As for Rupert, he felt his soul go free to prison; he was finding now the answer to the unhappy, ceaseless trouble he had undergone since childhood. He had been thrust aside by folk more practical and matter-of-fact; he had feared ridicule; he had heard men name him scholarly, and had retreated, like a snail into its shell, to the dreams of gallantry that were food and drink to him. But through it all he had kept one bridge against all comers--the bridge of his simple, knightly faith; and it is the big deeds such as this--wrought out in silence, so that none guesses them--that train a man for the forlorn hope, the sudden call, the need to step out into the open when there is no one else to face odds ludicrous and overwhelming. It was Rupert who broke the silence, and his voice was deep and steady. “Mr. Oliphant,” he said, not knowing how the words came to him, “this may be for the best.” So Oliphant, who was saddle-sore and human, snapped round on him. “By gad, sir, you are obstinately cheerful! Ride somewhere between here and Derby, and ask the Highlanders if all is for the best. I tell you I have seen the Prince’s face, and faith grows dull. He would be in London now, if he had had his way.” Rupert glanced up to the moors, where the last tattered banners of the sunset fluttered crimson on the hilltops. And in his eyes was the look which any countryman of Lancashire, or any Highlander from Skye, would have known as “seeing far.” “The Prince has not had his way,” he said, with queer, unhurried certainty. “You tell us he retreats as other men go to a ball. You say his heart is breaking, sir, and that he still finds jests. I know retreat and waiting--know them by heart--and the going is not smooth. If he can do this--why, he’s bigger even than my dreams of him.” Nance understood him now; and Oliphant’s ill-temper ceased to trouble him. Here was one, bred of a soldier-stock, who had missed his way along the road of deeds; but to the bone of him he was instinct, not with the ballad-stuff of victory, but with the tedious prose of long, sick marches, of defeat carried with shoulders squared to any onset of adversity. Oliphant laughed grimly. It was his way when feeling waded so deep that it was like to carry him away. “I’ve seen many countries, lad--have had my back to the wall a few times, knowing who stood by me and who found excuse to save his skin; but I never in my travels met one so like a man, round and about, find him in rough weather or in smooth, as--as the Prince, God bless him! The ladies up in Edinburgh--your pardon, Miss Demaine, but some of your sex are fools paramount--saw only his love-locks and the rest of it; but we have seen his manhood. There’s none like him. And he retreats because my Lord George Murray is mathematical and has captured the Scots prudence of the chiefs; and he’s still the great gentleman among us--greater now that he dances, not in Holyrood, but through the miry roads.”