made a most extraordinary reply. “By George and the Draggin!” cried Riderhood, “if he ain’t a going to bathe!”
He had passed back, on and among the trunks of trees again, and has passed on to the waterside and had begun undressing on the grass. For a moment it had a suspicious look of suicide, arranged to counterfeit accident. “But you wouldn’t have fetched a bundle under your arm, from among that timber, if such was your game!” said Riderhood. Nevertheless it was a relief to him when the bather after a plunge and a few strokes came out. “For I shouldn’t,” he said in a feeling manner, “have liked to lose you till I had made more money out of you neither.”
Prone in another ditch (he had changed his ditch as his man had changed his position), and holding apart so small a patch of the hedge that the sharpest eyes could not have detected him, Rogue Riderhood watched the bather dressing. And now gradually came the wonder that he stood up, completely clothed, another man, and not the bargeman.
“Aha!” said Riderhood. “Much as you was dressed that night. I see. You’re a taking me with you, now. You’re deep. But I knows a deeper.”
When the bather had finished dressing, he kneeled on the grass, doing something with his hands, and again stood up with his bundle under his arm. Looking all around him with great attention, he then went to the river’s edge, and flung it in as far, and yet as lightly as he could. It was not until he was so decidedly upon his way again as to be beyond a bend of the river and for the time out of view, that Riderhood scrambled from the ditch.
“Now,” was his debate with himself “shall I foller you on, or shall I let you loose for this once, and go a fishing?” The debate continuing, he followed, as a precautionary measure in any case, and got him again in sight. “If I was to let you loose this once,” said Riderhood then, still following, “I could make you come to me agin, or I could find you out in