The field gathered round him. He was a man commanding men, and he compelled attention. “What meet?” asked Squire Demaine, his ruddy face brick-red with sudden hope. “The Loyal Meet. Who’s with me, gentlemen?” Sir Jasper was strung to that pitch of high endeavour which sees each face in a crowd and knows what impulse sways it. They gathered round him to a man; but as he glanced from one to the other he knew that there were many waverers. For loyalty, free and unswerving, sets a light about a man’s face that admits no counterfeit. Yet the din was loud enough to promise that all were of one mind here. Hounds and fox and huntsmen were forgotten. Men waved their hats and shouted frantically. Nance Demaine and the half-dozen ladies who were in the field to-day found little kerchiefs and waved them, too, and were shrill and sanguine in their cries of “The Prince, God bless him!--the Prince!--the Stuart home again!” It was all like Bedlam, while the austere hills, lined here and there with snow that would not melt, looked down on this warmth of human enterprise. The horses reared and fidgeted, dismayed by the uproar. Hounds got out of hand and ran in and out between the plunging hoofs, while the huntsman, a better fox-hunter than King’s man, swore roundly and at large as he tried to bring them out of this outrageous riot. “Where’s Will Underwood?” asked a youngster suddenly. It was young Hunter of Hunterscliff, whose lukewarmness had angered Nance not long ago. “It’s the first meet he’s missed this winter.” A horseman at his elbow laughed, the laugh that men understood. “He had business in the south, so he told me when I met him taking the coach. Wild Will, from the look of his face, seemed tired of hunting.” “No!” said Sir Jasper sharply. “I’ll have no man condemned without a hearing. He lives wide of here--perhaps this last news of the Rising has not reached him. Any man may be called away on sudden business.” “You’re generous, sir. I’m hot for the King, and no other business in the world would tempt me out of Lancashire just now. Besides, he must have known.” Nance had lost her high spirits; but she was glad that some one had spoken on Will Underwood’s behalf, for otherwise she must have yielded to the impulse to defend him. “That does not follow, sir,” said Sir Jasper, punctilious in defence of a man he neither liked nor trusted. “At any rate, it is no time for accusation. Mr. Underwood, if I know him, will join us farther south.” Young Hunter, a wayward, unlicked cub, would not keep silence. “Yes,” he said, in his thin, high-pitched voice, “he’ll join us as far south as London--after he’s sure that a Stuart’s on the throne again.” An uneasy silence followed. Older men looked at older men, knowing that they shared this boy’s easy summing-up of Underwood’s motives. And Nance wondered that this man, whom she was near to loving, had no friends here--no friends of the loyal sort who came out into the open and pledged their faith in him.