Will Underwood caught infection from these two. The one was hale, bluff and hard-riding, a man proven; the other was a slip of a lassie, slender as a reed and fanciful; yet each had the same eager outlook on this matter of the Rising--an outlook that admitted no compromise, no asking whether the time were ripe for sacrifice and peril. The moment was instinct with drama to Underwood, and he was ready always to step into the forefront of a scene. “When are we needed, sir?” he asked, with a grave simplicity that was equal to their own. “Within the month, if all goes well with the march. There’s little time, Will, and much to do.” “Ay, there’s much to do--but we shall light a fire for every loyalist to warm his hands at. May the Prince come soon, say I.” The Squire glanced sharply at him. Will’s tone, his easy, gallant bearing, removed some doubts he had had of late touching the younger man’s fidelity; and when, a little later, Nance said that she would leave them to their wine, he permitted Will to open the door for her, to follow her for a moment into the draughty hall. He noticed, with an old man’s dry and charitable humour, that Nance dropped her kerchief as she went out, and that Will picked it up. “The hunt is up,” he muttered. “The finest hunt is up that England ever saw--and these two are playing a child’s game of drop-kerchief. There’ll be time to make love by and by, surely, when peace comes in again.” The Squire was restless. To his view of the Prince’s march from Scotland, there was England’s happiness at stake. He would have to wait three weeks or so, drilling his men, rousing his neighbours to the rally, doing fifty things a day to keep his patience decently in bounds. He needed the gallop south, and the quick dangers of the road; and here, instead, were two youngsters who fancied love was all. Outside in the hall Nance and Will Underwood were facing each other with a certain grave disquiet. The wind was rising fast; its song overhead among the chimney-stacks was wild and comfortless; the draught of it crept down the stairs, and under the main door, and through ill-fitting casements, blowing the candle-flames aslant and shaping the droppings into what the country-folk called “candle-corpsies.” Somewhere from the kitchen a maidservant was singing a doleful ballad, dear to rustic Lancashire, of one Sir Harry of Devilsbridge, who rode out to his wedding one day and never was seen again save as a ghost that haunted Lang Rigg Moss. “There’s a lively tune for Rising men to march to,” said Underwood, ill at ease somehow, yet forcing a gay laugh. “If I were superstitious----” “We are all superstitious,” broke in the other, restless as her father. “Since babyhood we’ve listened to that note i’ the wind. Oh, it sobs, and will not any way be still! It comes homeless from the moors, and cries to us to let it in. Martha is right to be singing yonder of souls crying over the Moss.”