He peered into the hollows and loitered in every ravine. This gave singular offense to the keen eye that was now upon him. Presently he was seen to stop and call his taller companion to him, and point with great earnestness first to something at their feet, then to the backbone of rocks; and it so happened by mere accident that his finger took nearly the direction of the very spot where the observer of all his movements stood. The man started back out of sight and called in a low voice to his comrades,
“Come here.”
They came straggling up with troubled and lowering faces. “Lie down and watch them,” said the leader. The men stooped and crawled forward to some stunted bushes, behind which they lay down and watched in silence the unconscious pair who were now about two furlongs distant. The shorter of the two still loitered behind his companion, and inspected the ground with particular interest. The leader of the band, who went by the name of Black Will, muttered a curse upon his inquisitiveness. The others assented all but one, a huge fellow whom the others addressed as Jem. “Nonsense,” said Jem, “dozens pass this way and are none the wiser.”
“Ay,” replied Black Will, “with their noses in the air. But that is a notice-taking fellow. Look at him with his eyes forever on the rocks, or in the gullies, or—there if he is not picking up a stone and breaking it!”
“Ha! ha!” laughed Jem incredulously, “how many thousand have picked up stones and broke them and all, and never known what we know.”
“He has been in the same oven as we,” retorted the other.
Here one of the others put in his word. “That is not likely, captain; but if it is so there are no two ways. A secret is no secret if all the world is to know it.”
“You remember our oath, Jem,” said the leader sternly.
“Why should I forget it more than another?” replied the other angrily.
“Have you all your knives?” asked the captain gloomily. The men nodded assent.