tream side of the bridge, nobody seemed to have seen him until I
myself found his body.

There was another back-set for us when we reached Berwick--in the reply
from Dundee. It was brief and decisive enough. "Have no knowledge
whatever of any person named John Phillips--Gavin Smeaton." So, for the
moment, there was nothing to be gained from that quarter.

Mr. Lindsey and I were at the inn where the body had been taken, and
where the inquest was to be held, early next morning, in company with
the police, and amidst a crowd that had gathered from all parts of
the country. As we hung about, waiting the coroner's arrival, a
gentleman rode up on a fine bay horse--a good-looking elderly man,
whose coming attracted much attention. He dismounted and came towards
the inn door, and as he drew the glove off his right hand I saw that
the first and second fingers of that hand were missing. Here, without
doubt, was the man whom I had seen at the cross-roads just before my
discovery of the murder!

CHAPTER VII

THE INQUEST ON JOHN PHILLIPS

Several of the notabilities of the neighbourhood had ridden or driven to
the inn, attracted, of course, by curiosity, and the man with the maimed
hand immediately joined them as they stood talking apart from the rest of
us. Now, I knew all such people of our parts well enough by sight, but I
did not know this man, who certainly belonged to their class, and I
turned to Mr. Lindsey, asking him who was this gentleman that had just
ridden up. He glanced at me with evident surprise at my question.

"What?" said he. "You don't know him? That's the man there's been so much
talk about lately--Sir Gilbert Carstairs of Hathercleugh House, the new
successor to the old baronetcy."

I knew at once what he meant. Between Norham and Berwick, overlooking the
Tweed, and on the English side of the river, stood an ancient,
picturesque, romantic old place, half-mansion, half-castle, set in its
own grounds, and shut off from the rest of the world by high walls and
groves of pine and fir, which had belonged for many a generation to the
old family of Carstairs. Its last proprietor, Sir Alexander Carstairs,
sixth baronet, had been a good deal of a recluse, and I never remember
seeing him but once, when I caught sight of him driving in the town--a
very, very old man who looked like what he really was, a hermit. He had
been a widower for many long years, and though he had three children, it
was little compan