For his health’s sake, the master went the round of the house, found Ben Shackleton frankly asleep at the west window, and Simon Foster nodding, half-befogged with weariness. He roused them--not gently--and the struggle to stir them into watchfulness cleared all the cobwebs from his eyes. He went back to his post by way of the north window; and here again he found his sentry fast asleep. Nance was sitting on the chair that Lady Royd had brought her, earlier in the day. Her brown hair was loosened in a cloud, and her face was hidden in her two capable, small hands. She had been a sentry to him--no more, no less, since the fiercest of this siege commanded all his ruggedness and strength; but he had no wish to rouse her now. The waning light showed him the bowed figure, the tiredness that had conquered her persistent courage. He drew nearer, touched her bowed head with some stifling war of passion against reverence. All the muddled way of his love for her--the love that had not dared, because he doubted his own strength to claim her--was swept aside. At the heart of him--the big, eager heart that had found no room till now--he knew himself a man. With the strength of his manhood he needed her, here in the midst of the siege perilous, needed to tell her of his love. He moved forward, checked himself, watched the figure that was bent by a vigil too burdensome and long-protracted. And the wildness left him. The faith that had grown with his growing--the faith that had shown signs, a little while ago, of wear and tear--laid a cool, persuasive hand on him. Through the storm and trouble of this love for Nance he saw that she was weak, and wearied-out, and needing sleep. And at such times to the stalwart men a little light, reflected, may be, from the Madonna’s face, shows like a shrouded star about all suffering women. Rupert was finding the big love, and the lasting, here in the silence that tested faith and courage more than any fury of attack and open peril. He went back to his window. And again sleep tried to spin her cobwebs round his eyes; but her blandishments were idle. The snow, about three of the afternoon, ceased falling, and across the moors that guarded Windyhough a wild splendour lit the hills. The clouds were scattered, till the last of them trailed over Lone Man’s Hill in smoky mist. The sun lay red and fiery on the western spurs, and from the east the young moon rose, her face clean-washed and radiant. Frost settled keen and hard about the land, and all the white emptiness of snow grew full of sparkling life, as if some fairy had gone sowing diamonds broadcast.