“You’re not looking just as gay as you were yesternight,” he growled, snatching a glance at Rupert’s face. “Summat amiss wi’ the Faith ye hold by, master?” Rupert was sick with bitter trouble, sick with inaction and the frustration of long hopes; yet he held his head up suddenly and smiled. “Nothing amiss with that,” he answered cheerily. “I’m too weak to carry it at times, that is all, Simon.” Simon stroked his cheek thoughtfully. “Well, it’s all moonshine to me--speaking as a plain man; but I’ve noticed it has a way o’ carrying folk over five-barred gates and walls too high to clamber. For my part, I’m weary, dead weary; and I see naught before us, master, save a heavy snow-storm coming, and women blanketing us wi’ whimsies, and a sort o’ silent, nothing-doing time that maddens a body. You’ve the gift o’ faith--just tell me what it shows you, Maister Rupert.” The master laughed. It tickled his humour that he, who was wading deep in sickness and disillusion, should be asked for help in need by this grizzled elder, who had loved and pitied him, who had tried, these last days, to teach him the right handling of a musket. “Just this, Simon--square shoulders, and a quick eye, and the day’s routine ahead. What else?” “Then faith is a soldier’s game, after all.” “Yes, a soldier’s game,” Rupert answered dryly. And so they went forward from room to room, from loophole to loophole, that cast slant, grey eyes on the sleet that was blowing across the troubled moonlight out of doors. And, at the end of the round, after Simon had gone down to see if he could catch a glimpse of Martha in the kitchen, Rupert heard the sound of spinet keys, touched lightly from below. And then he heard Nance Demaine singing the ballads that were dear to him, and a sudden hunger came upon him. He went down to the parlour, stood silent in the doorway. Lady Royd was upstairs, putting her toy spaniel to bed with much ceremony; and Nance was alone with the candlelight and the faded rose-leaf scents. With ache of heart, with a longing strong and troublesome, he saw the trim figure, the orderly brown hair, the whole fragrant person of this girl who was singing loyal ballads--this girl who kept his feet steady up the hills of endeavour, and of longing for the battle that did not come his way. And the mood took Nance to sing a ballad of the last Stuart Rising, thirty years ago, when all was lost because the leaders of the enterprise were weaker than the men who rode behind them. “There’s a lonely tryst to keep, wife, All for the King’s good health. God knows, when we two bid farewell I give him all my wealth.”