“He goes and sits on a stone with his spy-glass where he can see them, but they can’t see him, and he stops there watching for hours everything they do, and comes back looking very serious and queer.”
“Well, what does it matter?” I said. “He won’t hurt us. He can’t, because he is my father’s tenant, and if he did he’d have to go.”
“Don’t talk like that, Sep,” whispered Bigley. “It’s bad enough now, and it would be worse then.”
“I say, what chaps you two are!” cried Bob Chowne. “Why don’t you talk to a fellow?”
No one answered, and Bob turned sulky and went and sat on the front of the cart, where he began to whistle.
“What do you mean by being worse?” I said.
Bigley shook his head.
“I don’t know; I can’t say,” he whispered. “I mean I don’t want father to be very cross.”
“I say, Big,” I whispered. “Your father really is a smuggler, isn’t he?”
Bigley looked sharply round to gaze at old Teggley Grey and Bob Chowne, creeping as he did so nearer to the tail-board of the cart, and I followed him.