Into their midst, none knowing how he had drifted there, came Nat the shepherd, pipe in hand—a figure so old, so palsied, that stronger men were moved by a pity deep as human courage and human suffering.
“Eh, now, I mind th’ ’15!” he cackled. “I rode out wi’ Sir Jasper—he was a lad i’ those days, and me a mettlesome man of fifty—and there were bonnie doings. It was all about some business o’ setting King Jamie on his throne—and there were bonnie doings. The gentry riding in, and the gentry riding out—and the bonnie ladies’ een bo-peeping at them as they went; and all the brave, open road ahead of us. We shall see no such times again, I warrant.”
His head drooped suddenly. He fumbled for his tinder-box, because in his enthusiasm for days gone by he had let his pipe go out. He was a figure pitiful beyond belief—the last, blown autumn leaf, it seemed, clinging to the wind-blown tree of Stuart loyalty. And the master, in spite of the hazard out of doors, halted for a word of compassion.
“You did well, Nat,” he said gently. “Tell us how the ’15 went.”
Nat was silent for a while. Across his dotage, across the memories that were food and drink to him, he returned to present-day affairs. He looked closely at the master, and nodded sagely.
“You’re varry like your father, Maister Rupert. It seems a pity, like, you should be left here, to die like a ratten in a trap, when you might have been crying Tally-Ho along the Lunnon road.”
The master winced. “They’ve not trapped us yet,” he said quietly. “Get down to the inglenook, Nat, and smoke your pipe.”
“Hark!” said Shackleton, his ear turned to the window. “They’re getting merry out yonder. Begom! they must have found liquor somewhere, to go singing out o’ doors on a stark night like this.”
A full-throated chorus was sounding now across the snow and the dancing red of the fire. The words were German, but the lilt of them was not to be mistaken.
“I wish I’d known they were coming,” said Simon Foster ruefully. “There was a barrel of ale, master, left i’ the shippon because I was too lazy to get it indoors yesterday. And they’ve broached it, they have; and it’s good liquor going down furrin throats. The waste o’ decent stuff!”