march from Scotland, there was England’s happiness at stake. He would have to wait three weeks or so, drilling his men, rousing his neighbours to the rally, doing fifty things a day to keep his patience decently in bounds. He needed the gallop south, and the quick dangers of the road; and here, instead, were two youngsters who fancied love was all.

Outside in the hall Nance and Will Underwood were facing each other with a certain grave disquiet. The wind was rising fast; its song overhead among the chimney-stacks was wild and comfortless; the draught of it crept down the stairs, and under the main door, and through ill-fitting casements, blowing the candle-flames aslant and shaping the droppings into what the country-folk called “candle-corpsies.” Somewhere from the kitchen a maidservant was singing a doleful ballad, dear to rustic Lancashire, of one Sir Harry of Devilsbridge, who rode out to his wedding one day and never was seen again save as a ghost that haunted Lang Rigg Moss.

“There’s a lively tune for Rising men to march to,” said Underwood, ill at ease somehow, yet forcing a gay laugh. “If I were superstitious——”

“We are all superstitious,” broke in the other, restless as her father. “Since babyhood we’ve listened to that note i’ the wind. Oh, it sobs, and will not any way be still! It comes homeless from the moors, and cries to us to let it in. Martha is right to be singing yonder of souls crying over the Moss.”

Again Will Underwood yielded to place and circumstance. He had watched Nance grow up from lanky girlhood into a[18] womanhood that, if it had no extravagance of beauty, arrested every man’s attention and made him better for the pause. He had hunted with her, in fair weather and in foul, had sat at meat with her in this house that kept open, hospitable doors. Yet, until to-night, he had not seen her as she was, a child of the moors, passionate, wayward, strong for the realities of human pity, human need for faith and constancy.

[18]

“I have your kerchief, Nance,” he said. The gravity, the quietness of his tone surprised her. “I’ll keep it, by your leave.”

She glanced at him, and there was trouble in her eyes. This news of the Rising had stirred every half-forgotten longing, inbred in her, that a Stuart might reign again, gallant and debonair and kingly, over this big-little land of England. She wished the old days back, with desperate eagerness—the days when men were not blameless, as in a fairy-tale, but 

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