Sir Jasper, reining sharply round, saw a company of men--a score or so--who wore the Hanoverian livery; and at the head of them was a blunt, red-featured officer who looked singularly like a farmer who had lived neighbour to the ale-barrel. And he knew them for the men who had given chase at Derby, though as yet they had no answering recollection of the friend who had ridden close beside the Prince’s bridle-hand that day. “Your business, sir?” asked Goldstein sharply. “You’re too near the retreat to be let pass without a challenge. Besides”--with a laugh, following long scrutiny--“you’ve the look, somehow, of one of those cursed Jacobites.” “You flatter me, sir,” said Sir Jasper coolly. “It has been my business in life to feel like one--and, by your leave, it is pleasant that you know my breed at sight.” The sleet was drifting in quiet flakes before a wind that was tired for a while of its own speed. From the western spur of moor a long, slanting gleam of sunlight lit up this bleak land’s loneliness--lit up Sir Jasper’s figure as he sat, unconcerned, disdainful, in the saddle of a restive horse. For a moment the dragoons drew back; they had lived in a world where each fought for his own advancement only, and they were perplexed by this spectacle of a man who, alone and far behind retreating comrades, made open confession of his faith. Goldstein swore roundly--not as the gently-born do in times of stress, but like a ploughboy when his team refuses to obey him. “Are you a fool, sir?” he sputtered. “Well, yes,” Sir Jasper answered gravely. “As much as my fellows. I’m human, sir, as you are.” The troopers laughed, and Goldstein felt his hold on them grow ever a little and a little less. “You’re one of the Pretender’s men?” he snarled. “We shoot all vermin of that sort at sight.” “No, sir. I am attached to the army of Prince Charles Edward. No man is a pretender when he asks only for his own again.” “Then you’re tired of life?” said Goldstein, trying clumsily to catch something of Sir Jasper’s easy handling of the situation. “Again you are in the wrong. I never guessed, till now, how good life is. I have been riding with one stronger and better than myself--and after that I ride, when you are tired of questioning me, to the wife and the home I love. It is all so simple, if you would believe me.” Sir Jasper, under all his honesty of speech, was aware that he was delaying the advance of these rough-riders along the Langton road, was helping the Prince to safety while he rode so perilously behind his army. He was aware, too, in some random way, as he listened to Goldstein’s queer, guttural English, that he had been exact when he told Lady Royd, over and over again, that it was no civil war the Rising men had stirred up, but simply the resistance of the English to the foreign invader; a resistance old and stalwart as that of Hereward the Wake; a resistance that would last the English till they triumphed or they died.