“Will Underwood will join us,” Squire Roger had said, with the testiness of a man who only half believes his own words. “He takes any fence that comes.” “Yes,” Oliphant had broken in, with the dry smile of one who knew his world. “Yes, he can gallop well. Can he stand a siege, though?” “A siege?” “There’s not always a game fox in front, Squire--and hounds running with a fine, full-throated cry. I’m on the other side o’ life myself--the long night rides, when a man would barter all for one clean fight in open daylight. Underwood will not find this march such a gallop. Horse and foot go together, and the roads are vile. Can he last, Squire, crawling at a foot pace?” Nance remembered the very tone of Oliphant’s voice--the dry, sharp challenge in it, as of one who had learned to sum up a man’s character quickly. It was her own judgment of Will Underwood, though warm liking for him--his bigness and his way of taking fences--had stifled half her healthy common sense. She checked her horse, looked out across this land of wintry nakedness. It was here on the uplands that she had let Underwood steal into her friendship, here that her quick need for romance had shaped him to the likeness of a gentleman--gallant, debonair, a man to count on whether peace or war were in the doing. Something of the wind’s free-roving heedlessness took hold of her. She was free to choose her man, free to be loyal to her heart and let her judgment go. She looked down the slope. A horseman came suddenly into view, riding up the trough of the hills. She checked her horse, with a sharp, instinctive cry. The superstitions of the moor, bred in its lonely marshes and voiced by its high priests, the curlews and the plover, crept round her like the hill-mists that bewilder human judgment. Will Underwood was away with the Stuart, riding south to London and the Restoration; yet he was coming up to meet her, over the slopes which they had crossed together on many a hunting-day. She watched him climb the slope. There was no mistaking the dashing, handsome figure, the way he had of sitting a horse; and the wide emptiness of the heath, its savage loneliness, seemed only to make bigger this intruder who rode up into its silence. The old, unconquerable legends of the moor returned to Nance. Her nurse had taught her, long ago, what such apparitions meant. The dead were allowed to return to those they loved, for the brief hour before the soul, half between heaven and earth, took its last departure. She watched the horseman ride nearer, nearer. And suddenly she broke into a flood of tears. He had died in battle--had died for the Stuart--and was riding up, a ghostly horseman on a phantom steed, to tell her of it. He had died well--yes--but she would miss him in the coming years. She would miss him----