And then the night’s uproar and its madness passed by her. She thought only of the master who had all but died just now to save the house--to save her honour. She could not face the busy hall, the man sprawling on the stair, head downward, where Rupert’s blow had left him. Instead, she went back along the corridor and up by the servants’ stairway, and found Rupert lying in a dead sleep in his own chamber, a lighted candle at his elbow, just as the red-faced squire had left him. “My dear,” she said, knowing he could not hear, “my dear”--her voice broke in a deep, quiet laugh that had no meaning to her as yet--“they said you were the scholar. And I think they lied.” She lifted her head by and by, hearing the squire’s voice below in the hall. “Where’s Will Underwood?” he was asking noisily. “We’ve got the fire under, and we can see each other’s faces now we’ve lit the candles. Where, by the Mass, is Underwood?” Nance shivered. Through her weariness, through the panic of this sharp attack, she recalled the shame of her first love, recalled her meeting with Will Underwood on the high moors, when he had talked of loyalty as a thing of barter. She stooped to touch Rupert as he slept. Here was a man, spent and weak; but here, proved through and through, was a cleanly gentleman who, against odds, had kept his obligations. Old affection stirred in her, and new pride in his conduct of the siege. “Where’s Underwood?” came the squire’s voice again. “Is this some prank of his, to hide away?” “With Nance Demaine, sir,” answered some pert youngster of the company. “Where else should he be? He was never one to waste time.” “You’ve guessed the riddle, youngster.” The squire’s laugh was boisterous. “It’s odd to think of Underwood lovesick as a lad in his teens--especially just now, with all this litter in the hall.” Outside the doorway Will Underwood was lying in the moonlight. He had been hit in the groin by Goldstein’s trooper, just as he answered with a charge of shot at six paces; and because the hills had bred him, he needed to get out into the open, taking his sickness with him. He lay in the snow and looked up at the sky. He had never seen a whiter moon, a clearer light, at time of midwinter. Land and sky were glittering with frost, and overhead he saw the seven starry lamps of Charlie’s Wain. He was in bitter anguish, and knew that his hurt was mortal; he had no regret for that, because he knew, too, that Windyhough and Nance were saved. His bitterness was of the soul. Strain as he would, he could not shut out the picture--clear as the frosty sky above him--of Nance’s face when she met him on the moor--years ago, it seemed--and he thought he was his own ghost, come to warn her of his death.