Sir Jasper dusted his nostrils, with the spacious air that set well on him. And then, from old habit, he glanced up, in search of the hills that were food and drink to him in time of trouble. He saw no hills worth the name; but, for lack of them, his eyes rested on a mound, wide of his bridle-hand, which from lack of true proportion the country-folk named Big Blue Hill. There was little inspiration to be gathered from the mound; so he looked out with his world’s eyes again, and saw that there were horsemen gathered on the rise, and that they wore the enemy’s livery. “Your Highness, we must gallop,” he said briefly. The Prince, following his glance, saw Goldstein plucking his horse into a trot. “I prefer to wait,” he said lazily. “It is a skirmish of this sort I hoped for.” “And your Highlanders? We’re in the open without a wall to set our backs to. You _dare_ not leave your Highlanders.” “True, I dare not.” He glanced wistfully at the down-riding men, as if death in the open were easier to him just now than life. “It is retreat once more? Dear God, I must have sinned, to have this sickness put on me!” “Our horses are fresh. We’ll give them Tally-Ho, your Highness.” Through the darkness and the trouble of his soul, through the wish to die here and now and lie in forgetfulness of Derby and retreat, the Prince caught up some tattered remnants of the Stuart courage. It was easy to wait, sword ready, for the oncoming; but it was hard to gallop from an enemy he loathed. Yet from the discipline of that long peril shared with his men, since they came on the forlorn hope from Scotland, the strength that does not fail returned to Prince Charles Edward. He set his mare--Nance Demaine’s mare--to the gallop; and Sir Jasper rode keen and hard beside him; and Goldstein found his heavy horse slip and lurch under him, as all his company did while they blundered in pursuit. Goldstein followed headlong. Three of his troopers came to ground in galloping down a greasy slope, and their leader, if he had been a worse horseman, would have shared the same fate. As it was, he kept forward, and at a bend of the road saw, half a mile ahead, the company of MacDonalds who kept the rear of the Stuart army. “Well, it’s not to-day we catch him,” he snapped, reining up and facing the ill-tempered men behind him. “We can bide our time.” “Aye, we’ve been biding a good while,” growled a weather-beaten trooper. “Whichever way his back’s turned, this cursed Pretender always slips out of reach.” “The money’s on his head, you fools!” snapped Goldstein. “You’ll mutiny against God or man, but not against thirty thousand pounds, if I know your breed. There’s to-morrow; we shall catch him soon or late, while this mood is on him to ride behind his army.”