He was several miles upon his way to Penrith.  Before him appeared a crossroad, noted by him in the afternoon.  A great salient of a hill overhung it, and on the near side a fir wood crept close.  He looked about him, and as he rode kept his hand upon his pistol.  He did not think to meet an enemy in strength, but there might be lurkers, men of the countryside ready to fall upon stragglers from the army that had passed that way.  He had left behind the crossroad when from in front, around the jut of the hill, came four horsemen.  He turned his head.  Others had started from the wood.  He made to ride on as though he were of their kindred and cause, but hands were laid upon his bridle.

“Courier, no doubt—­”

All turned into the narrow road.  Half an hour’s riding brought in sight a substantial farm-house and about it the dimly flaring lights of a considerable camp, both cavalry and infantry.  Rullock supposed it to be a detachment of Wade’s, though it was possible that the Duke of Cumberland might have thrust advance troops thus far.  He wished quite heartily that something might occur to warn Lord George Murray, the Macdonalds and the Prince’s guns, asleep at Shap.  For himself, he might, if he chose, pick out among the glittering constellations a shape like a scaffold.

When he dismounted he was brought past a bivouac fire and a coming and going of men afoot and on horseback, into the farm-house, where two or three officers sat at table.  Questioned, threatened, and re-questioned, he had of course nothing to divulge.  The less pressure was brought in that these troops were in possession of the facts which the moment desired.  His name and rank he gave, it being idle to withhold them.  In the end he was shut alone into a small room of the farm-house, behind a guarded door.  He saw that there was planned an attack upon the detachment that with dawn would move from Shap.  But this force of Wade’s or of the Duke’s was itself a detachment and apparently of no great mass.  He could only hope that Lord George and the Macdonalds would move warily and when the shock came be found equal.  All that was beyond his control.  In the chill darkness he turned to the consideration of his own affair, which seemed desperate enough.  He found, by groping, a bench against the wall.  Wrapping himself in his cloak, he lay down upon this and tried to sleep, but could not.  With all his will he closed off the future, and then as best he might the immediately environing present.  After all, these armies—­these struggles—­these eery ambitions....  The feeling of out of it crept over him.  It was an unfamiliar perception, impermanent.  Yet it might leave a trace to work in the under-consciousness, on a far day to emerge, be revalued and added to.

This December air!  Fire would be good—­and with that thought he seemed to catch a gleam through the small-paned, small window, and in a moment through the opening door.  He rose from the bench.  A man in a long cloak entered the room, behind him a soldier bearing a lantern which he set upon a shelf above a litter of boards and kegs.  Dismissed by a gesture, he went out, shutting the door behind him.  The first man dropped his cloak, drew a heavy stool from the thrust-aside lumber, and sat down beneath the lantern.  He spoke: