Nance glanced up sharply. She was thinking of Will Underwood, who had killed first love for her with a clown’s rough hand. “If there were more men of your breed--and Rupert’s----” “By your leave,” broke in Oliphant gruffly, “I think most of us are bred straight. The mongrels make such an uproar that you fancy them a full pack in cry, Miss Demaine. We’re not happy, not one of us three; but we carry a faith bigger than our hardships.” He turned to Rupert with surprising grace and charm. “My thanks, sir. I was tired before I met you, and now--my weariness is gone.” The door of Windyhough was opened suddenly, and Lady Royd came running out bareheaded, and halted on seeing the horseman and the two on foot in the falling dusk of the courtyard. “Rupert, I cannot find my little dog!” she cried. Her elder-born smiled grimly. He was struggling with the need to stand firm against Oliphant’s disastrous news; and his mother came to tell him, in her pretty, querulous way, that her little dog was missing. “Fido is in the house, mother,” he answered patiently. “We heard him barking at us when we crossed the courtyard.” “Oh, it is not Fido. It’s the little black pug, Rupert. And she’s so delicate. An hour of this keen wind, if she is out of doors, might kill the poor, wee doggie.” Oliphant of Muirhouse gave a muttered curse, for, to his finger-tips, he was a man, his instincts primitive when they were touched. Then he laughed gently, for his soul’s health, and got from saddle, and stooped to kiss Lady Royd’s hand. “You do not know me, Lady Royd, in this dim light? I’m Oliphant of Muirhouse, and I bring Rising news.” Sir Jasper’s wife put a hand to her breast. The movement was quick, and another than Oliphant might easily have missed it in this dim light; but now his task grew harder, for he knew that, apart from pet-dog whimsies, she loved her husband. “Is he safe, Mr. Oliphant?” she asked, bridging all usual courtesies of greeting. “Hale and well. I saw him three days since, and he sent messages to you, knowing I had errands here in Lancashire.” Lady Royd, easy for the moment because her good man did not happen to be lying dead among the ditches of her nightmares, grew almost roguish. “And his heart, sir? Is it sound, too? There are so many pretty women in the south--I know, because I lived there once, before I came to these bleak hills that frighten me.” Oliphant sought for some way of breaking news better left untold. “You to fear rivalry?” he said, in his low, pleasant voice. “Sir Jasper has known you all these years----” “Precisely. And the years have left their mark. You need not dwell on that, Mr. Oliphant.” “I meant that, to have known you all these years--why, it explains the lover-like and pressing messages he sent by me.” So then Lady Royd was like a girl in her teens. “Tell me what he said.” “No, by your leave!” laughed Oliphant. “He said so much, and my time is not my own just now.”