d it doesn't
take me long to see a thing that's put plain before them."

"Well?" said I, seeing quick enough that she'd some notion in her mind.
"You've found something out?"

Without answering the question in words she went out of the kitchen and
up the stairs, and presently came back to us, carrying in one hand a
man's collar and in the other Gilverthwaite's blue serge jacket. And she
turned the inside of the collar to us, pointing her finger to some words
stamped in black on the linen.

"Take heed of that!" she said. "He'd a dozen of those collars,
brand-new, when he came, and this, you see, is where he bought them; and
where he bought them, there, too, he bought his ready-made suit of
clothes--that was brand-new as well,--here's the name on a tab inside the
coat: Brown Brothers, Gentlemen's Outfitters, Exchange Street, Liverpool.
What does all that prove but that it was from Liverpool he came?"

"Aye!" I said. "And it proves, too, that he was wanting an outfit when he
came to Liverpool from--where? A long way further afield, I'm thinking!
But it's something to know as much as that, and you've no doubt hit on a
clue that might be useful, mother. And if we can find out that the other
man came from Liverpool, too, why then--"

But I stopped short there, having a sudden vision of a very wide world of
which Liverpool was but an outlet. Where had Gilverthwaite last come from
when he struck Liverpool, and set himself up with new clothes and linen?
And had this mysterious man who had met such a terrible fate come also
from some far-off part, to join him in whatever it was that had brought
Gilverthwaite to Berwick? And--a far more important thing,--mysterious as
these two men were, what about the equally mysterious man that was
somewhere in the background--the murderer?

Chisholm and I had no great difficulty--indeed, we had nothing that you
might call a difficulty--in finding out something about the murdered man
at Peebles. We had the half-ticket with us, and we soon got hold of the
booking-clerk who had issued it on the previous afternoon. He remembered
the looks of the man to whom he had sold it, and described him to us well
enough. Moreover, he found us a ticket-collector who remembered that same
man arriving in Peebles two days before, and giving up a ticket from
Glasgow. He had a reason for remembering him, for the man had asked him
to recommend him to a good hotel, and had given him a two-shilling piece
for his