Sir Jasper, out at Ben Shackleton’s farm, had been no easy guest to entertain since he sought refuge there from the pursuit of Goldstein’s men. He slept for twelve hours, after they had laid him on the lang-settle and stopped the bleeding from his wound; and then, for an hour, he had lain between sleep and waking; and, after that, he was keen to be up and doing.

Shackleton’s wife, dismayed because her goodman had not returned long since from carrying his message to Windyhough, was sharp of tongue, and lacking in deference a little, as the way of the sturdy farm-folk is when they are troubled.

“As you wish, Sir Jasper,” she said tartly. “Just get up and stand on your two feet, and see how it feels, like.”

He got stubbornly to his feet, and moved a pace or two across the floor; and then he grew weak and dizzy, and was glad to find his way again to the lang-settle.

“Ay, so!” said Shackleton’s wife. “It’s good for men-folk to learn, just time and time, how they can go weak as a little babby.”

“My wife needs me yonder.”

“Ay, and I need my goodman here. Exchange is no robbery, Sir Jasper.”

“She is in danger,” he snapped, with a sick man’s petulance.

“Well, so’s my man, I reckon—they’ve kept him yonder, or he’d have been home lang-syne.”

Then weariness conquered Sir Jasper; and he slept again till that day passed, and the next night, and half through the morning. It was his respite from remembrance of the retreat from Derby, from the wound that kept him out of action.

“You’ll do nicely now,” said Shackleton’s wife, glancing round from ironing a shirt of her husband’s. “You’ve got the look of your old self about you, Sir Jasper.”

The wound itself was of less account than the bleeding that had followed it; and by nightfall he was waiting impatiently until the shepherd saddled his mare and brought her to the door.

The farm-wife looked him up and down, with the frank glance that had only friendliness and extreme solicitude behind it. “Eh, but you look sick and wambly,” she said. “Can you sit a horse, Sir Jasper?”

“I am hale and well,” he answered—fretfully, because he felt his weakness and because he was fearing for his wife.

He got to saddle, and the mare and he went slushing up and down the mile of bridle-track that separated them from home. He was no longer conscious of pain or weakness; his heart was on fire to see his wife again, to know her safe. At the turn of the hill, just beyond the gallows-tree that stood naked against the sky, he saw Windyhough lying below him, the moonlight keen on snowy chimney-stacks and gables.

“Thank God!” he said, seeing how peaceful the old house lay.

A little later he came to the splintered gateway, and his heart misgave him. The mare fidgeted and would not go forward; and, looking down, he saw a dead man lying in the moonlight—the trooper at whom Rupert had fired his maiden battle-shot.

He got from saddle, left the mare to her own devices, and ran across the courtyard. Here, too, were bodies lying in the snow. The main door was gone, save for a charred framework through which the moon showed him a disordered hall.

Without thought of his own safety here, with a single, savage purpose to find his wife—dead or worse—he crossed the hall; and at the stairway foot he met the red-faced squire, coming down with a brisk tread surprising in a man of his bulk and goutiness.

“By gad! we’re too busy with flesh and blood to care for ghosts,” said the squire, halting suddenly. His laugh was boisterous, but it covered a superstition lively and afraid.

“A truce to nonsense,” snapped Sir Jasper. “Where is Lady Royd?”

“Asleep—and her toy spaniel, too.” The squire had come down and touched Sir Jasper to make sure that he was of this world. “I should poison that dog if it were mine, Royd. It yapped at every wounded man we carried in.”

“My wife is asleep—and safe?” asked the other, as if he feared the answer.

“We’re all safe—except poor Will Underwood; and all busy, thanks to that game pup of yours. For a scholar, he shaped well.”

“Rupert kept the house?” Through all his trouble and unrest Sir Jasper tried to grasp the meaning of the charred doorway, the groans of wounded men above. “It did not seem so when I came indoors.”

So then the Squire told him, all in clipped, hurried speech, the way of it. And Sir Jasper forgot his wife, forgot his wound, and all the misery that had dogged his steps since Derby. He had an heir at last. Rupert, the well-beloved, had proved himself.

“Where is he?” he asked huskily.

“Asleep, too, by your leave. No, we’ll not wake him. He’s had three days of gunpowder and wakefulness, Royd. Let him sleep the clock round.”

The squire, seeing how weak Sir Jasper was, took him by the arm into the dining-chamber, filled him a measure of brandy, and pushed him gently into a chair.

“I came late to the wedding, Royd,” he said dryly, “but I’m in command here, till you find your strength.”Sir Jasper, for the first time since Derby, was content. His wife was safe, and his heir was a man at last. And the red-faced squire, whom he had always liked, was no recusant, after all.

“You talked of carrying wounded men in?” he asked by and by. “I can hear them crying out for thirst.”

“That’s where they have us, Royd, these flea-bitten men of George’s,” said the squire, with another boisterous laugh. “They were crying like stuck pigs—out in the cold—and we had to take them in. Windyhough is a hospital, I tell you, owing to the queer Catholic training that weakens us. They’d not have done as much for us.”

“That is their loss—and, as for training, I think Rupert has proved it fairly right.”

“Well, yes. But I hate wounds, Royd, and all the sickroom messiness. It’s an ill business, tending men you’d rather see lying snugly in their graves.”

Sir Jasper laughed, not boisterously at all, but with the tranquil gaiety that comes of sadness. “There was a worse business, friend, at Derby. I went through it; and, I tell you, nothing matters very much—nothing will ever matter again, unless the Prince finds his battle up in Scotland.”

And by and by they fell to talking of ways and means. Sir Jasper was pledged to rejoin the Prince, and would not break his word. Neither would he leave his son at Windyhough a second time, among the women and old men. And yet—there was his wife, who needed him.

The red-faced squire, blunt and full of cheery common sense, resolved his difficulties. “Cannot you trust us, Royd? There’ll be six men of us—seven, counting Simon Foster, who is getting better of his hurt—and only wounded prisoners to guard.”

“What if another company of roving blackguards rides this way?”

“Not likely. By your own showing, the hunt goes wide of this. Besides, we shall get a new doorway up. Rupert held the house with two to help him—seven of us could do the like.”

Sir Jasper began to pace restlessly up and down. “You forget,” he said sharply, “it will be my wife you’re guarding—my wife—and she means so much to me, old friend.”

“We know, we know. D’ye think we’d let hurt come to her? Listen, Royd. When these jackanapes who groan in German are fit to look after themselves, we’ll leave them to it, and take all your women with us to my house at Ravenscliff. And word shall go round that Lady Royd—the toast of the county to this day—needs gentlemen about her. She’ll not lack friends, I tell you.”

The squire’s glance fell as it met Sir Jasper’s. His conscience was uneasy still, and he fancied a rebuke that was far from Royd’s thoughts. So had the Prince been the county’s toast—until the Prince asked instant service.

“I can trust you,” said Sir Jasper, with sudden decision. “Guard her—as God sees us, she is—is very dear to me.”

Then, after a restless silence, Sir Jasper’s doubts, bred of bodily weakness, ran into a new channel.

“There’s yourself to think of in all this—your own wife, and your house. The Hanover men will not be gentle if we lose the battle up in Scotland.”

“Royd,” said the red-faced squire, not fearing now to meet his glance, “we’ve come badly out of this, we fools who stayed at home. There’s been no flavour in our wine; we’ve been poor fox-hunters, not caring whether we were in at the death or no—you’ll not grudge us our one chance to play the man?”

Sir Jasper understood at last that recusants can have their evil moments, can find worse cheer than he had met at Derby.

“I warn you, Ned, there’s small chance of our winning now. For old friendship’s sake, I’ll not let you go blindly into this.”

“What’s the ballad Nance Demaine sings so nattily? Life’s losing and land’s losing, and what were they to gi’e? Oh, it’s all true, Royd. We have our chance at last—and, gad! we mean to take it.”

“It bites deep, Ned,” said the other, with grave concern. “It bites deep, this wife losing and land losing.”

“Not as deep as shame,” snapped the red-faced squire. “I’m a free man of my hands again. And now, by the look of you, you’d best get to bed. Honest man to honest man, Royd, you’re dead-beat?”

“Yes—if the house is safe,” said Sir Jasper, with unalterable simplicity.

“Oh, trust me, Royd! I’m in command here—and, I tell you, all is safe.”

He went upstairs, and into his wife’s room. There was a candle burning on the table at her elbow, and he forgot his own need of sleep in watching hers. The strain of the past days was gone. She lay like a child at peace with God and man, and the peevish, day-time wrinkles were smoothed away; and she was dreaming, had her husband known it, of the days when she had come, as a bride, to Windyhough.

A gusty tenderness, a reverence beyond belief, came to Sir Jasper. He forgot all hardships Derby way. The simple heart of him was content with the day’s journey, so long as it brought him this—his wife secure, with happiness asleep about her face.

He stooped to touch her, and the spaniel sleeping at her side stood up and barked at him, rousing the mistress.

“Be quiet!” she said sleepily. “I was dreaming—that my lord came home again, forgiving all my foolishness.”

The spaniel only barked the more. And Sir Jasper, who was by way of being rough just now with all intruders, big or little, pitched him out on to the landing.

His wife was awake now, and she looked at him with wide eyes of misery. “You have kept tryst, my dear. You promised—when you rode out—that, if you died, you would come to tell me of it. And I—God help me!—was dreaming that we were young again together.”“We’re very young again together, Agnes,” said Sir Jasper, with a quiet laugh. “Do I look so ghostly that you all mistake me for a wraith?”

She touched him, as the squire had done—gently at first, and then with gaining confidence. “You look—as I have never seen you, husband; you are as grey of face as Rupert, when his work was done and they carried him upstairs. Your wound—Jasper, it is not mortal?”

“It is healing fast. There, wife, you are only half awake, and I’m dishevelled. I had no time to put myself in order. I was too eager just—just to see my wife again.”

And Lady Royd was wide awake now. Not only the husband, but the lover, had returned. “I shall have to take care of you, Jasper,” she said, with the woman’s need to be protective when she is happy. “You’ll need nursing, and——”

“I need sleep,” growled Sir Jasper—“just a few hours’ sleep, Agnes, and—and forgetfulness of Derby.”

“Ah, sleep! That has been our need, too. We—we none of us went out with you, Jasper—but we kept the house. And we learned what sleep means—more than food or drink, more than any gift that we can ask.”

It is in the hurried, perilous moments that men come to understanding. Sir Jasper, by the little said and the much left unsaid, knew that his wife, according to her strength, had taken a brave part in this enterprise.

“You talk of what old campaigners know,” he said.

And there was a little, pleasant silence; and after that Lady Royd looked into her husband’s face.

“You are home again—to stay until your wound is healed?” she asked.

“No, my dear. I take the road to-morrow. The Prince needs me.”

She turned her face to the wall. And temptation played like a windy night about Sir Jasper, taking him at the ebb of his strength, as all cowards do. He was more weak of body than she guessed; he had given really of himself, and surely he had earned a little ease, a sitting by the hearth while he told his wife, this once again, what was in his heart for her.

And his wife turned suddenly. Her eyes were radiant with the faith that siege had taught her—siege, and the reek of gunpowder, and the way men carried themselves in the face of the bright comrade, danger.

“Go, Jasper—and good luck to your riding,” she said quietly.

At two of the next afternoon Sir Jasper and Rupert got to saddle; and the father, knowing the way of his son’s heart, rode on ahead down the long, sloping bridle-track, leaving him to say good-bye to Nance Demaine.

Nance had been used to courage, as she was used to wind on the hills; but all her world was slipping from her now. She had given her kerchief to Will Underwood, from pity for a love that was dead and hidden out of sight; she had gone through stress and turmoil; and at the end of all Rupert, her one friend here, was riding out with his eyes on the hills, though she stood at his stirrup and sought his glance.

“God speed, Rupert!” she said.

He stooped to kiss her hand, but his thoughts were far away. “It seemed all past praying for, Nance—and it has come.”

“What has come?” she asked—peevishly, because she was tired and very lonely. “Fire, and sleeplessness, and the cries of wounded men—what else has come to Windyhough?”

“Not Stuart songs,” he answered gravely. “Stuart deeds are coming my way, Nance, at long last.”

“So you—are glad to go, Rupert?”

He looked down at her and for a moment he forgot the road ahead. He saw only Nance—Nance, whom he had loved from boyhood—Nance, with the wholesome, bonnie face that discerning men, who could see the soul behind it, named beautiful. All his keen young love for her was needing outlet on the sudden. She was so near, so friendly; and about her was a clear, eager starshine, such as lovers see.

The siege, and killing of a man here and there, stepped in and conquered this old weakness that was hindering him. “Nance, my dear,” he said, “I shall come back—when I’m your proven man.”

It was so he went quietly out into the sunlight that had struggled free awhile of the grey, wintry clouds. And again Nance was chilled, as she had been when the Loyal Meet rode out—years ago, it seemed—without sound of drum or any show of pageantry. She had not learned even yet that men with a single purpose go about their business quietly, not heeding bugle-calls of this world’s sounding.

She watched him go, old pity and old liking stirred. And she longed to call him back, but pride forbade her.

Simon Foster came grumbling through the charred courtyard gate. He had stood at the hilltop, watching the old master and the young go out along the track he was too infirm to follow; and there was a deep, abiding bitterness in his heart.

“They shouldn’t have gi’en me a taste o’ fight, Miss Nance,” he said. “I call it fair shameful just to whet a body’s appetite, and then give him naught solid to follow. Oh, I tell ye, it’s ill work staying at home, tied up wi’ rheumatiz.”

Nance was glad of the respite from her own muddled thoughts, from the sense of loss that Rupert had left her as a parting gift. “It is time you settled down,” she said, with a touch of the humour that was never far from her. “And you have Martha to make up for all you’re losing.”

“Ay, true,” grumbled Simon, his eyes far away; “but Martha could have bided till I’d had my fill, like. She’s patient—it’s in the build of her—but, I never was.”

“Patience?” said Nance. “It is in no woman’s build, Simon. We have to learn it, while our men are enjoying the free weather.”Rupert had overtaken his father on the winding, downhill track, and they rode in silence together for a mile or so, each thinking of the other and of the work ahead. It was a pleasant, deep communion for them both; and the son remembered, for the last time, how Sir Jasper had lied to him in giving him the house of Windyhough to keep. From the soldiery learnt there, from the peril waiting for them ahead, Rupert had won the priceless gift, forgiveness—a herb troublesome and hard to find.

“You’re silent, lad,” said Sir Jasper, as they came to the stretch of level track that took them right-handed into the Langton road.

“I was thinking—that dreams come true, sir, as I said to Nance just now.”

Clouds were hurrying up against the sun—yellow, evil clouds, packed thick with snow—and a bitter wind was rising. The going underfoot was vile. Their errand was to join an army in retreat, with likelihood that they would dine and breakfast on disaster. And yet—because God made them so—they found tranquillity. Sir Jasper had dreamed of this, since his first gladness that he had an heir, his first sorrow when he admitted to himself, grudgingly, that the boy was not as strong as he had wished. And Rupert, while his shoulders found their scholarly droop in reading old books at Windyhough, had shared the same dream—that one day, by a miracle, he might ride out with his father on the Stuart’s business.

And they were here together. And nothing mattered, somehow, as the way of men is when their souls have taken the open, friendly road.

They rode hard in pursuit of the Prince’s army, nursing their horses’ strength as far as eagerness would let them; and, at long last, they overtook their friends on the windy summit of Shap Fell, where the Stuart army was bivouacked for the night.

Sir Jasper asked audience of the Prince, and found him sitting in his tent, eating a stew of sheep’s kidneys—the one luxury royalty could command at the moment. And the Prince rose, forgetting his quality, in frank welcome of this man who had shared the evil Derby days with him.

“I thought you dead, sir; and I’m very glad to see you—alive, but thinner than you were.”

No detail ever escaped the Prince’s eye, when he was concerned about the welfare of his friends; and the solicitude, the affection of this greeting atoned for many hardships.

“I was wounded, your Highness, or should have been with you long since.”

“So much I knew. No other hindrance would have kept you,” said the Prince, with flattering trust.

“I bring a volunteer with me.”

“He must be staunch indeed! A volunteer to join us in these days of havoc? Has he been jilted by one of your Lancashire witches, that he’s eager to trudge through this evil weather?”

“No. He has just won through a siege on your behalf—the siege of my own house—and could not rest till he had seen you.”

The Prince had been in a black mood of despair not long ago. He was alone in his tent, with none to need him for the moment, none to know if he were sick at heart. Like all men, great or small, he was at once the victim and the captain of the temperament given him at birth; and none but the Stuarts knew how dearly they purchased—through lonely hours of misery, self-doubt, denial of all hope—the charm, the gay, unyielding courage that touched the dullest wayfarers with some fine hint of betterment.

Sir Jasper’s coming had cleared the Prince’s outlook. In the man’s simplicity, in the obvious love he held for this unknown volunteer, the Stuart read a request unspoke.

“Present him,” he said, with the smile that had tempted men and women alike to follow him for love. “He’ll forgive me if I finish this stew of kidneys? For I own I’m devilish hungry.”

Through the toilsome ride from Windyhough to Shap, Rupert had talked of the Prince, and only of the Prince; and Sir Jasper went now to find his heir, proud—as simple men are—of the transparent diplomacy that had secured Rupert his heart’s desire so promptly. He did not find him at once among the busy camp; and when they were admitted to the royal tent, his Highness had finished his meal, and was smoking the disreputable pipe that had been his friend throughout this weary, meaningless retreat.

“My son, your Highness,” said Sir Jasper.

Rupert, coming out of the stark night outside, blinked as he met the flickering light of the rush-candles within the tent. Then his eyes cleared, and some trouble took him by the throat. He was young, and in the Presence; and his dreams had been greatly daring, sweeping up to the stars of Stuart loyalty.

“I commend you, sir,” said the Prince, looking the lad through and through, as his way was, to learn what shape he had. “There are apt to be volunteers when a cause is gaining, but few when it’s escaping to the hills.”

The heart of a man, kept bridled for five-and-twenty years, knows no reticence when it meets at last the comrade of its long desire.

“Your Highness,” said Rupert, with a simplicity larger than his father’s, because less way-worn, “I begin to live. I asked to serve you, and—and the prayer is granted.”

“You join us in retreat?” said the Prince, touched by the pity of this hero-worship.

“I join you either way. I’ve found—why, happiness, I think.”

The Prince was a few months younger than himself; but he touched him now on the shoulder, as a father might. “Good luck to your honour lad!” he said. “Clean the world’s mud off from it whenever you find leisure, as you polish a sword-blade. That’s the soldier’s gospel.”

The next day they were on the march again. The weather was not gentle on the top of Shap Fell, and the red sun, rising into a clear and frosty sky, showed them a lonely and a naked land—hills reaching out to farther hills, desolate, snow-white, and dumb. Not a bird called. The Highlanders, with their steady, swinging strides, the horsemen moving at a sober pace, were ringed about with silence. Before nightfall, however, they reached Clifton village, and here at last they found diversion from the day’s austerity.

The Prince, with the greater part of his cavalry, had pushed forward to Penrith; but Lord Elcho, who, with Sir Jasper’s horsemen, had charge of the rear, gave a sharp sigh of thanksgiving when a messenger brought news that the Duke of Cumberland, with his own regiment and Kingston’s light horse, were close at his heels after ten hours’ hard pursuit. Elcho was glad even of the long odds against him, knowing that his Highlanders were wearying for battle, and made his dispositions with a cheery sense that the Duke had done them a good turn in overtaking them.

Taking full advantage of the cover afforded by the country, Elcho placed his men behind the hedges and stone walls, and as the first of the dusk came down the Duke’s soldiery delivered their attack. It was a sharp, bewildering skirmish, ended speedily by nightfall; but to Rupert, fighting in the open after the stifled days at Windyhough, it was easy to show a gallantry that roused the applause of men grown old and hard to combat. And ever he thought less of Nance, and more of this new comrade, danger, whose face was bright, alluring.

They left the Duke with his dead; and, because they were hopelessly outnumbered if the daylight found them still in possession of Clifton, they went through the black night to Penrith, bringing news to the Prince of their little victory. And after that it was forward to Carlisle.