“He has been in the same oven as we,” retorted the other.

Here one of the others put in his word.  “That is not likely, captain; but if it is so there are no two ways.  A secret is no secret if all the world is to know it.”

“You remember our oath, Jem,” said the leader sternly.

“Why should I forget it more than another?” replied the other angrily.

“Have you all your knives?” asked the captain gloomily.  The men nodded assent.

“Cross them with me as we did when we took our oath first.”

The men stretched out each a brawny arm, and a long sharp knife, so that all the points came together in a focus; and this action suited well with their fierce and animal features, their long neglected beards, their matted hair and their gleaming eyes.  It looked the prologue to some deed of blood.  This done, at another word from their ruffianly leader they turned away from the angle in the rock and plunged hastily down the ravine; but they had scarcely taken thirty steps when they suddenly disappeared.

In the neighborhood of the small stream I have mentioned was a cavern of irregular shape that served these men for a habitation and place of concealment.  Nature had not done all.  The stone was soft, and the natural cavity had been enlarged and made a comfortable retreat enough for the hardy men whose home it was.  A few feet from the mouth of the cave on one side grew a stout bush that added to the shelter and the concealment, and on the other the men themselves had placed two or three huge stones, which, from the attitude the rogues had given them, appeared, like many others, to have rolled thither years ago from the rock above.

In this retreat the whole band were now silently couched, two of them in the mouth of the cave, Black Will and another lying flat on their stomachs watching the angle of the road for the two men who must pass that way, and listening for every sound.  Black Will was carefully and quietly sharpening his knife on one of the stones and casting back every now and then a meaning glance to his companions.  The pertinacity with which he held to his idea began to tell on them, and they sat in an attitude of sullen and terrible suspicion.  But Jem wore a look of contemptuous incredulity.  However small a society may be, if it is a human one jealousy shall creep in.  Jem grudged Black Will his captaincy.  Jem was intellectually a bit of a brute.  He was a stronger man than Will, and therefore thought it hard that merely because Will was a keener spirit, Will should be over him.  Half an hour passed thus, and the two travelers did not make their appearance.

“Not even coming this way at all,” said Jem.

“Hush!” replied Will sternly, “hold your tongue.  They must come this way, and they can’t be far off.  Jem, you can crawl out and see where they are, if you are clever enough to keep that great body out of sight.”

Jem resented this doubt cast upon his adroitness, and crawled out among the bushes.  He had scarcely got twenty yards when he halted and made a signal that the men were in sight.  Soon afterward he came back with less precaution.  “They are sitting eating their dinner close by, just on the sunny side of the rock—­shepherds, as I told you—­got a dog.  Go yourself if you don’t believe me.”