THE retreat had moved up through Staffordshire and Cheshire, always evading the pursuit that followed it so closely from many separate quarters. The Highlanders had ever their hearts turned backward to the London road--the road of battle; but old habit made their feet move briskly along the route mapped out for them. They set the pace for the Lowland foot, less used to the swinging stride that was half a run; and for this reason the Prince’s army went northward at a speed incredible to Marshal Wade, the Duke of Cumberland, and other heavy-minded generals who were eager in pursuit. There was irony in the whole sad business. A few cautious leaders of the clans apart, few men were anxious to succeed in this retreat. They would have welcomed any hindrance by the way that allowed one or more of the pursuing armies to come up with them. Food was often lacking, because defeated folk are apt to find less wayside hospitality than conquerors; their feet were sore from long contact with the wet roads, that both chafed and softened them; yet their worst hardship was the need for battle that found no food to thrive on. Behind them Cumberland was cursing his luck because he could not catch them up; yet, had he known it, he was the gainer by his failure. If he and his mixed company of hirelings had met the Prince’s men just now, they would have been ridden through and through, as Colonel Gardiner’s men had been at Prestonpans in the first battle of the Rising. For the Highlander is sad and gusty as the mist-topped hills that cradled him; but when the mood is on him, when all seems lost, and he is gay because the odds are ludicrously against him, he goes bare-sark to the fight and accomplishes what more stolid men name miracles. They went north--the men who wished to overtake and the men who yearned to be overtaken. And the luck was all with Marshal Wade and Cumberland, for the Prince’s army constantly evaded them. There are times, maybe, when God proves His gentlemen by the road of sick retreat, by denial of the fight they seek. But few win through this sort of hazard. Sir Jasper was leading his own little troop of gentry, yeomen, and farmer-folk when they crossed the Cheshire border and made up into Lancashire, and neared the bluff heights that were his homeland. The wind was shrewd still from the northeast, and sleet was driving from the grey-black mist that swept the hilltops, yet Sir Jasper, by the look of the shrouded hills, by the smell of the wind in his teeth, knew that he was home again in Lancashire. Love of women is a hazardous and restless enterprise, and a man’s leal liking for his friend is apt to be upset by jealousies; but love of the hills that cannot lie, love of the feel and scents and sounds of the country that he loves never desert the native-born. They are there, like a trusty dog, running eagerly before him when he is home again, biding on the threshold with a welcome if he chances to be absent.