Goldstein’s men had tracked their quarry, day after patient day, since their first attempt at Derby to capture the Prince’s person. Three times they had found him so far behind his army that he seemed an easy prey; and three times—following what some would call a random whim, and others the guidance of the God he served—the Prince, not knowing his enemies were near, had grown tired of guarding the rear and had galloped forward suddenly to join his men and pass a jest among them. And Goldstein knew that his hold on the rough cavalry he led was weakening day by day. He had kept them to heel only by crude and persistent reminders that thirty thousand pounds, as represented by the Stuart, were worth some patience in the gaining.
Sir Jasper, reining sharply round, saw a company of men—a score or so—who wore the Hanoverian livery; and at the head of them was a blunt, red-featured officer who looked singularly like a farmer who had lived neighbour to the ale-barrel. And he knew them for the men who had given chase at Derby, though as yet they had no answering recollection of the friend who had ridden close beside the Prince’s bridle-hand that day.
“Your business, sir?” asked Goldstein sharply. “You’re too near the retreat to be let pass without a challenge. Besides”—with a laugh, following long scrutiny—“you’ve the look, somehow, of one of those cursed Jacobites.”
“You flatter me, sir,” said Sir Jasper coolly. “It has been my business in life to feel like one—and, by your leave, it is pleasant that you know my breed at sight.”
The sleet was drifting in quiet flakes before a wind that was tired for a while of its own speed. From the western spur of moor a long, slanting gleam of sunlight lit up this bleak land’s loneliness—lit up Sir Jasper’s figure as he sat, unconcerned, disdainful, in the saddle of a restive horse. For a moment the dragoons drew back; they had lived in a world where each fought for his own advancement only, and they were perplexed by this spectacle of a man who, alone and far behind retreating comrades, made open confession of his faith.
Goldstein swore roundly—not as the gently-born do in times of stress, but like a ploughboy when his team refuses to obey him. “Are you a fool, sir?” he sputtered.
“Well, yes,” Sir Jasper answered gravely. “As much as my fellows. I’m human, sir, as you are.”
The troopers laughed, and Goldstein felt his hold on them grow ever a little and a little less. “You’re one of the Pretender’s men?” he snarled. “We shoot all vermin of that sort at sight.”
“No, sir. I am attached to the army of Prince Charles Edward. No man is a pretender when he asks only for his own again.”
“Then you’re tired of life?” said Goldstein, trying clumsily to catch something of Sir Jasper’s easy handling of the situation.