y that he seemed to have ever got out of them, for his
elder son, Mr. Michael Carstairs, had long since gone away to foreign
parts, and had died there; his younger son, Mr. Gilbert, was, it was
understood, a doctor in London, and never came near the old place; and
his one daughter, Mrs. Ralston, though she lived within ten miles of her
father, was not on good terms with him. It was said that the old
gentleman was queer and eccentric, and hard to please or manage; however
that may be, it is certain that he lived a lonely life till he was well
over eighty years of age. And he had died suddenly, not so very long
before James Gilverthwaite came to lodge with us; and Mr. Michael being
dead, unmarried, and therefore without family, the title and estate had
passed to Mr. Gilbert, who had recently come down to Hathercleugh House
and taken possession, bringing with him--though he himself was getting on
in years, being certainly over fifty--a beautiful young wife whom, they
said, he had recently married, and was, according to various accounts
which had crept out, a very wealthy woman in her own right.

So here was Sir Gilbert Carstairs, seventh baronet, before me, chatting
away to some of the other gentlemen of the neighbourhood, and there was
not a doubt in my mind that he was the man whom I had seen on the road
the night of the murder. I was close enough to him now to look more
particularly at his hand, and I saw that the two first fingers had
completely disappeared, and that the rest of it was no more than a claw.
It was not likely there could be two men in our neighbourhood thus
disfigured. Moreover, the general build of the man, the tweed suit of
grey that he was wearing, the attitude in which he stood, all convinced
me that this was the person I had seen at the cross-roads, holding his
electric torch to the face of his map. And I made up my mind there and
then to say nothing in my evidence about that meeting, for I had no
reason to connect such a great gentleman as Sir Gilbert Carstairs with
the murder, and it seemed to me that his presence at those cross-roads
was easily enough explained. He was a big, athletic man and was likely
fond of a walk, and had been taking one that evening, and, not as yet
being over-familiar with the neighbourhood--having lived so long away
from it,--had got somewhat out of his way in returning home. No, I would
say nothing. I had been brought up to have a firm belief in the old
proverb which tell