He looked down at her--down and beyond her, for in truth he had no need of Stuart glamour till this night’s business was well through. “You Nance? Get back to the house, and take my mother with you; the gate will be down, I tell you, and after that--it will be no place for women. And, Simon,” he added, “bring three muskets out. Hurry, man!” Nance, high-spirited and new to commands of this sharp, peremptory kind, went submissively enough, she knew not why. And, near the porch, she found Lady Royd busy with the spaniel which had run out to find her. “Poor little man!” Sir Jasper’s wife was murmuring, as she kissed the foolish, pampered brute that, under happier auspices, would have been a dog. “He missed me, Nance, and he came, getting wet feet in the snow, and you know how delicate he is. He is all I have, Nance,” she added, with a touch of pathos, real in its futility “since--since they told me Sir Jasper was dying at the farm.” Nance remembered how Rupert had met the sudden call to arms, and gathered something of his buoyancy. “Sir Jasper is not dying,” she said sharply. “I’ll not believe it. He will come by and by, when he has recovered from his wound----” “You think he will come?” put in the other, helpless and snatching at any straw of comfort. “Oh, I know it; but we must get indoors, and let Rupert guide the siege.” Lady Royd had not learned the true gaiety of danger; but Nance, from the childhood shared with hard-riding brothers, had gained a courage and experience that served her well just now. None knew what would chance to Windyhough before the dawn; and, for her part, she did not look before or after, but took the present as it came. And her instinct was Rupert’s, as she shepherded Lady Royd into the hall--that here at last, thank God! was action after long sitting by the hearth. Captain Goldstein, meanwhile, convinced that his entry into Windyhough was not to be bloodless, after all, had tried his strength once more against the gate of the courtyard, and, finding it solid, had cast about for some way of breaking through it. The moon was making greater headway now through the rifted snow-clouds, and he saw the pile of tree-trunks at which Simon Foster had been busy until Sir Jasper’s messenger had disturbed him at the wood-chopping. Like his troopers, Goldstein was wet and hungry and impatient, and his one thought was to rive the gate down, whatever strength opposed him on the far side of it. He gave a sharp order, and six of his men lifted a trunk of sycamore, and poised it for a while, and rammed the gate. The first thrust strained the gate against the cross-bars, and broke back sharply on the men who held the ram, disordering them for a moment. The master waited, his musket ready primed. “Simon,” he said, “and you, Ben Shackleton, we’re bidden to hold the house, but gad! we’ll do a little in the courtyard first.”