“I deny it. I was not in Belfast that day. I was here in Donegore with Aeneas Moylin.”
“You were here the day before,” said Moylin. “You left me that day early. You might have been in Belfast.”
“I was not,” said Finlay.
Donald Ward produced the scrap of paper which Peg Macllrea had taken from the dragoon.
“Is that your handwriting?” he asked.
James Finlay looked at it.
“No,” he said.
“James Bigger, give me the last letter you had from Finlay. Now put the lantern down on the floor.”
He looked steadily at the two papers, and then said—
“In my opinion these two are written in the same hand.”