Rupert laughed. He was learning much of human to-and-froing during these last days, and his first hot contempt of this sleeping sentry yielded to a broader sympathy. “What was your dream, Ben?” he asked.
“Nay, naught so much—only that I went to Lancashire Market and had a pig to sell. She wasn’t worth what I was asking, not by th’ half. And t’other chap he wrangled, and I wrangled; then, blamed if the fool didn’t gi’e me what I asked, and we were just wetting our whistles on th’ bargain when ye wakened me. It was a terrible good dream, master.”
“Well, stay awake to remember it, Ben. These folk outside are too quiet for my liking.”
Ben’s face was impassive as ever, but his glance measured Rupert from heel to crown. He saw a slim-bodied man, whose face was lit with a keen and happy fire; he saw, too, that the anxiety which had dulled even Lady Royd’s eyes—the toast of the county still, though the eyes were middle-aged—had only strengthened the light of authority and strength which played about his face. Ben Shackleton was slow to awake from his dream of pig-selling, but he was aware of some settled gladness—gladness that Sir Jasper had an heir at last.
“Aye,” he said, shaking himself afresh. “It’s the honest dog that barks—the biting sort lie quiet. Well, then? What’s afoot, maister? I’m here to take my orders, I reckon, as Blacksmith Dan said when parson asked him if he’d have Mary o’ Ghyll to be his wedded wife.”
The man’s lazy tongue, his steadfastness, proved long ago, brought an odd peace to Rupert. There were snow and a bitter wind outside, and an enemy that only by convention could be named civilised; but within there was a little garrison whose members, on the great, main issues, were not divided.
“Yes. You are here to obey orders,” said the other sharply. “Keep awake at your post, Ben.”
Shackleton saluted gravely. “I’ll do it for ye, master, though I had a busyish day before I rade hither-till, getting ewes down from the high lands—and sleep is sticking round me fair like a bramble-thicket.”
“Well, you’ve to win through the thicket, Ben,” said the master, and passed on.
He crossed to the north window, saw Nance standing there, her trim head lifted to the moonlight as she peered over the window-sill; and for a moment he forgot that they were in the thick of the siege perilous.