self that her Hughie was alive and
safe, would have to lie quaking and speculating through the dark hours of
that night, for here was work that was going to keep me busied till day
broke. I set to it there and then, leaving the man just as I had found
him, and hastening back in the direction of the main road. As luck would
have it, I heard voices of men on Twizel Bridge, and ran right on the
local police-sergeant and a constable, who had met there in the course of
their night rounds. I knew them both, the sergeant being one Chisholm,
and the constable a man named Turndale, and they knew me well enough from
having seen me in the court at Berwick; and it was with open-mouthed
surprise that they listened to what I had to tell them. Presently we were
all three round the dead man, and this time there was the light of three
lamps on his face and on the gouts of blood that were all about him, and
Chisholm clicked his tongue sharply at what he saw.

"Here's a sore sight for honest folk!" he said in a low voice, as he bent
down and touched one of the hands. "Aye, and he's been dead a good hour,
I should say, by the feel of him! You heard nothing as you came down yon
lane, Mr. Hugh?"

"Not a sound!" I answered.

"And saw nothing?" he questioned.

"Nothing and nobody!" I said.

"Well," said he, "we'll have to get him away from this. You'll have to
get help," he went on, turning to the constable. "Fetch some men to help
us carry him. He'll have to be taken to the nearest inn for the
inquest--that's how the law is. I wasn't going to ask it while yon man
was about, Mr. Hugh," he continued, when Turndale had gone hurrying
towards the village; "but you'll not mind me asking it now--what were you
doing here yourself, at this hour?"

"You've a good right, Chisholm," said I; "and I'll tell you, for by all I
can see, there'll be no way of keeping it back, and it's no concern of
mine to keep it back, and I don't care who knows all about it--not me!
The truth is, we've a lodger at our house, one Mr. James Gilverthwaite,
that's a mysterious sort of man, and he's at present in his bed with a
chill or something that's like to keep him there; and tonight he got me
to ride out here to meet a man whom he ought to have met himself--and
that's why I'm here and all that I have to do with it."

"You don't mean to say that--that!" he exclaimed, jerking his thumb at
the dead man; "that--that's the man you were to meet?"

"Who else?" said I. "Ca