put bodily ease aside for sake of battle, he was older than Sir Jasper. The night-riders of this Rising saw the dark side, not only of the hilly roads they crossed, but of human character; and in this corner of Lancashire alone Oliphant knew to a nicety the few who would rise, sanguine at the call of honour, and the many who would add up gain and loss like figures in a tradesman’s ledger.

“Sir Jasper,” he said, breaking an uneasy silence, “the[49] Prince will come to his own with few or many. If it were you and I alone, I think we’d still ride out.”

[49]

He leaned from the saddle, gripped the other’s hand, and spurred forward into the grey haze that was creeping up the moor across the ruddy sundown.

Sir Jasper followed him, at an easier pace. For a while he captured something of Oliphant’s zeal—a zeal that had not been won lightly—and then again doubt settled on him, cold as the mist that grew thicker and more frosty as he gained the lower lands. He knew that the call had come which could not be disobeyed, and he was sick with longing for the things that had been endeared to him by long-continued peace. There was Rupert, needing a father’s guidance, a father’s help at every turn, because he was a weakling; he had not known till now how utterly he loved the lad. There was his wife, who was wayward and discontented these days; but he had not forgotten the beauty of his wooing-time. There was all to lose, it seemed, in spite of his brave words not long ago.

Resolute men feel these things no less—nay, more, perhaps—than the easy-going. Their very hatred of weakness, of swerving from the straight, loyal path, reacts on them, and they find temptation doubly strong. Sir Jasper, as he rode down into the nipping frost that hung misty about the chimney-stacks below him, had never seen this house of his so comely, so likeable. Temptation has a knack of rubbing out all harsher lines, of showing a stark, midwinter landscape as a land of plenty and of summer. There were the well ordered life, the cheery greetings with farmer-folk and hinds who loved their squire. There was his wife—she was young again, as on her bridal-day, asking him if he dared leave her—and there was his heir. Maurice, the younger-born, would go out with the Rising; but Rupert must be left behind.

Sir Jasper winced, as if in bodily pain. Every impulse was bidding him stay. Every tie, of home and lands and tenantry, was pulling him away from strict allegiance to the greater[50] Cause. He had but to bide at home, to let 

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