And now he was the Scholar again. His horse had failed him. His own feet had played him false. He sat there, wet and homeless, and from the cloudy hills a smooth, contemptuous voice came whispering at his ear. Best be done with a life that had served him ill. He was a hindrance to himself, to his friends. Best creep down to the pool at the road-foot; he had bathed there often in summer and knew its depth. Best end it all—the shame, the laughter of strong men, the constant misadventure that met him by the way. He was weak and accursed. None would miss him if he went to sleep.

“No,” he said deliberately, as if answering an enemy in human shape, “a Royd could not do it.”

Sir Jasper’s view of his first-born was finding confirmation. The soul of the lad had been tempered to a nicety, and the bodily pain scarce troubled him, as he set his face away from London and the Prince, and limped toward home. Now and then he was forced to rest, because sickness would not let him see the road ahead; but always he got up again. Self-blame had grown to be a mischievous habit with him, and he was ashamed now that he had deserted his allotted post. True, his father, in bidding him guard Windyhough, had practised a tender fraud on him; but he had given his word, and had been false to it when the first haphazard temptation met him by the way. It had been so easy to steal Giles’s horse, so easy to scamper off along the road of glamour, so bitter-hard to stay among the women.

The lad was over-strained and heart-sick, ready to make molehills into mountains; yet his shame was bottomed on sound instinct. He came of a soldier-stock, and in the tissues of him was interwoven this contempt for the sentry who forsook his post. No danger threatened Windyhough. He was returning to a duty which, in itself, was idle; but he had pledged his word.

He struggled forward. The road to London was not for him; but at least he could keep faith with the father who was riding now, no doubt, beside the Prince.

CHAPTER VII
THE HEIR RETURNS

At Windyhough, Martha the dairymaid was restless, like all the women left about the house. She could not settle to her work, though it was churning-day, and good cream was likely to be wasted. Martha at five-and-thirty, had not found a mate, yet she would have made a good wife to any man; strong, supple, with wind and roses in her cheeks, she was born to matronhood; though, by some blindness that had hindered the farmer-folk about her when she crossed their path, she had not found her road in life. And, in her quiet, practical way, she knew that the shadows were beginning to lengthen down her road, that she might very well go on dairying, eating, sleeping, till they buried her in the churchyard of St. John’s—no more, no less.

The prospect had never shown so cheerless as it did just now. The men, as their habit was, had all the luck; they had gone off on horseback, pretending that some cause or other took them into open country. For her part, she was tired of being left behind.