There was, indeed, great speculation as to what might happen should another landing be attempted, but month after month passed without any indication of this, and the little population had settled down to a dull monotony.  Except for a casual reference to the stirring times, the smugglers and their emissaries were apparently all but forgotten.  The Preventive men were secretly as much on the alert as when the smugglers were most active.  They purposely adopted an apparent indifference with the idea of luring the rovers into over-confidence.  Each party took into account the possibility of being betrayed.  In all secretive illegal societies there are suspects.  Jimmy Stone having changed his mode of life, suspicion fell very naturally on him; but though he sometimes darkly hinted at the identity and the secrets of his late allies, he was never known to definitely divulge anything that would incriminate them.  The nephew of Mrs. Clarkson was another marked man, as was also a friend of his.  The former had been very little heard of in those parts since the night that his aunt implored him to give up his associates.  The last that was really seen of Lawrence and his friend, they were drinking together in a public-house, and a few days after some of their torn and blood-stained clothes were found in a lonely hedged-in lane close by the moor.  This dreaded place was called the “Mugger’s Lonnin” by the country-folk, owing to its being a camping-ground for the gipsies, and from end to end it was prolific of bramble-berries and other wild fruit.  When the children went during the summer months to gather these they were always accompanied by a few grown-up people, as it was believed that many terrible tragedies had happened there.  The discovery of the clothes and the patches of blood right in the middle of the lonnin was indicative of a foul murder having taken place, and the bodies dragged along the grass to some place of concealment.  Search parties were formed, bloodhounds were called into requisition, but no trace of the murdered lads’ bodies could be found, and for many months this supposed terrible crime was sealed in mystery.  A few people were callous enough to say that they were convinced that no murder had taken place, but these were very unpopular.  The greater part of the small colony liked sensation, and nursed this one assiduously until an almost greater came to hand by it leaking out that the two men had been expeditiously sent to Australia, and that the blood on their clothes was not their own, but that of a sheep which had been killed for the purpose of misleading.  This exciting revelation lead to important issues.  Were they really alive and in Australia?  Had they been bribed to reveal the secrets of their former friends, or was it dread of capture that caused them to be sent out of the country?  These were some of the outspoken conjectures that flowed with ever-increasing imagination.  The real facts never became known, but the tales of these stirring times have been handed down in more or less hyperbolic form.  It may be fairly assumed that Thomas Turnbull got reliable information from some source which he was never known to disclose, and having got it, he hastened to use it judiciously and to advantage.