"That also struck me," observed Crankey Jem; "and it's all those doubts and uncertainties that make me watch him so close to find out what it all means. And, mark me, Harry—I will find it all out too! I'm pretty near as cunning as he is! Why—what a fool he must take me for, if he thinks I can't see that he has got a great hulking chap to dog me about. But I always give him the slip somehow or another; and every evening when I go out I take a different direction. So I'll be bound that I've set Tidkins and his man at fault. The night afore last I saw the spy, as I call him—I mean the chap that is set to dog me—go to Tidkins's house; and about an hour afterwards a man I once knew well—one Jack Wicks, who is called the Buffer—went there also. Ah! there's a precious nest of them!"
"I say, Jem," exclaimed Henry Holford, abruptly, "I wish you would lend me your pistols for a few hours."
"And what do you want with pistols, young feller?" demanded the returned convict, laying down his knife, and looking Holford full in the face.
"A friend of mine has made a wager with another man about hitting a halfpenny at thirty paces," said Henry, returning the glance in a manner so confident and unabashed, that Jem's suspicions were hushed in a moment.
"Yes—you shall have the pistols till this evening," said he: "but mind you bring 'em back before dusk."
With these words, he rose, went to a cupboard, and produced the weapons.
"I'll be sure to bring them back by the time you go out," said Holford. "Are they loaded?"
"No," answered Jem. "But here's powder and ball, which you can take along with you."
"I wish you would load them all ready," observed Holford. "I—I don't think my friend knows how."