“The news, Oliphant? The news? I’m wearying for it.”
“Be ready within the week. The Prince is into Annan—Carlisle will fall—get your men and arms together. Pass on the word to Squire Demaine.”
“And the signal?”
“Wait till I bring it, or another. Be ready, and—God save the King!”
Here on the hilltops, while Oliphant of Muirhouse breathed his horse for a moment, the two men looked, as honest folk do, straight into each other’s eyes. Sir Jasper saw that Oliphant was weary in the cause of well-doing; that was his trade in life, and he pursued it diligently; but the older man was not prepared for the sudden break and tenderness in the rider’s voice as he broke off to cry “God save the King!” There was no bravado possible up here, where sleety, austere hills were the only onlookers; the world’s applause was far off, and in any case Oliphant was too saddle-sore and hungry to care for such light diet; yet that cry of his—resolute, gay almost—told Sir Jasper that two men, here on the uplands, were sharing the same faith.
“God save the King!” said Sir Jasper, uncovering; “and—Oliphant, you’ll take a pinch of snuff with me.”
Oliphant laughed—the tired man’s laugh that had great pluck behind it—and dusted his nostrils with the air of one who had known courts and gallantry. “They say it guards a man against chills, Sir Jasper—and one needs protection of that sort in Lancashire. Your men are warm and Catholic—but your weather and your roads—de’il take them!”
“Our weather bred us, Oliphant. We’ll not complain.”
Oliphant of Muirhouse glanced at him. “By gad! you’re tough, sir,” he said, with that rare smile of his which folk likened to sun in midwinter frost.
“By grace o’ God, I’m tough; but I never learned your trick of hunting up tired folk along the roads and putting new heart into them. How did you learn the trick, Oliphant?”