And her husband, seeing her resolute, allowed himself a moment’s sickness, such as he had felt not long ago after saying good-bye to Oliphant high up the moor. He might not return. The odds were all against it. He was bidding a last farewell, perhaps, to the ordered life here, the lover’s zeal which his wife commanded from him still--to the son whom he had watched from babyhood, waiting always, with a father’s dogged hope, for signs of latent strength. In some queer way he thought most of his boy just now; the lad was lonely, and needed him. Then he crushed the sickness down. The night’s road was dark and troublesome; but, whether he returned or no, there must needs be a golden end to it. “What does it matter, wife?” he said, his voice quivering a little. “A little loneliness--in any case it would not be for long, sweetheart--and then--why, just that the Prince had called me, and we had answered, you and I----” She swept round on him in a storm of misery and doubt. “Oh, Faith’s good enough in time of Peace. Women cherish it when days go easily, and chide their men for slackness. And the call comes--and then, God help us! we cling about your knees while you are resolute. It is the men who have true faith--the faith that matters and that helps them.” He took her face into his two hands. She remembered that he had worn just this look, far off in the days of lavender and rosemary, when he had brought her home a bride to Windyhough and had kissed her loneliness away. “What’s to fear? War or peace--what’s to fear? We’re not children, wife o’ mine.” And “No!” she said, with brave submissiveness. And then again her face clouded with woe, and tenderness, and longing, as when hill-mists gather round the sun. “Ah, but yes!” she added petulantly. “We are like children--like children straying in the dark. You see the Prince taking London, with skirl of the pipes and swinging Highland kilts. _I_ see you kneeling, husband, with your head upon the block.” Sir Jasper laughed quietly, standing to his full, brave height. “And either way it does not matter, wife--so long as the Prince has need of me. You’ll find me kneeling, one way or the other.” From the shadowed hall, with the candles flickering in the sconces, their son came out into the open--their son, who could not go to war because he was untrained. He had been listening to them. “Father,” he said, “I must ride with you. Indeed, I cannot stay at home.” Sir Jasper answered hastily, as men will when they stand in the thick of trouble. “What, you? You cannot, lad. Your place is here, as I told you--to guard your mother and Windyhough.”