“Gurner’s got one, because he goes after the wild geese in the winter,” thought Vane; “and Bruff has that big flint-lock with the pan lined with silver. He’d lend it to anybody for a shilling and be glad of it.—Well, look at that! Why he must have made a regular short cut so as to get there. Why did he do that?”
This thought was evoked by Vane suddenly catching sight of the second gipsy lad turned into the first. In other words, the one whom he supposed to have gone back, had gone on, and Vane found himself in that narrow lane with high banks and hedges on either side and with one of these great lawless lads in front, and the other behind.
For the first time it now occurred to Vane that the place was very lonely, and that the nearest farm was quite a mile away, right beyond Sowner wood, whose trees now came in view, running up the slope of a great chalk down.
“Whatever do they mean?” thought Vane, for the gipsy lad in front had suddenly stopped, turned round, and was coming toward him.
“Why, he has a stick,” said Vane to himself, and looking sharply round he saw that the other one also carried a stick.
For a moment a feeling of dread ran through him, but it passed off on the instant, and he laughed at himself for a coward.
“Pooh!” he said, “they want to beat for rabbits and that’s why they have got their sticks.”
In spite of himself Vane Lee wondered why the lads had not been seen to carry sticks before; then, laughing to himself as he credited them with having had them tucked up somewhere under their clothes, he walked on boldly.
“What nonsense!” he thought; “is it likely that those two fellows would be going to attack me!”
But all the same their movements were very suggestive, for there was a furtive, peculiar action on the part of the one in front, who was evidently uneasy, and kept on looking behind him and to right and left, as if in search of danger or a way of escape, and in both a peculiar hesitancy that struck Vane at once.