“Dreams come true, just time and time. You should count it a privilege, my lad, to stay at home. It is easier to ride out.” Lady Royd, as she watched them go arm-in-arm together through the hall, was in agreement with her husband. It was easier to ride out than to sit at home, as scholars and women did, waiting emptily for news that, when it came, was seldom pleasant. Already, though her husband had not got to saddle, she was counting the hazards that were sure to meet him on the road to London. And yet some sense of comfort whispered at her ear. Her son was left behind to guard her. She lingered on the thought, and with twenty womanish devices she hedged it round, until at last she half believed it. This boy of hers was to guard her. In her heart she knew that the storm of battle would break far away from Windyhough, that in the event of peril Rupert must prove a slender reed; but she was yielding to impulse just now, and felt the need to see her son a hero. Sir Jasper, meanwhile, was going from room to room of the old house, from one half-forgotten stairway to another. He showed Rupert how each window--old loopholes, most of them, filled in with glass to fit modern needs--commanded some useful outlook on an enemy attacking Windyhough. He showed him the cellars, where the disused muskets and the cannon lay, and the piles of leaden balls, and the kegs of gunpowder. “You’re in command, remember,” he said now and then, as they made their tour of the defences. “You must carry every detail with you. You must be ready.” To Sir Jasper all this was a fairy-tale he told--a clumsy tale enough, but one designed to soften the blow to his heir; to Rupert it was a trumpet-note that roused his sleeping manhood. “I have it all by heart, father,” he said eagerly. Then he glanced sharply at Sir Jasper. “No one ever--ever trusted me till now,” he said. “It was trust I needed, maybe.” Sir Jasper was ashamed. Looking at Rupert, with his lean body, the face that was lit with strength and purpose, he repented of the nursery-tale he had told him--the tale of leadership, of an attack upon the house, of the part which one poor scholar was asked to play in it. “Get up to bed, dear lad,” he said huskily. “I’ve told you all that need be. Sleep well, until you’re wanted.” But Rupert could not sleep. He was possessed by the beauty of this hope that had wound itself, a silver thread, through the drab pattern of his life. He let his father go down into the hall, then followed, not wishing to play eavesdropper again, but needing human comradeship. Lady Royd, weaving dreams of her own downstairs, glanced up as she heard her husband’s step. “Oh, you were kind to the boy,” she said, comelier since she found her motherhood. He put her aside. “I was not kind, wife. I lied to him.” “In a good cause, my dear.”