Читать книгу The Lone Adventure - Sutcliffe Halliwell - Страница 7

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At Windyhough, Rupert had watched Sir Jasper and his brother ride out to the hunt, had felt the old pang of jealousy and helplessness. They were so hale and keen on the day’s business; and he was not one of them.

He turned impatiently from the upper window, not guessing that his father had carried the picture of his tired face with him to the meet. With some thought of getting up into the moor, to still his restlessness, he went down the stair and out into the courtyard. Lady Royd, who had not lain easy in her bed this morning, was standing there. Some stronger call than luxury and well-being had bidden her get up and steal into the windy, nipping air, to watch her men ride out. She was late, as she was for all appointments, and some bitter loneliness had taken hold of her when she found them gone. She had never been one of these gusty, unswerving people here in Lancashire, and their strength was as foreign to her as their weaknesses. Until her marriage with the impulsive northern lover who had come south to the wooing and had captured her girl’s fancy, she had lived in the lowlands, where breezes played for frolic only; and the bleakness of these hills had never oppressed her as it did this morning. She forgot the swift and magic beauty that came with the late-won spring, forgot how every slope and dingle of this northern country wakened under the sun’s touch, how the stark and empty moor grew rich with colour, how blackbird and lavrock, plover and rook and full-throated thrush made music wild and exquisite under the blue, happy sky. For the present, the wind was nipping; on the higher hill-crests snow lay like a burial-shroud; her husband and the younger son she idolised were riding out to-morrow on a perilous road because they had listened to that haunting, unhappy melody which all the Stuarts had the gift of sounding.

Lady Royd could not see beyond. Her faith was colder than the hills which frightened her, emptier than this winter-time she hated. She had not once captured the quiet, resolute note that sounded through her husband’s conduct of affairs. Let the wind whistle its keenest under a black and sullen sky, Sir Jasper knew that he was chilled, as she did; but he knew, too, that summer would follow, blithe and full of hay-scents, fuller, riper in warmth and well-being, because the months of cold had fed its strength.

She chose to believe that he was playing with a fine, romantic sense of drama, in following the Prince, that he was sacrificing Maurice to the same misplaced zeal. Yet hour by hour and day by day of their long companionship, he had made it plain, to a comrade less unwilling, that he had followed a road marked white at every milestone by a faith that would not budge, an obedience to the call of honour that was instinctive, instant, as the answer of a soldier to his commanding officer. If all went amiss with this Rising, if he gave his life for a lost cause, it did not matter greatly to Sir Jasper; for he was sure that in one world or another, a little sooner or a little later, he would see that Restoration whose promise shone like the morning star above the staunch, unbending hills of Lancashire.

“Who is to gain by it all?” murmured Lady Royd, shivering as she drew her wrap about her. “When I’m widowed, and Maurice has gone, too, to Tower Hill—shall I hate these Stuart fools the less? It matters little who is king—so little——”

She heard Rupert’s step behind her, turned and regarded him with that half-tolerant disdain which had stood to her for motherhood. Not long ago she had felt a touch of some divine compassion for him, had been astonished by the pain and happiness that pity teaches; but the mood had passed, and he stood to her now as a simpleton so exquisite that he had not strength even to follow the stupid creeds he cherished. She was in no temper to spare him; he was a welcome butt on which to vent her weariness of all things under the sun.

They looked at each other, silent, questioning. Big happenings were in the making. The very air of Lancashire these days was instinct with the coming troubles, and folk were restless, ill-at-ease as moor-birds are when thunder comes beating up against the wind.

“It is not my fault, mother,” said Rupert brusquely, as if answering some plainly-spoken challenge. “If I had my way, I’d be taking fences, too—but, then, I never had my way.”

Lady Royd laughed gently—the frigid, easy laugh that Rupert knew by heart. “A man,” she said, halting on the word—“a man makes his way, if he’s to have it. The babies stay at home, and blame the dear God because He will not let them hunt like other men.”

Rupert took fire on the sudden, as he had done not long since when he had fought with his brother on the moor. Old indignities were brought to a head. He did not know what he said; but Lady Royd bent her head, as if a moorland tempest beat about her. It seemed as if the whole unrest, the whole passion and heedlessness, of the Stuart battle against circumstance had gathered to a head in this wind-swept courtyard of the old fighting house of Windyhough.

And the combatants were a spoilt wife on one hand, on the other a scholar who had not yet found his road in life. The battle should have given food for laughter; yet the scholar wore something of his father’s dignity and spirit, and the woman was slow to admit a mastery that pleased and troubled her.

Again there was a silence. The east wind was piping through and through the courtyard, and rain was falling; but on the high moors there were drifts of snow that would not yield to the gusty warmth. All was upset, disordered—rain, and snow, and wind, were all at variance, as if they shared the unrest and the tumult of the times.

“You—you hurt me, Rupert,” she said weakly.

“I had no right, mother,” he broke in, contrite. “Of course I am the heir—and I was never strong, as you had wished—and—and I spoke in heat.”

“I like your heat, boy,” she said unexpectedly. “Oh, you were right, were right! You never had a chance.”

He put his hand on her arm—gently, as a lover or a courtier might. “Maurice should have been the heir. It cannot be helped, mother—but you’ve been kind to me through it all.”

Lady Royd was dismayed. Her husband had yielded to her whims; the folk about her had liked her beauty, her easy, friendly insolence, the smile which comes easily to women who are spoilt and have luxury at command. She had been sure of herself till now—till now, when the son she had made light of was at pains to salve her conscience. He was a stay-at-home, a weakling. There was no glamour attaching to him, no riding-out to high endeavour among the men who were making or were marring history. Yet now, to the mother’s fancy, he was big of stature.

She yielded to a sharp, dismaying pity. “My dear,” she said, with a broken laugh, “you talk like your father—like your father when I like him most and disagree with his mad view of life.”

Rupert went to bed that night—after his father and Maurice had returned muddied from a hunt he had not shared, after the supper that had found him silent and without appetite—with a sense of keen and personal disaster that would not let him sleep. Through all his dreams—the brave, unspoiled dreams of boyhood—he had seen this Rising take its present shape. His father’s teaching, his stealthy reading in the library of books that could only better a sound Stuart faith, had prepared him for the Loyal Meet that was to gather at Windyhough with to-morrow’s dawn. But in his dreams he had been a rider among loyal riders, had struck a blow here and there for the Cause he had at heart. In plain reality, with the wind sobbing round the gables overhead, he was not disciplined enough to join the hunt. He was untrained.

Maurice shared his elder brother’s bedroom; and somewhere in the dark hours before the dawn he heard Rupert start from a broken sleep, crying that the Prince was in some danger and needed him. Maurice was tired after the day’s hunting, and knew that he must be up betimes; and a man’s temper at such times is brittle.

“Get to sleep, Rupert!” he growled. “The Prince will be none the better for your nightmares.”

Rupert was silent. He knew it was true. No man would ever be the better, he told himself, for the help of a dreamer and a weakling. He heard his brother turn over, heard the heavy, measured breathing. He had no wish for sleep, but lay listening to the sleet that was driving at the window-panes. It was bitter cold, and dark beyond belief. Whatever chanced with the Prince’s march to London, there was something to chill the stoutest faith in this night-hour before the dawn. Yet the scholar chose this moment for a sudden hope, a warmth of impulse and of courage. Down the sleety wind, from the moors he loved, a trumpet-call seemed to ring sharp and clear. And the call sounded boot-and-saddle.

He sprang from bed and dressed himself, halted to be sure that Maurice was still sound asleep, felt his way through the pitch-dark of the room until he reached the door. Then he went down, unbarred the main door with gentle haste, and stood in the windy courtyard. It was a wet night and a stormy one on Windyhough Heights. Now and then the moon ran out between the grey-black, scudding clouds and lit a world made up of rain and emptiness.

And Rupert again heard the clear, urgent call. Slight of body, a thing of small account set in the middle of this majestic uproar of the heath, he squared his shoulders, looked at the house-front, the fields, the naked, wind-swept coppices, to which he was the heir.

Old tradition, some instinct fathered by many generations, rendered him greater than himself. “Get to saddle,” said the voice at his ear; and he forgot that the ways of a horse were foreign to him. He glanced once again at the heath, as if asking borrowed strength, then crept like a thief toward the stables.

It was near dawn now. The wind, tired out, had sunk to a low, piping breeze. The moon shone high and white from a sky cleared of all but the filmiest clouds; and over the eastern hummocks of the moor lithe, palpitating streaks of rose, and grey, and amber were ushering up the sun.

All was uproar in the stable-yard, and the future master of these grooms and farm-lads waited in the shadows—a looker-on, as always. He saw a lanthorn swinging up and down the yard, confusing still more the muddled light of moon and dawn; and then he heard Giles, his father’s bailiff, laugh as he led out Sir Jasper’s horse, and listened while the man swore, with many a rich Lancashire oath, that Rising work was better than keeping books and harrying farmers when they would not pay their rents. And still Rupert waited, watching sturdy yeomen ride in from Pendle Forest, on nags as well built as themselves, to answer Sir Jasper’s rally-call.

“’Tis only decent-like, Giles,” he heard one ruddy yeoman say, “to ride in a little before our betters need us. I was never one to be late at a hunt, for my part.”

“It all gangs gradely,” Giles answered cheerily. “By dangment, though, the dawn’s nearer than I thought; and I’ve my own horse to saddle yet.”

Rupert waited with great patience for his chance—waited until Giles came out again, leading a thick-set chestnut that had carried him on many a bailiff’s errand. And in the waiting his glow of courage and high purpose grew chilled. He watched the lanthorns bobbing up and down the yard, watched the dawn sweep bold and crimson over this crowd of busy folk. He was useless, impotent; he had no part in action, no place among these men, strong of their hands, who were getting ready for the battle. Yet, under all the cold and shame, he knew that, if he were asked to die for the Cause—asked simply, and without need to show himself a fool at horsemanship—it would be an easy matter.

He looked on, and he was lonelier than in the years behind. Until a day or two ago he had been sure of one thing at least—of his father’s trust in him; and Sir Jasper had killed that illusion when he taught his heir how Windyhough was to be defended against attack and afterwards confessed that it was a trick to soothe the lad’s vanity.

Yet still he waited, some stubborness of purpose behind him. And by and by he saw his chance. The stable-yard was empty for the moment. Sir Jasper’s men had mustered under the house-front, waiting for their leader to come out. Giles had left his own horse tethered to a ring outside the stable door, while he led the master’s grey and Maurice’s slim, raking chestnut into the courtyard. From the bridle-track below came the clatter of hoofs, as Sir Jasper’s hunting intimates brought in their followers to the Loyal Meet. On that side of the house all was noise, confusion; on this side, the stable-yard lay quiet under the paling moonlight and the ruddy, nipping dawn.

Sir Jasper’s heir crossed the yard, as if he planned a theft and feared surprisal. There had been horse-thieves among his kin, doubtless, long ago when the Royds were founding a family in this turbulent and lawless county; and Rupert was but harking back to the times when necessity was the day’s gospel.

He unslipped the bridle of Giles’s horse, and let him through the gate that opened on the pastures at the rear of Windyhough. Then he went in a wide circle round the house, until he reached a wood of birch and rowan that stood just above the Langton road. The wind was up again, and rain with it; and in the downpour Rupert, holding the bridle of a restive horse, waited for the active men to pass him by along the road that led to Prince Charles Edward. He could not join them at the meet in the courtyard, but he would wait here till they passed, he told himself, would get to saddle afterwards and ride down and follow them. And in the coming battle, may be, he would prove to his father that courage was not lacking, after all, in the last heir of the Royd men.

The front of Windyhough, meanwhile, was busy with men and horses, with sheep-dogs that had followed their masters, unnoticed and unbidden, from the high farms that bordered Windyhough. It might have been Langton market-day, so closely and with such laughing comradeship yeomen, squires, and hinds rubbed shoulders, while dogs ran in and out between their legs and horses whinnied to each other. The feudal note was paramount. There was no distrust here, no jealousy of class against class; the squires were pledged to defend those who followed them with healthy and implicit confidence, their men were loyal in obedience that was neither blind nor stupid, but trained by knowledge and the sense of discipline, as a soldier’s is. Each squire was a kingly father to the men he had gathered from his own acres. In all things, indeed, this gathering at Windyhough was moved by the clan spirit that had made possible the Prince’s gathering of an army in Scotland—that small, ill-equipped army which had already routed General Cope at Prestonpans, had compelled Edinburgh to applaud its pluck and gallantry, had taken Carlisle Castle, and now was marching through a country, disaffected for the most part, on the forlornest hope that ever bade men leave warm hearths.

Sir Jasper, standing near the main door of Windyhough, watched the little companies ride in. He was keen and buoyant, and would not admit that he was troubled because his own judgment and that of his friends was justified. He had guessed that one in five of those who had passed their claret over the water would prove their faith; and he had calculated to a nicety. One whom he had counted a certain absentee was here, to be sure—young Hunter of Hunterscliff, whose tongue was more harum-scarum than his heart. But, against this gain of a sword-arm and a dozen men, he had to set Will Underwood’s absence. Some easy liking for Will’s horsemanship, some instinct to defend him against the common distrust, had prompted him to an obstinate, half-hearted faith in the man. Yet he was not here, and Sir Jasper guessed unerringly what the business was that had taken him wide of Lancashire.

Squire Demaine was the last to ride in with his men. He could afford to be late; for Pendle Hill, round and stalwart up against the crimson, rainy sky, would as soon break away from its moorings as Roger Demaine proved truant to his faith.

It was wet and cold, and the errand of these men was not one to promise warmth for many a day to come. Yet they raised a cheer when old Roger pushed his big, hard-bitten chestnut through the crowd. And when they saw that his daughter was with him, riding the grey mare that had known many a hunting morn, their cheers grew frantic. For at these times men learn the way of their hearts, and know the folk whose presence brings a sense of well-being.

Sir Jasper had not got to saddle yet. He stood at the door, with his wife and Maurice, greeting all new-comers, and hoping constantly that there were laggards to come in. He reached up a hand to grasp the Squire’s.

“The muster’s small, old friend,” he said.

“Well, what else?” growled Roger. “We know our Lancashire—oh, by the Heart, we know it through and through.” He glanced round the courtyard, with the free, wind-trained eye that saw each face, each detail. “There’s few like to make a hard bed for themselves, Jasper. Best leave our feather-bed folk at home.”

Sir Jasper, with a twinge of pain to which long use had accustomed him, thought of Rupert, his heir. He glanced aside from the trouble, and for the first time saw that Nance was close behind her father.

“Does Nance go with us?” he asked, with a quick smile. “She can ride as well as the best of us—we know as much, but women are not soldiers these days, Roger.”

Squire Demaine looked round for a face he did not find. “No, she stays here at Windyhough. Where’s Rupert? I always trusted that quiet lad.”

“He’s gone up to the moors, sir, I think,” said Maurice, with some impulse to defend the absent brother. “He was full of nightmares just before dawn—talking of the Prince, who needed him—and he was gone when I got up at daybreak.”

“Well, he’ll return,” snapped the Squire; “and, though I say it, he’ll find a bonnie nestling here at Windyhough. Nance, tell the lad that I trust him. And now, Jasper, we’ll be late for the meet on the Langton Road, unless we bestir ourselves.”

Sir Jasper, under all his unswerving zeal, grew weak with a fine human tenderness. He turned, caught his wife’s glance, wondered in some odd, dizzy way why he had chosen to tear his heart out by the roots. And Rupert was not here; he had longed to say good-bye to him, and he was hiding somewhere, full of shame that was too heavy for his years—oh, yes, he knew the lad!

He passed a hand across his eyes, stooped for a moment and whispered some farewell message to his wife, then set his foot into the stirrup that Giles was holding for him. His face cleared. He had chosen the way of action—and the road lay straight ahead.

“We’re ready, gentlemen, I take it?” he said. “Good! The Prince might chance to be a little earlier at the meet. We’d best be starting.”

Nance had slipped from the saddle, and stood, with the bridle in her hand, watching the riders get into some semblance of a well-drilled company of horse. At another time her quick eye would have seen the humour of it. Small farmers—and their hinds, on plough-horses—were jostling thoroughbreds. Rough faces that she knew were self-conscious of a new dignity; rough lips were muttering broad, lively oaths as if still they were engaged in persuading their mounts to drive a straight furrow.

Yet to Nance the dignity, the courage, the overwhelming pity of it all were paramount. The rain and the ceaseless wind in the courtyard here—the wintry moors above, with sleet half covering their black austerity—the uneasy whinnying of horses that did not like this cold snap of wind, telling of snow to come—all made up the burden of a song that was old as Stuart haplessness and chivalry.

The muttered oaths, the restlessness, died down. The drill of months had found its answer now. Rough farmers, keen-faced yeomen, squires gently-bred, were an ordered company. They were equals here, met on a grave business that touched their hearts. And Nance gained courage, while she watched the men look quietly about them, as if they might not see the Lancashire moors again, and were anxious to carry a clear picture of the homeland into the unknown. It seemed that loyalty so grim, and so unquestioning, was bound to have its way.

She saw, too, that Sir Jasper was resolute, with a cheeriness that admitted no denial, saw that her father carried the same easy air. Then, with a brisk air of command, Sir Jasper gathered up his reins and lifted his hat.

“For the King, gentlemen!” he said. “It is time we sought the Langton Road.”

It was so they rode out, through a soaking rain and a wind that nipped to the bone; and Nance, because she was young and untried as yet, felt again the chill of bitter disappointment. Like Rupert, her childish dreams had been made up of this Loyal Meet that was to happen one day. Year by year it had been postponed. Year by year she had heard her elders talk of it, when listeners were not about, until it had grown to the likeness of a fairy-tale, in which all the knights were brave and blameless, all the dragons evil and beyond reach of pity for the certain end awaiting them.

And now the tale was coming true, so far as the riding out went. The hunt was up; but there was no flashing of swords against the clear sunlight she had pictured, no ringing cheers, no sudden music of the pipes. These knights of the fairy-tale had proved usual men—men with their sins and doubts and personal infirmities, who went on the Prince’s business as if they rode to kirk in time of Lent. She was too young to understand that the faith behind this rainy enterprise sang swifter and more clear than any music of the pipes.

She heard them clatter down the road. She was soaked to the skin, and her mare was fidgeting on the bridle which she still held over-tight, forgetting that she grasped it.

“You will come indoors, Nance?” said Lady Royd, shivering at the door. “They’ve gone, and we are left—and that’s the woman’s story always. Men do not care for us, except as playthings when they see no chance of shedding blood.”

Nance came out from her dreams. Not the quiet riding-out, not the rain and the bitter wind, had chilled her as did the knowledge that Will Underwood was absent from the meet. She had hoped, without confessing it, that young Hunter’s gibe of yesterday would be disproved, that Will would be there, whatever business had taken him abroad, in time to join his fellows. He was not there; and, in the hand that was free of her mare’s bridle, she crushed the kerchief she had had in readiness. He had asked for it, to wear when he rode out—and he had not claimed it—and her pride grew resolute and hot, as if one of her father’s hinds had laughed at her.

“You’re wet and shivering, child,” said Lady Royd, her temper frayed, as always, when men were stupid in their need to get away from feather-beds. “I tell you, men are all alike—they follow any will-o’-the-wisp, and name him Faith. Faith? What has it done for you or me?”

Nance quivered, as her mare did, here in the soaking rain and the wind that would not be quiet. Yet she was resolute, obedient to her training. “Faith?” she said, with an odd directness and simplicity. “It will have to help us through the waiting-time. What else? We are only women here, and men too old for battle——”

“You forget Rupert,” broke in the other, with the tired disdain that Nance hated. The girl did not know how Lady Royd was suffering, how heart and strength and sense of well-being had gone out with the husband who was all in all to her. “Rupert—the heir—is here to guard us, Nance. The wind will rave about the house—dear heart! how it will rave, and cry, and whistle—but Rupert will be here! He’ll quiet our fears for us. He is—so resolute, shall we say?—so stay-at-home. Cannot you see the days to come?” she went on, seeking a weak relief from pain in wounding others. “Rupert will come down to us o’ nights, when the corridors are draughty with their ghosts, and will tell us he’s been reading books—that we need fear no assault, surprisal, because good King Charles died for the true faith.” She drew her wrap about her and shivered.

She was so dainty, so young of face, that her spite against the first-born gathered strength by contrast. And, somehow, warmth returned to Nance, though she was forlorn enough, and wet to the skin. “So he did,” she answered quickly. “No light talk can alter that. The King died—when he might have bought his life. He disdained to save himself.”

Lady Royd laughed gently. “Oh, come indoors, my girl. You’ll find Rupert there—and you can put your heads together, studying old books.”

“Old books? Surely we’ve seen a new page turned to-day? These men who gathered to the Loyal Meet—were they fools, or bookish? Did they show like men who were riding out for pastime?”

“My dear,” said Lady Royd, with a tired laugh, “the Stuart faith becomes you. I see what Sir Jasper meant, when he said one day that you were beautiful, and I would have it that you had only the prettiness of youth. Rupert——”

Nance stood at bay, her head up. She did not know her heart, or the reason of this quiet, courageous fury that had settled on her. “Rupert fought on the moor—for my sake; you saw the plight Maurice came home in. I tell you, Rupert can fight like other men.”

“Oh, yes—for books, and causes dead before our time.”

“The Cause lives, Lady Royd—to Rupert and myself,” broke in Nance impulsively.

So then the elder woman glanced at her with a new, mocking interest. “So the wind sits there, child, does it? It is ‘Rupert and I’ to-day—and to-morrow it will be ‘we’—and what will Mr. Underwood think of the pretty foolery, I wonder?”

The girl flushed. This tongue of Lady Royd’s—it was so silken, and yet it bit like an unfriendly wind. “Mr. Underwood’s opinion carries little weight these days,” she said, gathering her pride together. “He is known already as the man who shirked his first big fence and ran away.”

“Oh, then, you’re like the rest of them! All’s hunting here, it seems—you cannot speak without some stupid talk of fox, or hounds, or fences. For my part, I like Will Underwood. He’s smooth and easy, and a respite from the weather.”

“Yes. He is that,” assented Nance, with something of the other’s irony.

“He’s a rest, somehow, from all the wind and rain and downrightness of Lancashire. But, there! We shall not agree, Nance. You’re too like your father and Sir Jasper. Come indoors, and get those wet clothes off. We shall take a chill, the two of us, if we stand here.”

Nance shivered, more from heart-chill than from cold of body.

“Yes,” she said—“if only some one will take this mare of mine to stable. She’s wet and lonely. All her friends have left her—to seek the Langton Road.”

Again the older woman was aware of a breadth of sympathy, an instinctive care for their dumb fellows, that marked so many of these hill-folk. It seemed barbarous to her that at a time like this, when women’s hearts were breaking for their men, Nance should be thinking of her mare’s comfort and peace of mind.

A step sounded across the courtyard. Both women glanced up sharply, and saw Giles, the bailiff, a ludicrous anger and worry in his face.

“Well, Giles?” asked his mistress, with soft impatience. “Are you a shirker, too?”

“No, my lady. I was not reared that way. Some cursed fool—asking pardon for my plain speech—has stolen my horse. I’ll just have to o’ertake them on foot, I reckon—unless——”

His glance rested on Nance’s mare, big and strong enough to carry him.

“But, Giles, we keep no horse-thieves at Windyhough,” said Lady Royd, in her gentle, purring voice. “Where did you leave him?”

“Tethered to the stable-door, my lady. He couldn’t have unslipped the bridle without human hands to help him. It was this way. I had to see Sir Jasper mounted, and Maister Maurice. They’re raither feckless-like, unless they’ve got Giles nigh handy to see that all goes well. Well, after they were up i’ saddle, I tried to get through the swarm o’ folk i’ the courtyard, and a man on foot has little chance. So I bided till they gat away, thinking I’d catch them up; and when they’d ridden a lile way down the road, I ran to th’ stable. Th’ stable-door was there all right, and th’ ring for tething, but blamed if my fiddle-headed horse warn’t missing. It was that way, my lady, take it or leave it—and maister will be sadly needing me.”

He was business-like in all emergencies, and his glance wandered again, as if by chance, from Nance’s face to the mare’s bridle that she held.

“There’s not a horse in Lancashire just the equal of my chestnut,” he said dispassionately; “but I’d put up with another, if ’twere offered me.”

Nance, bred on the soil, knew what this sturdy, six-foot fellow asked of her. It was hard to give up the one solace she had brought to Windyhough—her mare, who would take her long scampers up the pastures and the moor when she needed room about her.

“She could not carry you, Giles,” said the girl, answering the plain meaning behind his words.

“Ay, blithely, miss. But, then, you wouldn’t spare her, like.”

There was a moment’s silence. Nance was asked to give up something for the Cause—something as dear to her as hedgerows, and waving sterns of hounds, and a game fox ahead. Then she put the bridle into Giles’s hand.

“On second thoughts”—she halted to stroke the mare’s neck—“I think, Giles, she’ll carry you. Tell Sir Jasper that the women, too, are leal, though they’re compelled to stay at home.”

Giles wasted little time in thanks. Business-like, even in this matter of running his neck into a halter, he sprang to the mare’s back. He would be sore before the day was out, because the saddle was wringing wet by this time; but he was used to casual hardships.

Lady Royd watched the bailiff ride quickly down the road, heard the last hoof-beats die away. “You are odd, you folk up here,” she said, with a warmer note in her tired voice. “You did not give up your mare lightly, Nance—and to Giles, of all men. Who stole his horse, think you?”

Nance answered without knowing she had framed the thought. “Rupert is missing, too,” she said, with an odd, wayward smile. “I told you he had pluck.”

Yet, after they had gone indoors, after she had changed her riding-gear, Nance sat in the guest-chamber upstairs, and could think only of Will Underwood. Her dreams of him had been so pleasant, so loyal; she was not prepared to trample on them. She saw him giving her a lead on many a bygone hunting-day—saw the eager face, and heard his low, persuasive voice.

Nance was steadfast, even to disproven trust. She caught hold of Sir Jasper’s challenge yesterday, when men had doubted Will. He would join them on the southward march. Surely he would, knowing how well she liked him. And the kerchief he had asked for—it must wait, until he came in his own time to claim it.