“By your leave, Mr. Hamilton,” he said, “I shall choose my own messenger.”
The Governor nodded gravely. “It is your due, sir—much more than that is your due, if I could give it you.”
“Sir Jasper Royd is my friend—and he will be glad to know that his son is trusted with dispatches.”
Rupert took fire from the torch that this harassed messenger had carried into Carlisle Castle. Not long ago he had been a stay-at-home, fenced round with women and old men; and now, by some miracle, he was chosen to ride hard through open country.
Across his eagerness, across the free and windy gladness that had come to him, there struck a chillier air; and he stayed for a thought of comrades left in the rear-guard of the action. It was the old, abiding instinct that ran with the simple Stuart loyalty.
“Mr. Oliphant,” he said quietly, “we are waiting here for certain death. I choose to stay.”
“You choose to stay?” echoed Oliphant.
“Because I volunteered—because you must take these dispatches north yourself. I tell you, sir, you must get free of Carlisle. It is death to stay.”
Oliphant’s failing strength rallied for a moment. He no longer saw the strained, eager face of this youngster who had given him hero-worship, who was pleading with him for his own safety. Instead, he saw a mountain-burn, high up on the braes of Glenmoriston, and a summer’s day lang syne gone by, and one who walked with him. They had talked together, he and she, and she had been kind and winsome, but no more; and with that dream, high as the stars, yet vastly human, had ended his foolish quest for happiness.
He saw her now with the young eyes that had sought answering fire from hers and had not found response. He saw the whaups wheeling and crying over their heads, heard the tinkling hurry of the burn, the lilt of the breeze through the heather.