24 A JACOBITE EXILE

That he should, then, be in secret communication with a
servant at Lynnwood, struck him as a very serious matter
indeed. Charlie was not yet sixteen, but his close com-
panionship with his father had rendered him older than
most lads of his age. He was as warm a Jacobite as his
father, but the manner in which William with his: Dutch
troops had crushed the great Jacobite rebellion in Ireland,
seemed to him a lesson that the prospects of success in
England were much less certain than his father believed
them to be. John Dormay, as an adherent of William,
would be interested in thwarting the proposed movement,
with the satisfaction of, at the same time, bringing Sir
Marmaduke into disgrace. Charlie could hardly believe
that his cousin would be guilty of setting a spy to watch his
father, but it was certainly possible, and as he thought the
matter over as he rode back after escorting Ciceley to her
home, he resolved to keep a sharp watch over the doings of
this man Nicholson.

“Tt would never do to tell my father what Ciceley said.
He would bundle the fellow out neck and crop, and perhaps
break some of his bones, and then it would be traced to
her. She has not a happy home as it is, and it would be
far worse if her father knew that it was she who had put us~
on our guard. I must find out something myself, and then
we can turn him out without there being the least suspicion
that Ciceley is mixed up in it.”

Vhe next evening several Jacobite gentlemen rode in,
and, as usual, had a long talk with Sir Marmaduke after
supper.

“Tf this fellow is a spy,” Charlie said to himself, “he
will be wanting to hear what is said, and to do so he must
either hide himself in the room or listen at the door or at
one of the windows. It is not likely that he will get into
the room, for to do that he must have hidden himself before
supper began. I don’t think he would dare to listen at the