Will was glad when the night’s revelry ended and he found himself alone in the dining-hall. He had drunk level with his friends, and the wine had left him untouched. He had diced with them, sung hunting-songs, and no spark of gaiety had reached him. For, day by day since he lost Nance once for all, he had been learning how deep his love had gone. Looking back to-night, as he sat at the littered table, with its empty bottles and its wine-stains, he could not understand how he had come to be absent from the Loyal Meet. The meaner side of him was hidden away. He was a man carrying a love bigger than himself--a love that would last him till he died; and he had not known as much until these days of loss and misery came. At Windyhough the night wore slowly on. The besiegers, since Goldstein crept into shelter, spent and disabled, were less disposed than ever to risk attack before the daylight gave them clearer knowledge of this house that seemed to have a musket behind every window. The besieged listened to the silence--the silence of expectancy, which grows so deep and burdensome that a man can almost hear it. From time to time Rupert went the round of the corridor to see that his garrison was wakeful, and about the middle of the night he found Ben Shackleton nodding at his post, and gripped him by the shoulder. “What’s to do?” growled the farmer, shaking his big bulk like a dog whistled out of the water. “I was dreaming, master, and as nigh heaven as a man ever gets i’ this life. I’d have swopped farming and wife and all for one more blessed hour of it.” Rupert laughed. He was learning much of human to-and-froing during these last days, and his first hot contempt of this sleeping sentry yielded to a broader sympathy. “What was your dream, Ben?” he asked. “Nay, naught so much--only that I went to Lancashire Market and had a pig to sell. She wasn’t worth what I was asking, not by th’ half. And t’other chap he wrangled, and I wrangled; then, blamed if the fool didn’t gi’e me what I asked, and we were just wetting our whistles on th’ bargain when ye wakened me. It was a terrible good dream, master.” “Well, stay awake to remember it, Ben. These folk outside are too quiet for my liking.” Ben’s face was impassive as ever, but his glance measured Rupert from heel to crown. He saw a slim-bodied man, whose face was lit with a keen and happy fire; he saw, too, that the anxiety which had dulled even Lady Royd’s eyes--the toast of the county still, though the eyes were middle-aged--had only strengthened the light of authority and strength which played about his face. Ben Shackleton was slow to awake from his dream of pig-selling, but he was aware of some settled gladness--gladness that Sir Jasper had an heir at last.