The emphasis on the word "once" conveyed the suggestion which had
evidently just occurred to him.

"Oh, I know all about _that_ story." Alec spoke with the scorn of
superior information, casting off the disagreeable suggestion. "I was
there myself."

"You were, were you? Well, so was I, and I tell you I know no more than
babe unborn whether this old gentleman's Cameron or not."

Alec's mind was singularly free from any turn for speculative thought.
He intended to bring Bates to see the dead in the morning, and that
would decide the matter. He saw no sense in debating a question of fact.

"I was one of the fellows in that survey," explained Harkness, "and if
you're the fellow we saw at the station, as I reckon you are, then I
don't know any more about this old gentleman I've been housing than you
do."

Trenholme had an impulse to command silence, but, resisting it, only
kept silence himself and resumed his tread over the uneven ground.

"'Tisn't true," broke in the other again, in unexpected denial of his
own words, "that that's all I know. I know something more; 'tisn't much,
perhaps, but as I value my soul's salvation, I'll say it here. Before I
left the neighbourhood of Turrifs, I heard of this old gentleman here
a-making his way round the country, and I put in currency the report
that he was Cameron, and I've no doubt that that suggestion made the
country folks head him off towards Turrifs Station as far as they could