erwards
transpired.

I decided to walk straight back to my uncle's, and dinner was over
before I had had my tub and dressed. I therefore ate my meal alone,
Davis, the grave old butler, serving me with that stateliness which
always amused me. I usually chatted with him when others were not
present, but that night I remained silent, my mind full of that strange
and startling affair of which I alone held secret knowledge.

Next day the body would surely be found; then the whole countryside
would be filled with horror and surprise. Was it possible that
Leithcourt, that calm, well-groomed, distinguished-looking man, held any
knowledge of the ghastly truth? No. His manner as he stood in the hall
chatting gayly with me was surely not that of a man with a guilty
secret. I became firmly convinced that although the tragedy affected him
very closely, and that it had occurred at the spot which he had each day
visited for some mysterious purpose, yet up to the present he was in
ignorance of what had transpired.

But who was the woman? Was she young or old?

A thousand times I regretted bitterly that I had no matches with me so
that I might examine her features.

One sudden thought that struck me as I sat there at table caused me to
lay down my fork and pause in breathless bewilderment. Was the victim
that sweet-faced young girl whose photograph had been so ruthlessly cast
from its frame and destroyed? The theory was a weird one, but was it the
truth?

I longed for the coming of the dawn when the Rannoch keepers would most
certainly discover her. Then at least I should know the truth, for I
might go and see the body out of curiosity without arousing any
suspicion.

I tried to play my usual game of billiards with my uncle, but my hand
was so unsteady that the old gentleman began to chaff me.

"It's the gun, I suppose," I remarked. "I've been carrying it all day,
and am tired out. I walked all the way home from Crossburn."

"The Carmichaels are very thick with the Leithcourts, I hear," my uncle
remarked. "Strange they didn't ask Leithcourt to their shoot."

"They did, but he'd got another engagement--over at Kenmure Castle, I
think."

I retired to my room that night full of fevered apprehension. Had I
acted rightly in not returning to that lonely spot on the brow of the
hill? Had I done as a man should do in keeping the tragic secret to
myself?

I opened my window and gazed away across the dark Nithsdale, where, in
the