“I’m all right, Mr. Lindsey,” I answered cheerfully.  “I’ve been down to Jericho, it’s true, and to worse, but I chanced across a good Samaritan or two.  And I’ve looked out a clean and comfortable hotel for you, and we’ll go there now.”

I led them away to a good hotel that I had noticed in my walks, and while they took their suppers I sat by and told them all my adventure, to the accompaniment of many exclamations from my mother and Maisie.  But Mr. Lindsey made none, and I was quick to notice that what most interested him was that I had been to see Mr. Gavin Smeaton.

“But what for did you not come straight home when you were safely on shore again?” asked my mother, who was thinking of the expense I was putting her to.  “What’s the reason of fetching us all this way when you’re alive and well?”

I looked at Mr. Lindsey—­knowingly, I suppose.

“Because, mother,” I answered her, “I believed yon Carstairs would go back to Berwick and tell that there’d been a sad accident, and I was dead—­drowned—­and I wanted to let him go on thinking that I was dead—­and so I decided to keep away.  And if he is alive, it’ll be the best thing to let the man still go on thinking I was drowned—­as I’ll prove to Mr. Lindsey there.  If Carstairs is alive, I say, it’s the right policy for me to keep out of his sight and our neighbourhood.”

“Aye!” agreed Mr. Lindsey, who was a quick hand at taking up things.  “There’s something in that, Hugh.”

“Well, it’s beyond me, all this,” observed my mother, “and it all comes of me taking yon Gilverthwaite into the house!  But me and Maisie’ll away to our beds, and maybe you and Mr. Lindsey’ll get more light out of the matter than I can, and glad I’ll be when all this mystery’s cleared up and we’ll be able to live as honest folk should, without all this flying about the country and spending good money.”

I contrived to get a few minutes with Maisie, however, before she and my mother retired, and I found then that, had I known it, I need not have been so anxious and disturbed.  For they had attached no particular importance to the fact that I had not returned the night before; they had thought that Sir Gilbert had sailed his yacht in elsewhere, and that I would be turning up later, and there had been no great to-do after me until my own telegram had arrived, when, of course, there was consternation and alarm, and nothing but hurry to catch the next train north.  But Mr. Lindsey had contrived to find out that nothing had been seen of Sir Gilbert Carstairs and his yacht at Berwick; and to that point he and I at once turned when the women had gone to bed and I went with him into the smoking-room while he had his pipe and his drop of whisky.  By that time I had told him of the secret about the meeting at the cross-roads, and about my interview with Crone at his shop, and Sir Gilbert Carstairs at Hathercleugh, when he offered me the stewardship; and I was greatly relieved when Mr. Lindsey let me down lightly and said no more than that if I’d told him these things, at first, there might have been a great difference.