that day, he went on, was to hear such evidence--not much--as had already
been collected, and then to adjourn.

Mr. Lindsey had said to me as we drove along to the inn that I should
find myself the principal witness, and that Gilverthwaite would come into
the matter more prominently than anybody fancied. And this, of course,
was soon made evident. What there was to tell of the dead man, up to that
time, was little. There was the medical evidence that he had been stabbed
to death by a blow from a very formidable knife or dagger, which had been
driven into his heart from behind. There was the evidence which Chisholm
and I had collected in Peebles and at Cornhill station, and at the inn
across the Coldstream Bridge. There was the telegram which had been sent
by Mr. Gavin Smeaton--whoever he might be--from Dundee. And that was
about all, and it came to this: that here was a man who, in registering
at a Peebles hotel, called himself John Phillips and wrote down that he
came from Glasgow, where, up to that moment, the police had failed to
trace anything relating to such a person; and this man had travelled to
Cornhill station from Peebles, been seen in an adjacent inn, had then
disappeared, and had been found, about two hours later, murdered in a
lonely place.

"And the question comes to this," observed the coroner, "what was this
man doing at that place, and who was he likely to meet there? We have
some evidence on that point, and," he added, with one shrewd glance at
the legal folk in front of him and another at the jurymen at his side,
"I think you'll find, gentlemen of the jury, that it's just enough to
whet your appetite for more."

They had kept my evidence to the last, and if there had been a good deal
of suppressed excitement in the crowded room while Chisholm and the