“You’re up to the neck in love,” protested the squire, trying to keep pace with Will. “There’s naught else gives such wind to a man’s feet.”
A sharp noise of musketry answered him from below, and Will ran ever a little faster. The squire’s gibe did not trouble him. The whole past life of him—the squalor of his youth, the sterile abnegation of the Sabbaths spent at Rigstones Chapel, the gradual change to ease and popularity among big-hearted gentry—passed by him like a fast-moving company of ghosts. And then another phantom stole, with faltering steps and shrouded head, across this vision he was borrowing from another world. He saw his cowardice, lean, shrivelled, stooping—the cowardice that had been born of ease and frank self-seeking. He had pledged faith that he would follow the Stuart when need asked; and he had broken troth, because he yearned to keep his house and lands, because he had planned to give a ball at Christmas that should set all Lancashire talking of its pomp.
God was very kind to-night to Wild Will. The run was short and swift to Windyhough, as time is reckoned; but during the scamper over broken ground he found that leisure of the soul which is cradled in eternity. He won free of his past. He knew only that the squire had spoken a true word in jest.
He was deep in love. All the ache and trouble of his need for Nance were wiped clean away. She was in danger, and he was running to her aid; and he understood, with a clean and happy sense of well-being, the way of his Catholic friends when they loved a woman. Until now it had been a riddle to him, the quality of this regard. He had seen them love as full-blooded men do—with storm and jealousy and passionate unrest, but always with a subtle reserve, a princely deference, shining dimly through it all. And to-night, his vision singularly clear, he knew that their faith was more than lip speech, knew that the Madonna had come once, and once for all, to show the path of chivalry.
If Rupert had found happiness during this siege that had tested his manhood, so, too, had Will Underwood. With a single purpose, with desire only to serve Nance, asking no thanks or recompense, he raced over the last strip of broken ground and through the courtyard gate.
“Be gad! they’ve been busy here!” growled the red-faced squire, seeing the bodies lying black against the snow and hearing the wounded crying in their anguish. But Will did not see the littered yard, the white, keen moonlight that spared no ugly detail. His eyes were fixed on the burning threshold—Nance was behind it, and she needed him.
The fallen doorway, the blazing remnants of the settle, had set fire by now to the woodwork of the hall. Will ran through the heat and smoke of it, saw Rupert swaying dizzily half up the stair, and below him four Hessian troopers, one of whom was lifting a musket to his shoulder. He had his fowling-piece in hand, half-cocked by instinct when he left the duck-shooting for this scamper down the moor. He cocked it, and at the moment the trooper who was taking aim at Rupert turned sharply, hearing the din of feet behind, saw a press of men, white from head to foot, pouring through the doorway, and fired heedlessly at Underwood. And Will’s fowling-piece barked at the same moment; at six paces the charge of shot was compact and solid as a bullet, but the wound it made was larger, and not clean at all.
The three troopers left faced round on the incoming company. They saw seven men, white in the linen coats they had not found thought or leisure to throw off, and sudden panic seized them. Through the stark waiting-time of their siege, with the moors and the sobbing winds to foster superstition, they had learned belief in ghosts, and thought they saw them now. They ran blindly for the doorway. Rupert leaped from the stair, and they were taken front and rear.
When all was done, Rupert steadied himself, stood straight and soldierly, scanned the faces of his rescuers, and knew them all for friends.
“My thanks, gentlemen,” he said, with tired courtesy. “You came in a good hour.”