"Does Cyril know anything about it?" Nellie asked suddenly.
"Yes, he knows, my dear; indeed, it was owing to his cleverness that your father first came to have suspicions."
"Oh! that explains it," Nellie said. "He had been talking to father, and I asked what it was about and he would not tell me, and I have been very angry with him ever since."
"I have noticed that you have been behaving very foolishly," Mrs. Dowsett said quietly, "and that for the last week you have been taking Robert with you as an escort when you went out of an evening. I suppose you did that to annoy Cyril, but I don't think that he minded much."
"I don't think he did, mother," Nellie agreed, with a laugh which betrayed a certain amount of irritation. "I saw that he smiled, two or three evenings back, when I told Robert at supper that I wanted him to go out with me, and I was rarely angry, I can tell you."
Cyril had indeed troubled himself in no way about Nellie's coolness; but when she had so pointedly asked Robert to go with her, he had been amused at the thought of how greatly she would be mortified, when Robert was haled up to the Guildhall for robbing her father, at the thought that he had been accompanying her as an escort.
"I rather hope this will be our last watch, Captain Dave," he said, on the seventh evening.
"Why do you hope so specially to-night, lad?"
"Of course I have been hoping so every night. But I think it is likely that the men who take the goods come regularly once a week; for in that case there would be no occasion for them to meet at other times to arrange on what night they should be in the lane."
"Yes, that is like enough, Cyril; and the hour will probably be the same, too. John and I will share your watch to-night, so as to be ready to get the men off without loss of time."