Will Underwood’s wraith came up and up the track. She drooped in the saddle of the broken-winded horse, and hid her eyes, and waited for the kiss, cold as an east wind over the marshes, that would tell her he was loyal in the dying. The tales of nursery days were very close about her now, and she was a child who walked in the unknown.
“Why, Nance, what the devil is amiss? You’re crying like a burn in spate.”
Will’s voice was sharp and human. Nance reined back a pace or two. They were so near, so big, Will and his horse, that they shattered her nursery tales with bewildering roughness.
For a while she could not speak, could not check the sobs which were a tribute, not to the living man but to his wraith. Then she gathered up her strength, for she came of a plucky stock. Will Underwood was good at reading women’s faces; it was his trade in life; but he could make nothing of Nance just now. Her glance was searching, her eyes quiet and hard, though tears were lying on her lashes still. All her world had slipped from under her. There seemed no longer any trust, or faith, or happiness in the bleak years to come; but at least she had her pride.
“Nance, what is it?” he asked.
“I thought you a ghost just now, Mr. Underwood—the ghost of your better self, may be. And now——”
“Well, and now?” he broke in, with the hardy self-assurance that had served him well in days gone by. “I’m alive, and entirely at your service, Nance. Surely there’s no occasion for distress in that.”
She looked gravely at him for a moment, with clear eyes that seemed to glance through and beyond him, as if his handsome body and his strength had disappeared, leaving only a puff of unsubstantial wind behind.
“There is occasion,” she said, very gravely and in a voice that was musical with pain and steadfastness. “You had better be lying dead, Mr. Underwood, along some road of loyalty, than—than be idling here, when other men are fighting.”
He reddened, seemed at a loss for words. Then, “Nance, what a child you are—and I fancied you a woman grown,” he said, with an attempt at playfulness. “What is this Rising, after all? A few Scots ragamuffins following a laddie with yellow hair and flyaway wits. Let the women sing ballads, and dream dreams; but level-headed men don’t risk all on moonshine of that sort.”