“Well, I hope so. You’ll not plead, eh, that you are pledged to hunt six days a week, and cannot come? that you’ve a snug house and some thought of bringing a wife to it one day, and cannot come? that you are training a dog to the gun, and cannot come----” It was Nance who broke in now. She had forgotten Rupert, standing hungry and forlorn up the high moor and looking down on his inheritance of Windyhough. Her old liking for Will Underwood--a liking that had come near, during these last days, to love and hero-worship--bade her defend their guest against a tongue that was sharper than her father guessed. “I _know_ he will be true. Why should you doubt him, father?” “Oh, there, child! Who said I doubted him? It’s the whole younger race of men I distrust. Will here must be scapegoat--and, by that token, your glass is empty, Will.” With entire disregard of anything that had gone before, Squire Demaine filled another measure for his guest, pointed to the chair across the hearth, and was about to give the news from Scotland, word by word, when he remembered Nance. “It will be only recruiting-talk, Nance--men to be counted on in one place, and men we doubt in t’other. It would only weary you.” Nance came and stood between them, slim and passionate. “I choose to stay, father. Your talk of men, of arms hidden in the hay-mows and the byres, of the marching-out--that is your part of the battle. But what afterwards?” They glanced at her in some perplexity. She was so resolute, yet so remote, in her eager beauty, from the highways that men tramp when civil war is going forward. “What afterwards?” grumbled Squire Roger. “Well, the right King on the throne again, we hope. What else, my girl?” “After you’ve gone, father, and left the house to its women? I’m mistress here, since--since mother died.” Roger Demaine got to his feet hurriedly and took a pinch of snuff. “Oh, have a care, Nance!” he protested noisily. “There’s no need to remind me that your mother died. I should have taken a whole heart to the Rising, instead of half o’ one, if she’d been alive.” Nance touched his hair lightly, in quick repentance of the hurt she had given him. But she would not yield her point. “I shall be left mistress here--mistress of a house made up of women and old men--and you? You will be out in the open, giving blows instead of nursing patience by the hearth.” “Perhaps--Nance, perhaps the Rising will not need us, after all,” said Will Underwood, with a lame attempt to shirk the issue. “I trust that it will need you, sir--will need us both,” she said, flinging round on him with the speed of her father’s temper. “You thought I complained of the loneliness that is coming? No--but, if I’m to take part in your war, I’ll know what news you have.”