“Yes,” put in Sir Jasper adroitly. “We knew as much. You said, before Annan was reached, that we’d no chance of getting beyond Carlisle.”
“Who told you that?” said Murray, flurried and unguarded.
“Oliphant of Muirhouse, who never lies, my lord. Well, we’re here in Staffordshire, and the London road still open to us; and your prophecy, somehow, has miscarried.”
Murray grew fidgety. Hot temper he knew, and suavity he knew, but not this subtle mixture of the two. “Thank our good luck for that. They say Heaven guards all fools.”
“But more especially all true believers. That is my point. We’re adventurers, Lord Murray, not seasoned troops. We ride by faith, we ride for love of the Prince, of what he stands for—and we have come through odds that cautious generals would shirk—but we are here, in Staffordshire, and the London road, I say, is open to us.”
“Well, then, it’s a sermon, after all, you wish to preach. The clergy, my good Sir Jasper, are wiser than you; they preach between four snug walls that shut off this cursed wind.”
“Not a sermon,” said Sir Jasper doggedly. “I preach common sense, to one whose faith is dulled by tactics.”
Murray lost the bullying air that had carried him fairly well through life. He felt dwarfed, ashamed, by some quality in Sir Jasper that overrode his self-importance and trampled it in the mire. “Sir Jasper,” he asked sullenly, “may I ask you for plain speech? What is your quarrel with me?”
“You ask for plain speech? And you’ll not ask Mr. Johnstone to ride out of earshot? No? Then he, too, shall listen to plain speech.”
There was a moment’s silence. Murray wondered at the tense, lean carriage of this Lancashire squire, whose loyalty had been a jest among the cynics of the army, but for the others a steady beacon-light. He wondered more that Sir Jasper’s face, grey and lined a while since, was comely now in its heat and youthfulness.