She rode slowly up by way of Hangman’s Snout--a bluff, round hill that once had carried a gallows-tree. Line by swarthy line the heath widened out before her as she climbed. Crumpled hillocks, flat wastes of peat, acre after acre of dead bracken intermixed with ling and benty grasses, swept out and up to the sky that was big with sunrise and with storm. The wind blew cold and shrill, and all was empty loneliness; but to Nance it seemed that she was in a friendly land, where she was free to breathe. They would not let her fight for the true cause; she had no skill in arms; but here, on the naked, friendly heath, she was free at least to grasp the meaning of that stormy hardship which her folk had been content to undergo. There was Sir Jasper--her father, and many who had ridden out from the Loyal Meet at Windyhough under her own eyes--and all of them had seemed instinct with this large, stormy air that lay above the moors. She was girlish yet, healthy and in need of pleasure; and she had wondered, seeing these men ride from Windyhough, that they were so grave about the matter, intent and quiet, as if they went to kirk instead of to the wars. Like Rupert, she had pictured the scene in more vivid colours, had been impatient that no music of the pipes, no rousing cheers had gone to the farewell. She had longed for the strong lights and shades of drama, and had found instead a workaday company of gentlemen who rode about their business and made no boast of it. Here on the wintry heights she looked life in the face to-day. These men who had ridden out--Sir Jasper turning only at the last moment to kiss his wife, though he was deep in love with her at the end of many years--had been rugged and silent as the hills that had nursed their strength and loyalty. Nance was not herself just now. The superstitious would have said that she was “seeing far.” And so she was--far as the red sunrise-glow that reached up to heaven. She and the moors, between them, struck sparks of vivid faith from the winter’s barrenness and hardship. She was sure that summer would return, fragrant with the scent of Stuart roses. They had reached the top of Hangman’s Snout, she and her broken-winded horse. And suddenly a doubt came blowing down the breeze to her. Will Underwood had been absent from the Loyal Meet. She was aware that men doubted him in some subtle manner that did not need words to explain its meaning. He was popular, in a haphazard way, with his own kind; but always, as Nance looked back along the years, there was a suggestion that he was happier among the women, because he had the gift of fooling them. And yet men admitted that he was a good companion in all field-sports--and yet again Nance remembered how, not long ago, she had overheard her father talking with Oliphant of Muirhouse, when they did not guess that she was within earshot.