At Windyhough there was an end of watching. Sleep had been the one traitor within-doors, and Goldstein’s men, by firing the main door, had killed their comrade in the garrison. Rupert, fingering one of his six muskets, was tasting the keenest happiness that had come to him as yet. Ben Shackleton, as he watched the timbers of the doorway flame and glow, forgot that he had a farm, a wife, and twenty head of cattle needing him. And Simon Foster, for his part, remembered the ’15, the slow years afterwards, and knew that it was good to be alive at last.

They watched the fire eat at the woodwork, watched the shifting play of colour; and, apart from the roar of the flames, the cracking of strained timbers, there was silence on each side of the crumbling barricades. Then suddenly the whole middle of the door fell inward, and in the pulsing light outside Rupert saw a press of men.

And the battle at the main door here was guided with wise generalship, as it had been at the outer gate some days ago.

“Fire!” said the master sharply.

His own musket was the first to answer the command, then Shackleton’s, and afterwards Simon Foster’s. In the red light, and at such close quarters, they could not miss their aim, and three of Goldstein’s company dropped headlong into the flaming gap, hindering those behind them.

“Fire!” said the master again, with quick precision.

And then the attacking company withdrew a while, after sending a hurried, useless volley through the hall. They had been prepared for a fight within-doors against a garrison of unknown strength, but not for this welcome on the threshold.

The sergeant, hard-bitten and old to campaigning, was dismayed for a moment as he looked at his lessened company. When they came first to Windyhough this band of Goldstein’s had numbered one-and-twenty. Now, at the end of two days, he could count only ten; the rest were either killed or laid aside beyond present hope of action. It was no pleasant beginning for an assault upon the darkness that lay inside the burning woodwork of the door.

Then he got himself in hand again. Whatever the unknown odds against them, their one chance was to go forward, now the door was down.

“We’ve tasted hell before,” he growled. “Steady, you fools! You’re not frightened of the dark.”

He sprang forward, and at the moment the last timbers of the doorway fell and flamed on the threshold, lighting up the whole width of the hall. He saw Simon Foster standing by the wall and levelling his musket, and fired sharply and hit him through the ribs. And after that was Bedlam, confused and maniacal and full of oaths; but to Rupert the glamour of his life had dawned in earnest.

He fired into the incoming company, and so did Ben Shackleton; and then they retreated to the stairfoot, carrying a musket apiece.

There were eight left now of Goldstein’s men, and they rushed in with such fury that they jostled one another, hindering their aim. Eight shots spat viciously at the garrison of two, and Shackleton’s right arm was hit by a bullet that glanced wide from the masonry behind him. He clubbed his musket with the left hand and brought it down on the head of the man nearest to him, and then he was borne down by numbers.

Rupert, not for the first time in his life, was alone against long odds. But to-night he was master of his house, master of the clean, eager soul that had waited for this battle. From the kitchen, where he had bidden his women-folk take shelter, he heard Lady Royd’s spaniel yapping furiously; and he smiled, because old memories were stirred.

He went up five steps of the stairway, singled out the sergeant, because he was the bulkiest of the seven left, and fired point-blank at him. After that there was no leisure for any one of them to reload; it was simply Rupert on the narrow stairway, swinging his musket lightly, against six maddened troopers who could only come up one by one.

It was Nance who intervened disastrously. She did not know—how could she—that the master, at the end of a dismaying, harassed vigil, was stronger than the six who met him. They were dulled to the glory of assault, but he was gathering up the dreams of the long, unproven years, was fighting his first battle, was armoured by a faith more keen and vivid than this world’s weaknesses could touch.

Nance, sick to know how it was faring with the master, weary of the yapping spaniel and the old housekeeper’s complaint that she wished to die decently in her bed, out of eye-shot of rude men—Nance crept up the back stair, and took a musket from the ledge of the north window she had guarded. Then she went down again, crossed the passage that led to the main hall, halted a moment as she saw Rupert on the stair, the six men below—all lit by the unearthly, crimson flare of burning woodwork—and lifted her musket with trim precision.

She had lessened the odds by one; but Rupert, glancing down to see who had fired so unexpectedly, saw Nance standing at the rear of this battle which was his. And his weakness took him unawares. He had been dominant and gay, because he carried his life lightly; but now there was Nance’s honour. One of the five left came up at him, and Rupert’s aim was true with the butt-end of his musket; but he was not fighting now with a single purpose, and he knew it. And sleep, kept at bay through every minute of every hour that had struck since Goldstein’s men came first, began to claim its toll.He could not hold the stair, sleep whispered at his ear. And he rallied bravely, afraid for the first time because of Nance. If he should fail to keep the stair? A sharp, unreasoning anger seized him. Why was she here? Women were good to send men into battle, to bind their wounds up afterwards, but in the hot, keen thick of it they had no place. Do as he would, his glance kept seeking the little figure that stood on the edge of the fire-glow, and the men pressing up were quick to see the change in him.

With a last, hard effort he shut down all thought of Nance. The troopers he had stunned lay sprawling down the stair, hindering the men behind. For a moment there was respite, and in that moment sleep thickened round the master’s eyelids. The confidence, the sense of treading air, borrowed at usury from his strength, were fast deserting him. He had victory full in sight on this narrow stair, and, like his Prince, he felt it slip past him out of reach, for no cause that seemed logical.

Nance did not guess the share she had had in this. She saw only that Rupert stooped suddenly, as if in mortal sickness, then squared his shoulders—saw that one of the men at the stairfoot was reloading his musket with deft haste, and shut her eyes. For she, too, was weak from lack of sleep.

Will Underwood, meanwhile, was running down the moor, the red-faced squire and the other sporting recusants behind him. There was no doubt now that Windyhough was in urgent peril. They could see the flaming doorway, could smell the scudding reek of smoke that came up-wind.

“You’re up to the neck in love,” protested the squire, trying to keep pace with Will. “There’s naught else gives such wind to a man’s feet.”

A sharp noise of musketry answered him from below, and Will ran ever a little faster. The squire’s gibe did not trouble him. The whole past life of him—the squalor of his youth, the sterile abnegation of the Sabbaths spent at Rigstones Chapel, the gradual change to ease and popularity among big-hearted gentry—passed by him like a fast-moving company of ghosts. And then another phantom stole, with faltering steps and shrouded head, across this vision he was borrowing from another world. He saw his cowardice, lean, shrivelled, stooping—the cowardice that had been born of ease and frank self-seeking. He had pledged faith that he would follow the Stuart when need asked; and he had broken troth, because he yearned to keep his house and lands, because he had planned to give a ball at Christmas that should set all Lancashire talking of its pomp.

God was very kind to-night to Wild Will. The run was short and swift to Windyhough, as time is reckoned; but during the scamper over broken ground he found that leisure of the soul which is cradled in eternity. He won free of his past. He knew only that the squire had spoken a true word in jest.

He was deep in love. All the ache and trouble of his need for Nance were wiped clean away. She was in danger, and he was running to her aid; and he understood, with a clean and happy sense of well-being, the way of his Catholic friends when they loved a woman. Until now it had been a riddle to him, the quality of this regard. He had seen them love as full-blooded men do—with storm and jealousy and passionate unrest, but always with a subtle reserve, a princely deference, shining dimly through it all. And to-night, his vision singularly clear, he knew that their faith was more than lip speech, knew that the Madonna had come once, and once for all, to show the path of chivalry.

If Rupert had found happiness during this siege that had tested his manhood, so, too, had Will Underwood. With a single purpose, with desire only to serve Nance, asking no thanks or recompense, he raced over the last strip of broken ground and through the courtyard gate.

“Be gad! they’ve been busy here!” growled the red-faced squire, seeing the bodies lying black against the snow and hearing the wounded crying in their anguish. But Will did not see the littered yard, the white, keen moonlight that spared no ugly detail. His eyes were fixed on the burning threshold—Nance was behind it, and she needed him.

The fallen doorway, the blazing remnants of the settle, had set fire by now to the woodwork of the hall. Will ran through the heat and smoke of it, saw Rupert swaying dizzily half up the stair, and below him four Hessian troopers, one of whom was lifting a musket to his shoulder. He had his fowling-piece in hand, half-cocked by instinct when he left the duck-shooting for this scamper down the moor. He cocked it, and at the moment the trooper who was taking aim at Rupert turned sharply, hearing the din of feet behind, saw a press of men, white from head to foot, pouring through the doorway, and fired heedlessly at Underwood. And Will’s fowling-piece barked at the same moment; at six paces the charge of shot was compact and solid as a bullet, but the wound it made was larger, and not clean at all.

The three troopers left faced round on the incoming company. They saw seven men, white in the linen coats they had not found thought or leisure to throw off, and sudden panic seized them. Through the stark waiting-time of their siege, with the moors and the sobbing winds to foster superstition, they had learned belief in ghosts, and thought they saw them now. They ran blindly for the doorway. Rupert leaped from the stair, and they were taken front and rear.

When all was done, Rupert steadied himself, stood straight and soldierly, scanned the faces of his rescuers, and knew them all for friends.

“My thanks, gentlemen,” he said, with tired courtesy. “You came in a good hour.”

He leaned a hand on the Red Squire’s shoulder, wiped a trickle of blood from some chance wound that had touched his forehead, glanced round at them with dim, unseeing eyes.

“Have I kept the house? Have I finished?”“The house is in our keeping now. You’ve done well, my lad,” said the red-faced squire, with gruff tenderness.

“Then I’ll get to sleep, I think.”

And he would have fallen, but the squire held him up and, putting two rough arms about him, carried him upstairs.

“A well-plucked one,” he said, returning quickly. “And now, gentlemen, the house will be on fire, by your leave, if we don’t turn our hands to the pump.”

Nance, watching from the shadows, was bewildered by the speed and fury of it all—bewildered more by the business-like, quiet way in which these linen-coated gentry went in and out of hall, carrying buckets and quenching the last smouldering flames with water from the stable yard. This was war—war, with its horror, its gallantry, its comedy; but it was not the warfare she had pictured when she sang heroic ballads at the spinet.

And then the night’s uproar and its madness passed by her. She thought only of the master who had all but died just now to save the house—to save her honour. She could not face the busy hall, the man sprawling on the stair, head downward, where Rupert’s blow had left him. Instead, she went back along the corridor and up by the servants’ stairway, and found Rupert lying in a dead sleep in his own chamber, a lighted candle at his elbow, just as the red-faced squire had left him.

“My dear,” she said, knowing he could not hear, “my dear”—her voice broke in a deep, quiet laugh that had no meaning to her as yet—“they said you were the scholar. And I think they lied.”

She lifted her head by and by, hearing the squire’s voice below in the hall.

“Where’s Will Underwood?” he was asking noisily. “We’ve got the fire under, and we can see each other’s faces now we’ve lit the candles. Where, by the Mass, is Underwood?”

Nance shivered. Through her weariness, through the panic of this sharp attack, she recalled the shame of her first love, recalled her meeting with Will Underwood on the high moors, when he had talked of loyalty as a thing of barter.

She stooped to touch Rupert as he slept. Here was a man, spent and weak; but here, proved through and through, was a cleanly gentleman who, against odds, had kept his obligations. Old affection stirred in her, and new pride in his conduct of the siege.

“Where’s Underwood?” came the squire’s voice again. “Is this some prank of his, to hide away?”

“With Nance Demaine, sir,” answered some pert youngster of the company. “Where else should he be? He was never one to waste time.”

“You’ve guessed the riddle, youngster.” The squire’s laugh was boisterous. “It’s odd to think of Underwood lovesick as a lad in his teens—especially just now, with all this litter in the hall.”

Outside the doorway Will Underwood was lying in the moonlight. He had been hit in the groin by Goldstein’s trooper, just as he answered with a charge of shot at six paces; and because the hills had bred him, he needed to get out into the open, taking his sickness with him.

He lay in the snow and looked up at the sky. He had never seen a whiter moon, a clearer light, at time of midwinter. Land and sky were glittering with frost, and overhead he saw the seven starry lamps of Charlie’s Wain. He was in bitter anguish, and knew that his hurt was mortal; he had no regret for that, because he knew, too, that Windyhough and Nance were saved. His bitterness was of the soul. Strain as he would, he could not shut out the picture—clear as the frosty sky above him—of Nance’s face when she met him on the moor—years ago, it seemed—and he thought he was his own ghost, come to warn her of his death.

He lived through that scene again in detail, heard Nance’s voice sweep all his prudent self-esteem aside. And her scorn bit deeper now, because he knew at last the strength of his fine regard for her. Passion was gone. Prudence was gone, because men near to death remember that they came naked into the world. He had lost the trickeries that had earned him the name of Wild Will, and was glad to let them go. He was aware only that he lay between here and hereafter, in pain of body and soul, and that he might take this last fence gladly, as on a hunting-morn, if he could wipe away the remembrance of one day gone by.

Many things grew clear to him as he lay and watched the moon. The wrath and pitiless hell-fire of Rigstones Chapel yielded to a wider outlook on the forgiveness of a Being greater than himself in charity. He found it easy to forgive his enemies, to forget his jealousy of Rupert, whom he had saved just now. But, warring against the peace he sought, and keeping the life quick in his tortured body, was remembrance of that day on the high moors. His work, good or ill, was done, and he longed to die, and could not.

Into the littered hall at Windyhough, while the squire paced up and down asking noisily for Will Underwood, old Nat the shepherd sauntered, pipe in hand. He was old, and a dreamer, and the gunshots and the fury had not disturbed him greatly.

Nat glanced round at the fallen men and the standing, at the doorway through whose blackened lintels the keen moonlight stole to drown the candle-flames. And he laughed, a gentle, pitying laugh. “It’s naught so much to brag about,” he said. “There were bonnier doings i’ the ’15 Rising. Men were men i’ those days.”

Nance wearied of it all as she stood by the master’s bed and listened to the talk downstairs. The house seemed full of men, and insolent coupling of her name with Will Underwood’s, and the sickly, pungent smell of blood and smoke. She was tired of gallantry and war, tired of her own weariness; and she went down the stair, stepping lightly over Rupert’s enemy, and came among them into hall.

“Your servant, Miss Nance,” said the red-faced squire, not guessing what a figure of comedy he cut, bowing under the folds of a white linen coat.

“I thank you, gentlemen,” said Nance unsteadily. “From my heart I thank you. You—you have done us service. And now, by your leave, I need to get out of doors. I—I have been in prison here.”

They made a lane of honour for her. They had been laggards in the Prince’s service; they were recusants, come at the last hour to prove themselves; but they felt, seeing Nance step down between them, her face stained with weariness and long vigil, that a royal lady had come into their midst.

Nance went through the charred doorway, and halted a moment as the pleasant frost-wind met her. The moonlight and the clean face of the sky gave her a sense of ease and liberty, after the cramped days indoors. The siege’s uproar, its stealthy quiet, were lost in this big silence of the frosty spaces overhead.

From the silence, from the snowy courtyard at her feet, a groan brought her back sharply to realities. She looked down, and saw Will Underwood lying face upwards to the stars. He, too, was linen-sheeted, as the squire had been; but there was no touch of comedy in his apparel. It seemed to Nance that he was shrouded for his bier.

They looked into each other’s eyes for a while, and some kindness in the girl’s glance, some regret to see him lying helpless with the fire of torment in his eyes, fired his courage.

“You?” she said gently. “You came to save the house?”

“No, Nance; I came to save you. That was my only thought.”

“They are asking for you indoors. I do not understand—you are wounded——”

“In your service—yes. They were right, after all—they always said I’d more luck than I deserved.”

She was free now of the bewilderment of this night attack, the sharp battle in the hall, quick and confused in the doing. The moonlight showed her the face of a man in obvious pain, a man fighting for every word that crossed his lips; and yet he was smiling, and the soul of him was gay.

“I’ll bring help,” she said, turning toward the house.

“No; you’ve brought help. Nance, I’ll not keep you long. There was a day—a day when we met up the moor, and I was your liar, Nance—from heel to crown I was your liar—and God knows the shame you put on me.”

Nance, scarce heeding what she did, took a kerchief, stained with gunpowder, from the pocket of the riding-coat she had worn, day in, day out, since the siege began.

“I keep my promise, Will.”

Even yet, though Nance was kneeling in the snow beside him and he heard the pity in her voice, Will could not free himself from some remembrance of that bygone meeting. “As a flag of truce?” he asked sharply.

“As a badge of honour. You are free to wear it.”

He reached out for her hand, and put it to his lips with the reverence learned since he came down from duck-shooting to find a mortal hurt. “As God sees me,” he said, a pleasant note of triumph in his voice—“as God sees me, I die happy.”

And then he turned on his side. And the pert youngster who had coupled Nance’s name with Will’s, coming out in search of the missing leader, saw the girl kneeling in the snow and heard her sobs. And he crept back into the hall, ashamed in some queer way.

“Why, lad, have you seen a ghost out yonder?” asked the red-faced squire.

“No, sir,” the boy answered gravely. “It is as I said—Will is with Nance Demaine, and—and I think we’d better leave them to it.”