The Prince turned in saddle. “My thanks, Sir Jasper,” he said, with an easy laugh. “Lord Murray has never kept a Lenten fast—it smacks too much of superstition, he says; but, by the God we serve, Sir Jasper, he would likely be the better for it.”
So then Murray, seeing two against him and not relishing the odds, lost his temper outright. “Superstition does not carry armies on to victory,” he snapped.
“No,” assented the Prince, as if he reckoned up a sum in simple addition. “But faith, my lord Murray—it carries men far and happily.”
Murray checked himself with obvious effort, and they rode on in silence for a while. “Your Highness, I spoke hastily just now,” he said by and by. His voice, try as he would, had no warmth in it, no true sincerity. “I ask your pardon.”
“Oh, that is granted. Our royal purse is empty, but we can still be spendthrift with forgiveness.”
Again Sir Jasper glanced at this many-sided Prince of his. The smile, the grave rebuke hidden beneath gentlest courtesy, were not his own; they were gifts entrusted to his keeping by many generations of the Stuart race. They had not always done well or wisely, these Stuarts; but wherever down the track of history they had touched a world made dull and ugly by the men who lived in it, they had stood always for the buoyant faith, the clean and eager hope, the royal breadth of sympathy that sweeps shams and make-believes aside.
Sir Jasper, riding through this wet, unlovely country, found himself once more in that mood of tenderness, of wrath and pity, which had surprised him not long ago in Langton High Street. The islanders of Skye—Skye, in the misty Highland country—had known this mood from birth and were accustomed to it, as they were used to the daily labour to win bread, from land or sea, for their wives and bairns. But Sir Jasper was young to it, and was disturbed by the simple, tragic pity that seemed to cling about the Stuart—a something filmy and impalpable, as if with him always there rode a phantom shape of martyrdom to come.
He sought relief in action, glanced up and down the highway in hope of straightforward, healthy battle. But Marshal Wade was a good three days’ march in the rear, and the Duke of Cumberland was playing hide-and-seek along the Staffordshire lanes without success.
Sir Jasper turned from looking up and down the road, and saw Lord Murray riding close on his right. The man’s face was set and hard; and Sir Jasper, with the intuition that comes to tired and heart-sick men, knew that the enemy was here among them—not in the shape of an army challenging endeavour, but of one cautious Scotsman who was busy saving halfpennies while guineas were going down the wind.
As if to prove Sir Jasper’s judgment accurate, Lord Murray broke the silence. “You spoke of faith just now, your Highness,” he said.