to his shattered strength, “if I bring the blunt side of my sword about your ears.”

So Ben Shackleton, troubled and full of doubt, got to horse, following that instinct of obedience which the master had learned before he taught it to his men, and rode up the windy track. Sir Jasper, when he had seen him top the rise and disappear in the yellow, dreary haze, leaned heavily against the shepherd.

“Now for the lang-settle, since needs must,” he said, with a last bid for gaiety. “I can cross the mistal-yard, I think, with a little help. So, shepherd! It heaves like a ship in storm; it heaves, I tell you; but my son out yonder—my son at Windyhough—oh, the dear God knows, shepherd, that I taught him—taught him how to die, I hope!”

They crossed the mistal-yard, blundering as they went; and somehow the shepherd got Sir Jasper into the cheery, firelit house-place, and on to the lang-settle. Ben Shackleton’s wife was baking an apple-pasty when they came in, and glanced up. If she felt surprise, she showed none, but wiped the flour from her arms with her apron, and crossed to the settle. She looked at Sir Jasper as he lay in a white and deathlike swoon, and saw the blood oozing from his wounded shoulder.

Shackleton’s wife was quick of tongue and quick of her hands. “Take thy girt lad’s foolishness out o’ doors, William!” she snapped. “I know how to dress a wound by this time, or should do, seeing how oft Shackleton lames himself by using farm-tools carelessly. Shackleton has a gift that way.”

The shepherd passed out into the windy, cheerless out-o’-doors. He knew the mistress in this humour, and preferred a chill breeze from the east. As he crossed the mistal-yard he saw a company of horsemen, riding jaded nags; and they were grouped about Sir Jasper’s mare, that, too tired to move, was whinnying for her absent master.

“Hi, my man!” said Goldstein. “Whose mare is this?”

“Sir Jasper Royd’s,” the shepherd answered. His voice was low and pleasant, as the way of Lancashire folk is when they prepare to meet a bullying intrusion.

“Then he’s here?”

“No,” said the shepherd, after picking a straw from the yard and chewing it with bucolic, grave simplicity. “No. Sir Jasper changed horses here, and rode for Windyhough.”

“How far away?”

The shepherd thought of Sir Jasper, lying yonder on the lang-settle. He was touched, in some queer way, by the master’s gallantry in the dark hour of retreat. He was so moved that he was brought, against his will, to tell a lie and stick to it.

“Oh, six mile or so, as the crow flies—more by road,” he said nonchalantly. “Ye’d best be getting forrard, if ye want to win there by nightfall.”

Goldstein mistook this country yokel’s simplicity for honest dullness. Men more in touch with the Lancashire character had done as much before his time, especially when horse-dealing was in progress on market days. “You look honest, my man,” he said, stooping to slip a coin into William’s hand. “Tell me what sort of road it is from here to Windyhough.”

“Well, as for honest,” said the other, with the vacant grin that was expected of him, “I may be honest as my neighbours, if that be much to boast of; and it’s a terrible ill-found road, for sure. Best be jogging forrard, I tell ye.”

“It’s cursed luck, men,” said Goldstein, spurring his horse into the semblance of a trot; “but we’re hunting big game this time. A mile or two needn’t matter. There’s the Pretender at Windyhough, remember, and a nice bit of money to be earned.”

The shepherd watched them over the hilltop, then glanced at the piece of silver lying in his palm. There was so much he might do with this money—might buy himself a mug or two of ale at the tavern in the hollow, just by way of changing the crown-piece into smaller coin—and he was “feeling as if he needed warming up, like, after all this plaguy wind.”

He glanced at the coin again, with a wistfulness that was almost passionate. Then he spat on it, and threw it into the refuse from the mistal lying close behind.

“Nay, I’ll have honest ale, or none,” he growled, and crossed quietly to the house, and stood on the threshold, looking in.

He saw Shackleton’s wife bending over Sir Jasper, who lay in a swoon so helpless and complete that it was like a child’s sleep—a sleep tired with the day’s endeavours, yet tranquil and unfearful for the morrow’s safety.

“Oh, it is thee, is’t?” said Shackleton’s wife, facing round. “Well, he’s doing nicely—or was, till ye let in all this wind that’s fit to rouse a body from his grave.”

“Well-a-day, mistress,” said the shepherd, with a pleasant grin, “if that’s your humour, I’m for the mistal-yard again. It’s rare and quiet out there.”

“Nay, now,” she said, glancing up with sharp, imperious kindliness. “Shut t’ door, lad, and sit thee down by th’ peats, and keep a still tongue i’ thy head. I wouldn’t turn a dog out into all this storm that’s brewing up. And, besides, Sir Jasper’s mending. I’d doubts of him at first; but he’s sleeping like a babby now. We’ll keep watch together, till Shackleton comes home fro’ his ride to Windyhough. He’ll not be long, unless the maids there ’tice him to gossip and strong ale.”

“I might smoke, mistress—just, like, to pass the time?”

“Aye, smoke,” snapped Shackleton’s wife. “Men were always like bairns, needing their teething-rings, in one shape or another.”

“Better than spoiling their tempers,” said the shepherd. And he lit his pipe from a live peat, and said no more; for he was wise, as men go.