Elphinstone."

"Aye!" he said with an amused smile. "You're the lad that's had his
finger in the pie pretty deep--you're well out of it, my man! Well--there
I was, and a man sitting by me that knew everybody, and before ever the
case was called this man pointed out Sir Gilbert Carstairs coming in and
being given a seat on the bench. And I knew that there was a fine to-do,
and perhaps nobody but myself knowing of it, for the man pointed out to
me was no Sir Gilbert Carstairs, nor any Carstairs at all--not he! But--I
knew him!"

"You knew him!" exclaimed Mr. Lindsey. "Man!--that's the first direct bit
of real illumination we've had! And--who is he, then, Mr. Elphinstone?"

"Take your time!" answered Mr. Elphinstone. "We'll have to go back a bit:
you'll put the police court out of your mind a while. It's about--I
forget rightly how long since, but it was just after I gave up the
stewardship that I had occasion to go up to London on business of my own.
And there, one morning, as I was sauntering down the lower end of Regent
Street, I met Gilbert Carstairs, whom I'd never seen since he left home.
He'd his arm in mine in a minute, and he would have me go with him to his
rooms in Jermyn Street, close by--there was no denying him. I went, and
found his rooms full of trunks, and cases, and the like--he and a friend
of his, he said, were just off on a sort of hunting-exploration trip to
some part of Central America; I don't know what they weren't going to do,
but it was to be a big affair, and they were to come back loaded up with
natural-history specimens and to make a pile of money out of the venture,
too. And he was telling me all about it in his eager, excitable way when
the other man came in, and I was introduced to him. And, gentlemen,
that's the man I saw--under the name of Sir Gilbert Carstairs--on the
bench at Berwick only the other day! He's changed, of course--more than I
should have thought he would have done in fifteen years, for that's about
the time since I saw him and Gilbert together there in Jermyn
Street,--but I knew him as soon as I clapped eyes on him, and whatever
doubt I had went as soon as I saw him lift his right hand to his
moustache, for there are two fingers missing on that hand--the middle
ones--and I remembered that fact about the man Gilbert Carstairs had
introduced to me. I knew, I tell you, as I sat in that court, that the
fellow there on the bench, listening, was an impostor!"

We were all be