A little later, as they trampled along, James Moore heard little pattering, staggering footsteps behind.
He stopped, and the other two went on.
“Man,” a voice whispered, and a face, white and pitiful, like a mother's pleading for her child, looked into his—“Man, ye'll no tell them a' I'd no like 'em to ken 'twas ma Wullie. Think an 't had bin yer ain dog.”
“You may trust me!” the other answered thickly.
The little man stretched out a palsied hand.
“Gie us yer hand on't. And G-God bless ye, James Moore!”
So these two shook hands in the moonlight, with none to witness it but the God who made them.
And that is why the mystery of the Black Killer is yet unsolved in the Daleland. Many have surmised; besides those three only one other knows—knows now which of those two he saw upon a summer night was the guilty, which the innocent. And Postie Jim tells no man.