The Lone Adventure

THE LONE ADVENTURE
BY HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY NEW YORK Publishers in America for Hodder & Stoughton
Copyright, 1911, By George H. Doran Company

THE LONE ADVENTURE
In a gorge of the moors, not far away as the crow flies from Pendle Hill, stood a grim, rambling house known to the heath-men as Windyhough. It had been fortified once; but afterwards, in times of ease, successive owners had thought more of dice and hunting than of warfare, and within-doors the house was furnished with a comfort that belied its loopholed walls.
It stood in the county of Lancaster, famed for its loyalty and for the beauty of its women—two qualities that often run together—and there had been Royds at Windyhough since Norman William first parcelled out the County Palatine among the strong men of his following. The Royd pride had been deep enough, yet chivalrous and warm-hearted, as of men whose history is an open book, not fearing scrutiny but asking it.
The heir of it all—house, and name, and lusty pride—came swinging over the moor-crest that gave him a sight of Windyhough, lying far below in the haze of the November afternoon. It was not Rupert’s fault that he was the heir, and less strong of body than others of his race. It was not his fault that Lady Royd, his mother, had despised him from infancy, because he broke the tradition of his house that all its sons must needs be strong and good to look at.
The heir stood on the windy summit, his gun under his arm, and looked over the rolling, never-ending sweep of hills. The sun, big and ruddy, was dipping over Pendle’s rounded slope, and all the hollows in between were luminous and still. He forgot his loneliness—forgot that he could not sit a horse with ease or pleasure to himself; forgot that he was shy of his equals, shy of the country-folk who met him on the road, that his one respite from the burden of the day was to get up into the hills which God had set there for a sanctuary.