Rupert listened to the uproar out of doors. He had a quick imagination, and he was picturing an attack by drunken soldiery. These men of Goldstein’s, he had gathered, were not lambs when sober. He thought of Nance, of his mother—thought of the virile, tender love that men of his Faith give their women—and the soul of him caught fire.
“Shackleton,” he said sharply, “keep your post. Simon, get to yours. And, by the God who made me, I’ll shoot you if you sleep to-night!”
He did not see Nance, nor think of her, as he went to his own station overlooking the main door. But Nance heard his tread, and glanced up, and found the night emptier because he did not know that she was near. For men and women see life from opposite sides of the same hill, and always will until hereafter they find themselves standing on the same free, windy summit.
He went to his post, and the long night settled down. And nothing happened, as of old. From sheer need of occupation, he fell to watching the snow fall thick and thicker out of doors—tried to count the flakes—and found the dumb, unceasing crowd of them enticing him to sleep. And then he sought a better remedy. He remembered the man he had hit through the opening of the courtyard gate—the others who had fallen to his musket; and he found the odd zest, the call of future peril, which spring from action. And to Rupert the call came with a peculiar sharpness; for he had been accounted slight, a scholar, and he was here in the thick of the siege perilous, with a deed or two standing already to his credit.
He was used from of old to sleeplessness, and as the night wore on his spirits rose to a surprising gaiety and sense of well-being. His garrison was small; but he was master of his own house, at long last, and he had powder and ball on the window-sill in front of him. Whether he lived or died mattered little; but it was of prime importance that he kept this house of Windyhough to the last edge of his strength.
Out of doors, Captain Goldstein had given up all thoughts of prosecuting the siege until the dawn. He had detached six men from the ale-barrel to play sentry round the house, and had got the rest into shelter of the outhouses a half-hour later. They were bone-tired, all of them; they were well fed and full of ale; and the beds they made for themselves, of hay and straw, seemed soft as eider-down. Only Goldstein kept awake. He was as weary as any of them; but he had a single purpose, as Rupert had. The Prince was in the house here; dead or alive, he stood for thirty thousand pounds; and Goldstein kept himself awake by picturing the life he would enjoy, out yonder in the Fatherland, when he had claimed his share of the reward. He would squander a thousand of the thirty among his men—more or less, according to their temper—and would afterwards retire from service. For Goldstein, it would seem, did not share the Catholic belief that, till he dies, no man is privileged to retire from soldiery.
He kept awake; and by and by he could not rest under shelter of the byre that kept him weather-tight. He went out into the snowy moonlight, intent on seeing that his sentries were leaving no way open for the Prince to escape; and he forgot that there were windows looking out at him.
Rupert was standing at his post meanwhile, finding his high dreams useful now that the call to arms had come. He was serving for faith’s sake, and for loyalty’s; and service of that sort is apt to breed an odd content.
Across his sense of well-being a gunshot sounded—quick, and loud, and urgent, in this house of silence. He took up a musket, and peered through the snow-storm out of doors, expecting an assault. And again nothing happened, for a little while. And then he heard a woman’s step along the corridor, and Nance’s voice, low and piteous.
“Rupert, where are you? I—I need you.”