Perhaps, out of the sympathy that had always bound Sir Jasper and his heir together, the like mood had come to both just now, the like need to face a stern and awful sickness of the soul, to win through it, to plant Faith’s standard in the wilderness of defeat and hope deferred.
“Nance was right. Nothing will ever again happen at Windyhough, until my father returns from the crowning—and then the work will be done, and no more need of me.”
Stubbornly, slowly, he came to a better heart and mind. Undoubtedly this scholar had pluck.
“I will not give in,” he said, lifting his head to the ruddy heath as if answering a challenge.
And at that hour the Prince and his father were riding north from Derby—were riding nearer to him than he thought, on a journey whose end no man could foresee.
CHAPTER XI
THE TALE COMES TO WINDYHOUGH
Nearly a week had gone since Nance came down from her ride on the moor, from the meeting with Will Underwood that had ruined one dream of her life for good and all. Each day that passed was more full of strain for those at Windyhough. They practised musketry together, she and Rupert and old Simon Foster; and the rivalry between them, keen enough, improved their marksmanship. At the week’s end Rupert was the best shot of the three; it was his way to be thorough, and to this business of countering Nance’s taunt—that she could not trust her men to guard her—he brought the same untiring zeal, the patience not to be dismayed, that had kept his faith secure against disastrous odds.
But as each short day closed in there was the return to the silence of the house at Windyhough, to Lady Royd’s wonder if her husband were lying dead in some south country ditch, to the yapping of the toy spaniel that harassed Rupert because, soul and body, he was tired of mimic warfare.