It was Rupert who broke in. “Remember?” he said stormily. “My father taught me just that word, when he used to come up into the nursery long ago, and play with us. He did not know then how--how like God’s fool I was to grow up, and he would tell me tales of Charles the First, how likeable and kingly he was always; how he’d have been glad to take his crown off, and live like a country gentleman, following field-sports all the day, and coming back to the wife and bairns he loved, to spend long evenings with them.” Oliphant of Muirhouse felt pity stir about him. This lad--with the simplicity of one who was seeing far back along the years, scarce knowing that he was speaking his thoughts aloud--was a figure to rouse any thinking man’s attention. He was so good a soldier wasted. “Then father would tell me,” went on Rupert, the passion deepening in his voice, “how the King was asked to leave it all; how he could have saved his life, if he had given his Faith in exchange, and how he would not yield. And then--father made it all so plain to me--the King went out from Whitehall, one bitter January day, and the scaffold and the streets were thick with snow, and he went with a grave, happy face, as if he had many friends about him. And he knelt awhile at the scaffold in decent prayer; and then he turned to Bishop Juxon, and said, ‘Remember!’ And then--black Cromwell had his way of him, for a little while.” “My dear, that is past history,” protested Lady Royd, with petulant dislike of sorrow. “Of course he died well, and, to be sure, the snow must have added to his great discomfort; but we live in other times.” “No!” said Oliphant, sharp as a bugle-call. “We live in the same times, my lady. The way of men’s hearts does not change. I’m tired, and not so young as I was; but your son has marshalled all my courage up.” So then Rupert stood aside. His chivalry and hero-worship, like his love for Nance, were too delicate as yet, for lack of drill; and he was ashamed that Oliphant of Muirhouse should praise his littleness. “Mr. Oliphant,” said Lady Royd, with her roguish, faded laugh, “you’re like the rest of my daft men-folk; you are all for remembrance of the days behind----” “Yes. We take a few steps back, the better to leap forward. That is the strict method of leaping any five-barred gate. There’s been so much surmise about that riddle of ‘Remember,’ and Rupert here has made it plain to me for the first time.” “‘Out of the mouths of babes,’” said Rupert’s mother, with a flippancy that was born of this long idleness at Windyhough, the long anxiety for the safety of her husband, whom, in some muddled way, she loved. “He is no babe, by your leave. He is nearly a proven man, my lady, and I think God finds no better praise than that for any of us.”