ust follow him,' said Bradley Headstone. 'He takes this
river-road--the fool!--to confuse observation, or divert attention, if
not solely to baffle me. But he must have the power of making himself
invisible before he can shake Me off.'

Riderhood stopped. 'If you don't get disapinted agin, T'otherest, maybe
you'll put up at the Lock-house when you come back?'

'I will.'

Riderhood nodded, and the figure of the bargeman went its way along the
soft turf by the side of the towing-path, keeping near the hedge and
moving quickly. They had turned a point from which a long stretch of
river was visible. A stranger to the scene might have been certain that
here and there along the line of hedge a figure stood, watching the
bargeman, and waiting for him to come up. So he himself had often
believed at first, until his eyes became used to the posts, bearing the
dagger that slew Wat Tyler, in the City of London shield.

Within Mr Riderhood's knowledge all daggers were as one. Even to Bradley
Headstone, who could have told to the letter without book all about Wat
Tyler, Lord Mayor Walworth, and the King, that it is dutiful for youth
to know, there was but one subject living in the world for every sharp
destructive instrument that summer evening. So, Riderhood looking after
him as he went, and he with his furtive hand laid upon the dagger as he
passed it, and his eyes upon the boat, were much upon a par.

The boat went on, under the arching trees, and over their tranquil
shadows in the water. The bargeman skulking on the opposite bank of the
stream, went on after it. Sparkles of light showed Riderhood when
and where the rower dipped his blades, until, even as he stood idly
watching, the sun went down and the landscape was dyed red. And then the
red had the appearance of fading out of it and mounting up to Heaven, as
we say that blood, guiltily shed, does.

Turning back towards his Lock (he had not gone out of view of it), the
Rogue pondered as deeply as it was within the contracted power of such
a fellow to do. 'Why did he copy my clothes? He could have looked like
what he wanted to look like, without that.' This was the subject-matter
in his thoughts; in which, too, there came lumbering up, by times, like
any half floating and half sinking rubbish in the river, the question,
Was it done by accident? The setting of a trap for finding out whether
it was accidentally done, soon superseded, as a practical piece of
cunning, the abst