'That's it,' said Dick. 'We'll do it comfortably, Chippy, my boy.'
He carefully marked the track they had followed, then closed the map, and returned it to the haversack. Their haversacks lay at their feet between them and the dying fire; their staves were beside them. The two scouts now stretched themselves comfortably in the sun, drew their hats over their eyes, and discussed their own affairs.
'I say, Chippy, we're bound to have plenty of cash to see us through now,' said Dick, 'even if we have to spend steady on for the rest of the journey.'
'Rather,' replied Chippy; 'there's a lot o' flour left, an' some tea an' sugar, an' the bakin'-powder, an' the lump o' salt; an' we've only spent eleven three-fardens so fur.'
'Yes,' chuckled Dick. 'I can see father smiling now as he gave me the two half-sovereigns. I know as well as can be what he thought. He felt sure we should be back before now, with our ten shillings for way-money all blued. And one half-sovereign is in my belt, and almost all the other is in my purse.'
On the other side of the hedge below which the scouts lay, a couple of evil faces looked at each other with evil joy in their eyes. Every word the boys were saying was falling into the ears of a pair of big, burly tramps. One was a stout, middle-aged man, the other a tall young fellow with long legs; both belonged to the worst class of that bad order.
When will this pest of lazy, loutish loafers, often brutal and dangerous, be cleared from our pleasant highways and byways? There are beautiful stretches of our country where it is not safe for women and children to stroll unattended through the quiet lanes, simply because the district lies on a tramps' route from one big town to another, and is infested by these worthless vagrants. There is nothing that dwellers in the country see with greater satisfaction than the conviction, slowly ripening in the public mind, that this tramp nuisance and danger must shortly be dealt with, and the firmer the hand the better. They are the people to shut up in compounds, where they should be made to do a few strokes of labour to earn their living, instead of terrorizing cottagers and dwellers in lonely houses for food and money. But now to our heroes and their experience with two members of this rascally order, feared and dreaded in every solitary neighbourhood.
We have said that the scouts had made their halt beside a brook. They had paused on the bridge where the brook ran under the road they were following, and had observed that a path turned from the road, passed through a narrow gateway from which the gate was missing, and went along the bank. They had gone down the path some sixty or seventy yards, and had made their halt at a point where there was a strip of grass some ten yards wide between the hedge of a field and the bank of the brook.
Half an hour before the boys arrived, a pair of tramps had turned down the same quiet side track, intending to eat the food they had begged in a hamlet near at hand. They had gone some distance beyond the spot where the scouts halted, and did not discover the presence of the latter until they were on their way back to the high-road. The younger tramp was leading the way, and when he saw the boys lying on the bank with their haversacks at their feet, he stepped back into cover, and the two rascals took counsel with each other.
'Might be the price of a pint or two on 'em,' said the elder, a villainous-looking rogue, his tiny bloodshot eyes firing at the thought of drink.