ur evidence that you saw Sir Gilbert Carstairs at yon cross-roads just
before you found the dead man? Come!"

You could have knocked me down with a feather, as the saying is, when he
said that. And before I could recover from the surprise of it, he had a
hand on my arm.

"Come this way," he said. "I'll have a word with you in private."

CHAPTER X

THE OTHER WITNESS

It was with a thumping heart and nerves all a-tingle that I followed Abel
Crone out of his front shop into a sort of office that he had at the back
of it--a little, dirty hole of a place, in which there was a ramshackle
table, a chair or two, a stand-up desk, a cupboard, and a variety of odds
and ends that he had picked up in his trade. The man's sudden revelation
of knowledge had knocked all the confidence out of me. It had never
crossed my mind that any living soul had a notion of my secret--for
secret, of course, it was, and one that I would not have trusted to
Crone, of all men in the world, knowing him as I did to be such a one for
gossip. And he had let this challenge out on me so sharply, catching me
unawares that I was alone with him, and, as it were, at his mercy, before
I could pull my wits together. Everything in me was confused. I was
thinking several things all at a time. How did he come to know? Had I
been watched? Had some person followed me out of Berwick that night? Was
this part of the general mystery? And what was going to come of it, now
that Abel Crone was aware that I knew something which, up to then, I had
kept back?

I stood helplessly staring at him as he turned up the wick of an oil
lamp that stood on a mantelpiece littered with a mess of small things,
and he caught a sight of my face when there was more light, and as he
shut the door on us he laughed--laughed as if he knew that he had me in a
trap. And before he spoke again he went over to the cupboard and took out
a bottle and glasses.

"Will you taste?" he asked, leering at me. "A wee drop, now? It'll do
you good."

"No!" said I.

"Then I'll drink for the two of us," he responded, and poured out a
half-tumblerful of whisky, to which he added precious little water.
"Here's to you, my lad; and may you have grace to take advantage of
your chances!"

He winked over the rim of his glass as he took a big pull at its
contents, and there was something so villainous in the look of him that
it did me good in the way of steeling my nerves again. For I now saw
that here