instinct, was not only dead but had been cruelly murdered.

CHAPTER IV

THE MURDERED MAN

There may be folk in the world to whom the finding of a dead man, lying
grim and stark by the roadside, with the blood freshly run from it and
making ugly patches of crimson on the grass and the gravel, would be an
ordinary thing; but to me that had never seen blood let in violence,
except in such matters as a bout of fisticuffs at school, it was the
biggest thing that had ever happened, and I stood staring down at the
white face as if I should never look at anything else as long as I lived.
I remember all about that scene and that moment as freshly now as if the
affair had happened last night. The dead man lying in the crushed
grass--his arms thrown out helplessly on either side of him--the gloom of
the trees all around--the murmuring of the waters, where Till was pouring
its sluggish flood into the more active swirl and rush of the Tweed--the
hot, oppressive air of the night--and the blood on the dry road--all that
was what, at Mr. Gilverthwaite's bidding, I had ridden out from Berwick
to find in that lonely spot.

But I knew, of course, that James Gilverthwaite himself had not foreseen
this affair, nor thought that I should find a murdered man. And as I at
last drew breath, and lifted myself up a little from staring at the
corpse, a great many thoughts rushed into my head, and began to tumble
about over each other. Was this the man Mr. Gilverthwaite meant me to
meet? Would Mr. Gilverthwaite have been murdered, too, if he had come
there in person? And had the man been murdered for the sake of robbery?
But I answered that last question as soon as I asked it, and in the
negative, for the light of my lamp showed a fine, heavy gold watch-chain
festooned across the man's waistcoat--if murderously inclined thieves had
been at him, they were not like to have left that. Then I wondered if I
had disturbed the murderers--it was fixed in me from the beginning that
there must have been more than one in at this dreadful game--and if they
were still lurking about and watching me from the brushwood; and I made
an effort, and bent down and touched one of the nerveless hands. It was
stiffened already, and I knew then that the man had been dead some time.

And I knew another thing in that moment: poor Maisie, lying awake to
listen for the tap at her window, so that she might get up and peep round
the corner of her blind to assure her