married life. “Then would God my son could come under the Prince’s discipline! He’s the heir to Windyhough—laugh with me, Mr. Oliphant, while I tell you what a weakling he is. He can ride, after a fashion—but not to hounds; he can only read old books in the library, or take his gun up to these evil moors my husband loves.”

Sir Jasper’s temper was slow to catch fire, but it was burning now with a fierce, dismaying heat. He would have spoken—words that would never be forgotten afterwards between his wife and him—if Oliphant had not surprised them both by the quietness of his interruption.

“He has had no chance to prove himself, I take it?” he broke in, with a certain tender gravity. “I was in that plight once—and the chance came—and it seemed easy to accept it. Good-night to you, Lady Royd, and trust your son a little more.”

Sir Jasper was glad to follow his guest out of doors into the courtyard, where a grey-blue moon was looking down on the late-fallen sleet. Oliphant’s horse, tied to the bridle-ring at the door, was shivering in the wind, and his master patted him with the instinctive, friendly comradeship he had for all dumb things.

“Only ten more miles, old lad,” he muttered, hunting for sugar in the pockets of his riding-coat, and finding two small pieces.

[28]As he was untying the bridle a sound of feet came up the roadway. The courtyard gate was opened, and three figures, unheroic all of them, came trudging in. They crossed the yard slowly, and they were strangely silent.

[28]

Sir Jasper and his guest stared at the three in blank surprise as they drew near. The moonlight showed them Maurice, carrying a black eye and a battered face with the jauntiness inborn in him, and Rupert, bending a little under the bruises that were patent enough, and a horse that moved dejectedly.

“You’ve been hunting with a vengeance, boys,” said Sir Jasper, after long scrutiny of the sons who stood shamefacedly at attention. “Who was it marked your face so prettily, Maurice?”

“It was Rupert, sir. We had a quarrel—and he half-killed me—I couldn’t make him yield.”

Sir Jasper was aware of an unreasoning happiness, a sense that, in the thick of coming dangers, he had found something for which he had been searching many years. If he had been Squire Demaine, his intimate friend and neighbour, he would have 

 Prev. P 23/322 next