“If this wretch attempted to drown you—to take your life—do you think you are doing right to screen him from the just punishment of his crime?” sternly observed her father.
“Will would never attempt such a thing,” warmly answered the girl. “He has faults—though not so many as people imagine—but that he would never do. It is not in his nature.”
“The police are after him now, and likely to get him, and when he is tried you will be forced to speak the truth,” said her father; “you will be the principal witness, and if you do not speak the whole truth, you will be sent to prison yourself.”
“I will never say anything against him though they cut me in pieces,” said Jessie, with a deep sigh. “Why did they take me out of the river? It would have been better to let me lie than torture me with questions.”
As Jessie’s condition was still precarious, it was decided to let the matter rest for a little, and meanwhile make every effort to capture Smeaton, trusting to Jessie becoming less reticent, or other evidence turning up sufficient to secure his conviction. On the same forenoon that Jessie was thus questioned, I was going along a street near Nicolson Street, with my thoughts about as far from this case as the moon is from the sun. As yet I had only the brief telegram to guide me, and that contained but a meagre description of the man. He was said to be a native of Berwick, of medium height, and to have curly hair of a sandy hue, and a florid complexion, and to be rather muscular and firmly built. These points might suit a dozen out of every hundred one might meet in passing along the street, and the description interested me so little that the actual features had, at the moment, all but left my memory. What invisible finger is it that guides many of our sudden impulses? When I entered that street I had no intention whatever of visiting a pawnbroker’s, but when I came to one of their prominent signs I turned into the stair and ascended it, as gravely as if I had gone south for no other purpose than to visit that particular establishment. I had been there the day before looking for some trinkets which were reported stolen, and as I entered, the thought struck me that I might ask for them again as an excuse for my reappearance. I was in no hurry, however, and as I could hear that there were some customers in before me, I simply took my stand inside one of the little boxes, and nodded to the proprietor to intimate that I should wait my turn. For the benefit of those lucky mortals who have never been forced to enter such a place, I may explain that these boxes run along in front of the counter, and are chiefly useful for screening one customer from another. Once shut in, you are safe from every eye but that sharp million-power magnifier owned by the proprietor or his assistant.
As soon as I was shut in I noticed that the box next to me was occupied by a male customer, who was busy extolling the value and powers of a silver lever which he was trying to pledge. The pawnbroker was quite willing to take the watch, but, as is usual in such cases, the point on which they disagreed was the sum to be advanced on the pledge. The argument was not particularly interesting to me, and I gradually left it behind in my thoughts while I revelled in the queer brogue of the stranger. It was a rich and musical twang to my ears; and when the man came to any word with the letter R in it—such as “tr-r-r-ain”—he rolled that R out into about a thousand, with a rich swell which made one imagine he enjoyed it. I was puzzled for a moment or two to decide on the exact locality of the dialect—though I have often boasted that I can tell the dialects of Scotland and a good part of England to within thirty miles of the exact spot on hearing them spoken.
“The man is from Newcastle,” I rather hastily decided; then came a slight mental demur at the decision. There were slight points of difference and many strong points of resemblance. I listened for a little longer, and then smiled out at my own slowness and stupidity.
“I might have known that tongue at the first sentence,” was my mental exclamation. “It’s the Berwick burr.”
While this analysis was going on in my mind, the haggling over the watch was concluded by the stranger accepting a loan of thirty shillings on the pledge, and a ticket was rapidly filled up to that effect, till it came to the important question—
“What name?”