Dead Men's Money

crimson on the grass and the gravel, would be an ordinary thing; but to me that had never seen blood let in violence, except in such matters as a bout of fisticuffs

on either side of him-the gloom of the trees all around-the murmuring of the waters, where Till was pouring its sluggish flood into the more active swirl and rush of the Tweed-

ite have been murdered, too, if he had come there in person? And had the man been murdered for the sake of robbery? But I answered that last question as soon as I asked it, and in the negative, for the light of my lamp showed a fine, heavy gold watch-chain festooned across the man's waistcoat-if murderously inclined thieves had been at him, they were not like to have left that.

t there and then, leaving the man just as I had found him, and hastening back in the direction of the main road. As luck would have it, I heard voices of men on Twizel Bridge, and ran right on the local police-sergeant and a constable, who had met there in the course of their night rounds. I knew them both, the sergeant being one Chisholm, and the constable a man named Turnda

and touched one of the hands. "Aye, and he's been dead a good hour, I should

ound!" I

thing?" he

and nobod

y 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

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 s

laimed, jerking his thumb at the dead man

whoever killed this fellow, whoever he may be, wouldn't have killed Mr. Gilverthwaite

om me to the body, and from it to me. "You saw nobody about

; 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

ere," said I. "It's not likely there'd

ce. "Anyway, he's not known to me, and I've been in these parts twenty years. And altogether it's a fine mys

ty years or so,-dressed in a gentlemanlike fashion, and wearing good boots and linen and a tweed suit of the sort affected by tourists. There was a good deal of money in his pockets-bank-notes, gold, and silver-and an expensive watch and chain, and other such things that a gentleman would carry; and it seemed very evident that robbery

and the time was creeping on to morning), and that the dead man must accordingly have come to Coldstream not many hours before his death; "and we'll likely find something about him from either Dundee or Peebles. But I'

?" I

such a man would be without letters and that sort of thing in his pockets? Like as not he'd carry his pocket-book,

had been killed on the spot by a single blow from a knife or dagger which had been thrust into his heart from behind with tremendous force, and the thought of it was sicke

h, there's just one man hereabouts that can give us some light on this affair straightaway-if he will-and that the lodger you were telling me of. And I

again-was this some man who had come upon Mr. Gilverthwaite's correspondent, and, for some reason, been murdered by him? It was, however, all beyond me just then, and presently the sergeant and I were on our machines and making for Berwick. But we had not been set out half an hour, and were only just where we cou

hlessly. "But you must get back with me quickly. Yon lodger of you