SIR JASPER, out at Ben Shackleton’s farm, had been no easy guest to entertain since he sought refuge there from the pursuit of Goldstein’s men. He slept for twelve hours, after they had laid him on the lang-settle and stopped the bleeding from his wound; and then, for an hour, he had lain between sleep and waking; and, after that, he was keen to be up and doing. Shackleton’s wife, dismayed because her goodman had not returned long since from carrying his message to Windyhough, was sharp of tongue, and lacking in deference a little, as the way of the sturdy farm-folk is when they are troubled. “As you wish, Sir Jasper,” she said tartly. “Just get up and stand on your two feet, and see how it feels, like.” He got stubbornly to his feet, and moved a pace or two across the floor; and then he grew weak and dizzy, and was glad to find his way again to the lang-settle. “Ay, so!” said Shackleton’s wife. “It’s good for men-folk to learn, just time and time, how they can go weak as a little babby.” “My wife needs me yonder.” “Ay, and I need my goodman here. Exchange is no robbery, Sir Jasper.” “She is in danger,” he snapped, with a sick man’s petulance. “Well, so’s my man, I reckon--they’ve kept him yonder, or he’d have been home lang-syne.” Then weariness conquered Sir Jasper; and he slept again till that day passed, and the next night, and half through the morning. It was his respite from remembrance of the retreat from Derby, from the wound that kept him out of action. “You’ll do nicely now,” said Shackleton’s wife, glancing round from ironing a shirt of her husband’s. “You’ve got the look of your old self about you, Sir Jasper.” The wound itself was of less account than the bleeding that had followed it; and by nightfall he was waiting impatiently until the shepherd saddled his mare and brought her to the door. The farm-wife looked him up and down, with the frank glance that had only friendliness and extreme solicitude behind it. “Eh, but you look sick and wambly,” she said. “Can you sit a horse, Sir Jasper?” “I am hale and well,” he answered--fretfully, because he felt his weakness and because he was fearing for his wife. He got to saddle, and the mare and he went slushing up and down the mile of bridle-track that separated them from home. He was no longer conscious of pain or weakness; his heart was on fire to see his wife again, to know her safe. At the turn of the hill, just beyond the gallows-tree that stood naked against the sky, he saw Windyhough lying below him, the moonlight keen on snowy chimney-stacks and gables. “Thank God!” he said, seeing how peaceful the old house lay. A little later he came to the splintered gateway, and his heart misgave him. The mare fidgeted and would not go forward; and, looking down, he saw a dead man lying in the moonlight--the trooper at whom Rupert had fired his maiden battle-shot.