rumour.”

“Well, I call it good news. They say Marshal Wade has men enough under him to kill half Lancashire—and he’s marching down this way from Newcastle to cut off these pesty Scotchmen.”

Will Underwood turned sharply. “Is your news sure, Eli?”

“Sure as judgment. I had it from one of Wade’s own riders, who’s been busy hereabouts these last days, trying to keep silly country-folk from leaving their homes for sake o’ moonshine. He laughed at this pretty-boy Prince, I tell ye, saying he was no more than a lad who tries to rob an orchard with the big farmer looking on.”

Underwood questioned him in detail about this messenger of Marshal Wade’s, and from the bailiff’s answers, knowing[41] the man’s shrewdness, he grew sure that the odds were ludicrously against the Prince.

[41]

“I’m pledged to the Stuart Cause. You may go, Eli,” he said, with the curtness he mistook for strength.

“Ay, you’re pledged, maister. But is it down in black and white? As a plain man o’ business, I tell ye no contract need be kept unless it’s signed and sealed.”

“And honour, you old fool?” snapped Underwood, afraid of his own conscience.

“Honour? That’s for gentry-folk to play with. You and me, maister, were reared at Rigstones Chapel, where there was no slippery talk o’ that kind. It’s each for his own hand, to rive his way through to the Mercy Throne. It’s a matter o’ business, surely—we just creep and clamber up, knowing we’ve to die one day—and we’ve to keep sharp wits about us, if we’re to best our neighbour at the job. It would be a poor do, I reckon, if ye lost your chance by letting some other body squeeze past ye, and get in just as th’ Gates were shutting, leaving ye behind.”

The whole bleak past returned to Will Underwood. He saw, as if it stood before him harsh against the rough hillocks of the moor, the squat face of Rigstones Chapel. He heard again the gospel of self-help, crude, arid, and unwashed, that had thundered about his boyhood’s ears when his father took him to the desolation that was known as Sabbath to the sect that worshipped there. It had been all self-help there, in this world’s business or the next—all a talk of gain and barter—and never, by any chance, a hint of the over-glory that counts sacrifice a pleasant matter, leading to the starry heights.

“Eli, I washed my hands of all that years ago,” 

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