answered, and his voice was like the call of pipes where rowans hide an upland glen. "That is true. You bring me wine and food-daintier food, and better wine, than life ever brought me yet."

He glanced at the altar. "There are two faiths, we said just now," he went on. "Nay, there are three. Faith in the true Church, faith in the Stuart, faith in the one woman made for man."

"I do not understand," she faltered. He laughed, so low and bravely that the laughter carried no sense of sacrilege with it, though they stood within the chancel.

"I shall teach you to understand." There was assurance in his tone, as there had been assurance in Sir Peter's when he bade a gallant farewell to this life the clear and abiding knowledge of a faith as tried and lofty as the hills that girt their moorland home.

Barbara shrank away, ashamed that she had forgotten, even for a moment, the grief that lay, below stairs, silent on the lang-settle.

"Mr. Blair," she said-her face had grown desperately sad, yet no less comely-"Mr. Blair, my father is dead."

"No! I'll not believe it. His name has been a watchword with us. He was so upright"

"He is dead, Mr. Blair, and for his sake"-she faltered, seeking his glance across the flicker of the altar candles"for his sake I have promised to hide you safely and to send you safely out from this crazy house of ours."

There was a silence between them. A rat came up the stair of the hidingchamber, peeped at them, and withdrew. Blair of Blair had fought and silenced many of his kindred in the narrow lodging-place below.

"You are unprotected here?" he said at last.

"No, sir, by your leave. Our Lady watches over me."

"Oh, true-true-but these fools who hunted me across the moor-they're quartered here?"

Barbara knew that soon she would be compelled to yield to this man with whom she talked at hazard to herself and him. For that reason she was minded to keep her liberty for as long as might be.

"They are quartered here, and they are fools, Mr. Blair. If you cannot trust me in a den of thieves-well, do not trust me, and I shall think the worse of you. Listen! I am pledged to send you safe across the hills

"And I am pledged to guard your honor. Listen! You say, listen! Listen to me, child, and let me tell you that these troopers-"

"Are you my guest, or are you not?" she asked-peremptorily, as if in her tattered frock she were accustomed to give commands and to see them instantly obeyed.

,"I am your guest." The tapers flickered on the altar, and their eyes met, and neither would give

way.

"Then you will not question when I tell you what are our laws of hospitality-here on Windy Hill." Barbara's voice was deep and strong; in long past generations she would have mothered Viking sons, have watched them go to battle, have wept by stealth when they were slain.

"A guest must not question," he answered doggedly.

Yet Barbara knew that he meant to come out with her into the open. She saw his hand go stealthily toward his sword-hilt. He was minded to fight for her. Across her maiden past there blew a keen, swift wind of hazard and of mother-love. The words slipped from her; she could not stem the torrent.

"I forbid you to bring disaster on the house. You will not hide, you say? I have done many things, Mr. Blair,

that were irksome in the doing. I have watched o' nights, while men of your faith, and of mine, were hiding here. It is easy for you to run down the stair, and fight against odds, and lie in peace, after being killed for sake of the true faith. Cannot you hide with honor, and live to fight some worthier battle?"

"Yes," said Blair, "if I win you at the end."

It was winter time, but for Barbara pansies bloomed in summer gardens, and all the world was young. She laughed, forgetting the dead father. There was storm and tempest round about her, but from the island city of her maidenhood she welcomed the boat that came, across rough seas, to bring fresh tidings to her.

"We

"If you win me?" she echoed. were strangers some few hours since, Mr. Blair, and danger lies very near to you. I ask your promise that you will seek shelter, and keep it, until your road is clear."

Reluctant, eager; proud, disdainful, tender; this girl in the tattered frock, with the shifting lights and shadows from the candles on her, moved Blair as no stress of battle had ever done. He had been courted; his deeds had passed into song; he had known the gay, yet melancholy glamor which Stuart Charlie.cast about his intimates; all went by him now. The world held only Barbara-Barbara, and the candles shining from the altar on her upturned face.

He checked himself. This girl was friendless here, save for himself and old Donald. It was not the hour for wooing.

"Can you pledge your word that you are safe here in the house?" His voice was cold, for he could not trust himself.

"Safer, Mr. Blair, than if you put all our care for you aside, and went down, and courted death. What have I to

"You carry despatches from the Prince?" she said abruptly.

"I do-and God forgive me, I had forgotten them for the moment."

"Would you care for them to fall into the hands of Captain Hurst? I tell you, Mr. Blair, he holds the house securely. He means to take no sleep to-night, but is roaming ceaselessly from room to room, searching a cupboard here, tapping a panel there. The prize is a big one, Mr. Blair, and your enemies are minded to secure it." "There are windows. See you, these despatches are urgent-"

"The windows are guarded on all four sides. You would knot sheets together and lower yourself? Ay, and the troopers would be ready for you. Mr. Blair, you do not doubt my friendship? Be advised that the best service you can do the Prince is to lie hidden until Captain Hurst grows weary. I shall be as wakeful as he, I promise you, and will warn you when your road is clear."

He paced up and down restlessly. "Child, they are so urgent, those despatches! I was riding into Lancashire with them when these rascals found my trail and hunted me up into the moorland here. Lancashire failed us on the southward march-we had trusted implicitly to the promises of a good Catholic county-but there is better hope of them. Disaster has roused them. I am pledged to rally the gentry there."

with sudden eagerness.

Blair laughed-not recklessly, not lightly, but with that deep and tempered faith which had earned him the respect of all men and the love of many.

"Hope? Why, yes. The Prince's men are of the breed that fights better always under hardship. If we could win Prestonpans, we can win our next big battle. I was there at Prestonpans."

They had forgotten danger, turmoil; they had forgotten their love, which in a single day of peril had raced to flood. The candlelight showed two eager faces-that of the man who told of onset and the battle-fury, that of the maid who listened. And on both faces was the reflection of that transfiguring light which Stuart love had lit, like a beacon, on the mountains of the North.

He

Blair told how Prestonpans was won -how they came in the gray of a chilly dawn across the marshland; how they fell upon trained troops with their little army, hastily levied and ill-armed, and penned them up like driven sheep between the walls which had promised safety to the Hanoverian camp. told of a slaughter grim and terrible. He told of the southward march, the abiding gallantry and steadfastness of the Highlanders. He told of that disastrous scene at Derby, when the Prince and his army saw London well in sight, when the leaders of the clans alone proposed retreat. And then his voice grew brave and tranquil. He talked of the battle that must soon be fought-on this or the far side of the Seots border-and he was sure that they would win the fight.

Barbara was listening to the talk of an upright man, who feared God and honored his King. So her father had talked. So Donald, the old servingman, had talked in childhood's days.

with its lighted candles and its figure of the Virgin looking down with deep compassion on men's warfare.

"You-you have killed men?" she said, scarce knowing that she spoke.

"Never one who was not an enemy to the Prince. Child, there are matters that men only understand. I stand here yes, here before the altar if you will-with the knowledge that, whatever I have done, it was for sake of a righteous cause."

"Ah, yes! Forgive me-we have wayward impulses, we women-at one moment we buckle on the swords of our men, Mr. Blair, and at the next we shrink from the sharp edge of steel. I wronged you just now," she went on, impulsively. "I said that you were

not known to us until to-day. You have been known to me-known to my father-as a true courtier and a truer gentleman. We--"

"You will spare me!" he interrupted lightly. "What I have done might have been better done and even then 'twould have been too little to offer to his Highness. I'm sadly bothered in this life by friends and enemies, Miss Lynn. One party over-praises me; the other assures me that a Puritan, unfortable sort of fire is waiting me in the next world. And both are wrong, you understand-at least, I trust the Puritans are wrong. Like most of my fellows, I'm neither good nor bad, but a laughable mixture of the two. When I send in my last letters of credit they'll all have the one phrase written on them-'no man dare say I was lacking in love for Stuart Charlie.'"

So then Barbara knew that he loved her; for dispraise of self-eager, hotheaded desire to tell the worst at once and have done with it-went ever with true love, and Barbara-untutored, save by instinct-knew as much. fears for Blair's safety reawakened.

Her

"You will lie hid-for my sake," she whispered.

They took a grave regard of each other, with no word spoken. This was their betrothal, here before the altar they revered, and they knew their love secure. Like a wind that lifts past griefs and blows them wide afield, love shook Maid Barbara till she trembled. It is not by the ways of peace that men and women come to understanding, but by the road of onset and of danger; and along these paths of turmoil they are apt to love quickly and for life.

"Yes!" he answered. "I will lie hidfor your sake."

Captain Hurst, meanwhile, ill at ease, weary for the sleep he lacked, had been going doggedly about the house. He grew surer that Blair was hidden somewhere in these draughty rooms. His long vigil gave him leisure in which to view the earlier hazards of the day aright-the pursuit, the seeing of the fugitive mounted on a roan mare, both limned against the moorland skyline the coming to Windy Hall, and the dead nag at the gate, with a lady's saddle on its back. There was Sir Peter's open avowal of his faith, moreover, and Donald's lean riddle of a face. Undoubtedly the man he sought was here.

Hurst, unimaginative by discipline and habit, was disturbed by queer breezes of poetry that seemed to creep about these haunted passages. Love was not his business in life; yet he had seen Barbara, had heard her voice. He saw life, for his moment of freedom, from the watered hills where Blair of Blair and Barbara stoodwhere dead Sir Peter had stood in his lifetime and the cold greed of policy deserted him. He understood-clearly as if a voice were whispering in his ear-that these folk had truer breeding than himself, a livelier faith, a better

heart with which to meet the day's round of work and suffering.

His moment passed, and he cursed himself for harboring idle thoughts. He paced the draughty corridors again, listening for human voices, and hearing only the scamper of the rats behind the wainscoting.

At a turn of the passage he met Donald, who was wakeful as his mistress. Unobtrusive, alert, the old man had shadowed Hurst as if, indeed, the latter were a prisoner on doubtful parole, instead of the master of the situation.

"I want a word with you," said Hurst brusquely.

Donald was all grim attention. "If ye're like to sit up through the night, Captain Hurst, and if I'm like to sit up as long myself, there'll be time and to spare for talk. "Tis one and another, I take it. Ye guard a prisoner who's away to the hills by now; old Donald guards the house; 'twould seem a waste of time on both sides."

Hurst looked him through, but could learn nothing from the dour, welltempered irony of the man. For about Donald, as about his mistress, there was that air of resolution, gloved by courtesy, which had baffled Hurst since his first coming to this windy house upon the moor.

There was one expedient untried as yet. Hurst had little hope of it; but he drew five guinea pieces from his pocket.

"The man I seek is somewhere in the house here. You can guide me to him if you will."

For a space Hurst's spirits rose, for Donald took one of the guineas between a thumb and forefinger, and held it to the light of the candle he was carrying. Again Hurst felt the zest of the hunt: he would learn where Blair of Blair lay hid; he would secure despatches of the first importance, would secure, too, the person of one for

His

"It is false coin," said Donald. dry sobriety was more rich in humor than outright laughter could have been. "Ring it, man-ring it, if you doubt it." Hurst missed the other's meaning.

"I dinna need to ring it. I've seen the face of it, Captain Hurst, and 'tis a false likeness of the King I serve."

Again Hurst's dreams of glory faded. He was met once more by that wall of perfect trust, in themselves and in their faith, which had hindered him throughout this enterprise with loyal folk. King George up here in the north was simply a charlatan who coined money under false pretences.

"I could send you to the gallows for less treasonable words," he snapped, his temper breaking.

"Ye'd best send me quickly, then; now that Sir Peter's gone, and the retreat from Derby has set in, 'tis time I went. My mother, up by the burn in Skye, would always pray when I was a bairn that I might die between clean sheets. Ye promise me as much; for, if ye ken my meaning, your hangman is just my godly help to martyrdom. A martyr lies between clean sheets, they say."

Hurst turned on his heel with an oath. It was easy to dismiss old Donald as a crazy fool; but it was hard to fight against this faith-tempered like a sword-blade of Ferrara's-which met him at every draughty corner of the house.

"Is your Prince a saint, then?" he asked.

"No," said Donald soberly. "He's just a gentleman-like Mr. Blair of Blair, who's away to the hills-and both carry their naked sins with them,

as you and I carry 'em, Captain Hurst -but they carry them with a difference which ye'll ken."

Hurst understood that this was Donald's quiet revenge for the insult put upon him. He had attempted bribery with a Highland Jacobite, and all the world was soon to learn the hopelessness of such an enterprise. It was to the captain's credit that he accepted the slight with a shrug of the shoulders and passed on; for undoubtedly he had it in his power, if not to capture Blair as yet, at least to punish Blair's well-wisher.

A half-hour later-he was roaming the upper corridors, and wondering if, after all, his prize were in the househe heard a muffled sound of voices. So late at night, in a place so haunted, a man of keener fancy would have looked for some ghostly explanation of the voices. To Captain Hurst, however, phantoms had no bearing upon practical ambition, and were discredited by him; he sought at once for the chamber-obviously close at handfrom which the voices reached him.

He found a low and narrow passage, at the far end of which a streak of candlelight came from underneath a close-shut door. A silence tense and absolute had succeeded the hum of voices, but Hurst went forward hopefully-went on tip-toe, like a thief, and opened the door with soft and cautious stealth.

He saw a private chapel, appointed with reverence and zeal. He saw candles flickering on the altar, and Barbara kneeling with beautiful, bowed head.

She was alone.

Hurst stood at the door, motionless, intent. He had not found Blair of Blair, but he had found a reverence new to him these days. From the gardens of his boyhood-the green, quiet places he had known before ambition had haled him to the prison-house-the old winds blew about him. A poig