Within doors Rupert kept his post. The brief excitement of his skirmish with the sergeant was gone. His fancy, always active, was racing now. He pictured, with a minuteness painful in its vividness, the shrift his women-folk would meet at the hands of the enemy without. Men who could not honour a truce of their own asking differed little from the brutes. And he was almost single-handed here, the master of a garrison so small that it was laughable. The snow, after an hour or so, began to fall again. And round about the house there was a silence that could be felt. Those who have played sentry, hoping constantly for the relief of action, know the stealthy, evil fears that creep into a man’s mind, know the crude, imminent temptation that sleep offers them, know the persuasive devil at their elbow who asks them why they take this trouble for a cause lost already. All that day there was silence and the falling snow. And all night there was silence, broken only by a little wind that sobbed about the house; and Goldstein and the sergeant, nursing their wounds in the stable, could have told Rupert every symptom of the malady from which he suffered. They had gone through it years ago. Lady Royd, for her part, showed bright against the dull canvas of the siege. She discovered, in her own haphazard way, that years of communion with Sir Jasper had taught her courage when the pinch of danger came. She still kept her pampered spaniel under her arm; but, in between the sleep she snatched fitfully, she moved about the house as the mistress and great lady. She kept up the flagging spirits of the women-servants, saw that the men had food and wine to keep their strength alive. And, now and then, she stole into the room overlooking the main door, and stood watching her son--bone of her bone--keep steady at his post. And afterwards she would withdraw, a happiness like starshine going with her because the heir, despite her weak handling of his destiny, was after all a man. The next day broke with keen frost and a red sun that forced its way through the last cloudbanks of the snow. And the sergeant asked Goldstein for his orders. “Let ’em wait,” grinned Goldstein. “We know the game, Randolph, eh? Let ’em wait till nightfall. Change sentries every two hours. It’s devilish cold, and we must humour our ill-licked cubs. And, Randolph----” “Yes, Captain?” “Remember, thirty thousand pounds are worth the waiting for.” The master of Windyhough still kept his post; but, as the day wore on, he knew that he was facing disastrous odds. Across his eyes sleep began to weave slim and filmy cobwebs. He brushed them savagely away; but a moment later the hidden enemy was once again at work. It was a warfare as stealthy as this fight between the garrison, sheltered by stout walls, and the besiegers, who could not gauge the strength of those within.