“You’ll just come in, my lad, and sit you down to a hot supper that’s waiting you and Mr. Smeaton there,” he said, in that masterful way he had which took no denial from anybody.  “You can do no more good just now—­I’ve made every arrangement possible with the police, and they’re scouring the countryside.  So into that chair with you, and eat and drink—­you’ll be all the better for it.  Mr. Smeaton,” he went on, as he had us both to the supper-table and began to help us to food, “here’s news for you—­for such news as it is affects you, I’m thinking, more than any man that it has to do with.  Mr. Ridley here has found out something relating to Michael Carstairs that’ll change the whole course of events!—­especially if we prove, as I’ve no doubt we shall, that Michael Carstairs was no other than your father, whom you knew as Martin Smeaton.”

Smeaton turned in his chair and looked at Mr. Ridley, who—­he and Mr. Lindsey having taken their supper before we got in—­was sitting in a corner by the fire, eyeing the stranger from Dundee with evident and curious interest.

“I’ve heard of you, sir,” said he.  “You gave some evidence at the inquest on Phillips about Gilverthwaite’s searching of your registers, I think?”

“Aye; and it’s a fortunate thing—­and shows how one thing leads to another—­that Gilverthwaite did go to Mr. Ridley!” explained Mr. Lindsey.  “It set Mr. Ridley on a track, and he’s been following it up, and—­to cut matters short—­he’s found particulars of the marriage of Michael Carstairs, who was said to have died unmarried.  And I wish Portlethorpe hadn’t gone home to Newcastle before Mr. Ridley came to me with the news.”

Tired as I was, and utterly heart-sick about Maisie, I pricked up my ears at that.  For at intervals Mr. Lindsey and I had discussed the probabilities of this affair, and I knew that there was a strong likelihood of its being found out that the mysterious Martin Smeaton was no other than the Michael Carstairs who had left Hathercleugh for good as a young man.  And if it were established that he was married, and that Gavin Smeaton was his lawful son, why, then—­but Mr. Ridley was speaking, and I broke off my own speculations to listen to him.

“You’ve scarcely got me to thank for this, Mr. Smeaton,” he said.  “There was naturally a good deal of talk in the neighbourhood after that inquest on Phillips—­people began wondering what that man Gilverthwaite wanted to find in the parish registers, of which, I now know, he examined a good many, on both sides the Tweed.  And in the ordinary course of things—­and if some one had made a definite search with a definite object—­what has been found now could have been found at once.  But I’ll tell you how it was.  Up to some thirty years ago there was an old parish church away in the loneliest part of the Cheviots which had served a village that gradually went out of existence—­though it’s still got a name, Walholm, there’s but a house or two in it now; and as there was next