d said. He was a quiet, respectable, sober sort of man,
giving no trouble and paying down his money without question or murmur
every Saturday morning at his breakfast-time. All his days were passed in
pretty much the same fashion. After breakfast he would go out--you might
see him on the pier, or on the old town walls, or taking a walk across
the Border Bridge; now and then we heard of his longer excursions into
the country, one side or other of the Tweed. He took his dinner in the
evenings, having made a special arrangement with my mother to that
effect, and a very hearty eater he was, and fond of good things, which
he provided generously for himself; and when that episode of the day's
events was over, he would spend an hour or two over the newspapers, of
which he was a great reader, in company with his cigar and his glass. And
I'll say for him that from first to last he never put anything out, and
was always civil and polite, and there was never a Saturday that he did
not give the servant-maid a half-crown to buy herself a present.

All the same--we said it to ourselves afterwards, though not at the
time--there was an atmosphere of mystery about Mr. Gilverthwaite. He made
no acquaintance in the town. He was never seen in even brief conversation
with any of the men that hung about the pier, on the walls, or by the
shipping. He never visited the inns, nor brought anybody in to drink and
smoke with him. And until the last days of his lodging with us he never
received a letter.

A letter and the end of things came all at once. His stay had lengthened
beyond the month he had first spoken of. It was in the seventh week of
his coming that he came home to his dinner one June evening, complaining
to my mother of having got a great wetting in a sudden storm that had
come on that afternoon while he was away out in the country, and next
morning he was in bed with a bad pain in his chest, and not over well
able to talk. My mother kept him in his bed and began to doctor him; that
day, about noon, came for him the first and only letter he ever had while
he was with us--a letter that came in a registered envelope. The
servant-maid took it up to him when it was delivered, and she said later
that he started a bit when he saw it. But he said nothing about it to my
mother during that afternoon, nor indeed to me, specifically, when, later
on, he sent for me to go up to his room. All the same, having heard of
what he had got, I felt sure t