“Aye, you were ever a dreamer. The dreamers are all for speed, and earthquakes, and sudden happenings. Life as it’s lived, master, doesn’t often gallop. It creeps along, like, same as ye and me are doing, and keeps itself alive for fear of starving, and gets up, some durned way or another, for th’ next day’s work. Well, have we done, like, or must we finish this lad’s game?” And then Nance heard a sharper note in Rupert’s voice. She had heard it once before, that day he fought with his brother on the moor because he thought her honour was in question. “We finish, Simon. What else?” “Now you’re at your faith again, master. I can hear it singing like a throstle. Well, I’m a plain man myself, asking plain proof. Just as man to man--and want o’ respect apart--has your pretty, gentleman’s faith done much for you?” “Yes,” said Rupert, unexpectedly. “It has given me pluck to see this business through. A houseful of women and cripples--my father taking all the burden on his shoulders while I skulk at home--dear God! I’d be in a coward’s grave by now, Simon, if faith had not stood by me.” “Then there’s summat in it, after all?” “It is powder in the musket,” said Rupert, as if there could be no further argument. “No more, no less. But you and I, Simon, have to find the spark that fires it.” Nance heard them pass overhead, heard the sound of Simon’s heavy boots die along the corridor. And she turned again to the spinet, and her fingers moved up and down the keys, their colour mellowed by long service, and played random melodies that were in keeping with her thoughts--not Stuart airs, because these asked always sacrifice, and the big heart, and the royal laugh that comes when things go wrong in this world. Nance was too tired to-night for the adventurous road. To-morrow she would be herself again, eager, resolute, prepared for the day’s journey. But just now she needed the sleep, that stood far away from her; needed some charitable, firm voice to tell her she was foolish and unstrung; needed Rupert, as she had not guessed that she could lack any man. And Rupert had tramped overhead, concerned with make-believe defences. “Oh, he does not care!” she said, believing that she hated him. “Simon Foster, crippled in both legs, and musty loopholes, and powder that he’ll never use--they’re more to him than all this heartbreak gathering over Windyhough.” Into the scented room, with its candles shining from their silver sconces, Lady Royd came, tremulous and white of face, from watching Oliphant of Muirhouse ride out. “Nance, my dear, I--I am tired,” she said. “I think we all are,” Nance answered, rising from the spinet with a deference that had no heart in it.