“Well, it gives these other chiels a chance, and I’m no saying I’m sorry.”
“Nor I,” said Rupert as he got to saddle, and pressed a crown-piece into the blacksmith’s hand.
As he rode forward through the sleet, and was half-way to Annan in the Border country, a horseman, better mounted than himself, overtook him and drew rein sharply. There was a ragged sort of moonlight stealing through the darkness of the night, and he saw the face of a man, elderly and hard and in evil temper, peering at him through the gloom.
“I’m seeking my daughter, sir,” said the stranger, without preamble of any kind. “She was married at Gretna just now—I was too late to stop that—but I trust to make her a widow before the night is out. Have they passed you on the road?”
“Was she wearing a grey-blue hood, sir?”
“How should I know? Have they passed you, I say?”
“No, but I watched them married at Gretna not long ago, and they rode out ahead of me.”
“On which road?”
“They spoke”—even a white lie came unreadily to Rupert’s tongue—“they spoke of turning right-handed towards Newcastle, I think.”
So then the stranger turned his horse sharply round, swore roundly at his informant, and was gone without a good-night or a word of thanks. And Rupert laughed as he trotted forward. He had faced many things during his odd, disastrous five-and-twenty years—loneliness hard to bear, good-humoured liking that was half-contempt from the men who counted him a scholar, distrust and loathing of himself. But now he felt strength come into his right hand, as a sword-hilt does. His feet were set on the free, windy road. He had gone a little way to prove himself, and the zest of it was like rare wine, that warms the fancy but leaves both head and heart in a nice poise of sanity.