He lifted his head suddenly. From the courtyard below he heard the hum of guttural voices. Goldstein and his men were still gathered about the main doorway, hungry, wet to the skin, irresolute as to the best plan of action.
Rupert was no dreamer now. He could see nothing in the yard, through the thick snow and the moon-haze; but he took up a musket and fired at random, and picked up a second gun, and a third, and snapped the trigger; and from below there came a yelp of pain, a running of men’s feet. And Rupert was his own man again, forgetting dreams, remembering only that the siege was here in earnest.
Through the smoke and the reek of gunpowder Nance Demaine came into the room.
“Where is my post?” she asked, standing trim and soldierly at Rupert’s side.
Again she was met by the glance that looked through and beyond her, as if she stood between Rupert and some settled purpose. It seemed so short a while since she had sat at the spinet, had seen his eyes hungry with her, as if she were all his world; and now he scarcely heeded her. The riddle was so easy for a man to guess, so hard for a woman; and Nance, soldier-bred as she was, was piqued by the master’s grave, single-minded outlook on the task in hand.
“Your post, Nance?” he echoed. “With mother, away from any chance of bullets.”
“Did I shoot so badly, then—those days we practised up the fields?”
“No; but this is men’s work, Nance.”
“You have a garrison of three.” Some wayward humour, some wish to hurt him, clouded all her usual kindliness. He was strong and did not need her; and she missed something pleasant that had threaded the weariness of these last days. “There’s Simon, steady enough, but old. There is Ben Shackleton. And there is—yourself, Rupert, very young to musketry. Are you wise to refuse your last recruit?”
The taunt found its mark. This daughter of Squire Roger’s had an odd power to touch the depths in him, whether for pain or keen, unreasoning delight. A moment since he had tasted happiness, had had no thought save one—that he was master here, fighting an enemy of flesh and blood at last. And now the old unrest crept in, the vague self-distrust that had clouded earlier days.