to sit down myself, when the glancing light of the lamp fell on a great
red stain that had spread itself, and was still spreading, over the sandy
ground in front of me. And I knew on the instant that this was the stain
of blood, and I do not think I was surprised when, advancing a step or
two further, I saw, lying in the roadside grass at my feet, the still
figure and white face of a man who, I knew with a sure and certain
instinct, was not only dead but had been cruelly murdered.




CHAPTER IV

THE MURDERED MAN


There may be folk in the world to whom the finding of a dead man, lying
grim and stark by the roadside, with the blood freshly run from it and
making ugly patches of crimson on the grass and the gravel, would be an
ordinary thing; but to me that had never seen blood let in violence,
except in such matters as a bout of fisticuffs at school, it was the
biggest thing that had ever happened, and I stood staring down at the
white face as if I should never look at anything else as long as I lived.
I remember all about that scene and that moment as freshly now as if the
affair had happened last night. The dead man lying in the crushed
grass--his arms thrown out helplessly on either side of him--the gloom of
the trees all around--the murmuring of the waters, where Till was pouring
its sluggish flood into the more active swirl and rush of the Tweed--the
hot, oppressive air of the night--and the blood on the dry road--all that
was what, at Mr. Gilverthwaite's bidding, I had ridden out from Berwick