Nor would any one have done so.
After passing through Canterbury, they had taken disguises from the bottom of the cart, and even had it been light no one would have guessed they were not what they seemed—countrymen going into early market. The shorter one was in a shooting jacket and gaiters, and looked like a farmer's son; the other had on a smock-frock and a red handkerchief round his neck, and with his big slouching figure looked exactly like a farm labourer.
They drove along at a steady pace for another two hours. They had some time since left the main road, to avoid the towns of Sittingbourne and Chatham, and they were now in the lanes and byways skirting Rochester. The man called Bob was a native of Chatham, and knew all the country well. It was nearly six o'clock, and was still pitch dark, and since they had left Canterbury they had not met a single person.
In a short time they entered the highroad again, about a mile on the London side of Rochester, and turned their tired horse's head back again in the direction of that town. They kept along this till the lights of Rochester were close to them, and then turned again from the main road down a narrow lane, and stopped at a house about a hundred yards from the road.
The morning was beginning to break now, not giving much light, but sufficient to show that it was a small house standing in a yard, which the sense of smell, rather than sight, at once told to be a tanyard.
There was a gate in the wall, which was unfastened, for it yielded easily when one of the men got down from the cart and pushed it; he then led the horse and cart in, and closed the gate after them, and then knocked at the door of the house with his hand. In a minute or two a man's head appeared at an upper window.
"Is it you, boys?" he asked.
"All right, Parker; make haste and come down as quickly as you can."
The door was soon opened, and a man came out—a big man, with a not dishonest face, respectably dressed, and evidently the master of the place.
"So you are come back?" he said. "I don't want to ask any questions, but have you done well?"