“Arrah, then,” said Paddy, with a yawn, “they are the two bla’guards, entirely.” He crept with Ben to the hole in the floor and surveyed the two below with great interest. “And so they are the villains who stopped the carriage with the money in it,” he whispered. “And to think,” astonished, “that it’d be the same two whom I met to-night. Sure the world is a small place, after all.”
“Put our horses up, anyhow,” said Tobias Hawkins to the landlord. “And after you’ve seen them well and fed and littered, awaken these travelers and inquire of them if they’d not share their room with two gentlemen seeking shelter for the night.”
“Why, as for the matter of that,” said the landlord, as though the idea appealed to him, “perhaps we might do something in that way, sirs. You see, the two travelers are but boys, and they may be prevailed upon to——”
But the two men stopped him with uplifted hands and forward steps.
“Boys?” said Sugden.
“What sort of boys?” asked Hawkins.
“Why, well-grown lads, perhaps of eighteen,” replied the sharp-faced landlord. “They were on their way north on the road when one of their horses went lame—not that of the Irish one, but the other.”
“The Irish one,” said Tobias Hawkins. “Ah!”
The two watchers above saw him exchange glances with his companion, and they were glances full of meaning.
“We met the Irish lad on the road,” said Sugden, “but, as it chanced, he was alone.”