If the victim were dead, what aid could I render?  A knife had, I believed, been used, for my foot caught against it when I had started off after the fugitive.  The only doubt in my own mind was whether the unfortunate woman was actually dead, for if she were not then my disinclination to return to the scene of the tragedy was culpable.

Whether or not I acted rightly in remaining away from the place, I leave it to you to judge in the light of the amazing truth which afterwards transpired.

I decided to walk straight back to my uncle’s, and dinner was over before I had had my tub and dressed.  I therefore ate my meal alone, Davis, the grave old butler, serving me with that stateliness which always amused me.  I usually chatted with him when others were not present, but that night I remained silent, my mind full of that strange and startling affair of which I alone held secret knowledge.

Next day the body would surely be found; then the whole countryside would be filled with horror and surprise.  Was it possible that Leithcourt, that calm, well-groomed, distinguished-looking man, held any knowledge of the ghastly truth?  No.  His manner as he stood in the hall chatting gayly with me was surely not that of a man with a guilty secret.  I became firmly convinced that although the tragedy affected him very closely, and that it had occurred at the spot which he had each day visited for some mysterious purpose, yet up to the present he was in ignorance of what had transpired.

But who was the woman?  Was she young or old?

A thousand times I regretted bitterly that I had no matches with me so that I might examine her features.

One sudden thought that struck me as I sat there at table caused me to lay down my fork and pause in breathless bewilderment.  Was the victim that sweet-faced young girl whose photograph had been so ruthlessly cast from its frame and destroyed?  The theory was a weird one, but was it the truth?

I longed for the coming of the dawn when the Rannoch keepers would most certainly discover her.  Then at least I should know the truth, for I might go and see the body out of curiosity without arousing any suspicion.

I tried to play my usual game of billiards with my uncle, but my hand was so unsteady that the old gentleman began to chaff me.

“It’s the gun, I suppose,” I remarked.  “I’ve been carrying it all day, and am tired out.  I walked all the way home from Crossburn.”

“The Carmichaels are very thick with the Leithcourts, I hear,” my uncle remarked.  “Strange they didn’t ask Leithcourt to their shoot.”

“They did, but he’d got another engagement—­over at Kenmure Castle, I think.”

I retired to my room that night full of fevered apprehension.  Had I acted rightly in not returning to that lonely spot on the brow of the hill?  Had I done as a man should do in keeping the tragic secret to myself?