bones in case I was needed by and by—but I was spoiling all the while for this news you bring.”

[25]“What are the chances, Mr. Oliphant?” asked Lady Royd, with odd, impulsive eagerness. “For my part, I see a county of easy-going gentlemen and bacon-eating clowns, who wouldn’t miss one dinner for the Cause. The Cause? A few lean Highlanders; a lad who happens to carry the name of Stuart; the bagpipes waking our hills in protest with their screeching—righteous protest, surely—I see no hope in this affair.”

[25]

Oliphant was striding up and down the room. He halted, faced this petted woman of the world; and she wondered how it came that a man so muddied and so lined with weariness could smile as if he came down to breakfast after a night of pleasant sleep.

“The chances? All in our favour, Lady Royd. We’re few, and hold the Faith. We never count the chances; we just march on from day to day.” His smile grew broader. “And, by your leave, you’ll not speak ill of the pipes. They’re food and drink to us, when other rations fall a little short. The pipes? You’ve never heard them, surely.”

“Yes, to my cost,” put in the other shrewishly. “They’re like—like an east wind singing out of tune, I think.”

So then Oliphant grew hot on the sudden, as Highlanders will when they defend a thing that is marrow of their bones. “The pipes? You’ll hear them rightly, I hope, before you die. The soft, clear tongue of them! They’ll drone to ye, soft as summer, Lady Royd, and bring the slopes o’ Lomond to your sight—and you’ll hear the bees all busy in the thyme; and then they’ll snarl at you, and stretch your body tight as whipcord—and then you taste the fight that’s brewing up——”

“True,” said Lady Royd; “but you ask me for my husband, and I’m loth to part with him. Not all the pipes in Scotland may comfort me after—after this fight that you say is brewing up.”

Sir Jasper glanced at her. He had followed her whimsies with great chivalry and patience for six-and-twenty years, because it happened that he loved her, once for all; but he had[26] not heard, till now, this answering care for his safety, this foolish and tempestuous wish to keep him by her side.

[26]

Oliphant of Muirhouse understood their mood. He had ridden through the lonely places, counting life cheap; and such men grow quick of intuition. 

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