'We must follow 'im up,' said Chippy at last. 'Track 'im down an' see wot it means.'
'Yes, we must,' agreed Dick. 'You see, Chippy, if he is an escaped convict, he may be a very dangerous character to be at large. I've heard of them attacking lonely places to get food and clothes to help them to escape.'
'I've heerd o' that, too,' said the leader of the Ravens; 'an' some o' the h'eth folk, they live in cottages all by theirselves.'
'Yes; and suppose such a man went to a place where there was no one at home but a woman, or a woman and children?' said Dick.
'Who knows wot 'e might do?' And Chippy shook his head. 'We're bound to lend a hand, then – Law 3, ye know.'
'Right you are, Chippy,' said Dick. 'Law 3. Come on!' And the two boy scouts, game as a pair of terriers, crept swiftly up to the clump of bushes from which the mysterious stranger had emerged.
From the bushes the track was easy to follow for some distance. There were no footmarks, but the ferns were brushed aside and some were broken, and these signs showed which way the man had gone. When the ferns were left behind, there was still a fair trail, for the heavy boots of the stranger had broken the grass, or scraped a little earth loose here and there along the slope of the ridge which led up to Woody Knap.
Suddenly the boys lost the trail. It disappeared on a strip of turf, and they slipped back at once to the last spot of which they could be sure – a soft patch of earth where hobnail marks were fresh and clear.
'Now we've got to separate and try to pick up the line,' said Dick softly. 'I'll work right, and you left; and we'll meet at that big thorn-bush right in front, if we've found nothing. If one of us hits on the track, he must call to the other.'
'Wait a bit,' said Chippy. 'Wot call? Our own calls 'ud sound odd, an' might give 'im the tip as somebody was arter 'im.'
'You're right,' said Dick; 'the wolf howl, at any rate, is no good here.'
'Let's 'ave a call for ourselves this time,' suggested Chippy. 'One as you might 'ear at any minute, an' never notice. How about the pewey?'
'First-rate!' said Dick. 'The pewey. There are plenty of them on the heath!'
Bardon boys always called the 'peewit' the 'pewey,' and every one of them could imitate its well-known call. Nothing more simple and natural could have been adopted as a signal.
Dick was working most carefully round his half of the circle, when the cry of the peewit rang out from the other side. Away shot Dick, quickly and quietly, and, as he ran, the call was repeated, and this guided him straight to the spot where Chippy was kneeling beside the mouth of a rabbit burrow. The rabbits had been at work making the burrow larger, and a trail of newly thrown out earth stretched three or four feet from the hole.
'Have you got the track?' breathed Dick eagerly.
'I've got summat,' replied Chippy; 'it looks pretty rum, too!'
Dick dropped beside his companion, and saw that a foot had been set fair and square in the trail of earth. But there was no sign of a nail to be seen; the track of the foot was smooth and flat, and outlined all the way from heel to toe.
'That's not a boot-mark,' said Dick.
'No, it ain't,' murmured Chippy. 'If you ask me, I should say it wor' stockin' feet.'
'But what should he pull his boots off for?' said Dick, knitting his brows. 'This is an awfully strange affair, Chippy.'
'Ain't it?' said the latter, his eyes glittering with all the excitement of the chase, and the pleasure of having found this queer mark. 'As far as I can mek' out, he wanted to step as soft as he could tread.'
'But why – why, in the middle of the heath, here?' went on Dick.
'I dunno yet,' said Chippy; 'let's get on a bit, an' see if we pick up summat else.'
Dick blew out a long breath. 'It's going to be jolly hard,' he murmured, 'to track a fellow in his stockings. We've got to keep our eyes open.'
Chippy nodded, and they went on slowly and warily. As it happened, Dick scored the next move in the game. Thirty yards from the rabbit burrow a heath track crossed the trail they were following. The weather had been very dry lately, until about twelve o'clock of the present day, when a heavy shower had fallen – a shower from which the scouts had sheltered in a hovel where the heath-folk store their turves.
This shower had wetted the dust of the track, and Dick at once saw clear, heavy footmarks, as if a man had quite lately walked along the path and gone on.
'Here's a perfectly fresh track,' said Dick; 'and this chap in his stockings has crossed it at this patch of grass where he has left no sign on the path.'
'Seems to me,' remarked Chippy, 'as 'im wot we're arter heerd this one a-comin',' and Chippy pointed to the firm new tracks; 'an' then he off wi' his boots to dodge along on the quiet.'
'I don't see anything else for it,' said Dick; 'and that would make it plainer than ever that he's up to no good.'
'Look theer!' snapped Chippy swiftly, and pointed.
Dick whirled round in time to see a man's head and shoulders appear over the bushes at a far bend of the way, and then vanish as the walker turned the corner. But both boys had recognised him. It was the sergeant with whom they had spoken.
Dick gave a long, low whistle. 'He was dodging the sergeant, Chippy!'
'It's a convict!' said Chippy. 'Can't be nuthin' else!'
For a moment the boys discussed the plan of running after the sergeant and laying the matter before him, but they gave it up, for several reasons. He was a good way ahead, and out of sight. He might turn right or left across the open heath, and in that case they would have to hunt his track while their quarry was going farther and farther away. They decided to stick to their man, and turned to his spoor.
'Here's his road,' said Dick, pointing along a grassy glade. 'He's gone on, and he must have gone this way. It's all bramble and gorse everywhere else, and a man isn't going through that in his stockings.'
Chippy nodded in agreement, and the two scouts ran at full apeed along the narrow ribbon of grass between the prickly, spiny bushes.
'He'll soon put his boots on again,' said Dick,' and then we'll get this line a lot easier.'
But the fugitive had not stayed to do so for a long way, as was plain from the flat, smooth marks which the boys found twice in soft places. Then the trail went again, and they pulled up and began to beat round in search of it. It was Dick this time who uttered the cry of the peewit, and Chippy ran up to find his brother scout holding a fragment of something in his fingers.
'Picked it up just here,' said Dick. 'What do you reckon it is. Chippy?'
'Bit of an old cork sock,' replied the Raven.
'Just so,' said Dick, 'and it's quite dry, so it was dropped here since the rain.'
'One to you,' said Chippy; 'that come out of 'is boot – jerked out as 'e was runnin'. We're on the line.'
He made a few steps forward, then gave a low cry. 'Here's the place where he put 'is boots on,' called Chippy eagerly. 'Here's all sorts o' marks.' And then Chippy gave another low cry, this time full of such astonishment and wonder that Dick looked at him quickly.
To Dick's surprise, Chippy seemed fixed to the spot, his finger pointing, his eyes staring, his mouth gaping open, as if he could not believe what he saw. 'I know the tracks,' gasped Chippy. 'I know 'im! I can tell yer who it is!'
CHAPTER XIII
ALBERT, WHO WASN'T ALBERT
'You know who it is?' cried Dick. 'Well, who?'
'It's Albert,' said Chippy. 'It ain't no convict at all. It's Albert.'
'Who's Albert?' asked Dick.
Chippy told the story of his grandmother's lodger, and pointed to the heel-mark before them. It was the first time since they hit the trail that the heel-mark had been clearly shown. 'Screws in the heel-tip,'