“Your husband?” he echoed. “I only claim his promises. He’ll return to you, after paying pleasant debts.”

“Ah! but will he return?”

The messenger was surprised again into open confession of his faith. “One way or another you will meet—yes. The good God sees to that,” he answered gravely. “And now, Sir Jasper, we’ve talked enough, and my bed lies ten miles farther on. Your roads are quagmires—the only bad things I’ve found yet in Lancashire.”

“But, Oliphant, you’ll stay the night here? I’ll call you at daybreak if needs must.”

“I’ll sleep—a little later, friend—and at your house another day.”

His smile was easy as he bade farewell to Lady Royd and gripped his host’s hand for a moment; but Sir Jasper saw him stumble a little as he made towards the door.

“How far have you ridden to-day?” he asked sharply.

“Oh, fifty miles, no more—with a change of horses. Why d’ye ask?” said Oliphant, turning in some surprise.

“Because you look underfed and over-ridden, man. Stay here the night, I say. The Prince himself would not ask more of you if he could see you now.”

“The Prince least of all, perhaps. It is his way to shift burdens on to his own shoulders—if we would let him.”

Lady Royd found a moment’s respite from her spoiled and stunted outlook, from the sense of foreboding and of coming loss—loss of the husband whom, in some queer way, she loved. She looked at Oliphant of Muirhouse, standing in the doorway and looking backward at them; and she wondered by what gift he could be sleepless and saddle-sore, serene and temperately gay, all at the one time.

[27]“Mr. Oliphant,” she said, “this lad with the Stuart name gets more than his deserts. He has few men like yourself among his following, surely?”

[27]

“He has many better men.” Oliphant, weary of everything except the need to get his ten-mile errand done and snatch the sleep he needed, bowed prettily enough to his hostess. “The Prince, God bless him, sets the keynote for us all. He makes weaklings into—something better, Lady Royd.”

Royd’s wife, she knew not why, thought suddenly of Rupert, her elder-born, and she yielded to the temper that had not been curbed throughout her 

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