"I went into the inn for a glass of beer at eleven, as I always do, and heard them talking about it.

A young man was murdered last night up in Rannoch Wood.

The gamekeeper thought at first there'd been a fight among poachers, but from the dead man's clothes they say he isn't a poacher at all, but a stranger in this district." "The body was that of a man, then ?" I asked, trying to conceal my utter bewilderment.
"Yes--about thirty, they say.

The police have taken him to the mortuary at Dumfries, and the detectives are up there now looking at the spot, they say." A man! And yet the body I found was that of a woman--that I could swear.
After lunch I took the dog-cart and drove alone into Dumfries.
When I inquired of the police-constable on duty at the town mortuary to be allowed to view the body of the murdered man, he regarded me, I thought, with considerable suspicion.

My request was an unusual one.
Nevertheless, he took me up a narrow alley, unlocked a door, and I found myself in the cold, gloomy chamber of death.