Prince's College Cambridge is a peaceful & scholarly community enlivened by Prudence Pinsent the Master's daughter Spirited beautiful & thoroughly unconventional Prudence is a remarkable young woman One fine morning she sets out for Suffolk to join her cousin Lord Wellende for a few days' hunting On the way Prudence encounters Captain Studde of the coastguard
- who is pursuing a quarry of his own Studde is on the trail of a drug smuggling ring that connects Wellende Hall with the cloistered world of Cambridge It falls to Prudence to unravel the identity of the smugglers
- who may be forced to kill to protect their secret