Sir Jasper reined near and put a hand on the Prince’s bridle-arm, as a father might who sees his boy attempting more than his strength warrants. “I understand,” he said simply. “By your leave, I’ll play watch-dog to Murray till we reach London. He stands for caution, and I”--a sudden remembrance came to him of Windyhough, of the wife and heir, and his loneliness bit so deep that, for shame’s sake, he had to cover up his grief--“and I, your Highness,” he added, with a touch of humour, “have been blamed for many things, but never yet for caution.” “No, no. We might be old in friendship, you and I. We see the like world, Sir Jasper--the world that caution is too mean to enter. And yet my lord Murray--who has been bred among the hills, while I have not--has never learned their teaching, as I learned it at my first coming to the misty Highlands.” The pipes would not be quiet, behind them on this sloppy road. The Prince, as his habit was, had seen far and wisely when he forbade the music. To and fro the uproar went, wild, insistent, friendly as the cry of moor-birds--snipe and curlew and wide-roving plover--to men who love the uplands. The music lacked its fulness, for in these Midlands there were no mountains to echo it, to pass it on from rise to rise, till it grew faint and elfin-like among the blue moor-tops; but even here the pipes were swift and tender with persuasion. “All this, Sir Jasper,” the Prince said by and by--“the pipes playing fury into us, and in front of us the empty road. Murray promised us three battles at the least, and we’re here like soldiers on parade.” Sir Jasper had cherished dreams of this Rising, but war, in the hot fighting and in the dreary silences between, is not made up of dreams. The poetry of it comes before and after, when peace smooths her ruffled plumage and sings of heroism; the prose of it is so commonplace that men sensitively built need dogged loyalty to keep them safe from disillusionment. “The wind blows east, your Highness,” he said. “You’ll pardon me, but an east wind sets my temper all on edge. My sympathy is catholic, but I’d hang the nether millstone round Lord Murray’s neck if I had my way.” The Prince glanced behind, because the pipes were tired of battle now, and were crooning lullabies--the strong, tender cradle-songs that Highland mothers know. “No,” he said quietly. “We share the same desire, but we’d relent.” “Not I, for one.” “Yes, you, for one, and I, for one, because we’re human. So few of your English folk are human, somehow, as I’ve seen them since my Highlanders crossed Annan River. They’re ill-clad, these Highland lads of mine, and raw to look at, but they carry the ready heart, Sir Jasper, and the simple creed--you can bend them till point meets hilt, like a Ferrara blade, and yet not break them.”