“You won’t tell your father?” she asked eagerly.  “Because, if you were to speak of it—­”

“I shall not tell him.  You need not be afraid that what you have told me will come out.  It is curious, and that is all, and I will look after the fellow a bit.  Don’t think anything more about it.  It is just the sort of thing it is well to know, but I expect there is no harm in it, one way or the other.  Of course, he must have known your father before he came to us, and may have business of some sort with him.  He may have a brother, or some other relation, who wants to take one of your father’s farms.  Indeed, there are a hundred things he might want to see him about.  But still, I am glad you have told me.”

In his own mind, Charlie thought much more seriously of it than he pretended.  He knew that, at present, his father was engaged heart and soul in a projected Jacobite rising.  He knew that John Dormay was a bitter Whig.  He believed that he had a grudge against his father, and the general opinion of him was that he was wholly unscrupulous.

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 companionship 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.

“It 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.”

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

“If 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 door, for anyone passing through the hall would catch him at it.  It must be at one of the windows.”