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nant regret took hold of him. He reached out, an outcast, toward the clean, unswerving loyalty, the faith unquestioning, of Barbara, kneeling in her tattered gown. Once he might have chosen the same road, have climbed upward to the hills, a friend and equal of such as Barbara; instead, he was doomed to plod across the sullen flats of life.

He withdrew, quietly as he had come, and closed the door behind him. And Barbara, not knowing he had come or gone, rose from the altar-rails. She had been praying that God would aid her to be worthy of Blair's love.

CHAPTER IV.

HOW THE LONG NIGHT ENded.

The hours passed.. Captain Hurst, careful enough of his men, as a good officer should be, arranged the watches so that each of his troopers in turn snatched a two-hours sleep. For himself, he slept not at all, but waited doggedly in the draughty hall for the sound of the least footfall on stair or passage. And Donald shared his vigil.

"As ye'll ken," explained the old man, settling himself in a straightbacked chair that faced Hurst across the hearth-"as ye'll ken, we both have to guard the house."

"You explained as much before, I think," said the other drily. Surprised as he was by Donald's tacit air of an authority equal with his own at Windy Hall, Hurst could not but be tickled, in a grim fashion, by the man's way of putting the matter.

"The dead master owned little," went on Donald; "but what gear he had I'm pledged to watch over. And 'tis likelier work, come to think of it, than guarding a bird that's flown to the bonnie bills by now."

"If the bird has flown." Hurst, truth to tell, did not find company of any sort come amiss, for it served at

least to aid him in keeping his eyes away from sleep. "You are flattering, moreover, to doubt my honesty."

"Doot your honesty?" Again there was the deep, inimitable air of Scots theology about the man. "Why should I no doot all men's honesty? We're poor folk at the best, and at the worst we're fore-ordained to damnation, as ye well ken-or should do. Though, when I'm telling ye there's doot of all men's honesty, I'll beg ye to observe there are men who stand free o' all such doot." "Indeed?" "Oh, ay. Sir Peter, while he was living, Prince Charlie, and maybe old Donald here, who's talking to ye o' matters ye'll never in this world ken. Hereafter-well, ye'll just find out for yourself."

Not a word further could Hurst draw from him, try as he would to entice him into speech. Truth to tell, Donald was thinking of the dead master, lying so near to them in the diningchamber; his brief effort of what stood to him for humor was spent, and he could no longer hide from himself the truth that he would go lacking Sir Peter until they met in the after-world. Time after time, as they sat together, he and Hurst, speaking never a word, Donald glanced towards the door which hid Sir Peter from his view, and his eyes smarted, and for the first time in his life he wished he were a woman, to find relief in tears.

No silence can be half so deep as when another shares it with you, yet will not speak or look at you. Captain Hurst grew restless. The dull embers of his fancy were quickened, for he sat solitary here in a house whose memories and whose faith went back into the living past.

He passed in review each detail of the last hurried hours; and, while he sat and pondered, fighting with weariness and sleep, old ghosts crept out

from shadowed corners and whispered in his ear. This vigil, though he did not know it, was one of many lessons which had been taught him since his coming to Windy Hall; for ghosts can teach at once more quickly and more surely than human schoolmasters.

The beauty, the dignity of the lives which had been spent here; the loyalty which had been gentle in the hour of triumph, firm even to martyrdom when danger met it by the way; the grace of dead men of the Lynn family, the grace of dead women who, in their time, had been, as Barbara was now, though wearing frocks less tatteredthe fragrance of the past would no way be denied, and Captain Hurst, honest in the strict letter of obedience to politics, found himself transported, as on a magic carpet, to gardens where Stuart roses grew, where folk walked stately, self-assured, and modest in their faith.

So insistent was the message of this ruined house to Hurst that when he heard a softened footfall, a softened opening of the door that led from the hall to the kitchen offices, he was not surprised. He looked up, and thought to see a ghost; instead, he saw Maid Barbara, comely, proud, and watchful.

"You sit up late o' nights, Captain Hurst," she said, with the veiled mockery which she had shown him from the first.

"My duty compels me, Miss Lynn." Again he felt clumsy in her presence; again he felt a thrill of something more exquisite, more full of sharp and bitter pain, than life had taught him before this day of his riding up the moor.

"Ah, you may sleep," she said, with a careless shrug. "Mr. Blair is hidden in the cellars, sir-behind the wainscoting at the end of some long passage; Donald tells me you are sure of it. But he is hidden for the night."

Hurst was wearied out, and wearied by toil which seemed to bring him lit

tle nearer to his goal. He looked at Donald's face, averted, inscrutable; he glanced at Barbara, who was fighting down her grief with a courage older than her years-Barbara, who convinced him almost that he was following an all fools' chase at Windy Hall.

"I shall not sleep," he answered, regaining the obstinacy which had served him both well and ill in life. "You would be the better for a night's rest yourself, Miss Lynn-"

"My thanks. As you are neither my physician nor my gaoler, Captain Hurst, I shall regard your commands, or disregard them, as I please."

She was gone, taking the warmth with her, and Hurst was left once more to Donald's chill companionship. Should he follow her stealthily, see what she was about at this hour of a winter's night. He shook his head. Already he had intruded on her privacy, thinking to find her in company with the fugitive; and he had done no more than surprise her at the altarrails in maiden prayer. No, he could not spy upon a friendless girl, cost what it might.

There was a grim humor about this vigil shared by Hurst and Donald. Each was obstinately resolved to keep awake; each watched the other with deliberate and crafty caution. At times it was necessary to replenish the candle-sconces, and Donald performed the task with silence and despatch. Only Sir Peter Lynn, it seemed, was privileged to lie at rest.

And still, as the hall grew chillier yet at the approach of a red and stormy dawn, the ghosts of past gallantries seemed to brush Hurst's sleeve in passing, like voiceless winds.

No man need judge him for yielding to the devil. Spent with the long ride, the longer vigil, chilled to the bone, full of this wild, unheeding first love which had found him late in life, Hurst's resolution was at its lowest

ebb. The hour and the place were chosen well by the voice that crept from the shadows and whispered at his ear. Like an unclean ghost it came, threading its way through honorable phantoms; and Hurst started, so clearly the voice spoke, as if it came from lips palpable and human.

Donald seemed to be asleep, his eyelids closed, his head bowed forward; but he heard the other's sudden start, the creak of his chair, and looked sharply up. There was nothing to be seen except the lights and shadows; but Captain Hurst was sitting rigidly, and on his face there was a look of battle.

was

Like all the devil's propositions, this temptation that assailed Hurst oddly simple and convincing. Had he any great care for the fortunes of King George II., any personal care, as distinct from the letter of his duty? Well, no. He could find no trace of honest sentiment in the matter. Then, why should he not let Blair of Blair escape, for Barbara's sake? It was no way certain that Blair was hidden here. In any case, there could be no shadow of accusation against him if he told his dull-witted troopers that they need no longer seek the quarry here, and rode off with them on the next day.

Softly, with a thief's step, the suggestion made its way. He could not do this for nothing, naturally. As a man who had fought patiently for selfadvancement, neglecting pleasure by the way, he understood the value of a bargain. On the one hand, he abandoned all hope of a capture that would place him high in favor with the Duke of Cumberland and the other Hanoverian leaders; on the other, he must claim

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to cold policy, if it were honest, than to this treason, which would make him, in his own eyes at least, a leper among

men.

Old Donald watched him steadfastly, and could make nothing of the changing play of feature. For Donald had seen much of warfare, man against man, when faces glowed, now with generous passion, now with demoniac fury, till none could tell whether angel or devil had the upper hand; but he did not understand this battle of one man alone against a host of unclean thoughts.

Hurst lay back. He had resigned the struggle. He admitted the logic of that bargain, which he must make with Barbara. It was her life against Blair's.

Suddenly he got up and paced to and fro across the floor. He had forgotten Donald's presence. He saw only Barbara, who had sung the first love-song that ever stirred his heart. Her mockery, her pride, her disdain of all that appertained to his old life, gave only an added zest to the wooing he proposed.

He loved her honorably, moreover, with the love that good women welcome. And again-these thousand once agains since first the tangle of men's lives began-there was the old play played afresh. Hurst, unimaginative, a man trusted as one trusts a watch-dog, was prepared to buy true love with honor. Somewhere behind his courage, which rang true at all times, behind his relish for a hard, clean life, there was a weakness, unguessed till now. It seemed right to him, in this moment of surrender, that he should seek a real love along unrighteous paths. The weakness was a saving proof that he was human after all.

On the moors, that clasped this old house like a harsh but kindly mother, the red dawn woke from sleep.

It

was faith's answer to Captain Hurst's surrender. Foot by foot, fighting as it went, the dark receded; foot by foot the dawn advanced. And now, as in human combat, the forces of the night would rally in a sheltered dingle, would struggle till the last moment with the warriors of the sun; and again the clouds would come across the dawn-lights, fighting on night's side. But, last of all, a league of crimson glory stretched over the far spur of eastern hills, and the sun came up, a conqueror approved.

It was dawn-dawn above these lands of witchery and gloom which cradled Windy Hall. One by one the riggs and rounded hummocks of the moor moved quietly into view; there was light snow upon the highest summits, and all the lower stretches of heather, dead bracken stems, and gorse were pearled with frozen night-mist.

Out of doors here the wind blew crisp and heartsome, and no man could look out across the waste of rolling lands without a sense of liberty and strength. Within doors, however, Hurst and old Donald shivered, as they rubbed their eyes and rose with stiffened limbs.

Hurst moved to the window and looked out. All roads of thought led now to Barbara, and there was something in the aspect of these moorlands that brought the girl's figure to his mind with strange distinctness. Both were clothed in ragged gear; both were strong, self-reliant, jealous for the loneliness which was at once disdainful and pathetic. The Captain, indeed, was blessed to-day-or cursed-with a new sense. Keen shafts of poetry, of understanding, pierced the tough hide of his politics. He loved Maid Barbara; and lovers, when the keen dawn meets them face to face, renew that power of "listening to the angels," as the country-women have it, which they possessed in boyhood.

He stood there full ten minutes, Donald watching him constantly the while and wondering "what fresh devilment was in the making." He had been ambitious, this leader of Hanoverian troopers. He had forgotten it. For one purpose only he had striven, so it seemed that of winning Barbara Lynn at any price, at any hazard.

His road of wooing, mapped out so quietly during the cold of the nighthours, was scarcely distasteful to him now; miry and foul as the going was, his love for Barbara beckoned to him from the far end of the journey and sanctified its purpose.

He turned from the window at last. He was living again in the world of practical affairs.

"Donald, you will get breakfast ready for my troopers and myself. Poor devils! they must have had even a colder night of it than I." His voice was sharp, decisive. He was an officer again, no more, no less.

Donald was reluctant, out of temper. "Ye've full command o' the house, so I must do it," he said. looking studiously away from Hurst; "but I tell ye-and run your sword through me for it if ye will--that I'd rather feed honest pigs than such as ye."

Hurst straightened himself, and his adversary felt a grudging admiration for the crisp, cool fury of his voice.

“I command, and you obey. Understand as much at once. And, Donald, you will remember that even to an old man's tongue I allow a certain license, and no more."

Donald glanced keenly at the other, then went towards the kitchen. "Ye're more of a man than I took ye for," he said, with his coldest air of disapproval and theology.

Breakfast was a solitary meal once more for Captain Hurst; but a halfhour afterwards, as he opened the main door and stood on the threshold, letting the crisp wind blow the cob

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"I am troubled, Captain Hurst," she said.

A helplessness crept across Hurst's brave project of last night. At each meeting he loved her a little more, loved himself a little less. She talked of trouble, but with a quiet and regal irony which warned him that this was a match of rapier against broadsword. "We are poor," she went on, "thanks to you folk, who will not let the King come to his own. You would laugh, Captain Hurst, if you guessed how poor we are."

"Yes?" he answered, awkward as a schoolboy.

"Our larder-you would laugh again could you peep into it. I want to ask you-you will acquit me of discourtesy -for how long you propose to quarter yourselves on us. You may command us to provide food, but King's law does not run, you will remember, when the larder is empty."

"You jest," said Hurst. His natural stiffness was gone; he was alert, passionate, and even Barbara, admitted that he was something like a man. "Since I came here first, Miss Lynn, you have turned every look and word of mine to mockery."

"But, indeed I do not jest. A larder all but empty-your troopers and yourself quartered here for days-for weeks and months, if you persist in the superstition that you will capture Mr. Blair -can you not see the inconvenience you are causing us?"

"I inconvenience myself, Miss Lynn. Your hospitality is scarcely——"

"Our hospitality is for our friends," she broke in, stormily; "we do not propose to extend it at any time to men who will not come to us in decent garb."

She glanced at his uniform. They stood, avowed and open enemies, and her scorn-too pitiless, had she known it-swept round about him like a storm of sleet. And, because he was brave, the tempest braced and heartened him.

"Mr. Blair lies in the house here. I've not a doubt of it. It is left to you, Miss Lynn, to settle this question of your larder."

Barbara liked decision in a man. She looked at Captain Hurst with interest. "You will explain," she said, "how I, who am all but a prisoner, can arrange the household details to my liking."

"Mr. Blair is here. You wish to save him. I will help you."

She drew back. At all times she feared an enemy who came bringing gifts. "You will help me?"

"Do you fancy, Miss Lynn, that only lovers of the Stuart can love well?" The man was transfigured; face, voice, gesture, all were altered; he was a man whom love had found, and all such men bear a strange likeness to each other. "Mr. Blair is here, and I hold his life in my hands. You shall have it as a gift."

She drew further back from him, as if she read in part the meaning of his eagerness. "As a gift, or for a price?" she asked coldly.

"You will marry me. My love for you, Miss Lynn, is honest, though I can find no courtier's speech for it."

Maid Barbara was silent, struggling with an anger which she would not show to Hurst. And at last she laughed a laugh so low, restrained, and self-assured that the man's cheek crimsoned, as if struck by a ridingwhip.

"Your love is honest?" she answered.

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