I had reason to alter my mind.

"I saw nobody and heard nothing--about here," said I. "It's not likely
there'd be strangers in this spot at midnight."

"For that matter, the poor fellow is a stranger himself," said he, once
more turning his lamp on the dead face. "Anyway, he's not known to me,
and I've been in these parts twenty years. And altogether it's a fine
mystery you've hit on, Mr. Hugh, and there'll be strange doings before
we're at the bottom of it, I'm thinking."

That there was mystery in this affair was surer than ever when, having
got the man to the nearest inn, and brought more help, including a
doctor, they began to examine him and his clothing. And now that I saw
him in a stronger light, I found that he was a strongly built, well-made
man of about Mr. Gilverthwaite's age--say, just over sixty years or
so,--dressed in a gentlemanlike fashion, and wearing good boots and linen
and a tweed suit of the sort affected by tourists. There was a good deal
of money in his pockets--bank-notes, gold, and silver--and an expensive
watch and chain, and other such things that a gentleman would carry; and
it seemed very evident that robbery had not been the motive of the
murderers. But of papers that could identify the man there was
nothing--in the shape of paper or its like there was not one scrap in all
the clothing, except the return half of a railway ticket between Peebles
and Coldstream, and a bit of a torn bill-head giving the name and address
of a tradesman in Dundee.

"There's something to go on, anyway," remarked Chisholm, as he carefully
put these things aside after pointing out to us that the ticket was
dated on what was now the previous day (for it was already well past