Nance stroked the fiddle-headed nag, and watched him munch his carrot, and seemed glad to linger here.
“He can hit his man now, you think?”
“Well, I reckon if I were the man, I’d as lief be out of range as in. I tell you, the young master does naught by halves. The trouble is to get him started. You’d best come with us when we go out again this afternoon, and shoot a match with him.”
And by and by Nance went indoors with a light step and a sense of betterment. It was pleasant to hear Rupert praised.
CHAPTER X
HOW THE PIPES PLAYED DREARILY
While the Lancashire farmers were watering their cattle, milking them, tending the sheep whose fleeces were the great part of their livelihood; while Lady Royd and Nance were querulous because they had a roof above their heads, and fires in the house, and food in plenty; while Rupert went doggedly about his drill of musket-practice, with a heart yearning for the battles he pictured in the doing London way, the Prince’s army came to Derby—came in the dusk of a wild November day, with wind-driven rain across their faces, and every house-roof running wet.
Derby was no fine town to see. It was commonplace and dull, to the verge of dreariness. But, to those who marched into it to-day on the Stuart’s business, it stood ever afterwards for a place of tragedy—tragedy so poignant and so swift that it gathered round its mean, ill-ordered streets a glamour not its own—the glamour of the might-have-been.
Sir Jasper Royd, neither then nor afterwards, could piece together the tumult and unrest that troubled those two days they spent at Derby. He knew that Lord Murray was querulous, his temper shrewish; he saw the Prince move abroad with unconquerable courage, but with the look in his eyes that Skye men have when the sad mists hide the sun from them. He was aware that some big issue, known only to the leaders, was calling for prompt decision. For the rest, he wondered that loyal gentlemen had any thought but one—to march on where Prince Charles Edward chose to lead.