Until now Sir Jasper had been much with his men, had lightened their spirits as best he could through this evil march toward reinforcements in which few believed. But now some wildness seemed to come to him from the windy moors that had bred him. He was tired of leading men against the emptiness that met them day by day, and remembered the lonely figure of his Prince, who was still obstinate, despite Captain Goldstein’s late attack, in riding often behind the rear-guard of his army. More than once, since leaving Derby, Sir Jasper had ridden back along the route, had found the Prince separated by a few hundred yards from the last of the stragglers, and had tarried with him, partly to be near if the danger which he seemed to court recurred, and partly because the close and friendly intimacy that was growing between them had a charm that lightened the trouble of the road. To-day, as they came nearer still to his own country--the march was planned to reach Langton by nightfall--Sir Jasper yielded to his restless mood. He turned to Maurice, who was riding at his bridle hand. “Take our men forward, boy,” he said. “I’ll join you by and by.” Maurice showed few traces of the high spirits that had set him galloping once after Nance Demaine in a race for the glove she was to forfeit if he caught her up, of the fiery eagerness with which he had fought his brother Rupert on the moor. He could not understand the reason of his turn about from Derby. Since childhood he had been used to find action ready to his hand, used to the open life of the fields, in saddle or with a gun under his arm; and he was baffled by this slow, rain-sodden tramp over roads that led only to the next night’s bivouac. The constant rains, moreover, had increased his saddle-soreness and had given him a maddening toothache; and it is hard, at two-and-twenty, to bear any pain of body, apart from that associated with heroic wounds. “I will take them forward, sir,” he answered moodily, “though I’ve no gift of heartening them, as you have. If you promised me all Lancashire, I could not crack a jest with them just now.” Sir Jasper turned his head sharply, glanced at Maurice with the shrewd, steady eyes of middle age. “You were not out in the ’15 Rising, lad,” he snapped. “I was through it--and thirty years have gone under the bridge since then--and I’ve learned to wait. Waiting trains a man, I tell you.” “Waiting has given me the most devilish toothache, sir.” And his father laughed. So had he felt himself when, long ago, an untried boy, he had shared the troubles of a disastrous Rising. “There’s a worse malady,” he said dryly. “None that I can think of at this moment.” “Try heartache, Maurice--the Prince can tell you what that means. And I can tell you, maybe. It comes to older men, like gout. For the rest, you take your orders. You’re in command of our Lancashire lads till I return.”