I had scarcely said the word when from out the wood which we were nearly approaching--the road running along the very verge of the low bluff that lifted it above the high tide--burst a score or more of men on foot. They were led by a person richly dressed whose features were covered with a black visard. I had barely time to whisk out my sword and they were on us. One fellow bolder than the rest I had spitted with the blade, but it was jerked out of my hands. The next moment I was confronted by half a dozen heavy pistols, and the leader, he of the mask, cried: "Yield you, Sir Hugh. A motion and we blow you from the saddle." I might not have hesitated to take the risk, although it would have probably ended in my sudden death, had I not observed that the others of my party were alike menaced. I had fronted cold steel and had looked into the open mouth of musket and pistol, ay and of cannon, too, many times, but it gave me a thrill of horror to see my wife so threatened. I did not realise that she stood in no danger, or I might have acted differently. I made up my mind quickly, as a soldier needs must, and I said with a coolness I did not feel--on account of my dear wife: "Your arguments are too strong for me, gentlemen. I suppose you have come for plunder; my purse is in my pocket, you'll find there is little enough in it, we are exiles proscribed by King James, and..." "I don't want your purse, Sir Hugh Richmond," interposed the spokesman, drawing nearer to me. He stopped close by my side, and by a sudden impulse, for which I have ever been glad, before he could prevent it I reached over and twitched from his face with one quick movement of my hand the black mask that hid it. I recognised the man instantly. "Stenwold!" I cried. "What does this mean?" He was furiously angry at being discovered and showed it now. "By Heaven!" he roared, "I could have you shot for that." "And since when," I sneered, "has Lord Stenwold addressed himself to the cut-purse trade upon the King's Highway?": Now I knew in an instant that my aggravating accusation was a false one; as in a flash I had divined the whole situation. Lord Stenwold was King James' most intimate friend, a man who would stop at nothing, honourable or dishonourable, to further His Majesty's desires. And I knew that King James, probably aided and abetted thereto by that arch-devil Jeffreys' counsel, had repented him of his clemency and that he wanted to gain possession of my wife, for what purpose I could well imagine.