didn't choose," he retorted.

We both looked at each other again, and while we looked he swigged off
his drink and helped himself, just as generously, to more. And, as I was
getting bolder by that time, I set to work at questioning him.

"You'll be attaching some importance to what you saw?" said I.

"Well," he replied slowly, "it's not a pleasant thing--for a man's
safety--to be as near as what he was to a place where another man's just
been done to his death."

"You and I were near enough, anyway," I remarked.

"We know what we were there for," he flung back at me. "We don't know
what he was there for."

"Put your tongue to it, Mr. Crone," I said boldly. "The fact is, you
suspicion him?"

"I suspicion a good deal, maybe," he admitted. "After all, even a man of
that degree's only a man, when all's said and done, and there might be
reasons that you and me knows nothing about. Let me ask you a question,"
he went on, edging nearer at me across the table. "Have you mentioned it
to a soul?"

I made a mistake at that, but he was on me so sharp, and his manner was
so insistent, that I had the word out of my lips before I thought.

"No!" I replied. "I haven't."

"Nor me," he said. "Nor me. So--you and me are the only two folk
that know."

"Well?" I asked.

He took another pull at his liquor and for a moment or two sat silent,
tapping his finger-nails against the rim of the glass.

"It's a queer business, Moneylaws," he said at last. "Look at it anyway
you like, it's a queer business! Here's one man, yon lodger of your
mother's, comes into the town and goes round the neighbourhood reading
the old parish registers and asking questions at the parson's--aye,
and he was at it both sides of the Tweed--I've found that much out
for myself! For what purpose? Is there money at the back of
it--property--something of that sort, dependent on this Gilverthwaite
unearthing some facts or other out of those old books? And then comes
another man, a stranger, that's as mysterious in his movements as
Gilverthwaite was, and he's to meet Gilverthwaite at a certain lonely
spot, and at a very strange hour, and Gilverthwaite can't go, and he gets
you to go, and you find the man--murdered! And--close by--you've seen
this other man, who, between you and me--though it's no secret--is as
much a stranger to the neighbourhood as ever Gilverthwaite was or
Phillips was!"

"I don't follow you at that," I said.

"No?" said he. "Then I'll ma