have done with it.

But old Roger was still unconvinced. “We may be called out within the month. Have you set your house in order, Will?”

Again the younger man seemed to be looking backward to[15] some trouble that had dwarfed his impulse. “Why, no, sir,” he answered lamely. “Surely I have had no time?”

[15]

“Just so,” put in the other dryly. “At my time of life, Will, men learn to set things in order before the call comes. Best have all in readiness.”

A troubled silence followed. They stood in the thick of peril soon to come, and Squire Roger, haphazard and unthinking at usual times, had struck a note of faith that was deep, far sounding, not to be denied. As if ashamed of his feeling, openly expressed, the Squire laughed clumsily.

“I was boasting, Nance,” he said, putting a rough hand on her shoulder, “and that’s more dangerous than hunting foxes—bagged foxes brought overseas from Hanover. Bless me! you were talking of staying here as mistress, and I’ll not allow it. I’ve had a plan in my head since Oliphant first brought the news.”

“But, father, I must stay here. Where else?”

“At Windyhough. No, girl, I’ll have no arguments about it. You’ll be protected there.”

Will Underwood laughed, and somehow Nance liked him none the better for it. “Sir Jasper will go with us, and Maurice, and every able-bodied man about the place—who will be left to play guardian to Nance?”

“Rupert, unless I’ve misjudged the lad,” snapped the Squire.

“He cannot protect himself, sir.”

“No. May be not—just yet. But I’ve faith in that lad, somehow. He’ll look after other folk’s cattle better than his own. Some few are made in that mould, Will. It’s a good mould, and rare.”

His secret trouble, and his jealousy of any man who threatened to come close to Nance, swept Will Underwood’s prudence clean away. He should have known by now this bluff, uncompromising tone of the Squire’s. “She’s safer here, sir,” he blundered on. “We all know Rupert for a scholar—I’d rather trust Nance to her own women-servants.”

“But I would not,” put in old Roger dryly, “and I happen[16] to have a say in 

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