Lochiel, not long ago, had sounded the right note. They were children, Sir Jasper and his Prince, gathered round their mothers’ knees again; and, through the murk of Derby’s street, and through the falling sorrow of the music, God spoke to them, as if they needed, in this hour of extreme weakness, to reach out and hold with firm hands the faith that was slipping from their grasp. And the moment passed, leaving them the sadder, but the stronger for it. And they were men again--comrades, facing a disastrous world. And presently they rode slowly out of Derby, and took the long road north again; and between them fell a silence chill and heavy as the rain that never ceased to whip the puddles of the highway. “Your eyes are wet, Sir Jasper,” said the Prince, turning sharply from the thoughts that were too heavy to be borne. “So are yours, your Highness,” the other answered gruffly. “Well, then, we’ll blame the pipes for it. I think--there’s something broken in me, sir, since--since Derby; but no man in my army, except yourself, shall ever guess as much. We shall be gay, Sir Jasper, since need asks.” A few hours later a motley company of horse--three-and-twenty strong--rode into Derby. Some half-dozen of the riders were English, but the rest, and the officer in command, were Hessian soldiery. The officer, one Captain Goldstein, spoke English with some fluency; and his business here, it seemed, was to gather from the townsfolk such details of the retreat as they could furnish. They spent less than an hour in the town, snatched a hurried meal--for which, unlike the Prince’s men, they did not pay--and rode back as fast as they could set hoofs to ground to the main body of the Duke of Cumberland’s army, which had been hanging on the rear of the Stuart’s men for many days, hoping always to overtake them, and always finding them a few leagues nearer London than themselves. Captain Goldstein went straight to the Duke’s lodgings, and the sentry passed him in without demur when his challenge had been answered. “Ah, good!” said Cumberland gruffly, looking up from a map which he was studying. “What news from Derby?” “The best news. They’ve turned tail, though we could not credit the rumours that came into camp. Derby is empty, your Grace.” The two men were oddly like each other, as they stood in the lamplit room. They were big and fleshy, both of them; and each had the thick, loose lips, the heavy jaw, that go with an aggressive lust for the coarser vices, an aggressive ambition, and a cruelty in the handling of all hindrances. Cumberland drained the tankard at his elbow, thrust his boots a little nearer to the fire-blaze. “What fools these Stuarts are!” he said lazily. “By your leave, no,” said Captain Goldstein, wishing to be exact in detail. “From all I gathered, it was not the Pretender, but the leaders of the clans, who forced the retreat.”