Lord bless you, man, the news'll be all over the country within forty-eight hours! If this Gilverthwaite has folk of his own, they'll be here fast as crows hurry to a new-sown field! Let the news of it once out, and you'll wish that such men as newspaper reporters had never been born.

You can't keep these things quiet; and if we're going to get to the bottom of all this, then publicity's the very thing that's needed." All this was said in the presence of my mother, who, being by nature as quiet a body as ever lived, was by no means pleased to know that her house was, as it were, to be made a centre of attraction.

And when Mr.
Lindsey and the police had gone away, and she began getting some breakfast ready for me before my going to meet Chisholm at the station, she set on to bewail our misfortune in ever taking Gilverthwaite into the house, and so getting mixed up with such awful things as murder.

She should have had references with the man, she said, before taking him in, and so have known who she was dealing with.

And nothing that either I or Maisie--who was still there, staying to be of help, Tom Dunlop having gone home to tell his father the great news--could say would drive out of her head the idea that Gilverthwaite, somehow or other, had something to do with the killing of the strange man.