Then he stopped suddenly, shuddered, and looked round the room fearfully.
Then he drew himself painfully from the bed and to a box lying in the corner of the room, opened it, and, with another shudder, took something from it.
This something he held in his hand and stared at with an evident horror of fascination.
In his anxiety to see what the article was, Leicester nearly lost his balance, and made a slight noise.
The lad started, and the something dropped with a clash to the floor, revealing itself to be a large clasp-knife.
Leicester could scarcely believe his eyes.
Was the lad mad? or had he committed murder? Why did he sit and shudder over a clasp-knife which he kept hidden in his bedroom?
He got down and motioned Stumpy to his place.
Stumpy was just in time to see the knife hidden away, and on receiving a full account of all Leicester had seen was equally puzzled about it.
"It's very rum!" he said, shaking his head. "There's been some foul work somewhere, sir, take my word for it. What's that youngster got that knife for? It's no common one, or he wouldn't carry on like that over it. All the more reason, all this is, that we should keep dark and play a waiting game."
Then, with respectful earnestness, he implored Leicester to take some rest, and Leicester, to humor the man, who, however much a convict, had served him honestly, yielded.
On the morrow both men were up at sunrise.
Stumpy went down to the beach, and smoked a cigarette Spanish fashion among the fishermen, to whom he chatted and listened with the greatest liveliness.
He could not, however, learn anything and returned rather disappointed.
Not so Leicester, who entered the room looking as white and stern as a ghost, and who laid a soiled sheet of paper upon the table.
"Look at that!" he said. "Stumpy, look at it!"
"I took it from an old wall at the end of the village," said Leicester, pacing up and down.
It was the handbill offering a hundred pounds reward for the apprehension of Leicester Dodson, charged with the willful murder of James Starling.
No sooner had Stumpy read it than he grew alarmed.
"Some of 'em don't think you're dead," he said; "and this here's a dangerous place. That wig might blow off in the wind, and then where would you be? No, no, London's the place for us! We shan't get any more out of this yet a while, and if we stop here somebody will get suspicious. That bill's enough to make the dullest chap in England sharp. A hundred pounds!"