“A lie chills me,” he said abruptly; “especially a lie that is foisted on poor, unlettered folk. They told me this and that, Sir Jasper, of Hanoverian methods, and I--what shall I say?--_disdained_, I think, to believe it of an enemy. They will not fight us in the open since we worsted them at Prestonpans, but instead they send ‘well-spoken gentry’ to honeycomb the countryside with lies.” Sir Jasper, the more he followed the open road with this comrade in adversity, found ever and ever a deeper liking for him. He could be ashamed, this Stuart whom women had done their best to spoil in Scotland--could be ashamed because his Highlanders were slighted; could stand apart from his own danger and weariness, and grow hot with punctilious care for the honour of the men who followed him. And the older man thought no longer of Windyhough, of ties that had not been sundered lightly; he was content to be in company with one who, by instinct and by training, was a leader of the true royal fibre. The Prince was glancing straight ahead as they jogged forward, and in his eyes was the look which moorland folk know as “seeing far.” “My Highlanders are cannibals?” he said, not turning his head, seeming to need no listener, or to have forgotten that he rode in company. “The men I’ve learned to know by heart during these last wintry months--is that their reputation?” “It was a silly woman’s gibe, your Highness,” put in the other, with blunt common sense. “Surely you’re not moved by it?” “It was more. They have been sending paid liars up and down the length of this road to London--have fouled the going for us. I tell you, Sir Jasper, that lies make me sick at heart. I tell you an enemy that will go so far in cowardice will afterwards do anything, I think--kill wounded men as they lie helpless on the battlefield----” “No, no, your Highness! With all submission, your anger carries you away.” “I am not angry--only tired and sick at heart, and seeing far ahead. I say that I am seeing it--a bleak moor in the Highland country, and men lying on the ground, and a rough bullock of a man shouting, ‘Kill these wounded rascals; put them out of pain!’ And the wounded are--my Highlanders, who follow me for love. There are MacDonalds and Ogilvies and men from the Isles--I see their faces, and the resolute, keen pain that will not flinch. The wind’s whistling down the moor like Rachel crying for her children, and the corbie-crows are looking on.” Sir Jasper crossed himself with instinctive piety. So had he felt, up yonder on the hills of Lancashire, when the winds raved through the heather and down the glens, teaching him sorrow, and the second sight, and the need to prove himself a man in a world of doubt and mystery. “What then, your Highness?” he asked soberly.