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 The setting of a trap for finding out whether it was accidentally done, soon superseded, as a practical piece of cunning, the abstruser inquiry why otherwise it was done. And he devised a means.
Rogue Riderhood went into his lock-house, and brought forth, into the now sober grey light, his chest of clothes. Sitting on the grass beside it, he turned out, one by one, the articles it contained, until he came to a conspicuous bright red neckerchief stained black here and there by wear. It arrested his attention, and he sat pausing over it, until he took off the rusty colourless wisp that he wore round his throat, and substituted the red neckerchief, leaving the long ends flowing. “Now,” said the Rogue, “if arter he sees me in this neckhankecher, I see him in a sim’lar neckhankecher, it won’t be accident!” Elated by his device, he carried his chest in again and went to supper.
“Lock ho! Lock!” It was a light night, and a barge coming down summoned him out of a long doze. In due course he had let the barge through and was alone again, looking to the closing of his gates, when Bradley Headstone appeared before him, standing on the brink of the lock.
“Halloa!” said Riderhood. “Back a’ ready, t’otherest?”
“He has put up for the night, at an Angler’s Inn,” was the fatigued and hoarse reply. “He goes on, up the river, at six in the morning. I have come back for a couple of hours’ rest.”