So then, through the confusion of his thoughts, he remembered that the gunshot had sounded from within doors, and his heart grew lighter. “Why, then, there’s one less of the enemy. You should be proud, my dear.” “Proud?” Her voice was still and hushed. “You were right when you said that this was man’s work. I was watching at the north window--and the time seemed long in passing--and then I saw a man’s thick-set body coming through the snow. And I--I forgot I was a woman, and took aim, and he fell, Rupert, so suddenly, with his arms thrown up, and lay there in the snow.” “One less,” said the master, with a return to dogged cheerfulness. “We must get to our posts again.” Nance looked at him. Now that he knew her safe, he was again the soldier, forgetting the way of his heart and thinking only of the need for action. And her pride took fire, as she went back to her window, resolute to show him that she could be soldierly as he. For a while she dared not look out, remembering what lay yonder; and then she chided herself for cowardice, and peeped through the moonlight. The huddled bulk of a man that had lain prone in the snow was moving now--slowly, and on hands and knees--and was creeping out of range. And once again Nance knew herself a woman; for she was glad, with a joy instant and vehement, that she had a wounded man only on her conscience. Goldstein, when the shot hit him at close range, had thought the end had come. He was wearied out by long riding over broken roads, by need of sleep; and the flare of the gunshot, the sudden hell-fire in his left thigh, had knocked his hardiness to bits. But by and by, when he found leisure to pick his courage up, and knew that his wound went only deep through the fleshy part of his thigh, he made his way back to the stables, and roused one of his sleeping troopers; and, between them, they staunched the bleeding, and dressed the wound with odds and ends torn from the linings of their coats. And then Goldstein lay back on the straw and slept like a little child, and dreamed that he was home again in Hanover, in the days before he sought advancement in a foreign country. At Will Underwood’s house, meanwhile, the laggard gentry of Lancashire were sitting over their wine, and were cursing this snowfall that would not let them hunt to-morrow. And they were troubled, all of them; for they knew that better men were facing hardship on the London road, while they, from faults of sloth or caution, were sheltered by house-walls. They were men, after all, under the infirmities that hindered them; and ease, for its own sake, never yet appealed for long to hearts built for weather and adventure. They needed hard exercise, to blunt the edge of conscience; and they were fretful, ready to pick quarrels among themselves, because they knew that the morrow must be spent in idleness. “We can always drink, gentlemen,” said Underwood, pushing the bottle round. “That is one consolation.”