this course had been in the direction of Budmouth.  On they went, and the next clue was furnished them by a shepherd.  He said that wherever a clear space three or four yards wide ran in a line through a flock of sheep lying about a ewe-lease, it was a proof that somebody had passed there not more than half-an-hour earlier.  At twelve o’clock that day he had noticed such a feature in his flock.  Nothing more could be heard of him, and they got into Budmouth.  The steam-packet to the Channel Islands was to start at eleven last night, and they at once concluded that his hope was to get to France by way of Jersey and St. Malo—­his only chance, all the railway-stations being watched.

’Well, they went to the boat:  he was not on board then.  They went again at half-past ten:  he had not come.  Two men now placed themselves under the lamp immediately beside the gangway.  Another stayed by the office door, and one or two more up Mary Street—­the straight cut to the quay.  At a quarter to eleven the mail-bags were put on board.  Whilst the attention of the idlers was directed to the mails, down Mary Street came a man as boldly as possible.  The gait was Manston’s, but not the clothes.  He passed over to the shaded part of the street:  heads were turned.  I suppose this warned him, for he never emerged from the shadow.  They watched and waited, but the steward did not reappear.  The alarm was raised —­they searched the town high and low—­no Manston.  All this morning they have been searching, but there’s not a sign of him anywhere.  However, he has lost his last chance of getting across the Channel.  It is reported that he has since changed clothes with a labourer.’

During this narration, Edward, lost in thought, had let his eyes follow a shabby man in a smock-frock, but wearing light boots—­who was stalking down the street under a bundle of straw which overhung and concealed his head.  It was a very ordinary circumstance for a man with a bundle of straw on his shoulders and overhanging his head, to go down the High Street.  Edward saw him cross the bridge which divided the town from the country, place his shaggy encumbrance by the side of the road, and leave it there.

Springrove now parted from his acquaintance, and went also in the direction of the bridge, and some way beyond it.  As far as he could see stretched the turnpike road, and, while he was looking, he noticed a man to leap from the hedge at a point two hundred, or two hundred and fifty yards ahead, cross the road, and go through a wicket on the other side.  This figure seemed like that of the man who had been carrying the bundle of straw.  He looked at the straw:  it still stood alone.

The subjoined facts sprang, as it were, into juxtaposition in his brain:—­

Manston had been seen wearing the clothes of a labouring man—­a brown smock-frock.  So had this man, who seemed other than a labourer, on second thoughts:  and he had concealed his face by his bundle of straw with the greatest ease and naturalness.