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 CHAPTER LI

SIR MARMADUKE

A woman's wits are usually quick to detect intrigue, and are sharpened all the more keenly when she suspects danger to the one she loves.

The threats Captain Bold had been so indiscreet as to utter afforded an explanation of much that had hitherto puzzled Alice in the habits and demeanour of her aunt's guests. It seemed clear enough now, that the shrewd, dark-clothed gentleman upstairs, and his friend from the Hill, were involved in a treasonable plot, of which her abhorred suitor with the bay mare was a paid instrument. From the hints dropped by the last, it looked that some signal vengeance was contemplated against Sir George Hamilton, and worse still, against her own beloved Slap-Jack. Alice was not the girl to sit still with folded hands and bemoan herself in such a predicament. Her first impulse was at once to follow Sir George home and warn him of all she knew, all she suspected; but reflecting how little there was of the former, and how much of the latter; remembering, moreover, that one chief conspirator was his fast friend, and then in his company, she hesitated to oppose her own bare word against the latter's influence, and resolved to strike boldly across the moor till she saw the chimneys of Brentwood, and tell her tale to Sir Marmaduke Umpleby, a justice of the peace, therefore, in all probability, a loyal subject of King George.

It was a long walk for a girl accustomed to the needle-*work and dish-scouring of an indoor life, but Alice's legs had been stretched and her lungs exercised on the south-country downs, till she could trip over a Yorkshire moor as