At this there was much incredulous laughter, and then Judge Bolitho heard the man cry out something about his having seen someone on the very night of the murder. The conversation was not by any means connected, but Judge Bolitho, anxious to catch at any straw, determined not to allow the Scotsman to escape him. It might end in nothing; still, there was possibly something in what the man had said. A few minutes later Archie Fearn left his companions, evidently with the purpose of making his way to a public-house which stood at the corner of the Market Square. Before he reached it, however, the judge had come up to him and touched his arm. "So you call yourself Archie Fearn now, do you?" he said quickly. "Ay, and who dares say I'm not Archie Fearn?" replied the man. "Was I no born in Scotland? And do I not speak like a Scotsman?" "You did not call yourself Archie Fearn the last time I saw you," said the judge. "And when might ye have seen me?" "I saw you in Liverpool two years ago. You called yourself John McPhail then, and it was my duty to give you six months with hard labour." The man looked at the judge coolly. "Ay, very likely," he replied. "Ay, I remember noo, I remember noo," and he laughed significantly. "Why do you laugh?" asked the judge. "I was thinking," was the reply. "I think of mony things. The Scotch are a canny people. You'll be knowing that yourself, my lord." "And you say you're Willie Fearn's brother?" said the judge. "Ay, I am and all. It's perfectly true that Willie is an elder in the kirk, while I am--weel, what you see me; but, for all that, I know more about the fundamentals of doctrine than he does. I know the second catechism by heart, and I could put any meenister in this toon to shame. Ay, man, but if you want to hear preaching you must go to Scotland. It's there that the meenisters are groonded in the faith. In these English kirks they are very lax in the faith." And again the man laughed as though something amused him. "You seem to boast a good deal of your knowledge," said the judge, trying to estimate the man. "I ne'er boast," was the reply. "I'm just a canny Scotsman, that's all. If I told all I kenned--weel, I might become popular. But a still tongue makes a wise heid." "If you are Willie Fearn's brother," said the judge, and it pained him to say what next passed his lips, but as I have said, he was eager to catch at any straw, "you knew Jean Lindsay?" "Ay, I kenned her weel," was the reply. "But I was aboot to go into the 'Hare and Hoonds,' Mr. Judge Bolitho. Perhaps for the sake of the time when you called yourself Graham you might like to give me a drop of whisky?" "Come with me," said the judge. "I want to talk with you. If we go up Liverpool Road it will be quiet there. But stay, come with me to the house I'm staying at." "Dootless you keep a bottle of good whisky in the cupboard there?"