Chapter XLI.  The Last Of The Kinlays.

Thora Quendale—­as I must now call my young girl friend—­returned that evening to her old home at Crua Breck.  We walked together that far over the hardened snow; and many were the questions she asked me concerning all that I had seen and learnt of her dead father.  What was he like?  Was he tall, and great, and noble as she imagined him?  What was the colour of his hair?  How old did I think he was?  And did I suppose he had suffered much in that dreadful ice prison in the far north?

To all of which I answered as best I could, with my very slight knowledge of the facts she was so much interested in.  O, if I had only known who that passenger was that lay dead in the captain’s room!  I could perhaps have discovered more about him before the ship went down.

As we walked side by side across the white moorland, my companion looked again and again at the glittering ring on her finger.

“I am glad,” I said, “that I happened to bring the ring away with me.”

She sighed.

“I’d rather you had brought my mother’s picture.  That would have been more to me than anything else.”

“Alas!” I said.  “But I did not know then that it was the picture of your mother, Thora; and I thought it would be wrong to take it from his hand.  For it was perhaps the only thing he had to look upon in those weary long days in the ice prison that could remind him of his happier times.  I think it must have been the last thing his eyes rested upon while his life lingered.”

“Maybe you’re right, Halcro,” said she; “but I’d like to have seen the picture.

“Tell me,” she continued, “d’ye know where my mother’s grave is?”

“Yes, well do I know it, and I’ll take you to it some day when the snow is away.”

We walked along silently after this, and parted at the gate of Crua Breck farm.

A few days after Bailie Duke’s preliminary examination of witnesses, the procurator fiscal—­the official by whom such inquiries are conducted in Scotland on behalf of the Crown—­arrived from Kirkwall.  The case had already been made clear in preparation for him, and he had little else to do than take the evidence formally and arrange it in legal order.

The matter became somewhat involved with the action against the smugglers, for it transpired that Tom Kinlay had, after telling his father of the affair at the inn, been sent by Carver to spy on Colin Lothian, and to watch the cliffs and give an alarm in case the revenue authorities had determined to institute a plan of attack from the land.  The evidence against him was too strong to admit of a doubt as to the ultimate issue of the examination, and a single day’s inquiry was sufficient to establish the case against him.  He was accordingly carried off to Kirkwall, and there committed to prison on the charge of having “wilfully, wickedly, and with malice aforethought, murdered Colin Lothian by shooting him with a gun.”