Nance, hearing the confusion out of doors, had run into the courtyard. Lady Royd was standing apart, as if nothing mattered, now she had heard that Sir Jasper lay wounded at the farm; if her man had not been strong enough to ride in and guard her at such a time, he must be near to death, she felt. She had made him her idol, starving her sons of love because the father claimed it; and she was paying her debts now, in confusion and humiliation. Nance scarcely heeded her. Her eyes passed from Simon and Ben Shackleton to the slim, erect figure at the gate, and instinctively she crossed to Rupert’s side. There was peril on the far side of this gate--peril grave and urgent--and yet she was conscious only of a thrill of pride and tenderness. The scholar had longed for his chance to come; and the answer had reached him, without warning or preparation, from the heart of the stormy night. Her thoughts were running fast; she contrasted Will Underwood’s response to the first call of the Rising with Rupert’s gay acceptance of this hazard; and she was glad to be here at Windyhough. “Sir Jasper’s ‘on the open road, following his Prince’?” mimicked Goldstein, breaking the uneasy silence. “To be plain, he has followed the Pretender indoors here, and I know it.” Rupert had known only that he was bidden to guard the house against what Shackleton had named “a plaguy lot o’ thieves,” had accepted the trust with soldierly obedience; but the venture showed a new significance. He was cool-headed, practical, now that his years of high dreaming were put to the touchstone; and he snatched at Goldstein’s explanation of this night assault. “You think the Prince is a guest here at Windyhough?” he asked suavely. “I know it. We’ve followed the two of them over the foulest bridle-track in England--just because we were so sure.” Sir Jasper’s heir looked at the sturdy, snow-blurred gate that stood between the honour of his house and these troopers, whose oaths, with an odd lack of discipline, threaded all their leader’s talk. And he laughed, so quietly that Nance glanced sharply up, thinking his father had returned; for Sir Jasper carried just this laugh in face of danger. “The Prince is here?” he said. “Then hack your way through the gate and take him. He is well guarded.” Goldstein, chilled for a moment by the unexpected strength of the defence, grew savage. “You’ll not surrender?” “No Royd does, sir. We live leal, or we die leal.” “Then God help you when my troopers hack a way in! They’re not tame at any time, and your cursed roads have not smoothed their tempers.” “We are waiting,” said the master quietly. “Oh, well done, Rupert!” whispered Nance, with a light touch on his arm.