“Then God help you when my troopers hack a way in! They’re not tame at any time, and your cursed roads have not smoothed their tempers.”
“We are waiting,” said the master quietly.
“Oh, well done, Rupert!” whispered Nance, with a light touch on his arm.
He looked down at her—down and beyond her, for in truth he had no need of Stuart glamour till this night’s business was well through. “You Nance? Get back to the house, and take my mother with you; the gate will be down, I tell you, and after that—it will be no place for women. And, Simon,” he added, “bring three muskets out. Hurry, man!”
Nance, high-spirited and new to commands of this sharp, peremptory kind, went submissively enough, she knew not why. And, near the porch, she found Lady Royd busy with the spaniel which had run out to find her.
“Poor little man!” Sir Jasper’s wife was murmuring, as she kissed the foolish, pampered brute that, under happier auspices, would have been a dog. “He missed me, Nance, and he came, getting wet feet in the snow, and you know how delicate he is. He is all I have, Nance,” she added, with a touch of pathos, real in its futility “since—since they told me Sir Jasper was dying at the farm.”
Nance remembered how Rupert had met the sudden call to arms, and gathered something of his buoyancy. “Sir Jasper is not dying,” she said sharply. “I’ll not believe it. He will come by and by, when he has recovered from his wound——”
“You think he will come?” put in the other, helpless and snatching at any straw of comfort.
“Oh, I know it; but we must get indoors, and let Rupert guide the siege.”
Lady Royd had not learned the true gaiety of danger; but Nance, from the childhood shared with hard-riding brothers, had gained a courage and experience that served her well just now. None knew what would chance to Windyhough before the dawn; and, for her part, she did not look before or after, but took the present as it came. And her instinct was Rupert’s, as she shepherded Lady Royd into the hall—that here at last, thank God! was action after long sitting by the hearth.