back. The frenzied shriek he uttered the moment Hutcheson touched him, was the one which had startled Falcon.

Girzie heard the rattle of the approaching wheels. She was desperate; and she clasped Hutcheson's throat with her long bony fingers, in which was the strength of desperation. "Let him go," she cried.

She was behind him, the Laird was wrestling in his grasp. He held him with one hand, whilst with the other he endeavoured to unfasten the fingers which were throttling him.

But they held so tightly that he would have been obliged to release the Laird had not the gig they had heard approaching driven up, stopped beside them, and two men jumped out.

The light from the stable enabled the Laird to recognise the fiscal and Geordie Armstrong; and uttering a stifled cry he fell to the ground writhing in a species of fit.

Girzie instantly released Hutcheson; he turned, and would have seized her, but Falcon, who had reached the spot almost instantaneously with the fiscal, stayed him.

She shrank away, seeing that it was all over, that her help had come too late.

CHAPTER L.

PROOFS.

"O front of brass and brain of ass,
With heart of hare compounded;

How are thy boasts repaid with costs,

And all thy pride confounded!"-Old Ballad.

THE paper which Mrs. Begg had seen the Laird hiding under the large stone that lay loose in front of the Clashgirn door, and which she had carried to the fiscal, revealed the manner in which Wattie Todd met his death. It purported to be written to Carrach's dictation by his mate Donald on board the schooner Ailsa, and showed that both Carrach and the Laird were mistaken as to the identity of the man who had fallen.

Donald, being questioned, denied all knowledge of the

paper, and wrote a few words of it under the fiscal's direction, displaying quite a different style of caligraphy. Mr. Carnegie thereupon closely examined the penmanship, and, in spite of the careful attempt at disguise, proved it to be McWhapple's own by comparison with letters in his possession which were undoubtedly written by him.

After explaining that the confession was made to ease his conscience, and to show that he was not so guilty as might be supposed, the statement proceeded—and it is only necessary to give here the portions which explain the little that was left dark after Donald's confession and the Laird's revelation to Falcon :

"I hung about Askaig all day in order to make sure that James Falcon quitted the place that night. I had been drinking whisky during the night before and during the day; and I had two bottles with me when Donald went away. My head was not clear, for besides drinking much, I had not had any sleep. As the storm grew louder I stole up to the barn which faces the door of Askaig house and hid myself there. It was dark then and I had no fear of being seen.

66

I saw Cairnieford arrive, and heard his horse clattering away soon afterwards. I looked out again and then crept over to the window. Cairnieford and his mistress were still there. So was Falcon. They were quarrelling. I was nearly caught by Rab Keith, but he went into the house without seeing me. I was going to creep back to the barn when Cairnieford ran out. He sought round the place, I supposed for his horse. He nearly came upon me two or three times, but it was so dark that he had no chance of seeing me except when the lightning flashed. He was muttering in a daft way to himself. I saw him pass the door again, and that was the last I saw of him.

"Rab Keith came out, shouting something that I could not hear for the noise of the spate and the wind and the rain. He came close to me, and I crept round to the back of the house to get out of his way. I do not know how long I stopped there, maybe half an hour; then I started to get to the

window again or the barn-I cannot mind which of them I was going to but when I turned the corner of the house next the road I knocked against a man, who clutched at me and caught the end of a plaid I was wearing. He shouted something, but I broke from him and ran. I'm a heavy man, and not a quick runner. The chiel' kept at my heels, and I found myself at the fence of the Brownie's Bite.

"The chiel' gripped me again, and a flash of lightning let me see that it was Falcon who had hold of me; and I supposed that he knew me at the same time, for he grasped me tighter. I strove with him, trying to break away from him but he held on. I tried to throw him down, but he got the plaid with his teeth and his hands clasped round my neck. I got savage at that, struck him and flung him from me. I heard the fence crack, loud as the wind blew-I heard an awful skirl, loud as the spate roared—and I knew that Falcon had gone over the Bite. I ran away from the place, and will never go near it again if I can help it.

"I did not like the chiel' because he was trying to harm me. But when I struck him I had no thought of anything more than just to gar him let go; when I flung him from me I had forgot that we were on the brow of the Bite. I was not meaning to kill him; it was an accident; and it might have happened to me as well as to him. I was sorry for him; but I could not expect other folk to believe it was an accident; and so I mean to keep clear of the place. All this is solemn truth.

his

"IVAN CARRACH,

mark

"Witness-JEANIE GRAY."

This paper Jeanie identified without hesitation as the one she had signed; and the spots of ink, made by the pen slipping when Carrach had been drawing his mark, were there. Her signature to the receipt which had been placed in the fiscal's hands so freely was declared to be a forgery. That explained why the Laird had refused to show the document to Mr. Car

negie and Jeanie. He required time to trace her name on a document which would be harmless to himself and comparatively so to Carrach.

That same night the fiscal removed his three prisoners to the safe keeping of the county jail. The Laird was in such a condition that he required constant attendance, and the doctor said he doubted if he would ever recover from the shock.

Of course there was a fine ado in the Port when scraps of the singular story got about, dressed up with all the fantastic ornaments in which gossip delights to array her subjects. The kirk folk lingered much longer than usual amongst the tombstones next day, and there was a very general opinion that Jeanie was a fine body, James Falcon was an honest lad, and that Robin Gray had been hasty. There were few who really understood the generous nature of all three, which had been so severely tried by the petty machinations of a man whose guilty conscience sought protection from unknown dangers.

Geordie Armstrong was a man of high importance on this day. His diligence had been commended by the fiscal; and everybody was anxious to speak to him, as he was supposed to know all the ins and outs of the strange story. So Geordie, who had always been sensible of his own consequence, fancied that the folk were at last beginning to recognize his merit. They had laughed at him for the many blunders he had committed in his official capacity when, as he thought with some reason possibly-that most of them would have made the same blunder under the same circumstances.

For instance, when Adam Lindsay's cow had been “lifted,” Geordie had set off in hot pursuit of the thief to Glasgow in consequence of having been told that a man had been seen driving a cow in that direction. He had not paused to learn what the beast or the man was like, and on his way to the city he had overtaken several cows and several men. Having thus a selection of possible criminals he made his choice accordingly. But to the utter confusion of his charge,

the cow proved to be a fine stirk; and soon afterwards good reasons were found for believing that Lindsay's beast had been driven off to Sanquhar, the direction upon which Geordie had obstinately turned his back.

He was much laughed at for this and similar misadventures; but he had at length obtained an opportunity to distinguish himself, and he made the most of it.

He was up early on this Sabbath morning, and before kirktime he took a stroll down by the Links. He passed the place where Jeanie had been seized by Carrach, but of course the mounds displayed no traces of a struggle, and the tide had washed out all imprints on the beach. Geordie had taken his notion of seeking corroboration of Mrs. Gray's statement of her forcible abduction from the fact that the fiscal had made much of the footprints on the brow of the Brownie's Bite, and he began to think that he was to be disappointed.

With his disappointment he began to scent a new mystery. What if he should be able to present quite a new version of the affair-or, at any rate, that part of it which related to Mrs. Gray's voyage? Vanity assumes the most dangerous shape when it tempts a man to an effort to prove his own exceeding cleverness. Geordie was exactly in that state of mind now.

He looked about with profound suspicion of something not perfectly correct in Mrs. Gray's deposition. Luckily for himself, and perhaps for others, whilst he looked and meditated he discovered the small anchor by which Carrach had secured the boat when he landed. The Laird having cut the rope to bind Jeanie, the anchor had been forgotten in the Highlander's hurry to get away with his double prize. Geordie was unable to associate the anchor with the affair, but he took it in charge on suspicion, as he would have done the beach itself if he had only been able to carry it on his shoulder. Marching off with his discovery and crossing the Links, he next found Jeanie's plaid.

That changed the whole current of his thoughts. For although he did not recognize the plaid as Mrs. Gray's, not