And, in this hour of swift and unexpected trouble, she was as her father and her brothers would have had her be--unflinching, reliant, reaching out instinctively to the strong morrow, not to the dead, unlovely yesterday. Only, she was very tired; and there was one friend she needed--a friend who could not come and put warm, human arms about her, because her mother had died long ago, leaving her to the care of men who love and honour and defend their women, but who are weak to understand their times of loneliness. She was a great figure, after all, this daughter of Demaine’s who rode on a broken-winded horse through the fieldways that had bred her. It is easy to ride forward, head erect, into the city you have taken by assault; but it is hard to carry upright shoulders and a firm, disdainful head, when only faith and the clean years behind support you in the thick of grave disaster. At the bend of the track, where it passed Sunderland’s cornmill--the water-wheel treading its sleepy round--she saw Rupert and Simon Foster twenty yards ahead. Simon was carrying a couple of muskets, his pockets bulging with powder-flasks and lead, and Rupert was limping a little, as if he had given too much work to his damaged ankle; and Nance Demaine, who was in the mood that sees all and understands, knew, from the look of Rupert’s back, that he was pleased with the day’s adventure. Her horse was tired now, and for the last mile she had ridden him at a gentle foot pace. The track was heavy with wet leaves that waited for a drying wind to scatter them. The two on foot did not hear the muffled splash of hoofs, and she was content to follow them. She had been friendless; and now half her loneliness had slipped away from her, at sight of Rupert limping on ahead. He was more diffident than she, more sensitive to ridicule and hardship; but he stood for the truths that matter in a world where men and women are ready, for the most part, to believe that all ends when death robs them of the power to eat, and sleep, and dance foolishly from day to day, like gnats when the sun is warm about them. He stood for her own simple, downright view of creed and honour; he was a comrade of the true breed, in brief, and she was in sore need of companionship just now. How well she seemed to know this cripple who jogged on before her! Half-forgotten words of his; little, unselfish surrenders when Maurice had shown a younger brother’s wilfulness; the patient chivalry that had bidden him show deference to Lady Royd when her tongue was lashing his infirmities--all these stood out with startling clearness. And again that curious, sharp pain was at her heart, and the old thought returned how good a knight was lost to Prince Charles Edward.