world’s applause was far off, and in any case Oliphant was too saddle-sore and hungry to care for such light diet; yet that cry of his—resolute, gay almost—told Sir Jasper that two men, here on the uplands, were sharing the same faith.

“God save the King!” said Sir Jasper, uncovering; “and—Oliphant, you’ll take a pinch of snuff with me.”

Oliphant laughed—the tired man’s laugh that had great pluck behind it—and dusted his nostrils with the air of one who had known courts and gallantry. “They say it guards a man against chills, Sir Jasper—and one needs protection of that sort in Lancashire. Your men are warm and Catholic—but your weather and your roads—de’il take them!”

“Our weather bred us, Oliphant. We’ll not complain.”

Oliphant of Muirhouse glanced at him. “By gad! you’re[48] tough, sir,” he said, with that rare smile of his which folk likened to sun in midwinter frost.

[48]

“By grace o’ God, I’m tough; but I never learned your trick of hunting up tired folk along the roads and putting new heart into them. How did you learn the trick, Oliphant?”

It was cold up here, and the messenger had need to get about his business; but two men, sharing a faith bigger than the hills about them, were occupied with this new intimacy that lay between them, an intimacy that was tried enough to let them speak of what lay nearest to their hearts. Oliphant looked back along the years—saw the weakness of body, the tired distrust of himself that had hindered him, the groping forward to the light that glimmered faint ahead.

“Oh, by misadventure and by sorrow—how else? I’ll take another pinch of snuff, Sir Jasper, and ride forward.”

“If they but knew, Oliphant!” The older man’s glance was no less direct, but it was wistful and shadowed by some doubt that had taken him unawares. “We’ve all to gain, we loyalists, and George has left us little enough to lose. And yet our men hang back. Cannot they see this Rising as I see it? Prosperity and kingship back again—no need to have a jug of water ready when you drink the loyal toast—the Maypole reared again in this sour, yellow-livered England. Oliphant, we’ve the old, happy view of things, and yet our gentlemen hang back.”

A cloud crossed Oliphant’s persistent optimism, too. In experience of men’s littleness, their shams and subterfuges when they were asked to 

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