“I thought maybe he were a friend,” said the stranger, with questionable veracity.
The conversation thereupon proceeded with unrestrained vigor.
“It baffles me, his going to Carlisle. As I say, he's a 'cute sort. What's his game in this hunt?”
“Shaf! he's bagged himself, stump and rump.”
“I don't mind how soon we've done with this trapesing here and there. Which will be the 'dictment, think ye?”
“Small doubt which.” “Murder, eh? Can you manage it, Wilfrey and yourself?”
“Leave that to the pair of us.”
The perspiration was standing in beads on every inch of Robbie's body. He was struggling with an almost overpowering temptation to test the strength of his muscles at pitching certain weighty “bodies” off the top of that coach, in order to relieve it of some of the physical burden and a good deal of the moral iniquity under which it seemed to him just then to groan.
Snow began now to fall, and the driver gave the whip to his horses in order to reach a village which was not far away.
“We'll be bound to put up for the night,” he said; “this snowstorm will soon stop us.”