“Here’s a sore sight for honest folk!” he said in a low voice, as he bent down and touched one of the hands.  “Aye, and he’s been dead a good hour, I should say, by the feel of him!  You heard nothing as you came down yon lane, Mr. Hugh?”

“Not a sound!” I answered.

“And saw nothing?” he questioned.

“Nothing and nobody!” I said.

“Well,” said he, “we’ll have to get him away from this.  You’ll have to get help,” he went on, turning to the constable.  “Fetch some men to help us carry him.  He’ll have to be taken to the nearest inn for the inquest—­that’s how the law is.  I wasn’t going to ask it while yon man was about, Mr. Hugh,” he continued, when Turndale had gone hurrying towards the village; “but you’ll not mind me asking it now—­what were you doing here yourself, at this hour?”

“You’ve a good right, Chisholm,” said I; “and I’ll tell you, for by all I can see, there’ll be no way of keeping it back, and it’s no concern of mine to keep it back, and I don’t care who knows all about it—­not me!  The truth is, we’ve a lodger at our house, one Mr. James Gilverthwaite, that’s a mysterious sort of man, and he’s at present in his bed with a chill or something that’s like to keep him there; and tonight he got me to ride out here to meet a man whom he ought to have met himself—­and that’s why I’m here and all that I have to do with it.”

“You don’t mean to say that—­that!” he exclaimed, jerking his thumb at the dead man; “that—­that’s the man you were to meet?”

“Who else?” said I.  “Can you think of any other that it would be?  And I’m wondering if whoever killed this fellow, whoever he may be, wouldn’t have killed Mr. Gilverthwaite, too, if he’d come?  This is no by-chance murder, Chisholm, as you’ll be finding out.”

“Well, well, I never knew its like!” he remarked, staring from me to the body, and from it to me.  “You saw nobody about close by—­nor in the neighbourhood—­no strangers on the road?”

I was ready for that question.  Ever since finding the body, I had been wondering what I should say when authority, either in the shape of a coroner or a policeman, asked me about my own adventures that night.  To be sure, I had seen a stranger, and I had observed that he had lost a couple of fingers, the first and second, of his right hand; and it was certainly a queer thing that he should be in that immediate neighbourhood about the time when this unfortunate man met his death.  But it had been borne in on my mind pretty strongly that the man I had seen looking at his map was some gentleman-tourist who was walking the district, and had as like as not been tramping it over Plodden Field and that historic corner of the country, and had become benighted ere he could reach wherever his headquarters were.  And I was not going to bring suspicion on what was in all probability an innocent stranger, so I answered Chisholm’s question as I meant to answer any similar one—­unless, indeed, I had reason to alter my mind.