chill or something that's like to keep him there; and tonight he got me
to ride out here to meet a man whom he ought to have met himself--and
that's why I'm here and all that I have to do with it."

"You don't mean to say that--that!" he exclaimed, jerking his thumb at
the dead man; "that--that's the man you were to meet?"

"Who else?" said I. "Can you think of any other that it would be? And I'm
wondering if whoever killed this fellow, whoever he may be, wouldn't have
killed Mr. Gilverthwaite, too, if he'd come? This is no by-chance murder,
Chisholm, as you'll be finding out."

"Well, well, I never knew its like!" he remarked, staring from me to the
body, and from it to me. "You saw nobody about close by--nor in the
neighbourhood--no strangers on the road?"

I was ready for that question. Ever since finding the body, I had been
wondering what I should say when authority, either in the shape of a
coroner or a policeman, asked me about my own adventures that night. To
be sure, I had seen a stranger, and I had observed that he had lost a
couple of fingers, the first and second, of his right hand; and it was
certainly a queer thing that he should be in that immediate neighbourhood
about the time when this unfortunate man met his death. But it had been
borne in on my mind pretty strongly that the man I had seen looking at
his map was some gentleman-tourist who was walking the district, and had
as like as not been tramping it over Plodden Field and that historic
corner of the country, and had become benighted ere he could reach
wherever his headquarters were. And I was not going to bring suspicion on
what was in all probability an innocent stranger, so I answered
Chisholm's question as I meant to answer any similar one--unless, indeed,