But he had at once saw that it came through a knot-hole in the partition between his and the next state-room, and within a few feet of him were two men, one lying in the berth, the other seated upon a chair, and they were talking in a low tone.
Without stopping up his ears, Will could not help hearing all they said, and the voice of one seemed familiar.
Putting his eye near the knot-hole, to his surprise he recognized the man in the berth as Night Hawk Jerry.
The face of the other he did not know.
What he heard them say was as follows:
"Well, Nick, we can go and strike old Rossmore for all we can get out of the him, after we attend to this farmer on board that I tell you has the cash he got for a boat-load of cattle he took up to the city and sold.
"He stopped at the same hotel with me, and when I told him I was going down to see Mr. Rossmore, he told me he lived near him, and directed me how to get there, while he said he would ask me to ride out with him, only he had come to the village where he boarded the boat on horseback. Now we can get a rig and drive out ahead of the farmer, lay for him on the road, and just take in his pile, which goes up into the thousands, I am sure.
"Then we can go to see old Rossmore and see what we can get out of him, under promise of bringing him his boy."
"You think he'll put up anything?" asked the man addressed as Nick.
"Yes, he'll put up something, though he's been very freely bled by frauds; but, if it had not been for our being taken in by that boy Captain Cruel picked up in New York and who was, I admit, just the fellow if he had not played us false, we'd have got a clean fifty thousand from Rossmore."