The men who passed Sir Jasper, as he rode back to join his company, were awed by the sheer fury in his face. He did not see them. Kilted men on foot met him, and Lowlanders in tattered breeks, riding nags as rough-coated as themselves. And some from the pick of Scotland’s chivalry glanced at him for a nod of recognition, and saw him looking straight ahead with murder in his eyes.
Sir Jasper was in the mood that, now and then, had frightened his wife up yonder on the moors of Lancashire. He had kept the Faith. He had given up wife and bairns and lands if things chanced to go astray. And there was one man in this Rising who was the traitor in their midst. Scholarly, yet simple in his piety, Sir Jasper was in the thick of that stormy mood which hillmen know--a mood pitiless and keen as the winds bred in the hollows of the wintry moor, a mood that goes deeper than training, and touches, maybe, the bedrock of those stormy passions known to the forefathers of the race when all the heath was lit with feuds.
It was now that good luck found Sir Jasper. There was an empty stretch of road in front of him. He was alone with the black mood that he hated--the mood he could not kill; and the bitter wind was finding out the weak places in a body not too young. And then round the bend of the highway rode Lord Murray; and Sir Jasper felt a little stir of gladness, as if the wind had shifted to a warmer quarter.
Murray was unaccompanied, save for his aide-de-camp--a careless, pleasant-faced youth of twenty, Johnstone by name, who was destined afterwards to write a diverting and boyishly inaccurate account of a campaign whose shallows only, not its depths, were known to him.
“Of all men, I’ve hoped most to meet you, my lord Murray,” said Sir Jasper, drawing rein. “Your friend can ride apart; I’ve much to say to you.”
Murray, too, drew rein, glanced hard and uncivilly at Sir Jasper, and turned with a smile to his aide-de-camp. “The Lancashire manner is curt, Mr. Johnstone,” he said. “What is this gentleman’s name again? He joined us at Langton, I remember, and his Highness was pleased to overdo the warmth of his greeting. It is a way the Prince has, and it answers well enough with the women, to be sure.”