“Again you are in the wrong. I never guessed, till now, how good life is. I have been riding with one stronger and better than myself—and after that I ride, when you are tired of questioning me, to the wife and the home I love. It is all so simple, if you would believe me.”
Sir Jasper, under all his honesty of speech, was aware that he was delaying the advance of these rough-riders along the Langton road, was helping the Prince to safety while he rode so perilously behind his army. He was aware, too, in some random way, as he listened to Goldstein’s queer, guttural English, that he had been exact when he told Lady Royd, over and over again, that it was no civil war the Rising men had stirred up, but simply the resistance of the English to the foreign invader; a resistance old and stalwart as that of Hereward the Wake; a resistance that would last the English till they triumphed or they died.
Goldstein, his muddied wits stirred, may be, by some vision borrowed from Sir Jasper, knew his man at last. “It was you who rode with the Pretender, when we went near to capture you after Derby?”
“I was with the Prince,” said Sir Jasper, with a smile that bewildered Goldstein and his troopers; “but, sir, you did not come near to capturing us. You were too—too clumsy, shall I say?”
Goldstein’s troopers liked the free, courageous bearing of the man, and he knew it. “Well, we’re here,” he said dourly. “You admit little, but your life—it’s not worth a poor man’s purchase, surely?”
Sir Jasper took a look at the hills, as moor-bred men will do at these times. “It was worth a poor Man’s purchase once—near two thousand years ago,” he said, with the bearing of a man and the simplicity of a child who does not fear or doubt.
Goldstein had gone through many a rugged fight, overseas in Flanders; but the way of this man’s courage was unfamiliar, and it daunted him.
“There are one-and-twenty of us,” he said irresolutely, “and you’re alone. You’ll not fight single-handed?”
“No,” said Sir Jasper, handling his snuff-box lazily and giving no outward sign that he had crossed himself. “No, in any case I shall not fight single-handed. Have you any further questions to ask, sir? The sun is getting down, and I’ve a ride before me.”
To Goldstein this man’s calm was insolence, and he knew that he was losing ground constantly with the men behind him. “Yes, I’ve a question or two to ask,” he snapped. “You can buy your life by a straight answer.”