“Aye,” he said, shaking himself afresh. “It’s the honest dog that barks--the biting sort lie quiet. Well, then? What’s afoot, maister? I’m here to take my orders, I reckon, as Blacksmith Dan said when parson asked him if he’d have Mary o’ Ghyll to be his wedded wife.” The man’s lazy tongue, his steadfastness, proved long ago, brought an odd peace to Rupert. There were snow and a bitter wind outside, and an enemy that only by convention could be named civilised; but within there was a little garrison whose members, on the great, main issues, were not divided. “Yes. You are here to obey orders,” said the other sharply. “Keep awake at your post, Ben.” Shackleton saluted gravely. “I’ll do it for ye, master, though I had a busyish day before I rade hither-till, getting ewes down from the high lands--and sleep is sticking round me fair like a bramble-thicket.” “Well, you’ve to win through the thicket, Ben,” said the master, and passed on. He crossed to the north window, saw Nance standing there, her trim head lifted to the moonlight as she peered over the window-sill; and for a moment he forgot that they were in the thick of the siege perilous. “My dear,” he said, with the tenderest simplicity, “you’d best get to bed. You have done enough for one night.” She did not turn her head, and her voice was cold. “Have _you_ done enough, Rupert?” “Oh, I’m used to lack of sleep, and you are not.” She thought of the wakeful nights that had been torture to her since Will Underwood returned. First love, built of the stuff she had given him, dies hard; for it is the weak things that find easy death-beds, because their grip on this life and hereafter is languid and of slight account. “I can handle a musket,” she said, turning with sharp defiance; “and our defence is--is not strong.” In the silence, across the dull moonlight of the corridor, they measured each other with a long glance. And Nance, in this mood of hers, was passionately at war with him. Until to-day he had been her bond-slave, gay when she willed it, foolish and out of heart when she flouted him. And now her reign was ended. Rupert did not know it yet; but Nance, with the intuition that seems to do women little service, was aware that she had lost for the time being a cavalier and found instead a master. “You can handle a musket,” he said dryly. “Good-night, Nance--and remember to keep your head low above the sill. The men outside can aim straight, too.” He went back to his post at the window overlooking the main door. And he began to think of Nance, of the brown, shapely head that had been magic to him--the head that was in danger of a bullet from one of Goldstein’s men. Yesterday he would have gone to her side, to ease the fierce pain for her safety; his feet were willing, and he wondered that instead he stood obstinately at his post, intent on musketry and the welfare of his house.