Nance gave him a friendly smile--he had always been a favourite of hers, by force of his tough, homespun strength and honesty--and crossed the yard. The stablemen and grooms were off with Sir Jasper to the wars--all save two who were past seventy, and were warming themselves indoors before facing the nipping wind. She found the three horses left, like the stablemen, because of age and infirmity, and helped Simon, with a quickness she had learned in childhood, to saddle the fiddle-headed beast that he had recommended.
The beast had been eating his head off, and was almost youthful in caprice and eagerness as Nance rode him up into the moors. He had watched his comrades go out a week ago--mettled youngsters, neighing with wide nostrils from sheer lust of adventure--and he had been left to eat more corn than was good for him, left to think back along the years when men had needed him to carry the burden of their hopes.
The horse knew, perhaps, that Nance, like himself, was seeking respite from indolence and the companionship of ailing folk. He carried her bravely, and disguised from her for a while, with a certain chivalry, the fact that he was broken-winded. When they came to the moor, however, the smell of the marshes and the ling seemed to get to his head, like too much wine; and twice he all but unseated Nance, who was thinking of Will Underwood, riding south like her father into that perilous country where George the Second was seated on a stolen throne.
The horse, after his display of youthfulness, was content to laze up and down the sheep-tracks of the heath; and even Nance, blind as she was by habit to the failings of her comrades, was aware that he was roaring now like a half-gale from the north.
Then she forgot the horse, forgot the languid mother, the weakling heir, down yonder at the bleak house of Windyhough. Her thoughts returned to her father, to Sir Jasper, to gentle and simple of the Lancashire men who had ridden out against long odds. Last of all, her maidenly reserve broke down, and she knew that she was eager for Will Underwood’s safety. She saw him so clearly--fearless, a keen rider after hounds, a man who sought danger and coveted it. Surely he was made for such reckless battles as were coming. Through her anxieties, through her womanish picturing of the wounds and sickness that were lying in wait along this high-road that led south to victory and the Stuart, she was glad that “Wild Will” would need her prayers, her trust in him.