"Well, I'll make it ten, then. If anyone asks who gave you the note, say a stranger you met on the road gave you a shilling to deliver it to Miss Wray. Do you understand? Put it on a stranger, and you shall have ten pounds, for I do not wish to be mixed up in this matter at all." "I can well understand that." "You see, Jack, she may have gone to meet me, and when she found I was not there she may have shot herself. She is shot, you say?" "Yes, dead as a herring." "It's a shocking affair; really a shocking affair," continued Henderson, hastily; "poor girl!" "Ay, poor lass!" "It might have happened so--in her disappointment, you know, she may have shot herself, that is if she had anything to shoot herself with?" "They say her father's revolver was lying nigh her." "Then I fear it has happened so. Don't you think so, Jack? How lucky for me that I did not go near." "Quite a close shave." "Yes, quite a close shave indeed. Well, Jack, now we've arranged it, I'll go into the house and get you the ten pounds--but remember you were to say a stranger--that a stranger gave you the note." Jack nodded and Henderson hastily returned to the house, and speedily reappeared with two crisp five-pound bank notes in his pocket, which he soon placed in Jack's horny hand, who at once deposited them in his corduroys. But when they were safely there, he looked up with his shrewd brown eyes in his master's face. "About that note," he said. "Maybe the poor lass left it behind her, and it was in yer writing." Henderson's face fell. "The devil it was!" he muttered. "And maybe she's other letters, put by that ye wrote? I've taken other letters, perhaps, signed by yer name. No, master, the story about the stranger giving it to me won't wash. It would only make me out a big liar, and not help ye. You'll ha' to face the letters, and stick to the story that you did not go to meet the poor lass when she met her death." "Of course, I did not go. After I wrote the letter, I got afraid to meet her," said Henderson, in great agitation. "Stick to that; ye got afraid to go, and the poor lass must ha' shot herself because ye broke yer word; ye may make them believe that, not the other, for lots o' folks knew what was between ye and poor Elsie." Henderson's teeth almost chattered in his head. "You think so?" he said, tremblingly. "I'm sure; Alice the barmaid knew and others. Stick to the story that ye did not go." Jack's manner as he said this was very determined, and Henderson begun to see the prudence of his advice. "Perhaps you are right," he said, after thinking a moment or two. "The letter I sent yesterday was not signed in full--only my initials--but I have sent letters signed in full, and she may have kept them. It's a confounded business altogether, and I wish I had never seen her."