month is out.”

She was gone before he could insist on one last word, and Will Underwood turned impatiently to seek his host. A half-hour later, after she had heard him get to saddle and ride away, Nance came downstairs, and found her father pacing up and down the dining-chamber.

“What, you?” growled old Roger. “I thought you were in bed by this time, child.”

“I cannot sleep.” She came to his side, and put a friendly arm through his. “Father, am I right? It seems there are so many—so many of our men who are cold——”

“Why, damme, that’s just what I was thinking,” roared the Squire, his good-humour returning when another shared[20] his loneliness. “It’s the older men who are warm—the older men who are going to carry this business through. It was not so in my young days. Our fathers licked us into better shape, and we’d fewer luxuries, may be. Why, child, we dared not play fast and loose with loyalty, as some of these young blades are doing.”

[20]

“They ask for reasons, father. Young Hunter of Hunterscliff rode up to me to-day, as we were waiting for hounds to strike the scent. And I spoke of the Rising, because I can think of little else these days; and he yawned, in the lackadaisical way he brought from London a year ago, and said the Prince was following a wild-goose chase. And he, too, asked for reasons—asked why he should give up a hunting life for the pleasure of putting his neck into a halter.”

Roger Demaine stood, square and big, with his back to the fire. His fine apparel, the ordered comfort of the room, could not disguise his ruggedness. He was an out-of-doors man, simple, passionate, clean as the winds and an open life could make him. “Hunter of Hunterscliff will put his neck into a worse halter if he airs such shallow stuff. I’d have had him ducked in the nearest horse-pond if he’d said that to me.”

The two looked quietly at each other, father and daughter, each knowing that there was need of some deeper confidence.

“You dropped your kerchief just now, Nance,” said Roger dryly, “and Will Underwood picked it up. Did he keep it?”

The girl was full of trouble. Her father’s happiness, the welfare of the English land which she loved almost to idolatry, her trust in Underwood’s honour, were all at stake. But she stood proud and self-reliant. “Did you train me to drop my kerchief for any man 

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