and all the folk staring at him and me;
and for the life of me I could not think what other questions he could
get out of his brain to throw at me. But he found one, and put it with a
sharp cast of his eye.

"Now, did this man ever give you, while he was in your house, any reason
at all for his coming to Berwick?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered; "he did that when he came asking for lodgings. He said
he had folk of his own buried in the neighbourhood, and he was minded to
take a look at their graves and at the old places where they'd lived."

"Giving you, in fact, an impression that he was either a native of
these parts, or had lived here at some time, or had kindred that
had?" he asked.

"Just that," I replied.

"Did he tell you the names of such folk, or where they were buried, or
anything of that sort?" he suggested.

"No--never," said I. "He never mentioned the matter again."

"And you don't know that he ever went to any particular place to look at
any particular grave or house?" he inquired.

"No," I replied; "but we knew that he took his walks into the country on
both sides Tweed."

He hesitated a bit, looked at me and back at his papers, and then, with a
glance at the coroner, sat down. And the coroner, nodding at him as if
there was some understanding between them, turned to the jury.

"It may seem without the scope of this inquiry, gentlemen," he said,
"but the presence of this man Gilverthwaite in the neighbourhood has
evidently so much to do with the death of the other man, whom we know as
John Phillips, that we must not neglect any pertinent evidence. There is
a gentleman present that can tell us something. Call the Reverend
Septimus Ridley."

CHAPTER VIII

THE PARISH REGISTERS

I had noticed the Reverend Mr. Ridley sitting in the room with some other
gentlemen of the neighbourhood, and had wondered what had brought him, a
clergyman, there. I knew him well enough by sight. He was a vicar of a
lonely parish away up in the hills--a tall, thin, student-looking man
that you might occasionally see in the Berwick streets, walking very fast
with his eyes on the ground, as if, as the youngsters say, he was seeking
sixpences; and I should not have thought him likely to be attracted to an
affair of that sort by mere curiosity. And, whatever he might be in his
pulpit, he looked very nervous and shy as he stood up between the coroner
and the jury to give his evidence.

"Whatever are we going to h