Round the bend of the road below she heard the sound of footsteps—halting steps that now and then ceased for a while. She forgot Simon, forgot her peevishness, as she saw the figure that came up the road towards her. All the motherhood that was strong and eager in this lass came to the front as she saw Rupert, the heir—Rupert, who had been missing since the dawn—come home in this derelict, queer fashion. She ran out and put an arm about him. He was not the heir now, the master left in charge of Windyhough; he was the lad whose cries she had helped to still, long since in nursery days.
“Why, sir, ye’re i’ th’ wars, and proper. You’re limping sorely.”
Rupert steadied himself against her arm for a moment, then put her away and went forward. “Nay, I’m out of the wars, Martha,” he said, with the rare smile that made friends among those who chanced to see it. “I’m out of the wars—and that’s my trouble.”
“But you’re limping——”
“Yes,” he snapped, with sudden loss of temper. “I’m limping, Martha—since my birth. That’s no news to me.”
He went in at the door of Windyhough, and in the hall encountered Lady Royd. The light was dim here, and she did not see his weariness.
“Where have you been, Rupert?” she asked peevishly.
He kissed her lightly on the cheek. “I’ve been up the moors, mother,” he said, “planning how best to defend Windyhough if the attack should come.” He was here to take up the post allotted to him, and to his last ebb of strength he meant to be debonair and cheery, as his father would have been under like hardship. “There are so few men left here, and all of us are either old, or—or useless,” he added, with his whimsical, quiet smile.
Lady Royd, oppressed by loneliness, swept out of her self-love by the storm of this Loyal Meet that had left her in its wake, stood near to the life which is known to workaday folk—the life made up of sleet and a little sun, of work and the need for faith and courage. She looked at her boy, trying to read his face in the dull, uncertain light; and her heart ached for him.
“But, Rupert,” she said by and by, “there’s no fear of attack. The march has gone south—the fighting will be there, not here—you overheard your father say as much.”