"What's to hinder? Halloo! what's that?"
Bud Heyland straightened himself and looked up and down the road. The affrighted Fred Sheldon saw his head and shoulders rise to view as he glanced about him, while his companion seemed occupied also in looking and listening.
What was it they had heard? The lad was not aware that he had made the slightest noise, but the next guarded remark of Heyland startled him.
"I heard something move, as if in the grass."
"It would be a pretty thing if some one overheard our plans," said Cyrus Sutton, turning squarely about, so that his face was toward the crouching lad; "we ought to have looked out for that. Where did it seem to come from?"
"Maybe I was mistaken; it was very faint, and I couldn't think of the right course; it may have been across the road or behind us."
Fred Sheldon began to think it was time for him to withdraw, for his situation was becoming a dangerous one, indeed.
"I guess you were mistaken," said Sutton, off-hand; "this is a slow neighborhood and the people don't know enough to play such a game as that."
"You was saying a minute ago that you couldn't be too careful; I'll take a look across the road and up and down, while you can see how things are over the fence there."
The last clause referred to the hiding place of Fred Sheldon, who wondered how it was he had not already been seen, when he could distinguish both forms so plainly, now that they stood up on their feet.