the matter. If Rupert’s a fool—well, he shall have his chance of proving it. Nance, you go to Windyhough. That’s understood? The house down yonder can stand a siege, and this cannot. My fool of a grandfather—God rest him, all the same!—dismantled the house here. He thought there’d never again be civil war in Lancashire—but down at Windyhough they lived in hope.”

[16]

Nance laughed—the brave laugh of a woman cradled in a house of gallant faith, of loyalty to old tradition. She understood her father’s breezy, offhand talk of civil war, as if it were a pleasant matter. He would have chosen other means, she knew, if peace had shown the road; but better war, of friend against friend, than this corroding apathy that had fallen on men’s ideals since the King-in-name ruled England by the help of foreign mercenaries.

Will Underwood caught infection from these two. The one was hale, bluff and hard-riding, a man proven; the other was a slip of a lassie, slender as a reed and fanciful; yet each had the same eager outlook on this matter of the Rising—an outlook that admitted no compromise, no asking whether the time were ripe for sacrifice and peril. The moment was instinct with drama to Underwood, and he was ready always to step into the forefront of a scene.

“When are we needed, sir?” he asked, with a grave simplicity that was equal to their own.

“Within the month, if all goes well with the march. There’s little time, Will, and much to do.”

“Ay, there’s much to do—but we shall light a fire for every loyalist to warm his hands at. May the Prince come soon, say I.”

The Squire glanced sharply at him. Will’s tone, his easy, gallant bearing, removed some doubts he had had of late touching the younger man’s fidelity; and when, a little later, Nance said that she would leave them to their wine, he permitted Will to open the door for her, to follow her for a moment into the draughty hall. He noticed, with an old man’s dry and[17] charitable humour, that Nance dropped her kerchief as she went out, and that Will picked it up.

[17]

“The hunt is up,” he muttered. “The finest hunt is up that England ever saw—and these two are playing a child’s game of drop-kerchief. There’ll be time to make love by and by, surely, when peace comes in again.”

The Squire was restless. To his view of the Prince’s 

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