At the same moment there was a faint cry, and Hilary saw that the young girl had sunk back, fainting.
Chapter Two.
A Strict Search.
“Sir Henry!” ejaculated Hilary Leigh; and for the moment his heart seemed to stand still, for his duties as a king’s officer had brought him face to face with a dear old friend, at whose house he had passed some of his happiest days, and he knew that the disguised figure the Jacobite gentleman sought to hide was his only daughter, Adela, Hilary’s old playmate and friend, but so grown and changed that he hardly recognised her in the momentary glance he had of her fair young face.
“Hush! silence! Are you mad?” was the reply, in tones that set the young man’s heart beating furiously, for he knew that Sir Henry Norland was proscribed for the part he had take in the attempt of the Young Pretender, and Leigh had thought that he was in France.
“Who are they, Mr Leigh?” said the lieutenants striding over the lumber in the bottom of the boat.
“Seems to be an English gentleman, sir,” said Leigh, in answer to an agonised appeal from Sir Henry’s eyes.
“I am an English gentleman, sir, and this is my daughter. She is very ill.”