FTER what he had heard, Will was most anxious to remain unseen, for he knew that Night Hawk Jerry would recognize him very quickly, and that would spoil all.
So he feigned sickness, had his breakfast brought to his state-room the next morning, and then, as the boat landed at the town where the two conspirators were to leave it, he grasped his gripsack and cautiously went forward.
The men leaped ashore, when the gangplank was run out, and Will followed them at considerable distance up into the village.
There were quite a number of passengers, so that the boy was unable to select the one against whom the robbers had plotted.
But he watched his men, saw them go to a livery stable, and soon after ride out of town at a gallop. Instantly he went to that same stable, and a few minutes afterward was in a buggy with a driver, going on the road which the robbers had taken, for the livery man told him how he had directed them.
By fast driving he came in sight of them, and then he told his man to draw rein and wait, while he got out and went ahead on foot.
By keeping close in to the woods he kept out of sight of the robber pair, and saw them turn into a thickly-wooded point at a bend in the road, where the underbrush was very dense.
"That is their ambush," he muttered to himself, and he returned to the buggy, getting in just as a horseman appeared coming along the road.
As he drew near, Will saw that he was a fine-looking man, with an athletic form, and a kindly yet strangely stern face. He was well dressed and appeared to be a well-to-do country gentleman, and the boy remembered having seen him on the Chesapeake steamboat.