Its last proprietor, Sir Alexander Carstairs, sixth baronet, had been a good deal of a recluse, and I never remember seeing him but once, when I caught sight of him driving in the town--a very, very old man who looked like what he really was, a hermit.

He had been a widower for many long years, and though he had three children, it was little company that he seemed to have ever got out of them, for his elder son, Mr.Michael Carstairs, had long since gone away to foreign parts, and had died there; his younger son, Mr.Gilbert, was, it was understood, a doctor in London, and never came near the old place; and his one daughter, Mrs.Ralston, though she lived within ten miles of her father, was not on good terms with him.

It was said that the old gentleman was queer and eccentric, and hard to please or manage; however that may be, it is certain that he lived a lonely life till he was well over eighty years of age.

And he had died suddenly, not so very long before James Gilverthwaite came to lodge with us; and Mr.Michael being dead, unmarried, and therefore without family, the title and estate had passed to Mr.Gilbert, who had recently come down to Hathercleugh House and taken possession, bringing with him--though he himself was getting on in years, being certainly over fifty--a beautiful young wife whom, they said, he had recently married, and was, according to various accounts which had crept out, a very wealthy woman in her own right.
So here was Sir Gilbert Carstairs, seventh baronet, before me, chatting away to some of the other gentlemen of the neighbourhood, and there was not a doubt in my mind that he was the man whom I had seen on the road the night of the murder.

I was close enough to him now to look more particularly at his hand, and I saw that the two first fingers had completely disappeared, and that the rest of it was no more than a claw.
It was not likely there could be two men in our neighbourhood thus disfigured.