“She was looking close at a paper as I came upon her. She started a little, but when she saw who it was she bashed down the lid of the trunk and brushed past me, with the paper in her hand. 'You can tell him, if you like, that I have been here.' That was all she said, and before I had turned about she had gone, she had. What was that paper, Ralph; do you know?”
“Perhaps time will tell, perhaps not.”
“There was something afoot atween those two; what was it?”
“Can't you guess? You discovered his name.”
“Wilson Garth, that was it. That was the name I found on his papers. Yes, I opened the trunk and looked at them when the woman had gone; yes, I did that.”
“You remember how she came to these parts? That was before my time of remembrance, but not before yours, Sim.”
“I think they said she'd wedded a waistrel on the Borders.”
“Did they ever say the man was dead?”
“No, I can't mind that they ever did. I can't mind it. He had beaten her and soured her into the witch that she is now, and then she had run away frae him with her little one, Joe that now is. That was what they said, as I mind it.”
“Two and two are easily put together, Sim. Wilson Garth, not James Wilson, was the man's name.”