Life had become a nightmare of terror and despair for lovely Wivina Compton.

Jeffrey Farlow, leader of the village gang of smugglers, was determined to make her his wife. Wivina despised him. His crude advances repulsed her, and she was certain he had ordered her father's murder.

No one in the village would dare stand in Yarlow's way. He would marry Wivina by force.

There was only one man who could save her--the man known throughout England as "The Loathsome Leopard."