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