diff --git "a/Arthur Conan Doyle.json" "b/Arthur Conan Doyle.json" new file mode 100644--- /dev/null +++ "b/Arthur Conan Doyle.json" @@ -0,0 +1,1035 @@ +[ + { + "title": "Sir Nigel", + "author": "Arthur Conan Doyle", + "genres": [ + "adventure", + "historical fiction" + ], + "tags": [ + "" + ], + "chapters": [ + { + "title": "THE HOUSE OF LORING", + "text": "In the month of July of the year 1348, between the feasts of St. Benedict and of St. Swithin, a strange thing came upon England, for out of the east there drifted a monstrous cloud, purple and piled, heavy with evil, climbing slowly up the hushed heaven. In the shadow of that strange cloud the leaves drooped in the trees, the birds ceased their calling, and the cattle and the sheep gathered cowering under the hedges. A gloom fell upon all the land, and men stood with their eyes upon the strange cloud and a heaviness upon their hearts. They crept into the churches where the trembling people were blessed and shriven by the trembling priests. Outside no bird flew, and there came no rustling from the woods, nor any of the homely sounds of Nature. All was still, and nothing moved, save only the great cloud which rolled up and onward, with fold on fold from the black horizon. To the west was the light summer sky, to the east this brooding cloud-bank, creeping ever slowly across, until the last thin blue gleam faded away and the whole vast sweep of the heavens was one great leaden arch.\n\nThen the rain began to fall. All day it rained, and all the night and all the week and all the month, until folk had forgotten the blue heavens and the gleam of the sunshine. It was not heavy, but it was steady and cold and unceasing, so that the people were weary of its hissing and its splashing, with the slow drip from the eaves. Always the same thick evil cloud flowed from east to west with the rain beneath it. None could see for more than a bowshot from their dwellings for the drifting veil of the rain-storms. Every morning the folk looked upward for a break, but their eyes rested always upon the same endless cloud, until at last they ceased to look up, and their hearts despaired of ever seeing the change. It was raining at Lammastide and raining at the Feast of the Assumption and still raining at Michaelmas. The crops and the hay, sodden and black, had rotted in the fields, for they were not worth the garnering. The sheep had died, and the calves also, so there was little to kill when Martinmas came and it was time to salt the meat for the winter. They feared a famine, but it was worse than famine which was in store for them.\n\nFor the rain had ceased at last, and a sickly autumn sun shone upon a land which was soaked and sodden with water. Wet and rotten leaves reeked and festered under the foul haze which rose from the woods. The fields were spotted with monstrous fungi of a size and color never matched before\u2014scarlet and mauve and liver and black. It was as though the sick earth had burst into foul pustules; mildew and lichen mottled the walls, and with that filthy crop Death sprang also from the water-soaked earth. Men died, and women and children, the baron of the castle, the franklin on the farm, the monk in the abbey and the villein in his wattle-and-daub cottage. All breathed the same polluted reek and all died the same death of corruption. Of those who were stricken none recovered, and the illness was ever the same\u2014gross boils, raving, and the black blotches which gave its name to the disease. All through the winter the dead rotted by the wayside for want of some one to bury them. In many a village no single man was left alive. Then at last the spring came with sunshine and health and lightness and laughter\u2014the greenest, sweetest, tenderest spring that England had ever known\u2014but only half of England could know it. The other half had passed away with the great purple cloud.\n\nYet it was there in that stream of death, in that reek of corruption, that the brighter and freer England was born. There in that dark hour the first streak of the new dawn was seen. For in no way save by a great upheaval and change could the nation break away from that iron feudal system which held her limbs. But now it was a new country which came out from that year of death. The barons were dead in swaths. No high turret nor cunning moat could keep out that black commoner who struck them down.\n\nOppressive laws slackened for want of those who could enforce them, and once slackened could never be enforced again. The laborer would be a slave no longer. The bondsman snapped his shackles. There was much to do and few left to do it. Therefore the few should be freemen, name their own price, and work where and for whom they would. It was the black death which cleared the way for that great rising thirty years later which left the English peasant the freest of his class in Europe.\n\nBut there were few so far-sighted that they could see that here, as ever, good was coming out of evil. At the moment misery and ruin were brought into every family. The dead cattle, the ungarnered crops, the untilled lands\u2014every spring of wealth had dried up at the same moment. Those who were rich became poor; but those who were poor already, and especially those who were poor with the burden of gentility upon their shoulders, found themselves in a perilous state. All through England the smaller gentry were ruined, for they had no trade save war, and they drew their living from the work of others. On many a manor-house there came evil times, and on none more than on the Manor of Tilford, where for many generations the noble family of the Lorings had held their home.\n\nThere was a time when the Lorings had held the country from the North Downs to the Lakes of Frensham, and when their grim castle-keep rising above the green meadows which border the River Wey had been the strongest fortalice betwixt Guildford Castle in the east and Winchester in the west. But there came that Barons' War, in which the King used his Saxon subjects as a whip with which to scourge his Norman barons, and Castle Loring, like so many other great strongholds, was swept from the face of the land. From that time the Lorings, with estates sadly curtailed, lived in what had been the dower-house, with enough for splendor.\n\nAnd then came their lawsuit with Waverley Abbey, and the Cistercians laid claim to their richest land, with peccary, turbary and feudal rights over the remainder. It lingered on for years, this great lawsuit, and when it was finished the men of the Church and the men of the Law had divided all that was richest of the estate between them. There was still left the old manor-house from which with each generation there came a soldier to uphold the credit of the name and to show the five scarlet roses on the silver shield where it had always been shown\u2014in the van. There were twelve bronzes in the little chapel where Matthew the priest said mass every morning, all of men of the house of Loring. Two lay with their legs crossed, as being from the Crusades. Six others rested their feet upon lions, as having died in war. Four only lay with the effigy of their hounds to show that they had passed in peace.\n\nOf this famous but impoverished family, doubly impoverished by law and by pestilence, two members were living in the year of grace 1349\u2014Lady Ermyntrude Loring and her grandson Nigel. Lady Ermyntrude's husband had fallen before the Scottish spearsmen at Stirling, and her son Eustace, Nigel's father, had found a glorious death nine years before this chronicle opens upon the poop of a Norman galley at the sea-fight of Sluys. The lonely old woman, fierce and brooding like the falcon mewed in her chamber, was soft only toward the lad whom she had brought up. All the tenderness and love of her nature, so hidden from others that they could not imagine their existence, were lavished upon him. She could not bear him away from her, and he, with that respect for authority which the age demanded, would not go without her blessing and consent.\n\nSo it came about that Nigel, with his lion heart and with the blood of a hundred soldiers thrilling in his veins, still at the age of two and twenty, wasted the weary days reclaiming his hawks with leash and lure or training the alans and spaniels who shared with the family the big earthen-floored hall of the manor-house.\n\nDay by day the aged Lady Ermyntrude had seen him wax in strength and in manhood, small of stature, it is true, but with muscles of steel\u2014and a soul of fire. From all parts, from the warden of Guildford Castle, from the tiltyard of Farnham, tales of his prowess were brought back to her, of his daring as a rider, of his debonair courage, of his skill with all weapons; but still she, who had both husband and son torn from her by a bloody death, could not bear that this, the last of the Lorings, the final bud of so famous an old tree, should share the same fate. With a weary heart, but with a smiling face, he bore with his uneventful days, while she would ever put off the evil time until the harvest was better, until the monks of Waverley should give up what they had taken, until his uncle should die and leave money for his outfit, or any other excuse with which she could hold him to her side.\n\nAnd indeed, there was need for a man at Tilford, for the strife betwixt the Abbey and the manor-house had never been appeased, and still on one pretext or another the monks would clip off yet one more slice of their neighbor's land. Over the winding river, across the green meadows, rose the short square tower and the high gray walls of the grim Abbey, with its bell tolling by day and night, a voice of menace and of dread to the little household.\n\nIt is in the heart of the great Cistercian monastery that this chronicle of old days must take its start, as we trace the feud betwixt the monks and the house of Loring, with those events to which it gave birth, ending with the coming of Chandos, the strange spear-running of Tilford Bridge and the deeds with which Nigel won fame in the wars. Elsewhere, in the chronicle of the White Company, it has been set forth what manner of man was Nigel Loring. Those who love him may read herein those things which went to his making. Let us go back together and gaze upon this green stage of England, the scenery, hill, plain and river even as now, the actors in much our very selves, in much also so changed in thought and act that they might be dwellers in another world to ours." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE DEVIL CAME TO WAVERLEY", + "text": "The day was the first of May, which was the Festival of the Blessed Apostles Philip and James. The year was the 1,349th from man's salvation.\n\nFrom tierce to sext, and then again from sext to nones, Abbot John of the House of Waverley had been seated in his study while he conducted the many high duties of his office. All around for many a mile on every side stretched the fertile and flourishing estate of which he was the master. In the center lay the broad Abbey buildings, with church and cloisters, hospitium, chapter-house and frater-house, all buzzing with a busy life. Through the open window came the low hum of the voices of the brethren as they walked in pious converse in the ambulatory below. From across the cloister there rolled the distant rise and fall of a Gregorian chant, where the precentor was hard at work upon the choir, while down in the chapter-house sounded the strident voice of Brother Peter, expounding the rule of Saint Bernard to the novices.\n\nAbbot John rose to stretch his cramped limbs. He looked out at the greensward of the cloister, and at the graceful line of open Gothic arches which skirted a covered walk for the brethren within. Two and two in their black-and-white garb with slow step and heads inclined, they paced round and round. Several of the more studious had brought their illuminating work from the scriptorium, and sat in the warm sunshine with their little platters of pigments and packets of gold-leaf before them, their shoulders rounded and their faces sunk low over the white sheets of vellum. There too was the copper-worker with his burin and graver. Learning and art were not traditions with the Cistercians as with the parent Order of the Benedictines, and yet the library of Waverley was well filled both with precious books and with pious students.\n\nBut the true glory of the Cistercian lay in his outdoor work, and so ever and anon there passed through the cloister some sunburned monk, soiled mattock or shovel in hand, with his gown looped to his knee, fresh from the fields or the garden. The lush green water-meadows speckled with the heavy-fleeced sheep, the acres of corn-land reclaimed from heather and bracken, the vineyards on the southern slope of Crooksbury Hill, the rows of Hankley fish-ponds, the Frensham marshes drained and sown with vegetables, the spacious pigeon-cotes, all circled the great Abbey round with the visible labors of the Order.\n\nThe Abbot's full and florid face shone with a quiet content as he looked out at his huge but well-ordered household. Like every head of a prosperous Abbey, Abbot John, the fourth of the name, was a man of various accomplishments. Through his own chosen instruments he had to minister a great estate and to keep order and decorum among a large body of men living a celibate life. He was a rigid disciplinarian toward all beneath him, a supple diplomatist to all above. He held high debate with neighboring abbots and lords, with bishops, with papal legates, and even on occasion with the King's majesty himself. Many were the subjects with which he must be conversant. Questions of doctrine, questions of building, points of forestry, of agriculture, of drainage, of feudal law, all came to the Abbot for settlement. He held the scales of justice in all the Abbey banlieue which stretched over many a mile of Hampshire and of Surrey. To the monks his displeasure might mean fasting, exile to some sterner community, or even imprisonment in chains. Over the layman also he could hold any punishment save only corporeal death, instead of which he had in hand the far more dreadful weapon of spiritual excommunication.\n\nSuch were the powers of the Abbot, and it is no wonder that there were masterful lines in the ruddy features of Abbot John, or that the brethren, glancing up, should put on an even meeker carriage and more demure expression as they saw the watchful face in the window above them.\n\nA knock at the door of his studio recalled the Abbot to his immediate duties, and he returned to his desk. Already he had spoken with his cellarer and prior, almoner, chaplain and lector, but now in the tall and gaunt monk who obeyed his summons to enter he recognized the most important and also the most importunate of his agents, Brother Samuel the sacrist, whose office, corresponding to that of the layman's bailiff, placed the material interests of the monastery and its dealings with the outer world entirely under his control, subject only to the check of the Abbot. Brother Samuel was a gnarled and stringy old monk whose stern and sharp-featured face reflected no light from above but only that sordid workaday world toward which it was forever turned. A huge book of accounts was tucked under one of his arms, while a great bunch of keys hung from the other hand, a badge of his office, and also on occasion of impatience a weapon of offense, as many a scarred head among rustics and lay brothers could testify.\n\nThe Abbot sighed wearily, for he suffered much at the hands of his strenuous agent. \"Well, Brother Samuel, what is your will?\" he asked.\n\n\"Holy father, I have to report that I have sold the wool to Master Baldwin of Winchester at two shillings a bale more than it fetched last year, for the murrain among the sheep has raised the price.\"\n\n\"You have done well, brother.\"\n\n\"I have also to tell you that I have distrained Wat the warrener from his cottage, for his Christmas rent is still unpaid, nor the hen-rents of last year.\"\n\n\"He has a wife and four children, brother.\" He was a good, easy man, the Abbot, though liable to be overborne by his sterner subordinate.\n\n\"It is true, holy father; but if I should pass him, then how am I to ask the rent of the foresters of Puttenham, or the hinds in the village? Such a thing spreads from house to house, and where then is the wealth of Waverley?\"\n\n\"What else, Brother Samuel?\"\n\n\"There is the matter of the fish-ponds.\"\n\nThe Abbot's face brightened. It was a subject upon which he was an authority. If the rule of his Order had robbed him of the softer joys of life, he had the keener zest for those which remained.\n\n\"How have the char prospered, brother?\"\n\n\"They have done well, holy father, but the carp have died in the Abbot's pond.\"\n\n\"Carp prosper only upon a gravel bottom. They must be put in also in their due proportion, three milters to one spawner, brother sacrist, and the spot must be free from wind, stony and sandy, an ell deep, with willows and grass upon the banks. Mud for tench, brother, gravel for carp.\"\n\nThe sacrist leaned forward with the face of one who bears tidings of woe. \"There are pike in the Abbot's pond,\" said he.\n\n\"Pike!\" cried the Abbot in horror. \"As well shut up a wolf in our sheepfold. How came a pike in the pond? There were no pike last year, and a pike does not fall with the rain nor rise in the springs. The pond must be drained, or we shall spend next Lent upon stockfish, and have the brethren down with the great sickness ere Easter Sunday has come to absolve us from our abstinence.\"\n\n\"The pond shall be drained, holy father; I have already ordered it. Then we shall plant pot-herbs on the mud bottom, and after we have gathered them in, return the fish and water once more from the lower pond, so that they may fatten among the rich stubble.\"\n\n\"Good!\" cried the Abbot. \"I would have three fish-stews in every well-ordered house\u2014one dry for herbs, one shallow for the fry and the yearlings, and one deep for the breeders and the tablefish. But still, I have not heard you say how the pike came in the Abbot's pond.\"\n\nA spasm of anger passed over the fierce face of the sacrist, and his keys rattled as his bony hand clasped them more tightly. \"Young Nigel Loring!\" said he. \"He swore that he would do us scathe, and in this way he has done it.\"\n\n\"How know you this?\"\n\n\"Six weeks ago he was seen day by day fishing for pike at the great Lake of Frensham. Twice at night he has been met with a bundle of straw under his arm on the Hankley Down. Well, I wot that the straw was wet and that a live pike lay within it.\"\n\nThe Abbot shook his head. \"I have heard much of this youth's wild ways; but now indeed he has passed all bounds if what you say be truth. It was bad enough when it was said that he slew the King's deer in Woolmer Chase, or broke the head of Hobbs the chapman, so that he lay for seven days betwixt life and death in our infirmary, saved only by Brother Peter's skill in the pharmacies of herbs; but to put pike in the Abbot's pond\u2014why should he play such a devil's prank?\"\n\n\"Because he hates the House of Waverley, holy father; because he swears that we hold his father's land.\"\n\n\"In which there is surely some truth.\"\n\n\"But, holy father, we hold no more than the law has allowed.\"\n\n\"True, brother, and yet between ourselves, we may admit that the heavier purse may weigh down the scales of Justice. When I have passed the old house and have seen that aged woman with her ruddled cheeks and her baleful eyes look the curses she dare not speak, I have many a time wished that we had other neighbors.\"\n\n\"That we can soon bring about, holy father. Indeed, it is of it that I wished to speak to you. Surely it is not hard for us to drive them from the countryside. There are thirty years' claims of escuage unsettled, and there is Sergeant Wilkins, the lawyer of Guildford, whom I will warrant to draw up such arrears of dues and rents and issues of hidage and fodder-corn that these folk, who are as beggarly as they are proud, will have to sell the roof-tree over them ere they can meet them. Within three days I will have them at our mercy.\"\n\n\"They are an ancient family and of good repute. I would not treat them too harshly, brother.\"\n\n\"Bethink you of the pike in the carp pond!\"\n\nThe Abbot hardened his heart at the thought. \"It was indeed a devil's deed\u2014when we had but newly stocked it with char and with carp. Well, well, the law is the law, and if you can use it to hurt, it is still lawful to do so. Have these claims been advanced?\"\n\n\"Deacon the bailiff with his two varlets went down to the Hall yesternight on the matter of the escuage, and came screaming back with this young hothead raging at their heels. He is small and slight, yet he has the strength of many men in the hour of his wrath. The bailiff swears that he will go no more, save with half a score of archers to uphold him.\"\n\nThe Abbot was red with anger at this new offense. \"I will teach him that the servants of Holy Church, even though we of the rule of Saint Bernard be the lowliest and humblest of her children, can still defend their own against the froward and the violent! Go, cite this man before the Abbey court. Let him appear in the chapter-house after tierce to-morrow.\"\n\nBut the wary sacrist shook his head: \"Nay, holy father, the times are not yet ripe. Give me three days, I pray you, that my case against him may be complete. Bear in mind that the father and the grandfather of this unruly squire were both famous men of their day and the foremost knights in the King's own service, living in high honor and dying in their knightly duty. The Lady Ermyntrude Loring was first lady to the King's mother. Roger FitzAlan of Farnham and Sir Hugh Walcott of Guildford Castle were each old comrades-in-arms of Nigel's father, and sib to him on the distaff side. Already there has been talk that we have dealt harshly with them. Therefore, my rede is that we be wise and wary and wait until his cup be indeed full.\"\n\nThe Abbot had opened his mouth to reply, when the consultation was interrupted by a most unwonted buzz of excitement from among the monks in the cloister below. Questions and answers in excited voices sounded from one side of the ambulatory to the other. Sacrist and Abbot were gazing at each other in amazement at such a breach of the discipline and decorum of their well-trained flock, when there came a swift step upon the stair, and a white-faced brother flung open the door and rushed into the room.\n\n\"Father Abbot!\" he cried. \"Alas, alas! Brother John is dead, and the holy subprior is dead, and the Devil is loose in the five-virgate field!\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE YELLOW HORSE OF CROOKSBURY", + "text": "In those simple times there was a great wonder and mystery in life. Man walked in fear and solemnity, with Heaven very close above his head, and Hell below his very feet. God's visible hand was everywhere, in the rainbow and the comet, in the thunder and the wind. The Devil too raged openly upon the earth; he skulked behind the hedge-rows in the gloaming; he laughed loudly in the night-time; he clawed the dying sinner, pounced on the unbaptized babe, and twisted the limbs of the epileptic. A foul fiend slunk ever by a man's side and whispered villainies in his ear, while above him there hovered an angel of grace who pointed to the steep and narrow track. How could one doubt these things, when Pope and priest and scholar and King were all united in believing them, with no single voice of question in the whole wide world?\n\nEvery book read, every picture seen, every tale heard from nurse or mother, all taught the same lesson. And as a man traveled through the world his faith would grow the firmer, for go where he would there were the endless shrines of the saints, each with its holy relic in the center, and around it the tradition of incessant miracles, with stacks of deserted crutches and silver votive hearts to prove them. At every turn he was made to feel how thin was the veil, and how easily rent, which screened him from the awful denizens of the unseen world.\n\nHence the wild announcement of the frightened monk seemed terrible rather than incredible to those whom he addressed. The Abbot's ruddy face paled for a moment, it is true, but he plucked the crucifix from his desk and rose valiantly to his feet.\n\n\"Lead me to him!\" said he. \"Show me the foul fiend who dares to lay his grip upon brethren of the holy house of Saint Bernard! Run down to my chaplain, brother! Bid him bring the exorcist with him, and also the blessed box of relics, and the bones of Saint James from under the altar! With these and a contrite and humble heart we may show front to all the powers of darkness.\"\n\nBut the sacrist was of a more critical turn of mind. He clutched the monk's arm with a grip which left its five purple spots for many a day to come.\n\n\"Is this the way to enter the Abbot's own chamber, without knock or reverence, or so much as a 'Pax vobiscum'?\" said he sternly. \"You were wont to be our gentlest novice, of lowly carriage in chapter, devout in psalmody and strict in the cloister. Pull your wits together and answer me straightly. In what form has the foul fiend appeared, and how has he done this grievous scathe to our brethren? Have you seen him with your own eyes, or do you repeat from hearsay? Speak, man, or you stand on the penance-stool in the chapter-house this very hour!\"\n\nThus adjured, the frightened monk grew calmer in his bearing, though his white lips and his startled eyes, with the gasping of his breath, told of his inward tremors.\n\n\"If it please you, holy father, and you, reverend sacrist, it came about in this way. James the subprior, and Brother John and I had spent our day from sext onward on Hankley, cutting bracken for the cow-houses. We were coming back over the five-virgate field, and the holy subprior was telling us a saintly tale from the life of Saint Gregory, when there came a sudden sound like a rushing torrent, and the foul fiend sprang over the high wall which skirts the water-meadow and rushed upon us with the speed of the wind. The lay brother he struck to the ground and trampled into the mire. Then, seizing the good subprior in his teeth, he rushed round the field, swinging him as though he were a fardel of old clothes.\n\n\"Amazed at such a sight, I stood without movement and had said a credo and three aves, when the Devil dropped the subprior and sprang upon me. With the help of Saint Bernard I clambered over the wall, but not before his teeth had found my leg, and he had torn away the whole back skirt of my gown.\" As he spoke he turned and gave corroboration to his story by the hanging ruins of his long trailing garment.\n\n\"In what shape then did Satan appear?\" the Abbot demanded.\n\n\"As a great yellow horse, holy father\u2014a monster horse, with eyes of fire and the teeth of a griffin.\"\n\n\"A yellow horse!\" The sacrist glared at the scared monk. \"You foolish brother! How will you behave when you have indeed to face the King of Terrors himself if you can be so frightened by the sight of a yellow horse? It is the horse of Franklin Aylward, my father, which has been distrained by us because he owes the Abbey fifty good shillings and can never hope to pay it. Such a horse, they say, is not to be found betwixt this and the King's stables at Windsor, for his sire was a Spanish destrier, and his dam an Arab mare of the very breed which Saladin, whose soul now reeks in Hell, kept for his own use, and even it has been said under the shelter of his own tent. I took him in discharge of the debt, and I ordered the varlets who had haltered him to leave him alone in the water-meadow, for I have heard that the beast has indeed a most evil spirit, and has killed more men than one.\"\n\n\"It was an ill day for Waverley that you brought such a monster within its bounds,\" said the Abbot. \"If the subprior and Brother John be indeed dead, then it would seem that if the horse be not the Devil he is at least the Devil's instrument.\"\n\n\"Horse or Devil, holy father, I heard him shout with joy as he trampled upon Brother John, and had you seen him tossing the subprior as a dog shakes a rat you would perchance have felt even as I did.\"\n\n\"Come then,\" cried the Abbot, \"let us see with our own eyes what evil has been done.\"\n\nAnd the three monks hurried down the stair which led to the cloisters.\n\nThey had no sooner descended than their more pressing fears were set at rest, for at that very moment, limping, disheveled and mud-stained, the two sufferers were being led in amid a crowd of sympathizing brethren. Shouts and cries from outside showed, however, that some further drama was in progress, and both Abbot and sacrist hastened onward as fast as the dignity of their office would permit, until they had passed the gates and gained the wall of the meadow. Looking over it, a remarkable sight presented itself to their eyes.\n\nFetlock deep in the lush grass there stood a magnificent horse, such a horse as a sculptor or a soldier might thrill to see. His color was a light chestnut, with mane and tail of a more tawny tint. Seventeen hands high, with a barrel and haunches which bespoke tremendous strength, he fined down to the most delicate lines of dainty breed in neck and crest and shoulder. He was indeed a glorious sight as he stood there, his beautiful body leaning back from his widespread and propped fore legs, his head craned high, his ears erect, his mane bristling, his red nostrils opening and shutting with wrath, and his flashing eyes turning from side to side in haughty menace and defiance.\n\nScattered round in a respectful circle, six of the Abbey lay servants and foresters, each holding a halter, were creeping toward him. Every now and then, with a beautiful toss and swerve and plunge, the great creature would turn upon one of his would-be captors, and with outstretched head, flying mane and flashing teeth, would chase him screaming to the safety of the wall, while the others would close swiftly in behind and cast their ropes in the hope of catching neck or leg, but only in their turn to be chased to the nearest refuge.\n\nHad two of these ropes settled upon the horse, and had their throwers found some purchase of stump or boulder by which they could hold them, then the man's brain might have won its wonted victory over swiftness and strength. But the brains were themselves at fault which imagined that one such rope would serve any purpose save to endanger the thrower.\n\nYet so it was, and what might have been foreseen occurred at the very moment of the arrival of the monks. The horse, having chased one of his enemies to the wall, remained so long snorting his contempt over the coping that the others were able to creep upon him from behind. Several ropes were flung, and one noose settled over the proud crest and lost itself in the waving mane. In an instant the creature had turned and the men were flying for their lives; but he who had cast the rope lingered, uncertain what use to make of his own success. That moment of doubt was fatal. With a yell of dismay, the man saw the great creature rear above him. Then with a crash the fore feet fell upon him and dashed him to the ground. He rose screaming, was hurled over once more, and lay a quivering, bleeding heap, while the savage horse, the most cruel and terrible in its anger of all creatures on earth, bit and shook and trampled the writhing body.\n\nA loud wail of horror rose from the lines of tonsured heads which skirted the high wall\u2014a wail which suddenly died away into a long hushed silence, broken at last by a rapturous cry of thanksgiving and of joy.\n\nOn the road which led to the old dark manor-house upon the side of the hill a youth had been riding. His mount was a sorry one, a weedy, shambling, long-haired colt, and his patched tunic of faded purple with stained leather belt presented no very smart appearance; yet in the bearing of the man, in the poise of his head, in his easy graceful carriage, and in the bold glance of his large blue eyes, there was that stamp of distinction and of breed which would have given him a place of his own in any assembly. He was of small stature, but his frame was singularly elegant and graceful. His face, though tanned with the weather, was delicate in features and most eager and alert in expression. A thick fringe of crisp yellow curls broke from under the dark flat cap which he was wearing, and a short golden beard hid the outline of his strong square chin. One white osprey feather thrust through a gold brooch in the front of his cap gave a touch of grace to his somber garb. This and other points of his attire, the short hanging mantle, the leather-sheathed hunting-knife, the cross belt which sustained a brazen horn, the soft doeskin boots and the prick spurs, would all disclose themselves to an observer; but at the first glance the brown face set in gold and the dancing light of the quick, reckless, laughing eyes, were the one strong memory left behind.\n\nSuch was the youth who, cracking his whip joyously, and followed by half a score of dogs, cantered on his rude pony down the Tilford Lane, and thence it was that with a smile of amused contempt upon his face he observed the comedy in the field and the impotent efforts of the servants of Waverley.\n\nSuddenly, however, as the comedy turned swiftly to black tragedy, this passive spectator leaped into quick strenuous life. With a spring he was off his pony, and with another he was over the stone wall and flying swiftly across the field. Looking up from his victim, the great yellow horse saw this other enemy approach, and spurning the prostrate, but still writhing body with its heels, dashed at the newcomer.\n\nBut this time there was no hasty flight, no rapturous pursuit to the wall. The little man braced himself straight, flung up his metal-headed whip, and met the horse with a crashing blow upon the head, repeated again and again with every attack. In vain the horse reared and tried to overthrow its enemy with swooping shoulders and pawing hoofs. Cool, swift and alert, the man sprang swiftly aside from under the very shadow of death, and then again came the swish and thud of the unerring blow from the heavy handle.\n\nThe horse drew off, glared with wonder and fury at this masterful man, and then trotted round in a circle, with mane bristling, tail streaming and ears on end, snorting in its rage and pain. The man, hardly deigning to glance at his fell neighbor, passed on to the wounded forester, raised him in his arms with a strength which could not have been expected in so slight a body, and carried him, groaning, to the wall, where a dozen hands were outstretched to help him over. Then, at his leisure, the young man also climbed the wall, smiling back with cool contempt at the yellow horse, which had come raging after him once more.\n\nAs he sprang down, a dozen monks surrounded him to thank him or to praise him; but he would have turned sullenly away without a word had he not been stopped by Abbot John in person.\n\n\"Nay, Squire Loring,\" said he, \"if you be a bad friend to our Abbey, yet we must needs own that you have played the part of a good Christian this day, for if there is breath left in our servant's body it is to you next to our blessed patron Saint Bernard that we owe it.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul! I owe you no good-will, Abbot John,\" said the young man. \"The shadow of your Abbey has ever fallen across the house of Loring. As to any small deed that I may have done this day, I ask no thanks for it. It is not for you nor for your house that I have done it, but only because it was my pleasure so to do.\"\n\nThe Abbot flushed at the bold words, and bit his lip with vexation.\n\nIt was the sacrist, however, who answered: \"It would be more fitting and more gracious,\" said he, \"if you were to speak to the holy Father Abbot in a manner suited to his high rank and to the respect which is due to a Prince of the Church.\"\n\nThe youth turned his bold blue eyes upon the monk, and his sunburned face darkened with anger. \"Were it not for the gown upon your back, and for your silvering hair, I would answer you in another fashion,\" said he. \"You are the lean wolf which growls ever at our door, greedy for the little which hath been left to us. Say and do what you will with me, but by Saint Paul! if I find that Dame Ermyntrude is baited by your ravenous pack I will beat them off with this whip from the little patch which still remains of all the acres of my fathers.\"\n\n\"Have a care, Nigel Loring, have a care!\" cried the Abbot, with finger upraised. \"Have you no fears of the law of England?\"\n\n\"A just law I fear and obey.\"\n\n\"Have you no respect for Holy Church?\"\n\n\"I respect all that is holy in her. I do not respect those who grind the poor or steal their neighbor's land.\"\n\n\"Rash man, many a one has been blighted by her ban for less than you have now said! And yet it is not for us to judge you harshly this day. You are young and hot words come easily to your lips. How fares the forester?\"\n\n\"His hurt is grievous, Father Abbot, but he will live,\" said a brother, looking up from the prostrate form. \"With a blood-letting and an electuary, I will warrant him sound within a month.\"\n\n\"Then bear him to the hospital. And now, brother, about this terrible beast who still gazes and snorts at us over the top of the wall as though his thoughts of Holy Church were as uncouth as those of Squire Nigel himself, what are we to do with him?\"\n\n\"Here is Franklin Aylward,\" said one of the brethren. \"The horse was his, and doubtless he will take it back to his farm.\"\n\nBut the stout red-faced farmer shook his head at the proposal. \"Not I, in faith!\" said he. \"The beast hath chased me twice round the paddock; it has nigh slain my boy Samkin. He would never be happy till he had ridden it, nor has he ever been happy since. There is not a hind in my employ who will enter his stall. Ill fare the day that ever I took the beast from the Castle stud at Guildford, where they could do nothing with it and no rider could be found bold enough to mount it! When the sacrist here took it for a fifty-shilling debt he made his own bargain and must abide by it. He comes no more to the Crooksbury farm.\"\n\n\"And he stays no more here,\" said the Abbot. \"Brother sacrist, you have raised the Devil, and it is for you to lay it again.\"\n\n\"That I will most readily,\" cried the sacrist. \"The pittance-master can stop the fifty shillings from my very own weekly dole, and so the Abbey be none the poorer. In the meantime here is Wat with his arbalist and a bolt in his girdle. Let him drive it to the head through this cursed creature, for his hide and his hoofs are of more value than his wicked self.\"\n\nA hard brown old woodman who had been shooting vermin in the Abbey groves stepped forward with a grin of pleasure. After a lifetime of stoats and foxes, this was indeed a noble quarry which was to fall before him. Fitting a bolt on the nut of his taut crossbow, he had raised it to his shoulder and leveled it at the fierce, proud, disheveled head which tossed in savage freedom at the other side of the wall. His finger was crooked on the spring, when a blow from a whip struck the bow upward and the bolt flew harmless over the Abbey orchard, while the woodman shrank abashed from Nigel Loring's angry eyes.\n\n\"Keep your bolts for your weasels!\" said he. \"Would you take life from a creature whose only fault is that its spirit is so high that it has met none yet who dare control it? You would slay such a horse as a king might be proud to mount, and all because a country franklin, or a monk, or a monk's varlet, has not the wit nor the hands to master him?\"\n\nThe sacrist turned swiftly on the Squire. \"The Abbey owes you an offering for this day's work, however rude your words may be,\" said he. \"If you think so much of the horse, you may desire to own it. If I am to pay for it, then with the holy Abbot's permission it is in my gift and I bestow it freely upon you.\"\n\nThe Abbot plucked at his subordinate's sleeve. \"Bethink you, brother sacrist,\" he whispered, \"shall we not have this man's blood upon our heads?\"\n\n\"His pride is as stubborn as the horse's, holy father,\" the sacrist answered, his gaunt fact breaking into a malicious smile. \"Man or beast, one will break the other and the world will be the better for it. If you forbid me\u2014\"\n\n\"Nay, brother, you have bought the horse, and you may have the bestowal of it.\"\n\n\"Then I give it\u2014hide and hoofs, tail and temper\u2014to Nigel Loring, and may it be as sweet and as gentle to him as he hath been to the Abbot of Waverley!\"\n\nThe sacrist spoke aloud amid the tittering of the monks, for the man concerned was out of earshot. At the first words which had shown him the turn which affairs had taken he had run swiftly to the spot where he had left his pony. From its mouth he removed the bit and the stout bridle which held it. Then leaving the creature to nibble the grass by the wayside he sped back whence he came.\n\n\"I take your gift, monk,\" said he, \"though I know well why it is that you give it. Yet I thank you, for there are two things upon earth for which I have ever yearned, and which my thin purse could never buy. The one is a noble horse, such a horse as my father's son should have betwixt his thighs, and here is the one of all others which I would have chosen, since some small deed is to be done in the winning of him, and some honorable advancement to be gained. How is the horse called?\"\n\n\"Its name,\" said the franklin, \"is Pommers. I warn you, young sir, that none may ride him, for many have tried, and the luckiest is he who has only a staved rib to show for it.\"\n\n\"I thank you for your rede,\" said Nigel, \"and now I see that this is indeed a horse which I would journey far to meet. I am your man, Pommers, and you are my horse, and this night you shall own it or I will never need horse again. My spirit against thine, and God hold thy spirit high, Pommers, so that the greater be the adventure, and the more hope of honor gained!\"\n\nWhile he spoke the young Squire had climbed on to the top of the wall and stood there balanced, the very image of grace and spirit and gallantry, his bridle hanging from one hand and his whip grasped in the other. With a fierce snort, the horse made for him instantly, and his white teeth flashed as he snapped; but again a heavy blow from the loaded whip caused him to swerve, and even at the instant of the swerve, measuring the distance with steady eyes, and bending his supple body for the spring, Nigel bounded into the air and fell with his legs astride the broad back of the yellow horse. For a minute, with neither saddle nor stirrups to help him, and the beast ramping and rearing like a mad thing beneath him, he was hard pressed to hold his own. His legs were like two bands of steel welded on to the swelling arches of the great horse's ribs, and his left hand was buried deep in the tawny mane.\n\nNever had the dull round of the lives of the gentle brethren of Waverley been broken by so fiery a scene. Springing to right and swooping to left, now with its tangled wicked head betwixt its forefeet, and now pawing eight feet high in the air, with scarlet, furious nostrils and maddened eyes, the yellow horse was a thing of terror and of beauty. But the lithe figure on his back, bending like a reed in the wind to every movement, firm below, pliant above, with calm inexorable face, and eyes which danced and gleamed with the joy of contest, still held its masterful place for all that the fiery heart and the iron muscles of the great beast could do.\n\nOnce a long drone of dismay rose from the monks, as rearing higher and higher yet a last mad effort sent the creature toppling over backward upon its rider. But, swift and cool, he had writhed from under it ere it fell, spurned it with his foot as it rolled upon the earth, and then seizing its mane as it rose swung himself lightly on to its back once more. Even the grim sacrist could not but join the cheer, as Pommers, amazed to find the rider still upon his back, plunged and curveted down the field.\n\nBut the wild horse only swelled into a greater fury. In the sullen gloom of its untamed heart there rose the furious resolve to dash the life from this clinging rider, even if it meant destruction to beast and man. With red, blazing eyes it looked round for death. On three sides the five-virgate field was bounded by a high wall, broken only at one spot by a heavy four-foot wooden gate. But on the fourth side was a low gray building, one of the granges of the Abbey, presenting a long flank unbroken by door or window. The horse stretched itself into a gallop, and headed straight for that craggy thirty-foot wall. He would break in red ruin at the base of it if he could but dash forever the life of this man, who claimed mastery over that which had never found its master yet.\n\nThe great haunches gathered under it, the eager hoofs drummed the grass, as faster and still more fast the frantic horse bore himself and his rider toward the wall. Would Nigel spring off? To do so would be to bend his will to that of the beast beneath him. There was a better way than that. Cool, quick and decided, the man swiftly passed both whip and bridle into the left hand which still held the mane. Then with the right he slipped his short mantle from his shoulders and lying forward along the creature's strenuous, rippling back he cast the flapping cloth over the horse's eyes.\n\nThe result was but too successful, for it nearly brought about the downfall of the rider. When those red eyes straining for death were suddenly shrouded in unexpected darkness the amazed horse propped on its forefeet and came to so dead a stop that Nigel was shot forward on to its neck and hardly held himself by his hair-entwined hand. Ere he had slid back into position the moment of danger had passed, for the horse, its purpose all blurred in its mind by this strange thing which had befallen, wheeled round once more, trembling in every fiber, and tossing its petulant head until at last the mantle had been slipped from its eyes and the chilling darkness had melted into the homely circle of sunlit grass once more.\n\nBut what was this new outrage which had been inflicted upon it? What was this defiling bar of iron which was locked hard against its mouth? What were these straps which galled the tossing neck, this band which spanned its chest? In those instants of stillness ere the mantle had been plucked away Nigel had lain forward, had slipped the snaffle between the champing teeth, and had deftly secured it.\n\nBlind, frantic fury surged in the yellow horse's heart once more at this new degradation, this badge of serfdom and infamy. His spirit rose high and menacing at the touch. He loathed this place, these people, all and everything which threatened his freedom. He would have done with them forever; he would see them no more. Let him away to the uttermost parts of the earth, to the great plains where freedom is. Anywhere over the far horizon where he could get away from the defiling bit and the insufferable mastery of man.\n\nHe turned with a rush, and one magnificent deer-like bound carried him over the four-foot gate. Nigel's hat had flown off, and his yellow curls streamed behind him as he rose and fell in the leap. They were in the water-meadow now, and the rippling stream twenty feet wide gleamed in front of them running down to the main current of the Wey. The yellow horse gathered his haunches under him and flew over like an arrow. He took off from behind a boulder and cleared a furzebush on the farther side. Two stones still mark the leap from hoof-mark to hoof-mark, and they are eleven good paces apart. Under the hanging branch of the great oak-tree on the farther side (that Quercus Tilfordiensis ordiensis is still shown as the bound of the Abby's immediate precincts) the great horse passed. He had hoped to sweep off his rider, but Nigel sank low on the heaving back with his face buried in the flying mane. The rough bough rasped him rudely, but never shook his spirit nor his grip. Rearing, plunging and struggling, Pommers broke through the sapling grove and was out on the broad stretch of Hankley Down.\n\nAnd now came such a ride as still lingers in the gossip of the lowly country folk and forms the rude jingle of that old Surrey ballad, now nearly forgotten, save for the refrain:\n\n\u2003The Doe that sped on Hinde Head,\n\n\u2003The Kestril on the winde,\n\n\u2003And Nigel on the Yellow Horse\n\n\u2003Can leave the world behinde.\n\nBefore them lay a rolling ocean of dark heather, knee-deep, swelling in billow on billow up to the clear-cut hill before them. Above stretched one unbroken arch of peaceful blue, with a sun which was sinking down toward the Hampshire hills. Through the deep heather, down the gullies, over the watercourses, up the broken slopes, Pommers flew, his great heart bursting with rage, and every fiber quivering at the indignities which he had endured.\n\nAnd still, do what he would, the man clung fast to his heaving sides and to his flying mane, silent, motionless, inexorable, letting him do what he would, but fixed as Fate upon his purpose. Over Hankley Down, through Thursley Marsh, with the reeds up to his mud-splashed withers, onward up the long slope of the Headland of the Hinds, down by the Nutcombe Gorge, slipping, blundering, bounding, but never slackening his fearful speed, on went the great yellow horse. The villagers of Shottermill heard the wild clatter of hoofs, but ere they could swing the ox-hide curtains of their cottage doors horse and rider were lost amid the high bracken of the Haslemere Valley. On he went, and on, tossing the miles behind his flying hoofs. No marshland could clog him, no hill could hold him back. Up the slope of Linchmere and the long ascent of Fernhurst he thundered as on the level, and it was not until he had flown down the incline of Henley Hill, and the gray castle tower of Midhurst rose over the coppice in front, that at last the eager outstretched neck sank a little on the breast, and the breath came quick and fast. Look where he would in woodland and on down, his straining eyes could catch no sign of those plains of freedom which he sought.\n\nAnd yet another outrage! It was bad that this creature should still cling so tight upon his back, but now he would even go to the intolerable length of checking him and guiding him on the way that he would have him go. There was a sharp pluck at his mouth, and his head was turned north once more. As well go that way as another, but the man was mad indeed if he thought that such a horse as Pommers was at the end of his spirit or his strength. He would soon show him that he was unconquered, if it strained his sinews or broke his heart to do so. Back then he flew up the long, long ascent. Would he ever get to the end of it? Yet he would not own that he could go no farther while the man still kept his grip. He was white with foam and caked with mud. His eyes were gorged with blood, his mouth open and gasping, his nostrils expanded, his coat stark and reeking. On he flew down the long Sunday Hill until he reached the deep Kingsley Marsh at the bottom. No, it was too much! Flesh and blood could go no farther. As he struggled out from the reedy slime with the heavy black mud still clinging to his fetlocks, he at last eased down with sobbing breath and slowed the tumultuous gallop to a canter.\n\nOh, crowning infamy! Was there no limit to these degradations? He was no longer even to choose his own pace. Since he had chosen to gallop so far at his own will he must now gallop farther still at the will of another. A spur struck home on either flank. A stinging whip-lash fell across his shoulder. He bounded his own height in the air at the pain and the shame of it. Then, forgetting his weary limbs, forgetting his panting, reeking sides, forgetting everything save this intolerable insult and the burning spirit within, he plunged off once more upon his furious gallop. He was out on the heather slopes again and heading for Weydown Common. On he flew and on. But again his brain failed him and again his limbs trembled beneath him, and yet again he strove to ease his pace, only to be driven onward by the cruel spur and the falling lash. He was blind and giddy with fatigue.\n\nHe saw no longer where he placed his feet, he cared no longer whither he went, but his one mad longing was to get away from this dreadful thing, this torture which clung to him and would not let him go. Through Thursley village he passed, his eyes straining in his agony, his heart bursting within him, and he had won his way to the crest of Thursley Down, still stung forward by stab and blow, when his spirit weakened, his giant strength ebbed out of him, and with one deep sob of agony the yellow horse sank among the heather. So sudden was the fall that Nigel flew forward over his shoulder, and beast and man lay prostrate and gasping while the last red rim of the sun sank behind Butser and the first stars gleamed in a violet sky.\n\nThe young Squire was the first to recover, and kneeling by the panting, overwrought horse he passed his hand gently over the tangled mane and down the foam-flecked face. The red eye rolled up at him; but it was wonder not hatred, a prayer and not a threat, which he could read in it. As he stroked the reeking muzzle, the horse whinnied gently and thrust his nose into the hollow of his hand. It was enough. It was the end of the contest, the acceptance of new conditions by a chivalrous foe from a chivalrous victor.\n\n\"You are my horse, Pommers,\" Nigel whispered, and he laid his cheek against the craning head. \"I know you, Pommers, and you know me, and with the help of Saint Paul we shall teach some other folk to know us both. Now let us walk together as far as this moorland pond, for indeed I wot not whether it is you or I who need the water most.\"\n\nAnd so it was that some belated monks of Waverley passing homeward from the outer farms saw a strange sight which they carried on with them so that it reached that very night the ears both of sacrist and of Abbot. For, as they passed through Tilford they had seen horse and man walking side by side and head by head up the manor-house lane. And when they had raised their lanterns on the pair it was none other than the young Squire himself who was leading home, as a shepherd leads a lamb, the fearsome yellow horse of Crooksbury." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE SUMMONER CAME TO THE MANOR HOUSE OF TILFORD", + "text": "By the date of this chronicle the ascetic sternness of the old Norman castles had been humanized and refined so that the new dwellings of the nobility, if less imposing in appearance, were much more comfortable as places of residence. A gentle race had built their houses rather for peace than for war. He who compares the savage bareness of Pevensey or Guildford with the piled grandeur of Bodmin or Windsor cannot fail to understand the change in manners which they represent.\n\nThe earlier castles had a set purpose, for they were built that the invaders might hold down the country; but when the Conquest was once firmly established a castle had lost its meaning save as a refuge from justice or as a center for civil strife. On the marches of Wales and of Scotland the castle might continue to be a bulwark to the kingdom, and there still grew and flourished; but in all other places they were rather a menace to the King's majesty, and as such were discouraged and destroyed. By the reign of the third Edward the greater part of the old fighting castles had been converted into dwelling-houses or had been ruined in the civil wars, and left where their grim gray bones are still littered upon the brows of our hills. The new buildings were either great country-houses, capable of defense, but mainly residential, or they were manor-houses with no military significance at all.\n\nSuch was the Tilford Manor-house where the last survivors of the old and magnificent house of Loring still struggled hard to keep a footing and to hold off the monks and the lawyers from the few acres which were left to them. The mansion was a two-storied one, framed in heavy beams of wood, the interstices filled with rude blocks of stone. An outside staircase led up to several sleeping-rooms above. Below there were only two apartments, the smaller of which was the bower of the aged Lady Ermyntrude. The other was the hall, a very large room, which served as the living room of the family and as the common dining-room of themselves and of their little group of servants and retainers. The dwellings of these servants, the kitchens, the offices and the stables were all represented by a row of penthouses and sheds behind the main building. Here lived Charles the page, Peter the old falconer, Red Swire who had followed Nigel's grandfather to the Scottish wars, Weathercote the broken minstrel, John the cook, and other survivors of more prosperous days, who still clung to the old house as the barnacles to some wrecked and stranded vessel.\n\nOne evening about a week after the breaking of the yellow horse, Nigel and his grandmother sat on either side of the large empty fireplace in this spacious apartment. The supper had been removed, and so had the trestle tables upon which it had been served, so that the room seemed bare and empty. The stone floor was strewed with a thick layer of green rushes, which was swept out every Saturday and carried with it all the dirt and debris of the week. Several dogs were now crouched among these rushes, gnawing and cracking the bones which had been thrown from the table. A long wooden buffet loaded with plates and dishes filled one end of the room, but there was little other furniture save some benches against the walls, two dorseret chairs, one small table littered with chessmen, and a great iron coffer. In one corner was a high wickerwork stand, and on it two stately falcons were perched, silent and motionless, save for an occasional twinkle of their fierce yellow eyes.\n\nBut if the actual fittings of the room would have appeared scanty to one who had lived in a more luxurious age, he would have been surprised on looking up to see the multitude of objects which were suspended above his head. Over the fireplace were the coats-of-arms of a number of houses allied by blood or by marriage to the Lorings. The two cresset-lights which flared upon each side gleamed upon the blue lion of the Percies, the red birds of de Valence, the black engrailed cross of de Mohun, the silver star of de Vere, and the ruddy bars of FitzAlan, all grouped round the famous red roses on the silver shield which the Lorings had borne to glory upon many a bloody field. Then from side to side the room was spanned by heavy oaken beams from which a great number of objects were hanging. There were mail-shirts of obsolete pattern, several shields, one or two rusted and battered helmets, bowstaves, lances, otter-spears, harness, fishing-rods, and other implements of war or of the chase, while higher still amid the black shadows of the peaked roof could be seen rows of hams, flitches of bacon, salted geese, and those other forms of preserved meat which played so great a part in the housekeeping of the Middle Ages.\n\nDame Ermyntrude Loring, daughter, wife, and mother of warriors, was herself a formidable figure. Tall and gaunt, with hard craggy features and intolerant dark eyes, even her snow-white hair and stooping back could not entirely remove the sense of fear which she inspired in those around her. Her thoughts and memories went back to harsher times, and she looked upon the England around her as a degenerate and effeminate land which had fallen away from the old standard of knightly courtesy and valor.\n\nThe rising power of the people, the growing wealth of the Church, the increasing luxury in life and manners, and the gentler tone of the age were all equally abhorrent to her, so that the dread of her fierce face, and even of the heavy oak staff with which she supported her failing limbs, was widespread through all the country round.\n\nYet if she was feared she was also respected, for in days when books were few and readers scarce, a long memory and a ready tongue were of the more value; and where, save from Dame Ermyntrude, could the young unlettered Squires of Surrey and Hampshire hear of their grandfathers and their battles, or learn that lore of heraldry and chivalry which she handed down from a ruder but a more martial age? Poor as she was, there was no one in Surrey whose guidance would be more readily sought upon a question of precedence or of conduct than the Dame Ermyntrude Loring.\n\nShe sat now with bowed back by the empty fireplace, and looked across at Nigel with all the harsh lines of her old ruddled face softening into love and pride. The young Squire was busy cutting bird-bolts for his crossbow, and whistling softly as he worked. Suddenly he looked up and caught the dark eyes which were fixed upon him. He leaned forward and patted the bony hand.\n\n\"What hath pleased you, dear dame? I read pleasure in your eyes.\"\n\n\"I have heard to-day, Nigel, how you came to win that great warhorse which stamps in our stable.\"\n\n\"Nay, dame; I had told you that the monks had given it to me.\"\n\n\"You said so, fair son, but never a word more. Yet the horse which you brought home was a very different horse I wot, to that which was given you. Why did you not tell me?\"\n\n\"I should think it shame to talk of such a thing.\"\n\n\"So would your father before you, and his father no less. They would sit silent among the knights when the wine went round and listen to every man's deeds; but if perchance there was anyone who spoke louder than the rest and seemed to be eager for honor, then afterwards your father would pluck him softly by the sleeve and whisper in his ear to learn if there was any small vow of which he could relieve him, or if he would deign to perform some noble deed of arms upon his person. And if the man were a braggart and would go no further, your father would be silent and none would know it. But if he bore himself well, your father would spread his fame far and wide, but never make mention of himself.\"\n\nNigel looked at the old woman with shining eyes. \"I love to hear you speak of him,\" said he. \"I pray you to tell me once more of the manner of his death.\"\n\n\"He died as he had lived, a very courtly gentleman. It was at the great sea-battle upon the Norman coast, and your father was in command of the afterguard in the King's own ship. Now the French had taken a great English ship the year before when they came over and held the narrow seas and burned the town of Southampton.\n\n\"This ship was the Christopher, and they placed it in the front of their battle; but the English closed upon it and stormed over its side, and slew all who were upon it.\n\n\"But your father and Sir Lorredan of Genoa, who commanded the Christopher, fought upon the high poop, so that all the fleet stopped to watch it, and the King himself cried aloud at the sight, for Sir Lorredan was a famous man-at-arms and bore himself very stoutly that day, and many a knight envied your father that he should have chanced upon so excellent a person. But your father bore him back and struck him such a blow with a mace that he turned the helmet half round on his head, so that he could no longer see through the eye holes, and Sir Lorredan threw down his sword and gave himself to ransom. But your father took him by the helmet and twisted it until he had it straight upon his head. Then, when he could see once again, he handed him his sword, and prayed him that he would rest himself and then continue, for it was great profit and joy to see any gentleman carry himself so well. So they sat together and rested by the rail of the poop; but even as they raised their hands again your father was struck by a stone from a mangonel and so died.\"\n\n\"And this Sir Lorredan,\" cried Nigel, \"he died also, as I understand?\"\n\n\"I fear that he was slain by the archers, for they loved your father, and they do not see these things with our eyes.\"\n\n\"It was a pity,\" said Nigel; \"for it is clear that he was a good knight and bore himself very bravely.\"\n\n\"Time was, when I was young, when commoners dared not have laid their grimy hands upon such a man. Men of gentle blood and coat-armor made war upon each other, and the others, spearmen or archers, could scramble amongst themselves. But now all are of a level, and only here and there one like yourself, fair son, who reminds me of the men who are gone.\"\n\nNigel leaned forward and took her hands in his. \"What I am you have made me,\" said he.\n\n\"It is true, Nigel. I have indeed watched over you as the gardener watches his most precious blossom, for in you alone are all the hopes of our ancient house, and soon\u2014very soon\u2014you will be alone.\"\n\n\"Nay, dear lady, say not that.\"\n\n\"I am very old, Nigel, and I feel the shadow closing in upon me. My heart yearns to go, for all whom I have known and loved have gone before me. And you\u2014it will be a blessed day for you, since I have held you back from that world into which your brave spirit longs to plunge.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, I have been happy here with you at Tilford.\"\n\n\"We are very poor, Nigel. I do not know where we may find the money to fit you for the wars. Yet we have good friends. There is Sir John Chandos, who has won such credit in the French wars and who rides ever by the King's bridle-arm. He was your father's friend and they were Squires together. If I sent you to court with a message to him he would do what he could.\"\n\nNigel's fair face flushed. \"Nay, Dame Ermyntrude, I must find my own gear, even as I have found my own horse, for I had rather ride into battle in this tunic than owe my suit to another.\"\n\n\"I feared that you would say so, Nigel; but indeed I know not how else we may get the money,\" said the old woman sadly. \"It was different in the days of my father. I can remember that a suit of mail was but a small matter in those days, for in every English town such things could be made. But year by year since men have come to take more care of their bodies, there have been added a plate of proof here and a cunning joint there, and all must be from Toledo or Milan, so that a knight must have much metal in his purse ere he puts any on his limbs.\"\n\nNigel looked up wistfully at the old armor which was slung on the beams above him. \"The ash spear is good,\" said he, \"and so is the oaken shield with facings of steel. Sir Roger FitzAlan handled them and said that he had never seen better. But the armor\u2014\"\n\nLady Ermyntrude shook her old head and laughed. \"You have your father's great soul, Nigel, but you have not his mighty breadth of shoulder and length of limb. There was not in all the King's great host a taller or a stronger man. His harness would be little use to you. No, fair son, I rede you that when the time comes you sell this crumbling house and the few acres which are still left, and so go forth to the wars in the hope that with your own right hand you will plant the fortunes of a new house of Loring.\"\n\nA shadow of anger passed over Nigel's fresh young face. \"I know not if we may hold off these monks and their lawyers much longer. This very day there came a man from Guildford with claims from the Abbey extending back before my father's death.\"\n\n\"Where are they, fair son?\"\n\n\"They are flapping on the furzebushes of Hankley, for I sent his papers and parchments down wind as fast as ever falcon flew.\"\n\n\"Nay! you were mad to do that, Nigel. And the man, where is he?\"\n\n\"Red Swire and old George the archer threw him into the Thursley bog.\"\n\n\"Alas! I fear me such things cannot be done in these days, though my father or my husband would have sent the rascal back to Guildford without his ears. But the Church and the Law are too strong now for us who are of gentler blood. Trouble will come of it, Nigel, for the Abbot of Waverley is not one who will hold back the shield of the Church from those who are her servants.\"\n\n\"The Abbot would not hurt us. It is that gray lean wolf of a sacrist who hungers for our land. Let him do his worst. I fear him not.\"\n\n\"He has such an engine at his back, Nigel, that even the bravest must fear him. The ban which blasts a man's soul is in the keeping of his church, and what have we to place against it? I pray you to speak him fair, Nigel.\"\n\n\"Nay, dear lady, it is both my duty and my pleasure to do what you bid me; but I would die ere I ask as a favor that which we can claim as a right. Never can I cast my eyes from yonder window that I do not see the swelling downlands and the rich meadows, glade and dingle, copse and wood, which have been ours since Norman-William gave them to that Loring who bore his shield at Senlac. Now, by trick and fraud, they have passed away from us, and many a franklin is a richer man than I; but never shall it be said that I saved the rest by bending my neck to their yoke. Let them do their worst, and let me endure it or fight it as best I may.\"\n\nThe old lady sighed and shook her head. \"You speak as a Loring should, and yet I fear that some great trouble will befall us. But let us talk no more of such matters, since we cannot mend them. Where is your citole, Nigel? Will you not play and sing to me?\"\n\nThe gentleman of those days could scarce read and write; but he spoke in two languages, played at least one musical instrument as a matter of course, and possessed a number of other accomplishments, from the imping of hawk's feathers, to the mystery of venery, with knowledge of every beast and bird, its time of grace and when it was seasonable. As far as physical feats went, to vault barebacked upon a horse, to hit a running hare with a crossbow-bolt, or to climb the angle of a castle courtyard, were feats which had come by nature to the young Squire; but it was very different with music, which had called for many a weary hour of irksome work. Now at last he could master the strings, but both his ear and his voice were not of the best, so that it was well perhaps that there was so small and so unprejudiced an audience to the Norman-French chanson, which he sang in a high reedy voice with great earnestness of feeling, but with many a slip and quaver, waving his yellow head in cadence to the music:\n\n\u2003A sword! A sword! Ah, give me a sword!\n\n\u2003For the world is all to win.\n\n\u2003Though the way be hard and the door be barred,\n\n\u2003The strong man enters in.\n\n\u2003If Chance and Fate still hold the gate,\n\n\u2003Give me the iron key,\n\n\u2003And turret high my plume shall fly,\n\n\u2003Or you may weep for me!\n\n\u2003A horse! A horse! Ah, give me a horse!\n\n\u2003To bear me out afar,\n\n\u2003Where blackest need and grimmest deed\n\n\u2003And sweetest perils are.\n\n\u2003Hold thou my ways from glutted days\n\n\u2003Where poisoned leisure lies,\n\n\u2003And point the path of tears and wrath\n\n\u2003Which mounts to high emprise!\n\n\u2003A heart! A heart! Ah, give me a heart\n\n\u2003To rise to circumstance!\n\n\u2003Serene and high and bold to try\n\n\u2003The hazard of the chance,\n\n\u2003With strength to wait, but fixed as fate\n\n\u2003To plan and dare and do,\n\n\u2003The peer of all, and only thrall,\n\n\u2003Sweet lady mine, to you!\n\nIt may have been that the sentiment went for more than the music, or it may have been the nicety of her own ears had been dulled by age, but old Dame Ermyntrude clapped her lean hands together and cried out in shrill applause.\n\n\"Weathercote has indeed had an apt pupil!\" she said. \"I pray you that you will sing again.\"\n\n\"Nay, dear dame, it is turn and turn betwixt you and me. I beg that you will recite a romance, you who know them all. For all the years that I have listened I have never yet come to the end of them, and I dare swear that there are more in your head than in all the great books which they showed me at Guildford Castle. I would fain hear 'Doon of Mayence,' or 'The Song of Roland,' or 'Sir Isumbras.'\"\n\nSo the old dame broke into a long poem, slow and dull in the inception, but quickening as the interest grew, until with darting hands and glowing face she poured forth the verses which told of the emptiness of sordid life, the beauty of heroic death, the high sacredness of love and the bondage of honor. Nigel, with set, still features and brooding eyes, drank in the fiery words, until at last they died upon the old woman's lips and she sank back weary in her chair.\n\nNigel stooped over her and kissed her brow. \"Your words will ever be as a star upon my path,\" said he. Then, carrying over the small table and the chessmen, he proposed that they should play their usual game before they sought their rooms for the night.\n\nBut a sudden and rude interruption broke in upon their gentle contest. A dog pricked its ears and barked. The others ran growling to the door. And then there came a sharp clash of arms, a dull heavy blow as from a club or sword-pommel, and a deep voice from without summoned them to open in the King's name. The old dame and Nigel had both sprung to their feet, their table overturned and their chessmen scattered among the rushes. Nigel's hand had sought his crossbow, but the Lady Ermyntrude grasped his arm.\n\n\"Nay, fair son! Have you not heard that it is in the King's name?\" said she. \"Down, Talbot! Down, Bayard! Open the door and let his messenger in!\"\n\nNigel undid the bolt, and the heavy wooden door swung outward upon its hinges. The light from the flaring cressets beat upon steel caps and fierce bearded faces, with the glimmer of drawn swords and the yellow gleam of bowstaves. A dozen armed archers forced their way into the room. At their head were the gaunt sacrist of Waverley and a stout elderly man clad in a red velvet doublet and breeches much stained and mottled with mud and clay. He bore a great sheet of parchment with a fringe of dangling seals, which he held aloft as he entered.\n\n\"I call on Nigel Loring!\" he cried. \"I, the officer of the King's law and the lay summoner of Waverley, call upon the man named Nigel Loring!\"\n\n\"I am he.\"\n\n\"Yes, it is he!\" cried the sacrist. \"Archers, do as you were ordered!\"\n\nIn an instant the band threw themselves upon him like the hounds on a stag. Desperately Nigel strove to gain his sword which lay upon the iron coffer. With the convulsive strength which comes from the spirit rather than from the body, he bore them all in that direction, but the sacrist snatched the weapon from its place, and the rest dragged the writhing Squire to the ground and swathed him in a cord.\n\n\"Hold him fast, good archers! Keep a stout grip on him!\" cried the summoner. \"I pray you, one of you, prick off these great dogs which snarl at my heels. Stand off, I say, in the name of the King! Watkin, come betwixt me and these creatures who have as little regard for the law as their master.\"\n\nOne of the archers kicked off the faithful dogs. But there were others of the household who were equally ready to show their teeth in defense of the old house of Loring. From the door which led to their quarters there emerged the pitiful muster of Nigel's threadbare retainers. There was a time when ten knights, forty men-at-arms and two hundred archers would march behind the scarlet roses. Now at this last rally when the young head of the house lay bound in his own hall, there mustered at his call the page Charles with a cudgel, John the cook with his longest spit, Red Swire the aged man-at-arms with a formidable ax swung over his snowy head, and Weathercote the minstrel with a boar-spear. Yet this motley array was fired with the spirit of the house, and under the lead of the fierce old soldier they would certainly have flung themselves upon the ready swords of the archers, had the Lady Ermyntrude not swept between them:\n\n\"Stand back, Swire!\" she cried. \"Back, Weathercote Charles, put a leash on Talbot, and hold Bayard back!\" Her black eyes blazed upon the invaders until they shrank from that baleful gaze. \"Who are you, you rascal robbers, who dare to misuse the King's name and to lay hands upon one whose smallest drop of blood has more worth than all your thrall and caitiff bodies?\"\n\n\"Nay, not so fast, dame, not so fast, I pray you!\" cried the stout summoner, whose face had resumed its natural color, now that he had a woman to deal with. \"There is a law of England, mark you, and there are those who serve and uphold it, who are the true men and the King's own lieges. Such a one am I. Then again, there are those who take such as me and transfer, carry or convey us into a bog or morass. Such a one is this graceless old man with the ax, whom I have seen already this day. There are also those who tear, destroy or scatter the papers of the law, of which this young man is the chief. Therefore, I would rede you, dame, not to rail against us, but to understand that we are the King's men on the King's own service.\"\n\n\"What then is your errand in this house at this hour of the night?\"\n\nThe summoner cleared his throat pompously, and turning his parchment to the light of the cressets he read out a long document in Norman-French, couched in such a style and such a language that the most involved and foolish of our forms were simplicity itself compared to those by which the men of the long gown made a mystery of that which of all things on earth should be the plainest and the most simple. Despair fell cold upon Nigel's heart and blanched the face of the old dame as they listened to the dread catalogue of claims and suits and issues, questions of peccary and turbary, of house-bote and fire-bote, which ended by a demand for all the lands, hereditaments, tenements, messuages and curtilages, which made up their worldly all.\n\nNigel, still bound, had been placed with his back against the iron coffer, whence he heard with dry lips and moist brow this doom of his house. Now he broke in on the recital with a vehemence which made the summoner jump:\n\n\"You shall rue what you have done this night!\" he cried. \"Poor as we are, we have our friends who will not see us wronged, and I will plead my cause before the King's own majesty at Windsor, that he, who saw the father die, may know what things are done in his royal name against the son. But these matters are to be settled in course of law in the King's courts, and how will you excuse yourself for this assault upon my house and person?\"\n\n\"Nay, that is another matter,\" said the sacrist. \"The question of debt may indeed be an affair of a civil court. But it is a crime against the law and an act of the Devil, which comes within the jurisdiction of the Abbey Court of Waverley when you dare to lay hands upon the summoner or his papers.\"\n\n\"Indeed, he speaks truth,\" cried the official. \"I know no blacker sin.\"\n\n\"Therefore,\" said the stern monk, \"it is the order of the holy father Abbot that you sleep this night in the Abbey cell, and that to-morrow you be brought before him at the court held in the chapter-house so that you receive the fit punishment for this and the many other violent and froward deeds which you have wrought upon the servants of Holy Church. Enough is now said, worthy master summoner. Archers, remove your prisoner!\"\n\nAs Nigel was lifted up by four stout archers, the Dame Ermyntrude would have rushed to his aid, but the sacrist thrust her back.\n\n\"Stand off, proud woman! Let the law take its course, and learn to humble your heart before the power of Holy Church. Has your life not taught its lesson, you, whose horn was exalted among the highest and will soon not have a roof above your gray hairs? Stand back, I say, lest I lay a curse upon you!\"\n\nThe old dame flamed suddenly into white wrath as she stood before the angry monk: \"Listen to me while I lay a curse upon you and yours!\" she cried as she raised her shriveled arms and blighted him with her flashing eyes\u2014\n\n\"As you have done to the house of Loring, so may God do to you, until your power is swept from the land of England, and of your great Abbey of Waverley there is nothing left but a pile of gray stones in a green meadow! I see it! I see it! With my old eyes I see it! From scullion to Abbot and from cellar to tower, may Waverley and all within it droop and wither from this night on!\"\n\nThe monk, hard as he was, quailed before the frantic figure and the bitter, burning words. Already the summoner and the archers with their prisoner were clear of the house. He turned and with a clang he shut the heavy door behind him." + }, + { + "title": "HOW NIGEL WAS TRIED BY THE ABBOT OF WAVERLEY", + "text": "The law of the Middle Ages, shrouded as it was in old Norman-French dialect, and abounding in uncouth and incomprehensible terms, in deodands and heriots, in infang and outfang, was a fearsome weapon in the hands of those who knew how to use it. It was not for nothing that the first act of the rebel commoners was to hew off the head of the Lord Chancellor. In an age when few knew how to read or to write, these mystic phrases and intricate forms, with the parchments and seals which were their outward expression, struck cold terror into hearts which were steeled against mere physical danger.\n\nEven young Nigel Loring's blithe and elastic spirit was chilled as he lay that night in the penal cell of Waverley and pondered over the absolute ruin which threatened his house from a source against which all his courage was of no avail. As well take up sword and shield to defend himself against the black death, as against this blight of Holy Church. He was powerless in the grip of the Abbey. Already they had shorn off a field here and a grove there, and now in one sweep they would take in the rest, and where then was the home of the Lorings, and where should Lady Ermyntrude lay her aged head, or his old retainers, broken and spent, eke out the balance of their days? He shivered as he thought of it.\n\nIt was very well for him to threaten to carry the matter before the King, but it was years since royal Edward had heard the name of Loring, and Nigel knew that the memory of princes was a short one. Besides, the Church was the ruling power in the palace as well as in the cottage, and it was only for very good cause that a King could be expected to cross the purposes of so high a prelate as the Abbot of Waverley, as long as they came within the scope of the law. Where then was he to look for help? With the simple and practical piety of the age, he prayed for the aid of his own particular saints: of Saint Paul, whose adventures by land and sea had always endeared him; of Saint George, who had gained much honorable advancement from the Dragon; and of Saint Thomas, who was a gentleman of coat-armor, who would understand and help a person of gentle blood. Then, much comforted by his naive orisons he enjoyed the sleep of youth and health until the entrance of the lay brother with the bread and small beer, which served as breakfast, in the morning.\n\nThe Abbey court sat in the chapter-house at the canonical hour of tierce, which was nine in the forenoon. At all times the function was a solemn one, even when the culprit might be a villain who was taken poaching on the Abbey estate, or a chapman who had given false measure from his biased scales. But now, when a man of noble birth was to be tried, the whole legal and ecclesiastical ceremony was carried out with every detail, grotesque or impressive, which the full ritual prescribed. The distant roll of church music and the slow tolling of the Abbey bell; the white-robed brethren, two and two, walked thrice round the hall singing the \"Benedicite\" and the \"Veni, Creator\" before they settled in their places at the desks on either side. Then in turn each high officer of the Abbey from below upward, the almoner, the lector, the chaplain, the subprior and the prior, swept to their wonted places.\n\nFinally there came the grim sacrist, with demure triumph upon his downcast features, and at his heels Abbot John himself, slow and dignified, with pompous walk and solemn, composed face, his iron-beaded rosary swinging from his waist, his breviary in his hand, and his lips muttering as he hurried through his office for the day. He knelt at his high prie-dieu; the brethren, at a signal from the prior, prostrated themselves upon the floor, and the low deep voices rolled in prayer, echoed back from the arched and vaulted roof like the wash of waves from an ocean cavern. Finally the monks resumed their seats; there entered clerks in seemly black with pens and parchment; the red-velveted summoner appeared to tell his tale; Nigel was led in with archers pressing close around him; and then, with much calling of old French and much legal incantation and mystery, the court of the Abbey was open for business.\n\nIt was the sacrist who first advanced to the oaken desk reserved for the witnesses and expounded in hard, dry, mechanical fashion the many claims which the House, of Waverley had against the family of Loring. Some generations back in return for money advanced or for spiritual favor received the Loring of the day had admitted that his estate had certain feudal duties toward the Abbey. The sacrist held up the crackling yellow parchment with swinging leaden seals on which the claim was based. Amid the obligations was that of escuage, by which the price of a knight's fee should be paid every year. No such price had been paid, nor had any service been done. The accumulated years came now to a greater sum than the fee simple of the estate. There were other claims also. The sacrist called for his books, and with thin, eager forefinger he tracked them down: dues for this, and tailage for that, so many shillings this year, and so many marks that one. Some of it occurred before Nigel was born; some of it when he was but a child. The accounts had been checked and certified by the sergeant of the law.\n\nNigel listened to the dread recital, and felt like some young stag who stands at bay with brave pose and heart of fire, but who sees himself compassed round and knows clearly that there is no escape. With his bold young face, his steady blue eyes, and the proud poise of his head, he was a worthy scion of the old house, and the sun, shining through the high oriel window, and showing up the stained and threadbare condition of his once rich doublet, seemed to illuminate the fallen fortunes of his family.\n\nThe sacrist had finished his exposition, and the sergeant-at-law was about to conclude a case which Nigel could in no way controvert, when help came to him from an unexpected quarter. It may have been a certain malignity with which the sacrist urged his suit, it may have been a diplomatic dislike to driving matters to extremes, or it may have been some genuine impulse of kindliness, for Abbot John was choleric but easily appeased. Whatever the cause, the result was that a white plump hand, raised in the air with a gesture of authority, showed that the case was at an end.\n\n\"Our brother sacrist hath done his duty in urging this suit,\" said he, \"for the worldly wealth of this Abbey is placed in his pious keeping, and it is to him that we should look if we suffered in such ways, for we are but the trustees of those who come after us. But to my keeping has been consigned that which is more precious still, the inner spirit and high repute of those who follow the rule of Saint Bernard. Now it has ever been our endeavor, since first our saintly founder went down into the valley of Clairvaux and built himself a cell there, that we should set an example to all men in gentleness and humility. For this reason it is that we built our houses in lowly places, that we have no tower to our Abbey churches, and that no finery and no metal, save only iron or lead, come within our walls. A brother shall eat from a wooden platter, drink from an iron cup, and light himself from a leaden sconce. Surely it is not for such an order who await the exaltation which is promised to the humble, to judge their own case and so acquire the lands of their neighbor! If our cause be just, as indeed I believe that it is, then it were better that it be judged at the King's assizes at Guildford, and so I decree that the case be now dismissed from the Abbey court so that it can be heard elsewhere.\"\n\nNigel breathed a prayer to the three sturdy saints who had stood by him so manfully and well in the hour of his need. \"Abbot John,\" said he, \"I never thought that any man of my name would utter thanks to a Cistercian of Waverley; but by Saint Paul! you have spoken like a man this day, for it would indeed be to play with cogged dice if the Abbey's case is to be tried in the Abbey court.\"\n\nThe eighty white-clad brethren looked with half resentful, half amused eyes as they listened to this frank address to one who, in their small lives, seemed to be the direct vice-regent of Heaven. The archers had stood back from Nigel, as though he was at liberty to go, when the loud voice of the summoner broke in upon the silence\u2014\n\n\"If it please you, holy father Abbot,\" cried the voice, \"this decision of yours is indeed secundum legem and intra vires so far as the civil suit is concerned which lies between this person and the Abbey. That is your affair; but it is I, Joseph the summoner, who have been grievously and criminally mishandled, my writs, papers and indentures destroyed, my authority flouted, and my person dragged through a bog, quagmire or morass, so that my velvet gabardine and silver badge of office were lost and are, as I verily believe, in the morass, quagmire or bog aforementioned, which is the same bog, morass\u2014\"\n\n\"Enough!\" cried the Abbot sternly. \"Lay aside this foolish fashion of speech and say straitly what you desire.\"\n\n\"Holy father, I have been the officer of the King's law no less than the servant of Holy Church, and I have been let, hindered and assaulted in the performance of my lawful and proper duties, whilst my papers, drawn in the King's name, have been shended and rended and cast to the wind. Therefore, I demand justice upon this man in the Abbey court, the said assault having been committed within the banlieue of the Abbey's jurisdiction.\"\n\n\"What have you to say to this, brother sacrist?\" asked the Abbot in some perplexity.\n\n\"I would say, father, that it is within our power to deal gently and charitably with all that concerns ourselves, but that where a the King's officer is concerned we are wanting in our duty if we give him less than the protection that he demands. I would remind you also, holy father, that this is not the first of this man's violence, but that he has before now beaten our servants, defied our authority, and put pike in the Abbot's own fish-pond.\"\n\nThe prelate's heavy cheeks flushed with anger as this old grievance came fresh into his mind. His eyes hardened as he looked at the prisoner. \"Tell me, Squire Nigel, did you indeed put pike in the pond?\"\n\nThe young man drew himself proudly up. \"Ere I answer such a question, father Abbot, do you answer one from me, and tell me what the monks of Waverley have ever done for me that I should hold my hand when I could injure them?\"\n\nA low murmur ran round the room, partly wonder at his frankness, and partly anger at his boldness.\n\nThe Abbot settled down in his seat as one who has made up his mind. \"Let the case of the summoner be laid before me,\" said he. \"Justice shall be done, and the offender shall be punished, be he noble or simple. Let the plaint be brought before the court.\"\n\nThe tale of the summoner, though rambling and filled with endless legal reiteration, was only too clear in its essence. Red Swire, with his angry face framed in white bristles, was led in, and confessed to his ill treatment of the official. A second culprit, a little wiry nut-brown archer from Churt, had aided and abetted in the deed. Both of them were ready to declare that young Squire Nigel Loring knew nothing of the matter. But then there was the awkward incident of the tearing of the writs. Nigel, to whom a lie was an impossibility, had to admit that with his own hands he had shredded those august documents. As to an excuse or an explanation, he was too proud to advance any. A cloud gathered over the brow of the Abbot, and the sacrist gazed with an ironical smile at the prisoner, while a solemn hush fell over the chapter-house as the case ended and only, judgment remained.\n\n\"Squire Nigel,\" said the Abbot, \"it was for you, who are, as all men know, of ancient lineage in this land, to give a fair example by which others should set their conduct. Instead of this, your manor house has ever been a center for the stirring up of strife, and now not content with your harsh showing toward us, the Cistercian monks of Waverley, you have even marked your contempt for the King's law, and through your servants have mishandled the person of his messenger. For such offenses it is in my power to call the spiritual terrors of the Church upon your head, and yet I would not be harsh with you, seeing that you are young, and that even last week you saved the life of a servant of the Abbey when in peril. Therefore, it is by temporal and carnal means that I will use my power to tame your overbold spirit, and to chasten that headstrong and violent humor which has caused such scandal in your dealings with our Abbey. Bread and water for six weeks from now to the Feast of Saint Benedict, with a daily exhortation from our chaplain, the pious Father Ambrose, may still avail to bend the stiff neck and to soften the hard heart.\"\n\nAt this ignominious sentence by which the proud heir of the house of Loring would share the fate of the meanest village poacher, the hot blood of Nigel rushed to his face, and his eye glanced round him with a gleam which said more plainly than words that there could be no tame acceptance of such a doom. Twice he tried to speak, and twice his anger and his shame held the words in his throat.\n\n\"I am no subject of yours, proud Abbot!\" he cried at last. \"My house has ever been vavasor to the King. I deny the power of you and your court to lay sentence upon me. Punish these your own monks, who whimper at your frown, but do not dare to lay your hand upon him who fears you not, for he is a free man, and the peer of any save only the King himself.\"\n\nThe Abbot seemed for an instant taken aback by these bold words, and by the high and strenuous voice in which they were uttered. But the sterner sacrist came as ever to stiffen his will. He held up the old parchment in his hand.\n\n\"The Lorings were indeed vavasors to the King,\" said he; \"but here is the very seal of Eustace Loring which shows that he made himself vassal to the Abbey and held his land from it.\"\n\n\"Because he was gentle,\" cried Nigel, \"because he had no thought of trick or guile.\"\n\n\"Nay!\" said the summoner. \"If my voice may be heard, father Abbot, upon a point of the law, it is of no weight what the causes may have been why a deed is subscribed, signed or confirmed, but a court is concerned only with the terms, articles, covenants and contracts of the said deed.\"\n\n\"Besides,\" said the sacrist, \"sentence is passed by the Abbey court, and there is an end of its honor and good name if it be not upheld.\"\n\n\"Brother sacrist,\" said the Abbot angrily, \"methinks you show overmuch zeal in this case, and certes, we are well able to uphold the dignity and honor of the Abbey court without any rede of thine. As to you, worthy summoner, you will give your opinion when we crave for it, and not before, or you may yourself get some touch of the power of our tribunal. But your case hath been tried, Squire Loring, and judgment given. I have no more to say.\"\n\nHe motioned with his hand, and an archer laid his grip upon the shoulder of the prisoner. But that rough plebeian touch woke every passion of revolt in Nigel's spirit. Of all his high line of ancestors, was there one who had been subjected to such ignominy as this? Would they not have preferred death? And should he be the first to lower their spirit or their traditions? With a quick, lithe movement, he slipped under the arm of the archer, and plucked the short, straight sword from the soldier's side as he did so. The next instant he had wedged himself into the recess of one of the narrow windows, and there were his pale set face, his burning eyes, and his ready blade turned upon the assembly.\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" said he, \"I never thought to find honorable advancement under the roof of an abbey, but perchance there may, be some room for it ere you hale me to your prison.\"\n\nThe chapter-house was in an uproar. Never in the long and decorous history of the Abbey had such a scene been witnessed within its walls. The monks themselves seemed for an instant to be infected by this spirit of daring revolt. Their own lifelong fetters hung more loosely as they viewed this unheard-of defiance of authority. They broke from their seats on either side and huddled half-scared, half-fascinated, in a large half-circle round the defiant captive, chattering, pointing, grimacing, a scandal for all time. Scourges should fall and penance be done for many a long week before the shadow of that day should pass from Waverley. But meanwhile there was no effort to bring them back to their rule. Everything was chaos and disorder. The Abbot had left his seat of justice and hurried angrily forward, to be engulfed and hustled in the crowd of his own monks like a sheep-dog who finds himself entangled amid a flock.\n\nOnly the sacrist stood clear. He had taken shelter behind the half-dozen archers, who looked with some approval and a good deal of indecision at this bold fugitive from justice.\n\n\"On him!\" cried the sacrist. \"Shall he defy the authority of the court, or shall one man hold six of you at bay? Close in upon him and seize him. You, Baddlesmere, why do you hold back?\"\n\nThe man in question, a tall bushy-bearded fellow, clad like the others in green jerkin and breeches with high brown boots, advanced slowly, sword in hand, against Nigel. His heart was not in the business, for these clerical courts were not popular, and everyone had a tender heart for the fallen fortunes of the house of Loring and wished well to its young heir.\n\n\"Come, young sir, you have caused scathe enough,\" said he. \"Stand forth and give yourself up!\"\n\n\"Come and fetch me, good fellow,\" said Nigel, with a dangerous smile.\n\nThe archer ran in. There was a rasp of steel, a blade flickered like a swift dart of flame, and the man staggered back, with blood running down his forearm and dripping from his fingers. He wrung them and growled a Saxon oath.\n\n\"By the black rood of Bromeholm!\" he cried, \"I had as soon put my hand down a fox's earth to drag up a vixen from her cubs.\"\n\n\"Standoff!\" said Nigel curtly. \"I would not hurt you; but by Saint Paul! I will not be handled, or some one will be hurt in the handling.\"\n\nSo fierce was his eye and so menacing his blade as he crouched in the narrow bay of the window that the little knot of archers were at a loss what to do. The Abbot had forced his way through the crowd and stood, purple with outraged dignity, at their side.\n\n\"He is outside the law,\" said he. \"He hath shed blood in a court of justice, and for such a sin there is no forgiveness. I will not have my court so flouted and set at naught. He who draws the sword, by the sword also let him perish. Forester Hugh lay a shaft to your bow!\"\n\nThe man, who was one of the Abbey's lay servants, put his weight upon his long bow and slipped the loose end of the string into the upper notch. Then, drawing one of the terrible three-foot arrows, steel-tipped and gaudily winged, from his waist, he laid it to the string.\n\n\"Now draw your bow and hold it ready!\" cried the furious Abbot. \"Squire Nigel, it is not for Holy Church to shed blood, but there is naught but violence which will prevail against the violent, and on your head be the sin. Cast down the sword which you hold in your hand!\"\n\n\"Will you give me freedom to leave your Abbey?\"\n\n\"When you have abided your sentence and purged your sin.\"\n\n\"Then I had rather die where I stand than give up my sword.\"\n\nA dangerous flame lit in the Abbot's eyes. He came of a fighting Norman stock, like so many of those fierce prelates who, bearing a mace lest they should be guilty of effusion of blood, led their troops into battle, ever remembering that it was one of their own cloth and dignity who, crosier in hand, had turned the long-drawn bloody day of Hastings. The soft accent of the churchman was gone and it was the hard voice of a soldier which said\u2014\n\n\"One minute I give you, and no more. Then when I cry 'Loose!' drive me an arrow through his body.\"\n\nThe shaft was fitted, the bow was bent, and the stern eyes of the woodman were fixed on his mark. Slowly the minute passed, while Nigel breathed a prayer to his three soldier saints, not that they should save his body in this life, but that they should have a kindly care for his soul in the next. Some thought of a fierce wildcat sally crossed his mind, but once out of his corner he was lost indeed. Yet at the last he would have rushed among his enemies, and his body was bent for the spring, when with a deep sonorous hum, like a breaking harp-string, the cord of the bow was cloven in twain, and the arrow tinkled upon the tiled floor. At the same moment a young curly-headed bowman, whose broad shoulders and deep chest told of immense strength, as clearly as his frank, laughing face and honest hazel eyes did of good humor and courage, sprang forward sword in hand and took his place by Nigel's side.\n\n\"Nay, comrades!\" said he. \"Samkin Aylward cannot stand by and see a gallant man shot down like a bull at the end of a baiting. Five against one is long odds; but two against four is better, and by my finger-bones! Squire Nigel and I leave this room together, be it on our feet or no.\"\n\nThe formidable appearance of this ally and his high reputation among his fellows gave a further chill to the lukewarm ardor of the attack. Aylward's left arm was passed through his strung bow, and he was known from Woolmer Forest to the Weald as the quickest, surest archer that ever dropped a running deer at tenscore paces.\n\n\"Nay, Baddlesmere, hold your fingers from your string-case, or I may chance to give your drawing hand a two months' rest,\" said Aylward. \"Swords, if you will, comrades, but no man strings his bow till I have loosed mine.\"\n\nYet the angry hearts of both Abbot and sacrist rose higher with a fresh obstacle.\n\n\"This is an ill day for your father, Franklin Aylward, who holds the tenancy of Crooksbury,\" said the sacrist. \"He will rue it that ever he begot a son who will lose him his acres and his steading.\"\n\n\"My father is a bold yeoman, and would rue it evermore that ever his son should stand by while foul work was afoot,\" said Aylward stoutly. \"Fall on, comrades! We are waiting.\"\n\nEncouraged by promises of reward if they should fall in the service of the Abbey, and by threats of penalties if they should hold back, the four archers were about to close, when a singular interruption gave an entirely new turn to the proceedings.\n\nAt the door of the chapter-house, while these fiery doings had been afoot, there had assembled a mixed crowd of lay brothers, servants and varlets who had watched the development of the drama with the interest and delight with which men hail a sudden break in a dull routine. Suddenly there was an agitation at the back of this group, then a swirl in the center, and finally the front rank was violently thrust aside, and through the gap there emerged a strange and whimsical figure, who from the instant of his appearance dominated both chapter-house and Abbey, monks, prelates and archers, as if he were their owner and their master.\n\nHe was a man somewhat above middle age, with thin lemon-colored hair, a curling mustache, a tufted chin of the same hue, and a high craggy face, all running to a great hook of the nose, like the beak of an eagle. His skin was tanned a brown-red by much exposure to the wind and sun. In height he was tall, and his figure was thin and loose-jointed, but stringy and hard-bitten. One eye was entirely covered by its lid, which lay flat over an empty socket, but the other danced and sparkled with a most roguish light, darting here and there with a twinkle of humor and criticism and intelligence, the whole fire of his soul bursting through that one narrow cranny.\n\nHis dress was as noteworthy as his person. A rich purple doublet and cloak was marked on the lapels with a strange scarlet device shaped like a wedge. Costly lace hung round his shoulders, and amid its soft folds there smoldered the dull red of a heavy golden chain. A knight's belt at his waist and a knight's golden spurs twinkling from his doeskin riding-boots proclaimed his rank, and on the wrist of his left gauntlet there sat a demure little hooded falcon of a breed which in itself was a mark of the dignity of the owner. Of weapons he had none, but a mandolin was slung by a black silken band over his back, and the high brown end projected above his shoulder. Such was the man, quaint, critical, masterful, with a touch of what is formidable behind it, who now surveyed the opposing groups of armed men and angry monks with an eye which commanded their attention.\n\n\"Excusez!\" said he, in a lisping French. \"Excusez, mes amis! I had thought to arouse from prayer or meditation, but never have I seen such a holy exercise as this under an abbey's roof, with swords for breviaries and archers for acolytes. I fear that I have come amiss, and yet I ride on an errand from one who permits no delay.\"\n\nThe Abbot, and possibly the sacrist also, had begun to realize that events had gone a great deal farther than they had intended, and that without an extreme scandal it was no easy matter for them to save their dignity and the good name of Waverley. Therefore, in spite of the debonair, not to say disrespectful, bearing of the newcomer, they rejoiced at his appearance and intervention.\n\n\"I am the Abbot of Waverley, fair son,\" said the prelate. \"If your message deal with a public matter it may be fitly repeated in the chapter-house; if not I will give you audience in my own chamber; for it is clear to me that you are a gentle man of blood and coat-armor who would not lightly break in upon the business of our court\u2014a business which, as you have remarked, is little welcome to men of peace like myself and the brethren of the rule of Saint Bernard.\"\n\n\"Pardieu! Father Abbot,\" said the stranger. \"One had but to glance at you and your men to see that the business was indeed little to your taste, and it may be even less so when I say that rather than see this young person in the window, who hath a noble bearing, further molested by these archers, I will myself adventure my person on his behalf.\"\n\nThe Abbot's smile turned to a frown at these frank words. \"It would become you better, sir, to deliver the message of which you say that you are the bearer, than to uphold a prisoner against the rightful judgment of a court.\"\n\nThe stranger swept the court with his questioning eye. \"The message is not for you, good father Abbot. It is for one whom I know not. I have been to his house, and they have sent me hither. The name is Nigel Loring.\"\n\n\"It is for me, fair sir.\"\n\n\"I had thought as much. I knew your father, Eustace Loring, and though he would have made two of you, yet he has left his stamp plain enough upon your face.\"\n\n\"You know not the truth of this matter,\" said the Abbot. \"If you are a loyal man, you will stand aside, for this young man hath grievously offended against the law, and it is for the King's lieges to give us their support.\"\n\n\"And you have haled him up for judgment,\" cried the stranger with much amusement. \"It is as though a rookery sat in judgment upon a falcon. I warrant that you have found it easier to judge than to punish. Let me tell you, father Abbot, that this standeth not aright. When powers such as these were given to the like of you, they were given that you might check a brawling underling or correct a drunken woodman, and not that you might drag the best blood in England to your bar and set your archers on him if he questioned your findings.\"\n\nThe Abbot was little used to hear such words of reproof uttered in so stern a voice under his own abbey roof and before his listening monks. \"You may perchance find that an Abbey court has more powers than you wot of, Sir Knight,\" said he, \"if knight indeed you be who are so uncourteous and short in your speech. Ere we go further, I would ask your name and style?\"\n\nThe stranger laughed. \"It is easy to see that you are indeed men of peace,\" said he proudly. \"Had I shown this sign,\" and he touched the token upon his lapels, \"whether on shield or pennon, in the marches of France or Scotland, there is not a cavalier but would have known the red pile of Chandos.\"\n\nChandos, John Chandos, the flower of English chivalry, the pink of knight-errantry, the hero already of fifty desperate enterprises, a man known and honored from end to end of Europe! Nigel gazed at him as one who sees a vision. The archers stood back abashed, while the monks crowded closer to stare at the famous soldier of the French wars. The Abbot abated his tone, and a smile came to his angry face.\n\n\"We are indeed men of peace, Sir John, and little skilled in warlike blazonry,\" said he; \"yet stout as are our Abbey walls, they are not so thick that the fame of your exploits has not passed through them and reached our ears. If it be your pleasure to take an interest in this young and misguided Squire, it is not for us to thwart your kind intention or to withhold such grace as you request. I am glad indeed that he hath one who can set him so fair an example for a friend.\"\n\n\"I thank you for your courtesy, good father Abbot,\" said Chandos carelessly. \"This young Squire has, however, a better friend than myself, one who is kinder to those he loves and more terrible to those he hates. It is from him I bear a message.\"\n\n\"I pray you, fair and honored sir,\" said Nigel, \"that you will tell me what is the message that you bear.\"\n\n\"The message, mon ami, is that your friend comes into these parts and would have a night's lodging at the manor house of Tilford for the love and respect that he bears your family.\"\n\n\"Nay, he is most welcome,\" said Nigel, \"and yet I hope that he is one who can relish a soldier's fare and sleep under a humble roof, for indeed we can but give our best, poor as it is.\"\n\n\"He is indeed a soldier and a good one,\" Chandos answered, laughing, \"and I warrant he has slept in rougher quarters than Tilford Manor-house.\"\n\n\"I have few friends, fair sir,\" said Nigel, with a puzzled face. \"I pray you give me this gentleman's name.\"\n\n\"His name is Edward.\"\n\n\"Sir Edward Mortimer of Kent, perchance, or is it Sir Edward Brocas of whom the Lady Ermyntrude talks?\"\n\n\"Nay, he is known as Edward only, and if you ask a second name it is Plantagenet, for he who comes to seek the shelter of your roof is your liege lord and mine, the King's high majesty, Edward of England.\"" + }, + { + "title": "IN WHICH LADY ERMYNTRUDE OPENS THE IRON COFFER", + "text": "AS in a dream Nigel heard these stupendous and incredible words. As in a dream also he had a vision of a smiling and conciliatory Abbot, of an obsequious sacrist, and of a band of archers who cleared a path for him and for the King's messenger through the motley crowd who had choked the entrance of the Abbey court. A minute later he was walking by the side of Chandos through the peaceful cloister, and in front in the open archway of the great gate was the broad yellow road between its borders of green meadowland. The spring air was the sweeter and the more fragrant for that chill dread of dishonor and captivity which had so recently frozen his ardent heart. He had already passed the portal when a hand plucked at his sleeve and he turned to find himself confronted by the brown honest face and hazel eyes of the archer who had interfered in his behalf.\n\n\"Well,\" said Aylward, \"what have you to say to me, young sir?\"\n\n\"What can I say, my good fellow, save that I thank you with all my heart? By Saint Paul! if you had been my blood brother you could not have stood by me more stoutly.\"\n\n\"Nay! but this is not enough.\"\n\nNigel colored with vexation, and the more so as Chandos was listening with his critical smile to their conversation. \"If you had heard what was said in the court,\" said he, \"you would understand that I am not blessed at this moment with much of this world's gear. The black death and the monks have between them been heavy upon our estate. Willingly would I give you a handful of gold for your assistance, since that is what you seem to crave; but indeed I have it not, and so once more I say that you must be satisfied with my thanks.\"\n\n\"Your gold is nothing to me,\" said Aylward shortly, \"nor would you buy my loyalty if you filled my wallet with rose nobles, so long as you were not a man after my own heart. But I have seen you back the yellow horse, and I have seen you face the Abbot of Waverley, and you are such a master as I would very gladly serve if you have by chance a place for such a man. I have seen your following, and I doubt not that they were stout fellows in your grandfather's time; but which of them now would draw a bowstring to his ear? Through you I have left the service of the Abbey of Waverley, and where can I look now for a post? If I stay here I am all undone like a fretted bowstring.\"\n\n\"Nay, there can be no difficulty there,\" said Chandos. \"Pardieu! a roistering, swaggering dare-devil archer is worth his price on the French border. There are two hundred such who march behind my own person, and I would ask nothing better than to see you among them.\"\n\n\"I thank you, noble sir, for your offer,\" said Aylward, \"and I had rather follow your banner than many another one, for it is well known that it goes ever forward, and I have heard enough of the wars to know that there are small pickings for the man who lags behind. Yet, if the Squire will have me, I would choose to fight under the five roses of Loring, for though I was born in the hundred of Easebourne and the rape of Chichester, yet I have grown up and learned to use the longbow in these parts, and as the free son of a free franklin I had rather serve my own neighbor than a stranger.\"\n\n\"My good fellow,\" said Nigel, \"I have told you that I could in no wise reward you for such service.\"\n\n\"If you will but take me to the wars I will see to my own reward,\" said Aylward. \"Till then I ask for none, save a corner of your table and six feet of your floor, for it is certain that the only reward I would get from the Abbey for this day's work would be the scourge for my back and the stocks for my ankles. Samkin Aylward is your man, Squire Nigel, from this hour on, and by these ten finger-bones he trusts the Devil will fly away with him if ever he gives you cause to regret it!\" So saying he raised his hand to his steel cap in salute, slung his great yellow bow over his back, and followed on some paces in the rear of his new master.\n\n\"Pardieu! I have arrived a la bonne heure,\" said Chandos. \"I rode from Windsor and came to your manor house, to find it empty save for a fine old dame, who told me of your troubles. From her I walked across to the Abbey, and none too soon, for what with cloth-yard shafts for your body, and bell, book and candle for your soul, it was no very cheerful outlook. But here is the very dame herself, if I mistake not.\"\n\nIt was indeed the formidable figure of the Lady Ermyntrude, gaunt, bowed and leaning on her staff, which had emerged from the door of the manor-house and advanced to greet them. She croaked with laughter, and shook her stick at the great building as she heard of the discomfiture of the Abbey court. Then she led the way into the hall where the best which she could provide had been laid out for their illustrious guest. There was Chandos blood in her own veins, traceable back through the de Greys, de Multons, de Valences, de Montagues and other high and noble strains, so that the meal had been eaten and cleared before she had done tracing the network of intermarriages and connections, with quarterings, impalements, lozenges and augmentations by which the blazonry of the two families might be made to show a common origin. Back to the Conquest and before it there was not a noble family-tree every twig and bud of which was not familiar to the Dame Ermyntrude.\n\nAnd now when the trestles were cleared and the three were left alone in the hall, Chandos broke his message to the lady. \"King Edward hath ever borne in mind that noble knight your son Sir Eustace,\" said he. \"He will journey to Southampton next week, and I am his harbinger. He bade me say, noble and honored lady, that he would come from Guildford in any easy stage so that he might spend one night under your roof.\"\n\nThe old dame flushed with pleasure, and then turned white with vexation at the words. \"It is in truth great honor to the house of Loring,\" said she, \"yet our roof is now humble and, as you have seen, our fare is plain. The King knows not that we are so poor. I fear lest we seem churlish and niggard in his eyes.\"\n\nBut Chandos reasoned away her fears. The King's retinue would journey on to Farnham Castle. There were no ladies in his party. Though he was King, still he was a hardy soldier, and cared little for his ease. In any case, since he had declared his coming, they must make the best of it. Finally, with all delicacy, Chandos offered his own purse if it would help in the matter. But already the Lady Ermyntrude had recovered her composure.\n\n\"Nay, fair kinsman, that may not be,\" said she. \"I will make such preparation as I may for the King. He will bear in mind that if the house of Loring can give nothing else, they have always held their blood and their lives at his disposal.\"\n\nChandos was to ride on to Farnham Castle and beyond, but he expressed his desire to have a warm bath ere he left Tilford, for like most of his fellow-knights, he was much addicted to simmering in the hottest water that he could possibly endure. The bath therefore, a high hooped arrangement like a broader but shorter churn, was carried into the privacy of the guest-chamber, and thither it was that Nigel was summoned to hold him company while he stewed and sweltered in his tub.\n\nNigel perched himself upon the side of the high bed, swinging his legs over the edge and gazing with wonder and amusement at the quaint face, the ruffled yellow hair, and the sinewy shoulders of the famous warrior, dimly seen amid a pillar of steam. He was in a mood for talk; so Nigel with eager lips plied him with a thousand questions about the wars, hanging upon every word which came back to him, like those of the ancient oracles, out of the mist and the cloud. To Chandos himself, the old soldier for whom war had lost its freshness, it was a renewal of his own ardent youth to listen to Nigel's rapid questions and to mark the rapt attention with which he listened.\n\n\"Tell me of the Welsh, honored sir,\" asked the Squire. \"What manner of soldiers are the Welsh?\"\n\n\"They are very valiant men of war,\" said Chandos, splashing about in his tub. \"There is good skirmishing to be had in their valleys if you ride with a small following. They flare up like a furzebush in the flames, but if for a short space you may abide the heat of it, then there is a chance that it may be cooler.\"\n\n\"And the Scotch?\" asked Nigel. \"You have made war upon them also, as I understand.\"\n\n\"The Scotch knights have no masters in the world, and he who can hold his own with the best of them, be it a Douglas, a Murray or a Seaton, has nothing more to learn. Though you be a hard man, you will always meet as hard a one if you ride northward. If the Welsh be like the furze fire, then, pardieu! the Scotch are the peat, for they will smolder and you will never come to the end of them. I have had many happy hours on the marches of Scotland, for even if there be no war the Percies of Alnwick or the Governor of Carlisle can still raise a little bickering with the border clans.\"\n\n\"I bear in mind that my father was wont to say that they were very stout spearmen.\"\n\n\"No better in the world, for the spears are twelve foot long and they hold them in very thick array; but their archers are weak, save only the men of Ettrick and Selkirk who come from the forest. I pray you to open the lattice, Nigel, for the steam is overthick. Now in Wales it is the spearmen who are weak, and there are no archers in these islands like the men of Gwent with their bows of elm, which shoot with such power that I have known a cavalier to have his horse killed when the shaft had passed through his mail breeches, his thigh and his saddle. And yet, what is the most strongly shot arrow to these new balls of iron driven by the fire-powder which will crush a man's armor as an egg is crushed by a stone? Our fathers knew them not.\"\n\n\"Then the better for us,\" cried Nigel, \"since there is at least one honorable venture which is all our own.\"\n\nChandos chuckled and turned upon the flushed youth a twinkling and sympathetic eye. \"You have a fashion of speech which carries me back to the old men whom I met in my boyhood,\" said he. \"There were some of the real old knight-errants left in those days, and they spoke as you do. Young as you are, you belong to another age. Where got you that trick of thought and word?\"\n\n\"I have had only one to teach me, the Lady Ermyntrude.\"\n\n\"Pardieu! she has trained a proper young hawk ready to stoop at a lordly quarry,\" said Chandos. \"I would that I had the first unhooding of you. Will you not ride with me to the wars?\"\n\nThe tears brimmed over from Nigel's eyes, and he wrung the gaunt hand extended from the bath. \"By Saint Paul! what could I ask better in the world? I fear to leave her, for she has none other to care for her. But if it can in any way be arranged\u2014\"\n\n\"The King's hand may smooth it out. Say no more until he is here. But if you wish to ride with me\u2014\"\n\n\"What could man wish for more? Is there a Squire in England who would not serve under the banner of Chandos! Whither do you go, fair sir? And when do you go? Is it to Scotland? Is it to Ireland? Is it to France? But alas, alas!\"\n\nThe eager face had clouded. For the instant he had forgotten that a suit of armor was as much beyond his means as a service of gold plate. Down in a twinkling came all his high hopes to the ground. Oh, these sordid material things, which come between our dreams and their fulfilment! The Squire of such a knight must dress with the best. Yet all the fee simple of Tilford would scarce suffice for one suit of plate.\n\nChandos, with his quick wit and knowledge of the world, had guessed the cause of this sudden change. \"If you fight under my banner it is for me to find the weapons,\" said he. \"Nay, I will not be denied.\"\n\nBut Nigel shook his head sadly. \"It may not be. The Lady Ermyntrude would sell this old house and every acre round it, ere she would permit me to accept this gracious bounty which you offer. Yet I do not despair, for only last week I won for myself a noble warhorse for which I paid not a penny, so perchance a suit of armor may also come my way.\"\n\n\"And how won you the horse?\"\n\n\"It was given me by the monks of Waverley.\"\n\n\"This is wonderful. Pardieu! I should have expected, from what I had seen, that they would have given you little save their malediction.\"\n\n\"They had no use for the horse, and they gave it to me.\"\n\n\"Then we have only to find some one who has no use for a suit of armor and will give it to you. Yet I trust that you will think better of it and let me, since that good lady proves that I am your kinsman, fit you for the wars.\"\n\n\"I thank you, noble sir, and if I should turn to anyone it would indeed be to you; but there are other ways which I would try first. But I pray you, good Sir John, to tell me of some of your noble spear-runnings against the French, for the whole land rings with the tale of your deeds and I have heard that in one morning three champions have fallen before your lance. Was it not so?\"\n\n\"That it was indeed so these scars upon my body will prove; but these were the follies of my youth.\"\n\n\"How can you call them follies? Are they not the means by which honorable advancement may be gained and one's lady exalted?\"\n\n\"It is right that you should think so, Nigel. At your age a man should have a hot head and a high heart. I also had both and fought for my lady's glove or for my vow or for the love of fighting. But as one grows older and commands men one has other things to think of. One thinks less of one's own honor and more of the safety of the army. It is not your own spear, your own sword, your own arm, which will turn the tide of fight; but a cool head may save a stricken field. He who knows when his horsemen should charge and when they should fight on foot, he who can mix his archers with his men-at-arms in such a fashion that each can support the other, he who can hold up his reserve and pour it into the battle when it may turn the tide, he who has a quick eye for boggy land and broken ground\u2014that is the man who is of more worth to an army than Roland, Oliver and all the paladins.\"\n\n\"Yet if his knights fail him, honored sir, all his head-work will not prevail.\"\n\n\"True enough, Nigel; so may every Squire ride to the wars with his soul on fire, as yours is now. But I must linger no longer, for the King's service must be done. I will dress, and when I have bid farewell to the noble Dame Ermyntrude I will on to Farnham; but you will see me here again on the day that the King comes.\"\n\nSo Chandos went his way that evening, walking his horse through the peaceful lanes and twanging his citole as he went, for he loved music and was famous for his merry songs. The cottagers came from their huts and laughed and clapped as the rich full voice swelled and sank to the cheery tinkling of the strings. There were few who saw him pass that would have guessed that the quaint one-eyed man with the yellow hair was the toughest fighter and craftiest man of war in Europe. Once only, as he entered Farnham, an old broken man-at-arms ran out in his rags and clutched at his horse as a dog gambols round his master. Chandos threw him a kind word and a gold coin as he passed on to the castle.\n\nIn the meanwhile young Nigel and the Lady Ermyntrude, left alone with their difficulties, looked blankly in each other's faces.\n\n\"The cellar is well nigh empty,\" said Nigel. \"There are two firkins of small beer and a tun of canary. How can we set such drink before the King and his court?\"\n\n\"We must have some wine of Bordeaux. With that and the mottled cow's calf and the fowls and a goose, we can set forth a sufficient repast if he stays only for the one night. How many will be with him?\"\n\n\"A dozen, at the least.\"\n\nThe old dame wrung her hands in despair. \"Nay, take it not to heart, dear lady!\" said Nigel. \"We have but to say the word and the King would stop at Waverley, where he and his court would find all that they could wish.\"\n\n\"Never!\" cried the Lady Ermyntrude. \"It would be shame and disgrace to us forever if the King were to pass our door when he has graciously said that he was fain to enter in. Nay, I will do it. Never did I think that I would be forced to this, but I know that he would wish it, and I will do it.\"\n\nShe went to the old iron coffer, and taking a small key from her girdle she unlocked it. The rusty hinges, screaming shrilly as she threw back the lid, proclaimed how seldom it was that she had penetrated into the sacred recesses of her treasure-chest. At the top were some relics of old finery: a silken cloak spangled with golden stars, a coif of silver filigree, a roll of Venetian lace. Beneath were little packets tied in silk which the old lady handled with tender care: a man's hunting-glove, a child's shoe, a love-knot done in faded green ribbon, some letters in rude rough script, and a vernicle of Saint Thomas. Then from the very bottom of the box she drew three objects, swathed in silken cloth, which she uncovered and laid upon the table. The one was a bracelet of rough gold studded with uncut rubies, the second was a gold salver, and the third was a high goblet of the same metal.\n\n\"You have heard me speak of these, Nigel, but never before have you seen them, for indeed I have not opened the hutch for fear that we might be tempted in our great need to turn them into money. I have kept them out of my sight and even out of my thoughts. But now it is the honor of the house which calls, and even these must go. This goblet was that which my husband, Sir Nele Loring, won after the intaking of Belgrade when he and his comrades held the lists from matins to vespers against the flower of the French chivalry. The salver was given him by the Earl of Pembroke in memory of his valor upon the field of Falkirk.\"\n\n\"And the bracelet, dear lady?\"\n\n\"You will not laugh, Nigel?\"\n\n\"Nay, why should I laugh?\"\n\n\"The bracelet was the prize for the Queen of Beauty which was given to me before all the high-born ladies of England by Sir Nele Loring a month before our marriage\u2014the Queen of Beauty, Nigel\u2014I, old and twisted, as you see me. Five strong men went down before his lance ere he won that trinket for me. And now in my last years\u2014\"\n\n\"Nay, dear and honored lady, we will not part with it.\"\n\n\"Yes, Nigel, he would have it so. I can hear his whisper in my ear. Honor to him was everything\u2014the rest nothing. Take it from me, Nigel, ere my heart weakens. To-morrow you will ride with it to Guildford; you will see Thorold the goldsmith; and you will raise enough money to pay for all that we shall need for the King's coming.\" She turned her face away to hide the quivering of her wrinkled features, and the crash of the iron lid covered the sob which burst from her overwrought soul." + }, + { + "title": "HOW NIGEL WENT MARKETING TO GUILDFORD", + "text": "It was on a bright June morning that young Nigel, with youth and springtime to make his heart light, rode upon his errand from Tilford to Guildford town. Beneath him was his great yellow warhorse, caracoling and curveting as he went, as blithe and free of spirit as his master. In all England one would scarce have found upon that morning so high-mettled and so debonair a pair. The sandy road wound through groves of fir, where the breeze came soft and fragrant with resinous gums, or over heathery downs, which rolled away to north and to south, vast and untenanted, for on the uplands the soil was poor and water scarce. Over Crooksbury Common he passed, and then across the great Heath of Puttenham, following a sandy path which wound amid the bracken and the heather, for he meant to strike the Pilgrims' Way where it turned eastward from Farnham and from Seale. As he rode he continually felt his saddle-bag with his hand, for in it, securely strapped, he had placed the precious treasures of the Lady Ermyntrude. As he saw the grand tawny neck tossing before him, and felt the easy heave of the great horse and heard the muffled drumming of his hoofs, he could have sung and shouted with the joy of living.\n\nBehind him, upon the little brown pony which had been Nigel's former mount, rode Samkin Aylward the bowman, who had taken upon himself the duties of personal attendant and body-guard. His great shoulders and breadth of frame seemed dangerously top-heavy upon the tiny steed, but he ambled along, whistling a merry lilt and as lighthearted as his master. There was no countryman who had not a nod and no woman who had not a smile for the jovial bowman, who rode for the most part with his face over his shoulder, staring at the last petticoat which had passed him. Once only he met with a harsher greeting. It was from a tall, white-headed, red-faced man whom they met upon the moor.\n\n\"Good-morrow, dear father!\" cried Aylward. \"How is it with you at Crooksbury? And how are the new black cow and the ewes from Alton and Mary the dairymaid and all your gear?\"\n\n\"It ill becomes you to ask, you ne'er-do-weel,\" said the old man. \"You have angered the monks of Waverley, whose tenant I am, and they would drive me out of my farm. Yet there are three more years to run, and do what they may I will bide till then. But little did I think that I should lose my homestead through you, Samkin, and big as you are I would knock the dust out of that green jerkin with a good hazel switch if I had you at Crooksbury.\"\n\n\"Then you shall do it to-morrow morning, good father, for I will come and see you then. But indeed I did not do more at Waverley than you would have done yourself. Look me in the eye, old hothead, and tell me if you would have stood by while the last Loring\u2014look at him as he rides with his head in the air and his soul in the clouds\u2014was shot down before your very eyes at the bidding of that fat monk! If you would, then I disown you as my father.\"\n\n\"Nay, Samkin, if it was like that, then perhaps what you did was not so far amiss. But it is hard to lose the old farm when my heart is buried deep in the good brown soil.\"\n\n\"Tut, man! there are three years to run, and what may not happen in three years? Before that time I shall have gone to the wars, and when I have opened a French strong box or two you can buy the good brown soil and snap your fingers at Abbot John and his bailiffs. Am I not as proper a man as Tom Withstaff of Churt? And yet he came back after six months with his pockets full of rose nobles and a French wench on either arm.\"\n\n\"God preserve us from the wenches, Samkin! But indeed I think that if there is money to be gathered you are as likely to get your fist full as any man who goes to the war. But hasten, lad, hasten! Already your young master is over the brow.\"\n\nThus admonished, the archer waved his gauntleted hand to his father, and digging his heels into the sides of his little pony soon drew up with the Squire. Nigel glanced over his shoulder and slackened speed until the pony's head was up to his saddle.\n\n\"Have I not heard, archer,\" said he, \"that an outlaw has been loose in these parts?\"\n\n\"It is true, fair sir. He was villain to Sir Peter Mandeville, but he broke his bonds and fled into the forests. Men call him the 'Wild Man of Puttenham.'\"\n\n\"How comes it that he has not been hunted down? If the man be a draw-latch and a robber it would be an honorable deed to clear the country of such an evil.\"\n\n\"Twice the sergeants-at-arms from Guildford have come out against him, but the fox has many earths, and it would puzzle you to get him out of them.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul! were my errand not a pressing one I would be tempted to turn aside and seek him. Where lives he, then?\"\n\n\"There is a great morass beyond Puttenham, and across it there are caves in which he and his people lurk.\"\n\n\"His people? He hath a band?\"\n\n\"There are several with him.\"\n\n\"It sounds a most honorable enterprise,\" said Nigel. \"When the King hath come and gone we will spare a day for the outlaws of Puttenham. I fear there is little chance for us to see them on this journey.\"\n\n\"They prey upon the pilgrims who pass along the Winchester Road, and they are well loved by the folk in these parts, for they rob none of them and have an open hand for all who will help them.\"\n\n\"It is right easy to have an open hand with the money that you have stolen,\" said Nigel; \"but I fear that they will not try to rob two men with swords at their girdles like you and me, so we shall have no profit from them.\"\n\nThey had passed over the wild moors and had come down now into the main road by which the pilgrims from the west of England made their way to the national shrine at Canterbury. It passed from Winchester, and up the beautiful valley of the Itchen until it reached Farnham, where it forked into two branches, one of which ran along the Hog's Back, while the second wound to the south and came out at Saint Catherine's Hill where stands the Pilgrim shrine, a gray old ruin now, but once so august, so crowded and so affluent. It was this second branch upon which Nigel and Aylward found themselves as they rode to Guildford.\n\nNo one, as it chanced, was going the same way as themselves, but they met one large drove of pilgrims returning from their journey with pictures of Saint Thomas and snails' shells or little leaden ampullae in their hats and bundles of purchases over their shoulders. They were a grimy, ragged, travel-stained crew, the men walking, the women borne on asses. Man and beast, they limped along as if it would be a glad day when they saw their homes once more. These and a few beggars or minstrels, who crouched among the heather on either side of the track in the hope of receiving an occasional farthing from the passer-by, were the only folk they met until they had reached the village of Puttenham. Already there, was a hot sun and just breeze enough to send the dust flying down the road, so they were glad to clear their throats with a glass of beer at the alestake in the village, where the fair alewife gave Nigel a cold farewell because he had no attentions for her, and Aylward a box on the ear because he had too many.\n\nOn the farther side of Puttenham the road runs through thick woods of oak and beech, with a tangled undergrowth of fern and bramble. Here they met a patrol of sergeants-at-arms, tall fellows, well-mounted, clad in studded-leather caps and tunics, with lances and swords. They walked their horses slowly on the shady side of the road, and stopped as the travelers came up, to ask if they had been molested on the way.\n\n\"Have a care,\" they added, \"for the 'Wild Man' and his wife are out. Only yesterday they slew a merchant from the west and took a hundred crowns.\"\n\n\"His wife, you say?\"\n\n\"Yes, she is ever at his side, and has saved him many a time, for if he has the strength it is she who has the wit. I hope to see their heads together upon the green grass one of these mornings.\"\n\nThe patrol passed downward toward Farnham, and so, as it proved, away from the robbers, who had doubtless watched them closely from the dense brushwood which skirted the road. Coming round a curve, Nigel and Aylward were aware of a tall and graceful woman who sat, wringing her hands and weeping bitterly, upon the bank by the side of the track. At such a sight of beauty in distress Nigel pricked Pommers with the spur and in three bounds was at the side of the unhappy lady.\n\n\"What ails you, fair dame?\" he asked. \"Is there any small matter in which I may stand your friend, or is it possible that anyone hath so hard a heart as to do you an injury.\"\n\nShe rose and turned upon him a face full of hope and entreaty. \"Oh, save my poor, poor father!\" she cried. \"Have you perchance seen the way-wardens? They passed us, and I fear they are beyond reach.\"\n\n\"Yes, they have ridden onward, but we may serve as well.\"\n\n\"Then hasten, hasten, I pray you! Even now they may be doing him to death. They have dragged him into yonder grove and I have heard his voice growing ever weaker in the distance. Hasten, I implore you!\"\n\nNigel sprang from his horse and tossed the rein to Aylward.\n\n\"Nay, let us go together. How many robbers were there, lady?\"\n\n\"Two stout fellows.\"\n\n\"Then I come also.\"\n\n\"Nay, it is not possible,\" said Nigel. \"The wood is too thick for horses, and we cannot leave them in the road.\"\n\n\"I will guard them,\" cried the lady.\n\n\"Pommers is not so easily held. Do you bide here, Aylward, until you hear from me. Stir not, I command you!\" So saying, Nigel, with the light, of adventure gleaming in his joyous eyes, drew his sword and plunged swiftly into the forest.\n\nFar and fast he ran, from glade to glade, breaking through the bushes, springing over the brambles, light as a young deer, peering this way and that, straining his ears for a sound, and catching only the cry of the wood-pigeons. Still on he went, with the constant thought of the weeping woman behind and of the captured man in front. It was not until he was footsore and out of breath that he stopped with his hand to his side, and considered that his own business had still to be done, and that it was time once more that he should seek the road to Guildford.\n\nMeantime Aylward had found his own rough means of consoling the woman in the road, who stood sobbing with her face against the side of Pommers' saddle.\n\n\"Nay, weep not, my pretty one,\" said he. \"It brings the tears to my own eyes to see them stream from thine.\"\n\n\"Alas! good archer, he was the best of fathers, so gentle and so kind! Had you but known him, you must have loved him.\"\n\n\"Tut, tut! he will suffer no scathe. Squire Nigel will bring him back to you anon.\"\n\n\"No, no, I shall never see him more. Hold me, archer, or I fall!\"\n\nAylward pressed his ready arm round the supple waist. The fainting woman leaned with her hand upon his shoulder. Her pale face looked past him, and it was some new light in her eyes, a flash of expectancy, of triumph, of wicked joy, which gave him sudden warning of his danger.\n\nHe shook her off and sprang to one side, but only just in time to avoid a crashing blow from a great club in the hands of a man even taller and stronger than himself. He had one quick vision of great white teeth clenched in grim ferocity, a wild flying beard and blazing wild-beast eyes. The next instant he had closed, ducking his head beneath another swing of that murderous cudgel.\n\nWith his arms round the robber's burly body and his face buried in his bushy beard, Aylward gasped and strained and heaved. Back and forward in the dusty road the two men stamped and staggered, a grim wrestling-match, with life for the prize. Twice the great strength of the outlaw had Aylward nearly down, and twice with his greater youth and skill the archer restored his grip and his balance. Then at last his turn came. He slipped his leg behind the other's knee, and, giving a mighty wrench, tore him across it. With a hoarse shout the outlaw toppled backward and had hardly reached the ground before Aylward had his knee upon his chest and his short sword deep in his beard and pointed to his throat.\n\n\"By these ten finger-bones!\" he gasped, \"one more struggle and it is your last!\"\n\nThe man lay still enough, for he was half-stunned by the crashing fall. Aylward looked round him, but the woman had disappeared. At the first blow struck she had vanished into the forest. He began to have fears for his master, thinking that he perhaps had been lured into some deathtrap; but his forebodings were soon at rest, for Nigel himself came hastening down the road, which he had struck some distance from the spot where he left it.\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" he cried, \"who is this man on whom you are perched, and where is the lady who has honored us so far as to crave our help? Alas, that I have been unable to find her father!\"\n\n\"As well for you, fair sir,\" said Aylward, \"for I am of opinion that her father was the Devil. This woman is, as I believe, the wife of the 'Wild Man of Puttenham,' and this is the 'Wild Man' himself who set upon me and tried to brain me with his club.\"\n\nThe outlaw, who had opened his eyes, looked with a scowl from his captor to the newcomer. \"You are in luck, archer,\" said he, \"for I have come to grips with many a man, but I cannot call to mind any who have had the better of me.\"\n\n\"You have indeed the grip of a bear,\" said Aylward; \"but it was a coward deed that your wife should hold me while you dashed out my brains with a stick. It is also a most villainous thing to lay a snare for wayfarers by asking for their pity and assistance, so that it was our own soft hearts which brought us into such danger. The next who hath real need of our help may suffer for your sins.\"\n\n\"When the hand of the whole world is against you,\" said the outlaw in a surly voice, \"you must fight as best you can.\"\n\n\"You well deserve to be hanged, if only because you have brought this woman, who is fair and gentle-spoken, to such a life,\" said Nigel. \"Let us tie him by the wrist to my stirrup leather, Aylward, and we will lead him into Guildford.\"\n\nThe archer drew a spare bowstring from his case and had bound the prisoner as directed, when Nigel gave a sudden start and cry of alarm.\n\n\"Holy Mary!\" he cried. \"Where is the saddle-bag?\"\n\nIt had been cut away by a sharp knife. Only the two ends of strap remained. Aylward and Nigel stared at each other in blank dismay. Then the young Squire shook his clenched hands and pulled at his yellow curls in his despair.\n\n\"The Lady Ermyntrude's bracelet! My grandfather's cup!\" he cried. \"I would have died ere I lost them! What can I say to her? I dare not return until I have found them. Oh, Aylward, Aylward! how came you to let them be taken?\"\n\nThe honest archer had pushed back his steel cap and was scratching his tangled head. \"Nay, I know nothing of it. You never said that there was aught of price in the bag, else had I kept a better eye upon it. Certes! it was not this fellow who took it, since I have never had my hands from him. It can only be the woman who fled with it while we fought.\"\n\nNigel stamped about the road in his perplexity. \"I would follow her to the world's end if I knew where I could find her, but to search these woods for her is to look for a mouse in a wheat-field. Good Saint George, thou who didst overcome the Dragon, I pray you by that most honorable and knightly achievement that you will be with me now! And you also, great Saint Julian, patron of all wayfarers in distress! Two candles shall burn before your shrine at Godalming, if you will but bring me back my saddle-bag. What would I not give to have it back?\"\n\n\"Will you give me my life?\" asked the outlaw. \"Promise that I go free, and you shall have it back, if it be indeed true that my wife has taken it.\"\n\n\"Nay, I cannot do that,\" said Nigel. \"My honor would surely be concerned, since my loss is a private one; but it would be to the public scathe that you should go free. By Saint Paul! it would be an ungentle deed if in order to save my own I let you loose upon the gear of a hundred others.\"\n\n\"I will not ask you to let me loose,\" said the \"Wild Man.\" \"If you will promise that my life be spared I will restore your bag.\"\n\n\"I cannot give such a promise, for it will lie with the Sheriff and reeves of Guildford.\"\n\n\"Shall I have your word in my favor?\"\n\n\"That I could promise you, if you will give back the bag, though I know not how far my word may avail. But your words are vain, for you cannot think that we will be so fond as to let you go in the hope that you return?\"\n\n\"I would not ask it,\" said the \"Wild Man,\" \"for I can get your bag and yet never stir from the spot where I stand. Have I your promise upon your honor and all that you hold dear that you will ask for grace?\"\n\n\"You have.\"\n\n\"And that my wife shall be unharmed?\"\n\n\"I promise it.\"\n\nThe outlaw laid back his head and uttered a long shrill cry like the howl of a wolf. There was a silent pause, and then, clear and shrill, there rose the same cry no great distance away in the forest. Again the \"Wild Man\" called, and again his mate replied. A third time he summoned, as the deer bells to the doe in the greenwood. Then with a rustle of brushwood and snapping of twigs the woman was before them once more, tall, pale, graceful, wonderful. She glanced neither at Aylward nor Nigel, but ran to the side of her husband.\n\n\"Dear and sweet lord,\" she cried, \"I trust they have done you no hurt. I waited by the old ash, and my heart sank when you came not.\"\n\n\"I have been taken at last, wife.\"\n\n\"Oh, cursed, cursed day! Let him go, kind, gentle sirs; do not take him from me!\"\n\n\"They will speak for me at Guildford,\" said the \"Wild Man.\" \"They have sworn it. But hand them first the bag that you have taken.\"\n\nShe drew it out from under her loose cloak. \"Here it is, gentle sir. Indeed it went to my heart to take it, for you had mercy upon me in my trouble. But now I am, as you see, in real and very sore distress. Will you not have mercy now? Take ruth on us, fair sir! On my knees I beg it of you, most gentle and kindly Squire!\"\n\nNigel had clutched his bag, and right glad he was to feel that the treasures were all safe within it. \"My proffer is given,\" said he. \"I will say what I can; but the issue rests with others. I pray you to stand up, for indeed I cannot promise more.\"\n\n\"Then I must be content,\" said she, rising, with a composed face. \"I have prayed you to take ruth, and indeed I can do no more; but ere I go back to the forest I would rede you to be on your guard lest you lose your bag once more. Wot you how I took it, archer? Nay, it was simple enough, and may happen again, so I make it clear to you. I had this knife in my sleeve, and though it is small it is very sharp. I slipped it down like this. Then when I seemed to weep with my face against the saddle, I cut down like this\u2014\"\n\nIn an instant she had shorn through the stirrup leather which bound her man, and he, diving under the belly of the horse, had slipped like a snake into the brushwood. In passing he had struck Pommers from beneath, and the great horse, enraged and insulted, was rearing high, with two men hanging to his bridle. When at last he had calmed there was no sign left of the \"Wild Man\" or of his wife. In vain did Aylward, an arrow on his string, run here and there among the great trees and peer down the shadowy glades. When he returned he and his master cast a shamefaced glance at each other.\n\n\"I trust that we are better soldiers than jailers,\" said Aylward, as he climbed on his pony.\n\nBut Nigel's frown relaxed into a smile. \"At least we have gained back what we lost,\" said he. \"Here I place it on the pommel of my saddle, and I shall not take my eyes from it until we are safe in Guildford town.\"\n\nSo they jogged on together until passing Saint Catherine's shrine they crossed the winding Wey once more, and so found themselves in the steep high street with its heavy-caved gabled houses, its monkish hospitium upon the left, where good ale may still be quaffed, and its great square-keeped castle upon the right, no gray and grim skeleton of ruin, but very quick and alert, with blazoned banner flying free, and steel caps twinkling from the battlement. A row of booths extended from the castle gate to the high street, and two doors from the Church of the Trinity was that of Thorold the goldsmith, a rich burgess and Mayor of the town.\n\nHe looked long and lovingly at the rich rubies and at the fine work upon the goblet. Then he stroked his flowing gray beard as he pondered whether he should offer fifty nobles or sixty, for he knew well that he could sell them again for two hundred. If he offered too much his profit would be reduced. If he offered too little the youth might go as far as London with them, for they were rare and of great worth. The young man was ill-clad, and his eyes were anxious. Perchance he was hard pressed and was ignorant of the value of what he bore. He would sound him.\n\n\"These things are old and out of fashion, fair sir,\" said he. \"Of the stones I can scarce say if they are of good quality or not, but they are dull and rough. Yet, if your price be low I may add them to my stock, though indeed this booth was made to sell and not to buy. What do you ask?\"\n\nNigel bent his brows in perplexity. Here was a game in which neither his bold heart nor his active limbs could help him. It was the new force mastering the old: the man of commerce conquering the man of war\u2014wearing him down and weakening him through the centuries until he had him as his bond-servant and his thrall.\n\n\"I know not what to ask, good sir,\" said Nigel. \"It is not for me, nor for any man who bears my name, to chaffer and to haggle. You know the worth of these things, for it is your trade to do so. The Lady Ermyntrude lacks money, and we must have it against the King's coming, so give me that which is right and just, and we will say no more.\"\n\nThe goldsmith smiled. The business was growing more simple and more profitable. He had intended to offer fifty, but surely it would be sinful waste to give more than twenty-five.\n\n\"I shall scarce know what to do with them when I have them,\" said he. \"Yet I should not grudge twenty nobles if it is a matter in which the King is concerned.\"\n\nNigel's heart turned to lead. This sum would not buy one-half what was needful. It was clear that the Lady Ermyntrude had overvalued her treasures. Yet he could not return empty-handed, so if twenty nobles was the real worth, as this good old man assured him, then he must be thankful and take it.\n\n\"I am concerned by what you say,\" said he. \"You know more of these things than I can do. However, I will take\u2014\"\n\n\"A hundred and fifty,\" whispered Aylward's voice in his ear.\n\n\"A hundred and fifty,\" said Nigel, only too relieved to have found the humblest guide upon these unwonted paths.\n\nThe goldsmith started. This youth was not the simple soldier that he had seemed. That frank face, those blue eyes, were traps for the unwary. Never had he been more taken aback in a bargain.\n\n\"This is fond talk and can lead to nothing, fair sir,\" said he, turning away and fiddling with the keys of his strong boxes. \"Yet I have no wish to be hard on you. Take my outside price, which is fifty nobles.\"\n\n\"And a hundred,\" whispered Aylward.\n\n\"And a hundred,\" said Nigel, blushing at his own greed.\n\n\"Well, well, take a hundred!\" cried the merchant. \"Fleece me, skin me, leave me a loser, and take for your wares the full hundred!\"\n\n\"I should be shamed forever if I were to treat you so badly,\" said Nigel. \"You have spoken me fair, and I would not grind you down. Therefore, I will gladly take one hundred\u2014\"\n\n\"And fifty,\" whispered Aylward.\n\n\"And fifty,\" said Nigel.\n\n\"By Saint John of Beverley!\" cried the merchant. \"I came hither from the North Country, and they are said to be shrewd at a deal in those parts; but I had rather bargain with a synagogue full of Jews than with you, for all your gentle ways. Will you indeed take no less than a hundred and fifty? Alas! you pluck from me my profits of a month. It is a fell morning's work for me. I would I had never seen you!\" With groans and lamentations he paid the gold pieces across the counter, and Nigel, hardly able to credit his own good fortune, gathered them into the leather saddle-bag.\n\nA moment later with flushed face he was in the street and pouring out his thanks to Aylward.\n\n\"Alas, my fair lord! the man has robbed us now,\" said the archer. \"We could have had another twenty had we stood fast.\"\n\n\"How know you that, good Aylward?\"\n\n\"By his eyes, Squire Loring. I wot I have little store of reading where the parchment of a book or the pinching of a blazon is concerned, but I can read men's eyes, and I never doubted that he would give what he has given.\"\n\nThe two travelers had dinner at the monk's hospitium, Nigel at the high table and Aylward among the commonalty. Then again they roamed the high street on business intent. Nigel bought taffeta for hangings, wine, preserves, fruit, damask table linen and many other articles of need. At last he halted before the armorer's shop at the castle-yard, staring at the fine suits of plate, the engraved pectorals, the plumed helmets, the cunningly jointed gorgets, as a child at a sweet-shop.\n\n\"Well, Squire Loring,\" said Wat the armorer, looking sidewise from the furnace where he was tempering a sword blade, \"what can I sell you this morning? I swear to you by Tubal Cain, the father of all workers in metal, that you might go from end to end of Cheapside and never see a better suit than that which hangs from yonder hook!\"\n\n\"And the price, armorer?\"\n\n\"To anyone else, two hundred and fifty rose nobles. To you two hundred.\"\n\n\"And why cheaper to me, good fellow?\"\n\n\"Because I fitted your father also for the wars, and a finer suit never went out of my shop. I warrant that it turned many an edge before he laid it aside. We worked in mail in those days, and I had as soon have a well-made thick-meshed mail as any plates; but a young knight will be in the fashion like any dame of the court, and so it must be plate now, even though the price be trebled.\"\n\n\"Your rede is that the mail is as good?\"\n\n\"I am well sure of it.\"\n\n\"Hearken then, armorer! I cannot at this moment buy a suit of plate, and yet I sorely need steel harness on account of a small deed which it is in my mind to do. Now I have at my home at Tilford that very suit of mail of which you speak, with which my father first rode to the wars. Could you not so alter it that it should guard my limbs also?\"\n\nThe armorer looked at Nigel's small upright figure and burst out laughing. \"You jest, Squire Loring! The suit was made for one who was far above the common stature of man.\"\n\n\"Nay, I jest not. If it will but carry me through one spear-running it will have served its purpose.\"\n\nThe armorer leaned back on his anvil and pondered while Nigel stared anxiously at his sooty face.\n\n\"Right gladly would I lend you a suit of plate for this one venture, Squire Loring, but I know well that if you should be overthrown your harness becomes prize to the victor. I am a poor man with many children, and I dare not risk the loss of it. But as to what you say of the old suit of mail, is it indeed in good condition?\"\n\n\"Most excellent, save only at the neck, which is much frayed.\"\n\n\"To shorten the limbs is easy. It is but to cut out a length of the mail and then loop up the links. But to shorten the body\u2014nay, that is beyond the armorer's art.\"\n\n\"It was my last hope. Nay, good armorer, if you have indeed served and loved my gallant father, then I beg you by his memory that you will help me now.\"\n\nThe armorer threw down his heavy hammer with a crash upon the floor. \"It is not only that I loved your father, Squire Loring, but it is that I have seen you, half armed as you were, ride against the best of them at the Castle tiltyard. Last Martinmas my heart bled for you when I saw how sorry was your harness, and yet you held your own against the stout Sir Oliver with his Milan suit: When go you to Tilford?\"\n\n\"Even now.\"\n\n\"Heh, Jenkin, fetch out the cob!\" cried the worthy Wat. \"May my right hand lose its cunning if I do not send you into battle in your father's suit! To-morrow I must be back in my booth, but to-day I give to you without fee and for the sake of the good-will which I bear to your house. I will ride with you to Tilford, and before night you shall see what Wat can do.\"\n\nSo it came about that there was a busy evening at the old Tilford Manor-house, where the Lady Ermyntrude planned and cut and hung the curtains for the hall, and stocked her cupboards with the good things which Nigel had brought from Guildford.\n\nMeanwhile the Squire and the armorer sat with their heads touching and the old suit of mail with its gorget of overlapping plates laid out across their knees. Again and again old Wat shrugged his shoulders, as one who has been asked to do more than can be demanded from mortal man. At last, at a suggestion from the Squire, he leaned back in his chair and laughed long and loudly in his bushy beard, while the Lady Ermyntrude glared her black displeasure at such plebeian merriment. Then taking his fine chisel and his hammer from his pouch of tools, the armorer, still chuckling at his own thoughts, began to drive a hole through the center of the steel tunic." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE KING HAWKED ON CROOKSBURY HEATH", + "text": "The King and his attendants had shaken off the crowd who had followed them from Guildford along the Pilgrims' Way and now, the mounted archers having beaten off the more persistent of the spectators, they rode at their ease in a long, straggling, glittering train over the dark undulating plain of heather.\n\nIn the van was the King himself, for his hawks were with him and he had some hope of sport. Edward at that time was a well-grown, vigorous man in the very prime of his years, a keen sportsman, an ardent gallant and a chivalrous soldier. He was a scholar too, speaking Latin, French, German, Spanish, and even a little English.\n\nSo much had long been patent to the world, but only of recent years had he shown other and more formidable characteristics: a restless ambition which coveted his neighbor's throne, and a wise foresight in matters of commerce, which engaged him now in transplanting Flemish weavers and sowing the seeds of what for many years was the staple trade of England. Each of these varied qualities might have been read upon his face. The brow, shaded by a crimson cap of maintenance, was broad and lofty. The large brown eyes were ardent and bold. His chin was clean-shaven, and the close-cropped dark mustache did not conceal the strong mouth, firm, proud and kindly, but capable of setting tight in merciless ferocity. His complexion was tanned to copper by a life spent in field sports or in war, and he rode his magnificent black horse carelessly and easily, as one who has grown up in the saddle. His own color was black also, for his active; sinewy figure was set off by close-fitting velvet of that hue, broken only by a belt of gold, and by a golden border of open pods of the broom-plant.\n\nWith his high and noble bearing, his simple yet rich attire and his splendid mount, he looked every inch a King.\n\nThe picture of gallant man on gallant horse was completed by the noble Falcon of the Isles which fluttered along some twelve feet above his head, \"waiting on,\" as it was termed, for any quarry which might arise. The second bird of the cast was borne upon the gauntleted wrist of Raoul the chief falconer in the rear.\n\nAt the right side of the monarch and a little behind him rode a youth some twenty years of age, tall, slim and dark, with noble aquiline features and keen penetrating eyes which sparkled with vivacity and affection as he answered the remarks of the King. He was clad in deep crimson diapered with gold, and the trappings of his white palfrey were of a magnificence which proclaimed the rank of its rider. On his face, still free from mustache or beard, there sat a certain gravity and majesty of expression which showed that young as he was great affairs had been in his keeping and that his thoughts and interests were those of the statesman and the warrior. That great day when, little more than a schoolboy, he had led the van of the victorious army which had crushed the power of France and Crecy, had left this stamp upon his features; but stern as they were they had not assumed that tinge of fierceness which in after years was to make \"The Black Prince\" a name of terror on the marches of France. Not yet had the first shadow of fell disease come to poison his nature ere it struck at his life, as he rode that spring day, light and debonair, upon the heath of Crooksbury.\n\nOn the left of the King, and so near to him that great intimacy was implied, rode a man about his own age, with the broad face, the projecting jaw and the flattish nose which are often the outward indications of a pugnacious nature.\n\nHis complexion was crimson, his large blue eyes somewhat prominent, and his whole appearance full-blooded and choleric. He was short, but massively built, and evidently possessed of immense strength. His voice, however, when he spoke was gentle and lisping, while his manner was quiet and courteous. Unlike the King or the Prince, he was clad in light armor and carried a sword by his side and a mace at his saddlebow, for he was acting as Captain of the King's Guard, and a dozen other knights in steel followed in the escort. No hardier soldier could Edward have at his side, if, as was always possible in those lawless times, sudden danger was to threaten, for this was the famous knight of Hainault, now naturalized as an Englishman, Sir Walter Manny, who bore as high a reputation for chivalrous valor and for gallant temerity as Chandos himself.\n\nBehind the knights, who were forbidden to scatter and must always follow the King's person, there was a body of twenty or thirty hobblers or mounted bowmen, together with several squires, unarmed themselves but leading spare horses upon which the heavier part of their knights' equipment was carried. A straggling tail of falconers, harbingers, varlets, body-servants and huntsmen holding hounds in leash completed the long and many-colored train which rose and dipped on the low undulations of the moor.\n\nMany weighty things were on the mind of Edward the King. There was truce for the moment with France, but it was a truce broken by many small deeds of arms, raids, surprises and ambushes upon either side, and it was certain that it would soon dissolve again into open war. Money must be raised, and it was no light matter to raise it, now that the Commons had once already voted the tenth lamb and the tenth sheaf. Besides, the Black Death had ruined the country, the arable land was all turned to pasture, the laborer, laughing at statutes, would not work under fourpence a day, and all society was chaos. In addition, the Scotch were growling over the border, there was the perennial trouble in half-conquered Ireland, and his allies abroad in Flanders and in Brabant were clamoring for the arrears of their subsidies.\n\nAll this was enough to make even a victorious monarch full of care; but now Edward had thrown it all to the winds and was as lighthearted as a boy upon a holiday. No thought had he for the dunning of Florentine bankers or the vexatious conditions of those busybodies at Westminster. He was out with his hawks, and his thoughts and his talk should be of nothing else. The varlets beat the heather and bushes as they passed, and whooped loudly as the birds flew out.\n\n\"A magpie! A magpie!\" cried the falconer.\n\n\"Nay, nay, it is not worthy of your talons, my brown-eyed queen,\" said the King, looking up at the great bird which flapped from side to side above his head, waiting for the whistle which should give her the signal. \"The tercels, falconer\u2014a cast of tercels! Quick, man, quick! Ha! the rascal makes for wood! He puts in! Well flown, brave peregrine! He makes his point. Drive him out to thy comrade. Serve him, varlets! Beat the bushes! He breaks! He breaks! Nay, come away then! You will see Master Magpie no more.\"\n\nThe bird had indeed, with the cunning of its race, flapped its way through brushwood and bushes to the thicker woods beyond, so that neither the hawk amid the cover nor its partner above nor the clamorous beaters could harm it. The King laughed at the mischance and rode on. Continually birds of various sorts were flushed, and each was pursued by the appropriate hawk, the snipe by the tercel, the partridge by the goshawk, even the lark by the little merlin. But the King soon tired of this petty sport and went slowly on his way, still with the magnificent silent attendant flapping above his head.\n\n\"Is she not a noble bird, fair son?\" he asked, glancing up as her shadow fell upon him.\n\n\"She is indeed, sire. Surely no finer ever came from the isles of the north.\"\n\n\"Perhaps not, and yet I have had a hawk from Barbary as good a footer and a swifter flyer. An Eastern bird in yarak has no peer.\"\n\n\"I had one once from the Holy Land,\" said de Manny. \"It was fierce and keen and swift as the Saracens themselves. They say of old Saladin that in his day his breed of birds, of hounds and of horses had no equal on earth.\"\n\n\"I trust, dear father, that the day may come when we shall lay our hands on all three,\" said the Prince, looking with shining eyes upon the King. \"Is the Holy Land to lie forever in the grasp of these unbelieving savages, or the Holy Temple to be defiled by their foul presence? Ah! my dear and most sweet lord, give to me a thousand lances with ten thousand bowmen like those I led at Crecy, and I swear to you by God's soul that within a year I will have done homage to you for the Kingdom of Jerusalem!\"\n\nThe King laughed as he turned to Walter Manny. \"Boys will still be boys,\" said he.\n\n\"The French do not count me such!\" cried the young Prince, flushing with anger.\n\n\"Nay, fair son, there is no one sets you at a higher rate than your father. But you have the nimble mind and quick fancy of youth, turning over from the thing that is half done to a further task beyond. How would we fare in Brittany and Normandy while my young paladin with his lances and his bowmen was besieging Ascalon or battering at Jerusalem?\"\n\n\"Heaven would help in Heaven's work.\"\n\n\"From what I have heard of the past,\" said the King dryly, \"I cannot see that Heaven has counted for much as an ally in these wars of the East. I speak with reverence, and yet it is but sooth to say that Richard of the Lion Heart or Louis of France might have found the smallest earthly principality of greater service to him than all the celestial hosts. How say you to that, my Lord Bishop?\"\n\nA stout churchman who had ridden behind the King on a solid bay cob, well-suited to his weight and dignity, jogged up to the monarch's elbow. \"How say you, sire? I was watching the goshawk on the partridge and heard you not.\"\n\n\"Had I said that I would add two manors to the See of Chichester, I warrant that you would have heard me, my Lord Bishop.\"\n\n\"Nay, fair lord, test the matter by saying so,\" cried the jovial Bishop.\n\nThe King laughed aloud. \"A fair counter, your reverence. By the rood! you broke your lance that passage. But the question I debated was this: How is it that since the Crusades have manifestly been fought in God's quarrel, we Christians have had so little comfort or support in fighting them. After all our efforts and the loss of more men than could be counted, we are at last driven from the country, and even the military orders which were formed only for that one purpose can scarce hold a footing in the islands of the Greek sea. There is not one seaport nor one fortress in Palestine over which the flag of the Cross still waves. Where then was our ally?\"\n\n\"Nay, sire, you open a great debate which extends far beyond this question of the Holy Land, though that may indeed be chosen as a fair example. It is the question of all sin, of all suffering, of all injustice\u2014why it should pass without the rain of fire and the lightnings of Sinai. The wisdom of God is beyond our understanding.\"\n\nThe King shrugged his shoulders. \"This is an easy answer, my Lord Bishop. You are a prince of the Church. It would fare ill with an earthly prince who could give no better answer to the affairs which concerned his realm.\"\n\n\"There are other considerations which might be urged, most gracious sire. It is true that the Crusades were a holy enterprise which might well expect the immediate blessing of God; but the Crusaders\u2014is it certain that they deserved such a blessing? Have I not heard that their camp was the most dissolute ever seen?\"\n\n\"Camps are camps all the world over, and you cannot in a moment change a bowman into a saint. But the holy Louis was a crusader after your own heart. Yet his men perished at Mansurah and he himself at Tunis.\"\n\n\"Bethink you also that this world is but the antechamber of the next,\" said the prelate. \"By suffering and tribulation the soul is cleansed, and the true victor may be he who by the patient endurance of misfortune merits the happiness to come.\"\n\n\"If that be the true meaning of the Church's blessing, then I hope that it will be long before it rests upon our banners in France,\" said the King. \"But methinks that when one is out with a brave horse and a good hawk one might find some other subject than theology. Back to the birds, Bishop, or Raoul the falconer will come to interrupt thee in thy cathedral.\"\n\nStraightway the conversation came back to the mystery of the woods and the mystery of the rivers, to the dark-eyed hawks and the yellow-eyed, to hawks of the lure and hawks of the fist. The Bishop was as steeped in the lore of falconry as the King, and the others smiled as the two wrangled hard over disputed and technical questions: if an eyas trained in the mews can ever emulate the passage hawk taken wild, or how long the young hawks should be placed at hack, and how long weathered before they are fully reclaimed.\n\nMonarch and prelate were still deep in this learned discussion, the Bishop speaking with a freedom and assurance which he would never have dared to use in affairs of Church and State, for in all ages there is no such leveler as sport. Suddenly, however, the Prince, whose keen eyes had swept from time to time over the great blue heaven, uttered a peculiar call and reined up his palfrey, pointing at the same time into the air.\n\n\"A heron!\" he cried. \"A heron on passage!\"\n\nTo gain the full sport of hawking a heron must not be put up from its feeding-ground, where it is heavy with its meal, and has no time to get its pace on before it is pounced upon by the more active hawk, but it must be aloft, traveling from point to point, probably from the fish-stream to the heronry. Thus to catch the bird on passage was the prelude of all good sport. The object to which the Prince had pointed was but a black dot in the southern sky, but his strained eyes had not deceived him, and both Bishop and King agreed that it was indeed a heron, which grew larger every instant as it flew in their direction.\n\n\"Whistle him off, sire! Whistle off the gerfalcon!\" cried the Bishop.\n\n\"Nay, nay, he is overfar. She would fly at check.\"\n\n\"Now, sire, now!\" cried the Prince, as the great bird with the breeze behind him came sweeping down the sky.\n\nThe King gave the shrill whistle, and the well-trained hawk raked out to the right and to the left to make sure which quarry she was to follow. Then, spying the heron, she shot up in a swift ascending curve to meet him.\n\n\"Well flown, Margot! Good bird!\" cried the King, clapping his hands to encourage the hawk, while the falconers broke into the shrill whoop peculiar to the sport.\n\nGoing on her curve, the hawk would soon have crossed the path of the heron; but the latter, seeing the danger in his front and confident in his own great strength of wing and lightness of body, proceeded to mount higher in the air, flying in such small rings that to the spectators it almost seemed as if the bird was going perpendicularly upward.\n\n\"He takes the air!\" cried the King. \"But strong as he flies, he cannot out fly Margot. Bishop, I lay you ten gold pieces to one that the heron is mine.\"\n\n\"I cover your wager, sire,\" said the Bishop. \"I may not take gold so won, and yet I warrant that there is an altar-cloth somewhere in need of repairs.\"\n\n\"You have good store of altar-cloths, Bishop, if all the gold I have seen you win at tables goes to the mending of them,\" said the King. \"Ah! by the rood, rascal, rascal! See how she flies at check!\"\n\nThe quick eyes of the Bishop had perceived a drift of rooks when on their evening flight to the rookery were passing along the very line which divided the hawk from the heron. A rook is a hard temptation for a hawk to resist. In an instant the inconstant bird had forgotten all about the great heron above her and was circling over the rooks, flying westward with them as she singled out the plumpest for her stoop.\n\n\"There is yet time, sire! Shall I cast off her mate?\" cried the falconer.\n\n\"Or shall I show you, sire, how a peregrine may win where a gerfalcon fails?\" said the Bishop. \"Ten golden pieces to one upon my bird.\"\n\n\"Done with you, Bishop!\" cried the King, his brow dark with vexation. \"By the rood! if you were as learned in the fathers as you are in hawks you would win to the throne of Saint Peter! Cast off your peregrine and make your boasting good.\"\n\nSmaller than the royal gerfalcon, the Bishop's bird was none the less a swift and beautiful creature. From her perch upon his wrist she had watched with fierce, keen eyes the birds in the heaven, mantling herself from time to time in her eagerness. Now when the button was undone and the leash uncast the peregrine dashed off with a whir of her sharp-pointed wings, whizzing round in a great ascending circle which mounted swiftly upward, growing ever smaller as she approached that lofty point where, a mere speck in the sky, the heron sought escape from its enemies. Still higher and higher the two birds mounted, while the horsemen, their faces upturned, strained their eyes in their efforts to follow them.\n\n\"She rings! She still rings!\" cried the Bishop. \"She is above him! She has gained her pitch.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, she is far below,\" said the King.\n\n\"By my soul, my Lord Bishop is right!\" cried the Prince. \"I believe she is above. See! See! She swoops!\"\n\n\"She binds! She binds!\" cried a dozen voices as the two dots blended suddenly into one.\n\nThere could be no doubt that they were falling rapidly. Already they grew larger to the eye. Presently the heron disengaged himself and flapped heavily away, the worse for that deadly embrace, while the peregrine, shaking her plumage, ringed once more so as to get high above the quarry and deal it a second and more fatal blow. The Bishop smiled, for nothing, as it seemed, could hinder his victory.\n\n\"Thy gold pieces shall be well spent, sire,\" said he. \"What is lost to the Church is gained by the loser.\"\n\nBut a most unlooked-for chance deprived the Bishop's altar cloth of its costly mending. The King's gerfalcon having struck down a rook, and finding the sport but tame, bethought herself suddenly of that noble heron, which she still perceived fluttering over Crooksbury Heath. How could she have been so weak as to allow these silly, chattering rooks to entice her away from that lordly bird? Even now it was not too late to atone for her mistake. In a great spiral she shot upward until she was over the heron. But what was this? Every fiber of her, from her crest to her deck feathers, quivered with jealousy and rage at the sight of this creature, a mere peregrine, who had dared to come between a royal gerfalcon and her quarry. With one sweep of her great wings she shot up until she was above her rival. The next instant\u2014\n\n\"They crab! They crab!\" cried the King, with a roar of laughter, following them with his eyes as they bustled down through the air. \"Mend thy own altar-cloths, Bishop. Not a groat shall you have from me this journey. Pull them apart, falconer, lest they do each other an injury. And now, masters, let us on, for the sun sinks toward the west.\"\n\nThe two hawks, which had come to the ground interlocked with clutching talons and ruffled plumes, were torn apart and brought back bleeding and panting to their perches, while the heron after its perilous adventure flapped its way heavily onward to settle safely in the heronry of Waverley. The cortege, who had scattered in the excitement of the chase, came together again, and the journey was once more resumed.\n\nA horseman who had been riding toward them across the moor now quickened his pace and closed swiftly upon them. As he came nearer, the King and the Prince cried out joyously and waved their hands in greeting.\n\n\"It is good John Chandos!!\" cried the King. \"By the rood, John, I have missed your merry songs this week or more! Glad I am to see that you have your citole slung to your back. Whence come you then?\"\n\n\"I come from Tilford, sire, in the hope that I should meet your majesty.\"\n\n\"It was well thought of. Come, ride here between the Prince and me, and we will believe that we are back in France with our war harness on our backs once more. What is your news, Master John?\"\n\nChandos' quaint face quivered with suppressed amusement and his one eye twinkled like a star. \"Have you had sport, my liege?\"\n\n\"Poor sport, John. We flew two hawks on the same heron. They crabbed, and the bird got free. But why do you smile so?\"\n\n\"Because I hope to show you better sport ere you come to Tilford.\"\n\n\"For the hawk? For the hound?\"\n\n\"A nobler sport than either.\"\n\n\"Is this a riddle, John? What mean you?\"\n\n\"Nay, to tell all would be to spoil all. I say again that there is rare sport betwixt here and Tilford, and I beg you, dear lord, to mend your pace that we make the most of the daylight.\"\n\nThus adjured, the King set spurs to his horse, and the whole cavalcade cantered over the heath in the direction which Chandos showed. Presently as they came over a slope they saw beneath them a winding river with an old high-backed bridge across it. On the farther side was a village green with a fringe of cottages and one dark manor house upon the side of the hill.\n\n\"This is Tilford,\" said Chandos. \"Yonder is the house of the Lorings.\"\n\nThe King's expectations had been aroused and his face showed his disappointment.\n\n\"Is this the sport that you have promised us, Sir John? How can you make good your words?\"\n\n\"I will make them good, my liege.\"\n\n\"Where then is the sport?\"\n\nOn the high crown of the bridge a rider in armor was seated, lance in hand, upon a great yellow steed. Chandos touched the King's arm and pointed. \"That is the sport,\" said he." + }, + { + "title": "HOW NIGEL HELD THE BRIDGE AT TILFORD", + "text": "The King looked at the motionless figure, at the little crowd of hushed expectant rustics beyond the bridge, and finally at the face of Chandos, which shone with amusement.\n\n\"What is this, John?\" he asked.\n\n\"You remember Sir Eustace Loring, sire?\"\n\n\"Indeed I could never forget him nor the manner of his death.\"\n\n\"He was a knight errant in his day.\"\n\n\"That indeed he was\u2014none better have I known.\"\n\n\"So is his son Nigel, as fierce a young war-hawk as ever yearned to use beak and claws; but held fast in the mews up to now. This is his trial fight. There he stands at the bridge-head, as was the wont in our fathers' time, ready to measure himself against all comers.\"\n\nOf all Englishmen there was no greater knight errant than the King himself, and none so steeped in every quaint usage of chivalry; so that the situation was after his own heart.\n\n\"He is not yet a knight?\"\n\n\"No, sire, only a Squire.\"\n\n\"Then he must bear himself bravely this day if he is to make good what he has done. Is it fitting that a young untried Squire should venture to couch his lance against the best in England?\"\n\n\"He hath given me his cartel and challenge,\" said Chandos, drawing a paper from his tunic. \"Have I your permission, sire, to issue it?\"\n\n\"Surely, John, we have no cavalier more versed in the laws of chivalry than yourself. You know this young man, and you are aware how far he is worthy of the high honor which he asks. Let us hear his defiance.\"\n\nThe knights and squires of the escort, most of whom were veterans of the French war, had been gazing with interest and some surprise at the steel-clad figure in front of them. Now at a call from Sir Walter Manny they assembled round the spot where the King and Chandos had halted. Chandos cleared his throat and read from his paper\u2014\n\n\"'A tous seigneurs, chevaliers et escuyers,' so it is headed, gentlemen. It is a message from the good Squire Nigel Loring of Tilford, son of Sir Eustace Loring, of honorable memory. Squire Loring awaits you in arms, gentlemen, yonder upon the crown of the old bridge. Thus says he: 'For the great desire that I, a most humble and unworthy Squire, entertain, that I may come to the knowledge of the noble gentlemen who ride with my royal master, I now wait on the Bridge of the Way in the hope that some of them may condescend to do some small deed of arms upon me, or that I may deliver them from any vow which they may have taken. This I say out of no esteem for myself, but solely that I may witness the noble bearing of these famous cavaliers and admire their skill in the handling of arms. Therefore, with the help of Saint George, I will hold the bridge with sharpened lances against any or all who may deign to present themselves while daylight lasts.\"\n\n\"What say you to this, gentlemen?\" asked the King, looking round with laughing eyes.\n\n\"Truly it is issued in very good form,\" said the Prince. \"Neither Claricieux nor Red Dragon nor any herald that ever wore tabard could better it. Did he draw it of his own hand?\"\n\n\"He hath a grim old grandmother who is one of the ancient breed,\" said Chandos. \"I doubt not that the Dame Ermyntrude hath drawn a challenge or two before now. But hark ye, sire, I would have a word in your ear\u2014and yours too, most noble Prince.\"\n\nLeading them aside, Chandos whispered some explanations, which ended by them all three bursting into a shout of laughter.\n\n\"By the rood! no honorable gentleman should be reduced to such straits,\" said the King. \"It behooves me to look to it. But how now, gentlemen? This worthy cavalier still waits his answer.\"\n\nThe soldiers had all been buzzing together; but now Walter Manny turned to the King with the result of their counsel.\n\n\"If it please your majesty,\" said he, \"we are of opinion that this Squire hath exceeded all bounds in desiring to break a spear with a belted knight ere he has given his proofs. We do him sufficient honor if a Squire ride against him, and with your consent I have chosen my own body-squire, John Widdicombe, to clear the path for us across the bridge.\"\n\n\"What you say, Walter, is right and fair,\" said the King. \"Master Chandos, you will tell our champion yonder what hath been arranged. You will advise him also that it is our royal will that this contest be not fought upon the bridge, since it is very clear that it must end in one or both going over into the river, but that he advance to the end of the bridge and fight upon the plain. You will tell him also that a blunted lance is sufficient for such an encounter, but that a handstroke or two with sword or mace may well be exchanged, if both riders should keep their saddles. A blast upon Raoul's horn shall be the signal to close.\"\n\nSuch ventures as these where an aspirant for fame would wait for days at a cross-road, a ford, or a bridge, until some worthy antagonist should ride that way, were very common in the old days of adventurous knight erranty, and were still familiar to the minds of all men because the stories of the romancers and the songs of the trouveres were full of such incidents. Their actual occurrence however had become rare. There was the more curiosity, not unmixed with amusement, in the thoughts of the courtiers as they watched Chandos ride down to the bridge and commented upon the somewhat singular figure of the challenger. His build was strange, and so also was his figure, for the limbs were short for so tall a man. His head also was sunk forward as if he were lost in thought or overcome with deep dejection.\n\n\"This is surely the Cavalier of the Heavy Heart,\" said Manny. \"What trouble has he, that he should hang his head?\"\n\n\"Perchance he hath a weak neck,\" said the King.\n\n\"At least he hath no weak voice,\" the Prince remarked, as Nigel's answer to Chandos came to their ears. \"By our lady, he booms like a bittern.\"\n\nAs Chandos rode back again to the King, Nigel exchanged the old ash spear which had been his father's for one of the blunted tournament lances which he took from the hands of a stout archer in attendance. He then rode down to the end of the bridge where a hundred-yard stretch of greensward lay in front of him. At the same moment the Squire of Sir Walter Manny, who had been hastily armed by his comrades, spurred forward and took up his position.\n\nThe King raised his hand; there was a clang from the falconer's horn, and the two riders, with a thrust of their heels and a shake of their bridles, dashed furiously at each other. In the center the green strip of marshy meadowland, with the water squirting from the galloping hoofs, and the two crouching men, gleaming bright in the evening sun, on one side the half circle of motionless horsemen, some in steel, some in velvet, silent and attentive, dogs, hawks, and horses all turned to stone; on the other the old peaked bridge, the blue lazy river, the group of openmouthed rustics, and the dark old manor-house with one grim face which peered from the upper window.\n\nA good man was John Widdicombe, but he had met a better that day. Before that yellow whirlwind of a horse and that rider who was welded and riveted to his saddle his knees could not hold their grip. Nigel and Pommers were one flying missile, with all their weight and strength and energy centered on the steady end of the lance. Had Widdicombe been struck by a thunderbolt he could not have flown faster or farther from his saddle. Two full somersaults did he make, his plates clanging like cymbals, ere he lay prone upon his back.\n\nFor a moment the King looked grave at that prodigious fall. Then smiling once more as Widdicombe staggered to his feet, he clapped his hands loudly in applause. \"A fair course and fairly run!\" he cried. \"The five scarlet roses bear themselves in peace even as I have seen them in war. How now, my good Walter? Have you another Squire or will you clear a path for us yourself?\"\n\nManny's choleric face had turned darker as he observed the mischance of his representative. He beckoned now to a tall knight, whose gaunt and savage face looked out from his open bassinet as an eagle might from a cage of steel.\n\n\"Sir Hubert,\" said he, \"I bear in mind the day when you overbore the Frenchman at Caen. Will you not be our champion now?\"\n\n\"When I fought the Frenchman, Walter, it was with naked weapons,\" said the knight sternly. \"I am a soldier and I love a soldier's work, but I care not for these tiltyard tricks which were invented for nothing but to tickle the fancies of foolish women.\"\n\n\"Oh, most ungallant speech!\" cried the King. \"Had my good-consort heard you she would have arraigned you to appear at a Court of Love with a jury of virgins to answer for your sins. But I pray you to take a tilting spear, good Sir Hubert!\"\n\n\"I had as soon take a peacock's feather, my fair lord; but I will do it, if you ask me. Here, page, hand me one of those sticks, and let me see what I can do.\"\n\nBut Sir Hubert de Burgh was not destined to test either his skill or his luck. The great bay horse which he rode was as unused to this warlike play as was its master, and had none of its master's stoutness of heart; so that when it saw the leveled lance, the gleaming figure and the frenzied yellow horse rushing down upon it, it swerved, turned and galloped furiously down the river-bank. Amid roars of laughter from the rustics on the one side and from the courtiers on the other, Sir Hubert was seen, tugging vainly at his bridle, and bounding onward, clearing gorse-bushes and heather-clumps, until he was but a shimmering, quivering gleam upon the dark hillside. Nigel, who had pulled Pommers on to his very haunches at the instant that his opponent turned, saluted with his lance and trotted back to the bridge-head, where he awaited his next assailant.\n\n\"The ladies would say that a judgment hath fallen upon our good Sir Hubert for his impious words,\" said the King.\n\n\"Let us hope that his charger may be broken in ere they venture to ride out between two armies,\" remarked the Prince. \"They might mistake the hardness of his horse's mouth for a softness of the rider's heart. See where he rides, still clearing every bush upon his path.\"\n\n\"By the rood!\" said the King, \"if the bold Hubert has not increased his repute as a jouster he has gained great honor as a horseman. But the bridge is still closed, Walter. How say you now? Is this young Squire never to be unhorsed, or is your King himself to lay lance in rest ere his way can be cleared? By the head of Saint Thomas! I am in the very mood to run a course with this gentle youth.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, sire, too much honor hath already been done him!\" said Manny, looking angrily at the motionless horseman. \"That this untried boy should be able to say that in one evening he has unhorsed my Squire, and seen the back of one of the bravest knights in England is surely enough to turn his foolish head. Fetch me a spear, Robert! I will see what I can make of him.\"\n\nThe famous knight took the spear when it was brought to him as a master-workman takes a tool. He balanced it, shook it once or twice in the air, ran his eyes down it for a flaw in the wood, and then finally having made sure of its poise and weight laid it carefully in rest under his arm. Then gathering up his bridle so as to have his horse under perfect command, and covering himself with the shield, which was slung round his neck, he rode out to do battle.\n\nNow, Nigel, young and inexperienced, all Nature's aid will not help you against the mixed craft and strength of such a warrior. The day will come when neither Manny nor even Chandos could sweep you from your saddle; but now, even had you some less cumbrous armor, your chance were small. Your downfall is near; but as you see the famous black chevrons on a golden ground your gallant heart which never knew fear is only filled with joy and amazement at the honor done you. Your downfall is near, and yet in your wildest dreams you would never guess how strange your downfall is to be.\n\nAgain with a dull thunder of hoofs the horses gallop over the soft water-meadow. Again with a clash of metal the two riders meet. It is Nigel now, taken clean in the face of his helmet with the blunted spear, who flies backward off his horse and falls clanging on the grass.\n\nBut good heavens! what is this? Manny has thrown up his hands in horror and the lance has dropped from his nerveless fingers. From all sides, with cries of dismay, with oaths and shouts and ejaculations to the saints, the horsemen ride wildly in. Was ever so dreadful, so sudden, so complete, an end to a gentle passage at arms? Surely their eyes must be at fault? Some wizard's trick has been played upon them to deceive their senses. But no, it was only too clear. There on the greensward lay the trunk of the stricken cavalier, and there, a good dozen yards beyond, lay his helmeted head.\n\n\"By the Virgin!\" cried Manny wildly, as he jumped from his horse, \"I would give my last gold piece that the work of this evening should be undone! How came it? What does it mean? Hither, my Lord Bishop, for surely it smacks of witchcraft and the Devil.\"\n\nWith a white face the Bishop had sprung down beside the prostrate body, pushing through the knot of horrified knights and squires.\n\n\"I fear that the last offices of the Holy Church come too late,\" said he in a quivering voice. \"Most unfortunate young man! How sudden an end! In medio vitae, as the Holy Book has it\u2014one moment in the pride of his youth, the next his head torn from his body. Now God and his saints have mercy upon me and guard me from evil!\"\n\nThe last prayer was shot out of the Bishop with an energy and earnestness unusual in his orisons. It was caused by the sudden outcry of one of the Squires who, having lifted the helmet from the ground, cast it down again with a scream of horror.\n\n\"It is empty!\" he cried. \"It weighs as light as a feather.\"\n\n\"'Fore God, it is true!\" cried Manny, laying his hand on it. \"There is no one in it. With what have I fought, father Bishop? Is it of this world or of the next?\"\n\nThe Bishop had clambered on his horse the better to consider the point. \"If the foul fiend is abroad,\" said he, \"my place is over yonder by the King's side. Certes that sulphur-colored horse hath a very devilish look. I could have sworn that I saw both smoke and flame from its nostrils. The beast is fit to bear a suit of armor which rides and fights and yet hath no man within it.\"\n\n\"Nay, not too fast, father Bishop,\" said one of the knights. \"It may be all that you say and yet come from a human workshop. When I made a campaign in South Germany I have seen at Nuremberg a cunning figure, devised by an armorer, which could both ride and wield a sword. If this be such a one\u2014\"\n\n\"I thank you all for your very gentle courtesy,\" said a booming voice from the figure upon the ground.\n\nAt the words even the valiant Manny sprang into his saddle. Some rode madly away from the horrid trunk. A few of the boldest lingered.\n\n\"Most of all,\" said the voice, \"would I thank the most noble knight, Sir Walter Manny, that he should deign to lay aside his greatness and condescend to do a deed of arms upon so humble a Squire.\"\n\n\"'Fore God!\" said Manny, \"if this be the Devil, then the Devil hath a very courtly tongue. I will have him out of his armor, if he blast me!\"\n\nSo saying he sprang once more from his horse and plunging his hand down the slit in the collapsed gorget he closed it tightly upon a fistful of Nigel's yellow curls. The groan that came forth was enough to convince him that it was indeed a man who lurked within. At the same time his eyes fell upon the hole in the mail corselet which had served the Squire as a visor, and he burst into deep-chested mirth. The King, the Prince and Chandos, who had watched the scene from a distance, too much amused by it to explain or interfere, rode up weary with laughter, now that all was discovered.\n\n\"Let him out!\" said the King, with his hand to his side. \"I pray you to unlace him and let him out! I have shared in many a spear-running, but never have I been nearer falling from my horse than as I watched this one. I feared the fall had struck him senseless, since he lay so still.\"\n\nNigel had indeed lain with all the breath shaken from his body, and as he was unaware that his helmet had been carried off, he had not understood either the alarm or the amusement that he had caused. Now freed from the great hauberk in which he had been shut like a pea in a pod, he stood blinking in the light, blushing deeply with shame that the shifts to which his poverty had reduced him should be exposed to all these laughing courtiers. It was the King who brought him comfort.\n\n\"You have shown that you can use your father's weapons,\" said he, \"and you have proved also that you are the worthy bearer of his name and his arms, for you have within you that spirit for which he was famous. But I wot that neither he nor you would suffer a train of hungry men to starve before your door; so lead on, I pray you, and if the meat be as good as this grace before it, then it will be a feast indeed.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE KING GREETED HIS SENESCHAL OF CALAIS", + "text": "It would have fared ill with the good name of Tilford Manor house and with the housekeeping of the aged Dame Ermyntrude had the King's whole retinue, with his outer and inner marshal, his justiciar, his chamberlain and his guard, all gathered under the one roof. But by the foresight and the gentle management of Chandos this calamity was avoided, so that some were quartered at the great Abbey and others passed on to enjoy the hospitality of Sir Roger FitzAlan at Farnham Castle. Only the King himself, the Prince, Manny, Chandos, Sir Hubert de Burgh, the Bishop and two or three more remained behind as the guests of the Lorings.\n\nBut small as was the party and humble the surroundings, the King in no way relaxed that love of ceremony, of elaborate form and of brilliant coloring which was one of his characteristics. The sumpter-mules were unpacked, squires ran hither and thither, baths smoked in the bed-chambers, silks and satins were unfolded, gold chains gleamed and clinked, so that when at last, to the long blast of two court trumpeters, the company took their seats at the board, it was the brightest, fairest scene which those old black rafters had ever spanned.\n\nThe great influx of foreign knights who had come in their splendor from all parts of Christendom to take part in the opening of the Round Tower of Windsor six years before, and to try their luck and their skill at the tournament connected with it, had deeply modified the English fashions of dress. The old tunic, over-tunic and cyclas were too sad and simple for the new fashions, so now strange and brilliant cote-hardies, pourpoints, courtepies, paltocks, hanselines and many other wondrous garments, parti-colored or diapered, with looped, embroidered or escalloped edges, flamed and glittered round the King. He himself, in black velvet and gold, formed a dark rich center to the finery around him. On his right sat the Prince, on his left the Bishop, while Dame Ermyntrude marshaled the forces of the household outside, alert and watchful, pouring in her dishes and her flagons at the right moment, rallying her tired servants, encouraging the van, hurrying the rear, hastening up her reserves, the tapping of her oak stick heard everywhere the pressure was the greatest.\n\nBehind the King, clad in his best, but looking drab and sorry amid the brilliant costumes round him, Nigel himself, regardless of an aching body and a twisted knee, waited upon his royal guests, who threw many a merry jest at him over their shoulders as they still chuckled at the adventure of the bridge.\n\n\"By the rood!\" said King Edward, leaning back, with a chicken bone held daintily between the courtesy fingers of his left hand, \"the play is too good for this country stage. You must to Windsor with me, Nigel, and bring with you this great suit of harness in which you lurk. There you shall hold the lists with your eyes in your midriff, and unless some one cleave you to the waist I see not how any harm can befall you. Never have I seen so small a nut in so great a shell.\"\n\nThe Prince, looking back with laughing eyes, saw by Nigel's flushed and embarrassed face that his poverty hung heavily upon him. \"Nay,\" said he kindly, \"such a workman is surely worthy of better tools.\"\n\n\"And it is for his master to see that he has them,\" added the King. \"The court armorer will look to it that the next time your helmet is carried away, Nigel, your head shall be inside it.\"\n\nNigel, red to the roots of his flaxen hair, stammered out some words of thanks.\n\nJohn Chandos, however, had a fresh suggestion, and he cocked a roguish eye as he made it: \"Surely, my liege, your bounty is little needed in this case. It is the ancient law of arms that if two cavaliers start to joust, and one either by maladdress or misadventure fail to meet the shock, then his arms become the property of him who still holds the lists. This being so, methinks, Sir Hubert de Burgh, that the fine hauberk of Milan and the helmet of Bordeaux steel in which you rode to Tilford should remain with our young host as some small remembrance of your visit.\"\n\nThe suggestion raised a general chorus of approval and laughter, in which all joined, save only Sir Hubert himself, who, flushed with anger, fixed his baleful eyes upon Chandos' mischievous and smiling face.\n\n\"I said that I did not play that foolish game, and I know nothing of its laws,\" said he; \"but you know well, John, that if you would have a bout with sharpened spear or sword, where two ride to the ground, and only one away from it, you have not far to go to find it.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, would you ride to the ground? Surely you had best walk, Hubert,\" said Chandos. \"On your feet I know well that I should not see your back as we have seen it to-day. Say what you will, your horse has played you false, and I claim your suit of harness for Nigel Loring.\"\n\n\"Your tongue is overlong, John, and I am weary of its endless clack!\" said Sir Hubert, his yellow mustache bristling from a scarlet face. \"If you claim my harness, do you yourself come and take it. If there is a moon in the sky you may try this very night when the board is cleared.\"\n\n\"Nay, fair sirs,\" cried the King, smiling from one to the other, \"this matter must be followed no further. Do you fill a bumper of Gascony, John, and you also, Hubert. Now pledge each other, I pray you, as good and loyal comrades who would scorn to fight save in your King's quarrel. We can spare neither of you while there is so much work for brave hearts over the sea. As to this matter of the harness, John Chandos speaks truly where it concerns a joust in the lists, but we hold that such a law is scarce binding in this, which was but a wayside passage and a gentle trial of arms. On the other hand, in the case of your Squire, Master Manny, there can be no doubt that his suit is forfeit.\"\n\n\"It is a grievous hearing for him, my liege,\" said Walter Manny; \"for he is a poor man and hath been at sore pains to fit himself for the wars. Yet what you say shall be done, fair sire. So, if you will come to me in the morning, Squire Loring, John Widdicombe's suit will be handed over to you.\"\n\n\"Then with the King's leave, I will hand it back to him,\" said Nigel, troubled and stammering; \"for indeed I had rather never ride to the wars than take from a brave man his only suit of plate.\"\n\n\"There spoke your father's spirit!\" cried the King. \"By the rood! Nigel, I like you full well. Let the matter bide in my hands. But I marvel much that Sir Aymery the Lombard hath not come to us yet from Windsor.\"\n\nFrom the moment of his arrival at Tilford, again and again King Edward had asked most eagerly whether Sir Aymery had come, and whether there was any news of him, so that the courtiers glanced at each other in wonder. For Aymery was known to all of them as a famous mercenary of Italy, lately appointed Governor of Calais, and this sudden and urgent summons from the King might well mean some renewal of the war with France, which was the dearest wish of every soldier. Twice the King had stopped his meal and sat with sidelong head; his wine-cup in his hand, listening attentively when some sound like the clatter of hoofs was heard from outside; but the third time there could be no mistake. The tramp and jingle of the horses broke loud upon the ear, and ended in hoarse voices calling out of the darkness, which were answered by the archers posted as sentries without the door.\n\n\"Some traveler has indeed arrived, my liege,\" said Nigel. \"What is your royal will?\"\n\n\"It can be but Aymery,\" the King answered, \"for it was only to him that I left the message that he should follow me hither. Bid him come in, I pray you, and make him very welcome at your board.\"\n\nNigel cast open the door, plucking a torch from its bracket as he did so. Half a dozen men-at-arms sat on their horses outside, but one had dismounted, a short, squat, swarthy man with a rat face and quick, restless brown eyes which peered eagerly past Nigel into the red glare of the well-lit hall.\n\n\"I am Sir Aymery of Pavia,\" he whispered. \"For God's sake, tell me! is the King within?\"\n\n\"He is at table, fair sir, and he bids you to enter.\"\n\n\"One moment, young man, one moment, and a secret word in your ear. Wot you why it is that the King has sent for me?\"\n\nNigel read terror in the dark cunning eyes which glanced in sidelong fashion into his. \"Nay, I know not.\"\n\n\"I would I knew\u2014I would I was sure ere I sought his presence.\"\n\n\"You have but to cross the threshold, fair sir, and doubtless you will learn from the King's own lips.\"\n\nSir Aymery seemed to gather himself as one who braces for a spring into ice-cold water. Then he crossed with a quick stride from the darkness into the light. The King stood up and held out his hand with a smile upon his long handsome face, and yet it seemed to the Italian that it was the lips which smiled but not the eyes.\n\n\"Welcome!\" cried Edward. \"Welcome to our worthy and faithful Seneschal of Calais! Come, sit here before me at the board, for I have sent for you that I may hear your news from over the sea, and thank you for the care that you have taken of that which is as dear to me as wife or child. Set a place for Sir Aymery there, and give him food and drink, for he has ridden fast and far in our service to-day.\"\n\nThroughout the long feast which the skill of the Lady Ermyntrude had arranged, Edward chatted lightly with the Italian as well as with the barons near him. Finally, when the last dish was removed and the gravy-soaked rounds of coarse bread which served as plates had been cast to the dogs, the wine-flagons were passed round; and old Weathercote the minstrel entered timidly with his harp in the hope that he might be allowed to play before the King's majesty. But Edward had other sport afoot.\n\n\"I pray you, Nigel, to send out the servants, so that we may be alone. I would have two men-at-arms at every door lest we be disturbed in our debate, for it is a matter of privacy. And now, Sir Aymery, these noble lords as well as I, your master, would fain hear from your own lips how all goes forward in France.\"\n\nThe Italian's face was calm; but he looked restlessly from one to another along the line of his listeners.\n\n\"So far as I know, my liege, all is quiet on the French marches,\" said he.\n\n\"You have not heard then that they have mustered or gathered to a head with the intention of breaking the truce and making some attempt upon our dominions?\"\n\n\"Nay, sire, I have heard nothing of it.\"\n\n\"You set my mind much at ease, Aymery,\" said the King; \"for if nothing has come to your ears, then surely it cannot be. It was said that the wild Knight de Chargny had come down to St. Omer with his eyes upon my precious jewel and his mailed hands ready to grasp it.\"\n\n\"Nay, sire, let him come. He will find the jewel safe in its strong box, with a goodly guard over it.\"\n\n\"You are the guard over my jewel, Aymery.\"\n\n\"Yes, sire, I am the guard.\"\n\n\"And you are a faithful guard and one whom I can trust, are you not? You would not barter away that which is so dear to me when I have chosen you out of all my army to hold it for me?\"\n\n\"Nay, sire, what reasons can there be for such questions? They touch my honor very nearly. You know that I would part with Calais only when I parted with my soul.\"\n\n\"Then you know nothing of de Chargny's attempt?\"\n\n\"Nothing sire.\"\n\n\"Liar and villain!\" yelled the King, springing to his feet and dashing his fist upon the table until the glasses rattled again. \"Seize him, archers! Seize him this instant! Stand close by either elbow, lest he do himself a mischief! Now do you dare to tell me to my face, you perjured Lombard, that you know nothing of de Chargny and his plans?\"\n\n\"As God is my witness I know nothing of him!\" The man's lips were white, and he spoke in a thin, sighing, reedy voice, his eyes wincing away from the fell gaze of the angry King.\n\nEdward laughed bitterly, and drew a paper from his breast. \"You are the judges in this case, you, my fair son, and you, Chandos, and you, Manny, and you, Sir Hubert, and you also, my Lord Bishop. By my sovereign power I make you a court that you may deal justice upon this man, for by God's eyes I will not stir from this room until I have sifted the matter to the bottom. And first I would read you this letter. It is superscribed to Sir Aymery of Pavia, nomme Le Lombard, Chateau de Calais. Is not that your name and style, you rogue?\"\n\n\"It is my name, sire; but no such letter has come to me.\"\n\n\"Else had your villainy never been disclosed. It is signed 'Isidore de Chargny'. What says my enemy de Chargny to my trusted servant? Listen! 'We could not come with the last moon, for we have not gathered sufficient strength, nor have we been able to collect the twenty thousand crowns which are your price. But with the next turn of the moon in the darkest hour we will come and you will be paid your money at the small postern gate with the rowan-bush beside it.' Well, rogue, what say you now?\"\n\n\"It is a forgery!\" gasped the Italian.\n\n\"I pray you that you will let me see it, sire,\" said Chandos. \"De Chargny was my prisoner, and so many letters passed ere his ransom was paid that his script is well-known to me. Yes, yes, I will swear that this is indeed his. If my salvation were at stake I could swear it.\"\n\n\"If it were indeed written by de Chargny it was to dishonor me,\" cried Sir Aymery.\n\n\"Nay, nay!\" said the young Prince. \"We all know de Chargny and have fought against him. Many faults he has, a boaster and a brawler, but a braver man and one of greater heart and higher of enterprise does not ride beneath the lilies of France. Such a man would never stoop to write a letter for the sake of putting dishonor upon one of knightly rank. I, for one, will never believe it.\"\n\nA gruff murmur from the others showed that they were of one mind with the Prince. The light of the torches from the walls beat upon the line of stern faces at the high table. They had sat like flint, and the Italian shrank from their inexorable eyes. He looked swiftly round, but armed men choked every entrance. The shadow of death had fallen athwart his soul.\n\n\"This letter,\" said the King, \"was given by de Chargny to one Dom Beauvais, a priest of St. Omer, to carry into Calais. The said priest, smelling a reward, brought it to one who is my faithful servant, and so it came to me. Straightway I sent for this man that he should come to me. Meanwhile the priest has returned so that de Chargny may think that his message is indeed delivered.\"\n\n\"I know nothing of it,\" said the Italian doggedly, licking his dry lips.\n\nA dark flush mounted to the King's forehead, and his eyes were gorged with his wrath. \"No more of this, for God's dignity!\" he cried. \"Had we this fellow at the Tower, a few turns of the rack would tear a confession from his craven soul. But why should we need his word for his own guilt? You have seen, my lords, you have heard! How say you, fair son? Is the man guilty?\"\n\n\"Sire, he is guilty.\"\n\n\"And you, John? And you, Walter? And you, Hubert? And you, my Lord Bishop? You are all of one mind, then. He is guilty of the betrayal of his trust. And the punishment?\"\n\n\"It can only be death,\" said the Prince, and each in turn the others nodded their agreement.\n\n\"Aymery of Pavia, you have heard your doom,\" said Edward, leaning his chin upon his hand and glooming at the cowering Italian. \"Step forward, you archer at the door, you with the black beard. Draw your sword! Nay, you white-faced rogue, I would not dishonor this roof-tree by your blood. It is your heels, not your head, that we want. Hack off these golden spurs of knighthood with your sword, archer! 'Twas I who gave them, and I who take them back. Ha! they fly across the hall, and with them every bond betwixt you and the worshipful order whose sign and badge they are! Now lead him out on the heath afar from the house where his carrion can best lie, and hew his scheming head from his body as a warning to all such traitors!\"\n\nThe Italian, who had slipped from his chair to his knees, uttered a cry of despair, as an archer seized him by either shoulder. Writhing out of their grip, he threw himself upon the floor and clutched at the King's feet.\n\n\"Spare me, my most dread lord, spare me, I beseech you! In the name of Christ's passion, I implore your grace and pardon! Bethink you, my good and dear lord, how many years I have served under your banners and how many services I have rendered. Was it not I who found the ford upon the Seine two days before the great battle? Was it not I also who marshaled the attack at the intaking of Calais? I have a wife and four children in Italy, great King; and it was the thought of them which led me to fall from my duty, for this money would have allowed me to leave the wars and to see them once again. Mercy, my liege, mercy, I implore!\"\n\nThe English are a rough race, but not a cruel one. The King sat with a face of doom; but the others looked askance and fidgeted in their seats.\n\n\"Indeed, my fair liege,\" said Chandos, \"I pray you that you will abate somewhat of your anger.\"\n\nEdward shook his head curtly. \"Be silent, John. It shall be as I have said.\"\n\n\"I pray you, my dear and honored liege, not to act with overmuch haste in the matter,\" said Manny. \"Bind him and hold him until the morning, for other counsels may prevail.\"\n\n\"Nay, I have spoken. Lead him out!\"\n\nBut the trembling man clung to the King's knees in such a fashion that the archers could not disengage his convulsive grip. \"Listen to me a moment, I implore you! Give me but one minute to plead with you, and then do what you will.\"\n\nThe King leaned back in his chair. \"Speak and have done,\" said he.\n\n\"You must spare me, my noble liege. For your own sake I say that you must spare me, for I can set you in the way of such a knightly adventure as will gladden your heart. Bethink you, sire, that this de Chargny and his comrades know nothing of their plans having gone awry. If I do but send them a message they will surely come to the postern gate. Then, if we have placed our bushment with skill we shall have such a capture and such a ransom as will fill your coffers. He and his comrades should be worth a good hundred thousand crowns.\"\n\nEdward spurned the Italian away from him with his foot until he sprawled among the rushes, but even as he lay there like a wounded snake his dark eyes never left the King's face.\n\n\"You double traitor! You would sell Calais to de Chargny, and then in turn you would sell de Chargny to me. How dare you suppose that I or any noble knight had such a huckster's soul as to think only of ransoms where honor is to be won? Could I or any true man be so caitiff and so thrall? You have sealed your own doom. Lead him out!\"\n\n\"One instant, I pray you, my fair and most sweet lord,\" cried the Prince. \"Assuage your wrath yet a little while, for this man's rede deserves perhaps more thought than we have given it. He has turned your noble soul sick with his talk of ransoms; but look at it, I pray you, from the side of honor, and where could we find such hope of worshipfully winning worship? I pray you to let me put my body in this adventure, for it is one from which, if rightly handled, much advancement is to be gained.\"\n\nEdward looked with sparkling eyes at the noble youth at his side. \"Never was hound more keen on the track of a stricken hart than you on the hope of honor, fair son,\" said he. \"How do you conceive the matter in your mind?\"\n\n\"De Chargny and his men will be such as are worth going far to meet, for he will have the pick of France under his banner that night. If we did as this man says and awaited him with the same number of lances, then I cannot think that there is any spot in Christendom where one would rather be than in Calais that night.\"\n\n\"By the rood, fair son, you are right!\" cried the King, his face shining with the thought. \"Now which of you, John Chandos or Walter Manny, will take the thing in charge?\" He looked mischievously from one to the other like a master who dangles a bone betwixt two fierce old hounds. All they had to say was in their burning, longing eyes. \"Nay, John, you must not take it amiss; but it is Walter's turn, and he shall have it.\"\n\n\"Shall we not all go under your banner, sire, or that of the Prince?\"\n\n\"Nay, it is not fitting that the royal banners of England should be advanced in so small an adventure. And yet, if you have space in your ranks for two more cavaliers, both the Prince and I would ride with you that night.\"\n\nThe young man stooped and kissed his father's hand.\n\n\"Take this man in your charge, Walter, and do with him as you will. Guard well lest he betray us once again. Take him from my sight, for his breath poisons the room. And now, Nigel, if that worthy graybeard of thine would fain twang his harp or sing to us\u2014but what in God's name would you have?\"\n\nHe had turned, to find his young host upon his knee and his flaxen head bent in entreaty.\n\n\"What is it, man? What do you crave?\"\n\n\"A boon, fair liege!\"\n\n\"Well, well, am I to have no peace to-night, with a traitor kneeling to me in front, and a true man on his knees behind? Out with it, Nigel. What would you have?\"\n\n\"To come with you to Calais.\"\n\n\"By the rood! your request is fair enough, seeing that our plot is hatched beneath your very roof. How say you, Walter? Will you take him, armor and all?\" asked King Edward.\n\n\"Say rather will you take me?\" said Chandos. \"We two are rivals in honor, Walter, but I am very sure that you would not hold me back.\"\n\n\"Nay, John, I will be proud to have the best lance in Christendom beneath my banner.\"\n\n\"And I to follow so knightly a leader. But Nigel Loring is my Squire, and so he comes with us also.\"\n\n\"Then that is settled,\" said the King, \"and now there is no need for hurry, since there can be no move until the moon has changed. So I pray you to pass the flagon once again, and to drink with me to the good knights of France. May they be of great heart and high of enterprise when we all meet once more within the castle wall of Calais!\"" + }, + { + "title": "IN THE HALL OF THE KNIGHT OF DUPLIN", + "text": "The King had come and had gone. Tilford Manor house stood once more dark and silent, but joy and contentment reigned within its walls. In one night every trouble had fallen away like some dark curtain which had shut out the sun. A princely sum of money had come from the King's treasurer, given in such fashion that there could be no refusal. With a bag of gold pieces at his saddlebow Nigel rode once more into Guildford, and not a beggar on the way who had not cause to bless his name.\n\nThere he had gone first to the goldsmith and had bought back cup and salver and bracelet, mourning with the merchant over the evil chance that gold and gold-work had for certain reasons which only those in the trade could fully understand gone up in value during the last week, so that already fifty gold pieces had to be paid more than the price which Nigel had received. In vain the faithful Aylward fretted and fumed and muttered a prayer that the day would come when he might feather a shaft in the merchant's portly paunch. The money had to be paid.\n\nThence Nigel hurried to Wat the armorer's and there he bought that very suit for which he had yearned so short a time before. Then and there he tried it on in the booth, Wat and his boy walking round him with spanner and wrench, fixing bolts and twisting rivets.\n\n\"How is that, my fair sir?\" cried the armorer as he drew the bassinet over the head and fastened it to the camail which extended to the shoulders. \"I swear by Tubal Cain that it fits you as the shell fits the crab! A finer suit never came from Italy or Spain.\"\n\nNigel stood in front of a burnished shield which served as a mirror, and he turned this way and that, preening himself like a little shining bird. His smooth breastplate, his wondrous joints with their deft protection by the disks at knee and elbow and shoulder, the beautifully flexible gauntlets and sollerets, the shirt of mail and the close-fitting greave-plates were all things of joy and of beauty in his eyes. He sprang about the shop to show his lightness, and then running out he placed his hand on the pommel and vaulted into Pommers' saddle, while Wat and his boy applauded in the doorway.\n\nThen springing off and running into the shop again he clanked down upon his knees before the image of the Virgin upon the smithy wall. There from his heart he prayed that no shadow or stain should come upon his soul or his honor whilst these arms incased his body, and that he might be strengthened to use them for noble and godly ends. A strange turn this to a religion of peace, and yet for many a century the sword and the faith had upheld each other and in a darkened world the best ideal of the soldier had turned in some dim groping fashion toward the light. \"Benedictus dominus deus meus qui docet manus meas ad Praelium et digitos meos ad bellum!\" There spoke the soul of the knightly soldier.\n\nSo the armor was trussed upon the armorer's mule and went back with them to Tilford, where Nigel put it on once more for the pleasure of the Lady Ermyntrude, who clapped her skinny hands and shed tears of mingled pain and joy\u2014pain that she should lose him, joy that he should go so bravely to the wars. As to her own future, it had been made easy for her, since it was arranged that a steward should look to the Tilford estate whilst she had at her disposal a suite of rooms in royal Windsor, where with other venerable dames of her own age and standing she could spend the twilight of her days discussing long-forgotten scandals and whispering sad things about the grandfathers and the grandmothers of the young courtiers all around them. There Nigel might leave her with an easy mind when he turned his face to France.\n\nBut there was one more visit to be paid and one more farewell to be spoken ere Nigel could leave the moorlands where he had dwelled so long. That evening he donned his brightest tunic, dark purple velvet of Genoa, with trimming of miniver, his hat with the snow-white feather curling round the front, and his belt of embossed silver round his loins. Mounted on lordly Pommers, with his hawk upon wrist and his sword by his side, never did fairer young gallant or one more modest in mind set forth upon such an errand. It was but the old Knight of Duplin to whom he would say farewell; but the Knight of Duplin had two daughters, Edith and Mary, and Edith was the fairest maid in all the heather-country.\n\nSir John Buttesthorn, the Knight of Duplin, was so called because he had been present at that strange battle, some eighteen years before, when the full power of Scotland had been for a moment beaten to the ground by a handful of adventurers and mercenaries, marching under the banner of no nation, but fighting in their own private quarrel. Their exploit fills no pages of history, for it is to the interest of no nation to record it, and yet the rumor and fame of the great fight bulked large in those times, for it was on that day when the flower of Scotland was left dead upon the field, that the world first understood that a new force had arisen in war, and that the English archer, with his robust courage and his skill with the weapon which he had wielded from his boyhood, was a power with which even the mailed chivalry of Europe had seriously to reckon.\n\nSir John after his return from Scotland had become the King's own head huntsman, famous through all England for his knowledge of venery, until at last, getting overheavy for his horses, he had settled in modest comfort into the old house of Cosford upon the eastern slope of the Hindhead hill. Here, as his face grew redder and his beard more white, he spent the evening of his days, amid hawks and hounds, a flagon of spiced wine ever at his elbow, and his swollen foot perched upon a stool before him. There it was that many an old comrade broke his journey as he passed down the rude road which led from London to Portsmouth, and thither also came the young gallants of the country to hear the stout knight's tales of old wars, or to learn, from him that lore of the forest and the chase which none could teach so well as he.\n\nBut sooth to say, whatever the old knight might think, it was not merely his old tales and older wine which drew the young men to Cosford, but rather the fair face of his younger daughter, or the strong soul and wise counsel of the elder. Never had two more different branches sprung from the same trunk. Both were tall and of a queenly graceful figure. But there all resemblance began and ended.\n\nEdith was yellow as the ripe corn, blue-eyed, winning, mischievous, with a chattering tongue, a merry laugh, and a smile which a dozen of young gallants, Nigel of Tilford at their head, could share equally amongst them. Like a young kitten she played with all things that she found in life, and some there were who thought that already the claws could be felt amid the patting of her velvet touch.\n\nMary was dark as night, grave-featured, plain-visaged, with steady brown eyes looking bravely at the world from under a strong black arch of brows. None could call her beautiful, and when her fair sister cast her arm round her and placed her cheek against hers, as was her habit when company was there, the fairness of the one and the plainness of the other leaped visibly to the eyes of all, each the clearer for that hard contrast. And yet, here and there, there was one who, looking at her strange, strong face, and at the passing gleams far down in her dark eyes, felt that this silent woman with her proud bearing and her queenly grace had in her something of strength, of reserve and of mystery which was more to them than all the dainty glitter of her sister.\n\nSuch were the ladies of Cosford toward whom Nigel Loring rode that night with doublet of Genoan velvet and the new white feather in his cap.\n\nHe had ridden over Thursley Ridge past that old stone where in days gone by at the place of Thor the wild Saxons worshiped their war-god. Nigel looked at it with a wary eye and spurred Pommers onward as he passed it, for still it was said that wild fires danced round it on the moonless nights, and they who had ears for such things could hear the scream and sob of those whose lives had been ripped from them that the fiend might be honored. Thor's stone, Thor's jumps, Thor's punch-bowl\u2014the whole countryside was one grim monument to the God of Battles, though the pious monks had changed his uncouth name for that of the Devil his father, so that it was the Devil's jumps and the Devil's punch-bowl of which they spoke. Nigel glanced back at the old gray boulder, and he felt for an instant a shudder pass through his stout heart. Was it the chill of the evening air, or was it that some inner voice had whispered to him of the day when he also might lie bound on such a rock and have such a blood-stained pagan crew howling around him.\n\nAn instant later the rock and his vague fear and all things else had passed from his mind, for there, down the yellow sandy path, the setting sun gleaming on her golden hair, her lithe figure bending and swaying with every heave of the cantering horse, was none other than the same fair Edith, whose face had come so often betwixt him and his sleep. His blood rushed hot to his face at the sight, for fearless of all else, his spirit was attracted and yet daunted by the delicate mystery of woman. To his pure and knightly soul not Edith alone, but every woman, sat high and aloof, enthroned and exalted, with a thousand mystic excellencies and virtues which raised her far above the rude world of man. There was joy in contact with them; and yet there was fear, fear lest his own unworthiness, his untrained tongue or rougher ways should in some way break rudely upon this delicate and tender thing. Such was his thought as the white horse cantered toward him; but a moment later his vague doubts were set at rest by the frank voice of the young girl, who waved her whip in merry greeting.\n\n\"Hail and well met, Nigel!\" she cried. \"Whither away this evening? Sure I am that it is not to see your friends of Cosford, for when did you ever don so brave a doublet for us? Come, Nigel, her name, that I may hate her for ever.\"\n\n\"Nay, Edith,\" said the young Squire, laughing back at the laughing girl. \"I was indeed coming to Cosford.\"\n\n\"Then we shall ride back together, for I will go no farther. How think you that I am looking?\"\n\nNigel's answer was in his eyes as he glanced at the fair flushed face, the golden hair, the sparkling eyes and the daintily graceful figure set off in a scarlet-and-black riding-dress. \"You are as fair as ever, Edith.\"\n\n\"Oh, cold of speech! Surely you were bred for the cloisters, and not for a lady's bower, Nigel. Had I asked such a question from young Sir George Brocas or the Squire of Fernhurst, he would have raved from here to Cosford. They are both more to my taste than you are, Nigel.\"\n\n\"It is the worse for me, Edith,\" said Nigel ruefully.\n\n\"Nay, but you must not lose heart.\"\n\n\"Have I not already lost it?\" said he.\n\n\"That is better,\" she cried, laughing. \"You can be quick enough when you choose, Master Malapert. But you are more fit to speak of high and weary matters with my sister Mary. She will have none of the prattle and courtesy of Sir George, and yet I love them well. But tell me, Nigel, why do you come to Cosford to-night?\"\n\n\"To bid you farewell.\"\n\n\"Me alone?\"\n\n\"Nay, Edith, you and your sister Mary and the good knight your father.\"\n\n\"Sir George would have said that he had come for me alone. Indeed you are but a poor courtier beside him. But is it true, Nigel, that you go to France?\"\n\n\"Yes, Edith.\"\n\n\"It was so rumored after the King had been to Tilford. The story goes that the King goes to France and you in his train. Is that true?\"\n\n\"Yes, Edith, it is true.\"\n\n\"Tell me, then, to what part you go, and when?\"\n\n\"That, alas! I may not say.\"\n\n\"Oh, in sooth!\" She tossed her fair head and rode onward in silence, with compressed lips and angry eyes.\n\nNigel glanced at her in surprise and dismay. \"Surely, Edith,\" said he at last, \"you have overmuch regard for my honor that you should wish me to break the word that I have given?\"\n\n\"Your honor belongs to you, and my likings belong to me,\" said she. \"You hold fast to the one, and I will do the same by the other.\"\n\nThey rode in silence through Thursley village. Then a thought came to her mind and in an instant her anger was forgotten and she was hot on a new scent.\n\n\"What would you do if I were injured, Nigel? I have heard my father say that small as you are there is no man in these parts could stand against you. Would you be my champion if I suffered wrong?\"\n\n\"Surely I or any man of gentle blood would be the champion of any woman who had suffered wrong.\"\n\n\"You or any and I or any\u2014what sort of speech is that? Is it a compliment, think you, to be mixed with a drove in that fashion? My question was of you and me. If I were wronged would you be my man?\"\n\n\"Try me and see, Edith!\"\n\n\"Then I will do so, Nigel. Either Sir George Brocas or the Squire of Fernhurst would gladly do what I ask, and yet I am of a mind, Nigel, to turn to you.\"\n\n\"I pray you to tell me what it is.\"\n\n\"You know Paul de la Fosse of Shalford?\"\n\n\"You mean the small man with the twisted back?\"\n\n\"He is no smaller than yourself, Nigel, and as to his back there are many folk that I know who would be glad to have his face.\"\n\n\"Nay, I am no judge of that, and I spoke out of no discourtesy. What of the man?\"\n\n\"He has flouted me, Nigel, and I would have revenge.\"\n\n\"What\u2014on that poor twisted creature?\"\n\n\"I tell you that he has flouted me!\"\n\n\"But how?\"\n\n\"I should have thought that a true cavalier would have flown to my aid, withouten all these questions. But I will tell you, since I needs must. Know then that he was one of those who came around me and professed to be my own. Then, merely because he thought that there were others who were as dear to me as himself he left me, and now he pays court to Maude Twynham, the little freckle-faced hussy in his village.\"\n\n\"But how has this hurt you, since he was no man of thine?\"\n\n\"He was one of my men, was he not? And he has made game of me to his wench. He has told her things about me. He has made me foolish in her eyes. Yes, yes, I can read it in her saffron face and in her watery eyes when we meet at the church door on Sundays. She smiles\u2014yes, smiles at me! Nigel, go to him! Do not slay him, nor even wound him, but lay his face open with thy riding-whip, and then come back to me and tell me how I can serve you.\"\n\nNigel's face was haggard with the strife within, for desire ran hot in every vein, and yet reason shrank with horror. \"By Saint Paul! Edith,\" he cried, \"I see no honor nor advancement of any sort in this thing which you have asked me to do. Is it for me to strike one who is no better than a cripple? For my manhood I could not do such a deed, and I pray you, dear lady, that you will set me some other task.\"\n\nHer eyes flashed at him in contempt. \"And you are a man-at-arms!\" she cried, laughing in bitter scorn. \"You are afraid of a little man who can scarce walk. Yes, yes, say what you will, I shall ever believe that you have heard of his skill at fence and of his great spirit, and that your heart has failed you! You are right, Nigel. He is indeed a perilous man. Had you done what I asked he would have slain you, and so you have shown your wisdom.\"\n\nNigel flushed and winced under the words, but he said no more, for his mind was fighting hard within him, striving to keep that high image of woman which seemed for a moment to totter on the edge of a fall. Together in silence, side by side, the little man and the stately woman, the yellow charger and the white jennet, passed up the sandy winding track with the gorse and the bracken head-high on either side. Soon a path branched off through a gateway marked with the boar-heads of the Buttesthorns, and there was the low widespread house heavily timbered, loud with the barking of dogs. The ruddy Knight limped forth with outstretched hand and roaring voice\u2014\n\n\"What how, Nigel! Good welcome and all hail! I had thought that you had given over poor friends like us, now that the King had made so much of you. The horses, varlets, or my crutch will be across you! Hush, Lydiard! Down, Pelamon! I can scarce hear my voice for your yelping. Mary, a cup of wine for young Squire Loring!\"\n\nShe stood framed in the doorway, tall, mystic, silent, with strange, wistful face and deep soul shining in her dark, questioning eyes. Nigel kissed the hand that she held out, and all his faith in woman and his reverence came back to him as he looked at her. Her sister had slipped behind her and her fair elfish face smiled her forgiveness of Nigel over Mary's shoulder.\n\nThe Knight of Duplin leaned his weight upon the young man's arm and limped his way across the great high-roofed hall to his capacious oaken chair. \"Come, come, the stool, Edith!\" he cried. \"As God is my help, that girl's mind swarms with gallants as a granary with rats. Well, Nigel, I hear strange tales of your spear-running at Tilford and of the visit of the King. How seemed he? And my old friend Chandos\u2014many happy hours in the woodlands have we had together\u2014and Manny too, he was ever a bold and a hard rider\u2014what news of them all?\"\n\nNigel told to the old Knight all that had occurred, saying little of his own success and much of his own failure, yet the eyes of the dark woman burned the brighter as she sat at her tapestry and listened.\n\nSir John followed the story with a running fire of oaths, prayers, thumps with his great fist and flourishes of his crutch. \"Well, well, lad, you could scarce expect to hold your saddle against Manny, and you have carried yourself well. We are proud of you, Nigel, for you are our own man, reared in the heather country. But indeed I take shame that you are not more skilled in the mystery of the woods, seeing that I have had the teaching of you, and that no one in broad England is my master at the craft. I pray you to fill your cup again whilst I make use of the little time that is left to us.\"\n\nAnd straightway the old Knight began a long and weary lecture upon the times of grace and when each beast and bird was seasonable, with many anecdotes, illustrations, warnings and exceptions, drawn from his own great experience. He spoke also of the several ranks and grades of the chase: how the hare, hart and boar must ever take precedence over the buck, the doe, the fox, the marten and the roe, even as a knight banneret does over a knight, while these in turn are of a higher class to the badger, the wildcat or the otter, who are but the common populace of the world of beasts. Of blood-stains also he spoke\u2014how the skilled hunter may see at a glance if blood be dark and frothy, which means a mortal hurt, or thin and clear, which means that the arrow has struck a bone.\n\n\"By such signs,\" said he, \"you will surely know whether to lay on the hounds and cast down the blinks which hinder the stricken deer in its flight. But above all I pray you, Nigel, to have a care in the use of the terms of the craft, lest you should make some blunder at table, so that those who are wiser may have the laugh of you, and we who love you may be shamed.\"\n\n\"Nay, Sir John,\" said Nigel. \"I think that after your teaching I can hold my place with the others.\"\n\nThe old Knight shook his white head doubtfully. \"There is so much to be learned that there is no one who can be said to know all,\" said he. \"For example, Nigel, it is sooth that for every collection of beasts of the forest, and for every gathering of birds of the air, there is their own private name so that none may be confused with another.\"\n\n\"I know it, fair sir.\"\n\n\"You know it, Nigel, but you do not know each separate name, else are you a wiser man than I had thought you. In truth\u2014none can say that they know all, though I have myself picked off eighty, and six for a wager at court, and it is said that the chief huntsman of the Duke of Burgundy has counted over a hundred\u2014but it is in my mind that he may have found them as he went, for there was none to say him nay. Answer me now, lad, how would you say if you saw ten badgers together in the forest?\"\n\n\"A cete of badgers, fair sir.\"\n\n\"Good, Nigel\u2014good, by my faith! And if you walk in Woolmer Forest and see a swarm of foxes, how would you call it?\"\n\n\"A skulk of foxes.\"\n\n\"And if they be lions?\"\n\n\"Nay, fair sir, I am not like to meet several lions in Woolmer Forest.\"\n\n\"Aye, lad, but there are other forests besides Woolmer, and other lands besides England, and who can tell how far afield such a knight errant as Nigel of Tilford may go, when he sees worship to be won? We will say that you were in the deserts of Nubia, and that afterward at the court of the great Sultan you wished to say that you had seen several lions, which is the first beast of the chase, being the king of all animals. How then would you say it?\"\n\nNigel scratched his head. \"Surely, fair sir, I would be content to say that I had seen a number of lions, if indeed I could say aught after so wondrous an adventure.\"\n\n\"Nay, Nigel, a huntsman would have said that he had seen a pride of lions, and so proved that he knew the language of the chase. Now had it been boars instead of lions?\"\n\n\"One says a singular of boars.\"\n\n\"And if they be swine?\"\n\n\"Surely it is a herd of swine.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, lad, it is indeed sad to see how little you know. Your hands, Nigel, were always better than your head. No man of gentle birth would speak of a herd of swine; that is the peasant speech. If you drive them it is a herd. If you hunt them it is other. What call you them, then, Edith?\"\n\n\"Nay, I know not,\" said the girl listlessly. A crumpled note brought in by a varlet was clinched in her right hand and her blue eyes looked afar into the deep shadows of the roof.\n\n\"But you can tell us, Mary?\"\n\n\"Surely, sweet sir, one talks of a sounder of swine.\"\n\nThe old Knight laughed exultantly. \"Here is a pupil who never brings me shame!\" he cried. \"Be it lore\u2014of chivalry or heraldry or woodcraft or what you will, I can always turn to Mary. Many a man can she put to the blush.\"\n\n\"Myself among them,\" said Nigel.\n\n\"Ah, lad, you are a Solomon to some of them. Hark ye! only last week that jack-fool, the young Lord of Brocas, was here talking of having seen a covey of pheasants in the wood. One such speech would have been the ruin of a young Squire at the court. How would you have said it, Nigel?\"\n\n\"Surely, fair sir, it should be a nye of pheasants.\"\n\n\"Good, Nigel\u2014a nye of pheasants, even as it is a gaggle of geese or a badling of ducks, a fall of woodcock or a wisp of snipe. But a covey of pheasants! What sort of talk is that? I made him sit even where you are sitting, Nigel, and I saw the bottom of two pots of Rhenish ere I let him up. Even then I fear that he had no great profit from his lesson, for he was casting his foolish eyes at Edith when he should have been turning his ears to her father. But where is the wench?\"\n\n\"She hath gone forth, father.\"\n\n\"She ever doth go forth when there is a chance of learning aught that is useful indoors. But supper will soon be ready, and there is a boar's ham fresh from the forest with which I would ask your help, Nigel, and a side of venison from the King's own chase. The tinemen and verderers have not forgotten me yet, and my larder is ever full. Blow three moots on the horn, Mary, that the varlets may set the table, for the growing shadow and my loosening belt warn me that it is time.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW NIGEL FOUGHT THE TWISTED MAN OF SHALFORD", + "text": "In the days of which you read all classes, save perhaps the very poor, fared better in meat and in drink than they have ever done since. The country was covered with woodlands\u2014there were seventy separate forests in England alone, some of them covering half a shire. Within these forests the great beasts of the chase were strictly preserved, but the smaller game, the hares, the rabbits, the birds, which swarmed round the coverts, found their way readily into the poor man's pot. Ale was very cheap, and cheaper still was the mead which every peasant could make for himself out of the wild honey in the tree-trunks. There were many tea-like drinks also, which were brewed by the poor at no expense: mallow tea, tansy tea, and others the secret of which has passed.\n\nAmid the richer classes there was rude profusion, great joints ever on the sideboard, huge pies, beasts of the field and beasts of the chase, with ale and rough French or Rhenish wines to wash them down. But the very rich had attained to a high pitch of luxury in their food, and cookery was a science in which the ornamentation of the dish was almost as important as the dressing of the food. It was gilded, it was silvered, it was painted, it was surrounded with flame. From the boar and the peacock down to such strange food as the porpoise and the hedgehog, every dish had its own setting and its own sauce, very strange and very complex, with flavorings of dates, currants, cloves, vinegar, sugar and honey, of cinnamon, ground ginger, sandalwood, saffron, brawn and pines. It was the Norman tradition to eat in moderation, but to have a great profusion of the best and of the most delicate from which to choose. From them came this complex cookery, so unlike the rude and often gluttonous simplicity of the old Teutonic stock.\n\nSir John Buttesthorn was of that middle class who fared in the old fashion, and his great oak supper-table groaned beneath the generous pastries, the mighty joints and the great flagons. Below were the household, above on a raised dais the family table, with places ever ready for those frequent guests who dropped in from the high road outside. Such a one had just come, an old priest, journeying from the Abbey of Chertsey to the Priory of Saint John at Midhurst. He passed often that way, and never without breaking his journey at the hospitable board of Cosford.\n\n\"Welcome again, good Father Athanasius!\" cried the burly Knight. \"Come sit here on my right and give me the news of the countryside, for there is never a scandal but the priests are the first to know it.\"\n\nThe priest, a kindly, quiet man, glanced at an empty place upon the farther side of his host. \"Mistress Edith?\" said he.\n\n\"Aye, aye, where is the hussy?\" cried her father impatiently. \"Mary, I beg you to have the horn blown again, that she may know that the supper is on the table. What can the little owlet do abroad at this hour of the night?\"\n\nThere was trouble in the priest's gentle eyes as he touched the Knight upon the sleeve. \"I have seen Mistress Edith within this hour,\" said he. \"I fear that she will hear no horn that you may blow, for she must be at Milford ere now.\"\n\n\"At Milford? What does she there?\"\n\n\"I pray you, good Sir John, to abate your voice somewhat, for indeed this matter is for our private discourse, since it touches the honor of a lady.\"\n\n\"Her honor?\" Sir John's ruddy face had turned redder still, as he stared at the troubled features of the priest. \"Her honor, say you\u2014the honor of my daughter? Make good those words, or never set your foot over the threshold of Cosford again!\"\n\n\"I trust that I have done no wrong, Sir John, but indeed I must say what I have seen, else would I be a false friend and an unworthy priest.\"\n\n\"Haste man, haste! What in the Devil's name have you seen?\"\n\n\"Know you a little man, partly misshapen, named Paul de la Fosse?\"\n\n\"I know him well. He is a man of noble family and coat-armor, being the younger brother of Sir Eustace de la Fosse of Shalford. Time was when I had thought that I might call him son, for there was never a day that he did not pass with my girls, but I fear that his crooked back sped him ill in his wooing.\"\n\n\"Alas, Sir John! It is his mind that is more crooked than his back. He is a perilous man with women, for the Devil hath given him such a tongue and such an eye that he charms them even as the basilisk. Marriage may be in their mind, but never in his, so that I could count a dozen and more whom he has led to their undoing. It is his pride and his boast over the whole countryside.\"\n\n\"Well, well, and what is this to me or mine?\"\n\n\"Even now, Sir John, as I rode my mule up the road I met this man speeding toward his home. A woman rode by his side, and though her face was hooded I heard her laugh as she passed me. That laugh I have heard before, and it was under this very roof, from the lips of Mistress Edith.\"\n\nThe Knight's knife dropped from his hand. But the debate had been such that neither Mary nor Nigel could fail to have heard it. Mid the rough laughter and clatter of voices from below the little group at the high table had a privacy of their own.\n\n\"Fear not, father,\" said the girl\u2014\"indeed, the good Father Athanasius hath fallen into error, and Edith will be with us anon. I have heard her speak of this man many times of late, and always with bitter words.\"\n\n\"It is true, sir,\" cried Nigel eagerly. \"It was only this very evening as we rode over Thursley Moor that Mistress Edith told me that she counted him not a fly, and that she would be glad if he were beaten for his evil deeds.\"\n\nBut the wise priest shook his silvery locks. \"Nay, there is ever danger when a woman speaks like that. Hot hate is twin brother to hot love. Why should she speak so if there were not some bond between them?\"\n\n\"And yet,\" said Nigel, \"what can have changed her thoughts in three short hours? She was here in the hall with us since I came. By Saint Paul, I will not believe it!\"\n\nMary's face darkened. \"I call to mind,\" said she, \"that a note was brought her by Hannekin the stable varlet when you were talking to us, fair sir, of the terms of the chase. She read it and went forth.\"\n\nSir John sprang to his feet, but sank into his chair again with a groan. \"Would that I were dead,\" he cried, \"ere I saw dishonor come upon my house, and am so tied with this accursed foot that I can neither examine if it be true, nor yet avenge it! If my son Oliver were here, then all would be well. Send me this stable varlet that I may question him.\"\n\n\"I pray you, fair and honored sir,\" said Nigel, \"that you will take me for your son this night, that I may handle this matter in the way which seems best. On jeopardy of my honor I will do all that a man may.\"\n\n\"Nigel, I thank you. There is no man in Christendom to whom I would sooner turn.\"\n\n\"But I would lean your mind in one matter, fair sir. This man, Paul de la Fosse, owns broad acres, as I understand, and comes of noble blood. There is no reason if things be as we fear that he should not marry your daughter?\"\n\n\"Nay, she could not wish for better.\"\n\n\"It is well. And first I would question this Hannekin; but it shall be done in such a fashion that none shall know, for indeed it is not a matter for the gossip of servants. But if you will show me the man, Mistress Mary, I will take him out to tend my own horse, and so I shall learn all that he has to tell.\"\n\nNigel was absent for some time, and when he returned the shadow upon his face brought little hope to the anxious hearts at the high table. \"I have locked him in the stable loft, lest he talk too much,\" said he, \"for my questions must have shown him whence the wind blew. It was indeed from this man that the note came, and he had brought with him a spare horse for the lady.\"\n\nThe old Knight groaned, and his face sank upon his hands.\n\n\"Nay, father, they watch you!\" whispered Mary. \"For the honor of our house let us keep a bold face to all.\" Then, raising her young clear voice, so that it sounded through the room: \"If you ride eastward, Nigel, I would fain go with you, that my sister may not come back alone.\"\n\n\"We will ride together, Mary,\" said Nigel, rising; then in a lower voice: \"But we cannot go alone, and if we take a servant all is known. I pray you to stay at home and leave the matter with me.\"\n\n\"Nay, Nigel, she may sorely need a woman's aid, and what woman should it be save her own sister? I can take my tire-woman with us.\"\n\n\"Nay, I shall ride with you myself if your impatience can keep within the powers of my mule,\" said the old priest.\n\n\"But it is not your road, father?\"\n\n\"The only road of a true priest is that which leads to the good of others. Come, my children, and we will go together.\"\n\nAnd so it was that stout Sir John Buttesthorn, the aged Knight of Duplin, was left alone at his own high table, pretending to eat, pretending to drink, fidgeting in his seat, trying hard to seem unconcerned with his mind and body in a fever, while below him his varlets and handmaids laughed and jested, clattering their cups and clearing their trenchers, all unconscious of the dark shadow which threw its gloom over the lonely man upon the dais above.\n\nMeantime the Lady Mary upon the white jennet which her sister had ridden on the same evening, Nigel on his warhorse, and the priest on the mule, clattered down the rude winding road which led to London. The country on either side was a wilderness of heather moors and of morasses from which came the strange crying of night-fowl. A half-moon shone in the sky between the rifts of hurrying clouds. The lady rode in silence, absorbed in the thought of the task before them, the danger and the shame.\n\nNigel chatted in a low tone with the priest. From him he learned more of the evil name of this man whom they followed. His house at Shalford was a den of profligacy and vice. No woman could cross that threshold and depart unstained. In some strange fashion, inexplicable and yet common, the man, with all his evil soul and his twisted body, had yet some strange fascination for women, some mastery over them which compelled them to his will. Again and again he had brought ruin to a household, again and again his adroit tongue and his cunning wit had in some fashion saved him from the punishment of his deeds. His family was great in the county, and his kinsmen held favor with the King, so that his neighbors feared to push things too far against him. Such was the man, malignant and ravenous, who had stooped like some foul night-hawk and borne away to his evil nest the golden beauty of Cosford. Nigel said little as he listened, but he raised his hunting-dagger to his tightened lips, and thrice he kissed the cross of its handle.\n\nThey had passed over the moors and through the village of Milford and the little township of Godalming, until their path turned southward over the Pease marsh and crossed the meadows of Shalford. There on the dark hillside glowed the red points of light which marked the windows of the house which they sought. A somber arched avenue of oak-trees led up to it, and then they were in the moon-silvered clearing in front.\n\nFrom the shadow of the arched door there sprang two rough serving-men, bearded and gruff, great cudgels in their hands, to ask them who they were and what their errand. The Lady Mary had slipped from her horse and was advancing to the door, but they rudely barred her way.\n\n\"Nay, nay, our master needs no more!\" cried one, with a hoarse laugh. \"Stand back, mistress, whoever you be! The house is shut, and our lord sees no guests to-night.\"\n\n\"Fellow,\" said Nigel, speaking low and clear, \"stand back from us! Our errand is with your master.\"\n\n\"Bethink you, my children,\" cried the old priest, \"would it not be best perchance, that I go in to him and see whether the voice of the Church may not soften this hard heart? I fear bloodshed if you enter.\"\n\n\"Nay, father, I pray you to stay here for the nonce,\" said Nigel. \"And you, Mary, do you bide with the good priest, for we know not what may be within.\"\n\nAgain he turned to the door, and again the two men barred his passage.\n\n\"Stand back, I say, back for your lives!\" said Nigel. \"By Saint Paul! I should think it shame to soil my sword with such as you, but my soul is set, and no man shall bar my path this night.\"\n\nThe men shrank from the deadly menace of that gentle voice.\n\n\"Hold!\" said one of them, peering through the darkness, \"is it not Squire Loring of Tilford?\"\n\n\"That is indeed my name.\"\n\n\"Had you spoken it I for one would not have stopped your way. Put down your staff, Wat, for this is no stranger, but the Squire of Tilford.\"\n\n\"As well for him,\" grumbled the other, lowering his cudgel with an inward prayer of thanksgiving. \"Had it been otherwise I should have had blood upon my soul to-night. But our master said nothing of neighbors when he ordered us to hold the door. I will enter and ask him what is his will.\"\n\nBut already Nigel was past them and had pushed open the outer door. Swift as he was, the Lady Mary was at his very heels, and the two passed together into the hall beyond.\n\nIt was a great room, draped and curtained with black shadows, with one vivid circle of light in the center, where two oil lamps shone upon a small table. A meal was laid upon the table, but only two were seated at it, and there were no servants in the room. At the near end was Edith, her golden hair loose and streaming down over the scarlet and black of her riding-dress.\n\nAt the farther end the light beat strongly upon the harsh face and the high-drawn misshapen shoulders of the lord of the house. A tangle of black hair surmounted a high rounded forehead, the forehead of a thinker, with two deep-set cold gray eyes twinkling sharply from under tufted brows. His nose was curved and sharp, like the beak of some cruel bird, but below the whole of his clean-shaven powerful face was marred by the loose slabbing mouth and the round folds of the heavy chin. His knife in one hand and a half-gnawed bone in the other, he looked fiercely up, like some beast disturbed in his den, as the two intruders broke in upon his hall.\n\nNigel stopped midway between the door and the table. His eyes and those of Paul de la Fosse were riveted upon each other. But Mary, with her woman's soul flooded over with love and pity, had rushed forward and cast her arms round her younger sister. Edith had sprung up from her chair, and with averted face tried to push the other away from her.\n\n\"Edith, Edith! By the Virgin, I implore you to come back with us, and to leave this wicked man!\" cried Mary. \"Dear sister, you would not break our father's heart, nor bring his gray head in dishonor to the grave! Come back Edith, come back and all is well.\"\n\nBut Edith pushed her away, and her fair cheeks were flushed with her anger. \"What right have you over me, Mary, you who are but two years older, that you should follow me over the countryside as though I were a runagate villain and you my mistress? Do you yourself go back, and leave me to do that which seems best in my own eyes.\"\n\nBut Mary still held her in her arms, and still strove to soften the hard and angry heart. \"Our mother is dead, Edith. I thank God that she died ere she saw you under this roof! But I stand for her, as I have done all my life, since I am indeed your elder. It is with her voice that I beg and pray you that you will not trust this man further, and that you will come back ere it be too late!\"\n\nEdith writhed from her grasp, and stood flushed and defiant, with gleaming, angry eyes fixed upon her sister. \"You may speak evil of him now,\" said she, \"but there was a time when Paul de la Fosse came to Cosford, and who so gentle and soft-spoken to him then as wise, grave, sister Mary? But he has learned to love another; so now he is the wicked man, and it is shame to be seen under his roof! From what I see of my good pious sister and her cavalier it is sin for another to ride at night with a man at your side, but it comes easy enough to you. Look at your own eye, good sister, ere you would take the speck from that of another.\"\n\nMary stood irresolute and greatly troubled, holding down her pride and her anger, but uncertain how best to deal with this strong wayward spirit.\n\n\"It is not a time for bitter words, dear sister,\" said she, and again she laid her hand upon her sister's sleeve. \"All that you say may be true. There was indeed a time when this man was friend to us both, and I know even as you do the power which he may have to win a woman's heart. But I know him now, and you do not. I know the evil that he has wrought, the dishonor that he has brought, the perjury that lies upon his soul, the confidence betrayed, the promise unfulfilled\u2014all this I know. Am I to see my own sister caught in the same well-used trap? Has it shut upon you, child? Am I indeed already too late? For God's sake, tell me, Edith, that it is not so?\"\n\nEdith plucked her sleeve from her sister and made two swift steps to the head of the table. Paul de la Fosse still sat silent with his eyes upon Nigel. Edith laid her hand upon his shoulder: \"This is the man I love, and the only man that I have ever loved. This is my husband,\" said she.\n\nAt the word Mary gave a cry of joy.\n\n\"And is it so?\" she cried. \"Nay, then all is in honor, and God will see to the rest. If you are man and wife before the altar, then indeed why should I, or any other, stand between you? Tell me that it is indeed so, and I return this moment to make your father a happy man.\"\n\nEdith pouted like a naughty child. \"We are man and wife in the eyes of God. Soon also we shall be wedded before all the world. We do but wait until next Monday when Paul's brother, who is a priest at St. Albans, will come to wed us. Already a messenger has sped for him, and he will come, will he not, dear love?\"\n\n\"He will come,\" said the master of Shalford, still with his eyes fixed upon the silent Nigel.\n\n\"It is a lie; he will not come,\" said a voice from the door.\n\nIt was the old priest, who had followed the others as far as the threshold.\n\n\"He will not come,\" he repeated as he advanced into the room. \"Daughter, my daughter, hearken to the words of one who is indeed old enough to be your earthly father. This lie has served before. He has ruined others before you with it. The man has no brother at Saint Albans. I know his brothers well, and there is no priest among them. Before Monday, when it is all too late, you will have found the truth as others have done before you. Trust him not, but come with us!\"\n\nPaul de la Fosse looked up at her with a quick smile and patted the hand upon his shoulder.\n\n\"Do you speak to them, Edith,\" said he.\n\nHer eyes flashed with scorn as she surveyed them each in turn, the woman, the youth and the priest.\n\n\"I have but one word to say to them,\" said she. \"It is that they go hence and trouble us no more. Am I not a free woman? Have I not said that this is the only man I ever loved? I have loved him long. He did not know it, and in despair he turned to another. Now he knows all and never again can doubt come between us. Therefore I will stay here at Shalford and come to Cosford no more save upon the arm of my husband. Am I so weak that I would believe the tales you tell against him? Is it hard for a jealous woman and a wandering priest to agree upon a lie? No, no, Mary, you can go hence and take your cavalier and your priest with you, for here I stay, true to my love and safe in my trust upon his honor!\"\n\n\"Well spoken, on my faith, my golden bird!\" said the little master of Shalford. \"Let me add my own word to that which has been said. You would not grant me any virtue in your unkindly speech, good Lady Mary, and yet you must needs confess that at least I have good store of patience, since I have not set my dogs upon your friends who have come between me and my ease. But even to the most virtuous there comes at last a time when poor human frailty may prevail, and so I pray you to remove both yourself, your priest and your valiant knight errant, lest perhaps there be more haste and less dignity when at last you do take your leave. Sit down, my fair love, and let us turn once more to our supper.\" He motioned her to her chair, and he filled her wine-cup as well as his own.\n\nNigel had said no word since he had entered the room, but his look had never lost its set purpose, nor had his brooding eyes ever wandered from the sneering face of the deformed master of Shalford. Now he turned with swift decision to Mary and to the priest.\n\n\"That is over,\" said he in a low voice. \"You have done all that you could, and now it is for me to play my part as well as I am able. I pray you, Mary, and you, good father, that you will await me outside.\"\n\n\"Nay, Nigel, if there is danger\u2014\"\n\n\"It is easier for me, Mary, if you are not there. I pray you to go. I can speak to this man more at my ease.\"\n\nShe looked at him with questioning eyes and then obeyed.\n\nNigel plucked at the priest's gown.\n\n\"I pray you, father, have you your book of offices with you?\"\n\n\"Surely, Nigel, it is ever in my breast.\"\n\n\"Have it ready, father!\"\n\n\"For what, my son?\"\n\n\"There are two places you may mark; there is the service of marriage and there is the prayer for the dying. Go with her, father, and be ready at my call.\"\n\nHe closed the door behind them and was alone with this ill-matched couple. They both turned in their chairs to look at him, Edith with a defiant face, the man with a bitter smile upon his lips and malignant hatred in his eyes.\n\n\"What,\" said he, \"the knight errant still lingers? Have we not heard of his thirst for glory? What new venture does he see that he should tarry here?\"\n\nNigel walked to the table.\n\n\"There is no glory and little venture,\" said he; \"but I have come for a purpose and I must do it. I learn from your own lips, Edith, that you will not leave this man.\"\n\n\"If you have ears you have heard it.\"\n\n\"You are, as you have said, a free woman, and who can gainsay you? But I have known you, Edith, since we played as boy and girl on the heather-hills together. I will save you from this man's cunning and from your own foolish weakness.\"\n\n\"What would you do?\"\n\n\"There is a priest without. He will marry you now. I will see you married ere I leave this hall.\"\n\n\"Or else?\" sneered the man.\n\n\"Or else you never leave this hall alive. Nay, call not for your servants or your dogs! By Saint Paul! I swear to you that this matter lies between us three, and that if any fourth comes at your call you, at least, shall never live to see what comes of it! Speak then, Paul of Shalford! Will you wed this woman now, or will you not?\"\n\nEdith was on her feet with outstretched arms between them. \"Stand back, Nigel! He is small and weak. You would not do him a hurt! Did you not say so this very day? For God's sake, Nigel, do not look at him so! There is death in your eyes.\"\n\n\"A snake may be small and weak, Edith, yet every honest man would place his heel upon it. Do you stand back yourself, for my purpose is set.\"\n\n\"Paul!\" she turned her eyes to the pale sneering face. \"Bethink you, Paul! Why should you not do what he asks? What matter to you whether it be now or on Monday? I pray you, dear Paul, for my sake let him have his way! Your brother can read the service again if it so please him. Let us wed now, Paul, and then all is well.\"\n\nHe had risen from his chair, and he dashed aside her appealing hands. \"You foolish woman,\" he snarled, \"and you, my savior of fair damsels, who are so bold against a cripple, you have both to learn that if my body be weak there is the soul of my breed within it! To marry because a boasting, ranting, country Squire would have me do so\u2014no, by the soul of God, I will die first! On Monday I will marry, and no day sooner, so let that be your answer.\"\n\n\"It is the answer that I wished,\" said Nigel, \"for indeed I see no happiness in this marriage, and the other may well be the better way. Stand aside, Edith!\" He gently forced her to one side and drew his sword.\n\nDe la Fosse cried aloud at the sight. \"I have no sword. You would not murder me?\" said he, leaning back with haggard-face and burning eyes against his chair. The bright steel shone in the lamp-light. Edith shrank back, her hand over her face.\n\n\"Take this sword!\" said Nigel, and he turned the hilt to the cripple. \"Now!\" he added, as he drew his hunting knife. \"Kill me if you can, Paul de la Fosse, for as God is my help I will do as much for you!\"\n\nThe woman, half swooning and yet spellbound and fascinated, looked on at that strange combat. For a moment the cripple stood with an air of doubt, the sword grasped in his nerveless fingers. Then as he saw the tiny blade in Nigel's hand the greatness of the advantage came home to him, and a cruel smile tightened his loose lips. Slowly, step by step he advanced, his chin sunk upon his chest, his eyes glaring from under the thick tangle of his brows like fires through the brushwood. Nigel waited for him, his left hand forward, his knife down by his hip, his face grave, still and watchful.\n\nNearer and nearer yet, with stealthy step, and then with a bound and a cry of hatred and rage Paul de la Fosse had sped his blow. It was well judged and well swung, but point would have been wiser than edge against that supple body and those active feet. Quick as a flash, Nigel had sprung inside the sweep of the blade, taking a flesh wound on his left forearm, as he pressed it under the hilt. The next instant the cripple was on the ground and Nigel's dagger was at his throat.\n\n\"You dog!\" he whispered. \"I have you at my mercy! Quick ere I strike, and for the last time! Will you marry or no?\"\n\nThe crash of the fall and the sharp point upon his throat had cowed the man's spirit. He looked up with a white face and the sweat gleamed upon his forehead. There was terror in his eyes.\n\n\"Nay, take your knife from me!\" he cried. \"I cannot die like a calf in the shambles.\"\n\n\"Will you marry?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, I will wed her! After all she is a good wench and I might do worse. Let me up! I tell you I will marry her! What more would you have?\"\n\nNigel stood above him with his foot upon his misshapen body. He had picked up his sword, and the point rested upon the cripple's breast.\n\n\"Nay, you will bide where you are! If you are to live\u2014and my conscience cries loud against it\u2014at least your wedding will be such as your sins have deserved. Lie there, like the crushed worm that you are!\" Then he raised his voice. \"Father Athanasius!\" he cried. \"What ho! Father Athanasius!\"\n\nThe old priest ran to the cry, and so did the Lady Mary. A strange sight it was that met them now in the circle of light, the frightened girl, half-unconscious against the table, the prostrate cripple, and Nigel with foot and sword upon his body.\n\n\"Your book, father!\" cried Nigel. \"I know not if what we do is good or ill; but we must wed them, for there is no way out.\"\n\nBut the girl by the table had given a great cry, and she was clinging and sobbing with her arms round her sister's neck.\n\n\"Oh, Mary, I thank the Virgin that you have come! I thank the Virgin that it is not too late! What did he say? He said that he was a de la Fosse and that he would not be married at the sword-point. My heart went out to him when he said it. But I, am I not a Buttesthorn, and shall it be said that I would marry a man who could be led to the altar with a knife at his throat? No, no, I see him as he is! I know him now, the mean spirit, the lying tongue! Can I not read in his eyes that he has indeed deceived me, that he would have left me as you say that he has left others? Take me home, Mary, my sister, for you have plucked me back this night from the very mouth of Hell!\"\n\nAnd so it was that the master of Shalford, livid and brooding, was left with his wine at his lonely table, while the golden beauty of Cosford, hot with shame and anger, her fair face wet with tears, passed out safe from the house of infamy into the great calm and peace of the starry night." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE COMRADES JOURNEYED DOWN THE OLD, OLD ROAD", + "text": "And now the season of the moonless nights was drawing nigh and the King's design was ripe. Very secretly his preparations were made. Already the garrison of Calais, which consisted of five hundred archers and two hundred men-at-arms, could, if forewarned, resist any attack made upon it. But it was the King's design not merely to resist the attack, but to capture the attackers. Above all it was his wish to find the occasion for one of those adventurous passages of arms which had made his name famous throughout Christendom as the very pattern and leader of knight-errant chivalry.\n\nBut the affair wanted careful handling. The arrival of any, reinforcements, or even the crossing of any famous soldier, would have alarmed the French and warned them that their plot had been discovered. Therefore it was in twos and threes in the creyers and provision ships which were continually passing from shore to shore that the chosen warriors and their squires were brought to Calais. There they were passed at night through the water-gate into the castle where they could lie hidden, unknown to the townsfolk, until the hour for action had come.\n\nNigel had received word from Chandos to join him at \"The Sign of the Broom-Pod\" in Winchelsea. Three days beforehand he and Aylward rode from Tilford all armed and ready for the wars. Nigel was in hunting-costume, blithe and gay, with his precious armor and his small baggage trussed upon the back of a spare horse which Aylward led by the bridle. The archer had himself a good black mare, heavy and slow, but strong enough to be fit to carry his powerful frame. In his brigandine of chain mail and his steel cap, with straight strong sword by his side, his yellow longbow jutting over his shoulder, and his quiver of arrows supported by a scarlet baldric, he was such a warrior as any knight might well be proud to have in his train. All Tilford trailed behind them, as they rode slowly over the long slope of heath land which skirts the flank of Crooksbury Hill.\n\nAt the summit of the rise Nigel reined in Pommers and looked back at the little village behind him. There was the old dark manor house, with one bent figure leaning upon a stick and gazing dimly after him from beside the door. He looked at the high-pitched roof, the timbered walls, the long trail of swirling blue smoke which rose from the single chimney, and the group of downcast old servants who lingered at the gate, John the cook, Weathercote the minstrel, and Red Swire the broken soldier. Over the river amid the trees he could see the grim, gray tower of Waverley, and even as he looked, the iron bell, which had so often seemed to be the hoarse threatening cry of an enemy, clanged out its call to prayer. Nigel doffed his velvet cap and prayed also\u2014prayed that peace might remain at home, and good warfare, in which honor and fame should await him, might still be found abroad. Then, waving his hand to the people, he turned his horse's head and rode slowly eastward. A moment later Aylward broke from the group of archers and laughing girls who clung to his bridle and his stirrup straps, and rode on, blowing kisses over his shoulder. So at last the two comrades, gentle and simple, were fairly started on their venture.\n\nThere are two seasons of color in those parts: the yellow, when the countryside is flaming with the gorse-blossoms, and the crimson, when all the long slopes are smoldering with the heather. So it was now. Nigel looked back from time to time, as he rode along the narrow track where the ferns and the ling brushed his feet on either side, and as he looked it seemed to him that wander where he might he would never see a fairer scene than that of his own home. Far to the westward, glowing in the morning light, rolled billow after billow of ruddy heather land, until they merged into the dark shadows of Woolmer Forest and the pale clear green of the Butser chalk downs. Never in his life had Nigel wandered far beyond these limits, and the woodlands, the down and the heather were dear to his soul. It gave him a pang in his heart now as he turned his face away from them; but if home lay to the westward, out there to the eastward was the great world of adventure, the noble stage where each of his kinsmen in turn had played his manly part and left a proud name behind.\n\nHow often he had longed for this day! And now it had come with no shadow cast behind it. Dame Ermyntrude was under the King's protection. The old servants had their future assured. The strife with the monks of Waverley had been assuaged. He had a noble horse under him, the best of weapons, and a stout follower at his back. Above all he was bound on a gallant errand with the bravest knight in England as his leader. All these thoughts surged together in his mind, and he whistled and sang, as he rode, out of the joy of his heart, while Pommers sidled and curveted in sympathy with the mood of his master. Presently, glancing back, he saw from Aylward's downcast eyes and Puckered brow that the archer was clouded with trouble. He reined his horse to let him come abreast of him.\n\n\"How now, Aylward?\" said he. \"Surely of all men in England you and I should be the most blithe this morning, since we ride forward with all hopes of honorable advancement. By Saint Paul! ere we see these heather hills once more we shall either worshipfully win worship, or we shall venture our persons in the attempt. These be glad thoughts, and why should you be downcast?\"\n\nAylward shrugged his broad shoulders, and a wry smile dawned upon his rugged face. \"I am indeed as limp as a wetted bowstring,\" said he. \"It is the nature of a man that he should be sad when he leaves the woman he loves.\"\n\n\"In truth, yes!\" cried Nigel, and in a flash the dark eyes of Mary Buttesthorn rose before him, and he heard her low, sweet, earnest voice as he had heard it that night when they brought her frailer sister back from Shalford Manor, a voice which made all that was best and noblest in a man thrill within his soul. \"Yet, bethink you, archer, that what a woman loves in man is not his gross body, but rather his soul, his honor, his fame, the deeds with which he has made his life beautiful. Therefore you are winning love as well as glory when you turn to the wars.\"\n\n\"It may be so,\" said Aylward; \"but indeed it goes to my heart to see the pretty dears weep, and I would fain weep as well to keep them company. When Mary\u2014or was it Dolly?\u2014nay, it was Martha, the red-headed girl from the mill\u2014when she held tight to my baldric it was like snapping my heart-string to pluck myself loose.\"\n\n\"You speak of one name and then of another,\" said Nigel. \"How is she called then, this maid whom you love?\"\n\nAylward pushed back his steel cap and scratched his bristling head with some embarrassment. \"Her name,\" said he, \"is Mary Dolly Martha Susan Jane Cicely Theodosia Agnes Johanna Kate.\"\n\nNigel laughed as Aylward rolled out this prodigious title. \"I had no right to take you to the wars,\" said he; \"for by Saint Paul! it is very clear that I have widowed half the parish. But I saw your aged father the franklin. Bethink you of the joy that will fill his heart when he hears that you have done some small deed in France, and so won honor in the eyes of all.\"\n\n\"I fear that honor will not help him to pay his arrears of rent to the sacrist of Waverley,\" said Aylward. \"Out he will go on the roadside, honor and all, if he does not find ten nobles by next Epiphany. But if I could win a ransom or be at the storming of a rich city, then indeed the old man would be proud of me. 'Thy sword must help my spade, Samkin,' said he as he kissed me goodby. Ah! it would indeed be a happy day for him and for all if I could ride back with a saddle-bag full of gold pieces, and please God, I shall dip my hand in somebody's pocket before I see Crooksbury Hill once more!\"\n\nNigel shook his head, for indeed it seemed hopeless to try to bridge the gulf between them. Already they had made such good progress along the bridle-path through the heather that the little hill of Saint Catharine and the ancient shrine upon its summit loomed up before them. Here they crossed the road from the south to London, and at the crossing two wayfarers were waiting who waved their hands in greeting, the one a tall, slender, dark woman upon a white jennet, the other a very thick and red-faced old man, whose weight seemed to curve the back of the stout gray cob which he bestrode.\n\n\"What how, Nigel!\" he cried. \"Mary has told me that you make a start this morning, and we have waited here this hour and more on the chance of seeing you pass. Come, lad, and have a last stoup of English ale, for many a time amid the sour French wines you will long for the white foam under your nose, and the good homely twang of it.\"\n\nNigel had to decline the draft, for it meant riding into Guildford town, a mile out of his course, but very gladly he agreed with Mary that they should climb the path to the old shrine and offer a last orison together. The knight and Aylward waited below with the horses; and so it came about that Nigel and Mary found themselves alone under the solemn old Gothic arches, in front of the dark shadowed recess in which gleamed the golden reliquary of the saint. In silence they knelt side by side in prayer, and then came forth once more out of the gloom and the shadow into the fresh sunlit summer morning. They stopped ere they descended the path, and looked to right and left at the fair meadows and the blue Wey curling down the valley.\n\n\"What have you prayed for, Nigel?\" said she.\n\n\"I have prayed that God and His saints will hold my spirit high and will send me back from France in such a fashion that I may dare to come to you and to claim you for my own.\"\n\n\"Bethink you well what it is that you say, Nigel,\" said she. \"What you are to me only my own heart can tell; but I would never set eyes upon your face again rather than abate by one inch that height of honor and worshipful achievement to which you may attain.\"\n\n\"Nay, my dear and most sweet lady, how should you abate it, since it is the thought of you which will nerve my arm and uphold my heart?\"\n\n\"Think once more, my fair lord, and hold yourself bound by no word which you have said. Let it be as the breeze which blows past our faces and is heard of no more. Your soul yearns for honor. To that has it ever turned. Is there room in it for love also? or is it possible that both shall live at their highest in one mind? Do you not call to mind that Galahad and other great knights of old have put women out of their lives that they might ever give their whole soul and strength to the winning of honor? May it not be that I shall be a drag upon you, that your heart may shrink from some honorable task, lest it should bring risk and pain to me? Think well before you answer, my fair lord, for indeed my very heart would break if it should ever happen that through love of me your high hopes and great promise should miss fulfilment.\"\n\nNigel looked at her with sparkling eyes. The soul which shone through her dark face had transformed it for the moment into a beauty more lofty and more rare than that of her shallow sister. He bowed before the majesty of the woman, and pressed his lips to her hand. \"You are like a star upon my path which guides me on the upward way,\" said he. \"Our souls are set together upon the finding of honor, and how shall we hold each other back when our purpose is the same?\"\n\nShe shook her proud head. \"So it seems to you now, fair lord, but it may be otherwise as the years pass. How shall you prove that I am indeed a help and not a hindrance?\"\n\n\"I will prove it by my deeds, fair and dear lady,\" said Nigel. \"Here at the shrine of the holy Catharine, on this, the Feast of Saint Margaret, I take my oath that I will do three deeds in your honor as a proof of my high love before I set eyes upon your face again, and these three deeds shall stand as a proof to you that if I love you dearly, still I will not let the thought of you stand betwixt me and honorable achievement!\"\n\nHer face shone with her love and her pride. \"I also make my oath,\" said she, \"and I do it in the name of the holy Catharine whose shrine is hard by. I swear that I will hold myself for you until these three deeds be done and we meet once more; also that if\u2014which may dear Christ forfend! you fall in doing them then I shall take the veil in Shalford nunnery and look upon no man's face again! Give me your hand, Nigel.\"\n\nShe had taken a little bangle of gold filigree work from her arm and fastened it upon his sunburnt wrist, reading aloud to him the engraved motto in old French: \"Fais ce que dois, adviegne que pourra\u2014c'est commande au chevalier.\" Then for one moment they fell into each other's arms and with kiss upon kiss, a loving man and a tender woman, they swore their troth to each other. But the old knight was calling impatiently from below and together they hurried down the winding path to where the horses waited under the sandy bluff.\n\nAs far as the Shalford crossing Sir John rode by Nigel's arm, and many were the last injunctions which he gave him concerning woodcraft, and great his anxiety lest he confuse a spay with a brocket, or either with a hind. At last when they came to the reedy edge of the Wey the old knight and his daughter reined up their horses. Nigel looked back at them ere he entered the dark Chantry woods, and saw them still gazing after him and waving their hands. Then the path wound amongst the trees and they were lost to sight; but long afterwards when a clearing exposed once more the Shalford meadows Nigel saw that the old man upon the gray cob was riding slowly toward Saint Catharine's Hill, but that the girl was still where he had seen her last, leaning forward in her saddle and straining her eyes to pierce the dark forest which screened her lover from her view. It was but a fleeting glance through a break in the foliage, and yet in after days of stress and toil in far distant lands it was that one little picture\u2014the green meadow, the reeds, the slow blue-winding river, and the eager bending graceful figure upon the white horse\u2014which was the clearest and the dearest image of that England which he had left behind him.\n\nBut if Nigel's friends had learned that this was the morning of his leaving, his enemies too were on the alert. The two comrades had just emerged from the Chantry woods and were beginning the ascent of that curving path which leads upward to the old Chapel of the Martyr when with a hiss like an angry snake a long white arrow streaked under Pommers and struck quivering in the grassy turf. A second whizzed past Nigel's ear, as he tried to turn; but Aylward struck the great warhorse a sharp blow over the haunches, and it had galloped some hundreds of yards before its rider could pull it up. Aylward followed as hard as he could ride, bending low over his horse's neck, while arrows whizzed all around him.\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" said Nigel, tugging at his bridle and white with anger, \"they shall not chase me across the country as though I was a frighted doe. Archer, how dare you to lash my horse when I would have turned and ridden in upon them?\"\n\n\"It is well that I did so,\" said Aylward, \"or by these ten finger-bones! our journey would have begun and ended on the same day. As I glanced round I saw a dozen of them at the least amongst the brushwood. See now how the light glimmers upon their steel caps yonder in the bracken under the great beech-tree. Nay, I pray you, my fair lord, do not ride forward. What chance has a man in the open against all these who lie at their ease in the underwood? If you will not think of yourself, then consider your horse, which would have a cloth-yard shaft feathered in its hide ere it could reach the wood.\"\n\nNigel chafed in impotent anger. \"Am I to be shot at like a popinjay at a fair, by any reaver or outlaw that seeks a mark for his bow?\" he cried. \"By Saint Paul! Aylward, I will put on my harness and go further into the matter. Help me to untruss, I pray you!\"\n\n\"Nay, my fair lord, I will not help you to your own downfall. It is a match with cogged dice betwixt a horseman on the moor and archers amid the forest. But these men are no outlaws, or they would not dare to draw their bows within a league of the sheriff of Guildford.\"\n\n\"Indeed, Aylward, I think that you speak truth,\" said Nigel. \"It may be that these are the men of Paul de la Fosse of Shalford, whom I have given little cause to love me. Ah! there is indeed the very man himself.\"\n\nThey sat their horses with their backs to the long slope which leads up to the old chapel on the hill. In front of them was the dark ragged edge of the wood, with a sharp twinkle of steel here and there in its shadows which spoke of these lurking foes. But now there was a long moot upon a horn, and at once a score of russet-clad bowmen ran forward from amid the trees, spreading out into a scattered line and closing swiftly in upon the travelers. In the midst of them, upon a great gray horse, sat a small misshapen man, waving and cheering as one sets hounds on a badger, turning his head this way and that as he whooped and pointed, urging his bowmen onward up the slope.\n\n\"Draw them on, my fair lord! Draw them on until we have them out on the down!\" cried Aylward, his eyes shining with joy. \"Five hundred paces more, and then we may be on terms with them. Nay, linger not, but keep them always just clear of arrowshot until our turn has come.\"\n\nNigel shook and trembled with eagerness, as with his hand on his sword-hilt he looked at the line of eager hurrying men. But it flashed through his mind what Chandos had said of the cool head which is better for the warrior than the hot heart. Aylward's words were true and wise. He turned Pommers' head therefore, and amid a cry of derision from behind them the comrades trotted over the down. The bowmen broke into a run, while their leader screamed and waved more madly than before. Aylward cast many a glance at them over his shoulder.\n\n\"Yet a little farther! Yet a little farther still!\" he muttered. \"The wind is towards them and the fools have forgot that I can overshoot them by fifty paces. Now, my good lord, I pray you for one instant to hold the horses, for my weapon is of more avail this day, than thine can be. They may make sorry cheer ere they gain the shelter of the wood once more.\"\n\nHe had sprung from his horse, and with a downward wrench of his arm and a push with his knee he slipped the string into the upper nock of his mighty war-bow. Then in a flash he notched his shaft and drew it to the pile, his keen blue eyes glowing fiercely behind it from under his knotted brows. With thick legs planted sturdily apart, his body laid to the bow, his left arm motionless as wood, his right bunched into a double curve of swelling muscles as he stretched the white well-waxed string, he looked so keen and fierce a fighter that the advancing line stopped for an instant at the sight of him. Two or three loosed off their arrows, but the shafts flew heavily against the head wind, and snaked along the hard turf some score of paces short of the mark. One only, a short bandy-legged man, whose squat figure spoke of enormous muscular strength, ran swiftly in and then drew so strong a bow that the arrow quivered in the ground at Aylward's very feet.\n\n\"It is Black Will of Lynchmere,\" said the bowman. \"Many a match have I shot with him, and I know well that no other man on the Surrey marches could have sped such a shaft. I trust that you are houseled and shriven, Will, for I have known you so long that I would not have your damnation upon my soul.\"\n\nHe raised his bow as he spoke, and the string twanged with a rich deep musical note. Aylward leaned upon his bowstave as he keenly watched the long swift flight of his shaft, skimming smoothly down the wind.\n\n\"On him, on him! No, over him, by my hilt!\" he cried. \"There is more wind than I had thought. Nay, nay, friend, now that I have the length of you, you can scarce hope to loose again.\"\n\nBlack Will had notched an arrow and was raising his bow when Aylward's second shaft passed through the shoulder of his drawing arm. With a shout of anger and pain he dropped his weapon, and dancing in his fury he shook his fist and roared curses at his rival.\n\n\"I could slay him; but I will not, for good bowmen are not so common,\" said Aylward. \"And now, fair sir, we must on, for they are spreading round on either side, and if once they get behind us, then indeed our journey has come to a sudden end. But ere we go I would send a shaft through yonder horseman who leads them on.\"\n\n\"Nay, Aylward, I pray you to leave him,\" said Nigel. \"Villain as he is, he is none the less a gentleman of coat-armor, and should die by some other weapon than thine.\"\n\n\"As you will,\" said Aylward, with a clouded brow. \"I have been told that in the late wars many a French prince and baron has not been too proud to take his death wound from an English yeoman's shaft, and that nobles of England have been glad enough to stand by and see it done.\"\n\nNigel shook his head sadly. \"It is sooth you say, archer, and indeed it is no new thing, for that good knight Richard of the Lion Heart met his end in such a lowly fashion, and so also did Harold the Saxon. But this is a private matter, and I would not have you draw your bow against him. Neither can I ride at him myself, for he is weak in body, though dangerous in spirit. Therefore, we will go upon our way, since there is neither profit nor honor to be gained, nor any hope of advancement.\"\n\nAylward, having unstrung his bow, had remounted his horse during this conversation, and the two rode swiftly past the little squat Chapel of the Martyr and over the brow of the hill. From the summit they looked back. The injured archer lay upon the ground, with several of his comrades gathered in a knot around him. Others ran aimlessly up the hill, but were already far behind. The leader sat motionless upon his horse, and as he saw them look back he raised his hand and shrieked his curses at them. An instant later the curve of the ground had hid them from view. So, amid love and hate, Nigel bade adieu to the home of his youth.\n\nAnd now the comrades were journeying upon that old, old road which runs across the south of England and yet never turns toward London, for the good reason that the place was a poor hamlet when first the road was laid. From Winchester, the Saxon capital, to Canterbury, the holy city of Kent, ran that ancient highway, and on from Canterbury to the narrow straits where, on a clear day, the farther shore can be seen. Along this track as far back as history can trace the metals of the west have been carried and passed the pack-horses which bore the goods which Gaul sent in exchange. Older than the Christian faith and older than the Romans, is the old road. North and south are the woods and the marshes, so that only on the high dry turf of the chalk land could a clear track be found. The Pilgrim's Way, it still is called; but the pilgrims were the last who ever trod it, for it was already of immemorial age before the death of Thomas a Becket gave a new reason why folk should journey to the scene of his murder.\n\nFrom the hill of Weston Wood the travelers could see the long white band which dipped and curved and rose over the green downland, its course marked even in the hollows by the line of the old yew-trees which flanked it. Neither Nigel nor Aylward had wandered far from their own country, and now they rode with light hearts and eager eyes taking note of all the varied pictures of nature and of man which passed before them. To their left was a hilly country, a land of rolling heaths and woods, broken here and there into open spaces round the occasional farm-house of a franklin. Hackhurst Down, Dunley Hill, and Ranmore Common swelled and sank, each merging into the other. But on the right, after passing the village of Shere and the old church of Gomshall, the whole south country lay like a map at their feet. There was the huge wood of the Weald, one unbroken forest of oak-trees stretching away to the South Downs, which rose olive-green against the deep blue sky. Under this great canopy of trees strange folk lived and evil deeds were done. In its recesses were wild tribes, little changed from their heathen ancestors, who danced round the altar of Thor, and well was it for the peaceful traveler that he could tread the high open road of the chalk land with no need to wander into so dangerous a tract, where soft clay, tangled forest and wild men all barred his progress.\n\nBut apart from the rolling country upon the left and the great forest-hidden plain upon the right, there was much upon the road itself to engage the attention of the wayfarers. It was crowded with people. As far as their eyes could carry they could see the black dots scattered thickly upon the thin white band, sometimes single, sometimes several abreast, sometimes in moving crowds, where a drove of pilgrims held together for mutual protection, or a nobleman showed his greatness by the number of retainers who trailed at his heels. At that time the main roads were very crowded, for there were many wandering people in the land. Of all sorts and kinds, they passed in an unbroken stream before the eyes of Nigel and of Aylward, alike only in the fact that one and all were powdered from their hair to their shoes with the gray dust of the chalk.\n\nThere were monks journeying from one cell to another, Benedictines with their black gowns looped up to show their white skirts, Carthusians in white, and pied Cistercians. Friars also of the three wandering orders\u2014Dominicans in black, Carmelites in white and Franciscans in gray. There was no love lost between the cloistered monks and the free friars, each looking on the other as a rival who took from him the oblations of the faithful; so they passed on the high road as cat passes dog, with eyes askance and angry faces.\n\nThen besides the men of the church there were the men of trade, the merchant in dusty broadcloth and Flanders hat riding at the head of his line of pack-horses. He carried Cornish tin, Welt-country wool, or Sussex iron if he traded eastward, or if his head should be turned westward then he bore with him the velvets of Genoa, the ware of Venice, the wine of France, or the armor of Italy and Spain. Pilgrims were everywhere, poor people for the most part, plodding wearily along with trailing feet and bowed heads, thick staves in their hands and bundles over their shoulders. Here and there on a gaily caparisoned palfrey, or in the greater luxury of a horse-litter, some West-country lady might be seen making her easy way to the shrine of Saint Thomas.\n\nBesides all these a constant stream of strange vagabonds drifted along the road: minstrels who wandered from fair to fair, a foul and pestilent crew; jugglers and acrobats, quack doctors and tooth-drawers, students and beggars, free workmen in search of better wages, and escaped bondsmen who would welcome any wages at all. Such was the throng which set the old road smoking in a haze of white dust from Winchester to the narrow sea.\n\nBut of all the wayfarers those which interested Nigel most were the soldiers. Several times they passed little knots of archers or men-at-arms, veterans from France, who had received their discharge and were now making their way to their southland homes. They were half drunk all of them, for the wayfarers treated them to beer at the frequent inns and alestakes which lined the road, so that they cheered and sang lustily as they passed. They roared rude pleasantries at Aylward, who turned in his saddle and shouted his opinion of them until they were out of hearing.\n\nOnce, late in the afternoon, they overtook a body of a hundred archers all marching together with two knights riding at their head. They were passing from Guildford Castle to Reigate Castle, where they were in garrison. Nigel rode with the knights for some distance, and hinted that if either was in search of honorable advancement, or wished to do some small deed, or to relieve himself of any vow, it might be possible to find some means of achieving it. They were both, however, grave and elderly men, intent upon their business and with no mind for fond wayside adventures, so Nigel quickened his pace and left them behind.\n\nThey had left Boxhill and Headley Heath upon the left, and the towers of Reigate were rising amid the trees in front of them, when they overtook a large, cheery, red-faced man, with a forked beard, riding upon a good horse and exchanging a nod or a merry word with all who passed him. With him they rode nearly as far as Bletchingley, and Nigel laughed much to hear him talk; but always under the raillery there was much earnestness and much wisdom in all his words. He rode at his ease about the country, he said, having sufficient money to keep him from want and to furnish him for the road. He could speak all the three languages of England, the north, the middle and the south, so that he was at home with the people of every shire and could hear their troubles and their joys. In all parts in town and in country there was unrest, he said; for the poor folk were weary of their masters both of the Church and State, and soon there would be such doings in England as had never been seen before.\n\nBut above all this man was earnest against the Church its enormous wealth, its possession of nearly one-third of the whole land of the country, its insatiable greed for more at the very time when it claimed to be poor and lowly. The monks and friars, too, he lashed with his tongue: their roguish ways, their laziness and their cunning. He showed how their wealth and that of the haughty lord must always be founded upon the toil of poor humble Peter the Plowman, who worked and strove in rain and cold out in the fields, the butt and laughing-stock of everyone, and still bearing up the whole world upon his weary shoulders. He had set it all out in a fair parable; so now as he rode he repeated some of the verses, chanting them and marking time with his forefinger, while Nigel and Aylward on either side of him with their heads inclined inward listened with the same attention, but with very different feelings\u2014Nigel shocked at such an attack upon authority, and Aylward chuckling as he heard the sentiments of his class so shrewdly expressed. At last the stranger halted his horse outside the \"Five Angels\" at Gatton.\n\n\"It is a good inn, and I know the ale of old,\" said he. \"When I had finished that 'Dream of Piers the Plowman' from which I have recited to you, the last verses were thus:\n\n\u2003\"'Now have I brought my little booke to an ende\n\n\u2003God's blessing be on him who a drinke will me sende'\u2014\n\n\"I pray you come in with me and share it.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" said Nigel, \"we must on our way, for we have far to go. But give me your name, my friend, for indeed we have passed a merry hour listening to your words.\"\n\n\"Have a care!\" the stranger answered, shaking his head. \"You and your class will not spend a merry hour when these words are turned into deeds and Peter the Plowman grows weary of swinking in the fields and takes up his bow and his staff in order to set this land in order.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul! I expect that we shall bring Peter to reason and also those who have put such evil thoughts into his head,\" said Nigel. \"So once more I ask your name, that I may know it if ever I chance to hear that you have been hanged?\"\n\nThe stranger laughed good-humoredly. \"You can call me Thomas Lackland,\" said he. \"I should be Thomas Lack-brain if I were indeed to give my true name, since a good many robbers, some in black gowns and some in steel, would be glad to help me upwards in the way you speak of. So good-day to you, Squire, and to you also, archer, and may you find your way back with whole bones from the wars!\"\n\nThat night the comrades slept in Godstone Priory, and early next morning they were well upon their road down the Pilgrim's Way. At Titsey it was said that a band of villeins were out in Westerham Wood and had murdered three men the day before; so that Nigel had high hopes of an encounter; but the brigands showed no sign, though the travelers went out of their way to ride their horses along the edges of the forest. Farther on they found traces of their work, for the path ran along the hillside at the base of a chalk quarry, and there in the cutting a man was lying dead. From his twisted limbs and shattered frame it was easy to see that he had been thrown over from above, while his pockets turned outward showed the reason for his murder. The comrades rode past without too close a survey, for dead men were no very uncommon objects on the King's highway, and if sheriff or bailiff should chance upon you near the body you might find yourself caught in the meshes of the law.\n\nNear Sevenoaks their road turned out of the old Canterbury way and pointed south toward the coast, leaving the chalk lands and coming down into the clay of the Weald. It was a wretched, rutted mule-track running through thick forests with occasional clearings in which lay the small Kentish villages, where rude shock-headed peasants with smocks and galligaskins stared with bold, greedy eyes at the travelers. Once on the right they caught a distant view of the Towers of Penshurst, and once they heard the deep tolling of the bells of Bayham Abbey, but for the rest of their day's journey savage peasants and squalid cottages were all that met their eyes, with endless droves of pigs who fed upon the litter of acorns. The throng of travelers who crowded the old road were all gone, and only here and there did they meet or overtake some occasional merchant or messenger bound for Battle Abbey, Pevensey Castle or the towns of the south.\n\nThat night they slept in a sordid inn, overrun with rats and with fleas, one mile south of the hamlet of Mayfield. Aylward scratched vigorously and cursed with fervor. Nigel lay without movement or sound. To the man who had learned the old rule of chivalry there were no small ills in life. It was beneath the dignity of his soul to stoop to observe them. Cold and heat, hunger and thirst, such things did not exist for the gentleman. The armor of his soul was so complete that it was proof not only against the great ills of life but even against the small ones; so the flea-bitten Nigel lay grimly still while Aylward writhed upon his couch.\n\nThey were now but a short distance from their destination; but they had hardly started on their journey through the forest next morning, when an adventure befell them which filled Nigel with the wildest hopes.\n\nAlong the narrow winding path between the great oak trees there rode a dark sallow man in a scarlet tabard who blew so loudly upon a silver trumpet that they heard the clanging call long before they set eyes on him. Slowly he advanced, pulling up every fifty paces to make the forest ring with another warlike blast. The comrades rode forward to meet him.\n\n\"I pray you,\" said Nigel, \"to tell me who you are and why you blow upon this trumpet.\"\n\nThe fellow shook his head, so Nigel repeated the question in French, the common language of chivalry, spoken at that age by every gentleman in Western Europe.\n\nThe man put his lips to the trumpet and blew another long note before he answered. \"I am Gaston de Castrier,\" said he, \"the humble Squire of the most worthy and valiant knight Raoul de Tubiers, de Pestels, de Grimsard, de Mersac, de Leoy, de Bastanac, who also writes himself Lord of Pons. It is his order that I ride always a mile in front of him to prepare all to receive him, and he desires me to blow upon a trumpet not out of vainglory, but out of greatness of spirit, so that none may be ignorant of his coming should they desire to encounter him.\"\n\nNigel sprang from his horse with a cry of joy, and began to unbutton his doublet. \"Quick, Aylward, quick!\" he said. \"He comes, a knight errant comes! Was there ever such a chance of worshipfully winning worship? Untruss the harness whilst I loose my clothes! Good sir, I beg you to warn your noble and valiant master that a poor Squire of England would implore him to take notice of him and to do some small deed upon him as he passes.\"\n\nBut already the Lord of Pons had come in sight. He was a huge man upon an enormous horse, so that together they seemed to fill up the whole long dark archway under the oaks. He was clad in full armor of a brazen hue with only his face exposed, and of this face there was little visible save a pair of arrogant eyes and a great black beard, which flowed through the open visor and down over his breastplate. To the crest of his helmet was tied a small brown glove, nodding and swinging above him. He bore a long lance with a red square banner at the end, charged with a black boar's head, and the same symbol was engraved upon his shield. Slowly he rode through the forest, ponderous, menacing, with dull thudding of his charger's hoofs and constant clank of metal, while always in front of him came the distant peal of the silver trumpet calling all men to admit his majesty and to clear his path ere they be cleared from it.\n\nNever in his dreams had so perfect a vision come to cheer Nigel's heart, and as he struggled with his clothes, glancing up continually at this wondrous traveler, he pattered forth prayers of thanksgiving to the good Saint Paul who had shown such loving-kindness to his unworthy servant and thrown him in the path of so excellent and debonair a gentleman.\n\nBut alas! how often at the last instant the cup is dashed from the lips! This joyful chance was destined to change suddenly to unexpected and grotesque disaster\u2014disaster so strange and so complete that through all his life Nigel flushed crimson when he thought of it. He was busily stripping his hunting-costume, and with feverish haste he had doffed boots, hat, hose, doublet and cloak, so that nothing remained save a pink jupon and pair of silken drawers. At the same time Aylward was hastily unbuckling the load with the intention of handing his master his armor piece by piece, when the Squire gave one last challenging peal from his silver trumpet into the very ear of the spare horse.\n\nIn an instant it had taken to its heels, the precious armor upon its back, and thundered away down the road which they had traversed. Aylward jumped upon his mare, drove his prick spurs into her sides and galloped after the runaway as hard as he could ride. Thus it came about that in an instant Nigel was shorn of all his little dignity, had lost his two horses, his attendant and his outfit, and found himself a lonely and unarmed man standing in his shirt and drawers upon the pathway down which the burly figure of the Lord of Pons was slowly advancing.\n\nThe knight errant, whose mind had been filled by the thought of the maiden whom he had left behind at St. Jean\u2014the same whose glove dangled from his helmet\u2014had observed nothing that had occurred. Hence, all that met his eyes was a noble yellow horse, which was tethered by the track, and a small young man, who appeared to be a lunatic since he had undressed hastily in the heart of the forest, and stood now with an eager anxious face clad in his underlinen amid the scattered debris of his garments. Of such a person the high Lord of Pons could take no notice, and so he pursued his inexorable way, his arrogant eyes looking out into the distance and his thoughts set intently upon the maiden of St. Jean. He was dimly aware that the little crazy man in the undershirt ran a long way beside him in his stockings, begging, imploring and arguing.\n\n\"Just one hour, most fair sir, just one hour at the longest, and a poor Squire of England shall ever hold himself your debtor! Do but condescend to rein your horse until my harness comes back to me! Will you not stoop to show me some small deed of arms? I implore you, fair sir, to spare me a little of your time and a handstroke or two ere you go upon your way!\"\n\nLord de Pons motioned impatiently with his gauntleted hand, as one might brush away an importunate fly, but when at last Nigel became desperate in his clamor he thrust his spurs into his great warhorse, and clashing like a pair of cymbals he thundered off through the forest. So he rode upon his majestic way, until two days later he was slain by Lord Reginald Cobham in a field near Weybridge.\n\nWhen after a long chase Aylward secured the spare horse and brought it back, he found his master seated upon a fallen tree, his face buried in his hands and his mind clouded with humiliation and grief. Nothing was said, for the matter was beyond words, and so in moody silence they rode upon their way.\n\nBut soon they came upon a scene which drew Nigel's thoughts away from his bitter trouble, for in front of them there rose the towers of a great building with a small gray sloping village around it, and they learned from a passing hind that this was the hamlet and Abbey of Battle. Together they drew rein upon the low ridge and looked down into that valley of death from which even now the reek of blood seems to rise. Down beside that sinister lake and amid those scattered bushes sprinkled over the naked flank of the long ridge was fought that long-drawn struggle betwixt two most noble foes with broad England as the prize of victory. Here, up and down the low hill, hour by hour the grim struggle had waxed and waned, until the Saxon army had died where it stood, King, court, house-carl and fyrdsman, each in their ranks even as they had fought. And now, after all the stress and toil, the tyranny, the savage revolt, the fierce suppression, God had made His purpose complete, for here were Nigel the Norman and Aylward the Saxon with good-fellowship in their hearts and a common respect in their minds, with the same banner and the same cause, riding forth to do battle for their old mother England.\n\nAnd now the long ride drew to an end. In front of them was the blue sea, flecked with the white sails of ships. Once more the road passed upward from the heavy-wooded plain to the springy turf of the chalk downs. Far to the right rose the grim fortalice of Pevensey, squat and powerful, like one great block of rugged stone, the parapet twinkling with steel caps and crowned by the royal banner of England. A flat expanse of reeded marshland lay before them, out of which rose a single wooded hill, crowned with towers, with a bristle of masts rising out of the green plain some distance to the south of it. Nigel looked at it with his hand shading his eyes, and then urged Pommers to a trot. The town was Winchelsea, and there amid that cluster of houses on the hill the gallant Chandos must be awaiting him." + }, + { + "title": "HOW NIGEL CHASED THE RED FERRET", + "text": "They passed a ferry, wound upward by a curving path, and then, having satisfied a guard of men-at-arms, were admitted through the frowning arch of the Pipewell Gate. There waiting for them, in the middle of the east street, the sun gleaming upon his lemon-colored beard, and puckering his single eye, stood Chandos himself, his legs apart, his hands behind his back, and a welcoming smile upon his quaint high-nosed face. Behind him a crowd of little boys were gazing with reverent eyes at the famous soldier.\n\n\"Welcome, Nigel!\" said he, \"and you also, good archer! I chanced to be walking on the city wall, and I thought from the color of your horse that it was indeed you upon the Udimore Road. How have you fared, young squire errant? Have you held bridges or rescued damsels or slain oppressors on your way from Tilford?\"\n\n\"Nay, my fair lord, I have accomplished nothing; but I once had hopes\u2014\" Nigel flushed at the remembrance.\n\n\"I will give you more than hopes, Nigel. I will put you where you can dip both arms to the elbow into danger and honor, where peril will sleep with you at night and rise with you in the morning and the very air you breathe be laden with it. Are you ready for that, young sir?\"\n\n\"I can but pray, fair lord, that my spirit will rise to it.\"\n\nChandos smiled his approval and laid his thin brown hand on the youth's shoulder. \"Good!\" said he. \"It is the mute hound which bites the hardest. The babbler is ever the hang-back. Bide with me here, Nigel, and walk upon the ramparts. Archer, do you lead the horses to the 'Sign of the Broom Pod' in the high street, and tell my varlets to see them aboard the cog Thomas before nightfall. We sail at the second hour after curfew. Come hither, Nigel, to the crest of the corner turret, for from it I will show you what you have never seen.\"\n\nIt was but a dim and distant white cloud upon the blue water seen far off over the Dungeness Point, and yet the sight of it flushed the young Squire's cheeks and sent the blood hot through his veins. It was the fringe of France, that land of chivalry and glory, the stage where name and fame were to be won. With burning eyes he gazed across at it, his heart rejoicing to think that the hour was at hand when he might tread that sacred soil. Then his gaze crossed the immense stretch of the blue sea, dotted over with the sails of fishing-boats, until it rested upon the double harbor beneath packed with vessels of every size and shape, from the pessoners and creyers which plied up and down the coast to the great cogs and galleys which were used either as war-ships or merchantmen as the occasion served. One of them was at that instant passing out to sea, a huge galleass, with trumpets blowing and nakers banging, the flag of Saint George flaunting over the broad purple sail, and the decks sparkling from end to end with steel. Nigel gave a cry of pleasure at the splendor of the sight.\n\n\"Aye, lad,\" said Chandos, \"it is the Trinity of Rye, the very ship on which I fought at Sluys. Her deck ran blood from stem to stern that day. But turn your eyes this way, I beg you, and tell me if you see aught strange about this town.\"\n\nNigel looked down at the noble straight street, at the Roundel Tower, at the fine church of Saint Thomas, and the other fair buildings of Winchelsea. \"It is all new,\" said he\u2014\"church, castle, houses, all are new.\"\n\n\"You are right, fair son. My grandfather can call to mind the time when only the conies lived upon this rock. The town was down yonder by the sea, until one night the waves rose upon it and not a house was left. See, yonder is Rye, huddling also on a hill, the two towns like poor sheep when the waters are out. But down there under the blue water and below the Camber Sand lies the true Winchelsea\u2014tower, cathedral, walls and all, even as my grandfather knew it, when the first Edward was young upon the throne.\"\n\nFor an hour or more Chandos paced upon the ramparts with his young Squire at his elbow and talked to him of his duties and of the secrets and craft of warfare, Nigel drinking in and storing in his memory every word from so revered a teacher. Many a time in after life, in stress and in danger, he strengthened himself by the memory of that slow walk with the blue sea on one side and the fair town on the other, when the wise soldier and noble-hearted knight poured forth his precept and advice as the master workman to the apprentice.\n\n\"Perhaps, fair son,\" said he, \"you are like so many other lads who ride to the wars, and know so much already that it is waste of breath to advise them?\"\n\n\"Nay, my fair lord, I know nothing save that I would fain do my duty and either win honorable advancement or die worshipful on the field.\"\n\n\"You are wise to be humble,\" said Chandos; \"for indeed he who knows most of war knows best that there is much to learn. As there is a mystery of the rivers and a mystery of woodcraft, even so there is a mystery of warfare by which battles may be lost and gained; for all nations are brave, and where the brave meets the brave it is he who is crafty and war-wise who will win the day. The best hound will run at fault if he be ill laid on, and the best hawk will fly at check if he be badly loosed, and even so the bravest army may go awry if it be ill handled. There are not in Christendom better knights and squires than those of the French, and yet we have had the better of them, for in our Scottish Wars and elsewhere we have learned more of this same mystery of which I speak.\"\n\n\"And wherein lies our wisdom, honored sir?\" asked Nigel. \"I also would fain be war-wise and learn to fight with my wits as well as with my sword.\"\n\nChandos shook his head and smiled. \"It is in the forest and on the down that you learn to fly the hawk and loose the hound,\" said he. \"So also it is in camp and on the field that the mystery of war can be learned. There only has every great captain come to be its master. To start he must have a cool head, quick to think, soft as wax before his purpose is formed, hard as steel when once he sees it before him. Ever alert he must be, and cautious also, but with judgment to turn his caution into rashness where a large gain may be put against a small stake. An eye for country also, for the trend of the rivers, the slope of the hills, the cover of the woods, and the light green of the bog-land.\"\n\nPoor Nigel, who had trusted to his lance and to Pommers to break his path to glory, stood aghast at this list of needs. \"Alas!\" he cried. \"How am I to gain all this?\u2014I, who could scarce learn to read or write though the good Father Matthew broke a hazel stick a day across my shoulders?\"\n\n\"You will gain it, fair son, where others have gained it before you. You have that which is the first thing of all, a heart of fire from which other colder hearts may catch a spark. But you must have knowledge also of that which warfare has taught us in olden times. We know, par exemple, that horsemen alone cannot hope to win against good foot-soldiers. Has it not been tried at Courtrai, at Stirling, and again under my own eyes at Crecy, where the chivalry of France went down before our bowmen?\"\n\nNigel stared at him, with a perplexed brow. \"Fair sir, my heart grows heavy as I hear you. Do you then say that our chivalry can make no head against archers, billmen and the like?\"\n\n\"Nay, Nigel, for it has also been very clearly shown that the best foot-soldiers unsupported cannot hold their own against the mailed horsemen.\"\n\n\"To whom then is the victory?\" asked Nigel.\n\n\"To him who can mix his horse and foot, using each to strengthen the other. Apart they are weak. Together they are strong. The archer who can weaken the enemy's line, the horseman who can break it when it is weakened, as was done at Falkirk and Duplin, there is the secret of our strength. Now touching this same battle of Falkirk, I pray you for one instant to give it your attention.\"\n\nWith his whip he began to trace a plan of the Scottish battle upon the dust, and Nigel with knitted brows was trying hard to muster his small stock of brains and to profit by the lecture, when their conversation was interrupted by a strange new arrival.\n\nIt was a very stout little man, wheezy and purple with haste, who scudded down the rampart as if he were blown by the wind, his grizzled hair flying and his long black gown floating behind him. He was clad in the dress of a respectable citizen, a black jerkin trimmed with sable, a black-velvet beaver hat and a white feather. At the sight of Chandos he gave a cry of joy and quickened his pace so that when he did at last reach him he could only stand gasping and waving his hands.\n\n\"Give yourself time, good Master Wintersole, give yourself time!\" said Chandos in a soothing voice.\n\n\"The papers!\" gasped the little man. \"Oh, my Lord Chandos, the papers\u2014\"\n\n\"What of the papers, my worthy sir?\"\n\n\"I swear by our good patron Saint Leonard, it is no fault of mine! I had locked them in my coffer. But the lock was forced and the coffer rifled.\"\n\nA shadow of anger passed over the soldier's keen face.\n\n\"How now, Master Mayor? Pull your wits together and do not stand there babbling like a three-year child. Do you say that some one hath taken the papers?\"\n\n\"It is sooth, fair sir! Thrice I have been Mayor of the town, and fifteen years burgess and jurat, but never once has any public matter gone awry through me. Only last month there came an order from Windsor on a Tuesday for a Friday banquet, a thousand soles, four thousand plaice, two thousand mackerel, five hundred crabs, a thousand lobsters, five thousand whiting\u2014\"\n\n\"I doubt not, Master Mayor, that you are an excellent fishmonger; but the matter concerns the papers I gave into your keeping. Where are they?\"\n\n\"Taken, fair sir\u2014gone!\"\n\n\"And who hath dared to take them?\"\n\n\"Alas! I know not. It was but for as long as you would say an angelus that I left the chamber, and when I came back there was the coffer, broken and empty, upon my table.\"\n\n\"Do you suspect no one?\"\n\n\"There was a varlet who hath come with the last few days into my employ. He is not to be found, and I have sent horsemen along both the Udimore road and that to Rye, that they may seize him. By the help of Saint Leonard they can scarce miss him, for one can tell him a bowshot off by his hair.\"\n\n\"Is it red?\" asked Chandos eagerly. \"Is it fox-red, and the man a small man pocked with sun-spots, and very quick in his movements?\"\n\n\"It is the man himself.\"\n\nChandos shook his clenched hand with annoyance, and then set off swiftly down the street.\n\n\"It is Peter the Red Ferret once more!\" said he. \"I knew him of old in France, where he has done us more harm than a company of men-at-arms. He speaks English as he speaks French, and he is of such daring and cunning that nothing is secret from him. In all France there is no more dangerous man, for though he is a gentleman of blood and coat-armor he takes the part of a spy, because it hath the more danger and therefore the more honor.\"\n\n\"But, my fair lord,\" cried the Mayor, as he hurried along, keeping pace with the long strides of the soldier, \"I knew that you warned me to take all care of the papers; but surely there was no matter of great import in it? It was but to say what stores were to be sent after you to Calais?\"\n\n\"Is that not everything?\" cried Chandos impatiently. \"Can you not see, oh foolish Master Wintersole, that the French suspect we are about to make some attempt and that they have sent Peter the Red Ferret, as they have sent him many times before, to get tidings of whither we are bound? Now that he knows that the stores are for Calais, then the French near Calais will take his warning, and so the King's whole plan come to nothing.\"\n\n\"Then he will fly by water. We can stop him yet. He has not an hour's start.\"\n\n\"It may be that a boat awaits him at Rye or Hythe; but it is more like that he has all ready to depart from here. Ah, see yonder! I'll warrant that the Red Ferret is on board!\"\n\nChandos had halted in front of his inn, and now he pointed down to the outer harbor, which lay two miles off across the green plain. It was connected by a long winding canal with the inner dock at the base of the hill, upon which the town was built. Between the two horns formed by the short curving piers a small schooner was running out to sea, dipping and rising before a sharp southerly breeze.\n\n\"It is no Winchelsea boat,\" said the Mayor. \"She is longer and broader in the beam than ours.\"\n\n\"Horses! bring horses!\" cried Chandos. \"Come, Nigel, let us go further into the matter.\"\n\nA busy crowd of varlets, archers, and men-at-arms swarmed round the gateway of the \"Sign of the Broom Pod,\" singing, shouting, and jostling in rough good-fellowship. The sight of the tall thin figure of Chandos brought order amongst them, and a few minutes later the horses were ready and saddled. A breakneck ride down a steep declivity, and then a gallop of two miles over the sedgy plain carried them to the outer harbor. A dozen vessels were lying there, ready to start for Bordeaux or Rochelle, and the quay was thick with sailors, laborers and townsmen and heaped with wine-barrels and wool-packs.\n\n\"Who is warden here?\" asked Chandos, springing from his horse.\n\n\"Badding! Where is Cock Badding? Badding is warden!\" shouted the crowd.\n\nA moment later a short swarthy man, bull-necked and deep-chested, pushed through the people. He was clad in rough russet wool with a scarlet cloth tied round his black curly head. His sleeves were rolled up to his shoulders, and his brown arms, all stained with grease and tar, were like two thick gnarled branches from an oaken stump. His savage brown face was fierce and frowning, and was split from chin to temple with the long white wale of an ill-healed wound.\n\n\"How now, gentles, will you never wait your turn?\" he rumbled in a deep angry voice. \"Can you not see that we are warping the Rose of Guienne into midstream for the ebb-tide? Is this a time to break in upon us? Your goods will go aboard in due season, I promise you; so ride back into the town and find such pleasure as you may, while I and my mates do our work without let or hindrance.\"\n\n\"It is the gentle Chandos!\" cried some one in the crowd. \"It is the good Sir John.\"\n\nThe rough harbor-master changed his gruffness to smiles in an instant. \"Nay, Sir John, what would you? I pray you to hold me excused if I was short of speech, but we port-wardens are sore plagued with foolish young lordlings, who get betwixt us and our work and blame us because we do not turn an ebb-tide into a flood, or a south wind into a north. I pray you to tell me how I can serve you.\"\n\n\"That boat!\" said Chandos, pointing to the already distant sail rising and falling on the waves. \"What is it?\"\n\nCock Badding shaded his keen eyes with his strong brows hand. \"She has but just gone out,\" said he. \"She is La Pucelle, a small wine-sloop from Gascony, home-bound and laden with barrel-staves.\"\n\n\"I pray you did any man join her at the very last?\"\n\n\"Nay, I know not. I saw no one.\"\n\n\"But I know,\" cried a seaman in the crowd. \"I was standing at the wharf-side and was nigh knocked into the water by a little red-headed fellow, who breathed as though he had run from the town. Ere I had time to give him a cuff he had jumped aboard, the ropes were cast off, and her nose was seaward.\"\n\nIn a few words Chandos made all clear to Badding, the crowd pressing eagerly round.\n\n\"Aye, aye!\" cried a seaman, \"the good Sir John is right. See how she points. It is Picardy and not Gascony that she will fetch this journey in spite of her wine-staves.\"\n\n\"Then we must lay her aboard!\" cried Cock Badding. \"Come, lads, here is my own Marie Rose ready to cast off. Who's for a trip with a fight at the end of it?\"\n\nThere was a rush for the boat; but the stout little seaman picked his men. \"Go back, Jerry! Your heart is good, but you are overfat for the work. You, Luke, and you, Thomas, and the two Deedes, and William of Sandgate. You will work the boat. And now we need a few men of their hands. Do you come, little sir?\"\n\n\"I pray you, my dear lord, to let me go!\" cried Nigel.\n\n\"Yes, Nigel, you can go, and I will bring your gear over to Calais this night.\"\n\n\"I will join you there, fair sir, and with the help of Saint Paul I will bring this Red Ferret with me.\"\n\n\"Aboard, aboard! Time passes!\" cried Badding impatiently, while already his seamen were hauling on the line and raising the mainsail. \"Now then, sirrah! who are you?\" It was Aylward, who had followed Nigel and was pushing his way aboard.\n\n\"Where my master goes I go also,\" cried Aylward, \"so stand clear, master-shipman, or you may come by a hurt.\"\n\n\"By Saint Leonard! archer,\" said Cock Badding, \"had I more time I would give you a lesson ere I leave land. Stand back and give place to others!\"\n\n\"Nay, stand back and give place to me!\" cried Aylward, and seizing Badding round the waist he slung him into the dock.\n\nThere was a cry of anger from the crowd, for Badding was the hero of all the Cinque Ports and had never yet met his match in manhood. The epitaph still lingers in which it was said that he \"could never rest until he had foughten his fill.\" When, therefore, swimming like a duck, he reached a rope and pulled himself hand over hand up to the quay, all stood aghast to see what fell fate would befall this bold stranger. But Badding laughed loudly, dashing the saltwater from his eyes and hair.\n\n\"You have fairly won your place, archer,\" said he. \"You are the very man for our work. Where is Black Simon of Norwich?\"\n\nA tall dark young man with a long, stern, lean face came forward. \"I am with you, Cock,\" said he, \"and I thank you for my place.\"\n\n\"You can come, Hugh Baddlesmere, and you, Hal Masters, and you, Dicon of Rye. That is enough. Now off, in God's name, or it will be night ere we can come up with them!\"\n\nAlready the headsails and the mainsail had been raised, while a hundred willing hands poled her off from the wharf. Now the wind caught her; heeling over, and quivering with eagerness like an unleashed hound she flew through the opening and out into the Channel. She was a famous little schooner, the Marie Rose of Winchelsea, and under her daring owner Cock Badding, half trader and half pirate, had brought back into port many a rich cargo taken in mid-Channel, and paid for in blood rather than money. Small as she was, her great speed and the fierce character of her master had made her a name of terror along the French coast, and many a bulky Eastlander or Fleming as he passed the narrow seas had scanned the distant Kentish shore, fearing lest that ill-omened purple sail with a gold Christopher upon it should shoot out suddenly from the dim gray cliffs. Now she was clear of the land, with the wind on her larboard quarter, every inch of canvas set, and her high sharp bows smothered in foam, as she dug through the waves.\n\nCock Badding trod the deck with head erect and jaunty bearing, glancing up at the swelling sails and then ahead at the little tilted white triangle, which stood out clear and hard against the bright blue sky. Behind was the lowland of the Camber marshes, with the bluffs of Rye and Winchelsea, and the line of cliffs behind them. On the larboard bow rose the great white walls of Folkestone and of Dover, and far on the distant sky-line the gray shimmer of those French cliffs for which the fugitives were making.\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" cried Nigel, looking with eager eyes over the tossing waters, \"it seems to me, Master Badding, that already we draw in upon them.\"\n\nThe master measured the distance with his keen steady gaze, and then looked up at the sinking sun. \"We have still four hours of daylight,\" said he; \"but if we do not lay her aboard ere darkness falls she will save herself, for the nights are as black as a wolf's mouth, and if she alter her course I know not how we may follow her.\"\n\n\"Unless, indeed, you might guess to which port she was bound and reach it before her.\"\n\n\"Well thought of, little master!\" cried Badding. \"If the news be for the French outside Calais, then Ambleteuse would be nearest to Saint Omer. But my sweeting sails three paces to that lubber's two, and if the wind holds we shall have time and to spare. How now, archer? You do not seem so eager as when you made your way aboard this boat by slinging me into the sea.\"\n\nAylward sat on the upturned keel of a skiff which lay upon the deck. He groaned sadly and held his green face between his two hands. \"I would gladly sling you into the sea once more, master-shipman,\" said he, \"if by so doing I could get off this most accursed vessel of thine. Or if you would wish to have your turn, then I would thank you if you would lend me a hand over the side, for indeed I am but a useless weight upon your deck. Little did I think that Samkin Aylward could be turned into a weakling by an hour of salt water. Alas the day that ever my foot wandered from the good red heather of Crooksbury!\"\n\nCock Badding laughed loud and long. \"Nay, take it not to heart, archer,\" he cried; \"for better men than you or I have groaned upon this deck. The Prince himself with ten of his chosen knights crossed with me once, and eleven sadder faces I never saw. Yet within a month they had shown at Crecy that they were no weaklings, as you will do also, I dare swear, when the time comes. Keep that thick head of thine down upon the planks, and all will be well anon. But we raise her, we raise her with every blast of the wind!\"\n\nIt was indeed evident, even to the inexperienced eyes of Nigel, that the Marie Rose was closing in swiftly upon the stranger. She was a heavy, bluff-bowed, broad-sterned vessel which labored clumsily through the seas. The swift, fierce little Winchelsea boat swooping and hissing through the waters behind her was like some keen hawk whizzing down wind at the back of a flapping heavy-bodied duck. Half an hour before La Pucelle had been a distant patch of canvas. Now they could see the black hull, and soon the cut of her sails and the lines of her bulwarks. There were at least a dozen men upon her deck, and the twinkle of weapons from amongst them showed that they were preparing to resist. Cock Badding began to muster his own forces.\n\nHe had a crew of seven rough, hardy mariners, who had been at his back in many a skirmish. They were armed with short swords, but Cock Badding carried a weapon peculiar to himself, a twenty-pound blacksmith's hammer, the memory of which, as \"Badding's cracker,\" still lingers in the Cinque Ports. Then there were the eager Nigel, the melancholy Aylward, Black Simon who was a tried swordsman, and three archers, Baddlesmere, Masters and Dicon of Rye, all veterans of the French War. The numbers in the two vessels might be about equal; but Badding as he glanced at the bold harsh faces which looked to him for orders had little fear for the result.\n\nGlancing round, however, he saw something which was more dangerous to his plans than the resistance of the enemy. The wind, which had become more fitful and feebler, now fell suddenly away, until the sails hung limp and straight above them. A belt of calm lay along the horizon, and the waves around had smoothed down into a long oily swell on which the two little vessels rose and fell. The great boom of the Marie Rose rattled and jarred with every lurch, and the high thin prow pointed skyward one instant and seaward the next in a way that drew fresh groans from the unhappy Aylward. In vain Cock Badding pulled on his sheets and tried hard to husband every little wandering gust which ruffled for an instant the sleek rollers. The French master was as adroit a sailor, and his boom swung round also as each breath of wind came up from astern.\n\nAt last even these fitful puffs died finally away, and a cloudless sky overhung a glassy sea. The sun was almost upon the horizon behind Dungeness Point, and the whole western heaven was bright with the glory of the sunset, which blended sea and sky in one blaze of ruddy light. Like rollers of molten gold, the long swell heaved up Channel from the great ocean beyond. In the midst of the immense beauty and peace of nature the two little dark specks with the white sail and the purple rose and fell, so small upon the vast shining bosom of the waters, and yet so charged with all the unrest and the passion of life.\n\nThe experienced eye of the seaman told him that it was hopeless to expect a breeze before nightfall. He looked across at the Frenchman, which lay less than a quarter of a mile ahead, and shook his gnarled fist at the line of heads which could be seen looking back over her stern. One of them waved a white kerchief in derision, and Cock Badding swore a bitter oath at the sight.\n\n\"By Saint Leonard of Winchelsea,\" he cried, \"I will rub my side up against her yet! Out with the skiff, lads, and two of you to the oars. Make fast the line to the mast, Will. Do you go in the boat, Hugh, and I'll make the second. Now if we bend our backs to it we may have them yet ere night cover them.\"\n\nThe little skiff was swiftly lowered over the side and the slack end of the cable fastened to the after thwart. Cock Badding and his comrades pulled as if they would snap their oars, and the little vessel began slowly to lurch forward over the rollers. But the next moment a larger skiff had splashed over the side of the Frenchman, and no less than four seamen were hard at work under her bows. If the Marie Rose advanced a yard the Frenchman was going two. Again Cock Badding raved and shook his fist. He clambered aboard, his face wet with sweat and dark with anger.\n\n\"Curse them! they have had the best of us!\" he cried. \"I can do no more. Sir John has lost his papers, for indeed now that night is at hand I can see no way in which we can gain them.\"\n\nNigel had leaned against the bulwark during these events, watching with keen attention the doings of the sailors, and praying alternately to Saint Paul, Saint George, and Saint Thomas for a slant of wind which would put them along side their enemy. He was silent; but his hot heart was simmering within him. His spirit had risen even above the discomfort of the sea, and his mind was too absorbed in his mission to have a thought for that which had laid Aylward flat upon the deck. He had never doubted that Cock Badding in one way or another would accomplish his end, but when he heard his speech of despair he bounded off the bulwark and stood before the seaman with his face flushed and all his soul afire.\n\n\"By Saint Paul! master-shipman,\" he cried, \"we should never hold up our heads in honor if we did not go further into the matter! Let us do some small deed this night upon the water, or let us never see land again, for indeed we could not wish fairer prospect of winning honorable advancement.\"\n\n\"With your leave, little master, you speak like a fool,\" said the gruff seaman. \"You and all your kind are as children when once the blue water is beneath you. Can you not see that there is no wind, and that the Frenchman can warp her as swiftly as we? What then would you do?\"\n\nNigel pointed to the boat which towed astern. \"Let us venture forth in her,\" said he, \"and let us take this ship or die worshipful in the attempt.\"\n\nHis bold and fiery words found their echo in the brave rough hearts around him. There was a deep-chested shout from both archers and seamen. Even Aylward sat up, with a wan smile upon his green face.\n\nBut Cock Badding shook his head. \"I have never met the man who could lead where I would not follow,\" said he; \"but by Saint Leonard! this is a mad business, and I should be a fool if I were to risk my men and my ship. Bethink you, little master, that the skiff can hold only five, though you load her to the water's edge. If there is a man yonder, there are fourteen, and you have to climb their side from the boat. What chance would you have? Your boat stove and you in the water\u2014there is the end of it. No man of mine goes on such a fool's errand, and so I swear!\"\n\n\"Then, Master Badding, I must crave the loan of your skiff, for by Saint Paul! the good Lord Chandos' papers are not to be so lightly lost. If no one else will come, then I will go alone.\"\n\nThe shipman smiled at the words; but the smile died away from his lips when Nigel, with features set like ivory and eyes as hard as steel, pulled on the rope so as to bring the skiff under the counter. It was very clear that he would do even as he said. At the same time Aylward raised his bulky form from the deck, leaned for a moment against the bulwarks, and then tottered aft to his master's side.\n\n\"Here is one that will go with you,\" said he, \"or he would never dare show his face to the girls of Tilford again. Come, archers, let us leave these salt herrings in their pickle tub and try our luck out on the water.\"\n\nThe three archers at once ranged themselves on the same side as their comrade. They were bronzed, bearded men, short in stature, as were most Englishmen of that day, but hardy, strong and skilled with their weapons. Each drew his string from its waterproof case and bent the huge arc of his war-bow as he fitted it into the nocks.\n\n\"Now, master, we are at your back,\" said they as they pulled and tightened their sword-belts.\n\nBut already Cock Badding had been carried away by the hot lust of battle and had thrown aside every fear and doubt which had clouded him. To see a fight and not to be in it was more than he could bear.\n\n\"Nay, have it your own way!\" he cried, \"and may Saint Leonard help us, for a madder venture I have never seen! And yet it may be worth the trial. But if it be done let me have the handling of it, little master, for you know no more of a boat than I do of a warhorse. The skiff can bear five and not a man more. Now, who will come?\"\n\nThey had all caught fire, and there was not one who would be left out.\n\nBadding picked up his hammer. \"I will come myself,\" said he, \"and you also, little master, since it is your hot head that has planned it. Then there is Black Simon, the best sword of the Cinque Ports. Two archers can pull on the oars, and it may be that they can pick off two or three of these Frenchmen before we close with them. Hugh Baddlesmere, and you, Dicon of Rye\u2014into the boat with you!\"\n\n\"What?\" cried Aylward. \"Am I to be left behind? I, who am the Squire's own man? Ill fare the bowman who comes betwixt me and yonder boat!\"\n\n\"Nay, Aylward,\" said his master, \"I order that you stay, for indeed you are a sick man.\"\n\n\"But now that the waves have sunk I am myself again. Nay, fair sir, I pray that you will not leave me behind.\"\n\n\"You must needs take the space of a better man; for what do you know of the handling of a boat?\" said Badding shortly. \"No more fool's talk, I pray you, for the night will soon fall. Stand aside!\"\n\nAylward looked hard at the French boat. \"I could swim ten times up and down Frensham pond,\" said he, \"and it will be strange if I cannot go as far as that. By these finger-bones, Samkin Aylward may be there as soon as you!\"\n\nThe little boat with its five occupants pushed off from the side of the schooner, and dipping and rising, made its slow way toward the Frenchman. Badding and one archer had single oars, the second archer was in the prow, while Black Simon and Nigel huddled into the stern with the water lapping and hissing at their very elbows. A shout of defiance rose from the Frenchmen, and they stood in a line along the side of their vessel shaking their fists and waving their weapons. Already the sun was level with Dungeness, and the gray of evening was blurring sky and water into one dim haze. A great silence hung over the broad expanse of nature, and no sound broke it save the dip and splash of the oars and the slow deep surge of the boat upon the swell. Behind them their comrades of the Marie Rose stood motionless and silent, watching their progress with eager eyes.\n\nThey were near enough now to have a good look at the Frenchmen. One was a big swarthy man with a long black beard. He had a red cap and an ax over his shoulder. There were ten other hardy-looking fellows, all of them well armed, and there were three who seemed to be boys.\n\n\"Shall we try a shaft upon them?\" asked Hugh Baddlesmere. \"They are well within our bowshot.\"\n\n\"Only one of you can shoot at a time, for you have no footing,\" said Badding. \"With one foot in the prow and one over the thwart you will get your stance. Do what you may, and then we will close in upon them.\"\n\nThe archer balanced himself in the rolling boat with the deftness of a man who has been trained upon the sea, for he was born and bred in the Cinque Ports. Carefully he nocked his arrow, strongly he drew it, steadily he loosed it, but the boat swooped at the instant, and it buried itself in the waves. The second passed over the little ship, and the third struck in her black side. Then in quick succession so quick that two shafts were often in the air at the same instant\u2014he discharged a dozen arrows, most of which just cleared the bulwarks and dropped upon the deck. There was a cry on the Frenchman, and the heads vanished from the side.\n\n\"Enough!\" cried Badding. \"One is down, and it may be two. Close in, close in, in God's name, before they rally!\"\n\nHe and the other bent to their oars; but at the same instant there was a sharp zip in the air and a hard clear sound like a stone striking a wall. Baddlesmere clapped his hand to his head, groaned and fell forward out of the boat, leaving a swirl of blood upon the surface. A moment later the same fierce hiss ended in a loud wooden crash, and a short, thick crossbow-bolt was buried deep in the side of their boat.\n\n\"Close in, close in!\" roared Badding, tugging at his oar. \"Saint George for England! Saint Leonard for Winchelsea! Close in!\"\n\nBut again that fatal crossbow twanged. Dicon of Rye fell back with a shaft through his shoulder. \"God help me, I can no more!\" said he.\n\nBadding seized the oar from his hand; but it was only to sweep the boat's head round and pull her back to the Marie Rose. The attack had failed.\n\n\"What now, master-shipman?\" cried Nigel. \"What has befallen to stop us? Surely the matter does not end here?\"\n\n\"Two down out of five,\" said Badding, \"and twelve at the least against us. The odds are too long, little master. Let us at least go back, fill up once more, and raise a mantelet against the bolts, for they have an arbalist which shoots both straight and hard. But what we do we must do quickly, for the darkness falls apace.\"\n\nTheir repulse had been hailed by wild yells of delight from the Frenchmen, who danced with joy and waved their weapons madly over their heads. But before their rejoicings had finished they saw the little boat creeping out once more from the shadow of the Marie Rose, a great wooden screen in her bows to protect her from the arrows. Without a pause she came straight and fast for her enemy. The wounded archer had been put on board, and Aylward would have had his place had Nigel been able to see him upon the deck. The third archer, Hal Masters, had sprung in, and one of the seamen, Wat Finnis of Hythe. With their hearts hardened to conquer or to die, the five ran alongside the Frenchman and sprang upon her deck. At the same instant a great iron weight crashed through the bottom of their skiff, and their feet had hardly left her before she was gone. There was no hope and no escape save victory.\n\nThe crossbowman stood under the mast, his terrible weapon at his shoulder, the steel string stretched taut, the heavy bolt shining upon the nut. One life at least he would claim out of this little band. Just for one instant too long did he dwell upon his aim, shifting from the seaman to Cock Badding, whose formidable appearance showed him to be the better prize. In that second of time Hal Masters' string twanged and his long arrow sped through the arbalister's throat. He dropped on the deck, with blood and curses pouring from his mouth.\n\nA moment later Nigel's sword and Badding's hammer had each claimed a victim and driven back the rush of assailants. The five were safe upon the deck, but it was hard for them to keep a footing there. The French seamen, Bretons and Normans, were stout, powerful fellows, armed with axes and swords, fierce fighters and brave men. They swarmed round the little band, attacking them from all sides. Black Simon felled the black-bearded French Captain, and at the same instant was cut over the head and lay with his scalp open upon the deck. The seaman Wat of Hythe was killed by a crashing blow from an ax. Nigel was struck down, but was up again like a flash, and drove his sword through the man who had felled him.\n\nBut Badding, Masters the archer and he had been hustled back to the bulwark and were barely holding their own from minute to minute against the fierce crowd who assailed them, when an arrow coming apparently from the sea struck the foremost Frenchman to the heart. A moment later a boat dashed up alongside and four more men from the Marie Rose scrambled on to the blood-stained deck. With one fierce rush the remaining Frenchmen were struck down or were seized by their assailants. Nine prostrate men upon the deck showed how fierce had been the attack, how desperate the resistance.\n\nBadding leaned panting upon his blood-clotted hammer. \"By Saint Leonard!\" he cried, \"I thought that this little master had been the death of us all. God wot you were but just in time, and how you came I know not. This archer has had a hand in it, by the look of him.\"\n\nAylward, still pale from his seasickness and dripping from head to foot with water, had been the first man in the rescue party.\n\nNigel looked at him in amazement. \"I sought you aboard the ship, Aylward, but I could not lay eyes on you,\" said he.\n\n\"It was because I was in the water, fair sir, and by my hilt! it suits my stomach better than being on it,\" he answered. \"When you first set forth I swam behind you, for I saw that the Frenchman's boat hung by a rope, and I thought that while you kept him in play I might gain it. I had reached it when you were driven back, so I hid behind it in the water and said my prayers as I have not said them for many a day. Then you came again, and no one had an eye for me, so I clambered into it, cut the rope, took the oars which I found there and brought her back for more men.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul! you have acted very wisely and well,\" said Nigel, \"and I think that of all of us it is you who have won most honor this day. But of all these men dead and alive I see none who resembles that Red Ferret whom my Lord Chandos has described and who has worked such despite upon us in the past: It would indeed be an evil chance if he has in spite of all our pains made his way to France in some other boat.\"\n\n\"That we shall soon find out,\" said Badding. \"Come with me and we will search the ship from truck to keel ere he escapes us.\"\n\nThere was a scuttle at the base of the mast which led down into the body of the vessel, and the Englishmen were approaching this when a strange sight brought them to a stand. A round brazen head had appeared in the square dark opening. An instant afterward a pair of shining shoulders followed. Then slowly the whole figure of a man in complete plate-armor emerged on the deck. In his gauntleted hand he carried a heavy steel mace. With this uplifted he moved toward his enemies, silent save for the ponderous clank of his footfall. It was an inhuman, machine-like figure, menacing and terrible, devoid of all expression, slow-moving, inexorable and awesome.\n\nA sudden wave of terror passed over the English seamen. One of them tried to pass and get behind the brazen man, but he was pinned against the side by a quick movement and his brains dashed out by a smashing blow from the heavy mace. Wild panic seized the others, and they rushed back to the boat. Aylward strung an arrow, but his bowstring was damp and the shaft rang loudly upon the shining breastplate and glanced off into the sea. Masters struck the brazen head with a sword, but the blade snapped without injuring the helmet, and an instant later the bowman was stretched senseless on the deck. The seamen shrank from this terrible silent creature and huddled in the stern, all the fight gone out of them.\n\nAgain he raised his mace and was advancing on the helpless crowd where the brave were encumbered and hampered by the weaklings, when Nigel shook himself clear and bounded forward into the open, his sword in his hand and a smile of welcome upon his lips.\n\nThe sun had set, and one long mauve gash across the western Channel was closing swiftly into the dull grays of early night. Above, a few stars began to faintly twinkle; yet the twilight was still bright enough for an observer to see every detail of the scene: the Marie Rose, dipping and rising on the long rollers astern; the broad French boat with its white deck blotched with blood and littered with bodies; the group of men in the stern, some trying to advance and some seeking to escape\u2014all a confused, disorderly, struggling rabble.\n\nThen betwixt them and the mast the two figures: the armed shining man of metal, with hand upraised, watchful, silent, motionless, and Nigel, bareheaded and crouching, with quick foot, eager eyes and fearless happy face, moving this way and that, in and out, his sword flashing like a gleam of light as he sought at all points for some opening in the brazen shell before him.\n\nIt was clear to the man in armor that if he could but pen his antagonist in a corner he would beat him down without fail. But it was not to be done. The unhampered man had the advantage of speed. With a few quick steps he could always glide to either side and escape the clumsy rush. Aylward and Badding had sprung out to Nigel's assistance; but he shouted to them to stand back, with such authority and anger in his voice that their weapons dropped to their sides. With staring eyes and set features they stood watching that unequal fight.\n\nOnce it seemed that all was over with the Squire, for in springing back from his enemy he tripped over one of the bodies which strewed the deck and fell flat upon his back, but with a swift wriggle he escaped the heavy blow which thundered down upon him, and springing to his feet he bit deeply into the Frenchman's helmet with a sweeping cut in return. Again the mace fell, and this time Nigel had not quite cleared himself. His sword was beaten down and the blow fell partly upon his left shoulder. He staggered, and once more the iron club whirled upward to dash him to the ground.\n\nQuick as a flash it passed through his mind that he could not leap beyond its reach. But he might get within it. In an instant he had dropped his sword, and springing in he had seized the brazen man round the waist. The mace was shortened and the handle jobbed down once upon the bare flaxen head. Then, with a sonorous clang, and a yell of delight from the spectators, Nigel with one mighty wrench tore his enemy from the deck and hurled him down upon his back. His own head was whirling and he felt that his senses were slipping away, but already his hunting-knife was out and pointing through the slit in the brazen helmet.\n\n\"Give yourself up, fair sir!\" said he.\n\n\"Never to fishermen and to archers! I am a gentleman of coat-armor. Kill me!\"\n\n\"I also am a gentleman of coat-armor. I promise you quarter.\"\n\n\"Then, sir, I surrender myself to you.\"\n\nThe dagger tinkled down upon the deck. Seamen and archers ran forward, to find Nigel half senseless upon his face. They drew him off, and a few deft blows struck off the helmet of his enemy. A head, sharp-featured, freckled and foxy-red, disclosed itself beneath it. Nigel raised himself on his elbow for an instant.\n\n\"You are the Red Ferret?\" said he.\n\n\"So my enemies call me,\" said the Frenchman, with a smile. \"I rejoice, sir, that I have fallen to so valiant and honorable a gentleman.\"\n\n\"I thank you, fair sir,\" said Nigel feebly. \"I also rejoice that I have encountered so debonair a person, and I shall ever bear in mind the pleasure which I have had from our meeting.\"\n\nSo saying, he laid his bleeding head upon his enemy's brazen front and sank into a dead faint." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE RED FERRET CAME TO COSFORD", + "text": "The old chronicler in his \"Gestes du Sieur Nigel\" has bewailed his broken narrative, which rose from the fact that out of thirty-one years of warfare no less than seven were spent by his hero at one time or another in the recovery from his wounds or from those illnesses which arose from privation and fatigue. Here at the very threshold of his career, on the eve of a great enterprise, this very fate befell him.\n\nStretched upon a couch in a low-roofed and ill-furnished chamber, which looks down from under the machicolated corner turret upon the inner court of the Castle of Calais, he lay half-unconscious and impotent, while great deeds were doing under his window. Wounded in three places, and with his head splintered by the sharp pommel of the Ferret's mace, he hovered betwixt life and death, his shattered body drawing him downward, his youthful spirit plucking him up.\n\nAs in some strange dream he was aware of that deed of arms within the courtyard below. Dimly it came back to his memory afterwards the sudden startled shout, the crash of metal, the slamming of great gates, the roar of many voices, the clang, clang, clang, as of fifty lusty smiths upon their anvils, and then at last the dwindling of the hubbub, the low groans and sudden shrill cries to the saints, the measured murmur of many voices, the heavy clanking of armored feet.\n\nSometime in that fell struggle he must have drawn his weakened body as far as the narrow window, and hanging to the iron bars have looked down on the wild scene beneath him. In the red glare of torches held from windows and from roof he saw the rush and swirl of men below, the ruddy light shining back from glowing brass and gleaming steel. As a wild vision it came to him afterward, the beauty and the splendor, the flying lambrequins, the jeweled crests, the blazonry and richness of surcoat and of shield, where sable and gules, argent and vair, in every pattern of saltire, bend or chevron, glowed beneath him like a drift of many-colored blossoms, tossing, sinking, stooping into shadow, springing into light. There glared the blood-red gules of Chandos, and he saw the tall figure of his master, a thunderbolt of war, raging in the van. There too were the three black chevrons on the golden shield which marked the noble Manny. That strong swordsman must surely be the royal Edward himself, since only he and the black-armored swift-footed youth at his side were marked by no symbol of heraldry. \"Manny! Manny! George for England!\" rose the deep-throated bay, and ever the gallant counter-cry: \"A Chargny! A Chargny! Saint Denis for France!\" thundered amid the clash and thudding of the battle.\n\nSuch was the vague whirling memory still lingering in Nigel's mind when at last the mists cleared away from it and he found himself weak but clear on the low couch in the corner turret. Beside him, crushing lavender betwixt his rough fingers and strewing it over floor and sheets, was Aylward the archer. His longbow leaned at the foot of the bed, and his steel cap was balanced on the top of it, while he himself, sitting in his shirt sleeves, fanned off the flies and scattered the fragrant herbs over his helpless master.\n\n\"By my hilt!\" he cried with a sudden shout, every tooth in his head gleaming with joy, \"I thank the Virgin and all the saints for this blessed sight! I had not dared to go back to Tilford had I lost you. Three weeks have you lain there and babbled like a babe, but now I see in your eyes that you are your own man again.\"\n\n\"I have indeed had some small hurt,\" said Nigel feebly; \"but it is shame and sorrow that I should lie here if there is work for my hands. Whither go you, archer?\"\n\n\"To tell the good Sir John that you are mending.\"\n\n\"Nay, bide with me a little longer, Aylward. I can call to mind all that has passed. There was a bickering of small boats, was there not, and I chanced upon a most worthy person and exchanged handstrokes with him? He was my prisoner, was he not?\"\n\n\"He was, fair sir.\"\n\n\"And where is he now?\"\n\n\"Below in the castle.\"\n\nA smile stole over Nigel's pale face. \"I know what I will do with him,\" said he.\n\n\"I pray you to rest, fair sir,\" said Aylward anxiously. \"The King's own leech saw you this morning, and he said that if the bandage was torn from your head you would surely die.\"\n\n\"Nay, good archer, I will not move. But tell me what befell upon the boat?\"\n\n\"There is little to tell, fair sir. Had this Ferret not been his own squire and taken so long a time to don his harness it is likely that they would have had the better of us. He did not reach the battle till his comrades were on their backs. Him we took to the Marie Rose, because he was your man. The others were of no worth, so we threw them into the sea.\"\n\n\"The quick and the dead?\"\n\n\"Every man of them.\"\n\n\"It was an evil deed.\"\n\nAylward shrugged his shoulders. \"I tried to save one boy,\" said he; \"but Cock Badding would not have it, and he had Black Simon and the others at his back. 'It is the custom of the Narrow Seas,' said they: 'To-day for them; to-morrow for us.'\u2014Then they tore him from his hold and cast him screaming over the side. By my hilt! I have no love for the sea and its customs, so I care not if I never set foot on it again when it has once borne me back to England.\"\n\n\"Nay, there are great happenings upon the sea, and many worthy people to be found upon ships,\" said Nigel. \"In all parts, if one goes far enough upon the water, one would find those whom it would be joy to meet. If one crosses over the Narrow Sea, as we have done, we come on the French who are so needful to us; for how else would we win worship? Or if you go south, then in time one may hope to come to the land of the unbelievers, where there is fine skirmishing and much honor for him who will venture his person. Bethink you, archer, how fair a life it must be when one can ride forth in search of advancement with some hope of finding many debonair cavaliers upon the same quest, and then if one be overborne one has died for the faith, and the gates of Heaven are open before you. So also the sea to the north is a help to him who seeks honor, for it leads to the country of the Eastlanders and to those parts where the heathen still dwell who turn their faces from the blessed Gospel. There also a man might find some small deeds to do, and by Saint Paul! Aylward, if the French hold the truce and the good Sir John permits us, I would fain go down into those parts. The sea is a good friend to the cavalier, for it takes him where he may fulfil his vows.\"\n\nAylward shook his head, for his memories were too recent; but he said nothing, because at this instant the door opened and Chandos entered. With joy in his face he stepped forward to the couch and took Nigel's hand in his. Then he whispered a word in Aylward's ear, who hurried from the room.\n\n\"Pardieu! this is a good sight,\" said the knight. \"I trust that you will soon be on your feet again.\"\n\n\"I crave your pardon, my honored lord, that I have been absent from your side,\" said Nigel.\n\n\"In truth my heart was sore for you, Nigel; for you have missed such a night as comes seldom in any man's life. All went even as we had planned. The postern gate was opened, and a party made their way in; but we awaited them, and all were taken or slain. But the greater part of the French had remained without upon the plain of Nieullet, so we took horse and went out against them. When we drew near them they were surprised, but they made good cheer among themselves, calling out to each other: 'If we fly we lose all. It is better to fight on, in the hopes that the day may be ours.' This was heard by our people in the van, who cried out to them: 'By Saint George! you speak truth. Evil befall him who thinks of flying!' So they held their ground like worthy people for the space of an hour, and there were many there whom it is always good to meet: Sir Geoffrey himself, and Sir Pepin de Werre, with Sir John de Landas, old Ballieul of the Yellow Tooth, and his brother Hector the Leopard. But above all Sir Eustace de Ribeaumont was at great pains to meet us worthily, and he was at handstrokes with the King for a long time. Then, when we had slain or taken them, all the prisoners were brought to a feast which was ready for them, and the knights of England waited upon them at the table and made good cheer with them. And all this, Nigel, we owe to you.\"\n\nThe Squire flushed with pleasure at the words. \"Nay, most honored lord, it was but a small thing which I have been able to do. But I thank God and our Lady that I have done some service, since it has pleased you to take me with you to the wars. Should it chance\u2014\"\n\nBut the words were cut short upon Nigel's lips, and he lay back with amazed eyes staring from his pallid face. The door of his little chamber had opened, and who was this, the tall stately man with the noble presence, the high forehead, the long handsome face, the dark, brooding eyes\u2014who but the noble Edward of England?\n\n\"Ha, my little cock of Tilford Bridge, I still bear you in mind,\" said he. \"Right glad I was to hear that you had found your wits again, and I trust that I have not helped to make you take leave of them once more.\"\n\nNigel's stare of astonishment had brought a smile to the King's lips. Now the Squire stammered forth some halting words of gratitude at the honor done to him.\n\n\"Nay, not a word,\" said the King. \"But in sooth it is a joy to my heart to see the son of my old comrade Eustace Loring carry himself so bravely. Had this boat got before us with news of our coming, then all our labor had been in vain, and no Frenchman ventured to Calais that night. But above all I thank you for that you have delivered into my hands one whom I had vowed to punish in that he has caused us more scathe by fouler means than any living man. Twice have I sworn that Peter the Red Ferret shall hang, for all his noble blood and coat-armor, if ever he should fall into my hands. Now at last his time has come; but I would not put him to death until you, who had taken him, could be there to see it done. Nay, thank me not, for I could do no less, seeing that it is to you that I owe him.\"\n\nBut it was not thanks which Nigel was trying to utter. It was hard to frame his words, and yet they must be said. \"Sire,\" he murmured, \"it ill becomes me to cross your royal will\u2014\"\n\nThe dark Plantagenet wrath gathered upon the King's high brow and gloomed in his fierce deep-set eyes. \"By God's dignity! no man has ever crossed it yet and lived unscathed. How now, young sir, what mean such words, to which we are little wont? Have a care, for this is no light thing which you venture.\"\n\n\"Sire,\" said Nigel, \"in all matters in which I am a free man I am ever your faithful liege, but some things there are which may not be done.\"\n\n\"How?\" cried the King. \"In spite of my will?\"\n\n\"In spite of your will, sire,\" said Nigel, sitting up on his couch, with white face and blazing eyes.\n\n\"By the Virgin!\" the angry King thundered, \"we are come to a pretty pass! You have been held too long at home, young man. The overstabled horse will kick. The unweathered hawk will fly at check. See to it, Master Chandos! He is thine to break, and I hold you to it that you break him. And what is it that Edward of England may not do, Master Loring?\"\n\nNigel faced the King with a face as grim as his own. \"You may not put to death the Red Ferret.\"\n\n\"Pardieu! And why?\"\n\n\"Because he is not thine to slay, sire. Because he is mine. Because I promised him his life, and it is not for you, King though you be, to constrain a man of gentle blood to break his plighted word and lose his honor.\"\n\nChandos laid his soothing hand upon his Squire's shoulder. \"Excuse him, sire; he is weak from his wounds,\" said he. \"Perhaps we have stayed overlong, for the leech has ordered repose.\"\n\nBut the angry King was not easily to be appeased. \"I am not wont to be so browbeat,\" said he hotly. \"This is your Squire, Master John. How comes it that you can stand there and listen to his pert talk, and say no word to chide him? Is this how you guide your household? Have you not taught him that every promise given is subject to the King's consent, and that with him only lie the springs of life and death? If he is sick, you at least are hale. Why stand you there in silence?\"\n\n\"My liege,\" said Chandos gravely, \"I have served you for over a score of years, and have shed my blood through as many wounds in your cause, so that you should not take my words amiss. But indeed I should feel myself to be no true man if I did not tell you that my Squire Nigel, though perchance he has spoken more bluntly than becomes him, is none the less right in this matter, and that you are wrong. For bethink you, sire\u2014\"\n\n\"Enough!\" cried the King, more furious than ever. \"Like master, like man, and I might have known why it is that this saucy Squire dares to bandy words with his sovereign lord. He does but give out what he hath taken in. John, John, you grow overbold. But this I tell you, and you also, young man, that as God is my help, ere the sun has set this night the Red Ferret will hang as a warning to all spies and traitors from the highest tower of Calais, that every ship upon the Narrow Seas, and every man for ten miles round may see him as he swings and know how heavy is the hand of the English King. Do you bear it in mind, lest you also may feel its weight!\" With a glare like an angry lion he walked from the room, and the iron-clamped door clanged loudly behind him.\n\nChandos and Nigel looked ruefully at each other. Then the knight patted his Squire upon his bandaged head.\n\n\"You have carried yourself right well, Nigel. I could not wish for better. Fear not. All will be well.\"\n\n\"My fair and honored lord,\" cried Nigel, \"I am heavy at heart, for indeed I could do no other, and yet I have brought trouble upon you.\"\n\n\"Nay, the clouds will soon pass. If he does indeed slay this Frenchman, you have done all that lay within your power, and your mind may rest easy.\"\n\n\"I pray that it will rest easy in Paradise,\" said Nigel; \"for at the hour that I hear that I am dishonored and my prisoner slain I tear this bandage from my head and so end all things. I will not live when once my word is broken.\"\n\n\"Nay, fair son, you take this thing too heavily,\" said Chandos, with a grave face. \"When a man has done all he may there remains no dishonor; but the King hath a kind heart for all his hot head, and it may be that if I see him I will prevail upon him. Bethink you how he swore to hang the six burghers of this very town, and yet he pardoned them. So keep a high heart, fair son, and I will come with good news ere evening.\"\n\nFor three hours, as the sinking sun traced the shadow higher and ever higher upon the chamber wall, Nigel tossed feverishly upon his couch, his ears straining for the footfall of Aylward or of Chandos, bringing news of the fate of the prisoner. At last the door flew open, and there before him stood the one man whom he least expected, and yet would most gladly have seen. It was the Red Ferret himself, free and joyous.\n\nWith swift furtive steps he was across the room and on his knees beside the couch, kissing the pendent hand. \"You have saved me, most noble sir!\" he cried. \"The gallows was fixed and the rope slung, when the good Lord Chandos told the King that you would die by your own hand if I were slain. 'Curse this mule-headed Squire!' he cried. 'In God's name let him have his prisoner, and let him do what he will with him so long as he troubles me no more!' So here I have come, fair sir, to ask you what I shall do.\"\n\n\"I pray you to sit beside me and be at your ease,\" said Nigel. \"In a few words I will tell you what I would have you do. Your armor I will keep, that I may have some remembrance of my good fortune in meeting so valiant a gentleman. We are of a size, and I make little doubt that I can wear it. Of ransom I would ask a thousand crowns.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay!\" cried the Ferret. \"It would be a sad thing if a man of my position was worth less than five thousand.\"\n\n\"A thousand will suffice, fair sir, to pay my charges for the war. You will not again play the spy, nor do us harm until the truce is broken.\"\n\n\"That I will swear.\"\n\n\"And lastly there is a journey that you shall make.\"\n\nThe Frenchman's face lengthened. \"Where you order I must go,\" said he; \"but I pray you that it is not to the Holy Land.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" said Nigel; \"but it is to a land which is holy to me. You will make your way back to Southampton.\"\n\n\"I know it well. I helped to burn it down some years ago.\"\n\n\"I rede you to say nothing of that matter when you get there. You will then journey as though to London until you come to a fair town named Guildford.\"\n\n\"I have heard of it. The King hath a hunt there.\"\n\n\"The same. You will then ask for a house named Cosford, two leagues from the town on the side of a long hill.\"\n\n\"I will bear it in mind.\"\n\n\"At Cosford you will see a good knight named Sir John Buttesthorn, and you will ask to have speech with his daughter, the Lady Mary.\"\n\n\"I will do so; and what shall I say to the Lady Mary, who lives at Cosford on the slope of a long hill two leagues from the fair town of Guildford?\"\n\n\"Say only that I sent my greeting, and that Saint Catharine has been my friend\u2014only that and nothing more. And now leave me, I pray you, for my head is weary and I would fain have sleep.\"\n\nThus it came about that a month later on the eve of the Feast of Saint Matthew, the Lady Mary, as she walked front Cosford gates, met with a strange horseman, richly clad, a serving-man behind him, looking shrewdly about him with quick blue eyes, which twinkled from a red and freckled face. At sight of her he doffed his hat and reined his horse.\n\n\"This house should be Cosford,\" said he. \"Are you by chance the Lady Mary who dwells there?\"\n\nThe lady bowed her proud dark head.\n\n\"Then,\" said he, \"Squire Nigel Loring sends you greeting and tells you that Saint Catharine has been his friend.\" Then turning to his servant he cried: \"Heh, Raoul, our task is done! Your master is a free man once more. Come, lad, come, the nearest port to France! Hola! Hola! Hola!\" And so without a word more the two, master and man, set spurs to their horses and galloped like madmen down the long slope of Hindhead, until as she looked after them they were but two dark dots in the distance, waist-high in the ling and the bracken.\n\nShe turned back to the house, a smile upon her face. Nigel had sent her greeting. A Frenchman had brought it. His bringing it had made him a freeman. And Saint Catherine had been Nigel's friend. It was at her shrine that he had sworn that three deeds should be done ere he should set eyes upon her again. In the privacy of her room the Lady Mary sank upon her prie-dieu and poured forth the thanks of her heart to the Virgin that one deed was accomplished; but even as she did so her joy was overcast by the thought of those two others which lay before him." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE KING'S COURT FEASTED IN CALAIS CASTLE", + "text": "It was a bright sunshiny morning when Nigel found himself at last able to leave his turret chamber and to walk upon the rampart of the castle. There was a brisk northern wind, heavy and wet with the salt of the sea, and he felt, as he turned his face to it, fresh life and strength surging in his blood and bracing his limbs. He took his hand from Aylward's supporting arm and stood with his cap off, leaning on the rampart and breathing in the cool strong air. Far off upon the distant sky-line, half hidden by the heave of the waves, was the low white fringe of cliffs which skirted England. Between him and them lay the broad blue Channel, seamed and flecked with flashing foam, for a sharp sea was running and the few ships in sight were laboring heavily. Nigel's eyes traversed the widespread view, rejoicing in the change from the gray wall of his cramped chamber. Finally they settled upon a strange object at his very feet.\n\nIt was a long trumpet-shaped engine of leather and iron bolted into a rude wooden stand and fitted with wheels. Beside it lay a heap of metal slugs and lumps of stone. The end of the machine was raised and pointed over the battlement. Behind it stood an iron box which Nigel opened. It was filled with a black coarse powder, like gritty charcoal.\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" said he, passing his hands over the engine, \"I have heard men talk of these things, but never before have I seen one. It is none other than one of those wondrous new-made bombards.\"\n\n\"In sooth, it is even as you say,\" Aylward answered, looking at it with contempt and dislike in his face. \"I have seen them here upon the ramparts, and have also exchanged a buffet or two with him who had charge of them. He was jack-fool enough to think that with this leather pipe he could outshoot the best archer in Christendom. I lent him a cuff on the ear that laid him across his foolish engine.\"\n\n\"It is a fearsome thing,\" said Nigel, who had stooped to examine it. \"We live in strange times when such things can be made. It is loosed by fire, is it not, which springs from the black dust?\"\n\n\"By my hilt! fair sir, I know not. And yet I call to mind that ere we fell out this foolish bombardman did say something of the matter. The fire-dust is within and so also is the ball. Then you take more dust from this iron box and place it in the hole at the farther end\u2014so. It is now ready. I have never seen one fired, but I wot that this one could be fired now.\"\n\n\"It makes a strange sound, archer, does it not?\" said Nigel wistfully.\n\n\"So I have heard, fair sir\u2014even as the bow twangs, so it also has a sound when you loose it.\"\n\n\"There is no one to hear, since we are alone upon the rampart, nor can it do scathe, since it points to sea. I pray you to loose it and I will listen to the sound.\" He bent over the bombard with an attentive ear, while Aylward, stooping his earnest brown face over the touch-hole, scraped away diligently with a flint and steel. A moment later both he and Nigel were seated some distance off upon the ground while amid the roar of the discharge and the thick cloud of smoke they had a vision of the long black snakelike engine shooting back upon the recoil. For a minute or more they were struck motionless with astonishment while the reverberations died away and the smoke wreaths curled slowly up to the blue heavens.\n\n\"Good lack!\" cried Nigel at last, picking himself up and looking round him. \"Good lack, and Heaven be my aid! I thank the Virgin that all stands as it did before. I thought that the castle had fallen.\"\n\n\"Such a bull's bellow I have never heard,\" cried Aylward, rubbing his injured limbs. \"One could hear it from Frensham Pond to Guildford Castle. I would not touch one again\u2014not for a hide of the best land in Puttenham!\"\n\n\"It may fare ill with your own hide, archer, if you do,\" said an angry voice behind them. Chandos had stepped from the open door of the corner turret and stood looking at them with a harsh gaze. Presently, as the matter was made clear to him his face relaxed into a smile.\n\n\"Hasten to the warden, archer, and tell him how it befell. You will have the castle and the town in arms. I know not what the King may think of so sudden an alarm. And you, Nigel, how in the name of the saints came you to play the child like this?\"\n\n\"I knew not its power, fair lord.\"\n\n\"By my soul, Nigel, I think that none of us know its power. I can see the day when all that we delight in, the splendor and glory of war, may all go down before that which beats through the plate of steel as easily as the leathern jacket. I have bestrode my warhorse in my armor and have looked down at the sooty, smoky bombardman beside me, and I have thought that perhaps I was the last of the old and he the first of the new; that there would come a time when he and his engines would sweep you and me and the rest of us from the field.\"\n\n\"But not yet, I trust, honored sir?\"\n\n\"No, not yet, Nigel. You are still in time to win your spurs even as your fathers did. How is your strength?\"\n\n\"I am ready for any task, my good and honored lord.\"\n\n\"It is well, for work awaits us\u2014good work, pressing work, work of peril and of honor. Your eyes shine and your face flushes, Nigel. I live my own youth over again as I look at you. Know then that though there is truce with the French here, there is not truce in Brittany where the houses of Blois and of Montfort still struggle for the dukedom. Half Brittany fights for one, and half for the other. The French have taken up the cause of Blois, and we of Montfort, and it is such a war that many a great leader, such as Sir Walter Manny, has first earned his name there. Of late the war has gone against us, and the bloody hands of the Rohans, of Gaptooth Beaumanoir, of Oliver the Flesher and others have been heavy upon our people. The last tidings have been of disaster, and the King's soul is dark with wrath for that his friend and comrade Gilles de St. Pol has been done to death in the Castle of La Brohiniere. He will send succors to the country, and we go at their head. How like you that, Nigel?\"\n\n\"My honored lord, what could I ask for better?\"\n\n\"Then have your harness ready, for we start within the week. Our path by land is blocked by the French, and we go by sea. This night the King gives a banquet ere he returns to England, and your place is behind my chair. Be in my chamber that you may help me to dress, and so we will to the hall together.\"\n\nWith satin and with samite, with velvet and with fur, the noble Chandos was dressed for the King's feast, and Nigel too had donned his best silk jupon, faced with the five scarlet roses, that he might wait upon him. In the great hall of Calais Castle the tables were set, a high table for the lords, a second one for the less distinguished knights, and a third at which the squires might feast when their masters were seated.\n\nNever had Nigel in his simple life at Tilford pictured a scene of such pomp and wondrous luxury. The grim gray walls were covered from ceiling to floor with priceless tapestry of Arras, where hart, hounds and huntsmen circled the great hall with one long living image of the chase. Over the principal table drooped a line of banners, and beneath them rows of emblazoned shields upon the wall carried the arms of the high noblemen who sat beneath. The red light of cressets and of torches burned upon the badges of the great captains of England. The lions and lilies shone over the high dorseret chair in the center, and the same august device marked with the cadency label indicated the seat of the Prince, while glowing to right and to left were the long lines of noble insignia, honored in peace and terrible in war. There shone the gold and sable of Manny, the engrailed cross of Suffolk, the red chevron of Stafford, the scarlet and gold of Audley, the blue lion rampant of the Percies, the silver swallows of Arundel, the red roebuck of the Montacutes, the star of the de Veres, the silver scallops of Russell, the purple lion of de Lacy, and the black crosses of Clinton.\n\nA friendly Squire at Nigel's elbow whispered the names of the famous warriors beneath. \"You are young Loring of Tilford, the Squire of Chandos, are you not?\" said he. \"My name is Delves, and I come from Doddington in Cheshire. I am the Squire of Sir James Audley, yonder round-backed man with the dark face and close-cropped beard, who hath the Saracen head as a crest above him.\"\n\n\"I have heard of him as a man of great valor,\" said Nigel, gazing at him with interest.\n\n\"Indeed, you may well say so, Master Loring. He is the bravest knight in England, and in Christendom also, as I believe. No man hath done such deeds of valor.\"\n\nNigel looked at his new acquaintance with hope in his eyes. \"You speak as it becomes you to speak when you uphold your own master,\" said he. \"For the same reason, Master Delves, and in no spirit of ill-will to you, it behooves me to tell you that he is not to be compared in name or fame with the noble knight on whom I wait. Should you hold otherwise, then surely we can debate the matter in whatever way or time may please you best.\"\n\nDelves smiled good-humoredly. \"Nay, be not so hot,\" said he. \"Had you upheld any other knight, save perhaps Sir Walter Manny, I had taken you at your word, and your master or mine would have had place for a new Squire. But indeed it is only truth that no knight is second to Chandos, nor would I draw my sword to lower his pride of place. Ha, Sir James' cup is low! I must see to it!\" He darted off, a flagon of Gascony in his hand. \"The King hath had good news to-night,\" he continued when he returned. \"I have not seen him in so merry a mind since the night when we took the Frenchmen and he laid his pearl chaplet upon the head of de Ribeaumont. See how he laughs, and the Prince also. That laugh bodes some one little good, or I am the more mistaken. Have a care! Sir John's plate is empty.\"\n\nIt was Nigel's turn to dart away; but ever in the intervals he returned to the corner whence he could look down the hall and listen to the words of the older Squire. Delves was a short, thick-set man past middle age, weather-beaten and scarred, with a rough manner and bearing which showed that he was more at his ease in a tent than a hall. But ten years of service had taught him much, and Nigel listened eagerly to his talk.\n\n\"Indeed the King hath some good tidings,\" he continued. \"See now, he has whispered it to Chandos and to Manny. Manny spreads it on to Sir Reginald Cobham, and he to Robert Knolles, each smiling like the Devil over a friar.\"\n\n\"Which is Sir Robert Knolles?\" asked Nigel with interest. \"I have heard much of him and his deeds.\"\n\n\"He is the tall hard-faced man in yellow silk, he with the hairless cheeks and the split lip. He is little older than yourself, and his father was a cobbler in Chester, yet he has already won the golden spurs. See how he dabs his great hand in the dish and hands forth the gobbets. He is more used to a camp-kettle than a silver plate. The big man with the black beard is Sir Bartholomew Berghersh, whose brother is the Abbot of Beaulieu. Haste, haste! for the boar's head is come and the plate's to be cleaned.\"\n\nThe table manners of our ancestors at this period would have furnished to the modern eye the strangest mixture of luxury and of barbarism. Forks were still unknown, and the courtesy fingers, the index and the middle of the left hand, took their place. To use any others was accounted the worst of manners. A crowd of dogs lay among the rushes growling at each other and quarreling over the gnawed bones which were thrown to them by the feasters. A slice of coarse bread served usually as a plate, but the King's own high table was provided with silver platters, which were wiped by the Squire or page after each course. On the other hand the table-linen was costly, and the courses, served with a pomp and dignity now unknown, comprised such a variety of dishes and such complex marvels of cookery as no modern banquet could show. Besides all our domestic animals and every kind of game, such strange delicacies as hedgehogs, bustards, porpoises, squirrels, bitterns and cranes lent variety to the feast.\n\nEach new course, heralded by a flourish of silver trumpets, was borne in by liveried servants walking two and two, with rubicund marshals strutting in front and behind, bearing white wands in their hands, not only as badges of their office, but also as weapons with which to repel any impertinent inroad upon the dishes in the journey from the kitchen to the hall. Boar's heads, enarmed and endored with gilt tusks and flaming mouths, were followed by wondrous pasties molded to the shape of ships, castles and other devices with sugar seamen or soldiers who lost their own bodies in their fruitless defense against the hungry attack. Finally came the great nef, a silver vessel upon wheels laden with fruit and sweetmeats which rolled with its luscious cargo down the line of guests. Flagons of Gascony, of Rhine wine, of Canary and of Rochelle were held in readiness by the attendants; but the age, though luxurious, was not drunken, and the sober habits of the Norman had happily prevailed over the license of those Saxon banquets where no guest might walk from the table without a slur upon his host. Honor and hardihood go ill with a shaking hand or a blurred eye.\n\nWhilst wine, fruit and spices were handed round the high tables the squires had been served in turn at the farther end of the hall. Meanwhile round the King there had gathered a group of statesmen and soldiers, talking eagerly among themselves. The Earl of Stafford, the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Arundel, Lord Beauchamp and Lord Neville were assembled at the back of his chair, with Lord Percy and Lord Mowbray at either side. The little group blazed with golden chains and jeweled chaplets, flame colored paltocks and purple tunics.\n\nOf a sudden the King said something over his shoulder to Sir William de Pakyngton the herald, who advanced and stood by the royal chair. He was a tall and noble-featured man, with long grizzled beard which rippled down to the gold-linked belt girdling his many-colored tabard. On his head he had placed the heraldic barret-cap which bespoke his dignity, and he slowly raised his white wand high in the air, while a great hush fell upon the hall.\n\n\"My lords of England,\" said he, \"knight bannerets, knights, squires, and all others here present of gentle birth and coat-armor, know that your dread and sovereign lord, Edward, King of England and of France, bids me give you greeting and commands you to come hither that he may have speech with you.\"\n\nIn an instant the tables were deserted and the whole company had clustered in front of the King's chair. Those who had sat on either side of him crowded inward so that his tall dark figure upreared itself amid the dense circle of his guests.\n\nWith a flush upon his olive cheeks and with pride smoldering in his dark eyes, he looked round him at the eager faces of the men who had been his comrades from Sluys and Cadsand to Crecy and Calais. They caught fire from that warlike gleam in his masterful gaze, and a sudden wild, fierce shout pealed up to the vaulted ceiling, a soldierly thanks for what was passed and a promise for what was to come. The King's teeth gleamed in a quick smile, and his large white hand played with the jeweled dagger in his belt.\n\n\"By the splendor of God!\" said he in a loud clear voice, \"I have little doubt that you will rejoice with me this night, for such tidings have come to my ears as may well bring joy to everyone of you. You know well that our ships have suffered great scathe from the Spaniards, who for many years have slain without grace or ruth all of my people who have fallen into their cruel hands. Of late they have sent their ships into Flanders, and thirty great cogs and galleys lie now at Sluys well-filled with archers and men-at-arms and ready in all ways for battle. I have it to-day from a sure hand that, having taken their merchandise aboard, these ships will sail upon the next Sunday and will make their way through our Narrow Sea. We have for a great time been long-suffering to these people, for which they have done us many contraries and despites, growing ever more arrogant as we grow more patient. It is in my mind therefore that we hie us to-morrow to Winchelsea, where we have twenty ships, and make ready to sally out upon them as they pass. May God and Saint George defend the right!\"\n\nA second shout, far louder and fiercer than the first, came like a thunderclap after the King's words. It was the bay of a fierce pack to their trusted huntsman.\n\nEdward laughed again as he looked round at the gleaming eyes, the waving arms and the flushed joyful faces of his liegemen. \"Who hath fought against these Spaniards?\" he asked. \"Is there anyone here who can tell us what manner of men they be?\"\n\nA dozen hands went up into the air; but the King turned to the Earl of Suffolk at his elbow.\n\n\"You have fought them, Thomas?\" said he.\n\n\"Yes, sire, I was in the great sea-fight eight years ago at the Island of Guernsey, when Lord Lewis of Spain held the sea against the Earl of Pembroke.\"\n\n\"How found you them, Thomas?\"\n\n\"Very excellent people, sire, and no man could ask for better. On every ship they have a hundred crossbowmen of Genoa, the best in the world, and their spearmen also are very hardy men. They would throw great cantles of iron from the tops of the masts, and many of our people met their death through it. If we can bar their way in the Narrow Sea, then there will be much hope of honor for all of us.\"\n\n\"Your words are very welcome, Thomas,\" said the King, \"and I make no doubt that they will show themselves to be very worthy of what we prepare for them. To you I give a ship, that you may have the handling of it. You also, my dear son, shall have a ship, that evermore honor may be thine.\"\n\n\"I thank you, my fair and sweet father,\" said the Prince, with joy flushing his handsome boyish face.\n\n\"The leading ship shall be mine. But you shall have one, Walter Manny, and you, Stafford, and you, Arundel, and you, Audley, and you, Sir Thomas Holland, and you, Brocas, and you, Berkeley, and you, Reginald. The rest shall be awarded at Winchelsea, whither we sail to-morrow. Nay, John, why do you pluck so at my sleeve?\"\n\nChandos was leaning forward, with an anxious face. \"Surely, my honored lord, I have not served you so long and so faithfully that you should forget me now. Is there then no ship for me?\"\n\nThe King smiled, but shook his head. \"Nay, John, have I not given you two hundred archers and a hundred men-at-arms to take with you into Brittany? I trust that your ships will be lying in Saint Malo Bay ere the Spaniards are abreast of Winchelsea. What more would you have, old war-dog? Wouldst be in two battles at once?\"\n\n\"I would be at your side, my liege, when the lion banner is in the wind once more. I have ever been there. Why should you cast me now? I ask little, dear lord\u2014a galley, a balinger, even a pinnace, so that I may only be there.\"\n\n\"Nay, John, you shall come. I cannot find it in my heart to say you nay. I will find you place in my own ship, that you may indeed be by my side.\"\n\nChandos stooped and kissed the King's hand. \"My Squire?\" he asked.\n\nThe King's brows knotted into a frown. \"Nay, let him go to Brittany with the others,\" said he harshly. \"I wonder, John, that you should bring back to my memory this youth whose pertness is too fresh that I should forget it. But some one must go to Brittany in your stead, for the matter presses and our people are hard put to it to hold their own.\" He cast his eyes over the assembly, and they rested upon the stern features of Sir Robert Knolles.\n\n\"Sir Robert,\" he said, \"though you are young in years you are already old in war, and I have heard that you are as prudent in council as you are valiant in the field. To you I commit the charge of this venture to Brittany in place of Sir John Chandos, who will follow thither when our work has been done upon the waters. Three ships lie in Calais port and three hundred men are ready to your hand. Sir John will tell you what our mind is in the matter. And now, my friends and good comrades, you will haste you each to his own quarters, and you will make swiftly such preparations as are needful, for, as God is my aid, I will sail with you to Winchelsea to-morrow!\"\n\nBeckoning to Chandos, Manny and a few of his chosen leaders, the King led them away to an inner chamber, where they might discuss the plans for the future. At the same time the assembly broke up, the knights in silence and dignity, the squires in mirth and noise, but all joyful at heart for the thought of the great days which lay before them." + }, + { + "title": "THE SPANIARDS ON THE SEA", + "text": "Day had not yet dawned when Nigel was in the chamber of Chandos preparing him for his departure and listening to the last cheery words of advice and direction from his noble master. That same morning, before the sun was half-way up the heaven, the King's great nef Philippa, bearing within it the most of those present at his banquet the night before, set its huge sail, adorned with the lions and the lilies, and turned its brazen beak for England. Behind it went five smaller cogs crammed with squires, archers and men-at-arms.\n\nNigel and his companions lined the ramparts of the castle and waved their caps as the bluff, burly vessels, with drums beating and trumpets clanging, a hundred knightly pennons streaming from their decks and the red cross of England over all, rolled slowly out to the open sea. Then when they had watched them until they were hull down they turned, with hearts heavy at being left behind, to make ready for their own more distant venture.\n\nIt took them four days of hard work ere their preparations were complete, for many were the needs of a small force sailing to a strange country. Three ships had been left to them, the cog Thomas of Romney, the Grace Dieu of Hythe, and the Basilisk of Southampton, into each of which one hundred men were stowed, besides the thirty seamen who formed the crew. In the hold were forty horses, amongst them Pommers, much wearied by his long idleness, and homesick for the slopes of Surrey where his great limbs might find the work he craved. Then the food and the water, the bowstaves and the sheaves of arrows, the horseshoes, the nails, the hammers, the knives, the axes, the ropes, the vats of hay, the green fodder and a score of other things were packed aboard. Always by the side of the ships stood the stern young knight Sir Robert, checking, testing, watching and controlling, saying little, for he was a man of few words, but with his eyes, his hands, and if need be his heavy dog-whip, wherever they were wanted.\n\nThe seamen of the Basilisk, being from a free port, had the old feud against the men of the Cinque Ports, who were looked upon by the other mariners of England as being unduly favored by the King. A ship of the West Country could scarce meet with one from the Narrow Seas without blood flowing. Hence sprang sudden broils on the quay side, when with yell and blow the Thomases and Grace Dieus, Saint Leonard on their lips and murder in their hearts, would fall upon the Basilisks. Then amid the whirl of cudgels and the clash of knives would spring the tiger figure of the young leader, lashing mercilessly to right and left like a tamer among his wolves, until he had beaten them howling back to their work. Upon the morning of the fourth day all was ready, and the ropes being cast off the three little ships were warped down the harbor by their own pinnaces until they were swallowed up in the swirling folds of a Channel mist.\n\nThough small in numbers, it was no mean force which Edward had dispatched to succor the hard-pressed English garrisons in Brittany. There was scarce a man among them who was not an old soldier, and their leaders were men of note in council and in war. Knolles flew his flag of the black raven aboard the Basilisk. With him were Nigel and his own Squire John Hawthorn. Of his hundred men, forty were Yorkshire Dalesmen and forty were men of Lincoln, all noted archers, with old Wat of Carlisle, a grizzled veteran of border warfare, to lead them.\n\nAlready Aylward by his skill and strength had won his way to an under-officership amongst them, and shared with Long Ned Widdington, a huge North Countryman, the reputation of coming next to famous Wat Carlisle in all that makes an archer. The men-at-arms too were war-hardened soldiers, with Black Simon of Norwich, the same who had sailed from Winchelsea, to lead them. With his heart filled with hatred for the French who had slain all who were dear to him, he followed like a bloodhound over land and sea to any spot where he might glut his vengeance. Such also were the men who sailed in the other ships, Cheshire men from the Welsh borders in the cog Thomas, and Cumberland men, used to Scottish warfare, in the Grace Dieu.\n\nSir James Astley hung his shield of cinquefoil ermine over the quarter of the Thomas. Lord Thomas Percy, a cadet of Alnwick, famous already for the high spirit of that house which for ages was the bar upon the landward gate of England, showed his blue lion rampant as leader of the Grace Dieu. Such was the goodly company Saint-Malo bound, who warped from Calais Harbor to plunge into the thick reek of a Channel mist.\n\nA slight breeze blew from the eastward, and the highended, round-bodied craft rolled slowly down the Channel. The mist rose a little at times, so that they had sight of each other dipping and rising upon a sleek, oily sea, but again it would sink down, settling over the top, shrouding the great yard, and finally frothing over the deck until even the water alongside had vanished from their view and they were afloat on a little raft in an ocean of vapor. A thin cold rain was falling, and the archers were crowded under the shelter of the overhanging poop and forecastle, where some spent the hours at dice, some in sleep, and many in trimming their arrows or polishing their weapons.\n\nAt the farther end, seated on a barrel as a throne of honor, with trays and boxes of feathers around him, was Bartholomew the bowyer and Fletcher, a fat, bald-headed man, whose task it was to see that every man's tackle was as it should be, and who had the privilege of selling such extras as they might need. A group of archers with their staves and quivers filed before him with complaints or requests, while half a dozen of the seniors gathered at his back and listened with grinning faces to his comments and rebukes.\n\n\"Canst not string it?\" he was saying to a young bowman. \"Then surely the string is overshort or the stave overlong. It could not by chance be the fault of thy own baby arms more fit to draw on thy hosen than to dress a warbow. Thou lazy lurdan, thus is it strung!\" He seized the stave by the center in his right hand, leaned the end on the inside of his right foot, and then, pulling the upper nock down with the left hand, slid the eye of the string easily into place. \"Now I pray thee to unstring it again,\" handing it to the bowman.\n\nThe youth with an effort did so, but he was too slow in disengaging his fingers, and the string sliding down with a snap from the upper nock caught and pinched them sorely against the stave. A roar of laughter, like the clap of a wave, swept down the deck as the luckless bowman danced and wrung his hand.\n\n\"Serve thee well right, thou redeless fool!\" growled the old bowyer. \"So fine a bow is wasted in such hands. How now, Samkin? I can teach you little of your trade, I trow. Here is a bow dressed as it should be; but it would, as you say, be the better for a white band to mark the true nocking point in the center of this red wrapping of silk. Leave it and I will tend to it anon. And you, Wat? A fresh head on yonder stele? Lord, that a man should carry four trades under one hat, and be bowyer, fletcher, stringer and headmaker! Four men's work for old Bartholomew and one man's pay!\"\n\n\"Nay, say no more about that,\" growled an old wizened bowman, with a brown-parchment skin and little beady eyes. \"It is better in these days to mend a bow than to bend one. You who never looked a Frenchman in the face are pricked off for ninepence a day, and I, who have fought five stricken fields, can earn but fourpence.\"\n\n\"It is in my mind, John of Tuxford, that you have looked in the face more pots of mead than Frenchmen,\" said the old bowyer. \"I am swinking from dawn to night, while you are guzzling in an alestake. How now, youngster? Overbowed? Put your bow in the tiller. It draws at sixty pounds\u2014not a pennyweight too much for a man of your inches. Lay more body to it, lad, and it will come to you. If your bow be not stiff, how can you hope for a twenty-score flight. Feathers? Aye, plenty and of the best. Here, peacock at a groat each. Surely a dandy archer like you, Tom Beverley, with gold earrings in your ears, would have no feathering but peacocks?\"\n\n\"So the shaft fly straight, I care not of the feather,\" said the bowman, a tall young Yorkshireman, counting out pennies on the palm of his horny hand.\n\n\"Gray goose-feathers are but a farthing. These on the left are a halfpenny, for they are of the wild goose, and the second feather of a fenny goose is worth more than the pinion of a tame one. These in the brass tray are dropped feathers, and a dropped feather is better than a plucked one. Buy a score of these, lad, and cut them saddle-backed or swine-backed, the one for a dead shaft and the other for a smooth flyer, and no man in the company will swing a better-fletched quiver over his shoulder.\"\n\nIt chanced that the opinion of the bowyer on this and other points differed from that of Long Ned of Widdington, a surly straw-bearded Yorkshireman, who had listened with a sneering face to his counsel. Now he broke in suddenly upon the bowyer's talk. \"You would do better to sell bows than to try to teach others how to use them,\" said he; \"for indeed, Bartholomew, that head of thine has no more sense within it than it has hairs without. If you had drawn string for as many months as I have years you would know that a straight-cut feather flies smoother than a swine-backed, and pity it is that these young bowmen have none to teach them better!\"\n\nThis attack upon his professional knowledge touched the old bowyer on the raw. His fat face became suffused with blood and his eyes glared with fury as he turned upon the archer. \"You seven-foot barrel of lies!\" he cried. \"All-hallows be my aid, and I will teach you to open your slabbing mouth against me! Pluck forth your sword and stand out on yonder deck, that we may see who is the man of us twain. May I never twirl a shaft over my thumb nail if I do not put Bartholomew's mark upon your thick head!\"\n\nA score of rough voices joined at once in the quarrel, some upholding the bowyer and others taking the part of the North Countryman. A red-headed Dalesman snatched up a sword, but was felled by a blow from the fist of his neighbor. Instantly, with a buzz like a swarm of angry hornets, the bowmen were out on the deck; but ere a blow was struck Knolles was amongst them with granite face and eyes of fire.\n\n\"Stand apart, I say! I will warrant you enough fighting to cool your blood ere you see England once more. Loring, Hawthorn, cut any man down who raises his hand. Have you aught to say, you fox-haired rascal?\" He thrust his face within two inches of that of the red man who had first seized his sword. The fellow shrank back, cowed, from his fierce eyes. \"Now stint your noise, all of you, and stretch your long ears. Trumpeter, blow once more!\"\n\nA bugle call had been sounded every quarter of an hour so as to keep in touch with the other two vessels who were invisible in the fog. Now the high clear note rang out once more, the call of a fierce sea-creature to its mates, but no answer came back from the thick wall which pent them in. Again and again they called, and again and again with bated breath they waited for an answer.\n\n\"Where is the Shipman?\" asked Knolles. \"What is your name, fellow? Do you dare call yourself master-mariner?\"\n\n\"My name is Nat Dennis, fair sir,\" said the graybearded old seaman. \"It is thirty years since first I showed my cartel and blew trumpet for a crew at the water-gate of Southampton. If any man may call himself master-mariner, it is surely I.\"\n\n\"Where are our two ships?\"\n\n\"Nay, sir, who can say in this fog?\"\n\n\"Fellow, it was your place to hold them together.\"\n\n\"I have but the eyes God gave me, fair sir, and they cannot see through a cloud.\"\n\n\"Had it been fair, I, who am a soldier, could have kept them in company. Since it was foul, we looked to you, who are called a mariner, to do so. You have not done it. You have lost two of my ships ere the venture is begun.\"\n\n\"Nay, fair sir, I pray you to consider\u2014\"\n\n\"Enough words!\" said Knolles sternly. \"Words will not give me back my two hundred men. Unless I find them before I come to Saint-Malo, I swear by Saint Wilfrid of Ripon that it will be an evil day for you! Enough! Go forth and do what you may!\"\n\nFor five hours with a light breeze behind them they lurched through the heavy fog, the cold rain still matting their beards and shining on their faces. Sometimes they could see a circle of tossing water for a bowshot or so in each direction, and then the wreaths would crawl in upon them once more and bank them thickly round. They had long ceased to blow the trumpet for their missing comrades, but had hopes when clear weather came to find them still in sight. By the shipman's reckoning they were now about midway between the two shores.\n\nNigel was leaning against the bulwarks, his thoughts away in the dingle at Cosford and out on the heather-clad slopes of Hindhead, when something struck his ear. It was a thin clear clang of metal, pealing out high above the dull murmur of the sea, the creak of the boom and the flap of the sail. He listened, and again it was borne to his ear.\n\n\"Hark, my lord!\" said he to Sir Robert. \"Is there not a sound in the fog?\"\n\nThey both listened together with sidelong heads. Then it rang clearly forth once more, but this time in another direction. It had been on the bow; now it was on the quarter. Again it sounded, and again. Now it had moved to the other bow; now back to the quarter again; now it was near; and now so far that it was but a faint tinkle on the ear. By this time every man on board, seamen, archers and men-at-arms, were crowding the sides of the vessel. All round them there were noises in the darkness, and yet the wall of fog lay wet against their very faces. And the noises were such as were strange to their ears, always the same high musical clashing.\n\nThe old shipman shook his head and crossed himself.\n\n\"In thirty years upon the waters I have never heard the like,\" said he. \"The Devil is ever loose in a fog. Well is he named the Prince of Darkness.\"\n\nA wave of panic passed over the vessel, and these rough and hardy men who feared no mortal foe shook with terror at the shadows of their own minds. They stared into the cloud with blanched faces and fixed eyes, as though each instant some fearsome shape might break in upon them. And as they stared there came a gust of wind. For a moment the fog-bank rose and a circle of ocean lay before them.\n\nIt was covered with vessels. On all sides they lay thick upon its surface. They were huge caracks, highended and portly, with red sides and bulwarks carved and crusted with gold. Each had one great sail set and was driving down channel on the same course at the Basilisk. Their decks were thick with men, and from their high poops came the weird clashing which filled the air. For one moment they lay there, this wondrous fleet, surging slowly forward, framed in gray vapor. The next the clouds closed in and they had vanished from view. There was a long hush, and then a buzz of excited voices.\n\n\"The Spaniards!\" cried a dozen bowmen and sailors.\n\n\"I should have known it,\" said the shipman. \"I call to mind on the Biscay Coast how they would clash their cymbals after the fashion of the heathen Moor with whom they fight; but what would you have me do, fair sir? If the fog rises we are all dead men.\"\n\n\"There were thirty ships at the least,\" said Knolles, with a moody brow. \"If we have seen them I trow that they have also seen us. They will lay us aboard.\"\n\n\"Nay, fair sir, it is in my mind that our ship is lighter and faster than theirs. If the fog hold another hour we should be through them.\"\n\n\"Stand to your arms!\" yelled Knolles. \"Stand to your arms\u2014! They are on us!\"\n\nThe Basilisk had indeed been spied from the Spanish Admiral's ship before the fog closed down. With so light a breeze, and such a fog, he could not hope to find her under sail. But by an evil chance not a bowshot from the great Spanish carack was a low galley, thin and swift, with oars which could speed her against wind or tide. She also had seen the Basilisk and it was to her that the Spanish leader shouted his orders. For a few minutes she hunted through the fog, and then sprang out of it like a lean and stealthy beast upon its prey. It was the sight of the long dark shadow gliding after them which had brought that wild shout of alarm from the lips of the English knight. In another instant the starboard oars of the galley had been shipped, the sides of the two vessels grated together, and a stream of swarthy, red-capped Spaniards were swarming up the sides of the Basilisk and dropped with yells of triumph upon her deck.\n\nFor a moment it seemed as if the vessel was captured without a blow being struck, for the men of the English ship had run wildly in all directions to look for their arms. Scores of archers might be seen under the shadow of the forecastle and the poop bending their bowstaves to string them with the cords from their waterproof cases. Others were scrambling over saddles, barrels and cases in wild search of their quivers. Each as he came upon his arrows pulled out a few to lend to his less fortunate comrades. In mad haste the men-at-arms also were feeling and grasping in the dark corners, picking up steel caps which would not fit them, hurling them down on the deck, and snatching eagerly at any swords or spears that came their way.\n\nThe center of the ship was held by the Spaniards; and having slain all who stood before them, they were pressing up to either end before they were made to understand that it was no fat sheep but a most fierce old wolf which they had taken by the ears.\n\nIf the lesson was late, it was the more thorough. Attacked on both sides and hopelessly outnumbered, the Spaniards, who had never doubted that this little craft was a merchant-ship, were cut off to the last man. It was no fight, but a butchery. In vain the survivors ran screaming prayers to the saints and threw themselves down into the galley alongside. It also had been riddled with arrows from the poop of the Basilisk, and both the crew on the deck and the galley-slaves in the outriggers at either side lay dead in rows under the overwhelming shower from above. From stem to rudder every foot of her was furred with arrows. It was but a floating coffin piled with dead and dying men, which wallowed in the waves behind them as the Basilisk lurched onward and left her in the fog.\n\nIn their first rush on to the Basilisk, the Spaniards had seized six of the crew and four unarmed archers. Their throats had been cut and their bodies tossed overboard. Now the Spaniards who littered the deck, wounded and dead, were thrust over the side in the same fashion. One ran down into the hold and had to be hunted and killed squealing under the blows like a rat in the darkness. Within half an hour no sign was left of this grim meeting in the fog save for the crimson splashes upon bulwarks and deck. The archers, flushed and merry, were unstringing their bows once more, for in spite of the water glue the damp air took the strength from the cords. Some were hunting about for arrows which might have stuck inboard, and some tying up small injuries received in the scuffle. But an anxious shadow still lingered upon the face of Sir Robert, and he peered fixedly about him through the fog.\n\n\"Go among the archers, Hawthorne,\" said he to his Squire. \"Charge them on their lives to make no sound! You also, Loring. Go to the afterguard and say the same to them. We are lost if one of these great ships should spy us.\"\n\nFor an hour with bated breath they stole through the fleet, still hearing the cymbals clashing all round them, for in this way the Spaniards held themselves together. Once the wild music came from above their very prow, and so warned them to change their course. Once also a huge vessel loomed for an instant upon their quarter, but they turned two points away from her, and she blurred and vanished. Soon the cymbals were but a distant tinkling, and at last they died gradually away.\n\n\"It is none too soon,\" said the old shipman, pointing to a yellowish tint in the haze above them. \"See yonder! It is the sun which wins through. It will be here anon. Ah! said I not so?\"\n\nA sickly sun, no larger and far dimmer than the moon, had indeed shown its face, with cloud-wreaths smoking across it. As they looked up it waxed larger and brighter before their eyes\u2014a yellow halo spread round it, one ray broke through, and then a funnel of golden light poured down upon them, widening swiftly at the base. A minute later they were sailing on a clear blue sea with an azure cloud-flecked sky above their heads, and such a scene beneath it as each of them would carry in his memory while memory remained.\n\nThey were in mid-channel. The white and green coasts of Picardy and of Kent lay clear upon either side of them. The wide channel stretched in front, deepening from the light blue beneath their prow to purple on the far sky-line. Behind them was that thick bank of cloud from which they had just burst. It lay like a gray wall from east to west, and through it were breaking the high shadowy forms of the ships of Spain. Four of them had already emerged, their red bodies, gilded sides and painted sails shining gloriously in the evening sun. Every instant a fresh golden spot grew out of the fog, which blazed like a star for an instant, and then surged forward to show itself as the brazen beak of the great red vessel which bore it. Looking back, the whole bank of cloud was broken by the widespread line of noble ships which were bursting through it. The Basilisk lay a mile or more in front of them and two miles clear of their wing. Five miles farther off, in the direction of the French coast, two other small ships were running down Channel. A cry of joy from Robert Knolles and a hearty prayer of gratitude to the saints from the old shipman hailed them as their missing comrades, the cog Thomas and the Grace Dieu.\n\nBut fair as was the view of their lost friends, and wondrous the appearance of the Spanish ships, it was not on those that the eyes of the men of the Basilisk were chiefly bent. A greater sight lay before them\u2014a sight which brought them clustering to the forecastle with eager eyes and pointing fingers. The English fleet was coming forth from the Winchelsea Coast. Already before the fog lifted a fast galleass had brought the news down Channel that the Spanish were on the sea, and the King's fleet was under way. Now their long array of sails, gay with the coats and colors of the towns which had furnished them, lay bright against the Kentish coast from Dungeness Point to Rye. Nine and twenty ships were there from Southampton, Shoreham, Winchelsea, Hastings, Rye, Hythe, Romney, Folkestone, Deal, Dover and Sandwich. With their great sails slued round to catch the wind they ran out, whilst the Spanish, like the gallant foes that they have ever been, turned their heads landward to meet them. With flaunting banners and painted sails, blaring trumpets and clashing cymbals, the two glittering fleets, dipping and rising on the long Channel swell, drew slowly together.\n\nKing Edward had been lying all day in his great ship the Philippa, a mile out from the Camber Sands, waiting for the coming of the Spaniards. Above the huge sail which bore the royal arms flew the red cross of England. Along the bulwarks were shown the shields of forty knights, the flower of English chivalry, and as many pennons floated from the deck. The high ends of the ship glittered with the weapons of the men-at-arms, and the waist was crammed with the archers. From time to time a crash of nakers and blare of trumpets burst from the royal ship, and was answered by her great neighbors, the Lion on which the Black Prince flew his flag, the Christopher with the Earl of Suffolk, the Salle du Roi of Robert of Namur, and the Grace Marie of Sir Thomas Holland. Farther off lay the White Swan, bearing the arms of Mowbray, the Palmer of Deal, flying the Black Head of Audley, and the Kentish man under the Lord Beauchamp. The rest lay, anchored but ready, at the mouth of Winchelsea Creek.\n\nThe King sat upon a keg in the fore part of his ship, with little John of Richmond, who was no more than a schoolboy, perched upon his knee. Edward was clad in the black velvet jacket which was his favorite garb, and wore a small brown-beaver hat with a white plume at the side. A rich cloak of fur turned up with miniver drooped from his shoulders. Behind him were a score of his knights, brilliant in silks and sarcenets, some seated on an upturned boat and some swinging their legs from the bulwark.\n\nIn front stood John Chandos in a party-colored jupon, one foot raised upon the anchor-stock, picking at the strings of his guitar and singing a song which he had learned at Marienburg when last he helped the Teutonic knights against the heathen. The King, his knights, and even the archers in the waist below them, laughed at the merry lilt and joined lustily in the chorus, while the men of the neighboring ships leaned over the side to hearken to the deep chant rolling over the waters.\n\nBut there came a sudden interruption to the song. A sharp, harsh shout came down from the lookout stationed in the circular top at the end of the mast. \"I spy a sail\u2014two sails!\" he cried.\n\nJohn Bunce the King's shipman shaded his eyes and stared at the long fog-bank which shrouded the northern channel. Chandos, with his fingers over the strings of his guitar, the King, the knights, all gazed in the same direction. Two small dark shapes had burst forth, and then after some minutes a third.\n\n\"Surely they are the Spaniards?\" said the King.\n\n\"Nay, sire,\" the seaman answered, \"the Spaniards are greater ships and are painted red. I know not what these may be.\"\n\n\"But I could hazard a guess!\" cried Chandos. \"Surely they are the three ships with my own men on their way to Brittany.\"\n\n\"You have hit it, John,\" said the King. \"But look, I pray you! What in the name of the Virgin is that?\"\n\nFour brilliant stars of flashing light had shone out from different points of the cloud-bank. The next instant as many tall ships had swooped forth into the sunshine. A fierce shout rang from the King's ship, and was taken up all down the line, until the whole coast from Dungeness to Winchelsea echoed the warlike greeting. The King sprang up with a joyous face.\n\n\"The game is afoot, my friends!\" said he. \"Dress, John! Dress, Walter! Quick all of you! Squires, bring the harness! Let each tend to himself, for the time is short.\"\n\nA strange sight it was to see these forty nobles tearing off their clothes and littering the deck with velvets and satins, whilst the squire of each, as busy as an ostler before a race, stooped and pulled and strained and riveted, fastening the bassinets, the legpieces, the front and the back plates, until the silken courtier had become the man of steel. When their work was finished, there stood a stern group of warriors where the light dandies had sung and jested round Sir John's guitar. Below in orderly silence the archers were mustering under their officers and taking their allotted stations. A dozen had swarmed up to their hazardous post in the little tower in the tops.\n\n\"Bring wine, Nicholas!\" cried the King. \"Gentlemen, ere you close your visors I pray you to take a last rouse with me. You will be dry enough, I promise you, before your lips are free once more. To what shall we drink, John?\"\n\n\"To the men of Spain,\" said Chandos, his sharp face peering like a gaunt bird through the gap in his helmet. \"May their hearts be stout and their spirits high this day!\"\n\n\"Well said, John!\" cried the King, and the knights laughed joyously as they drank. \"Now, fair sirs, let each to his post! I am warden here on the forecastle. Do you, John, take charge of the afterguard. Walter, James, William, Fitzallan, Goldesborough, Reginald\u2014you will stay with me! John, you may pick whom you will and the others will bide with the archers. Now bear straight at the center, master-shipman. Ere yonder sun sets we will bring a red ship back as a gift to our ladies, or never look upon a lady's face again.\"\n\nThe art of sailing into a wind had not yet been invented, nor was there any fore-and-aft canvas, save for small headsails with which a vessel could be turned. Hence the English fleet had to take a long slant down channel to meet their enemies; but as the Spaniards coming before the wind were equally anxious to engage there was the less delay. With stately pomp and dignity, the two great fleets approached.\n\nIt chanced that one fine carack had outstripped its consorts and came sweeping along, all red and gold, with a fringe of twinkling steel, a good half-mile before the fleet. Edward looked at her with a kindling eye, for indeed she was a noble sight with the blue water creaming under her gilded prow.\n\n\"This is a most worthy and debonair vessel, Master Bunce,\" said he to the shipman beside him. \"I would fain have a tilt with her. I pray you to hold us straight that we may bear her down.\"\n\n\"If I hold her straight, then one or other must sink, and it may be both,\" the seaman answered.\n\n\"I doubt not that with the help of our Lady we shall do our part,\" said the King. \"Hold her straight, master-shipman, as I have told you.\"\n\nNow the two vessels were within arrow flight, and the bolts from the crossbowmen pattered upon the English ship. These short thick devil's darts were everywhere humming like great wasps through the air, crashing against the bulwarks, beating upon the deck, ringing loudly on the armor of the knights, or with a soft muffled thud sinking to the socket in a victim.\n\nThe bowmen along either side of the Philippa had stood motionless waiting for their orders, but now there was a sharp shout from their leader, and every string twanged together. The air was full of their harping, together with the swish of the arrows, the long-drawn keening of the bowmen and the short deep bark of the under-officers. \"Steady, steady! Loose steady! Shoot wholly together! Twelve score paces! Ten score! Now eight! Shoot wholly together!\" Their gruff shouts broke through the high shrill cry like the deep roar of a wave through the howl of the wind.\n\nAs the two great ships hurtled together the Spaniard turned away a few points so that the blow should be a glancing one. None the less it was terrific. A dozen men in the tops of the carack were balancing a huge stone with the intention of dropping it over on the English deck. With a scream of horror they saw the mast cracking beneath them. Over it went, slowly at first, then faster, until with a crash it came down on its side, sending them flying like stones from a sling far out into the sea. A swath of crushed bodies lay across the deck where the mast had fallen. But the English ship had not escaped unscathed. Her mast held, it is true, but the mighty shock not only stretched every man flat upon the deck, but had shaken a score of those who lined her sides into the sea. One bowman was hurled from the top, and his body fell with a dreadful crash at the very side of the prostrate King upon the forecastle. Many were thrown down with broken arms and legs from the high castles at either end into the waist of the ship. Worst of all, the seams had been opened by the crash and the water was gushing in at a dozen places.\n\nBut these were men of experience and of discipline, men who had already fought together by sea and by land, so that each knew his place and his duty. Those who could staggered to their feet and helped up a score or more of knights who were rolling and clashing in the scuppers unable to rise for the weight of their armor. The bowmen formed up as before. The seamen ran to the gaping seams with oakum and with tar. In ten minutes order had been restored and the Philippa, though shaken and weakened, was ready for battle once more. The King was glaring round him like a wounded boar.\n\n\"Grapple my ship with that,\" he cried, pointing to the crippled Spaniard, \"for I would have possession of her!\"\n\nBut already the breeze had carried them past it, and a dozen Spanish ships were bearing down full upon them.\n\n\"We cannot win back to her, lest we show our flank to these others,\" said the shipman.\n\n\"Let her go her way!\" cried the knights. \"You shall have better than her.\"\n\n\"By Saint George! you speak the truth,\" said the King, \"for she is ours when we have time to take her. These also seem very worthy ships which are drawing up to us, and I pray you, master-shipman, that you will have a tilt with the nearest.\"\n\nA great carack was within a bowshot of them and crossing their bows. Bunce looked up at his mast, and he saw that already it was shaken and drooping. Another blow and it would be over the side and his ship a helpless log upon the water. He jammed his helm round therefore, and ran his ship alongside the Spaniard, throwing out his hooks and iron chains as he did so.\n\nThey, no less eager, grappled the Philippa both fore and aft, and the two vessels, linked tightly together, surged slowly over the long blue rollers. Over their bulwarks hung a cloud of men locked together in a desperate struggle, sometimes surging forward on to the deck of the Spaniard, sometimes recoiling back on to the King's ship, reeling this way and that, with the swords flickering like silver flames above them, while the long-drawn cry of rage and agony swelled up like a wolf's howl to the calm blue heaven above them.\n\nBut now ship after ship of the English had come up, each throwing its iron over the nearest Spaniard and striving to board her high red sides. Twenty ships were drifting in furious single combat after the manner of the Philippa, until the whole surface of the sea was covered with a succession of these desperate duels. The dismasted carack, which the King's ship had left behind it, had been carried by the Earl of Suffolk's Christopher, and the water was dotted with the heads of her crew. An English ship had been sunk by a huge stone discharged from an engine, and her men also were struggling in the waves, none having leisure to lend them a hand. A second English ship was caught between two of the Spanish vessels and overwhelmed by a rush of boarders so that not a man of her was left alive. On the other hand, Mowbray and Audley had each taken the caracks which were opposed to them, and the battle in the center, after swaying this way and that, was turning now in favor of the Islanders.\n\nThe Black Prince, with the Lion, the Grace Marie and four other ships had swept round to turn the Spanish flank; but the movement was seen, and the Spaniards had ten ships with which to meet it, one of them their great carack the St. Iago di Compostella. To this ship the Prince had attached his little cog and strove desperately to board her, but her side was so high and the defense so desperate that his men could never get beyond her bulwarks but were hurled down again and again with a clang and clash to the deck beneath. Her side bristled with crossbowmen, who shot straight down on to the packed waist of the Lion, so that the dead lay there in heaps. But the most dangerous of all was a swarthy black-bearded giant in the tops, who crouched so that none could see him, but rising every now and then with a huge lump of iron between his hands, hurled it down with such force that nothing would stop it. Again and again these ponderous bolts crashed through the deck and hurtled down into the bottom of the ship, starting the planks and shattering all that came in their way.\n\nThe Prince, clad in that dark armor which gave him his name, was directing the attack from the poop when the shipman rushed wildly up to him with fear on his face.\n\n\"Sire!\" he cried. \"The ship may not stand against these blows. A few more will sink her! Already the water floods inboard.\"\n\nThe Prince looked up, and as he did so the shaggy beard showed once more and two brawny arms swept downward. A great slug, whizzing down, beat a gaping hole in the deck, and fell rending and riving into the hold below. The master-mariner tore his grizzled hair.\n\n\"Another leak!\" he cried. \"I pray to Saint Leonard to bear us up this day! Twenty of my shipmen are bailing with buckets, but the water rises on them fast. The vessel may not float another hour.\"\n\nThe Prince had snatched a crossbow from one of his attendants and leveled it at the Spaniard's tops. At the very instant when the seaman stood erect with a fresh bar in his hands, the bolt took him full in the face, and his body fell forward over the parapet, hanging there head downward. A howl of exultation burst from the English at the sight, answered by a wild roar of anger from the Spaniards. A seaman had run from the Lion's hold and whispered in the ear of the shipman. He turned an ashen face upon the Prince.\n\n\"It is even as I say, sire. The ship is sinking beneath our feet!\" he cried.\n\n\"The more need that we should gain another,\" said he. \"Sir Henry Stokes, Sir Thomas Stourton, William, John of Clifton, here lies our road! Advance my banner, Thomas de Mohun! On, and the day is ours!\"\n\nBy a desperate scramble a dozen men, the Prince at their head, gained a footing on the edge of the Spaniard's deck. Some slashed furiously to clear a space, others hung over, clutching the rail with one hand and pulling up their comrades from below. Every instant that they could hold their own their strength increased, till twenty had become thirty and thirty forty, when of a sudden the newcomers, still reaching forth to their comrades below, saw the deck beneath them reel and vanish in a swirling sheet of foam. The Prince's ship had foundered.\n\nA yell went up from the Spaniards as they turned furiously upon the small band who had reached their deck. Already the Prince and his men had carried the poop, and from that high station they beat back their swarming enemies. But crossbow darts pelted and thudded among their ranks till a third of their number were stretched upon the planks. Lined across the deck they could hardly keep an unbroken front to the leaping, surging crowd who pressed upon them. Another rush, or another after that, must assuredly break them, for these dark men of Spain, hardened by an endless struggle with the Moors, were fierce and stubborn fighters. But hark to this sudden roar upon the farther side of them\u2014\n\n\"Saint George! Saint George! A Knolles to the rescue!\" A small craft had run alongside and sixty men had swarmed on the deck of the St. Iago. Caught between two fires, the Spaniards wavered and broke. The fight became a massacre. Down from the poop sprang the Prince's men. Up from the waist rushed the new-corners. There were five dreadful minutes of blows and screams and prayers with struggling figures clinging to the bulwarks and sullen splashes into the water below. Then it was over, and a crowd of weary, overstrained men leaned panting upon their weapons, or lay breathless and exhausted upon the deck of the captured carack.\n\nThe Prince had pulled up his visor and lowered his beaver. He smiled proudly as he gazed around him and wiped his streaming face. \"Where is the shipman?\" he asked. \"Let him lead us against another ship.\"\n\n\"Nay, sire, the shipman and all his men have sunk in the Lion,\" said Thomas de Mohun, a young knight of the West Country, who carried the standard. \"We have lost our ship and the half of our following. I fear that we can fight no more.\"\n\n\"It matters the less since the day is already ours,\" said the Prince, looking over the sea. \"My noble father's royal banner flies upon yonder Spaniard. Mowbray, Audley, Suffolk, Beauchamp, Namur, Tracey, Stafford, Arundel, each has his flag over a scarlet carack, even as mine floats over this. See, yonder squadron is already far beyond our reach. But surely we owe thanks to you who came at so perilous a moment to our aid. Your face I have seen, and your coat-armor also, young sir, though I cannot lay my tongue to your name. Let me know that I may thank you.\"\n\nHe had turned to Nigel, who stood flushed and joyous at the head of the boarders from the Basilisk.\n\n\"I am but a Squire, sire, and can claim no thanks, for there is nothing that I have done. Here is our leader.\"\n\nThe Prince's eyes fell upon the shield charged with the Black Raven and the stern young face of him who bore it. \"Sir Robert Knolles,\" said he, \"I had thought you were on your way to Brittany.\"\n\n\"I was so, sire, when I had the fortune to see this battle as I passed.\"\n\nThe Prince laughed. \"It would indeed be to ask too much, Robert, that you should keep on your course when much honor was to be gathered so close to you. But now I pray you that you will come back with us to Winchelsea, for well I know that my father would fain thank you for what you have done this day.\"\n\nBut Robert Knolles shook his head. \"I have your father's command, sire, and without his order I may not go against it. Our people are hard-pressed in Brittany, and it is not for me to linger on the way. I pray you, sire, if you must needs mention me to the King, to crave his pardon that I should have broken my journey thus.\"\n\n\"You are right, Robert. God-speed you on your way! And I would that I were sailing under your banner, for I see clearly that you will take your people where they may worshipfully win worship. Perchance I also maybe in Brittany before the year is past.\"\n\nThe Prince turned to the task of gathering his weary people together, and the Basilisks passed over the side once more and dropped down on to their own little ship. They poled her off from the captured Spaniard and set their sail with their prow for the south. Far ahead of them were their two consorts, beating towards them in the hope of giving help, while down Channel were a score of Spanish ships with a few of the English vessels hanging upon their skirts. The sun lay low on the water, and its level beams glowed upon the scarlet and gold of fourteen great caracks, each flying the cross of Saint George, and towering high above the cluster of English ships which, with brave waving of flags and blaring of music, were moving slowly towards the Kentish coast." + }, + { + "title": "HOW BLACK SIMON CLAIMED FORFEIT FROM THE KING OF SARK", + "text": "For a day and a half the small fleet made good progress, but on the second morning, after sighting Cape de la Hague, there came a brisk land wind which blew them out to sea. It grew into a squall with rain and fog so that they were two more days beating back. Next morning they found themselves in a dangerous rock studded sea with a small island upon their starboard quarter. It was girdled with high granite cliffs of a reddish hue, and slopes of bright green grassland lay above them. A second smaller island lay beside it. Dennis the shipman shook his head as he looked.\n\n\"That is Brechou,\" said he, \"and the larger one is the Island of Sark. If ever I be cast away, I pray the saints that I may not be upon yonder coast!\"\n\nKnolles gazed across at it. \"You say well, master-shipman,\" said he. \"It does appear to be a rocky and perilous spot.\"\n\n\"Nay, it is the rocky hearts of those who dwell upon it that I had in my mind,\" the old sailor answered. \"We are well safe in three goodly vessels, but had we been here in a small craft I make no doubt that they would have already had their boats out against us.\"\n\n\"Who then are these people, and how do they live upon so small and windswept an island?\" asked the soldier.\n\n\"They do not live from the island, fair sir, but from what they can gather upon the sea around it. They are broken folk from all countries, justice-fliers, prison-breakers, reavers, escaped bondsmen, murderers and staff-strikers who have made their way to this outland place and hold it against all comers. There is one here who could tell you of them and of their ways, for he was long time prisoner amongst them.\" The seaman pointed to Black Simon, the dark man from Norwich, who was leaning against the side lost in moody thought and staring with a brooding eye at the distant shore.\n\n\"How now, fellow?\" asked Knolles. \"What is this I hear? Is it indeed sooth that you have been a captive upon this island?\"\n\n\"It is true, fair sir. For eight months I have been servant to the man whom they call their King. His name is La Muette, and he comes from Jersey nor is there under God's sky a man whom I have more desire to see.\"\n\n\"Has he then mishandled you?\"\n\nBlack Simon gave a wry smile and pulled off his jerkin. His lean sinewy back was waled and puckered with white scars. \"He has left his sign of hand upon me,\" said he. \"He swore that he would break me to his will, and thus he tried to do it. But most I desire to see him because he hath lost a wager to me and I would fain be paid.\"\n\n\"This is a strange saying,\" said Knolles. \"What is this wager, and why should he pay you?\"\n\n\"It is but a small matter,\" Simon answered; \"but I am a poor man and the payment would be welcome. Should it have chanced that we stopped at this island I should have craved your leave that I go ashore and ask for that which I have fairly won.\"\n\nSir Robert Knolles laughed. \"This business tickleth my fancy,\" said he. \"As to stopping at the island, this shipman tells me that we must needs wait a day and a night, for that we have strained our planks. But if you should go ashore, how will you be sure that you will be free to depart, or that you will see this King of whom you speak?\"\n\nBlack Simon's dark face was shining with a fierce joy. \"Fair sir, I will ever be your debtor if you will let me go. Concerning what you ask, I know this island even as I know the streets of Norwich, as you may well believe seeing that it is but a small place and I upon it for near a year. Should I land after dark, I could win my way to the King's house, and if he be not dead or distraught with drink I could have speech with him alone, for I know his ways and his hours and how he may be found. I would ask only that Aylward the archer may go with me, that I may have one friend at my side if things should chance to go awry.\"\n\nKnolles thought awhile. \"It is much that you ask,\" said he, \"for by God's truth I reckon that you and this friend of yours are two of my men whom I would be least ready to lose. I have seen you both at grips with the Spaniards and I know you. But I trust you, and if we must indeed stop at this accursed place, then you may do as you will. If you have deceived me, or if this is a trick by which you design to leave me, then God be your friend when next we meet, for man will be of small avail!\"\n\nIt proved that not only the seams had to be calked but that the cog Thomas was out of fresh water. The ships moored therefore near the Isle of Brechou, where springs were to be found. There were no people upon this little patch, but over on the farther island many figures could be seen watching them, and the twinkle of steel from among them showed that they were armed men. One boat had ventured forth and taken a good look at them, but had hurried back with the warning that they were too strong to be touched.\n\nBlack Simon found Aylward seated under the poop with his back, against Bartholomew the bowyer. He was whistling merrily as he carved a girl's face upon the horn of his bow.\n\n\"My friend,\" said Simon, \"will you come ashore to-night\u2014for I have need of your help?\"\n\nAylward crowed lustily. \"Will I come, Simon? By my hilt, I shall be right glad to put my foot on the good brown earth once more. All my life I have trod it, and yet I would never have learned its worth had I not journeyed in these cursed ships. We will go on shore together, Simon, and we will seek out the women, if there be any there, for it seems a long year since I heard their gentle voices, and my eyes are weary of such faces as Bartholomew's or thine.\"\n\nSimon's grim features relaxed into a smile. \"The only face that you will see ashore, Samkin, will bring you small comfort,\" said he, \"and I warn you that this is no easy errand, but one which may be neither sweet nor fair, for if these people take us our end will be a cruel one.\"\n\n\"By my hilt,\" said Aylward, \"I am with you, gossip, wherever you may go! Say no more, therefore, for I am weary of living like a cony in a hole, and I shall be right glad to stand by you in your venture.\"\n\nThat night, two hours after dark, a small boat put forth from the Basilisk. It contained Simon, Aylward and two seamen. The soldiers carried their swords, and Black Simon bore a brown biscuit-bag over his shoulder. Under his direction the rowers skirted the dangerous surf which beat against the cliffs until they came to a spot where an outlying reef formed a breakwater. Within was a belt of calm water and a shallow cover with a sloping beach. Here the boat was dragged up and the seamen were ordered to wait, while Simon and Aylward started on their errand.\n\nWith the assured air of a man who knows exactly where he is and whither he is going, the man-at-arms began to clamber up a narrow fern-lined cleft among the rocks. It was no easy ascent in the darkness, but Simon climbed on like an old dog hot upon a scent, and the panting Aylward struggled after as best he might. At last they were at the summit and the archer threw himself down upon the grass.\n\n\"Nay, Simon, I have not enough breath to blow out a candle,\" said he. \"Stint your haste for a minute, since we have a long night before us. Surely this man is a friend indeed, if you hasten so to see him.\"\n\n\"Such a friend,\" Simon answered, \"that I have often dreamed of our next meeting. Now before that moon has set it will have come.\"\n\n\"Had it been a wench I could have understood it,\" said Aylward. \"By these ten finger-bones, if Mary of the mill or little Kate of Compton had waited me on the brow of this cliff, I should have come up it and never known it was there. But surely I see houses and hear voices over yonder in the shadow?\"\n\n\"It is their town,\" whispered Simon. \"There are a hundred as bloody-minded cutthroats as are to be found in Christendom beneath those roofs. Hark to that!\"\n\nA fierce burst of laughter came out of the darkness, followed by a long cry of pain.\n\n\"All-hallows be with us!\" cried Aylward. \"What is that?\"\n\n\"As like as not some poor devil has fallen into their clutches, even as I did. Come this way, Samkin, for there is a peat-cutting where we may hide. Aye, here it is, but deeper and broader than of old. Now follow me close, for if we keep within it we shall find ourselves a stone cast off the King's house.\"\n\nTogether they crept along the dark cutting. Suddenly Simon seized Aylward by the shoulder and pushed him into the shadow of the bank. Crouching in the darkness, they heard footsteps and voices upon the farther side of the trench. Two men sauntered along it and stopped almost at the very spot where the comrades were lying. Aylward could see their dark figures outlined against the starry sky.\n\n\"Why should you scold, Jacques,\" said one of them, speaking a strange half-French, half-English lingo. \"Le diable t'emporte for a grumbling rascal. You won a woman and I got nothing. What more would you have?\"\n\n\"You will have your chance off the next ship, mon garcon, but mine is passed. A woman, it is true\u2014an old peasant out of the fields, with a face as yellow as a kite's claw. But Gaston, who threw a nine against my eight, got as fair a little Normandy lass as ever your eyes have seen. Curse the dice, I say! And as to my woman, I will sell her to you for a firkin of Gascony.\"\n\n\"I have no wine to spare, but I will give you a keg of apples,\" said the other. \"I had it out of the Peter and Paul, the Falmouth boat that struck in Creux Bay.\"\n\n\"Well, well your apples may be the worse for keeping, but so is old Marie, and we can cry quits on that. Come round and drink a cup over the bargain.\"\n\nThey shuffled onward in the darkness.\n\n\"Heard you ever such villainy?\" cried Aylward, breathing fierce and hard. \"Did you hear them, Simon? A woman for a keg of apples! And my heart's root is sad for the other one, the girl of Normandy. Surely we can land to-morrow and burn all these water-rats out of their nest.\"\n\n\"Nay, Sir Robert will not waste time or strength ere he reach Brittany.\"\n\n\"Sure I am that if my little master Squire Loring had the handling of it, every woman on this island would be free ere another day had passed.\"\n\n\"I doubt it not,\" said Simon. \"He is one who makes an idol of woman, after the manner of those crazy knight errants. But Sir Robert is a true soldier and hath only his purpose in view.\"\n\n\"Simon,\" said Aylward, \"the light is not overgood and the place is cramped for sword-play, but if you will step out into the open I will teach you whether my master is a true soldier or not.\"\n\n\"Tut, man! you are as foolish yourself,\" said Simon. \"Here we are with our work in hand, and yet you must needs fall out with me on our way to it. I say nothing against your master save that he hath the way of his fellows who follow dreams and fancies. But Knolles looks neither to right nor left and walks forward to his mark. Now, let us on, for the time passes.\"\n\n\"Simon, your words are neither good nor fair. When we are back on shipboard we will speak further of this matter. Now lead on, I pray you, and let us see some more of this ten-devil island.\"\n\nFor half a mile Simon led the way until they came to a large house which stood by itself. Peering at it from the edge of the cutting, Aylward could see that it was made from the wreckage of many vessels, for at each corner a prow was thrust out. Lights blazed within, and there came the sound of a strong voice singing a gay song which was taken up by a dozen others in the chorus.\n\n\"All is well, lad!\" whispered Simon in great delight. \"That is the voice of the King. It is the very song he used to sing. 'Les deux filles de Pierre.' 'Fore God, my back tingles at the very sound of it. Here we will wait until his company take their leave.\"\n\nHour after hour they crouched in the peat-cutting, listening to the noisy songs of the revelers within, some French, some English, and all growing fouler and less articulate as the night wore on. Once a quarrel broke out and the clamor was like a cageful of wild beasts at feeding-time. Then a health was drunk and there was much stamping and cheering.\n\nOnly once was the long vigil broken. A woman came forth from the house and walked up and down, with her face sunk upon her breast. She was tall and slender, but her features could not be seen for a wimple over her head. Weary sadness could be read in her bowed back and dragging steps. Once only they saw her throw her two hands up to Heaven as one who is beyond human aid. Then she passed slowly into the house again. A moment later the door of the hall was flung open, and a shouting stumbling throng came crowding forth, with whoop and yell, into the silent night. Linking arms and striking up a chorus, they marched past the peat-cutting, their voices dwindling slowly away as they made for their homes.\n\n\"Now, Samkin, now!\" cried Simon, and jumping out from the hiding-place he made for the door. It had not yet been fastened. The two comrades sprang inside. Then Simon drew the bolts so that none might interrupt them.\n\nA long table littered with flagons and beakers lay before them. It was lit up by a line of torches, which flickered and smoked in their iron sconces. At the farther end a solitary man was seated. His head rested upon his two hands, as if he were befuddled with wine, but at the harsh sound of the snapping bolts he raised his face and looked angrily around him. It was a strange powerful head, tawny and shaggy like a lion's, with a tangled beard and a large harsh face, bloated and blotched with vice. He laughed as the newcomers entered, thinking that two of his boon companions had returned to finish a flagon. Then he stared hard and he passed his hand over his eyes like one who thinks he may be dreaming.\n\n\"Mon Dieu!\" he cried. \"Who are you and whence come you at this hour of the night? Is this the way to break into our royal presence?\"\n\nSimon approached up one side of the table and Aylward up the other. When they were close to the King, the man-at-arms plucked a torch from its socket and held it to his own face. The King staggered back with a cry, as he gazed at that grim visage.\n\n\"Le diable noir!\" he cried. \"Simon, the Englishman! What make you here?\"\n\nSimon put his hand upon his shoulder. \"Sit here!\" said he, and he forced the King into his seat. \"Do you sit on the farther side of him, Aylward. We make a merry group, do we not? Often have I served at this table, but never did I hope to drink at it. Fill your cup, Samkin, and pass the flagon.\"\n\nThe King looked from one to the other with terror in his bloodshot eyes. \"What would you do?\" he asked. \"Are you mad, that you should come here. One shout and you are at my mercy.\"\n\n\"Nay, my friend, I have lived too long in your house not to know the ways of it. No man-servant ever slept beneath your roof, for you feared lest your throat would be cut in the night-time. You may shout and shout, if it so please you. It chanced that I was passing on my way from England in those ships which lie off La Brechou, and I thought I would come in and have speech with you.\"\n\n\"Indeed, Simon, I am right glad to see you,\" said the King, cringing away from the fierce eyes of the soldier. \"We were good friends in the past, were we not, and I cannot call to mind that I have ever done you injury. When you made your way to England by swimming to the Levantine there was none more glad in heart than I!\"\n\n\"If I cared to doff my doublet I could show you the marks of what your friendship has done for me in the past,\" said Simon. \"It is printed on my back as clearly as on my memory. Why, you foul dog, there are the very rings upon the wall to which my hands were fastened, and there the stains upon the boards on which my blood has dripped! Is it not so, you king of butchers?\"\n\nThe pirate chief turned whiter still. \"It may be that life here was somewhat rough, Simon, but if I have wronged you in anyway, I will surely make amends. What do you ask?\"\n\n\"I ask only one thing, and I have come hither that I may get it. It is that you pay me forfeit for that you have lost your wager.\"\n\n\"My wager, Simon! I call to mind no wager.\"\n\n\"But I will call it to your mind, and then I will take my payment. Often have you sworn that you would break my courage. 'By my head!' you have cried to me. 'You will crawl at my feet!' and again: 'I will wager my head that I will tame you!' Yes, yes, a score of times you have said so. In my heart, as I listened, I have taken up your gage. And now, dog, you have lost and I am here to claim the forfeit.\"\n\nHis long heavy sword flew from its sheath. The King, with a howl of despair, flung his arms round him, and they rolled together under the table. Aylward sat with a ghastly face, and his toes curled with horror at the sight, for he was still new to scenes of strife and his blood was too cold for such a deed. When Simon rose he tossed something into his bag and sheathed his bloody sword.\n\n\"Come, Samkin, our work is well done,\" said he.\n\n\"By my hilt, if I had known what it was I would have been less ready to come with you,\" said the archer. \"Could you not have clapped a sword in his fist and let him take his chance in the hall?\"\n\n\"Nay, Samkin, if you had such memories as I, you would have wished that he should die like a sheep and not like a man. What chance did he give me when he had the power? And why should I treat him better? But, Holy Virgin, what have we here?\"\n\nAt the farther end of the table a woman was standing. An open door behind her showed that she had come from the inner room of the house. By her tall figure the comrades knew that she was the same that they had already seen. Her face had once been fair, but now was white and haggard with wild dark eyes full of a hopeless terror and despair. Slowly she paced up the room, her gaze fixed not upon the comrades, but upon the dreadful thing beneath the table. Then as she stooped and was sure she burst into loud laughter and clapped her hands.\n\n\"Who shall say there is no God?\" she cried. \"Who shall say that prayer is unavailing? Great sir, brave sir, let me kiss that conquering hand!\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, dame, stand back! Well, if you must needs have one of them, take this which is the clean one.\"\n\n\"It is the other I crave\u2014that which is red with his blood! Oh! joyful night when my lips have been wet with it! Now I can die in peace!\"\n\n\"We must go, Aylward,\" said Simon. \"In another hour the dawn will have broken. In daytime a rat could not cross this island and pass unseen. Come, man, and at once!\"\n\nBut Aylward was at the woman's side. \"Come with us, fair dame,\" said he. \"Surely we can, at least, take you from this island, and no such change can be for the worse.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" said she, \"the saints in Heaven cannot help me now until they take me to my rest. There is no place for me in the world beyond, and all my friends were slain on the day I was taken. Leave me, brave men, and let me care for myself. Already it lightens in the east, and black will be your fate if you are taken. Go, and may the blessing of one who was once a holy nun go with you and guard you from danger!\"\n\nSir Robert Knolles was pacing the deck in the early morning, when he heard the sound of oars, and there were his two night-birds climbing up the side.\n\n\"So, fellow,\" said he, \"have you had speech with the King of Sark?\"\n\n\"Fair sir, I have seen him.\"\n\n\"And he has paid his forfeit?\"\n\n\"He has paid it, sir!\"\n\nKnolles looked with curiosity at the bag which Simon bore. \"What carry you there?\" he asked.\n\n\"The stake that he has lost.\"\n\n\"What was it then? A goblet? A silver plate?\"\n\nFor answer Simon opened his bag and shook it on the deck.\n\nSir Robert turned away with a whistle. \"'Fore God!\" said he, \"it is in my mind that I carry some hard men with me to Brittany.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW A SQUIRE OF ENGLAND MET A SQUIRE OF FRANCE", + "text": "Sir Robert Knolles with his little fleet had sighted the Breton coast near Cancale; they had rounded the Point du Grouin, and finally had sailed past the port of St. Malo and down the long narrow estuary of the Rance until they were close to the old walled city of Dinan, which was held by that Montfort faction whose cause the English had espoused. Here the horses had been disembarked, the stores were unloaded, and the whole force encamped outside the city, whilst the leaders waited for news as to the present state of affairs, and where there was most hope of honor and profit.\n\nThe whole of France was feeling the effects of that war with England which had already lasted some ten years, but no Province was in so dreadful a condition as this unhappy land of Brittany. In Normandy or Picardy the inroads of the English were periodical with intervals of rest between; but Brittany was torn asunder by constant civil war apart from the grapple of the two great combatants, so that there was no surcease of her sufferings. The struggle had begun in 1341 through the rival claims of Montfort and of Blois to the vacant dukedom. England had taken the part of Montfort, France that of Blois. Neither faction was strong enough to destroy the other, and so after ten years of continual fighting, history recorded a long ineffectual list of surprises and ambushes, of raids and skirmishes, of towns taken and retaken, of alternate victory and defeat, in which neither party could claim a supremacy. It mattered nothing that Montfort and Blois had both disappeared from the scene, the one dead and the other taken by the English. Their wives caught up the swords which had dropped from the hands of their lords, and the long struggle went on even more savagely than before.\n\nIn the south and east the Blois faction held the country, and Nantes the capital was garrisoned and occupied by a strong French army. In the north and west the Montfort party prevailed, for the island kingdom was at their back and always fresh sails broke the northern sky-line bearing adventurers from over the channel.\n\nBetween these two there lay a broad zone comprising all the center of the country which was a land of blood and violence, where no law prevailed save that of the sword. From end to end it was dotted with castles, some held for one side, some for the other, and many mere robber strongholds, the scenes of gross and monstrous deeds, whose brute owners, knowing that they could never be called to account, made war upon all mankind, and wrung with rack and with flame the last shilling from all who fell into their savage hands. The fields had long been untilled. Commerce was dead. From Rennes in the east to Hennebon in the west, and from Dinan in the north to Nantes in the south, there was no spot where a man's life or a woman's honor was safe. Such was the land, full of darkness and blood, the saddest, blackest spot in Christendom, into which Knolles and his men were now advancing.\n\nBut there was no sadness in the young heart of Nigel, as he rode by the side of Knolles at the head of a clump of spears, nor did it seem to him that Fate had led him into an unduly arduous path. On the contrary, he blessed the good fortune which had sent him into so delightful a country, and it seemed to him as he listened to dreadful stories of robber barons, and looked round at the black scars of war which lay branded upon the fair faces of the hills, that no hero of romances or trouveur had ever journeyed through such a land of promise, with so fair a chance of knightly venture and honorable advancement.\n\nThe Red Ferret was one deed toward his vow. Surely a second, and perhaps a better, was to be found somewhere upon this glorious countryside. He had borne himself as the others had in the sea-fight, and could not count it to his credit where he had done no more than mere duty. Something beyond this was needed for such a deed as could be laid at the feet of the Lady Mary. But surely it was to be found here in fermenting war-distracted Brittany. Then with two done it would be strange if he could not find occasion for that third one, which would complete his service and set him free to look her in the face once more. With the great yellow horse curveting beneath him, his Guildford armor gleaming in the sun, his sword clanking against his stirrup-iron, and his father's tough ash-spear in his hand, he rode with a light heart and a smiling face, looking eagerly to right and to left for any chance which his good Fate might send.\n\nThe road from Dinan to Caulnes, along which the small army was moving, rose and dipped over undulating ground, with a bare marshy plain upon the left where the river Rance ran down to the sea, while upon the right lay a wooded country with a few wretched villages, so poor and sordid that they had nothing with which to tempt the spoiler. The peasants had left them at the first twinkle of a steel cap, and lurked at the edges of the woods, ready in an instant to dive into those secret recesses known only to themselves. These creatures suffered sorely at the hands of both parties, but when the chance came they revenged their wrongs on either in a savage way which brought fresh brutalities upon their heads.\n\nThe newcomers soon had a chance of seeing to what lengths they would go, for in the roadway near to Caulnes they came upon an English man-at-arms who had been waylaid and slain by them. How they had overcome him could not be told, but how they had slain him within his armor was horribly apparent, for they had carried such a rock as eight men could lift, and had dropped it upon him as he lay, so that he was spread out in his shattered case like a crab beneath a stone. Many a fist was shaken at the distant woods and many a curse hurled at those who haunted them, as the column of scowling soldiers passed the murdered man, whose badge of the Molene cross showed him to have been a follower of that House of Bentley, whose head, Sir Walter, was at that time leader of the British forces in the country.\n\nSir Robert Knolles had served in Brittany before, and he marshaled his men on the march with the skill and caution of the veteran soldier, the man who leaves as little as possible to chance, having too steadfast a mind to heed the fool who may think him overcautious. He had recruited a number of bowmen and men-at-arms at Dinan; so that his following was now close upon five hundred men. In front under his own leadership were fifty mounted lancers, fully armed and ready for any sudden attack. Behind them on foot came the archers, and a second body of mounted men closed up the rear. Out upon either flank moved small bodies of cavalry, and a dozen scouts, spread fanwise, probed every gorge and dingle in front of the column. So for three days he moved slowly down the Southern Road.\n\nSir Thomas Percy and Sir James Astley had ridden to the head of the column, and Knolles conferred with them as they marched concerning the plan of their campaign. Percy and Astley were young and hotheaded with wild visions of dashing deeds and knight errantry, but Knolles with cold, clear brain and purpose of iron held ever his object in view.\n\n\"By the holy Dunstan and all the saints of Lindisfarne!\" cried the fiery Borderer, \"it goes to my heart to ride forward when there are such honorable chances on either side of us. Have I not heard that the French are at Evran beyond the river, and is it not sooth that yonder castle, the towers of which I see above the woods, is in the hands of a traitor, who is false to his liege lord of Montford? There is little profit to be gained upon this road, for the folk seem to have no heart for war. Had we ventured as far over the marches of Scotland as we now are in Brittany, we should not have lacked some honorable venture or chance of winning worship.\"\n\n\"You say truth, Thomas,\" cried Astley, a red-faced and choleric young man. \"It is well certain that the French will not come to us, and surely it is the more needful that we go to them. In sooth, any soldier who sees us would smile that we should creep for three days along this road as though a thousand dangers lay before us, when we have but poor broken peasants to deal with.\"\n\nBut Robert Knolles shook his head. \"We know not what are in these woods, or behind these hills,\" said he, \"and when I know nothing it is my wont to prepare for the worst which may befall. It is but prudence so to do.\"\n\n\"Your enemies might find some harsher name for it,\" said Astley with a sneer. \"Nay, you need not think to scare me by glaring at me, Sir Robert, nor will your ill-pleasure change my thoughts. I have faced fiercer eyes than thine, and I have not feared.\"\n\n\"Your speech, Sir James, is neither courteous nor good,\" said Knolles, \"and if I were a free man I would cram your words down your throat with the point of my dagger. But I am here to lead these men in profit and honor, not to quarrel with every fool who has not the wit to understand how soldiers should be led. Can you not see that if I make attempts here and there, as you would have me do, I shall have weakened my strength before I come to that part where it can best be spent?\"\n\n\"And where is that?\" asked Percy. \"'Fore God, Astley, it is in my mind that we ride with one who knows more of war than you or I, and that we would be wise to be guided by his rede. Tell us then what is in your mind.\"\n\n\"Thirty miles from here,\" said Knolles, \"there is, as I am told, a fortalice named Ploermel, and within it is one Bambro', an Englishman, with a good garrison. No great distance from him is the Castle of Josselin where dwells Robert of Beaumanoir with a great following of Bretons. It is my intention that we should join Bambro', and so be in such strength that we may throw ourselves upon Josselin, and by taking it become the masters of all mid-Brittany, and able to make head against the Frenchmen in the south.\"\n\n\"Indeed I think that you can do no better,\" said Percy heartily, \"and I swear to you on jeopardy of my soul that I will stand by you in the matter! I doubt not that when we come deep into their land they will draw together and do what they may to make head against us; but up to now I swear by all the saints of Lindisfarne that I should have seen more war in a summer's day in Liddesdale or at the Forest of Jedburgh than any that Brittany has shown us. But see, yonder horsemen are riding in. They are our own hobblers, are they not? And who are these who are lashed to their stirrups?\"\n\nA small troop of mounted bowmen had ridden out of an oak grove upon the left of the road. They trotted up to where the three knights had halted. Two wretched peasants whose wrists had been tied to their leathers came leaping and straining beside the horses in their effort not to be dragged off their feet. One was a tall, gaunt, yellow-haired man, the other short and swarthy, but both so crusted with dirt, so matted and tangled and ragged, that they were more like beasts of the wood than human beings.\n\n\"What is this?\" asked Knolles. \"Have I not ordered you to leave the countryfolk at peace?\"\n\nThe leader of the archers, old Wat of Carlisle, held up a sword, a girdle and a dagger. \"If it please you, fair sir,\" said he, \"I saw the glint of these, and I thought them no fit tools for hands which were made for the spade and the plow. But when we had ridden them down and taken them, there was the Bentley cross upon each, and we knew that they had belonged to yonder dead Englishman upon the road. Surely then, these are two of the villains who have slain him, and it is right that we do justice upon them.\"\n\nSure enough, upon sword, girdle and dagger shone the silver Molene cross which had gleamed on the dead man's armor. Knolles looked at them and then at the prisoners with a face of stone. At the sight of those fell eyes they had dropped with inarticulate howls upon their knees, screaming out their protests in a tongue which none could understand.\n\n\"We must have the roads safe for wandering Englishmen,\" said Knolles. \"These men must surely die. Hang them to yonder tree.\"\n\nHe pointed to a live-oak by the roadside, and rode onward upon his way in converse with his fellow-knights. But the old bowman had ridden after him.\n\n\"If it please you, Sir Robert, the bowmen would fain put these men to death in their own fashion,\" said he.\n\n\"So that they die, I care not how,\" Knolles answered carelessly, and looked back no more.\n\nHuman life was cheap in those stern days when the footmen of a stricken army or the crew of a captured ship were slain without any question or thought of mercy by the victors. War was a rude game with death for the stake, and the forfeit was always claimed on the one side and paid on the other without doubt or hesitation. Only the knight might be spared, since his ransom made him worth more alive than dead. To men trained in such a school, with death forever hanging over their own heads, it may be well believed that the slaying of two peasant murderers was a small matter.\n\nAnd yet there was special reason why upon this occasion the bowmen wished to keep the deed in their own hands. Ever since their dispute aboard the Basilisk, there had been ill-feeling betwixt Bartholomew the old bald-headed bowyer, and long Ned Widdington the Dalesman, which had ended in a conflict at Dinan, in which not only they, but a dozen of their friends had been laid upon the cobblestones. The dispute raged round their respective knowledge and skill with the bow, and now some quick wit amongst the soldiers had suggested a grim fashion in which it should be put to the proof, once for all, which could draw the surer shaft.\n\nA thick wood lay two hundred paces from the road upon which the archers stood. A stretch of smooth grassy sward lay between. The two peasants were led out fifty yards from the road, with their faces toward the wood. There they stood, held on a leash, and casting many a wondering frightened glance over their shoulders at the preparations which were being made behind them.\n\nOld Bartholomew and the big Yorkshireman had stepped out of the ranks and stood side by side each with his strung bow in his left hand and a single arrow in his right. With care they had drawn on and greased their shooting-gloves and fastened their bracers. They plucked and cast up a few blades of grass to measure the wind, examined every small point of their tackle, turned their sides to the mark, and Widened their feet in a firmer stance. From all sides came chaff and counsel from their comrades.\n\n\"A three-quarter wind, bowyer!\" cried one. \"Aim a body's breadth to the right!\"\n\n\"But not thy body's breadth, bowyer,\" laughed another. \"Else may you be overwide.\"\n\n\"Nay, this wind will scarce turn a well-drawn shaft,\" said a third. \"Shoot dead upon him and you will be clap in the clout.\"\n\n\"Steady, Ned, for the good name of the Dales,\" cried a Yorkshireman. \"Loose easy and pluck not, or I am five crowns the poorer man.\"\n\n\"A week's pay on Bartholomew!\" shouted another. \"Now, old fat-pate, fail me not!\"\n\n\"Enough, enough! Stint your talk!\" cried the old bowman, Wat of Carlisle. \"Were your shafts as quick as your tongues there would be no facing you. Do you shoot upon the little one, Bartholomew, and you, Ned, upon the other. Give them law until I cry the word, then loose in your own fashion and at your own time. Are you ready! Hola, there, Hayward, Beddington, let them run!\"\n\nThe leashes were torn away, and the two men, stooping their heads, ran madly for the shelter of the wood amid such a howl from the archers as beaters may give when the hare starts from its form. The two bowmen, each with his arrow drawn to the pile, stood like russet statues, menacing, motionless, their eager eyes fixed upon the fugitives, their bowstaves rising slowly as the distance between them lengthened. The Bretons were half-way to the wood, and still Old Wat was silent. It may have been mercy or it may have been mischief, but at least the chase should have a fair chance of life. At six score paces he turned his grizzled head at last.\n\n\"Loose!\" he cried.\n\nAt the word the Yorkshireman's bowstring twanged. It was not for nothing that he had earned the name of being one of the deadliest archers of the North and had twice borne away the silver arrow of Selby. Swift and true flew the fatal shaft and buried itself to the feather in the curved back of the long yellow-haired peasant. Without a sound he fell upon his face and lay stone-dead upon the grass, the one short white plume between his dark shoulders to mark where Death had smote him.\n\nThe Yorkshireman threw his bowstave into the air and danced in triumph, whilst his comrades roared their fierce delight in a shout of applause, which changed suddenly into a tempest of hooting and of laughter.\n\nThe smaller peasant, more cunning, than his comrade, had run more slowly, but with many a backward glance. He had marked his companion's fate and had waited with keen eyes until he saw the bowyer loose his string. At the moment he had thrown himself flat upon the grass and had heard the arrow scream above him,\u2014and seen it quiver in the turf beyond. Instantly he had sprung to his feet again and amid wild whoops and halloos from the bowmen had made for the shelter of the wood. Now he had reached it, and ten score good paces separated him from the nearest of his persecutors. Surely they could not reach him here. With the tangled brushwood behind him he was as safe as a rabbit at the mouth of his burrow. In the joy of his heart he must needs dance in derision and snap his fingers at the foolish men who had let him slip. He threw back his head, howling at them like a dog, and at the instant an arrow struck him full in the throat and laid him dead among the bracken. There was a hush of surprised silence and then a loud cheer burst from the archers.\n\n\"By the rood of Beverley!\" cried old Wat, \"I have not seen a finer roving shaft this many a year. In my own best day I could not have bettered it. Which of you loosed it?\"\n\n\"It was Aylward of Tilford\u2014Samkin Aylward,\" cried a score of voices, and the bowman, flushed at his own fame, was pushed to the front.\n\n\"Indeed I would that it had been at a nobler mark,\" said he. \"He might have gone free for me, but I could not keep my fingers from the string when he turned to jeer at us.\"\n\n\"I see well that you are indeed a master-bowman,\" said old Wat, \"and it is comfort to my soul to think that if I fall I leave such a man behind me to hold high the credit of our craft. Now gather your shafts and on, for Sir Robert awaits us on the brow of the hill.\"\n\nAll day Knolles and his men marched through the same wild and deserted country, inhabited only by these furtive creatures, hares to the strong and wolves to the weak, who hovered in the shadows of the wood. Ever and anon upon the tops of the hills they caught a glimpse of horsemen who watched them from a distance and vanished when approached. Sometimes bells rang an alarm from villages amongst the hills, and twice they passed castles which drew up their drawbridges at their approach and lined their walls with hooting soldiers as they passed. The Englishmen gathered a few oxen and sheep from the pastures of each, but Knolles had no mind to break his strength upon stone walls, and so he went upon his way.\n\nOnce at St. Meen they passed a great nunnery, girt with a high gray lichened wall, an oasis of peace in this desert of war, the black-robed nuns basking in the sun or working in the gardens, with the strong gentle hand of Holy Church shielding them ever from evil. The archers doffed caps to them as they passed, for the boldest and roughest dared not cross that line guarded by the dire ban and blight which was the one only force in the whole steel-ridden earth which could stand betwixt the weakling and the spoiler.\n\nThe little army halted at St. Meen and cooked its midday meal. It had gathered into its ranks again and was about to start, when Knolles drew Nigel to one side.\n\n\"Nigel,\" said he, \"it seems to me that I have seldom set eyes upon a horse which hath more power and promise of speed than this great beast of thine.\"\n\n\"It is indeed a noble steed, fair sir,\" said Nigel. Betwixt him and his young leader there had sprung up great affection and respect since the day that they set foot in the Basilisk.\n\n\"It will be the better if you stretch his limbs, for he grows overheavy,\" said the knight. \"Now mark me, Nigel! Yonder betwixt the ash-tree and the red rock what do you see on the side of the far hill?\"\n\n\"There is a white dot upon it. Surely it is a horse.\"\n\n\"I have marked it all morning, Nigel. This horseman has kept ever upon our flank, spying upon us or waiting to make some attempt upon us. Now I should be right glad to have a prisoner, for it is my wish to know something of this countryside, and these peasants can speak neither French nor English. I would have you linger here in hiding when we go forward. This man will still follow us. When he does so, yonder wood will lie betwixt you and him. Do you ride round it and come upon him from behind. There is broad plain upon his left, and we will cut him off upon the right. If your horse be indeed the swifter, then you cannot fail to take him.\"\n\nNigel had already sprung down and was tightening Pommers' girth.\n\n\"Nay, there is no need of haste, for you cannot start until we are two miles upon our way. And above all I pray you, Nigel, none of your knight-errant ways. It is this roan that I want, him and the news that he can bring me. Think little of your own advancement and much of the needs of the army. When you get him, ride westwards upon the sun, and you cannot fail to find the road.\"\n\nNigel waited with Pommers under the shadow of the nunnery wall, horse and man chafing with impatience, whilst above them six round-eyed innocent nun-faces looked down on this strange and disturbing vision from the outer world. At last the long column wound itself out of sight round a curve of the road, and the white dot was gone from the bare green flank of the hill. Nigel bowed his steel head to the nuns, gave his bridle a shake, and bounded off upon his welcome mission. The round-eyed sisters saw yellow horse and twinkling man sweep round the skirt of the wood, caught a last glimmer of him through the tree-trunks, and paced slowly back to their pruning and their planting, their minds filled with the beauty and the terror of that outer world beyond the high gray lichen-mottled wall.\n\nEverything fell out even as Knolles had planned. As Nigel rounded the oak forest, there upon the farther side of it, with only good greensward between, was the rider upon the white horse. Already he was so near that Nigel could see him clearly, a young cavalier, proud in his bearing, clad in purple silk tunic with a red curling feather in his low black cap. He wore no armor, but his sword gleamed at his side. He rode easily and carelessly, as one who cares for no man, and his eyes were forever fixed upon the English soldiers on the road. So intent was he upon them that he gave no thought to his own safety, and it was only when the low thunder of the great horse's hoofs broke upon his ears that he turned in his saddle, looked very coolly and steadily at Nigel, then gave his own bridle a shake and darted off, swift as a hawk, toward the hills upon the left.\n\nPommers had met his match that day. The white horse, two parts Arab, bore the lighter weight, since Nigel was clad in full armor. For five miles over the open neither gained a hundred yards upon the other. They had topped the hill and flew down the farther side, the stranger continually turning in his saddle to have a look at his pursuer. There was no panic in his flight, but rather the amused rivalry with which a good horseman who is proud of his mount contends with one who has challenged him. Below the hill was a marshy plain, studded with great Druidic stones, some prostrate, some erect, some bearing others across their tops like the huge doors of some vanished building. A path ran through the marsh with green rushes as a danger signal on either side of it. Across this path many of the huge stones were lying, but the white horse cleared them in its stride and Pommers followed close upon his heels. Then came a mile of soft ground where the lighter weight again drew to the front, but it ended in a dry upland and once again Nigel gained. A sunken road crossed it, but the white cleared it with a mighty spring, and again the yellow followed. Two small hills lay before them with a narrow gorge of deep bushes between. Nigel saw the white horse bounding chest-deep amid the underwood.\n\nNext instant its hind legs were high in the air, and the rider had been shot from its back. A howl of triumph rose from amidst the bushes, and a dozen wild figures armed with club and with spear, rushed upon the prostrate man.\n\n\"A moi, Anglais, a moi!\" cried a voice, and Nigel saw the young rider stagger to his feet, strike round him with his sword, and then fall once more before the rush of his assailants.\n\nThere was a comradeship among men of gentle blood and bearing which banded them together against all ruffianly or unchivalrous attack. These rude fellows were no soldiers. Their dress and arms, their uncouth cries and wild assault, marked them as banditti\u2014such men as had slain the Englishman upon the road. Waiting in narrow gorges with a hidden rope across the path, they watched for the lonely horseman as a fowler waits by his bird-trap, trusting that they could overthrow the steed and then slay the rider ere he had recovered from his fall.\n\nSuch would have been the fate of the stranger, as of so many cavaliers before him, had Nigel not chanced to be close upon his heels. In an instant Pommers had burst through the group who struck at the prostrate man, and in another two of the robbers had fallen before Nigel's sword. A spear rang on his breastplate, but one blow shore off its head, and a second that of him who held it. In vain they thrust at the steel-girt man. His sword played round them like lightning, and the fierce horse ramped and swooped above them with pawing iron-shod hoofs and eyes of fire. With cries and shrieks they flew off to right and left amidst the bushes, springing over boulders and darting under branches where no horseman could follow them. The foul crew had gone as swiftly and suddenly as it had come, and save for four ragged figures littered amongst the trampled bushes, no sign remaining of their passing.\n\nNigel tethered Pommers to a thorn-bush and then turned his attention to the injured man. The white horse had regained his feet and stood whinnying gently as he looked down on his prostrate master. A heavy blow, half broken by his sword, had beaten him down and left a great raw bruise upon his forehead. But a stream gurgled through the gorge, and a capful of water dashed over his face brought the senses back to the injured man. He was a mere stripling, with the delicate features of a woman, and a pair of great violet-blue eyes which looked up presently with a puzzled stare into Nigel's face.\n\n\"Who are you?\" he asked. \"Ah yes! I call you to mind. You are the young Englishman who chased me on the great yellow horse. By our Lady of Rocamadour whose vernicle is round my neck! I could not have believed that any horse could have kept at the heels of Charlemagne so long. But I will wager you a hundred crowns, Englishman, that I lead you over a five-mile course.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" said Nigel, \"we will wait till you can back a horse ere we talk of racing it. I am Nigel of Tilford, of the family of Loring, a squire by rank and the son of a knight. How are you called, young sir?\"\n\n\"I also am a squire by rank and the son of a knight. I am Raoul de la Roche Pierre de Bras, whose father writes himself Lord of Grosbois, a free vavasor of the noble Count of Toulouse, with the right of fossa and of furca, the high justice, the middle and the low.\" He sat up and rubbed his eyes. \"Englishman, you have saved my life as I would have saved yours, had I seen such yelping dogs set upon a man of blood and of coat-armor. But now I am yours, and what is your sweet will?\"\n\n\"When you are fit to ride, you will come back with me to my people.\"\n\n\"Alas! I feared that you would say so. Had I taken you, Nigel\u2014that is your name, is it not?\u2014had I taken you, I would not have acted thus.\"\n\n\"How then would you have ordered things?\" asked Nigel, much taken with the frank and debonair manner of his captive.\n\n\"I would not have taken advantage of such a mischance as has befallen me which has put me in your power. I would give you a sword and beat you in fair fight, so that I might send you to give greeting to my dear lady and show her the deeds which I do for her fair sake.\"\n\n\"Indeed, your words are both good and fair,\" said Nigel. \"By Saint Paul! I cannot call to mind that I have ever met a man who bore himself better. But since I am in my armor and you without, I see not how we can debate the matter.\"\n\n\"Surely, gentle Nigel, you could doff your armor.\"\n\n\"Then have I only my underclothes.\"\n\n\"Nay, there shall be no unfairness there, for I also will very gladly strip to my underclothes.\"\n\nNigel looked wistfully at the Frenchman; but he shook his head. \"Alas! it may not be,\" said he. \"The last words that Sir Robert said to me were that I was to bring you to his side, for he would have speech with you. Would that I could do what you ask, for I also have a fair lady to whom I would fain send you. What use are you to me, Raoul, since I have gained no honor in the taking of you? How is it with you now?\"\n\nThe young Frenchman had risen to his feet. \"Do not take my sword,\" he said. \"I am yours, rescue or no rescue. I think now that I could mount my horse, though indeed my head still rings like a cracked bell.\"\n\nNigel had lost all traces of his comrades; but he remembered Sir Robert's words that he should ride upon the sun with the certainty that sooner or later he would strike upon the road. As they jogged slowly along over undulating hills, the Frenchman shook off his hurt and the two chatted merrily together.\n\n\"I had but just come from France,\" said he, \"and I had hoped to win honor in this country, for I have ever heard that the English are very hardy men and excellent people to fight with. My mules and my baggage are at Evran; but I rode forth to see what I could see, and I chanced upon your army moving down the road, so I coasted it in the hopes of some profit or adventure. Then you came after me and I would have given all the gold goblets upon my father's table if I had my harness so that I could have turned upon you. I have promised the Countess Beatrice that I will send her an Englishman or two to kiss her hands.\"\n\n\"One might perchance have a worse fate,\" said Nigel. \"Is this fair dame your betrothed?\"\n\n\"She is my love,\" answered the Frenchman. \"We are but waiting for the Count to be slain in the wars, and then we mean to marry. And this lady of thine, Nigel? I would that I could see her.\"\n\n\"Perchance you shall, fair sir,\" said Nigel, \"for all that I have seen of you fills me with desire to go further with you. It is in my mind that we might turn this thing to profit and to honor, for when Sir Robert has spoken with you, I am free to do with you as I will.\"\n\n\"And what will you do, Nigel?\"\n\n\"We shall surely try some small deed upon each other, so that either I shall see the Lady Beatrice, or you the Lady Mary. Nay, thank me not, for like yourself, I have come to this country in search of honor, and I know not where I may better find it than at the end of your sword-point. My good lord and master, Sir John Chandos, has told me many times that never yet did he meet French knight nor squire that he did not find great pleasure and profit from their company, and now I very clearly see that he has spoken the truth.\"\n\nFor an hour these two friends rode together, the Frenchman pouring forth the praises of his lady, whose glove he produced from one pocket, her garter from his vest, and her shoe from his saddle-bag. She was blond, and when he heard that Mary was dark, he would fain stop then and there to fight the question of color. He talked too of his great chateau at Lauta, by the head waters of the pleasant Garonne; of the hundred horses in the stables, the seventy hounds in the kennels, the fifty hawks in the mews. His English friend should come there when the wars were over, and what golden days would be theirs! Nigel too, with his English coldness thawing before this young sunbeam of the South, found himself talking of the heather slopes of Surrey, of the forest of Woolmer, even of the sacred chambers of Cosford.\n\nBut as they rode onward towards the sinking sun, their thoughts far away in their distant homes, their horses striding together, there came that which brought their minds back in an instant to the perilous hillsides of Brittany.\n\nIt was the long blast of a trumpet blown from somewhere on the farther side of a ridge toward which they were riding. A second long-drawn note from a distance answered it.\n\n\"It is your camp,\" said the Frenchman.\n\n\"Nay,\" said Nigel; \"we have pipes with us and a naker or two, but I have heard no trumpet-call from our ranks. It behooves us to take heed, for we know not what may be before us. Ride this way, I pray you, that we may look over and yet be ourselves unseen.\"\n\nSome scattered boulders crowned the height, and from behind them the two young Squires could see the long rocky valley beyond. Upon a knoll was a small square building with a battlement round it. Some distance from it towered a great dark castle, as massive as the rocks on which it stood, with one strong keep at the corner, and four long lines of machicolated walls. Above, a great banner flew proudly in the wind, with some device which glowed red in the setting sun. Nigel shaded his eyes and stared with wrinkled brow.\n\n\"It is not the arms of England, nor yet the lilies of France, nor is it the ermine of Brittany,\" said he. \"He who holds this castle fights for his own hand, since his own device flies above it. Surely it is a head gules on an argent field.\"\n\n\"The bloody head on a silver tray!\" cried the Frenchman. \"Was I not warned against him? This is not a man, friend Nigel. It is a monster who wars upon English, French and all Christendom. Have you not heard of the Butcher of La Brohiniere?\"\n\n\"Nay, I have not heard of him.\"\n\n\"His name is accursed in France. Have I not been told also that he put to death this very year Gilles de St. Pol, a friend of the English King?\"\n\n\"Yes, in very truth it comes back to my mind now that I heard something of this matter in Calais before we started.\"\n\n\"Then there he dwells, and God guard you if ever you pass under yonder portal, for no prisoner has ever come forth alive! Since these wars began he hath been a king to himself, and the plunder of eleven years lies in yonder cellars. How can justice come to him, when no man knows who owns the land? But when we have packed you all back to your island, by the Blessed Mother of God, we have a heavy debt to pay to the man who dwells in yonder pile!\"\n\nBut even as they watched, the trumpet-call burst forth once more. It came not from the castle but from the farther end of the valley. It was answered by a second call from the walls. Then in a long, straggling line there came a wild troop of marauders streaming homeward from some foray. In the van, at the head of a body of spearmen, rode a tall and burly man, clad in brazen armor, so that he shone like a golden image in the slanting rays of the sun. His helmet had been loosened from his gorget and was held before him on his horse's neck. A great tangled beard flowed over his breastplate, and his hair hung down as far behind. A squire at his elbow bore high the banner of the bleeding head. Behind the spearmen were a line of heavily laden mules, and on either side of them a drove of poor country folk, who were being herded into the castle. Lastly came a second strong troop of mounted spearmen, who conducted a score or more of prisoners who marched together in a solid body.\n\nNigel stared at them and then, springing on his horse, he urged it along the shelter of the ridge so as to reach unseen a spot which was close to the castle gate. He had scarce taken up his new position when the cavalcade reached the drawbridge, and amid yells of welcome from those upon the wall, filed in a thin line across it. Nigel stared hard once more at the prisoners in the rear, and so absorbed was he by the sight that he had passed the rocks and was standing sheer upon the summit.\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" he cried, \"it must indeed be so. I see their russet jackets. They are English archers!\"\n\nAs he spoke, the hindmost one, a strongly built, broad-shouldered man, looked round and saw the gleaming figure above him upon the hill, with open helmet, and the five roses glowing upon his breast. With a sweep of his hands he had thrust his guardians aside and for a moment was clear of the throng.\n\n\"Squire Loring! Squire Loring!\" he cried. \"It is I, Aylward the archer! It is I, Samkin Aylward!\" The next minute a dozen hands had seized him, his cries were muffled with a gag, and he was hurled, the last of the band, through the black and threatening archway of the gate. Then with a clang the two iron wings came together, the portcullis swung upward, and captives and captors, robbers and booty, were all swallowed up within the grim and silent fortress." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE ENGLISH ATTEMPTED THE CASTLE OF LA BROHINIERE", + "text": "For some minutes Nigel remained motionless upon the crest of the hill, his heart, like lead within him, and his eyes fixed upon the huge gray walls which contained his unhappy henchman. He was roused by a sympathetic hand upon his shoulder and the voice of his young prisoner in his ear.\n\n\"Peste!\" said he. \"They have some of your birds in their cage, have they not? What then, my friend? Keep your heart high! Is it not the chance of war, to-day to them, to-morrow to thee, and death at last for us all? And yet I had rather they were in any hands than those of Oliver the Butcher.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul, we cannot suffer it!\" cried Nigel distractedly. \"This man has come with me from my own home. He has stood between me and death before now. It goes to my very heart that he should call upon me in vain. I pray you, Raoul, to use your wits, for mine are all curdled in my head. Tell me what I should do and how I may bring him help.\"\n\nThe Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. \"As easy to get a lamb unscathed out of a wolves' lair as a prisoner safe from La Brohiniere. Nay, Nigel, whither do you go? Have you indeed taken leave of your wits?\"\n\nThe Squire had spurred his horse down the hillside and never halted until he was within a bowshot of the gate. The French prisoner followed hard behind him, with a buzz of reproaches and expostulations.\n\n\"You are mad, Nigel!\" he cried. \"What do you hope to do then? Would you carry the castle with your own hands? Halt, man, halt, in the name of the Virgin!\"\n\nBut Nigel had no plan in his head and only obeyed the fevered impulse to do something to ease his thoughts. He paced his horse up and down, waving his spear, and shouting insults and challenges to the garrison. Over the high wall a hundred jeering faces looked down upon him. So rash and wild was his action that it seemed to those within to mean some trap, so the drawbridge was still held high and none ventured forth to seize him. A few long-range arrows pattered on the rocks, and then with a deep booming sound a huge stone, hurled from a mangonel, sang over the head of the two Squires and crushed into splinters amongst the boulders behind them. The Frenchman seized Nigel's bridle and forced him farther from the gateway.\n\n\"By the dear Virgin!\" he cried, \"I care not to have those pebbles about my ears, yet I cannot go back alone, so it is very clear, my crazy comrade, that you must come also. Now we are beyond their reach! But see, my friend Nigel, who are those who crown the height?\"\n\nThe sun had sunk behind the western ridge, but the glowing sky was fringed at its lower edge by a score of ruddy twinkling points. A body of horsemen showed hard and black upon the bare hill. Then they dipped down the slope into the valley, whilst a band of footmen followed behind.\n\n\"They are my people,\" cried Nigel joyously. \"Come, my friend, hasten, that we may take counsel what we shall do.\"\n\nSir Robert Knolles rode a bowshot in front of his men, and his brow was as black as night. Beside him, with crestfallen face, his horse bleeding, his armor dinted and soiled, was the hotheaded knight, Sir James Astley. A fierce discussion raged between them.\n\n\"I have done my devoir as best I might,\" said Astley. \"Alone I had ten of them at my sword-point. I know not how I have lived to tell it.\"\n\n\"What is your devoir to me? Where are my thirty bowmen?\" cried Knolles in bitter wrath. \"Ten lie dead upon the ground and twenty are worse than dead in yonder castle. And all because you must needs show all men how bold you are, and ride into a bushment such as a child could see. Alas for my own folly that ever I should have trusted such a one as you with the handling of men!\"\n\n\"By God, Sir Robert, you shall answer to me for those words!\" cried Astley with a choking voice. \"Never has a man dared to speak to me as you have done this day.\"\n\n\"As long as I hold the King's order I shall be master, and by the Lord I will hang you, James, on a near tree if I have further cause of offense! How now, Nigel? I see by yonder white horse that you at least have not failed me. I will speak with you anon. Percy, bring up your men, and let us gather round this castle, for, as I hope for my soul's salvation, I win not leave it until I have my archers, or the head of him who holds them.\"\n\nThat night the English lay thick round the fortress of La Brohiniere so that none might come forth from it. But if none could come forth it was hard to see how any could win their way in, for it was full of men, the walls were high and strong, and a deep dry ditch girt it round. But the hatred and fear which its master had raised over the whole countryside could now be plainly seen, for during the night the brushwood men and the villagers came in from all parts with offers of such help as they could give for the intaking of the castle. Knolles set them cutting bushes and tying them into fagots. When morning came he rode out before the wall and he held counsel with his knights and squires as to how he should enter in.\n\n\"By noon,\" said he, \"we shall have so many fagots that we may make our way over the ditch. Then we will beat in the gates and so win a footing.\"\n\nThe young Frenchman had come with Nigel to the conference, and now, amid the silence which followed the leader's proposal, he asked if he might be heard. He was clad in the brazen armor which Nigel had taken from the Red Ferret.\n\n\"It may be that it is not for me to join in your counsel,\" said he, \"seeing that I am a prisoner and a Frenchman. But this man is the enemy of all, and we of France owe him a debt even as you do, since many a good Frenchman has died in his cellars. For this reason I crave to be heard.\"\n\n\"We will hear you,\" said Knolles.\n\n\"I have come from Evran yesterday,\" said he. \"Sir Henry Spinnefort, Sir Peter La Roye and many other brave knights and squires lie there, with a good company of men, all of whom would very gladly join with you to destroy this butcher and his castle, for it is well known amongst us that his deeds are neither good nor fair. There are also bombards which we could drag over the hills, and so beat down this iron gate. If you so order it I will ride to Evran and bring my companions back with me.\"\n\n\"Indeed, Robert,\" said Percy, \"it is in my mind that this Frenchman speaks very wisely and well.\"\n\n\"And when we have taken the castle\u2014what then?\" asked Knolles.\n\n\"Then you could go upon your way, fair sir, and we upon ours. Or if it please you better you could draw together on yonder hill and we on this one, so that the valley lies between us. Then if any cavalier wished to advance himself or to shed a vow and exalt his lady, an opening might be found for him. Surely it would be shame if so many brave men drew together and no small deed were to come of it.\"\n\nNigel clasped his captive's hand to show his admiration and esteem, but Knolles shook his head.\n\n\"Things are not ordered thus, save in the tales of the minstrels,\" said he. \"I have no wish that your people at Evran should know our numbers or our plans. I am not in this land for knight errantry, but I am here to make head against the King's enemies. Has no one aught else to say?\"\n\nPercy pointed to the small outlying fortalice upon the knoll, on which also flew the flag of the bloody head. \"This smaller castle, Robert, is of no great strength and cannot hold more than fifty men. It is built, as I conceive it, that no one should seize the high ground and shoot down into the other. Why should we not turn all our strength upon it, since it is the weaker of the twain?\"\n\nBut again the young leader shook his head. \"If I should take it,\" said he, \"I am still no nearer to my desire, nor will it avail me in getting back my bowmen. It may cost a score of men, and what profit shall I have from it? Had I bombards, I might place them on yonder hill, but having none it is of little use to me.\"\n\n\"It may be,\" said Nigel, \"that they have scant food or water, and so must come forth to fight us.\"\n\n\"I have made inquiry of the peasants,\" Knolles answered, \"and they are of one mind that there is a well within the castle, and good store of food. Nay, gentlemen, there is no way before us save to take it by arms, and no spot where we can attempt it save through the great gate. Soon we will have so many fagots that we can cast them down into the ditch, and so win our way across. I have ordered them to cut a pine-tree on the hill and shear the branches so that we may beat down the gate with it. But what is now amiss, and why do they run forward to the castle?\"\n\nA buzz had risen from the soldiers in the camp, and they all crowded in one direction, rushing toward the castle wall. The knights and squires rode after them, and when in view of the main gate, the cause of the disturbance lay before them. On the tower above the portal three men were standing in the garb of English archers, ropes round their necks and their hands bound behind them. Their comrades surged below them with cries of recognition and of pity.\n\n\"It is Ambrose!\" cried one. \"Surely it is Ambrose of Ingleton.\"\n\n\"Yes, in truth, I see his yellow hair. And the other, him with the beard, it is Lockwood of Skipton. Alas for his wife who keeps the booth by the bridge-head of Ribble! I wot not who the third may be.\"\n\n\"It is little Johnny Alspaye, the youngest man in the company,\" cried old Wat, with the tears running down his cheeks, \"'Twas I who brought him from his home. Alas! Alas! Foul fare the day that ever I coaxed him from his mother's side that he might perish in a far land.\"\n\nThere was a sudden flourish of a trumpet and the drawbridge fell. Across it strode a portly man with a faded herald's coat. He halted warily upon the farther side and his voice boomed like a drum. \"I would speak with your leader.\" he cried.\n\nKnolles rode forward.\n\n\"Have I your knightly word that I may advance unscathed with all courteous entreaty as befits a herald?\"\n\nKnolles nodded his head.\n\nThe man came slowly and pompously forward. \"I am the messenger and liege servant,\" said he, \"of the high baron, Oliver de St. Yvon, Lord of La Brohiniere. He bids me to say that if you continue your journey and molest him no further he will engage upon his part to make no further attack upon you. As to the men whom he holds, he will enroll them in his own honorable service, for he has need of longbowmen, and has heard much of their skill. But if you constrain him or cause him further displeasure by remaining before his castle he hereby gives you warning that he will hang these three men over his gateway and every morning another three until all have been slain. This he has sworn upon the rood of Calvary, and as he has said so he will do upon jeopardy of his soul.\"\n\nRobert Knolles looked grimly at the messenger. \"You may thank the saints that you have had my promise,\" said he, \"else would I have stripped that lying tabard from thy back and the skin beneath it from thy bones, that thy master might have a fitting answer to his message. Tell him that I hold him and all that are within his castle as hostage for the lives of my men, and that should he dare to do them scathe he and every man that is with him shall hang upon his battlements. Go, and go quickly, lest my patience fail.\"\n\nThere was that in Knolles' cold gray eyes and in his manner of speaking those last words which sent the portly envoy back at a quicker gait than he had come. As he vanished into the gloomy arch of the gateway the drawbridge swung up with creak and rattle behind him.\n\nA few minutes later a rough-bearded fellow stepped out over the portal where the condemned archers stood and seizing the first by the shoulders he thrust him over the wall. A cry burst from the man's lips and a deep groan from those of his comrades below as he fell with a jerk which sent him half-way up to the parapet again, and then after dancing like a child's toy swung slowly backward and forward with limp limbs and twisted neck.\n\nThe hangman turned and bowed in mock reverence to the spectators beneath him. He had not yet learned in a land of puny archers how sure and how strong is the English bow. Half a dozen men, old Wat amongst them, had run forward toward the wall. They were too late to save their comrades, but at least their deaths were speedily avenged.\n\nThe man was in the act of pushing off the second prisoner when an arrow crashed through his head, and he fell stone dead upon the parapet. But even in falling he had given the fatal thrust and a second russet figure swung beside the first against the dark background of the castle wall.\n\nThere only remained the young lad, Johnny Alspaye, who stood shaking with fear, an abyss below him, and the voices of those who would hurl him over it behind. There was a long pause before anyone would come forth to dare those deadly arrows. Then a fellow, crouching double, ran forward from the shelter, keeping the young archer's body as a shield between him and danger.\n\n\"Aside, John! Aside!\" cried his comrades from below.\n\nThe youth sprang as far as the rope would allow him, and slipped it half over his face in the effort. Three arrows flashed past his side, and two of them buried themselves in the body of the man behind. A howl of delight burst from the spectators as he dropped first upon his knees and then upon his face. A life for a life was no bad bargain.\n\nBut it was only a short respite which the skill of his comrades had given to the young archer. Over the parapet there appeared a ball of brass, then a pair of great brazen shoulders, and lastly the full figure of an armored man. He walked to the edge and they heard his hoarse guffaw of laughter as the arrows clanged and clattered against his impenetrable mail. He slapped his breastplate, as he jeered at them. Well he knew that at the distance no dart ever sped by mortal hands could cleave through his plates of metal. So he stood, the great burly Butcher of La Brohiniere, with head uptossed, laughing insolently at his foes. Then with slow and ponderous tread he walked toward his boy victim, seized him by the ear, and dragged him across so that the rope might be straight. Seeing that the noose had slipped across the face, he tried to push it down, but the mail glove hampering him he pulled it off, and grasped the rope above the lad's head with his naked hand.\n\nQuick as a flash old Wat's arrow had sped, and the Butcher sprang back with a howl of pain, his hand skewered by a cloth-yard shaft. As he shook it furiously at his enemies a second grazed his knuckles. With a brutal kick of his metal-shod feet he hurled young Alspaye over the edge, looked down for a few moments at his death agonies, and then walked slowly from the parapet, nursing his dripping hand, the arrows still ringing loudly upon his back-piece as he went.\n\nThe archers below, enraged at the death of their comrades, leaped and howled like a pack of ravening wolves.\n\n\"By Saint Dunstan,\" said Percy, looking round at their flushed faces, \"if ever we are to carry it now is the moment, for these men will not be stopped if hate can take them forward.\"\n\n\"You are right, Thomas!\" cried Knolles. \"Gather together twenty men-at-arms each with his shield to cover him. Astley, do you place the bowmen so that no head may show at window or parapet. Nigel, I pray you to order the countryfolk forward with their fardels of fagots. Let the others bring up the lopped pine-tree which lies yonder behind the horse lines. Ten men-at-arms can bear it on the right, and ten on the left, having shields over their heads. The gate once down, let every man rush in. And God help the better cause!\"\n\nSwiftly and yet quietly the dispositions were made, for these were old soldiers whose daily trade was war. In little groups the archers formed in front of each slit or crevice in the walls, whilst others scanned the battlements with wary eyes, and sped an arrow at every face which gleamed for an instant above them. The garrison shot forth a shower of crossbow bolts and an occasional stone from their engine, but so deadly was the hail which rained upon them that they had no time to dwell upon their aim, and their discharges were wild and harmless. Under cover of the shafts of the bowmen a line of peasants ran unscathed to the edge of the ditch, each hurling in the bundle which he bore in his arms, and then hurrying back for another one. In twenty minutes a broad pathway of fagots lay level with the ground upon one side and the gate upon the other. With the loss of two peasants slain by bolts and one archer crushed by a stone, the ditch had been filled up. All was ready for the battering-ram.\n\nWith a shout, twenty picked men rushed forward with the pine-tree under their arms, the heavy end turned toward the gate. The arbalesters on the tower leaned over and shot into the midst of them, but could not stop their advance. Two dropped, but the others raising their shields ran onward still shouting, crossed the bridge of fagots, and came with a thundering crash against the door. It splintered from base to arch, but kept its place.\n\nSwinging their mighty weapon, the storming party thudded and crashed upon the gate, every blow loosening and widening the cracks which rent it from end to end. The three knights, with Nigel, the Frenchman Raoul and the other squires, stood beside the ram, cheering on the men, and chanting to the rhythm of the swing with a loud \"Ha!\" at every blow. A great stone loosened from the parapet roared through the air and struck Sir James Astley and another of the attackers, but Nigel and the Frenchman had taken their places in an instant, and the ram thudded and smashed with greater energy than ever. Another blow and another! the lower part was staving inward, but the great central bar still held firm. Surely another minute would beat it from its sockets.\n\nBut suddenly from above there came a great deluge of liquid. A hogshead of it had been tilted from the battlement until soldiers, bridge, and ram were equally drenched in yellow slime. Knolles rubbed his gauntlet in it, held it to his visor, and smelled it.\n\n\"Back, back!\" he cried. \"Back before it is too late!\"\n\nThere was a small barred window above their heads at the side of the gate. A ruddy glare shone through it, and then a blazing torch was tossed down upon them. In a moment the oil had caught and the whole place was a sheet of flame. The fir-tree that they carried, the fagots beneath them, their very weapons, were all in a blaze.\n\nTo right and left the men sprang down into the dry ditch, rolling with screams upon the ground in their endeavor to extinguish the flames. The knights and squires protected by their armor strove hard, stamping and slapping, to help those who had but leather jacks to shield their bodies. From above a ceaseless shower of darts and of stones were poured down upon them, while on the other hand the archers, seeing the greatness of the danger, ran up to the edge of the ditch, and shot fast and true at every face which showed above the wall.\n\nScorched, wearied and bedraggled, the remains of the storming party clambered out of the ditch as best they could, clutching at the friendly hands held down to them, and so limped their way back amid the taunts and howls of their enemies. A long pile of smoldering cinders was all that remained of their bridge, and on it lay Astley and six other red-hot men glowing in their armor.\n\nKnolles clinched his hands as he looked back at the ruin that was wrought, and then surveyed the group of men who stood or lay around him nursing their burned limbs and scowling up at the exultant figures who waved on the castle wall. Badly scorched himself, the young leader had no thought for his own injuries in the rage and grief which racked his soul. \"We will build another bridge,\" he cried. \"Set the peasants binding fagots once more.\"\n\nBut a thought had flashed through Nigel's mind. \"See, fair sir,\" said he. \"The nails of yonder door are red-hot and the wood as white as ashes. Surely we can break our way through it.\"\n\n\"By the Virgin, you speak truly!\" cried the French Squire. \"If we can cross the ditch the gate will not stop us. Come, Nigel, for our fair ladies' sakes, I will race you who will reach it first, England or France.\"\n\nAlas for all the wise words of the good Chandos! Alas for all the lessons in order and discipline learned from the wary Knolles. In an instant, forgetful of all things but this noble challenge, Nigel was running at the top of his speed for the burning gate. Close at his heels was the Frenchman, blowing and gasping, as he rushed along in his brazen armor. Behind came a stream of howling archers and men-at-arms, like a flood which has broken its dam. Down they slipped into the ditch, rushed across it, and clambered on each other's backs up the opposite side. Nigel, Raoul and two archers gained a foothold in front of the burning gate at the same moment. With blows and kicks they burst it to pieces, and dashed with a yell of triumph through the dark archway beyond. For a moment they thought with mad rapture that the castle was carried. A dark tunnel lay before them, down which they rushed. But alas! at the farther end it was blocked by a second gateway as strong as that which had been burned. In vain they beat upon it with their swords and axes. On each side the tunnel was pierced with slits, and the crossbow bolts discharged at only a few yards' distance crashed through armor as if it were cloth and laid man after man upon the stones. They raged and leaped before the great iron-clamped barrier, but the wall itself was as easy to tear down.\n\nIt was bitter to draw back; but it was madness to remain. Nigel looked round and saw that half his men were down. At the same moment Raoul sank with a gasp at his feet, a bolt driven to its socket through the links of the camail which guarded his neck. Some of the archers, seeing that certain death awaited them, were already running back to escape from the fatal passage.\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" cried Nigel hotly. \"Would you leave our wounded where this butcher may lay his hands upon them? Let the archers shoot inwards and hold them back from the slits. Now let each man raise one of our comrades, lest we leave our honor in the gate of this castle.\"\n\nWith a mighty effort he had raised Raoul upon his shoulders and staggered with him to the edge of the ditch. Several men were waiting below where the steep bank shield them from the arrows, and to them Nigel handed down his wounded friend, and each archer in turn did the same. Again and again Nigel went back until no one lay in the tunnel save seven who had died there. Thirteen wounded were laid in the shelter of the ditch, and there they must remain until night came to cover them. Meanwhile the bowmen on the farther side protected them from attack, and also prevented the enemy from all attempts to build up the outer gate. The gaping smoke-blackened arch was all that they could show for a loss of thirty men, but that at least Knolles was determined to keep.\n\nBurned and bruised, but unconscious of either pain or fatigue for the turmoil of his spirit within him, Nigel knelt by the Frenchman and loosened his helmet. The girlish face of the young Squire was white as chalk, and the haze of death was gathering over his violet eyes, but a faint smile played round his lips as he looked up at his English comrade.\n\n\"I shall never see Beatrice again,\" he whispered. \"I pray you, Nigel, that when there is a truce you will journey as far as my father's chateau and tell him how his son died. Young Gaston will rejoice, for to him come the land and the coat, the war-cry and the profit. See them, Nigel, and tell them that I was as forward as the others.\"\n\n\"Indeed Raoul, no man could have carried himself with more honor or won more worship than you have done this day. I will do your behest when the time comes.\"\n\n\"Surely you are happy, Nigel,\" the dying Squire murmured, \"for this day has given you one more deed which you may lay at the feet of your lady-love.\"\n\n\"It might have been so had we carried the gate,\" Nigel answered sadly; \"but by Saint Paul! I cannot count it a deed where I have come back with my purpose unfulfilled. But this is no time, Raoul, to talk of my small affairs. If we take the castle and I bear a good part in it, then perchance all this may indeed avail.\"\n\nThe Frenchman sat up with that strange energy which comes often as the harbinger of death. \"You will win your Lady Mary, Nigel, and your great deeds will be not three but a score, so that in all Christendom there shall be no man of blood and coat-armor who has not heard your name and your fame. This I tell you\u2014I, Raoul de la Roche Pierre de Bras, dying upon the field of honor. And now kiss me, sweet friend, and lay me back, for the mists close round me and I am gone!\"\n\nWith tender hands the Squire lowered his comrade's head, but even as he did so there came a choking rush of blood, and the soul had passed. So died a gallant cavalier of France, and Nigel as he knelt in the ditch beside him prayed that his own end might be as noble and as debonair." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE SECOND MESSENGER WENT TO COSFORD", + "text": "Under cover of night the wounded men were lifted from the ditch and carried back, whilst pickets of archers were advanced to the very gate so that none should rebuild it. Nigel, sick at heart over his own failure, the death of his prisoner and his fears for Aylward, crept back into the camp, but his cup was not yet full, for Knolles was waiting for him with a tongue which cut like a whip-lash. Who was he, a raw squire, that he should lead an attack without orders? See what his crazy knight errantry had brought about. Twenty men had been destroyed by it and nothing gained. Their blood was on his head. Chandos should hear of his conduct. He should be sent back to England when the castle had fallen.\n\nSuch were the bitter words of Knolles, the more bitter because Nigel felt in his heart that he had indeed done wrong, and that Chandos would have said the same though, perchance, in kinder words. He listened in silent respect, as his duty was, and then having saluted his leader he withdrew apart, threw himself down amongst the bushes, and wept the hottest tears of his life, sobbing bitterly with his face between his hands. He had striven hard, and yet everything had gone wrong with him. He was bruised, burned and aching from head to foot. Yet so high is the spirit above the body that all was nothing compared to the sorrow and shame which racked his soul.\n\nBut a little thing changed the current of his thoughts and brought some peace to his mind. He had slipped off his mail gauntlets, and as he did so his fingers lighted upon the tiny bangle which Mary had fastened there when they stood together upon St. Catharine's Hill on the Guildford Road. He remembered the motto curiously worked in filigree of gold. It ran: \"Fais ce que dois, adviegne que pourra\u2014c'est commande au chevalier.\"\n\nThe words rang in his weary brain. He had done what seemed right, come what might. It had gone awry, it is true; but all things human may do that. If he had carried the castle, he felt that Knolles would have forgiven and forgotten all else. If he had not carried it, it was no fault of his. No man could have done more. If Mary could see she would surely have approved. Dropping into sleep, he saw her dark face, shining with pride and with pity, stooping over him as he lay. She stretched out her hand in his dream and touched him on the shoulder. He sprang up and rubbed his eyes, for fact had woven itself into dream in the strange way that it does, and some one was indeed leaning over him in the gloom, and shaking him from his slumbers. But the gentle voice and soft touch of the Lady Mary had changed suddenly to the harsh accents and rough grip of Black Simon, the fierce Norfolk man-at-arms.\n\n\"Surely you are the Squire Loring,\" he said, peering close to his face in the darkness.\n\n\"I am he. What then?\"\n\n\"I have searched through the camp for you, but when I saw the great horse tethered near these bushes, I thought you would be found hard by. I would have a word with you.\"\n\n\"Speak on.\"\n\n\"This man Aylward the bowman was my friend, and it is the nature that God has given me to love my friends even as I hate my foes. He is also thy servant, and it has seemed to me that you love him also.\"\n\n\"I have good cause so to do.\"\n\n\"Then you and I, Squire Loring, have more reason to strive on his behalf than any of these others, who think more of taking the castle than of saving those who are captives within. Do you not see that such a man as this robber lord would, when all else had failed him, most surely cut the throats of his prisoners at the last instant before the castle fell, knowing well that come what might he would have short shrift himself? Is that not certain?\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul! I had not thought of it.\"\n\n\"I was with you, hammering at the inner gate,\" said Simon, \"and yet once when I thought that it was giving way I said in my heart: 'Good-by, Samkin! I shall never see you more.' This Baron has gall in his soul, even as I have myself, and do you think that I would give up my prisoners alive, if I were constrained so to do? No, no; had we won our way this day it would have been the death-stroke for them all.\"\n\n\"It may be that you are right, Simon,\" said Nigel, \"and the thought of it should assuage our grief. But if we cannot save them by taking the castle, then surely they are lost indeed.\"\n\n\"It may be so, or it may not,\" Simon answered slowly. \"It is in my mind that if the castle were taken very suddenly, and in such a fashion that they could not foresee it, then perchance we might get the prisoners before they could do them scathe.\"\n\nNigel bent forward eagerly, his hand on the soldier's arm.\n\n\"You have some plan in your mind, Simon. Tell me what it is.\"\n\n\"I had wished to tell Sir Robert, but he is preparing the assault for to-morrow and will not be turned from his purpose. I have indeed a plan, but whether it be good or not I cannot say until I have tried it. But first I will tell you what put it into my thoughts. Know then that this morning when I was in yonder ditch I marked one of their men upon the wall. He was a big man with a white face, red hair and a touch of Saint Anthony's fire upon the cheek.\"\n\n\"But what has this to do with Aylward?\"\n\n\"I will show you. This evening after the assault I chanced to walk with some of my fellows, round yonder small fort upon the knoll to see if we could spy a weak spot in it. Some of them came to the wall to curse us, and among them whom should I see but a big man with a white face, red hair and a touch of Anthony's fire upon his cheek? What make you of that, Squire Nigel?\"\n\n\"That this man had crossed from the castle to the fort.\"\n\n\"In good sooth, it must indeed be so. There are not two such ken-speckled men in the world. But if he crossed from the castle to the fort, it was not above the ground, for our own people were between.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul! I see your meaning!\" cried Nigel. \"It is in your mind that there is a passage under the earth from one to the other.\"\n\n\"I am well sure of it.\"\n\n\"Then if we should take the small fort we may pass down this tunnel, and so carry the great castle also.\"\n\n\"Such a thing might happen,\" said Simon, \"and yet it is dangerous also, for surely those in the castle would hear our assault upon the fort and so be warned to bar the passage against us, and to slay the prisoners before we could come.\"\n\n\"What then is your rede?\"\n\n\"Could we find where the tunnel lay, Squire Nigel, I know not what is to prevent us from digging down upon it and breaking into it so that both fort and castle are at our mercy before either knows that we are there.\"\n\nNigel clapped his hands with joy. \"'Fore God!\" he cried. \"It is a most noble plan! But alas! Simon, I see not how we can tell the course of this passage or where we should dig.\"\n\n\"I have peasants yonder with spades,\" said Simon. \"There are two of my friends, Harding of Barnstable and West-country John who are waiting for us with their gear. If you will come to lead us, Squire Nigel, we are ready to venture our bodies in the attempt.\"\n\nWhat would Knolles say in case they failed? The thought flashed through Nigel's mind, but another came swiftly behind it. He would not venture further unless he found hopes of success. And if he did venture further he would put his life upon it. Giving that, he made amends for all errors. And if on the other hand success crowned their efforts, then Knolles would forgive his failure at the gateway. A minute later, every doubt banished from his mind, he was making his way through the darkness under the guidance of Black Simon.\n\nOutside the camp the two other men-at-arms were waiting for them, and the four advanced together. Presently a little group of figures loomed up in the darkness. It was a cloudy night, and a thin rain was falling which obscured both the castle and the fort; but a stone had been placed by Simon in the daytime which assured that they were between the two.\n\n\"Is blind Andreas there?\" asked Simon.\n\n\"Yes, kind sir, I am here,\" said a voice.\n\n\"This man,\" said Simon, \"was once rich and of good repute, but he was beggared by this robber lord, who afterwards put out his eyes so that he has lived for many years in darkness at the charity of others.\"\n\n\"How can he help us in our enterprise if he be indeed blind?\" asked Nigel.\n\n\"It is for that very reason, fair lord, that he can be of greater service than any other man,\" Simon answered; \"for it often happens that when a man has lost a sense the good God will strengthen those that remain. Hence it is that Andreas has such ears that he can hear the sap in the trees or the cheep of the mouse in its burrow. He has come to help us to find the tunnel.\"\n\n\"And I have found it,\" said the blind man proudly. \"Here I have placed my staff upon the line of it. Twice as I lay there with my ear to the ground I have heard footsteps pass beneath me.\"\n\n\"I trust you make no mistake, old man,\" said Nigel.\n\nFor answer the blind man raised his staff and smote twice upon the ground, once to the right and once to the left. The one gave a dull thud, the other a hollow boom.\n\n\"Can you not hear that?\" he asked. \"Will you ask me now if I make a mistake?\"\n\n\"Indeed, we are much beholden to you!\" cried Nigel. \"Let the peasants dig then, and as silently as they may. Do you keep your ear upon the ground, Andreas, so that if anyone pass beneath us we shall be warned.\"\n\nSo, amid the driving rain, the little group toiled in the darkness. The blind man lay silent, flat upon his face, and twice they heard his warning hiss and stopped their work, whilst some one passed beneath. In an hour they had dug down to a stone arch which was clearly the outer side of the tunnel roof. Here was a sad obstacle, for it might take long to loosen a stone, and if their work was not done by the break of day then their enterprise was indeed hopeless. They loosened the mortar with a dagger, and at last dislodged one small stone which enabled them to get at the others. Presently a dark hole blacker than the night around them yawned at their feet, and their swords could touch no bottom to it. They had opened the tunnel.\n\n\"I would fain enter it first,\" said Nigel. \"I pray you to lower me down.\" They held him to the full length of their arms and then letting him drop they heard him land safely beneath them. An instant later the blind man started up with a low cry of alarm.\n\n\"I hear steps coming,\" said he. \"They are far off, but they draw nearer.\"\n\nSimon thrust his head and neck down the hole. \"Squire Nigel,\" he whispered, \"can you hear me?\"\n\n\"I can hear you, Simon.\"\n\n\"Andreas says that some one comes.\"\n\n\"Then cover over the hole,\" came the answer. \"Quick, I pray you, cover it over!\"\n\nA mantle was stretched across it, so that no glimmer of light should warn the newcomer. The fear was that he might have heard, the sound of Nigel's descent. But soon it was clear that he had not done so, for Andreas announced that he was still advancing. Presently Nigel could hear the distant thud of his feet. If he bore a lantern all was lost. But no gleam of light appeared in the black tunnel, and still the footsteps drew nearer.\n\nNigel breathed a prayer of thanks to all his guardian saints as he crouched close to the slimy wall and waited breathless, his dagger in his hand. Nearer yet and nearer came the steps. He could hear the stranger's coarse breathing in the darkness. Then as he brushed past Nigel bounded upon him with a tiger spring. There was one gasp of astonishment, and not a sound more, for the Squire's grip was on the man's throat and his body was pinned motionless against the wall.\n\n\"Simon! Simon!\" cried Nigel loudly.\n\nThe mantle was moved from the hole.\n\n\"Have you a cord? Or your belts linked together may serve.\"\n\nOne of the peasants had a rope, and Nigel soon felt it dangling against his hand. He listened and there was no sound in the passage. For an instant he released his captive's throat. A torrent of prayers and entreaties came forth. The man was shaking like a leaf in the wind. Nigel pressed the point of his dagger against his face and dared him to open his lips. Then he slipped the rope beneath his arms and tied it.\n\n\"Pull him up!\" he whispered, and for an instant the gray glimmer above him was obscured.\n\n\"We have him, fair sir,\" said Simon.\n\n\"Then drop me the rope and hold it fast.\"\n\nA moment later Nigel stood among the group of men who had gathered round their captive. It was too dark to see him, and they dare not strike flint and steel.\n\nSimon passed his hand roughly over him and felt a fat clean-shaven face, and a cloth gabardine which hung to the ankles. \"Who are you?\" he whispered. \"Speak the truth and speak it low, if you would ever speak again.\"\n\nThe man's teeth chattered in his head with cold and fright. \"I speak no English,\" he murmured.\n\n\"French, then,\" said Nigel.\n\n\"I am a holy priest of God. You court the ban of holy Church when you lay hands upon me. I pray you let me go upon my way, for there are those whom I would shrive and housel. If they should die in sin, their damnation is upon you.\"\n\n\"How are you called then?\"\n\n\"I am Dom Peter de Cervolles.\"\n\n\"De Cervolles, the arch-priest, he who heated the brazier when they burned out my eyes,\" cried old Andreas. \"Of all the devils in hell there is none fouler than this one. Friends, friends, if I have done aught for you this night, I ask but one reward, that ye let me have my will of this man.\"\n\nBut Nigel pushed the old man back. \"There is no time for this,\" he said. \"Now hark you, priest\u2014if priest indeed you be\u2014your gown and tonsure will not save you if you play us false, for we are here of a set purpose and we will go forward with it, come what may. Answer me and answer me truly or it will be an ill night for you. In what part of the Castle does this tunnel enter?\"\n\n\"In the lower cellar.\"\n\n\"What is at the end?\"\n\n\"An oaken door.\"\n\n\"Is it barred?\"\n\n\"Yes, it is barred.\"\n\n\"How would you have entered?\"\n\n\"I would have given the password.\"\n\n\"Who then would have opened?\"\n\n\"There is a guard within.\"\n\n\"And beyond him?\"\n\n\"Beyond him are the prison cells and the jailers.\"\n\n\"Who else would be afoot?\"\n\n\"No one save a guard at the gate and another on the battlement.\"\n\n\"What then is the password?\"\n\nThe man was silent.\n\n\"The password, fellow!\"\n\nThe cold points of two daggers pricked his throat; but still he would not speak.\n\n\"Where is the blind man?\" asked Nigel. \"Here, Andreas, you can have him and do what you will with him.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay,\" the priest whimpered. \"Keep him off me. Save me from blind Andreas! I will tell you everything.\"\n\n\"The password then, this instant?\"\n\n\"It is 'Benedicite!'\"\n\n\"We have the password, Simon,\" cried Nigel. \"Come then, let us on to the farther end. These peasants will guard the priest, and they will remain here lest we wish to send a message.\"\n\n\"Nay, fair sir, it is in my mind that we can do better,\" said Simon. \"Let us take the priest with us, so that he who is within may know his voice.\"\n\n\"It is well thought of,\" said Nigel, \"and first let us pray together, for indeed this night may well be our last.\"\n\nHe and the three men-at-arms knelt in the rain and sent up their simple orisons, Simon still clutching tight to his prisoner's wrist.\n\nThe priest fumbled in his breast and drew something forth. \"It is the heart of the blessed confessor Saint Enogat,\" said he. \"It may be that it will ease and assoil your souls if you would wish to handle it.\"\n\nThe four Englishmen passed the flat silver case from hand to hand, each pressing his lips devoutly upon it. Then they rose to their feet. Nigel was the first to lower himself down the hole; then Simon; then the priest, who was instantly seized by the other two. The men-at-arms followed them. They had scarcely moved away from the hole when Nigel stopped.\n\n\"Surely some one else came after us,\" said he.\n\nThey listened, but no whisper or rustle came from behind them. For a minute they paused and then resumed their journey through the dark. It seemed a long, long way, though in truth it was but a few hundred yards before they came to a door with a glimmer of yellow light around it, which barred their passage. Nigel struck upon it with his hand.\n\nThere was the rasping of a bolt and then a loud voice \"Is that you, priest?\"\n\n\"Yes, it is I,\" said the prisoner in a quavering voice. \"Open, Arnold!\"\n\nThe voice was enough. There was no question of passwords. The door swung inward, and in an instant the janitor was cut down by Nigel and Simon. So sudden and so fierce was the attack that save for the thud of his body no sound was heard. A flood of light burst outward into the passage, and the Englishmen stood with blinking eyes in its glare.\n\nIn front of them lay a stone-flagged corridor, across which lay the dead body of the janitor. It had doors on either side of it, and another grated door at the farther end. A strange hubbub, a kind of low droning and whining filled the air. The four men were standing listening, full of wonder as to what this might mean, when a sharp cry came from behind them. The priest lay in a shapeless heap upon the ground, and the blood was rushing from his gaping throat. Down the passage, a black shadow in the yellow light, there fled a crouching man, who clattered with a stick as he went.\n\n\"It is Andreas,\" cried West-country Will. \"He has slain him.\"\n\n\"Then it was he that I heard behind us,\" said Nigel. \"Doubtless he was at our very heels in the darkness. I fear that the priest's cry has been heard.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" said Simon, \"there are so many cries that one more may well pass. Let us take this lamp from the wall and see what sort of devil's den we have around us.\"\n\nThey opened the door upon the right, and so horrible a smell issued from it that they were driven back from it. The lamp which Simon held forward showed a monkeylike creature mowing and grimacing in the corner, man or woman none could tell, but driven crazy by loneliness and horror. In the other cell was a graybearded man fettered to the wall, looking blankly before him, a body without a soul, yet with life still in him, for his dull eyes turned slowly in their direction. But it was from behind the central door at the end of the passage that the chorus of sad cries came which filled the air.\n\n\"Simon,\" said Nigel, \"before we go farther we will take this outer door from its hinges. With it we will block this passage so that at the worst we may hold our ground here until help comes. Do you back to the camp as fast as your feet can bear you. The peasants will draw you upward through the hole. Give my greetings to Sir Robert and tell him that the castle is taken without fail if he comes this way with fifty men. Say that we have made a lodgment within the walls. And tell him also, Simon, that I would counsel him to make a stir before the gateway so that the guard may be held there whilst we make good our footing behind them. Go, good Simon, and lose not a moment!\"\n\nBut the man-at-arms shook his head. \"It is I who have brought you here, fair sir, and here I bide through fair and foul. But you speak wisely and well, for Sir Robert should indeed be told what is going forward now that we have gone so far. Harding, do you go with all speed and bear the gentle Nigel's message.\"\n\nReluctantly the man-at-arms sped upon his errand. They could hear the racing of his feet and the low jingle of his harness until they died away in the tunnel. Then the three companions approached the door at the end. It was their intention to wait where they were until help should come, but suddenly amid the babel of cries within there broke forth an English voice, shouting in torment.\n\n\"My God!\" it cried, \"I pray you, comrades, for a cup of water, as you hope for Christ's mercy!\"\n\nA shout of laughter and the thud of a heavy blow followed the appeal.\n\nAll the hot blood rushed to Nigel's head at the sound, buzzing in his ears and throbbing in his temples. There are times when the fiery heart of a man must overbear the cold brain of a soldier. With one bound he was at the door, with another he was through it, the men-at-arms at his heels. So strange was the scene before them that for an instant all three stood motionless with horror and surprise.\n\nIt was a great vaulted chamber, brightly lit by many torches. At the farther end roared a great fire. In front of it three naked men were chained to posts in such a way that flinch as they might they could never get beyond the range of its scorching heat. Yet they were so far from it that no actual burn would be inflicted if they could but keep turning and shifting so as continually to present some fresh portion of their flesh to the flames. Hence they danced and whirled in front of the fire, tossing ceaselessly this way and that within the compass of their chains, wearied to death, their protruding tongues cracked and blackened with thirst, but unable for one instant to rest from their writhings and contortions.\n\nEven stranger was the sight at each side of the room, whence came that chorus of groans which had first struck upon the ears of Nigel and his companions. A line of great hogsheads were placed alongside the walls, and within each sat a man, his head protruding from the top. As they moved within there was a constant splashing and washing of water. The white wan faces all turned together as the door flew open, and a cry of amazement and of hope took the place of those long-drawn moans of despair.\n\nAt the same instant two fellows clad in black, who had been seated with a flagon of wine between them at a table near the fire, sprang wildly to their feet, staring with blank amazement at this sudden inrush. That instant of delay deprived them of their last chance of safety. Midway down the room was a flight of stone steps which led to the main door.\n\nSwift as a wildcat Nigel bounded toward it and gained the steps a stride or two before the jailers. They turned and made for the other which led to the passage, but Simon and his comrades were nearer to it than they. Two sweeping blows, two dagger thrusts into writhing figures, and the ruffians who worked the will of the Butcher lay dead upon the floor of their slaughter-house.\n\nOh, the buzz of joy and of prayer from all those white lips! Oh, the light of returning hope in all those sunken weary eyes! One wild shout would have gone up had not Nigel's outstretched hands and warning voice hushed them to silence.\n\nHe opened the door behind him. A curving newel staircase wound upward into the darkness. He listened, but no sound came down. There was a key in the outer lock of the iron door. He whipped it out and turned it on the inner side. The ground that they had gained was safe. Now they could turn to the relief of these poor fellows beside them. A few strong blows struck off the irons and freed the three dancers before the fire. With a husky croak of joy, they rushed across to their comrades' water-barrels, plunged their heads in like horses, and drank and drank and drank. Then in turn the poor shivering wretches were taken out of the barrels, their skins bleached and wrinkled with long soaking. Their bonds were torn from them; but, cramped and fixed, their limbs refused to act, and they tumbled and twisted upon the floor in their efforts to reach Nigel and to kiss his hand.\n\nIn a corner lay Aylward, dripping from his barrel and exhausted with cold and hunger. Nigel ran to his side and raised his head. The jug of wine from which the two jailers had drunk still stood upon their table. The Squire placed it to the archer's lips and he took a hearty pull at it.\n\n\"How is it with you now, Aylward?\"\n\n\"Better, Squire, better, but may I never touch water again as long as I live! Alas! poor Dicon has gone, and Stephen also\u2014the life chilled out of them. The cold is in the very marrow of my bones. I pray you, let me lean upon your arm as far as the fire, that I may warm the frozen blood and set it running in my veins once more.\"\n\nA strange sight it was to see these twenty naked men crouching in a half-circle round the fire with their trembling hands extended to the blaze. Soon their tongues at least were thawed, and they poured out the story of their troubles with many a prayer and ejaculation to the saints for their safe delivery. No food had crossed their lips since they had been taken. The Butcher had commanded them to join his garrison and to shoot upon their comrades from the wall. When they refused he had set aside three of them for execution.\n\nThe others had been dragged to the cellar, whither the leering tyrant had followed them. Only one question he had asked them, whether they were of a hot-blooded nature or of a cold. Blows were showered upon them until they answered. Three had said cold, and had been condemned to the torment of the fire. The rest who had said hot were delivered up to the torture of the water-cask. Every few hours this man or fiend had come down to exult over their sufferings and to ask them whether they were ready yet to enter his service. Three had consented and were gone. But the others had all of them stood firm, two of them even to their death.\n\nSuch was the tale to which Nigel and his comrades listened whilst they waited impatiently for the coming of Knolles and his men. Many an anxious look did they cast down the black tunnel, but no glimmer of light and no clash of steel came from its depths. Suddenly, however, a loud and measured sound broke upon their ears. It was a dull metallic clang, ponderous and slow, growing louder and ever louder\u2014the tread of an armored man. The poor wretches round the fire, all unnerved by hunger and suffering, huddled together with wan, scared faces, their eyes fixed in terror on the door.\n\n\"It is he!\" they whispered. \"It is the Butcher himself!\"\n\nNigel had darted to the door and listened intently. There were no footfalls save those of one man. Once sure of that, he softly turned the key in the lock. At the same instant there came a bull's bellow from without.\n\n\"Ives! Bertrand!\" cried the voice. \"Can you not hear me coming, you drunken varlets? You shall cool your own heads in the water-casks, you lazy rascals! What, not even now! Open, you dogs. Open, I say!\"\n\nHe had thrust down the latch, and with a kick he flung the door wide and rushed inward. For an instant he stood motionless, a statue of dull yellow metal, his eyes fixed upon the empty casks and the huddle of naked men. Then with the roar of a trapped lion, he turned, but the door had slammed behind him, and Black Simon, with grim figure and sardonic face, stood between.\n\nThe Butcher looked round him helplessly, for he was unarmed save for his dagger. Then his eyes fell upon Nigel's roses.\n\n\"You are a gentleman of coat-armor,\" he cried. \"I surrender myself to you.\"\n\n\"I will not take your surrender, you black villain,\" said Nigel. \"Draw and defend yourself. Simon, give him your sword.\"\n\n\"Nay, this is madness,\" said the blunt man-at-arms. \"Why should I give the wasp a sting?\"\n\n\"Give it him, I say. I cannot kill him in cold blood.\"\n\n\"But I can!\" yelled Aylward, who had crept up from the fire. \"Come, comrades! By these ten finger-bones! has he not taught us how cold blood should be warmed?\"\n\nLike a pack of wolves they were on him, and he clanged upon the floor with a dozen frenzied naked figures clutching and clinging above him. In vain Nigel tried to pull them off. They were mad with rage, these tortured starving men, their eyes fixed and glaring, their hair on end, their teeth gnashing with fury, while they tore at the howling, writhing man. Then with a rattle and clatter they pulled him across the room by his two ankles and dragged him into the fire.\n\nNigel shuddered and turned away his eyes as he saw the brazen figure roll out and stagger to his knees, only to be hurled once more into the heart of the blaze. His prisoners screamed with joy and clapped their hands as they pushed him back with their feet until the armor was too hot for them to touch. Then at last he lay still and glowed darkly red, whilst the naked men danced in a wild half-circle round the fire.\n\nBut now at last the supports had come. Lights flashed and armor gleamed down the tunnel. The cellar filled with armed men, while from above came the cries and turmoil of the feigned assault upon the gate. Led by Knolles and Nigel, the storming party rushed upward and seized the courtyard. The guard of the gate taken in the rear threw down their weapons and cried for mercy. The gate was thrown open and the assailants rushed in, with hundreds of furious peasants at their heels. Some of the robbers died in hot blood, many in cold; but all died, for Knolles had vowed to give no quarter. Day was just breaking when the last fugitive had been hunted out and slain. From all sides came the yells and whoops of the soldiers with the rending and riving of doors as they burst into the store-rooms and treasure-chambers. There was a joyous scramble amongst them, for the plunder of eleven years, gold and jewels, satins and velvets, rich plate and noble hangings were all to be had for the taking.\n\nThe rescued prisoners, their hunger appeased and their clothes restored, led the search for booty. Nigel, leaning on his sword by the gateway, saw Aylward totter past, a huge bundle under each arm, another slung over his back and a smaller packet hanging from his mouth. He dropped it for a moment as he passed his young master.\n\n\"By these ten finger-bones! I am right glad that I came to the war, and no man could ask for a more goodly life,\" said he. \"I have a present here for every girl in Tilford, and my father need never fear the frown of the sacrist of Waverley again. But how of you, Squire Loring? It standeth not aright that we should gather the harvest whilst you, who sowed it, go forth empty-handed. Come, gentle sir, take these things that I have gathered, and I will go back and find more.\"\n\nBut Nigel smiled and shook his head. \"You have gained what your heart desired, and perchance I have done so also,\" said he.\n\nAn instant later Knolles strode up to him with outstretched hand. \"I ask your pardon, Nigel,\" said he. \"I have spoken too hotly in my wrath.\"\n\n\"Nay, fair sir, I was at fault.\"\n\n\"If we stand here now within this castle, it is to you that I owe it. The King shall know of it, and Chandos also. Can I do aught else, Nigel, to prove to you the high esteem in which I hold you?\"\n\nThe Squire flushed with pleasure. \"Do you send a messenger home to England, fair sir, with news of these doings?\"\n\n\"Surely, I must do so. But do not tell me, Nigel, that you would be that messenger. Ask me some other favor, for indeed I cannot let you go.\"\n\n\"Now God forbid!\" cried Nigel. \"By Saint Paul! I would not be so caitiff and so thrall as to leave you, when some small deed might still be done. But I would fain send a message by your messenger.\"\n\n\"To whom?\"\n\n\"It is to the Lady Mary, daughter of old Sir John Buttesthorn who dwells near Guildford.\"\n\n\"But you will write the message, Nigel. Such greetings as a cavalier sends to his lady-love should be under seal.\"\n\n\"Nay, he can carry my message by word of mouth.\"\n\n\"Then I shall tell him for he goes this morning. What message, then, shall he say to the lady?\"\n\n\"He will give her my very humble greeting, and he will say to her that for the second time Saint Catharine has been our friend.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW ROBERT OF BEAUMANOIR CAME TO PLOERMEL", + "text": "Sir Robert Knolles and his men passed onward that day, looking back many a time to see the two dark columns of smoke, one thicker and one more slender, which arose from the castle and from the fort of La Brohiniere. There was not an archer nor a man-at-arms who did not bear a great bundle of spoil upon his back, and Knolles frowned darkly as he looked upon them. Gladly would he have thrown it all down by the roadside, but he had tried such matters before, and he knew that it was as safe to tear a half-gnawed bone from a bear as their blood-won plunder from such men as these. In any case it was but two days' march to Ploermel, where he hoped to bring his journey to an end.\n\nThat night they camped at Mauron, where a small English and Breton garrison held the castle. Right glad were the bowmen to see some of their own countrymen once more, and they spent the night over wine and dice, a crowd of Breton girls assisting, so that next morning their bundles were much lighter, and most of the plunder of La Brohiniere was left with the men and women of Mauron. Next day their march lay with a fair sluggish river upon their right, and a great rolling forest upon their left which covered the whole country. At last toward evening the towers of Ploermel rose before them and they saw against a darkening sky the Red Cross of England waving in the wind. So blue was the river Duc which skirted the road, and so green its banks, that they might indeed have been back beside their own homely streams, the Oxford Thames or the Midland Trent, but ever as the darkness deepened there came in wild gusts the howling of wolves from the forest to remind them that they were in a land of war. So busy had men been for many years in hunting one another that the beasts of the chase had grown to a monstrous degree, until the streets of the towns were no longer safe from the wild inroads of the fierce creatures, the wolves and the bears, who swarmed around them.\n\nIt was nightfall when the little army entered the outer gate of the Castle of Ploermel and encamped in the broad Bailey yard. Ploermel was at that time the center of British power in Mid-Brittany, as Hennebon was in the West, and it was held by a garrison of five hundred men under an old soldier, Richard of Bambro', a rugged Northumbrian, trained in that great school of warriors, the border wars. He who had ridden the marches of the most troubled frontier in Europe, and served his time against the Liddlesdale and Nithsdale raiders was hardened for a life in the field.\n\nOf late, however, Bambro' had been unable to undertake any enterprise, for his reinforcements had failed him, and amid his following he had but three English knights and seventy men. The rest were a mixed crew of Bretons, Hainaulters and a few German mercenary soldiers, brave men individually, as those of that stock have ever been, but lacking interest in the cause, and bound together by no common tie of blood or tradition.\n\nOn the other hand, the surrounding castles, and especially that of Josselin, were held by strong forces of enthusiastic Bretons, inflamed by a common patriotism, and full of warlike ardor. Robert of Beaumanoir, the fierce seneschal of the house of Rohan, pushed constant forays and excursions against Ploermel so that town and castle were both in daily dread of being surrounded and besieged. Several small parties of the English faction had been cut off and slain to a man, and so straitened were the others that it was difficult for them to gather provisions from the country round.\n\nSuch was the state of Bambro's garrison when on that March evening Knolles and his men streamed into the bailey-yard of his Castle.\n\nIn the glare of the torches at the inner gate Bambro' was waiting to receive them, a dry, hard, wizened man, small and fierce, with beady black eyes and quick furtive ways.\n\nBeside him, a strange contrast, stood his Squire, Croquart, a German, whose name and fame as a man-at-arms were widespread, though like Robert Knolles himself he had begun as a humble page. He was a very tall man, with an enormous spread of shoulders, and a pair of huge hands with which he could crack a horseshoe. He was slow and lethargic, save in moments of excitement, and his calm blond face, his dreamy blue eyes and his long fair hair gave him so gentle an appearance that none save those who had seen him in his berserk mood, raging, an iron giant, in the forefront of the battle, could ever guess how terrible a warrior he might be. Little knight and huge squire stood together under the arch of the donjon and gave welcome to the newcomers, whilst a swarm of soldiers crowded round to embrace their comrades and to lead them off where they might feed and make merry together.\n\nSupper had been set in the hall of Ploermel wherein the knights and squires assembled. Bambro' and Croquart were there with Sir Hugh Calverly, an old friend of Knolles and a fellow-townsman, for both were men of Chester. Sir Hugh was a middle-sized flaxen man, with hard gray eyes and fierce large-nosed face sliced across with the scar of a sword-cut. There too were Geoffrey D'Ardaine, a young Breton seigneur, Sir Thomas Belford, a burly thick-set Midland Englishman, Sir Thomas Walton, whose surcoat of scarlet martlets showed that he was of the Surrey Waltons, James Marshall and John Russell, young English squires, and the two brothers, Richard and Hugh Le Galliard, who were of Gascon blood. Besides these were several squires, unknown to fame, and of the newcomers, Sir Robert Knolles, Sir Thomas Percy, Nigel Loring and two other squires, Allington and Parsons. These were the company who gathered in the torchlight round the table of the Seneschal of Ploermel, and kept high revel with joyous hearts because they thought that much honor and noble deeds lay before them.\n\nBut one sad face there was at the board, and that belonged to him at the head of it. Sir Robert Bambro' sat with his chin leaning upon his hand and his eyes downcast upon the cloth, whilst all round him rose the merry clatter of voices, everyone planning some fresh enterprise which might now be attempted. Sir Robert Knolles was for an immediate advance upon Josselin. Calverly thought that a raid might be made into the South where the main French power lay. Others spoke of an attack upon Vannes.\n\nTo all these eager opinions Bambro' listened in a moody silence, which he broke at last by a fierce execration which drew a hushed attention from the company. \"Say no more, fair sirs,\" he cried; \"for indeed your words are like so many stabs in my heart. All this and more we might indeed have done. But of a truth you are too late.\"\n\n\"Too late?'\" cried Knolles. \"What mean you, Richard?\"\n\n\"Alas; that I should have to say it, but you and all these fair soldiers might be back in England once more for all the profit that I am like to have from your coming. Saw you a rider on a white horse ere you reached the Castle?\"\n\n\"Nay, I saw him not?\"\n\n\"He came by the western road from Hennebon. Would that he had broken his neck ere he came here. Not an hour ago he left his message and now hath ridden on to warn the garrison of Malestroit. A truce has been proclaimed for a year betwixt the French King and the English, and he who breaks it forfeits life and estate.\"\n\n\"A truce!\" Here was an end to all their fine dreams. They looked blankly at each other all round the table, whilst Croquart brought his great fist down upon the board until the glasses rattled again. Knolles sat with clenched hands as if he were a figure of stone, while Nigel's heart turned cold and heavy within him. A truce! Where then was his third deed, and how might he return without it?\n\nEven as they sat in moody silence there was the call of a bugle from somewhere out in the darkness.\n\nSir Richard looked up with surprise. \"We are not wont to be summoned after once the portcullis is up,\" said he. \"Truce or no truce, we must let no man within our walls until we have proved him. Croquart, see to it!\"\n\nThe huge German left the room. The company were still seated in despondent silence when he returned.\n\n\"Sir Richard,\" said he, \"the brave knight Robert of Beaumanoir and his Squire William de Montaubon are without the gate, and would fain have speech with you.\"\n\nBambro' started in his chair. What could the fierce leader of the Bretons, a man who was red to the elbow with English blood, have to say to them? On what errand had he left his castle of Josselin to pay this visit to his deadly enemies?\n\n\"Are they armed?\" he asked.\n\n\"They are unarmed.\"\n\n\"Then admit them and bring them hither, but double the guards and take all heed against surprise.\"\n\nPlaces were set at the farther end of the table for these most unexpected guests. Presently the door was swung open, and Croquart with all form and courtesy announced the two Bretons, who entered with the proud and lofty air of gallant warriors and high-bred gentlemen.\n\nBeaumanoir was a tall dark man with raven hair and long swarthy beard. He was strong and straight as a young oak, with fiery black eyes, and no flaw in his comely features save that his front teeth had been dashed from their sockets. His Squire, William of Montaubon, was also tall, with a thin hatchet face, and two small gray eyes set very close upon either side of a long fierce nose. In Beaumanoir's expression one read only gallantry and frankness; in Montaubon's there was gallantry also, but it was mixed with the cruelty and cunning of the wolf. They bowed as they entered, and the little English seneschal advanced with outstretched hand to meet them.\n\n\"Welcome, Robert, so long as you are beneath this roof,\" said he. \"Perhaps the time may come in another place when we may speak to each other in another fashion.\"\n\n\"So I hope, Richard,\" said Beaumanoir; \"but indeed we of Josselin bear you in high esteem and are much beholden to you and to your men for all that you have done for us. We could not wish better neighbors nor any from whom more honor is to be gained. I learn that Sir Robert Knolles and others have joined you, and we are heavy-hearted to think that the orders of our Kings should debar us from attempting a venture.\" He and his squire sat down at the places set for them, and filling their glasses drank to the company.\n\n\"What you say is true, Robert,\" said Bambro', \"and before you came we were discussing the matter among ourselves and grieving that it should be so. When heard you of the truce?\"\n\n\"Yester-evening a messenger rode from Nantes.\"\n\n\"Our news came to-night from Hennebon. The King's own seal was on the order. So I fear that for a year at least you will bide at Josselin and we at Ploermel, and kill time as we may. Perchance we may hunt the wolf together in the great forest, or fly our hawks on the banks of the Duc.\"\n\n\"Doubtless we shall do all this, Richard,\" said Beaumanoir; \"but by Saint Cadoc it is in my mind that with good-will upon both sides we may please ourselves and yet stand excused before our Kings.\"\n\nKnights and squires leaned forward in their chairs, their eager eyes, fixed upon him. He broke into a gap-toothed smile as he looked round at the circle, the wizened seneschal, the blond giant, Nigel's fresh young face, the grim features of Knolles, and the yellow hawk-like Calverly, all burning with the same desire.\n\n\"I see that I need not doubt the good-will,\" said he, \"and of that I was very certain before I came upon this errand. Bethink you then that this order applies to war but not to challenges, spear-runnings, knightly exchanges or the like. King Edward is too good a knight, and so is King John, that either of them should stand in the way of a gentleman who desires to advance himself or to venture his body for the exaltation of his lady. Is this not so?\"\n\nA murmur of eager assent rose from the table.\n\n\"If you as the garrison of Ploermel march upon the garrison of Josselin, then it is very plain that we have broken the truce and upon our heads be it. But if there be a private bickering betwixt me, for example, and this young squire whose eyes show that he is very eager for honor, and if thereafter others on each side join in and fight upon the quarrel, it is in no sense war, but rather our own private business which no king can alter.\"\n\n\"Indeed, Robert,\" said Bambro', \"all that you say is very good and fair.\"\n\nBeaumanoir leaned forward toward Nigel, his brimming glass in his hand. \"Your name, squire?\" said he.\n\n\"My name is Nigel Loring.\"\n\n\"I see that you are young and eager, so I choose you as I would fain have been chosen when I was of your age.\"\n\n\"I thank you, fair sir,\" said Nigel. \"It is great honor that one so famous as yourself should condescend to do some small deed upon me.\"\n\n\"But we must have cause for quarrel, Nigel. Now here I drink to the ladies of Brittany, who of all ladies upon this earth are the most fair and the most virtuous, so that the least worthy-amongst them is far above the best of England. What say you to that, young sir?\"\n\nNigel dipped his finger in his glass and leaning over he placed its wet impress on the Breton's hand. \"This in your face!\" said he.\n\nBeaumanoir swept off the red drop of moisture and smiled his approval. \"It could not have been better done,\" said he. \"Why spoil my velvet paltock as many a hotheaded fool would have done. It is in my mind, young sir, that you will go far. And now, who follows up this quarrel?\"\n\nA growl ran round the table.\n\nBeaumanoir ran his eye round and shook his head. \"Alas!\" said he, \"there are but twenty of you here, and I have thirty at Josselin who are so eager to advance themselves that if I return without hope for all of them there will be sore hearts amongst them. I pray you, Richard, since we have been at these pains to arrange matters, that you in turn will do what you may. Can you not find ten more men?\"\n\n\"But not of gentle blood.\"\n\n\"Nay, it matters not, if they will only fight.\"\n\n\"Of that there can be no doubt, for the castle is full of archers and men-at-arms who would gladly play a part in the matter.\"\n\n\"Then choose ten,\" said Beaumanoir.\n\nBut for the first time the wolf-like squire opened his thin lips. \"Surely, my lord, you will not allow archers,\" said he.\n\n\"I fear not any man.\"\n\n\"Nay, fair sir, consider that this is a trial of weapons betwixt us where man faces man. You have seen these English archers, and you know how fast and how strong are their shafts. Bethink you that if ten of them were against us it is likely that half of us would be down before ever we came to handstrokes.\"\n\n\"By Saint Cadoc, William, I think that you are right,\" cried the Breton. \"If we are to have such a fight as will remain in the memories of men, you will bring no archers and we no crossbows. Let it be steel upon steel. How say you then?\"\n\n\"Surely we can bring ten men-at-arms to make up the thirty that you desire, Robert. It is agreed then that we fight on no quarrel of England and France, but over this matter of the ladies in which you and Squire Loring have fallen out. And now the time?\"\n\n\"At once.\"\n\n\"Surely at once, or perchance a second messenger may come and this also be forbidden. We will be ready with to-morrow's sunrise.\"\n\n\"Nay, a day later,\" cried the Breton Squire. \"Bethink you, my lord, that the three lances of Radenac would take time to come over.\"\n\n\"They are not of our garrison, and they shall not have a place.\"\n\n\"But, fair sir, of all the lances of Brittany\u2014\"\n\n\"Nay, William, I will not have it an hour later. To-morrow it shall be, Richard.\"\n\n\"And where?\"\n\n\"I marked a fitting place even as I rode here this evening. If you cross the river and take the bridle-path through the fields which leads to Josselin you come midway upon a mighty oak standing at the corner of a fair and level meadow. There let us meet at midday to-morrow.\"\n\n\"Agreed!\" cried Bambro'. \"But I pray you not to rise, Robert! The night is still young and the spices and hippocras will soon be served. Bide with us, I pray you, for if you would fain hear the latest songs from England, these gentlemen have doubtless brought them. To some of us perchance it is the last night, so we would make it a full one.\"\n\nBut the gallant Breton shook his head. \"It may indeed be the last night for many,\" said he, \"and it is but right that my comrades should know it. I have no need of monk or friar, for I cannot think that harm will ever come beyond the grave to one who has borne himself as a knight should, but others have other thoughts upon these matters and would fain have time for prayer and penitence. Adieu, fair sirs, and I drink a last glass to a happy meeting at the midway oak.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW THIRTY OF JOSSELIN ENCOUNTERED THIRTY OF PLOERMEL", + "text": "All night the Castle of Ploermel rang with warlike preparations, for the smiths were hammering and filing and riveting, preparing the armor for the champions. In the stable yard hostlers were testing and grooming the great warhorses, whilst in the chapel knights and squires were easing their souls at the knees of old Father Benedict.\n\nDown in the courtyard, meanwhile, the men-at-arms had been assembled, and the volunteers weeded out until the best men had been selected. Black Simon had obtained a place, and great was the joy which shone upon his grim visage. With him were chosen young Nicholas Dagsworth, a gentleman adventurer who was nephew to the famous Sir Thomas, Walter the German, Hulbitee\u2014a huge peasant whose massive frame gave promise which his sluggish spirit failed to fulfil\u2014John Alcock, Robin Adey and Raoul Provost. These with three others made up the required thirty. Great was the grumbling and evil the talk amongst the archers when it was learned that none of them were to be included, but the bow had been forbidden on either side. It is true that many of them were expert fighters both with ax and with sword, but they were unused to carry heavy armor, and a half-armed man would have short shrift in such a hand-to-hand struggle as lay before them.\n\nIt was two hours after tierce, or one hour before noon, on the fourth Wednesday of Lent in the year of Christ 1351 that the men of Ploermel rode forth from their castle-gate and crossed the bridge of the Due. In front was Bambro' with his Squire Croquart, the latter on a great roan horse bearing the banner of Ploermel, which was a black rampant lion holding a blue flag upon a field of ermine. Behind him came Robert Knolles and Nigel Loring, with an attendant at their side, who carried the pennon of the black raven. Then rode Sir Thomas Percy with his blue lion flaunting above him, and Sir Hugh Calverly, whose banner bore a silver owl, followed by the massive Belford who carried a huge iron club, weighing sixty pounds, upon his saddlebow, and Sir Thomas Walton the knight of Surrey. Behind them were four brave Anglo-Bretons, Perrot de Commelain, Le Gaillart, d'Aspremont and d'Ardaine, who fought against their own countrymen because they were partisans of the Countess of Montfort. Her engrailed silver cross upon a blue field was carried at their head. In the rear were five German or Hainault mercenaries, the tall Hulbitee, and the men-at-arms. Altogether of these combatants twenty were of English birth, four were Breton and six were of German blood.\n\nSo, with glitter of armor and flaunting of pennons, their warhorses tossing and pawing, the champions rode down to the midway oak. Behind them streamed hundreds of archers and men-at-arms whose weapons had been wisely taken from them lest a general battle should ensue. With them also went the townsfolk, men and women, together with wine-sellers, provisions merchants, armorers, grooms and heralds, with surgeons to tend the wounded and priests to shrive the dying. The path was blocked by this throng, but all over the face of the country horsemen and footmen, gentle and simple, men and women, could be seen speeding their way to the scene of the encounter.\n\nThe journey was not a long one, for presently, as they threaded their way through the fields, there appeared before them a great gray oak which spread its gnarled leafless branches over the corner of a green and level meadow. The tree was black with the peasants who had climbed into it, and all round it was a huge throng, chattering and calling like a rookery at sunset. A storm of hooting broke out from them at the approach of the English, for Bambro' was hated in the country where he raised money for the Montfort cause by putting every parish to ransom and maltreating those who refused to pay. There was little amenity in the warlike ways which had been learned upon the Scottish border. The champions rode onward without deigning to take notice of the taunts of the rabble, but the archers turned that way and soon beat the mob to silence. Then they resolved themselves into the keepers of the ground, and pressed the people back until they formed a dense line along the edge of the field, leaving the whole space clear for the warriors.\n\nThe Breton champions had not yet arrived, so the English tethered their horses at one side of the ground, and then gathered round their leader. Every man had his shield slung round his neck, and had cut his spear to the length of five feet so that it might be more manageable for fighting on foot. Besides the spear a sword or a battle-ax hung at the side of each. They were clad from head to foot in armor, with devices upon the crests and surcoats to distinguish them from their antagonists. At present their visors were still up and they chatted gayly with each other.\n\n\"By Saint Dunstan!\" cried Percy, slapping his gauntleted hands together and stamping his steel feet. \"I shall be right glad to get to work, for my blood is chilled.\"\n\n\"I warrant you will be warm enough ere you get through,\" said Calverly.\n\n\"Or cold forever. Candle shall burn and bell toll at Alnwick Chapel if I leave this ground alive, but come what may, fair sirs, it should be a famous joust and one which will help us forward. Surely each of us will have worshipfully won worship, if we chance to come through.\"\n\n\"You say truth, Thomas,\" said Knolles, bracing his girdle. \"For my own part I have no joy in such encounters when there is warfare to be carried out, for it standeth not aright that a man should think of his own pleasure and advancement rather than of the King's cause and the weal of the army. But in times of truce I can think of no better way in which a day may be profitably spent. Why so silent, Nigel?\"\n\n\"Indeed, fair sir, I was looking toward Josselin, which lies as I understand beyond those woods. I see no sign of this debonair gentleman and of his following. It would be indeed grievous pity if any cause came to hold them back.\"\n\nHugh Calverly laughed at the words. \"You need have no fear, young sir,\" said he. \"Such a spirit lies in Robert de Beaumanoir that if he must come alone he would ride against us none the less. I warrant that if he were on a bed of death he would be borne here and die on the green field.\"\n\n\"You say truly, Hugh,\" said Bambro'. \"I know him and those who ride behind him. Thirty stouter men or more skilled in arms are not to be found in Christendom. It is in my mind that come what may there will be much honor for all of us this day. Ever in my head I have a rhyme which the wife of a Welsh archer gave me when I crossed her hand with a golden bracelet after the intaking of Bergerac. She was of the old blood of Merlin with the power of sight. Thus she said\u2014\n\n\u2003\"'Twixt the oak-tree and the river\n\n\u2003Knightly fame aid brave endeavor\n\n\u2003Make an honored name forever.'\n\n\"Methinks I see the oak-tree, and yonder is the river. Surely this should betide some good to us.\"\n\nThe huge German Squire betrayed some impatience during this speech of his leader. Though his rank was subordinate, no man present had more experience of warfare or was more famous as a fighter than he. He new broke brusquely into the talk. \"We should be better employed in ordering our line and making our plans than in talking of the rhymes of Merlin or such old wives' tales,\" said he. \"It is to our own strong arms and good weapons that we must trust this day. And first I would ask you, Sir Richard, what is your will if perchance you should fall in the midst of the fight?\"\n\nBambro' turned to the others. \"If such should be the case, fair sirs, I desire that my Squire Croquart should command.\"\n\nThere was a pause while the knights looked with some chagrin at each other. The silence was broken by Knolles.\n\n\"I will do what you say, Richard,\" said he, \"though indeed it is bitter that we who are knights should serve beneath a squire. Yet it is not for us to fall out among ourselves now at this last moment, and I have ever heard that Croquart is a very worthy and valiant man. Therefore, I will pledge you on jeopardy of my soul that I will accept him as leader if you fall.\"\n\n\"So will I also, Richard,\" said Calverly.\n\n\"And I too!\" cried Belford. \"But surely I hear music, and yonder are their pennons amid the trees.\"\n\nThey all turned, leaning upon their short spears, and watched the advance of the men of Josselin, as their troop wound its way out from the woodlands. In front rode three heralds with tabards of the ermine of Brittany, blowing loudly upon silver trumpets. Behind them a great man upon a white horse bore the banner of Josselin which carries nine golden torteaus upon a scarlet field. Then came the champions riding two and two, fifteen knights and fifteen squires, each with his pennon displayed. Behind them on a litter was borne an aged priest, the Bishop of Rennes, carrying in his hands the viaticum and the holy oils that he might give the last aid and comfort of the Church to those who were dying. The procession was terminated by hundreds of men and women from Josselin, Guegon, and Helleon, and by the entire garrison of the fortress, who came, as the English had done, without their arms. The head of this long column had reached the field before the rear were clear of the wood, but as they arrived the champions picketed their horses on the farther side, behind which their banner was planted and the people lined up until they had inclosed the whole lists with a dense wall of spectators.\n\nWith keen eyes the English party had watched the armorial blazonry of their antagonists, for those fluttering pennons and brilliant surcoats carried a language which all men could read. In front was the banner of Beaumanoir, blue with silver frets. His motto \"J'ayme qui m'ayme\" was carried on a second flag by a little page.\n\n\"Whose is the shield behind him\u2014silver with scarlet drops?\" asked Knolles.\n\n\"It is his Squire, William of Montaubon,\" Calverly answered. \"And there are the golden lion of Rochefort and the silver cross of Du Bois the Strong. I would not wish to meet a better company than are before us this day. See, there are the blue rings of young Tintiniac, who slew my Squire Hubert last Lammastide. With the aid of Saint George I will avenge him ere nightfall.\"\n\n\"By the three kings of Almain,\" growled Croquart, \"we will need to fight hard this day, for never have I seen so many good soldiers gathered together. Yonder is Yves Cheruel, whom they call the man of iron, Caro de Bodegat also with whom I have had more than one bickering\u2014that is he with the three ermine circles on the scarlet shield. There too is left-handed Alain de Karanais; bear in mind that his stroke comes on the side where there is no shield.\"\n\n\"Who is the small stout man\"\u2014asked Nigel\u2014\"he with the black and silver shield? By Saint Paul! he seems a very worthy person and one from whom much might be gained, for he is nigh as broad as he is long.\"\n\n\"It is Sir Robert Raguenel,\" said Calverly, whose long spell of service in Brittany had made him familiar with the people. \"It is said that he can lift a horse upon his back. Beware a full stroke of that steel mace, for the armor is not made that can abide it. But here is the good Beaumanoir, and surely it is time that we came to grips.\"\n\nThe Breton leader had marshaled his men in a line opposite to the English, and now he strode forward and shook Bambro' by the hand. \"By Saint Cadoc! this is a very joyous meeting, Richard,\" said he, \"and we have certainly hit upon a very excellent way of keeping a truce.\"\n\n\"Indeed, Robert,\" said Bambro', \"we owe you much thanks, for I can see that you have been at great pains to bring a worthy company against us this day. Surely if all should chance to perish there will be few noble houses in Brittany who will not mourn.\"\n\n\"Nay, we have none of the highest of Brittany,\" Beaumanoir answered. \"Neither a Blois, nor a Leon, nor a Rohan, nor a Conan, fights in our ranks this day. And yet we are all men of blood and coat-armor, who are ready to venture our persons for the desire of our ladies and the love of the high order of knighthood. And now, Richard, what is your sweet will concerning this fight?\"\n\n\"That we continue until one or other can endure no longer, for since it is seldom that so many brave men draw together it is fitting that we see as much as is possible of each other.\"\n\n\"Richard, your words are fair and good. It shall be even as you say. For the rest, each shall fight as pleases him best from the time that the herald calls the word. If any man from without shall break in upon us he shall be hanged on yonder oak.\"\n\nWith a salute he drew down his visor and returned to his own men, who were kneeling in a twinkling, many colored group whilst the old bishop gave them his blessing.\n\nThe heralds rode round with a warning to the spectators. Then they halted at the side of the two bands of men who now stood in a long line facing each other with fifty yards of grass between. The visors had been closed, and every man was now cased in metal from head to foot, some few glowing in brass, the greater number shining in steel. Only their fierce eyes could be seen smoldering in the dark shadow of their helmets. So for an instant they stood glaring and crouching.\n\nThen with a loud cry of \"Allez!\" the herald dropped his upraised hand, and the two lines of men shuffled as fast as their heavy armor would permit until they met with a sharp clang of metal in the middle of the field. There was a sound as of sixty smiths working upon their anvils. Then the babel of yells and shouts from the spectators, cheering on this party or that, rose and swelled until even the uproar of the combat was drowned in that mighty surge.\n\nSo eager were the combatants to engage that in a few moments all order had been lost and the two bands were mixed up in one furious scrambling, clattering throng, each man tossed hither and thither, thrown against one adversary and then against another, beaten and hustled and buffeted, with only the one thought in his mind to thrust with his spear or to beat with his ax against anyone who came within the narrow slit of vision left by his visor.\n\nBut alas for Nigel and his hopes of some great deed! His was at least the fate of the brave, for he was the first to fall. With a high heart he had placed himself in the line as nearly opposite to Beaumanoir as he could, and had made straight for the Breton leader, remembering that in the out set the quarrel had been so ordered that it lay between them. But ere he could reach his goal he was caught in the swirl of his own comrades, and being the lighter man was swept aside and dashed into the arms of Alain de Karanais, the left-handed swordsman, with such a crash that the two rolled upon the ground together. Light footed as a cat, Nigel had sprung up first, and was stooping over the Breton Squire when the powerful dwarf Raguenel brought his mace thudding down upon the exposed back of his helmet. With a groan Nigel fell upon his face, blood gushing from his mouth, nose, and ears. There he lay, trampled over by either party, while that great fight for which his fiery soul had panted was swaying back and forward above his unconscious form.\n\nBut Nigel was not long unavenged. The huge iron club of Belford struck the dwarf Raguenel to the ground, while Belford in turn was felled by a sweeping blow from Beaumanoir. Sometimes a dozen were on the ground at one time, but so strong was the armor, and so deftly was the force of a blow broken by guard and shield, that the stricken men were often pulled to their feet once more by their comrades, and were able to continue the fight.\n\nSome, however, were beyond all aid. Croquart had cut at a Breton knight named Jean Rousselot and had shorn away his shoulder-piece, exposing his neck and the upper part of his arm. Vainly he tried to cover this vulnerable surface with his shield. It was his right side, and he could not stretch it far enough across, nor could he get away on account of the press of men around him. For a time he held his foemen at bay, but that bare patch of white shoulder was a mark for every weapon, until at last a hatchet sank up to the socket in the knight's chest. Almost at the same moment a second Breton, a young Squire named Geoffrey Mellon, was slain by a thrust from Black Simon which found the weak spot beneath the armpit. Three other Bretons, Evan Cheruel, Caro de Bodegat, and Tristan de Pestivien, the first two knights and the latter a squire, became separated from their comrades, and were beaten to the ground with English all around them, so that they had to choose between instant death and surrender. They handed their swords to Bambro' and stood apart, each of them sorely wounded, watching with hot and bitter hearts the melee which still surged up and down the field.\n\nBut now the combat had lasted half an hour without stint or rest, until the warriors were so exhausted with the burden of their armor, the loss of blood, the shock of blows, and their own furious exertions, that they could scarce totter or raise their weapons. There must be a pause if the combat was to have any decisive end. \"Cessez! Cessez! Retirez!\" cried the heralds, as they spurred their horses between the exhausted men.\n\nSlowly the gallant Beaumanoir led the twenty-five men who were left to their original station, where they opened their visors and threw themselves down upon the grass, panting like weary dogs, and wiping the sweat from their bloodshot eyes. A pitcher of wine of Anjou was carried round by a page, and each in turn drained a cup, save only Beaumanoir who kept his Lent with such strictness that neither food nor drink might pass his lips before sunset. He paced slowly amongst his men, croaking forth encouragement from his parched lips and pointing out to them that among the English there was scarce a man who was not wounded, and some so sorely that they could hardly stand. If the fight so far had gone against them, there were still five hours of daylight, and much might happen before the last of them was laid upon his back.\n\nVarlets had rushed forth to draw away the two dead Bretons, and a brace of English archers had carried Nigel from the field. With his own hands Aylward had unlaced the crushed helmet and had wept to see the bloodless and unconscious face of his young master. He still breathed, however, and stretched upon the grass by the riverside the bowman tended him with rude surgery, until the water upon his brow and the wind upon his face had coaxed back the life into his battered frame. He breathed with heavy gasps, and some tinge of blood crept hack into his cheeks, but still he lay unconscious of the roar of the crowd and of that great struggle which his comrades were now waging once again.\n\nThe English had lain for a space bleeding and breathless, in no better case than their rivals, save that they were still twenty-nine in number. But of this muster there were not nine who were hale men, and some were so weak from loss of blood that they could scarce keep standing. Yet, when the signal was at last given to reengage there was not a man upon either side who did not totter to his feet and stagger forward toward his enemies.\n\nBut the opening of this second phase of the combat brought one great misfortune and discouragement to the English. Bambro' like the others, had undone his visor, but with his mind full of many cares he had neglected to make it fast again. There was an opening an inch broad betwixt it and the beaver. As the two lines met the left-handed Breton squire, Alain de Karanais, caught sight of Bambro's face, and in an instant thrust his short spear through the opening. The English leader gave a cry of pain and fell on his knees, but staggered to his feet again, too weak to raise his shield. As he stood exposed the Breton knight, Geoffrey Dubois the Strong, struck him such a blow with his ax that he beat in the whole breastplate with the breast behind it. Bambro' fell dead upon the ground and for a few minutes a fierce fight raged round his body.\n\nThen the English drew back, sullen and dogged, bearing Bambro' with them, and the Bretons, breathing hard, gathered again in their own quarter. At the same instant the three prisoners picked up such weapons as were scattered upon the grass and ran over to join their own party.\n\n\"Nay, nay!\" cried Knolles, raising his visor and advancing. \"This may not be. You have been held to mercy when we might have slain you, and by the Virgin I will hold you dishonored, all three, if you stand not back.\"\n\n\"Say not so, Robert Knolles,\" Evan Cheruel answered. \"Never yet has the word dishonor been breathed with my name, but I should count myself faineant if I did not fight beside my comrades when chance has made it right and proper that I should do so.\"\n\n\"By Saint Cadoc! he speaks truly,\" croaked Beaumanoir, advancing in front of his men. \"You are well aware, Robert, that it is the law of war and the usage of chivalry that if the knight to whom you have surrendered is himself slain the prisoners thereby become released.\"\n\nThere was no answer to this and Knolles, weary and spent, returned to his comrades. \"I would that we had slain them,\" said he. \"We have lost our leader and they have gained three men by the same stroke.\"\n\n\"If any more lay down their arms it is my order that you slay them forthwith,\" said Croquart, whose bent sword and bloody armor showed how manfully he had borne himself in the fray. \"And now, comrades, do not be heavy-hearted because we have lost our leader. Indeed, his rhymes of Merlin have availed him little. By the three kings of Almain! I can teach you what is better than an old woman's prophecies, and that is that you should keep your shoulders together and your shields so close that none can break between them. Then you will know what is on either side of you, and you can fix your eyes upon the front. Also, if any be so weak or wounded that he must sink his hands his comrades on right and left can bear him up. Now advance all together in God's name, for the battle is still ours if we bear ourselves like men.\"\n\nIn a solid line the English advanced, while the Bretons ran forward as before to meet them. The swiftest of these was a certain Squire, Geoffrey Poulart, who bore a helmet which was fashioned as a cock's head, with high comb above, and long pointed beak in front pierced with the breathing-holes. He thrust with his sword at Calverly, but Belford who was the next in the line raised his giant club and struck him a crushing blow from the side. He staggered, and then pushing forth from the crowd, he ran round and round in circles as one whose brain is stricken, the blood dripping from the holes of his brazen beak. So for a long time he ran, the crowd laughing and cock-crowing at the sight, until at last he stumbled and fell stone-dead upon his face. But the fighters had seen nothing of his fate, for desperate and unceasing was the rush of the Bretons and the steady advance of the English line.\n\nFor a time it seemed as if nothing would break it, but gap-toothed Beaumanoir was a general as well as a warrior. Whilst his weary, bleeding, hard-breathing men still flung themselves upon the front of the line, he himself with Raguenel, Tentiniac, Alain de Karanais, and Dubois rushed round the flank and attacked the English with fury from behind. There was a long and desperate melee until once more the heralds, seeing the combatants stand gasping and unable to strike a blow, rode in and called yet another interval of truce.\n\nBut in those few minutes whilst they had been assaulted upon both sides, the losses of the English party had been heavy. The Anglo-Breton D'Ardaine had fallen before Beaumanoir's sword, but not before he had cut deeply into his enemy's shoulder. Sir Thomas Walton, Richard of Ireland one of the Squires, and Hulbitee the big peasant had all fallen before the mace of the dwarf Raguenel or the swords of his companions. Some twenty men were still left standing upon either side, but all were in the last state of exhaustion, gasping, reeling, hardly capable of striking a blow.\n\nIt was strange to see them as they staggered with many a lurch and stumble toward each other once again, for they moved like drunken men, and the scales of their neck-armor and joints were as red as fishes' gills when they raised them They left foul wet footprints behind them on the green grass as they moved forward once more to their endless contest.\n\nBeaumanoir, faint with the drain of his blood and with a tongue of leather, paused as he advanced. \"I am fainting, comrades,\" he cried. \"I must drink.\"\n\n\"Drink your own blood, Beaumanoir!\" cried Dubois, and the weary men all croaked together in dreadful laughter.\n\nBut now the English had learned from experience, and under the guidance of Croquart they fought no longer in a straight line, but in one so bent that at last it became a circle. As the Bretons still pushed and staggered against it they thrust it back on every side, until they had turned it into the most dangerous formation of all, a solid block of men, their faces turned outward, their weapons bristling forth to meet every attack. Thus the English stood, and no assault could move them. They could lean against each other back to back while they waited and allowed their foemen to tire themselves out. Again and again the gallant Bretons tried to make a way through. Again and again they were beaten back by a shower of blows.\n\nBeaumanoir, his head giddy with fatigue, opened his helmet and gazed in despair at this terrible, unbreakable circle. Only too clearly he could see the inevitable result. His men were wearing themselves out. Already many of them could scarce stir hand or foot, and might be dead for any aid which they could give him in winning the fight. Soon all would be in the same plight. Then these cursed English would break their circle to swarm over his helpless men and to strike them down. Do what he might, he could see no way by which such an end might be prevented. He cast his eyes round in his agony, and there was one of his Bretons slinking away to the side of the lists. He could scarce credit his senses when he saw by the scarlet and silver that the deserter was his own well-tried squire, William of Montaubon.\n\n\"William! William!\" he cried. \"Surely you would not leave me?\"\n\nBut the other's helmet was closed and he could hear nothing. Beaumanoir saw that he was staggering away as swiftly as he could. With a cry of bitter despair, he drew into a knot as many of his braves as could still move, and together they made a last rush upon the English spears. This time he was firmly resolved, deep in his gallant soul, that he would come no foot back, but would find his death there amongst his foemen or carve a path into the heart of their ranks. The fire in his breast spread from man to man of his followers, and amid the crashing of blows they still locked themselves against the English shields and drove hard for an opening in their ranks.\n\nBut all was vain! Beaumanoir's head reeled. His senses were leaving him. In another minute he and his men would have been stretched senseless before this terrible circle of steel, when suddenly the whole array fell in pieces before his eyes, his enemies Croquart, Knolles, Calverly, Belford, all were stretched upon the ground together, their weapons dashed from their hands and their bodies too exhausted to rise. The surviving Bretons had but strength to fall upon them dagger in hands, and to wring from them their surrender with the sharp point stabbing through their visors. Then victors and vanquished lay groaning and panting in one helpless and blood-smeared heap.\n\nTo Beaumanoir's simple mind it had seemed that at the supreme moment the Saints of Brittany had risen at their country's call. Already, as he lay gasping, his heart was pouring forth its thanks to his patron Saint Cadoc. But the spectators had seen clearly enough the earthly cause of this sudden victory, and a hurricane of applause from one side, with a storm of hooting from the other showed how different was the emotion which it raised in minds which sympathized with the victors or the vanquished.\n\nWilliam of Montaubon, the cunning squire, had made his way across to the spot where the steeds were tethered, and had mounted his own great roussin. At first it was thought that he was about to ride from the field, but the howl of execration from the Breton peasants changed suddenly to a yell of applause and delight as he turned the beast's head for the English circle and thrust his long prick spurs into its side. Those who faced him saw this sudden and unexpected appearance. Time was when both horse and rider must have winced away from the shower of their blows. But now they were in no state to meet such a rush. They could scarce raise their arms. Their blows were too feeble to hurt this mighty creature. In a moment it had plunged through the ranks, and seven of them were on the grass. It turned and rushed through them again, leaving five others helpless beneath its hoofs. No need to do more! Already Beaumanoir and his companions were inside the circle, the prostrate men were helpless, and Josselin had won.\n\nThat night a train of crestfallen archers, bearing many a prostrate figure, marched sadly into Ploermel Castle. Behind them rode ten men, all weary, all wounded, and all with burning hearts against William of Montaubon for the foul trick that he had served them.\n\nBut over at Josselin, yellow gorse-blossoms in their helmets, the victors were borne in on the shoulders of a shouting mob, amid the fanfare of trumpets and the beating of drums. Such was the combat of the Midway Oak, where brave men met brave men, and such honor was gained that from that day he who had fought in the Battle of the Thirty was ever given the highest place and the post of honor, nor was it easy for any man to pretend to have been there, for it has been said by that great chronicler who knew them all, that not one on either side failed to carry to his grave the marks of that stern encounter." + }, + { + "title": "HOW NIGEL WAS CALLED TO HIS MASTER", + "text": "\"My sweet ladye,\" wrote Nigel in a script which it would take the eyes of love to read, \"there hath been a most noble meeting in the fourth sennight of Lent betwixt some of our own people and sundry most worthy persons of this country, which ended, by the grace of our Lady, in so fine a joust that no man living can call to mind so fair an occasion. Much honor was gained by the Sieurde Beaumanoir and also by an Almain named Croquart, with whom I hope to have some speech when I am hale again, for he is a most excellent person and very ready to advance himself or to relieve another from a vow. For myself I had hoped, with Godde's help, to venture that third small deed which might set me free to haste to your sweet side, but things have gone awry with me, and I early met with such scathe and was of so small comfort to my friends that my heart is heavy within me, and in sooth I feel that I have lost honor rather than gained it. Here I have lain since the Feast of the Virgin, and here I am like still to be, for I can move no limb, save only my hand; but grieve not, sweet lady, for Saint Catharine hath been our friend since in so short a time I had two such ventures as the Red Ferret and the intaking of the Reaver's fortalice. It needs but one more deed, and sickerly when I am hale once more it will not be long ere I seek it out. Till then, if my eyes may not rest upon you, my heart at least is ever at thy feet.\"\n\nSo he wrote from his sick-room in the Castle of Ploermel late in the summer, but yet another summer had come before his crushed head had mended and his wasted limbs had gained their strength once more. With despair he heard of the breaking of the truce, and of the fight at Mauron in which Sir Robert Knolles and Sir Walter Bentley crushed the rising power of Brittany\u2014a fight in which many of the thirty champions of Josselin met their end. Then, when with renewed strength and high hopes in his heart he went forth to search for the famous Croquart who proclaimed himself ever ready night or day to meet any man with any weapon, it was only to find that in trying the paces of his new horse the German had been cast into a ditch and had broken his neck. In the same ditch perished Nigel's last chance of soon accomplishing that deed which should free him from his vow.\n\nThere was truce once more over all Christendom, and mankind was sated with war, so that only in far-off Prussia, where the Teutonic knights waged ceaseless battle with the Lithuanian heathen, could he hope to find his heart's desire. But money and high knightly fame were needed ere a man could go upon the northern crusade, and ten years were yet to pass ere Nigel should look from the battlements of Marienberg on the waters of the Frische Haff, or should endure the torture of the hot plate when bound to the Holy Woden stone of Memel. Meanwhile, he chafed his burning soul out through the long seasons of garrison life in Brittany, broken only by one visit to the chateau of the father of Raoul, when he carried to the Lord of Grosbois the news of how his son had fallen like a gallant gentleman under the gateway of La Brohiniere.\n\nAnd then, then at last, when all hope was well-nigh dead in his heart, there came one glorious July morning which brought a horseman bearing a letter to the Castle of Vannes, of which Nigel now was seneschal. It contained but few words, short and clear as the call of a war-trumpet. It was Chandos who wrote. He needed his Squire at his side, for his pennon was in the breeze once more. He was at Bordeaux. The Prince was starting at once for Bergerac, whence he would make a great raid into France. It would not end without a battle. They had sent word of their coming, and the good French King had promised to be at great pains to receive them. Let Nigel hasten at once. If the army had left, then let him follow after with all speed. Chandos had three other squires, but would very gladly see his fourth once again, for he had heard much of him since he parted, and nothing which he might not have expected to hear of his father's son. Such was the letter which made the summer sun shine brighter and the blue sky seem of a still fairer blue upon that happy morning in Vannes.\n\nIt is a weary way from Vannes to Bordeaux. Coastwise ships are hard to find, and winds blow north when all brave hearts would fain be speeding south. A full month has passed from the day when Nigel received his letter before he stood upon the quay-side of the Garonne amid the stacked barrels of Gascon wine and helped to lead Pommers down the gang-planks. Not Aylward himself had a worse opinion of the sea than the great yellow horse, and he whinnied with joy as he thrust his muzzle into his master's outstretched hand, and stamped his ringing hoofs upon the good firm cobblestones. Beside him, slapping his tawny shoulder in encouragement, was the lean spare form of Back Simon who had remained ever under Nigel's pennon.\n\nBut Aylward, where was he? Alas! two years before he and the whole of Knolles' company of archers had been drafted away on the King's service to Guienne, and since he could not write the Squire knew not whether he was alive or dead. Simon, indeed, had thrice heard of him from wandering archers, each time that he was alive and well and newly married, but as the wife in one case was a fair maid, and in another a dark, while in the third she was a French widow, it was hard to know the truth.\n\nAlready the army had been gone a month, but news of it came daily to the town, and such news as all men could read, for through the landward gates there rolled one constant stream of wagons, pouring down the Libourne Road, and bearing the booty of Southern France. The town was full of foot-soldiers, for none but mounted men had been taken by the Prince. With sad faces and longing eyes they watched the passing of the train of plunder-laden carts, piled high with rich furniture, silks, velvets, tapestries, carvings, and precious metals, which had been the pride of many a lordly home in fair Auvergne or the wealthy Bourbonnais.\n\nLet no man think that in these wars England alone was face to face with France alone. There is glory and to spare without trifling with the truth. Two Provinces in France, both rich and warlike, had become English through a royal marriage, and these, Guienne and Gascony, furnished many of the most valiant soldiers under the island flag. So poor a country as England could not afford to keep a great force overseas, and so must needs have lost the war with France through want of power to uphold the struggle. The feudal system enabled an army to be drawn rapidly together with small expense, but at the end of a few weeks it dispersed again as swiftly, and only by a well-filled money-chest could it be held together. There was no such chest in England, and the King was forever at his wits' end how to keep his men in the field.\n\nBut Guienne and Gascony were full of knights and squires who were always ready to assemble from their isolated castles for a raid into France, and these with the addition of those English cavaliers who fought for honor, and a few thousand of the formidable archers, hired for fourpence a day, made an army with which a short campaign could be carried on. Such were the materials of the Prince's force, some eight thousand strong, who were now riding in a great circle through Southern France, leaving a broad wale of blackened and ruined country behind them.\n\nBut France, even with her southwestern corner in English hands, was still a very warlike power, far richer and more populous than her rival. Single Provinces were so great that they were stronger than many a kingdom. Normandy in the north, Burgundy in the east, Brittany in the west and Languedoc in the south were each capable of fitting out a great army of their own. Therefore the brave and spirited John, watching from Paris this insolent raid into his dominions, sent messengers in hot haste to all these great feudatories as well as to Lorraine, Picardy, Auvergne, Hainault, Vermandois, Champagne, and to the German mercenaries over his eastern border, bidding all of them to ride hard, with bloody spur, day and night, until they should gather to a head at Chartres.\n\nThere a great army had assembled early in September, whilst the Prince, all unconscious of its presence sacked towns and besieged castles from Bourges to Issodun, passing Romorautin, and so onward to Vierzon and to Tours. From week to week there were merry skirmishes at barriers, brisk assaults of fortresses in which much honor was won, knightly meetings with detached parties of Frenchmen and occasional spear-runnings where noble champions deigned to venture their persons. Houses, too, were to be plundered, while wine and women were in plenty. Never had either knights or archers had so pleasant and profitable an excursion, so that it was with high heart and much hope of pleasant days at Bordeaux with their pockets full of money that the army turned south from the Loire and began to retrace its steps to the seaboard city.\n\nBut now its pleasant and martial promenade changed suddenly to very serious work of war. As the Prince moved south he found that all, supplies had been cleared away from in front of him and that there was neither fodder for the horses nor food for the men. Two hundred wagons laden with spoil rolled at the head of the army, but the starving soldiers would soon have gladly changed it all for as many loads of bread and of meat. The light troops of the French had preceded then and burned or destroyed everything that could be of use. Now also for the first time the Prince and his men became aware that a great army was moving upon the eastern side of them, streaming southward in the hope of cutting off their retreat to the sea. The sky glowed with their fires at night, and the autumn sun twinkled and gleamed from one end of the horizon to the other upon the steel caps and flashing weapons of a mighty host.\n\nAnxious to secure his plunder, and conscious that the levies of France were far superior in number to his own force, the Prince redoubled his attempts to escape; but his horses were exhausted and his starving men were hardly to be kept in order. A few more days would unfit them for battle. Therefore, when he found near the village of Maupertuis a position in which a small force might have a chance to hold its own, he gave up the attempt to outmarch his pursuers, and he turned at bay, like a hunted boar, all tusks and eyes of flame.\n\nWhilst these high events had been in progress, Nigel with Black Simon and four other men-at-arms from Bordeaux, was hastening northward to join the army. As far as Bergerac they were in a friendly land, but thence onward they rode over a blackened landscape with many a roofless house, its two bare gable-ends sticking upward\u2014a \"Knolles' miter\" as it was afterward called when Sir Robert worked his stern will upon the country. For three days they rode northward, seeing many small parties of French in all directions, but too eager to reach the army to ease their march in the search of adventures.\n\nThen at last after passing Lusignan they began to come in touch with English foragers, mounted bowmen for the most part, who were endeavoring to collect supplies either for the army or for themselves. From them Nigel learned that the Prince, with Chandos ever at his side, was hastening south and might be met within a short day's march. As he still advanced these English stragglers became more and more numerous, until at last he overtook a considerable column of archers moving in the same direction as his own party. These were men whose horses had failed them and who had therefore been left behind on the advance, but were now hastening to be in time for the impending battle. A crowd of peasant girls accompanied them upon their march, and a whole train of laden mules were led beside them.\n\nNigel and his little troop of men-at-arms were riding past the archers when Black Simon with a sudden exclamation touched his leader upon the arm.\n\n\"See yonder, fair sir,\" he cried, with gleaming eyes, \"there where the wastrel walks with the great fardel upon his back! Who is he who marches behind him?\"\n\nNigel looked, and was aware of a stunted peasant who bore upon his rounded back an enormous bundle very much larger than himself. Behind him walked a burly broad-shouldered archer, whose stained jerkin and battered headpiece gave token of long and hard service. His bow was slung over his shoulder, and his arms were round the waists of two buxom Frenchwomen, who tripped along beside him with much laughter and many saucy answers flung back over their shoulders to a score of admirers behind them.\n\n\"Aylward!\" cried Nigel, spurring forward.\n\nThe archer turned his bronzed face, stared for an instant with wild eyes, and then, dropping his two ladies, who were instantly carried off by his comrades, he rushed to seize the hand which his young master held down to him. \"Now, by my hilt, Squire Nigel, this is the fairest sight of my lifetime!\" he cried. \"And you, old leather-face! Nay, Simon, I would put my arms round your dried herring of a body, if I could but reach you. Here is Pommers too, and I read in his eye that he knows me well and is as ready to put his teeth into me as when he stood in my father's stall.\"\n\nIt was like a whiff of the heather-perfumed breezes of Hankley to see his homely face once more. Nigel laughed with sheer joy as he looked at him.\n\n\"It was an ill day when the King's service called you from my side,\" said he, \"and by Saint Paul! I am right glad to set eyes upon you once more! I see well that you are in no wise altered, but the same Aylward that I have ever known. But who is this varlet with the great bundle who waits upon your movements?\"\n\n\"It is no less than a feather-bed, fair sir, which he bears upon his back, for I would fain bring it to Tilford, and yet it is overlarge for me when I take my place with my fellows in the ranks. But indeed this war has been a most excellent one, and I have already sent half a wagonload of my gear back to Bordeaux to await my homecoming. Yet I have my fears when I think of all the rascal foot-archers who are waiting there, for some folk have no grace or honesty in their souls, and cannot keep their hands from that which belongs to another. But if I may throw my leg over yonder spare horse I will come on with you, fair sir, for indeed it would be joy to my heart to know that I was riding under your banner once again.\"\n\nSo Aylward, having given instructions to the bearer of his feather-bed, rode away in spite of shrill protests from his French companions, who speedily consoled themselves with those of his comrades who seemed to have most to give. Nigel's party was soon clear of the column of archers and riding hard in the direction of the Prince's army. They passed by a narrow and winding track, through the great wood of Nouaille, and found before them a marshy valley down which ran a sluggish stream. Along its farther bank hundreds of horses were being watered, and beyond was a dense block of wagons. Through these the comrades passed, and then topped a small mound from which the whole strange scene lay spread before them.\n\nDown the valley the slow stream meandered with marshy meadows on either side. A mile or two lower a huge drove of horses were to be seen assembled upon the bank. They were the steeds of the French cavalry, and the blue haze of a hundred fires showed where King John's men were camping. In front of the mound upon which they stood the English line was drawn, but there were few fires, for indeed, save their horses, there was little for them to cook. Their right rested upon the river, and their array stretched across a mile of ground until the left was in touch with a tangled forest which guarded it from flank attack. In front was a long thick hedge and much broken ground, with a single deeply rutted country road cutting through it in the middle. Under the hedge and along the Whole front of the position lay swarms of archers upon the grass, the greater number slumbering peacefully with sprawling limbs in the warm rays of the September sun. Behind were the quarters of the various knights, and from end to end flew the banners and pennons marked with the devices of the chivalry of England and Guienne.\n\nWith a glow in his heart Nigel saw those badges of famous captains and leaders and knew that now at last he also might show his coat-armor in such noble company. There was the flag of Jean Grailly, the Captal de Buch, five silver shells on a black cross, which marked the presence of the most famous soldier of Gascony, while beside it waved the red lion of the noble Knight of Hainault, Sir Eustace d'Ambreticourt. These two coats Nigel knew, as did every warrior in Europe, but a dense grove of pennoned lances surrounded them, bearing charges which were strange to him, from which he understood that these belonged to the Guienne division of the army. Farther down the line the famous English ensigns floated on the wind, the scarlet and gold of Warwick, the silver star of Oxford, the golden cross of Suffolk, the blue and gold of Willoughby, and the gold-fretted scarlet of Audley. In the very center of them, all was one which caused all others to pass from his mind, for close to the royal banner of England, crossed with the label of the Prince, there waved the war-worn flag with the red wedge upon the golden field which marked the quarters of the noble Chandos.\n\nAt the sight Nigel set spurs to his horse, and a few minutes later had reached the spot. Chandos, gaunt from hunger and want of sleep, but with the old fire lurking in his eye, was standing by the Prince's tent, gazing down at what could be seen of the French array, and heavy with thought. Nigel sprang from his horse and was within touch of his master when the silken hanging of the royal tent was torn violently aside and Edward rushed out.\n\nHe was without his armor and clad in a sober suit of black, but the high dignity of his bearing and the imperious anger which flushed his face proclaimed the leader and the Prince. At his heels was a little white-haired ecclesiastic in a flowing gown of scarlet sendal, expostulating and arguing in a torrent of words.\n\n\"Not another word, my Lord Cardinal,\" cried the angry prince. \"I have listened to you overlong, and by God's dignity! that which you say is neither good nor fair in my ears. Hark you, John, I would have your counsel. What think you is the message which my Lord Cardinal of Perigord has carried from the King of France? He says that of his clemency he will let my army pass back to Bordeaux if we will restore to him all that we have taken, remit all ransoms, and surrender my own person with that of a hundred nobles of England and Guienne to be held as prisoners. What think you, John?\"\n\nChandos smiled. \"Things are not done in that fashion,\" said he.\n\n\"But my Lord Chandos,\" cried the Cardinal, \"I have made it clear to the Prince that indeed it is a scandal to all Christendom and a cause of mocking to the heathen, that two great sons of the Church should turn their swords thus upon each other.\"\n\n\"Then bid the King of France keep clear of us,\" said the Prince.\n\n\"Fair son, you are aware that you are in the heart of his country and that it standeth not aright that he should suffer you to go forth as you came. You have but a small army, three thousand bowmen and five thousand men-at-arms at the most, who seem in evil case for want of food and rest. The King has thirty thousand men at his back, of which twenty thousand are expert men-at-arms. It is fitting therefore that you make such terms as you may, lest worse befall.\"\n\n\"Give my greetings to the King of France and tell him that England will never pay ransom for me. But it seems to me, my Lord Cardinal, that you have our numbers and condition very ready upon your tongue, and I would fain know how the eye of a Churchman can read a line of battle so easily. I have seen that these knights of your household have walked freely to and fro within our camp, and I much fear that when I welcomed you as envoys I have in truth given my protection to spies. How say you, my Lord Cardinal?\"\n\n\"Fair Prince, I know not how you can find it in your heart or conscience to say such evil words.\"\n\n\"There is this red-bearded nephew of thine, Robert de Duras. See where he stands yonder, counting and prying. Hark hither, young sir! I have been saying to your uncle the Cardinal that it is in my mind that you and your comrades have carried news of our dispositions to the French King. How say you?\"\n\nThe knight turned pale and sank his eyes. \"My lord,\" he murmured, \"it may be that I have answered some questions.\"\n\n\"And how will such answers accord with your honor, seeing that we have trusted you since you came in the train of the Cardinal?\"\n\n\"My lord, it is true that I am in the train of the Cardinal, and yet I am liege man of King John and a knight of France, so I pray you to assuage your wrath against me.\"\n\nThe Prince ground his teeth and his piercing eyes blazed upon the youth. \"By my father's soul! I can scarce forbear to strike you to the earth! But this I promise you, that if you show that sign of the Red Griffin in the field and if you be taken alive in to-morrow's battle, your head shall most assuredly be shorn from your shoulders.\"\n\n\"Fair son, indeed you speak wildly,\" cried the Cardinal. \"I pledge you my word that neither my nephew Robert nor any of my train will take part in the battle. And now I leave you, sire, and may God assoil your soul, for indeed in all this world no men stand in greater peril than you and those who are around you, and I rede you that you spend the night in such ghostly exercises as may best prepare you for that which may befall.\" So saying the Cardinal bowed, and with his household walking behind him set off for the spot where they had left their' horses, whence they rode to the neighboring Abbey.\n\nThe angry Prince turned upon his heel and entered his tent once more, whilst Chandos, glancing round, held out a warm welcoming hand to Nigel.\n\n\"I have heard much of your noble deeds,\" said he. \"Already your name rises as a squire errant. I stood no higher, nor so high, at your age.\"\n\nNigel flushed with pride and pleasure. \"Indeed, my dear lord, it is very little that I have done. But now that I am back at your side I hope that in truth I shall learn to bear myself in worthy fashion, for where else should I win honor if it be not under your banner.\"\n\n\"Truly, Nigel, you have come at a very good time for advancement. I cannot see how we can leave this spot without a great battle which will live in men's minds forever. In all our fights in France I cannot call to mind any in which they have been so strong or we so weak as now, so that there will be the more honor to be gained. I would that we had two thousand more archers. But I doubt not that we shall give them much trouble ere they drive us out from amidst these hedges. Have you seen the French?\"\n\n\"Nay, fair sir, I have but this moment arrived.\"\n\n\"I was about to ride forth myself to coast their army and observe their countenance, so come with me ere the night fall, and we shall see what we can of their order and dispositions.\"\n\nThere was a truce betwixt the two forces for the day, on account of the ill-advised and useless interposition of the Cardinal of Perigord, Hence when Chandos and Nigel had pushed their horses through the long hedge which fronted the position they found that many small parties of the knights of either army were riding up and down on the plain outside. The greater number of these groups were French, since it was very necessary for them to know as much as possible of the English defenses; and many of their scouts had ridden up to within a hundred yards of the hedge, where they were sternly ordered back by the pickets of archers on guard.\n\nThrough these scattered knots of horsemen Chandos rode, and as many of them were old antagonists it was \"Ha, John!\" on the one side, and \"Ha, Raoul!\" \"Ha, Nicholas!\" \"Ha, Guichard!\" upon the other, as they brushed past them. Only one cavalier greeted them amiss, a large, red-faced man, the Lord Clermont, who by some strange chance bore upon his surcoat a blue virgin standing amid golden sunbeams, which was the very device which Chandos had donned for the day. The fiery Frenchman dashed across their path and drew his steed back on to its haunches.\n\n\"How long is it, my Lord Chandos,\" said he hotly, \"since you have taken it upon yourself to wear my arms?\"\n\nChandos smiled. \"It is surely you who have mine,\" said he, \"since this surcoat was worked for thee by the good nuns of Windsor a long year ago.\"\n\n\"If it were not for the truce,\" said Clermont, \"I would soon show you that you have no right to wear it.\"\n\n\"Look for it then in the battle to-morrow, and I also will look for yours,\" Chandos answered. \"There we can very honorably settle the matter.\"\n\nBut the Frenchman was choleric and hard to appease. \"You English can invent nothing,\" said he, \"and you take for your own whatever you see handsome belonging to others.\" So, grumbling and fuming, he rode upon his way, while Chandos, laughing gayly, spurred onward across the plain.\n\nThe immediate front of the English line was shrouded with scattered trees and bushes which hid the enemy; but when they had cleared these a fair view of the great French army lay before them. In the center of the huge camp was a long and high pavilion of red silk, with the silver lilies of the King at one end of it, and the golden oriflamme, the battle-flag of old France, at the other. Like the reeds of a pool from side to side of the broad array, and dwindling away as far as their eyes could see, were the banners and pennons of high barons and famous knights, but above them all flew the ducal standards which showed that the feudal muster of all the warlike provinces of France was in the field before them.\n\nWith a kindling eye Chandos looked across at the proud ensigns of Normandy, or Burgundy, of Auvergne, of Champagne, of Vermandois, and of Berry, flaunting and gleaming in the rays of the sinking sun. Riding slowly down the line he marked with attentive gaze the camp of the crossbowmen, the muster of the German mercenaries, the numbers of the foot-soldiers, the arms of every proud vassal or vavasor which might give some guide as to the power of each division. From wing to wing and round the flanks he went, keeping ever within crossbow-shot of the army, and then at last having noted all things in his mind he turned his horse's head and rode slowly back, heavy with thought, to the English lines." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE KING OF FRANCE HELD COUNSEL AT MAUPERTUIS", + "text": "The morning of Sunday, the nineteenth of September, in the year of our Lord 1356, was cold and fine. A haze which rose from the marshy valley of Muisson covered both camps and set the starving Englishmen shivering, but it cleared slowly away as the sun rose. In the red silken pavilion of the French King\u2014the same which had been viewed by Nigel and Chandos the evening before\u2014a solemn mass was held by the Bishop of Chalons, who prayed for those who were about to die, with little thought in his mind that his own last hour was so near at hand. Then, when communion had been taken by the King and his four young sons the altar was cleared away, and a great red-covered table placed lengthwise down the tent, round which John might assemble his council and determine how best he should proceed. With the silken roof, rich tapestries of Arras round the walls and Eastern rugs beneath the feet, his palace could furnish no fairer chamber.\n\nKing John, who sat upon the canopied dais at the upper end, was now in the sixth year of his reign and the thirty-sixth of his life. He was a short burly man, ruddy-faced and deep-chested, with dark kindly eyes and a most noble bearing. It did not need the blue cloak sewed with silver lilies to mark him as the King. Though his reign had been short, his fame was already widespread over all Europe as a kindly gentleman and a fearless soldier\u2014a fit leader for a chivalrous nation. His elder son, the Duke of Normandy, still hardly more than a boy, stood beside him, his hand upon the King's shoulder, and John half turned from time to time to fondle him. On the right, at the same high dais, was the King's younger brother, the Duke of Orleans, a pale heavy-featured man, with a languid manner and intolerant eyes. On the left was the Duke of Bourbon, sad-faced and absorbed, with that gentle melancholy in his eyes and bearing which comes often with the premonition of death. All these were in their armor, save only for their helmets, which lay upon the board before them.\n\nBelow, grouped around the long red table, was an assembly of the most famous warriors in Europe. At the end nearest the King was the veteran soldier the Duke of Athens, son of a banished father, and now High Constable of France. On one side of him sat the red-faced and choleric Lord Clermont, with the same blue Virgin in golden rays upon his surcoat which had caused his quarrel with Chandos the night before. On the other was a noble-featured grizzly-haired soldier, Arnold d'Andreghen, who shared with Clermont the honor of being Marshal of France. Next to them sat Lord James of Bourbon, a brave warrior who was afterwards slain by the White Company at Brignais, and beside him a little group of German noblemen, including the Earl of Salzburg and the Earl of Nassau, who had ridden over the frontier with their formidable mercenaries at the bidding of the French King. The ridged armor and the hanging nasals of their bassinets were enough in themselves to tell every soldier that they were from beyond the Rhine. At the other side of the table were a line of proud and warlike Lords, Fiennes, Chatillon, Nesle, de Landas, de Beaujeu, with the fierce knight errant de Chargny, he who had planned the surprise of Calais, and Eustace de Ribeaumont, who had upon the same occasion won the prize of valor from the hands of Edward of England. Such were the chiefs to whom the King now turned for assistance and advice.\n\n\"You have already heard, my friends,\" said he, \"that the Prince of Wales has made no answer to the proposal which we sent by the Lord Cardinal of Perigord. Certes this is as it should be, and though I have obeyed the call of Holy Church I had no fears that so excellent a Prince as Edward of England would refuse to meet us in battle. I am now of opinion that we should fall upon them at once, lest perchance the Cardinal's cross should again come betwixt our swords and our enemies.\"\n\nA buzz of joyful assent arose from the meeting, and even from the attendant men-at-arms who guarded the door. When it had died away the Duke of Orleans rose in his place beside the King.\n\n\"Sire,\" said he, \"you speak as we would have you do, and I for one am of opinion that the Cardinal of Perigord has been an ill friend of France, for why should we bargain for a part when we have but to hold out our hand in order to grasp the whole? What need is there for words? Let us spring to horse forthwith and ride over this handful of marauders who have dared to lay waste your fair dominions. If one of them go hence save as our prisoner we are the more to blame.\"\n\n\"By Saint Denis, brother!\" said the King, smiling, \"if words could slay you would have had them all upon their backs ere ever we left Chartres. You are new to war, but when you have had experience of a stricken field or two you would know that things must be done with forethought and in order or they may go awry. In our father's time we sprang to horse and spurred upon these English at Crecy and elsewhere as you advise, but we had little profit from it, and now we are grown wiser. How say you, Sieur de Ribeaumont? You have coasted their lines and observed their countenance. Would you ride down upon them, as my brother has advised, or how would you order the matter?\"\n\nDe Ribeaumont, a tall dark-eyed handsome man, paused ere he answered. \"Sire,\" he said at last, \"I have indeed ridden along their front and down their flanks, in company with Lord Landas and Lord de Beaujeu, who are here at your council to witness to what I say. Indeed, sire, it is in my mind that though the English are few in number yet they are in such a position amongst these hedges and vines that you would be well-advised if you were to leave them alone, for they have no food and must retreat, so that you will be able to follow them and to fight them to better advantage.\"\n\nA murmur of disapproval rose from the company, and the Lord Clermont, Marshal of the army, sprang to his feet, his face red with anger.\n\n\"Eustace; Eustace,\" said he, \"I bear in mind the days when you were of great heart and high enterprise, but since King Edward gave you yonder chaplet of pearls you have ever been backward against the English!\"\n\n\"My Lord Clermont,\" said de Ribeaumont sternly, \"it is not for me to brawl at the King's council and in the face of the enemy, but we will go further into this matter at some other time. Meanwhile, the King has asked me for my advice and I have given it as best I might.\"\n\n\"It had been better for your honor, Sir Eustace, had you held your peace,\" said the Duke of Orleans. \"Shall we let them slip from our fingers when we have them here and are fourfold their number? I know not where we should dwell afterwards, for I am very sure that we should be ashamed to ride back to Paris, or to look our ladies in the eyes again.\"\n\n\"Indeed, Eustace, you have done well to say what is in your mind,\" said the King; \"but I have already said that we shall join battle this morning, so that there is no room here for further talk. But I would fain have heard from you how it would be wisest and best that we attack them?\"\n\n\"I will advise you, sire, to the best of my power. Upon their right is a river with marshes around it, and upon their left a great wood, so that we can advance only upon the center. Along their front is a thick hedge, and behind it I saw the green jerkins of their archers, as thick as the sedges by the river. It is broken by one road where only four horsemen could ride abreast, which leads through the position. It is clear then that if we are to drive them back we must cross the great hedge, and I am very sure that the horses will not face it with such a storm of arrows beating from behind it. Therefore, it is my council that we fight upon foot, as the English did at Crecy, for indeed we may find that our horses will be more hindrance than help to us this day.\"\n\n\"The same thought was in my own mind, sire,\" said Arnold d'Andreghen the veteran Marshal. \"At Crecy the bravest had to turn their backs, for what can a man do with a horse which is mad with pain and fear? If we advance upon foot we are our own masters, and if we stop the shame is ours.\"\n\n\"The counsel is good,\" said the Duke of Athens, turning his shrewd wizened face to the King; \"but one thing only I would add to it. The strength of these people lies in their archers, and if we could throw them into disorder, were it only for a short time, we should win the hedge; else they will shoot so strongly that we must lose many men before we reach it, for indeed we have learned that no armor will keep out their shafts when they are close.\"\n\n\"Your words, fair sir, are both good and wise,\" said the King, \"but I pray you to tell us how you would throw these archers into disorder?\"\n\n\"I would choose three hundred horsemen, sire, the best and most forward in the army. With these I would ride up the narrow road, and so turn to right and left, falling upon the archers behind the hedge. It may be that the three hundred would suffer sorely, but what are they among so great a host, if a road may be cleared for their companions?\"\n\n\"I would say a word to that, sire,\" cried the German Count of Nassau, \"I have come here with my comrades to venture our persons in your quarrel; but we claim the right to fight in our own fashion, and we would count it dishonor to dismount from our steeds out of fear of the arrows of the English. Therefore, with your permission, we will ride to the front, as the Duke of Athens has advised, and so clear a path for the rest of you.\"\n\n\"This may not be!\" cried the Lord Clermont angrily. \"It would be strange indeed if Frenchmen could not be found to clear a path for the army of the King of France. One would think to hear you talk, my Lord Count, that your hardihood was greater than our own, but by our Lady of Rocamadour you will learn before nightfall that it is not so. It is for me, who am a Marshal of France; to lead these three hundred, since it is an honorable venture.\"\n\n\"And I claim the same right for the same reason,\" said Arnold of Andreghen.\n\nThe German Count struck the table with his mailed fist. \"Do what you like!\" said he. \"But this only I can promise you, that neither I nor any of my German riders will descend from our horses so long as they are able to carry us, for in our country it is only people of no consequence who fight upon their feet.\"\n\nThe Lord Clermont was leaning angrily forward with some hot reply when King John intervened. \"Enough, enough!\" he said. \"It is for you to give your opinions, and for me to tell you what you will do. Lord Clermont, and you, Arnold, you will choose three hundred of the bravest cavaliers in the army and you will endeavor to break these archers. As to you and your Germans, my Lord Nassau, you will remain upon horseback, since you desire it, and you will follow the Marshals and support them as best you may. The rest of the army will advance upon foot, in three other divisions as arranged: yours, Charles,\" and he patted his son, the Duke of Normandy, affectionately upon the hand; \"yours, Philip,\" he glanced at the Duke of Orleans; \"and the main battle which is my own. To you, Geoffrey de Chargny, I intrust the oriflamme this day. But who is this knight and what does he desire?\"\n\nA young knight, ruddy-bearded and tall, a red griffin upon his surcoat, had appeared in the opening of the tent. His flushed face and disheveled dress showed that he had come in haste. \"Sire,\" said he, \"I am Robert de Duras, of the household of the Cardinal de Perigord. I have told you yesterday all that I have learned of the English camp. This morning I was again admitted to it, and I have seen their wagons moving to the rear. Sire, they are in flight for Bordeaux.\"\n\n\"'Fore God, I knew it!\" cried the Duke of Orleans in a voice of fury. \"Whilst we have been talking they have slipped through our fingers. Did I not warn you?\"\n\n\"Be silent, Philip!\" said the King angrily. \"But you, sir, have you seen this with your own eyes?\"\n\n\"With my own eyes, sire, and I have ridden straight from their camp.\"\n\nKing John looked at him with a stern gaze. \"I know not how it accords with your honor to carry such tidings in such a fashion,\" said he; \"but we cannot choose but take advantage of it. Fear not, brother Philip, it is in my mind that you will see all that you would wish of the Englishmen before nightfall. Should we fall upon them whilst they cross the ford it will be to our advantage. Now, fair sirs, I pray you to hasten to your posts and to carry out all that we have agreed. Advance the oriflamme, Geoffrey, and do you marshal the divisions, Arnold. So may God and Saint Denis have us in their holy keeping this day!\"\n\nThe Prince of Wales stood upon that little knoll where Nigel had halted the day before. Beside him were Chandos, and a tall sunburned warrior of middle age, the Gascon Captal de Buch. The three men were all attentively watching the distant French lines, while behind them a column of wagons wound down to the ford of the Muisson.\n\nClose in the rear four knights in full armor with open visors sat their horses and conversed in undertones with each other. A glance at their shields would have given their names to any soldier, for they were all men of fame who had seen much warfare. At present they were awaiting their orders, for each of them commanded the whole or part of a division of the army. The youth upon the left, dark, slim and earnest, was William Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, only twenty-eight years of age and yet a veteran of Crecy. How high he stood in reputation is shown by the fact that the command of the rear, the post of honor in a retreating army, had been given to him by the Prince. He was talking to a grizzled harsh-faced man, somewhat over middle age, with lion features and fierce light-blue eyes which gleamed as they watched the distant enemy. It was the famous Robert de Ufford, Earl of Suffolk, who had fought without a break from Cadsand onward through the whole Continental War. The other tall silent soldier, with the silver star gleaming upon his surcoat, was John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and he listened to the talk of Thomas Beauchamp, a burly, jovial, ruddy nobleman and a tried soldier, who leaned forward and tapped his mailed hand upon the other's steel-clad thigh. They were old battle-companions, of the same age and in the very prime of life, with equal fame and equal experience of the wars. Such was the group of famous English soldiers who sat their horses behind the Prince and waited for their orders.\n\n\"I would that you had laid hands upon him,\" said the Prince angrily, continuing his conversation with Chandos, \"and yet, perchance, it was wiser to play this trick and make them think that we were retreating.\"\n\n\"He has certainly carried the tidings,\" said Chandos, with a smile. \"No sooner had the wagons started than I saw him gallop down the edge of the wood.\"\n\n\"It was well thought of, John,\" the Prince remarked, \"for it would indeed be great comfort if we could turn their own spy against them. Unless they advance upon us, I know not how we can hold out another day, for there is not a loaf left in the army; and yet if we leave this position where shall we hope to find such another?\"\n\n\"They will stoop, fair sir, they will stoop to our lure. Even now Robert de Duras will be telling them that the wagons are on the move, and they will hasten to overtake us lest we pass the ford. But who is this, who rides so fast? Here perchance may be tidings.\"\n\nA horseman had spurred up to the knoll. He sprang from the saddle, and sank on one knee before the Prince.\n\n\"How now, my Lord Audley,\" said Edward. \"What would you have?\"\n\n\"Sir,\" said the knight, still kneeling with bowed head before his leader, \"I have a boon to ask of you.\"\n\n\"Nay, James, rise! Let me hear what I can do.\"\n\nThe famous knight errant, pattern of chivalry for all time; rose and turned his swarthy face and dark earnest eyes upon his master. \"Sir,\" said he, \"I have ever served most loyally my lord your father and yourself, and shall continue so to do so long as I have life. Dear sir, I must now acquaint you that formerly I made a vow if ever I should be in any battle under your command that I would be foremost or die in the attempt. I beg therefore that you will graciously permit me to honorably quit my place among the others, that I may post myself in such wise as to accomplish my vow.\"\n\nThe Prince smiled, for it was very sure that vow or no vow, permission or no permission, Lord James Audley would still be in the van. \"Go, James,\" said he, shaking his hand, \"and God grant that this day you may shine in valor above all knights. But hark, John, what is that?\"\n\nChandos cast up his fierce nose like the eagle which smells slaughter afar. \"Surely, sir, all is forming even as we had planned it.\"\n\nFrom far away there came a thunderous shout. Then another and yet another.\n\n\"See, they are moving!\" cried the Captal de Buch.\n\nAll morning they had watched the gleam of the armed squadrons who were drawn up in front of the French camp. Now whilst a great blare of trumpets was borne to their ears, the distant masses flickered and twinkled in the sunlight.\n\n\"Yes, yes, they are moving!\" cried the Prince.\n\n\"They are moving! They are moving!\" Down the line the murmur ran. And then with a sudden impulse the archers at the hedge sprang to their feet and the knights behind them waved their weapons in the air, while one tremendous shout of warlike joy carried their defiance to the approaching enemy. Then there fell such a silence that the pawing of the horses or the jingle of their harness struck loud upon the ear, until amid the hush there rose a low deep roar like the sound of the tide upon the beach, ever growing and deepening as the host of France drew near." + }, + { + "title": "HOW NIGEL FOUND HIS THIRD DEED", + "text": "Four archers lay behind a clump of bushes ten yards in front of the thick hedge which shielded their companions. Amid the long line of bowmen those behind them were their own company, and in the main the same who were with Knolles in Brittany. The four in front were their leaders: old Wat of Carlisle, Ned Widdington the red-headed Dalesman, the bald bowyer Bartholomew, and Samkin Alyward, newly rejoined after a week's absence. All four were munching bread and apples, for Aylward had brought in a full haversack and divided them freely amongst his starving comrades. The old Borderer and the Yorkshireman were gaunt and hollow-eyed with privation, while the bowyer's round face had fallen in so that the skin hung in loose pouches under his eyes and beneath his jaws.\n\nBehind them lines of haggard, wolfish men glared through the underwood, silent and watchful save that they burst into a fierce yelp of welcome when Chandos and Nigel galloped up, sprang from their horses and took their station beneath them. All along the green fringe of bowmen might be seen the steel-clad figures of knights and squires who had pushed their way into the front line to share the fortune of the archers.\n\n\"I call to mind that I once shot six ends with a Kentish woldsman at Ashford\u2014\" began the Bowyer.\n\n\"Nay, nay, we have heard that story!\" said old Wat impatiently. \"Shut thy clap, Bartholomew, for it is no time for redeless gossip! Walk down the line, I pray you, and see if there be no frayed string, nor broken nock nor loosened whipping to be mended.\"\n\nThe stout bowyer passed down the fringe of bowmen, amidst a running fire of rough wit. Here and there a bow was thrust out at him through the hedge for his professional advice.\n\n\"Wax your heads!\" he kept crying. \"Pass down the wax-pot and wax your heads. A waxed arrow will pass where a dry will be held. Tom Beverley, you jack-fool! where is your bracer-guard? Your string will flay your arm ere you reach your up-shot this day. And you, Watkin, draw not to your mouth, as is your wont, but to your shoulder. You are so used to the wine-pot that the string must needs follow it. Nay, stand loose, and give space for your drawing arms, for they will be on us anon.\"\n\nHe ran back and joined his comrades in the front, who had now risen to their feet. Behind them a half-mile of archers stood behind the hedge, each with his great warbow strung, half a dozen shafts loose behind him, and eighteen more in the quiver slung across his front. With arrow on string, their feet firm-planted, their fierce eager faces peering through the branches, they awaited the coming storm.\n\nThe broad flood of steel, after oozing slowly forward, had stopped about a mile from the English front. The greater part of the army had then descended from their horses, while a crowd of varlets and hostlers led them to the rear. The French formed themselves now into three great divisions, which shimmered in the sun like silvery pools, reed-capped with many a thousand of banners and pennons. A space of several hundred yards divided each. At the same time two bodies of horsemen formed themselves in front. The first consisted of three hundred men in one thick column, the second of a thousand, riding in a more extended line.\n\nThe Prince had ridden up to the line of archers. He was in dark armor, his visor open, and his handsome aquiline face all glowing with spirit and martial fire. The bowmen yelled at him, and he waved his hands to them as a huntsman cheers his hounds.\n\n\"Well, John, what think you now?\" he asked. \"What would my noble father not give to be by our side this day? Have you seen that they have left their horses?\"\n\n\"Yes, my fair lord, they have learned their lesson,\" said Chandos. \"Because we have had good fortune upon our feet at Crecy and elsewhere they think that they have found the trick of it. But it is in my mind that it is very different to stand when you are assailed, as we have done, and to assail others when you must drag your harness for a mile and come weary to the fray.\"\n\n\"You speak wisely, John. But these horsemen who form in front and ride slowly towards us, what make you of them?\"\n\n\"Doubtless they hope to cut the strings of our bowmen and so clear a way for the others. But they are indeed a chosen band, for mark you, fair sir, are not those the colors of Clermont upon the left, and of d'Andreghen upon the right, so that both marshals ride with the vanguard?\"\n\n\"By God's soul, John!\" cried the Prince, \"it is very sure that you can see more with one eye than any man in this army with two. But it is even as you say. And this larger band behind?\"\n\n\"They should be Germans, fair sir, by the fashion of their harness.\"\n\nThe two bodies of horsemen had moved slowly over the plain, with a space of nearly a quarter of a mile between them. Now, having come two bowshots from the hostile line, they halted. All that they could see of the English was the long hedge, with an occasional twinkle of steel through its leafy branches, and behind that the spear-heads of the men-at-arms rising from amidst the brushwood and the vines. A lovely autumn countryside with changing many-tinted foliage lay stretched before them, all bathed in peaceful sunshine, and nothing save those flickering fitful gleams to tell of the silent and lurking enemy who barred their way. But the bold spirit of the French cavaliers rose the higher to the danger. The clamor of their warcries filled the air, and they tossed their pennoned spears over their heads in menace and defiance. From the English line it was a noble sight, the gallant, pawing, curveting horses, the many-colored twinkling riders, the swoop and wave and toss of plume and banner.\n\nThen a bugle rang forth. With a sudden yell every spur struck deep, every lance was laid in rest, and the whole gallant squadron flew like a glittering thunderbolt for the center of the English line.\n\nA hundred yards they had crossed, and yet another hundred, but there was no movement in front of them, and no sound save their own hoarse battle-cries and the thunder of their horses. Ever swifter and swifter they flew. From behind the hedge it was a vision of horses, white, bay and black, their necks stretched, their nostrils distended, their bellies to the ground, whilst of the rider one could but see a shield with a plume-tufted visor above it, and a spear-head twinkling in front.\n\nThen of a sudden the Prince raised his hand and gave a cry. Chandos echoed it, it swelled down the line, and with one mighty chorus of twanging strings and hissing shafts the long-pent storm broke at last.\n\nAlas for the noble steeds! Alas for the gallant men. When the lust of battle is over who would not grieve to see that noble squadron break into red ruin before the rain of arrows beating upon the faces and breasts of the horses? The front rank crashed down, and the others piled themselves upon the top of them, unable to check their speed, or to swerve aside from the terrible wall of their shattered comrades which had so suddenly sprung up before them. Fifteen feet high was that blood-spurting mound of screaming, kicking horses and writhing, struggling men. Here and there on the flanks a horseman cleared himself and dashed for the hedge, only to have his steed slain under him and to be hurled from his saddle. Of all the three hundred gallant riders, not one ever reached that fatal hedge.\n\nBut now in a long rolling wave of steel the German battalion roared swiftly onward. They opened in the center to pass that terrible mound of death, and then spurred swiftly in upon the archers. They were brave men, well led, and in their open lines they could avoid the clubbing together which had been the ruin of the vanguard; yet they perished singly even as the others had perished together. A few were slain by the arrows. The greater number had their horses killed under them, and were so shaken and shattered by the fall that they could not raise their limbs, over-weighted with iron, from the spot where they lay.\n\nThree men riding together broke through the bushes which sheltered the leaders of the archers, cut down Widdington the Dalesman, spurred onward through the hedge, dashed over the bowmen behind it, and made for the Prince. One fell with an arrow through his head, a second was beaten from his saddle by Chandos, and the third was slain by the Prince's own hand. A second band broke through near the river, but were cut off by Lord Audley and his squires, so that all were slain. A single horseman whose steed was mad with pain, an arrow in its eye and a second in its nostril, sprang over the hedge and clattered through the whole army, disappearing amid whoops and laughter into the woods behind. But none others won as far as the hedge. The whole front of the position was fringed with a litter of German wounded or dead, while one great heap in the center marked the downfall of the gallant French three hundred.\n\nWhilst these two waves of the attack had broken in front of the English position, leaving this blood-stained wreckage behind them, the main divisions had halted and made their last preparations for their own assault. They had not yet begun their advance, and the nearest was still half a mile distant, when the few survivors from the forlorn hope, their maddened horses bristling with arrows, flew past them on either flank.\n\nAt the same moment the English archers and men-at-arms dashed through the hedge, and dragged all who were living out of that tangled heap of shattered horses and men. It was a mad wild rush, for in a few minutes the fight must be renewed, and yet there was a rich harvest of wealth for the lucky man who could pick a wealthy prisoner from amid the crowd. The nobler spirits disdained to think of ransoms whilst the fight was still unsettled; but a swarm of needy soldiers, Gascons and English, dragged the wounded out by the leg or the arm, and with daggers at their throats demanded their names, title and means. He who had made a good prize hurried him to the rear where his own servants could guard him, while he who was disappointed too often drove the dagger home and then rushed once more into the tangle in the hope of better luck. Clermont, with an arrow through the sky-blue Virgin on his surcoat, lay dead within ten paces of the hedge; d'Andreghen was dragged by a penniless squire from under a horse and became his prisoner. The Earl of Salzburg and of Nassau were both found helpless on the ground and taken to the rear. Aylward cast his thick arms round Count Otto von Langenbeck, and laid him, helpless from a broken leg, behind his bush. Black Simon had made prize of Bernard, Count of Ventadour, and hurried him through the hedge. Everywhere there was rushing and shouting, brawling and buffeting, while amidst it all a swarm of archers were seeking their shafts, plucking them from the dead, and sometimes even from the wounded. Then there was a sudden cry of warning. In a moment every man was back in his place once more, and the line of the hedge was clear.\n\nIt was high time; for already the first division of the French was close upon them. If the charge of the horsemen had been terrible from its rush and its fire, this steady advance of a huge phalanx of armored footmen was even more fearsome to the spectator. They moved very slowly, on account of the weight of their armor, but their progress was the more regular and inexorable. With elbows touching\u2014their shields slung in front, their short five-foot spears carried in their right hands, and their maces or swords ready at their belts, the deep column of men-at-arms moved onward. Again the storm of arrows beat upon them clinking and thudding on the armor. They crouched double behind their shields as they met it. Many fell, but still the slow tide lapped onward. Yelling, they surged up to the hedge, and lined it for half a mile, struggling hard to pierce it.\n\nFor five minutes the long straining ranks faced each other with fierce stab of spear on one side and heavy beat of ax or mace upon the other. In many parts the hedge was pierced or leveled to the ground, and the French men-at-arms were raging amongst the archers, hacking and hewing among the lightly armed men. For a moment it seemed as if the battle was on the turn.\n\nBut John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, cool, wise and crafty in war, saw and seized his chance. On the right flank a marshy meadow skirted the river. So soft was it that a heavily-armed man would sink to his knees. At his order a spray of light bowmen was thrown out from the battle line and forming upon the flank of the French poured their arrows into them. At the same moment Chandos, with Audley, Nigel, Bartholomew Burghersh, the Captal de Buch, and a score of other knights sprang upon their horses, and charging down the narrow lane rode over the French line in front of them. Once through it they spurred to left and right, trampling down the dismounted men-at-arms.\n\nA fearsome sight was Pommers that day, his red eyes rolling, his nostrils gaping, his tawny mane tossing, and his savage teeth gnashing in fury, as he tore and smashed and ground beneath his ramping hoofs all that came before him. Fearsome too was the rider, ice-cool; alert, concentrated of purpose, with, heart of fire and muscles of steel. A very angel of battle he seemed as he drove his maddened horse through the thickest of the press, but strive as he would: the tall figure of his master upon his coal-black steed was ever half a length before him.\n\nAlready the moment of danger was passed. The French line had given back. Those who had pierced the hedge had fallen like brave men amid the ranks of their foemen. The division of Warwick had hurried up from the vineyards to fill the gaps of Salisbury's battle-line. Back rolled the shining tide, slowly at first, even as it had advanced, but quicker now as the bolder fell and the weaker shredded out and shuffled with ungainly speed for a place of safety. Again there was a rush from behind the hedge. Again there was a reaping of that strange crop of bearded arrows which grew so thick upon the ground, and again the wounded prisoners were seized and dragged in brutal haste to the rear. Then the line was restored, and the English, weary, panting and shaken, awaited the next attack.\n\nBut a great good fortune had come to them\u2014so great that as they looked down the valley they could scarce credit their own senses. Behind the division of the Dauphin, which had pressed them so hard, stood a second division hardly less numerous, led by the Duke of Orleans. The fugitives from in front, blood-smeared and bedraggled, blinded with sweat and with fear, rushed amidst its ranks in their flight, and in a moment, without a blow being struck, had carried them off in their wild rout. This vast array, so solid and so martial, thawed suddenly away like a snow-wreath in the sun. It was gone, and in its place thousands of shining dots scattered over the whole plain as each man made his own way to the spot where he could find his horse and bear himself from the field. For a moment it seemed that the battle was won, and a thundershout of joy pealed up from the English line.\n\nBut as the curtain of the Duke's division was drawn away it was only to disclose stretching far behind it, and spanning the valley from side to side, the magnificent array of the French King, solid, unshaken, and preparing its ranks for the attack. Its numbers were as great as those of the English army; it was unscathed by all that was past, and it had a valiant monarch to lead it to the charge. With the slow deliberation of the man who means to do or to die, its leader marshaled its ranks for the supreme effort of the day.\n\nMeanwhile during that brief moment of exultation when the battle appeared to be won, a crowd of hotheaded young knights and squires swarmed and clamored round the Prince, beseeching that he would allow them to ride forth.\n\n\"See this insolent fellow who bears three martlets upon a field gales!\" cried Sir Maurice Berkeley. \"He stands betwixt the two armies as though he had no dread of us.\"\n\n\"I pray you, sir, that I may ride out to him, since he seems ready to attempt some small deed,\" pleaded Nigel.\n\n\"Nay, fair sirs, it is an evil thing that we should break our line, seeing that we still have much to do,\" said the Prince. \"See! he rides away, and so the matter is settled.\"\n\n\"Nay, fair prince,\" said the young knight who had spoken first. \"My gray horse, Lebryte, could run him down ere he could reach shelter. Never since I left Severn side have I seen steed so fleet as mine. Shall I not show you?\" In an instant he had spurred the charger and was speeding across the plain.\n\nThe Frenchman, John de Helennes, a squire of Picardy, had waited with a burning heart, his soul sick at the flight of the division in which he had ridden. In the hope of doing some redeeming exploit, or of meeting his own death, he had loitered betwixt the armies, but no movement had come from the English lines. Now he had turned his horse's head to join the King's array, when the low drumming of hoofs sounded behind him, and he turned to find a horseman hard upon his heels. Each had drawn his sword, and the two armies paused to view the fight. In the first bout Sir Maurice Berkeley's lance was struck from his hand, and as he sprang down to recover it the Frenchman ran him through the thigh, dismounted from his horse, and received his surrender. As the unfortunate Englishman hobbled away at the side of his captor a roar of laughter burst from both armies at the spectacle.\n\n\"By my ten finger-bones!\" cried Aylward, chuckling behind the remains of his bush, \"he found more on his distaff that time than he knew how to spin. Who was the knight?\"\n\n\"By his arms,\" said old Wat, \"he should either be a Berkeley of the West or a Popham of Kent.\"\n\n\"I call to mind that I shot a match of six ends once with a Kentish woldsman\u2014\" began the fat Bowyer.\n\n\"Nay, nay, stint thy talk, Bartholomew!\" cried old Wat. \"Here is poor Ned with his head cloven, and it would be more fitting if you were saying aves for his soul, instead of all this bobance and boasting. Now, now, Tom of Beverley?\"\n\n\"We have suffered sorely in this last bout, Wat. There are forty of our men upon their backs, and the Dean Foresters on the right are in worse case still.\"\n\n\"Talking will not mend it, Tom, and if all but one were on their backs he must still hold his ground.\"\n\nWhilst the archers were chatting, the leaders of the army were in solemn conclave just behind them. Two divisions of the French had been repulsed, and yet there was many an anxious face as the older knights looked across the plain at the unbroken array of the French King moving slowly toward them. The line of the archers was much thinned and shredded. Many knights and squires had been disabled in the long and fierce combat at the hedge. Others, exhausted by want of food, had no strength left and were stretched panting upon the ground. Some were engaged in carrying the wounded to the rear and laying them under the shelter of the trees, whilst others were replacing their broken swords or lances from the weapons of the slain. The Captal de Buch, brave and experienced as he was, frowned darkly and whispered his misgivings to Chandos.\n\nBut the Prince's courage flamed the higher as the shadow fell, while his dark eyes gleamed with a soldier's pride as he glanced round him at his weary comrades, and then at the dense masses of the King's battle which now, with a hundred trumpets blaring and a thousand pennons waving, rolled slowly over the plain. \"Come what may, John, this has been a most noble meeting,\" said he. \"They will not be ashamed of us in England. Take heart, my friends, for if we conquer we shall carry the glory ever with us; but if we be slain then we die most worshipfully and in high honor, as we have ever prayed that we might die, and we leave behind us our brothers and kinsmen who will assuredly avenge us. It is but one more effort, and all will be well. Warwick, Oxford, Salisbury, Suffolk, every man to the front! My banner to the front also! Your horses, fair sirs! The archers are spent, and our own good lances must win the field this day. Advance, Walter, and may God and Saint George be with England!\"\n\nSir Walter Woodland, riding a high black horse, took station by the Prince, with the royal banner resting in a socket by his saddle. From all sides the knights and squires crowded in upon it, until they formed a great squadron containing the survivors of the battalions of Warwick and Salisbury as well as those of the Prince. Four hundred men-at-arms who had been held in reserve were brought up and thickened the array, but even so Chandos' face was grave as he scanned it and then turned his eyes upon the masses of the Frenchmen.\n\n\"I like it not, fair sir. The weight is overgreat,\" he whispered to the Prince.\n\n\"How would you order it, John? Speak what is in your mind.\"\n\n\"We should attempt something upon their flank whilst we hold them in front. How say you, Jean?\" He turned to the Captal de Buch, whose dark, resolute face reflected the same misgivings.\n\n\"Indeed, John, I think as you do,\" said he. \"The French King is a very valiant man, and so are those who are about him, and I know not how we may drive them back unless we can do as you advise. If you will give me only a hundred men I will attempt it.\"\n\n\"Surely the task is mine, fair sir, since the thought has come from me,\" said Chandos.\n\n\"Nay, John, I would keep you at my side. But you speak well, Jean, and you shall do even as you have said. Go ask the Earl of Oxford for a hundred men-at-arms and as many hobblers, that you may ride round the mound yonder, and so fall upon them unseen. Let all that are left of the archers gather on each side, shoot away their arrows, and then fight as best they may. Wait till they are past yonder thorn-bush and then, Walter, bear my banner straight against that of the King of France. Fair sirs, may God and the thought of your ladies hold high your hearts!\"\n\nThe French monarch, seeing that his footmen had made no impression upon the English, and also that the hedge had been well-nigh leveled to the ground in the course of the combat, so that it no longer presented an obstacle, had ordered his followers to remount their horses, and it was as a solid mass of cavalry that the chivalry of France advanced to their last supreme effort. The King was in the center of the front line, Geoffrey de Chargny with the golden oriflamme upon his right, and Eustace de Ribeaumont with the royal lilies upon the left. At his elbow was the Duke of Athens, High Constable of France, and round him were the nobles of the court, fiery and furious, yelling their warcries as they waved their weapons over their heads. Six thousand gallant men of the bravest race in Europe, men whose very names are like blasts of a battle-trumpet\u2014Beaujeus and Chatillons, Tancarvilles and Ventadours\u2014pressed hard behind the silver lilies.\n\nSlowly they moved at first, walking their horses that they might be the fresher for the shock. Then they broke into a trot which was quickening into a gallop when the remains of the hedge in front of them was beaten in an instant to the ground and the broad line of the steel-clad chivalry of England swept grandly forth to the final shock. With loose rein and busy spur the two lines of horsemen galloped at the top of their speed straight and hard for each other. An instant later they met with a thunder-crash which was heard by the burghers on the wall of Poitiers, seven good miles away.\n\nUnder that frightful impact horses fell dead with broken necks, and many a rider, held in his saddle by the high pommel, fractured his thighs with the shock. Here and there a pair met breast to breast, the horses rearing straight upward and falling back upon their masters. But for the most part the line had opened in the gallop, and the cavaliers, flying through the gaps, buried themselves in the enemy's ranks. Then the flanks shredded out, and the thick press in the center loosened until there was space to swing a sword and to guide a steed. For ten acres there was one wild tumultuous swirl of tossing heads, of gleaming weapons which rose and fell, of upthrown hands, of tossing plumes and of lifted shields, whilst the din of a thousand warcries and the clash-clash of metal upon metal rose and swelled like the roar and beat of an ocean surge upon a rock-bound coast. Backward and forward swayed the mighty throng, now down the valley and now up, as each side in turn put forth its strength for a fresh rally. Locked in one long deadly grapple, great England and gallant France with iron hearts and souls of fire strove and strove for mastery.\n\nSir Walter Woodland, riding hard upon his high black horse, had plunged into the swelter and headed for the blue and silver banner of King John. Close at his heels in a solid wedge rode the Prince, Chandos, Nigel, Lord Reginald Cobham, Audley with his four famous squires, and a score of the flower of the English and Gascon knighthood. Holding together and bearing down opposition by a shower of blows and by the weight of their powerful horses, their progress was still very slow, for ever fresh waves of French cavaliers surged up against them and broke in front only to close in again upon their rear. Sometimes they were swept backward by the rush, sometimes they gained a few paces, sometimes they could but keep their foothold, and yet from minute to minute that blue and silver flag which waved above the press grew ever a little closer. A dozen furious hard-breathing French knights had broken into their ranks, and clutched at Sir Walter Woodland's banner, but Chandos and Nigel guarded it on one side, Audley with his squires on the other, so that no man laid his hand upon it and lived.\n\nBut now there was a distant crash and a roar of \"Saint George for Guienne!\" from behind. The Captal de Buch had charged home. \"Saint George for England!\" yelled the main attack, and ever the counter-cry came back to them from afar. The ranks opened in front of them. The French were giving way. A small knight with golden scroll-work upon his armor threw himself upon the Prince and was struck dead by his mace. It was the Duke of Athens, Constable of France, but none had time to note it, and the fight rolled on over his body. Looser still were the French ranks. Many were turning their horses, for that ominous roar from the rear had shaken their resolution. The little English wedge poured onward, the Prince, Chandos, Audley and Nigel ever in the van.\n\nA huge warrior in black, bearing a golden banner, appeared suddenly in a gap of the shredding ranks. He tossed his precious burden to a squire, who bore it away. Like a pack of hounds on the very haunch of a deer the English rushed yelling for the oriflamme. But the black warrior flung himself across their path. \"Chargny! Chargny a la recousse!\" he roared with a voice of thunder. Sir Reginald Cobham dropped before his battle-ax, so did the Gascon de Clisson. Nigel was beaten down on to the crupper of his horse by a sweeping blow; but at the same instant Chandos' quick blade passed through the Frenchman's camail and pierced his throat. So died Geoffrey de Chargny; but the oriflamme was saved.\n\nDazed with the shock, Nigel still kept his saddle, and Pommers, his yellow hide mottled with blood, bore him onward with the others. The French horsemen were now in full flight; but one stern group of knights stood firm, like a rock in a rushing torrent, beating off all, whether friend or foe, who tried to break their ranks. The oriflamme had gone, and so had the blue and silver banner, but here were desperate men ready to fight to the death. In their ranks honor was to be reaped. The Prince and his following hurled themselves upon them, while the rest of the English horsemen swept onward to secure the fugitives and to win their ransoms. But the nobler spirits\u2014Audley, Chandos and the others\u2014would have thought it shame to gain money whilst there was work to be done or honor to be won. Furious was the wild attack, desperate the prolonged defense. Men fell from their saddles for very exhaustion.\n\nNigel, still at his place near Chandos' elbow, was hotly attacked by a short broad-shouldered warrior upon a stout white cob, but Pommers reared with pawing fore feet and dashed the smaller horse to the ground. The falling rider clutched Nigel's arm and tore him from the saddle, so that the two rolled upon the grass under the stamping hoofs, the English squire on the top, and his shortened sword glimmered before the visor of the gasping, breathless Frenchman.\n\n\"Je me rends! je axe rends!\" he panted.\n\nFor a moment a vision of rich ransoms passed through Nigel's brain. That noble palfrey, that gold-flecked armor, meant fortune to the captor. Let others have it! There was work still to be done. How could he desert the Prince and his noble master for the sake of a private gain? Could he lead a prisoner to the rear when honor beckoned him to the van? He staggered to his feet, seized Pommers by the mane, and swung himself into the saddle.\n\nAn instant later he was by Chandos' side once more and they were bursting together through the last ranks of the gallant group who had fought so bravely to the end. Behind them was one long swath of the dead and the wounded. In front the whole wide plain was covered with the flying French and their pursuers.\n\nThe Prince reined up his steed and opened his visor, whilst his followers crowded round him with waving weapons and frenzied shouts of victory. \"What now, John!\" cried the smiling Prince, wiping his streaming face with his ungauntleted hand. \"How fares it then?\"\n\n\"I am little hurt, fair lord, save for a crushed hand and a spear-prick in the shoulder. But you, sir? I trust you have no scathe?\"\n\n\"In truth, John, with you at one elbow and Lord Audley at the other, I know not how I could come to harm. But alas! I fear that Sir James is sorely stricken.\"\n\nThe gallant Lord Audley had dropped upon the ground and the blood oozed from every crevice of his battered armor. His four brave Squires\u2014Dutton of Dutton, Delves of Doddington, Fowlhurst of Crewe and Hawkstone of Wainhill\u2014wounded and weary themselves, but with no thought save for their master, unlaced his helmet and bathed his pallid blood-stained face.\n\nHe looked up at the Prince with burning eyes. \"I thank you, sir, for deigning to consider so poor a knight as myself,\" said he in a feeble voice.\n\nThe Prince dismounted and bent over him. \"I am bound to honor you very much, James,\" said he, \"for by your valor this day you have won glory and renown above us all, and your prowess has proved you to be the bravest knight.\"\n\n\"My Lord,\" murmured the wounded man, \"you have a right to say what you please; but I wish it were as you say.\"\n\n\"James,\" said the Prince, \"from this time onward I make you a knight of my own household, and I settle upon you five hundred marks of yearly income from my own estates in England.\"\n\n\"Sir,\" the knight answered, \"God make me worthy of the good fortune you bestow upon me. Your knight I will ever be, and the money I will divide with your leave amongst these four squires who have brought me whatever glory I have won this day.\" So saying his head fell back, and he lay white and silent upon the grass.\n\n\"Bring water!\" said the Prince. \"Let the royal leech see to him; for I had rather lose many men than the good Sir James. Ha, Chandos, what have we here?\"\n\nA knight lay across the path with his helmet beaten down upon his shoulders. On his surcoat and shield were the arms of a red griffin.\n\n\"It is Robert de Duras the spy,\" said Chandos.\n\n\"Well for him that he has met his end,\" said the angry Prince. \"Put him on his shield, Hubert, and let four archers bear him to the monastery. Lay him at the feet of the Cardinal and say that by this sign I greet him. Place my flag on yonder high bush, Walter, and let my tent be raised there, that my friends may know where to seek me.\"\n\nThe flight and pursuit had thundered far away, and the field was deserted save for the numerous groups of weary horsemen who were making their way back, driving their prisoners before them. The archers were scattered over the whole plain, rifling the saddle-bags and gathering the armor of those who had fallen, or searching for their own scattered arrows.\n\nSuddenly, however, as the Prince was turning toward the bush which he had chosen for his headquarters, there broke out from behind him an extraordinary uproar and a group of knights and squires came pouring toward him, all arguing, swearing and abusing each other in French and English at the tops of their voices. In the midst of them limped a stout little man in gold-spangled armor, who appeared to be the object of the contention, for one would drag him one way and one another, as though they would pull him limb from limb. \"Nay, fair sirs, gently, gently, I pray you!\" he pleaded. \"There is enough for all, and no need to treat me so rudely.\" But ever the hubbub broke out again, and swords gleamed as the angry disputants glared furiously at each other. The Prince's eyes fell upon the small prisoner, and he staggered back with a gasp of astonishment.\n\n\"King John!\" he cried.\n\nA shout of joy rose from the warriors around him. \"The King of France! The King of France a prisoner!\" they cried in an ecstasy.\n\n\"Nay, nay, fair sirs, let him not hear that we rejoice! Let no word bring pain to his soul!\" Running forward the Prince clasped the French King by the two hands.\n\n\"Most welcome, sire!\" he cried. \"Indeed it is good for us that so gallant a knight should stay with us for some short time, since the chance of war has so ordered it. Wine there! Bring wine for the King!\"\n\nBut John was flushed and angry. His helmet had been roughly torn off, and blood was smeared upon his cheek. His noisy captors stood around him in a circle, eying him hungrily like dogs who have been beaten from their quarry. There were Gascons and English, knights, squires and archers, all pushing and straining.\n\n\"I pray you, fair Prince, to get rid of these rude fellows,\" said King John, \"for indeed they have plagued me sorely. By Saint Denis! my arm has been well-nigh pulled from its socket.\"\n\n\"What wish you then?\" asked the Prince, turning angrily upon the noisy swarm of his followers.\n\n\"We took him, fair lord. He is ours!\" cried a score of voices. They closed in, all yelping together like a pack of wolves. \"It was I, fair lord!\"\u2014\"Nay, it was I!\"\u2014\"You lie, you rascal, it was I!\" Again their fierce eyes glared and their blood-stained hands sought the hilts of their weapons.\n\n\"Nay, this must be settled here and now!\" said the Prince. \"I crave your patience, fair and honored sir, for a few brief minutes, since indeed much ill-will may spring from this if it be not set at rest. Who is this tall knight who can scarce keep his hands from the King's shoulder?\"\n\n\"It is Denis de Morbecque, my lord, a knight of St. Omer, who is in our service, being an outlaw from France.\"\n\n\"I call him to mind. How then, Sir Denis? What say you in this matter?\"\n\n\"He gave himself to me, fair lord. He had fallen in the press, and I came upon him and seized him. I told him that I was a knight from Artois, and he gave me his glove. See here, I bear it in my hand.\"\n\n\"It is true, fair lord! It is true!\" cried a dozen French voices.\n\n\"Nay, sir, judge not too soon!\" shouted an English squire, pushing his way to the front. \"It was I who had him at my mercy, and he is my prisoner, for he spoke to this man only because he could tell by his tongue that he was his own countryman. I took him, and here are a score to prove it.\"\n\n\"It is true, fair lord. We saw it and it was even so,\" cried a chorus of Englishmen.\n\nAt all times there was growling and snapping betwixt the English and their allies of France. The Prince saw how easily this might set a light to such a flame as could not readily be quenched. It must be stamped out now ere it had time to mount.\n\n\"Fair and honored lord,\" he said to the King, \"again I pray you for a moment of patience. It is your word and only yours which can tell us what is just and right. To whom were you graciously pleased to commit your royal person?\"\n\nKing John looked up from the flagon which had been brought to him and wiped his lips with the dawnings of a smile upon his ruddy face.\n\n\"It was not this Englishman,\" he said, and a cheer burst from the Gascons, \"nor was it this bastard Frenchman,\" he added. \"To neither of them did I surrender.\"\n\nThere was a hush of surprise.\n\n\"To whom then, sir?\" asked the Prince.\n\nThe King looked slowly round. \"There was a devil of a yellow horse,\" said he. \"My poor palfrey went over like a skittle-pin before a ball. Of the rider I know nothing save that he bore red roses on a silver shield. Ah! by Saint Denis, there is the man himself, and there his thrice-accursed horse!\"\n\nHis head swimming, and moving as if in a dream, Nigel found himself the center of the circle of armed and angry men.\n\nThe Prince laid his hand upon his shoulder. \"It is the little cock of Tilford Bridge,\" said he. \"On my father's soul, I have ever said that you would win your way. Did you receive the King's surrender?\"\n\n\"Nay, fair lord, I did not receive it.\"\n\n\"Did you hear him give it?\"\n\n\"I heard, sir, but I did not know that it was the King. My master Lord Chandos had gone on, and I followed after.\"\n\n\"And left him lying. Then the surrender was not complete, and by the laws of war the ransom goes to Denis de Morbecque, if his story be true.\"\n\n\"It is true,\" said the King. \"He was the second.\"\n\n\"Then the ransom is yours, Denis. But for my part I swear by my father's soul that I had rather have the honor this Squire has gathered than all the richest ransoms of France.\"\n\nAt these words spoken before that circle of noble warriors Nigel's heart gave one great throb, and he dropped upon his knee before the Prince. \"Fair lord, how can I thank you?\" he murmured. \"These words at least are more than any ransom.\"\n\n\"Rise up!\" said the smiling Prince, and he smote with his sword upon his shoulder. \"England has lost a brave Squire, and has gained a gallant knight. Nay, linger not, I pray! Rise up, Sir Nigel!\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE THIRD MESSENGER CAME TO COSFORD", + "text": "Two months have passed, and the long slopes of Hindhead are russet with the faded ferns\u2014the fuzzy brown pelt which wraps the chilling earth. With whoop and scream the wild November wind sweeps over the great rolling downs, tossing the branches of the Cosford beeches, and rattling at the rude latticed windows. The stout old knight of Duplin, grown even a little stouter, with whiter beard to fringe an ever redder face, sits as of yore at the head of his own board. A well-heaped platter flanked by a foaming tankard stands before him. At his right sits the Lady Mary, her dark, plain, queenly face marked deep with those years of weary waiting, but bearing the gentle grace and dignity which only sorrow and restraint can give. On his left is Matthew, the old priest. Long ago the golden-haired beauty had passed from Cosford to Fernhurst, where the young and beautiful Lady Edith Brocas is the belle of all Sussex, a sunbeam of smiles and merriment, save perhaps when her thoughts for an instant fly back to that dread night when she was plucked from under the very talons of the foul hawk of Shalford.\n\nThe old knight looked up as a fresh gust of wind with a dash of rain beat against the window behind him. \"By Saint Hubert, it is a wild night!\" said he. \"I had hoped to-morrow to have a flight at a heron of the pool or a mallard in the brook. How fares it with little Katherine the peregrine, Mary?\"\n\n\"I have joined the wing, father, and I have imped the feathers; but I fear it will be Christmas ere she can fly again.\"\n\n\"This is a hard saying,\" said Sir John; \"for indeed I have seen no bolder better bird. Her wing was broken by a heron's beak last Sabbath sennight, holy father, and Mary has the mending of it.\"\n\n\"I trust, my son, that you had heard mass ere you turned to worldly pleasure upon God's holy day,\" Father Matthew answered.\n\n\"Tut, tut!\" said the old knight, laughing. \"Shall I make confession at the head of my own table? I can worship the good God amongst his own works, the woods and the fields, better than in yon pile of stone and wood. But I call to mind a charm for a wounded hawk which was taught me by the fowler of Gaston de Foix. How did it run? 'The lion of the Tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered.' Yes, those were the words to be said three times as you walk round the perch where the bird is mewed.\"\n\nThe old priest shook his head. \"Nay, these charms are tricks of the Devil,\" said he. \"Holy Church lends them no countenance, for they are neither good nor fair. But how is it now with your tapestry, Lady Mary? When last I was beneath this roof you had half done in five fair colors the story of Theseus and Ariadne.\"\n\n\"It is half done still, holy father.\"\n\n\"How is this, my daughter? Have you then so many calls?\"\n\n\"Nay, holy father, her thoughts are otherwhere,\" Sir John answered. \"She will sit an hour at a time, the needle in her hand and her soul a hundred leagues from Cosford House. Ever since the Prince's battle\u2014\"\n\n\"Good father, I beg you\u2014\"\n\n\"Nay, Mary, none can hear me, save your own confessor, Father Matthew. Ever since the Prince's battle, I say, when we heard that young Nigel had won such honor she is brain-wode, and sits ever\u2014well, even as you see her now.\"\n\nAn intent look had come into Mary's eyes; her gaze was fixed upon the dark rain-splashed window. It was a face carved from ivory, white-lipped and rigid, on which the old priest looked.\n\n\"What is it, my daughter? What do you see?\"\n\n\"I see nothing, father.\"\n\n\"What is it then that disturbs you?\"\n\n\"I hear, father.\"\n\n\"What do you hear?\"\n\n\"There are horsemen on the road.\"\n\nThe old knight laughed. \"So it goes on, father. What day is there that a hundred horsemen do not pass our gate, and yet every clink of hoofs sets her poor heart a-trembling. So strong and steadfast she has ever been, my Mary, and now no sound too slight to shake her to the soul! Nay, daughter, nay, I pray you!\"\n\nShe had half-risen from her chair, her hands clenched and her dark, startled eyes still fixed upon the window. \"I hear them, father! I hear them amid the wind and the rain! Yes, yes, they are turning\u2014they have turned! My God, they are at our very door!\"\n\n\"By Saint Hubert, the girl is right!\" cried old Sir John, beating his fist upon the board. \"Ho, varlets, out with you to the yard! Set the mulled wine on the blaze once more! There are travelers at the gate, and it is no night to keep a dog waiting at our door. Hurry, Hannekin! Hurry, I say, or I will haste you with my cudgel!\"\n\nPlainly to the ears of all men could be heard the stamping of the horses. Mary had stood up, quivering in every limb. An eager step at the threshold, the door was flung wide, and there in the opening stood Nigel, the rain gleaming upon his smiling face, his cheeks flushed with the beating of the wind, his blue eyes shining with tenderness and love. Something held her by the throat, the light of the torches danced up and down; but her strong spirit rose at the thought that others should see that inner holy of holies of her soul. There is a heroism of women to which no valor of man can attain. Her eyes only carried him her message as she held out her hand.\n\n\"Welcome, Nigel!\" said she.\n\nHe stooped and kissed it.\n\n\"Saint Catharine has brought me home,\" said he.\n\nA merry supper it was at Cosford Manor that night, with Nigel at the head betwixt the jovial old knight and the Lady Mary, whilst at the farther end Samkin Aylward, wedged between two servant maids, kept his neighbors in alternate laughter and terror as he told his tales of the French Wars. Nigel had to turn his doeskin heels and show his little golden spurs. As he spoke of what was passed Sir John clapped him on the shoulder, while Mary took his strong right hand in hers, and the good old priest smiling blessed them both. Nigel had drawn a little golden ring from his pocket, and it twinkled in the torchlight.\n\n\"Did you say that you must go on your way to-morrow, father?\" he asked the priest.\n\n\"Indeed, fair son, the matter presses.\"\n\n\"But you may bide the morning?\"\n\n\"It will suffice if I start at noon.\"\n\n\"Much may be done in a morning.\" He looked at Mary, who blushed and smiled. \"By Saint Paul! I have waited long enough.\"\n\n\"Good, good!\" chuckled the old knight, with wheezy laughter. \"Even so I wooed your mother, Mary. Wooers were brisk in the olden time. To-morrow is Tuesday, and Tuesday is ever a lucky day. Alas! that the good Dame Ermyntrude is no longer with us to see it done! The old hound must run us down, Nigel, and I hear its bay upon my own heels; but my heart will rejoice that before the end I may call you son. Give me your hand, Mary, and yours, Nigel. Now, take an old man's blessing, and may God keep and guard you both, and give you your desert, for I believe on my soul that in all this broad land there dwells no nobler man nor any woman more fitted to be his mate!\"\n\nThere let us leave them, their hearts full of gentle joy, the golden future of hope and promise stretching out before their youthful eyes. Alas for those green spring dreaming! How often do they fade and wither until they fall and rot, a dreary sight, by the wayside of life! But here, by God's blessing, it was not so, for they burgeoned and they grew, ever fairer and more noble, until the whole wide world might marvel at the beauty of it.\n\nIt has been told elsewhere how as the years passed Nigel's name rose higher in honor; but still Mary's would keep pace with it, each helping and sustaining the other upon an ever higher path. In many lands did Nigel carve his fame, and ever as he returned spent and weary from his work he drank fresh strength and fire and craving for honor from her who glorified his home. At Twynham Castle they dwelled for many years, beloved and honored by all. Then in the fullness of time they came back to the Tilford Manor-house and spent their happy, healthy age amid those heather downs where Nigel had passed his first lusty youth, ere ever he turned his face to the wars. Thither also came Aylward when he had left the \"Pied Merlin\" where for many a year he sold ale to the men of the forest.\n\nBut the years pass; the old wheel turns and ever the thread runs out. The wise and the good, the noble and the brave, they come from the darkness, and into the darkness they go, whence, whither and why, who may say? Here is the slope of Hindhead. The fern still glows russet in November, the heather still burns red in July; but where now is the Manor of Cosford? Where is the old house of Tilford? Where, but for a few scattered gray stones, is the mighty pile of Waverley? And yet even gnawing Time has not eaten all things away. Walk with me toward Guildford, reader, upon the busy highway. Here, where the high green mound rises before us, mark yonder roofless shrine which still stands foursquare to the winds. It is St. Catharine's, where Nigel and Mary plighted their faith. Below lies the winding river, and over yonder you still see the dark Chantry woods which mount up to the bare summit, on which, roofed and whole, stands that Chapel of the Martyr where the comrades beat off the archers of the crooked Lord of Shalford. Down yonder on the flanks of the long chalk hills one traces the road by which they made their journey to the wars. And now turn hither to the north, down this sunken winding path! It is all unchanged since Nigel's day. Here is the Church of Compton. Pass under the aged and crumbling arch. Before the steps of that ancient altar, unrecorded and unbrassed, lies the dust of Nigel and of Mary. Near them is that of Maude their daughter, and of Alleyne Edricson, whose spouse she was; their children and children's children are lying by their side. Here too, near the old yew in the churchyard, is the little mound which marks where Samkin Aylward went back to that good soil from which he sprang.\n\nSo lie the dead leaves; but they and such as they nourish forever that great old trunk of England, which still sheds forth another crop and another, each as strong and as fair as the last. The body may lie in moldering chancel, or in crumbling vault, but the rumor of noble lives, the record of valor and truth, can never die, but lives on in the soul of the people. Our own work lies ready to our hands; and yet our strength may be the greater and our faith the firmer if we spare an hour from present toils to look back upon the women who were gentle and strong, or the men who loved honor more than life, on this green stage of England where for a few short years we play our little part." + } + ] + }, + { + "title": "The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I", + "author": "Arthur Conan Doyle", + "genres": [ + "mystery" + ], + "tags": [ + "short stories" + ], + "chapters": [ + { + "title": "A STUDY IN SCARLET", + "text": "[ Part I BEING A REPRINT FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF JOHN H. WATSON, M. D., LATE OF THE ARMY MEDICAL DEPARTMENT ]\n\n[ Mr. Sherlock Holmes ]\n\nIn the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the Army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as assistant surgeon. The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and before I could join it, the second Afghan war had broken out. On landing at Bombay, I learned that my corps had advanced through the passes, and was already deep in the enemy's country. I followed, however, with many other officers who were in the same situation as myself, and succeeded in reaching Candahar in safety, where I found my regiment, and at once entered upon my new duties.\n\nThe campaign brought honours and promotion to many, but for me it had nothing but misfortune and disaster. I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand. There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery. I should have fallen into the hands of the murderous Ghazis had it not been for the devotion and courage shown by Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a pack-horse, and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines.\n\nWorn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hardships which I had undergone, I was removed, with a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base hospital at Peshawar. Here I rallied, and had already improved so far as to be able to walk about the wards, and even to bask a little upon the veranda, when I was struck down by enteric fever, that curse of our Indian possessions. For months my life was despaired of, and when at last I came to myself and became convalescent, I was so weak and emaciated that a medical board determined that not a day should be lost in sending me back to England. I was despatched, accordingly, in the troopship Orontes, and landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it.\n\nI had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air\u2014or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had, considerably more freely than I ought. So alarming did the state of my finances become, that I soon realized that I must either leave the metropolis and rusticate somewhere in the country, or that I must make a complete alteration in my style of living. Choosing the latter alternative, I began by making up my mind to leave the hotel, and take up my quarters in some less pretentious and less expensive domicile.\n\nOn the very day that I had come to this conclusion, I was standing at the Criterion Bar, when someone tapped me on the shoulder, and turning round I recognized young Stamford, who had been a dresser under me at Bart's. The sight of a friendly face in the great wilderness of London is a pleasant thing indeed to a lonely man. In old days Stamford had never been a particular crony of mine, but now I hailed him with enthusiasm, and he, in his turn, appeared to be delighted to see me. In the exuberance of my joy, I asked him to lunch with me at the Holborn, and we started off together in a hansom.\n\n\"Whatever have you been doing with yourself, Watson?\" he asked in undisguised wonder, as we rattled through the crowded London streets. \"You are as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut.\"\n\nI gave him a short sketch of my adventures, and had hardly concluded it by the time that we reached our destination.\n\n\"Poor devil!\" he said, commiseratingly, after he had listened to my misfortunes. \"What are you up to now?\"\n\n\"Looking for lodgings,\" I answered. \"Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.\"\n\n\"That's a strange thing,\" remarked my companion; \"you are the second man today that has used that expression to me.\"\n\n\"And who was the first?\" I asked.\n\n\"A fellow who is working at the chemical laboratory up at the hospital. He was bemoaning himself this morning because he could not get someone to go halves with him in some nice rooms which he had found, and which were too much for his purse.\"\n\n\"By Jove!\" I cried; \"if he really wants someone to share the rooms and the expense, I am the very man for him. I should prefer having a partner to being alone.\"\n\nYoung Stamford looked rather strangely at me over his wineglass. \"You don't know Sherlock Holmes yet,\" he said; \"perhaps you would not care for him as a constant companion.\"\n\n\"Why, what is there against him?\"\n\n\"Oh, I didn't say there was anything against him. He is a little queer in his ideas\u2014an enthusiast in some branches of science. As far as I know he is a decent fellow enough.\"\n\n\"A medical student, I suppose?\" said I.\n\n\"No\u2014I have no idea what he intends to go in for. I believe he is well up in anatomy, and he is a first-class chemist; but, as far as I know, he has never taken out any systematic medical classes. His studies are very desultory and eccentric, but he has amassed a lot of out-of-the-way knowledge which would astonish his professors.\"\n\n\"Did you never ask him what he was going in for?\" I asked.\n\n\"No; he is not a man that it is easy to draw out, though he can be communicative enough when the fancy seizes him.\"\n\n\"I should like to meet him,\" I said. \"If I am to lodge with anyone, I should prefer a man of studious and quiet habits. I am not strong enough yet to stand much noise or excitement. I had enough of both in Afghanistan to last me for the remainder of my natural existence. How could I meet this friend of yours?\"\n\n\"He is sure to be at the laboratory,\" returned my companion. \"He either avoids the place for weeks, or else he works there from morning till night. If you like, we will drive round together after luncheon.\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" I answered, and the conversation drifted away into other channels.\n\nAs we made our way to the hospital after leaving the Holborn, Stamford gave me a few more particulars about the gentleman whom I proposed to take as a fellow-lodger.\n\n\"You mustn't blame me if you don't get on with him,\" he said; \"I know nothing more of him than I have learned from meeting him occasionally in the laboratory. You proposed this arrangement, so you must not hold me responsible.\"\n\n\"If we don't get on it will be easy to part company,\" I answered. \"It seems to me, Stamford,\" I added, looking hard at my companion, \"that you have some reason for washing your hands of the matter. Is this fellow's temper so formidable, or what is it? Don't be mealymouthed about it.\"\n\n\"It is not easy to express the inexpressible,\" he answered with a laugh. \"Holmes is a little too scientific for my tastes\u2014it approaches to cold-bloodedness. I could imagine his giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply out of a spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects. To do him justice, I think that he would take it himself with the same readiness. He appears to have a passion for definite and exact knowledge.\"\n\n\"Very right too.\"\n\n\"Yes, but it may be pushed to excess. When it comes to beating the subjects in the dissecting-rooms with a stick, it is certainly taking rather a bizarre shape.\"\n\n\"Beating the subjects!\"\n\n\"Yes, to verify how far bruises may be produced after death. I saw him at it with my own eyes.\"\n\n\"And yet you say he is not a medical student?\"\n\n\"No. Heaven knows what the objects of his studies are. But here we are, and you must form your own impressions about him.\" As he spoke, we turned down a narrow lane and passed through a small side-door, which opened into a wing of the great hospital. It was familiar ground to me, and I needed no guiding as we ascended the bleak stone staircase and made our way down the long corridor with its vista of whitewashed wall and dun-coloured doors. Near the farther end a low arched passage branched away from it and led to the chemical laboratory.\n\nThis was a lofty chamber, lined and littered with countless bottles. Broad, low tables were scattered about, which bristled with retorts, test-tubes, and little Bunsen lamps, with their blue flickering flames. There was only one student in the room, who was bending over a distant table absorbed in his work. At the sound of our steps he glanced round and sprang to his feet with a cry of pleasure. \"I've found it! I've found it,\" he shouted to my companion, running towards us with a test-tube in his hand. \"I have found a re-agent which is precipitated by h\u00e6moglobin, and by nothing else.\" Had he discovered a gold mine, greater delight could not have shone upon his features.\n\n\"Dr. Watson, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,\" said Stamford, introducing us.\n\n\"How are you?\" he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. \"You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.\"\n\n\"How on earth did you know that?\" I asked in astonishment.\n\n\"Never mind,\" said he, chuckling to himself. \"The question now is about h\u00e6moglobin. No doubt you see the significance of this discovery of mine?\"\n\n\"It is interesting, chemically, no doubt,\" I answered, \"but practically\u2014\"\n\n\"Why, man, it is the most practical medico-legal discovery for years. Don't you see that it gives us an infallible test for blood stains? Come over here now!\" He seized me by the coat-sleeve in his eagerness, and drew me over to the table at which he had been working. \"Let us have some fresh blood,\" he said, digging a long bodkin into his finger, and drawing off the resulting drop of blood in a chemical pipette. \"Now, I add this small quantity of blood to a litre of water. You perceive that the resulting mixture has the appearance of pure water. The proportion of blood cannot be more than one in a million. I have no doubt, however, that we shall be able to obtain the characteristic reaction.\" As he spoke, he threw into the vessel a few white crystals, and then added some drops of a transparent fluid. In an instant the contents assumed a dull mahogany colour, and a brownish dust was precipitated to the bottom of the glass jar.\n\n\"Ha! ha!\" he cried, clapping his hands, and looking as delighted as a child with a new toy. \"What do you think of that?\"\n\n\"It seems to be a very delicate test,\" I remarked.\n\n\"Beautiful! beautiful! The old guaiacum test was very clumsy and uncertain. So is the microscopic examination for blood corpuscles. The latter is valueless if the stains are a few hours old. Now, this appears to act as well whether the blood is old or new. Had this test been invented, there are hundreds of men now walking the earth who would long ago have paid the penalty of their crimes.\"\n\n\"Indeed!\" I murmured.\n\n\"Criminal cases are continually hinging upon that one point. A man is suspected of a crime months perhaps after it has been committed. His linen or clothes are examined and brownish stains discovered upon them. Are they blood stains, or mud stains, or rust stains, or fruit stains, or what are they? That is a question which has puzzled many an expert, and why? Because there was no reliable test. Now we have the Sherlock Holmes's test, and there will no longer be any difficulty.\"\n\nHis eyes fairly glittered as he spoke, and he put his hand over his heart and bowed as if to some applauding crowd conjured up by his imagination.\n\n\"You are to be congratulated,\" I remarked, considerably surprised at his enthusiasm.\n\n\"There was the case of Von Bischoff at Frankfort last year. He would certainly have been hung had this test been in existence. Then there was Mason of Bradford, and the notorious Muller, and Lefevre of Montpellier, and Samson of New Orleans. I could name a score of cases in which it would have been decisive.\"\n\n\"You seem to be a walking calendar of crime,\" said Stamford with a laugh. \"You might start a paper on those lines. Call it the 'Police News of the Past.'\"\n\n\"Very interesting reading it might be made, too,\" remarked Sherlock Holmes, sticking a small piece of plaster over the prick on his finger. \"I have to be careful,\" he continued, turning to me with a smile, \"for I dabble with poisons a good deal.\" He held out his hand as he spoke, and I noticed that it was all mottled over with similar pieces of plaster, and discoloured with strong acids.\n\n\"We came here on business,\" said Stamford, sitting down on a high three-legged stool, and pushing another one in my direction with his foot. \"My friend here wants to take diggings; and as you were complaining that you could get no one to go halves with you, I thought that I had better bring you together.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes seemed delighted at the idea of sharing his rooms with me. \"I have my eye on a suite in Baker Street,\" he said, \"which would suit us down to the ground. You don't mind the smell of strong tobacco, I hope?\"\n\n\"I always smoke 'ship's' myself,\" I answered.\n\n\"That's good enough. I generally have chemicals about, and occasionally do experiments. Would that annoy you?\"\n\n\"By no means.\"\n\n\"Let me see\u2014what are my other shortcomings? I get in the dumps at times, and don't open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I'll soon be right. What have you to confess now? It's just as well for two fellows to know the worst of one another before they begin to live together.\"\n\nI laughed at this cross-examination. \"I keep a bull pup,\" I said, \"and I object to rows because my nerves are shaken, and I get up at all sorts of ungodly hours, and I am extremely lazy. I have another set of vices when I'm well, but those are the principal ones at present.\"\n\n\"Do you include violin playing in your category of rows?\" he asked, anxiously.\n\n\"It depends on the player,\" I answered. \"A well-played violin is a treat for the gods\u2014a badly played one\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, that's all right,\" he cried, with a merry laugh. \"I think we may consider the thing as settled\u2014that is, if the rooms are agreeable to you.\"\n\n\"When shall we see them?\"\n\n\"Call for me here at noon to-morrow, and we'll go together and settle everything,\" he answered.\n\n\"All right\u2014noon exactly,\" said I, shaking his hand.\n\nWe left him working among his chemicals, and we walked together towards my hotel.\n\n\"By the way,\" I asked suddenly, stopping and turning upon Stamford, \"how the deuce did he know that I had come from Afghanistan?\"\n\nMy companion smiled an enigmatical smile. \"That's just his little peculiarity,\" he said. \"A good many people have wanted to know how he finds things out.\"\n\n\"Oh! a mystery is it?\" I cried, rubbing my hands. \"This is very piquant. I am much obliged to you for bringing us together. 'The proper study of mankind is man,' you know.\"\n\n\"You must study him, then,\" Stamford said, as he bade me good-bye. \"You'll find him a knotty problem, though. I'll wager he learns more about you than you about him. Good-bye.\"\n\n\"Good-bye,\" I answered, and strolled on to my hotel, considerably interested in my new acquaintance." + }, + { + "title": "The Science of Deduction", + "text": "We met next day as he had arranged, and inspected the rooms at No. 221B, Baker Street, of which he had spoken at our meeting. They consisted of a couple of comfortable bedrooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished, and illuminated by two broad windows. So desirable in every way were the apartments, and so moderate did the terms seem when divided between us, that the bargain was concluded upon the spot, and we at once entered into possession. That very evening I moved my things round from the hotel, and on the following morning Sherlock Holmes followed me with several boxes and portmanteaus. For a day or two we were busily employed in unpacking and laying out our property to the best advantage. That done, we gradually began to settle down and to accommodate ourselves to our new surroundings.\n\nHolmes was certainly not a difficult man to live with. He was quiet in his ways, and his habits were regular. It was rare for him to be up after ten at night, and he had invariably breakfasted and gone out before I rose in the morning. Sometimes he spent his day at the chemical laboratory, sometimes in the dissecting-rooms, and occasionally in long walks, which appeared to take him into the lowest portions of the city. Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night. On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion.\n\nAs the weeks went by, my interest in him and my curiosity as to his aims in life gradually deepened and increased. His very person and appearance were such as to strike the attention of the most casual observer. In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing, save during those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded; and his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination. His hands were invariably blotted with ink and stained with chemicals, yet he was possessed of extraordinary delicacy of touch, as I frequently had occasion to observe when I watched him manipulating his fragile philosophical instruments.\n\nThe reader may set me down as a hopeless busybody, when I confess how much this man stimulated my curiosity, and how often I endeavoured to break through the reticence which he showed on all that concerned himself. Before pronouncing judgment, however, be it remembered how objectless was my life, and how little there was to engage my attention. My health forbade me from venturing out unless the weather was exceptionally genial, and I had no friends who would call upon me and break the monotony of my daily existence. Under these circumstances, I eagerly hailed the little mystery which hung around my companion, and spent much of my time in endeavouring to unravel it.\n\nHe was not studying medicine. He had himself, in reply to a question, confirmed Stamford's opinion upon that point. Neither did he appear to have pursued any course of reading which might fit him for a degree in science or any other recognized portal which would give him an entrance into the learned world. Yet his zeal for certain studies was remarkable, and within eccentric limits his knowledge was so extraordinarily ample and minute that his observations have fairly astounded me. Surely no man would work so hard or attain such precise information unless he had some definite end in view. Desultory readers are seldom remarkable for the exactness of their learning. No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.\n\nHis ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the na\u00efvest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.\n\n\"You appear to be astonished,\" he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. \"Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.\"\n\n\"To forget it!\"\n\n\"You see,\" he explained. \"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.\"\n\n\"But the Solar System!\" I protested.\n\n\"What the deuce is it to me?\" he interrupted impatiently: \"you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.\"\n\n[ I was on the point of asking him what that work might be, but something in his manner showed me that the question would be an unwelcome one. I pondered over our short conversation, however, and endeavoured to draw my deductions from it. He said that he would acquire no knowledge which did not bear upon his object. Therefore all the knowledge which he possessed was such as would be useful to him. I enumerated in my own mind all the various points upon which he had shown me that he was exceptionally well informed. I even took a pencil and jotted them down. I could not help smiling at the document when I had completed it. It ran in this way: Sherlock Holmes\u2014his limits ]\n\n1. Knowledge of Literature.\u2014Nil.\n\n2. \" \" Philosophy.\u2014Nil.\n\n3. \" \" Astronomy.\u2014Nil.\n\n4. \" \" Politics.\u2014Feeble.\n\n5. \" \" Botany.\u2014Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally.\n\nKnows nothing of practical gardening.\n\n6. Knowledge of Geology.\u2014Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.\n\n7. Knowledge of Chemistry.\u2014Profound.\n\n8. \" \" Anatomy.\u2014Accurate, but unsystematic.\n\n9. \" \" Sensational Literature.\u2014Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.\n\n10. Plays the violin well.\n\n11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.\n\n12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.\n\nWhen I had got so far in my list I threw it into the fire in despair. \"If I can only find what the fellow is driving at by reconciling all these accomplishments, and discovering a calling which needs them all,\" I said to myself, \"I may as well give up the attempt at once.\"\n\nI see that I have alluded above to his powers upon the violin. These were very remarkable, but as eccentric as all his other accomplishments. That he could play pieces, and difficult pieces, I knew well, because at my request he has played me some of Mendelssohn's Lieder, and other favourites. When left to himself, however, he would seldom produce any music or attempt any recognized air. Leaning back in his armchair of an evening, he would close his eyes and scrape carelessly at the fiddle which was thrown across his knee. Sometimes the chords were sonorous and melancholy. Occasionally they were fantastic and cheerful. Clearly they reflected the thoughts which possessed him, but whether the music aided those thoughts, or whether the playing was simply the result of a whim or fancy, was more than I could determine. I might have rebelled against these exasperating solos had it not been that he usually terminated them by playing in quick succession a whole series of my favourite airs as a slight compensation for the trial upon my patience.\n\nDuring the first week or so we had no callers, and I had begun to think that my companion was as friendless a man as I was myself. Presently, however, I found that he had many acquaintances, and those in the most different classes of society. There was one little sallow, rat-faced, dark-eyed fellow, who was introduced to me as Mr. Lestrade, and who came three or four times in a single week. One morning a young girl called, fashionably dressed, and stayed for half an hour or more. The same afternoon brought a gray-headed, seedy visitor, looking like a Jew peddler, who appeared to me to be much excited, and who was closely followed by a slip-shod elderly woman. On another occasion an old white-haired gentleman had an interview with my companion; and on another, a railway porter in his velveteen uniform. When any of these nondescript individuals put in an appearance, Sherlock Holmes used to beg for the use of the sitting-room, and I would retire to my bedroom. He always apologized to me for putting me to this inconvenience. \"I have to use this room as a place of business,\" he said, \"and these people are my clients.\" Again I had an opportunity of asking him a point-blank question, and again my delicacy prevented me from forcing another man to confide in me. I imagined at the time that he had some strong reason for not alluding to it, but he soon dispelled the idea by coming round to the subject of his own accord.\n\nIt was upon the 4th of March, as I have good reason to remember, that I rose somewhat earlier than usual, and found that Sherlock Holmes had not yet finished his breakfast. The landlady had become so accustomed to my late habits that my place had not been laid nor my coffee prepared. With the unreasonable petulance of mankind I rang the bell and gave a curt intimation that I was ready. Then I picked up a magazine from the table and attempted to while away the time with it, while my companion munched silently at his toast. One of the articles had a pencil mark at the heading, and I naturally began to run my eye through it.\n\nIts somewhat ambitious title was \"The Book of Life,\" and it attempted to show how much an observant man might learn by an accurate and systematicexamination of all that came in his way. It struck me as being a remarkable mixture of shrewdness and of absurdity. The reasoning was close and intense, but the deductions appeared to me to be far fetched and exaggerated. The writer claimed by a momentary expression, a twitch of a muscle or a glance of an eye, to fathom a man's inmost thoughts. Deceit, according to him, was an impossibility in the case of one trained to observation and analysis. His conclusions were as infallible as so many propositions of Euclid. So startling would his results appear to the uninitiated that until they learned the processes by which he had arrived at them they might well consider him as a necromancer.\n\n\"From a drop of water,\" said the writer, \"a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other. So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it. Like all other arts, the Science of Deduction and Analysis is one which can only be acquired by long and patient study, nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it. Before turning to those moral and mental aspects of the matter which present the greatest difficulties, let the inquirer begin by mastering more elementary problems. Let him, on meeting a fellow-mortal, learn at a glance to distinguish the history of the man, and the trade or profession to which he belongs. Puerile as such an exercise may seem, it sharpens the faculties of observation, and teaches one where to look and what to look for. By a man's finger-nails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser-knees, by the callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt-cuffs\u2014by each of these things a man's calling is plainly revealed. That all united should fail to enlighten the competent inquirer in any case is almost inconceivable.\"\n\n\"What ineffable twaddle!\" I cried, slapping the magazine down on the table; \"I never read such rubbish in my life.\"\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Sherlock Holmes.\n\n\"Why, this article,\" I said, pointing at it with my eggspoon as I sat down to my breakfast. \"I see that you have read it since you have marked it. I don't deny that it is smartly written. It irritates me, though. It is evidently the theory of some armchair lounger who evolves all these neat little paradoxes in the seclusion of his own study. It is not practical. I should like to see him clapped down in a third-class carriage on the Underground, and asked to give the trades of all his fellow-travellers. I would lay a thousand to one against him.\"\n\n\"You would lose your money,\" Holmes remarked calmly. \"As for the article, I wrote it myself.\"\n\n\"You!\"\n\n\"Yes; I have a turn both for observation and for deduction. The theories which I have expressed there, and which appear to you to be so chimerical, are really extremely practical\u2014so practical that I depend upon them for my bread and cheese.\"\n\n\"And how?\" I asked involuntarily.\n\n\"Well, I have a trade of my own. I suppose I am the only one in the world. I'm a consulting detective, if you can understand what that is. Here in London we have lots of government detectives and lots of private ones. When these fellows are at fault, they come to me, and I manage to put them on the right scent. They lay all the evidence before me, and I am generally able, by the help of my knowledge of the history of crime, to set them straight. There is a strong family resemblance about misdeeds, and if you have all the details of a thousand at your finger ends, it is odd if you can't unravel the thousand and first. Lestrade is a well-known detective. He got himself into a fog recently over a forgery case, and that was what brought him here.\"\n\n\"And these other people?\"\n\n\"They are mostly sent on by private inquiry agencies. They are all people who are in trouble about something and want a little enlightening. I listen to their story, they listen to my comments, and then I pocket my fee.\"\n\n\"But do you mean to say,\" I said, \"that without leaving your room you can unravel some knot which other men can make nothing of, although they have seen every detail for themselves?\"\n\n\"Quite so. I have a kind of intuition that way. Now and again a case turns up which is a little more complex. Then I have to bustle about and see things with my own eyes. You see I have a lot of special knowledge which I apply to the problem, and which facilitates matters wonderfully. Those rules of deduction laid down in that article which aroused your scorn are invaluable to me in practical work. Observation with me is second nature. You appeared to be surprised when I told you, on our first meeting, that you had come from Afghanistan.\"\n\n\"You were told, no doubt.\"\n\n\"Nothing of the sort. I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, 'Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.' The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished.\"\n\n\"It is simple enough as you explain it,\" I said, smiling. \"You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes rose and lit his pipe. \"No doubt you think that you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin,\" he observed. \"Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends' thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour's silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine.\"\n\n\"Have you read Gaboriau's works?\" I asked. \"Does Lecoq come up to your idea of a detective?\"\n\nSherlock Holmes sniffed sardonically. \"Lecoq was a miserable bungler,\" he said, in an angry voice; \"he had only one thing to recommend him, and that was his energy. That book made me positively ill. The question was how to identify an unknown prisoner. I could have done it in twenty-four hours. Lecoq took six months or so. It might be made a textbook for detectives to teach them what to avoid.\"\n\nI felt rather indignant at having two characters whom I had admired treated in this cavalier style. I walked over to the window and stood looking out into the busy street. \"This fellow may be very clever,\" I said to myself, \"but he is certainly very conceited.\"\n\n\"There are no crimes and no criminals in these days,\" he said, querulously. \"What is the use of having brains in our profession? I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect; or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it.\"\n\nI was still annoyed at his bumptious style of conversation. I thought it best to change the topic.\n\n\"I wonder what that fellow is looking for?\" I asked, pointing to a stalwart, plainly dressed individual who was walking slowly down the other side of the street, looking anxiously at the numbers. He had a large blue envelope in his hand, and was evidently the bearer of a message.\n\n\"You mean the retired sergeant of Marines,\" said Sherlock Holmes.\n\n\"Brag and bounce!\" thought I to myself. \"He knows that I cannot verify his guess.\"\n\nThe thought had hardly passed through my mind when the man whom we were watching caught sight of the number on our door, and ran rapidly across the roadway. We heard a loud knock, a deep voice below, and heavy steps ascending the stair.\n\n\"For Mr. Sherlock Holmes,\" he said, stepping into the room and handing my friend the letter.\n\nHere was an opportunity of taking the conceit out of him. He little thought of this when he made that random shot. \"May I ask, my lad,\" I said, in the blandest voice, \"what your trade may be?\"\n\n\"Commissionaire, sir,\" he said, gruffly. \"Uniform away for repairs.\"\n\n\"And you were?\" I asked, with a slightly malicious glance at my companion.\n\n\"A sergeant, sir, Royal Marine Light Infantry, sir. No answer? Right, sir.\"\n\nHe clicked his heels together, raised his hand in salute, and was gone." + }, + { + "title": "The Lauriston Garden Mystery", + "text": "I confess that I was considerably startled by this fresh proof of the practical nature of my companion's theories. My respect for his powers of analysis increased wondrously. There still remained some lurking suspicion in my mind, however, that the whole thing was a prearranged episode, intended to dazzle me, though what earthly object he could have in taking me in was past my comprehension. When I looked at him, he had finished reading the note, and his eyes had assumed the vacant, lack-lustre expression which showed mental abstraction.\n\n\"How in the world did you deduce that?\" I asked.\n\n\"Deduce what?\" said he, petulantly.\n\n\"Why, that he was a retired sergeant of Marines.\"\n\n\"I have no time for trifles,\" he answered, brusquely; then with a smile, \"Excuse my rudeness. You broke the thread of my thoughts; but perhaps it is as well. So you actually were not able to see that that man was a sergeant of Marines?\"\n\n\"No, indeed.\"\n\n\"It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact. Even across the street I could see a great blue anchor tattooed on the back of the fellow's hand. That smacked of the sea. He had a military carriage, however, and regulation side whiskers. There we have the marine. He was a man with some amount of self-importance and a certain air of command. You must have observed the way in which he held his head and swung his cane. A steady, respectable, middle-aged man, too, on the face of him all facts which led me to believe that he had been a sergeant.\"\n\n\"Wonderful!\" I ejaculated.\n\n\"Commonplace,\" said Holmes, though I thought from his expression that he was pleased at my evident surprise and admiration. \"I said just now that there were no criminals. It appears that I am wrong\u2014look at this!\" He threw me over the note which the commissionaire had brought.\n\n\"Why,\" I cried, as I cast my eye over it, \"this is terrible!\"\n\n\"It does seem to be a little out of the common,\" he remarked, calmly. \"Would you mind reading it to me aloud?\"\n\nThis is the letter which I read to him,\u2014\n\n\u2002\"My dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes:\n\n\u2002\"There has been a bad business during the night at 3, Lauriston Gardens, off the Brixton Road. Our man on the beat saw a light there about two in the morning, and as the house was an empty one, suspected that something was amiss. He found the door open, and in the front room, which is bare of furniture, discovered the body of a gentleman, well dressed, and having cards in his pocket bearing the name of 'Enoch J. Drebber, Cleveland, Ohio, U. S. A.' There had been no robbery, nor is there any evidence as to how the man met his death. There are marks of blood in the room, but there is no wound upon his person. We are at a loss as to how he came into the empty house; indeed, the whole affair is a puzzler. If you can come round to the house any time before twelve, you will find me there. I have left everything in statu quo until I hear from you. If you are unable to come, I shall give you fuller details, and would esteem it a great kindness if you would favour me with your opinions.\n\n\u2002\"Yours faithfully,\n\n\u2002\"TOBIAS GREGSON.\"\n\n\"Gregson is the smartest of the Scotland Yarders,\" my friend remarked; \"he and Lestrade are the pick of a bad lot. They are both quick and energetic, but conventional\u2014shockingly so. They have their knives into one another, too. They are as jealous as a pair of professional beauties. There will be some fun over this case if they are both put upon the scent.\"\n\nI was amazed at the calm way in which he rippled on. \"Surely there is not a moment to be lost,\" I cried; \"shall I go and order you a cab?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure about whether I shall go. I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather\u2014that is, when the fit is on me, for I can be spry enough at times.\"\n\n\"Why, it is just such a chance as you have been longing for.\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, what does it matter to me? Supposing I unravel the whole matter, you may be sure that Gregson, Lestrade, and Co. will pocket all the credit. That comes of being an unofficial personage.\"\n\n\"But he begs you to help him.\"\n\n\"Yes. He knows that I am his superior, and acknowledges it to me; but he would cut his tongue out before he would own it to any third person. However, we may as well go and have a look. I shall work it out on my own hook. I may have a laugh at them, if I have nothing else. Come on!\"\n\nHe hustled on his overcoat, and bustled about in a way that showed that an energetic fit had superseded the apathetic one.\n\n\"Get your hat,\" he said.\n\n\"You wish me to come?\"\n\n\"Yes, if you have nothing better to do.\" A minute later we were both in a hansom, driving furiously for the Brixton Road.\n\nIt was a foggy, cloudy morning, and a dun-coloured veil hung over the housetops, looking like the reflection of the mud-coloured streets beneath. My companion was in the best of spirits, and prattled away about Cremona fiddles and the difference between a Stradivarius and an Amati. As for myself, I was silent, for the dull weather and the melancholy business upon which we were engaged depressed my spirits.\n\n\"You don't seem to give much thought to the matter in hand,\" I said at last, interrupting Holmes's musical disquisition.\n\n\"No data yet,\" he answered. \"It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.\"\n\n\"You will have your data soon,\" I remarked, pointing with my finger; \"this is the Brixton Road, and that is the house, if I am not very much mistaken.\"\n\n\"So it is. Stop, driver, stop!\" We were still a hundred yards or so from it, but he insisted upon our alighting, and we finished our journey upon foot.\n\nNumber 3, Lauriston Gardens wore an ill-omened and minatory look. It was one of four which stood back some little way from the street, two being occupied and two empty. The latter looked out with three tiers of vacant melancholy windows, which were blank and dreary, save that here and there a \"To Let\" card had developed like a cataract upon the bleared panes. A small garden sprinkled over with a scattered eruption of sickly plants separated each of these houses from the street, and was traversed by a narrow pathway, yellowish in colour, and consisting apparently of a mixture of clay and of gravel. The whole place was very sloppy from the rain which had fallen through the night. The garden was bounded by a three-foot brick wall with a fringe of wood rails upon the top, and against this wall was leaning a stalwart police constable, surrounded by a small knot of loafers, who craned their necks and strained their eyes in the vain hope of catching some glimpse of the proceedings within.\n\nI had imagined that Sherlock Holmes would at once have hurried into the house and plunged into a study of the mystery. Nothing appeared to be further from his intention. With an air of nonchalance which, under the circumstances, seemed to me to border upon affectation, he lounged up and down the pavement, and gazed vacantly at the ground, the sky, the opposite houses and the line of railings. Having finished his scrutiny, he proceeded slowly down the path, or rather down the fringe of grass which flanked the path, keeping his eyes riveted upon the ground. Twice he stopped, and once I saw him smile, and heard him utter an exclamation of satisfaction. There were many marks of footsteps upon the wet clayey soil; but since the police had been coming and going over it, I was unable to see how my companion could hope to learn anything from it. Still I had had such extraordinary evidence of the quickness of his perceptive faculties, that I had no doubt that he could see a great deal which was hidden from me.\n\nAt the door of the house we were met by a tall, white-faced, flaxen-haired man, with a notebook in his hand, who rushed forward and wrung my companion's hand with effusion. \"It is indeed kind of you to come,\" he said, \"I have had everything left untouched.\"\n\n\"Except that!\" my friend answered, pointing at the pathway. \"If a herd of buffaloes had passed along, there could not be a greater mess. No doubt, however, you had drawn your own conclusions, Gregson, before you permitted this.\"\n\n\"I have had so much to do inside the house,\" the detective said evasively. \"My colleague, Mr. Lestrade, is here. I had relied upon him to look after this.\"\n\nHolmes glanced at me and raised his eyebrows sardonically. \"With two such men as yourself and Lestrade upon the ground, there will not be much for a third party to find out,\" he said.\n\nGregson rubbed his hands in a self-satisfied way. \"I think we have done all that can be done,\" he answered; \"it's a queer case, though, and I knew your taste for such things.\"\n\n\"You did not come here in a cab?\" asked Sherlock Holmes.\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"Nor Lestrade?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"Then let us go and look at the room.\" With which inconsequent remark he strode on into the house followed by Gregson, whose features expressed his astonishment.\n\nA short passage, bare-planked and dusty, led to the kitchen and offices. Two doors opened out of it to the left and to the right. One of these had obviously been closed for many weeks. The other belonged to the dining-room, which was the apartment in which the mysterious affair had occurred. Holmes walked in, and I followed him with that subdued feeling at my heart which the presence of death inspires.\n\nIt was a large square room, looking all the larger from the absence of all furniture. A vulgar flaring paper adorned the walls, but it was blotched in places with mildew, and here and there great strips had become detached and hung down, exposing the yellow plaster beneath. Opposite the door was a showy fireplace, surmounted by a mantelpiece of imitation white marble. On one corner of this was stuck the stump of a red wax candle. The solitary window was so dirty that the light was hazy and uncertain, giving a dull gray tinge to everything, which was intensified by the thick layer of dust which coated the whole apartment.\n\nAll these details I observed afterwards. At present my attention was centred upon the single, grim, motionless figure which lay stretched upon the boards, with vacant, sightless eyes staring up at the discoloured ceiling. It was that of a man about forty-three or forty-four years of age, middle-sized, broad-shouldered, with crisp curling black hair, and a short, stubbly beard. He was dressed in a heavy broadcloth frock coat and waistcoat, with light-coloured trousers, and immaculate collar and cuffs. A top hat, well brushed and trim, was placed upon the floor beside him. His hands were clenched and his arms thrown abroad, while his lower limbs were interlocked, as though his death struggle had been a grievous one. On his rigid face there stood an expression of horror, and, as it seemed to me, of hatred, such as I have never seen upon human features. This malignant and terrible contortion, combined with the low forehead, blunt nose, and prognathous jaw, gave the dead man a singularly simious and ape-like appearance, which was increased by his writhing, unnatural posture. I have seen death in many forms, but never has it appeared to me in a more fearsome aspect than in that dark, grimy apartment, which looked out upon one of the main arteries of suburban London.\n\nLestrade, lean and ferret-like as ever, was standing by the doorway, and greeted my companion and myself.\n\n\"This case will make a stir, sir,\" he remarked. \"It beats anything I have seen, and I am no chicken.\"\n\n\"There is no clue?\" said Gregson.\n\n\"None at all,\" chimed in Lestrade.\n\nSherlock Holmes approached the body, and, kneeling down, examined it intently. \"You are sure that there is no wound?\" he asked, pointing to numerous gouts and splashes of blood which lay all round.\n\n\"Positive!\" cried both detectives.\n\n\"Then, of course, this blood belongs to a second individual\u2014presumably the murderer, if murder has been committed. It reminds me of the circumstances attendant on the death of Van Jansen, in Utrecht, in the year '34. Do you remember the case, Gregson?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"Read it up\u2014you really should. There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.\"\n\nAs he spoke, his nimble fingers were flying here, there, and everywhere, feeling, pressing, unbuttoning, examining, while his eyes wore the same far-away expression which I have already remarked upon. So swiftly was the examination made, that one would hardly have guessed the minuteness with which it was conducted. Finally, he sniffed the dead man's lips, and then glanced at the soles of his patent leather boots.\n\n\"He has not been moved at all?\" he asked.\n\n\"No more than was necessary for the purpose of our examination.\"\n\n\"You can take him to the mortuary now,\" he said. \"There is nothing more to be learned.\"\n\nGregson had a stretcher and four men at hand. At his call they entered the room, and the stranger was lifted and carried out. As they raised him, a ring tinkled down and rolled across the floor. Lestrade grabbed it up and stared at it with mystified eyes.\n\n\"There's been a woman here,\" he cried. \"It's a woman's wedding ring.\"\n\nHe held it out, as he spoke, upon the palm of his hand. We all gathered round him and gazed at it. There could be no doubt that that circlet of plain gold had once adorned the finger of a bride.\n\n\"This complicates matters,\" said Gregson. \"Heaven knows, they were complicated enough before.\"\n\n\"You're sure it doesn't simplify them?\" observed Holmes. \"There's nothing to be learned by staring at it. What did you find in his pockets?\"\n\n\"We have it all here,\" said Gregson, pointing to a litter of objects upon one of the bottom steps of the stairs. \"A gold watch, No. 97163, by Barraud, of London. Gold Albert chain, very heavy and solid. Gold ring, with masonic device. Gold pin\u2014bull-dog's head, with rubies as eyes. Russian leather cardcase, with cards of Enoch J. Drebber of Cleveland, corresponding with the E. J. D. upon the linen. No purse, but loose money to the extent of seven pounds thirteen. Pocket edition of Boccaccio's 'Decameron,' with name of Joseph Stangerson upon the flyleaf. Two letters\u2014one addressed to E. J. Drebber and one to Joseph Stangerson.\n\n\"At what address?\"\n\n\"American Exchange, Strand\u2014to be left till called for. They are both from the Guion Steamship Company, and refer to the sailing of their boats from Liverpool. It is clear that this unfortunate man was about to return to New York.\"\n\n\"Have you made any inquiries as to this man Stangerson?\"\n\n\"I did it at once, sir,\" said Gregson. \"I have had advertisements sent to all the newspapers, and one of my men has gone to the American Exchange, but he has not returned yet.\"\n\n\"Have you sent to Cleveland?\"\n\n\"We telegraphed this morning.\"\n\n\"How did you word your inquiries?\"\n\n\"We simply detailed the circumstances, and said that we should be glad of any information which could help us.\"\n\n\"You did not ask for particulars on any point which appeared to you to be crucial?\"\n\n\"I asked about Stangerson.\"\n\n\"Nothing else? Is there no circumstance on which this whole case appears to hinge? Will you not telegraph again?\"\n\n\"I have said all I have to say,\" said Gregson, in an offended voice.\n\nSherlock Holmes chuckled to himself, and appeared to be about to make some remark, when Lestrade, who had been in the front room while we were holding this conversation in the hall, reappeared upon the scene, rubbing his hands in a pompous and self-satisfied manner.\n\n\"Mr. Gregson,\" he said, \"I have just made a discovery of the highest importance, and one which would have been overlooked had I not made a careful examination of the walls.\"\n\nThe little man's eyes sparkled as he spoke, and he was evidently in a state of suppressed exultation at having scored a point against his colleague.\n\n\"Come here,\" he said, bustling back into the room, the atmosphere of which felt clearer since the removal of its ghastly inmate. \"Now, stand there!\"\n\nHe struck a match on his boot and held it up against the wall.\n\n\"Look at that!\" he said, triumphantly.\n\nI have remarked that the paper had fallen away in parts. In this particular corner of the room a large piece had peeled off, leaving a yellow square of coarse plastering. Across this bare space there was scrawled in blood-red letters a single word\u2014" + }, + { + "title": "RACHE", + "text": "\"What do you think of that?\" cried the detective, with the air of a showman exhibiting his show. \"This was overlooked because it was in the darkest corner of the room, and no one thought of looking there. The murderer has written it with his or her own blood. See this smear where it has trickled down the wall! That disposes of the idea of suicide anyhow. Why was that corner chosen to write it on? I will tell you. See that candle on the mantelpiece. It was lit at the time, and if it was lit this corner would be the brightest instead of the darkest portion of the wall.\"\n\n\"And what does it mean now that you have found it?\" asked Gregson in a depreciatory voice.\n\n\"Mean? Why, it means that the writer was going to put the female name Rachel, but was disturbed before he or she had time to finish. You mark my words, when this case comes to be cleared up, you will find that a woman named Rachel has something to do with it. It's all very well for you to laugh, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. You may be very smart and clever, but the old hound is the best, when all is said and done.\"\n\n\"I really beg your pardon!\" said my companion, who had ruffled the little man's temper by bursting into an explosion of laughter. \"You certainly have the credit of being the first of us to find this out and, as you say, it bears every mark of having been written by the other participant in last night's mystery. I have not had time to examine this room yet, but with your permission I shall do so now.\"\n\nAs he spoke, he whipped a tape measure and a large round magnifying glass from his pocket. With these two implements he trotted noiselessly about the room, sometimes stopping, occasionally kneeling, and once lying flat upon his face. So engrossed was he with his occupation that he appeared to have forgotten our presence, for he chattered away to himself under his breath the whole time, keeping up a running fire of exclamations, groans, whistles, and little cries suggestive of encouragement and of hope. As I watched him I was irresistibly reminded of a pure-blooded, well-trained foxhound, as it dashes backward and forward through the covert, whining in its eagerness, until it comes across the lost scent. For twenty minutes or more he continued his researches, measuring with the most exact care the distance between marks which were entirely invisible to me, and occasionally applying his tape to the walls in an equally incomprehensible manner. In one place he gathered up very carefully a little pile of gray dust from the floor, and packed it away in an envelope. Finally he examined with his glass the word upon the wall, going over every letter of it with the most minute exactness. This done, he appeared to be satisfied, for he replaced his tape and his glass in his pocket.\n\n\"They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains,\" he remarked with a smile. \"It's a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work.\"\n\nGregson and Lestrade had watched the man\u0153uvres of their amateur companion with considerable curiosity and some contempt. They evidently failed to appreciate the fact, which I had begun to realize, that Sherlock Holmes's smallest actions were all directed towards some definite and practical end.\n\n\"What do you think of it, sir?\" they both asked.\n\n\"It would be robbing you of the credit of the case if I were to presume to help you,\" remarked my friend. \"You are doing so well now that it would be a pity for anyone to interfere.\" There was a world of sarcasm in his voice as he spoke. \"If you will let me know how your investigations go,\" he continued, \"I shall be happy to give you any help I can. In the meantime I should like to speak to the constable who found the body. Can you give me his name and address?\"\n\nLestrade glanced at his notebook. \"John Rance,\" he said. \"He is off duty now. You will find him at 46, Audley Court, Kennington Park Gate.\"\n\nHolmes took a note of the address.\n\n\"Come along, Doctor,\" he said: \"we shall go and look him up. I'll tell you one thing which may help you in the case,\" he continued, turning to the two detectives. \"There has been murder done, and the murderer was a man. He was more than six feet high, was in the prime of life, had small feet for his height, wore coarse, square-toed boots and smoked a Trichinopoly cigar. He came here with his victim in a four-wheeled cab, which was drawn by a horse with three old shoes and one new one on his off fore-leg. In all probability the murderer had a florid face, and the finger-nails of his right hand were remarkably long. These are only a few indications, but they may assist you.\"\n\nLestrade and Gregson glanced at each other with an incredulous smile.\n\n\"If this man was murdered, how was it done?\" asked the former.\n\n\"Poison,\" said Sherlock Holmes curtly, and strode off. \"One other thing, Lestrade,\" he added, turning round at the door: \" 'Rache,' is the German for 'revenge'; so don't lose your time looking for Miss Rachel.\"\n\nWith which Parthian shot he walked away, leaving the two rivals open mouthed behind him." + }, + { + "title": "What John Rance Had to Tell", + "text": "It was one o'clock when we left No. 3, Lauriston Gardens. Sherlock Holmes led me to the nearest telegraph office, whence he dispatched a long telegram. He then hailed a cab, and ordered the driver to take us to the address given us by Lestrade.\n\n\"There is nothing like first-hand evidence,\" he remarked; \"as a matter of fact, my mind is entirely made up upon the case, but still we may as well learn all that is to be learned.\"\n\n\"You amaze me, Holmes,\" said I. \"Surely you are not as sure as you pretend to be of all those particulars which you gave.\"\n\n\"There's no room for a mistake,\" he answered. \"The very first thing which I observed on arriving there was that a cab had made two ruts with its wheels close to the curb. Now, up to last night, we have had no rain for a week, so that those wheels which left such a deep impression must have been there during the night. There were the marks of the horse's hoofs, too, the outline of one of which was far more clearly cut than that of the other three, showing that that was a new shoe. Since the cab was there after the rain began, and was not there at any time during the morning\u2014I have Gregson's word for that\u2014it follows that it must have been there during the night, and therefore, that it brought those two individuals to the house.\"\n\n\"That seems simple enough,\" said I; \"but how about the other man's height?\"\n\n\"Why, the height of a man, in nine cases out of ten, can be told from the length of his stride. It is a simple calculation enough, though there is no use my boring you with figures. I had this fellow's stride both on the clay outside and on the dust within. Then I had a way of checking my calculation. When a man writes on a wall, his instinct leads him to write above the level of his own eyes. Now that writing was just over six feet from the ground. It was child's play.\"\n\n\"And his age?\" I asked.\n\n\"Well, if a man can stride four and a half feet without the smallest effort, he can't be quite in the sere and yellow. That was the breadth of a puddle on the garden walk which he had evidently walked across. Patent-leather boots had gone round, and Square-toes had hopped over. There is no mystery about it at all. I am simply applying to ordinary life a few of those precepts of observation and deduction which I advocated in that article. Is there anything else that puzzles you?\"\n\n\"The finger-nails and the Trichinopoly,\" I suggested.\n\n\"The writing on the wall was done with a man's forefinger dipped in blood. My glass allowed me to observe that the plaster was slightly scratched in doing it, which would not have been the case if the man's nail had been trimmed. I gathered up some scattered ash from the floor. It was dark in colour and flaky\u2014such an ash is only made by a Trichinopoly. I have made a special study of cigar ashes\u2014in fact, I have written a monograph upon the subject. I flatter myself that I can distinguish at a glance the ash of any known brand either of cigar or of tobacco. It is just in such details that the skilled detective differs from the Gregson and Lestrade type.\"\n\n\"And the florid face?\" I asked.\n\n\"Ah, that was a more daring shot, though I have no doubt that I was right. You must not ask me that at the present state of the affair.\"\n\nI passed my hand over my brow. \"My head is in a whirl,\" I remarked; \"the more one thinks of it the more mysterious it grows. How came these two men\u2014if there were two men\u2014into an empty house? What has become of the cabman who drove them? How could one man compel another to take poison? Where did the blood come from? What was the object of the murderer, since robbery had no part in it? How came the woman's ring there? Above all, why should the second man write up the German word RACHE before decamping? I confess that I cannot see any possible way of reconciling all these facts.\"\n\nMy companion smiled approvingly.\n\n\"You sum up the difficulties of the situation succinctly and well,\" he said. \"There is much that is still obscure, though I have quite made up my mind on the main facts. As to poor Lestrade's discovery, it was simply a blind intended to put the police upon a wrong track, by suggesting Socialism and secret societies. It was not done by a German. The A, if you noticed, was printed somewhat after the German fashion. Now, a real German invariably prints in the Latin character, so that we may safely say that this was not written by one, but by a clumsy imitator who overdid his part. It was simply a ruse to divert inquiry into a wrong channel. I'm not going to tell you much more of the case, Doctor. You know a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all.\"\n\n\"I shall never do that,\" I answered; \"you have brought detection as near an exact science as it ever will be brought in this world.\"\n\nMy companion flushed up with pleasure at my words, and the earnest way in which I uttered them. I had already observed that he was as sensitive to flattery on the score of his art as any girl could be of her beauty.\n\n\"I'll tell you one other thing,\" he said. \"Patent-leathers and Square-toes came in the same cab, and they walked down the pathway together as friendly as possible\u2014arm-in-arm, in all probability. When they got inside, they walked up and down the room\u2014or rather, Patent-leathers stood still while Square-toes walked up and down. I could read all that in the dust; and I could read that as he walked he grew more and more excited. That is shown by the increased length of his strides. He was talking all the while, and working himself up, no doubt, into a fury. Then the tragedy occurred. I've told you all I know myself now, for the rest is mere surmise and conjecture. We have a good working basis, however, on which to start. We must hurry up, for I want to go to Halle's concert to hear Norman Neruda this afternoon.\"\n\nThis conversation had occurred while our cab had been threading its way through a long succession of dingy streets and dreary byways. In the dingiest and dreariest of them our driver suddenly came to a stand. \"That's Audley Court in there,\" he said, pointing to a narrow slit in the line of dead-coloured brick. \"You'll find me here when you come back.\"\n\nAudley Court was not an attractive locality. The narrow passage led us into a quadrangle paved with flags and lined by sordid dwellings. We picked our way among groups of dirty children, and through lines of discoloured linen, until we came to Number 46, the door of which was decorated with a small slip of brass on which the name Rance was engraved. On inquiry we found that the constable was in bed, and we were shown into a little front parlour to await his coming.\n\nHe appeared presently, looking a little irritable at being disturbed in his slumbers. \"I made my report at the office,\" he said.\n\nHolmes took a half-sovereign from his pocket and played with it pensively. \"We thought that we should like to hear it all from your own lips,\" he said.\n\n\"I shall be most happy to tell you anything I can,\" the constable answered, with his eyes upon the little golden disc.\n\n\"Just let us hear it all in your own way as it occurred.\"\n\nRance sat down on the horsehair sofa, and knitted his brows, as though determined not to omit anything in his narrative.\n\n\"I'll tell it ye from the beginning,\" he said. \"My time is from ten at night to six in the morning. At eleven there was a fight at the White Hart; but bar that all was quiet enough on the beat. At one o'clock it began to rain, and I met Harry Murcher\u2014him who has the Holland Grove beat\u2014and we stood together at the corner of Henrietta Street a-talkin'. Presently\u2014maybe about two or a little after\u2014I thought I would take a look round and see that all was right down the Brixton Road. It was precious dirty and lonely. Not a soul did I meet all the way down, though a cab or two went past me. I was a-strollin' down, thinkin' between ourselves how uncommon handy a four of gin hot would be, when suddenly the glint of a light caught my eye in the window of that same house. Now, I knew that them two houses in Lauriston Gardens was empty on account of him that owns them who won't have the drains seed to, though the very last tenant what lived in one of them died o' typhoid fever. I was knocked all in a heap, therefore, at seeing a light in the window, and I suspected as something was wrong. When I got to the door\u2014\"\n\n\"You stopped, and then walked back to the garden gate,\" my companion interrupted. \"What did you do that for?\"\n\nRance gave a violent jump, and stared at Sherlock Holmes with the utmost amazement upon his features.\n\n\"Why, that's true, sir,\" he said; \"though how you come to know it. Heaven only knows. Ye see when I got up to the door, it was so still and so lonesome, that I thought I'd be none the worse for someone with me. I ain't afeared of anything on this side o' the grave; but I thought that maybe it was him that died o' the typhoid inspecting the drains what killed him. The thought gave me a kind o' turn, and I walked back to the gate to see if I could see Murcher's lantern, but there wasn't no sign of him nor of anyone else.\"\n\n\"There was no one in the street?\"\n\n\"Not a livin' soul, sir, nor as much as a dog. Then I pulled myself together and went back and pushed the door open. All was quiet inside, so I went into the room where the light was a-burnin'. There was a candle flickerin' on the mantelpiece\u2014a red wax one\u2014and by its light I saw\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, I know all that you saw. You walked round the room several times, and you knelt down by the body, and then you walked through and tried the kitchen door, and then\u2014\"\n\nJohn Rance sprang to his feet with a frightened face and suspicion in his eyes. \"Where was you hid to see all that?\" he cried. \"It seems to me that you knows a deal more than you should.\"\n\nHolmes laughed and threw his card across the table to the constable. \"Don't go arresting me for the murder,\" he said. \"I am one of the hounds and not the wolf; Mr. Gregson or Mr. Lestrade will answer for that. Go on, though. What did you do next?\"\n\nRance resumed, his seat, without, however, losing his mystified expression. \"I went back to the gate and sounded my whistle. That brought Murcher and two more to the spot.\"\n\n\"Was the street empty then?\"\n\n\"Well, it was, as far as anybody that could be of any good goes.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\nThe constable's features broadened into a grin. \"I've seen many a drunk chap in my time,\" he said, \"but never anyone so cryin' drunk as that cove. He was at the gate when I came out, a-leanin' up ag'in the railings, and a-singin' at the pitch o' his lungs about Columbine's New-fangled Banner, or some such stuff. He couldn't stand, far less help.\"\n\n\"What sort of a man was he?\" asked Sherlock Holmes.\n\nJohn Rance appeared to be somewhat irritated at this digression. \"He was an uncommon drunk sort o' man,\" he said. \"He'd ha' found hisself in the station if we hadn't been so took up.\"\n\n\"His face\u2014his dress\u2014didn't you notice them?\" Holmes broke in impatiently.\n\n\"I should think I did notice them, seeing that I had to prop him up\u2014me and Murcher between us. He was a long chap, with a red face, the lower part muffled round\u2014\"\n\n\"That will do,\" cried Holmes. \"What became of him?\"\n\n\"We'd enough to do without lookin' after him,\" the policeman said, in an aggrieved voice. \"I'll wager he found his way home all right.\"\n\n\"How was he dressed?\"\n\n\"A brown overcoat.\"\n\n\"Had he a whip in his hand?\"\n\n\"A whip\u2014no.\"\n\n\"He must have left it behind,\" muttered my companion. \"You didn't happen to see or hear a cab after that?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"There's a half-sovereign for you,\" my companion said, standing up and taking his hat. \"I am afraid, Rance, that you will never rise in the force. That head of yours should be for use as well as ornament. You might have gained your sergeant's stripes last night. The man whom you held in your hands is the man who holds the clue of this mystery, and whom we are seeking. There is no use of arguing about it now; I tell you that it is so. Come along, Doctor.\"\n\nWe started off for the cab together, leaving our informant incredulous, but obviously uncomfortable.\n\n\"The blundering fool!\" Holmes said, bitterly, as we drove back to our lodgings. \"Just to think of his having such an incomparable bit of good luck, and not taking advantage of it.\"\n\n\"I am rather in the dark still. It is true that the description of this man tallies with your idea of the second party in this mystery. But why should he come back to the house after leaving it? That is not the way of criminals.\"\n\n\"The ring, man, the ring: that was what he came back for. If we have no other way of catching him, we can always bait our line with the ring. I shall have him, Doctor\u2014I'll lay you two to one that I have him. I must thank you for it all. I might not have gone but for you, and so have missed the finest study I ever came across: a study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon. There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it. And now for lunch, and then for Norman Neruda. Her attack and her bowing are splendid. What's that little thing of Chopin's she plays so magnificently: Tra-la-la-lira-lira-lay.\"\n\nLeaning back in the cab, this amateur bloodhound carolled away like a lark while I meditated upon the many-sidedness of the human mind." + }, + { + "title": "Our Advertisement Brings a Visitor", + "text": "Our morning's exertions had been too much for my weak health, and I was tired out in the afternoon. After Holmes's departure for the concert, I lay down upon the sofa and endeavoured to get a couple of hours' sleep. It was a useless attempt. My mind had been too much excited by all that had occurred, and the strangest fancies and surmises crowded into it. Every time that I closed my eyes I saw before me the distorted, baboon-like countenance of the murdered man. So sinister was the impression which that face had produced upon me that I found it difficult to feel anything but gratitude for him who had removed its owner from the world. If ever human features bespoke vice of the most malignant type, they were certainly those of Enoch J. Drebber, of Cleveland. Still I recognized that justice must be done, and that the depravity of the victim was no condonement in the eyes of the law.\n\nThe more I thought of it the more extraordinary did my companion's hypothesis, that the man had been poisoned, appear. I remembered how he had sniffed his lips, and had no doubt that he had detected something which had given rise to the idea. Then, again, if not poison, what had caused the man's death, since there was neither wound nor marks of strangulation? But, on the other hand, whose blood was that which lay so thickly upon the floor? There were no signs of a struggle, nor had the victim any weapon with which he might have wounded an antagonist. As long as all these questions were unsolved, I felt that sleep would be no easy matter, either for Holmes or myself. His quiet, self-confident manner convinced me that he had already formed a theory which explained all the facts, though what it was I could not for an instant conjecture.\n\nHe was very late in returning\u2014so late that I knew that the concert could not have detained him all the time. Dinner was on the table before he appeared.\n\n\"It was magnificent,\" he said, as he took his seat. \"Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.\"\n\n\"That's rather a broad idea,\" I remarked.\n\n\"One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,\" he answered. \"What's the matter? You're not looking quite yourself. This Brixton Road affair has upset you.\"\n\n\"To tell the truth, it has,\" I said. \"I ought to be more case-hardened after my Afghan experiences. I saw my own comrades hacked to pieces at Maiwand without losing my nerve.\"\n\n\"I can understand. There is a mystery about this which stimulates the imagination; where there is no imagination there is no horror. Have you seen the evening paper?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"It gives a fairly good account of the affair. It does not mention the fact that when the man was raised up a woman's wedding ring fell upon the floor. It is just as well it does not.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Look at this advertisement,\" he answered. \"I had one sent to every paper this morning immediately after the affair.\"\n\nHe threw the paper across to me and I glanced at the place indicated. It was the first announcement in the \"Found\" column. \"In Brixton Road, this morning,\" it ran, \"a plain gold wedding ring, found in the roadway between the White Hart Tavern and Holland Grove. Apply Dr. Watson, 221B, Baker Street, between eight and nine this evening.\"\n\n\"Excuse my using your name,\" he said. \"If I used my own, some of these dunderheads would recognize it, and want to meddle in the affair.\"\n\n\"That is all right,\" I answered. \"But supposing anyone applies, I have no ring.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, you have,\" said he, handing me one. \"This will do very well. It is almost a facsimile.\"\n\n\"And who do you expect will answer this advertisement?\"\n\n\"Why, the man in the brown coat\u2014our florid friend with the square toes. If he does not come himself, he will send an accomplice.\"\n\n\"Would he not consider it as too dangerous?\"\n\n\"Not at all. If my view of the case is correct, and I have every reason to believe that it is, this man would rather risk anything than lose the ring. According to my notion he dropped it while stooping over Drebber's body, and did not miss it at the time. After leaving the house he discovered his loss and hurried back, but found the police already in possession, owing to his own folly in leaving the candle burning. He had to pretend to be drunk in order to allay the suspicions which might have been aroused by his appearance at the gate. Now put yourself in that man's place. On thinking the matter over, it must have occurred to him that it was possible that he had lost the ring in the road after leaving the house. What would he do then? He would eagerly look out for the evening papers in the hope of seeing it among the articles found. His eye, of course, would light upon this. He would be overjoyed. Why should he fear a trap? There would be no reason in his eyes why the finding of the ring should be connected with the murder. He would come. He will come. You shall see him within an hour.\"\n\n\"And then?\" I asked.\n\n\"Oh, you can leave me to deal with him then. Have you any arms?\"\n\n\"I have my old service revolver and a few cartridges.\"\n\n\"You had better clean it and load it. He will be a desperate man; and though I shall take him unawares, it is as well to be ready for anything.\"\n\nI went to my bedroom and followed his advice. When I returned with the pistol, the table had been cleared, and Holmes was engaged in his favourite occupation of scraping upon his violin.\n\n\"The plot thickens,\" he said, as I entered; \"I have just had an answer to my American telegram. My view of the case is the correct one.\"\n\n\"And that is\u2014?\" I asked eagerly.\n\n\"My fiddle would be the better for new strings,\" he remarked. \"Put your pistol in your pocket. When the fellow comes, speak to him in an ordinary way. Leave the rest to me. Don't frighten him by looking at him too hard.\"\n\n\"It is eight o'clock now,\" I said, glancing at my watch.\n\n\"Yes. He will probably be here in a few minutes. Open the door slightly. That will do. Now put the key on the inside. Thank you! This is a queer old book I picked up at a stall yesterday\u2014De Jure inter Gentes\u2014published in Latin at Li\u00e9ge in the Lowlands, in 1642. Charles's head was still firm on his shoulders when this little brown-backed volume was struck off.\"\n\n\"Who is the printer?\"\n\n\"Philippe de Croy, whoever he may have been. On the fly-leaf, in very faded ink, is written 'Ex libris Guliolmi Whyte.' I wonder who William Whyte was. Some pragmatical seventeenth-century lawyer, I suppose. His writing has a legal twist about it. Here comes our man, I think.\"\n\nAs he spoke there was a sharp ring at the bell. Sherlock Holmes rose softly and moved his chair in the direction of the door. We heard the servant pass along the hall, and the sharp click of the latch as she opened it.\n\n\"Does Dr. Watson live here?\" asked a clear but rather harsh voice. We could not hear the servant's reply, but the door closed, and someone began to ascend the stairs. The footfall was an uncertain and shuffling one. A look of surprise passed over the face of my companion as he listened to it. It came slowly along the passage, and there was a feeble tap at the door.\n\n\"Come in,\" I cried.\n\nAt my summons, instead of the man of violence whom we expected, a very old and wrinkled woman hobbled into the apartment. She appeared to be dazzled by the sudden blaze of light, and after dropping a curtsey, she stood blinking at us with her bleared eyes and fumbling in her pocket with nervous, shaky fingers. I glanced at my companion, and his face had assumed such a disconsolate expression that it was all I could do to keep my countenance.\n\nThe old crone drew out an evening paper, and pointed at our advertisement. \"It's this as has brought me, good gentlemen,\" she said, dropping another curtsey; \"a gold wedding ring in the Brixton Road. It belongs to my girl Sally, as was married only this time twelvemonth, which her husband is steward aboard a Union boat, and what he'd say if he comes 'ome and found her without her ring is more than I can think, he being short enough at the best o' times, but more especially when he has the drink. If it please you, she went to the circus last night along with\u2014\"\n\n\"Is that her ring?\" I asked.\n\n\"The Lord be thanked!\" cried the old woman; \"Sally will be a glad woman this night. That's the ring.\"\n\n\"And what may your address be?\" I inquired, taking up a pencil.\n\n\"13, Duncan Street, Houndsditch. A weary way from here.\"\n\n\"The Brixton Road does not lie between any circus and Houndsditch,\" said Sherlock Holmes sharply.\n\nThe old woman faced round and looked keenly at him from her little red-rimmed eyes. \"The gentleman asked me for my address,\" she said. \"Sally lives in lodgings at 3, Mayfield Place, Peckham.\"\n\n\"And your name is\u2014?\"\n\n\"My name is Sawyer\u2014hers is Dennis, which Tom Dennis married her\u2014and a smart, clean lad, too, as long as he's at sea, and no steward in the company more thought of; but when on shore, what with the women and what with liquor shops\u2014\"\n\n\"Here is your ring, Mrs. Sawyer,\" I interrupted, in obedience to a sign from my companion; \"it clearly belongs to your daughter, and I am glad to be able to restore it to the rightful owner.\"\n\nWith many mumbled blessings and protestations of gratitude the old crone packed it away in her pocket, and shuffled off down the stairs. Sherlock Holmes sprang to his feet the moment that she was gone and rushed into his room. He returned in a few seconds enveloped in an ulster and a cravat. \"I'll follow her,\" he said, hurriedly; \"she must be an accomplice, and will lead me to him. Wait up for me.\" The hall door had hardly slammed behind our visitor before Holmes had descended the stair. Looking through the window I could see her walking feebly along the other side, while her pursuer dogged her some little distance behind. \"Either his whole theory is incorrect,\" I thought to myself, \"or else he will be led now to the heart of the mystery.\" There was no need for him to ask me to wait up for him, for I felt that sleep was impossible until I heard the result of his adventure.\n\nIt was close upon nine when he set out. I had no idea how long he might be, but I sat stolidly puffing at my pipe and skipping over the pages of Henri Murger's Vie de Boh\u00e8me. Ten o'clock passed, and I heard the footsteps of the maid as she pattered off to bed. Eleven, and the more stately tread of the landlady passed my door, bound for the same destination. It was close upon twelve before I heard the sharp sound of his latchkey. The instant he entered I saw by his face that he had not been successful. Amusement and chagrin seemed to be struggling for the mastery, until the former suddenly carried the day, and he burst into a hearty laugh.\n\n\"I wouldn't have the Scotland Yarders know it for the world,\" he cried, dropping into his chair; \"I have chaffed them so much that they would never have let me hear the end of it. I can afford to laugh, because I know that I will be even with them in the long run.\"\n\n\"What is it then?\" I asked.\n\n\"Oh, I don't mind telling a story against myself. That creature had gone a little way when she began to limp and show every sign of being footsore. Presently she came to a halt, and hailed a four-wheeler which was passing. I managed to be close to her so as to hear the address, but I need not have been so anxious, for she sang it out loud enough to be heard at the other side of the Street, 'Drive to 13, Duncan Street, Houndsditch,' she cried. This begins to look genuine, I thought, and having seen her safely inside, I perched myself behind. That's an art which every detective should be an expert at. Well, away we rattled, and never drew rein until we reached the street in question. I hopped off before we came to the door, and strolled down the street in an easy, lounging way. I saw the cab pull up. The driver jumped down, and I saw him open the door and stand expectantly. Nothing came out though. When I reached him, he was groping about frantically in the empty cab, and giving vent to the finest assorted collection of oaths that ever I listened to. There was no sign or trace of his passenger, and I fear it will be some time before he gets his fare. On inquiring at Number 13 we found that the house belonged to a respectable paperhanger, named Keswick, and that no one of the name either of Sawyer or Dennis had ever been heard of there.\"\n\n\"You don't mean to say,\" I cried, in amazement, \"that that tottering, feeble old woman was able to get out of the cab while it was in motion, without either you or the driver seeing her?\"\n\n\"Old woman be damned!\" said Sherlock Holmes, sharply. \"We were the old women to be so taken in. It must have been a young man, and an active one, too, besides being an incomparable actor. The get-up was inimitable. He saw that he was followed, no doubt, and used this means of giving me the slip. It shows that the man we are after is not as lonely as I imagined he was, but has friends who are ready to risk something for him. Now, Doctor, you are looking done-up. Take my advice and turn in.\"\n\nI was certainly feeling very weary, so I obeyed his injunction. I left Holmes seated in front of the smouldering fire, and long into the watches of the night I heard the low melancholy wailings of his violin, and knew that he was still pondering over the strange problem which he had set himself to unravel." + }, + { + "title": "Tobias Gregson Shows What He Can Do", + "text": "The papers next day were full of the \"Brixton Mystery,\" as they termed it. Each had a long account of the affair, and some had leaders upon it in addition. There was some information in them which was new to me. I still retain in my scrapbook numerous clippings and extracts bearing upon the case. Here is a condensation of a few of them:\n\nThe Daily Telegraph remarked that in the history of crime there had seldom been a tragedy which presented stranger features. The German name of the victim, the absence of all other motive, and the sinister inscription on the wall, all pointed to its perpetration by political refugees and revolutionists. The Socialists had many branches in America, and the deceased had, no doubt, infringed their unwritten laws, and been tracked down by them. After alluding airily to the Vehmgericht, aqua tofana, Carbonari, the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, the Darwinian theory, the principles of Malthus, and the Ratcliff Highway murders, the article concluded by admonishing the government and advocating a closer watch over foreigners in England.\n\nThe Standard commented upon the fact that lawless outrages of the sort usually occurred under a Liberal administration. They arose from the unsettling of the minds of the masses, and the consequent weakening of all authority. The deceased was an American gentleman who had been residing for some weeks in the metropolis. He had stayed at the boarding-house of Madame Charpentier, in Torquay Terrace, Camberwell. He was accompanied in his travels by his private secretary, Mr. Joseph Stangerson. The two bade adieu to their landlady upon Tuesday, the 4th inst., and departed to Euston Station with the avowed intention of catching the Liverpool express. They were afterwards seen together upon the platform. Nothing more is known of them until Mr. Drebber's body was, as recorded, discovered in an empty house in the Brixton Road, many miles from Euston. How he came there, or how he met his fate, are questions which are still involved in mystery. Nothing is known of the whereabouts of Stangerson. We are glad to learn that Mr. Lestrade and Mr. Gregson, of Scotland Yard, are both engaged upon the case, and it is confidently anticipated that these well-known officers will speedily throw light upon the matter.\n\nThe Daily News observed that there was no doubt as to the crime being a political one. The despotism and hatred of Liberalism which animated the Continental governments had had the effect of driving to our shores a number of men who might have made excellent citizens were they not soured by the recollection of all that they had undergone. Among these men there was a stringent code of honour, any infringement of which was punished by death. Every effort should be made to find the secretary, Stangerson, and to ascertain some particulars of the habits of the deceased. A great step had been gained by the discovery of the address of the house at which he had boarded\u2014a result which was entirely due to the acuteness and energy of Mr. Gregson of Scotland Yard.\n\nSherlock Holmes and I read these notices over together at breakfast, and they appeared to afford him considerable amusement.\n\n\"I told you that, whatever happened, Lestrade and Gregson would be sure to score.\"\n\n\"That depends on how it turns out.\"\n\n\"Oh, bless you, it doesn't matter in the least. If the man is caught, it will be on account of their exertions; if he escapes, it will be in spite of their exertions. It's heads I win and tails you lose. Whatever they do, they will have followers. 'Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire.'\"\n\n\"What on earth is this?\" I cried, for at this moment there came the pattering of many steps in the hall and on the stairs, accompanied by audible expressions of disgust upon the part of our landlady.\n\n\"It's the Baker Street division of the detective police force,\" said my companion gravely; and as he spoke there rushed into the room half a dozen of the dirtiest and most ragged street Arabs that ever I clapped eyes on.\n\n\"'Tention!\" cried Holmes, in a sharp tone, and the six dirty little scoundrels stood in a line like so many disreputable statuettes. \"In future you shall send up Wiggins alone to report, and the rest of you must wait in the street. Have you found it, Wiggins?\"\n\n\"No, sir, we hain't,\" said one of the youths.\n\n\"I hardly expected you would. You must keep on until you do. Here are your wages.\" He handed each of them a shilling. \"Now, off you go, and come back with a better report next time.\"\n\nHe waved his hand, and they scampered away downstairs like so many rats, and we heard their shrill voices next moment in the street.\n\n\"There's more work to be got out of one of those little beggars than out of a dozen of the force,\" Holmes remarked. \"The mere sight of an official-looking person seals men's lips. These youngsters, however, go everywhere and hear everything. They are as sharp as needles, too; all they want is organization.\"\n\n\"Is it on this Brixton case that you are employing them?\" I asked.\n\n\"Yes; there is a point which I wish to ascertain. It is merely a matter of time. Hullo! we are going to hear some news now with a vengeance! Here is Gregson coming down the road with beatitude written upon every feature of his face. Bound for us, I know. Yes, he is stopping. There he is!\"\n\nThere was a violent peal at the bell, and in a few seconds the fair-haired detective came up the stairs, three steps at a time, and burst into our sitting-room.\n\n\"My dear fellow,\" he cried, wringing Holmes's unresponsive hand, \"congratulate me! I have made the whole thing as clear as day.\"\n\nA shade of anxiety seemed to me to cross my companion's expressive face.\n\n\"Do you mean that you are on the right track?\" he asked.\n\n\"The right track! Why, sir, we have the man under lock and key.\"\n\n\"And his name is?\"\n\n\"Arthur Charpentier, sub-lieutenant in Her Majesty's navy,\" cried Gregson pompously rubbing his fat hands and inflating his chest.\n\nSherlock Holmes gave a sigh of relief and relaxed into a smile.\n\n\"Take a seat, and try one of these cigars,\" he said. \"We are anxious to know how you managed it. Will you have some whisky and water?\"\n\n\"I don't mind if I do,\" the detective answered. \"The tremendous exertions which I have gone through during the last day or two have worn me out. Not so much bodily exertion, you understand, as the strain upon the mind. You will appreciate that, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, for we are both brain-workers.\"\n\n\"You do me too much honour,\" said Holmes, gravely. \"Let us hear how you arrived at this most gratifying result.\"\n\nThe detective seated himself in the armchair, and puffed complacently at his cigar. Then suddenly he slapped his thigh in a paroxysm of amusement.\n\n\"The fun of it is,\" he cried, \"that that fool Lestrade, who thinks himself so smart, has gone off upon the wrong track altogether. He is after the secretary Stangerson, who had no more to do with the crime than the babe unborn. I have no doubt that he has caught him by this time.\"\n\nThe idea tickled Gregson so much that he laughed until he choked.\n\n\"And how did you get your clue?\"\n\n\"Ah, I'll tell you all about it. Of course, Dr. Watson, this is strictly between ourselves. The first difficulty which we had to contend with was the finding of this American's antecedents. Some people would have waited until their advertisements were answered, or until parties came forward and volunteered information. That is not Tobias Gregson's way of going to work. You remember the hat beside the dead man?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Holmes; \"by John Underwood and Sons, 129, Camberwell Road.\"\n\nGregson looked quite crestfallen.\n\n\"I had no idea that you noticed that,\" he said. \"Have you been there?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Ha!\" cried Gregson, in a relieved voice; \"you should never neglect a chance, however small it may seem.\"\n\n\"To a great mind, nothing is little,\" remarked Holmes, sententiously.\n\n\"Well, I went to Underwood, and asked him if he had sold a hat of that size and description. He looked over his books, and came on it at once. He had sent the hat to a Mr. Drebber, residing at Charpentier's Boarding Establishment, Torquay Terrace. Thus I got at his address.\"\n\n\"Smart\u2014very smart!\" murmured Sherlock Holmes.\n\n\"I next called upon Madame Charpentier,\" continued the detective. \"I found her very pale and distressed. Her daughter was in the room, too\u2014an uncommonly fine girl she is, too; she was looking red about the eyes and her lips trembled as I spoke to her. That didn't escape my notice. I began to smell a rat. You know the feeling, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, when you come upon the right scent\u2014a kind of thrill in your nerves. 'Have you heard of the mysterious death of your late boarder Mr. Enoch J. Drebber, of Cleveland?' I asked.\n\n\"The mother nodded. She didn't seem able to get out a word. The daughter burst into tears. I felt more than ever that these people knew something of the matter.\n\n\"'At what o'clock did Mr. Drebber leave your house for the train?' I asked.\n\n\"'At eight o'clock,' she said, gulping in her throat to keep down her agitation. 'His secretary, Mr. Stangerson, said that there were two trains\u2014one at 9:15 and one at 11. He was to catch the first.'\n\n\"'And was that the last which you saw of him?'\n\n\"A terrible change came over the woman's face as I asked the question. Her features turned perfectly livid. It was some seconds before she could get out the single word 'Yes'\u2014and when it did come it was in a husky, unnatural tone.\n\n\"There was silence for a moment, and then the daughter spoke in a calm, clear voice.\n\n\"'No good can ever come of falsehood, mother,' she said. 'Let us be frank with this gentleman. We did see Mr. Drebber again.'\n\n\"'God forgive you!' cried Madame Charpentier, throwing up her hands and sinking back in her chair. 'You have murdered your brother.'\n\n\"'Arthur would rather that we spoke the truth,' the girl answered firmly.\n\n\"'You had best tell me all about it now,' I said. 'Half confidences are worse than none. Besides, you do not know how much we know of it.'\n\n\"'On your head be it, Alice!' cried her mother; and then, turning to me, 'I will tell you all, sir. Do not imagine that my agitation on behalf of my son arises from any fear lest he should have had a hand in this terrible affair. He is utterly innocent of it. My dread is, however, that in your eyes and in the eyes of others he may appear to be compromised. That, however, is surely impossible. His high character, his profession, his antecedents would all forbid it.'\n\n\"'Your best way is to make a clean breast of the facts,' I answered. 'Depend upon it, if your son is innocent he will be none the worse.'\n\n\"'Perhaps, Alice, you had better leave us together,' she said, and her daughter withdrew. 'Now, sir,' she continued, 'I had no intention of telling you all this, but since my poor daughter has disclosed it I have no alternative. Having once decided to speak, I will tell you all without omitting any particular.'\n\n\"'It is your wisest course,' said I.\n\n\"'Mr. Drebber has been with us nearly three weeks. He and his secretary, Mr. Stangerson, had been travelling on the Continent. I noticed a Copenhagen label upon each of their trunks, showing that that had been their last stopping place. Stangerson was a quiet, reserved man, but his employer, I am sorry to say, was far otherwise. He was coarse in his habits and brutish in his ways. The very night of his arrival he became very much the worse for drink, and, indeed, after twelve o'clock in the day he could hardly ever be said to be sober. His manners towards the maid-servants were disgustingly free and familiar. Worst of all, he speedily assumed the same attitude towards my daughter, Alice, and spoke to her more than once in a way which, fortunately, she is too innocent to understand. On one occasion he actually seized her in his arms and embraced her\u2014an outrage which caused his own secretary to reproach him for his unmanly conduct.'\n\n\"'But why did you stand all this?' I asked. 'I suppose that you can get rid of your boarders when you wish.'\n\n\"Mrs. Charpentier blushed at my pertinent question. 'Would to God that I had given him notice on the very day that he came,' she said. 'But it was a sore temptation. They were paying a pound a day each\u2014fourteen pounds a week, and this is the slack season. I am a widow, and my boy in the Navy has cost me much. I grudged to lose the money. I acted for the best. This last was too much, however, and I gave him notice to leave on account of it. That was the reason of his going.'\n\n\"'Well?'\n\n\"'My heart grew light when I saw him drive away. My son is on leave just now, but I did not tell him anything of all this, for his temper is violent, and he is passionately fond of his sister. When I closed the door behind them a load seemed to be lifted from my mind. Alas, in less than an hour there was a ring at the bell, and I learned that Mr. Drebber had returned. He was much excited, and evidently the worse for drink. He forced his way into the room, where I was sitting with my daughter, and made some incoherent remark about having missed his train. He then turned to Alice, and before my very face, proposed to her that she should fly with him. \"You are of age,\" he said, \"and there is no law to stop you. I have money enough and to spare. Never mind the old girl here, but come along with me now straight away. You shall live like a princess.\" Poor Alice was so frightened that she shrunk away from him, but he caught her by the wrist and endeavoured to draw her towards the door. I screamed, and at that moment my son Arthur came into the room. What happened then I do not know. I heard oaths and the confused sounds of a scuffle. I was too terrified to raise my head. When I did look up I saw Arthur standing in the doorway laughing, with a stick in his hand. \"I don't think that fine fellow will trouble us again,\" he said. \"I will just go after him and see what he does with himself.\" With those words he took his hat and started off down the street. The next morning we heard of Mr. Drebber's mysterious death.'\n\n\"This statement came from Mrs. Charpentier's lips with many gasps and pauses. At times she spoke so low that I could hardly catch the words. I made shorthand notes of all that she said, however, so that there should be no possibility of a mistake.\"\n\n\"It's quite exciting,\" said Sherlock Holmes, with a yawn. \"What happened next?\"\n\n\"When Mrs. Charpentier paused,\" the detective continued, \"I saw that the whole case hung upon one point. Fixing her with my eye in a way which I always found effective with women, I asked her at what hour her son returned.\n\n\"'I do not know,' she answered.\n\n\"'Not know?'\n\n\"'No; he has a latchkey, and he let himself in.'\n\n\"'After you went to bed?'\n\n\"'Yes.'\n\n\"'When did you go to bed?'\n\n\"'About eleven.'\n\n\"'So your son was gone at least two hours?'\n\n\"'Yes.'\n\n\"'Possibly four or five?'\n\n\"'Yes.'\n\n\"'What was he doing during that time?'\n\n\"'I do not know,' she answered, turning white to her very lips.\n\n\"Of course after that there was nothing more to be done. I found out where Lieutenant Charpentier was, took two officers with me, and arrested him. When I touched him on the shoulder and warned him to come quietly with us, he answered us as bold as brass, 'I suppose you are arresting me for being concerned in the death of that scoundrel Drebber,' he said. We had said nothing to him about it, so that his alluding to it had a most suspicious aspect.\"\n\n\"Very,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"He still carried the heavy stick which the mother described him as having with him when he followed Drebber. It was a stout oak cudgel.\"\n\n\"What is your theory, then?\"\n\n\"Well, my theory is that he followed Drebber as far as the Brixton Road. When there, a fresh altercation arose between them, in the course of which Drebber received a blow from the stick, in the pit of the stomach perhaps, which killed him without leaving any mark. The night was so wet that no one was about, so Charpentier dragged the body of his victim into the empty house. As to the candle, and the blood, and the writing on the wall, and the ring, they may all be so many tricks to throw the police on to the wrong scent.\"\n\n\"Well done!\" said Holmes in an encouraging voice. \"Really, Gregson, you are getting along. We shall make something of you yet.\"\n\n\"I flatter myself that I have managed it rather neatly,\" the detective answered, proudly. \"The young man volunteered a statement, in which he said that after following Drebber some time, the latter perceived him, and took a cab in order to get away from him. On his way home he met an old shipmate, and took a long walk with him. On being asked where this old shipmate lived, he was unable to give any satisfactory reply. I think the whole case fits together uncommonly well. What amuses me is to think of Lestrade, who had started off upon the wrong scent. I am afraid he won't make much of it. Why, by Jove, here's the very man himself!\"\n\nIt was indeed Lestrade, who had ascended the stairs while we were talking, and who now entered the room. The assurance and jauntiness which generally marked his demeanour and dress were, however, wanting. His face was disturbed and troubled, while his clothes were disarranged and untidy. He had evidently come with the intention of consulting with Sherlock Holmes, for on perceiving his colleague he appeared to be embarrassed and put out. He stood in the centre of the room, fumbling nervously with his hat and uncertain what to do. \"This is a most extraordinary case,\" he said at last\u2014\"a most incomprehensible affair.\"\n\n\"Ah, you find it so, Mr. Lestrade!\" cried Gregson, triumphantly. \"I thought you would come to that conclusion. Have you managed to find the secretary, Mr. Joseph Stangerson?\"\n\n\"The secretary, Mr. Joseph Stangerson,\" said Lestrade, gravely, \"was murdered at Halliday's Private Hotel about six o'clock this morning.\"" + }, + { + "title": "Light in the Darkness", + "text": "The intelligence with which Lestrade greeted us was so momentous and so unexpected that we were all three fairly dumfounded. Gregson sprang out of his chair and upset the remainder of his whisky and water. I stared in silence at Sherlock Holmes, whose lips were compressed and his brows drawn down over his eyes.\n\n\"Stangerson too!\" he muttered. \"The plot thickens.\"\n\n\"It was quite thick enough before,\" grumbled Lestrade, taking a chair, \"I seem to have dropped into a sort of council of war.\"\n\n\"Are you\u2014are you sure of this piece of intelligence?\" stammered Gregson.\n\n\"I have just come from his room,\" said Lestrade. \"I was the first to discover what had occurred.\"\n\n\"We have been hearing Gregson's view of the matter,\" Holmes observed. \"Would you mind letting us know what you have seen and done?\"\n\n\"I have no objection,\" Lestrade answered, seating himself. \"I freely confess that I was of the opinion that Stangerson was concerned in the death of Drebber. This fresh development has shown me that I was completely mistaken. Full of the one idea, I set myself to find out what had become of the secretary. They had been seen together at Euston Station about half-past eight on the evening of the 3rd. At two in the morning Drebber had been found in the Brixton Road. The question which confronted me was to find out how Stangerson had been employed between 8:30 and the time of the crime, and what had become of him afterwards. I telegraphed to Liverpool, giving a description of the man, and warning them to keep a watch upon the American boats. I then set to work calling upon all the hotels and lodging-houses in the vicinity of Euston. You see, I argued that if Drebber and his companion had become separated, the natural course for the latter would be to put up somewhere in the vicinity for the night, and then to hang about the station again next morning.\"\n\n\"They would be likely to agree on some meeting-place beforehand,\" remarked Holmes.\n\n\"So it proved. I spent the whole of yesterday evening in making inquiries entirely without avail. This morning I began very early, and at eight o'clock I reached Halliday's Private Hotel, in Little George Street. On my inquiry as to whether a Mr. Stangerson was living there, they at once answered me in the affirmative.\n\n\"'No doubt you are the gentleman whom he was expecting,' they said. 'He has been waiting for a gentleman for two days.'\n\n\"'Where is he now?' I asked.\n\n\"'He is upstairs in bed. He wished to be called at nine.'\n\n\"'I will go up and see him at once,' I said.\n\n\"It seemed to me that my sudden appearance might shake his nerves and lead him to say something unguarded. The boots volunteered to show me the room: it was on the second floor, and there was a small corridor leading up to it. The boots pointed out the door to me, and was about to go downstairs again when I saw something that made me feel sickish, in spite of my twenty years' experience. From under the door there curled a little red ribbon of blood, which had meandered across the passage and formed a little pool along the skirting at the other side. I gave a cry, which brought the boots back. He nearly fainted when he saw it. The door was locked on the inside, but we put our shoulders to it, and knocked it in. The window of the room was open, and beside the window, all huddled up, lay the body of a man in his nightdress. He was quite dead, and had been for some time, for his limbs were rigid and cold. When we turned him over, the boots recognized him at once as being the same gentleman who had engaged the room under the name of Joseph Stangerson. The cause of death was a deep stab in the left side, which must have penetrated the heart. And now comes the strangest part of the affair. What do you suppose was above the murdered man?\"\n\nI felt a creeping of the flesh, and a presentiment of coming horror, even before Sherlock Holmes answered.\n\n\"The word RACHE, written in letters of blood,\" he said.\n\n\"That was it,\" said Lestrade, in an awestruck voice; and we were all silent for a while.\n\nThere was something so methodical and so incomprehensible about the deeds of this unknown assassin, that it imparted a fresh ghastliness to his crimes. My nerves, which were steady enough on the field of battle, tingled as I thought of it.\n\n\"The man was seen,\" continued Lestrade. \"A milk boy, passing on his way to the dairy, happened to walk down the lane which leads from the mews at the back of the hotel. He noticed that a ladder, which usually lay there, was raised against one of the windows of the second floor, which was wide open. After passing, he looked back and saw a man descend the ladder. He came down so quietly and openly that the boy imagined him to be some carpenter or joiner at work in the hotel. He took no particular notice of him, beyond thinking in his own mind that it was early for him to be at work. He has an impression that the man was tall, had a reddish face, and was dressed in a long, brownish coat. He must have stayed in the room some little time after the murder, for we found blood-stained water in the basin, where he had washed his hands, and marks on the sheets where he had deliberately wiped his knife.\"\n\nI glanced at Holmes on hearing the description of the murderer which tallied so exactly with his own. There was, however, no trace of exultation or satisfaction upon his face.\n\n\"Did you find nothing in the room which could furnish a clue to the murderer?\" he asked.\n\n\"Nothing. Stangerson had Drebber's purse in his pocket, but it seems that this was usual, as he did all the paying. There was eighty-odd pounds in it, but nothing had been taken. Whatever the motives of these extraordinary crimes, robbery is certainly not one of them. There were no papers or memoranda in the murdered man's pocket, except a single telegram, dated from Cleveland about a month ago, and containing the words, 'J. H. is in Europe.' There was no name appended to this message.\"\n\n\"And there was nothing else?\" Holmes asked.\n\n\"Nothing of any importance. The man's novel, with which he had read himself to sleep, was lying upon the bed, and his pipe was on a chair beside him. There was a glass of water on the table, and on the window-sill a small chip ointment box containing a couple of pills.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes sprang from his chair with an exclamation of delight. \"The last link,\" he cried, exultantly. \"My case is complete.\"\n\nThe two detectives stared at him in amazement.\n\n\"I have now in my hands,\" my companion said, confidently, \"all the threads which have formed such a tangle. There are, of course, details to be filled in, but I am as certain of all the main facts, from the time that Drebber parted from Stangerson at the station, up to the discovery of the body of the latter, as if I had seen them with my own eyes. I will give you a proof of my knowledge. Could you lay your hand upon those pills?\"\n\n\"I have them,\" said Lestrade, producing a small white box; \"I took them and the purse and the telegram, intending to have them put in a place of safety at the police station. It was the merest chance my taking these pills, for I am bound to say that I do not attach any importance to them.\"\n\n\"Give them here,\" said Holmes. \"Now, Doctor,\" turning to me, \"are those ordinary pills?\"\n\nThey certainly were not. They were of a pearly gray colour, small, round, and almost transparent against the light. \"From their lightness and transparency, I should imagine that they are soluble in water,\" I remarked.\n\n\"Precisely so,\" answered Holmes. \"Now would you mind going down and fetching that poor little devil of a terrier which has been bad so long, and which the landlady wanted you to put out of its pain yesterday?\"\n\nI went downstairs and carried the dog upstairs in my arms. Its laboured breathing and glazing eye showed that it was not far from its end. Indeed, its snow-white muzzle proclaimed that it had already exceeded the usual term of canine existence. I placed it upon a cushion on the rug.\n\n\"I will now cut one of these pills in two,\" said Holmes, and drawing his penknife he suited the action to the word. \"One half we return into the box for future purposes. The other half I will place in this wineglass, in which is a teaspoonful of water. You perceive that our friend, the doctor, is right, and that it readily dissolves.\"\n\n\"This may be very interesting,\" said Lestrade, in the injured tone of one who suspects that he is being laughed at; \"I cannot see, however, what it has to do with the death of Mr. Joseph Stangerson.\"\n\n\"Patience, my friend, patience! You will find in time that it has everything to do with it. I shall now add a little milk to make the mixture palatable, and on presenting it to the dog we find that he laps it up readily enough.\"\n\nAs he spoke he turned the contents of the wineglass into a saucer and placed it in front of the terrier, who speedily licked it dry. Sherlock Holmes's earnest demeanour had so far convinced us that we all sat in silence, watching the animal intently, and expecting some startling effect. None such appeared, however. The dog continued to lie stretched upon the cushion, breathing in a laboured way, but apparently neither the better nor the worse for its draught.\n\nHolmes had taken out his watch, and as minute followed minute without result, an expression of the utmost chagrin and disappointment appeared upon his features. He gnawed his lip, drummed his fingers upon the table, and showed every other symptom of acute impatience. So great was his emotion that I felt sincerely sorry for him, while the two detectives smiled derisively, by no means displeased at this check which he had met.\n\n\"It can't be a coincidence,\" he cried, at last springing from his chair and pacing wildly up and down the room; \"it is impossible that it should be a mere coincidence. The very pills which I suspected in the case of Drebber are actually found after the death of Stangerson. And yet they are inert. What can it mean? Surely my whole chain of reasoning cannot have been false. It is impossible! And yet this wretched dog is none the worse. Ah, I have it! I have it!\" With a perfect shriek of delight he rushed to the box, cut the other pill in two, dissolved it, added milk, and presented it to the terrier. The unfortunate creature's tongue seemed hardly to have been moistened in it before it gave a convulsive shiver in every limb, and lay as rigid and lifeless as if it had been struck by lightning.\n\nSherlock Holmes drew a long breath, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. \"I should have more faith,\" he said; \"I ought to know by this time that when a fact appears to be opposed to a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation. Of the two pills in that box, one was of the most deadly poison, and the other was entirely harmless. I ought to have known that before ever I saw the box at all.\"\n\nThis last statement appeared to me to be so startling that I could hardly believe that he was in his sober senses. There was the dead dog, however, to prove that his conjecture had been correct. It seemed to me that the mists in my own mind were gradually clearing away, and I began to have a dim, vague perception of the truth.\n\n\"All this seems strange to you,\" continued Holmes, \"because you failed at the beginning of the inquiry to grasp the importance of the single real clue which was presented to you. I had the good fortune to seize upon that, and everything which has occurred since then has served to confirm my original supposition, and, indeed, was the logical sequence of it. Hence things which have perplexed you and made the case more obscure have served to enlighten me and to strengthen my conclusions. It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious, because it presents no new or special features from which deductions may be drawn. This murder would have been infinitely more difficult to unravel had the body of the victim been simply found lying in the roadway without any of those outr\u00e9 and sensational accompaniments which have rendered it remarkable. These strange details, far from making the case more difficult, have really had the effect of making it less so.\"\n\nMr. Gregson, who had listened to this address with considerable impatience, could contain himself no longer. \"Look here, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,\" he said, \"we are all ready to acknowledge that you are a smart man, and that you have your own methods of working. We want something more than mere theory and preaching now, though. It is a case of taking the man. I have made my case out, and it seems I was wrong. Young Charpentier could not have been engaged in this second affair. Lestrade went after his man, Stangerson, and it appears that he was wrong too. You have thrown out hints here, and hints there, and seem to know more than we do, but the time has come when we feel that we have a right to ask you straight how much you do know of the business. Can you name the man who did it?\"\n\n\"I cannot help feeling that Gregson is right, sir,\" remarked Lestrade. \"We have both tried, and we have both failed. You have remarked more than once since I have been in the room that you had all the evidence which you require. Surely you will not withhold it any longer.\"\n\n\"Any delay in arresting the assassin,\" I observed, \"might give him time to perpetrate some fresh atrocity.\"\n\nThus pressed by us all, Holmes showed signs of irresolution. He continued to walk up and down the room with his head sunk on his chest and his brows drawn down, as was his habit when lost in thought.\n\n\"There will be no more murders,\" he said at last, stopping abruptly and facing us. \"You can put that consideration out of the question. You have asked me if I know the name of the assassin. I do. The mere knowing of his name is a small thing, however, compared with the power of laying our hands upon him. This I expect very shortly to do. I have good hopes of managing it through my own arrangements; but it is a thing which needs delicate handling, for we have a shrewd and desperate man to deal with, who is supported, as I have had occasion to prove, by another who is as clever as himself. As long as this man has no idea that anyonecan have a clue there is some chance of securing him; but if he had the slightest suspicion, he would change his name, and vanish in an instant among the four million inhabitants of this great city. Without meaning to hurt either of your feelings, I am bound to say that I consider these men to be more than a match for the official force, and that is why I have not asked your assistance. If I fail, I shall, of course, incur all the blame due to this omission; but that I am prepared for. At present I am ready to promise that the instant that I can communicate with you without endangering my own combinations, I shall do so.\"\n\nGregson and Lestrade seemed to be far from satisfied by this assurance, or by the depreciating allusion to the detective police. The former had flushed up to the roots of his flaxen hair, while the other's beady eyes glistened with curiosity and resentment. Neither of them had time to speak, however, before there was a tap at the door, and the spokesman of the street Arabs, young Wiggins, introduced his insignificant and unsavoury person.\n\n\"Please, sir,\" he said, touching his forelock, \"I have the cab downstairs.\"\n\n\"Good boy,\" said Holmes, blandly. \"Why don't you introduce this pattern at Scotland Yard?\" he continued, taking a pair of steel handcuffs from a drawer. \"See how beautifully the spring works. They fasten in an instant.\"\n\n\"The old pattern is good enough,\" remarked Lestrade, \"if we can only find the man to put them on.\"\n\n\"Very good, very good,\" said Holmes, smiling. \"The cabman may as well help me with my boxes. Just ask him to step up, Wiggins.\"\n\nI was surprised to find my companion speaking as though he were about to set out on a journey, since he had not said anything to me about it. There was a small portmanteau in the room, and this he pulled out and began to strap. He was busily engaged at it when the cabman entered the room.\n\n\"Just give me a help with this buckle, cabman,\" he said, kneeling over his task, and never turning his head.\n\nThe fellow came forward with a somewhat sullen, defiant air, and put down his hands to assist. At that instant there was a sharp click, the jangling of metal, and Sherlock Holmes sprang to his feet again.\n\n\"Gentlemen,\" he cried, with flashing eyes, \"let me introduce you to Mr. Jefferson Hope, the murderer of Enoch Drebber and of Joseph Stangerson.\"\n\nThe whole thing occurred in a moment\u2014so quickly that I had no time to realize it. I have a vivid recollection of that instant, of Holmes's triumphant expression and the ring of his voice, of the cabman's dazed, savage face, as he glared at the glittering handcuffs, which had appeared as if by magic upon his wrists. For a second or two we might have been a group of statues. Then with an inarticulate roar of fury, the prisoner wrenched himself free from Holmes's grasp, and hurled himself through the window. Woodwork and glass gave way before him; but before he got quite through, Gregson, Lestrade, and Holmes sprang upon him like so many staghounds. He was dragged back into the room, and then commenced a terrific conflict. So powerful and so fierce was he that the four of us were shaken off again and again. He appeared to have the convulsive strength of a man in an epileptic fit. His face and hands were terribly mangled by his passage through the glass, but loss of blood had no effect in diminishing his resistance. It was not until Lestrade succeeded in getting his hand inside his neckcloth and half-strangling him that we made him realize that his struggles were of no avail; and even then we felt no security until we had pinioned his feet as well as his hands. That done, we rose to our feet breathless and panting.\n\n\"We have his cab,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"It will serve to take him to Scotland Yard. And now, gentlemen,\" he continued, with a pleasant smile, \"we have reached the end of our little mystery. You are very welcome to put any questions that you like to me now, and there is no danger that I will refuse to answer them.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE COUNTRY OF THE SAINTS", + "text": "[ On the Great Alkali Plain ]\n\nIn the central portion of the great North American Continent there lies an arid and repulsive desert, which for many a long year served as a barrier against the advance of civilization. From the Sierra Nevada to Nebraska, and from the Yellowstone River in the north to the Colorado upon the south, is a region of desolation and silence. Nor is Nature always in one mood throughout this grim district. It comprises snow-capped and lofty mountains, and dark and gloomy valleys. There are swift-flowing rivers which dash through jagged canons; and there are enormous plains, which in winter are white with snow, and in summer are gray with the saline alkali dust. They all preserve, however, the common characteristics of barrenness, inhospitality, and misery.\n\nThere are no inhabitants of this land of despair. A band of Pawnees or of Blackfeet may occasionally traverse it in order to reach other hunting-grounds, but the hardiest of the braves are glad to lose sight of those awe-some plains, and to find themselves once more upon their prairies. The coyote skulks among the scrub, the buzzard flaps heavily through the air, and the clumsy grizzly bear lumbers through the dark ravines, and picks up such sustenance as it can amongst the rocks. These are the sole dwellers in the wilderness.\n\nIn the whole world there can be no more dreary view than that from the northern slope of the Sierra Blanco. As far as the eye can reach stretches the great flat plain-land, all dusted over with patches of alkali, and intersected by clumps of the dwarfish chaparral bushes. On the extreme verge of the horizon lie a long chain of mountain peaks, with their rugged summits flecked with snow. In this great stretch of country there is no sign of life, nor of anything appertaining to life. There is no bird in the steel-blue heaven, no movement upon the dull, gray earth\u2014above all, there is absolute silence. Listen as one may, there is no shadow of a sound in all that mighty wilderness; nothing but silence\u2014complete and heart-subduing silence.\n\nIt has been said there is nothing appertaining to life upon the broad plain. That is hardly true. Looking down from the Sierra Blanco, one sees a pathway traced out across the desert, which winds away and is lost in the extreme distance. It is rutted with wheels and trodden down by the feet of many adventurers. Here and there there are scattered white objects which glisten in the sun, and stand out against the dull deposit of alkali. Approach, and examine, them! They are bones: some large and coarse, others smaller and more delicate. The former have belonged to oxen, and the latter to men. For fifteen hundred miles one may trace this ghastly caravan route by these scattered remains of those who had fallen by the wayside.\n\nLooking down on this very scene, there stood upon the fourth of May, eighteen hundred and forty-seven, a solitary traveller. His appearance was such that he might have been the very gemus or demon of the region. An observer would have found it difficult to say whether he was nearer to forty or to sixty. His face was lean and haggard, and the brown parchment-like skin was drawn tightly over the projecting bones; his long, brown hair and beard were all flecked and dashed with white; his eyes were sunken in his head, and burned with an unnatural lustre; while the hand which grasped his rifle was hardly more fleshy than that of a skeleton. As he stood, he leaned upon his weapon for support, and yet his tall figure and the massive framework of his bones suggested a wiry and vigorous constitution. His gaunt face, however, and his clothes, which hung so baggily over his shrivelled limbs, proclaimed what it was that gave him that senile and decrepit appearance. The man was dying\u2014dying from hunger and from thirst.\n\nHe had toiled painfully down the ravine, and on to this little elevation, in the vain hope of seeing some signs of water. Now the great salt plain stretched before his eyes, and the distant belt of savage mountains, without a sign anywhere of plant or tree, which might indicate the presence of moisture. In all that broad landscape there was no gleam of hope. North, and east, and west he looked with wild, questioning eyes, and then he realized that his wanderings had come to an end, and that there, on that barren crag, he was about to die. \"Why not here, as well as in a feather bed, twenty years hence?\" he muttered, as he seated himself in the shelter of a boulder.\n\nBefore sitting down, he had deposited upon the ground his useless rifle, and also a large bundle tied up in a gray shawl, which he had carried slung over his right shoulder. It appeared to be somewhat too heavy for his strength, for in lowering it, it came down on the ground with some little violence. Instantly there broke from the gray parcel a little moaning cry, and from it there protruded a small, scared face, with very bright brown eyes, and two little speckled dimpled fists.\n\n\"You've hurt me!\" said a childish voice, reproachfully.\n\n\"Have I, though?\" the man answered penitently; \"I didn't go for to do it.\" As he spoke he unwrapped the gray shawl and extricated a pretty little girl of about five years of age, whose dainty shoes and smart pink frock with its little linen apron, all bespoke a mother's care. The child was pale and wan, but her healthy arms and legs showed that she had suffered less than her companion.\n\n\"How is it now?\" he answered anxiously, for she was still rubbing the tousy golden curls which covered the back of her head.\n\n\"Kiss it and make it well,\" she said, with perfect gravity, showing the injured part up to him. \"That's what mother used to do. Where's mother?\"\n\n\"Mother's gone. I guess you'll see her before long.\"\n\n\"Gone, eh!\" said the little girl. \"Funny, she didn't say good-bye; she 'most always did if she was just goin' over to auntie's for tea, and now she's been away three days. Say, it's awful dry, ain't it? Ain't there no water nor nothing to eat?\"\n\n\"No, there ain't nothing, dearie. You'll just need to be patient awhile, and then you'll be all right. Put your head up ag'in me like that, and then you'll feel bullier. It ain't easy to talk when your lips is like leather, but I guess I'd best let you know how the cards lie. What's that you've got?\"\n\n\"Pretty things! fine things!\" cried the little girl enthusiastically, holding up two glittering fragments of mica. \"When we goes back to home I'll give them to brother Bob.\"\n\n\"You'll see prettier things than them soon,\" said the man confidently. \"You just wait a bit. I was going to tell you though\u2014you remember when we left the river?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes.\"\n\n\"Well, we reckoned we'd strike another river soon, d'ye see. But there was somethin' wrong; compasses, or map, or somethin', and it didn't turn up. Water ran out. Just except a little drop for the likes of you, and\u2014and\u2014\"\n\n\"And you couldn't wash yourself,\" interrupted his companion gravely, staring up at his grimy visage.\n\n\"No, nor drink. And Mr. Bender, he was the fust to go, and then Indian Pete, and then Mrs. McGregor, and then Johnny Hones, and then, dearie, your mother.\"\n\n\"Then mother's a deader too,\" cried the little girl, dropping her face in her pinafore and sobbing bitterly.\n\n\"Yes, they all went except you and me. Then I thought there was some chance of water in this direction, so I heaved you over my shoulder and we tramped it together. It don't seem as though we've improved matters. There's an almighty small chance for us now!\"\n\n\"Do you mean that we are going to die too?\" asked the child, checking her sobs, and raising her tear-stained face.\n\n\"I guess that's about the size of it.\"\n\n\"Why didn't you say so before?\" she said, laughing gleefully. \"You gave me such a fright. Why, of course, now as long as we die we'll be with mother again.\"\n\n\"Yes, you will, dearie.\"\n\n\"And you too. I'll tell her how awful good you've been. I'll bet she meets us at the door of heaven with a big pitcher of water, and a lot of buckwheat cakes, hot, and toasted on both sides, like Bob and me was fond of. How long will it be first?\"\n\n\"I don't know\u2014not very long.\" The man's eyes were fixed upon the northern horizon. In the blue vault of the heaven there had appeared three little specks which increased in size every moment, so rapidly did they approach. They speedily resolved themselves into three large brown birds, which circled over the heads of the two wanderers, and then settled upon some rocks which overlooked them. They were buzzards, the vultures of the West, whose coming is the forerunner of death.\n\n\"Cocks and hens,\" cried the little girl gleefully, pointing at their ill-omened forms, and clapping her hands to make them rise. \"Say, did God make this country?\"\n\n\"Of course He did,\" said her companion, rather startled by this unexpected question.\n\n\"He made the country down in Illinois, and He made the Missouri,\" the little girl continued. \"I guess somebody else made the country in these parts. It's not nearly so well done. They forgot the water and the trees.\"\n\n\"What would ye think of offering up prayer?\" the man asked diffidently.\n\n\"It ain't night yet,\" she answered.\n\n\"It don't matter. It ain't quite regular, but He won't mind that, you bet. You say over them ones that you used to say every night in the wagon when we was on the plains.\"\n\n\"Why don't you say some yourself?\" the child asked, with wondering eyes.\n\n\"I disremember them,\" he answered. \"I hain't said none since I was half the height o' that gun. I guess it's never too late. You say them out, and I'll stand by and come in on the choruses.\"\n\n\"Then you'll need to kneel down, and me too,\" she said, laying the shawl out for that purpose. \"You've got to put your hands up like this. It makes you feel kind of good.\"\n\nIt was a strange sight, had there been anything but the buzzards to see it. Side by side on the narrow shawl knelt the two wanderers, the little prattling child and the reckless, hardened adventurer. Her chubby face and his haggard, angular visage were both turned up to the cloudless heaven in heartfelt entreaty to that dread Being with whom they were face to face, while the two voices\u2014the one thin and clear, the other deep and harsh\u2014united in the entreaty for mercy and forgiveness. The prayer finished, they resumed their seat in the shadow of the boulder until the child fell asleep, nestling upon the broad breast of her protector. He watched over her slumber for some time, but Nature proved to be too strong for him. For three days and three nights he had allowed himself neither rest nor repose. Slowly the eyelids drooped over the tired eyes, and the head sunk lower and lower upon the breast, until the man's grizzled beard was mixed with the gold tresses of his companion, and both slept the same deep and dreamless slumber.\n\nHad the wanderer remained awake for another half-hour a strange sight would have met his eyes. Far away on the extreme verge of the alkali plain there rose up a little spray of dust; very slight at first, and hardly to be distinguished from the mists of the distance, but gradually growing higher and broader until it formed a solid, well-defined cloud. This cloud continued to increase in size until it became evident that it could only be raised by a great multitude of moving creatures. In more fertile spots the observer would have come to the conclusion that one of those great herds of bisons which graze upon the prairie land was approaching him. This was obviously impossible in these arid wilds. As the whirl of dust drew nearer to the solitary bluff upon which the two castaways were reposing, the canvas-covered tilts of wagons and the figures of armed horsemen began to show up through the haze, and the apparition revealed itself as being a great caravan upon its journey for the West. But what a caravan! When the head of it had reached the base of the mountains, the rear was not yet visible on the horizon. Right across the enormous plain stretched the straggling array, wagons and carts, men on horseback, and men on foot. Innumerable women who staggered along under burdens, and children who toddled beside the wagons or peeped out from under the white coverings. This was evidently no ordinary party of immigrants, but rather some nomad people who had been compelled from stress of circumstances to seek themselves a new country. There rose through the clear air a confused clattering and rumbling from this great mass of humanity, with the creaking of wheels and the neighing of horses. Loud as it was, it was not sufficient to rouse the two tired wayfarers above them.\n\nAt the head of the column there rode a score or more of grave, iron-faced men, clad in sombre homespun garments and armed with rifles. On reaching the base of the bluff they halted, and held a short council among themselves.\n\n\"The wells are to the right, my brothers,\" said one, a hard-lipped, clean-shaven man with grizzly hair.\n\n\"To the right of the Sierra Blanco\u2014so we shall reach the Rio Grande,\" said another.\n\n\"Fear not for water,\" cried a third. \"He who could draw it from the rocks will not now abandon His own chosen people.\"\n\n\"Amen! amen!\" responded the whole party.\n\nThey were about to resume their journey when one of the youngest and keenest-eyed uttered an exclamation and pointed up at the rugged crag above them. From its summit there fluttered a little wisp of pink, showing up hard and bright against the gray rocks behind. At the sight there was a general reining up of horses and unslinging of guns, while fresh horsemen came galloping up to reinforce the vanguard. The word \"Redskins\" was on every lip.\n\n\"There can't be any number of Injuns here,\" said the elderly man who appeared to be in command. \"We have passed the Pawnees, and there are no other tribes until we cross the great mountains.\"\n\n\"Shall I go forward and see, Brother Stangerson?\" asked one of the band.\n\n\"And I,\" \"And I,\" cried a dozen voices.\n\n\"Leave your horses below and we will await you here,\" the elder answered. In a moment the young fellows had dismounted, fastened their horses, and were ascending the precipitous slope which led up to the object which had excited their curiosity. They advanced rapidly and noiselessly, with the confidence and dexterity of practised scouts. The watchers from the plain below could see them flit from rock to rock until their figures stood out against the sky-line. The young man who had first given the alarm was leading them. Suddenly his followers saw him throw up his hands, as though overcome with astonishment, and on joining him they were affected in the same way by the sight which met their eyes.\n\nOn the little plateau which crowned the barren hill there stood a single giant boulder, and against this boulder there lay a tall man, long-bearded and hard-featured, but of an excessive thinness. His placid face and regular breathing showed that he was fast asleep. Beside him lay a child, with her round white arms encircling his brown sinewy neck, and her golden-haired head resting upon the breast of his velveteen tunic. Her rosy lips were parted, showing the regular line of snow-white teeth within, and a playful smile played over her infantile features. Her plump little white legs, terminating in white socks and neat shoes with shining buckles, offered a strange contrast to the long shrivelled members of her companion. On the ledge of rock above this strange couple there stood three solemn buzzards, who, at the sight of the newcomers, uttered raucous screams of disappointment and flapped sullenly away.\n\nThe cries of the foul birds awoke the two sleepers, who stared about them in bewilderment. The man staggered to his feet and looked down upon the plain which had been so desolate when sleep had overtaken him, and which was now traversed by this enormous body of men and of beasts. His face assumed an expression of incredulity as he gazed, and he passed his bony hand over his eyes. \"This is what they call delirium, I guess,\" he muttered. The child stood beside him, holding on to the skirt of his coat, and said nothing, but looked all round her with the wondering, questioning gaze of childhood.\n\nThe rescuing party were speedily able to convince the two castaways that their appearance was no delusion. One of them seized the little girl and hoisted her upon his shoulder, while two others supported her gaunt companion, and assisted him towards the wagons.\n\n\"My name is John Ferrier,\" the wanderer explained; \"me and that little un are all that's left o' twenty-one people. The rest is all dead o' thirst and hunger away down in the south.\"\n\n\"Is she your child?\" asked someone.\n\n\"I guess she is now,\" the other cried, defiantly; \"she's mine 'cause I saved her. No man will take her from me. She's Lucy Ferrier from this day on. Who are you, though?\" he continued, glancing with curiosity at his stalwart, sunburned rescuers; \"there seems to be a powerful lot of ye.\"\n\n\"Nigh unto ten thousand,\" said one of the young men; \"we are the persecuted children of God\u2014the chosen of the Angel Moroni.\"\n\n\"I never heard tell on him,\" said the wanderer. \"He appears to have chosen a fair crowd of ye.\"\n\n\"Do not jest at that which is sacred,\" said the other, sternly. \"We are of those who believe in those sacred writings, drawn in Egyptian letters on plates of beaten gold, which were handed unto the holy Joseph Smith at Palmyra. We have come from Nauvoo, in the state of Illinois, where we had founded our temple. We have come to seek a refuge from the violent man and from the godless, even though it be the heart of the desert.\"\n\nThe name of Nauvoo evidently recalled recollections to John Ferrier. \"I see,\" he said; \"you are the Mormons.\"\n\n\"We are the Mormons,\" answered his companions with one voice.\n\n\"And where are you going?\"\n\n\"We do not know. The hand of God is leading us under the person of our Prophet. You must come before him. He shall say what is to be done with you.\"\n\nThey had reached the base of the hill by this time, and were surrounded by crowds of the pilgrims\u2014pale-faced, meek-looking women; strong, laughing children; and anxious, earnest-eyed men. Many were the cries of astonishment and of commiseration which arose from them when they perceived the youth of one of the strangers and the destitution of the other. Their escort did not halt, however, but pushed on, followed by a great crowd of Mormons, until they reached a wagon, which was conspicuous for its great size and for the gaudiness and smartness of its appearance. Six horses were yoked to it, whereas the others were furnished with two, or, at most, four apiece. Beside the driver there sat a man who could not have been more than thirty years of age, but whose massive head and resolute expression marked him as a leader. He was reading a brown-backed volume, but as the crowd approached he laid it aside, and listened attentively to an account of the episode. Then he turned to the two castaways.\n\n\"If we take you with us,\" he said, in solemn words, \"it can only be as believers in our own creed. We shall have no wolves in our fold. Better far that your bones should bleach in this wilderness than that you should prove to be that little speck of decay which in time corrupts the whole fruit. Will you come with us on these terms?\"\n\n\"Guess I'll come with you on any terms,\" said Ferrier, with such emphasis that the grave Elders could not restrain a smile. The leader alone retained his stern, impressive expression.\n\n\"Take him, Brother Stangerson,\" he said, \"give him food and drink, and the child likewise. Let it be your task also to teach him our holy creed. We have delayed long enough. Forward! On, on to Zion!\"\n\n\"On, on to Zion!\" cried the crowd of Mormons, and the words rippled down the long caravan, passing from mouth to mouth until they died away in a dull murmur in the far distance. With a cracking of whips and a creaking of wheels the great wagons got into motion, and soon the whole caravan was winding along once more. The Elder to whose care the two waifs had been committed led them to his wagon, where a meal was already awaiting them.\n\n\"You shall remain here,\" he said. \"In a few days you will have recovered from your fatigues. In the meantime, remember that now and forever you are of our religion. Brigham Young has said it, and he has spoken with the voice of Joseph Smith, which is the voice of God.\"" + }, + { + "title": "The Flower of Utah", + "text": "This is not the place to commemorate the trials and privations endured by the immigrant Mormons before they came to their final haven. From the shores of the Mississippi to the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains they had struggled on with a constancy almost unparalleled in history. The savage man, and the savage beast, hunger, thirst, fatigue, and disease\u2014every impediment which Nature could place in the way\u2014had all been overcome with Anglo-Saxon tenacity. Yet the long journey and the accumulated terrors had shaken the hearts of the stoutest among them. There was not one who did not sink upon his knees in heartfelt prayer when they saw the broad valley of Utah bathed in the sunlight beneath them, and learned from the lips of their leader that this was the promised land, and that these virgin acres were to be theirs for evermore.\n\nYoung speedily proved himself to be a skilful administrator as well as a resolute chief. Maps were drawn and charts prepared, in which the future city was sketched out. All around farms were apportioned and allotted in proportion to the standing of each individual. The tradesman was put to his trade and the artisan to his calling. In the town streets and squares sprang up as if by magic. In the country there was draining and hedging, planting and clearing, until the next summer saw the whole country golden with the wheat crop. Everything prospered in the strange settlement. Above all, the great temple which they had erected in the centre of the city grew ever taller and larger. From the first blush of dawn until the closing of the twilight, the clatter of the hammer and the rasp of the saw were never absent from the monument which the immigrants erected to Him who had led them safe through many dangers.\n\nThe two castaways, John Ferrier and the little girl, who had shared his fortunes and had been adopted as his daughter, accompanied the Mormons to the end of their great pilgrimage. Little Lucy Ferrier was borne along pleasantly enough in Elder Stangerson's wagon, a retreat which she shared with the Mormon's three wives and with his son, a headstrong, forward boy of twelve. Having rallied, with the elasticity of childhood, from the shock caused by her mother's death, she soon became a pet with the women, and reconciled herself to this new life in her moving canvas-covered home. In the meantime Ferrier having recovered from his privations, distinguished himself as a useful guide and an indefatigable hunter. So rapidly did he gain the esteem of his new companions, that when they reached the end of their wanderings, it was unanimously agreed that he should be provided with as large and as fertile a tract of land as any of the settlers, with the exception of Young himself, and of Stangerson, Kemball, Johnston, and Drebber, who were the four principal Elders.\n\nOn the farm thus acquired John Ferrier built himself a substantial log-house, which received so many additions in succeeding years that it grew into a roomy villa. He was a man of a practical turn of mind, keen in his dealings and skilful with his hands. His iron constitution enabled him to work morning and evening at improving and tilling his lands. Hence it came about that his farm and all that belonged to him prospered exceedingly. In three years he was better off than his neighbours, in six he was well-to-do, in nine he was rich, and in twelve there were not half a dozen men in the whole of Salt Lake City who could compare with him. From the great inland sea to the distant Wasatch Mountains there was no name better known than that of John Ferrier.\n\nThere was one way and only one in which he offended the susceptibilities of his co-religionists. No argument or persuasion could ever induce him to set up a female establishment after the manner of his companions. He never gave reasons for this persistent refusal, but contented himself by resolutely and inflexibly adhering to his determination. There were some who accused him of lukewarmness in his adopted religion, and others who put it down to greed of wealth and reluctance to incur expense. Others, again, spoke of some early love affair, and of a fair-haired girl who had pined away on the shores of the Atlantic. Whatever the reason, Ferrier remained strictly celibate. In every other respect he conformed to the religion of the young settlement, and gained the name of being an orthodox and straight-walking man.\n\nLucy Ferrier grew up within the log-house, and assisted her adopted father in all his undertakings. The keen air of the mountains and the balsamic odour of the pine trees took the place of nurse and mother to the young girl. As year succeeded to year she grew taller and stronger, her cheek more ruddy and her step more elastic. Many a wayfarer upon the high road which ran by Ferrier's farm felt long-forgotten thoughts revive in his mind as he watched her lithe, girlish figure tripping through the wheatfields, or met her mounted upon her father's mustang, and managing it with all the ease and grace of a true child of the West. So the bud blossomed into a flower, and the year which saw her father the richest of the farmers left her as fair a specimen of American girlhood as could be found in the whole Pacific slope.\n\nIt was not the father, however, who first discovered that the child had developed into the woman. It seldom is in such cases. That mysterious change is too subtle and too gradual to be measured by dates. Least of all does the maiden herself know it until the tone of a voice or the touch of a hand sets her heart thrilling within her, and she learns, with a mixture of pride and of fear, that a new and a larger nature has awakened within her. There are few who cannot recall that day and remember the one little incident which heralded the dawn of a new life. In the case of Lucy Ferrier the occasion was serious enough in itself, apart from its future influence on her destiny and that of many besides.\n\nIt was a warm June morning, and the Latter Day Saints were as busy as the bees whose hive they have chosen for their emblem. In the fields and in the streets rose the same hum of human industry. Down the dusty high roads defiled long streams of heavily laden mules, all heading to the west, for the gold fever had broken out in California, and the overland route lay through the city of the Elect. There, too, were droves of sheep and bullocks coming in from the outlying pasture lands, and trains of tired immigrants, men and horses equally weary of their interminable journey. Through all this motley assemblage, threading her way with the skill of an accomplished rider, there galloped Lucy Ferrier, her fair face flushed with the exercise and her long chestnut hair floating out behind her. She had a commission from her father in the city, and was dashing in as she had done many a time before, with all the fearlessness of youth, thinking only of her task and how it was to be performed. The travel-stained adventurers gazed after her in astonishment, and even the unemotional Indians, journeying in with their peltries, relaxed their accustomed stoicism as they marvelled at the beauty of the pale-faced maiden.\n\nShe had reached the outskirts of the city when she found the road blocked by a great drove of cattle, driven by a half-dozen wild-looking herdsmen from the plains. In her impatience she endeavoured to pass this obstacle by pushing her horse into what appeared to be a gap. Scarcely had she got fairly into it, however, before the beasts closed in behind her, and she found herself completely embedded in the moving stream of fierce-eyed, long-horned bullocks. Accustomed as she was to deal with cattle, she was not alarmed at her situation, but took advantage of every opportunity to urge her horse on, in the hopes of pushing her way through the cavalcade. Unfortunately the horns of one of the creatures, either by accident or design, came in violent contact with the flank of the mustang, and excited it to madness. In an instant it reared up upon its hind legs with a snort of rage, and pranced and tossed in a way that would have unseated any but a skilful rider. The situation was full of peril. Every plunge of the excited horse brought it against the horns again, and goaded it to fresh madness. It was all that the girl could do to keep herself in the saddle, yet a slip would mean a terrible death under the hoofs of the unwieldy and terrified animals. Unaccustomed to sudden emergencies, her head began to swim, and her grip upon the bridle to relax. Choked by the rising cloud of dust and by the steam from the struggling creatures, she might have abandoned her efforts in despair, but for a kindly voice at her elbow which assured her of assistance. At the same moment a sinewy brown hand caught the frightened horse by the curb, and forcing a way through the drove, soon brought her to the outskirts.\n\n\"You're not hurt, I hope, miss,\" said her preserver, respectfully.\n\nShe looked up at his dark, fierce face, and laughed saucily. \"I'm awful frightened,\" she said, na\u00efvely; \"whoever would have thought that Poncho would have been so scared by a lot of cows?\"\n\n\"Thank God, you kept your seat,\" the other said, earnestly. He was a tall, savage-looking young fellow, mounted on a powerful roan horse, and clad in the rough dress of a hunter, with a long rifle slung over his shoulders. \"I guess you are the daughter of John Ferrier,\" he remarked; \"I saw you ride down from his house. When you see him, ask him if he remembers the Jefferson Hopes of St. Louis. If he's the same Ferrier, my father and he were pretty thick.\"\n\n\"Hadn't you better come and ask yourself?\" she asked, demurely.\n\nThe young fellow seemed pleased at the suggestion, and his dark eyes sparkled with pleasure. \"I'll do so,\" he said; \"we've been in the mountains for two months, and are not over and above in visiting condition. He must take us as he finds us.\"\n\n\"He has a good deal to thank you for, and so have I,\" she answered; \"he's awful fond of me. If those cows had jumped on me he'd have never got over it.\"\n\n\"Neither would I,\" said her companion.\n\n\"You! Well, I don't see that it would make much matter to you, anyhow. You ain't even a friend of ours.\"\n\nThe young hunter's dark face grew so gloomy over this remark that Lucy Ferrier laughed aloud.\n\n\"There, I didn't mean that,\" she said; \"of course, you are a friend now. You must come and see us. Now I must push along, or father won't trust me with his business any more. Good-bye!\"\n\n\"Good-bye,\" he answered, raising his broad sombrero, and bending over her little hand. She wheeled her mustang round, gave it a cut with her riding-whip, and darted away down the broad road in a rolling cloud of dust.\n\nYoung Jefferson Hope rode on with his companions, gloomy and taciturn. He and they had been among the Nevada Mountains prospecting for silver, and were returning to Salt Lake City in the hope of raising capital enough to work some lodes which they had discovered. He had been as keen as any of them upon the business until this sudden incident had drawn his thoughts into another channel. The sight of the fair young girl, as frank and wholesome as the Sierra breezes, had stirred his volcanic, untamed heart to its very depths. When she had vanished from his sight, he realized that a crisis had come in his life, and that neither silver speculations nor any other questions could ever be of such importance to him as this new and all-absorbing one. The love which had sprung up in his heart was not the sudden, changeable fancy of a boy, but rather the wild, fierce passion of a man of strong will and imperious temper. He had been accustomed to succeed in all that he undertook. He swore in his heart that he would not fail in this if human effort and human perseverance could render him successful.\n\nHe called on John Ferrier that night, and many times again, until his face was a familiar one at the farmhouse. John, cooped up in the valley, and absorbed in his work, had had little chance of learning the news of the outside world during the last twelve years. All this Jefferson Hope was able to tell him, and in a style which interested Lucy as well as her father. He had been a pioneer in California, and could narrate many a strange tale of fortunes made and fortunes lost in those wild, halcyon days. He had been a scout too, and a trapper, a silver explorer, and a ranchman. Wherever stirring adventures were to be had, Jefferson Hope had been there in search of them. He soon became a favourite with the old farmer, who spoke eloquently of his virtues. On such occasions, Lucy was silent, but her blushing cheek and her bright, happy eyes showed only too clearly that her young heart was no longer her own. Her honest father may not have observed these symptoms, but they were assuredly not thrown away upon the man who had won her affections.\n\nOne summer evening he came galloping down the road and pulled up at the gate. She was at the doorway, and came down to meet him. He threw the bridle over the fence and strode up the pathway.\n\n\"I am off, Lucy,\" he said, taking her two hands in his, and gazing tenderly down into her face: \"I won't ask you to come with me now, but will you be ready to come when I am here again?\"\n\n\"And when will that be?\" she asked, blushing and laughing.\n\n\"A couple of months at the outside. I will come and claim you then, my darling. There's no one who can stand between us.\"\n\n\"And how about father?\" she asked.\n\n\"He has given his consent, provided we get these mines working all right. I have no fear on that head.\"\n\n\"Oh, well; of course, if you and father have arranged it all, there's no more to be said,\" she whispered, with her cheek against his broad breast.\n\n\"Thank God!\" he said, hoarsely, stooping and kissing her. \"It is settled, then. The longer I stay, the harder it will be to go. They are waiting for me at the ca\u00f1on. Good-bye, my own darling\u2014good-bye. In two months you shall see me.\"\n\nHe tore himself from her as he spoke, and, flinging himself upon his horse, galloped furiously away, never even looking round, as though afraid that his resolution might fail him if he took one glance at what he was leaving. She stood at the gate, gazing after him until he vanished from her sight. Then she walked back into the house, the happiest girl in all Utah." + }, + { + "title": "John Ferrier Talks with the Prophet", + "text": "Three weeks had passed since Jefferson Hope and his comrades had departed from Salt Lake City. John Ferrier's heart was sore within him when he thought of the young man's return, and of the impending loss of his adopted child. Yet her bright and happy face reconciled him to the arrangement more than any argument could have done. He had always determined, deep down in his resolute heart, that nothing would ever induce him to allow his daughter to wed a Mormon. Such marriage he regarded as no marriage at all, but as a shame and a disgrace. Whatever he might think of the Mormon doctrines, upon that one point he was inflexible. He had to seal his mouth on the subject, however, for to express an unorthodox opinion was a dangerous matter in those days in the Land of the Saints.\n\nYes, a dangerous matter\u2014so dangerous that even the most saintly dared only whisper their religious opinions with bated breath, lest something which fell from their lips might be misconstrued, and bring down a swift retribution upon them. The victims of persecution had now turned persecutors on their own account, and persecutors of the most terrible description. Not the Inquisition of Seville, nor the German Vehmgericht, nor the secret societies of Italy, were ever able to put a more formidable machinery in motion than that which cast a cloud over the state of Utah.\n\nIts invisibility, and the mystery which was attached to it, made this organization doubly terrible. It appeared to be omniscient and omnipotent, and yet was neither seen nor heard. The man who held out against the Church vanished away, and none knew whither he had gone or what had befallen him. His wife and his children awaited him at home, but no father ever returned to tell them how he had fared at the hands of his secret judges. A rash word or a hasty act was followed by annihilation, and yet none knew what the nature might be of this terrible power which was suspended over them. No wonder that men went about in fear and trembling, and that even in the heart of the wilderness they dared not whisper the doubts which oppressed them.\n\nAt first this vague and terrible power was exercised only upon the recalcitrants who, having embraced the Mormon faith, wished afterwards to pervert or to abandon it. Soon, however, it took a wider range. The supply of adult women was running short, and polygamy without a female population on which to draw was a barren doctrine indeed. Strange rumours began to be bandied about\u2014rumours of murdered immigrants and rifled camps in regions where Indians had never been seen. Fresh women appeared in the harems of the Elders\u2014women who pined and wept, and bore upon their faces the traces of an unextinguishable horror. Belated wanderers upon the mountains spoke of gangs of armed men, masked, stealthy, and noiseless, who flitted by them in the darkness. These tales and rumours took substance and shape, and were corroborated and recorroborated, until they resolved themselves into a definite name. To this day, in the lonely ranches of the West, the name of the Danite Band, or the Avenging Angels, is a sinister and an ill-omened one.\n\nFuller knowledge of the organization which produced such terrible results served to increase rather than to lessen the horror which it inspired in the minds of men. None knew who belonged to this ruthless society. The names of the participators in the deeds of blood and violence done under the name of religion were kept profoundly secret. The very friend to whom you communicated your misgivings as to the Prophet and his mission might be one of those who would come forth at night with fire and sword to exact a terrible reparation. Hence every man feared his neighbour, and none spoke of the things which were nearest his heart.\n\nOne fine morning John Ferrier was about to set out to his wheatfields, when he heard the click of the latch, and, looking through the window, saw a stout, sandy-haired, middle-aged man coming up the pathway. His heart leapt to his mouth, for this was none other than the great Brigham Young himself. Full of trepidation\u2014for he knew that such a visit boded him little good\u2014Ferrier ran to the door to greet the Mormon chief. The latter, however, received his salutations coldly, and followed him with a stern face into the sitting-room.\n\n\"Brother Ferrier,\" he said, taking a seat, and eyeing the farmer keenly from under his light-coloured eyelashes, \"the true believers have been good friends to you. We picked you up when you were starving in the desert, we shared our food with you, led you safe to the Chosen Valley, gave you a goodly share of land, and allowed you to wax rich under our protection. Is not this so?\"\n\n\"It is so,\" answered John Ferrier.\n\n\"In return for all this we asked but one condition: that was, that you should embrace the true faith, and conform in every way to its usages. This you promised to do, and this, if common report says truly, you have neglected.\"\n\n\"And how have I neglected it?\" asked Ferrier, throwing out his hands in expostulation. \"Have I not given to the common fund? Have I not attended at the Temple? Have I not\u2014?\"\n\n\"Where are your wives?\" asked Young, looking round him. \"Call them in, that I may greet them.\"\n\n\"It is true that I have not married,\" Ferrier answered. \"But women were few, and there were many who had better claims than I. I was not a lonely man: I had my daughter to attend to my wants.\"\n\n\"It is of that daughter that I would speak to you,\" said the leader of the Mormons. \"She has grown to be the flower of Utah, and has found favour in the eyes of many who are high in the land.\"\n\nJohn Ferrier groaned internally.\n\n\"There are stories of her which I would fain disbelieve\u2014stories that she is sealed to some Gentile. This must be the gossip of idle tongues. What is the thirteenth rule in the code of the sainted Joseph Smith? 'Let every maiden of the true faith marry one of the elect; for if she wed a Gentile, she commits a grievous sin.' This being so, it is impossible that you, who profess the holy creed, should suffer your daughter to violate it.\"\n\nJohn Ferrier made no answer, but he played nervously with his riding-whip.\n\n\"Upon this one point your whole faith shall be tested\u2014so it has been decided in the Sacred Council of Four. The girl is young, and we would not have her wed gray hairs, neither would we deprive her of all choice. We Elders have many heifers, but our children must also be provided. Stangerson has a son, and Drebber has a son, and either of them would gladly welcome your daughter to his house. Let her choose between them. They are young and rich, and of the true faith. What say you to that?\"\n\nFerrier remained silent for some little time with his brows knitted.\n\n\"You will give us time,\" he said at last. \"My daughter is very young\u2014she is scarce of an age to marry.\"\n\n\"She shall have a month to choose,\" said Young, rising from his seat. \"At the end of that time she shall give her answer.\"\n\nHe was passing through the door, when he turned with flushed face and flashing eyes. \"It were better for you, John Ferrier,\" he thundered, \"that you and she were now lying blanched skeletons upon the Sierra Blanco, than that you should put your weak wills against the orders of the Holy Four!\"\n\nWith a threatening gesture of his hand, he turned from the door, and Ferrier heard his heavy steps scrunching along the shingly path.\n\nHe was still sitting with his elbow upon his knee, considering how he should broach the matter to his daughter, when a soft hand was laid upon his, and looking up, he saw her standing beside him. One glance at her pale, frightened face showed him that she had heard what had passed.\n\n\"I could not help it,\" she said, in answer to his look. \"His voice rang through the house. Oh, father, father, what shall we do?\"\n\n\"Don't you scare yourself,\" he answered, drawing her to him, and passing his broad, rough hand caressingly over her chestnut hair. \"We'll fix it up somehow or another. You don't find your fancy kind o' lessening for this chap, do you?\"\n\nA sob and a squeeze of his hand were her only answer.\n\n\"No; of course not. I shouldn't care to hear you say you did. He's a likely lad, and he's a Christian, which is more than these folks here, in spite o' all their praying and preaching. There's a party starting for Nevada to-morrow, and I'll manage to send him a message letting him know the hole we are in. If I know anything o' that young man, he'll be back with a speed that would whip electro-telegraphs.\"\n\nLucy laughed through her tears at her father's description.\n\n\"When he comes, he will advise us for the best. But it is for you that I am frightened, dear. One hears\u2014one hears such dreadful stories about those who oppose the Prophet; something terrible always happens to them.\"\n\n\"But we haven't opposed him yet,\" her father answered. \"It will be time to look out for squalls when we do. We have a clear month before us; at the end of that, I guess we had best shin out of Utah.\"\n\n\"Leave Utah!\"\n\n\"That's about the size of it.\"\n\n\"But the farm?\"\n\n\"We will raise as much as we can in money, and let the rest go. To tell the truth, Lucy, it isn't the first time I have thought of doing it. I don't care about knuckling under to any man, as these folk do to their darned Prophet. I'm a freeborn American, and it's all new to me. Guess I'm too old to learn. If he comes browsing about this farm, he might chance to run up against a charge of buckshot travelling in the opposite direction.\"\n\n\"But they won't let us leave,\" his daughter objected.\n\n\"Wait till Jefferson comes, and we'll soon manage that. In the mean-time, don't you fret yourself, my dearie, and don't get your eyes swelled up, else he'll be walking into me when he sees you. There's nothing to be afeared about, and there's no danger at all.\"\n\nJohn Ferrier uttered these consoling remarks in a very confident tone, but she could not help observing that he paid unusual care to the fastening of the doors that night, and that he carefully cleaned and loaded the rusty old shot-gun which hung upon the wall of his bedroom." + }, + { + "title": "A Flight for Life", + "text": "On the morning which followed his interview with the Mormon Prophet, John Ferrier went in to Salt Lake City, and having found his acquaintance, who was bound for the Nevada Mountains, he entrusted him with his message to Jefferson Hope. In it he told the young man of the imminent danger which threatened them, and how necessary it was that he should return. Having done thus he felt easier in his mind, and returned home with a lighter heart.\n\nAs he approached his farm, he was surprised to see a horse hitched to each of the posts of the gate. Still more surprised was he on the entering to find two young men in possession of his sitting-room. One, with a long pale face, was leaning back in the rocking-chair, with his feet cocked up upon the stove. The other, a bull-necked youth with coarse, bloated features, was standing in front of the window with his hands in his pockets whistling a popular hymn. Both of them nodded to Ferrier as he entered, and the one in the rocking-chair commenced the conversation.\n\n\"Maybe you don't know us,\" he said. \"This here is the son of Elder Drebber, and I'm Joseph Stangerson, who travelled with you in the desert when the Lord stretched out His hand and gathered you into the true fold.\"\n\n\"As He will all the nations in His own good time,\" said the other in a nasal voice; \"He grindeth slowly but exceeding small.\"\n\nJohn Ferrier bowed coldly. He had guessed who his visitors were.\n\n\"We have come,\" continued Stangerson, \"at the advice of our fathers to solicit the hand of your daughter for whichever of us may seem good to you and to her. As I have but four wives and Brother Drebber here has seven, it appears to me that my claim is the stronger one.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, Brother Stangerson,\" cried the other; \"the question is not how many wives we have, but how many we can keep. My father has now given over his mills to me, and I am the richer man.\"\n\n\"But my prospects are better,\" said the other, warmly. \"When the Lord removes my father, I shall have his tanning yard and his leather factory. Then I am your elder, and am higher in the Church.\"\n\n\"It will be for the maiden to decide,\" rejoined young Drebber, smirking at his own reflection in the glass. \"We will leave it all to her decision.\"\n\nDuring this dialogue John Ferrier had stood fuming in the doorway, hardly able to keep his riding-whip from the backs of his two visitors.\n\n\"Look here,\" he said at last, striding up to them, \"when my daughter summons you, you can come, but until then I don't want to see your faces again.\"\n\nThe two young Mormons stared at him in amazement. In their eyes this competition between them for the maiden's hand was the highest of honours both to her and her father.\n\n\"There are two ways out of the room,\" cried Ferrier; \"there is the door, and there is the window. Which do you care to use?\"\n\nHis brown face looked so savage, and his gaunt hands so threatening, that his visitors sprang to their feet and beat a hurried retreat. The old farmer followed them to the door.\n\n\"Let me know when you have settled which it is to be,\" he said, sardonically.\n\n\"You shall smart for this!\" Stangerson cried, white with rage. \"You have defied the Prophet and the Council of Four. You shall rue it to the end of your days.\"\n\n\"The hand of the Lord shall be heavy upon you,\" cried young Drebber; \"He will arise and smite you!\"\n\n\"Then I'll start the smiting,\" exclaimed Ferrier, furiously, and would have rushed upstairs for his gun had not Lucy seized him by the arm and restrained him. Before he could escape from her, the clatter of horses' hoofs told him that they were beyond his reach.\n\n\"The young canting rascals!\" he exclaimed, wiping the perspiration from his forehead; \"I would sooner see you in your grave, my girl, than the wife of either of them.\"\n\n\"And so should I, father.\" she answered, with spirit; \"but Jefferson will soon be here.\"\n\n\"Yes. It will not be long before he comes. The sooner the better, for we do not know what their next move may be.\"\n\nIt was, indeed, high time that someone capable of giving advice and help should come to the aid of the sturdy old farmer and his adopted daughter. In the whole history of the settlement there had never been such a case of rank disobedience to the authority of the Elders. If minor errors were punished so sternly, what would be the fate of this arch rebel? Ferrier knew that his wealth and position would be of no avail to him. Others as well known and as rich as himself had been spirited away before now, and their goods given over to the Church. He was a brave man, but he trembled at the vague, shadowy terrors which hung over him. Any known danger he could face with a firm lip, but this suspense was unnerving. He concealed his fears from his daughter, however, and affected to make light of the whole matter, though she, with the keen eye of love, saw plainly that he was ill at ease.\n\nHe expected that he would receive some message or remonstrance from Young as to his conduct, and he was not mistaken, though it came in an unlooked-for manner. Upon rising next morning he found, to his surprise, a small square of paper pinned on to the coverlet of his bed just over his chest. On it was printed, in bold, straggling letters:\u2014\n\n\"Twenty-nine days are given you for amendment, and then\u2014\"\n\nThe dash was more fear-inspiring than any threat could have been. How this warning came into his room puzzled John Ferrier sorely, for his servants slept in an outhouse, and the doors and windows had all been secured. He crumpled the paper up and said nothing to his daughter, but the incident struck a chill into his heart. The twenty-nine days were evidently the balance of the month which Young had promised. What strength or courage could avail against an enemy armed with such mysterious powers? The hand which fastened that pin might have struck him to the heart, and he could never have known who had slain him.\n\nStill more shaken was he next morning. They had sat down to their breakfast, when Lucy with a cry of surprise pointed upwards. In the centre of the ceiling was scrawled, with a burned stick apparently, the number 28. To his daughter it was unintelligible, and he did not enlighten her. That night he sat up with his gun and kept watch and ward. He saw and he heard nothing, and yet in the morning a great 27 had been painted upon the outside of his door.\n\nThus day followed day; and as sure as morning came he found that his unseen enemies had kept their register, and had marked up in some conspicuous position how many days were still left to him out of the month of grace. Sometimes the fatal numbers appeared upon the walls, sometimes upon the floors, occasionally they were on small placards stuck upon the garden gate or the railings. With all his vigilance John Ferrier could not discover whence these daily warnings proceeded. A horror which was almost superstitious came upon him at the sight of them. He became haggard and restless, and his eyes had the troubled look of some hunted creature. He had but one hope in life now, and that was for the arrival of the young hunter from Nevada.\n\nTwenty had changed to fifteen, and fifteen to ten, but there was no news of the absentee. One by one the numbers dwindled down, and still there came no sign of him. Whenever a horseman clattered down the road, or a driver shouted at his team, the old farmer hurried to the gate, thinking that help had arrived at last. At last, when he saw five give way to four and that again to three, he lost heart, and abandoned all hope of escape. Single-handed, and with his limited knowledge of the mountains which surrounded the settlement, he knew that he was powerless. The more frequented roads were strictly watched and guarded, and none could pass along them without an order from the Council. Turn which way he would, there appeared to be no avoiding the blow which hung over him. Yet the old man never wavered in his resolution to part with life itself before he consented to what he regarded as his daughter's dishonour.\n\nHe was sitting alone one evening pondering deeply over his troubles, and searching vainly for some way out of them. That morning had shown the figure 2 upon the wall of his house, and the next day would be the last of the allotted time. What was to happen then? All manner of vague and terrible fancies filled his imagination. And his daughter\u2014what was to become of her after he was gone? Was there no escape from the invisible network which was drawn all round them? He sank his head upon the table and sobbed at the thought of his own impotence.\n\nWhat was that? In the silence he heard a gentle scratching sound\u2014low, but very distinct in the quiet of the night. It came from the door of the house. Ferrier crept into the hall and listened intently. There was a pause for a few moments, and then the low, insidious sound was repeated. Someone was evidently tapping very gently upon one of the panels of the door. Was it some midnight assassin who had come to carry out the murderous orders of the secret tribunal? Or was it some agent who was marking up that the last day of grace had arrived? John Ferrier felt that instant death would be better than the suspense which shook his nerves and chilled his heart. Springing forward, he drew the bolt and threw the door open.\n\nOutside all was calm and quiet. The night was fine, and the stars were twinkling brightly overhead. The little front garden lay before the farmer's eyes bounded by the fence and gate; but neither there nor on the road was any human being to be seen. With a sigh of relief, Ferrier looked to right and to left, until, happening to glance straight down at his own feet, he saw to his astonishment a man lying flat upon his face upon the ground, with arms and legs all asprawl.\n\nSo unnerved was he at the sight that he leaned up against the wall with his hand to his throat to stifle his inclination to call out. His first thought was that the prostrate figure was that of some wounded or dying man, but as he watched it he saw it writhe along the ground and into the hall with the rapidity and noiselessness of a serpent. Once within the house the man sprang to his feet, closed the door, and revealed to the astonished farmer the fierce face and resolute expression of Jefferson Hope.\n\n\"Good God!\" gasped John Ferrier. \"How you scared me! Whatever made you come in like that?\"\n\n\"Give me food,\" the other said, hoarsely. \"I have had no time for bite or sup for eight-and-forty hours.\" He flung himself upon the cold meat and bread which were still lying upon the table from his host's supper, and devoured it voraciously. \"Does Lucy bear up well?\" he asked, when he had satisfied his hunger.\n\n\"Yes. She does not know the danger,\" her father answered.\n\n\"That is well. The house is watched on every side. That is why I crawled my way up to it. They may be darned sharp, but they're not quite sharp enough to catch a Washoe hunter.\"\n\nJohn Ferrier felt a different man now that he realized that he had a devoted ally. He seized the young man's leathery hand and wrung it cordially. \"You're a man to be proud of,\" he said. \"There are not many who would come to share our danger and our troubles.\"\n\n\"You've hit it there, pard,\" the young hunter answered. \"I have a respect for you, but if you were alone in this business I'd think twice before I put my head into such a hornet's nest. It's Lucy that brings me here, and before harm comes on her I guess there will be one less o' the Hope family in Utah.\"\n\n\"What are we to do?\"\n\n\"To-morrow is your last day, and unless you act to-night you are lost. I have a mule and two horses waiting in the Eagle Ravine. How much money have you?\"\n\n\"Two thousand dollars in gold, and five in notes.\"\n\n\"That will do. I have as much more to add to it. We must push for Carson City through the mountains. You had best wake Lucy. It is as well that the servants do not sleep in the house.\"\n\nWhile Ferrier was absent, preparing his daughter for the approaching journey, Jefferson Hope packed all the eatables that he could find into a small parcel, and filled a stoneware jar with water, for he knew by experience that the mountain wells were few and far between. He had hardly completed his arrangements before the farmer returned with his daughter all dressed and ready for a start. The greeting between the lovers was warm, but brief, for minutes were precious, and there was much to be done.\n\n\"We must make our start at once,\" said Jefferson Hope, speaking in a low but resolute voice, like one who realizes the greatness of the peril, but has steeled his heart to meet it. \"The front and back entrances are watched, but with caution we may get away through the side window and across the fields. Once on the road we are only two miles from the Ravine where the horses are waiting. By daybreak we should be halfway through the mountains.\"\n\n\"What if we are stopped?\" asked Ferrier.\n\nHope slapped the revolver butt which protruded from the front of his tunic. \"If they are too many for us, we shall take two or three of them with us,\" he said with a sinister smile.\n\nThe lights inside the house had all been extinguished, and from the darkened window Ferrier peered over the fields which had been his own, and which he was now about to abandon forever. He had long nerved himself to the sacrifice, however, and the thought of the honour and happiness of his daughter outweighed any regret at his ruined fortunes. All looked so peaceful and happy, the rustling trees and the broad silent stretch of grainland, that it was difficult to realize that the spirit of murder lurked through it all. Yet the white face and set expression of the young hunter showed that in his approach to the house he had seen enough to satisfy him upon that head.\n\nFerrier carried the bag of gold and notes, Jefferson Hope had the scanty provisions and water, while Lucy had a small bundle containing a few of her more valued possessions. Opening the window very slowly and carefully, they waited until a dark cloud had somewhat obscured the night, and then one by one passed through into the little garden. With bated breath and crouching figures they stumbled across it, and gained the shelter of the hedge, which they skirted until they came to the gap which opened into the cornfield. They had just reached this point when the young man seized his two companions and dragged them down into the shadow, where they lay silent and trembling.\n\nIt was as well that his prairie training had given Jefferson Hope the ears of a lynx. He and his friends had hardly crouched down before the melancholy hooting of a mountain owl was heard within a few yards of them, which was immediately answered by another hoot at a small distance. At the same moment a vague, shadowy figure emerged from the gap for which they had been making, and uttered the plaintive signal cry again, on which a second man appeared out of the obscurity.\n\n\"To-morrow at midnight,\" said the first, who appeared to be in authority. \"When the whippoorwill calls three times.\"\n\n\"It is well,\" returned the other. \"Shall I tell Brother Drebber?\"\n\n\"Pass it on to him, and from him to the others. Nine to seven!\"\n\n\"Seven to five!\" repeated the other; and the two figures flitted away in different directions. Their concluding words had evidently been some form of sign and countersign. The instant that their footsteps had died away in the distance, Jefferson Hope sprang to his feet, and helping his companions through the gap, led the way across the fields at the top of his speed, supporting and half-carrying the girl when her strength appeared to fail her.\n\n\"Hurry on! hurry on!\" he gasped from time to time. \"We are through the line of sentinels. Everything depends on speed. Hurry on!\"\n\nOnce on the high road, they made rapid progress. Only once did they meet anyone, and then they managed to slip into a field, and so avoid recognition. Before reaching the town the hunter branched away into a rugged and narrow footpath which led to the mountains. Two dark, jagged peaks loomed above them through the darkness, and the defile which led between them was the Eagle Ca\u00f1on in which the horses were awaiting them. With unerring instinct Jefferson Hope picked his way among the great boulders and along the bed of a dried-up water-course, until he came to the retired corner screened with rocks, where the faithful animals had been picketed. The girl was placed upon the mule, and old Ferrier upon one of the horses, with his money-bag, while Jefferson Hope led the other along the precipitous and dangerous path.\n\nIt was a bewildering route for anyone who was not accustomed to face Nature in her wildest moods. On the one side a great crag towered up a thousand feet or more, black, stern, and menacing, with long basaltic columns upon its rugged surface like the ribs of some petrified monster. On the other hand a wild chaos of boulders and debris made all advance impossible. Between the two ran the irregular tracks, so narrow in places that they had to travel in Indian file, and so rough that only practised riders could have traversed it at all. Yet, in spite of all dangers and difficulties, the hearts of the fugitives were light within them, for every step increased the distance between them and the terrible despotism from which they were flying.\n\nThey soon had a proof, however, that they were still within the jurisdiction of the Saints. They had reached the very wildest and most desolate portion of the pass when the girl gave a startled cry, and pointed upwards. On a rock which overlooked the track, showing out dark and plain against the sky, there stood a solitary sentinel. He saw them as soon as they perceived him, and his military challenge of \"Who goes there?\" rang through the silent ravine.\n\n\"Travellers for Nevada,\" said Jefferson Hope, with his hand upon the rifle which hung by his saddle.\n\nThey could see the lonely watcher fingering his gun, and peering down at them as if dissatisfied at their reply.\n\n\"By whose permission?\" he asked.\n\n\"The Holy Four,\" answered Ferrier. His Mormon experiences had taught him that that was the highest authority to which he could refer.\n\n\"Nine to seven,\" cried the sentinel.\n\n\"Seven to five,\" returned Jefferson Hope promptly, remembering the countersign which he had heard in the garden.\n\n\"Pass, and the Lord go with you,\" said the voice from above. Beyond his post the path broadened out, and the horses were able to break into a trot. Looking back, they could see the solitary watcher leaning upon his gun, and knew that they had passed the outlying post of the chosen people, and that freedom lay before them." + }, + { + "title": "The Avenging Angels", + "text": "All night their course lay through intricate defiles and over irregular and rockstrewn paths. More than once they lost their way, but Hope's intimate knowledge of the mountains enabled them to regain the track once more. When morning broke, a scene of marvellous though savage beauty lay before them. In every direction the great snow-capped peaks hemmed them in, peeping over each other's shoulders to the far horizon. So steep were the rocky banks on either side of them that the larch and the pine seemed to be suspended over their heads, and to need only a gust of wind to come hurtling down upon them. Nor was the fear entirely an illusion, for the barren valley was thickly strewn with trees and boulders which had fallen in a similar manner. Even as they passed, a great rock came thundering down with a hoarse rattle which woke the echoes in the silent gorges, and startled the weary horses into a gallop.\n\nAs the sun rose slowly above the eastern horizon, the caps of the great mountains lit up one after the other, like lamps at a festival, until they were all ruddy and glowing. The magnificent spectacle cheered the hearts of the three fugitives and gave them fresh energy. At a wild torrent which swept out of a ravine they called a halt and watered their horses, while they partook of a hasty breakfast. Lucy and her father would fain have rested longer, but Jefferson Hope was inexorable. \"They will be upon our track by this time,\" he said. \"Everything depends upon our speed. Once safe in Carson, we may rest for the remainder of our lives.\"\n\nDuring the whole of that day they struggled on through the defiles, and by evening they calculated that they were more than thirty miles from their enemies. At night-time they chose the base of a beetling crag, where the rocks offered some protection from the chill wind, and there, huddled together for warmth, they enjoyed a few hours' sleep. Before daybreak, however, they were up and on their way once more. They had seen no signs of any pursuers, and Jefferson Hope began to think that they were fairly out of the reach of the terrible organization whose enmity they had incurred. He little knew how far that iron grasp could reach, or how soon it was to close upon them and crush them.\n\nAbout the middle of the second day of their flight their scanty store of provisions began to run out. This gave the hunter little uneasiness, however, for there was game to be had among the mountains, and he had frequently before had to depend upon his rifle for the needs of life. Choosing a sheltered nook, he piled together a few dried branches and made a blazing fire, at which his companions might warm themselves, for they were now nearly five thousand feet above the sea level, and the air was bitter and keen. Having tethered the horses, and bid Lucy adieu, he threw his gun over his shoulder, and set out in search of whatever chance might throw in his way. Looking back, he saw the old man and the young girl crouching over the blazing fire, while the three animals stood motionless in the background. Then the intervening rocks hid them from his view.\n\nHe walked for a couple of miles through one ravine after another without success, though, from the marks upon the bark of the trees, and other indications, he judged that there were numerous bears in the vicinity. At last, after two or three hours' fruitless search, he was thinking of turning back in despair, when casting his eyes upwards he saw a sight which sent a thrill of pleasure through his heart. On the edge of a jutting pinnacle, three or four hundred feet above him, there stood a creature somewhat resembling a sheep in appearance, but armed with a pair of gigantic horns. The big-horn\u2014for so it is called\u2014was acting, probably, as a guardian over a flock which were invisible to the hunter; but fortunately it was heading in the opposite direction, and had not perceived him. Lying on his face, he rested his rifle upon a rock, and took a long and steady aim before drawing the trigger. The animal sprang into the air, tottered for a moment upon the edge of the precipice, and then came crashing down into the valley beneath.\n\nThe creature was too unwieldy to lift, so the hunter contented himself with cutting away one haunch and part of the flank. With this trophy over his shoulder, he hastened to retrace his steps, for the evening was already drawing in. He had hardly started, however, before he realized the difficulty which faced him. In his eagerness he had wandered far past the ravines which were known to him, and it was no easy matter to pick out the path which he had taken. The valley in which he found himself divided and sub-divided into many gorges, which were so like each other that it was impossible to distinguish one from the other. He followed one for a mile or more until he came to a mountain torrent which he was sure that he had never seen before. Convinced that he had taken the wrong turn, he tried another, but with the same result. Night was coming on rapidly, and it was almost dark before he at last found himself in a defile which was familiar to him. Even then it was no easy matter to keep to the right track, for the moon had not yet risen, and the high cliffs on either side made the obscurity more profound. Weighed down with his burden, and weary from his exertions, he stumbled along, keeping up his heart by the reflection that every step brought him nearer to Lucy, and that he carried with him enough to ensure them food for the remainder of their journey.\n\nHe had now come to the mouth of the very defile in which he had left them. Even in the darkness he could recognize the outline of the cliffs which bounded it. They must, he reflected, be awaiting him anxiously, for he had been absent nearly five hours. In the gladness of his heart he put his hands to his mouth and made the glen re\u00ebcho to a loud halloo as a signal that he was coming. He paused and listened for an answer. None came save his own cry, which clattered up the dreary, silent ravines, and was borne back to his ears in countless repetitions. Again he shouted, even louder than before, and again no whisper came back from the friends whom he had left such a short time ago. A vague, nameless dread came over him, and he hurried onward frantically, dropping the precious food in his agitation.\n\nWhen he turned the corner, he came full in sight of the spot where the fire had been lit. There was still a glowing pile of wood ashes there, but it had evidently not been tended since his departure. The same dead silence still reigned all round. With his fears all changed to convictions, he hurried on. There was no living creature near the remains of the fire: animals, man, maiden, all were gone. It was only too clear that some sudden and terrible disaster had occurred during his absence\u2014a disaster which had embraced them all, and yet had left no traces behind it.\n\nBewildered and stunned by this blow, Jefferson Hope felt his head spin round, and had to lean upon his rifle to save himself from falling. He was essentially a man of action, however, and speedily recovered from his temporary impotence. Seizing a half-consumed piece of wood from the smouldering fire, he blew it into a flame, and proceeded with its help to examine the little camp. The ground was all stamped down by the feet of horses, showing that a large party of mounted men had overtaken the fugitives, and the direction of their tracks proved that they had afterwards turned back to Salt Lake City. Had they carried back both of his companions with them? Jefferson Hope had almost persuaded himself that they must have done so, when his eye fell upon an object which made every nerve of his body tingle within him. A little way on one side of the camp was a lowlying heap of reddish soil, which had assuredly not been there before. There was no mistaking it for anything but a newly dug grave. As the young hunter approached it, he perceived that a stick had been planted on it, with a sheet of paper stuck in the cleft fork of it. The inscription upon the paper was brief, but to the point:\n\n\u2002JOHN FERRIER,\n\n\u2002FORMERLY OF SALT LAKE CITY.\n\n\u2002Died August 4th, 1860.\n\nThe sturdy old man, whom he had left so short a time before, was gone, then, and this was all his epitaph. Jefferson Hope looked wildly round to see if there was a second grave, but there was no sign of one. Lucy had been carried back by their terrible pursuers to fulfil her original destiny, by becoming one of the harem of an Elder's son. As the young fellow realized the certainty of her fate, and his own powerlessness to prevent it, he wished that he, too, was lying with the old farmer in his last silent resting-place.\n\nAgain, however, his active spirit shook off the lethargy which springs from despair. If there was nothing else left to him, he could at least devote his life to revenge. With indomitable patience and perseverance, Jefferson Hope possessed also a power of sustained vindictiveness, which he may have learned from the Indians amongst whom he had lived. As he stood by the desolate fire, he felt that the only one thing which could assuage his grief would be thorough and complete retribution, brought by his own hand upon his enemies. His strong will and untiring energy should, he determined, be devoted to that one end. With a grim, white face, he retraced his steps to where he had dropped the food, and having stirred up the smouldering fire, he cooked enough to last him for a few days. This he made up into a bundle, and, tired as he was, he set himself to walk back through the mountains upon the track of the Avenging Angels.\n\nFor five days he toiled footsore and weary through the defiles which he had already traversed on horseback. At night he flung himself down among the rocks, and snatched a few hours of sleep; but before daybreak he was always well on his way. On the sixth day, he reached the Eagle Ca\u00f1on, from which they had commenced their ill-fated flight. Thence he could look down upon the home of the Saints. Worn and exhausted, he leaned upon his rifle and shook his gaunt hand fiercely at the silent widespread city beneath him. As he looked at it, he observed that there were flags in some of the principal streets, and other signs of festivity. He was still speculating as to what this might mean when he heard the clatter of horse's hoofs, and saw a mounted man riding towards him. As he approached, he recognized him as a Mormon named Cowper, to whom he had rendered services at different times. He therefore accosted him when he got up to him, with the object of finding out what Lucy Ferrier's fate had been.\n\n\"I am Jefferson Hope,\" he said. \"You remember me.\"\n\nThe Mormon looked at him with undisguised astonishment\u2014indeed, it was difficult to recognize in this tattered, unkempt wanderer, with ghastly white face and fierce, wild eyes, the spruce young hunter of former days. Having, however, at last satisfied himself as to his identity, the man's surprise changed to consternation.\n\n\"You are mad to come here,\" he cried. \"It is as much as my own life is worth to be seen talking with you. There is a warrant against you from the Holy Four for assisting the Ferriers away.\"\n\n\"I don't fear them, or their warrant,\" Hope said, earnestly. \"You must know something of this matter, Cowper. I conjure you by everything you hold dear to answer a few questions. We have always been friends. For God's sake, don't refuse to answer me.\"\n\n\"What is it?\" the Mormon asked, uneasily. \"Be quick. The very rocks have ears and the trees eyes.\"\n\n\"What has become of Lucy Ferrier?\"\n\n\"She was married yesterday to young Drebber. Hold up, man, hold up; you have no life left in you.\"\n\n\"Don't mind me,\" said Hope faintly. He was white to the very lips, and had sunk down on the stone against which he had been leaning. \"Married, you say?\"\n\n\"Married yesterday\u2014that's what those flags are for on the Endowment House. There was some words between young Drebber and young Stangerson as to which was to have her. They'd both been in the party that followed them, and Stangerson had shot her father, which, seemed to give him the best claim; but when they argued it out in council, Drebber's party was the stronger, so the Prophet gave her over to him. No one won't have her very long though, for I saw death in her face yesterday. She is more like a ghost than a woman. Are you off, then?\"\n\n\"Yes, I am off,\" said Jefferson Hope, who had risen from his seat. His face might have been chiselled out of marble, so hard and set was its expression, while its eyes glowed with a baleful light.\n\n\"Where are you going?\"\n\n\"Never mind,\" he answered; and, slinging his weapon over his shoulder, strode off down the gorge and so away into the heart of the mountains to the haunts of the wild beasts. Amongst them all there was none so fierce and so dangerous as himself.\n\nThe prediction of the Mormon was only too well fulfilled. Whether it was the terrible death of her father or the effects of the hateful marriage into which she had been forced, poor Lucy never held up her head again, but pined away and died within a month. Her sottish husband, who had married her principally for the sake of John Ferrier's property, did not affect any great grief at his bereavement; but his other wives mourned over her, and sat up with her the night before the burial, as is the Mormon custom. They were grouped round the bier in the early hours of the morning, when, to their inexpressible fear and astonishment, the door was flung open, and a savage-looking, weather-beaten man in tattered garments strode into the room. Without a glance or a word to the cowering women, he walked up to the white silent figure which had once contained the pure soul of Lucy Ferner. Stooping over her, he pressed his lips reverently to her cold forehead, and then, snatching up her hand, he took the wedding ring from her finger. \"She shall not be buried in that,\" he cried with a fierce snarl, and before an alarm could be raised sprang down the stairs and was gone. So strange and so brief was the episode that the watchers might have found it hard to believe it themselves or persuade other people of it, had it not been for the undeniable fact that the circlet of gold which marked her as having been a bride had disappeared.\n\nFor some months Jefferson Hope lingered among the mountains, leading a strange, wild life, and nursing in his heart the fierce desire for vengeance which possessed him. Tales were told in the city of the weird figure which was seen prowling about the suburbs, and which haunted the lonely mountain gorges. Once a bullet whistled through Stangerson's window and flattened itself upon the wall within a foot of him. On another occasion, as Drebber passed under a cliff a great boulder crashed down on him, and he only escaped a terrible death by throwing himself upon his face. The two young Mormons were not long in discovering the reason of these attempts upon their lives, and led repeated expeditions into the mountains in the hope of capturing or killing their enemy, but always without success. Then they adopted the precaution of never going out alone or after nightfall, and of having their houses guarded. After a time they were able to relax these measures, for nothing was either heard or seen of their opponent, and they hoped that time had cooled his vindictiveness.\n\nFar from doing so, it had, if anything, augmented it. The hunter's mind was of a hard, unyielding nature, and the predominant idea of revenge had taken such complete possession of it that there was no room for any other emotion. He was, however, above all things, practical. He soon realized that even his iron constitution could not stand the incessant strain which he was putting upon it. Exposure and want of wholesome food were wearing him out. If he died like a dog among the mountains, what was to become of his revenge then? And yet such a death was sure to overtake him if he persisted. He felt that that was to play his enemy's game, so he reluctantly returned to the old Nevada mines, there to recruit his health and to amass money enough to allow him to pursue his object without privation.\n\nHis intention had been to be absent a year at the most, but a combination of unforeseen circumstances prevented his leaving the mines for nearly five. At the end of that time, however, his memory of his wrongs and his craving for revenge were quite as keen as on that memorable night when he had stood by John Ferrier's grave. Disguised, and under an assumed name, he returned to Salt Lake City, careless what became of his own life, as long as he obtained what he knew to be justice. There he found evil tidings awaiting him. There had been a schism among the Chosen People a few months before, some of the younger members of the Church having rebelled against the authority of the Elders, and the result had been the secession of a certain number of the malcontents, who had left Utah and become Gentiles. Among these had been Drebber and Stangerson; and no one knew whither they had gone. Rumour reported that Drebber had managed to convert a large part of his property into money, and that he had departed a wealthy man, while his companion, Stangerson, was comparatively poor. There was no clue at all, however, as to their whereabouts.\n\nMany a man, however vindictive, would have abandoned all thought of revenge in the face of such a difficulty, but Jefferson Hope never faltered for a moment. With the small competence he possessed, eked out by such employment as he could pick up, he travelled from town to town through the United States in quest of his enemies. Year passed into year, his black hair turned grizzled, but still he wandered on, a human bloodhound, with his mind wholly set upon the one object to which he had devoted his life. At last his perseverance was rewarded. It was but a glance of a face in a window, but that one glance told him that Cleveland in Ohio possessed the men whom he was in pursuit of. He returned to his miserable lodgings with his plan of vengeance all arranged. It chanced, however, that Drebber, looking from his window, had recognized the vagrant in the street, and had read murder in his eyes. He hurried before a justice of the peace accompanied by Stangerson, who had become his private secretary, and represented to him that they were in danger of their lives from the jealousy and hatred of an old rival. That evening Jefferson Hope was taken into custody, and not being able to find sureties, was detained for some weeks. When at last he was liberated it was only to find that Drebber's house was deserted, and that he and his secretary had departed for Europe.\n\nAgain the avenger had been foiled, and again his concentrated hatred urged him to continue the pursuit. Funds were wanting, however, and for some time he had to return to work, saving every dollar for his approaching journey. At last, having collected enough to keep life in him, he departed for Europe, and tracked his enemies from city to city, working his way in any menial capacity, but never overtaking the fugitives. When he reached St. Petersburg, they had departed for Paris; and when he followed them there, he learned that they had just set off for Copenhagen. At the Danish capital he was again a few days late, for they had journeyed on to London, where he at last succeeded in running them to earth. As to what occurred there, we cannot do better than quote the old hunter's own account, as duly recorded in Dr. Watson's Journal, to which we are already under such obligations." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 14", + "text": "A Continuation of the Reminiscences of John Watson, M.D.\n\nOur prisoner's furious resistance did not apparently indicate any ferocity in his disposition towards ourselves, for on finding himself powerless, he smiled in an affable manner, and expressed his hopes that he had not hurt any of us in the scuffle. \"I guess you're going to take me to the police-station,\" he remarked to Sherlock Holmes. \"My cab's at the door. If you'll loose my legs I'll walk down to it. I'm not so light to lift as I used to be.\"\n\nGregson and Lestrade exchanged glances, as if they thought this proposition rather a bold one; but Holmes at once took the prisoner at his word, and loosened the towel which we had bound round his ankles. He rose and stretched his legs, as though to assure himself that they were free once more. I remember that I thought to myself, as I eyed him, that I had seldom seen a more powerfully built man; and his dark, sunburned face bore an expression of determination and energy which was as formidable as his personal strength.\n\n\"If there's a vacant place for a chief of the police, I reckon you are the man for it,\" he said, gazing with undisguised admiration at my fellow-lodger. \"The way you kept on my trail was a caution.\"\n\n\"You had better come with me,\" said Holmes to the two detectives.\n\n\"I can drive you,\" said Lestrade.\n\n\"Good! and Gregson can come inside with me. You too, Doctor. You have taken an interest in the case, and may as well stick to us.\"\n\nI assented gladly, and we all descended together. Our prisoner made no attempt at escape, but stepped calmly into the cab which had been his, and we followed him. Lestrade mounted the box, whipped up the horse, and brought us in a very short time to our destination. We were ushered into a small chamber, where a police inspector noted down our prisoner's name and the names of the men with whose murder he had been charged. The official was a white-faced, unemotional man, who went through his duties in a dull, mechanical way. \"The prisoner will be put before the magistrates in the course of the week,\" he said; \"in the meantime, Mr. Jefferson Hope, have you anything that you wish to say? I must warn you that your words will be taken down, and may be used against you.\"\n\n\"I've got a good deal to say,\" our prisoner said slowly. \"I want to tell you gentlemen all about it.\"\n\n\"Hadn't you better reserve that for your trial?\" asked the inspector.\n\n\"I may never be tried,\" he answered. \"You needn't look startled. It isn't suicide I am thinking of. Are you a doctor?\" He turned his fierce dark eyes upon me as he asked this last question.\n\n\"Yes, I am,\" I answered.\n\n\"Then put your hand here,\" he said, with a smile, motioning with his manacled wrists towards his chest.\n\nI did so; and became at once conscious of an extraordinary throbbing and commotion which was going on inside. The walls of his chest seemed to thrill and quiver as a frail building would do inside when some powerful engine was at work. In the silence of the room I could hear a dull humming and buzzing noise which proceeded from the same source.\n\n\"Why,\" I cried, \"you have an aortic aneurism!\"\n\n\"That's what they call it,\" he said, placidly. \"I went to a doctor last week about it, and he told me that it is bound to burst before many days passed. It has been getting worse for years. I got it from overexposure and under-feeding among the Salt Lake Mountains. I've done my work now, and I don't care how soon I go, but I should like to leave some account of the business behind me. I don't want to be remembered as a common cut-throat.\"\n\nThe inspector and the two detectives had a hurried discussion as to the advisability of allowing him to tell his story.\n\n\"Do you consider, Doctor, that there is immediate danger?\" the former asked.\n\n\"Most certainly there is,\" I answered.\n\n\"In that case it is clearly our duty, in the interests of justice, to take his statement,\" said the inspector. \"You are at liberty, sir, to give your account, which I again warn you will be taken down.\"\n\n\"I'll sit down, with your leave,\" the prisoner said, suiting the action to the word. \"This aneurism of mine makes me easily tired, and the tussle we had half an hour ago has not mended matters. I'm on the brink of the grave, and I am not likely to lie to you. Every word I say is the absolute truth, and how you use it is a matter of no consequence to me.\"\n\nWith these words, Jefferson Hope leaned back in his chair and began the following remarkable statement. He spoke in a calm and methodical manner, as though the events which he narrated were commonplace enough. I can vouch for the accuracy of the subjoined account, for I have had access to Lestrade's notebook, in which the prisoner's words were taken down exactly as they were uttered.\n\n\"It don't much matter to you why I hated these men,\" he said; \"it's enough that they were guilty of the death of two human beings\u2014a father and daughter\u2014and that they had, therefore, forfeited their own lives. After the lapse of time that has passed since their crime, it was impossible for me to secure a conviction against them in any court. I knew of their guilt though, and I determined that I should be judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one. You'd have done the same, if you have any manhood in you, if you had been in my place.\n\n\"That girl that I spoke of was to have married me twenty years ago. She was forced into marrying that same Drebber, and broke her heart over it. I took the marriage ring from her dead finger, and I vowed that his dying eyes should rest upon that very ring, and that his last thoughts should be of the crime for which he was punished. I have carried it about with me, and have followed him and his accomplice over two continents until I caught them. They thought to tire me out, but they could not do it. If I die to-morrow, as is likely enough, I die knowing that my work in this world is done, and well done. They have perished, and by my hand. There is nothing left for me to hope for, or to desire.\n\n\"They were rich and I was poor, so that it was no easy matter for me to follow them. When I got to London my pocket was about empty, and I found that I must turn my hand to something for my living. Driving and riding are as natural to me as walking, so I applied at a cab-owner's office, and soon got employment. I was to bring a certain sum a week to the owner, and whatever was over that I might keep for myself. There was seldom much over, but I managed to scrape along somehow. The hardest job was to learn my way about, for I reckon that of all the mazes that ever were contrived, this city is the most confusing. I had a map beside me, though, and when once I had spotted the principal hotels and stations, I got on pretty well.\n\n\"It was some time before I found out where my two gentlemen were living; but I inquired and inquired until at last I dropped across them. They were at a boarding-house at Camberwell, over on the other side of the river. When once I found them out, I knew that I had them at my mercy. I had grown my beard, and there was no chance of their recognizing me. I would dog them and follow them until I saw my opportunity. I was determined that they should not escape me again.\n\n\"They were very near doing it for all that. Go where they would about London, I was always at their heels. Sometimes I followed them on my cab, and sometimes on foot, but the former was the best, for then they could not get away from me. It was only early in the morning or late at night that I could earn anything, so that I began to get behindhand with my employer. I did not mind that, however, as long as I could lay my hand upon the men I wanted.\n\n\"They were very cunning, though. They must have thought that there was some chance of their being followed, for they would never go out alone, and never after nightfall. During two weeks I drove behind them every day, and never once saw them separate. Drebber himself was drunk half the time, but Stangerson was not to be caught napping. I watched them late and early, but never saw the ghost of a chance; but I was not discouraged, for something told me that the hour had almost come. My only fear was that this thing in my chest might burst a little too soon and leave my work undone.\n\n\"At last, one evening I was driving up and down Torquay Terrace, as the street was called in which they boarded, when I saw a cab drive up to their door. Presently some luggage was brought out and after a time Drebber and Stangerson followed it, and drove off. I whipped up my horse and kept within sight of them, feeling very ill at ease, for I feared that they were going to shift their quarters. At Euston Station they got out, and I left a boy to hold my horse and followed them on to the platform. I heard them ask for the Liverpool train, and the guard answer that one had just gone, and there would not be another for some hours. Stangerson seemed to be put out at that, but Drebber was rather pleased than otherwise. I got so close to them in the bustle that I could hear every word that passed between them. Drebber said that he had a little business of his own to do, and that if the other would wait for him he would soon rejoin him. His companion remonstrated with him, and reminded him that they had resolved to stick together. Drebber answered that the matter was a delicate one, and that he must go alone. I could not catch what Stangerson said to that, but the other burst out swearing, and reminded him that he was nothing more than his paid servant, and that he must not presume to dictate to him. On that the secretary gave it up as a bad job, and simply bargained with him that if he missed the last train he should rejoin him at Halliday's Private Hotel; to which Drebber answered that he would be back on the platform before eleven, and made his way out of the station.\n\n\"The moment for which I had waited so long had at last come. I had my enemies within my power. Together they could protect each other, but singly they were at my mercy. I did not act, however, with undue precipitation. My plans were already formed. There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution has come upon him. I had my plans arranged by which I should have the opportunity of making the man who had wronged me understand that his old sin had found him out. It chanced that some days before a gentleman who had been engaged in looking over some houses in the Brixton Road had dropped the key of one of them in my carriage. It was claimed that same evening, and returned; but in the interval I had taken a moulding of it, and had a duplicate constructed. By means of this I had access to at least one spot in this great city where I could rely upon being free from interruption. How to get Drebber to that house was the difficult problem which I had now to solve.\n\n\"He walked down the road and went into one or two liquor shops, staying for nearly half an hour in the last of them. When he came out, he staggered in his walk, and was evidently pretty well on. There was a hansom just in front of me, and he hailed it. I followed it so close that the nose of my horse was within a yard of his driver the whole way. We rattled across Waterloo Bridge and through miles of streets, until, to my astonishment, we found ourselves back in the terrace in which he had boarded. I could not imagine what his intention was in returning there; but I went on and pulled up my cab a hundred yards or so from the house. He entered it, and his hansom drove away. Give me a glass of water, if you please. My mouth gets dry with the talking.\"\n\nI handed him the glass, and he drank it down.\n\n\"That's better,\" he said. \"Well, I waited for a quarter of an hour, or more, when suddenly there came a noise like people struggling inside the house. Next moment the door was flung open and two men appeared, one of whom was Drebber, and the other was a young chap whom I had never seen before. This fellow had Drebber by the collar, and when they came to the head of the steps he gave him a shove and a kick which sent him half across the road. 'You hound!' he cried, shaking his stick at him; 'I'll teach you to insult an honest girl!' He was so hot that I think he would have thrashed Drebber with his cudgel, only that the cur staggered away down the road as fast as his legs would carry him. He ran as far as the corner, and then seeing my cab, he hailed me and jumped in. 'Drive me to Halliday's Private Hotel,' said he.\n\n\"When I had him fairly inside my cab, my heart jumped so with joy that I feared lest at this last moment my aneurism might go wrong. I drove along slowly, weighing in my own mind what it was best to do. I might take him right out into the country, and there in some deserted lane have my last interview with him. I had almost decided upon this, when he solved the problem for me. The craze for drink had seized him again, and he ordered me to pull up outside a gin palace. He went in, leaving word that I should wait for him. There he remained until closing time, and when he came out he was so far gone that I knew the game was in my own hands.\n\n\"Don't imagine that I intended to kill him in cold blood. It would only have been rigid justice if I had done so, but I could not bring myself to do it. I had long determined that he should have a show for his life if he chose to take advantage of it. Among the many billets which I have filled in America during my wandering life, I was once janitor and sweeper-out of the laboratory at York College. One day the professor was lecturing on poisons, and he showed his students some alkaloid, as he called it, which he had extracted from some South American arrow poison, and which was so powerful that the least grain meant instant death. I spotted the bottle in which this preparation was kept, and when they were all gone. I helped myself to a little of it. I was a fairly good dispenser, so I worked this alkaloid into small, soluble pills, and each pill I put in a box with a similar pill made without the poison. I determined at the time that when I had my chance my gentlemen should each have a draw out of one of these boxes, while I ate the pill that remained. It would be quite as deadly and a good deal less noisy than firing across a handkerchief. From that day I had always my pill boxes about with me, and the time had now come when I was to use them.\n\n\"It was nearer one than twelve, and a wild, bleak night, blowing hard and raining in torrents. Dismal as it was outside, I was glad within\u2014so glad that I could have shouted out from pure exultation. If any of you gentlemen have ever pined for a thing, and longed for it during twenty long years, and then suddenly found it within your reach, you would understand my feelings. I lit a cigar, and puffed at it to steady my nerves, but my hands were trembling and my temples throbbing with excitement. As I drove, I could see old John Ferrier and sweet Lucy looking at me out of the darkness and smiling at me, just as plain as I see you all in this room. All the way they were ahead of me, one on each side of the horse until I pulled up at the house in the Brixton Road.\n\n\"There was not a soul to be seen, nor a sound to be heard, except the dripping of the rain. When I looked in at the window, I found Drebber all huddled together in a drunken sleep. I shook him by the arm. 'It's time to get out,' I said.\n\n\"'All right, cabby.' said he.\n\n\"I suppose he thought we had come to the hotel that he had mentioned, for he got out without another word, and followed me down the garden. I had to walk beside him to keep him steady, for he was still a little top-heavy. When we came to the door, I opened it and led him into the front room. I give you my word that all the way, the father and the daughter were walking in front of us.\n\n\"'It's infernally dark,' said he, stamping about.\n\n\"'We'll soon have a light,' I said, striking a match and putting it to a wax candle which I had brought with me. 'Now, Enoch Drebber,' I continued, turning to him, and holding the light to my own face, 'who am I?'\n\n\"He gazed at me with bleared, drunken eyes for a moment, and then I saw a horror spring up in them, and convulse his whole features, which showed me that he knew me. He staggered back with a livid face, and I saw the perspiration break out upon his brow, while his teeth chattered in his head. At the sight I leaned my back against the door and laughed loud and long. I had always known that vengeance would be sweet, but I had never hoped for the contentment of soul which now possessed me.\n\n\"'You dog!' I said; 'I have hunted you from Salt Lake City to St. Petersburg, and you have always escaped me. Now, at last your wanderings have come to an end, for either you or I shall never see to-morrow's sun rise.' He shrunk still farther away as I spoke, and I could see on his face that he thought I was mad. So I was for the time. The pulses in my temples beat like sledgehammers, and I believe I would have had a fit of some sort if the blood had not gushed from my nose and relieved me.\n\n\"'What do you think of Lucy Ferrier now?' I cried, locking the door, and shaking the key in his face. 'Punishment has been slow in coming, but it has overtaken you at last.' I saw his coward lips tremble as I spoke. He would have begged for his life, but he knew well that it was useless.\n\n\"'Would you murder me?' he stammered.\n\n\"'There is no murder,' I answered. 'Who talks of murdering a mad dog? What mercy had you upon my poor darling, when you dragged her from her slaughtered father, and bore her away to your accursed and shameless harem?\n\n\"'It was not I who killed her father,' he cried.\n\n\"'But it was you who broke her innocent heart,' I shrieked, thrusting the box before him. 'Let the high God judge between us. Choose and eat. There is death in one and life in the other. I shall take what you leave. Let us see if there is justice upon the earth, or if we are ruled by chance.'\n\n\"He cowered away with wild cries and prayers for mercy, but I drew my knife and held it to his throat until he had obeyed me. Then I swallowed the other, and we stood facing one another in silence for a minute or more, waiting to see which was to live and which was to die. Shall I ever forget the look which came over his face when the first warning pangs told him that the poison was in his system? I laughed as I saw it, and held Lucy's marriage ring in front of his eyes. It was but for a moment, for the action of the alkaloid is rapid. A spasm of pain contorted his features; he threw his hands out in front of him, staggered, and then, with a hoarse cry, fell heavily upon the floor. I turned him over with my foot, and placed my hand upon his heart. There was no movement. He was dead!\n\n\"The blood had been streaming from my nose, but I had taken no notice of it. I don't know what it was that put it into my head to write upon the wall with it. Perhaps it was some mischievous idea of setting the police upon a wrong track, for I felt light-hearted and cheerful. I remember a German being found in New York with RACHE written up above him, and it was argued at the time in the newspapers that the secret societies must have done it. I guessed that what puzzled the New Yorkers would puzzle the Londoners, so I dipped my finger in my own blood and printed it on a convenient place on the wall. Then I walked down to my cab and found that there was nobody about, and that the night was still very wild. I had driven some distance, when I put my hand into the pocket in which I usually kept Lucy's ring, and found that it was not there. I was thunderstruck at this, for it was the only memento that I had of her. Thinking that I might have dropped it when I stooped over Drebber's body, I drove back, and leaving my cab in a side street, I went boldly up to the house\u2014for I was ready to dare anything rather than lose the ring. When I arrived there, I walked right into the arms of a police-officer who was coming out, and only managed to disarm his suspicions by pretending to be hopelessly drunk.\n\n\"That was how Enoch Drebber came to his end. All I had to do then was to do as much for Stangerson, and so pay off John Ferrier's debt. I knew that he was staying at Halliday's Private Hotel, and I hung about all day, but he never came out. I fancy that he suspected something when Drebber failed to put in an appearance. He was cunning, was Stangerson, and always on his guard. If he thought he could keep me off by staying indoors he was very much mistaken. I soon found out which was the window of his bedroom, and early next morning I took advantage of some ladders which were lying in the lane behind the hotel, and so made my way into his room in the gray of the dawn. I woke him up and told him that the hour had come when he was to answer for the life he had taken so long before. I described Drebber's death to him, and I gave him the same choice of the poisoned pills. Instead of grasping at the chance of safety which that offered him, he sprang from his bed and flew at my throat. In self-defence I stabbed him to the heart. It would have been the same in any case, for Providence would never have allowed his guilty hand to pick out anything but the poison.\n\n\"I have little more to say, and it's as well, for I am about done up. I went on cabbing it for a day or so, intending to keep at it until I could save enough to take me back to America. I was standing in the yard when a ragged youngster asked if there was a cabby there called Jefferson Hope, and said that his cab was wanted by a gentleman at 221B Baker Street. I went round suspecting no harm, and the next thing I knew, this young man here had the bracelets on my wrists, and as neatly shackled as ever I saw in my life. That's the whole of my story, gentlemen. You may consider me to be a murderer; but I hold that I am just as much an officer of justice as you are.\"\n\nSo thrilling had the man's narrative been and his manner was so impressive that we had sat silent and absorbed. Even the professional detectives, blas\u00e9 as they were in every detail of crime, appeared to be keenly interested in the man's story. When he finished, we sat for some minutes in a stillness which was only broken by the scratching of Lestrade's pencil as he gave the finishing touches to his shorthand account.\n\n\"There is only one point on which I should like a little more information,\" Sherlock Holmes said at last. \"Who was your accomplice who came for the ring which I advertised?\"\n\nThe prisoner winked at my friend jocosely. \"I can tell my own secrets,\" he said, \"but I don't get other people into trouble. I saw your advertisement, and I thought it might be a plant, or it might be the ring which I wanted. My friend volunteered to go and see. I think you'll own he did it smartly.\"\n\n\"Not a doubt of that,\" said Holmes, heartily.\n\n\"Now, gentlemen,\" the inspector remarked gravely, \"the forms of the law must be complied with. On Thursday the prisoner will be brought before the magistrates, and your attendance will be required. Until then I will be responsible for him.\" He rang the bell as he spoke, and Jefferson Hope was led off by a couple of warders, while my friend and I made our way out of the station and took a cab back to Baker Street." + }, + { + "title": "The Conclusion", + "text": "We had all been warned to appear before the magistrates upon the Thursday; but when the Thursday came there was no occasion for our testimony. A higher Judge had taken the matter in hand, and Jefferson Hope had been summoned before a tribunal where strict justice would be meted out to him. On the very night after his capture the aneurism burst, and he was found in the morning stretched upon the floor of the cell, with a placid smile upon his face, as though he had been able in his dying moments to look back upon a useful life, and on work well done.\n\n\"Gregson and Lestrade will be wild about his death,\" Holmes remarked, as we chatted it over next evening. \"Where will their grand advertisement be now?\"\n\n\"I don't see that they had very much to do with his capture,\" I answered.\n\n\"What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence,\" returned my companion, bitterly. \"The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done? Never mind,\" he continued, more brightly, after a pause. \"I would not have missed the investigation for anything. There has been no better case within my recollection. Simple as it was, there were several most instructive points about it.\"\n\n\"Simple!\" I ejaculated.\n\n\"Well, really, it can hardly be described as otherwise,\" said Sherlock Holmes, smiling at my surprise. \"The proof of its intrinsic simplicity is, that without any help save a few very ordinary deductions I was able to lay my hand upon the criminal within three days.\"\n\n\"That is true,\" said I.\n\n\"I have already explained to you that what is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance. In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise it much. In the everyday affairs of life it is more useful to reason forward, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.\"\n\n\"I confess,\" said I, \"that I do not quite follow you.\"\n\n\"I hardly expected that you would. Let me see if I can make it clearer. Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backward, or analytically.\"\n\n\"I understand,\" said I.\n\n\"Now this was a case in which you were given the result and had to find everything else for yourself. Now let me endeavour to show you the different steps in my reasoning. To begin at the beginning. I approached the house, as you know, on foot, and with my mind entirely free from all impressions. I naturally began by examining the roadway, and there, as I have already explained to you, I saw clearly the marks of a cab, which, I ascertained by inquiry, must have been there during the night. I satisfied myself that it was a cab and not a private carriage by the narrow gauge of the wheels. The ordinary London growler is considerably less wide than a gentleman's brougham.\n\n\"This was the first point gained. I then walked slowly down the garden path, which happened to be composed of a clay soil, peculiarly suitable for taking impressions. No doubt it appeared to you to be a mere trampled line of slush, but to my trained eyes every mark upon its surface had a meaning. There is no branch of detective science which is so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing footsteps. Happily, I have always laid great stress upon it, and much practice has made it second nature to me. I saw the heavy footmarks of the constables, but I saw also the track of the two men who had first passed through the garden. It was easy to tell that they had been before the others, because in places their marks had been entirely obliterated by the others coming upon the top of them. In this way my second link was formed, which told me that the nocturnal visitors were two in number, one remarkable for his height (as I calculated from the length of his stride), and the other fashionably dressed, to judge from the small and elegant impression left by his boots.\n\n\"On entering the house this last inference was confirmed. My well-booted man lay before me. The tall one, then, had done the murder, if murder there was. There was no wound upon the dead man's person, but the agitated expression upon his face assured me that he had foreseen his fate before it came upon him. Men who die from heart disease, or any sudden natural cause, never by any chance exhibit agitation upon their features. Having sniffed the dead man's lips, I detected a slightly sour smell, and I came to the conclusion that he had had poison forced upon him. Again, I argued that it had been forced upon him from the hatred and fear expressed upon his face. By the method of exclusion, I had arrived at this result, for no other hypothesis would meet the facts. Do not imagine that it was a very unheard-of idea. The forcible administration of poison is by no means a new thing in criminal annals. The cases of Dolsky in Odessa, and of Leturier in Montpellier, will occur at once to any toxicologist.\n\n\"And now came the great question as to the reason why. Robbery had not been the object of the murder, for nothing was taken. Was it politics, then, or was it a woman? That was the question which confronted me. I was inclined from the first to the latter supposition. Political assassins are only too glad to do their work and to fly. This murder had, on the contrary, been done most deliberately, and the perpetrator had left his tracks all over the room, showing that he had been there all the time. It must have been a private wrong, and not a political one, which called for such a methodical revenge. When the inscription was discovered upon the wall, I was more inclined than ever to my opinion. The thing was too evidently a blind. When the ring was found, however, it settled the question. Clearly the murderer had used it to remind his victim of some dead or absent woman. It was at this point that I asked Gregson whether he had inquired in his telegram to Cleveland as to any particular point in Mr. Drebber's former career. He answered, you remember, in the negative.\n\n\"I then proceeded to make a careful examination of the room, which confirmed me in my opinion as to the murderer's height, and furnished me with the additional details as to the Trichinopoly cigar and the length of his nails. I had already come to the conclusion, since there were no signs of a struggle, that the blood which covered the floor had burst from the murderer's nose in his excitement. I could perceive that the track of blood coincided with the track of his feet. It is seldom that any man, unless he is very full-blooded, breaks out in this way through emotion, so I hazarded the opinion that the criminal was probably a robust and ruddy-faced man. Events proved that I had judged correctly.\n\n\"Having left the house, I proceeded to do what Gregson had neglected. I telegraphed to the head of the police at Cleveland, limiting my inquiry to the circumstances connected with the marriage of Enoch Drebber. The answer was conclusive. It told me that Drebber had already applied for the protection of the law against an old rival in love, named Jefferson Hope, and that this same Hope was at present in Europe. I knew now that I held the clue to the mystery in my hand, and all that remained was to secure the murderer.\n\n\"I had already determined in my own mind that the man who had walked into the house with Drebber was none other than the man who had driven the cab. The marks in the road showed me that the horse had wandered on in a way which would have been impossible had there been anyone in charge of it. Where, then, could the driver be, unless he were inside the house? Again, it is absurd to suppose that any sane man would carry out a deliberate crime under the very eyes, as it were, of a third person who was sure to betray him. Lastly, supposing one man wished to dog another through London, what better means could he adopt than to turn cabdriver? All these considerations led me to the irresistible conclusion that Jefferson Hope was to be found among the jarveys of the Metropolis.\n\n\"If he had been one, there was no reason to believe that he had ceased to be. On the contrary, from his point of view, any sudden change would be likely to draw attention to himself. He would probably, for a time at least, continue to perform his duties. There was no reason to suppose that he was going under an assumed name. Why should he change his name in a country where no one knew his original one? I therefore organized my street Arab detective corps, and sent them systematically to every cab proprietor in London until they ferreted out the man that I wanted. How well they succeeded, and how quickly I took advantage of it, are still fresh in your recollection. The murder of Stangerson was an incident which was entirely unexpected, but which could hardly in any case have been prevented. Through it, as you know, I came into possession of the pills, the existence of which I had already surmised. You see, the whole thing is a chain of logical sequences without a break or flaw.\"\n\n\"It is wonderful!\" I cried. \"Your merits should be publicly recognized. You should publish an account of the case. If you won't, I will for you.\"\n\n\"You may do what you like, Doctor,\" he answered. \"See here!\" he continued, handing a paper over to me, \"look at this!\"\n\nIt was the Echo for the day, and the paragraph to which he pointed was devoted to the case in question.\n\n\"The public,\" it said, \"have lost a sensational treat through the sudden death of the man Hope, who was suspected of the murder of Mr. Enoch Drebber and of Mr. Joseph Stangerson. The details of the case will probably be never known now, though we are informed upon good authority that the crime was the result of an old-standing and romantic feud, in which love and Mormonism bore a part. It seems that both the victims belonged, in their younger days, to the Latter Day Saints, and Hope, the deceased prisoner, hails also from Salt Lake City. If the case has had no other effect, it, at least, brings out in the most striking manner the efficiency of our detective police force, and will serve as a lesson to all foreigners that they will do wisely to settle their feuds at home, and not to carry them on to British soil. It is an open secret that the credit of this smart capture belongs entirely to the well-known Scotland Yard officials, Messrs. Lestrade and Gregson. The man was apprehended, it appears, in the rooms of a certain Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who has himself, as an amateur, shown some talent in the detective line and who, with such instructors, may hope in time to attain to some degree of their skill. It is expected that a testimonial of some sort will be presented to the two officers as a fitting recognition of their services.\"\n\n\"Didn't I tell you so when we started?\" cried Sherlock Holmes with a laugh. \"That's the result of all our Study in Scarlet: to get them a testimonial!\"\n\n\"Never mind,\" I answered; \"I have all the facts in my journal, and the public shall know them. In the meantime you must make yourself contented by the consciousness of success, like the Roman miser\u2014\n\n\u2003\"Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo\n\n\u2003Ipse domi simul ac nummos contemplar in arca.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE SIGN OF FOUR", + "text": "[ The Science of Deduction ]\n\nSherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirtcuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction.\n\nThree times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day to day I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swelled nightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest. Again and again I had registered a vow that I should deliver my soul upon the subject; but there was that in the cool, nonchalant air of my companion which made him the last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a liberty. His great powers, his masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossing him.\n\nYet upon that afternoon, whether it was the Beaune which I had taken with my lunch or the additional exasperation produced by the extreme deliberation of his manner, I suddenly felt that I could hold out no longer.\n\n\"Which is it to-day,\" I asked, \"morphine or cocaine?\"\n\nHe raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened.\n\n\"It is cocaine,\" he said, \"a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?\"\n\n\"No, indeed,\" I answered brusquely. \"My constitution has not got over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain upon it.\"\n\nHe smiled at my vehemence. \"Perhaps you are right, Watson,\" he said. \"I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment.\"\n\n\"But consider!\" I said earnestly. \"Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process which involves increased tissue-change and may at least leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to some extent answerable.\"\n\nHe did not seem offended. On the contrary, he put his fingertips together, and leaned his elbows on the arms of his chair, like one who has a relish for conversation.\n\n\"My mind,\" he said, \"rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.\"\n\n\"The only unofficial detective?\" I said, raising my eyebrows.\n\n\"The only unofficial consulting detective,\" he answered. \"I am the last and highest court of appeal in detection. When Gregson, or Lestrade, or Athelney Jones are out of their depths\u2014which, by the way, is their normal state\u2014the matter is laid before me. I examine the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist's opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward. But you have yourself had some experience of my methods of work in the Jefferson Hope case.\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed,\" said I cordially. \"I was never so struck by anything in my life. I even embodied it in a small brochure, with the somewhat fantastic title of 'A Study in Scarlet.'\n\nHe shook his head sadly.\n\n\"I glanced over it,\" said he. \"Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.\"\n\n\"But the romance was there,\" I remonstrated. \"I could not tamper with the facts.\"\n\n\"Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes, by which I succeeded in unravelling it.\"\n\nI was annoyed at this criticism of a work which had been specially designed to please him. I confess, too, that I was irritated by the egotism which seemed to demand that every line of my pamphlet should be devoted to his own special doings. More than once during the years that I had lived with him in Baker Street I had observed that a small vanity underlay my companion's quiet and didactic manner. I made no remark, however, but sat nursing my wounded leg. I had had a Jezail bullet through it some time before, and though it did not prevent me from walking it ached wearily at every change of the weather.\n\n\"My practice has extended recently to the Continent,\" said Holmes after a while, filling up his old brier-root pipe. \"I was consulted last week by Fran\u00e7ois le Villard, who, as you probably know, has come rather to the front lately in the French detective service. He has all the Celtic power of quick intuition, but he is deficient in the wide range of exact knowledge which is essential to the higher developments of his art. The case was concerned with a will and possessed some features of interest. I was able to refer him to two parallel cases, the one at Riga in 1857, and the other at St. Louis in 1871, which have suggested to him the true solution. Here is the letter which I had this morning acknowledging my assistance.\"\n\nHe tossed over, as he spoke, a crumpled sheet of foreign notepaper. I glanced my eyes down it, catching a profusion of notes of admiration, with stray magnifiques, coup-de-ma\u00eetres and tours-de-force, all testifying to the ardent admiration of the Frenchman.\n\n\"He speaks as a pupil to his master,\" said I.\n\n\"Oh, he rates my assistance too highly,\" said Sherlock Holmes lightly. \"He has considerable gifts himself. He possesses two out of the three qualities necessary for the ideal detective. He has the power of observation and that of deduction. He is only wanting in knowledge, and that may come in time. He is now translating my small works into French.\"\n\n\"Your works?\"\n\n\"Oh, didn't you know?\" he cried, laughing. \"Yes, I have been guilty of several monographs. They are all upon technical subjects. Here, for example, is one 'Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos. ' In it I enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar, cigarette, and pipe tobacco, with coloured plates illustrating the difference in the ash. It is a point which is continually turning up in criminal trials, and which is sometimes of supreme importance as a clue. If you can say definitely, for example, that some murder had been done by a man who was smoking an Indian lunkah, it obviously narrows your field of search. To the trained eye there is as much difference between the black ash of a Trichinopoly and the white fluff of bird's-eye as there is between a cabbage and a potato.\"\n\n\"You have an extraordinary genius for minuti\u00e6,\" I remarked.\n\n\"I appreciate their importance. Here is my monograph upon the tracing of footsteps, with some remarks upon the uses of plaster of Paris as a preserver of impresses. Here, too, is a curious little work upon the influence of a trade upon the form of the hand, with lithotypes of the hands of slaters, sailors, cork-cutters, compositors, weavers, and diamond-polishers. That is a matter of great practical interest to the scientific detective\u2014especially in cases of unclaimed bodies, or in discovering the antecedents of criminals. But I weary you with my hobby.\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" I answered earnestly. \"It is of the greatest interest to me, especially since I have had the opportunity of observing your practical application of it. But you spoke just now of observation and deduction. Surely the one to some extent implies the other.\"\n\n\"Why, hardly,\" he answered, leaning back luxuriously in his armchair and sending up thick blue wreaths from his pipe. \"For example, observation shows me that you have been to the Wigmore Street Post-Office this morning, but deduction lets me know that when there you dispatched a telegram.\"\n\n\"Right!\" said I. \"Right on both points! But I confess that I don't see how you arrived at it. It was a sudden impulse upon my part, and I have mentioned it to no one.\"\n\n\"It is simplicity itself,\" he remarked, chuckling at my surprise\u2014\"so absurdly simple that an explanation is superfluous; and yet it may serve to define the limits of observation and of deduction. Observation tells me that you have a little reddish mould adhering to your instep. Just opposite the Wigmore Street Office they have taken up the pavement and thrown up some earth, which lies in such a way that it is difficult to avoid treading in it in entering. The earth is of this peculiar reddish tint which is found, as far as I know, nowhere else in the neighbourhood. So much is observation. The rest is deduction.\"\n\n\"How, then, did you deduce the telegram?\"\n\n\"Why, of course I knew that you had not written a letter, since I sat opposite to you all morning. I see also in your open desk there that you have a sheet of stamps and a thick bundle of postcards. What could you go into the post-office for, then, but to send a wire? Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.\"\n\n\"In this case it certainly is so,\" I replied after a little thought. The thing, however, is, as you say, of the simplest. Would you think me impertinent if I were to put your theories to a more severe test?\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" he answered, \"it would prevent me from taking a second dose of cocaine. I should be delighted to look into any problem which you might submit to me.\"\n\n\"I have heard you say it is difficult for a man to have any object in daily use without leaving the impress of his individuality upon it in such a way that a trained observer might read it. Now, I have here a watch which has recently come into my possession. Would you have the kindness to let me have an opinion upon the character or habits of the late owner?\"\n\nI handed him over the watch with some slight feeling of amusement in my heart, for the test was, as I thought, an impossible one, and I intended it as a lesson against the somewhat dogmatic tone which he occasionally assumed. He balanced the watch in his hand, gazed hard at the dial, opened the back, and examined the works, first with his naked eyes and then with a powerful convex lens. I could hardly keep from smiling at his crestfallen face when he finally snapped the case to and handed it back.\n\n\"There are hardly any data,\" he remarked. \"The watch has been recently cleaned, which robs me of my most suggestive facts.\"\n\n\"You are right,\" I answered. \"It was cleaned before being sent to me.\"\n\nIn my heart I accused my companion of putting forward a most lame and impotent excuse to cover his failure. What data could he expect from an uncleaned watch?\n\n\"Though unsatisfactory, my research has not been entirely barren,\" he observed, staring up at the ceiling with dreamy, lack-lustre eyes. \"Subject to your correction, I should judge that the watch belonged to your elder brother, who inherited it from your father.\"\n\n\"That you gather, no doubt, from the H. W. upon the back?\"\n\n\"Quite so. The W. suggests your own name. The date of the watch is nearly fifty years back, and the initials are as old as the watch: so it was made for the last generation. Jewellery usually descends to the eldest son, and he is most likely to have the same name as the father. Your father has, if I remember right, been dead many years. It has, therefore, been in the hands of your eldest brother.\"\n\n\"Right, so far,\" said I. \"Anything else?\"\n\n\"He was a man of untidy habits\u2014very untidy and careless. He was left with good prospects, but he threw away his chances, lived for some time in poverty with occasional short intervals of prosperity, and finally, taking to drink, he died. That is all I can gather.\"\n\nI sprang from my chair and limped impatiently about the room with considerable bitterness in my heart.\n\n\"This is unworthy of you, Holmes,\" I said. \"I could not have believed that you would have descended to this. You have made inquiries into the history of my unhappy brother, and you now pretend to deduce this knowledge in some fanciful way. You cannot expect me to believe that you have read all this from his old watch! It is unkind and, to speak plainly, has a touch of charlatanism in it.\"\n\n\"My dear doctor,\" said he kindly, \"pray accept my apologies. Viewing the matter as an abstract problem, I had forgotten how personal and painful a thing it might be to you. I assure you, however, that I never even knew that you had a brother until you handed me the watch.\"\n\n\"Then how in the name of all that is wonderful did you get these facts? They are absolutely correct in every particular.\"\n\n\"Ah, that is good luck. I could only say what was the balance of probability. I did not at all expect to be so accurate.\"\n\n\"But it was not mere guesswork?\"\n\n\"No, no: I never guess. It is a shocking habit\u2014destructive to the logical faculty. What seems strange to you is only so because you do not follow my train of thought or observe the small facts upon which large inferences may depend. For example. I began by stating that your brother was careless. When you observe the lower part of that watch-case you notice that it is not only dinted in two places but it is cut and marked all over from the habit of keeping other hard objects, such as coins or keys, in the same pocket. Surely it is no great feat to assume that a man who treats a fifty-guinea watch so cavalierly must be a careless man. Neither is it a very far-fetched inference that a man who inherits one article of such value is pretty well provided for in other respects.\"\n\nI nodded to show that I followed his reasoning.\n\n\"It is very customary for pawnbrokers in England, when they take a watch, to scratch the numbers of the ticket with a pin-point upon the inside of the case. It is more handy than a label as there is no risk of the number being lost or transposed. There are no less than four such numbers visible to my lens on the inside of this case. Inference\u2014that your brother was often at low water. Secondary inference\u2014that he had occasional bursts of prosperity, or he could not have redeemed the pledge. Finally, I ask you to look at the inner plate, which contains the keyhole. Look at the thousands of scratches all round the hole\u2014marks where the key has slipped. What sober man's key could have scored those grooves? But you will never see a drunkard's watch without them. He winds it at night, and he leaves these traces of his unsteady hand. Where is the mystery in all this?\"\n\n\"It is as clear as daylight,\" I answered. \"I regret the injustice which I did you. I should have had more faith in your marvellous faculty. May I ask whether you have any professional inquiry on foot at present?\"\n\n\"None. Hence the cocaine. I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the Street and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them? Crime is commonplace, existence is commonplace, and no qualities save those which are commonplace have any function upon earth.\"\n\nI had opened my mouth to reply to this tirade when, with a crisp knock, our landlady entered, bearing a card upon the brass salver.\n\n\"A young lady for you, sir,\" she said, addressing my companion.\n\n\"Miss Mary Morstan,\" he read. \"Hum! I have no recollection of the name. Ask the young lady to step up, Mrs. Hudson. Don't go, Doctor. I should prefer that you remain.\"" + }, + { + "title": "The Statement of the Case", + "text": "Miss Morstan entered the room with a firm step and an outward composure of manner. She was a blonde young lady, small, dainty, well gloved, and dressed in the most perfect taste. There was, however, a plainness and simplicity about her costume which bore with it a suggestion of limited means. The dress was a sombre grayish beige, untrimmed and unbraided, and she wore a small turban of the same dull hue, relieved only by a suspicion of white feather in the side. Her face had neither regularity of feature nor beauty of complexion, but her expression was sweet and amiable, and her large blue eyes were singularly spiritual and sympathetic. In an experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents, I have never looked upon a face which gave a clearer promise of a refined and sensitive nature. I could not but observe that as she took the seat which Sherlock Holmes placed for her, her lip trembled, her hand quivered, and she showed every sign of intense inward agitation.\n\n\"I have come to you, Mr. Holmes,\" she said, \"because you once enabled my employer, Mrs. Cecil Forrester, to unravel a little domestic complication. She was much impressed by your kindness and skill.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Cecil Forrester,\" he repeated thoughtfully. \"I believe that I was of some slight service to her. The case, however, as I remember it, was a very simple one.\"\n\n\"She did not think so. But at least you cannot say the same of mine. I can hardly imagine anything more strange, more utterly inexplicable, than the situation in which I find myself.\"\n\nHolmes rubbed his hands, and his eyes glistened. He leaned forward in his chair with an expression of extraordinary concentration upon his clear-cut, hawklike features.\n\n\"State your case,\" said he in brisk business tones.\n\nI felt that my position was an embarrassing one.\n\n\"You will, I am sure, excuse me,\" I said, rising from my chair.\n\nTo my surprise, the young lady held up her gloved hand to detain me.\n\n\"If your friend,\" she said, \"would be good enough to stop, he might be of inestimable service to me.\"\n\nI relapsed into my chair.\n\n\"Briefly,\" she continued, \"the facts are these. My father was an officer in an Indian regiment, who sent me home when I was quite a child. My mother was dead, and I had no relative in England. I was placed, however, in a comfortable boarding establishment at Edinburgh, and there I remained until I was seventeen years of age. In the year 1878 my father, who was senior captain of his regiment, obtained twelve months' leave and came home. He telegraphed to me from London that he had arrived all safe and directed me to come down at once, giving the Langham Hotel as his address. His message, as I remember, was full of kindness and love. On reaching London I drove to the Langham and was informed that Captain Morstan was staying there, but that he had gone out the night before and had not returned. I waited all day without news of him. That night, on the advice of the manager of the hotel, I communicated with the police, and next morning we advertised in all the papers. Our inquiries led to no result; and from that day to this no word has ever been heard of my unfortunate father. He came home with his heart full of hope to find some peace, some comfort, and instead\u2014\"\n\nShe put her hand to her throat, and a choking sob cut short the sentence.\n\n\"The date?\" asked Holmes, opening his notebook.\n\n\"He disappeared upon the third of December, 1878\u2014nearly ten years ago.\"\n\n\"His luggage?\"\n\n\"Remained at the hotel. There was nothing in it to suggest a clue\u2014some clothes, some books, and a considerable number of curiosities from the Andaman Islands. He had been one of the officers in charge of the convict-guard there.\"\n\n\"Had he any friends in town?\"\n\n\"Only one that we know of\u2014Major Sholto, of his own regiment, the Thirty-fourth Bombay Infantry. The major had retired some little time before and lived at Upper Norwood. We communicated with him, of course, but he did not even know that his brother officer was in England.\"\n\n\"A singular case,\" remarked Holmes.\n\n\"I have not yet described to you the most singular part. About six years ago\u2014to be exact, upon the fourth of May, 1882\u2014an advertisement appeared in the Times asking for the address of Miss Mary Morstan, and stating that it would be to her advantage to come forward. There was no name or address appended. I had at that time just entered the family of Mrs. Cecil Forrester in the capacity of governess. By her advice I published my address in the advertisement column. The same day there arrived through the post a small cardboard box addressed to me, which I found to contain a very large and lustrous pearl. No word of writing was enclosed. Since then every year upon the same date there has always appeared a similar box, containing a similar pearl, without any clue as to the sender. They have been pronounced by an expert to be of a rare variety and of considerable value. You can see for yourself that they are very handsome.\"\n\nShe opened a flat box as she spoke and showed me six of the finest pearls that I had ever seen.\n\n\"Your statement is most interesting,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"Has anything else occurred to you?\"\n\n\"Yes, and no later than to-day. That is why I have come to you. This morning I received this letter, which you will perhaps read for yourself.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Holmes. \"The envelope, too, please. Post-mark, London, S. W. Date, July 7. Hum! Man's thumbmark on corner\u2014probably postman. Best quality paper. Envelopes at sixpence a packet. Particular man in his stationery. No address.\n\n\"Be at the third pillar from the left outside the Lyceum Theatre tonight at seven o'clock. If you are distrustful bring two friends. You are a wronged woman and shall have justice. Do not bring police. If you do, all will be in vain. Your unknown friend.\"\n\nWell, really, this is a very pretty little mystery! What do you intend to do, Miss Morstan?\"\n\n\"That is exactly what I want to ask you.\"\n\n\"Then we shall most certainly go\u2014you and I and\u2014yes, why Dr. Watson is the very man. Your correspondent says two friends. He and I have worked together before.\"\n\n\"But would he come?\" she asked with something appealing in her voice and expression.\n\n\"I shall be proud and happy,\" said I fervently. \"if I can be of any service.\"\n\n\"You are both very kind,\" she answered. \"I have led a retired life and have no friends whom I could appeal to. If I am here at six it will do, I suppose?\"\n\n\"You must not be later,\" said Holmes. \"There is one other point, however. Is this handwriting the same as that upon the pearl-box addresses?\"\n\n\"I have them here,\" she answered, producing half a dozen pieces of paper.\n\n\"You are certainly a model client. You have the correct intuition. Let us see, now.\" He spread out the papers upon the table and gave little darting glances from one to the other. \"They are disguised hands, except the letter,\" he said presently; \"but there can be no question as to the authorship. See how the irrepressible Greek e will break out, and see the twirl of the final s. They are undoubtedly by the same person. I should not like to suggest false hopes, Miss Morstan, but is there any resemblance between this hand and that of your father?\"\n\n\"Nothing could be more unlike.\"\n\n\"I expected to hear you say so. We shall look out for you, then, at six. Pray allow me to keep the papers. I may look into the matter before then. It is only half-past three. Au revoir, then.\"\n\n\"Au revoir,\" said our visitor; and with a bright, kindly glance from one to the other of us, she replaced her pearl-box in her bosom and hurried away.\n\nStanding at the window, I watched her walking briskly down the street until the gray turban and white feather were but a speck in the sombre crowd.\n\n\"What a very attractive woman!\" I exclaimed, turning to my companion.\n\nHe had lit his pipe again and was leaning back with drooping eyelids. \"Is she?\" he said languidly; \"I did not observe.\"\n\n\"You really are an automaton\u2014a calculating machine,\" I cried. \"There is something positively inhuman in you at times.\"\n\nHe smiled gently.\n\n\"It is of the first importance,\" he cried, \"not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellent man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.\"\n\n\"In this case, however\u2014\"\n\n\"I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule. Have you ever had occasion to study character in handwriting? What do you make of this fellow's scribble?\"\n\n\"It is legible and regular,\" I answered. \"A man of business habits and some force of character.\"\n\nHolmes shook his head.\n\n\"Look at his long letters,\" he said. \"They hardly rise above the common herd. That d might be an a, and that l an e. Men of character always differentiate their long letters, however illegibly they may write. There is vacillation in his k's and self-esteem in his capitals. I am going out now. I have some few references to make. Let me recommend this book\u2014one of the most remarkable ever penned. It is Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man. I shall be back in an hour.\"\n\nI sat in the window with the volume in my hand, but my thoughts were far from the daring speculations of the writer. My mind ran upon our late visitor\u2014her smiles, the deep rich tones of her voice, the strange mystery which overhung her life. If she were seventeen at the time of her father's disappearance she must be seven-and-twenty now\u2014a sweet age, when youth has lost its self-consciousness and become a little sobered by experience. So I sat and mused until such dangerous thoughts came into my head that I hurried away to my desk and plunged furiously into the latest treatise upon pathology. What was I, an army surgeon with a weak leg and a weaker banking account, that I should dare to think of such things? She was a unit, a factor\u2014nothing more. If my future were black, it was better surely to face it like a man than to attempt to brighten it by mere will-o'-the-wisps of the imagination." + }, + { + "title": "In Quest of a Solution", + "text": "It was half-past five before Holmes returned. He was bright, eager, and inexcell entspirits, a mood which in his case alternated with fits of the blackest depression.\n\n\"There is no great mystery in this matter,\" he said, taking the cup of tea which I had poured out for him; \"the facts appear to admit of only one explanation.\"\n\n\"What! you have solved it already?\"\n\n\"Well, that would be too much to say. I have discovered a suggestive fact, that is all. It is, however, very suggestive: The details are still to be added. I have just found, on consulting the back files of the Times, that Major Sholto, of Upper Norwood, late of the Thirty-fourth Bombay Infantry, died upon the twenty-eighth of April, 1882.\"\n\n\"I may be very obtuse, Holmes, but I fail to see what this suggests.\"\n\n\"No? You surprise me. Look at it in this way, then. Captain Morstan disappears. The only person in London whom he could have visited is Major Sholto. Major Sholto denies having heard that he was in London. Four years later Sholto dies. Within a week of his death Captain Morstan's daughter receives a valuable present, which is repeated from year to year and now culminates in a letter which describes her as a wronged woman. What wrong can it refer to except this deprivation of her father? And why should the presents begin immediately after Sholto's death unless it is that Sholto's heir knows something of the mystery and desires to make compensation? Have you any alternative theory which will meet the facts?\"\n\n\"But what a strange compensation! And how strangely made! Why, too, should he write a letter now, rather than six years ago? Again, the letter speaks of giving her justice. What justice can she have? It is too much to suppose that her father is still alive. There is no other injustice in her case that you know of.\"\n\n\"There are difficulties; there are certainly difficulties,\" said Sherlock Holmes pensively; \"but our expedition of to-night will solve them all. Ah, here is a four-wheeler, and Miss Morstan is inside. Are you all ready? Then we had better go down, for it is a little past the hour.\"\n\nI picked up my hat and my heaviest stick, but I observed that Holmes took his revolver from his drawer and slipped it into his pocket. It was clear that he thought that our night's work might be a serious one.\n\nMiss Morstan was muffled in a dark cloak, and her sensitive face was composed but pale. She must have been more than woman if she did not feel some uneasiness at the strange enterprise upon which we were embarking, yet her self-control was perfect, and she readily answered the few additional questions which Sherlock Holmes put to her.\n\n\"Major Sholto was a very particular friend of Papa's,\" she said. \"His letters were full of allusions to the major. He and Papa were in command of the troops at the Andaman Islands, so they were thrown a great deal together. By the way, a curious paper was found in Papa's desk which no one could understand. I don't suppose that it is of the slightest importance, but I thought you might care to see it, so I brought it with me. It is here.\"\n\nHolmes unfolded the paper carefully and smoothed it out upon his knee. He then very methodically examined it all over with his double lens.\n\n\"It is paper of native Indian manufacture,\" he remarked. \"It has at some time been pinned to a board. The diagram upon it appears to be a plan of part of a large building with numerous halls, corridors, and passages. At one point is a small cross done in red ink, and above it is '3.37 from left,' in faded pencil-writing. In the left-hand corner is a curious hieroglyphic like four crosses in a line with their arms touching. Beside it is written, in very rough and coarse characters, 'The sign of the four\u2014Jonathan Small, Mahomet Singh, Abdullah Khan, Dost Akbar.' No, I confess that I do not see how this bears upon the matter. Yet it is evidently a document of importance. It has been kept carefully in a pocketbook, for the one side is as clean as the other.\"\n\n\"It was in his pocketbook that we found it.\"\n\n\"Preserve it carefully, then, Miss Morstan, for it may prove to be of use to us. I begin to suspect that this matter may turn out to be much deeper and more subtle than I at first supposed. I must reconsider my ideas.\"\n\nHe leaned back in the cab, and I could see by his drawn brow and his vacant eye that he was thinking intently. Miss Morstan and I chatted in an undertone about our present expedition and its possible outcome, but our companion maintained his impenetrable reserve until the end of our journey.\n\nIt was a September evening and not yet seven o'clock, but the day had been a dreary one, and a dense drizzly fog lay low upon the great city. Mud-coloured clouds drooped sadly over the muddy streets. Down the Strand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light which threw a feeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement. The yellow glare from the shop-windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air and threw a murky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare. There was, to my mind, something eerie and ghostlike in the endless procession of faces which flitted across these narrow bars of light\u2014sad faces and glad, haggard and merry. Like all humankind, they flitted from the gloom into the light and so back into the gloom once more. I am not subject to impressions, but the dull, heavy evening, with the strange business upon which we were engaged, combined to make me nervous and depressed. I could see from Miss Morstan's manner that she was suffering from the same feeling. Holmes alone could rise superior to petty influences. He held his open notebook upon his knee, and from time to time he jotted down figures and memoranda in the light of his pocket-lantern.\n\nAt the Lyceum Theatre the crowds were already thick at the side-entrances. In front a continuous stream of hansoms and four-wheelers were rattling up, discharging their cargoes of shirt-fronted men and be-shawled, bediamonded women. We had hardly reached the third pillar, which was our rendezvous, before a small, dark, brisk man in the dress of a coachman accosted us.\n\n\"Are you the parties who come with Miss Morstan?\" he asked.\n\n\"I am Miss Morstan, and these two gentlemen are my friends,\" said she.\n\nHe bent a pair of wonderfully penetrating and questioning eyes upon us.\n\n\"You will excuse me, miss,\" he said with a certain dogged manner, \"but I was to ask you to give me your word that neither of your companions is a police-officer.\"\n\n\"I give you my word on that,\" she answered.\n\nHe gave a shrill whistle, on which a street Arab led across a four-wheeler and opened the door. The man who had addressed us mounted to the box, while we took our places inside. We had hardly done so before the driver whipped up his horse, and we plunged away at a furious pace through the foggy streets.\n\nThe situation was a curious one. We were driving to an unknown place, on an unknown errand. Yet our invitation was either a complete hoax\u2014which was an inconceivable hypothesis\u2014or else we had good reason to think that important issues might hang upon our journey. Miss Morstan's demeanour was as resolute and collected as ever. I endeavoured to cheer and amuse her by reminiscences of my adventures in Afghanistan; but, to tell the truth, I was myself so excited at our situation and so curious as to our destination that my stories were slightly involved. To this day she declares that I told her one moving anecdote as to how a musket looked into my tent at the dead of night, and how I fired a double-barrelled tiger cub at it. At first I had some idea as to the direction in which we were driving; but soon, what with our pace, the fog, and my own limited knowledge of London, I lost my bearings and knew nothing save that we seemed to be going a very long way. Sherlock Holmes was never at fault, however, and he muttered the names as the cab rattled through squares and in and out by tortuous by-streets.\n\n\"Rochester Row,\" said he. \"Now Vincent Square. Now we come out on the Vauxhall Bridge Road. We are making for the Surrey side apparently. Yes, I thought so. Now we are on the bridge. You can catch glimpses of the river.\"\n\nWe did indeed get a fleeting view of a stretch of the Thames, with the lamps shining upon the broad, silent water; but our cab dashed on and was soon involved in a labyrinth of streets upon the other side.\n\n\"Wordsworth Road,\" said my companion. \"Priory Road. Lark Hall Lane. Stockwell Place. Robert Street. Cold Harbour Lane. Our quest does not appear to take us to very fashionable regions.\"\n\nWe had indeed reached a questionable and forbidding neighbourhood. Long lines of dull brick houses were only relieved by the coarse glare and tawdry brilliancy of public-houses at the corner. Then came rows of two-storied villas, each with a fronting of miniature garden, and then again interminable lines of new, staring brick buildings\u2014the monster tentacles which the giant city was throwing out into the country. At last the cab drew up at the third house in a new terrace. None of the other houses were inhabited, and that at which we stopped was as dark as its neighbours, save for a single glimmer in the kitchen-window. On our knocking, however, the door was instantly thrown open by a Hindoo servant, clad in a yellow turban, white loose-fitting clothes, and a yellow sash. There was something strangely incongruous in this Oriental figure framed in the commonplace doorway of a third-rate suburban dwelling-house.\n\n\"The sahib awaits you,\" said he, and even as he spoke, there came a high, piping voice from some inner room.\n\n\"Show them in to me, khitmutgar,\" it said. \"Show them straight in to me.\"" + }, + { + "title": "The Story of the Bald-Headed Man", + "text": "We followed the Indian down a sordid and common passage, ill-lit and worse furnished, until he came to a door upon the right, which he threw open. A blaze of yellow light streamed out upon us, and in the centre of the glare there stood a small man with a very high head, a bristle of red hair all round the fringe of it, and a bald, shining scalp which shot out from among it like a mountain-peak from fir-trees. He writhed his hands together as he stood, and his features were in a perpetual jerk\u2014now smiling, now scowling, but never for an instant in repose. Nature had given him a pendulous lip, and a too visible line of yellow and irregular teeth, which he strove feebly to conceal by constantly passing his hand over the lower part of his face. In spite of his obtrusive baldness he gave the impression of youth. In point of fact, he had just turned his thirtieth year.\n\n\"Your servant, Miss Morstan,\" he kept repeating in a thin, high voice. \"Your servant, gentlemen. Pray step into my little sanctum. A small place, miss, but furnished to my own liking. An oasis of art in the howling desert of South London.\"\n\nWe were all astonished by the appearance of the apartment into which he invited us. In that sorry house it looked as out of place as a diamond of the first water in a setting of brass. The richest and glossiest of curtains and tapestries draped the walls, looped back here and there to expose some richly mounted painting or Oriental vase. The carpet was of amber and black, so soft and so thick that the foot sank pleasantly into it, as into a bed of moss. Two great tiger-skins thrown athwart it increased the suggestion of Eastern luxury, as did a huge hookah which stood upon a mat in the corner. A lamp in the fashion of a silver dove was hung from an almost invisible golden wire in the centre of the room. As it burned it filled the air with a subtle and aromatic odour.\n\n\"Mr. Thaddeus Sholto,\" said the little man, still jerking and smiling. \"That is my name. You are Miss Morstan, of course. And these gentlemen\u2014\"\n\n\"This is Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and this Dr. Watson.\"\n\n\"A doctor, eh?\" cried he, much excited. \"Have you your stethoscope? Might I ask you\u2014would you have the kindness? I have grave doubts as to my mitral valve, if you would be so very good. The aortic I may rely upon, but I should value your opinion upon the mitral.\"\n\nI listened to his heart, as requested, but was unable to find anything amiss, save, indeed, that he was in an ecstasy of fear, for he shivered from head to foot.\n\n\"It appears to be normal,\" I said. \"You have no cause for uneasiness.\"\n\n\"You will excuse my anxiety, Miss Morstan,\" he remarked airily. \"I am a great sufferer, and I have long had suspicions as to that valve. I am delighted to hear that they are unwarranted. Had your father, Miss Morstan, refrained from throwing a strain upon his heart, he might have been alive now.\"\n\nI could have struck the man across the face, so hot was I at this callous and offhand reference to so delicate a matter. Miss Morstan sat down, and her face grew white to the lips.\n\n\"I knew in my heart that he was dead,\" said she.\n\n\"I can give you every information,\" said he; \"and, what is more, I can do you justice; and I will, too, whatever Brother Bartholomew may say. I am so glad to have your friends here not only as an escort to you but also as witnesses to what I am about to do and say. The three of us can show a bold front to Brother Bartholomew. But let us have no outsiders\u2014no police or officials. We can settle everything satisfactorily among ourselves without any interference. Nothing would annoy Brother Bartholomew more than any publicity.\"\n\nHe sat down upon a low settee and blinked at us inquiringly with his weak, watery blue eyes.\n\n\"For my part,\" said Holmes, \"whatever you may choose to say will go no further.\"\n\nI nodded to show, my agreement.\n\n\"That is well! That is well!\" said he. \"May I offer you a glass of Chianti, Miss Morstan? Or of Tokay? I keep no other wines. Shall I open a flask? No? Well, then, I trust that you have no objection to tobacco-smoke, to the balsamic odour of the Eastern tobacco. I am a little nervous, and I find my hookah an invaluable sedative.\"\n\nHe applied a taper to the great bowl, and the smoke bubbled merrily through the rose-water. We sat all three in a semicircle, with our heads advanced and our chins upon our hands, while the strange, jerky little fellow, with his high, shining head, puffed uneasily in the centre.\n\n\"When I first determined to make this communication to you,\" said he, \"I might have given you my address; but I feared that you might disregard my request and bring unpleasant people with you. I took the liberty, therefore, of making an appointment in such a way that my man Williams might be able to see you first. I have complete confidence in his discretion, and he had orders, if he were dissatisfied, to proceed no further in the matter. You will excuse these precautions, but I am a man of somewhat retiring, and I might even say refined, tastes, and there is nothing more unesthetic than a policeman. I have a natural shrinking from all forms of rough materialism. I seldom come in contact with the rough crowd. I live, as you see, with some little atmosphere of elegance around me. I may call myself a patron of the arts. It is my weakness. The landscape is genuine Corot, and though a connoisseur might perhaps throw doubt upon that Salvator Rosa, there cannot be the least question about the Bouguereau. I am partial to the modern French school.\"\n\n\"You will excuse me, Mr. Sholto,\" said Miss Morstan, \"but I am here at your request to learn something which you desire to tell me. It is very late, and I should desire the interview to be as short as possible.\"\n\n\"At the best it must take some time,\" he answered; \"for we shall certainly have to go to Norwood and see Brother Bartholomew. We shall all go and try if we can get the better of Brother Bartholomew. He is very angry with me for taking the course which has seemed right to me. I had quite high words with him last night. You cannot imagine what a terrible fellow he is when he is angry.\"\n\n\"If we are to go to Norwood, it would perhaps be as well to start at once,\" I ventured to remark.\n\nHe laughed until his ears were quite red.\n\n\"That would hardly do,\" he cried. \"I don't know what he would say if I brought you in that sudden way. No, I must prepare you by showing you how we all stand to each other. In the first place, I must tell you that there are several points in the story of which I am myself ignorant. I can only lay the facts before you as far as I know them myself.\n\n\"My father was, as you may have guessed, Major John Sholto, once of the Indian Army. He retired some eleven years ago and came to live at Pondicherry Lodge in Upper Norwood. He had prospered in India and brought back with him a considerable sum of money, a large collection of valuable curiosities, and a staff of native servants. With these advantages he bought himself a house, and lived in great luxury. My twin-brother Bartholomew and I were the only children.\n\n\"I very well remember the sensation which was caused by the disappearance of Captain Morstan. We read the details in the papers, and knowing that he had been a friend of our father's we discussed the case freely in his presence. He used to join in our speculations as to what could have happened. Never for an instant did we suspect that he had the whole secret hidden in his own breast, that of all men he alone knew the fate of Arthur Morstan.\n\n\"We did know, however, that some mystery, some positive danger, overhung our father. He was very fearful of going out alone, and he always employed two prize-fighters to act as porters at Pondicherry Lodge. Williams, who drove you tonight, was one of them. He was once lightweight champion of England. Our father would never tell us what it was he feared, but he had a most marked aversion to men with wooden legs. On one occasion he actually fired his revolver at a wooden-legged man, who proved to be a harmless tradesman canvassing for orders. We had to pay a large sum to hush the matter up. My brother and I used to think this a mere whim of my father's, but events have since led us to change our opinion.\n\n\"Early in 1882 my father received a letter from India which was a great shock to him. He nearly fainted at the breakfast-table when he opened it, and from that day he sickened to his death. What was in the letter we could never discover, but I could see as he held it that it was short and written in a scrawling hand. He had suffered for years from an enlarged spleen, but he now became rapidly worse, and towards the end of April we were informed that he was beyond all hope, and that he wished to make a last communication to us.\n\n\"When we entered his room he was propped up with pillows and breathing heavily. He besought us to lock the door and to come upon either side of the bed. Then grasping our hands he made a remarkable statement to us in a voice which was broken as much by emotion as by pain. I shall try and give it to you in his own very words.\n\n\"'I have only one thing,' he said, 'which weighs upon my mind at this supreme moment. It is my treatment of poor Morstan's orphan. The cursed greed which has been my besetting sin through life has withheld from her the treasure, half at least of which should have been hers. And yet I have made no use of it myself, so blind and foolish a thing is avarice. The mere feeling of possession has been so dear to me that I could not bear to share it with another. See that chaplet tipped with pearls beside the quinine-bottle. Even that I could not bear to part with, although I had got it out with the design of sending it to her. You, my sons, will give her a fair share of the Agra treasure. But send her nothing\u2014not even the chaplet\u2014until I am gone. After all, men have been as bad as this and have recovered.\n\n\"'I will tell you how Morstan died,' he continued. 'He had suffered for years from a weak heart, but he concealed it from every one. I alone knew it. When in India, he and I, through a remarkable chain of circumstances, came into possession of a considerable treasure. I brought it over to England, and on the night of Morstan's arrival he came straight over here to claim his share. He walked over from the station and was admitted by my faithful old Lal Chowdar, who is now dead. Morstan and I had a difference of opinion as to the division of the treasure, and we came to heated words. Morstan had sprung out of his chair in a paroxysm of anger, when he suddenly pressed his hand to his side, his face turned a dusky hue, and he fell backward, cutting his head against the corner of the treasure-chest. When I stooped over him I found, to my horror, that he was dead.\n\n\"'For a long time I sat half distracted, wondering what I should do. My first impulse was, of course, to call for assistance; but I could not but recognize that there was every chance that I would be accused of his murder. His death at the moment of a quarrel, and the gash in his head, would be black against me. Again, an official inquiry could not be made without bringing out some facts about the treasure, which I was particularly anxious to keep secret. He had told me that no soul upon earth knew where he had gone. There seemed to be no necessity why any soul ever should know.\n\n\"'I was still pondering over the matter, when, looking up, I saw my servant, Lal Chowdar, in the doorway. He stole in and bolted the door behind him. \"Do not fear, sahib,\" he said; \"no one need know that you have killed him. Let us hide him away, and who is the wiser?\" \"I did not kill him,\" said I. Lal Chowdar shook his head and smiled. \"I heard it all, sahib,\" said he; \"I heard you quarrel, and I heard the blow. But my lips are sealed. All are asleep in the house. Let us put him away together.\" That was enough to decide me. If my own servant could not believe my innocence, how could I hope to make it good before twelve foolish tradesmen in a jury-box? Lal Chowdar and I disposed of the body that night, and within a few days the London papers were full of the mysterious disappearance of Captain Morstan. You will see from what I say that I can hardly be blamed in the matter. My fault lies in the fact that we concealed not only the body but also the treasure and that I have clung to Morstan's share as well as to my own. I wish you, therefore, to make restitution. Put your ears down to my mouth. The treasure is hidden in\u2014'\n\n\"At this instant a horrible change came over his expression; his eyes stared wildly, his jaw dropped, and he yelled in a voice which I can never forget, 'Keep him out! For Christ's sake keep him out!' We both stared round at the window behind us upon which his gaze was fixed. A face was looking in at us out of the darkness. We could see the whitening of the nose where it was pressed against the glass. It was a bearded, hairy face, with wild cruel eyes and an expression of concentrated malevolence. My brother and I rushed towards the window, but the man was gone. When we returned to my father his head had dropped and his pulse had ceased to beat.\n\n\"We searched the garden that night but found no sign of the intruder save that just under the window a single footmark was visible in the flower-bed. But for that one trace, we might have thought that our imaginations had conjured up that wild, fierce face. We soon, however, had another and a more striking proof that there were secret agencies at work all round us. The window of my father's room was found open in the morning, his cupboards and boxes had been rifled, and upon his chest was fixed a torn piece of paper with the words 'The sign of the four' scrawled across it. What the phrase meant or who our secret visitor may have been, we never knew. As far as we can judge, none of my father's property had been actually stolen, though everything had been turned out. My brother and I naturally associated this peculiar incident with the fear which haunted my father during his life, but it is still a complete mystery to us.\"\n\nThe little man stopped to relight his hookah and puffed thoughtfully for a few moments. We had all sat absorbed, listening to his extraordinary narrative. At the short account of her father's death Miss Morstan had turned deadly white, and for a moment I feared that she was about to faint. She rallied, however, on drinking a glass of water which I quietly poured out for her from a Venetian carafe upon the side-table. Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his chair with an abstracted expression and the lids drawn low over his glittering eyes. As I glanced at him I could not but think how on that very day he had complained bitterly of the common-placeness of life. Here at least was a problem which would tax his sagacity to the utmost. Mr. Thaddeus Sholto looked from one to the other of us with an obvious pride at the effect which his story had produced and then continued between the puffs of his overgrown pipe.\n\n\"My brother and I,\" said he, \"were, as you may imagine, much excited as to the treasure which my father had spoken of. For weeks and for months we dug and delved in every part of the garden without discovering its whereabouts. It was maddening to think that the hiding-place was on his very lips at the moment that he died. We could judge the splendour of the missing riches by the chaplet which he had taken out. Over this chaplet my brother Bartholomew and I had some little discussion. The pearls were evidently of great value, and he was averse to part with them, for, between friends, my brother was himself a little inclined to my father's fault. He thought, too, that if we parted with the chaplet it might give rise to gossip and finally bring us into trouble. It was all that I could do to persuade him to let me find out Miss Morstan's address and send her a detached pearl at fixed intervals so that at least she might never feel destitute.\"\n\n\"It was a kindly thought,\" said our companion earnestly; \"it was extremely good of you.\"\n\nThe little man waved his hand deprecatingly.\n\n\"We were your trustees,\" he said; \"that was the view which I took of it, though Brother Bartholomew could not altogether see it in that light. We had plenty of money ourselves. I desired no more. Besides, it would have been such bad taste to have treated a young lady in so scurvy a fashion. 'Le mauvais go\u00fbt m\u00e8ne au crime.' The French have a very neat way of putting these things. Our difference of opinion on this subject went so far that I thought it best to set up rooms for myself; so I left Pondicherry Lodge, taking the old khitmutgar and Williams with me. Yesterday, however, I learned that an event of extreme importance has occurred. The treasure has been discovered. I instantly communicated with Miss Morstan, and it only remains for us to drive out to Norwood and demand our share. I explained my views last night to Brother Bartholomew, so we shall be expected, if not welcome, visitors.\"\n\nMr. Thaddeus Sholto ceased and sat twitching on his luxurious settee. We all remained silent, with our thoughts upon the new development which the mysterious business had taken. Holmes was the first to spring to his feet.\n\n\"You have done well, sir, from first to last,\" said he. \"It is possible that we may be able to make you some small return by throwing some light upon that which is still dark to you. But, as Miss Morstan remarked just now, it is late, and we had best put the matter through without delay.\"\n\nOur new acquaintance very deliberately coiled up the tube of his hookah and produced from behind a curtain a very long befrogged topcoat with astrakhan collar and cuffs. This he buttoned tightly up in spite of the extreme closeness of the night and finished his attire by putting on a rabbit-skin cap with hanging lappets which covered the ears, so that no part of him was visible save his mobile and peaky face.\n\n\"My health is somewhat fragile,\" he remarked as he led the way down the passage. \"I am compelled to be a valetudinarian.\"\n\nOur cab was awaiting us outside, and our programme was evidently prearranged, for the driver started off at once at a rapid pace. Thaddeus Sholto talked incessantly in a voice which rose high above the rattle of the wheels.\n\n\"Bartholomew is a clever fellow,\" said he. \"How do you think he found out where the treasure was? He had come to the conclusion that it was somewhere indoors, so he worked out all the cubic space of the house and made measurements everywhere so that not one inch should be unaccounted for. Among other things, he found that the height of the building was seventy-four feet, but on adding together the heights of all the separate rooms and making every allowance for the space between, which he ascertained by borings, he could not bring the total to more than seventy feet. There were four feet unaccounted for. These could only be at the top of the building. He knocked a hole, therefore, in the lath and plaster ceiling of the highest room, and there, sure enough, he came upon another little garret above it, which had been sealed up and was known to no one. In the centre stood the treasure-chest resting upon two rafters. He lowered it through the hole, and there it lies. He computes the value of the jewels at not less than half a million sterling.\"\n\nAt the mention of this gigantic sum we all stared at one another open-eyed. Miss Morstan, could we secure her rights, would change from a needy governess to the richest heiress in England. Surely it was the place of a loyal friend to rejoice at such news, yet I am ashamed to say that selfishness took me by the soul and that my heart turned as heavy as lead within me. I stammered out some few halting words of congratulation and then sat downcast, with my head drooped, deaf to the babble of our new acquaintance. He was clearly a confirmed hypochondriac, and I was dreamily conscious that he was pouring forth interminable trains of symptoms, and imploring information as to the composition and action of innumerable quack nostrums, some of which he bore about in a leather ease in his pocket. I trust that he may not remember any of the answers which I gave him that night. Holmes declares that he overheard me caution him against the great danger of taking more than two drops of castor-oil, while I recommended strychnine in large doses as a sedative. However that may be, I was certainly relieved when our cab pulled up with a jerk and the coachman sprang down to open the door.\n\n\"This, Miss Morstan, is Pondicherry Lodge,\" said Mr. Thaddeus Sholto as he handed her out." + }, + { + "title": "Tragedy of Pondicherry Lodge", + "text": "It was nearly eleven o'clock when we reached this final stage of our night's adventures. We had left the damp fog of the great city behind us, and the night was fairly fine. A warm wind blew from the westward, and heavy clouds moved slowly across the sky, with half a moon peeping occasionally through the rifts. It was clear enough to see for some distance, but Thaddeus Sholto took down one of the sidelamps from the carriage to give us a better light upon our way.\n\nPondicherry Lodge stood in its own grounds and was girt round with a very high stone wall topped with broken glass. A single narrow iron-clamped door formed the only means of entrance. On this our guide knocked with a peculiar postman-like rat-tat.\n\n\"Who is there?\" cried a gruff voice from within.\n\n\"It is I, McMurdo. You surely know my knock by this time.\"\n\nThere was a grumbling sound and a clanking and jarring of keys. The door swung heavily back, and a short, deep-chested man stood in the opening, with the yellow light of the lantern shining upon his protruded face and twinkling, distrustful eyes.\n\n\"That you, Mr. Thaddeus? But who are the others? I had no orders about them from the master.\"\n\n\"No, McMurdo? You surprise me! I told my brother last night that I should bring some friends.\"\n\n\"He hain't been out o' his rooms to-day, Mr. Thaddeus, and I have no orders. You know very well that I must stick to regulations. I can let you in, but your friends they must just stop where they are.\"\n\nThis was an unexpected obstacle. Thaddeus Sholto looked about him in a perplexed and helpless manner.\n\n\"This is too bad of you, McMurdo!\" he said. \"If I guarantee them, that is enough for you. There is the young lady, too. She cannot wait on the public road at this hour.\"\n\n\"Very sorry, Mr. Thaddeus,\" said the porter inexorably. \"Folk may be friends o' yours, and yet no friend o' the master's. He pays me well to do my duty; and my duty I'll do. I don't know none o' your friends.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes you do, McMurdo,\" cried Sherlock Holmes genially. \"I don't think you can have forgotten me. Don't you remember that amateur who fought three rounds with you at Alison's rooms on the night of your benefit four years back?\"\n\n\"Not Mr. Sherlock Holmes!\" roared the prize-fighter. \"God's truth! how could I have mistook you? If instead o' standin' there so quiet you had just stepped up and given me that cross-hit of yours under the jaw, I'd ha' known you without a question. Ah, you're one that has wasted your gifts, you have! You might have aimed high, if you had joined the fancy.\"\n\n\"You see, Watson, if all else fails me, I have still one of the scientific professions open to me,\" said Holmes, laughing. \"Our friend won't keep us out in the cold now, I am sure.\"\n\n\"In you come, sir, in you come\u2014you and your friends,\" he answered. \"Very sorry, Mr. Thaddeus, but orders are very strict. Had to be certain of your friends before I let them in.\"\n\nInside, a gravel path wound through desolate grounds to a huge clump of a house, square and prosaic, all plunged in shadow save where a moon-beam struck one corner and glimmered in a garret window. The vast size of the building, with its gloom and its deathly silence, struck a chill to the heart. Even Thaddeus Sholto seemed ill at ease, and the lantern quivered and rattled in his hand.\n\n\"I cannot understand it,\" he said. \"There must be some mistake. I distinctly told Bartholomew that we should be here, and yet there is no light in his window. I do not know what to make of it.\"\n\n\"Does he always guard the premises in this way?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"Yes; he has followed my father's custom. He was the favourite son you know, and I sometimes think that my father may have told him more than he ever told me. That is Bartholomew's window up there where the moonshine strikes. It is quite bright, but there is no light from within, I think.\"\n\n\"None,\" said Holmes. \"But I see the glint of a light in that little window beside the door.\"\n\n\"Ah, that is the housekeeper's room. That is where old Mrs. Bernstone sits. She can tell us all about it. But perhaps you would not mind waiting here for a minute or two, for if we all go in together, and she has had no word of our coming, she may be alarmed. But, hush! what is that?\"\n\nHe held up the lantern, and his hand shook until the circles of light flickered and wavered all round us. Miss Morstan seized my wrist, and we all stood, with thumping hearts, straining our ears. From the great black house there sounded through the silent night the saddest and most pitiful of sounds\u2014the shrill, broken whimpering of a frightened woman.\n\n\"It is Mrs. Bernstone,\" said Sholto. \"She is the only woman in the house. Wait here. I shall be back in a moment.\"\n\nHe hurried for the door and knocked in his peculiar way. We could see a tall old woman admit him and sway with pleasure at the very sight of him.\n\n\"Oh, Mr. Thaddeus, sir, I am so glad you have come! I am so glad you have come, Mr. Thaddeus, sir!\"\n\nWe heard her reiterated rejoicings until the door was closed and her voice died away into a muffled monotone.\n\nOur guide had left us the lantern. Holmes swung it slowly round and peered keenly at the house and at the great rubbish-heaps which cumbered the grounds. Miss Morstan and I stood together, and her hand was in mine. A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we two, who had never seen each other before that day, between whom no word or even look of affection had ever passed, and yet now in an hour of trouble our hands instinctively sought for each other. I have marvelled at it since, but at the time it seemed the most natural thing that I should go out to her so, and, as she has often told me, there was in her also the instinct to turn to me for comfort and protection. So we stood hand in hand like two children, and there was peace in our hearts for all the dark things that surrounded us.\n\n\"What a strange place!\" she said, looking round.\n\n\"It looks as though all the moles in England had been let loose in it. I have seen something of the sort on the side of a hill near Ballarat, where the prospectors had been at work.\"\n\n\"And from the same cause,\" said Holmes. \"These are the traces of the treasure-seekers. You must remember that they were six years looking for it. No wonder that the grounds look like a gravel-pit.\"\n\nAt that moment the door of the house burst open, and Thaddeus Sholto came running out, with his hands thrown forward and terror in his eyes.\n\n\"There is something amiss with Bartholomew!\" he cried. \"I am frightened! My nerves cannot stand it.\"\n\nHe was, indeed, half blubbering with fear, and his twitching, feeble face peeping out from the great astrakhan collar had the helpless, appealing expression of a terrified child.\n\n\"Come into the house,\" said Holmes in his crisp, firm way.\n\n\"Yes, do!\" pleaded Thaddeus Sholto. \"I really do not feel equal to giving directions.\"\n\nWe all followed him into the housekeeper's room, which stood upon the lefthand side of the passage. The old woman was pacing up and down with a scared look and restless, picking fingers, but the sight of Miss Morstan appeared to have a soothing effect upon her.\n\n\"God bless your sweet, calm face!\" she cried with a hysterical sob. \"It does me good to see you. Oh, but I have been sorely tried this day!\"\n\nOur companion patted her thin, work-worn hand and murmured some few words of kindly, womanly comfort which brought the colour back into the other's bloodless cheeks.\n\n\"Master has locked himself in and will not answer me,\" she explained. \"All day I have waited to hear from him, for he often likes to be alone; but an hour ago I feared that something was amiss, so I went up and peeped through the keyhole. You must go up, Mr. Thaddeus\u2014you must go up and look for yourself. I have seen Mr. Bartholomew Sholto in joy and in sorrow for ten long years, but I never saw him with such a face on him as that.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes took the lamp and led the way, for Thaddeus Sholto's teeth were chattering in his head. So shaken was he that I had to pass my hand under his arm as we went up the stairs, for his knees were trembling under him. Twice as we ascended, Holmes whipped his lens out of his pocket and carefully examined marks which appeared to me to be mere shapeless smudges of dust upon the cocoanut-matting which served as a stair-carpet. He walked slowly from step to step, holding the lamp low, and shooting keen glances to right and left. Miss Morstan had remained behind with the frightened housekeeper.\n\nThe third flight of stairs ended in a straight passage of some length, with a great picture in Indian tapestry upon the right of it and three doors upon the left. Holmes advanced along it in the same slow and methodical way, while we kept close at his heels, with our long black shadows streaming backward down the corridor. The third door was that which we were seeking. Holmes knocked without receiving any answer, and then tried to turn the handle and force it open. It was locked on the inside, however, and by a broad and powerful bolt, as we could see when we set our lamp up against it. The key being turned, however, the hole was not entirely closed. Sherlock Holmes bent down to it and instantly rose again with a sharp intaking of the breath.\n\n\"There is something devilish in this, Watson,\" said he, more moved than I had ever before seen him. \"What do you make of it?\"\n\nI stooped to the hole and recoiled in horror. Moonlight was streaming into the room, and it was bright with a vague and shifty radiance. Looking straight at me and suspended, as it were, in the air, for all beneath was in shadow, there hung a face\u2014the very face of our companion Thaddeus. There was the same high, shining head, the same circular bristle of red hair, the same bloodless countenance. The features were set, however, in a horrible smile, a fixed and unnatural grin, which in that still and moon-lit room was more jarring to the nerves than any scowl or contortion. So like was the face to that of our little friend that I looked round at him to make sure that he was indeed with us. Then I recalled to mind that he had mentioned to us that his brother and he were twins.\n\n\"This is terrible!\" I said to Holmes. \"What is to be done?\"\n\n\"The door must come down,\" he answered, and springing against it, he put all his weight upon the lock.\n\nIt creaked and groaned but did not yield. Together we flung ourselves upon it once more, and this time it gave way with a sudden snap, and we found ourselves within Bartholomew Sholto's chamber.\n\nIt appeared to have been fitted up as a chemical laboratory. A double line of glass-stoppered bottles was drawn up upon the wall opposite the door, and the table was littered over with Bunsen burners, test-tubes, and retorts. In the corners stood carboys of acid in wicker baskets. One of these appeared to leak or to have been broken, for a stream of dark-coloured liquid had trickled out from it, and the air was heavy with a peculiarly pungent, tarlike odour. A set of steps stood at one side of the room in the midst of a litter of lath and plaster, and above them there was an opening in the ceiling large enough for a man to pass through. At the foot of the steps a long coil of rope was thrown carelessly together.\n\nBy the table in a wooden armchair the master of the house was seated all in a heap, with his head sunk upon his left shoulder and that ghastly, inscrutable smile upon his face. He was stiff and cold and had clearly been dead many hours. It seemed to me that not only his features but all his limbs were twisted and turned in the most fantastic fashion. By his hand upon the table there lay a peculiar instrument\u2014a brown, close-grained stick, with a stone head like a hammer, rudely lashed on with coarse twine. Beside it was a torn sheet of note-paper with some words scrawled upon it. Holmes glanced at it and then handed it to me.\n\n\"You see,\" he said with a significant raising of the eyebrows.\n\nIn the light of the lantern I read with a thrill of horror, \"The sign of the four.\"\n\n\"In God's name, what does it all mean?\" I asked.\n\n\"It means murder,\" said he, stooping over the dead man. \"Ah! I expected it. Look here!\"\n\nHe pointed to what looked like a long dark thorn stuck in the skin just above the ear.\n\n\"It looks like a thorn,\" said I.\n\n\"It is a thorn. You may pick it out. But be careful, for it is poisoned.\"\n\nI took it up between my finger and thumb. It came away from the skin so readily that hardly any mark was left behind. One tiny speck of blood showed where the puncture had been.\n\n\"This is all an insoluble mystery to me,\" said I. \"It grows darker instead of clearer.\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" he answered, \"it clears every instant. I only require a few missing links to have an entirely connected case.\"\n\nWe had almost forgotten our companion's presence since we entered the chamber. He was still standing in the doorway, the very picture of terror, wringing his hands and moaning to himself. Suddenly, however, he broke out into a sharp, querulous cry.\n\n\"The treasure is gone!\" he said. \"They have robbed him of the treasure! There is the hole through which we lowered it. I helped him to do it! I was the last person who saw him! I left him here last night, and I heard him lock the door as I came downstairs.\"\n\n\"What time was that?\"\n\n\"It was ten o'clock. And now he is dead, and the police will be called in, and I shall be suspected of having had a hand in it. Oh, yes, I am sure I shall. But you don't think so, gentlemen? Surely you don't think that it was I? Is it likely that I would have brought you here if it were I? Oh, dear! oh, dear! I know that I shall go mad!\"\n\nHe jerked his arms and stamped his feet in a kind of convulsive frenzy.\n\n\"You have no reason for fear, Mr. Sholto,\" said Holmes kindly, putting his hand upon his shoulder; \"take my advice and drive down to the station to report the matter to the police. Offer to assist them in every way. We shall wait here until your return.\"\n\nThe little man obeyed in a half-stupefied fashion, and we heard him stumbling down the stairs in the dark." + }, + { + "title": "Sherlock Holmes Gives a Demonstration", + "text": "\"Now, Watson,\" said Holmes, rubbing his hands, \"we have half an hour to ourselves. Let us make good use of it. My case is, as I have told you, almost complete; but we must not err on the side of overconfidence. Simple as the case seems now, there may be something deeper underlying it.\"\n\n\"Simple!\" I ejaculated.\n\n\"Surely,\" said he with something of the air of a clinical professor expounding to his class. \"Just sit in the corner there, that your footprints may not complicate matters. Now to work! In the first place, how did these folk come and how did they go? The door has not been opened since last night. How of the window?\" He carried the lamp across to it, muttering his observations aloud the while but addressing them to himself rather than to me. \"Window is snibbed on the inner side. Framework is solid. No hinges at the side. Let us open it. No water-pipe near. Roof quite out of reach. Yet a man has mounted by the window. It rained a little last night. Here is the print of a foot in mould upon the sill. And here is a circular muddy mark, and here again upon the floor, and here again by the table. See here, Watson! This is really a very pretty demonstration.\"\n\nI looked at the round, well-defined muddy discs.\n\n\"That is not a footmark,\" said I.\n\n\"It is something much more valuable to us. It is the impression of a wooden stump. You see here on the sill is the boot-mark, a heavy boot with a broad metal heel, and beside it is the mark of the timber-toe.\"\n\n\"It is the wooden-legged man.\"\n\n\"Quite so. But there has been someone else\u2014a very able and efficient ally. Could you scale that wall, Doctor?\"\n\nI looked out of the open window. The moon still shone brightly on that angle of the house. We were a good sixty feet from the ground, and, look where I would, I could see no foothold, nor as much as a crevice in the brickwork.\n\n\"It is absolutely impossible,\" I answered.\n\n\"Without aid it is so. But suppose you had a friend up here who lowered you this good stout rope which I see in the corner, securing one end of it to this great hook in the wall. Then, I think, if you were an active man, you might swarm up, wooden leg and all. You would depart, of course, in the same fashion, and your ally would draw up the rope, untie it from the hook, shut the window, snib it on the inside, and get away in the way that he originally came. As a minor point, it may be noted,\" he continued, fingering the rope, \"that our wooden-legged friend, though a fair climber, was not a professional sailor. His hands were far from horny. My lens discloses more than one blood-mark, especially towards the end of the rope, from which I gather that he slipped down with such velocity that he took the skin off his hands.\"\n\n\"This is all very well,\" said I; \"but the thing becomes more unintelligible than ever. How about this mysterious ally? How came he into the room?\"\n\n\"Yes, the ally!\" repeated Holmes pensively. \"There are features of interest about this ally. He lifts the case from the regions of the commonplace. I fancy that this ally breaks fresh ground in the annals of crime in this country\u2014though parallel cases suggest themselves from India and, if my memory serves me, from Senegambia.\n\n\"How came he, then?\" I reiterated. \"The door is locked; the window is inaccessible. Was it through the chimney?\"\n\n\"The grate is much too small,\" he answered. \"I had already considered that possibility.\"\n\n\"How, then?\" I persisted.\n\n\"You will not apply my precept,\" he said, shaking his head. \"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? We know that he did not come through the door, the window, or the chimney. We also know that he could not have been concealed in the room, as there is no concealment possible. When, then, did he come?\"\n\n\"He came through the hole in the roof!\" I cried.\n\n\"Of course he did. He must have done so. If you will have the kindness to hold the lamp for me, we shall now extend our researches to the room above\u2014the secret room in which the treasure was found.\"\n\nHe mounted the steps, and, seizing a rafter with either hand, he swung himself up into the garret. Then, lying on his face, he reached down for the lamp and held it while I followed him.\n\nThe chamber in which we found ourselves was about ten feet one way and six the other. The floor was formed by the rafters, with thin lath and plaster between, so that in walking one had to step from beam to beam. The roof ran up to an apex and was the evidently inner shell of the true roof of the house. There was no furniture of any sort, and the accumulated dust of years lay thick upon the floor.\n\n\"Here you are, you see,\" said Sherlock Holmes, putting his hand against the sloping wall. \"This is a trapdoor which leads out on to the roof. I can press it back, and here is the roof itself, sloping at a gentle angle. This, then, is the way by which Number One entered. Let us see if we can find some other traces of his individuality?\"\n\nHe held down the lamp to the floor, and as he did so I saw for the second time that night a startled, surprised look come over his face. For myself, as I followed his gaze, my skin was cold under my clothes. The floor was covered thickly with the prints of a naked foot\u2014clear, well-defined, perfectly formed, but scarce half the size of those of an ordinary man.\n\n\"Holmes,\" I said in a whisper, \"a child has done this horrid thing.\"\n\nHe had recovered his self-possession in an instant.\n\n\"I was staggered for the moment,\" he said, \"but the thing is quite natural. My memory failed me, or I should have been able to foretell it. There is nothing more to be learned here. Let us go down.\"\n\n\"What is your theory, then, as to those footmarks?\" I asked eagerly when we had regained the lower room once more.\n\n\"My dear Watson, try a little analysis yourself,\" said he with a touch of impatience. \"You know my methods. Apply them, and it will be instructive to compare results.\"\n\n\"I cannot conceive anything which will cover the facts,\" I answered.\n\n\"It will be clear enough to you soon,\" he said, in an offhand way. \"I think that there is nothing else of importance here, but I will look.\"\n\nHe whipped out his lens and a tape measure and hurried about the room on his knees, measuring, comparing, examining, with his long thin nose only a few inches from the planks and his beady eyes gleaming and deep-set like those of a bird. So swift, silent, and furtive were his movements, like those of a trained bloodhound picking out a scent, that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law instead of exerting them in its defence. As he hunted about, he kept muttering to himself, and finally he broke out into a loud crow of delight.\n\n\"We are certainly in luck,\" said he. \"We ought to have very little trouble now. Number One has had the misfortune to tread in the creosote. You can see the outline of the edge of his small foot here at the side of this evil-smelling mess. The carboy has been cracked, you see, and the stuff has leaked out.\"\n\n\"What then?\" I asked.\n\n\"Why, we have got him, that's all,\" said he.\n\n\"I know a dog that would follow that scent to the world's end. If a pack can track a trailed herring across a shire, how far can a specially trained hound follow so pungent a smell as this? It sounds like a sum in the rule of three. The answer should give us the\u2014But hallo! here are the accredited representatives of the law.\"\n\nHeavy steps and the clamour of loud voices were audible from below, and the hall door shut with a loud crash.\n\n\"Before they come,\" said Holmes, \"just put your hand here on this poor fellow's arm, and here on his leg. What do you feel?\"\n\n\"The muscles are as hard as a board,\" I answered.\n\n\"Quite so. They are in a state of extreme contraction, far exceeding the usual rigor mortis. Coupled with this distortion of the face, this Hippocratic smile, or '...risus sardonicus,' as the old writers called it, what conclusion would it suggest to your mind?\"\n\n\"Death from some powerful vegetable alkaloid,\" I answered, \"some strychnine-like substance which would produce tetanus.\"\n\n\"That was the idea which occurred to me the instant I saw the drawn muscles of the face. On getting into the room I at once looked for the means by which the poison had entered the system. As you saw, I discovered a thorn which had been driven or shot with no great force into the scalp. You observe that the part struck was that which would be turned towards the hole in the ceiling if the man were erect in his chair. Now examine this thorn.\"\n\nI took it up gingerly and held it in the light of the lantern. It was long, sharp, and black, with a glazed look near the point as though some gummy substance had dried upon it. The blunt end had been trimmed and rounded off with a knife.\n\n\"Is that an English thorn?\" he asked.\n\n\"No, it certainly is not.\"\n\n\"With all these data you should be able to draw some just inference. But here are the regulars, so the auxiliary forces may beat a retreat.\"\n\nAs he spoke, the steps which had been coming nearer sounded loudly on the passage, and a very stout, portly man in a gray suit strode heavily into the room. He was red-faced, burly, and plethoric, with a pair of very small twinkling eyes which looked keenly out from between swollen and puffy pouches. He was closely followed by an inspector in uniform and by the still palpitating Thaddeus Sholto.\n\n\"Here's a business!\" he cried in a muffled, husky voice. \"Here's a pretty business! But who are all these? Why, the house seems to be as full as a rabbit-warren!\"\n\n\"I think you must recollect me, Mr. Athelney Jones,\" said Holmes quietly.\n\n\"Why, of course I do!\" he wheezed. \"It's Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the theorist. Remember you! I'll never forget how you lectured us all on causes and inferences and effects in the Bishopgate jewel case. It's true you set us on the right track; but you'll own now that it was more by good luck than good guidance.\"\n\n\"It was a piece of very simple reasoning.\"\n\n\"Oh, come, now, come! Never be ashamed to own up. But what is all this? Bad business! Bad business! Stern facts here\u2014no room for theories. How lucky that I happened to be out at Norwood over another case! I was at the station when the message arrived. What d'you think the man died of?\"\n\n\"Oh, this is hardly a case for me to theorize over,\" said Holmes dryly.\n\n\"No, no. Still, we can't deny that you hit the nail on the head sometimes. Dear me! Door locked, I understand. Jewels worth half a million missing. How was the window?\"\n\n\"Fastened; but there are steps on the sill.\"\n\n\"Well, well, if it was fastened the steps could have nothing to do with the matter. That's common sense. Man might have died in a fit; but then the jewels are missing. Ha! I have a theory. These flashes come upon me at times.\u2014Just step outside, Sergeant, and you, Mr. Sholto. Your friend can remain.\u2014What do you think of this, Holmes? Sholto was, on his own confession, with his brother last night. The brother died in a fit, on which Sholto walked off with the treasure? How's that?\"\n\n\"On which the dead man very considerately got up and locked the door on the inside.\"\n\n\"Hum! There's a flaw there. Let us apply common sense to the matter. This Thaddeus Sholto was with his brother; there was a quarrel: so much we know. The brother is dead and the jewels are gone. So much also we know. No one saw the brother from the time Thaddeus left him. His bed had not been slept in. Thaddeus is evidently in a most disturbed state of mind. His appearance is\u2014well, not attractive. You see that I am weaving my web round Thaddeus. The net begins to close upon him.\"\n\n\"You are not quite in possession of the facts yet,\" said Holmes. \"This splinter of wood, which I have every reason to believe to be poisoned, was in the man's scalp where you still see the mark; this card, inscribed as you see it, was on the table, and beside it lay this rather curious stone-headed instrument. How does all that fit into your theory?\"\n\n\"Confirms it in every respect,\" said the fat detective pompously. \"House is full of Indian curiosities. Thaddeus brought this up, and if this splinter be poisonous Thaddeus may as well have made murderous use of it as any other man. The card is some hocus-pocus\u2014a blind, as like as not. The only question is, how did he depart? Ah, of course, here is a hole in the roof.\"\n\nWith great activity, considering his bulk, he sprang up the steps and squeezed through into the garret, and immediately afterwards we heard his exulting voice proclaiming that he had found the trapdoor.\n\n\"He can find something,\" remarked Holmes, shrugging his shoulders; \"he has occasional glimmerings of reason. I! n'y a pas des sots si incommodes que ceux qui ont de l'esprit!\"\n\n\"You see!\" said Athelney Jones, reappearing down the steps again; \"facts are better than theories, after all. My view of the case is confirmed. There is a trapdoor communicating with the roof, and it is partly open.\"\n\n\"It was I who opened it.\"\n\n\"Oh, indeed! You did notice it, then?\" He seemed a little crestfallen at the discovery. \"Well, whoever noticed it, it shows how our gentleman got away. Inspector!\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" from the passage.\n\n\"Ask Mr. Sholto to step this way.\u2014Mr. Sholto, it is my duty to inform you that anything which you may say will be used against you. I arrest you in the Queen's name as being concerned in the death of your brother.\"\n\n\"There, now! Didn't I tell you!\" cried the poor little man, throwing out his hands and looking from one to the other of us.\n\n\"Don't trouble yourself about it, Mr. Sholto,\" said Holmes; \"I think that I can engage to clear you of the charge.\"\n\n\"Don't promise too much, Mr. Theorist, don't promise too much!\" snapped the detective. \"You may find it a harder matter than you think.\"\n\n\"Not only will I clear him, Mr. Jones, but I will make you a free present of the name and description of one of the two people who were in this room last night. His name, I have every reason to believe, is Jonathan Small. He is a poorly educated man, small, active, with his right leg off, and wearing a wooden stump which is worn away upon the inner side. His left boot has a coarse, square-toed sole, with an iron band round the heel. He is a middle-aged man, much sunburned, and has been a convict. These few indications may be of some assistance to you, coupled with the fact that there is a good deal of skin missing from the palm of his hand. The other man\u2014\"\n\n\"Ah! the other man?\" asked Athelney Jones in a sneering voice, but impressed none the less, as I could easily see, by the precision of the other's manner.\n\n\"Is a rather curious person,\" said Sherlock Holmes, turning upon his heel. \"I hope before very long to be able to introduce you to the pair of them. A word with you, Watson.\"\n\nHe led me out to the head of the stair.\n\n\"This unexpected occurrence,\" he said, \"has caused us rather to lose sight of the original purpose of our journey.\"\n\n\"I have just been thinking so,\" I answered; \"it is not right that Miss Morstan should remain in this stricken house.\"\n\n\"No. You must escort her home. She lives with Mrs. Cecil Forrester in Lower Camberwell, so it is not very far. I will wait for you here if you will drive out again. Or perhaps you are too tired?\"\n\n\"By no means. I don't think I could rest until I know more of this fantastic business. I have seen something of the rough side of life, but I give you my word that this quick succession of strange surprises to-night has shaken my nerve completely. I should like, however, to see the matter through with you, now that I have got so far.\"\n\n\"Your presence will be of great service to me,\" he answered. \"We shall work the case out independently and leave this fellow Jones to exult, over any mare's-nest which he may choose to construct. When you have dropped Miss Morstan, I wish you to go on to No. 3 Pinchin Lane, down near the water's edge at Lambeth. The third house on the right-hand side is a bird-stuffer's; Sherman is the name. You will see a weasel holding a young rabbit in the window. Knock old Sherman up and tell him, with my compliments, that I want Toby at once. You will bring Toby back in the cab with you.\"\n\n\"A dog, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Yes, a queer mongrel with a most amazing power of scent. I would rather have Toby's help than that of the whole detective force of London.\"\n\n\"I shall bring him then,\" said I. \"It is one now. I ought to be back before three if I can get a fresh horse.\"\n\n\"And I,\" said Holmes, \"shall see what I can learn from Mrs. Bernstone and from the Indian servant, who, Mr. Thaddeus tells me, sleeps in the next garret. Then I shall study the great Jones's methods and listen to his not too delicate sarcasms.\n\n\"'Wir sind gewohnt dass die Menschen verh\u00f6hnen was sie nicht verstehen.'\n\n\"Goethe is always pithy.\"" + }, + { + "title": "The Episode of the Barrel", + "text": "The police had brought a cab with them, and in this I escorted Miss Morstan back to her home. After the angelic fashion of women, she had borne trouble with a calm face as long as there was someone weaker than herself to support, and I had found her bright and placid by the side of the frightened housekeeper. In the cab, however, she first turned faint and then burst into a passion of weeping\u2014so sorely had she been tried by the adventures of the night. She has told me since that she thought me cold and distant upon that journey. She little guessed the struggle within my breast, or the effort of self-restraint which held me back. My sympathies and my love went out to her, even as my hand had in the garden. I felt that years of the conventionalities of life could not teach me to know her sweet, brave nature as had this one day of strange experiences. Yet there were two thoughts which sealed the words of affection upon my lips. She was weak and helpless, shaken in mind and nerve. It was to take her at a disadvantage to obtrude love upon her at such a time. Worse still, she was rich. If Holmes's researches were successful, she would be an heiress. Was it fair, was it honourable, that a half-pay surgeon should take such advantage of an intimacy which chance had brought about? Might she not look upon me as a mere vulgar fortune-seeker? I could not bear to risk that such a thought should cross her mind. This Agra treasure intervened like an impassable barrier between us.\n\nIt was nearly two o'clock when we reached Mrs. Cecil Forrester's. The servants had retired hours ago, but Mrs. Forrester had been so interested by the strange message which Miss Morstan had received that she had sat up in the hope of her return. She opened the door herself, a middle-aged, graceful woman, and it gave me joy to see how tenderly her arm stole round the other's waist and how motherly was the voice in which she greeted her. She was clearly no mere paid dependant but an honoured friend. I was introduced, and Mrs. Forrester earnestly begged me to step in and tell her our adventures. I explained, however, the importance of my errand and promised faithfully to call and report any progress which we might make with the case. As we drove away I stole a glance back, and I still seem to see that little group on the step\u2014the two graceful, clinging figures, the half-opened door, the hall-light shining through stained glass, the barometer, and the bright stair-rods. It was soothing to catch even that passing glimpse of a tranquil English home in the midst of the wild, dark business which had absorbed us.\n\nAnd the more I thought of what had happened, the wilder and darker it grew. I reviewed the whole extraordinary sequence of events as I rattled on through the silent, gas-lit streets. There was the original problem: that at least was pretty clear now. The death of Captain Morstan, the sending of the pearls, the advertisement, the letter\u2014we had had light upon all those events. They had only led us, however, to a deeper and far more tragic mystery. The Indian treasure, the curious plan found among Morstan's baggage, the strange scene at Major Sholto's death, the rediscovery of the treasure immediately followed by the murder of the discoverer, the very singular accompaniments to the crime, the footsteps, the remarkable weapons, the words upon the card, corresponding with those upon Captain Morstan's chart\u2014here was indeed a labyrinth in which a man less singularly endowed than my fellow-lodger might well despair of ever finding the clue.\n\nPinchin Lane was a row of shabby, two-storied brick houses in the lower quarter of Lambeth. I had to knock for some time at No. 3 before I could make any impression. At last, however, there was the glint of a candle behind the blind, and a face looked out at the upper window.\n\n\"Go on, you drunken vagabond,\" said the face. \"If you kick up any more row, I'll open the kennels and let out forty-three dogs upon you.\"\n\n\"If you'll let one out, it's just what I have come for,\" said I.\n\n\"Go on!\" yelled the voice. \"So help me gracious, I have a wiper in this bag, and I'll drop it on your 'ead if you don't hook it!\"\n\n\"But I want a dog,\" I cried.\n\n\"I won't be argued with!\" shouted Mr. Sherman. \"Now stand clear; for when I say 'three,' down goes the wiper.\"\n\n\"Mr. Sherlock Holmes\u2014\" I began; but the words had a most magical effect, for the window instantly slammed down, and within a minute the door was unbarred and open. Mr. Sherman was a lanky, lean old man, with stooping shoulders, a stringy neck, and blue-tinted glasses.\n\n\"A friend of Mr. Sherlock is always welcome,\" said he. \"Step in, sir. Keep clear of the badger, for he bites. Ah, naughty, naughty; would you take a nip at the gentleman?\" This to a stoat which thrust its wicked head and red eyes between the bars of its cage. \"Don't mind that, sir; it's only a slowworm. It hain't got no fangs, so I gives it the run o' the room, for it keeps the beetles down. You must not mind my bein' just a little short wi' you at first, for I'm guyed at by the children, and there's many a one just comes down this lane to knock me up. What was it that Mr. Sherlock Holmes wanted, sir?\"\n\n\"He wanted a dog of yours.\"\n\n\"Ah! that would be Toby.\"\n\n\"Yes, Toby was the name.\"\n\n\"Toby lives at No. 7 on the left here.\"\n\nHe moved slowly forward with his candle among the queer animal family which he had gathered round him. In the uncertain, shadowy light I could see dimly that there were glancing, glimmering eyes peeping down at us from every cranny and corner. Even the rafters above our heads were lined by solemn fowls, who lazily shifted their weight from one leg to the other as our voices disturbed their slumbers.\n\nToby proved to be an ugly, long-haired, lop-eared creature, half spaniel and half lurcher, brown and white in colour, with a very clumsy, waddling gait. It accepted, after some hesitation, a lump of sugar which the old naturalist handed to me, and, having thus sealed an alliance, it followed me to the cab and made no difficulties about accompanying me. It had just struck three on the Palace clock when I found myself back once more at Pondicherry Lodge. The ex-prize-fighter McMurdo had, I found, been arrested as an accessory, and both he and Mr. Sholto had been marched off to the station. Two constables guarded the narrow gate, but they allowed me to pass with the dog on my mentioning the detective's name.\n\nHolmes was standing on the doorstep with his hands in his pockets, smoking his pipe.\n\n\"Ah, you have him there!\" said he. \"Good dog, then! Athelney Jones has gone. We have had an immense display of energy since you left. He has arrested not only friend Thaddeus but the gatekeeper, the housekeeper, and the Indian servant. We have the place to ourselves but for a sergeant upstairs. Leave the dog here and come up.\"\n\nWe tied Toby to the hall table and reascended the stairs. The room was as we had left it, save that a sheet had been draped over the central figure. A weary-looking police-sergeant reclined in the corner.\n\n\"Lend me your bull's eye, Sergeant,\" said my companion. \"Now tie this bit of cord round my neck, so as to hang it in front of me. Thank you. Now I must kick off my boots and stockings. Just you carry them down with you, Watson. I am going to do a little climbing. And dip my handkerchief into the creosote. That will do. Now come up into the garret with me for a moment.\"\n\nWe clambered up through the hole. Holmes turned his light once more upon the footsteps in the dust.\n\n\"I wish you particularly to notice these footmarks,\" he said. \"Do you observe anything noteworthy about them?\"\n\n\"They belong,\" I said, \"to a child or a small woman.\"\n\n\"Apart from their size, though. Is there nothing else?\"\n\n\"They appear to be much as other footmarks.\"\n\n\"Not at all. Look here! This is the print of a right foot in the dust. Now I make one with my naked foot beside it. What is the chief difference?\"\n\n\"Your toes are all cramped together. The other print has each toe distinctly divided.\"\n\n\"Quite so. That is the point. Bear that in mind. Now, would you kindly step over to that flap-window and smell the edge of the woodwork? I shall stay over here, as I have this handkerchief in my hand.\"\n\nI did as he directed and was instantly conscious of a strong tarry smell.\n\n\"That is where he put his foot in getting out. If you can trace him, I should think that Toby will have no difficulty. Now run downstairs, loose the dog, and look out for Blondin.\"\n\nBy the time that I got out into the grounds Sherlock Holmes was on the roof, and I could see him like an enormous glow-worm crawling very slowly along the ridge. I lost sight of him behind a stack of chimneys, but he presently reappeared and then vanished once more upon the opposite side. When I made my way round there I found him seated at one of the corner eaves.\n\n\"That you, Watson?\" he cried.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"This is the place. What is that black thing down there?\"\n\n\"A water-barrel.\"\n\n\"Top on it?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"No sign of a ladder?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Confound the fellow! It's a most breakneck place. I ought to be able to come down where he could climb up. The water-pipe feels pretty firm. Here goes, anyhow.\"\n\nThere was a scuffling of feet, and the lantern began to come steadily down the side of the wall. Then with a light spring he came on to the barrel, and from there to the earth.\n\n\"It was easy to follow him,\" he said, drawing on his stockings and boots. \"Tiles were loosened the whole way along, and in his hurry he had dropped this. It confirms my diagnosis, as you doctors express it.\"\n\nThe object which he held up to me was a small pocket or pouch woven out of coloured grasses and with a few tawdry beads strung round it. In shape and size it was not unlike a cigarette-case. Inside were half a dozen spines of dark wood, sharp at one end and rounded at the other, like that which had struck Bartholomew Sholto.\n\n\"They are hellish things,\" said he. \"Look out that you don't prick yourself. I'm delighted to have them, for the chances are that they are all he has. There is the less fear of you or me finding one in our skin before long. I would sooner face a Martini bullet, myself. Are you game for a six-mile trudge, Watson?\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" I answered.\n\n\"Your leg will stand it?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes.\"\n\n\"Here you are, doggy! Good old Toby! Smell it, Toby, smell it!\" He pushed the creosote handkerchief under the dog's nose, while the creature stood with its fluffy legs separated, and with a most comical cock to its head, like a connoisseur sniffing the bouquet of a famous vintage. Holmes then threw the handkerchief to a distance, fastened a stout cord to the mongrel's collar, and led him to the foot of the water-barrel. The creature instantly broke into a succession of high, tremulous yelps and, with his nose on the ground and his tail in the air, pattered off upon the trail at a pace which strained his leash and kept us at the top of our speed.\n\nThe east had been gradually whitening, and we could now see some distance in the cold gray light. The square, massive house, with its black, empty windows and high, bare walls, towered up, sad and forlorn, behind us. Our course led right across the grounds, in and out among the trenches and pits with which they were scarred and intersected. The whole place, with its scattered dirt-heaps and ill-grown shrubs, had a blighted, ill-omened look which harmonized with the black tragedy which hung over it.\n\nOn reaching the boundary wall Toby ran along, whining eagerly, underneath its shadow, and stopped finally in a corner screened by a young beech. Where the two walls joined, several bricks had been loosened, and the crevices left were worn down and rounded upon the lower side, as though they had frequently been used as a ladder. Holmes clambered up, and taking the dog from me he dropped it over upon the other side.\n\n\"There's the print of Wooden-leg's hand,\" he remarked as I mounted up beside him. \"You see the slight smudge of blood upon the white plaster. What a lucky thing it is that we have had no very heavy rain since yesterday! The scent will lie upon the road in spite of their eight-and-twenty hours' start.\"\n\nI confess that I had my doubts myself when I reflected upon the great traffic which had passed along the London road in the interval. My fears were soon appeased, however. Toby never hesitated or swerved but waddled on in his peculiar rolling fashion. Clearly the pungent smell of the creosote rose high above all other contending scents.\n\n\"Do not imagine,\" said Holmes, \"that I depend for my success in this case upon the mere chance of one of these fellows having put his foot in the chemical. I have knowledge now which would enable me to trace them in many different ways. This, however, is the readiest, and, since fortune has put it into our hands, I should be culpable if I neglected it. It has, however, prevented the case from becoming the pretty little intellectual problem which it at one time promised to be. There might have been some credit to be gained out of it but for this too palpable clue.\"\n\n\"There is credit, and to spare,\" said I. \"I assure you, Holmes, that I marvel at the means by which you obtain your results in this case even more than I did in the Jefferson Hope murder. The thing seems to me to be deeper and more inexplicable. How, for example, could you describe with such confidence the wooden-legged man?\"\n\n\"Pshaw, my dear boy! it was simplicity itself. I don't wish to be theatrical. It is all patent and above-board. Two officers who are in command of a convict-guard learn an important secret as to buried treasure. A map is drawn for them by an Englishman named Jonathan Small. You remember that we saw the name upon the chart in Captain Morstan's possession. He had signed it in behalf of himself and his associates\u2014the sign of the four, as he somewhat dramatically called it. Aided by this chart, the officers\u2014or one of them\u2014gets the treasure and brings it to England, leaving, we will suppose, some condition under which he received it unfulfilled. Now, then, why did not Jonathan Small get the treasure himself? The answer is obvious. The chart is dated at a time when Morstan was brought into close association with convicts. Jonathan Small did not get the treasure because he and his associates were themselves convicts and could not get away.\"\n\n\"But this is mere speculation,\" said I.\n\n\"It is more than that. It is the only hypothesis which covers the facts. Let us see how it fits in with the sequel. Major Sholto remains at peace for some years, happy in the possession of his treasure. Then he receives a letter from India which gives him a great fright. What was that?\"\n\n\"A letter to say that the men whom he had wronged had been set free.\"\n\n\"Or had escaped. That is much more likely, for he would have known what their term of imprisonment was. It would not have been a surprise to him. What does he do then? He guards himself against a wooden-legged man\u2014a white man, mark you, for he mistakes a white tradesman for him and actually fires a pistol at him. Now, only one white man's name is on the chart. The others are Hindoos or Mohammedans. There is no other white man. Therefore we may say with confidence that the wooden-legged man is identical with Jonathan Small. Does the reasoning strike you as being faulty?\"\n\n\"No: it is clear and concise.\"\n\n\"Well, now, let us put ourselves in the place of Jonathan Small. Let us look at it from his point of view. He comes to England with the double idea of regaining what he would consider to be his rights and of having his revenge upon the man who had wronged him. He found out where Sholto lived, and very possibly he established communications with someone inside the house. There is this butler, Lal Rao, whom we have not seen. Mrs. Bernstone gives him far from a good character. Small could not find out, however, where the treasure was hid, for no one ever knew save the major and one faithful servant who had died. Suddenly Small learns that the major is on his deathbed. In a frenzy lest the secret of the treasure die with him, he runs the gauntlet of the guards, makes his way to the dying man's window, and is only deterred from entering by the presence of his two sons. Mad with hate, however, against the dead man, he enters the room that night, searches his private papers in the hope of discovering some memorandum relating to the treasure, and finally leaves a memento of his visit in the short inscription upon the card. He had doubtless planned beforehand that, should he slay the major, he would leave some such record upon the body as a sign that it was not a common murder but, from the point of view of the four associates, something in the nature of an act of justice. Whimsical and bizarre conceits of this kind are common enough in the annals of crime and usually afford valuable indications as to the criminal. Do you follow all this?\"\n\n\"Very clearly.\"\n\n\"Now what could Jonathan Small do? He could only continue to keep a secret watch upon the efforts made to find the treasure. Possibly he leaves England and only comes back at intervals. Then comes the discovery of the garret, and he is instantly informed of it. We again trace the presence of some confederate in the household. Jonathan, with his wooden leg, is utterly unable to reach the lofty room of Bartholomew Sholto. He takes with him, however, a rather curious associate, who gets over this difficulty but dips his naked foot into creosote, whence come Toby, and a six-mile limp for a half-pay officer with a damaged tendo Achillis.\"\n\n\"But it was the associate and not Jonathan who committed the crime.\n\n\"Quite so. And rather to Jonathan's disgust, to judge by the way he stamped about when he got into the room. He bore no grudge against Bartholomew Sholto and would have preferred if he could have been simply bound and gagged. He did not wish to put his head in a halter. There was no help for it, however: the savage instincts of his companion had broken out, and the poison had done its work: so Jonathan Small left his record, lowered the treasure-box to the ground, and followed it himself. That was the train of events as far as I can decipher them. Of course, as to his personal appearance, he must be middle-aged and must be sunburned after serving his time in such an oven as the Andamans. His height is readily calculated from the length of his stride, and we know that he was bearded. His hairiness was the one point which impressed itself upon Thaddeus Sholto when he saw him at the window. I don't know that there is anything else.\"\n\n\"The associate?\"\n\n\"Ah, well, there is no great mystery in that. But you will know all about it soon enough. How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature! Are you well up in your Jean Paul?\"\n\n\"Fairly so. I worked back to him through Carlyle.\"\n\n\"That was like following the brook to the parent lake. He makes one curious but profound remark. It is that the chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness. It argues, you see, a power of comparison and of appreciation which is in itself a proof of nobility. There is much food for thought in Richter. You have not a pistol, have you?\"\n\n\"I have my stick.\"\n\n\"It is just possible that we may need something of the sort if we get to their lair. Jonathan I shall leave to you, but if the other turns nasty I shall shoot him dead.\"\n\nHe took out his revolver as he spoke, and, having loaded two of the chambers, he put it back into the right-hand pocket of his jacket.\n\nWe had during this time been following the guidance of Toby down the half-rural villa-lined roads which lead to the metropolis. Now, however, we were beginning to come among continuous streets, where labourers and dockmen were already astir, and slatternly women were taking down shutters and brushing doorsteps. At the square-topped corner public-houses business was just beginning, and rough-looking men were emerging, rubbing their sleeves across their beards after their morning wet. Strange dogs sauntered up and stared wonderingly at us as we passed, but our inimitable Toby looked neither to the right nor to the left but trotted onward with his nose to the ground and an occasional eager whine which spoke of a hot scent.\n\nWe had traversed Streatham, Brixton, Camberwell, and now found ourselves in Kennington Lane, having borne away through the side streets to the east of the Oval. The men whom we pursued seemed to have taken a curiously zigzag road, with the idea probably of escaping observation. They had never kept to the main road if a parallel side street would serve their turn. At the foot of Kennington Lane they had edged away to the left through Bond Street and Miles Street. Where the latter street turns into Knight's Place, Toby ceased to advance but began to run backward and forward with one ear cocked and the other drooping, the very picture of canine indecision. Then he waddled round in circles, looking up to us from time to time, as if to ask for sympathy in his embarrassment.\n\n\"What the deuce is the matter with the dog?\" growled Holmes. \"They surely would not take a cab or go off in a balloon.\"\n\n\"Perhaps they stood here for some time,\" I suggested.\n\n\"Ah! it's all right. He's off again,\" said my companion in a tone of relief.\n\nHe was indeed off, for after sniffing round again he suddenly made up his mind and darted away with an energy and determination such as he had not yet shown. The scent appeared to be much hotter than before, for he had not even to put his nose on the ground but tugged at his leash and tried to break into a run. I could see by the gleam in Holmes's eyes that he thought we were nearing the end of our journey.\n\nOur course now ran down Nine Elms until we came to Broderick and Nelson's large timber-yard just past the White Eagle tavern. Here the dog, frantic with excitement, turned down through the side gate into the enclosure, where the sawyers were already at work. On the dog raced through sawdust and shavings, down an alley, round a passage, between two wood-piles, and finally, with a triumphant yelp, sprang upon a large barrel which still stood upon the hand-trolley on which it had been brought. With lolling tongue and blinking eyes Toby stood upon the cask, looking from one to the other of us for some sign of appreciation. The staves of the barrel and the wheels of the trolley were smeared with a dark liquid, and the whole air was heavy with the smell of creosote.\n\nSherlock Holmes and I looked blankly at each other and then burst simultaneously into an uncontrollable fit of laughter." + }, + { + "title": "The Baker Street Irregulars", + "text": "\"What now?\" I asked. \"Toby has lost his character for infallibility.\"\n\n\"He acted according to his lights,\" said Holmes, lifting him down from the barrel and walking him out of the timber-yard. \"If you consider how much creosote is carted about London in one day, it is no great wonder that our trail should have been crossed. It is much used now, especially for the seasoning of wood. Poor Toby is not to blame.\"\n\n\"We must get on the main scent again, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Yes. And, fortunately, we have no distance to go. Evidently what puzzled the dog at the corner of Knight's Place was that there were two different trails running in opposite directions. We took the wrong one. It only remains to follow the other.\"\n\nThere was no difficulty about this. On leading Toby to the place where he had committed his fault, he cast about in a wide circle and finally dashed off in a fresh direction.\n\n\"We must take care that he does not now bring us to the place where the creosote-barrel came from,\" I observed.\n\n\"I had thought of that. But you notice that he keeps on the pavement, whereas the barrel passed down the roadway. No, we are on the true scent now.\"\n\nIt tended down towards the riverside, running through Belmont Place and Prince's Street. At the end of Broad Street it ran right down to the water's edge, where there was a small wooden wharf. Toby led us to the very edge of this and there stood whining, looking out on the dark current beyond.\n\n\"We are out of luck,\" said Holmes. \"They have taken to a boat here.\"\n\nSeveral small punts and skiffs were lying about in the water and on the edge of the wharf. We took Toby round to each in turn, but though he sniffed earnestly he made no sign.\n\nClose to the rude landing-stage was a small brick house, with a wooden placard slung out through the second window. \"Mordecai Smith\" was printed across it in large letters, and, underneath, \"Boats to hire by the hour or day.\" A second inscription above the door informed us that a steam launch was kept\u2014a statement which was confirmed by a great pile of coke upon the jetty. Sherlock Holmes looked slowly round, and his face assumed an ominous expression.\n\n\"This looks bad,\" said he. \"These fellows are sharper than I expected. They seem to have covered their tracks. There has, I fear, been preconcerted management here.\"\n\nHe was approaching the door of the house, when it opened, and a little curly-headed lad of six came running out, followed by a stoutish, red-faced woman with a large sponge in her hand.\n\n\"You come back and be washed, Jack,\" she shouted. \"Come back, you young imp; for if your father comes home and finds you like that he'll let us hear of it.\"\n\n\"Dear little chap!\" said Holmes strategically. \"What a rosy-cheeked young rascal! Now, Jack, is there anything you would like?\"\n\nThe youth pondered for a moment.\n\n\"I'd like a shillin',\" said he.\n\n\"Nothing you would like better?\"\n\n\"I'd like two shillin' better,\" the prodigy answered after some thought.\n\n\"Here you are, then! Catch!\u2014A fine child, Mrs. Smith!\"\n\n\"Lor' bless you, sir, he is that, and forward. He gets a'most too much for me to manage, 'specially when my man is away days at a time.\"\n\n\"Away, is he?\" said Holmes in a disappointed voice. \"I am sorry for that, for I wanted to speak to Mr. Smith.\"\n\n\"He's been away since yesterday mornin', sir, and, truth to tell, I am beginnin' to feel frightened about him. But if it was about a boat, sir, maybe I could serve as well.\"\n\n\"I wanted to hire his steam launch.\"\n\n\"Why, bless you, sir, it is in the steam launch that he has gone. That's what puzzles me; for I know there ain't more coals in her than would take her to about Woolwich and back. If he's been away in the barge I'd ha' thought nothin'; for many a time a job has taken him as far as Gravesend, and then if there was much doin' there he might ha' stayed over. But what good is a steam launch without coals?\"\n\n\"He might have bought some at a wharf down the river.\"\n\n\"He might, sir, but it weren't his way. Many a time I've heard him call out at the prices they charge for a few odd bags. Besides, I don't like that wooden-legged man, wi' his ugly face and outlandish talk. What did he want always knockin' about here for?\"\n\n\"A wooden-legged man?\" said Holmes with bland surprise.\n\n\"Yes, sir, a brown, monkey-faced chap that's called more'n once for my old man. It was him that roused him up yesternight, and, what's more, my man knew he was comin', for he had steam up in the launch. I tell you straight, sir. I don't feel easy in my mind about it.\"\n\n\"But, my dear Mrs. Smith,\" said Holmes, shrugging his shoulders, \"you are frightening yourself about nothing. How could you possibly tell that it was the wooden-legged man who came in the night? I don't quite understand how you can be so sure.\"\n\n\"His voice, sir. I knew his voice, which is kind o' thick and foggy. He tapped at the winder\u2014about three it would be. 'Show a leg, matey,' says he: 'time to turn out guard.' My old man woke up Jim\u2014that's my eldest\u2014and away they went without so much as a word to me. I could hear the wooden leg clackin' on the stones.\"\n\n\"And was this wooden-legged man alone?\"\n\n\"Couldn't say, I am sure, sir. I didn't hear no one else.\"\n\n\"I am sorry, Mrs. Smith, for I wanted a steam launch, and I have heard good reports of the\u2014Let me see, what is her name?\"\n\n\"The Aurora, sir.\"\n\n\"Ah! She's not that old green launch with a yellow line, very broad in the beam?\"\n\n\"No, indeed. She's as trim a little thing as any on the river. She's been fresh painted, black with two red streaks.\"\n\n\"Thanks. I hope that you will hear soon from Mr. Smith. I am going down the river, and if I should see anything of the Aurora I shall let him know that you are uneasy. A black funnel, you say?\"\n\n\"No, sir. Black with a white band.\"\n\n\"Ah, of course. It was the sides which were black. Good morning, Mrs. Smith. There is a boatman here with a wherry, Watson. We shall take it and cross the river.\"\n\n\"The main thing with people of that sort,\" said Holmes as we sat in the sheets of the wherry, \"is never to let them think that their information can be of the slightest importance to you. If you do they will instantly shut up like an oyster. If you listen to them under protest, as it were, you are very likely to get what you want.\"\n\n\"Our course now seems pretty clear,\" said I.\n\n\"What would you do, then?\"\n\n\"I would engage a launch and go down the river on the track of the Aurora .\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, it would be a colossal task. She may have touched at any wharf on either side of the stream between here and Greenwich. Below the bridge there is a perfect labyrinth of landing-places for miles. It would take you days and days to exhaust them if you set about it alone.\"\n\n\"Employ the police, then.\"\n\n\"No. I shall probably call Athelney Jones in at the last moment. He is not a bad fellow, and I should not like to do anything which would injure him professionally. But I have a fancy for working it out myself, now that we have gone so far.\"\n\n\"Could we advertise, then, asking for information from wharfingers?\"\n\n\"Worse and worse! Our men would know that the chase was hot at their heels, and they would be off out of the country. As it is, they are likely enough to leave, but as long as they think they are perfectly safe they will be in no hurry. Jones's energy will be of use to us there, for his view of the case is sure to push itself into the daily press, and the runaways will think that everyone is off on the wrong scent.\"\n\n\"What are we to do, then?\" I asked as we landed near Millbank Penitentiary.\n\n\"Take this hansom, drive home, have some breakfast, and get an hour's sleep. It is quite on the cards that we may be afoot to-night again. Stop at a telegraph office, cabby! We will keep Toby, for he may be of use to us yet.\"\n\nWe pulled up at the Great Peter Street Post-Office, and Holmes dispatched his wire.\n\n\"Whom do you think that is to?\" he asked as we resumed our journey.\n\n\"I am sure I don't know.\"\n\n\"You remember the Baker Street division of the detective police force whom I employed in the Jefferson Hope case?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said I, laughing.\n\n\"This is just the case where they might be invaluable. If they fail I have other resources, but I shall try them first. That wire was to my dirty little lieutenant, Wiggins, and I expect that he and his gang will be with us before we have finished our breakfast.\n\nIt was between eight and nine o'clock now, and I was conscious of a strong reaction after the successive excitements of the night. I was limp and weary, befogged in mind and fatigued in body. I had not the professional enthusiasm which carried my companion on, nor could I look at the matter as a mere abstract intellectual problem. As far as the death of Bartholomew Sholto went, I had heard little good of him and could feel no intense antipathy to his murderers. The treasure, however, was a different matter. That, or part of it, belonged rightfully to Miss Morstan. While there was a chance of recovering it I was ready to devote my life to the one object. True, if I found it, it would probably put her forever beyond my reach. Yet it would be a petty and selfish love which would be influenced by such a thought as that. If Holmes could work to find the criminals, I had a tenfold stronger reason to urge me on to find the treasure.\n\nA bath at Baker Street and a complete change freshened me up wonderfully. When I came down to our room I found the breakfast laid and Holmes pouring out the coffee.\n\n\"Here it is,\" said he, laughing and pointing to an open newspaper. \"The energetic Jones and the ubiquitous reporter have fixed it up between them. But you have had enough of the case. Better have your ham and eggs first.\"\n\nI took the paper from him and read the short notice, Which was headed \"Mysterious Business at Upper Norwood.\"\n\nAbout twelve o'clock last night [said the Standard] Mr. Bartholomew Sholto, of Pondicherry Lodge, Upper Norwood, was found dead in his room under circumstances which point to foul play. As far as we can learn, no actual traces of violence were found upon Mr. Sholto's person, but a valuable collection of Indian gems which the deceased gentleman had inherited from his father has been carried off. The discovery was first made by Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who had called at the house with Mr. Thaddeus Sholto, brother of the deceased. By a singular piece of good fortune, Mr. Athelney Jones, the well-known member of the detective police force, happened to be at the Norwood police station and was on the ground within half an hour of the first alarm. His trained and experienced faculties were at once directed towards the detection of the criminals, with the gratifying result that the brother, Thaddeus Sholto, has already been arrested, together with the housekeeper, Mrs. Bernstone, an Indian butler named Lal Rao, and a porter, or gatekeeper, named McMurdo. It is quite certain that the thief or thieves were well acquainted with the house, for Mr. Jones's well-known technical knowledge and his powers of minute observation have enabled him to prove conclusively that the miscreants could not have entered by the door or by the window but must have made their way across the roof of the building, and so through a trapdoor into a room which communicated with that in which the body was found. This fact, which has been very clearly made out, proves conclusively that it was no mere haphazard burglary. The prompt and energetic action of the officers of the law shows the great advantage of the presence on such occasions of a single vigorous and masterful mind. We cannot but think that it supplies an argument to those who would wish to see our detectives more decentralized, and so brought into closer and more effective touch with the cases which it is their duty to investigate.\n\n\"Isn't it gorgeous!\" said Holmes, grinning over his coffee cup. \"What do you think of it?\"\n\n\"I think that we have had a close shave ourselves of being arrested for the crime.\"\n\n\"So do I. I wouldn't answer for our safety now if he should happen to have another of his attacks of energy.\"\n\nAt this moment there was a loud ring at the bell, and I could hear Mrs. Hudson, our landlady, raising her voice in a wail of expostulation and dismay.\n\n\"By heavens, Holmes,\" I said, half rising, \"I believe that they are really after us.\"\n\n\"No, it's not quite so bad as that. It is the unofficial force\u2014the Baker Street irregulars.\"\n\nAs he spoke, there came a swift pattering of naked feet upon the stairs, a clatter of high voices, and in rushed a dozen dirty and ragged little street Arabs. There was some show of discipline among them, despite their tumultuous entry, for they instantly drew up in line and stood facing us with expectant faces. One of their number, taller and older than the others, stood forward with an air of lounging superiority which was very funny in such a disreputable little scarecrow.\n\n\"Got your message, sir,\" said he, \"and brought 'em on sharp. Three bob and a tanner for tickets.\"\n\n\"Here you are,\" said Holmes, producing some silver. \"In future they can report to you, Wiggins, and you to me. I cannot have the house invaded in this way. However, it is just as well that you should all hear the instructions. I want to find the whereabouts of a steam launch called the Aurora, owner Mordecai Smith, black with two red streaks, funnel black with a white band. She is down the river somewhere. I want one boy to be at Mordecai Smith's landing-stage opposite Millbank to say if the boat comes back. You must divide it out among yourselves and do both banks thoroughly. Let me know the moment you have news. Is that all clear?\"\n\n\"Yes, guv'nor,\" said Wiggins.\n\n\"The old scale of pay, and a guinea to the boy who finds the boat. Here's a day in advance. Now off you go!\"\n\nHe handed them a shilling each, and away they buzzed down the stairs, and I saw them a moment later streaming down the street.\n\n\"If the launch is above water they will find her,\" said Holmes as he rose from the table and lit his pipe. \"They can go every-where, see everything, overhear everyone. I expect to hear before evening that they have spotted her. In the meanwhile, we can do nothing but await results. We cannot pick up the broken trail until we find either the Aurora or Mr. Mordecai Smith.\"\n\n\"Toby could eat these scraps, I dare say. Are you going to bed, Holmes?\"\n\n\"No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely. I am going to smoke and to think over this queer business to which my fair client has introduced us. If ever man had an easy task, this of ours ought to be. Wooden-legged men are not so common, but the other man must, I should think, be absolutely unique.\"\n\n\"That other man again!\"\n\n\"I have no wish to make a mystery of him to you, anyway. But you must have formed your own opinion. Now, do consider the data. Diminutive footmarks, toes never fettered by boots, naked feet, stone-headed wooden mace, great agility, small poisoned darts. What do you make of all this?\"\n\n\"A savage!\" I exclaimed. \"Perhaps one of those Indians who were the associates of Jonathan Small.\"\n\n\"Hardly that,\" said he. \"When first I saw signs of strange weapons I was inclined to think so, but the remarkable character of the footmarks caused me to reconsider my views. Some of the inhabitants of the Indian Peninsula are small men, but none could have left such marks as that. The Hindoo proper has long and thin feet. The sandal-wearing Mohammedan has the great toe well separated from the others because the thong is commonly passed between. These little darts, too, could only be shot in one way. They are from a blow-pipe. Now, then, where are we to find our savage?\"\n\n\"South America,\" I hazarded.\n\nHe stretched his hand up and took down a bulky volume from the shelf.\n\n\"This is the first volume of a gazetteer which is now being published. It may be looked upon as the very latest authority. What have we here?\n\n\"Andaman Islands, situated 340 miles to the north of Sumatra, in the Bay of Bengal.\n\nHum! hum! What's all this? Moist climate, coral reefs, sharks, Port Blair, convict barracks. Rutland Island, cottonwoods\u2014Ah, here we are!\n\n\"The aborigines of the Andaman Islands may perhaps claim the distinction of being the smallest race upon this earth, though some anthropologists prefer the Bushmen of Africa, the Digger Indians of America, and the Terra del Fuegians. The average height is rather below four feet, although many full-grown adults may be found who are very much smaller than this. They are a fierce, morose, and intractable people, though capable of forming most devoted friendships when their confidence has once been gained.\n\nMark that, Watson. Now, then listen to this.\n\n\"They are naturally hideous, having large, misshapen heads, small fierce eyes, and distorted features. Their feet and hands, however, are remarkably small. So intractable and fierce are they, that all the efforts of the British officials have failed to win them over in any degree. They have always been a terror to shipwrecked crews, braining the survivors with their stone-headed clubs or shooting them with their poisoned arrows. These massacres are invariably concluded by a cannibal feast.\n\nNice, amiable people, Watson! If this fellow had been left to his own unaided devices, this affair might have taken an even more ghastly turn. I fancy that, even as it is, Jonathan Small would give a good deal not to have employed him.\"\n\n\"But how came he to have so singular a companion?\"\n\n\"Ah, that is more than I can tell. Since, however, we had already determined that Small had come from the Andamans, it is not so very wonderful that this islander should be with him. No doubt we shall know all about it in time. Look here, Watson; you look regularly done. Lie down there on the sofa and see if I can put you to sleep.\"\n\nHe took up his violin from the corner, and as I stretched myself out he began to play some low, dreamy, melodious air\u2014his own, no doubt, for he had a remarkable gift for improvisation. I have a vague remembrance of his gaunt limbs, his earnest face and the rise and fall of his bow. Then I seemed to be floated peacefully away upon a soft sea of sound until I found myself in dreamland, with the sweet face of Mary Morstan looking down upon me." + }, + { + "title": "A Break in the Chain", + "text": "It was late in the afternoon before I woke, strengthened and refreshed. Sherlock Holmes still sat exactly as I had left him, save that he had laid aside his violin and was deep in a book. He looked across at me as I stirred, and I noticed that his face was dark and troubled.\n\n\"You have slept soundly,\" he said. \"I feared that our talk would wake you.\"\n\n\"I heard nothing,\" I answered. \"Have you had fresh news, then?\"\n\n\"Unfortunately, no. I confess that I am surprised and disappointed. I expected something definite by this time. Wiggins has just been up to report. He says that no trace can be found of the launch. It is a provoking check, for every hour is of importance.\"\n\n\"Can I do anything? I am perfectly fresh now, and quite ready for another night's outing.\"\n\n\"No; we can do nothing. We can only wait. If we go ourselves the message might come in our absence and delay be caused. You can do what you will, but I must remain on guard.\"\n\n\"Then I shall run over to Camberwell and call upon Mrs. Cecil Forrester. She asked me to, yesterday.\"\n\n\"On Mrs. Cecil Forrester?\" asked Holmes with the twinkle of a smile in his eyes.\n\n\"Well, of course on Miss Morstan, too. They were anxious to hear what happened.\"\n\n\"I would not tell them too much,\" said Holmes. \"Women are never to be entirely trusted\u2014not the best of them.\"\n\nI did not pause to argue over this atrocious sentiment.\n\n\"I shall be back in an hour or two,\" I remarked.\n\n\"All right! Good luck! But, I say, if you are crossing the river you may as well return Toby, for I don't think it is at all likely that we shall have any use for him now.\"\n\nI took our mongrel accordingly and left him, together with a half-sovereign at the old naturalist's in Pinchin Lane. At Camberwell I found Miss Morstan a little weary after her night's adventures but very eager to hear the news. Mrs. Forrester, too, was full of curiosity. I told them all that we had done, suppressing, however, the more dreadful parts of the tragedy. Thus, although I spoke of Mr. Sholto's death, I said nothing of the exact manner and method of it. With all my omissions, however, there was enough to startle and amaze them.\n\n\"It is a romance!\" cried Mrs. Forrester. \"An injured lady, half a million in treasure, a black cannibal, and a wooden-legged ruffian. They take the place of the conventional dragon or wicked earl.\"\n\n\"And two knight-errants to the rescue,\" added Miss Morstan with a bright glance at me.\n\n\"Why, Mary, your fortune depends upon the issue of this search. I don't think that you are nearly excited enough. Just imagine what it must be to be so rich and to have the world at your feet!\"\n\nIt sent a little thrill of joy to my heart to notice that she showed no sign of elation at the prospect. On the contrary, she gave a toss of her proud head, as though the matter were one in which she took small interest.\n\n\"It is for Mr. Thaddeus Sholto that I am anxious,\" she said. \"Nothing else is of any consequence; but I think that he has behaved most kindly and honourably throughout. It is our duty to clear him of this dreadful and unfounded charge.\"\n\nIt was evening before I left Camberwell, and quite dark by the time I reached home. My companion's book and pipe lay by his chair, but he had disappeared. I looked about in the hope of seeing a note, but there was none.\n\n\"I suppose that Mr. Sherlock Holmes has gone out,\" I said to Mrs. Hudson as she came up to lower the blinds.\n\n\"No, sir. He has gone to his room, sir. Do you know, sir,\" sinking her voice into an impressive whisper, \"I am afraid for his health.\"\n\n\"Why so, Mrs. Hudson?\"\n\n\"Well, he's that strange, sir. After you was gone he walked and he walked, up and down, and up and down, until I was weary of the sound of his footstep. Then I heard him talking to himself and muttering, and every time the bell rang out he came on the stairhead, with 'What is that, Mrs. Hudson?' And now he has slammed off to his room, but I can hear him walking away the same as ever. I hope he's not going to be ill, sir. I ventured to say something to him about cooling medicine, but he turned on me, sir, with such a look that I don't know how ever I got out of the room.\"\n\n\"I don't think that you have any cause to be uneasy, Mrs. Hudson,\" I answered. \"I have seen him like this before. He has some small matter upon his mind which makes him restless.\"\n\nI tried to speak lightly to our worthy landlady, but I was myself somewhat uneasy when through the long night I still from time to time heard the dull sound of his tread, and knew how his keen spirit was chafing against this involuntary inaction.\n\nAt breakfast-time he looked worn and haggard, with a little fleck of feverish colour upon either cheek.\n\n\"You are knocking yourself up, old man,\" I remarked. \"I heard you marching about in the night.\"\n\n\"No, I could not sleep,\" he answered. \"This infernal problem is consuming me. It is too much to be balked by so petty an obstacle, when all else had been overcome. I know the men, the launch, everything; and yet I can get no news. I have set other agencies at work and used every means at my disposal. The whole river has been searched on either side, but there is no news, nor has Mrs. Smith heard of her husband. I shall come to the conclusion soon that they have scuttled the craft. But there are objections to that.\"\n\n\"Or that Mrs. Smith has put us on a wrong scent.\"\n\n\"No, I think that may be dismissed. I had inquiries made, and there is a launch of that description.\"\n\n\"Could it have gone up the river?\"\n\n\"I have considered that possibility, too, and there is a search-party who will work up as far as Richmond. If no news comes to-day I shall start off myself tomorrow and go for the men rather than the boat. But surely, surely, we shall hear something.\"\n\nWe did not, however. Not a word came to us either from Wiggins or from the other agencies. There were articles in most of the papers upon the Norwood tragedy. They all appeared to be rather hostile to the unfortunate Thaddeus Sholto. No fresh details were to be found, however, in any of them, save that an inquest was to be held upon the following day. I walked over to Camberwell in the evening to report our ill-success to the ladies, and on my return I found Holmes dejected and somewhat morose. He would hardly reply to my questions and busied himself all the evening in an abstruse chemical analysis which involved much heating of retorts and distilling of vapours, ending at last in a smell which fairly drove me out of the apartment. Up to the small hours of the morning I could hear the clinking of his test-tubes which told me that he was still engaged in his malodorous experiment.\n\nIn the early dawn I woke with a start and was surprised to find him standing by my bedside, clad in a rude sailor dress with a pea-jacket and a coarse red scarf round his neck.\n\n\"I am off down the river, Watson,\" said he. \"I have been turning it over in my mind, and I can see only one way out of it. It is worth trying, at all events.\"\n\n\"Surely I can come with you, then?\" said I.\n\n\"No; you can be much more useful if you will remain here as my representative. I am loath to go, for it is quite on the cards that some message may come during the day, though Wiggins was despondent about it last night. I want you to open all notes and telegrams; and to act on your own judgment if any news should come. Can I rely upon you?\"\n\n\"Most certainly.\"\n\n\"I am afraid that you will not be able to wire to me, for I can hardly tell yet where I may find myself. If I am in luck, however, I may not be gone so very long. I shall have news of some sort or other before I get back.\"\n\nI had heard nothing of him by breakfast time. On opening the Standard, however, I found that there was a fresh allusion to the business.\n\nWith reference to the Upper Norwood tragedy [it remarked] we have reason to believe that the matter promises to be even more complex and mysterious than was originally supposed. Fresh evidence has shown that it is quite impossible that Mr. Thaddeus Sholto could have been in any way concerned in the matter. He and the housekeeper, Mrs. Bernstone, were both released yesterday evening. It is believed, however, that the police have a clue as to the real culprits, and that it is being prosecuted by Mr. Athelney Jones, of Scotland Yard, with all his well-known energy and sagacity. Further arrests may be expected at any moment.\n\n\"That is satisfactory so far as it goes,\" thought I. \"Friend Sholto is safe, at any rate. I wonder what the fresh clue may be, though it seems to be a stereotyped form whenever the police have made a blunder.\"\n\nI tossed the paper down upon the table, but at that moment my eye caught an advertisement in the agony column. It ran in this way:\n\nLOST\u2014Whereas Mordecai Smith, boatman, and his son Jim, left Smith's Wharf at or about three o'clock last Tuesday morning in the steam launch Aurora, black with two red stripes, funnel black with a white band, the sum of five pounds will be paid to anyone who can give information to Mrs. Smith, at Smith's Wharf, or at 221B, Baker Street, as to the whereabouts of the said Mordecai Smith and the launch Aurora.\n\nThis was clearly Holmes's doing. The Baker Street address was enough to prove that. It struck me as rather ingenious because it might be read by the fugitives without their seeing in it more than the natural anxiety of a wife for her missing husband.\n\nIt was a long day. Every time that a knock came to the door or a sharp step passed in the street, I imagined that it was either Holmes returning or an answer to his advertisement. I tried to read, but my thoughts would wander off to our strange quest and to the ill-assorted and villainous pair whom we were pursuing. Could there be, I wondered, some radical flaw in my companion's reasoning? Might he not be suffering from some huge self-deception? Was it not possible that his nimble and speculative mind had built up this wild theory upon faulty premises? I had never known him to be wrong, and yet the keenest reasoner may occasionally be deceived. He was likely, I thought, to fall into error through the over-refinement of his logic\u2014his preference for a subtle and bizarre explanation when a plainer and more commonplace one lay ready to his hand. Yet, on the other hand, I had myself seen the evidence, and I had heard the reasons for his deductions. When I looked back on the long chain of curious circumstances, many of them trivial in themselves but all tending in the same direction, I could not disguise from myself that even if Holmes's explanation were incorrect the true theory must be equally outr\u00e9 and startling.\n\nAt three o'clock on the afternoon there was a loud peal at the bell, an authoritative voice in the hall, and, to my surprise, no less a person than Mr. Athelney Jones was shown up to me. Very different was he, however, from the brusque and masterful professor of common sense who had taken over the case so confidently at Upper Norwood. His expression was downcast, and his bearing meek and even apologetic.\n\n\"Good-day, sir; good-day,\" said he. \"Mr. Sherlock Holmes is out, I understand.\"\n\n\"Yes, and I cannot be sure when he will be back. But perhaps you would care to wait. Take that chair and try one of these cigars.\"\n\n\"Thank you; I don't mind if I do,\" said he, mopping his face with a red bandanna handkerchief.\n\n\"And a whisky and soda?\"\n\n\"Well, half a glass. It is very hot for the time of year, and I have had a good deal to worry and try me. You know my theory about this Norwood case?\"\n\n\"I remember that you expressed one.\"\n\n\"Well, I have been obliged to reconsider it. I had my net drawn tightly round Mr. Sholto, sir, when pop he went through a hole in the middle of it. He was able to prove an alibi which could not be shaken. From the time that he left his brother's room he was never out of sight of someone or other. So it could not be he who climbed over roofs and through trap-doors. It's a very dark case, and my professional credit is at stake. I should be very glad of a little assistance.\"\n\n\"We all need help sometimes,\" said I.\n\n\"Your friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, is a wonderful man, sir,\" said he in a husky and confidential voice. \"He's a man who is not to be beat. I have known that young man go into a good many cases, but I never saw the case yet that he could not throw a light upon. He is irregular in his methods and a little quick perhaps in jumping at theories, but, on the whole, I think he would have made a most promising officer, and I don't care who knows it. I have had a wire from him this morning, by which I understand that he has got some clue to this Sholto business. Here is his message.\"\n\nHe took the telegram out of his pocket and handed it to me. It was dated from Poplar at twelve o'clock.\n\nGo to Baker Street at once [it said]. If I have not returned, wait for me. I am close on the track of the Sholto gang. You can come with us to-night if you want to be in at the finish.\n\n\"This sounds well. He has evidently picked up the scent again,\" said I.\n\n\"Ah, then he has been at fault too,\" exclaimed Jones with evident satisfaction. \"Even the best of us are thrown off sometimes. Of course this may prove to be a false alarm but it is my duty as an officer of the law to allow no chance to slip. But there is someone at the door. Perhaps this is he.\"\n\nA heavy step was heard ascending the stair, with a great wheezing and rattling as from a man who was sorely put to it for breath. Once or twice he stopped, as though the climb were too much for him, but at last he made his way to our door and entered. His appearance corresponded to the sounds which we had heard. He was an aged man, clad in seafaring garb, with an old pea-jacket buttoned up to his throat. His back was bowed, his knees were shaky, and his breathing was painfully asthmatic. As he leaned upon a thick oaken cudgel his shoulders heaved in the effort to draw the air into his lungs. He had a coloured scarf round his chin, and I could see little of his face save a pair of keen dark eyes, overhung by bushy white brows and long gray side-whiskers. Altogether he gave me the impression of a respectable master mariner who had fallen into years and poverty.\n\n\"What is it, my man?\" I asked.\n\nHe looked about him in the slow methodical fashion of old age.\n\n\"Is Mr. Sherlock Holmes here?\" said he.\n\n\"No; but I am acting for him. You can tell me any message you have for him.\"\n\n\"It was to him himself I was to tell it,\" said he.\n\n\"But I tell you that I am acting for him. Was it about Mordecai Smith's boat?\"\n\n\"Yes. I knows well where it is. An' I knows where the men he is after are. An' I knows where the treasure is. I knows all about it.\"\n\n\"Then tell me, and I shall let him know.\"\n\n\"It was to him I was to tell it,\" he repeated with the petulant obstinacy of a very old man.\n\n\"Well, you must wait for him.\"\n\n\"No, no; I ain't goin' to lose a whole day to please no one. If Mr. Holmes ain't here, then Mr. Holmes must find it all out for himself. I don't care about the look of either of you, and I won't tell a word.\"\n\nHe shuffled towards the door, but Athelney Jones got in front of him.\n\n\"Wait a bit, my friend,\" said he. \"You have important information, and you must not walk off. We shall keep you, whether you like or not, until our friend returns.\"\n\nThe old man made a little run towards the door, but, as Athelney Jones put his broad back up against it, he recognized the uselessness of resistance.\n\n\"Pretty sort o' treatment this!\" he cried, stamping his stick. \"I come here to see a gentleman, and you two, who I never saw in my life, seize me and treat me in this fashion!\"\n\n\"You will be none the worse,\" I said. \"We shall recompense you for the loss of your time. Sit over here on the sofa, and you will not have long to wait.\"\n\nHe came across sullenly enough and seated himself with his face restingon his hands. Jones and I resumed our cigars and our talk. Suddenly, however, Holmes's voice broke in upon us.\n\n\"I think that you might offer me a cigar too,\" he said.\n\nWe both started in our chairs. There was Holmes sitting close to us with an air of quiet amusement.\n\n\"Holmes!\" I exclaimed. \"You here! But where is the old man?\"\n\n\"Here is the old man,\" said he, holding out a heap of white hair. \"Here he is\u2014wig, whiskers, eyebrows, and all. I thought my disguise was pretty good, but I hardly expected that it would stand that test.\"\n\n\"Ah, you rogue!\" cried Jones, highly delighted. \"You would have made an actor and a rare one. You had the proper work-house cough, and those weak legs of yours are worth ten pound a week. I thought I knew the glint of your eye, though. You didn't get away from us so easily, you see.\"\n\n\"I have been working in that get-up all day,\" said he, lighting his cigar. \"You see, a good many of the criminal classes begin to know me\u2014especially since our friend here took to publishing some of my cases: so I can only go on the war-path under some simple disguise like this. You got my wire?\"\n\n\"Yes; that was what brought me here.\"\n\n\"How has your case prospered?\"\n\n\"It has all come to nothing. I have had to release two of my prisoners, and there is no evidence against the other two.\"\n\n\"Never mind. We shall give you two others in the place of them. But you must put yourself under my orders. You are welcome to all the official credit, but you must act on the lines that I point out. Is that agreed?\"\n\n\"Entirely, if you will help me to the men.\"\n\n\"Well, then, in the first place I shall want a fast police-boat\u2014a steam launch\u2014to be at the Westminster Stairs at seven o'clock.\"\n\n\"That is easily managed. There is always one about there, but I can step across the road and telephone to make sure.\"\n\n\"Then I shall want two staunch men in case of resistance.\"\n\n\"There will be two or three in the boat. What else?\"\n\n\"When we secure the men we shall get the treasure. I think that it would be a pleasure to my friend here to take the box round to the young lady to whom half of it rightfully belongs. Let her be the first to open it. Eh, Watson?\"\n\n\"It would be a great pleasure to me.\"\n\n\"Rather an irregular proceeding,\" said Jones, shaking his head. \"However, the whole thing is irregular, and I suppose we must wink at it. The treasure must afterwards be handed over to the authorities until after the official investigation.\"\n\n\"Certainly. That is easily managed. One other point. I should much like to have a few details about this matter from the lips of Jonathan Small himself. You know I like to work the details of my cases out. There is no objection to my having an unofficial interview with him, either here in my rooms or elsewhere, as long as he is efficiently guarded?\"\n\n\"Well, you are master of the situation. I have had no proof yet of the existence of this Jonathan Small. However, if you can catch him, I don't see how I can refuse you an interview with him.\"\n\n\"That is understood, then?\"\n\n\"Perfectly. Is there anything else?\"\n\n\"Only that I insist upon your dining with us. It will be ready in half an hour. I have oysters and a brace of grouse, with something a little choice in white wines.\u2014Watson, you have never yet recognized my merits as a housekeeper.\"" + }, + { + "title": "The End of the Islander", + "text": "Our meal was a merry one. Holmes could talk exceedingly well when he chose, and that night he did choose. He appeared to be in a state of nervous exaltation. I have never known him so brilliant. He spoke on a quick succession of subjects\u2014on miracle plays, on medi\u00e6val pottery, on Stradivarius violins, on the Buddhism of Ceylon, and on the warships of the future\u2014handling each as though he had made a special study of it. His bright humour marked the reaction from his black depression of the preceding days. Athelney Jones proved to be a sociable soul in his hours of relaxation and faced his dinner with the air of a bon vivant. For myself, I felt elated at the thought that we were nearing the end of our task, and I caught something of Holmes's gaiety. None of us alluded during dinner to the cause which had brought us together.\n\nWhen the cloth was cleared Holmes glanced at his watch and filled up three glasses with port.\n\n\"One bumper,\" said he, \"to the success of our little expedition. And now it is high time we were off. Have you a pistol, Watson?\"\n\n\"I have my old service-revolver in my desk.\"\n\n\"You had best take it, then. It is well to be prepared. I see that the cab is at the door. I ordered it for half-past six.\"\n\nIt was a little past seven before we reached the Westminster wharf and found our launch awaiting us. Holmes eyed it critically.\n\n\"Is there anything to mark it as a police-boat?\"\n\n\"Yes, that green lamp at the side.\"\n\n\"Then take it off.\"\n\nThe small change was made, we stepped on board, and the ropes were cast off. Jones, Holmes, and I sat in the stern. There was one man at the rudder, one to tend the engines, and two burly police-inspectors forward.\n\n\"Where to?\" asked Jones.\n\n\"To the Tower. Tell them to stop opposite to Jacobson's Yard.\"\n\nOur craft was evidently a very fast one. We shot past the long lines of loaded barges as though they were stationary. Holmes smiled with satisfaction as we overhauled a river steamer and left her behind us.\n\n\"We ought to be able to catch anything on the river,\" he said.\n\n\"Well, hardly that. But there are not many launches to beat us.\"\n\n\"We shall have to catch the Aurora, and she has a name for being a clipper. I will tell you how the land lies, Watson. You recollect how annoyed I was at being baulked by so small a thing?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Well, I gave my mind a thorough rest by plunging into a chemical analysis. One of our greatest statesmen has said that a change of work is the best rest. So it is. When I had succeeded in dissolving the hydrocarbon which I was at work at, I came back to our problem of the Sholtos, and thought the whole matter out again. My boys had been up the river and down the river without result. The launch was not at any landing-stage or wharf, nor had it returned. Yet it could hardly have been scuttled to hide their traces, though that always remained as a possible hypothesis if all else failed. I knew that this man Small had a certain degree of low cunning, but I did not think him capable of anything in the nature of delicate finesse. That is usually a product of higher education. I then reflected that since he had certainly been in London some time\u2014as we had evidence that he maintained a continual watch over Pondicherry Lodge\u2014he could hardly leave at a moment's notice, but would need some little time, if it were only a day, to arrange his affairs. That was the balance of probability, at any rate.\"\n\n\"It seems to me to be a little weak,\" said I; \"it is more probable that he had arranged his affairs before ever he set out upon his expedition.\"\n\n\"No, I hardly think so. This lair of his would be too valuable a retreat in case of need for him to give it up until he was sure that he could do without it. But a second consideration struck me. Jonathan Small must have felt that the peculiar appearance of his companion, however much he may have top-coated him, would give rise to gossip, and possibly be associated with this Norwood tragedy. He was quite sharp enough to see that. They had started from their headquarters under cover of darkness, and he would wish to get back before it was broad light. Now, it was past three o'clock, according to Mrs. Smith, when they got the boat. It would be quite bright, and people would be about in an hour or so. Therefore, I argued, they did not go very far. They paid Smith well to hold his tongue, reserved his launch for the final escape, and hurried to their lodgings with the treasure-box. In a couple of nights, when they had time to see what view the papers took, and whether there was any suspicion, they would make their way under cover of darkness to some ship at Gravesend or in the Downs, where no doubt they had already arranged for passages to America or the Colonies.\"\n\n\"But the launch? They could not have taken that to their lodgings.\"\n\n\"Quite so. I argued that the launch must be no great way off, in spite of its invisibility. I then put myself in the place of Small and looked at it as a man of his capacity would. He would probably consider that to send back the launch or to keep it at a wharf would make pursuit easy if the police did happen to get on his track. How, then, could he conceal the launch and yet have her at hand when wanted? I wondered what I should do myself if I were in his shoes. I could only think of one way of doing it. I might hand the launch over to some boat-builder or repairer, with directionsto make a trifling change in her. She would then be removed to his shed or yard, and so be effectually concealed, while at the same time I could have her at a few hours' notice.\"\n\n\"That seems simple enough.\"\n\n\"It is just these very simple things which are extremely liable to be overlooked. However, I determined to act on the idea. I started at once in this harmless seaman's rig and inquired at all the yards down the river. I drew blank at fifteen, but at the sixteenth\u2014Jacobson's\u2014I learned that the Aurora had been handed over to them two days ago by a wooden-legged man, with some trivial directions as to her rudder. 'There ain't naught amiss with her rudder,' said the foreman. 'There she lies, with the red streaks.' At that moment who should come down but Mordecai Smith, the missing owner. He was rather the worse for liquor. I should not, of course, have known him, but he bellowed out his name and the name of his launch. 'I want her to-night at eight o'clock,' said he\u2014'eight o'clock sharp, mind, for I have two gentlemen who won't be kept waiting.' They had evidently paid him well, for he was very flush of money, chucking shillings about to the men. I followed him some distance, but he subsided into an alehouse; so I went back to the yard, and, happening to pick up one of my boys on the way, I stationed him as a sentry over the launch. He is to stand at the water's edge and wave his handkerchief to us when they start. We shall be lying off in the stream, and it will be a strange thing if we do not take men, treasure, and all.\"\n\n\"You have planned it all very neatly, whether they are the right men or not,\" said Jones; \"but if the affair were in my hands I should have had a body of police in Jacobson's Yard and arrested them when they came down.\"\n\n\"Which would have been never. This man Small is a pretty shrewd fellow. He would send a scout on ahead, and if anything made him suspicious he would lie snug for another week.\"\n\n\"But you might have stuck to Mordecai Smith, and so been led to their hiding-place,\" said I.\n\n\"In that case I should have wasted my day. I think that it is a hundred to one against Smith knowing where they live. As long as he has liquor and good pay, why should he ask questions? They send him messages what to do. No, I thought over every possible course, and this is the best.\"\n\nWhile this conversation had been proceeding, we had been shooting the long series of bridges which span the Thames. As we passed the City the last rays of the sun were gilding the cross upon the summit of St. Paul's. It was twilight before we reached the Tower.\n\n\"That is Jacobson's Yard,\" said Holmes, pointing to a bristle of masts and rigging on the Surrey side. \"Cruise gently up and down here under cover of this string of lighters.\" He took a pair of night-glasses from his pocket and gazed some time at the shore. \"I see my sentry at his post,\" he remarked, \"but no sign of a handkerchief.\"\n\n\"Suppose we go downstream a short way and lie in wait for them,\" said Jones eagerly.\n\nWe were all eager by this time, even the policemen and stokers, who had a very vague idea of what was going forward.\n\n\"We have no right to take anything for granted,\" Holmes answered. \"It is certainly ten to one that they go downstream, but we cannot be certain. From this point we can see the entrance of the yard, and they can hardly see us. It will be a clear night and plenty of light. We must stay where we are. See how the folk swarm over yonder in the gaslight.\"\n\n\"They are coming from work in the yard.\"\n\n\"Dirty-looking rascals, but I suppose every one has some little immortal spark concealed about him. You would not think it, to look at them. There is no a priori probability about it. A strange enigma is man!\"\n\n\"Someone calls him a soul concealed in an animal,\" I suggested.\n\n\"Winwood Reade is good upon the subject,\" said Holmes. \"He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician. But do I see a handkerchief? Surely there is a white flutter over yonder.\"\n\n\"Yes, it is your boy,\" I cried. \"I can see him plainly.\"\n\n\"And there is the Aurora,\" exclaimed Holmes, \"and going like the devil! Full speed ahead, engineer. Make after that launch with the yellow light. By heaven, I shall never forgive myself if she proves to have the heels of us!\"\n\nShe had slipped unseen through the yard-entrance and passed between two or three small craft, so that she had fairly got her speed up before we saw her. Now she was flying down the stream, near in to the shore, going at a tremendous rate. Jones looked gravely at her and shook his head.\n\n\"She is very fast,\" he said. \"I doubt if we shall catch her.\"\n\n\"We must catch her!\" cried Holmes between his teeth. \"Heap it on, stokers! Make her do all she can! If we burn the boat we must have them!\"\n\nWe were fairly after her now. The furnaces roared, and the powerful engines whizzed and clanked like a great metallic heart. Her sharp, steep prow cut through the still river-water and sent two rolling waves to right and to left of us. With every throb of the engines we sprang and quivered like a living thing. One great yellow lantern in our bows threw a long, flickering funnel of light in front of us. Right ahead a dark blur upon the water showed where the Aurora lay, and the swirl of white foam behind her spoke of the pace at which she was going. We flashed past barges, steamers, merchant-vessels, in and out, behind this one and round the other. Voices hailed us out of the darkness, but still the Aurora thundered on, and still we followed close upon her track.\n\n\"Pile it on, men, pile it on!\" cried Holmes, looking down into the engine-room, while the fierce glow from below beat upon his eager, aquiline face. \"Get every pound of steam you can.\"\n\n\"I think we gain a little,\" said Jones with his eyes on the Aurora.\n\n\"I am sure of it,\" said I. \"We shall be up with her in a very few minutes.\"\n\nAt that moment, however, as our evil fate would have it, a tug with three barges in tow blundered in between us. It was only by putting our helm hard down that we avoided a collision, and before we could round them and recover our way the Aurora had gained a good two hundred yards. She was still, however, well in view, and the murky, uncertain twilight was settling into a clear, starlit night. Our boilers were strained to their utmost, and the frail shell vibrated and creaked with the fierce energy which was driving us along. We had shot through the pool, past the West India Docks, down the long Deptford Reach, and up again after rounding the Isle of Dogs. The dull blur in front of us resolved itself now clearly into the dainty Aurora. Jones turned our searchlight upon her, so that we could plainly see the figures upon her deck. One man sat by the stern, with something black between his knees, over which he stooped. Beside him lay a dark mass, which looked like a Newfoundland dog. The boy held the tiller, while against the red glare of the furnace I could see old Smith, stripped to the waist, and shovelling coals for dear life. They may have had some doubt at first as to whether we were really pursuing them, but now as we followed every winding and turning which they took there could no longer be any question about it. At Greenwich we were about three hundred paces behind them. At Blackwall we could not have been more than two hundred and fifty. I have coursed many creatures in many countries during my checkered career, but never did sport give me such a wild thrill as this mad, flying man-hunt down the Thames. Steadily we drew in upon them, yard by yard. In the silence of the night we could hear the panting and clanking of their machinery. The man in the stern still crouched upon the deck, and his arms were moving as though he were busy, while every now and then he would look up and measure with a glance the distance which still separated us. Nearer we came and nearer. Jones yelled to them to stop. We were not more than four boat's-lengths behind them, both boats flying at a tremendous pace. It was a clear reach of the river, with Barking Level upon one side and the melancholy Plum-stead Marshes upon the other. At our hail the man in the stern sprang up from the deck and shook his two clenched fists at us, cursing the while in a high, cracked voice. He was a good-sized, powerful man, and as he stood poising himself with legs astride I could see that from the thigh downward there was but a wooden stump upon the right side. At the sound of his strident, angry cries, there was movement in the huddled bundle upon the deck. It straightened itself into a little black man\u2014the smallest I have ever seen\u2014with a great, misshapen head and a shock of tangled, dishevelled hair. Holmes had already drawn his revolver, and I whipped out mine at the sight of this savage, distorted creature. He was wrapped in some sort of dark ulster or blanket, which left only his face exposed, but that face was enough to give a man a sleepless night. Never have I seen features so deeply marked with all bestiality and cruelty. His small eyes glowed and burned with a sombre light, and his thick lips were writhed back from his teeth, which grinned and chattered at us with half animal fury.\n\n\"Fire if he raises his hand,\" said Holmes quietly.\n\nWe were within a boat's-length by this time, and almost within touch of our quarry. I can see the two of them now as they stood, the white man with his legs far apart, shrieking out curses, and the unhallowed dwarf with his hideous face, and his strong yellow teeth gnashing at us in the light of our lantern.\n\nIt was well that we had so clear a view of him. Even as we looked he plucked out from under his covering a short, round piece of wood, like a school-ruler, and clapped it to his lips. Our pistols rang out together. He whirled round, threw up his arms, and, with a kind of choking cough, fell sideways into the stream. I caught one glimpse of his venomous, menacing eyes amid the white swirl of the Waters. At the same moment the wooden-legged man threw himself upon the rudder and put it hard down, so that his boat made straight in for the southern bank, while we shot past her stern, only clearing her by a few feet. We were round after her in an instant, but she was already nearly at the bank. It was a wild and desolate place, where the moon glimmered upon a wide expanse of marsh-land, with pools of stagnant water and beds of decaying vegetation. The launch, with a dull thud, ran up upon the mud-bank, with her bow in the air and her stern flush with the water. The fugitive sprang out; but his stump instantly sank its whole length into the sodden soil. In vain he struggled and writhed. Not one step could he possibly take either forward or backward. He yelled in impotent rage and kicked frantically into the mud with his other foot, but his struggles only bored his wooden pin the deeper into the sticky bank. When we brought our launch alongside he was so firmly anchored that it was only by throwing the end of a rope over his shoulders that we were able to haul him out and to drag him, like some evil fish, over our side. The two Smiths, father and son, sat sullenly in their launch but came aboard meekly enough when commanded. The Aurora herself we hauled off and made fast to our stern. A solid iron chest of Indian workmanship stood upon the deck. This, there could be no question, was the same that had contained the ill-omened treasure of the Sholtos. There was no key, but it was of considerable weight, so we transferred it carefully to our own little cabin. As we steamed slowly upstream again, we flashed our searchlight in every direction, but there was no sign of the Islander. Somewhere in the dark ooze at the bottom of the Thames lie the bones of that strange visitor to our shores.\n\n\"See here,\" said Holmes, pointing to the wooden hatchway. \"We were hardly quick enough with our pistols.\" There, sure enough, just behind where we had been standing, stuck one of those murderous darts which we knew so well. It must have whizzed between us at the instant we fired. Holmes smiled at it and shrugged his shoulders in his easy fashion, but I confess that it turned me sick to think of the horrible death which had passed so close to us that night." + }, + { + "title": "The Great Agra Treasure", + "text": "Our captive sat in the cabin opposite to the iron box which he had done so much and waited so long to gain. He was a sunburned reckless-eyed fellow, with a network of lines and wrinkles all over his mahogany features, which told of a hard, open-air life. There was a singular prominence about his bearded chin which marked a man who was not to be easily turned from his purpose. His age may have been fifty or thereabouts, for his black, curly hair was thickly shot with gray. His face in repose was not an unpleasing one, though his heavy brows and aggressive chin gave him, as I had lately seen, a terrible expression when moved to anger. He sat now with his handcuffed hands upon his lap, and his head sunk upon his breast, while he looked with his keen, twinkling eyes at the box which had been the cause of his ill-doings. It seemed to me that there was more sorrow than anger in his rigid and contained countenance. Once he looked up at me with a gleam of something like humour in his eyes.\n\n\"Well, Jonathan Small,\" said Holmes, lighting a cigar, \"I am sorry that it has come to this.\"\n\n\"And so am I, sir,\" he answered frankly. \"I don't believe that I can swing over the job. I give you my word on the book that I never raised hand against Mr. Sholto. It was that little hell-hound, Tonga, who shot one of his cursed darts into him. I had no part in it, sir. I was as grieved as if it had been my blood-relation. I welted the little devil with the slack end of the rope for it, but it was done, and I could not undo it again.\"\n\n\"Have a cigar,\" said Holmes; \"and you had best take a pull out of my flask, for you are very wet. How could you expect so small and weak a man as this black fellow to overpower Mr. Sholto and hold him while you were climbing the rope?\"\n\n\"You seem to know as much about it as if you were there, sir. The truth is that I hoped to find the room clear. I knew the habits of the house pretty well, and it was the time when Mr. Sholto usually went down to his supper. I shall make no secret of the business. The best defence that I can make is just the simple truth. Now, if it had been the old major I would have swung for him with a light heart. I would have thought no more of knifing him than of smoking this cigar. But it's cursed hard that I should be lagged over this young Sholto, with whom I had no quarrel whatever.\"\n\n\"You are under the charge of Mr. Athelney Jones, of Scotland Yard. He is going to bring you up to my rooms, and I shall ask you for a true account of the matter. You must make a clean breast of it, for if you do I hope that I may be of use to you. I think I can prove that the poison acts so quickly that the man was dead before ever you reached the room.\"\n\n\"That he was, sir. I never got such a turn in my life as when I saw him grinning at me with his head on his shoulder as I climbed through the window. It fairly shook me, sir. I'd have half-killed Tonga for it if he had not scrambled off. That was how he came to leave his club, and some of his darts too, as he tells me, which I dare say helped to put you on our track; though how you kept on it is more than I can tell. I don't feel no malice against you for it. But it does seem a queer thing,\" he added with a bitter smile, \"that I, who have a fair claim to half a million of money, should spend the first half of my life building a breakwater in the Andamans, and am like to spend the other half digging drains at Dartmoor. It was an evil day for me when first I clapped eyes upon the merchant Achmet and had to do with the Agra treasure, which never brought anything but a curse yet upon the man who owned it. To him it brought murder, to Major Sholto it brought fear and guilt, to me it has meant slavery for life.\"\n\nAt this moment Athelney Jones thrust his broad face and heavy shoulders into the tiny cabin.\n\n\"Quite a family party,\" he remarked. \"I think I shall have a pull at that flask, Holmes. Well, I think we may all congratulate each other. Pity we didn't take the other alive, but there was no choice. I say, Holmes, you must confess that you cut it rather fine. It was all we could do to overhaul her.\"\n\n\"All is well that ends well,\" said Holmes. \"But I certainly did not know that the Aurora was such a clipper.\"\n\n\"Smith says she is one of the fastest launches on the river, and that if he had had another man to help him with the engines we should never have caught her. He swears he knew nothing of this Norwood business.\"\n\n\"Neither he did,\" cried our prisoner\u2014\"not a word. I chose his launch because I heard that she was a flier. We told him nothing; but we paid him well, and he was to get something handsome if we reached our vessel, the Esmeralda, at Gravesend, outward bound for the Brazils.\"\n\n\"Well, if he has done no wrong we shall see that no wrong comes to him. If we are pretty quick in catching our men, we are not so quick in condemning them.\" It was amusing to notice how the consequential Jones was already beginning to give himself airs on the strength of the capture. From the slight smile which played over Sherlock Holmes's face, I could see that the speech had not been lost upon him.\n\n\"We will be at Vauxhall Bridge presently,\" said Jones, \"and shall land you, Dr. Watson, with the treasure-box. I need hardly tell you that I am taking a very grave responsibility upon myself in doing this. It is most irregular, but of course an agreement is an agreement. I must, however, as a matter of duty, send an inspector with you, since you have so valuable a charge. You will drive, no doubt?\"\n\n\"Yes, I shall drive.\"\n\n\"It is a pity there is no key, that we may make an inventory first. You will have to break it open. Where is the key, my man?\"\n\n\"At the bottom of the river,\" said Small shortly.\n\n\"Hum! There was no use your giving this unnecessary trouble. We have had work enough already through you. However, Doctor, I need not warn you to be careful. Bring the box back with you to the Baker Street rooms. You will find us there, on our way to the station.\"\n\nThey landed me at Vauxhall, with my heavy iron box, and with a bluff, genial inspector as my companion. A quarter of an hour's drive brought us to Mrs. Cecil Forrester's. The servant seemed surprised at so late a visitor. Mrs. Cecil Forrester was out for the evening, she explained, and likely to be very late. Miss Morstan, however, was in the drawing-room; so to the drawing-room I went, box in hand, leaving the obliging inspector in the cab.\n\nShe was seated by the open window, dressed in some sort of white diaphanous material, with a little touch of scarlet at the neck and waist. The soft light of a shaded lamp fell upon her as she leaned back in the basket chair, playing over her sweet grave face, and tinting with a dull, metallic sparkle the rich coils of her luxuriant hair. One white arm and hand drooped over the side of the chair, and her whole pose and figure spoke of an absorbing melancholy. At the sound of my footfall she sprang to her feet, however, and a bright flush of surprise and of pleasure coloured her pale cheeks.\n\n\"I heard a cab drive up,\" she said. \"I thought that Mrs. Forrester had come back very early, but I never dreamed that it might-be you. What news have you brought me?\"\n\n\"I have brought something better than news,\" said I, putting down the box upon the table and speaking jovially and boisterously, though my heart was heavy within me. \"I have brought you something which is worth all the news in the world. I have brought you a fortune.\"\n\nShe glanced at the iron box.\n\n\"Is that the treasure then?\" she asked, coolly enough.\n\n\"Yes, this is the great Agra treasure. Half of it is yours and half is Thaddeus Sholto's. You will have a couple of hundred thousand each. Think of that! An annuity of ten thousand pounds. There will be few richer young ladies in England. Is it not glorious?\"\n\nI think I must have been rather over-acting my delight, and that she detected a hollow ring in my congratulations, for I saw her eyebrows rise a little, and she glanced at me curiously.\n\n\"If I have it,\" said she, \"I owe it to you.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" I answered, \"not to me but to my friend Sherlock Holmes. With all the will in the world, I could never have followed up a clue which has taxed even his analytical genius. As it was, we very nearly lost it at the last moment.\"\n\n\"Pray sit down and tell me all about it, Dr. Watson,\" said she.\n\nI narrated briefly what had occurred since I had seen her last. Holmes's new method of search, the discovery of the Aurora, the appearance of Athelney Jones, our expedition in the evening, and the wild chase down the Thames. She listened with parted lips and shining eyes to my recital of our adventures. When I spoke of the dart which had so narrowly missed us, she turned so white that I feared that she was about to faint.\n\n\"It is nothing,\" she said as I hastened to pour her out some water. \"I am all right again. It was a shock to me to hear that I had placed my friends in such horrible peril.\"\n\n\"That is all over,\" I answered. \"It was nothing. I will tell you no more gloomy details. Let us turn to something brighter. There is the treasure. What could be brighter than that? I got leave to bring it with me, thinking that it would interest you to be the first to see it.\"\n\n\"It would be of the greatest interest to me,\" she said. There was no eagerness in her voice, however. It had struck her, doubtless, that it might seem ungracious upon her part to be indifferent to a prize which had cost so much to win.\n\n\"What a pretty box!\" she said, stooping over it. \"This is Indian work, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Yes; it is Benares metal-work.\"\n\n\"And so heavy!\" she exclaimed, trying to raise it. \"The box alone must be of some value. Where is the key?\"\n\n\"Small threw it into the Thames,\" I answered. \"I must borrow Mrs. Forrester's poker.\"\n\nThere was in the front a thick and broad hasp, wrought in the image of a sitting Buddha. Under this I thrust the end of the poker and twisted it outward as a lever. The hasp sprang open with a loud snap. With trembling fingers I flung back the lid. We both stood gazing in astonishment. The box was empty!\n\nNo wonder that it was heavy. The ironwork was two-thirds of an inch thick all round. It was massive, well made, and solid, like a chest constructed to carry things of great price, but not one shred or crumb of metal or jewellery lay within it. It was absolutely and completely empty.\n\n\"The treasure is lost,\" said Miss Morstan calmly.\n\nAs I listened to the words and realized what they meant, a great shadow seemed to pass from my soul. I did not know how this Agra treasure had weighed me down until now that it was finally removed. It was selfish, no doubt, disloyal, wrong, but I could realize nothing save that the golden barrier was gone from between us.\n\n\"Thank God!\" I ejaculated from my very heart.\n\nShe looked at me with a quick, questioning smile.\n\n\"Why do you say that?\" she asked.\n\n\"Because you are within my reach again,\" I said, taking her hand. She did not withdraw it. \"Because I love you, Mary, as truly as ever a man loved a woman. Because this treasure, these riches, sealed my lips. Now that they are gone I can tell you how I love you. That is why I said, 'Thank God.'\"\n\n\"Then I say 'Thank God,' too,\" she whispered as I drew her to my side.\n\nWhoever had lost a treasure, I knew that night that I had gained one." + }, + { + "title": "The Strange Story of Jonathan Small", + "text": "A very patient man was that inspector in the cab, for it was a weary time before I rejoined him. His face clouded over when I showed him the empty box.\n\n\"There goes the reward!\" said he gloomily. \"Where there is no money there is no pay. This night's work would have been worth a tenner each to Sam Brown and me if the treasure had been there.\"\n\n\"Mr. Thaddeus Sholto is a rich man,\" I said; \"he will see that you are rewarded, treasure or no.\"\n\nThe inspector shook his head despondently, however.\n\n\"It's a bad job,\" he repeated; \"and so Mr. Athelney Jones will think.\"\n\nHis forecast proved to be correct, for the detective looked blank enough when I got to Baker Street and showed him the empty box. They had only just arrived, Holmes, the prisoner, and he, for they had changed their plans so far as to report themselves at a station upon the way. My companion lounged in his armchair with his usual listless expression, while Small sat stolidly opposite to him with his wooden leg cocked over his sound one. As I exhibited the empty box he leaned back in his chair and laughed aloud.\n\n\"This is your doing, Small,\" said Athelney Jones angrily.\n\n\"Yes, I have put it away where you shall never lay hand upon it,\" he cried exultantly. \"It is my treasure, and if I can't have the loot I'll take darned good care that no one else does. I tell you that no living man has any right to it, unless it is three men who are in the Andaman convict-barracks and myself. I know now that I cannot have the use of it, and I know that they cannot. I have acted all through for them as much as for myself. It's been the sign of four with us always. Well, I know that they would have had me do just what I have done, and throw the treasure into the Thames rather than let it go to kith or kin of Sholto or Morstan. It was not to make them rich that we did for Achmet. You'll find the treasure where the key is and where little Tonga is. When I saw that your launch must catch us, I put the loot away in a safe place. There are no rupees for you this journey.\"\n\n\"You are deceiving us, Small,\" said Athelney Jones sternly; \"if you had wished to throw the treasure into the Thames, it would have been easier for you to have thrown box and all.\"\n\n\"Easier for me to throw and easier for you to recover,\" he answered with a shrewd, side-long look. \"The man that was clever enough to hunt me down is clever enough to pick an iron box from the bottom of a river. Now that they are scattered over five miles or so, it may be a harder job. It went to my heart to do it though. I was half mad when you came up with us. However, there's no good grieving over it. I've had ups in my life, and I've had downs, but I've learned not to cry over spilled milk.\"\n\n\"This is a very serious matter, Small,\" said the detective. \"If you had helped justice, instead of thwarting it in this way, you would have had a better chance at your trial.\"\n\n\"Justice!\" snarled the ex-convict. \"A pretty justice! Whose loot is this, if it is not ours? Where is the justice that I should give it up to those who have never earned it? Look how I have earned it! Twenty long years in that fever-ridden swamp, all day at work under the mangrove-tree, all night chained up in the filthy convict-huts, bitten by mosquitoes, racked with ague, bullied by every cursed black-faced policeman who loved to take it out of a white man. That was how I earned the Agra treasure, and you talk to me of justice because I cannot bear to feel that I have paid this price only that another may enjoy it! I would rather swing a score of times, or have one of Tonga's darts in my hide, than live in a convict's cell and feel that another man is at his ease in a palace with the money that should be mine.\"\n\nSmall had dropped his mask of stoicism, and all this came out in a wild whirl of words, while his eyes blazed, and the handcuffs clanked together with the impassioned movement of his hands. I could understand, as I saw the fury and the passion of the man, that it was no groundless or unnatural terror which had possessed Major Sholto when he first learned that the injured convict was upon his track.\n\n\"You forget that we know nothing of all this,\" said Holmes quietly. \"We have not heard your story, and we cannot tell how far justice may originally have been on your side.\"\n\n\"Well, sir, you have been very fair-spoken to me, though I can see that I have you to thank that I have these bracelets upon my wrists. Still, I bear no grudge for that. It is all fair and above-board. If you want to hear my story, I have no wish to hold it back. What I say to you is God's truth, every word of it. Thank you, you can put the glass beside me here, and I'll put my lips to it if I am dry.\n\n\"I am a Worcestershire man myself, born near Pershore. I dare say you would find a heap of Smalls living there now if you were to look. I have often thought of taking a look round there, but the truth is that I was never much of a credit to the family, and I doubt if they would be so very glad to see me. They were all steady, chapel-going folk, small farmers, well known and respected over the countryside, while I was always a bit of a rover. At last, however, when I was about eighteen, I gave them no more trouble, for I got into a mess over a girl and could only get out of it again by taking the Queen's shilling and joining the Third Buffs, which was just starting for India.\n\n\"I wasn't destined to do much soldiering, however. I had just got past the goose-step and learned to handle my musket, when I was fool enough to go swimming in the Ganges. Luckily for me, my company sergeant, John Holder, was in the water at the same time, and he was one of the finest swimmers in the service. A crocodile took me just as I was halfway across and nipped off my right leg as clean as a surgeon could have done it, just above the knee. What with the shock and the loss of blood, I fainted, and should have been drowned if Holder had not caught hold of me and paddled for the bank. I was five months in hospital over it, and when at last I was able to limp out of it with this timber toe strapped to my stump, I found myself invalided out of the Army and unfitted for any active occupation.\n\n\"I was, as you can imagine, pretty down on my luck at this time, for I was a useless cripple, though not yet in my twentieth year. However, my misfortune soon proved to be a blessing in disguise. A man named Abel White, who had come out there as an indigo-planter, wanted an overseer to look after his coolies and keep them up to their work. He happened to be a friend of our colonel's, who had taken an interest in me since the accident. To make a long story short, the colonel recommended me strongly for the post, and, as the work was mostly to be done on horseback, my leg was no great obstacle, for I had enough thigh left to keep a good grip on the saddle. What I had to do was to ride over the plantation, to keep an eye on the men as they worked, and to report the idlers. The pay was fair, I had comfortable quarters, and altogether I was content to spend the remainder of my life in indigo-planting. Mr. Abel White was a kind man, and he would often drop into my little shanty and smoke a pipe with me, for white folk out there feel their hearts warm to each other as they never do here at home.\n\n\"Well, I was never in luck's way long. Suddenly, without a note of warning, the great mutiny broke upon us. One month India lay as still and peaceful, to all appearance, as Surrey or Kent; the next there were two hundred thousand black devils let loose, and the country was a perfect hell. Of course you know all about it, gentlemen\u2014a deal more than I do, very like, since reading is not in my line. I only know what I saw with my own eyes. Our plantation was at a place called Muttra, near the border of the Northwest Provinces. Night after night the whole sky was alight with the burning bungalows, and day after day we had small companies of Europeans passing through our estate with their wives and children, on their way to Agra, where were the nearest troops. Mr. Abel White was an obstinate man. He had it in his head that the affair had been exaggerated, and that it would blow over as suddenly as it had sprung up. There he sat on his veranda, drinking whisky-pegs and smoking cheroots, while the country was in a blaze about him. Of course we stuck by him, I and Dawson, who, with his wife, used to do the book-work and the managing. Well, one fine day the crash came. I had been away on a distant plantation and was riding slowly home in the evening, when my eye fell upon something all huddled together at the bottom of a steep nullah. I rode down to see what it was, and the cold struck through my heart when I found it was Dawson's wife, all cut into ribbons, and half eaten by jackals and native dogs. A little further up the road Dawson himself was lying on his face, quite dead, with an empty revolver in his hand, and four sepoys lying across each other in front of him. I reined up my horse, wondering which way I should turn; but at that moment I saw thick smoke curling up from Abel White's bungalow and the flames beginning to burst through the roof. I knew then that I could do my employer no good, but would only throw my own life away if I meddled in the matter. From where I stood I could see hundreds of the black fiends, with their red coats still on their backs, dancing and howling round the burning house. Some of them pointed at me, and a couple of bullets sang past my head: so I broke away across the paddy-fields, and found myself late at night safe within the walls at Agra.\n\n\"As it proved, however, there was no great safety there, either. The whole country was up like a swarm of bees. Wherever the English could collect in little bands they held just the ground that their guns commanded. Everywhere else they were helpless fugitives. It was a fight of the millions against the hundreds; and the cruellest part of it was that these men that we fought against, foot, horse, and gunners, were our own picked troops, whom we had taught and trained, handling our own weapons and blowing our own bugle-calls. At Agra there were the Third Bengal Fusiliers, some Sikhs, two troops of horse, and a battery of artillery. A volunteer corps of clerks and merchants had been formed, and this I joined, wooden leg and all. We went out to meet the rebels at Shah-gunge early in July, and we beat them back for a time, but our powder gave out, and we had to fall back upon the city.\n\n\"Nothing but the worst news came to us from every side\u2014which is not to be wondered at, for if you look at the map you will see that we were right in the heart of it. Lucknow is rather better than a hundred miles to the east, and Cawnpore about as far to the south. From every point on the compass there was nothing but torture and murder and outrage.\n\n\"The city of Agra is a great place, swarming with fanatics and fierce devil-worshippers of all sorts. Our handful of men were lost among the narrow, winding streets. Our leader moved across the river, therefore, and took up his position in the old fort of Agra. I don't know if any of you gentlemen have ever read or heard anything of that old fort. It is a very queer place\u2014the queerest that ever I was in, and I have been in some rum corners, too. First of all it is enormous in size. I should think that the enclosure must be acres and acres. There is a modern part, which took all our garrison, women, children, stores, and everything else, with plenty of room over. But the modern part is nothing like the size of the old quarter, where nobody goes, and which is given over to the scorpions and the centipedes. It is all full of great deserted halls, and winding passages, and long corridors twisting in and out, so that it is easy enough for folk to get lost in it. For this reason it was seldom that anyone went into it, though now and again a party with torches might go exploring.\n\n\"The river washes along the front of the old fort, and so protects it, but on the sides and behind there are many doors, and these had to be guarded, of course, in the old quarter as well as in that which was actually held by our troops. We were short-handed, with hardly men enough to man the angles of the building and to serve the guns. It was impossible for us, therefore, to station a strong guard at every one of the innumerable gates. What we did was to organize a central guardhouse in the middle of the fort, and to leave each gate under the charge of one white man and two or three natives. I was selected to take charge during certain hours of the night of a small isolated door upon the south-west side of the building. Two Sikh troopers were placed under my command, and I was instructed if anything went wrong to fire my musket, when I might rely upon help coming at once from the central guard. As the guard was a good two hundred paces away, however, and as the space between was cut up into a labyrinth of passages and corridors, I had great doubts as to whether they could arrive in time to be of any use in case of an actual attack.\n\n\"Well, I was pretty proud at having this small command given me, since I was a raw recruit, and a game-legged one at that. For two nights I kept the watch with my Punjabees. They were tall, fierce-looking chaps, Mahomet Singh and Abdullah Khan by name, both old fighting men, who had borne arms against us at Chilian Wallah. They could talk English pretty well, but I could get little out of them. They preferred to stand together, and jabber all night in their queer Sikh lingo. For myself, I used to stand outside the gateway, looking down on the broad, winding river and on the twinkling lights of the great city. The beating of drums, the rattle of tomtoms, and the yells and howls of the rebels, drunk with opium and with bhang, were enough to remind us all night of our dangerous neighbours across the stream. Every two hours the officer of the night used to come round to all the posts to make sure that all was well.\n\n\"The third night of my watch was dark and dirty, with a small driving rain. It was dreary work standing in the gateway hour after hour in such weather. I tried again and again to make my Sikhs talk, but without much success. At two in the morning the rounds passed and broke for a moment the weariness of the night. Finding that my companions would not be led into conversation, I took out my pipe and laid down my musket to strike the match. In an instant the two Sikhs were upon me. One of them snatched my firelock up and levelled it at my head, while the other held a great knife to my throat and swore between his teeth that he would plunge it into me if I moved a step.\n\n\"My first thought was that these fellows were in league with the rebels, and that this was the beginning of an assault. If our door were in the hands of the sepoys the place must fall, and the women and children be treated as they were in Cawnpore. Maybe you gentlemen think that I am just making out a case for myself, but I give you my word that when I thought of that, though I felt the point of the knife at my throat, I opened my mouth with the intention of giving a scream, if it was my last one, which might alarm the main guard. The man who held me seemed to know my thoughts; for, even as I braced myself to it, he whispered: 'Don't make a noise. The fort is safe enough. There are no rebel dogs on this side of the river.' There was the ring of truth in what he said, and I knew that if I raised my voice I was a dead man. I could read it in the fellow's brown eyes. I waited, therefore, in silence, to see what it was that they wanted from me.\n\n\"'Listen to me, sahib,' said the taller and fiercer of the pair, the one whom they called Abdullah Khan. 'You must either be with us now, or you must be silenced forever. The thing is too great a one for us to hesitate. Either you are heart and soul with us on your oath on the cross of the Christians, or your body this night shall be thrown into the ditch, and we shall pass over to our brothers in the rebel army. There is no middle way. Which is it to be\u2014death or life? We can only give you three minutes to decide, for the time is passing, and all must be done before the rounds come again.'\n\n\"'How can I decide?' said I. 'You have not told me what you want of me. But I tell you now that if it is anything against the safety of the fort I will have no truck with it, so you can drive home your knife and welcome.'\n\n\"'It is nothing against the fort,' said he. 'We only ask you to do that which your countrymen come to this land for. We ask you to be rich. If you will be one of us this night, we will swear to you upon the naked knife, and by the threefold oath which no Sikh was ever known to break, that you shall have your fair share of the loot. A quarter of the treasure shall be yours. We can say no fairer.'\n\n\"'But what is the treasure then?' I asked. 'I am as ready to be rich as you can be if you will but show me how it can be done.'\n\n'You will swear, then,' said he, 'by the bones of your father, by the honour of your mother, by the cross of your faith, to raise no hand and speak no word against us, either now or afterwards?'\n\n\"'I will swear it,' I answered, 'provided that the fort is not endangered.'\n\n\"'Then my comrade and I will swear that you shall have a quarter of the treasure which shall be equally divided among the four of us.'\n\n\"'There are but three,' said I.\n\n\"'No; Dost Akbar must have his share. We can tell the tale to you while we wait them. Do you stand at the gate, Mahomet Singh, and give notice of their coming. The thing stands thus, sahib, and I tell it to you because I know that an oath is binding upon a Feringhec, and that we may trust you. Had you been a lying Hindoo, though you had sworn by all the gods in their false temples, your blood would have been upon the knife and your body in the water. But the Sikh knows the Englishman, and the Englishman knows the Sikh. Hearken, then, to what I have to say.\n\n\"'There is a rajah in the northern provinces who has much wealth, though his lands are small. Much has come to him from his father, and more still he has set by himself, for he is of a low nature and hoards his gold rather than spend it. When the troubles broke out he would be friends both with the lion and the tiger\u2014with the sepoy and with the Company's raj. Soon, however, it seemed to him that the white men's day was come, for through all the land he could hear of nothing but of their death and their overthrow. Yet, being a careful man, he made such plans that, come what might, half at least of his treasure should be left to him. That which was in gold and silver he kept by him in the vaults of his palace, but the most precious stones and the choicest pearls that he had he put in an iron box and sent it by a trusty servant, who, under the guise of a merchant, should take it to the fort at Agra, there to lie until the land is at peace. Thus, if the rebels won he would have his money, but if the Company conquered, his jewels would be saved to him. Having thus divided his hoard, he threw himself into the cause of the sepoys, since they were strong upon his borders. By his doing this, mark you, sahib, his property becomes the due of those who have been true to their salt.\n\n\"'This pretended merchant, who travels under the name of Achmet, is now in the city of Agra and desires to gain his way into the fort. He has with him as travelling-companion my foster-brother Dost Akbar, who knows his secret. Dost Akbar has promised this night to lead him to a side-postern of the fort, and has chosen this one for his purpose. Here he will come presently, and here he will find Mahomet Singh and myself awaiting him. The place is lonely, and none shall know of his coming. The world shall know the merchant Achmet no more, but the great treasure of the rajah shall be divided among us. What say you to it, sahib?'\n\n\"In Worcestershire the life of a man seems a great and a sacred thing; but it is very different when there is fire and blood all round you, and you have been used to meeting death at every turn. Whether Achmet the merchant lived or died was a thing as light as air to me, but at the talk about the treasure my heart turned to it, and I thought of what I might do in the old country with it, and how my folk would stare when they saw their ne'er-do-well coming back with his pockets full of gold moidores. I had, therefore, already made up my mind. Abdullah Khan, however, thinking that I hesitated, pressed the matter more closely.\n\n\"'Consider, sahib,' said he, 'that if this man is taken by the commandant he will be hung or shot, and his jewels taken by the government, so that no man will be a rupee the better for them. Now, since we do the taking of him, why should we not do the rest as well? The jewels will be as well with us as in the Company's coffers. There will be enough to make every one of us rich men and great chiefs. No one can know about the matter, for here we are cut off from all men. What could be better for the purpose? Say again, then, sahib, whether you are with us, or if we must look upon you as an enemy.'\n\n\"'I am with you heart and soul,' said I.\n\n\"'It is well,' he answered, handing me back my firelock. 'You see that we trust you, for your word, like ours, is not to be broken. We have now only to wait for my brother and the merchant.'\n\n\"'Does your brother know, then, of what you will do?' I asked.\n\n\"'The plan is his. He has devised it. We will go to the gate and share the watch with Mahomet Singh.'\n\n\"The rain was still falling steadily, for it was just the beginning of the wet season. Brown, heavy clouds were drifting across the sky, and it was hard to see more than a stonecast. A deep moat lay in front of our door, but the water was in places nearly dried up, and it could easily be crossed. It was strange to me to be standing there with those two wild Punjabees waiting for the man who was coming to his death.\n\n\"Suddenly my eye caught the glint of a shaded lantern at the other side of the moat. It vanished among the mound-heaps, and then appeared again coming slowly in our direction.\n\n\"'Here they are!' I exclaimed.\n\n\"'You will challenge him, sahib, as usual,' whispered Abdullah. 'Give him no cause for fear. Send us in with him, and we shall do the rest while you stay here on guard. Have the lantern ready to uncover, that we may be sure that it is indeed the man.'\n\n\"The light had flickered onward, now stopping and now advancing, until I could see two dark figures upon the other side of the moat. I let them scramble down the sloping bank, splash through the mire, and climb halfway up to the gate before I challenged them.\n\n\"'Who goes there?' said I in a subdued voice.\n\n\"'Friends,' came the answer. I uncovered my lantern and threw a flood of light upon them. The first was an enormous Sikh with a black beard which swept nearly down to his cumberbund. Outside of a show I have never seen so tall a man. The other was a little fat, round fellow with a great yellow turban and a bundle in his hand, done up in a shawl. He seemed to be all in a quiver with fear, for his hands twitched as if he had the ague, and his head kept turning to left and right with two bright little twinkling eyes, like a mouse when he ventures out from his hole. It gave me the chills to think of killing him, but I thought of the treasure, and my heart set as hard as a flint within me. When he saw my white face he gave a little chirrup of joy and came running up towards me.\n\n\"'Your protection, sahib,' he panted, 'your protection for the unhappy merchant Achmet. I have travelled across Rajpootana, that I might seek the shelter of the fort at Agra. I have been robbed and beaten and abused because I have been the friend of the Company. It is a blessed night this when I am once more in safety\u2014I and my poor possessions.'\n\n\"'What have you in the bundle?' I asked.\n\n\"'An iron box,' he answered, 'which contains one or two little family matters which are of no value to others but which I should be sorry to lose. Yet I am not a beggar; and I shall reward you, young sahib, and your governor also if he will give me the shelter I ask.'\n\n\"I could not trust myself to speak longer with the man. The more I looked at his fat, frightened face, the harder did it seem that we should slay him in cold blood. It was best to get it over.\n\n\"'Take him to the main guard,' said I. The two Sikhs closed in upon him on each side, and the giant walked behind, while they marched in through the dark gateway. Never was a man so compassed round with death. I remained at the gateway with the lantern.\n\n\"I could hear the measured tramp of their footsteps sounding through the lonely corridors. Suddenly it ceased, and I heard voices and a scuffle, with the sound of blows. A moment later there came, to my horror, a rush of footsteps coming in my direction, with a loud breathing of a running man. I turned my lantern down the long straight passage, and there was the fat man, running like the wind, with a smear of blood across his face, and close at his heels, bounding like a tiger, the great black-bearded Sikh, with a knife flashing in his hand. I have never seen a man run so fast as that little merchant. He was gaining on the Sikh, and I could see that if he once passed me and got to the open air he would save himself yet. My heart softened to him, but again the thought of his treasure turned me hard and bitter. I cast my firelock between his legs as he raced past, and he rolled twice over like a shot rabbit. Ere he could stagger to his feet the Sikh was upon him and buried his knife twice in his side. The man never uttered moan nor moved muscle but lay where he had fallen. I think myself that he may have broken his neck with the fall. You see, gentlemen, that I am keeping my promise. I am telling you every word of the business just exactly as it happened, whether it is in my favour or not.\"\n\nHe stopped and held out his manacled hands for the whisky and water which Holmes had brewed for him. For myself, I confess that I had now conceived the utmost horror of the man not only for this cold-blooded business in which he had been concerned but even more for the somewhat flippant and careless way in which he narrated it. Whatever punishment was in store for him, I felt that he might expect no sympathy from me. Sherlock Holmes and Jones sat with their hands upon their knees, deeply interested in the story but with the same disgust written upon their faces. He may have observed it, for there was a touch of defiance in his voice and manner as he proceeded.\n\n\"It was all very bad, no doubt.\" said he. \"I should like to know how many fellows in my shoes would have refused a share of this loot when they knew that they would have their throats cut for their pains. Besides, it was my life or his when once he was in the fort. If he had got out, the whole business would come to light, and I should have been court-martialled and shot as likely as not; for people were not very lenient at a time like that.\"\n\n\"Go on with your story,\" said Holmes shortly.\n\n\"Well, we carried him in, Abdullah, Akbar, and I. A fine weight he was, too, for all that he was so short. Mahomet Singh was left to guard the door. We took him to a place which the Sikhs had already prepared. It was some distance off, where a winding passage leads to a great empty hall, the brick walls of which were all crumbling to pieces. The earth floor had sunk in at one place, making a natural grave, so we left Achmet the merchant there, having first covered him over with loose bricks. This done, we all went back to the treasure.\n\n\"It lay where he had dropped it when he was first attacked. The box was the same which now lies open upon your table. A key was hung by a silken cord to that carved handle upon the top. We opened it, and the light of the lantern gleamed upon a collection of gems such as I have read of and thought about when I was a little lad at Pershore. It was blinding to look upon them. When we had feasted our eyes we took them all out and made a list of them. There were one hundred and forty-three diamonds of the first water, including one which has been called, I believe, 'the Great Mogul,' and is said to be the second largest stone in existence. Then there were ninety-seven very fine emeralds, and one hundred and seventy rubies, some of which, however, were small. There were forty carbuncles, two hundred and ten sapphires, sixty-one agates, and a great quantity of beryls, onyxes, cats'-eyes, turquoises, and other stones, the very names of which I did not know at the time, though I have become more familiar with them since. Besides this, there were nearly three hundred very fine pearls, twelve of which were set in a gold coronet. By the way, these last had been taken out of the chest, and were not there when I recovered it.\n\n\"After we had counted our treasures we put them back into the chest and carried them to the gateway to show them to Mahomet Singh. Then we solemnly renewed our oath to stand by each other and be true to our secret. We agreed to conceal our loot in a safe place until the country should be at peace again, and then to divide it equally among ourselves. There was no use dividing it at present, for if gems of such value were found upon us it would cause suspicion, and there was no privacy in the fort nor any place where we could keep them. We carried the box, therefore, into the same hall where we had buried the body, and there, under certain bricks in the best-preserved wall, we made a hollow and put our treasure. We made careful note of the place, and next day I drew four plans, one for each of us, and put the sign of the four of us at the bottom, for we had sworn that we should each always act for all, so that none might take advantage. That is an oath that I can put my hand to my heart and swear that I have never broken.\n\n\"Well, there's no use my telling you gentlemen what came of the Indian mutiny. After Wilson took Delhi and Sir Cohn relieved Lucknow the back of the business was broken. Fresh troops came pouring in, and Nana Sahib made himself scarce over the frontier. A flying column under Colonel Greathed came round to Agra and cleared the Pandies away from it. Peace seemed to be settling upon the country, and we four were beginning to hope that the time was at hand when we might safely go off with our shares of the plunder. In a moment, however, our hopes were shattered by our being arrested as the murderers of Achmet.\n\n\"It came about in this way. When the rajah put his jewels into the hands of Achmet he did it because he knew that he was a trusty man. They are suspicious folk in the East, however: so what does this rajah do but take a second even more trusty servant and set him to play the spy upon the first. This second man was ordered never to let Achmet out of his sight, and he followed him like his shadow. He went after him that night and saw him pass through the doorway. Of course he thought he had taken refuge in the fort and applied for admission there himself next day, but could find no trace of Achmet. This seemed to him so strange that he spoke about it to a sergeant of guides, who brought it to the ears of the commandant. A thorough search was quickly made, and the body was discovered. Thus at the very moment that we thought that all was safe we were all four seized and brought to trial on a charge of murder\u2014three of us because we had held the gate that night, and the fourth because he was known to have been in the company of the murdered man. Not a word about the jewels came out at the trial, for the rajah had been deposed and driven out of India: so no one had any particular interest in them. The murder, however, was clearly made out, and it was certain that we must all have been concerned in it. The three Sikhs got penal servitude for life, and I was condemned to death, though my sentence was afterwards commuted to the same as the others.\n\n\"It was rather a queer position that we found ourselves in then. There we were all four tied by the leg and with precious little chance of ever getting out again, while we each held a secret which might have put each of us in a palace if we could only have made use of it. It was enough to make a man eat his heart out to have to stand the kick and the cuff of every petty jack-in-office, to have rice to eat and water to drink, when that gorgeous fortune was ready for him outside, just waiting to be picked up. It might have driven me mad; but I was always a pretty stubborn one, so I just held on and bided my time.\n\n\"At last it seemed to me to have come. I was changed from Agra to Madras, and from there to Blair Island in the Andamans. There are very few white convicts at this settlement, and, as I had behaved well from the first, I soon found myself a sort of privileged person. I was given a hut in Hope Town, which is a small place on the slopes of Mount Harriet, and I was left pretty much to myself. It is a dreary, fever-stricken place, and all beyond our little clearings was infested with wild cannibal natives, who were ready enough to blow a poisoned dart at us if they saw a chance. There was digging and ditching and yam-planting, and a dozen other things to be done, so we were busy enough all day; though in the evening we had a little time to ourselves. Among other things, I learned to dispense drugs for the surgeon, and picked up a smattering of his knowledge. All the time I was on the lookout for a chance to escape; but it is hundreds of miles from any other land, and there is little or no wind in those seas: so it was a terribly difficult job to get away.\n\n\"The surgeon, Dr. Somerton, was a fast, sporting young chap, and the other young officers would meet in his rooms of an evening and play cards. The surgery, where I used to make up my drugs, was next to his sitting-room, with a small window between us. Often, if I felt lonesome, I used to turn out the lamp in the surgery, and then, standing there, I could hear their talk and watch their play. I am fond of a hand at cards myself, and it was almost as good as having one to watch the others. There was Major Sholto, Captain Morstan, and Lieutenant Bromley Brown, who were in command of the native troops, and there was the surgeon himself, and two or three prison-officials, crafty old hands who played a nice sly safe game. A very snug little party they used to make.\n\n\"Well, there was one thing which very soon struck me, and that was that the soldiers used always to lose and the civilians to win. Mind, I don't say there was anything unfair, but so it was. These prison-chaps had done little else than play cards ever since they had been at the Andamans, and they knew each other's game to a point, while the others just played to pass the time and threw their cards down anyhow. Night after night the soldiers got up poorer men, and the poorer they got the more keen they were to play. Major Sholto was the hardest hit. He used to pay in notes and gold at first, but soon it came to notes of hand and for big sums. He sometimes would win for a few deals just to give him heart, and then the luck would set in against him worse than ever. All day he would wander about as black as thunder, and he took to drinking a deal more than was good for him.\n\n\"One night he lost even more heavily than usual. I was sitting in my hut when he and Captain Morstan came stumbling along on the way to their quarters. They were bosom friends, those two, and never far apart. The major was raving about his losses.\n\n\"'It's all up, Morstan,' he was saying as they passed my hut. 'I shall have to send in my papers. I am a ruined man.'\n\n\"'Nonsense, old chap!' said the other, slapping him upon the shoulder. 'I've had a nasty facer myself, but\u2014' That was all I could hear, but it was enough to set me thinking.\n\n\"A couple of days later Major Sholto was strolling on the beach: so I took the chance of speaking to him.\n\n\"'I wish to have your advice, Major,' said I.\n\n\"'Well, Small, what is it?' he asked, taking his cheroot from his lips.\n\n\"'I wanted to ask you, sir,' said I, 'who is the proper person to whom hidden treasure should be handed over. I know where half a million worth lies, and, as I cannot use it myself, I thought perhaps the best thing that I could do would be to hand it over to the proper authorities, and then perhaps they would get my sentence shortened for me.'\n\n\"'Half a million, Small?' he gasped, looking hard at me to see if I was in earnest.\n\n\"'Quite that, sir\u2014in jewels and pearls. It lies there ready for anyone. And the queer thing about it is that the real owner is outlawed and cannot hold property, so that it belongs to the first comer.'\n\n\"'To government, Small,' he stammered, 'to government.' But he said it in a halting fashion, and I knew in my heart that I had got him.\n\n\"'You think, then, sir, that I should give the information to the governor-general? ' said I quietly.\n\n\"'Well, well, you must not do anything rash, or that you might repent. Let me hear all about it, Small. Give me the facts.'\n\n\"I told him the whole story, with small changes, so that he could not identify the places. When I had finished he stood stock still and full of thought. I could see by the twitch of his lip that there was a struggle going on within him.\n\n\"'This is a very important matter, Small,' he said at last. 'You must not say a word to anyone about it, and I shall see you again soon.'\n\n\"Two nights later he and his friend, Captain Morstan, came to my hut in the dead of the night with a lantern.\n\n\"'I want you just to let Captain Morstan hear that story from your own lips, Small,' said he.\n\n\"I repeated it as I had told it before.\n\n\"'It rings true, eh?' said he. 'It's good enough to act upon?'\n\n\"Captain Morstan nodded.\n\n\"'Look here, Small,' said the major. 'We have been talking it over, my friend here and I, and we have come to the conclusion that this secret of yours is hardly a government matter, after all, but is a private concern of your own, which of course you have the power of disposing of as you think best. Now the question is, What price would you ask for it? We might be inclined to take it up, and at least look into it, if we could agree as to terms.' He tried to speak in a cool, careless way, but his eyes were shining with excitement and greed.\n\n\"'Why, as to that, gentlemen,' I answered, trying also to be cool but feeling as excited as he did, 'there is only one bargain which a man in my position can make. I shall want you to help me to my freedom, and to help my three companions to theirs. We shall then take you into partnership and give you a fifth share to divide between you.'\n\n\"'Hum!' said he. 'A fifth share! That is not very tempting.'\n\n\"'It would come to fifty thousand apiece,' said I.\n\n\"'But how can we gain your freedom? You know very well that you ask an impossibility.'\n\n\"'Nothing of the sort,' I answered. 'I have thought it all out to the last detail. The only bar to our escape is that we can get no boat fit for the voyage, and no provisions to last us for so long a time. There are plenty of little yachts and yawls at Calcutta or Madras which would serve our turn well. Do you bring one over. We shall engage to get aboard her by night, and if you will drop us on any part of the Indian coast you will have done your part of the bargain.'\n\n\"'If there were only one,' he said.\n\n\"'None or all,' I answered. 'We have sworn it. The four of us must always act together.'\n\n\"'You see, Morstan,' said he, 'Small is a man of his word. He does not flinch from his friends. I think we may very well trust him.'\n\n\"'It's a dirty business,' the other answered. 'Yet, as you say, the money will save our commissions handsomely.'\n\n\"'Well, Small,' said the major, 'we must, I suppose, try and meet you. We must first, of course, test the truth of your story. Tell me where the box is hid, and I shall get leave of absence and go back to India in the monthly relief-boat to inquire into the affair.'\n\n\"'Not so fast,' said I, growing colder as he got hot. 'I must have the consent of my three comrades. I tell you that it is four or none with us.'\n\n\"'Nonsense!' he broke in. 'What have three black fellows to do with our agreement?'\n\n\"'Black or blue,' said I, 'they are in with me, and we all go together.'\n\n\"Well, the matter ended by a second meeting, at which Mahomet Singh, Abdullah Khan, and Dost Akbar were all present. We talked the matter over again, and at last we came to an arrangement. We were to provide both the officers with charts of the part of the Agra fort, and mark the place in the wall where the treasure was hid. Major Sholto was to go to India to test our story. If he found the box he was to leave it there, to send out a small yacht provisioned for a voyage, which was to lie off Rutland Island, and to which we were to make our way, and finally to return to his duties. Captain Morstan was then to apply for leave of absence, to meet us at Agra, and there we were to have a final division of the treasure, he taking the major's share as well as his own. All this we sealed by the most solemn oaths that the mind could think or the lips utter. I sat up all night with paper and ink, and by the morning I had the two charts all ready, signed with the sign of four\u2014that is, of Abdullah, Akbar, Mahomet, and myself.\n\n\"Well, gentlemen, I weary you with my long story, and I know that my friend Mr. Jones is impatient to get me safely stowed in chokey. I'll make it as short as I can. The villain Sholto went off to India, but he never came back again. Captain Morstan showed me his name among a list of passengers in one of the mail-boats very shortly afterwards. His uncle had died, leaving him a fortune, and he had left the Army; yet he could stoop to treat five men as he had treated us. Morstan went over to Agra shortly afterwards and found, as we expected, that the treasure was indeed gone. The scoundrel had stolen it all without carrying out one of the conditions on which we had sold him the secret. From that I lived only for vengeance. I thought of it by day and I nursed it by night. It became an overpowering, absorbing passion with me. I cared nothing for the law\u2014nothing for the gallows. To escape, to track down Sholto, to have my hand upon his throat\u2014that was my one thought. Even the Agra treasure had come to be a smaller thing in my mind than the slaying of Sholto.\n\n\"Well, I have set my mind on many things in this life, and never one which I did not carry out. But it was weary years before my time came. I have told you that I had picked up something of medicine. One day when Dr. Somerton was down with a fever a little Andaman Islander was picked up by a convict-gang in the woods. He was sick to death and had gone to a lonely place to die. I took him in hand, though he was as venomous as a young snake, and after a couple of months I got him all right and able to walk. He took a kind of fancy to me then, and would hardly go back to his woods, but was always hanging about my hut. I learned a little of his lingo from him, and this made him all the fonder of me.\n\n\"Tonga\u2014for that was his name\u2014was a fine boatman and owned a big, roomy canoe of his own. When I found that he was devoted to me and would do anything to serve me, I saw my chance of escape. I talked it over with him. He was to bring his boat round on a certain night to an old wharf which was never guarded, and there he was to pick me up. I gave him directions to have several gourds of water and a lot of yas, cocoanuts, and sweet potatoes.\n\n\"He was staunch and true, was little Tonga. No man ever had a more faithful mate. At the night named he had his boat at the wharf. As it chanced, however, there was one of the convict-guard down there\u2014a vile Pathan who had never missed a chance of insulting and injuring me. I had always vowed vengeance, and now I had my chance. It was as if fate had placed him in my way that I might pay my debt before I left the island. He stood on the bank with his back to me, and his carbine on his shoulder. I looked about for a stone to beat out his brains with, but none could I see.\n\n\"Then a queer thought came into my head and showed me where I could lay my hand on a weapon. I sat down in the darkness and unstrapped my wooden leg. With three long hops I was on him. He put his carbine to his shoulder, but I struck him full, and knocked the whole front of his skull in. You can see the split in the wood now where I hit him. We both went down together, for I could not keep my balance; but when I got up I found him still lying quiet enough. I made for the boat, and in an hour we were well out at sea. Tonga had brought all his earthly possessions with him, his arms and his gods. Among other things, he had a long bamboo spear, and some Andaman cocoanut matting, with which I made a sort of a sail. For ten days we were beating about, trusting to luck, and on the eleventh we were picked up by a trader which was going from Singapore to Jiddah with a cargo of Malay pilgrims. They were a rum crowd, and Tonga and I soon managed to settle down among them. They had one very good quality: they let you alone and asked no questions.\n\n\"Well, if I were to tell you all the adventures that my little chum and I went through, you would not thank me, for I would have you here until the sun was shining. Here and there we drifted about the world, something always turning up to keep us from London. All the time, however, I never lost sight of my purpose. I would dream of Sholto at night. A hundred times I have killed him in my sleep. At last, however, some three or four years ago, we found ourselves in England. I had no great difficulty in finding where Sholto lived, and I set to work to discover whether he had realized on the treasure, or if he still had it. I made friends with someone who could help me\u2014I name no names, for I don't want to get anyone else in a hole\u2014and I soon found that he still had the jewels. Then I tried to get at him in many ways; but he was pretty sly and had always two prize-fighters, besides his sons and his khitmutgar, on guard over him.\n\n\"One day, however, I got word that he was dying. I hurried at once to the garden, mad that he should slip out of my clutches like that, and, looking through the window, I saw him lying in his bed, with his sons on each side of him. I'd have come through and taken my chance with the three of them, only even as I looked at him his jaw dropped, and I knew that he was gone. I got into his room that same night though, and I searched his papers to see if there was any record of where he had hidden our jewels. There was not a line, however, so I came away, bitter and savage as a man could be. Before I left I bethought me that if I ever met my Sikh friends again it would be a satisfaction to know that I had left some mark of our hatred; so I scrawled down the sign of the four of us, as it had been on the chart, and I pinned it on his bosom. It was too much that he should be taken to the grave without some token from the men whom he had robbed and befooled.\n\n\"We earned a living at this time by my exhibiting poor Tonga at fairs and other such places as the black cannibal. He would eat raw meat and dance his wardance: so we always had a hatful of pennies after a day's work. I still heard all the news from Pondicherry Lodge, and for some years there was no news to hear, except that they were hunting for the treasure. At last, however, came what we had waited for so long. The treasure had been found. It was up at the top of the house in Mr. Bartholomew Sholto's chemical laboratory. I came at once and had a look at the place, but I could not see how, with my wooden leg, I was to make my way up to it. I learned, however, about a trapdoor in the roof, and also about Mr. Sholto's supper-hour. It seemed to me that I could manage the thing easily through Tonga. I brought him out with me with a long rope wound round his waist. He could climb like a cat, and he soon made his way through the roof, but, as ill luck would have it, Bartholomew Sholto was still in the room, to his cost. Tonga thought he had done something very clever in killing him, for when I came up by the rope I found him strutting about as proud as a peacock. Very much surprised was he when I made at him with the rope's end and cursed him for a little bloodthirsty imp. I took the treasure box and let it down, and then slid down myself, having first left the sign of the four upon the table to show that the jewels had come back at last to those who had most right to them. Tonga then pulled up the rope, closed the window, and made off the way that he had come.\n\n\"I don't know that I have anything else to tell you. I had heard a waterman speak of the speed of Smith's launch, the Aurora, so I thought she would be a handy craft for our escape with old Smith, and was to give him a big sum if he got us safe to our ship. He knew, no doubt, that there was some screw loose, but he was not in our secrets. All this is the truth, and if I tell it to you, gentlemen, it is not to amuse you\u2014for you have not done me a very good turn\u2014but it is because I believe the best defence I can make is just to hold back nothing, but let all the world know how badly I have myself been served by Major Sholto, and how innocent I am of the death of his son.\"\n\n\"A very remarkable account,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"A fitting windup to an extremely interesting case. There is nothing at all new to me in the latter part of your narrative except that you brought your own rope. That I did not know. By the way, I had hoped that Tonga had lost all his darts; yet he managed to shoot one at us in the boat.\"\n\n\"He had lost them all, sir, except the one which was in his blow-pipe at the time.\"\n\n\"Ah, of course,\" said Holmes. \"I had not thought of that.\"\n\n\"Is there any other point which you would like to ask about?\" asked the convict affably.\n\n\"I think not, thank you,\" my companion answered.\n\n\"Well, Holmes,\" said Athelney Jones, \"you are a man to be humoured, and we all know that you are a connoisseur of crime; but duty is duty, and I have gone rather far in doing what you and your friend asked me. I shall feel more at ease when we have our story-teller here safe under lock and key. The cab still waits, and there are two inspectors downstairs. I am much obliged to you both for your assistance. Of course you will be wanted at the trial. Good-night to you.\"\n\n\"Good-night, gentlemen both,\" said Jonathan Small.\n\n\"You first, Small,\" remarked the wary Jones as they left the room. \"I'll take particular care that you don't club me with your wooden leg, whatever you may have done to the gentleman at the Andaman Isles.\"\n\n\"Well, and there is the end of our little drama,\" I remarked, after we had sat some time smoking in silence. \"I fear that it may be the last investigation in which I shall have the chance of studying your methods. Miss Morstan has done me the honour to accept me as a husband in prospective.\"\n\nHe gave a most dismal groan.\n\n\"I feared as much,\" said he. \"I really cannot congratulate you.\"\n\nI was a little hurt.\n\n\"Have you any reason to be dissatisfied with my choice?\" I asked.\n\n\"Not at all. I think she is one of the most charming young ladies I ever met and might have been most useful in such work as we have been doing. She had a decided genius that way; witness the way in which she preserved that Agra plan from all the other papers of her father. But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgment.\"\n\n\"I trust,\" said I, laughing, \"that my judgment may survive the ordeal. But you look weary.\"\n\n\"Yes, the reaction is already upon me. I shall be as limp as a rag for a week.\"\n\n\"Strange,\" said I, \"how terms of what in another man I should call laziness alternate with your fits of splendid energy and vigour.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he answered, \"there are in me the makings of a very fine loafer, and also of a pretty spry sort of a fellow. I often think of those lines of old Goethe:\n\n\u2003Schade dass die Natur nur einen Mensch aus dir schuf,\n\n\u2003Denn zum w\u00fcrdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff.\n\nBy the way, apropos of this Norwood business, you see that they had, as I surmised, a confederate in the house, who could be none other than Lal Rao, the butler: so Jones actually has the undivided honour of having caught one fish in his great haul.\"\n\n\"The division seems rather unfair,\" I remarked. \"You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?\"\n\n\"For me,\" said Sherlock Holmes, \"there still remains the cocaine-bottle.\" And he stretched his long white hand up for it." + }, + { + "title": "ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES", + "text": "[ A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA ]\n\nTo Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer\u2014excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.\n\nI had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland. Beyond these signs of his activity, however, which I merely shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of my former friend and companion.\n\nOne night\u2014it was on the twentieth of March, 1888\u2014I was returning from a journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil practice), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered door, which must always be associated in my mind with my wooing, and with the dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers. His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their own story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new problem. I rang the bell and was shown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own.\n\nHis manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think, to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Then he stood before the fire and looked me over in his singular introspective fashion.\n\n\"Wedlock suits you,\" he remarked. \"I think, Watson, that you have put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you.\"\n\n\"Seven!\" I answered.\n\n\"Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, I fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not tell me that you intended to go into harness.\"\n\n\"Then, how do you know?\"\n\n\"I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant girl?\"\n\n\"My dear Holmes,\" said I, \"this is too much. You would certainly have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true that I had a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful mess, but as I have changed my clothes I can't imagine how you deduce it. As to Mary Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has given her notice; but there, again, I fail to see how you work it out.\"\n\nHe chuckled to himself and rubbed his long, nervous hands together.\n\n\"It is simplicity itself,\" said he; \"my eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey. As to your practice, if a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge on the right side of his top-hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession.\"\n\nI could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his process of deduction. \"When I hear you give your reasons,\" I remarked, \"the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled until you explain your process. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good as yours.\"\n\n\"Quite so,\" he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself down into an armchair. \"You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.\"\n\n\"Frequently.\"\n\n\"How often?\"\n\n\"Well, some hundreds of times.\"\n\n\"Then how many are there?\"\n\n\"How many? I don't know.\"\n\n\"Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed. By the way, since you are interested in these little problems, and since you are good enough to chronicle one or two of my trifling experiences, you may be interested in this.\" He threw over a sheet of thick, pink-tinted note-paper which had been lying open upon the table. \"It came by the last post,\" said he. \"Read it aloud.\"\n\nThe note was undated, and without either signature or address.\n\n\"There will call upon you to-night, at a quarter to eight o'clock [it said], a gentleman who desires to consult you upon a matter of the very deepest moment. Your recent services to one of the royal houses of Europe have shown that you are one who may safely be trusted with matters which are of an importance which can hardly be exaggerated. This account of you we have from all quarters received. Be in your chamber then at that hour, and do not take it amiss if your visitor wear a mask.\n\n\"This is indeed a mystery,\" I remarked. \"What do you imagine that it means?\"\n\n\"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. But the note itself. What do you deduce from it?\"\n\nI carefully examined the writing, and the paper upon which it was written.\n\n\"The man who wrote it was presumably well to do,\" I remarked, endeavouring to imitate my companion's processes. \"Such paper could not be bought under half a crown a packet. It is peculiarly strong and stiff.\"\n\n\"Peculiar\u2014that is the very word,\" said Holmes. \"It is not an English paper at all. Hold it up to the light.\"\n\nI did so, and saw a large \"E\" with a small \"g,\" a \"P,\" and a large \"G\" with a small \"t\" woven into the texture of the paper.\n\n\"What do you make of that?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"The name of the maker, no doubt; or his monogram, rather.\"\n\n\"Not at all. The 'G' with the small 't' stands for 'Gesellschaft,' which is the German for 'Company.' It is a customary contraction like our 'Co.' 'P,' of course, stands for 'Papier.' Now for the 'Eg.' Let us glance at our Continental Gazetteer.\" He took down a heavy brown volume from his shelves. \"Eglow. Eglonitz\u2014here we are, Egria. It is in a German-speaking country\u2014in Bohemia, not far from Carlsbad. 'Remarkable as being the scene of the death of Wallenstein, and for its numerous glass-factories and paper-mills.' Ha, ha, my boy, what do you make of that?\" His eyes sparkled, and he sent up a great blue triumphant cloud from his cigarette.\n\n\"The paper was made in Bohemia,\" I said.\n\n\"Precisely. And the man who wrote the note is a German. Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence\u2014'This account of you we have from all quarters received.' A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs. It only remains, therefore, to discover what is wanted by this German who writes upon Bohemian paper and prefers wearing a mask to showing his face. And here he comes, if I am not mistaken, to resolve all our doubts.\"\n\nAs he spoke there was the sharp sound of horses' hoofs and grating wheels against the curb, followed by a sharp pull at the bell. Holmes whistled.\n\n\"A pair, by the sound,\" said he. \"Yes,\" he continued, glancing out of the window. \"A nice little brougham and a pair of beauties. A hundred and fifty guineas apiece. There's money in this case, Watson, if there is nothing else.\"\n\n\"I think that I had better go, Holmes.\"\n\n\"Not a bit, Doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell. And this promises to be interesting. It would be a pity to miss it.\"\n\n\"But your client\u2014\"\n\n\"Never mind him. I may want your help, and so may he. Here he comes. Sit down in that armchair, Doctor, and give us your best attention.\"\n\nA slow and heavy step, which had been heard upon the stairs and in the passage, paused immediately outside the door. Then there was a loud and authoritative tap.\n\n\"Come in!\" said Holmes.\n\nA man entered who could hardly have been less than six feet six inches in height, with the chest and limbs of a Hercules. His dress was rich with a richness which would, in England, be looked upon as akin to bad taste. Heavy bands of astrakhan were slashed across the sleeves and fronts of his double-breasted coat, while the deep blue cloak which was thrown over his shoulders was lined with flame-coloured silk and secured at the neck with a brooch which consisted of a single flaming beryl. Boots which extended halfway up his calves, and which were trimmed at the tops with rich brown fur, completed the impression of barbaric opulence which was suggested by his whole appearance. He carried a broad-brimmed hat in his hand, while he wore across the upper part of his face, extending down past the cheekbones, a black vizard mask, which he had apparently adjusted that very moment, for his hand was still raised to it as he entered. From the lower part of the face he appeared to be a man of strong character, with a thick, hanging lip, and a long, straight chin suggestive of resolution pushed to the length of obstinacy.\n\n\"You had my note?\" he asked with a deep harsh voice and a strongly marked German accent. \"I told you that I would call.\" He looked from one to the other of us, as if uncertain which to address.\n\n\"Pray take a seat,\" said Holmes. \"This is my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson, who is occasionally good enough to help me in my cases. Whom have I the honour to address?\"\n\n\"You may address me as the Count Von Kramm, a Bohemian nobleman. I understand that this gentleman, your friend, is a man of honour and discretion, whom I may trust with a matter of the most extreme importance. If not, I should much prefer to communicate with you alone.\"\n\nI rose to go, but Holmes caught me by the wrist and pushed me back into my chair. \"It is both, or none,\" said he. \"You may say before this gentleman anything which you may say to me.\"\n\nThe Count shrugged his broad shoulders. \"Then I must begin,\" said he, \"by binding you both to absolute secrecy for two years; at the end of that time the matter will be of no importance. At present it is not too much to say that it is of such weight it may have an influence upon European history.\"\n\n\"I promise,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"And I.\"\n\n\"You will excuse this mask,\" continued our strange visitor. \"The august person who employs me wishes his agent to be unknown to you, and I may confess at once that the title by which I have just called myself is not exactly my own.\"\n\n\"I was aware of it,\" said Holmes drily.\n\n\"The circumstances are of great delicacy, and every precaution has to be taken to quench what might grow to be an immense scandal and seriously compromise one of the reigning families of Europe. To speak plainly, the matter implicates the great House of Ormstein, hereditary kings of Bohemia.\"\n\n\"I was also aware of that,\" murmured Holmes, settling himself down in his armchair and closing his eyes.\n\nOur visitor glanced with some apparent surprise at the languid, lounging figure of the man who had been no doubt depicted to him as the most incisive reasoner and most energetic agent in Europe. Holmes slowly reopened his eyes and looked impatiently at his gigantic client.\n\n\"If your Majesty would condescend to state your case,\" he remarked, \"I should be better able to advise you.\"\n\nThe man sprang from his chair and paced up and down the room in uncontrollable agitation. Then, with a gesture of desperation, he tore the mask from his face and hurled it upon the ground. \"You are right,\" he cried; \"I am the King. Why should I attempt to conceal it?\"\n\n\"Why, indeed?\" murmured Holmes. \"Your Majesty had not spoken before I was aware that I was addressing Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein, and hereditary King of Bohemia.\"\n\n\"But you can understand,\" said our strange visitor, sitting down once more and passing his hand over his high white forehead, \"you can understand that I am not accustomed to doing such business in my own person. Yet the matter was so delicate that I could not confide it to an agent without putting myself in his power. I have come incognito from Prague for the purpose of consulting you.\"\n\n\"Then, pray consult,\" said Holmes, shutting his eyes once more.\n\n\"The facts are briefly these: Some five years ago, during a lengthy visit to Warsaw, I made the acquaintance of the well-known adventuress, Irene Adler. The name is no doubt familiar to you.\"\n\n\"Kindly look her up in my index, Doctor,\" murmured Holmes without opening his eyes. For many years he had adopted a system of docketing all paragraphs concerning men and things, so that it was difficult to name a subject or a person on which he could not at once furnish information. In this case I found her biography sandwiched in between that of a Hebrew rabbi and that of a staff-commander who had written a monograph upon the deep-sea fishes.\n\n\"Let me see!\" said Holmes. \"Hum! Born in New Jersey in the year 1858. Contralto\u2014hum! La Scala, hum! Prima donna Imperial Opera of Warsaw\u2014yes! Retired from operatic stage\u2014ha! Living in London\u2014quite so! Your Majesty, as I understand, became entangled with this young person, wrote her some compromising letters, and is now desirous of getting those letters back.\"\n\n\"Precisely so. But how\u2014\"\n\n\"Was there a secret marriage?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\n\"No legal papers or certificates?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\n\"Then I fail to follow your Majesty. If this young person should produce her letters for blackmailing or other purposes, how is she to prove their authenticity?\"\n\n\"There is the writing.\"\n\n\"Pooh, pooh! Forgery.\"\n\n\"My private note-paper.\"\n\n\"Stolen.\"\n\n\"My own seal.\"\n\n\"Imitated.\"\n\n\"My photograph.\"\n\n\"Bought.\"\n\n\"We were both in the photograph.\"\n\n\"Oh, dear! That is very bad! Your Majesty has indeed committed an indiscretion.\"\n\n\"I was mad\u2014insane.\"\n\n\"You have compromised yourself seriously.\"\n\n\"I was only Crown Prince then. I was young. I am but thirty now.\"\n\n\"It must be recovered.\"\n\n\"We have tried and failed.\"\n\n\"Your Majesty must pay. It must be bought.\"\n\n\"She will not sell.\"\n\n\"Stolen, then.\"\n\n\"Five attempts have been made. Twice burglars in my pay ransacked her house. Once we diverted her luggage when she travelled. Twice she has been waylaid. There has been no result.\"\n\n\"No sign of it?\"\n\n\"Absolutely none.\"\n\nHolmes laughed. \"It is quite a pretty little problem,\" said he.\n\n\"But a very serious one to me,\" returned the King reproachfully.\n\n\"Very, indeed. And what does she propose to do with the photograph?\"\n\n\"To ruin me.\"\n\n\"But how?\"\n\n\"I am about to be married.\"\n\n\"So I have heard.\"\n\n\"To Clotilde Lothman von Saxe-Meningen, second daughter of the King of Scandinavia. You may know the strict principles of her family. She is herself the very soul of delicacy. A shadow of a doubt as to my conduct would bring the matter to an end.\"\n\n\"And Irene Adler?\"\n\n\"Threatens to send them the photograph. And she will do it. I know that she will do it. You do not know her, but she has a soul of steel. She has the face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute of men. Rather than I should marry another woman, there are no lengths to which she would not go\u2014none.\"\n\n\"You are sure that she has not sent it yet?\"\n\n\"I am sure.\"\n\n\"And why?\"\n\n\"Because she has said that she would send it on the day when the betrothal was publicly proclaimed. That will be next Monday.\"\n\n\"Oh, then we have three days yet,\" said Holmes with a yawn. \"That is very fortunate, as I have one or two matters of importance to look into just at present. Your Majesty will, of course, stay in London for the present?\"\n\n\"Certainly. You will find me at the Langham under the name of the Count Von Kramm.\"\n\n\"Then I shall drop you a line to let you know how we progress.\"\n\n\"Pray do so. I shall be all anxiety.\"\n\n\"Then, as to money?\"\n\n\"You have carte blanche.\"\n\n\"Absolutely?\"\n\n\"I tell you that I would give one of the provinces of my kingdom to have that photograph.\"\n\n\"And for present expenses?\"\n\nThe King took a heavy chamois leather bag from under his cloak and laid it on the table.\n\n\"There are three hundred pounds in gold and seven hundred in notes,\" he said.\n\nHolmes scribbled a receipt upon a sheet of his note-book and handed it to him.\n\n\"And Mademoiselle's address?\" he asked.\n\n\"Is Briony Lodge, Serpentine Avenue, St. John's Wood.\"\n\nHolmes took a note of it. \"One other question,\" said he. \"Was the photograph a cabinet?\"\n\n\"It was.\"\n\n\"Then, good-night, your Majesty, and I trust that we shall soon have some good news for you. And good-night, Watson,\" he added, as the wheels of the royal brougham rolled down the street. \"If you will be good enough to call to-morrow afternoon at three o'clock I should like to chat this little matter over with you.\"" + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 29", + "text": "At three o'clock precisely I was at Baker Street, but Holmes had not yet returned. The landlady informed me that he had left the house shortly after eight o'clock in the morning. I sat down beside the fire, however, with the intention of awaiting him, however long he might be. I was already deeply interested in his inquiry, for, though it was surrounded by none of the grim and strange features which were associated with the two crimes which I have already recorded, still, the nature of the case and the exalted station of his client gave it a character of its own. Indeed, apart from the nature of the investigation which my friend had on hand, there was something in his masterly grasp of a situation, and his keen, incisive reasoning, which made it a pleasure to me to study his system of work, and to follow the quick, subtle methods by which he disentangled the most inextricable mysteries. So accustomed was I to his invariable success that the very possibility of his failing had ceased to enter into my head.\n\nIt was close upon four before the door opened, and a drunken-looking groom, ill-kempt and side-whiskered, with an inflamed face and disreputable clothes, walked into the room. Accustomed as I was to my friend's amazing powers in the use of disguises, I had to look three times before I was certain that it was indeed he. With a nod he vanished into the bedroom, whence he emerged in five minutes tweed-suited and respectable, as of old. Putting his hands into his pockets, he stretched out his legs in front of the fire and laughed heartily for some minutes.\n\n\"Well, really!\" he cried, and then he choked and laughed again until he was obliged to lie back, limp and helpless, in the chair.\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"It's quite too funny. I am sure you could never guess how I employed my morning, or what I ended by doing.\"\n\n\"I can't imagine. I suppose that you have been watching the habits, and perhaps the house, of Miss Irene Adler.\"\n\n\"Quite so; but the sequel was rather unusual. I will tell you, however. I left the house a little after eight o'clock this morning in the character of a groom out of work. There is a wonderful sympathy and freemasonry among horsy men. Be one of them, and you will know all that there is to know. I soon found Briony Lodge. It is a bijou villa, with a garden at the back, but built out in front right to the road, two stones. Chubb lock to the door. Large sitting-room on the right side, well furnished, with long windows almost to the floor, and those preposterous English window fasteners which a child could open. Behind there was nothing remarkable, save that the passage window could be reached from the top of the coach-house. I walked round it and examined it closely from every point of view, but without noting anything else of interest.\n\n\"I then lounged down the Street and found, as I expected, that there was a mews in a lane which runs down by one wall of the garden. I lent the ostlers a hand in rubbing down their horses, and received in exchange twopence, a glass of half and half, two fills of shag tobacco, and as much information as I could desire about Miss Adler, to say nothing of half a dozen other people in the neighbourhood in whom I was not in the least interested, but whose biographies I was compelled to listen to.\"\n\n\"And what of Irene Adler?\" I asked.\n\n\"Oh, she has turned all the men's heads down in that part. She is the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet. So say the Serpentine-mews, to a man. She lives quietly, sings at concerts, drives out at five every day, and returns at seven sharp for dinner. Seldom goes out at other times, except when she sings. Has only one male visitor, but a good deal of him. He is dark, handsome, and dashing, never calls less than once a day, and often twice. He is a Mr. Godfrey Norton, of the Inner Temple. See the advantages of a cabman as a confidant. They had driven him home a dozen times from Serpentine-mews, and knew all about him. When I had listened to all they had to tell, I began to walk up and down near Briony Lodge once more, and to think over my plan of campaign.\n\n\"This Godfrey Norton was evidently an important factor in the matter: He was a lawyer. That sounded ominous. What was the relation between them, and what the object of his repeated visits? Was she his client, his friend, or his mistress? If the former, she had probably transferred the photograph to his keeping. If the latter, it was less likely. On the issue of this question depended whether I should continue my work at Briony Lodge, or turn my attention to the gentleman's chambers in the Temple. It was a delicate point, and it widened the field of my inquiry. I fear that I bore you with these details, but I have to let you see my little difficulties, if you are to understand the situation.\"\n\n\"I am following you closely,\" I answered.\n\n\"I was still balancing the matter in my mind when a hansom cab drove up to Briony Lodge, and a gentleman sprang out. He was a remarkably handsome man, dark, aquiline, and moustached\u2014evidently the man of whom I had heard. He appeared to be in a great hurry, shouted to the cabman to wait, and brushed past the maid who opened the door with the air of a man who was thoroughly at home.\n\n\"He was in the house about half an hour, and I could catch glimpses of him in the windows of the sitting-room, pacing up and down, talking excitedly, and waving his arms. Of her I could see nothing. Presently he emerged, looking even more flurried than before. As he stepped up to the cab, he pulled a gold watch from his pocket and looked at it earnestly, 'Drive like the devil,' he shouted, 'first to Gross & Hankey's in Regent Street, and then to the Church of St. Monica in the Edgeware Road. Half a guinea if you do it in twenty minutes!'\n\n\"Away they went, and I was just wondering whether I should not do well to follow them when up the lane came a neat little landau, the coachman with his coat only half-buttoned, and his tie under his ear, while all the tags of his harness were sticking out of the buckles. It hadn't pulled up before she shot out of the hall door and into it. I only caught a glimpse of her at the moment, but she was a lovely woman, with a face that a man might die for.\n\n\"'The Church of St. Monica, John,' she cried, 'and half a sovereign if you reach it in twenty minutes.'\n\n\"This was quite too good to lose, Watson. I was just balancing whether I should run for it, or whether I should perch behind her landau when a cab came through the street. The driver looked twice at such a shabby fare, but I jumped in before he could object. 'The Church of St. Monica,' said I, 'and half a sovereign if you reach it in twenty minutes.' It was twenty-five minutes to twelve, and of course it was clear enough what was in the wind.\n\n\"My cabby drove fast. I don't think I ever drove faster, but the others were there before us. The cab and the landau with their steaming horses were in front of the door when I arrived. I paid the man and hurried into the church. There was not a soul there save the two whom I had followed and a surpliced clergyman, who seemed to be expostulating with them. They were all three standing in a knot in front of the altar. I lounged up the side aisle like any other idler who has dropped into a church. Suddenly, to my surprise, the three at the altar faced round to me, and Godfrey Norton came running as hard as he could towards me.\n\n\"'Thank God,' he cried. 'You'll do. Come! Come!'\n\n\"'What then?' I asked.\n\n\"'Come, man, come, only three minutes, or it won't be legal.'\n\n\"I was half-dragged up to the altar, and before I knew where I was I found myself mumbling responses which were whispered in my ear, and vouching for things of which I knew nothing, and generally assisting in the secure tying up of Irene Adler, spinster, to Godfrey Norton, bachelor. It was all done in an instant, and there was the gentleman thanking me on the one side and the lady on the other, while the clergyman beamed on me in front. It was the most preposterous position in which I ever found myself in my life, and it was the thought of it that started me laughing just now. It seems that there had been some informality about their license, that the clergyman absolutely refused to marry them without a witness of some sort, and that my lucky appearance saved the bridegroom from having to sally out into the streets in search of a best man. The bride gave me a sovereign, and I mean to wear it on my watch-chain in memory of the occasion.\n\n\"This is a very unexpected turn of affairs,\" said I; \"and what then?\"\n\n\"Well, I found my plans very seriously menaced. It looked as if the pair might take an immediate departure, and so necessitate very prompt and energetic measures on my part. At the church door, however, they separated, he driving back to the Temple, and she to her own house. 'I shall drive out in the park at five as usual,' she said as she left him. I heard no more. They drove away in different directions, and I went off to make my own arrangements.\"\n\n\"Which are?\"\n\n\"Some cold beef and a glass of beer,\" he answered, ringing the bell. \"I have been too busy to think of food, and I am likely to be busier still this evening. By the way, Doctor. I shall want your co\u00f6peration.\"\n\n\"I shall be delighted.\"\n\n\"You don't mind breaking the law?\"\n\n\"Not in the least.\"\n\n\"Nor running a chance of arrest?\"\n\n\"Not in a good cause.\"\n\n\"Oh, the cause is excellent!\"\n\n\"Then I am your man.\"\n\n\"I was sure that I might rely on you.\"\n\n\"But what is it you wish?\"\n\n\"When Mrs. Turner has brought in the tray I will make it clear to you. Now,\" he said as he turned hungrily on the simple fare that our landlady had provided, \"I must discuss it while I eat, for I have not much time. It is nearly five now. In two hours we must be on the scene of action. Miss Irene, or Madame, rather, returns from her drive at seven. We must be at Briony Lodge to meet her.\"\n\n\"And what then?\"\n\n\"You must leave that to me. I have already arranged what is to occur. There is only one point on which I must insist. You must not interfere, come what may. You understand?\"\n\n\"I am to be neutral?\"\n\n\"To do nothing whatever. There will probably be some small unpleasantness. Do not join in it. It will end in my being conveyed into the house. Four or five minutes afterwards the sitting-room window will open. You are to station yourself close to that open window.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"You are to watch me, for I will be visible to you.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And when I raise my hand\u2014so\u2014you will throw into the room what I give you to throw, and will, at the same time, raise the cry of fire. You quite follow me?\"\n\n\"Entirely.\"\n\n\"It is nothing very formidable,\" he said, taking a long cigar-shaped roll from his pocket. \"It is an ordinary plumber's smoke-rocket, fitted with a cap at either end to make it self-lighting. Your task is confined to that. When you raise your cry of fire, it will be taken up by quite a number of people. You may then walk to the end of the street, and I will rejoin you in ten minutes. I hope that I have made myself clear?\"\n\n\"I am to remain neutral, to get near the window, to watch you, and at the signal to throw in this object, then to raise the cry of fire, and to wait you at the corner of the street.\"\n\n\"Precisely.\"\n\n\"Then you may entirely rely on me.\"\n\n\"That is excellent. I think, perhaps, it is almost time that I prepare for the new role I have to play.\"\n\nHe disappeared into his bedroom and returned in a few minutes in the character of an amiable and simple-minded Nonconformist clergyman. His broad black hat, his baggy trousers, his white tie, his sympathetic smile, and general look of peering and benevolent curiosity were such as Mr. John Hare alone could have equalled. It was not merely that Holmes changed his costume. His expression, his manner, his very soul seemed to vary with every fresh part that he assumed. The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a specialist in crime.\n\nIt was a quarter past six when we left Baker Street, and it still wanted ten minutes to the hour when we found ourselves in Serpentine Avenue. It was already dusk, and the lamps were just being lighted as we paced up and down in front of Briony Lodge, waiting for the coming of its occupant. The house was just such as I had pictured it from Sherlock Holmes's succinct description, but the locality appeared to be less private than I expected. On the contrary, for a small street in a quiet neighbourhood, it was remarkably animated. There was a group of shabbily dressed men smoking and laughing in a corner, a scissors-grinder with his wheel, two guardsmen who were flirting with a nurse-girl, and several well-dressed young men who were lounging up and down with cigars in their mouths.\n\n\"You see,\" remarked Holmes, as we paced to and fro in front of the house, \"this marriage rather simplifies matters. The photograph becomes a double-edged weapon now. The chances are that she would be as averse to its being seen by Mr. Godfrey Norton, as our client is to its coming to the eyes of his princess. Now the question is, Where are we to find the photograph?\"\n\n\"Where, indeed?\"\n\n\"It is most unlikely that she carries it about with her. It is cabinet size. Too large for easy concealment about a woman's dress. She knows that the King is capable of having her waylaid and searched. Two attempts of the sort have already been made. We may take it, then, that she does not carry it about with her.\"\n\n\"Where, then?\"\n\n\"Her banker or her lawyer. There is that double possibility. But I am inclined to think neither. Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting. Why should she hand it over to anyone else? She could trust her own guardianship, but she could not tell what indirect or political influence might be brought to bear upon a business man. Besides, remember that she had resolved to use it within a few days. It must be where she can lay her hands upon it. It must be in her own house.\"\n\n\"But it has twice been burgled.\"\n\n\"Pshaw! They did not know how to look.\"\n\n\"But how will you look?\"\n\n\"I will not look.\"\n\n\"What then?\"\n\n\"I will get her to show me.\"\n\n\"But she will refuse.\"\n\n\"She will not be able to. But I hear the rumble of wheels. It is her carriage. Now carry out my orders to the letter.\"\n\nAs he spoke the gleam of the side-lights of a carriage came round the curve of the avenue. It was a smart little landau which rattled up to the door of Briony Lodge. As it pulled up, one of the loafing men at the corner dashed forward to open the door in the hope of earning a copper, but was elbowed away by another loafer, who had rushed up with the same intention. A fierce quarrel broke out, which was increased by the two guardsmen, who took sides with one of the loungers, and by the scissors-grinder, who was equally hot upon the other side. A blow was struck, and in an instant the lady, who had stepped from her carriage, was the centre of a little knot of flushed and struggling men, who struck savagely at each other with their fists and sticks. Holmes dashed into the crowd to protect the lady; but just as he reached her he gave a cry and dropped to the ground, with the blood running freely down his face. At his fall the guardsmen took to their heels in one direction and the loungers in the other, while a number of better-dressed people, who had watched the scuffle without taking part in it, crowded in to help the lady and to attend to the injured man. Irene Adler, as I will still call her, had hurried up the steps; but she stood at the top with her superb figure outlined against the lights of the hail, looking back into the street.\n\n\"Is the poor gentleman much hurt?\" she asked.\n\n\"He is dead,\" cried several voices.\n\n\"No, no, there's life in him!\" shouted another. \"But he'll be gone before you can get him to hospital.\"\n\n\"He's a brave fellow,\" said a woman. \"They would have had the lady's purse and watch if it hadn't been for him. They were a gang, and a rough one, too. Ah, he's breathing now.\"\n\n\"He can't lie in the street. May we bring him in, marm?\"\n\n\"Surely. Bring him into the sitting room. There is a comfortable sofa. This way, please!\"\n\nSlowly and solemnly he was borne into Briony Lodge and laid out in the principal room, while I still observed the proceedings from my post by the window. The lamps had been lit, but the blinds had not been drawn, so that I could see Holmes as he lay upon the couch. I do not know whether he was seized with compunction at that moment for the part he was playing, but I know that I never felt more heartily ashamed of myself in my life than when I saw the beautiful creature against whom I was conspiring, or the grace and kindliness with which she waited upon the injured man. And yet it would be the blackest treachery to Holmes to draw back now from the part which he had intrusted to me. I hardened my heart, and took the smoke-rocket from under my ulster. After all, I thought, we are not injuring her. We are but preventing her from injuring another.\n\nHolmes had sat up upon the couch, and I saw him motion like a man who is in need of air. A maid rushed across and threw open the window. At the same instant I saw him raise his hand, and at the signal I tossed my rocket into the room with a cry of \"Fire!\" The word was no sooner out of my mouth than the whole crowd of spectators, well dressed and ill\u2014gentlemen, ostlers, and servant-maids\u2014joined in a general shriek of \"Fire!\" Thick clouds of smoke curled through the room and out at the open window. I caught a glimpse of rushing figures, and a moment later the voice of Holmes from within assuring them that it was a false alarm. Slipping through the shouting crowd I made my way to the corner of the street, and in ten minutes was rejoiced to find my friend's arm in mine, and to get away from the scene of uproar. He walked swiftly and in silence for some few minutes until we had turned down one of the quiet streets which lead towards the Edgeware Road.\n\n\"You did it very nicely, Doctor,\" he remarked. \"Nothing could have been better. It is all right.\"\n\n\"You have the photograph?\"\n\n\"I know where it is.\"\n\n\"And how did you find out?\"\n\n\"She showed me, as I told you she would.\"\n\n\"I am still in the dark.\"\n\n\"I do not wish to make a mystery,\" said he, laughing. \"The matter was perfectly simple. You, of course, saw that everyone in the street was an accomplice. They were all engaged for the evening.\"\n\n\"I guessed as much.\"\n\n\"Then, when the row broke out, I had a little moist red paint in the palm of my hand. I rushed forward, fell down, clapped my hand to my face, and became a piteous spectacle. It is an old trick.\"\n\n\"That also I could fathom.\"\n\n\"Then they carried me in. She was bound to have me in. What else could she do? And into her sitting-room, which was the very room which I suspected. It lay between that and her bedroom, and I was determined to see which. They laid me on a couch, I motioned for air, they were compelled to open the window, and you had your chance.\"\n\n\"How did that help you?\"\n\n\"It was all-important. When a woman thinks that her house is on fire, her instinct is at once to rush to the thing which she values most. It is a perfectly overpowering impulse, and I have more than once taken advantage of it. In the case of the Darlington substitution scandal it was of use to me, and also in the Arnsworth Castle business. A married woman grabs at her baby; an unmarried one reaches for her jewel-box. Now it was clear to me that our lady of to-day had nothing in the house more precious to her than what we are in quest of. She would rush to secure it. The alarm of fire was admirably done. The smoke and shouting were enough to shake nerves of steel. She responded beautifully. The photograph is in a recess behind a sliding panel just above the right bell-pull. She was there in an instant, and I caught a glimpse of it as she half-drew it out. When I cried out that it was a false alarm, she replaced it, glanced at the rocket, rushed from the room, and I have not seen her since. I rose, and, making my excuses, escaped from the house. I hesitated whether to attempt to secure the photograph at once; but the coachman had come in, and as he was watching me narrowly it seemed safer to wait. A little over-precipitance may ruin all.\"\n\n\"And now?\" I asked.\n\n\"Our quest is practically finished. I shall call with the King to-morrow, and with you, if you care to come with us. We will be shown into the sitting-room to wait for the lady; but it is probable that when she comes she may find neither us nor the photograph. It might be a satisfaction to his Majesty to regain it with his own hands.\"\n\n\"And when will you call?\"\n\n\"At eight-in the morning. She will not be up, so that we shall have a clear field. Besides, we must be prompt, for this marriage may mean a complete change in her life and habits. I must wire to the King without delay.\"\n\nWe had reached Baker Street and had stopped at the door. He was searching his pockets for the key when someone passing said:\n\n\"Good-night, Mister Sherlock Holmes.\"\n\nThere were several people on the pavement at the time, but the greeting appeared to come from a slim youth in an ulster who had hurried by.\n\n\"I've heard that voice before,\" said Holmes, staring down the dimly lit street. \"Now, I wonder who the deuce that could have been.\"" + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 30", + "text": "I slept at Baker Street that night, and we were engaged upon our toast and coffee in the morning when the King of Bohemia rushed into the room.\n\n\"You have really got it!\" he cried, grasping Sherlock Holmes by either shoulder and looking eagerly into his face.\n\n\"Not yet.\"\n\n\"But you have hopes?\"\n\n\"I have hopes.\"\n\n\"Then, come. I am all impatience to be gone.\"\n\n\"We must have a cab.\"\n\n\"No, my brougham is waiting.\"\n\n\"Then that will simplify matters.\" We descended and started off once more for Briony Lodge.\n\n\"Irene Adler is married,\" remarked Holmes.\n\n\"Married! When?\"\n\n\"Yesterday.\"\n\n\"But to whom?\"\n\n\"To an English lawyer named Norton.\"\n\n\"But she could not love him.\"\n\n\"I am in hopes that she does.\"\n\n\"And why in hopes?\"\n\n\"Because it would spare your Majesty all fear of future annoyance. If the lady loves her husband, she does not love your Majesty. If she does not love your Majesty, there is no reason why she should interfere with your Majesty's plan.\"\n\n\"It is true. And yet\u2014Well! I wish she had been of my own station! What a queen she would have made!\" He relapsed into a moody silence, which was not broken until we drew up in Serpentine Avenue.\n\nThe door of Briony Lodge was open and an elderly woman stood upon the steps. She watched us with a sardonic eye as we stepped from the brougham.\n\n\"Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I believe?\" said she.\n\n\"I am Mr. Holmes,\" answered my companion, looking at her with a questioning and rather startled gaze.\n\n\"Indeed! My mistress told me that you were likely to call. She left this morning with her husband by the 5:15 train from Charing Cross for the Continent.\"\n\n\"What!\" Sherlock Holmes staggered back, white with chagrin and surprise. \"Do you mean that she has left England?\"\n\n\"Never to return.\"\n\n\"And the papers?\" asked the King hoarsely. \"All is lost.\"\n\n\"We shall see.\" He pushed past the servant and rushed into the drawing-room, followed by the King and myself. The furniture was scattered about in every direction, with dismantled shelves and open drawers, as if the lady had hurriedly ransacked them before her flight. Holmes rushed at the bell-pull, tore back a small sliding shutter, and, plunging in his hand, pulled out a photograph and a letter. The photograph was of Irene Adler herself in evening dress, the letter was superscribed to \"Sherlock Holmes, Esq. To be left till called for.\" My friend tore it open, and we all three read it together. It was dated at midnight of the preceding night and ran in this way:\n\n\u2002MY DEAR MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES:\n\n\u2002You really did it very well. You took me in completely. Until after the alarm of fire, I had not a suspicion. But then, when I found how I had betrayed myself, I began to think. I had been warned against you months ago. I had been told that if the King employed an agent it would certainly be you. And your address had been given me. Yet, with all this, you made me reveal what you wanted to know. Even after I became suspicious, I found it hard to think evil of such a dear, kind old clergyman. But, you know, I have been trained as an actress, myself. Male costume is nothing new to me. I often take advantage of the freedom which it gives. I sent John, the coachman, to watch you, ran upstairs, got into my walking-clothes, as I call them, and came down just as you departed.\n\n\u2002Well, I followed you to your door, and so made sure that I was really an object of interest to the celebrated Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Then I, rather imprudently, wished you good-night, and started for the Temple to see my husband.\n\n\u2002We both thought the best resource was flight, when pursued by so formidable an antagonist; so you will find the nest empty when you call to-morrow. As to the photograph, your client may rest in peace. I love and am loved by a better man than he. The King may do what he will without hindrance from one whom he has cruelly wronged. I keep it only to safeguard myself, and to preserve a weapon which will always secure me from any steps which he might take in the future. I leave a photograph which he might care to possess; and I remain, dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes,\n\n\u2002Very truly yours,\n\n\u2002IRENE NORTON, n\u00e9e ADLER.\n\n\"What a woman\u2014oh, what a woman!\" cried the King of Bohemia, when we had all three read this epistle. \"Did I not tell you how quick and resolute she was? Would she not have made an admirable queen? Is it not a pity that she was not on my level?\"\n\n\"From what I have seen of the lady she seems indeed to be on a very different level to your Majesty,\" said Holmes coldly. \"I am sorry that I have not been able to bring your Majesty's business to a more successful conclusion.\"\n\n\"On the contrary, my dear sir,\" cried the King; \"nothing could be more successful. I know that her word is inviolate. The photograph is now as safe as if it were in the fire.\"\n\n\"I am glad to hear your Majesty say so.\"\n\n\"I am immensely indebted to you. Pray tell me in what way I can reward you. This ring\u2014\" He slipped an emerald snake ring from his finger and held it out upon the palm of his hand.\n\n\"Your Majesty has something which I should value even more highly,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"You have but to name it.\"\n\n\"This photograph!\"\n\nThe King stared at him in amazement.\n\n\"Irene's photograph!\" he cried. \"Certainly, if you wish it.\"\n\n\"I thank your Majesty. Then there is no more to be done in the matter. I have the honour to wish you a very good-morning.\" He bowed, and, turning away without observing the hand which the King had stretched out to him, he set off in my company for his chambers.\n\nAnd that was how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom of Bohemia, and how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman's wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honourable title of the woman." + }, + { + "title": "THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE", + "text": "I had called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the autumn of last year and found him in deep conversation with a very stout, florid-faced, elderly gentleman with fiery red hair. With an apology for my intrusion, I was about to withdraw when Holmes pulled me abruptly into the room and closed the door behind me.\n\n\"You could not possibly have come at a better time, my dear Watson,\" he said cordially.\n\n\"I was afraid that you were engaged.\"\n\n\"So I am. Very much so.\"\n\n\"Then I can wait in the next room.\"\n\n\"Not at all. This gentleman, Mr. Wilson, has been my partner and helper in many of my most successful cases, and I have no doubt that he will be of the utmost use to me in yours also.\"\n\nThe stout gentleman half rose from his chair and gave a bob of greeting, with a quick little questioning glance from his small fat-encircled eyes.\n\n\"Try the settee,\" said Holmes, relapsing into his armchair and putting his fingertips together, as was his custom when in judicial moods. \"I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life. You have shown your relish for it by the enthusiasm which has prompted you to chronicle, and, if you will excuse my saying so, somewhat to embellish so many of my own little adventures.\"\n\n\"Your cases have indeed been of the greatest interest to me,\" I observed.\n\n\"You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.\"\n\n\"A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.\"\n\n\"You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right. Now, Mr. Jabez Wilson here has been good enough to call upon me this morning, and to begin a narrative which promises to be one of the most singular which I have listened to for some time. You have heard me remark that the strangest and most unique things are very often connected not with the larger but with the smaller crimes, and occasionally, indeed, where there is room for doubt whether any positive crime has been committed. As far as I have heard it is impossible for me to say whether the present case is an instance of crime or not, but the course of events is certainly among the most singular that I have ever listened to. Perhaps, Mr. Wilson, you would have the great kindness to recommence your narrative. I ask you not merely because my friend Dr. Watson has not heard the opening part but also because the peculiar nature of the story makes me anxious to have every possible detail from your lips. As a rule, when I have heard some slight indication of the course of events, I am able to guide myself by the thousands of other similar cases which occur to my memory. In the present instance I am forced to admit that the facts are, to the best of my belief, unique.\"\n\nThe portly client puffed out his chest with an appearance of some little pride and pulled a dirty and wrinkled newspaper from the inside pocket of his greatcoat. As he glanced down the advertisement column, with his head thrust forward and the paper flattened out upon his knee, I took a good look at the man and endeavoured, after the fashion of my companion, to read the indications which might be presented by his dress or appearance.\n\nI did not gain very much, however, by my inspection. Our visitor bore every mark of being an average commonplace British tradesman, obese, pompous, and slow. He wore rather baggy gray shepherd's check trousers, a not over-clean black frock-coat, unbuttoned in the front, and a drab waistcoat with a heavy brassy Albert chain, and a square pierced bit of metal dangling down as an ornament. A frayed top-hat and a faded brown overcoat with a wrinkled velvet collar lay upon a chair beside him. Altogether, look as I would, there was nothing remarkable about the man save his blazing red head, and the expression of extreme chagrin and discontent upon his features.\n\nSherlock Holmes's quick eye took in my occupation, and he shook his head with a smile as he noticed my questioning glances. \"Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.\"\n\nMr. Jabez Wilson started up in his chair, with his forefinger upon the paper, but his eyes upon my companion.\n\n\"How, in the name of good-fortune, did you know all that, Mr. Holmes?\" he asked. \"How did you know, for example, that I did manual labour? It's as true as gospel, for I began as a ship's carpenter.\"\n\n\"Your hands, my dear sir. Your right hand is quite a size larger than your left. You have worked with it, and the muscles are more developed.\"\n\n\"Well, the snuff, then, and the Freemasonry?\"\n\n\"I won't insult your intelligence by telling you how I read that, especially as, rather against the strict rules of your order, you use an arc-and-compass breastpin.\"\n\n\"Ah, of course, I forgot that. But the writing?\"\n\n\"What else can be indicated by that right cuff so very shiny for five inches, and the left one with the smooth patch near the elbow where you rest it upon the desk?\"\n\n\"Well, but China?\"\n\n\"The fish that you have tattooed immediately above your right wrist could only have been done in China. I have made a small study of tattoo marks and have even contributed to the literature of the subject. That trick of staining the fishes' scales of a delicate pink is quite peculiar to China. When, in addition, I see a Chinese coin hanging from your watch-chain, the matter becomes even more simple.\"\n\nMr. Jabez Wilson laughed heavily. \"Well, I never!\" said he. \"I thought at first that you had done something clever, but I see that there was nothing in it, after all.\"\n\n\"I begin to think, Watson,\" said Holmes, \"that I make a mistake in explaining. 'Omne ignotum pro magnifico, you know, and my poor little reputation, such as it is, will suffer shipwreck if I am so candid. Can you not find the advertisement, Mr. Wilson?\"\n\n\"Yes, I have got it now,\" he answered with his thick red finger planted halfway down the column. \"Here it is. This is what began it all. You just read it for yourself, sir.\"\n\nI took the paper from him and read as follows.\n\nTO THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE:\n\nOn account of the bequest of the late Ezekiah Hopkins, of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, U. S. A., there is now another vacancy open which entitles a member of the League to a salary of \u00a34 a week for purely nominal services. All red-headed men who are sound in body and mind, and above the age of twenty-one years, are eligible. Apply in person on Monday, at eleven o'clock, to Duncan Ross, at the offices of the League, 7 Pope's Court, Fleet Street.\n\n\"What on earth does this mean?\" I ejaculated after I had twice read over the extraordinary announcement.\n\nHolmes chuckled and wriggled in his chair, as was his habit when in high spirits. \"It is a little off the beaten track, isn't it?\" said he. \"And now, Mr. Wilson, off you go at scratch and tell us all about yourself, your household, and the effect which this advertisement had upon your fortunes. You will first make a note, Doctor, of the paper and the date.\"\n\n\"It is The Morning Chronicle of April 27, 1890. Just two months ago.\"\n\n\"Very good. Now, Mr. Wilson?\"\n\n\"Well, it is just as I have been telling you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,\" said Jabez Wilson, mopping his forehead; \"I have a small pawnbroker's businessat Coburg Square, near the City. It's not a very large affair, and of late years it has not done more than just give me a living. I used to be able to keep two assistants, but now I only keep one; and I would have a job to pay him but that he is willing to come for half wages so as to learn the business.\"\n\n\"What is the name of this obliging youth?\" asked Sherlock Holmes.\n\n\"His name is Vincent Spaulding, and he's not such a youth, either. It's hard to say his age. I should not wish a smarter assistant, Mr. Holmes; and I know very well that he could better himself and earn twice what I am able to give him. But, after all, if he is satisfied, why should I put ideas in his head?\"\n\n\"Why, indeed? You seem most fortunate in having an employee who comes under the full market price. It is not a common experience among employers in this age. I don't know that your assistant is not as remarkable as your advertisement.\"\n\n\"Oh, he has his faults, too,\" said Mr. Wilson. \"Never was such a fellow for photography. Snapping away with a camera when he ought to be improving his mind, and then diving down into the cellar like a rabbit into its hole to develop his pictures. That is his main fault, but on the whole he's a good worker. There's no vice in him.\"\n\n\"He is still with you, I presume?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. He and a girl of fourteen, who does a bit of simple cooking and keeps the place clean\u2014that's all I have in the house, for I am a widower and never had any family. We live very quietly, sir, the three of us; and we keep a roof over our heads and pay our debts, if we do nothing more.\n\n\"The first thing that put us out was that advertisement. Spaulding, he came down into the office just this day eight weeks, with this very paper in his hand, and he says:\n\n\"'I wish to the Lord, Mr. Wilson, that I was a red-headed man.'\n\n\"'Why that?' I asks.\n\n\"'Why,' says he, 'here's another vacancy on the League of the Red-headed Men. It's worth quite a little fortune to any man who gets it, and I understand that there are more vacancies than there are men, so that the trustees are at their wits' end what to do with the money. If my hair would only change colour, here's a nice little crib all ready for me to step into.'\n\n\"'Why, what is it then?' I asked. You see, Mr. Holmes. I am a very stay-at-home man, and as my business came to me instead of my having to go to it, I was often weeks on end without putting my foot over the door-mat. In that way I didn't know much of what was going on outside, and I was always glad of a bit of news.\n\n\"'Have you never heard of the League of the Red-headed Men?' he asked with his eyes open.\n\n\"'Never.'\n\n\"'Why, I wonder at that, for you are eligible yourself for one of the vacancies.'\n\n\"'And what are they worth?' I asked.\n\n\"'Oh, merely a couple of hundred a year, but the work is slight, and it need not interfere very much with one's other occupations.'\n\n\"Well, you can easily think that that made me prick up my ears, for the business has not been over-good for some years, and an extra couple of hundred would have been very handy.\n\n\"'Tell me all about it,' said I.\n\n\"'Well,' said he, showing me the advertisement, 'you can see for yourself that the League has a vacancy, and there is the address where you should apply for particulars. As far as I can make out, the League was founded by an American millionaire, Ezekiah Hopkins, who was very peculiar in his ways. He was himself red-headed, and he had a great sympathy for all red-headed men; so when he died it was found that he had left his enormous fortune in the hands of trustees, with instructions to apply the interest to the providing of easy berths to men whose hair is of that colour. From all I hear it is splendid pay and very little to do.'\n\n\"'But,' said I, 'there would be millions of red-headed men who would apply.'\n\n\"'Not so many as you might think,' he answered. 'You see it is really confined to Londoners, and to grown men. This American had started from London when he was young, and he wanted to do the old town a good turn. Then, again, I have heard it is no use your applying if your hair is light red, or dark red, or anything but real bright, blazing, fiery red. Now, if you cared to apply, Mr. Wilson, you would just walk in; but perhaps it would hardly be worth your while to put yourself out of the way for the sake of a few hundred pounds.'\n\n\"Now, it is a fact, gentlemen, as you may see for yourselves, that my hair is of a very full and rich tint, so that it seemed to me that if there was to be any competition in the matter I stood as good a chance as any man that I had ever met. Vincent Spaulding seemed to know so much about it that I thought he might prove useful, so I just ordered him to put up the shutters for the day and to come right away with me. He was very willing to have a holiday, so we shut the business up and started off for the address that was given us in the advertisement.\n\n\"I never hope to see such a sight as that again, Mr. Holmes. From north, south, east, and west every man who had a shade of red in his hair had tramped into the city to answer the advertisement. Fleet Street was choked with red-headed folk, and Pope's Court looked like a coster's orange barrow. I should not have thought there were so many in the whole country as were brought together by that single advertisement. Every shade of colour they were\u2014straw, lemon, orange, brick, Irish-setter, liver, clay; but, as Spaulding said, there were not many who had the real vivid flame-coloured tint. When I saw how many were waiting, I would have given it up in despair; but Spaulding would not hear of it. How he did it I could not imagine, but he pushed and pulled and butted until he got me through the crowd, and right up to the steps which led to the office. There was a double stream upon the stair, some going up in hope, and some coming back dejected; but we wedged in as well as we could and soon found ourselves in the office.\"\n\n\"Your experience has been a most entertaining one,\" remarked Holmes as his client paused and refreshed his memory with a huge pinch of snuff. \"Pray continue your very interesting statement.\"\n\n\"There was nothing in the office but a couple of wooden chairs and a deal table, behind which sat a small man with a head that was even redder than mine. He said a few words to each candidate as he came up, and then he always managed to find some fault in them which would disqualify them. Getting a vacancy did not seem to be such a very easy mailer, after all. However, when our turn came the little man was much more favourable to me than to any of the others, and he closed the door as we entered, so that he might have a private word with us.\n\n\"'This is Mr. Jabez Wilson,' said my assistant, 'and he is willing to fill a vacancy in the League.'\n\n\"'And he is admirably suited for it,' the other answered. 'He has every requirement. I cannot recall when I have seen anything so fine.' He took a step backward, cocked his head on one side, and gazed at my hair until I felt quite bashful. Then suddenly he plunged forward, wrung my hand, and congratulated me warmly on my success.\n\n\"'It would be injustice to hesitate,' said he. 'You will, however, I am sure, excuse me for taking an obvious precaution.' With that he seized my hair in both his hands, and tugged until I yelled with the pain. 'There is water in your eyes,' said he as he released me. 'I perceive that all is as it should be. But we have to be careful, for we have twice been deceived by wigs and once by paint. I could tell you tales of cobbler's wax which would disgust you with human nature.' He stepped over to the window and shouted through it at the top of his voice that the vacancy was filled. A groan of disappointment came up from below, and the folk all trooped away in different directions until there was not a red-head to be seen except my own and that of the manager.\n\n\"'My name,' said he, 'is Mr. Duncan Ross, and I am myself one of the pensioners upon the fund left by our noble benefactor. Are you a married man, Mr. Wilson? Have you a family?'\n\n\"I answered that I had not.\n\n\"His face fell immediately.\n\n\"'Dear me!' he said gravely, 'that is very serious indeed! I am sorry to hear you say that. The fund was, of course, for the propagation and spread of the red-heads as well as for their maintenance. It is exceedingly unfortunate that you should be a bachelor.'\n\n\"My face lengthened at this, Mr. Holmes, for I thought that I was not to have the vacancy after all; but after thinking it over for a few minutes he said that it would be all right.\n\n\"'In the case of another,' said he, 'the objection might be fatal, but we must stretch a point in favour of a man with such a head of hair as yours. When shall you be able to enter upon your new duties?'\n\n\"'Well, it is a little awkward, for I have a business already,' said I.\n\n\"'Oh, never mind about that, Mr. Wilson!' said Vincent Spaulding. 'I should be able to look after that for you.'\n\n\"'What would be the hours?' I asked.\n\n\"'Ten to two.'\n\n\"Now a pawnbroker's business is mostly done of an evening, Mr. Holmes, especially Thursday and Friday evening, which is just before pay-day; so it would suit me very well to earn a little in the mornings. Besides, I knew that my assistant was a good man, and that he would see to anything that turned up.\n\n\"'That would suit me very well,' said I. 'And the pay?'\n\n\"'Is \u00a34 a week.'\n\n\"'And the work?'\n\n\"'Is purely nominal.'\n\n\"'What do you call purely nominal?'\n\n\"'Well, you have to be in the office, or at least in the building, the whole time. If you leave, you forfeit your whole position forever. The will is very clear upon that point. You don't comply with the conditions if you budge from the office during that time.'\n\n\"'It's only four hours a day, and I should not think of leaving,' said I.\n\n\"'No excuse will avail,' said Mr. Duncan Ross; 'neither sickness nor business nor anything else. There you must stay, or you lose your billet.'\n\n\"'And the work?'\n\n\"'Is to copy out the Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica. There is the first volume of it in that press. You must find your own ink, pens, and blotting-paper, but we provide this table and chair. Will you be ready to-morrow?'\n\n\"'Certainly,' I answered.\n\n\"'Then, good-bye, Mr. Jabez Wilson, and let me congratulate you once more on the important position which you have been fortunate enough to gain.' He bowed me out of the room, and I went home with my assistant, hardly knowing what to say or do, I was so pleased at my own good fortune.\n\n\"Well, I thought over the matter all day, and by evening I was in low spirits again; for I had quite persuaded myself that the whole affair must be some great hoax or fraud, though what its object might be I could not imagine. It seemed altogether past belief that anyone could make such a will, or that they would pay such a sum for doing anything so simple as copying out the Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica. Vincent Spaulding did what he could to cheer me up, but by bedtime I had reasoned myself out of the whole thing. However, in the morning I determined to have a look at it anyhow, so I bought a penny bottle of ink, and with a quill-pen, and seven sheets of foolscap paper, I started off for Pope's Court.\n\n\"Well, to my surprise and delight, everything was as right as possible. The table was set out ready for me, and Mr. Duncan Ross was there to see that I got fairly to work. He started me off upon the letter A, and then he left me; but he would drop in from time to time to see that all was right with me. At two o'clock he bade me good-day, complimented me upon the amount that I had written, and locked the door of the office after me.\n\n\"This went on day after day, Mr. Holmes, and on Saturday the manager came in and planked down four golden sovereigns for my week's work. It was the same next week, and the same the week after. Every morning I was there at ten, and every afternoon I left at two. By degrees Mr. Duncan Ross took to coming in only once of a morning, and then, after a time, he did not come in at all. Still, of course, I never dared to leave the room for an instant, for I was not sure when he might come, and the billet was such a good one, and suited me so well, that I would not risk the loss of it.\n\n\"Eight weeks passed away like this, and I had written about Abbots and Archery and Armour and Architecture and Attica, and hoped with diligence that I might get on to the B's before very long. It cost me something in foolscap, and I had pretty nearly filled a shelf with my writings. And then suddenly the whole business came to an end.\"\n\n\"To an end?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. And no later than this morning. I went to my work as usual at ten o'clock, but the door was shut and locked, with a little square of card-board hammered on to the middle of the panel with a tack. Here it is, and you can read for yourself.\"\n\nHe held up a piece of white card-board about the size of a sheet of note-paper. It read in this fashion:" + }, + { + "title": "THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE", + "text": "DISSOLVED.\n\nOctober 9, 1890.\n\nSherlock Holmes and I surveyed this curt announcement and the rueful face behind it, until the comical side of the affair so completely over-topped every other consideration that we both burst out into a roar of laughter.\n\n\"I cannot see that there is anything very funny,\" cried our client, flushing up to the roots of his flaming head. \"If you can do nothing better than laugh at me, I can go elsewhere.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" cried Holmes, shoving him back into the chair from which he had half risen. \"I really wouldn't miss your case for the world. It is most refreshingly unusual. But there is, if you will excuse my saying so, something just a little funny about it. Pray what steps did you take when you found the card upon the door?\"\n\n\"I was staggered, sir. I did not know what to do. Then I called at the offices round, but none of them seemed to know anything about it. Finally, I went to the landlord, who is an accountant living on the ground-floor, and I asked him if he could tell me what had become of the Red-headed League. He said that he had never heard of any such body. Then I asked him who Mr. Duncan Ross was. He answered that the name was new to him.\n\n\"'Well,' said I, 'the gentleman at No. 4.'\n\n\"'What, the red-headed man?'\n\n\"'Yes.'\n\n\"'Oh,' said he, 'his name was William Morris. He was a solicitor and was using my room as a temporary convenience until his new premises were ready. He moved out yesterday.'\n\n\"'Where could I find him?'\n\n\"'Oh, at his new offices. He did tell me the address. Yes, 17 King Edward Street, near St. Paul's.'\n\n\"I started off, Mr. Holmes, but when I got to that address it was a manufactory of artificial knee-caps, and no one in it had ever heard of either Mr. William Morris or Mr. Duncan Ross.\"\n\n\"And what did you do then?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"I went home to Saxe-Coburg Square, and I took the advice of my assistant. But he could not help me in any way. He could only say that if I waited I should hear by post. But that was not quite good enough, Mr. Holmes. I did not wish to lose such a place without a struggle, so, as I had heard that you were good enough to give advice to poor folk who were in need of it, I came right away to you.\"\n\n\"And you did very wisely,\" said Holmes. \"Your case is an exceedingly remarkable one, and I shall be happy to look into it. From what you have told me I think that it is possible that graver issues hang from it than might at first sight appear.\"\n\n\"Grave enough!\" said Mr. Jabez Wilson. \"Why, I have lost four pound a week.\"\n\n\"As far as you are personally concerned,\" remarked Holmes, \"I do not see that you have any grievance against this extraordinary league. On the contrary, you are, as I understand, richer by some \u00a330, to say nothing of the minute knowledge which you have gained on every subject which comes under the letter A. You have lost nothing by them.\"\n\n\"No, sir. But I want to find out about them, and who they are, and what their object was in playing this prank\u2014if it was a prank\u2014upon me. It was a pretty expensive joke for them, for it cost them two and thirty pounds.\"\n\n\"We shall endeavour to clear up these points for you. And, first, one or two questions, Mr. Wilson. This assistant of yours who first called your attention to the advertisement\u2014how long had he been with you?\"\n\n\"About a month then.\"\n\n\"How did he come?\"\n\n\"In answer to an advertisement.\"\n\n\"Was he the only applicant?\"\n\n\"No, I had a dozen.\"\n\n\"Why did you pick him?\"\n\n\"Because he was handy and would come cheap.\"\n\n\"At half-wages, in fact.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"What is he like, this Vincent Spaulding?\"\n\n\"Small, stout-built, very quick in his ways, no hair on his face, though he's not short of thirty. Has a white splash of acid upon his forehead.\"\n\nHolmes sat up in his chair in considerable excitement. \"I thought as much,\" said he. \"Have you ever observed that his ears are pierced for earrings?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. He told me that a gypsy had done it for him when he was a lad.\"\n\n\"Hum!\" said Holmes, sinking back in deep thought. \"He is still with you?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, sir; I have only just left him.\"\n\n\"And has your business been attended to in your absence?\"\n\n\"Nothing to complain of, sir. There's never very much to do of a morning.\"\n\n\"That will do, Mr. Wilson. I shall be happy to give you an opinion upon the subject in the course of a day or two. To-day is Saturday, and I hope that by Monday we may come to a conclusion.\"\n\n\"Well, Watson,\" said Holmes when our visitor had left us, \"what do you make of it all?\"\n\n\"I make nothing of it,\" I answered frankly. \"It is a most mysterious business.\"\n\n\"As a rule,\" said Holmes. \"the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify. But I must be prompt over this matter.\"\n\n\"What are you going to do, then?\" I asked.\n\n\"To smoke,\" he answered. \"It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes.\" He curled himself up in his chair, with his thin knees drawn up to his hawk-like nose, and there he sat with his eyes closed and his black clay pipe thrusting out like the bill of some strange bird. I had come to the conclusion that he had dropped asleep, and indeed was nodding myself, when he suddenly sprang out of his chair with the gesture of a man who had made up his mind and put his pipe down upon the mantelpiece.\n\n\"Sarasate plays at the St. James's Hall this afternoon,\" he remarked. \"What do you think, Watson? Could your patients spare you for a few hours?\"\n\n\"I have nothing to do to-day. My practice is never very absorbing.\"\n\n\"Then put on your hat and come. I am going through the City first, and we can have some lunch on the way. I observe that there is a good deal of German music on the programme, which is rather more to my taste than Italian or French. It is introspective, and I want to introspect. Come along!\"\n\nWe travelled by the Underground as far as Aldersgate; and a short walk took us to Saxe-Coburg Square, the scene of the singular story which we had listened to in the morning. It was a poky, little, shabby-genteel place, where four lines of dingy two-storied brick houses looked out into a small railed-in enclosure, where a lawn of weedy grass and a few clumps of faded laurel-bushes made a hard fight against a smoke-laden and uncongenial atmosphere. Three gilt balls and a brown board with \"JABEZ WILSON\" in white letters, upon a corner house, announced the place where our red-headed client carried on his business. Sherlock Holmes stopped in front of it with his head on one side and looked it all over, with his eyes shining brightly between puckered lids. Then he walked slowly up the Street, and then down again to the corner, still looking keenly at the houses. Finally he returned to the pawnbroker's, and, having thumped vigorously upon the pavement with his stick two or three times, he went up to the door and knocked. It was instantly opened by a bright-looking, clean-shaven young fellow, who asked him to step in.\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Holmes, \"I only wished to ask you how you would go from here to the Strand.\"\n\n\"Third right, fourth left,\" answered the assistant promptly, closing the door.\n\n\"Smart fellow, that,\" observed Holmes as we walked away. \"He is, in my judgment, the fourth smartest man in London, and for daring I am not sure that he has not a claim to be third. I have known something of him before.\"\n\n\"Evidently,\" said I, \"Mr. Wilson's assistant counts for a good deal in this mystery of the Red-headed League. I am sure that you inquired your way merely in order that you might see him.\"\n\n\"Not him.\"\n\n\"What then?\"\n\n\"The knees of his trousers.\"\n\n\"And what did you see?\"\n\n\"What I expected to see.\"\n\n\"Why did you beat the pavement?\"\n\n\"My dear doctor, this is a time for observation, not for talk. We are spies in an enemy's country. We know something of Saxe-Coburg Square. Let us now explore the parts which lie behind it.\"\n\nThe road in which we found ourselves as we turned round the corner from the retired Saxe-Coburg Square presented as great a contrast to it as the front of a picture does to the back. It was one of the main arteries which conveyed the traffic of the City to the north and west. The roadway was blocked with the immense stream of commerce flowing in a double tide inward and outward, while the footpaths were black with the hurrying swarm of pedestrians. It was difficult to realize as we looked at the line of fine shops and stately business premises that they really abutted on the other side upon the faded and stagnant square which we had just quitted.\n\n\"Let me see,\" said Holmes, standing at the corner and glancing along the line, \"I should like just to remember the order of the houses here. It is a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of London. There is Mortimer's, the tobacconist, the little newspaper shop, the Coburg branch of the City and Suburban Bank, the Vegetarian Restaurant, and McFarlane's carriage-building depot. That carries us right on to the other block. And now, Doctor, we've done our work, so it's time we had some play. A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony, and there are no red-headed clients to vex us with their conundrums.\"\n\nMy friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very capable performer but a composer of no ordinary merit. All the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those of Holmes, the sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive. In his singular character the dual nature alternately asserted itself, and his extreme exactness and astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally predominated in him. The swing of his nature took him from extreme languor to devouring energy; and, as I knew well, he was never so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been lounging in his armchair amid his improvisations and his black-letter editions. Then it was that the lust of the chase would suddenly come upon him, and that his brilliant reasoning power would rise to the level of intuition, until those who were unacquainted with his methods would look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge was not that of other mortals. When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music at St. James's Hall I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom he had set himself to hunt down.\n\n\"You want to go home, no doubt, Doctor,\" he remarked as we emerged.\n\n\"Yes, it would be as well.\"\n\n\"And I have some business to do which will take some hours. This business at Coburg Square is serious.\"\n\n\"Why serious?\"\n\n\"A considerable crime is in contemplation. I have every reason to believe that we shall be in time to stop it. But to-day being Saturday rather complicates matters. I shall want your help tonight.\"\n\n\"At what time?\"\n\n\"Ten will be early enough.\"\n\n\"I shall be at Baker Street at ten.\"\n\n\"Very well. And, I say, Doctor, there may be some little danger, so kindly put your army revolver in your pocket.\" He waved his hand, turned on his heel, and disappeared in an instant among the crowd.\n\nI trust that I am not more dense than my neighbours, but I was always oppressed with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings with Sherlock Holmes. Here I had heard what he had heard, I had seen what he had seen, and yet from his words it was evident that he saw clearly not only what had happened but what was about to happen, while to me the whole business was still confused, and grotesque. As I drove home to my house in Kensington I thought over it all, from the extraordinary story of the red-headed copier of the Encyclop\u00e6dia down to the visit to Saxe-Coburg Square, and the ominous words with which he had parted from me. What was this nocturnal expedition, and why should I go armed? Where were we going, and what were we to do? I had the hint from Holmes that this smooth-faced pawnbroker's assistant was a formidable man\u2014a man who might play a deep game. I tried to puzzle it out, but gave it up in despair and set the matter aside until night should bring an explanation.\n\nIt was a quarter-past nine when I started from home and made my way across the Park, and so through Oxford Street to Baker Street. Two hansoms were standing at the door, and as I entered the passage I heard the sound of voices from above. On entering his room I found Holmes in animated conversation with two men, one of whom I recognized as Peter Jones, the official police agent, while the other was a long, thin, sad-faced man, with a very shiny hat and oppressively respectable frock-coat.\n\n\"Ha! Our party is complete,\" said Holmes, buttoning up his pea-jacket and taking his heavy hunting crop from the rack. \"Watson, I think you know Mr. Jones, of Scotland Yard? Let me introduce you to Mr. Merryweather, who is to be our companion in tonight's adventure.\"\n\n\"We're hunting in couples again, Doctor, you see,\" said Jones in his consequential way. \"Our friend here is a wonderful man for starting a chase. All he wants is an old dog to help him to do the running down.\"\n\n\"I hope a wild goose may not prove to be the end of our chase,\" observed Mr. Merryweather gloomily.\n\n\"You may place considerable confidence in Mr. Holmes, sir,\" said the police agent loftily. \"He has his own little methods, which are, if he won't mind my saying so, just a little too theoretical and fantastic, but he has the makings of a detective in him. It is not too much to say that once or twice, as in that business of the Sholto murder and the Agra treasure, he has been more nearly correct than the official force.\"\n\n\"Oh, if you say so, Mr. Jones, it is all right,\" said the stranger with deference. \"Still, I confess that I miss my rubber. It is the first Saturday night for seven-and-twenty years that I have not had my rubber.\"\n\n\"I think you will find,\" said Sherlock Holmes, \"that you will play for a higher stake tonight than you have ever done yet, and that the play will be more exciting. For you, Mr. Merryweather, the stake will be some \u00a330,000; and for you, Jones, it will be the man upon whom you wish to lay your hands.\"\n\n\"John Clay, the murderer, thief, smasher, and forger. He's a young man, Mr. Merryweather, but he is at the head of his profession, and I would rather have my bracelets on him than on any criminal in London. He's a remarkable man, is young John Clay. His grandfather was a royal duke, and he himself has been to Eton and Oxford. His brain is as cunning as his fingers, and though we meet signs of him at every turn, we never know where to find the man himself. He'll crack a crib in Scotland one week, and be raising money to build an orphanage in Cornwall the next. I've been on his track for years and have never set eyes on him yet.\"\n\n\"I hope that I may have the pleasure of introducing you tonight. I've had one or two little turns also with Mr. John Clay, and I agree with you that he is at the head of his profession. It is past ten, however, and quite time that we started. If you two will take the first hansom, Watson and I will follow in the second.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes was not very communicative during the long drive and lay back in the cab humming the tunes which he had heard in the afternoon. We rattled through an endless labyrinth of gas-lit streets until we emerged into Farrington Street.\n\n\"We are close there now,\" my friend remarked. \"This fellow Merryweather is a bank director, and personally interested in the matter. I thought it as well to have Jones with us also. He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone. Here we are, and they are waiting for us.\"\n\nWe had reached the same crowded thoroughfare in which we had found ourselves in the morning. Our cabs were dismissed, and, following the guidance of Mr. Merryweather, we passed down a narrow passage and through a side door, which he opened for us. Within there was a small corridor, which ended in a very massive iron gate. This also was opened, and led down a flight of winding stone steps, which terminated at another formidable gate. Mr. Merryweather stopped to light a lantern, and then conducted us down a dark, earth-smelling passage, and so, after opening a third door, into a huge vault or cellar, which was piled all round with crates and massive boxes.\n\n\"You are not very vulnerable from above,\" Holmes remarked as he held up the lantern and gazed about him.\n\n\"Nor from below,\" said Mr. Merryweather, striking his stick upon the flags which lined the floor. \"Why, dear me, it sounds quite hollow!\" he remarked, looking up in surprise.\n\n\"I must really ask you to be a little more quiet!\" said Holmes severely. \"You have already imperilled the whole success of our expedition. Might I beg that you would have the goodness to sit down upon one of those boxes, and not to interfere?\"\n\nThe solemn Mr. Merryweather perched himself upon a crate, with a very injured expression upon his face, while Holmes fell upon his knees upon the floor and, with the lantern and a magnifying lens, began to examine minutely the cracks between the stones. A few seconds sufficed to satisfy him, for he sprang to his feet again and put his glass in his pocket.\n\n\"We have at least an hour before us,\" he remarked, \"for they can hardly take any steps until the good pawnbroker is safely in bed. Then they will not lose a minute, for the sooner they do their work the longer time they will have for their escape. We are at present, Doctor\u2014as no doubt you have divined\u2014in the cellar of the City branch of one of the principal London banks. Mr. Merryweather is the chairman of directors, and he will explain to you that there are reasons why the more daring criminals of London should take a considerable interest in this cellar at present.\"\n\n\"It is our French gold,\" whispered the director. \"We have had several warnings that an attempt might be made upon it.\"\n\n\"Your French gold?\"\n\n\"Yes. We had occasion some months ago to strengthen our resources and borrowed for that purpose 30,000 napoleons from the Bank of France. It has become known that we have never had occasion to unpack the money, and that it is still lying in our cellar. The crate upon which I sit contains 2,000 napoleons packed between layers of lead foil. Our reserve of bullion is much larger at present than is usually kept in a single branch office, and the directors have had misgivings upon the subject.\"\n\n\"Which were very well justified,\" observed Holmes. \"And now it is time that we arranged our little plans. I expect that within an hour matters will come to a head. In the meantime, Mr. Merryweather, we must put the screen over that dark lantern.\"\n\n\"And sit in the dark?\"\n\n\"I am afraid so. I had brought a pack of cards in my pocket, and I thought that, as we were a partie carr\u00e9e, you might have your rubber after all. But I see that the enemy's preparations have gone so far that we cannot risk the presence of a light. And, first of all, we must choose our positions. These are daring men, and though we shall take them at a disadvantage, they may do us some harm unless we are careful. I shall stand behind this crate, and do you conceal yourselves behind those. Then, when I flash a light upon them, close in swiftly. If they fire, Watson, have no compunction about shooting them down.\"\n\nI placed my revolver, cocked, upon the top of the wooden case behind which I crouched. Holmes shot the slide across the front of his lantern and left us in pitch darkness\u2014such an absolute darkness as I have never before experienced. The smell of hot metal remained to assure us that the light was still there, ready to flash out at a moment's notice. To me, with my nerves worked up to a pitch of expectancy, there was something depressing and subduing in the sudden gloom, and in the cold dank air of the vault.\n\n\"They have but one retreat,\" whispered Holmes. \"That is back through the house into Saxe-Coburg Square. I hope that you have done what I asked you, Jones?\"\n\n\"I have an inspector and two officers waiting at the front door.\"\n\n\"Then we have stopped all the holes. And now we must be silent and wait.\"\n\nWhat a time it seemed! From comparing notes afterwards it was but an hour and a quarter, yet it appeared to me that the night must have almost gone, and the dawn be breaking above us. My limbs were weary and stiff, for I feared to change my position; yet my nerves were worked up to the highest pitch of tension, and my hearing was so acute that I could not only hear the gentle breathing of my companions, but I could distinguish the deeper, heavier in-breath of the bulky Jones from the thin, sighing note of the bank director. From my position I could look over the case in the direction of the floor. Suddenly my eyes caught the glint of a light.\n\nAt first it was but a lurid spark upon the stone pavement. Then it lengthened out until it became a yellow line, and then, without any warning or sound, a gash seemed to open and a hand appeared; a white, almost womanly hand, which felt about in the centre of the little area of light. For a minute or more the hand, with its writhing fingers, protruded out of the floor. Then it was withdrawn as suddenly as it appeared, and all was dark again save the single lurid spark which marked a chink between the stones.\n\nIts disappearance, however, was but momentary. With a rending, tearing sound, one of the broad, white stones turned over upon its side and left a square, gaping hole, through which streamed the light of a lantern. Over the edge there peeped a clean-cut, boyish face, which looked keenly about it, and then, with a hand on either side of the aperture, drew itself shoulder-high and waist-high, until one knee rested upon the edge. In another instant he stood at the side of the hole and was hauling after him a companion, lithe and small like himself, with a pale face and a shock of very red hair.\n\n\"It's all clear,\" he whispered. \"Have you the chisel and the bags? Great Scott! Jump, Archie, jump, and I'll swing for it!\"\n\nSherlock Holmes had sprung out and seized the intruder by the collar. The other dived down the hole, and I heard the sound of rending cloth as Jones clutched at his skirts. The light flashed upon the barrel of a revolver, but Holmes's hunting crop came down on the man's wrist, and the pistol clinked upon the stone floor.\n\n\"It's no use, John Clay,\" said Holmes blandly. \"You have no chance at all.\"\n\n\"So I see,\" the other answered with the utmost coolness. \"I fancy that my pal is all right, though I see you have got his coat-tails.\"\n\n\"There are three men waiting for him at the door,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Oh, indeed! You seem to have done the thing very completely. I must compliment you.\"\n\n\"And I you,\" Holmes answered. \"Your red-headed idea was very new and effective.\"\n\n\"You'll see your pal again presently,\" said Jones. \"He's quicker at climbing down holes than I am. Just hold out while I fix the derbies.\"\n\n\"I beg that you will not touch me with your filthy hands,\" remarked our prisoner as the handcuffs clattered upon his wrists. \"You may not be aware that I have royal blood in my veins. Have the goodness, also, when you address me always to say 'sir' and 'please.'\"\n\n\"All right,\" said Jones with a stare and a snigger. \"Well, would you please, sir, march upstairs, where we can get a cab to carry your Highness to the police-station?\"\n\n\"That is better,\" said John Clay serenely. He made a sweeping bow to the three of us and walked quietly off in the custody of the detective.\n\n\"Really, Mr. Holmes,\" said Mr. Merryweather as we followed them from the cellar, \"I do not know how the bank can thank you or repay you. There is no doubt that you have detected and defeated in the most complete manner one of the most determined attempts at bank robbery that have ever come within my experience.\"\n\n\"I have had one or two little scores of my own to settle with Mr. John Clay,\" said Holmes. \"I have been at some small expense over this matter, which I shall expect the bank to refund, but beyond that I am amply repaid by having had an experience which is in many ways unique, and by hearing the very remarkable narrative of the Red-headed League.\"\n\n\"You see, Watson,\" he explained in the early hours of the morning as we sat over a glass of whisky and soda in Baker Street, \"it was perfectly obvious from the first that the only possible object of this rather fantastic business of the advertisement of the League, and the copying of the Encyclop\u00e6dia, must be to get this not over-bright pawnbroker out of the way for a number of hours every day. It was a curious way of managing it but, really, it would be difficult to suggest a better. The method was no doubt suggested to Clay's ingenious mind by the colour of his accomplice's hair. The \u00a34 a week was a lure which must draw him, and what was it to them, who were playing for thousands? They put in the advertisement, one rogue has the temporary office, the other rogue incites the man to apply for it, and together they manage to secure his absence every morning in the week. From the time that I heard of the assistant having come for half wages, it was obvious to me that he had some strong motive for securing the situation.\"\n\n\"But how could you guess what the motive was?\"\n\n\"Had there been women in the house, I should have suspected a mere vulgar intrigue. That, however, was out of the question. The man's business was a small one, and there was nothing in his house which could account for such elaborate preparations, and such an expenditure as they were at. It must, then, be something out of the house. What could it be? I thought of the assistant's fondness for photography, and his trick of vanishing into the cellar. The cellar! There was the end of this tangled clue. Then I made inquiries as to this mysterious assistant and found that I had to deal with one of the coolest and most daring criminals in London. He was doing something in the cellar\u2014something which took many hours a day for months on end. What could it be, once more? I could think of nothing save that he was running a tunnel to some other building.\n\n\"So far I had got when we went to visit the scene of action. I surprised you by beating upon the pavement with my stick. I was ascertaining whether the cellar stretched out in front or behind. It was not in front. Then I rang the bell, and, as I hoped, the assistant answered it. We have had some skirmishes, but we had never set eyes upon each other before. I hardly looked at his face. His knees were what I wished to see. You must yourself have remarked how worn, wrinkled, and stained they were. They spoke of those hours of burrowing. The only remaining point was what they were burrowing for. I walked round the corner, saw the City and Suburban Bank abutted on our friend's premises, and felt that I had solved my problem. When you drove home after the concert I called upon Scotland Yard and upon the chairman of the bank directors, with the result that you have seen.\"\n\n\"And how could you tell that they would make their attempt tonight?\" I asked.\n\n\"Well, when they closed their League offices that was a sign that they cared no longer about Mr. Jabez Wilson's presence\u2014in other words, that they had completed their tunnel. But it was essential that they should use it soon, as it might be discovered, or the bullion might be removed. Saturday would suit them better than any other day, as it would give them two days for their escape. For all these reasons I expected them to come tonight.\"\n\n\"You reasoned it out beautifully,\" I exclaimed in unfeigned admiration. \"It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true.\"\n\n\"It saved me from ennui,\" he answered, yawning. \"Alas! I already feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.\"\n\n\"And you are a benefactor of the race,\" said I.\n\nHe shrugged his shoulders. \"Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some little use,\" he remarked. \" 'L'homme c'est rien\u2014l' \u0153uvre c'est tout,' as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand.\"" + }, + { + "title": "A CASE OF IDENTITY", + "text": "\"My dear fellow,\" said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, \"life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generation, and leading to the most outr\u00e9 results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.\"\n\n\"And yet I am not convinced of it,\" I answered. \"The cases which come to light in the papers are, as a rule, bald enough, and vulgar enough. We have in our police reports realism pushed to its extreme limits, and yet the result is, it must be confessed, neither fascinating nor artistic.\"\n\n\"A certain selection and discretion must be used in producing a realistic effect,\" remarked Holmes. \"This is wanting in the police report, where more stress is laid, perhaps, upon the platitudes of the magistrate than upon the details, which to an observer contain the vital essence of the whole matter. Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.\"\n\nI smiled and shook my head. \"I can quite understand your thinking so,\" I said. \"Of course, in your position of unofficial adviser and helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout three continents, you are brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre. But here\"\u2014I picked up the morning paper from the ground\u2014\"let us put it to a practical test. Here is the first heading upon which I come. 'A husband's cruelty to his wife.' There is half a column of print, but I know without reading it that it is all perfectly familiar to me. There is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady. The crudest of writers could invent nothing more crude.\"\n\n\"Indeed, your example is an unfortunate one for your argument,\" said Holmes, taking the paper and glancing his eye down it. \"This is the Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it. The husband was a teetotaler, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife, which, you will allow, is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average story-teller. Take a pinch of snuff, Doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example.\"\n\nHe held out his snuffbox of old gold, with a great amethyst in the centre of the lid. Its splendour was in such contrast to his homely ways and simple life that I could not help commenting upon it.\n\n\"Ah,\" said he, \"I forgot that I had not seen you for some weeks. It is a little souvenir from the King of Bohemia in return for my assistance in the case of the Irene Adler papers.\"\n\n\"And the ring?\" I asked, glancing at a remarkable brilliant which sparkled upon his finger.\n\n\"It was from the reigning family of Holland, though the matter in which I served them was of such delicacy that I cannot confide it even to you, who have been good enough to chronicle one or two of my little problems.\"\n\n\"And have you any on hand just now?\" I asked with interest.\n\n\"Some ten or twelve, but none which present any feature of interest. They are important, you understand, without being interesting. Indeed, I have found that it is usually in unimportant matters that there is a field for the observation, and for the quick analysis of cause and effect which gives the charm to an investigation. The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive. In these cases, save for one rather intricate matter which has been referred to me from Marseilles, there is nothing which presents any features of interest. It is possible, however, that I may have something better before very many minutes are over, for this is one of my clients, or I am much mistaken.\"\n\nHe had risen from his chair and was standing between the parted blinds gazing down into the dull neutral-tinted London street. Looking over his shoulder, I saw that on the pavement opposite there stood a large woman with a heavy fur boa round her neck, and a large curling red feather in a broad-brimmed hat, which was tilted in a coquettish Duchess of Devonshire fashion over her ear. From under this great panoply she peeped up in a nervous, hesitating fashion at our windows, while her body oscillated backward and forward, and her fingers fidgeted with her glove buttons. Suddenly, with a plunge, as of the swimmer who leaves the bank, she hurried across the road, and we heard the sharp clang of the bell.\n\n\"I have seen those symptoms before,\" said Holmes, throwing his cigarette into the fire. \"Oscillation upon the pavement always means an af-faire de c\u0153ur. She would like advice, but is not sure that the matter is not too delicate for communication. And yet even here we may discriminate. When a woman has been seriously wronged by a man she no longer oscillates, and the usual symptom is a broken bell wire. Here we may take it that there is a love matter, but that the maiden is not so much angry as perplexed, or grieved. But here she comes in person to resolve our doubts.\"\n\nAs he spoke there was a tap at the door, and the boy in buttons entered to announce Miss Mary Sutherland, while the lady herself loomed behind his small black figure like a full-sailed merchant-man behind a tiny pilot boat. Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable, and, having closed the door and bowed her into an armchair, he looked her over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which was peculiar to him.\n\n\"Do you not find,\" he said, \"that with your short sight it is a little trying to do so much typewriting?\"\n\n\"I did at first,\" she answered, \"but now I know where the letters are without looking.\" Then, suddenly realizing the full purport of his words, she gave a violent start and looked up, with fear and astonishment upon her broad, good-humoured face. \"You've heard about me, Mr. Holmes,\" she cried, \"else how could you know all that?\"\n\n\"Never mind,\" said Holmes, laughing; \"it is my business to know things. Perhaps I have trained myself to see what others overlook. If not, why should you come to consult me?\"\n\n\"I came to you, sir, because I heard of you from Mrs. Etherege, whose husband you found so easy when the police and everyone had given him up for dead. Oh, Mr. Holmes, I wish you would do as much for me. I'm not rich, but still I have a hundred a year in my own right, besides the little that I make by the machine, and I would give it all to know what has become of Mr. Hosmer Angel.\"\n\n\"Why did you come away to consult me in such a hurry?\" asked Sherlock Holmes, with his fingertips together and his eyes to the ceiling.\n\nAgain a startled look came over the somewhat vacuous face of Miss Mary Sutherland. \"Yes, I did bang out of the house,\" she said, \"for it made me angry to see the easy way in which Mr. Windibank\u2014that is, my father\u2014took it all. He would not go to the police, and he would not go to you, and so at last, as he would do nothing and kept on saying that there was no harm done, it made me mad, and I just on with my things and came right away to you.\"\n\n\"Your father,\" said Holmes, \"your stepfather, surely, since the name is different.\"\n\n\"Yes, my stepfather. I call him father, though it sounds funny, too, for he is only five years and two months older than myself.\"\n\n\"And your mother is alive?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, mother is alive and well. I wasn't best pleased, Mr. Holmes, when she married again so soon after father's death, and a man who was nearly fifteen years younger than herself. Father was a plumber in the Tottenham Court Road, and he left a tidy business behind him, which mother carried on with Mr. Hardy, the foreman; but when Mr. Windibank came he made her sell the business, for he was very superior, being a traveller in wines. They got \u00a34700 for the goodwill and interest, which wasn't near as much as father could have got if he had been alive.\"\n\nI had expected to see Sherlock Holmes impatient under this rambling and inconsequential narrative, but, on the contrary he had listened with the greatest concentration of attention.\n\n\"Your own little income,\" he asked, \"does it come out of the business?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, sir. It is quite separate and was left me by my uncle Ned in Auckland. It is in New Zealand stock, paying 41/2 per cent. Two thousand five hundred pounds was the amount, but I can only touch the interest.\"\n\n\"You interest me extremely,\" said Holmes. \"And since you draw so large a sum as a hundred a year, with what you earn into the bargain, you no doubt travel a little and indulge yourself in every way. I believe that a single lady can get on very nicely upon an income of about \u00a360.\"\n\n\"I could do with much less than that, Mr. Holmes, but you understand that as long as I live at home I don't wish to be a burden to them, and so they have the use of the money just while I am staying with them. Of course, that is only just for the time. Mr. Windibank draws my interest every quarter and pays it over to mother, and I find that I can do pretty well with what I earn at typewriting. It brings me twopence a sheet, and I can often do from fifteen to twenty sheets in a day.\"\n\n\"You have made your position very clear to me,\" said Holmes. \"This is my friend, Dr. Watson, before whom you can speak as freely as before myself. Kindly tell us now all about your connection with Mr. Hosmer Angel.\"\n\nA flush stole over Miss Sutherland's face, and she picked nervously at the fringe of her jacket. \"I met him first at the gasfitters' ball,\" she said. \"They used to send father tickets when he was alive, and then afterwards they remembered us, and sent them to mother. Mr. Windibank did not wish us to go. He never did wish us to go anywhere. He would get quite mad if I wanted so much as to join a Sunday-school treat. But this time I was set on going, and I would go; for what right had he to prevent? He said the folk were not fit for us to know, when all father's friends were to be there. And he said that I had nothing fit to wear, when I had my purple plush that I had never so much as taken out of the drawer. At last, when nothing else would do, he went off to France upon the business of the firm, but we went, mother and I, with Mr. Hardy, who used to be our foreman, and it was there I met Mr. Hosmer Angel.\n\n\"I suppose,\" said Holmes, \"that when Mr. Windibank came back from France he was very annoyed at your having gone to the ball.\"\n\n\"Oh, well, he was very good about it. He laughed, I remember, and shrugged his shoulders, and said there was no use denying anything to a woman, for she would have her way.\"\n\n\"I see. Then at the gasfitters' ball you met, as I understand, a gentleman called Mr. Hosmer Angel.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. I met him that night, and he called next day to ask if we had got home all safe, and after that we met him\u2014that is to say, Mr. Holmes, I met him twice for walks, but after that father came back again, and Mr. Hosmer Angel could not come to the house any more.\"\n\n\"No?\"\n\n\"Well, you know, father didn't like anything of the sort. He wouldn't have any visitors if he could help it, and he used to say that a woman should be happy in her own family circle. But then, as I used to say to mother, a woman wants her own circle to begin with, and I had not got mine yet.\"\n\n\"But how about Mr. Hosmer Angel? Did he make no attempt to see you?\"\n\n\"Well, father was going off to France again in a week, and Hosmer wrote and said that it would be safer and better not to see each other until he had gone. We could write in the mean-time, and he used to write every day. I took the letters in in the morning, so there was no need for father to know.\"\n\n\"Were you engaged to the gentleman at this time?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, Mr. Holmes. We were engaged after the first walk that we took. Hosmer\u2014Mr. Angel\u2014was a cashier in an office in Leadenhall Street\u2014and\u2014\"\n\n\"What office?\"\n\n\"That's the worst of it, Mr. Holmes, I don't know.\"\n\n\"Where did he live, then?\"\n\n\"He slept on the premises.\"\n\n\"And you don't know his address?\"\n\n\"No\u2014except that it was Leadenhall Street.\"\n\n\"Where did you address your letters, then?\"\n\n\"To the Leadenhall Street Post-Office, to be left till called for. He said that if they were sent to the office he would be chaffed by all the other clerks about having letters from a lady, so I offered to typewrite them, like he did his, but he wouldn't have that, for he said that when I wrote them they seemed to come from me, but when they were typewritten he always felt that the machine had come between us. That will just show you how fond he was of me, Mr. Holmes, and the little things that he would think of.\"\n\n\"It was most suggestive,\" said Holmes. \"It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. Can you remember any other little things about Mr. Hosmer Angel?\"\n\n\"He was a very shy man, Mr. Holmes. He would rather walk with me in the evening than in the daylight, for he said that he hated to be conspicuous. Very retiring and gentlemanly he was. Even his voice was gentle. He'd had the quinsy and swollen glands when he was young, he told me, and it had left him with a weak throat, and a hesitating, whispering fashion of speech. He was always well dressed, very neat and plain, but his eyes were weak, just as mine are, and he wore tinted glasses against the glare.\"\n\n\"Well, and what happened when Mr. Windibank, your stepfather, returned to France?\"\n\n\"Mr. Hosmer Angel came to the house again and proposed that we should marry before father came back. He was in dreadful earnest and made me swear, with my hands on the Testament, that whatever happened I would always be true to him. Mother said he was quite right to make me swear, and that it was a sign of his passion. Mother was all in his favour from the first and was even fonder of him than I was. Then, when they talked of marrying within the week, I began to ask about father; but they both said never to mind about father, but just to tell him afterwards, and mother said she would make it all right with him. I didn't quite like that, Mr. Holmes. It seemed funny that I should ask his leave, as he was only a few years older than me; but I didn't want to do anything on the sly, so I wrote to father at Bordeaux, where the company has its French offices, but the letter came back to me on the very morning of the wedding.\"\n\n\"It missed him, then?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir; for he had started to England just before it arrived.\"\n\n\"Ha! that was unfortunate. Your wedding was arranged, then, for the Friday. Was it to be in church?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, but very quietly. It was to be at St. Saviour's, near King's Cross, and we were to have breakfast afterwards at the St. Pancras Hotel. Hosmer came for us in a hansom, but as there were two of us he put us both into it and stepped himself into a four-wheeler, which happened to be the only other cab in the street. We got to the church first, and when the four-wheeler drove up we waited for him to step out, but he never did, and when the cabman got down from the box and looked there was no one there! The cabman said that he could not imagine what had become of him, for he had seen him get in with his own eyes. That was last Friday, Mr. Holmes, and I have never seen or heard anything since then to throw any light upon what became of him.\"\n\n\"It seems to me that you have been very shamefully treated,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Oh, no, sir! He was too good and kind to leave me so. Why, all the morning he was saying to me that, whatever happened, I was to be true; and that even if something quite unforeseen occurred to separate us, I was always to remember that I was pledged to him, and that he would claim his pledge sooner or later. It seemed strange talk for a wedding-morning, but what has happened since gives a meaning to it.\"\n\n\"Most certainly it does. Your own opinion is, then, that some unforeseen catastrophe has occurred to him?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. I believe that he foresaw some danger, or else he would not have talked so. And then I think that what he foresaw happened.\"\n\n\"But you have no notion as to what it could have been?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\n\"One more question. How did your mother take the matter?\"\n\n\"She was angry, and said that I was never to speak of the matter again.\"\n\n\"And your father? Did you tell him?\"\n\n\"Yes; and he seemed to think, with me, that something had happened, and that I should hear of Hosmer again. As he said, what interest could anyone have in bringing me to the doors of the church, and then leaving me? Now, if he had borrowed my money, or if he had married me and got my money settled on him, there might be some reason, but Hosmer was very independent about money and never would look at a shilling of mine. And yet, what could have happened? And why could he not write? Oh, it drives me half-mad to think of it, and I can't sleep a wink at night.\" She pulled a little handkerchief out of her muff and began to sob heavily into it.\n\n\"I shall glance into the case for you,\" said Holmes, rising, \"and I have no doubt that we shall reach some definite result. Let the weight of the matter rest upon me now, and do not let your mind dwell upon it further. Above all, try to let Mr. Hosmer Angel vanish from your memory, as he has done from your life.\"\n\n\"Then you don't think I'll see him again?\"\n\n\"I fear not.\"\n\n\"Then what has happened to him?\"\n\n\"You will leave that question in my hands. I should like an accurate description of him and any letters of his which you can spare.\"\n\n\"I advertised for him in last Saturday's Chronicle,\" said she. \"Here is the slip and here are four letters from him.\"\n\n\"Thank you. And your address?\"\n\n\"No. 31 Lyon Place, Camberwell.\"\n\n\"Mr. Angel's address you never had, I understand. Where is your father's place of business?\"\n\n\"He travels for Westhouse & Marbank, the great claret importers of Fenchurch Street.\"\n\n\"Thank you. You have made your statement very clearly. You will leave the papers here, and remember the advice which I have given you. Let the whole incident be a sealed book, and do not allow it to affect your life.\"\n\n\"You are very kind, Mr. Holmes, but I cannot do that. I shall be true to Hosmer. He shall find me ready when he comes back.\"\n\nFor all the preposterous hat and the vacuous face, there was something noble in the simple faith of our visitor which compelled our respect. She laid her little bundle of papers upon the table and went her way, with a promise to come again whenever she might be summoned.\n\nSherlock Holmes sat silent for a few minutes with his fingertips still pressed together, his legs stretched out in front of him, and his gaze directed upward to the ceiling. Then he took down from the rack the old and oily clay pipe, which was to him as a counsellor, and, having lit it, he leaned back in his chair, with the thick blue cloud-wreaths spinning up from him, and a look of infinite languor in his face.\n\n\"Quite an interesting study, that maiden,\" he observed. \"I found her more interesting than her little problem, which, by the way, is rather a trite one. You will find parallel cases, if you consult my index, in Andover in '77, and there was something of the sort at The Hague last year. Old as is the idea, however, there were one or two details which were new to me. But the maiden herself was most instructive.\"\n\n\"You appeared to read a good deal upon her which was quite invisible to me,\" I remarked.\n\n\"Not invisible but unnoticed, Watson. You did not know where to look, and so you missed all that was important. I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace. Now, what did you gather from that woman's appearance? Describe it.\"\n\n\"Well, she had a slate-coloured, broad-brimmed straw hat, with a feather of a brickish red. Her jacket was black, with black beads sewn upon it, and a fringe of little black jet ornaments. Her dress was brown, rather darker than coffee colour, with a little purple plush at the neck and sleeves. Her gloves were grayish and were worn through at the right forefinger. Her boots I didn't observe. She had small round, hanging gold earrings, and a general air of being fairly well-to-do in a vulgar, comfortable, easy-going way.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes clapped his hands softly together and chuckled.\n\n\"'Pon my word, Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. You have really done very well indeed. It is true that you have missed everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method, and you have a quick eye for colour. Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details. My first glance is always at a woman's sleeve. In a man it is perhaps better first to take the knee of the trouser. As you observe, this woman had plush upon her sleeves, which is a most useful material for showing traces. The double line a little above the wrist, where the typewritist presses against the table, was beautifully defined. The sewing-machine, of the hand type, leaves a similar mark, but only on the left arm, and on the side of it farthest from the thumb, instead of being right across the broadest part, as this was. I then glanced at her face, and, observing the dint of a pince-nez at either side of her nose, I ventured a remark upon short sight and typewriting, which seemed to surprise her.\"\n\n\"It surprised me.\"\n\n\"But, surely, it was obvious. I was then much surprised and interested on glancing down to observe that, though the boots which she was wearing were not unlike each other, they were really odd ones; the one having a slightly decorated toe-cape and the other a plain one. One was buttoned only in the two lower buttons out of five, and the other at the first, third, and fifth. Now, when you see that a young lady, otherwise neatly dressed, has come away from home with odd boots, half-buttoned, it is no great deduction to say that she came away in a hurry.\"\n\n\"And what else?\" I asked, keenly interested, as I always was, by my friend's incisive reasoning.\n\n\"I noted, in passing, that she had written a note before leaving home but after being fully dressed. You observed that her right glove was torn at the forefinger, but you did not apparently see that both glove and finger were stained with violet ink. She had written in a hurry and dipped her pen too deep. It must have been this morning, or the mark would not remain clear upon the finger. All this is amusing, though rather elementary, but I must go back to business, Watson. Would you mind reading me the advertised description of Mr. Hosmer Angel?\"\n\nI held the little printed slip to the light.\n\n\"Missing [it said] on the morning of the fourteenth, a gentleman named Hosmer Angel. About five feet seven inches in height; strongly built, sallow complexion, black hair, a little bald in the centre, bushy, black side-whiskers and moustache; tinted glasses, slight infirmity of speech. Was dressed, when last seen, in black frock-coat faced with silk, black waistcoat, gold Albert chain, and gray Harris tweed trousers, with brown gaiters over elastic-sided boots. Known to have been employed in an office in Leadenhall Street. Anybody bringing\u2014\"\n\n\"That will do,\" said Holmes. \"As to the letters,\" he continued, glancing over them, \"they are very commonplace. Absolutely no clue in them to Mr. Angel, save that he quotes Balzac once. There is one remarkable point, however, which will no doubt strike you.\"\n\n\"They are typewritten,\" I remarked.\n\n\"Not only that, but the signature is typewritten. Look at the neat little 'Hosmer Angel' at the bottom. There is a date, you see, but no superscription except Leadenhall Street, which is rather vague. The point about the signature is very suggestive\u2014in fact, we may call it conclusive.\"\n\n\"Of what?\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, is it possible you do not see how strongly it bears upon the case?\"\n\n\"I cannot say that I do unless it were that he wished to be able to deny his signature if an action for breach of promise were instituted.\"\n\n\"No, that was not the point. However, I shall write two letters, which should settle the matter. One is to a firm in the City, the other is to the young lady's stepfather, Mr. Windibank, asking him whether he could meet us here at six o'clock to-morrow evening. It is just as well that we should do business with the male relatives. And now, Doctor, we can do nothing until the answers to those letters come, so we may put our little problem upon the shelf for the interim.\"\n\nI had had so many reasons to believe in my friend's subtle powers of reasoning and extraordinary energy in action that I felt that he must have some solid grounds for the assured and easy demeanour with which he treated the singular mystery which he had been called upon to fathom. Once only had I known him to fail, in the case of the King of Bohemia and of the Irene Adler photograph; but when I looked back to the weird business of 'The Sign of Four', and the extraordinary circumstances connected with 'A Study in Scarlet', I felt that it would be a strange tangle indeed which he could not unravel.\n\nI left him then, still puffing at his black clay pipe, with the conviction that when I came again on the next evening I would find that he held in his hands all the clues which would lead up to the identity of the disappearing bridegroom of Miss Mary Sutherland.\n\nA professional case of great gravity was engaging my own attention at the time, and the whole of next day I was busy at the bedside of the sufferer. It was not until close upon six o'clock that I found myself free and was able to spring into a hansom and drive to Baker Street, half afraid that I might be too late to assist at the denouement of the little mystery. I found Sherlock Holmes alone, however, half asleep, with his long, thin form curled up in the recesses of his armchair. A formidable array of bottles and test-tubes, with the pungent cleanly smell of hydrochloric acid, told me that he had spent his day in the chemical work which was so dear to him.\n\n\"Well, have you solved it?\" I asked as I entered.\n\n\"Yes. It was the bisulphate of baryta.\"\n\n\"No, no, the mystery!\" I cried.\n\n\"Oh, that! I thought of the salt that I have been working upon. There was never any mystery in the matter, though, as I said yesterday, some of the details are of interest. The only drawback is that there is no law, I fear, that can touch the scoundrel.\"\n\n\"Who was he, then, and what was his object in deserting Miss Sutherland?\"\n\nThe question was hardly out of my mouth, and Holmes had not yet opened his lips to reply, when we heard a heavy footfall in the passage and a tap at the door.\n\n\"This is the girl's stepfather, Mr. James Windibank,\" said Holmes. \"He has written to me to say that he would be here at six. Come in!\"\n\nThe man who entered was a sturdy, middle-sized fellow, some thirty years of age, clean-shaven, and sallow-skinned, with a bland, insinuating manner, and a pair of wonderfully sharp and penetrating gray eyes. He shot a questioning glance at each of us, placed his shiny top-hat upon the sideboard, and with a slight bow sidled down into the nearest chair.\n\n\"Good-evening, Mr. James Windibank,\" said Holmes. \"I think that this typewritten letter is from you, in which you made an appointment with me for six o'clock?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. I am afraid that I am a little late, but I am not quite my own master, you know. I am sorry that Miss Sutherland has troubled you about this little matter, for I think it is far better not to wash linen of the sort in public. It was quite against my wishes that she came, but she is a very excitable, impulsive girl, as you may have noticed, and she is not easily controlled when she has made up her mind on a point. Of course, I did not mind you so much, as you are not connected with the official police, but it is not pleasant to have a family misfortune like this noised abroad. Besides, it is a useless expense, for how could you possibly find this Hosmer Angel?\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" said Holmes quietly; \"I have every reason to believe that I will succeed in discovering Mr. Hosmer Angel.\"\n\nMr. Windibank gave a violent start and dropped his gloves. \"I am delighted to hear it,\" he said.\n\n\"It is a curious thing,\" remarked Holmes, \"that a typewriter has really quite as much individuality as a man's handwriting. Unless they are quite new, no two of them write exactly alike. Some letters get more worn than others, and some wear only on one side. Now, you remark in this note of yours, Mr. Windibank, that in every case there is some little slurring over of the 'e,' and a slight defect in the tail of the 'r.' There are fourteen other characteristics, but those are the more obvious.\"\n\n\"We do all our correspondence with this machine at the office, and no doubt it is a little worn,\" our visitor answered, glancing keenly at Holmes with his bright little eyes.\n\n\"And now I will show you what is really a very interesting study, Mr. Windibank,\" Holmes continued. \"I think of writing another little monograph some of these days on the typewriter and its relation to crime. It is a subject to which I have devoted some little attention. I have here four letters which purport to come from the missing man. They are all typewritten. In each case, not only are the 'e's' slurred and the 'r's' tailless, but you will observe, if you care to use my magnifying lens, that the fourteen other characteristics to which I have alluded are there as well.\"\n\nMr. Windibank sprang out of his chair and picked up his hat. \"I cannot waste time over this sort of fantastic talk, Mr. Holmes,\" he said. \"If you can catch the man, catch him, and let me know when you have done it.\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" said Holmes, stepping over and turning the key in the door. \"I let you know, then, that I have caught him!\"\n\n\"What! where?\" shouted Mr. Windibank, turning white to his lips and glancing about him like a rat, in a trap.\n\n\"Oh, it won't do\u2014really it won't,\" said Holmes suavely. \"There is no possible getting out of it, Mr. Windibank. It is quite too transparent, and it was a very bad compliment when you said that it was impossible for me to solve so simple a question. That's right! Sit down and let us talk it over.\"\n\nOur visitor collapsed into a chair, with a ghastly face and a glitter of moisture on his brow. \"It\u2014it's not actionable,\" he stammered.\n\n\"I am very much afraid that it is not. But between ourselves, Windibank, it was as cruel and selfish and heartless a trick in a petty way as ever came before me. Now, let me just run over the course of events, and you will contradict me if I go wrong.\"\n\nThe man sat huddled up in his chair, with his head sunk upon his breast, like one who is utterly crushed. Holmes stuck his feet up on the corner of the mantelpiece and, leaning back with his hands in his pockets, began talking, rather to himself, as it seemed, than to us.\n\n\"The man married a woman very much older than himself for her money,\" said he, \"and he enjoyed the use of the money of the daughter as long as she lived with them. It was a considerable sum, for people in their position, and the loss of it would have made a serious difference. It was worth an effort to preserve it. The daughter was of a good, amiable disposition, but affectionate and warm-hearted in her ways, so that it was evident that with her fair personal advantages, and her little income, she would not be allowed to remain single long. Now her marriage would mean, of course, the loss of a hundred a year, so what does her stepfather do to prevent it? He takes the obvious course of keeping her at home and forbidding her to seek the company of people of her own age. But soon he found that that would not answer forever. She became restive, insisted upon her rights, and finally announced her positive intention of going to a certain ball. What does her clever stepfather do then? He conceives an idea more creditable to his head than to his heart. With the connivance and assistance of his wife he disguised himself, covered those keen eyes with tinted glasses, masked the face with a moustache and a pair of bushy whiskers, sunk that clear voice into an insinuating whisper, and doubly secure on account of the girl's short sight, he appears as Mr. Hosmer Angel, and keeps off other lovers by making love himself.\"\n\n\"It was only a joke at first,\" groaned our visitor. \"We never thought that she would have been so carried away.\"\n\n\"Very likely not. However that may be, the young lady was very decidedly carried away, and, having quite made up her mind that her stepfather was in France, the suspicion of treachery never for an instant entered her mind. She was flattered by the gentleman's attentions, and the effect was increased by the loudly expressed admiration of her mother. Then Mr. Angel began to call, for it was obvious that the matter should be pushed as far as it would go if a real effect were to be produced. There were meetings, and an engagement, which would finally secure the girl's affections from turning towards anyone else. But the deception could not be kept up forever. These pretended journeys to France were rather cumbrous. The thing to do was clearly to bring the business to an end in such a dramatic manner that it would leave a permanent impression upon the young lady's mind and prevent her from looking upon any other suitor for some time to come. Hence those vows of fidelity exacted upon a Testament, and hence also the allusions to a possibility of something happening on the very morning of the wedding. James Windibank wished Miss Sutherland to be so bound to Hosmer Angel, and so uncertain as to his fate, that for ten years to come, at any rate, she would not listen to another man. As far as the church door he brought her, and then, as he could go no farther, he conveniently vanished away by the old trick of stepping in at one door of a four-wheeler and out at the other. I think that was the chain of events, Mr. Windibank!\"\n\nOur visitor had recovered something of his assurance while Holmes had been talking, and he rose from his chair now with a cold sneer upon his pale face.\n\n\"It may be so, or it may not, Mr. Holmes,\" said he, \"but if you are so very sharp you ought to be sharp enough to know that it is you who are breaking the law now, and not me. I have done nothing actionable from the first, but as long as you keep that door locked you lay yourself open to an action for assault and illegal constraint.\"\n\n\"The law cannot, as you say, touch you,\" said Holmes, unlocking and throwing open the door, \"yet there never was a man who deserved punishment more. If the young lady has a brother or a friend, he ought to lay a whip across your shoulders. By Jove!\" he continued, flushing up at the sight of the bitter sneer upon the man's face, \"it is not part of my duties to my client, but here's a hunting crop handy, and I think I shall just treat myself to\u2014\" He took two swift steps to the whip, but before he could grasp it there was a wild clatter of steps upon the stairs, the heavy hall door banged, and from the window we could see Mr. James Windibank running at the top of his speed down the road.\n\n\"There's a cold-blooded scoundrel!\" said Holmes, laughing, as he threw himself down into his chair once more. \"That fellow will rise from crime to crime until he does something very bad, and ends on a gallows. The case has, in some respects, been not entirely devoid of interest.\"\n\n\"I cannot now entirely see all the steps of your reasoning,\" I remarked.\n\n\"Well, of course it was obvious from the first that this Mr. Hosmer Angel must have some strong object for his curious conduct, and it was equally clear that the only man who really profited by the incident, as far as we could see, was the stepfather. Then the fact that the two men were never together, but that the one always appeared when the other was away, was suggestive. So were the tinted spectacles and the curious voice, which both hinted at a disguise, as did the bushy whiskers. My suspicions were all confirmed by his peculiar action in typewriting his signature, which, of course, inferred that his handwriting was so familiar to her that she would recognize even the smallest sample of it. You see all these isolated facts, together with many minor ones, all pointed in the same direction.\"\n\n\"And how did you verify them?\"\n\n\"Having once spotted my man, it was easy to get corroboration. I knew the firm for which this man worked. Having taken the printed description, I eliminated everything from it which could be the result of a disguise\u2014the whiskers, the glasses, the voice, and I sent it to the firm, with a request that they would inform me whether it answered to the description of any of their travellers. I had already noticed the peculiarities of the typewriter, and I wrote to the man himself at his business address, asking him if he would come here. As I expected, his reply was typewritten and revealed the same trivial but characteristic defects. The same post brought me a letter from Westhouse & Marbank, of Fenchurch Street, to say that the description tallied in every respect with that of their employee, James Windibank. Voil\u00e0 tout!\"\n\n\"And Miss Sutherland?\"\n\n\"If I tell her she will not believe me. You may remember the old Persian saying, 'There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.' There is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE BOSCOMBE VALLEY MYSTERY", + "text": "We were seated at breakfast one morning, my wife and I, when the maid brought in a telegram. It was from Sherlock Holmes and ran in this way:\n\nHave you a couple of days to spare? Have just been wired for from the west of England in connection with Boscombe Valley tragedy. Shall be glad if you will come with me. Air and scenery perfect. Leave Paddington by the 11:15.\n\n\"What do you say, dear?\" said my wife, looking across at me. \"Will you go?\"\n\n\"I really don't know what to say. I have a fairly long list at present.\"\n\n\"Oh, Anstruther would do your work for you. You have been looking a little pale lately. I think that the change would do you good, and you are always so interested in Mr. Sherlock Holmes's cases.\"\n\n\"I should be ungrateful if I were not, seeing what I gained through one of them,\" I answered. \"But if I am to go, I must pack at once, for I have only half an hour.\"\n\nMy experience of camp life in Afghanistan had at least had the effect of making me a prompt and ready traveller. My wants were few and simple, so that in less than the time stated I was in a cab with my valise, rattling away to Paddington Station. Sherlock Holmes was pacing up and down the platform, his tall, gaunt figure made even gaunter and taller by his long gray travelling-cloak and close-fitting cloth cap.\n\n\"It is really very good of you to come, Watson,\" said he. \"It makes a considerable difference to me, having someone with me on whom I can thoroughly rely. Local aid is always either worthless or else biassed. If you will keep the two corner seats I shall get the tickets.\"\n\nWe had the carriage to ourselves save for an immense litter of papers which Holmes had brought with him. Among these he rummaged and read, with intervals of note-taking and of meditation, until we were past Reading. Then he suddenly rolled them all into a gigantic ball and tossed them up onto the rack.\n\n\"Have you heard anything of the case?\" he asked.\n\n\"Not a word. I have not seen a paper for some days.\"\n\n\"The London press has not had very full accounts. I have just been looking through all the recent papers in order to master the particulars. It seems, from what I gather, to be one of those simple cases which are so extremely difficult.\"\n\n\"That sounds a little paradoxical.\"\n\n\"But it is profoundly true. Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home. In this case, however, they have established a very serious case against the son of the murdered man.\"\n\n\"It is a murder, then?\"\n\n\"Well, it is conjectured to be so. I shall take nothing for granted until I have the opportunity of looking personally into it. I will explain the state of things to you, as far as I have been able to understand it, in a very few words.\n\n\"Boscombe Valley is a country district not very far from Ross, in Herefordshire. The largest landed proprietor in that part is a Mr. John Turner, who made his money in Australia and returned some years ago to the old country. One of the farms which he held, that of Hatherley, was let to Mr. Charles McCarthy, who was also an ex-Australian. The men had known each other in the colonies, so that it was not unnatural that when they came to settle down they should do so as near each other as possible. Turner was apparently the richer man, so McCarthy became his tenant but still remained, it seems, upon terms of perfect equality, as they were frequently together. McCarthy had one son, a lad of eighteen, and Turner had an only daughter of the same age, but neither of them had wives living. They appear to have avoided the society of the neighbouring English families and to have led retired lives, though both the McCarthys were fond of sport and were frequently seen at the race-meetings of the neighbourhood. McCarthy kept two servants\u2014a man and a girl. Turner had a considerable household, some half-dozen at the least. That is as much as I have been able to gather about the families. Now for the facts.\n\n\"On June 3rd, that is, on Monday last, McCarthy left his house at Hatherley about three in the afternoon and walked down to the Boscombe Pool, which is a small lake formed by the spreading out of the stream which runs down the Boscombe Valley. He had been out with his serving-man in the morning at Ross, and he had told the man that he must hurry, as he had an appointment of importance to keep at three. From that appointment he never came back alive.\n\n\"From Hatherley Farmhouse to the Boscombe Pool is a quarter of a mile, and two people saw him as he passed over this ground. One was an old woman, whose name is not mentioned, and the other was William Crowder, a game-keeper in the employ of Mr. Turner. Both these witnesses depose that Mr. McCarthy was walking alone. The game-keeper adds that within a few minutes of his seeing Mr. McCarthy pass he had seen his son, Mr. James McCarthy, going the same way with a gun under his arm. To the best of his belief, the father was actually in sight at the time, and the son was following him. He thought no more of the matter until he heard in the evening of the tragedy that had occurred.\n\n\"The two McCarthys were seen after the time when William Crowder, the game-keeper, lost sight of them. The Boscombe Pool is thickly wooded round, with just a fringe of grass and of reeds round the edge. A girl of fourteen, Patience Moran, who is the daughter of the lodge-keeper of the Boscombe Valley estate, was in one of the woods picking flowers. She states that while she was there she saw, at the border of the wood and close by the lake, Mr. McCarthy and his son, and that they appeared to be having a violent quarrel. She heard Mr. McCarthy the elder using very strong language to his son, and she saw the latter raise up his hand as if to strike his father. She was so frightened by their violence that she ran away and told her mother when she reached home that she had left the two McCarthys quarrelling near Boscombe Pool, and that she was afraid that they were going to fight. She had hardly said the words when young Mr. McCarthy came running up to the lodge to say that he had found his father dead in the wood, and to ask for the help of the lodge-keeper. He was much excited, without either his gun or his hat, and his right hand and sleeve were observed to be stained with fresh blood. On following him they found the dead body stretched out upon the grass beside the pool. The head had been beaten in by repeated blows of some heavy and blunt weapon. The injuries were such as might very well have been inflicted by the butt-end of his son's gun, which was found lying on the grass within a few paces of the body. Under these circumstances the young man was instantly arrested, and a verdict of 'wilful murder' having been returned at the inquest on Tuesday, he was on Wednesday brought before the magistrates at Ross, who have referred the case to the next Assizes. Those are the main facts of the case as they came out before the coroner and the police-court.\"\n\n\"I could hardly imagine a more damning case,\" I remarked. \"If ever circumstantial evidence pointed to a criminal it does so here.\"\n\n\"Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing,\" answered Holmes thoughtfully. \"It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different. It must be confessed, however, that the case looks exceedingly grave against the young man, and it is very possible that he is indeed the culprit. There are several people in the neighbourhood, however, and among them Miss Turner, the daughter of the neighbouring landowner, who believe in his innocence, and who have retained Lestrade, whom you may recollect in connection with 'A Study in Scarlet', to work out the case in his interest. Lestrade, being rather puzzled, has referred the case to me, and hence it is that two middle-aged gentlemen are flying westward at fifty miles an hour instead of quietly digesting their breakfasts at home.\"\n\n\"I am afraid,\" said I, \"that the facts are so obvious that you will find little credit to be gained out of this case.\"\n\n\"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact,\" he answered, laughing. \"Besides, we may chance to hit upon some other obvious facts which may have been by no means obvious to Mr. Lestrade. You know me too well to think that I am boasting when I say that I shall either confirm or destroy his theory by means which he is quite incapable of employing, or even of understanding. To take the first example to hand, I very clearly perceive that in your bedroom the window is upon the right-hand side, and yet I question whether Mr. Lestrade would have noted even so self-evident a thing as that.\"\n\n\"How on earth\u2014\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, I know you well. I know the military neatness which characterizes you. You shave every morning, and in this season you shave by the sunlight; but since your shaving is less and less complete as we get farther back on the left side, until it becomes positively slovenly as we get round the angle of the jaw, it is surely very clear that that side is less illuminated than the other. I could not imagine a man of your habits looking at himself in an equal light and being satisfied with such a result. I only quote this as a trivial example of observation and inference. Therein lies my m\u00e9tier, and it is just possible that it may be of some service in the investigation which lies before us. There are one or two minor points which were brought out in the inquest, and which are worth considering.\"\n\n\"What are they?\"\n\n\"It appears that his arrest did not take place at once, but after the return to Hatherley Farm. On the inspector of constabulary informing him that he was a prisoner, he remarked that he was not surprised to hear it, and that it was no more than his deserts. This observation of his had the natural effect of removing any traces of doubt which might have remained in the minds of the coroner's jury.\"\n\n\"It was a confession,\" I ejaculated.\n\n\"No, for it was followed by a protestation of innocence.\"\n\n\"Coming on the top of such a damning series of events, it was at least a most suspicious remark.\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" said Holmes, \"it is the brightest rift which I can at present see in the clouds. However innocent he might be, he could not be such an absolute imbecile as not to see that the circumstances were very black against him. Had he appeared surprised at his own arrest, or feigned indignation at it, I should have looked upon it as highly suspicious, because such surprise or anger would not be natural under the circumstances, and yet might appear to be the best policy to a scheming man. His frank acceptance of the situation marks him as either an innocent man, or else as a man of considerable self-restraint and firmness. As to his remark about his deserts, it was also not unnatural if you consider that he stood beside the dead body of his father, and that there is no doubt that he had that very day so far forgotten his filial duty as to bandy words with him, and even, according to the little girl whose evidence is so important, to raise his hand as if to strike him. The self-reproach and contritionwhich are displayed in his remark appear to me to be the signs of a healthy mind rather than of a guilty one.\"\n\nI shook my head. \"Many men have been hanged on far slighter evidence,\" I remarked.\n\n\"So they have. And many men have been wrongfully hanged.\"\n\n\"What is the young man's own account of the matter?\"\n\n\"It is, I am afraid, not very encouraging to his supporters, though there are one or two points in it which are suggestive. You will find it here, and may read it for yourself.\"\n\nHe picked out from his bundle a copy of the local Herefordshire paper, and having turned down the sheet he pointed out the paragraph in which the unfortunate young man had given his own statement of what had occurred. I settled myself down in the corner of the carriage and read it very carefully. It ran in this way:\n\nMr. James McCarthy, the only son of the deceased, was then called and gave evidence as follows: \"I had been away from home for three days at Bristol, and had only just returned upon the morning of last Monday, the 3d. My father was absent from home at the time of my arrival, and I was informed by the maid that he had driven over to Ross with John Cobb, the groom. Shortly after my return I heard the wheels of his trap in the yard, and, looking out of my window, I saw him get out and walk rapidly out of the yard, though I was not aware in which direction he was going. I then took my gun and strolled out in the direction of the Boscombe Pool, with the intention of visiting the rabbit-warren which is upon the other side. On my way I saw William Crowder, the game-keeper, as he had stated in his evidence; but he is mistaken in thinking that I was following my father. I had no idea that he was in front of me. When about a hundred yards from the pool I heard a cry of 'Cooee!' which was a usual signal between my father and myself. I then hurried forward, and found him standing by the pool. He appeared to be much surprised at seeing me and asked me rather roughly what I was doing there. A conversation ensued which led to high words and almost to blows, for my father was a man of a very violent temper. Seeing that his passion was becoming ungovernable, I left him and returned towards Hatherley Farm. I had not gone more than 150 yards, however, when I heard a hideous outcry behind me, which caused me to run back again. I found my father expiring upon the ground, with his head terribly injured. I dropped my gun and held him in my arms, but he almost instantly expired. I knelt beside him for some minutes, and then made my way to Mr. Turner's lodge-keeper, his house being the nearest, to ask for assistance. I saw no one near my father when I returned, and I have no idea how he came by his injuries. He was not a popular man, being somewhat cold and forbidding in his manners; but he had, as far as I know, no active enemies. I know nothing further of the matter.\"\n\nThe Coroner: Did your father make any statement to you before he died?\n\nWitness: He mumbled a few words, but I could only catch some allusion to a rat.\n\nThe Coroner: What did you understand by that?\n\nWitness: It conveyed no meaning to me. I thought that he was delirious.\n\nThe Coroner: What was the point upon which you and your father had this final quarrel?\n\nWitness: I should prefer not to answer.\n\nThe Coroner: I am afraid that I must press it.\n\nWitness: It is really impossible for me to tell you. I can assure you that it has nothing to do with the sad tragedy which followed.\n\nThe Coroner: That is for the court to decide. I need not point out to you that your refusal to answer will prejudice your case considerably in any future proceedings which may arise.\n\nWitness: I must still refuse.\n\nThe Coroner: I understand that the cry of \"Cooee\" was a common signal between you and your father?\n\nWitness: It was.\n\nThe Coroner: How was it, then, that he uttered it before he saw you, and before he even knew that you had returned from Bristol?\n\nWitness (with considerable confusion): I do not know.\n\nA Juryman: Did you see nothing which aroused your suspicions when you returned on hearing the cry and found your father fatally injured?\n\nWitness: Nothing definite.\n\nThe Coroner: What do you mean?\n\nWitness: I was so disturbed and excited as I rushed out into the open, that I could think of nothing except of my father. Yet I have a vague impression that as I ran forward something lay upon the ground to the left of me. It seemed to me to be something gray in colour, a coat of some sort, or a plaid perhaps. When I rose from my father I looked round for it, but it was gone.\n\n\"Do you mean that it disappeared before you went for help?\"\n\n\"Yes, it was gone.\"\n\n\"You cannot say what it was?\"\n\n\"No, I had a feeling something was there.\"\n\n\"How far from the body?\"\n\n\"A dozen yards or so.\"\n\n\"And how far from the edge of the wood?\"\n\n\"About the same.\"\n\n\"Then if it was removed it was while you were within a dozen yards of it?\"\n\n\"Yes, but with my back towards it.\"\n\nThis concluded the examination of the witness.\n\n\"I see,\" said I as I glanced down the column, \"that the coroner in his concluding remarks was rather severe upon young McCarthy. He calls attention, and with reason, to the discrepancy about his father having signalled to him before seeing him, also to his refusal to give details of his conversation with his father, and his singular account of his father's dying words. They are all, as he remarks, very much against the son.\"\n\nHolmes laughed softly to himself and stretched himself out upon the cushioned seat. \"Both you and the coroner have been at some pains,\" said he, \"to single out the very strongest points in the young man's favour. Don't you see that you alternately give him credit for having too much imagination and too little? Too little, if he could not invent a cause of quarrel which would give him the sympathy of the jury; too much, if he evolved from his own inner consciousness anything so outr\u00e9 as a dying reference to a rat, and the incident of the vanishing cloth. No, sir, I shall approach this case from the point of view that what this young man says is true, and we shall see whither that hypothesis will lead us. And now here is my pocket Petrarch, and not another word shall I say of this case until we are on the scene of action. We lunch at Swindon, and I see that we shall be there in twenty minutes.\"\n\nIt was nearly four o'clock when we at last, after passing through the beautiful Stroud Valley, and over the broad gleaming Severn, found ourselves at the pretty little country-town of Ross. A lean, ferret-like man, furtive and sly-looking, was waiting for us upon the platform. In spite of the light brown dustcoat and leather-leggings which he wore in deference to his rustic surroundings, I had no difficulty in recognizing Lestrade, of Scotland Yard. With him we drove to the Hereford Arms where a room had already been engaged for us.\n\n\"I have ordered a carriage,\" said Lestrade as we sat over a cup of tea. \"I knew your energetic nature, and that you would not be happy until you had been on the scene of the crime.\"\n\n\"It was very nice and complimentary of you,\" Holmes answered. \"It is entirely a question of barometric pressure.\"\n\nLestrade looked startled. \"I do not quite follow,\" he said.\n\n\"How is the glass? Twenty-nine, I see. No wind, and not a cloud in the sky. I have a caseful of cigarettes here which need smoking, and the sofa is very much superior to the usual country hotel abomination. I do not think that it is probable that I shall use the carriage to-night.\"\n\nLestrade laughed indulgently. \"You have, no doubt, already formed your conclusions from the newspapers,\" he said. \"The case is as plain as a pikestaff, and the more one goes into it the plainer it becomes. Still, of course, one can't refuse a lady, and such a very positive one, too. She had heard of you, and would have your opinion, though I repeatedly told her that there was nothing which you could do which I had not already done. Why, bless my soul! here is her carriage at the door.\"\n\nHe had hardly spoken before there rushed into the room one of the most lovely young women that I have ever seen in my life. Her violet eyes shining, her lips parted, a pink flush upon her cheeks, all thought of her natural reserve lost in her overpowering excitement and concern.\n\n\"Oh, Mr. Sherlock Holmes!\" she cried, glancing from one to the other of us, and finally, with a woman's quick intuition, fastening upon my companion, \"I am so glad that you have come. I have driven down to tell you so. I know that James didn't do it. I know it, and I want you to start upon your work knowing it, too. Never let yourself doubt upon that point. We have known each other since we were little children, and I know his faults as no one else does; but he is too tenderhearted to hurt a fly. Such a charge is absurd to anyone who really knows him.\"\n\n\"I hope we may clear him, Miss Turner,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"You may rely upon my doing all that I can.\"\n\n\"But you have read the evidence. You have formed some conclusion? Do you not see some loophole, some flaw? Do you not yourself think that he is innocent?\"\n\n\"I think that it is very probable.\"\n\n\"There, now!\" she cried, throwing back her head and looking defiantly at Lestrade. \"You hear! He gives me hopes.\"\n\nLestrade shrugged his shoulders. \"I am afraid that my colleague has been a little quick in forming his conclusions,\" he said.\n\n\"But he is right. Oh! I know that he is right. James never did it. And about his quarrel with his father, I am sure that the reason why he would not speak about it to the coroner was because I was concerned in it.\"\n\n\"In what way?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"It is no time for me to hide anything. James and his father had many disagreements about me. Mr. McCarthy was very anxious that there should be a marriage between us. James and I have always loved each other as brother and sister; but of course he is young and has seen very little of life yet, and\u2014and\u2014well, he naturally did not wish to do anything like that yet. So there were quarrels, and this, I am sure, was one of them.\"\n\n\"And your father?\" asked Holmes. \"Was he in favour of such a union?\"\n\n\"No, he was averse to it also. No one but Mr. McCarthy was in favour of it.\" A quick blush passed over her fresh young face as Holmes shot one of his keen, questioning glances at her.\n\n\"Thank you for this information,\" said he. \"May I see your father if I call to-morrow?\"\n\n\"I am afraid the doctor won't allow it.\"\n\n\"The doctor?\"\n\n\"Yes, have you not heard? Poor father has never been strong for years back, but this has broken him down completely. He has taken to his bed, and Dr. Willows says that he is a wreck and that his nervous system is shattered. Mr. McCarthy was the only man alive who had known dad in the old days in Victoria.\"\n\n\"Ha! In Victoria! That is important.\"\n\n\"Yes, at the mines.\"\n\n\"Quite so; at the gold-mines, where, as I understand, Mr. Turner made his money.\"\n\n\"Yes, certainly.\"\n\n\"Thank you. Miss Turner. You have been of material assistance to me.\"\n\n\"You will tell me if you have any news to-morrow. No doubt you will go to the prison to see James. Oh, if you do, Mr. Holmes, do tell him that I know him to be innocent.\"\n\n\"I will, Miss Turner.\"\n\n\"I must go home now, for dad is very ill, and he misses me so if I leave him. Good-bye, and God help you in your undertaking.\" She hurried from the room as impulsively as she had entered, and we heard the wheels of her carriage rattle off down the street.\n\n\"I am ashamed of you, Holmes,\" said Lestrade with dignity after a few minutes' silence. \"Why should you raise up hopes which you are bound to disappoint? I am not over-tender of heart, but I call it cruel.\"\n\n\"I think that I see my way to clearing James McCarthy,\" said Holmes. \"Have you an order to see him in prison?\"\n\n\"Yes, but only for you and me.\"\n\n\"Then I shall reconsider my resolution about going out. We have still time to take a train to Hereford and see him to-night?\"\n\n\"Ample.\"\n\n\"Then let us do so. Watson, I fear that you will find it very slow, but I shall only be away a couple of hours.\"\n\nI walked down to the station with them, and then wandered through the streets of the little town, finally returning to the hotel, where I lay upon the sofa and tried to interest myself in a yellow-backed novel. The puny plot of the story was so thin, however, when compared to the deep mystery through which we were groping, and I found my attention wander so continually from the fiction to the fact, that I at last flung it across the room and gave myself up entirely to a consideration of the events of the day. Supposing that this unhappy young man's story were absolutely true, then what hellish thing, what absolutely unforeseen and extraordinary calamity could have occurred between the time when he parted from his father, and the moment when, drawn back by his screams, he rushed into the glade? It was something terrible and deadly. What could it be? Might not the nature of the injuries reveal something to my medical instincts? I rang the bell and called for the weekly county paper, which contained a verbatim account of the inquest. In the surgeon's deposition it was stated that the posterior third of the left parietal bone and the left half of the occipital bone had been shattered by a heavy blow from a blunt weapon. I marked the spot upon my own head. Clearly such a blow must have been struck from behind. That was to some extent in favour of the accused, as when seen quarrelling he was face to face with his father. Still, it did not go for very much, for the older man might have turned his back before the blow fell. Still, it might be worth while to call Holmes's attention to it. Then there was the peculiar dying reference to a rat. What could that mean? It could not be delirium. A man dying from a sudden blow does not commonly become delirious. No, it was more likely to be an attempt to explain how he met his fate. But what could it indicate? I cudgelled my brains to find some possible explanation. And then the incident of the gray cloth seen by young McCarthy. If that were true the murderer must have dropped some part of his dress, presumably his overcoat, in his flight, and must have had the hardihood to return and to carry it away at the instant when the son was kneeling with his back turned not a dozen paces off. What a tissue of mysteries and improbabilities the whole thing was! I did not wonder at Lestrade's opinion, and yet I had so much faith in Sherlock Holmes's insight that I could not lose hope as long as every fresh fact seemed to strengthen his conviction of young McCarthy's innocence.\n\nIt was late before Sherlock Holmes returned. He came back alone, for Lestrade was staying in lodgings in the town.\n\n\"The glass still keeps very high,\" he remarked as he sat down. \"It is of importance that it should not rain before we are able to go over the ground. On the other hand, a man should be at his very best and keenest for such nice work as that, and I did not wish to do it when fagged by a long journey. I have seen young McCarthy.\"\n\n\"And what did you learn from him?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"Could he throw no light?\"\n\n\"None at all. I was inclined to think at one time that he knew who had done it and was screening him or her, but I am convinced now that he is as puzzled as everyone else. He is not a very quick-witted youth, though comely to look at and, I should think, sound at heart.\"\n\n\"I cannot admire his taste,\" I remarked, \"if it is indeed a fact that he was averse to a marriage with so charming a young lady as this Miss Turner.\"\n\n\"Ah, thereby hangs a rather painful tale. This fellow is madly, insanely, in love with her, but some two years ago, when he was only a lad, and before he really knew her, for she had been away five years at a boarding-school, what does the idiot do but get into the clutches of a barmaid in Bristol and marry her at a registry office? No one knows a word of the matter, but you can imagine how maddening it must be to him to be upbraided for not doing what he would give his very eyes to do, but what he knows to be absolutely impossible. It was sheer frenzy of this sort which made him throw his hands up into the air when his father, at their last interview, was goading him on to propose to Miss Turner. On the other hand, he had no means of supporting himself, and his father, who was by all accounts a very hard man, would have thrown him over utterly had he known the truth. It was with his barmaid wife that he had spent the last three days in Bristol, and his father did not know where he was. Mark that point. It is of importance. Good has come out of evil, however, for the barmaid, finding from the papers that he is in serious trouble and likely to be hanged, has thrown him over utterly and has written to him to say that she has a husband already in the Bermuda Dockyard, so that there is really no tie between them. I think that that bit of news has consoled young McCarthy for all that he has suffered.\"\n\n\"But if he is innocent, who has done it?\"\n\n\"Ah! who? I would call your attention very particularly to two points. One is that the murdered man had an appointment with someone at the pool, and that the someone could not have been his son, for his son was away, and he did not know when he would return. The second is that the murdered man was heard to cry 'Cooee!' before he knew that his son had returned. Those are the crucial points upon which the case depends. And now let us talk about George Meredith, if you please, and we shall leave all minor matters until to-morrow.\"\n\nThere was no rain, as Holmes had foretold, and the morning broke bright and cloudless. At nine o'clock Lestrade called for us with the carriage, and we set off for Hatherley Farm and the Boscombe Pool.\n\n\"There is serious news this morning,\" Lestrade observed. \"It is said that Mr. Turner, of the Hall, is so ill that his life is despaired of.\"\n\n\"An elderly man, I presume?\" said Holmes.\n\n\"About sixty; but his constitution has been shattered by his life abroad, and he has been in failing health for some time. This business has had a very bad effect upon him. He was an old friend of McCarthy's, and, I may add, a great benefactor to him, for I have learned that he gave him Hatherley Farm rent free.\"\n\n\"Indeed! That is interesting,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Oh, yes! In a hundred other ways he has helped him. Everybody about here speaks of his kindness to him.\"\n\n\"Really! Does it not strike you as a little singular that this McCarthy, who appears to have had little of his own, and to have been under such obligations to Turner, should still talk of marrying his son to Turner's daughter, who is, presumably, heiress to the estate, and that in such a very cocksure manner, as if it were merely a case of a proposal and all else would follow? It is the more strange, since we know that Turner himself was averse to the idea. The daughter told us as much. Do you not deduce something from that?\"\n\n\"We have got to the deductions and the inferences,\" said Lestrade, winking at me. \"I find it hard enough to tackle facts, Holmes, without flying away after theories and fancies.\"\n\n\"You are right,\" said Holmes demurely; \"you do find it very hard to tackle the facts.\"\n\n\"Anyhow, I have grasped one fact which you seem to find it difficult to get hold of,\" replied Lestrade with some warmth.\n\n\"And that is\u2014\"\n\n\"That McCarthy senior met his death from McCarthy junior and that all theories to the contrary are the merest moonshine.\"\n\n\"Well, moonshine is a brighter thing than fog,\" said Holmes, laughing. \"But I am very much mistaken if this is not Hatherley Farm upon the left.\"\n\n\"Yes, that is it.\" It was a widespread, comfortable-looking building, two-storied, slate-roofed, with great yellow blotches of lichen upon the gray walls. The drawn blinds and the smokeless chimneys, however, gave it a stricken look, as though the weight of this horror still lay heavy upon it. We called at the door when the maid, at Holmes's request, showed us the boots which her master wore at the time of his death, and also a pair of the son's, though not the pair which he had then had. Having measured these very carefully from seven or eight different points, Holmes desired to be led to the court-yard, from which we all followed the winding track which led to Boscombe Pool.\n\nSherlock Holmes was transformed when he was hot upon such a scent as this. Men who had only known the quiet thinker and logician of Baker Street would have failed to recognize him. His face flushed and darkened. His brows were drawn into two hard black lines, while his eyes shone out from beneath them with a steely glitter. His face was bent downward, his shoulders bowed, his lips compressed, and the veins stood out like whipcord in his long, sinewy neck. His nostrils seemed to dilate with a purely animal lust for the chase, and his mind was so absolutely concentrated upon the matter before him that a question or remark fell unheeded upon his ears, or, at the most, only provoked a quick, impatient snarl in reply. Swiftly and silently he made his way along the track which ran through the meadows, and so by way of the woods to the Boscombe Pool. It was damp, marshy ground, as is all that district, and there were marks of many feet, both upon the path and amid the short grass which bounded it on either side. Sometimes Holmes would hurry on, sometimes stop dead, and once he made quite a little detour into the meadow. Lestrade and I walked behind him, the detective indifferent and contemptuous, while I watched my friend with the interest which sprang from the conviction that every one of his actions was directed towards a definite end.\n\nThe Boscombe Pool, which is a little reed-girt sheet of water some fifty yards across, is situated at the boundary between the Hatherley Farm and the private park of the wealthy Mr. Turner. Above the woods which lined it upon the farther side we could see the red, jutting pinnacles which marked the site of the rich landowner's dwelling. On the Hatherley side of the pool the woods grew very thick, and there was a narrow belt of sodden grass twenty paces across between the edge of the trees and the reeds which lined the lake. Lestrade showed us the exact spot at which the body had been found, and, indeed, so moist was the ground, that I could plainly see the traces which had been left by the fall of the stricken man. To Holmes, as I could see by his eager face and peering eyes, very many other things were to be read upon the trampled grass. He ran round, like a dog who is picking up a scent, and then turned upon my companion.\n\n\"What did you go into the pool for?\" he asked.\n\n\"I fished about with a rake. I thought there might be some weapon or other trace. But how on earth\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, tut, tut! I have no time! That left foot of yours with its inward twist is all over the place. A mole could trace it, and there it vanishes among the reeds. Oh, how simple it would all have been had I been here before they came like a herd of buffalo and wallowed all over it. Here is where the party with the lodge-keeper came, and they have covered all tracks for six or eight feet round the body. But here are three separate tracks of the same feet.\" He drew out a lens and lay down upon his waterproof to have a better view, talking all the time rather to himself than to us. \"These are young McCarthy's feet. Twice he was walking, and once he ran swiftly, so that the soles are deeply marked and the heels hardly visible. That bears out his story. He ran when he saw his father on the ground. Then here are the father's feet as he paced up and down. What is this, then? It is the butt-end of the gun as the son stood listening. And this? Ha, ha! What have we here? Tiptoes! tiptoes! Square, too, quite unusual boots! They come, they go, they come again\u2014of course that was for the cloak. Now where did they come from?\" He ran up and down, sometimes losing, sometimes finding the track until we were well within the edge of the wood and under the shadow of a great beech, the largest tree in the neighbourhood. Holmes traced his way to the farther side of this and lay down once more upon his face with a little cry of satisfaction. For a long time he remained there, turning over the leaves and dried sticks, gathering up what seemed to me to be dust into an envelope and examining with his lens not only the ground but even the bark of the tree as far as he could reach. A jagged stone was lying among the moss, and this also he carefully examined and retained. Then he followed a pathway through the wood until he came to the highroad, where all traces were lost.\n\n\"It has been a case of considerable interest,\" he remarked, returning to his natural manner. \"I fancy that this gray house on the right must be the lodge. I think that I will go in and have a word with Moran, and perhaps write a little note. Having done that, we may drive back to our luncheon. You may walk to the cab, and I shall be with you presently.\"\n\nIt was about ten minutes before we regained our cab and drove back into Ross, Holmes still carrying with him the stone which he had picked up in the wood.\n\n\"This may interest you, Lestrade,\" he remarked, holding it out. \"The murder was done with it.\"\n\n\"I see no marks.\"\n\n\"There are none.\"\n\n\"How do you know, then?\"\n\n\"The grass was growing under it. It had only lain there a few days. There was no sign of a place whence it had been taken. It corresponds with the injuries. There is no sign of any other weapon.\"\n\n\"And the murderer?\"\n\n\"Is a tall man, left-handed, limps with the right leg, wears thick-soled shooting-boots and a gray cloak, smokes Indian cigars, uses a cigar-holder, and carries a blunt pen-knife in his pocket. There are several other indications, but these may be enough to aid us in our search.\"\n\nLestrade laughed. \"I am afraid that I am still a sceptic,\" he said. \"Theories are all very well, but we have to deal with a hard-headed British jury.\"\n\n\"Nous verrons,\" answered Holmes calmly; \"You work your own method, and I shall work mine. I shall be busy this afternoon, and shall probably return to London by the evening train.\"\n\n\"And leave your case unfinished?\"\n\n\"No, finished.\"\n\n\"But the mystery?\"\n\n\"It is solved.\"\n\n\"Who was the criminal, then?\"\n\n\"The gentleman I describe.\"\n\n\"But who is he?\"\n\n\"Surely it would not be difficult to find out. This is not such a populous neighbourhood.\"\n\nLestrade shrugged his shoulders. \"I am a practical man,\" he said, \"and I really cannot undertake to go about the country looking for a left-handed gentleman with a game-leg. I should become the laughing-stock of Scotland Yard.\"\n\n\"All right,\" said Holmes quietly. \"I have given you the chance. Here are your lodgings. Good-bye. I shall drop you a line before I leave.\"\n\nHaving left Lestrade at his rooms, we drove to our hotel, where we found lunch upon the table. Holmes was silent and buried in thought with a pained expression upon his face, as one who finds himself in a perplexing position.\n\n\"Look here, Watson,\" he said when the cloth was cleared; \"just sit down in this chair and let me preach to you for a little. I don't know quite what to do, and I should value your advice. Light a cigar and let me expound.\"\n\n\"Pray do so.\"\n\n\"Well, now, in considering this case there are two points about young McCarthy's narrative which struck us both instantly, although they impressed me in his favour and you against him. One was the fact that his father should, according to his account, cry 'Cooee!' before seeing him. The other was his singular dying reference to a rat. He mumbled several words, you understand, but that was all that caught the son's ear. Now from this double point our research must commence, and we will begin it by presuming that what the lad says is absolutely true.\"\n\n\"What of this 'Cooee!' then?\"\n\n\"Well, obviously it could not have been meant for the son. The son, as far as he knew, was in Bristol. It was mere chance that he was within earshot. The 'Cooee!' was meant to attract the attention of whoever it was that he had the appointment with. But 'Cooee' is a distinctly Australian cry, and one which is used between Australians. There is a strong presumption that the person whom McCarthy expected to meet him at Boscombe Pool was someone who had been in Australia.\"\n\n\"What of the rat, then?\"\n\nSherlock Holmes took a folded paper from his pocket and flattened it out on the table. \"This is a map of the Colony of Victoria,\" he said. \"I wired to Bristol for it last night.\" He put his hand over part of the map. \"What do you read?\"\n\n\"ARAT,\" I read.\n\n\"And now?\" He raised his hand.\n\n\"BALLARAT.\"\n\n\"Quite so. That was the word the man uttered, and of which his son only caught the last two syllables. He was trying to utter the name of his murderer. So and so, of Ballarat.\"\n\n\"It is wonderful!\" I exclaimed.\n\n\"It is obvious. And now, you see, I had narrowed the field down considerably. The possession of a gray garment was a point which, granting the son's statement to be correct was a certainty. We have come now out of mere vagueness to definite conception of an Australian from Ballarat with a cloak.\"\n\n\"Certainly.\"\n\n\"And one who was at home in the district, for the pool can only be approached by the farm or by the estate, where strangers could hardly wander.\"\n\n\"Quite so.\"\n\n\"Then comes our expedition of to-day. By an examination of the ground I gained the trifling details which I gave to that imbecile Lestrade, as to the personality of the criminal.\"\n\n\"But how did you gain them?\"\n\n\"You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.\"\n\n\"His height I know that you might roughly judge from the length of his stride. His boots, too, might be told from their traces.\"\n\n\"Yes, they were peculiar boots.\"\n\n\"But his lameness?\"\n\n\"The impression of his right foot was always less distinct than his left. He put less weight upon it. Why? Because he limped\u2014he was lame.\"\n\n\"But his left-handedness.\"\n\n\"You were yourself struck by the nature of the injury as recorded by the surgeon at the inquest. The blow was struck from immediately behind, and yet was upon the left side. Now, how can that be unless it were by a left-handed man? He had stood behind that tree during the interview between the father and son. He had even smoked there. I found the ash of a cigar, which my special knowledge of tobacco ashes enables me to pronounce as an Indian cigar. I have, as you know, devoted some attention to this, and written a little monograph on the ashes of 140 different varieties of pipe, cigar, and cigarette tobacco. Having found the ash, I then looked round and discovered the stump among the moss where he had tossed it. It was an Indian cigar, of the variety which are rolled in Rotterdam.\"\n\n\"And the cigar-holder?\"\n\n\"I could see that the end had not been in his mouth. Therefore he used a holder. The tip had been cut off, not bitten off, but the cut was not a clean one, so I deduced a blunt pen-knife.\"\n\n\"Holmes,\" I said, \"you have drawn a net round this man from which he cannot escape, and you have saved an innocent human life as truly as if you had cut the cord which was hanging him. I see the direction in which all this points. The culprit is\u2014\"\n\n\"Mr. John Turner,\" cried the hotel waiter, opening the door of our sitting-room, and ushering in a visitor.\n\nThe man who entered was a strange and impressive figure. His slow, limping step and bowed shoulders gave the appearance of decrepitude, and yet his hard, deep-lined, craggy features, and his enormous limbs showed that he was possessed of unusual strength of body and of character. His tangled beard, grizzled hair, and outstanding, drooping eyebrows combined to give an air of dignity and power to his appearance, but his face was of an ashen white, while his lips and the corners of his nostrils were tinged with a shade of blue. It was clear to me at a glance that he was in the grip of some deadly and chronic disease.\n\n\"Pray sit down on the sofa,\" said Holmes gently. \"You had my note?\"\n\n\"Yes, the lodge-keeper brought it up. You said that you wished to see me here to avoid scandal.\"\n\n\"I thought people would talk if I went to the Hall.\"\n\n\"And why did you wish to see me?\" He looked across at my companion with despair in his weary eyes, as though his question was already answered.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Holmes, answering the look rather than the words. \"It is so. I know all about McCarthy.\"\n\nThe old man sank his face in his hands. \"God help me!\" he cried. \"But I would not have let the young man come to harm. I give you my word that I would have spoken out if it went against him at the Assizes.\"\n\n\"I am glad to hear you say so,\" said Holmes gravely.\n\n\"I would have spoken now had it not been for my dear girl. It would break her heart\u2014it will break her heart when she hears that I am arrested.\"\n\n\"It may not come to that,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I am no official agent. I understand that it was your daughter who required my presence here, and I am acting in her interests. Young McCarthy must be got off, however.\"\n\n\"I am a dying man,\" said old Turner. \"I have had diabetes for years. My doctor says it is a question whether I shall live a month. Yet I would rather die under my own roof than in a jail.\"\n\nHolmes rose and sat down at the table with his pen in his hand and a bundle of paper before him. \"Just tell us the truth,\" he said. \"I shall jot down the facts. You will sign it, and Watson here can witness it. Then I could produce your confession at the last extremity to save young McCarthy. I promise you that I shall not use it unless it is absolutely needed.\"\n\n\"It's as well,\" said the old man; \"it's a question whether I shall live to the Assizes, so it matters little to me, but I should wish to spare Alice the shock. And now I will make the thing clear to you; it has been a long time in the acting, but will not take me long to tell.\n\n\"You didn't know this dead man, McCarthy. He was a devil incarnate. I tell you that. God keep you out of the clutches of such a man as he. His grip has been upon me these twenty years, and he has blasted my life. I'll tell you first how I came to be in his power.\n\n\"It was in the early '60's at the diggings. I was a young chap then, hot-blooded and reckless, ready to turn my hand at anything; I got among bad companions, took to drink, had no luck with my claim, took to the bush, and in a word became what you would call over here a highway robber. There were six of us, and we had a wild, free life of it, sticking up a station from time to time, or stopping the wagons on the road to the diggings. Black Jack of Ballarat was the name I went under, and our party is still remembered in the colony as the Ballarat Gang.\n\n\"One day a gold convoy came down from Ballarat to Melbourne, and we lay in wait for it and attacked it. There were six troopers and six of us, so it was a close thing, but we emptied four of their saddles at the first volley. Three of our boys were killed, however, before we got the swag. I put my pistol to the head of the wagon-driver, who was this very man McCarthy. I wish to the Lord that I had shot him then, but I spared him, though I saw his wicked little eyes fixed on my face, as though to remember every feature. We got away with the gold, became wealthy men, and made our way over to England without being suspected. There I parted from my old pals and determined to settle down to a quiet and respectable life. I bought this estate, which chanced to be in the market, and I set myself to do a little good with my money, to make up for the way in which I had earned it. I married, too, and though my wife died young she left me my dear little Alice. Even when she was just a baby her wee hand seemed to lead me down the right path as nothing else had ever done. In a word, I turned over a new leaf and did my best to make up for the past. All was going well when McCarthy laid his grip upon me.\n\n\"I had gone up to town about an investment, and I met him in Regent Street with hardly a coat to his back or a boot to his foot.\n\n\"'Here we are, Jack,' says he, touching me on the arm; 'we'll be as good as a family to you. There's two of us, me and my son, and you can have the keeping of us. If you don't\u2014it's a fine, law-abiding country is England, and there's always a policeman within hail.'\n\n\"Well, down they came to the west country, there was no shaking them off, and there they have lived rent free on my best land ever since. There was no rest for me, no peace, no forgetfulness; turn where I would, there was his cunning, grinning face at my elbow. It grew worse as Alice grew up, for he soon saw I was more afraid of her knowing my past than of the police. Whatever he wanted he must have, and whatever it was I gave him without question, land, money, houses, until at last he asked a thing which I could not give. He asked for Alice.\n\n\"His son, you see, had grown up, and so had my girl, and as I was known to be in weak health, it seemed a fine stroke to him that his lad should step into the whole property. But there I was firm. I would not have his cursed stock mixed with mine; not that I had any dislike to the lad, but his blood was in him, and that was enough. I stood firm. McCarthy threatened. I braved him to do his worst. We were to meet at the pool midway between our houses to talk it over.\n\n\"When we went down there I found him talking with his son, so I smoked a cigar and waited behind a tree until he should be alone. But as I listened to his talk all that was black and bitter in me seemed to come uppermost. He was urging his son to marry my daughter with as little regard for what she might think as if she were a slut from off the streets. It drove me mad to think that I and all that I held most dear should be in the power of such a man as this. Could I not snap the bond? I was already a dying and a desperate man. Though clear of mind and fairly strong of limb, I knew that my own fate was sealed. But my memory and my girl! Both could be saved if I could but silence that foul tongue. I did it, Mr. Holmes. I would do it again. Deeply as I have sinned, I have led a life of martyrdom to atone for it. But that my girl should be entangled in the same meshes which held me was more than I could suffer. I struck him down with no more compunction than if he had been some foul and venomous beast. His cry brought back his son; but I had gained the cover of the wood, though I was forced to go back to fetch the cloak which I had dropped in my flight. That is the true story, gentlemen, of all that occurred.\"\n\n\"Well, it is not for me to judge you,\" said Holmes as the old man signed the statement which had been drawn out. \"I pray that we may never be exposed to such a temptation.\"\n\n\"I pray not, sir. And what do you intend to do?\"\n\n\"In view of your health, nothing. You are yourself aware that you will soon have to answer for your deed at a higher court than the Assizes. I will keep your confession, and if McCarthy is condemned I shall be forced to use it. If not, it shall never be seen by mortal eye; and your secret, whether you be alive or dead, shall be safe with us.\"\n\n\"Farewell, then,\" said the old man solemnly. \"Your own deathbeds, when they come, will be the easier for the thought of the peace which you have given to mine.\" Tottering and shaking in all his giant frame, he stumbled slowly from the room.\n\n\"God help us!\" said Holmes after a long silence. \"Why does fate play such tricks with poor, helpless worms? I never hear of such a case as this that I do not think of Baxter's words, and say, 'There, but for the grace of God, goes Sherlock Holmes.'\"\n\nJames McCarthy was acquitted at the Assizes on the strength of a number of objections which had been drawn out by Holmes and submitted to the defending counsel. Old Turner lived for seven months after our interview, but he is now dead; and there is every prospect that the son and daughter may come to live happily together in ignorance of the black cloud which rests upon their past." + }, + { + "title": "THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS", + "text": "When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes cases between the years '82 and '90, I am faced by so many which present strange and interesting features that it is no easy matter to know which to choose and which to leave. Some, however, have already gained publicity through the papers, and others have not offered a field for those peculiar qualities which my friend possessed in so high a degree, and which it is the object of these papers to illustrate. Some, too, have baffled his analytical skill, and would be as narratives, beginnings without an ending, while others have been but partially cleared up, and have their explanations founded rather upon conjecture and surmise than on that absolute logical proof which was so dear to him. There is, however, one of these last which was so remarkable in its details and so startling in its results that I am tempted to give some account of it in spite of the fact that there are points in connection with it which never have been, and probably never will be, entirely cleared up.\n\nThe year '87 furnished us with a long series of cases of greater or less interest, of which I retain the records. Among my headings under this one twelve months I find an account of the adventure of the Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendicant Society, who held a luxurious club in the lower vault of a furniture warehouse, of the facts connected with the loss of the British bark Sophy Anderson, of the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa, and finally of the Camberwell poisoning case. In the latter, as may be remembered, Sherlock Holmes was able, by winding up the dead man's watch, to prove that it had been wound up two hours before, and that therefore the deceased had gone to bed within that time\u2014a deduction which was of the greatest importance in clearing up the case. All these I may sketch out at some future date, but none of them present such singular features as the strange train of circumstances which I have now taken up my pen to describe.\n\nIt was in the latter days of September, and the equinoctial gales had set in with exceptional violence. All day the wind had screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so that even here in the heart of great, hand-made London we were forced to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of life, and to recognize the presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilization, like untamed beasts in a cage. As evening drew in, the storm grew higher and louder, and the wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney. Sherlock Holmes sat moodily at one side of the fireplace cross-indexing his records of crime, while I at the other was deep in one of Clark Russell's fine sea-stories until the howl of the gale from without seemed to blend with the text, and the splash of the rain to lengthen out into the long swash of the sea waves. My wife was on a visit to her mother's, and for a few days I was a dweller once more in my old quarters at Baker Street.\n\n\"Why,\" said I, glancing up at my companion, \"that was surely the bell. Who could come to-night? Some friend of yours, perhaps?\"\n\n\"Except yourself I have none,\" he answered. \"I do not encourage visitors.\"\n\n\"A client, then?\"\n\n\"If so, it is a serious case. Nothing less would bring a man out on such a day and at such an hour. But I take it that it is more likely to be some crony of the landlady's.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes was wrong in his conjecture, however, for there came a step in the passage and a tapping at the door. He stretched out his long arm to turn the lamp away from himself and towards the vacant chair upon which a newcomer must sit. \"Come in!\" said he.\n\nThe man who entered was young, some two-and-twenty at the outside, well-groomed and trimly clad, with something of refinement and delicacy in his bearing. The streaming umbrella which he held in his hand, and his long shining waterproof told of the fierce weather through which he had come. He looked about him anxiously in the glare of the lamp, and I could see that his face was pale and his eyes heavy, like those of a man who is weighed down with some great anxiety.\n\n\"I owe you an apology,\" he said, raising his golden pince-nez to his eyes. \"I trust that I am not intruding. I fear that I have brought some traces of the storm and rain into your snug chamber.\"\n\n\"Give me your coat and umbrella,\" said Holmes. \"They may rest here on the hook and will be dry presently. You have come up from the south-west, I see.\"\n\n\"Yes, from Horsham.\"\n\n\"That clay and chalk mixture which I see upon your toe caps is quite distinctive.\"\n\n\"I have come for advice.\"\n\n\"That is easily got.\"\n\n\"And help.\"\n\n\"That is not always so easy.\"\n\n\"I have heard of you, Mr. Holmes. I heard from Major Prendergast how you saved him in the Tankerville Club scandal.\"\n\n\"Ah, of course. He was wrongfully accused of cheating at cards.\"\n\n\"He said that you could solve anything.\"\n\n\"He said too much.\"\n\n\"That you are never beaten.\"\n\n\"I have been beaten four times\u2014three times by men, and once by a woman.\"\n\n\"But what is that compared with the number of your successes?\"\n\n\"It is true that I have been generally successful.\"\n\n\"Then you may be so with me.\"\n\n\"I beg that you will draw your chair up to the fire and favour me with some details as to your case.\"\n\n\"It is no ordinary one.\"\n\n\"None of those which come to me are. I am the last court of appeal.\"\n\n\"And yet I question, sir, whether, in all your experience, you have ever listened to a more mysterious and inexplicable chain of events than those which have happened in my own family.\"\n\n\"You fill me with interest,\" said Holmes. \"Pray give us the essential facts from the commencement, and I can afterwards question you as to those details which seem to me to be most important.\"\n\nThe young man pulled his chair up and pushed his wet feet out towards the blaze.\n\n\"My name,\" said he, \"is John Openshaw, but my own affairs have, as far as I can understand, little to do with this awful business. It is a hereditary matter; so in order to give you an idea of the facts, I must go back to the commencement of the affair.\n\n\"You must know that my grandfather had two sons\u2014my uncle Elias and my father Joseph. My father had a small factory at Coventry, which he enlarged at the time of the invention of bicycling. He was a patentee of the Openshaw unbreakable tire, and his business met with such success that he was able to sell it and to retire upon a handsome competence.\n\n\"My uncle Elias emigrated to America when he was a young man and became a planter in Florida, where he was reported to have done very well. At the time of the war he fought in Jackson's army, and afterwards under Hood, where he rose to be a colonel. When Lee laid down his arms my uncle returned to his plantation, where he remained for three or four years. About 1869 or 1870 he came back to Europe and took a small estate in Sussex, near Horsham. He had made a very considerable fortune in the States, and his reason for leaving them was his aversion to the negroes, and his dislike of the Republican policy in extending the franchise to them. He was a singular man, fierce and quick-tempered, very foul-mouthed when he was angry, and of a most retiring disposition. During all the years that he lived at Horsham, I doubt if ever he set foot in the town. He had a garden and two or three fields round his house, and there he would take his exercise, though very often for weeks on end he would never leave his room. He drank a great deal of brandy and smoked very heavily, but he would see no society and did not want any friends, not even his own brother.\n\n\"He didn't mind me; in fact he took a fancy to me, for at the time when he saw me first I was a youngster of twelve or so. This would be in the year 1878, after he had been eight or nine years in England. He begged my father to let me live with him, and he was very kind to me in his way. When he was sober he used to be fond of playing backgammon and draughts with me and he would make me his representative both with the servants and with the tradespeople, so that by the time that I was sixteen I was quite master of the house. I kept all the keys and could go where I liked and do what I liked, so long as I did not disturb him in his privacy. There was one singular exception, however, for he had a single room, a lumber-room up among the attics, which was invariably locked, and which he would never permit either me or anyone else to enter. With a boy's curiosity I have peeped through the keyhole, but I was never able to see more than such a collection of old trunks and bundles as would be expected in such a room.\n\n\"One day\u2014it was in March, 1883\u2014a letter with a foreign stamp lay upon the table in front of the colonel's plate. It was not a common thing for him to receive letters, for his bills were all paid in ready money, and he had no friends of any sort. 'From India!' said he as he took it up, 'Pondicherry postmark! What can this be?' Opening it hurriedly, out there jumped five little dried orange pips, which pattered down upon his plate. I began to laugh at this, but the laugh was struck from my lips at the sight of his face. His lip had fallen, his eyes were protruding, his skin the colour of putty, and he glared at the envelope which he still held in his trembling hand, 'K. K. K.!' he shrieked, and then, 'My God, my God, my sins have overtaken me!'\n\n\"'What is it, uncle?' I cried.\n\n\"'Death,' said he, and rising from the table he retired to his room, leaving me palpitating with horror. I took up the envelope and saw scrawled in red ink upon the inner flap, just above the gum, the letter K three times repeated. There was nothing else save the five dried pips. What could be the reason of his overpowering terror? I left the breakfast-table, and as I ascended the stair I met him coming down with an old rusty key, which must have belonged to the attic, in one hand, and a small brass box, like a cashbox, in the other.\n\n\"'They may do what they like, but I'll checkmate them still,' said he with an oath. 'Tell Mary that I shall want a fire in my room to-day, and send down to Fordham, the Horsham lawyer.'\n\n\"I did as he ordered, and when the lawyer arrived I was asked to step up to the room. The fire was burning brightly, and in the grate there was a mass of black, fluffy ashes, as of burned paper, while the brass box stood open and empty beside it. As I glanced at the box I noticed, with a start, that upon the lid was printed the treble K which I had read in the morning upon the envelope.\n\n\"'I wish you, John,' said my uncle, 'to witness my will. I leave my estate, with all its advantages and all its disadvantages, to my brother, your father, whence it will, no doubt, descend to you. If you can enjoy it in peace, well and good! If you find you cannot, take my advice, my boy, and leave it to your deadliest enemy. I am sorry to give you such a two-edged thing, but I can't say what turn things are going to take. Kindly sign the paper where Mr. Fordham shows you.'\n\n\"I signed the paper as directed, and the lawyer took it away with him. The singular incident made, as you may think, the deepest impression upon me, and I pondered over it and turned it every way in my mind without being able to make anything of it. Yet I could not shake off the vague feeling of dread which it left behind, though the sensation grew less keen as the weeks passed, and nothing happened to disturb the usual routine of our lives. I could see a change in my uncle, however. He drank more than ever, and he was less inclined for any sort of society. Most of his time he would spend in his room, with the door locked upon the inside, but sometimes he would emerge in a sort of drunken frenzy and would burst out of the house and tear about the garden with a revolver in his hand, screaming out that he was afraid of no man, and that he was not to be cooped up, like a sheep in a pen, by man or devil. When these hot fits were over, however, he would rush tumultuously in at the door and lock and bar it behind him, like a man who can brazen it out no longer against the terror which lies at the roots of his soul. At such times I have seen his face, even on a cold day, glisten with moisture, as though it were new raised from a basin.\n\n\"Well, to come to an end of the matter, Mr. Holmes, and not to abuse your patience, there came a night when he made one of those drunken sallies from which he never came back. We found him, when we went to search for him, face downward in a little green-scummed pool, which lay at the foot of the garden. There was no sign of any violence, and the water was but two feet deep, so that the jury, having regard to his known eccentricity, brought in a verdict of 'suicide.' But I, who knew how he winced from the very thought of death, had much ado to persuade myself that he had gone out of his way to meet it. The matter passed, however, and my father entered into possession of the estate, and of some \u00a314,000, which lay to his credit at the bank.\"\n\n\"One moment,\" Holmes interposed, \"your statement is, I foresee, one of the most remarkable to which I have ever listened. Let me have the date of the reception by your uncle of the letter, and the date of his supposed suicide.\"\n\n\"The letter arrived on March 10, 1883. His death was seven weeks later, upon the night of May 2d.\"\n\n\"Thank you. Pray proceed.\"\n\n\"When my father took over the Horsham property, he, at my request, made a careful examination of the attic, which had been always locked up. We found the brass box there, although its contents had been destroyed. On the inside of the cover was a paper label, with the initials of K. K. K. repeated upon it, and 'Letters, memoranda, receipts, and a register' written beneath. These, we presume, indicated the nature of the papers which had been destroyed by Colonel Openshaw. For the rest, there was nothing of much importance in the attic save a great many scattered papers and note-books bearing upon my uncle's life in America. Some of them were of the war time and showed that he had done his duty well and had borne the repute of a brave soldier. Others were of a date during the reconstruction of the Southern states, and were mostly concerned with politics, for he had evidently taken a strong part in opposing the carpet-bag politicians who had been sent down from the North.\n\n\"Well, it was the beginning of '84 when my father came to live at Horsham, and all went as well as possible with us until the January of '85. On the fourth day after the new year I heard my father give a sharp cry of surprise as we sat together at the breakfast-table. There he was, sitting with a newly opened envelope in one hand and five dried orange pips in the outstretched palm of the other one. He had always laughed at what he called my cock-and-bull story about the colonel, but he looked very scared and puzzled now that the same thing had come upon himself.\n\n\"'Why, what on earth does this mean, John?' he stammered.\n\n\"My heart had turned to lead. 'It is K. K. K.,' said I.\n\n\"He looked inside the envelope. 'So it is,' he cried. 'Here are the very letters. But what is this written above them?'\n\n\"'Put the papers on the sundial,' I read, peeping over his shoulder.\n\n\"'What papers? What sundial?' he asked.\n\n\"'The sundial in the garden. There is no other,' said I; 'but the papers must be those that are destroyed.'\n\n\"'Pooh!' said he, gripping hard at his courage. 'We are in a civilized land here, and we can't have tomfoolery of this. Where does the thing come from?'\n\n\"'From Dundee,' I answered, glancing at the postmark.\n\n\"'Some preposterous practical joke,' said he. 'What have I to do with sundials and papers? I shall take no notice of such nonsense.'\n\n\"'I should certainly speak to the police,' I said.\n\n\"'And be laughed at for my pains. Nothing of the sort.'\n\n\"'Then let me do so?'\n\n\"'No, I forbid you. I won't have a fuss made about such nonsense.'\n\n\"It was in vain to argue with him, for he was a very obstinate man. I went about, however, with a heart which was full of forebodings.\n\n\"On the third day after the coming of the letter my father went from home to visit an old friend of his, Major Freebody, who is in command of one of the forts upon Portsdown Hill. I was glad that he should go, for it seemed to me that he was farther from danger when he was away from home. In that, however, I was in error. Upon the second day of his absence I received a telegram from the major, imploring me to come at once. My father had fallen over one of the deep chalk-pits which abound in the neighbourhood, and was lying senseless, with a shattered skull. I hurried to him, but he passed away without having ever recovered his consciousness. He had, as it appears, been returning from Fareham in the twilight, and as the country was unknown to him, and the chalk-pit un-fenced, the jury had no hesitation in bringing in a verdict of 'death from accidental causes.' Carefully as I examined every fact connected with his death, I was unable to find anything which could suggest the idea of murder. There were no signs of violence, no footmarks, no robbery, no record of strangers having been seen upon the roads. And yet I need not tell you that my mind was far from at ease, and that I was well-nigh certain that some foul plot had been woven round him.\n\n\"In this sinister way I came into my inheritance. You will ask me why I did not dispose of it? I answer, because I was well convinced that our troubles were in some way dependent upon an incident in my uncle's life, and that the danger would be as pressing in one house as in another.\n\n\"It was in January, '85, that my poor father met his end, and two years and eight months have elapsed since then. During that time I have lived happily at Horsham, and I had begun to hope that this curse had passed way from the family, and that it had ended with the last generation. I had begun to take comfort too soon, however; yesterday morning the blow fell in the very shape in which it had come upon my father.\"\n\nThe young man took from his waistcoat a crumpled envelope, and turning to the table he shook out upon it five little dried orange pips.\n\n\"This is the envelope,\" he continued. \"The postmark is London\u2014eastern division. Within are the very words which were upon my father's last message: 'K. K. K.'; and then 'Put the papers on the sundial.'\"\n\n\"What have you done?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"Nothing?\"\n\n\"To tell the truth\"\u2014he sank his face into his thin, white hands\u2014\"I have felt helpless. I have felt like one of those poor rabbits when the snake is writhing towards it. I seem to be in the grasp of some resistless, inexorable evil, which no foresight and no precautions can guard against.\"\n\n\"Tut! tut!\" cried Sherlock Holmes. \"You must act, man, or you are lost. Nothing but energy can save you. This is no time for despair.\"\n\n\"I have seen the police.\"\n\n\"Ah!\"\n\n\"But they listened to my story with a smile. I am convinced that the inspector has formed the opinion that the letters are all practical jokes, and that the deaths of my relations were really accidents, as the jury stated, and were not to be connected with the warnings.\"\n\nHolmes shook his clenched hands in the air. \"Incredible imbecility!\" he cried.\n\n\"They have, however, allowed me a policeman, who may remain in the house with me.\"\n\n\"Has he come with you to-night?\"\n\n\"No. His orders were to stay in the house.\"\n\nAgain Holmes raved in the air.\n\n\"Why did you come to me,\" he cried. \"and, above all, why did you not come at once?\"\n\n\"I did not know. It was only to-day that I spoke to Major Prendergast about my troubles and was advised by him to come to you.\"\n\n\"It is really two days since you had the letter. We should have acted before this. You have no further evidence, I suppose, than that which you have placed before us\u2014no suggestive detail which might help us?\"\n\n\"There is one thing,\" said John Openshaw. He rummaged in his coat pocket, and, drawing out a piece of discoloured, blue-tinted paper, he laid it out upon the table. \"I have some remembrance,\" said he, \"that on the day when my uncle burned the papers I observed that the small, unburned margins which lay amid the ashes were of this particular colour. I found this single sheet upon the floor of his room, and I am inclined to think that it may be one of the papers which has, perhaps, fluttered out from among the others, and in that way has escaped destruction. Beyond the mention of pips, I do not see that it helps us much. I think myself that it is a page from some private diary. The writing is undoubtedly my uncle's.\"\n\nHolmes moved the lamp, and we both bent over the sheet of paper, which showed by its ragged edge that it had indeed been torn from a book. It was headed, \"March, 1869,\" and beneath were the following enigmatical notices:\n\n4th. Hudson came. Same old platform.\n\n7th. Set the pips on McCauley, Paramore, and John Swain, of St. Augustine.\n\n9th. McCauley cleared.\n\n10th. John Swain cleared.\n\n12th. Visited Paramore. All well.\n\n\"Thank you!\" said Holmes, folding up the paper and returning it to our visitor. \"And now you must on no account lose another instant. We cannot spare time even to discuss what you have told me. You must get home instantly and act.\"\n\n\"What shall I do?\"\n\n\"There is but one thing to do. It must be done at once. You must put this piece of paper which you have shown us into the brass box which you have described. You must also put in a note to say that all the other papers were burned by your uncle, and that this is the only one which remains. You must assert that in such words as will carry conviction with them. Having done this, you must at once put the box out upon the sundial, as directed. Do you understand?\"\n\n\"Entirely.\"\n\n\"Do not think of revenge, or anything of the sort, at present. I think that we may gain that by means of the law; but we have our web to weave, while theirs is already woven. The first consideration is to remove the pressing danger which threatens you. The second is to clear up the mystery and to punish the guilty parties.\"\n\n\"I thank you,\" said the young man, rising and pulling on his overcoat. \"You have given me fresh life and hope. I shall certainly do as you advise.\"\n\n\"Do not lose an instant. And, above all, take care of yourself in the meanwhile, for I do not think that there can be a doubt that you are threatened by a very real and imminent danger. How do you go back?\"\n\n\"By train from Waterloo.\"\n\n\"It is not yet nine. The streets will be crowded, so I trust that you may be in safety. And yet you cannot guard yourself too closely.\"\n\n\"I am armed.\"\n\n\"That is well. To-morrow I shall set to work upon your case.\"\n\n\"I shall see you at Horsham, then?\"\n\n\"No, your secret lies in London. It is there that I shall seek it.\"\n\n\"Then I shall call upon you in a day, or in two days, with news as to the box and the papers. I shall take your advice in every particular.\" He shook hands with us and took his leave. Outside the wind still screamed and the rain splashed and pattered against the windows. This strange, wild story seemed to have come to us from amid the mad elements\u2014blown in upon us like a sheet of sea-weed in a gale\u2014and now to have been reabsorbed by them once more.\n\nSherlock Holmes sat for some time in silence, with his head sunk forward and his eyes bent upon the red glow of the fire. Then he lit his pipe, and leaning back in his chair he watched the blue smoke-rings as they chased each other up to the ceiling.\n\n\"I think, Watson,\" he remarked at last, \"that of all our cases we have had none more fantastic than this.\"\n\n\"Save, perhaps, the Sign of Four.\"\n\n\"Well, yes. Save, perhaps, that. And yet this John Openshaw seems to me to be walking amid even greater perils than did the Sholtos.\"\n\n\"But have you,\" I asked, \"formed any definite conception as to what these perils are?\"\n\n\"There can be no question as to their nature,\" he answered.\n\n\"Then what are they? Who is this K. K. K., and why does he pursue this unhappy family?\"\n\nSherlock Holmes closed his eyes and placed his elbows upon the arms of his chair, with his finger-tips together. \"The ideal reasoner,\" he remarked, \"would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it. As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after. We have not yet grasped the results which the reason alone can attain to. Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to utilize all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclop\u00e6dias, is a somewhatrare accomplishment. It is not so impossible, however, that a man should possess all knowledge which is likely to be useful to him in his work, and this I have endeavoured in my case to do. If I remember rightly, you on one occasion, in the early days of our friendship, defined my limits in a very precise fashion.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I answered, laughing. \"it was a singular document. Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud-stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin-player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco. Those, I think, were the main points of my analysis.\"\n\nHolmes grinned at the last item. \"Well,\" he said, \"I say now, as I said then, that a man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it. Now, for such a case as the one which has been submitted to us to-night, we need certainly to muster all our resources. Kindly hand me down the letter K of the American Encyclop\u00e6dia which stands upon the shelf beside you. Thank you. Now let us consider the situation and see what may be deduced from it. In the first place, we may start with a strong presumption that Colonel Openshaw had some very strong reason for leaving America. Men at his time of life do not change all their habits and exchange willingly the charming climate of Florida for the lonely life of an English provincial town. His extreme love of solitude in England suggests the idea that he was in fear of someone or something, so we may assume as a working hypothesis that it was fear of someone or something which drove him from America. As to what it was he feared, we can only deduce that by considering the formidable letters which were received by himself and his successors. Did you remark the postmarks of those letters?\"\n\n\"The first was from Pondicherry, the second from Dundee, and the third from London.\"\n\n\"From East London. What do you deduce from that?\"\n\n\"They are all seaports. That the writer was on board of a ship.\"\n\n\"Excellent. We have already a clue. There can be no doubt that the probability\u2014the strong probability\u2014is that the writer was on board of a ship. And now let us consider another point. In the case of Pondicherry, seven weeks elapsed between the threat and its fulfillment, in Dundee it was only some three or four days. Does that suggest anything?\"\n\n\"A greater distance to travel.\"\n\n\"But the letter had also a greater distance to come.\"\n\n\"Then I do not see the point.\"\n\n\"There is at least a presumption that the vessel in which the man or men are is a sailing-ship. It looks as if they always sent their singular warning or token before them when starting upon their mission. You see how quickly the deed followed the sign when it came from Dundee. If they had come from Pondicherry in a steamer they would have arrived almost as soon as their letter. But, as a matter of fact, seven weeks elapsed. I think that those seven weeks represented the difference between the mail-boat which brought the letter and the sailing vessel which brought the writer.\"\n\n\"It is possible.\"\n\n\"More than that. It is probable. And now you see the deadly urgency of this new case, and why I urged young Openshaw to caution. The blow has always fallen at the end of the time which it would take the senders to travel the distance. But this one comes from London, and therefore we cannot count upon delay.\"\n\n\"Good God!\" I cried. \"What can it mean, this relentless persecution?\"\n\n\"The papers which Openshaw carried are obviously of vital importance to the person or persons in the sailing-ship. I think that it is quite clear that there must be more than one of them. A single man could not have carried out two deaths in such a way as to deceive a coroner's jury. There must have been several in it, and they must have been men of resource and determination. Their papers they mean to have, be the holder of them who it may. In this way you see K. K. K. ceases to be the initials of an individual and becomes the badge of a society.\"\n\n\"But of what society?\"\n\n\"Have you never\u2014\" said Sherlock Holmes, bending forward and sinking his voice\u2014\"have you never heard of the Ku Klux Klan?\"\n\n\"I never have.\"\n\nHolmes turned over the leaves of the book upon his knee. \"Here it is,\" said he presently:\n\n\"Ku Klux Klan. A name derived from the fanciful resemblance to the sound produced by cocking a rifle. This terrible secret society was formed by some ex-Confederate soldiers in the Southern states after the Civil War, and it rapidly formed local branches in different parts of the country, notably in Tennessee, Louisiana, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. Its power was used for political purposes, principally for the terrorizing of the negro voters and the murdering and driving from the country of those who were opposed to its views. Its outrages were usually preceded by a warning sent to the marked man in some fantastic but generally recognized shape\u2014a sprig of oak-leaves in some parts, melon seeds or orange pips in others. On receiving this the victim might either openly abjure his former ways, or might fly from the country. If he braved the matter out, death would unfailingly come upon him, and usually in some strange and unforeseen manner. So perfect was the organization of the society, and so systematic its methods, that there is hardly a case upon record where any man succeeded in braving it with impunity, or in which any of its outrages were traced home to the perpetrators. For some years the organization flourished in spite of the efforts of the United States government and of the better classes of the community in the South. Eventually, in the year 1869, the movement rather suddenly collapsed, although there have been sporadic outbreaks of the same sort since that date.\n\n\"You will observe,\" said Holmes, laying down the volume, \"that the sudden breaking up of the society was coincident with the disappearance of Openshaw from America with their papers. It may well have been cause and effect. It is no wonder that he and his family have some of the more implacable spirits upon their track. You can understand that this register and diary may implicate some of the first men in the South, and that there may be many who will not sleep easy at night until it is recovered.\"\n\n\"Then the page we have seen\u2014\"\n\n\"Is such as we might expect. It ran, if I remember right, 'sent the pips to A, B, and C'\u2014that is, sent the society's warning to them. Then there are successive entries that A and B cleared, or left the country, and finally that C was visited, with, I fear, a sinister result for C. Well, I think, Doctor, that we may let some light into this dark place, and I believe that the only chance young Openshaw has in the meantime is to do what I have told him. There is nothing more to be said or to be done to-night, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellowmen.\"\n\nIt had cleared in the morning, and the sun was shining with a subdued brightness through the dim veil which hangs over the great city. Sherlock Holmes was already at breakfast when I came down.\n\n\"You will excuse me for not waiting for you,\" said he; \"I have, I foresee, a very busy day before me in looking into this case of young Openshaw's.\"\n\n\"What steps will you take?\" I asked.\n\n\"It will very much depend upon the results of my first inquiries. I may have to go down to Horsham, after all.\"\n\n\"You will not go there first?\"\n\n\"No, I shall commence with the City. Just ring the bell and the maid will bring up your coffee.\"\n\nAs I waited, I lifted the unopened newspaper from the table and glanced my eye over it. It rested upon a heading which sent a chill to my heart.\n\n\"Holmes,\" I cried, \"you are too late.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said he, laying down his cup, \"I feared as much. How was it done?\" He spoke calmly, but I could see that he was deeply moved.\n\n\"My eye caught the name of Openshaw, and the heading 'Tragedy Near Waterloo Bridge.' Here is the account:\n\n\"Between nine and ten last night Police-Constable Cook, of the H Division, on duty near Waterloo Bridge, heard a cry for help and a splash in the water. The night, however, was extremely dark and stormy, so that, in spite of the help of several passers-by, it was quite impossible to effect a rescue. The alarm, however, was given, and, by the aid of the water-police, the body was eventually recovered. It proved to be that of a young gentleman whose name, as it appears from an envelope which was found in his pocket, was John Openshaw, and whose residence is near Horsham. It is conjectured that he may have been hurrying down to catch the last train from Waterloo Station, and that in his haste and the extreme darkness he missed his path and walked over the edge of one of the small landing-places for river steamboats. The body exhibited no traces of violence, and there can be no doubt that the deceased had been the victim of an unfortunate accident, which should have the effect of calling the attention of the authorities to the condition of the riverside landing-stages.\"\n\nWe sat in silence for some minutes, Holmes more depressed and shaken than I had ever seen him.\n\n\"That hurts my pride, Watson,\" he said at last. \"It is a petty feeling, no doubt, but it hurts my pride. It becomes a personal matter with me now, and, if God sends me health, I shall set my hand upon this gang. That he should come to me for help, and that I should send him away to his death\u2014!\" He sprang from his chair and paced about the room in uncontrollable agitation, with a flush upon his sallow cheeks and a nervous clasping and unclasping of his long thin hands.\n\n\"They must be cunning devils,\" he exclaimed at last. \"How could they have decoyed him down there? The Embankment is not on the direct line to the station. The bridge, no doubt, was too crowded, even on such a night, for their purpose. Well, Watson, we shall see who will win in the long run. I am going out now!\"\n\n\"To the police?\"\n\n\"No; I shall be my own police. When I have spun the web they may take the flies, but not before.\"\n\nAll day I was engaged in my professional work, and it was late in the evening before I returned to Baker Street. Sherlock Holmes had not come back yet. It was nearly ten o'clock before he entered, looking pale and worn. He walked up to the sideboard, and tearing a piece from the loaf he devoured it voraciously, washing it down with a long draught of water.\n\n\"You are hungry,\" I remarked.\n\n\"Starving. It had escaped my memory. I have had nothing since breakfast.\"\n\n\"Nothing?\"\n\n\"Not a bite. I had no time to think of it.\"\n\n\"And how have you succeeded?\"\n\n\"Well.\"\n\n\"You have a clue?\"\n\n\"I have them in the hollow of my hand. Young Openshaw shall not long remain unavenged. Why, Watson, let us put their own devilish trademark upon them. It is well thought of!\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\nHe took an orange from the cupboard, and tearing it to pieces he squeezed out the pips upon the table. Of these he took five and thrust them into an envelope. On the inside of the flap he wrote \"S. H. for J. O.\" Then he sealed it and addressed it to \"Captain James Calhoun, Bark Lone Star, Savannah, Georgia.\"\n\n\"That will await him when he enters port,\" said he, chuckling. \"It may give him a sleepless night. He will find it as sure a precursor of his fate as Openshaw did before him.\"\n\n\"And who is this Captain Calhoun?\"\n\n\"The leader of the gang. I shall have the others, but he first.\"\n\n\"How did you trace it, then?\"\n\nHe took a large sheet of paper from his pocket, all covered with dates and names.\n\n\"I have spent the whole day,\" said he, \"over Lloyd's registers and files of the old papers, following the future career of every vessel which touched at Pondicherry in January and February in '83. There were thirty-six ships of fair tonnage which were reported there during those months. Of these, one, the Lone Star, instantly attracted my attention, since, although it was reported as having cleared from London, the name is that which is given to one of the states of the Union.\"\n\n\"Texas, I think.\"\n\n\"I was not and am not sure which; but I knew that the ship must have an American origin.\"\n\n\"What then?\"\n\n\"I searched the Dundee records, and when I found that the bark Lone Star was there in January, '85, my suspicion became a certainty. I then inquired as to the vessels which lay at present in the port of London.\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"The Lone Star had arrived here last week. I went down to the Albert Dock and found that she had been taken down the river by the early tide this morning, homeward bound to Savannah. I wired to Gravesend and learned that she had passed some time ago, and as the wind is easterly I have no doubt that she is now past the Goodwins and not very far from the Isle of Wight.\"\n\n\"What will you do, then?\"\n\n\"Oh, I have my hand upon him. He and the two mates, are, as I learn, the only native-born Americans in the ship. The others are Finns and Germans. I know, also, that they were all three away from the ship last night. I had it from the stevedore who has been loading their cargo. By the time that their sailing-ship reaches Savannah the mail-boat will have carried this letter, and the cable will have informed the police of Savannah that these three gentlemen are badly wanted here upon a charge of murder.\"\n\nThere is ever a flaw, however, in the best laid of human plans, and the murderers of John Openshaw were never to receive the orange pips which would show them that another, as cunning and as resolute as themselves, was upon their track. Very long and very severe were the equinoctial gales that year. We waited long for news of the Lone Star of Savannah, but none ever reached us. We did at last hear that somewhere far out in the Atlantic a shattered stern-post of the boat was seen swinging in the trough of a wave, with the letters \"L. S.\" carved upon it, and that is all which we shall ever know of the fate of the Lone Star." + }, + { + "title": "THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP", + "text": "Isa Whitney, brother of the late Elias Whitney, D.D., Principal of the Theological College of St. George's, was much addicted to opium. The habit grew upon him, as I understand, from some foolish freak when he was at college; for having read De Quincey's description of his dreams and sensations, he had drenched his tobacco with laudanum in an attempt to produce the same effects. He found, as so many more have done, that the practice is easier to attain than to get rid of, and for many years he continued to be a slave to the drug, an object of mingled horror and pity to his friends and relatives. I can see him now, with yellow, pasty face, drooping lids, and pin-point pupils, all huddled in a chair, the wreck and ruin of a noble man.\n\nOne night\u2014it was in June, '89\u2014there came a ring to my bell, about the hour when a man gives his first yawn and glances at the clock. I sat up in my chair, and my wife laid her needle-work down in her lap and made a little face of disappointment.\n\n\"A patient!\" said she. \"You'll have to go out.\"\n\nI groaned, for I was newly come back from a weary day.\n\nWe heard the door open, a few hurried words, and then quick steps upon the linoleum. Our own door flew open, and a lady, clad in some dark-coloured stuff, with a black veil, entered the room.\n\n\"You will excuse my calling so late,\" she began, and then, suddenly losing her self-control, she ran forward, threw her arms about my wife's neck, and sobbed upon her shoulder. \"Oh, I'm in such trouble!\" she cried; \"I do so want a little help.\"\n\n\"Why,\" said my wife, pulling up her veil, \"it is Kate Whitney. How you startled me, Kate! I had not an idea who you were when you came in.\"\n\n\"I didn't know what to do, so I came straight to you.\" That was always the way. Folk who were in grief came to my wife like birds to a lighthouse.\n\n\"It was very sweet of you to come. Now, you must have some wine and water, and sit here comfortably and tell us all about it. Or should you rather that I sent James off to bed?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, no! I want the doctor's advice and help too. It's about Isa. He has not been home for two days. I am so frightened about him!\"\n\nIt was not the first time that she had spoken to us of her husband's trouble, to me as a doctor, to my wife as an old friend and school companion. We soothed and comforted her by such words as we could find. Did she know where her husband was? Was it possible that we could bring him back to her?\n\nIt seems that it was. She had the surest information that of late he had, when the fit was on him, made use of an opium den in the farthest east of the City. Hitherto his orgies had always been confined to one day, and he had come back, twitching and shattered, in the evening. But now the spell had been upon him eight-and-forty hours, and he lay there, doubtless among the dregs of the docks, breathing in the poison or sleeping off the effects. There he was to be found, she was sure of it, at the Bar of Gold, in Upper Swandam Lane. But what was she to do? How could she, a young and timid woman, make her way into such a place and pluck her husband out from among the ruffians who surrounded him?\n\nThere was the case, and of course there was but one way out of it. Might I not escort her to this place? And then, as a second thought, why should she come at all? I was Isa Whitney's medical adviser, and as such I had influence over him. I could manage it better if I were alone. I promised her on my word that I would send him home in a cab within two hours if he were indeed at the address which she had given me. And so in ten minutes I had left my armchair and cheery sitting-room behind me, and was speeding eastward in a hansom on a strange errand, as it seemed to me at the time, though the future only could show how strange it was to be.\n\nBut there was no great difficulty in the first stage of my adventure. Upper Swandam Lane is a vile alley lurking behind the high wharves which line the north side of the river, to the east of London Bridge. Between a slop-shop and a gin-shop, approached by a steep flight of steps leading down to a black gap like the mouth of a cave, I found the den of which I was in search. Ordering my cab to wait, I passed down the steps, worn hollow in the centre by the ceaseless tread of drunken feet; and by the light of a flickering oil-lamp above the door I found the latch and made my way into a long, low room, thick and heavy with the brown opium smoke, and terraced with wooden berths, like the forecastle of an emigrant ship.\n\nThrough the gloom one could dimly catch a glimpse of bodies lying in strange fantastic poses, bowed shoulders, bent knees, heads thrown back, and chins pointing upward, with here and there a dark, lack-lustre eye turned upon the newcomer. Out of the black shadows there glimmered little red circles of light, now bright, now faint, as the burning poison waxed or waned in the bowls of the metal pipes. The most lay silent, but some muttered to themselves, and others talked together in a strange, low, monotonous voice, their conversation coming in gushes, and then suddenly tailing off into silence, each mumbling out his own thoughts and paying little heed to the words of his neighbour. At the farther end was a small brazier of burning charcoal, beside which on a three-legged wooden stool there sat a tall, thin old man, with his jaw resting upon his two fists, and his elbows upon his knees, staring into the fire.\n\nAs I entered, a sallow Malay attendant had hurried up with a pipe for me and a supply of the drug, beckoning me to an empty berth.\n\n\"Thank you. I have not come to stay,\" said I. \"There is a friend of mine here, Mr. Isa Whitney, and I wish to speak with him.\"\n\nThere was a movement and an exclamation from my right, and peering through the gloom I saw Whitney, pale, haggard, and unkempt, staring out at me.\n\n\"My God! It's Watson,\" said he. He was in a pitiable state of reaction, with every nerve in a twitter. \"I say, Watson, what o'clock is it?\"\n\n\"Nearly eleven.\"\n\n\"Of what day?\"\n\n\"Of Friday, June 19th.\"\n\n\"Good heavens! I thought it was Wednesday. It is Wednesday. What d'you want to frighten the chap for?\" He sank his face onto his arms and began to sob in a high treble key.\n\n\"I tell you that it is Friday, man. Your wife has been waiting this two days for you. You should be ashamed of yourself!\"\n\n\"So I am. But you've got mixed, Watson, for I have only been here a few hours, three pipes, four pipes\u2014I forget how many. But I'll go home with you. I wouldn't frighten Kate\u2014poor little Kate. Give me your hand! Have you a cab?\"\n\n\"Yes, I have one waiting.\"\n\n\"Then I shall go in it. But I must owe something. Find what I owe, Watson. I am all off colour. I can do nothing for myself.\"\n\nI walked down the narrow passage between the double row of sleepers, holding my breath to keep out the vile, stupefying fumes of the drug, and looking about for the manager. As I passed the tall man who sat by the brazier I felt a sudden pluck at my skirt, and a low voice whispered, \"Walk past me, and then look back at me.\" The words fell quite distinctly upon my ear. I glanced down. They could only have come from the old man at my side, and yet he sat now as absorbed as ever, very thin, very wrinkled, bent with age, an opium pipe dangling down from between his knees, as though it had dropped in sheer lassitude from his fingers. I took two steps forward and looked back. It took all my self-control to prevent me from breaking out into a cry of astonishment. He had turned his back so that none could see him but I. His form had filled out, his wrinkles were gone, the dull eyes had regained their fire, and there, sitting by the fire and grinning at my surprise, was none other than Sherlock Holmes. He made a slight motion to me to approach him, and instantly, as he turned his face half round to the company once more, subsided into a doddering, loose-lipped senility.\n\n\"Holmes!\" I whispered, \"what on earth are you doing in this den?\"\n\n\"As low as you can,\" he answered; \"I have excellent ears. If you would have the great kindness to get rid of that sottish friend of yours I should be exceedingly glad to have a little talk with you.\"\n\n\"I have a cab outside.\"\n\n\"Then pray send him home in it. You may safely trust him, for he appears to be too limp to get into any mischief. I should recommend you also to send a note by the cabman to your wife to say that you have thrown in your lot with me. If you will wait outside, I shall be with you in five minutes.\"\n\nIt was difficult to refuse any of Sherlock Holmes's requests, for they were always so exceedingly definite, and put forward with such a quiet air of mastery. I felt, however, that when Whitney was once confined in the cab my mission was practically accomplished; and for the rest, I could not wish anything better than to be associated with my friend in one of those singular adventures which were the normal condition of his existence. In a few minutes I had written my note, paid Whitney's bill, led him out to the cab, and seen him driven through the darkness. In a very short time a decrepit figure had emerged from the opium den, and I was walking down the street with Sherlock Holmes. For two streets he shuffled along with a bent back and an uncertain foot. Then, glancing quickly round, he straightened himself out and burst into a hearty fit of laughter.\n\n\"I suppose, Watson,\" said he, \"that you imagine that I have added opium-smoking to cocaine injections, and all the other little weaknesses on which you have favoured me with your medical views.\"\n\n\"I was certainly surprised to find you there.\"\n\n\"But not more so than I to find you.\"\n\n\"I came to find a friend.\"\n\n\"And I to find an enemy.\"\n\n\"An enemy?\"\n\n\"Yes; one of my natural enemies, or, shall I say, my natural prey. Briefly, Watson, I am in the midst of a very remarkable inquiry, and I have hoped to find a clue in the incoherent ramblings of these sots, as I have done before now. Had I been recognized in that den my life would not have been worth an hour's purchase; for I have used it before now for my own purposes, and the rascally lascar who runs it has sworn to have vengeance upon me. There is a trap-door at the back of that building, near the corner of Paul's Wharf, which could tell some strange tales of what has passed through it upon the moonless nights.\"\n\n\"What! You do not mean bodies?\"\n\n\"Ay, bodies, Watson. We should be rich men if we had \u00a31000 for every poor devil who has been done to death in that den. It is the vilest murder-trap on the whole riverside, and I fear that Neville St. Clair has entered it never to leave it more. But our trap should be here.\" He put his two forefingers between his teeth and whistled shrilly\u2014a signal which was answered by a similar whistle from the distance, followed shortly by the rattle of wheels and the clink of horses' hoofs.\n\n\"Now, Watson,\" said Holmes, as a tall dog-cart dashed up through the gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels of yellow light from its side lanterns. \"You'll come with me, won't you?\"\n\n\"If I can be of use.\"\n\n\"Oh, a trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so. My room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one.\"\n\n\"The Cedars?\"\n\n\"Yes; that is Mr. St. Clair's house. I am staying there while I conduct the inquiry.\"\n\n\"Where is it, then?\"\n\n\"Near Lee, in Kent. We have a seven-mile drive before us.\"\n\n\"But I am all in the dark.\"\n\n\"Of course you are. You'll know all about it presently. Jump up here. All right, John; we shall not need you. Here's half a crown. Look out for me to-morrow, about eleven. Give her her head. So long, then!\"\n\nHe flicked the horse with his whip, and we dashed away through the endless succession of sombre and deserted streets, which widened gradually, until we were flying across a broad balustraded bridge, with the murky river flowing sluggishly beneath us. Beyond lay another dull wilderness of bricks and mortar, its silence broken only by the heavy, regular footfall of the policeman, or the songs and shouts of some belated party of revellers. A dull wrack was drifting slowly across the sky, and a star or two twinkled dimly here and there through the rifts of the clouds. Holmes drove in silence, with his head sunk upon his breast, and the air of a man who is lost in thought, while I sat beside him, curious to learn what this new quest might be which seemed to tax his powers so sorely, and yet afraid to break in upon the current of his thoughts. We had driven several miles, and were beginning to get to the fringe of the belt of suburban villas, when he shook himself, shrugged his shoulders, and lit up his pipe with the air of a man who has satisfied himself that he is acting for the best.\n\n\"You have a grand gift of silence, Watson,\" said he. \"It makes you quite invaluable as a companion. 'Pon my word, it is a great thing for me to have someone to talk to, for my own thoughts are not over-pleasant. I was wondering what I should say to this dear little woman to-night when she meets me at the door.\"\n\n\"You forget that I know nothing about it.\"\n\n\"I shall just have time to tell you the facts of the case before we get to Lee. It seems absurdly simple, and yet, somehow, I can get nothing to go upon. There's plenty of thread, no doubt, but I can't get the end of it into my hand. Now, I'll state the case clearly and concisely to you, Watson, and maybe you can see a spark where all is dark to me.\"\n\n\"Proceed, then.\"\n\n\"Some years ago\u2014to be definite, in May, 1884\u2014there came to Lee a gentleman, Neville St. Clair by name, who appeared to have plenty of money. He took a large villa, laid out the grounds very nicely, and lived generally in good style. By degrees he made friends in the neighbourhood, and in 1887 he married the daughter of a local brewer, by whom he now has two children. He had no occupation, but was interested in several companies and went into town as a rule in the morning, returning by the 5:14 from Cannon Street every night. Mr. St. Clair is now thirty-seven years of age, is a man of temperate habits, a good husband, a very affectionate father, and a man who is popular with all who know him. I may add that his whole debts at the present moment, as far as we have been able to ascertain, amount to \u00a388 l0s., while he has \u00a3220 standing to his credit in the Capital and Counties Bank. There is no reason, therefore, to think that money troubles have been weighing upon his mind.\n\n\"Last Monday Mr. Neville St. Clair went into town rather earlier than usual, remarking before he started that he had two important commissions to perform, and that he would bring his little boy home a box of bricks. Now, by the merest chance, his wife received a telegram upon this same Monday, very shortly after his departure, to the effect that a small parcel of considerable value which she had been expecting was waiting for her at the offices of the Aberdeen Shipping Company. Now, if you are well up in your London, you will know that the office of the company is in Fresno Street, which branches out of Upper Swandam Lane, where you found me to-night. Mrs. St. Clair had her lunch, started for the City, did some shopping, proceeded to the company's office, got her packet, and found herself at exactly 4:35 walking through Swandam Lane on her way back to the station. Have you followed me so far?\"\n\n\"It is very clear.\"\n\n\"If you remember, Monday was an exceedingly hot day, and Mrs. St. Clair walked slowly, glancing about in the hope of seeing a cab, as she did not like the neighbourhood in which she found herself. While she was walking in this way down Swandam Lane, she suddenly heard an ejaculation or cry, and was struck cold to see her husband looking down at her and, as it seemed to her, beckoning to her from a second-floor window. The window was open, and she distinctly saw his face, which she describes as being terribly agitated. He waved his hands frantically to her, and then vanished from the window so suddenly that it seemed to her that he had been plucked back by some irresistible force from behind. One singular point which struck her quick feminine eye was that although he wore some dark coat, such as he had started to town in, he had on neither collar nor necktie.\n\n\"Convinced that something was amiss with him, she rushed down the steps\u2014for the house was none other than the opium den in which you found me to-night\u2014and running through the front room she attempted to ascend the stairs which led to the first floor. At the foot of the stairs, however, she met this lascar scoundrel of whom I have spoken, who thrust her back and, aided by a Dane, who acts as assistant there, pushed her out into the street. Filled with the most maddening doubts and fears, she rushed down the lane and, by rare good-fortune, met in Fresno Street a number of constables with an inspector, all on their way to their beat. The inspector and two men accompanied her back, and in spite of the continued resistance of the proprietor, they made their way to the room in which Mr. St. Clair had last been seen. There was no sign of him there. In fact, in the whole of that floor there was no one to be found save a crippled wretch of hideous aspect, who, it seems, made his home there. Both he and the lascar stoutly swore that no one else had been in the front room during the afternoon. So determined was their denial that the inspector was staggered, and had almost come to believe that Mrs. St. Clair had been deluded when, with a cry, she sprang at a small deal box which lay upon the table and tore the lid from it. Out there fell a cascade of children's bricks. It was the toy which he had promised to bring home.\n\n\"This discovery, and the evident confusion which the cripple showed, made the inspector realize that the matter was serious. The rooms were carefully examined, and results all pointed to an abominable crime. The front room was plainly furnished as a sitting-room and led into a small bedroom, which looked out upon the back of one of the wharves. Between the wharf and the bedroom window is a narrow strip, which is dry at low tide but is covered at high tide with at least four and a half feet of water. The bedroom window was a broad one and opened from below. On examination traces of blood were to be seen upon the window-sill, and several scattered drops were visible upon the wooden floor of the bedroom. Thrust away behind a curtain in the front room were all the clothes of Mr. Neville St. Clair, with the exception of his coat. His boots, his socks, his hat, and his watch\u2014all were there. There were no signs of violence upon any of these garments, and there were no other traces of Mr. Neville St. Clair. Out of the window he must apparently have gone, for no other exit could be discovered, and the ominous bloodstains upon the sill gave little promise that he could save himself by swimming, for the tide was at its very highest at the moment of the tragedy.\n\n\"And now as to the villains who seemed to be immediately implicated in the matter. The lascar was known to be a man of the vilest antecedents, but as, by Mrs. St. Clair's story, he was known to have been at the foot of the stair within a very few seconds of her husband's appearance at the window, he could hardly have been more than an accessory to the crime. His defense was one of absolute ignorance, and he protested that he had no knowledge as to the doings of Hugh Boone, his lodger, and that he could not account in any way for the presence of the missing gentleman's clothes.\n\n\"So much for the lascar manager. Now for the sinister cripple who lives upon the second floor of the opium den, and who was certainly the last human being whose eyes rested upon Neville St. Clair. His name is Hugh Boone, and his hideous face is one which is familiar to every man who goes much to the City. He is a professional beggar, though in order to avoid the police regulations he pretends to a small trade in wax vestas. Some little distance down Threadneedle Street, upon the left-hand side, there is, as you may have remarked, a small angle in the wall. Here it is that this creature takes his daily seat, cross-legged, with his tiny stock of matches on his lap, and as he is a piteous spectacle a small rain of charity descends into the greasy leather cap which lies upon the pavement beside him. I have watched the fellow more than once before ever I thought of making his professional acquaintance, and I have been surprised at the harvest which he has reaped in a short time. His appearance, you see, is so remarkable that no one can pass him without observing him. A shock of orange hair, a pale face disfigured by a horrible scar, which, by its contraction, has turned up the outer edge of his upper lip, a bulldog chin, and a pair of very penetrating dark eyes, which present a singular contrast to the colour of his hair, all mark him out from amid the common crowd of mendicants, and so, too, does his wit, for he is ever ready with a reply to any piece of chaff which may be thrown at him by the passers-by. This is the man whom we now learn to have been the lodger at the opium den, and to have been the last man to see the gentleman of whom we are in quest.\"\n\n\"But a cripple!\" said I. \"What could he have done single-handed against a man in the prime of life?\"\n\n\"He is a cripple in the sense that he walks with a limp; but in other respects he appears to be a powerful and well-nurtured man. Surely your medical experience would tell you, Watson, that weakness in one limb is often compensated for by exceptional strength in the others.\"\n\n\"Pray continue your narrative.\"\n\n\"Mrs. St. Clair had fainted at the sight of the blood upon the window, and she was escorted home in a cab by the police, as her presence could be of no help to them in their investigations. Inspector Barton, who had charge of the case, made a very careful examination of the premises, but without finding anything which threw any light upon the matter. One mistake had been made in not arresting Boone instantly, as he was allowed some few minutes during which he might have communicated with his friend the lascar, but this fault was soon remedied, and he was seized and searched, without anything being found which could incriminate him. There were, it is true, some bloodstains upon his right shirt-sleeve, but he pointed to his ring-finger, which had been cut near the nail, and explained that the bleeding came from there, adding that he had been to the window not long before, and that the stains which had been observed there came doubtless from the same source. He denied strenuously having ever seen Mr. Neville St. Clair and swore that the presence of the clothes in his room was as much a mystery to him as to the police. As to Mrs. St. Clair's assertion that she had actually seen her husband at the window, he declared that she must have been either mad or dreaming. He was removed, loudly protesting, to the police-station, while the inspector remained upon the premises in the hope that the ebbing tide might afford some fresh clue.\n\n\"And it did, though they hardly found upon the mud-bank what they had feared to find. It was Neville St. Clair's coat, and not Neville St. Clair, which lay uncovered as the tide receded. And what do you think they found in the pockets?\"\n\n\"I cannot imagine.\"\n\n\"No, I don't think you would guess. Every pocket stuffed with pennies and half-pennies\u2014421 pennies and 270 half-pennies. It was no wonder that it had not been swept away by the tide. But a human body is a different matter. There is a fierce eddy between the wharf and the house. It seemed likely enough that the weighted coat had remained when the stripped body had been sucked away into the river.\"\n\n\"But I understand that all the other clothes were found in the room. Would the body be dressed in a coat alone?\"\n\n\"No, sir, but the facts might be met speciously enough. Suppose that this man Boone had thrust Neville St. Clair through the window, there is no human eye which could have seen the deed. What would he do then? It would of course instantly strike him that he must get rid of the tell-tale garments. He would seize the coat, then, and be in the act of throwing it out, when it would occur to him that it would swim and not sink. He has little time, for he has heard the scuffle downstairs when the wife tried to force her way up, and perhaps he has already heard from his lascar confederate that the police are hurrying up the street. There is not an instant to be lost. He rushes to some secret hoard, where he has accumulated the fruits of his beggary, and he stuffs all the coins upon which he can lay his hands into the pockets to make sure of the coat's sinking. He throws it out, and would have done the same with the other garments had not he heard the rush of steps below, and only just had time to close the window when the police appeared.\"\n\n\"It certainly sounds feasible.\"\n\n\"Well, we will take it as a working hypothesis for want of a better. Boone, as I have told you, was arrested and taken to the station, but it could not be shown that there had ever before been anything against him. He had for years been known as a professional beggar, but his life appeared to have been a very quiet and innocent one. There the matter stands at present, and the questions which have to be solved\u2014what Neville St. Clair was doing in the opium den, what happened to him when there, where is he now, and what Hugh Boone had to do with his disappearance\u2014are all as far from a solution as ever. I confess that I cannot recall any case within my experience which looked at the first glance so simple and yet which presented such difficulties.\"\n\nWhile Sherlock Holmes had been detailing this singular series of events, we had been whirling through the outskirts of the great town until the last straggling houses had been left behind, and we rattled along with a country hedge upon either side of us. Just as he finished, however, we drove through two scattered villages, where a few lights still glimmered in the windows.\n\n\"We are on the outskirts of Lee,\" said my companion. \"We have touched on three English counties in our short drive, starting in Middlesex, passing over an angle of Surrey, and ending in Kent. See that light among the trees? That is The Cedars, and beside that lamp sits a woman whose anxious ears have already, I have little doubt, caught the clink of our horse's feet.\"\n\n\"But why are you not conducting the case from Baker Street?\" I asked.\n\n\"Because there are many inquiries which must be made out here. Mrs. St. Clair has most kindly put two rooms at my disposal, and you may rest assured that she will have nothing but a welcome for my friend and colleague. I hate to meet her, Watson, when I have no news of her husband. Here we are. Whoa, there, whoa!\"\n\nWe had pulled up in front of a large villa which stood within its own grounds. A stable-boy had run out to the horse's head, and springing, down I followed Holmes up the small, winding gravel-drive which led to the house. As we approached, the door flew open, and a little blonde woman stood in the opening, clad in some sort of light mousseline de soie, with a touch of fluffy pink chiffon at her neck and wrists. She stood with her figure outlined against the flood of light, one hand upon the door, one half-raised in her eagerness, her body slightly bent, her head and face protruded, with eager eyes and parted lips, a standing question.\n\n\"Well?\" she cried, \"well?\" And then, seeing that there were two of us, she gave a cry of hope which sank into a groan as she saw that my companion shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"No good news?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\n\"No bad?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Thank God for that. But come in. You must be weary, for you have had a long day.\"\n\n\"This is my friend, Dr. Watson. He has been of most vital use to me in several of my cases, and a lucky chance has made it possible for me to bring him out and associate him with this investigation.\"\n\n\"I am delighted to see you,\" said she, pressing my hand warmly. \"You will, I am sure, forgive anything that may be wanting in our arrangements, when you consider the blow which has come so suddenly upon us.\"\n\n\"My dear madam,\" said I, \"I am an old campaigner, and if I were not I can very well see that no apology is needed. If I can be of any assistance, either to you or to my friend here, I shall be indeed happy.\"\n\n\"Now, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,\" said the lady as we entered a well-lit dining-room, upon the table of which a cold supper had been laid out, \"I should very much like to ask you one or two plain questions, to which I beg that you will give a plain answer.\"\n\n\"Certainly, madam.\"\n\n\"Do not trouble about my feelings. I am not hysterical, not given to fainting. I simply wish to hear your real, real opinion.\"\n\n\"Upon what point?\"\n\n\"In your heart of hearts, do you think that Neville is alive?\"\n\nSherlock Holmes seemed to be embarrassed by the question. \"Frankly, now!\" she repeated, standing upon the rug and looking keenly down at him as he leaned back in a basket-chair.\n\n\"Frankly, then, madam, I do not.\"\n\n\"You think that he is dead?\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"Murdered?\"\n\n\"I don't say that. Perhaps.\"\n\n\"And on what day did he meet his death?\"\n\n\"On Monday.\"\n\n\"Then perhaps, Mr. Holmes, you will be good enough to explain how it is that I have received a letter from him to-day.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes sprang out of his chair as if he had been galvanized. \"What!\" he roared.\n\n\"Yes, to-day.\" She stood smiling, holding up a little slip of paper in the air.\n\n\"May I see it?\"\n\n\"Certainly.\"\n\nHe snatched it from her in his eagerness, and smoothing it out upon the table he drew over the lamp and examined it intently. I had left my chair and was gazing at it over his shoulder. The envelope was a very coarse one and was stamped with the Gravesend postmark and with the date of that very day, or rather of the day before, for it was considerably after midnight.\n\n\"Coarse writing,\" murmured Holmes. \"Surely this is not your husband's writing, madam.\"\n\n\"No, but the enclosure is.\"\n\n\"I perceive also that whoever addressed the envelope had to go and inquire as to the address.\"\n\n\"How can you tell that?\"\n\n\"The name, you see, is in perfectly black ink, which has dried itself. The rest is of the grayish colour, which shows that blotting-paper has been used. If it had been written straight off, and then blotted, none would be of a deep black shade. This man has written the name, and there has then been a pause before he wrote the address, which can only mean that he was not familiar with it. It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles. Let us now see the letter. Ha! there has been an enclosure here!\"\n\n\"Yes, there was a ring. His signet-ring.\"\n\n\"And you are sure that this is your husband's hand?\"\n\n\"One of his hands.\"\n\n\"One?\"\n\n\"His hand when he wrote hurriedly. It is very unlike his usual writing, and yet I know it well.\"\n\n\"Dearest do not be frightened. All will come well. There is a huge error which it may take some little time to rectify. Wait in patience.\n\n\"NEVILLE.\n\nWritten in pencil upon the fly-leaf of a book, octavo size, no water-mark. Hum! Posted to-day in Gravesend by a man with a dirty thumb. Ha! And the flap has been gummed, if I am not very much in error, by a person who had been chewing tobacco. And you have no doubt that it is your husband's hand, madam?\"\n\n\"None. Neville wrote those words.\"\n\n\"And they were posted to-day at Gravesend. Well, Mrs. St. Clair, the clouds lighten, though I should not venture to say that the danger is over.\"\n\n\"But he must be alive, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"Unless this is a clever forgery to put us on the wrong scent. The ring, after all, proves nothing. It may have been taken from him.\"\n\n\"No, no; it is, it is his very own writing!\"\n\n\"Very well. It may, however, have been written on Monday and only posted to-day.\"\n\n\"That is possible.\"\n\n\"If so, much may have happened between.\"\n\n\"Oh, you must not discourage me, Mr. Holmes. I know that all is well with him. There is so keen a sympathy between us that I should know if evil came upon him. On the very day that I saw him last he cut himself in the bedroom, and yet I in the dining-room rushed upstairs instantly with the utmost certainty that something had happened. Do you think that I would respond to such a trifle and yet be ignorant of his death?\"\n\n\"I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner. And in this letter you certainly have a very strong piece of evidence to corroborate your view. But if your husband is alive and able to write letters, why should he remain away from you?\"\n\n\"I cannot imagine. It is unthinkable.\"\n\n\"And on Monday he made no remarks before leaving you?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"And you were surprised to see him in Swandam Lane?\"\n\n\"Very much so.\"\n\n\"Was the window open?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Then he might have called to you?\"\n\n\"He might.\"\n\n\"He only, as I understand, gave an inarticulate cry?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"A call for help, you thought?\"\n\n\"Yes. He waved his hands.\"\n\n\"But it might have been a cry of surprise. Astonishment at the unexpected sight of you might cause him to throw up his hands?\"\n\n\"It is possible.\"\n\n\"And you thought he was pulled back?\"\n\n\"He disappeared so suddenly.\"\n\n\"He might have leaped back. You did not see anyone else in the room?\"\n\n\"No, but this horrible man confessed to having been there, and the lascar was at the foot of the stairs.\"\n\n\"Quite so. Your husband, as far as you could see, had his ordinary clothes on?\"\n\n\"But without his collar or tie. I distinctly saw his bare throat.\"\n\n\"Had he ever spoken of Swandam Lane?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"Had he ever showed any signs of having taken opium?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Mrs. St. Clair. Those are the principal points about which I wished to be absolutely clear. We shall now have a little supper and then retire, for we may have a very busy day to-morrow.\"\n\nA large and comfortable double-bedded room had been placed at our disposal, and I was quickly between the sheets, for I was weary after my night of adventure. Sherlock Holmes was a man, however, who, when he had an unsolved problem upon his mind, would go for days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it over, rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view until he had either fathomed it or convinced himself that his data were insufficient. It was soon evident to me that he was now preparing for an all-night sitting. He took off his coat and waistcoat, put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then wandered about the room collecting pillows from his bed and cushions from the sofa and armchairs. With these he constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old briar pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features. So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe was still between his lips, the smoke still curled upward, and the room was full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap of shag which I had seen upon the previous night.\n\n\"Awake, Watson?\" he asked.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Game for a morning drive?\"\n\n\"Certainly.\"\n\n\"Then dress. No one is stirring yet, but I know where the stable-boy sleeps, and we shall soon have the trap out.\" He chuckled to himself as he spoke, his eyes twinkled, and he seemed a different man to the sombre thinker of the previous night.\n\nAs I dressed I glanced at my watch. It was no wonder that no one was stirring. It was twenty-five minutes past four. I had hardly finished when Holmes returned with the news that the boy was putting in the horse.\n\n\"I want to test a little theory of mine,\" said he, pulling on his boots. \"I think, Watson, that you are now standing in the presence of one of the most absolute fools in Europe. I deserve to be kicked from here to Charing Cross. But I think I have the key of the affair now.\"\n\n\"And where is it?\" I asked, smiling.\n\n\"In the bathroom,\" he answered. \"Oh, yes, I am not joking,\" he continued, seeing my look of incredulity. \"I have just been there, and I have taken it out, and I have got it in this Gladstone bag. Come on, my boy; and we shall see whether it will not fit the lock.\"\n\nWe made our way downstairs as quietly as possible, and out into the bright morning sunshine. In the road stood our horse and trap, with the half-clad stable-boy waiting at the head. We both sprang in, and away we dashed down the London Road. A few country carts were stirring, bearing in vegetables to the metropolis, but the lines of villas on either side were as silent and lifeless as some city in a dream.\n\n\"It has been in some points a singular case,\" said Holmes, flicking the horse on into a gallop. \"I confess that I have been as blind as a mole, but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.\"\n\nIn town the earliest risers were just beginning to look sleepily from their windows as we drove through the streets of the Surrey side. Passing down the Waterloo Bridge Road we crossed over the river, and dashing up Wellington Street wheeled sharply to the right and found ourselves in Bow Street. Sherlock Holmes was well known to the force, and the two constables at the door saluted him. One of them held the horse's head while the other led us in.\n\n\"Who is on duty?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"Inspector Bradstreet, sir.\"\n\n\"Ah, Bradstreet, how are you?\" A tall, stout official had come down the stone-flagged passage, in a peaked cap and frogged jacket. \"I wish to have a quiet word with you, Bradstreet.\"\n\n\"Certainly, Mr. Holmes. Step into my room here.\"\n\nIt was a small, office-like room, with a huge ledger upon the table, and a telephone projecting from the wall. The inspector sat down at his desk.\n\n\"What can I do for you, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"I called about that beggarman, Boone\u2014the one who was charged with being concerned in the disappearance of Mr. Neville St. Clair, of Lee.\"\n\n\"Yes. He was brought up and remanded for further inquiries.\"\n\n\"So I heard. You have him here?\"\n\n\"In the cells.\"\n\n\"Is he quiet?\"\n\n\"Oh, he gives no trouble. But he is a dirty scoundrel.\"\n\n\"Dirty?\"\n\n\"Yes, it is all we can do to make him wash his hands, and his face is as black as a tinker's. Well, when once his case has been settled, he will have a regular prison bath; and I think, if you saw him, you would agree with me that he needed it.\"\n\n\"I should like to see him very much.\"\n\n\"Would you? That is easily done. Come this way. You can leave your bag.\"\n\n\"No, I think that I'll take it.\"\n\n\"Very good. Come this way, if you please.\" He led us down a passage, opened a barred door, passed down a winding stair, and brought us to a whitewashed corridor with a line of doors on each side.\n\n\"The third on the right is his,\" said the inspector. \"Here it is!\" He quietly shot back a panel in the upper part of the door and glanced through.\n\n\"He is asleep,\" said he. \"You can see him very well.\"\n\nWe both put our eyes to the grating. The prisoner lay with his face towards us, in a very deep sleep, breathing slowly and heavily. He was a middle-sized man, coarsely clad as became his calling, with a coloured shirt protruding through the rent in his tattered coat. He was, as the inspector had said, extremely dirty, but the grime which covered his face could not conceal its repulsive ugliness. A broad wheal from an old scar ran right across it from eye to chin, and by its contraction had turned up one side of the upper lip, so that three teeth were exposed in a perpetual snarl. A shock of very bright red hair grew low over his eyes and forehead.\n\n\"He's a beauty, isn't he?\" said the inspector.\n\n\"He certainly needs a wash,\" remarked Holmes. \"I had an idea that he might, and I took the liberty of bringing the tools with me.\" He opened the Gladstone bag as he spoke, and took out, to my astonishment, a very large bath-sponge.\n\n\"He! he! You are a funny one,\" chuckled the inspector.\n\n\"Now, if you will have the great goodness to open that door very quietly, we will soon make him cut a much more respectable figure.\"\n\n\"Well, I don't know why not,\" said the inspector. \"He doesn't look a credit to the Bow Street cells, does he?\" He slipped his key into the lock, and we all very quietly entered the cell. The sleeper half turned, and then settled down once more into a deep slumber. Holmes stooped to the water-jug, moistened his sponge, and then rubbed it twice vigorously across and down the prisoner's face.\n\n\"Let me introduce you,\" he shouted, \"to Mr. Neville St. Clair, of Lee, in the county of Kent.\"\n\nNever in my life have I seen such a sight. The man's face peeled off under the sponge like the bark from a tree. Gone was the coarse brown tint! Gone, too, was the horrid scar which had seamed it across, and the twisted lip which had given the repulsive sneer to the face! A twitch brought away the tangled red hair, and there, sitting up in his bed, was a pale, sad-faced, refined-looking man, black-haired and smooth-skinned, rubbing his eyes and staring about him with sleepy bewilderment. Then suddenly realizing the exposure, he broke into a scream and threw himself down with his face to the pillow.\n\n\"Great heavens!\" cried the inspector, \"it is, indeed, the missing man. I know him from the photograph.\"\n\nThe prisoner turned with the reckless air of a man who abandons himself to his destiny. \"Be it so,\" said he. \"And pray, what am I charged with?\"\n\n\"With making away with Mr. Neville St.\u2014Oh, come, you can't be charged with that unless they make a case of attempted suicide of it,\" said the inspector with a grin. \"Well, I have been twenty-seven years in the force, but this really takes the cake.\"\n\n\"If I am Mr. Neville St. Clair, then it is obvious that no crime has been committed, and that, therefore, I am illegally detained.\"\n\n\"No crime, but a very great error has been committed,\" said Holmes. \"You would have done better to have trusted your wife.\"\n\n\"It was not the wife; it was the children,\" groaned the prisoner. \"God help me, I would not have them ashamed of their father. My God! What an exposure! What can I do?\"\n\nSherlock Holmes sat down beside him on the couch and patted him kindly on the shoulder.\n\n\"If you leave it to a court of law to clear the matter up,\" said he, \"of course you can hardly avoid publicity. On the other hand, if you convince the police authorities that there is no possible case against you, I do not know that there is any reason that the details should find their way into the papers. Inspector Bradstreet would, I am sure, make notes upon anything which you might tell us and submit it to the proper authorities. The case would then never go into court at all.\"\n\n\"God bless you!\" cried the prisoner passionately. \"I would have endured imprisonment, ay, even execution, rather than have left my miserable secret as a family blot to my children.\n\n\"You are the first who have ever heard my story. My father was a school-master in Chesterfield, where I received an excellent education. I travelled in my youth, took to the stage, and finally became a reporter on an evening paper in London. One day my editor wished to have a series of articles upon begging in the metropolis, and I volunteered to supply them. There was the point from which all my adventures started. It was only by trying begging as an amateur that I could get the facts upon which to base my articles. When an actor I had, of course, learned all the secrets of making up, and had been famous in the green-room for my skill. I took advantage now of my attainments. I painted my face, and to make myself as pitiable as possible I made a good scar and fixed one side of my lip in a twist by the aid of a small slip of flesh-coloured plaster. Then with a red head of hair, and an appropriate dress, I took my station in the business part of the city, ostensibly as a match-seller but really as a beggar. For seven hours I plied my trade, and when I returned home in the evening I found to my surprise that I had received no less than 26s. 4d.\n\n\"I wrote my articles and thought little more of the matter until, some time later, I backed a bill for a friend and had a writ served upon me for \u00a325. I was at my wit's end where to get the money, but a sudden idea came to me. I begged a fortnight's grace from the creditor, asked for a holiday from my employers, and spent the time in begging in the City under my disguise. In ten days I had the money and had paid the debt.\n\n\"Well, you can imagine how hard it was to settle down to arduous work at \u00a32 a week when I knew that I could earn as much in a day by smearing my face with a little paint, laying my cap on the ground, and sitting still. It was a long fight between my pride and the money, but the dollars won at last, and I threw up reporting and sat day after day in the corner which I had first chosen, inspiring pity by my ghastly face and filling my pockets with coppers. Only one man knew my secret. He was the keeper of a low den in which I used to lodge in Swandam Lane, where I could every morning emerge as a squalid beggar and in the evenings transform myself into a well-dressed man about town. This fellow, a lascar, was well paid by me for his rooms, so that I knew that my secret was safe in his possession.\n\n\"Well, very soon I found that I was saving considerable sums of money. I do not mean that any beggar in the streets of London could earn \u00a3700 a year\u2014which is less than my average takings\u2014but I had exceptional advantages in my power of making up, and also in a facility of repartee, which improved by practice and made me quite a recognized character in the City. All day a stream of pennies, varied by silver, poured in upon me, and it was a very bad day in which I failed to take \u00a32.\n\n\"As I grew richer I grew more ambitious, took a house in the country, and eventually married, without anyone having a suspicion as to my real occupation. My dear wife knew that I had business in the City. She little knew what.\n\n\"Last Monday I had finished for the day and was dressing in my room above the opium den when I looked out of my window and saw, to my horror and astonishment, that my wife was standing in the street, with her eyes fixed full upon me. I gave a cry of surprise, threw up my arms to cover my face, and, rushing to my confidant, the lascar, entreated him to prevent anyone from coming up to me. I heard her voice downstairs, but I knew that she could not ascend. Swiftly I threw off my clothes, pulled on those of a beggar, and put on my pigments and wig. Even a wife's eyes could not pierce so complete a disguise. But then it occurred to me that there might be a search in the room, and that the clothes might betray me. I threw open the window, reopening by my violence a small cut which I had inflicted upon myself in the bedroom that morning. Then I seized my coat, which was weighted by the coppers which I had just transferred to it from the leather bag in which I carried my takings. I hurled it out of the window, and it disappeared into the Thames. The other clothes would have followed, but at that moment there was a rush of constables up the stair, and a few minutes after I found, rather, I confess, to my relief, that instead of being identified as Mr. Neville St. Clair, I was arrested as his murderer.\n\n\"I do not know that there is anything else for me to explain. I was determined to preserve my disguise as long as possible, and hence my preference for a dirty face. Knowing that my wife would be terribly anxious, I slipped off my ring and confided it to the lascar at a moment when no constable was watching me, together with a hurried scrawl, telling her that she had no cause to fear.\"\n\n\"That note only reached her yesterday,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Good God! What a week she must have spent!\"\n\n\"The police have watched this lascar,\" said Inspector Bradstreet, \"and I can quite understand that he might find it difficult to post a letter unobserved. Probably he handed it to some sailor customer of his, who forgot all about it for some days.\"\n\n\"That was it,\" said Holmes, nodding approvingly; \"I have no doubt of it. But have you never been prosecuted for begging?\"\n\n\"Many times; but what was a fine to me?\"\n\n\"It must stop here, however,\" said Bradstreet. \"If the police are to hush this thing up, there must be no more of Hugh Boone.\"\n\n\"I have sworn it by the most solemn oaths which a man can take.\"\n\n\"In that case I think that it is probable that no further steps may be taken. But if you are found again, then all must come out. I am sure, Mr. Holmes, that we are very much indebted to you for having cleared the matter up. I wish I knew how you reach your results.\"\n\n\"I reached this one,\" said my friend, \"by sitting upon five pillows and consuming an ounce of shag. I think, Watson, that if we drive to Baker Street we shall just be in time for breakfast.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE", + "text": "I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing-gown, a pipe-rack within his reach upon the right, and a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand. Beside the couch was a wooden chair, and on the angle of the back hung a very seedy and disreputable hard-felt hat, much the worse for wear, and cracked in several places. A lens and a forceps lying upon the seat of the chair suggested that the hat had been suspended in this manner for the purpose of examination.\n\n\"You are engaged,\" said I; \"perhaps I interrupt you.\"\n\n\"Not at all. I am glad to have a friend with whom I can discuss my results. The matter is a perfectly trivial one\"\u2014he jerked his thumb in the direction of the old hat\u2014\"but there are points in connection with it which are not entirely devoid of interest and even of instruction.\"\n\nI seated myself in his armchair and warmed my hands before his crackling fire, for a sharp frost had set in, and the windows were thick with the ice crystals. \"I suppose,\" I remarked, \"that, homely as it looks, this thing has some deadly story linked on to it\u2014that it is the clue which will guide you in the solution of some mystery and the punishment of some crime.\"\n\n\"No, no. No crime,\" said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. \"Only one of those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have four million human beings all jostling each other within the space of a few square miles. Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre without being criminal. We have already had experience of such.\"\n\n\"So much so,\" I remarked, \"that of the last six cases which I have added to my notes, three have been entirely free of any legal crime.\"\n\n\"Precisely. You allude to my attempt to recover the Irene Adler papers, to the singular case of Miss Mary Sutherland, and to the adventure of the man with the twisted lip. Well, I have no doubt that this small matter will fall into the same innocent category. You know Peterson, the commissionaire?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"It is to him that this trophy belongs.\"\n\n\"It is his hat.\"\n\n\"No, no; he found it. Its owner is unknown. I beg that you will look upon it not as a battered billycock but as an intellectual problem. And, first, as to how it came here. It arrived upon Christmas morning, in company with a good fat goose, which is, I have no doubt, roasting at this moment in front of Peterson's fire. The facts are these: about four o'clock on Christmas morning, Peterson, who, as you know, is a very honest fellow, was returning from some small jollification and was making his way homeward down Tottenham Court Road. In front of him he saw, in the gaslight, a tallish man, walking with a slight stagger, and carrying a white goose slung over his shoulder. As he reached the corner of Goodge Street, a row broke out between this stranger and a little knot of roughs. One of the latter knocked off the man's hat, on which he raised his stick to defend himself and, swinging it over his head, smashed the shop window behind him. Peterson had rushed forward to protect the stranger from his assailants; but the man, shocked at having broken the window, and seeing an official-looking person in uniform rushing towards him, dropped his goose, took to his heels, and vanished amid the labyrinth of small streets which lie at the back of Tottenham Court Road. The roughs had also fled at the appearance of Peterson, so that he was left in possession of the field of battle, and also of the spoils of victory in the shape of this battered hat and a most unimpeachable Christmas goose.\"\n\n\"Which surely he restored to their owner?\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, there lies the problem. It is true that 'For Mrs. Henry Baker' was printed upon a small card which was tied to the bird's-left leg, and it is also true that the initials 'H. B.' are legible upon the lining of this hat; but as there are some thousands of Bakers, and some hundreds of Henry Bakers in this city of ours, it is not easy to restore lost property to any one of them.\"\n\n\"What, then, did Peterson do?\"\n\n\"He brought round both hat and goose to me on Christmas morning, knowing that even the smallest problems are of interest to me. The goose we retained until this morning, when there were signs that, in spite of the slight frost, it would be well that it should be eaten without unnecessary delay. Its finder has carried it off, therefore, to fulfil the ultimate destiny of a goose, while I continue to retain the hat of the unknown gentleman who lost his Christmas dinner.\"\n\n\"Did he not advertise?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Then, what clue could you have as to his identity?\"\n\n\"Only as much as we can deduce.\"\n\n\"From his hat?\"\n\n\"Precisely.\"\n\n\"But you are joking. What can you gather from this old battered felt?\"\n\n\"Here is my lens. You know my methods. What can you gather yourself as to the individuality of the man who has worn this article?\"\n\nI took the tattered object in my hands and turned it over rather ruefully. It was a very ordinary black hat of the usual round shape, hard and much the worse for wear. The lining had been of red silk, but was a good deal discoloured. There was no maker's name; but, as Holmes had remarked, the initials \"H. B.\" were scrawled upon one side. It was pierced in the brim for a hat-securer, but the elastic was missing. For the rest, it was cracked, exceedingly dusty, and spotted in several places, although there seemed to have been some attempt to hide the discoloured patches by smearing them with ink.\n\n\"I can see nothing,\" said I, handing it back to my friend.\n\n\"On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your inferences.\"\n\n\"Then, pray tell me what it is that you can infer from this hat?\"\n\nHe picked it up and gazed at it in the peculiar introspective fashion which was characteristic of him. \"It is perhaps less suggestive than it might have been,\" he remarked, \"and yet there are a few inferences which are very distinct; and a few others which represent at least a strong balance of probability. That the man was highly intellectual is of course obvious upon the face of it, and also that he was fairly well-to-do within the last three years, although he has now fallen upon evil days. He had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing to a moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, at work upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact that his wife has ceased to love him.\"\n\n\"My dear Holmes!\"\n\n\"He has, however, retained some degree of self-respect,\" he continued, disregarding my remonstrance. \"He is a man who leads a sedentary life, goes out little, is out of training entirely, is middle-aged, has grizzled hair which he has had cut within the last few days, and which he anoints with lime-cream. These are the more patent facts which are to be deduced from his hat. Also, by the way, that it is extremely improbable that he has gas laid on in his house.\"\n\n\"You are certainly joking, Holmes.\"\n\n\"Not in the least. Is it possible that even now, when I give you these results, you are unable to see how they are attained?\"\n\n\"I have no doubt that I am very stupid, but I must confess that I am unable to follow you. For example, how did you deduce that this man was intellectual?\"\n\nFor answer Holmes clapped the hat upon his head. It came right over the forehead and settled upon the bridge of his nose. \"It is a question of cubic capacity,\" said he; \"a man with so large a brain must have something in it.\"\n\n\"The decline of his fortunes, then?\"\n\n\"This hat is three years old. These flat brims curled at the edge came in then. It is a hat of the very best quality. Look at the band of ribbed silk and the excellent lining. If this man could afford to buy so expensive a hat three years ago, and has had no hat since, then he has assuredly gone down in the world.\"\n\n\"Well, that is clear enough, certainly. But how about the foresight and the moral retrogression?\"\n\nSherlock Holmes laughed. \"Here is the foresight,\" said he, putting his finger upon the little disc and loop of the hat-securer. \"They are never sold upon hats. If this man ordered one, it is a sign of a certain amount of foresight, since he went out of his way to take this precaution against the wind. But since we see that he has broken the elastic and has not troubled to replace it, it is obvious that he has less foresight now than formerly, which is a distinct proof of a weakening nature. On the other hand, he has endeavoured to conceal some of these stains upon the felt by daubing them with ink, which is a sign that he has not entirely lost his self-respect.\"\n\n\"Your reasoning is certainly plausible.\"\n\n\"The further points, that he is middle-aged, that his hair is grizzled, that it has been recently cut, and that he uses lime-cream, are all to be gathered from a close examination of the lower part of the lining. The lens discloses a large number of hair-ends, clean cut by the scissors of the barber. They all appear to be adhesive, and there is a distinct odour of lime-cream. This dust, you will observe, is not the gritty, gray dust of the street but the fluffy brown dust of the house, showing that it has been hung up indoors most of the time; while the marks of moisture upon the inside are proof positive that the wearer perspired very freely, and could therefore, hardly be in the best of training.\"\n\n\"But his wife\u2014you said that she had ceased to love him.\"\n\n\"This hat has not been brushed for weeks. When I see you, my dear Watson, with a week's accumulation of dust upon your hat, and when your wife allows you to go out in such a state, I shall fear that you also have been unfortunate enough to lose your wife's affection.\"\n\n\"But he might be a bachelor.\"\n\n\"Nay, he was bringing home the goose as a peace-offering to his wife. Remember the card upon the bird's leg.\"\n\n\"You have an answer to everything. But how on earth do you deduce that the gas is not laid on in his house?\"\n\n\"One tallow stain, or even two, might come by chance; but when I see no less than five, I think that there can be little doubt that the individual must be brought into frequent contact with burning tallow\u2014walks upstairs at night probably with his hat in one hand and a guttering candle in the other. Anyhow, he never got tallow-stains from a gas-jet. Are you satisfied?\"\n\n\"Well, it is very ingenious,\" said I, laughing; \"but since, as you said just now, there has been no crime committed, and no harm done save the loss of a goose, all this seems to be rather a waste of energy.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes had opened his mouth to reply, when the door flew open, and Peterson, the commissionaire, rushed into the apartment with flushed cheeks and the face of a man who is dazed with astonishment.\n\n\"The goose, Mr. Holmes! The goose, sir!\" he gasped.\n\n\"Eh? What of it, then? Has it returned to life and flapped off through the kitchen window?\" Holmes twisted himself round upon the sofa to get a fairer view of the man's excited face.\n\n\"See here, sir! See what my wife found in its crop!\" He held out his hand and displayed upon the centre of the palm a brilliantly scintillating blue stone, rather smaller than a bean in size, but of such purity and radiance that it twinkled like an electric point in the dark hollow of his hand.\n\nSherlock Holmes sat up with a whistle. \"By Jove, Peterson!\" said he, \"this is treasure trove indeed. I suppose you know what you have got?\"\n\n\"A diamond, sir? A precious stone. It cuts into glass as though it were putty.\"\n\n\"It's more than a precious stone. It is the precious stone.\"\n\n\"Not the Countess of Morcar's blue carbuncle!\" I ejaculated.\n\n\"Precisely so. I ought to know its size and shape, seeing that I have read the advertisement about it in The Times every day lately. It is absolutely unique, and its value can only be conjectured, but the reward offered of \u00a31000 is certainly not within a twentieth part of the market price.\"\n\n\"A thousand pounds! Great Lord of mercy!\" The commissionaire plumped down into a chair and stared from one to the other of us.\n\n\"That is the reward, and I have reason to know that there are sentimental considerations in the background which would induce the Countess to part with half her fortune if she could but recover the gem.\"\n\n\"It was lost, if I remember aright, at the Hotel Cosmopolitan,\" I remarked.\n\n\"Precisely so, on December 22d, just five days ago. John Homer, a plumber, was accused of having abstracted it from the lady's jewel-case. The evidence against him was so strong that the case has been referred to the Assizes. I have some account of the matter here, I believe.\" He rummaged amid his newspapers, glancing over the dates, until at last he smoothed one out, doubled it over, and read the following paragraph:\n\n\"Hotel Cosmopolitan Jewel Robbery. John Horner, 26, plumber, was brought up upon the charge of having upon the 22d inst., abstracted from the jewel-case of the Countess of Morcar the valuable gem known as the blue carbuncle. James Ryder, upper-attendant at the hotel, gave his evidence to the effect that he had shown Horner up to the dressing-room of the Countess of Morcar upon the day of the robbery in order that he might solder the second bar of the grate, which was loose. He had remained with Horner some little time, but had finally been called away. On returning, he found that Horner had disappeared, that the bureau had been forced open, and that the small morocco casket in which, as it afterwards transpired, the Countess was accustomed to keep her jewel, was lying empty upon the dressing-table. Ryder instantly gave the alarm, and Horner was arrested the same evening; but the stone could not be found either upon his person or in his rooms. Catherine Cusack, maid to the Countess, deposed to having heard Ryder's cry of dismay on discovering the robbery, and to having rushed into the room, where she found matters as described by the last witness. Inspector Bradstreet, B division, gave evidence as to the arrest of Horner, who struggled frantically, and protested his innocence in the strongest terms. Evidence of a previous conviction for robbery having been given against the prisoner, the magistrate refused to deal summarily with the offence, but referred it to the Assizes. Horner, who had shown signs of intense emotion during the proceedings, fainted away at the conclusion and was carried out of court.\n\n\"Hum! So much for the police-court,\" said Holmes thoughtfully, tossing aside the paper. \"The question for us now to solve is the sequence of events leading from a rifled jewel-case at one end to the crop of a goose in Tottenham Court Road at the other. You see, Watson, our little deductions have suddenly assumed a much more important and less innocent aspect. Here is the stone; the stone came from the goose, and the goose came from Mr. Henry Baker, the gentleman with the bad hat and all the other characteristics with which I have bored you. So now we must set ourselves very seriously to finding this gentleman and ascertaining what part he has played in this little mystery. To do this, we must try the simplest means first, and these lie undoubtedly in an advertisement in all the evening papers. If this fail, I shall have recourse to other methods.\"\n\n\"What will you say?\"\n\n\"Give me a pencil and that slip of paper. Now, then:\n\n\"Found at the corner of Goodge Street, a goose and a black felt hat. Mr. Henry Baker can have the same by applying at 6:30 this evening at 22lB Baker Street.\n\nThat is clear and concise.\"\n\n\"Very. But will he see it?\"\n\n\"Well, he is sure to keep an eye on the papers, since, to a poor man, the loss was a heavy one. He was clearly so scared by his mischance in breaking the window and by the approach of Peterson that he thought of nothing but flight, but since then he must have bitterly regretted the impulse which caused him to drop his bird. Then, again, the introduction of his name will cause him to see it, for everyone who knows him will direct his attention to it. Here you are, Peterson, run down to the advertising agency and have this put in the evening papers.\"\n\n\"In which, sir?\"\n\n\"Oh, in the Globe, Star, Pall Mall, St. James's, Evening News Standard, Echo, and any others that occur to you.\"\n\n\"Very well, sir. And this stone?\"\n\n\"Ah, yes, I shall keep the stone. Thank you. And, I say, Peterson, just buy a goose on your way back and leave it here with me, for we must have one to give to this gentleman in place of the one which your family is now devouring.\"\n\nWhen the commissionaire had gone, Holmes took up the stone and held it against the light. \"It's a bonny thing,\" said he. \"Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil's pet baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed. This stone is not yet twenty years old. It was found in the banks of the Amoy River in southern China and is remarkable in having every characteristic of the carbuncle, save that it is blue in shade instead of ruby red. In spite of its youth, it has already a sinister history. There have been two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several robberies brought about for the sake of this forty-grain weight of crystallized charcoal. Who would think that so pretty a toy would be a purveyor to the gallows and the prison? I'll lock it up in my strong box now and drop a line to the Countess to say that we have it.\"\n\n\"Do you think that this man Horner is innocent?\"\n\n\"I cannot tell.\"\n\n\"Well, then, do you imagine that this other one, Henry Baker, had anything to do with the matter?\"\n\n\"It is, I think, much more likely that Henry Baker is an absolutely innocent man, who had no idea that the bird which he was carrying was of considerably more value than if it were made of solid gold. That, however, I shall determine by a very simple test if we have an answer to our advertisement.\"\n\n\"And you can do nothing until then?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"In that case I shall continue my professional round. But I shall come back in the evening at the hour you have mentioned, for I should like to see the solution of so tangled a business.\"\n\n\"Very glad to see you. I dine at seven. There is a woodcock, I believe. By the way, in view of recent occurrences, perhaps I ought to ask Mrs. Hudson to examine its crop.\"\n\nI had been delayed at a case, and it was a little after half-past six when I found myself in Baker Street once more. As I approached the house I saw a tall man in a Scotch bonnet with a coat which was buttoned up to his chin waiting in the bright semicircle which was thrown from the fan-light. Just as I arrived the door was opened, and we were shown up together to Holmes's room.\n\n\"Mr. Henry Baker, I believe,\" said he, rising from his armchair and greeting his visitor with the easy air of geniality which he could so readilyassume. \"Pray take this chair by the fire, Mr. Baker. It is a cold night, and I observe that your circulation is more adapted for summer than for winter. Ah, Watson, you have just come at the right time. Is that your hat, Mr. Baker?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, that is undoubtedly my hat.\"\n\nHe was a large man with rounded shoulders, a massive head, and a broad, intelligent face, sloping down to a pointed beard of grizzled brown. A touch of red in nose and cheeks, with a slight tremor of his extended hand, recalled Holmes's surmise as to his habits. His rusty black frock-coat was buttoned right up in front, with the collar turned up; and his lank wrists protruded from his sleeves without a sign of cuff or shirt. He spoke in a slow staccato fashion, choosing his words with care, and gave the impression generally of a man of learning and letters who had had ill-usage at the hands of fortune.\n\n\"We have retained these things for some days,\" said Holmes, \"because we expected to see an advertisement from you giving your address. I am at a loss to know now why you did not advertise.\"\n\nOur visitor gave a rather shamefaced laugh. \"Shillings have not been so plentiful with me as they once were,\" he remarked. \"I had no doubt that the gang of roughs who assaulted me had carried off both my hat and the bird. I did not care to spend more money in a hopeless attempt at recovering them.\"\n\n\"Very naturally. By the way, about the bird, we were compelled to eat it.\"\n\n\"To eat it!\" Our visitor half rose from his chair in his excitement.\n\n\"Yes, it would have been of no use to anyone had we not done so. But I presume that this other goose upon the sideboard, which is about the same weight and perfectly fresh, will answer your purpose equally well?\"\n\n\"Oh, certainly, certainly,\" answered Mr. Baker with a sigh of relief.\n\n\"Of course, we still have the feathers, legs, crop, and so on of your own bird, so if you wish\u2014\"\n\nThe man burst into a hearty laugh. \"They might be useful to me as relics of my adventure,\" said he \"but beyond that I can hardly see what use the disjecta membra of my late acquaintance are going to be to me. No, sir, I think that, with your permission, I will confine my attentions to the excellent bird which I perceive upon the sideboard.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes glanced sharply across at me with a slight shrug of his shoulders.\n\n\"There is your hat, then, and there your bird,\" said he. \"By the way, would it bore you to tell me where you got the other one from? I am somewhat of a fowl fancier, and I have seldom seen a better grown goose.\"\n\n\"Certainly, sir,\" said Baker, who had risen and tucked his newly gained property under his arm. \"There are a few of us who frequent the Alpha Inn, near the Museum\u2014we are to be found in the Museum itself during the day, you understand. This year our good host, Windigate by name, instituted a goose club, by which, on consideration of some few pence every week, we were each to receive a bird at Christmas. My pence were duly paid, and the rest is familiar to you. I am much indebted to you, sir, for a Scotch bonnet is fitted neither to my years nor my gravity.\" With a comical pomposity of manner he bowed solemnly to both of us and strode off upon his way.\n\n\"So much for Mr. Henry Baker,\" said Holmes when he had closed the door behind him. \"It is quite certain that he knows nothing whatever about the matter. Are you hungry, Watson?\"\n\n\"Not particularly.\"\n\n\"Then I suggest that we turn our dinner into a supper and follow up this clue while it is still hot.\"\n\n\"By all means.\"\n\nIt was a bitter night, so we drew on our ulsters and wrapped cravats about our throats. Outside, the stars were shining coldly in a cloudless sky, and the breath of the passers-by blew out into smoke like so many pistol shots. Our footfalls rang out crisply and loudly as we swung through the doctors' quarter, Wimpole Street, Harley Street, and so through Wigmore Street into Oxford Street. In a quarter of an hour we were in Bloomsbury at the Alpha Inn, which is a small public-house at the corner of one of the streets which runs down into Holborn. Holmes pushed open the door of the private bar and ordered two glasses of beer from the ruddy-faced, white-aproned landlord.\n\n\"Your beer should be excellent if it is as good as your geese,\" said he.\n\n\"My geese!\" The man seemed surprised.\n\n\"Yes. I was speaking only half an hour ago to Mr. Henry Baker, who was a member of your goose club.\"\n\n\"Ah! yes, I see. But you see, sir, them's not our geese.\"\n\n\"Indeed! Whose, then?\"\n\n\"Well, I got the two dozen from a salesman in Covent Garden.\"\n\n\"Indeed? I know some of them. Which was it?\"\n\n\"Breckinridge is his name.\"\n\n\"Ah! I don't know him. Well, here's your good health, landlord, and prosperity to your house. Good-night.\n\n\"Now for Mr. Breckinridge,\" he continued, buttoning up his coat as we came out into the frosty air. \"Remember, Watson, that though we have so homely a thing as a goose at one end of this chain, we have at the other a man who will certainly get seven years' penal servitude unless we can establish his innocence. It is possible that our inquiry may but confirm his guilt; but, in any case, we have a line of investigation which has been missed by the police, and which a singular chance has placed in our hands. Let us follow it out to the bitter end. Faces to the south, then, and quick march!\"\n\nWe passed across Holborn, down Endell Street, and so through a zigzag of slums to Covent Garden Market. One of the largest stalls bore the name of Breckinridge upon it, and the proprietor, a horsy-looking man, with a sharp face and trim side-whiskers, was helping a boy to put up the shutters.\n\n\"Good-evening. It's a cold night,\" said Holmes.\n\nThe salesman nodded and shot a questioning glance at my companion. \"Sold out of geese, I see,\" continued Holmes, pointing at the bare slabs of marble.\n\n\"Let you have five hundred to-morrow morning.\"\n\n\"That's no good.\"\n\n\"Well, there are some on the stall with the gas-flare.\"\n\n\"Ah, but I was recommended to you.\"\n\n\"Who by?\"\n\n\"The landlord of the Alpha.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes; I sent him a couple of dozen.\"\n\n\"Fine birds they were, too. Now where did you get them from?\"\n\nTo my surprise the question provoked a burst of anger from the salesman.\n\n\"Now, then, mister,\" said he, with his head cocked and his arms akimbo, \"what are you driving at? Let's have it straight, now.\"\n\n\"It is straight enough. I should like to know who sold you the geese which you supplied to the Alpha.\"\n\n\"Well, then, I shan't tell you. So now!\"\n\n\"Oh, it is a matter of no importance; but I don't know why you should be so warm over such a trifle.\"\n\n\"Warm! You'd be as warm, maybe, if you were as pestered as I am. When I pay good money for a good article there should be an end of the business; but it's 'Where are the geese?' and 'Who did you sell the geese to?' and 'What will you take for the geese?' One would think they were the only geese in the world, to hear the fuss that is made over them.\"\n\n\"Well, I have no connection with any other people who have been making inquiries,\" said Holmes carelessly. \"If you won't tell us the bet is off, that is all. But I'm always ready to back my opinion on a matter of fowls, and I have a fiver on it that the bird I ate is country bred.\"\n\n\"Well, then, you've lost your fiver, for it's town bred,\" snapped the salesman.\n\n\"It's nothing of the kind.\"\n\n\"I say it is.\"\n\n\"I don't believe it.\"\n\n\"D'you think you know more about fowls than I, who have handled them ever since I was a nipper? I tell you, all those birds that went to the Alpha were town bred.\"\n\n\"You'll never persuade me to believe that.\"\n\n\"Will you bet, then?\"\n\n\"It's merely taking your money, for I know that I am right. But I'll have a sovereign on with you, just to teach you not to be obstinate.\"\n\nThe salesman chuckled grimly. \"Bring me the books, Bill,\" said he.\n\nThe small boy brought round a small thin volume and a great greasy-backed one, laying them out together beneath the hanging lamp.\n\n\"Now then, Mr. Cocksure,\" said the salesman, \"I thought that I was out of geese, but before I finish you'll find that there is still one left in my shop. You see this little book?\"\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"That's the list of the folk from whom I buy. D'you see? Well, then, here on this page are the country folk, and the numbers after their names are where their accounts are in the big ledger. Now, then! You see this other page in red ink? Well, that is a list of my town suppliers. Now, look at that third name. Just read it out to me.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Oakshott, 117, Brixton Road\u2014249,\" read Holmes.\n\n\"Quite so. Now turn that up in the ledger.\"\n\nHolmes turned to the page indicated. \"Here you are, 'Mrs. Oakshott, 117, Brixton Road, egg and poultry supplier.'\"\n\n\"Now, then, what's the last entry?\"\n\n\"'December 22d. Twenty-four geese at 7s. 6d.'\"\n\n\"Quite so. There you are. And underneath?\"\n\n\"'Sold to Mr. Windigate of the Alpha at 12s.'\"\n\n\"What have you to say now?\"\n\nSherlock Holmes looked deeply chagrined. He drew a sovereign from his pocket and threw it down upon the slab, turning away with the air of a man whose disgust is too deep for words. A few yards off he stopped under a lamp-post and laughed in the hearty, noiseless fashion which was peculiar to him.\n\n\"When you see a man with whiskers of that cut and the 'Pink 'un' protruding out of his pocket, you can always draw him by a bet,\" said he. \"I daresay that if I had put \u00a3100 down in front of him, that man would not have given me such complete information as was drawn from him by the idea that he was doing me on a wager. Well, Watson, we are, I fancy, nearing the end of our quest, and the only point which remains to be determined is whether we should go on to this Mrs. Oakshott to-night, or whether we should reserve it for to-morrow. It is clear from what that surly fellow said that there are others besides ourselves who are anxious about the matter, and I should\u2014\"\n\nHis remarks were suddenly cut short by a loud hubbub which broke out from the stall which we had just left. Turning round we saw a little rat-faced fellow standing in the centre of the circle of yellow light which was thrown by the swinging lamp, while Breckinridge, the salesman, framed in the door of his stall, was shaking his fists fiercely at the cringing figure.\n\n\"I've had enough of you and your geese,\" he shouted. \"I wish you were all at the devil together. If you come pestering me any more with your silly talk I'll set the dog at you. You bring Mrs. Oakshott here and I'll answer her, but what have you to do with it? Did I buy the geese off you?\"\n\n\"No; but one of them was mine all the same,\" whined the little man.\n\n\"Well, then, ask Mrs. Oakshott for it.\"\n\n\"She told me to ask you.\"\n\n\"Well, you can ask the King of Proosia, for all I care. I've had enough of it. Get out of this!\" He rushed fiercely forward, and the inquirer flitted away into the darkness.\n\n\"Ha! this may save us a visit to Brixton Road,\" whispered Holmes. \"Come with me, and we will see what is to be made of this fellow.\" Striding through the scattered knots of people who lounged round the flaring stalls, my companion speedily overtook the little man and touched him upon the shoulder. He sprang round, and I could see in the gaslight that every vestige of colour had been driven from his face.\n\n\"Who are you, then? What do you want?\" he asked in a quavering voice.\n\n\"You will excuse me,\" said Holmes blandly, \"but I could not help overhearing the questions which you put to the salesman just now. I think that I could be of assistance to you.\"\n\n\"You? Who are you? How could you know anything of the matter?\"\n\n\"My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't know.\"\n\n\"But you can know nothing of this?\"\n\n\"Excuse me, I know everything of it. You are endeavouring to trace some geese which were sold by Mrs. Oakshott, of Brixton Road, to a salesman named Breckinridge, by him in turn to Mr. Windigate, of the Alpha, and by him to his club, of which Mr. Henry Baker is a member.\"\n\n\"Oh, sir, you are the very man whom I have longed to meet,\" cried the little fellow with outstretched hands and quivering fingers. \"I can hardly explain to you how interested I am in this matter.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes hailed a four-wheeler which was passing. \"In that case we had better discuss it in a cosy room rather than in this wind-swept market-place,\" said he. \"But pray tell me, before we go farther, who it is that I have the pleasure of assisting.\"\n\nThe man hesitated for an instant. \"My name is John Robinson,\" he answered with a sidelong glance.\n\n\"No, no; the real name,\" said Holmes sweetly. \"It is always awkward doing business with an alias.\"\n\nA flush sprang to the white cheeks of the stranger. \"Well, then,\" said he, \"my real name is James Ryder.\"\n\n\"Precisely so. Head attendant at the Hotel Cosmopolitan. Pray step into the cab, and I shall soon be able to tell you everything which you would wish to know.\"\n\nThe little man stood glancing from one to the other of us with half-frightened, half-hopeful eyes, as one who is not sure whether he is on the verge of a windfall or of a catastrophe. Then he stepped into the cab, and in half an hour we were back in the sitting-room at Baker Street. Nothing had been said during our drive, but the high, thin breathing of our new companion, and the claspings and unclaspings of his hands, spoke of the nervous tension within him.\n\n\"Here we are!\" said Holmes cheerily as we filed into the room. \"The fire looks very seasonable in this weather. You look cold, Mr. Ryder. Pray take the basket-chair. I will just put on my slippers before we settle this little matter of yours. Now, then! You want to know what became of those geese?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Or rather, I fancy, of that goose. It was one bird, I imagine, in which you were interested\u2014white, with a black bar across the tail.\"\n\nRyder quivered with emotion. \"Oh, sir,\" he cried, \"can you tell me where it went to?\"\n\n\"It came here.\"\n\n\"Here?\"\n\n\"Yes, and a most remarkable bird it proved. I don't wonder that you should take an interest in it. It laid an egg after it was dead\u2014the bonniest, brightest little blue egg that ever was seen. I have it here in my museum.\"\n\nOur visitor staggered to his feet and clutched the mantelpiece with his right hand. Holmes unlocked his strong-box and held up the blue carbuncle, which shone out like a star, with a cold, brilliant, many-pointed radiance. Ryder stood glaring with a drawn face, uncertain whether to claim or to disown it.\n\n\"The game's up, Ryder,\" said Holmes quietly. \"Hold up, man, or you'll be into the fire! Give him an arm back into his chair, Watson. He's not got blood enough to go in for felony with impunity. Give him a dash of brandy. So! Now he looks a little more human. What a shrimp it is, to be sure!\"\n\nFor a moment he had staggered and nearly fallen, but the brandy brought a tinge of colour into his cheeks, and he sat staring with frightened eyes at his accuser.\n\n\"I have almost every link in my hands, and all the proofs which I could possibly need, so there is little which you need tell me. Still, that little may as well be cleared up to make the case complete. You had heard, Ryder, of this blue stone of the Countess of Morcar's?\"\n\n\"It was Catherine Cusack who told me of it,\" said he in a crackling voice.\n\n\"I see\u2014her ladyship's waiting-maid. Well, the temptation of sudden wealth so easily acquired was too much for you, as it has been for better men before you; but you were not very scrupulous in the means you used. It seems to me, Ryder, that there is the making of a very pretty villain in you. You knew that this man Horner, the plumber, had been concerned in some such matter before, and that suspicion would rest the more readily upon him. What did you do, then? You made some small job in my lady's room\u2014you and your confederate Cusack\u2014and you managed that he should be the man sent for. Then, when he had left, you rifled the jewel-case, raised the alarm, and had this unfortunate man arrested. You then\u2014\"\n\nRyder threw himself down suddenly upon the rug and clutched at my companion's knees. \"For God's sake, have mercy!\" he shrieked. \"Think of my father! of my mother! It would break their hearts. I never went wrong before! I never will again. I swear it. I'll swear it on a Bible. Oh, don't bring it into court! For Christ's sake, don't!\"\n\n\"Get back into your chair!\" said Holmes sternly. \"It is very well to cringe and crawl now, but you thought little enough of this poor Horner in the dock for a crime of which he knew nothing.\"\n\n\"I will fly, Mr. Holmes. I will leave the country, sir. Then the charge against him will break down.\"\n\n\"Hum! We will talk about that. And now let us hear a true account of the next act. How came the stone into the goose, and how came the goose into the open market? Tell us the truth, for there lies your only hope of safety.\"\n\nRyder passed his tongue over his parched lips. \"I will tell you it just as it happened, sir,\" said he. \"When Horner had been arrested, it seemed to me that it would be best for me to get away with the stone at once, for I did not know at what moment the police might not take it into their heads to search me and my room. There was no place about the hotel where it would be safe. I went out, as if on some commission, and I made for my sister's house. She had married a man named Oakshott, and lived in Brixton Road, where she fattened fowls for the market. All the way there every man I met seemed to me to be a policeman or a detective; and, for all that it was a cold night, the sweat was pouring down my face before I came to the Brixton Road. My sister asked me what was the matter, and why I was so pale; but I told her that I had been upset by the jewel robbery at the hotel. Then I went into the back yard and smoked a pipe, and wondered what it would be best to do.\n\n\"I had a friend once called Maudsley, who went to the bad, and has just been serving his time in Pentonville. One day he had met me, and fell into talk about the ways of thieves, and how they could get rid of what they stole. I knew that he would be true to me, for I knew one or two things about him; so I made up my mind to go right on to Kilburn, where he lived, and take him into my confidence. He would show me how to turn the stone into money. But how to get to him in safety? I thought of the agonies I had gone through in coming from the hotel. I might at any moment be seized and searched, and there would be the stone in my waistcoat pocket. I was leaning against the wall at the time and looking at the geese which were waddling about round my feet, and suddenly an idea came into my head which showed me how I could beat the best detective that ever lived.\n\n\"My sister had told me some weeks before that I might have the pick of her geese for a Christmas present, and I knew that she was always as good as her word. I would take my goose now, and in it I would carry my stone to Kilburn. There was a little shed in the yard, and behind this I drove one of the birds\u2014a fine big one, white, with a barred tail. I caught it, and, prying its bill open, I thrust the stone down its throat as far as my finger could reach. The bird gave a gulp, and I felt the stone pass along its gullet and down into its crop. But the creature flapped and struggled, and out came my sister to know what was the matter. As I turned to speak to her the brute broke loose and fluttered off among the others.\n\n\"'Whatever were you doing with that bird, Jem?' says she.\n\n\"'Well,' said I, 'you said you'd give me one for Christmas, and I was feeling which was the fattest.'\n\n\"'Oh,' says she, 'we've set yours aside for you\u2014Jem's bird, we call it. It's the big white one over yonder. There's twenty-six of them, which makes one for you, and one for us, and two dozen for the market.'\n\n\"'Thank you, Maggie,' says I; 'but if it is all the same to you, I'd rather have that one I was handling just now.'\n\n\"'The other is a good three pound heavier,' said she, 'and we fattened it expressly for you.'\n\n\"'Never mind. I'll have the other, and I'll take it now,' said I.\n\n\"'Oh, just as you like,' said she, a little huffed. 'Which is it you want, then?'\n\n\"'That white one with the barred tail, right in the middle of the flock.'\n\n\"'Oh, very well. Kill it and take it with you.'\n\n\"Well, I did what she said, Mr. Holmes, and I carried the bird all the way to Kilburn. I told my pal what I had done, for he was a man that it was easy to tell a thing like that to. He laughed until he choked, and we got a knife and opened the goose. My heart turned to water, for there was no sign of the stone, and I knew that some terrible mistake had occurred. I left the bird, rushed back to my sister's, and hurried into the back yard. There was not a bird to be seen there.\n\n\"'Where are they all, Maggie?' I cried.\n\n\"'Gone to the dealer's, Jem.'\n\n\"'Which dealer's?'\n\n\"'Breckinridge, of Covent Garden.'\n\n\"'But was there another with a barred tail?' I asked, 'the same as the one I chose?'\n\n\"'Yes, Jem; there were two barred-tailed ones, and I could never tell them apart.'\n\n\"Well, then, of course I saw it all, and I ran off as hard as my feet would carry me to this man Breckinridge; but he had sold the lot at once, and not one word would he tell me as to where they had gone. You heard him yourselves to-night. Well, he has always answered me like that. My sister thinks that I am going mad. Sometimes I think that I am myself. And now\u2014and now I am myself a branded thief, without ever having touched the wealth for which I sold my character. God help me! God help me!\" He burst into convulsive sobbing, with his face buried in his hands.\n\nThere was a long silence, broken only by his heavy breathing, and by the measured tapping of Sherlock Holmes's finger-tips upon the edge of the table. Then my friend rose and threw open the door.\n\n\"Get out!\" said he.\n\n\"What, sir! Oh, Heaven bless you!\"\n\n\"No more words. Get out!\"\n\nAnd no more words were needed. There was a rush, a clatter upon the stairs, the bang of a door, and the crisp rattle of running footfalls from the street.\n\n\"After all, Watson,\" said Holmes, reaching up his hand for his clay pipe, \"I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies. If Horner were in danger it would be another thing; but this fellow will not appear against him, and the case must collapse. I suppose that I am commiting a felony, but it is just possible that I am saving a soul. This fellow will not go wrong again; he is too terribly frightened. Send him to jail now, and you make him a jail-bird for life. Besides, it is the season of forgiveness. Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward. If you will have the goodness to touch the bell, Doctor, we will begin another investigation, in which, also a bird will be the chief feature.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECKLED BAND", + "text": "On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic. Of all these varied cases, however, I cannot recall any which presented more singular features than that which was associated with the well-known Surrey family of the Roylotts of Stoke Moran. The events in question occurred in the early days of my association with Holmes, when we were sharing rooms as bachelors in Baker Street. It is possible that I might have placed them upon record before, but a promise of secrecy was made at the time, from which I have only been freed during the last month by the untimely death of the lady to whom the pledge was given. It is perhaps as well that the facts should now come to light, for I have reasons to know that there are widespread rumours as to the death of Dr. Grimesby Roylott which tend to make the matter even more terrible than the truth.\n\nIt was early in April in the year '83 that I woke one morning to find Sherlock Holmes standing, fully dressed, by the side of my bed. He was a late riser, as a rule, and as the clock on the mantelpiece showed me that it was only a quarter-past seven, I blinked up at him in some surprise, and perhaps just a little resentment, for I was myself regular in my habits.\n\n\"Very sorry to knock you up, Watson,\" said he, \"but it's the common lot this morning. Mrs. Hudson has been knocked up, she retorted upon me, and I on you.\"\n\n\"What is it, then\u2014a fire?\"\n\n\"No; a client. It seems that a young lady has arrived in a considerable state of excitement, who insists upon seeing me. She is waiting now in the sitting-room. Now, when young ladies wander about the metropolis at this hour of the morning, and knock sleepy people up out of their beds, I presume that it is something very pressing which they have to communicate. Should it prove to be an interesting case, you would, I am sure, wish to follow it from the outset. I thought, at any rate, that I should call you and give you the chance.\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, I would not miss it for anything.\"\n\nI had no keener pleasure than in following Holmes in his professional investigations, and in admiring the rapid deductions, as swift as intuitions, and yet always founded on a logical basis, with which he unravelled the problems which were submitted to him. I rapidly threw on my clothes and was ready in a few minutes to accompany my friend down to the sitting-room. A lady dressed in black and heavily veiled, who had been sitting in the window, rose as we entered.\n\n\"Good-morning, madam,\" said Holmes cheerily. \"My name is Sherlock Holmes. This is my intimate friend and associate, Dr. Watson, before whom you can speak as freely as before myself. Ha! I am glad to see that Mrs. Hudson has had the good sense to light the fire. Pray draw up to it, and I shall order you a cup of hot coffee, for I observe that you are shivering.\"\n\n\"It is not cold which makes me shiver,\" said the woman in a low voice, changing her seat as requested.\n\n\"What, then?\"\n\n\"It is fear, Mr. Holmes. It is terror.\" She raised her veil as she spoke, and we could see that she was indeed in a pitiable state of agitation, her face all drawn and gray, with restless, frightened eyes, like those of some hunted animal. Her features and figure were those of a woman of thirty, but her hair was shot with premature gray, and her expression was weary and haggard. Sherlock Holmes ran her over with one of his quick, all comprehensive glances.\n\n\"You must not fear,\" said he soothingly, bending forward and patting her forearm. \"We shall soon set matters right, I have no doubt. You have come in by train this morning, I see.\"\n\n\"You know me, then?\"\n\n\"No, but I observe the second half of a return ticket in the palm of your left glove. You must have started early, and yet you had a good drive in a dog-cart, along heavy roads, before you reached the station.\"\n\nThe lady gave a violent start and stared in bewilderment at my companion.\n\n\"There is no mystery, my dear madam,\" said he, smiling. \"The left arm of your jacket is spattered with mud in no less than seven places. The marks are perfectly fresh. There is no vehicle save a dog-cart which throws up mud in that way, and then only when you sit on the left-hand side of the driver.\"\n\n\"Whatever your reasons may be, you are perfectly correct,\" said she. \"I started from home before six, reached Leatherhead at twenty past, and came in by the first train to Waterloo. Sir, I can stand this strain no longer; I shall go mad if it continues. I have no one to turn to\u2014none, save only one, who cares for me, and he, poor fellow, can be of little aid. I have heard of you, Mr. Holmes; I have heard of you from Mrs. Farintosh, whom you helped in the hour of her sore need. It was from her that I had your address. Oh, sir, do you not think that you could help me, too, and at least throw a little light through the dense darkness which surrounds me? At present it is out of my power to reward you for your services, but in a month or six weeks I shall be married, with the control of my own income, and then at least you shall not find me ungrateful.\"\n\nHolmes turned to his desk and, unlocking it, drew out a small case-book, which he consulted.\n\n\"Farintosh,\" said he. \"Ah yes, I recall the case; it was concerned with an opal tiara. I think it was before your time, Watson. I can only say, madam, that I shall be happy to devote the same care to your case as I did to that of your friend. As to reward my profession is its own reward; but you are at liberty to defray whatever expenses I may be put to, at the time which suits you best. And now I beg that you will lay before us everything that may help us in forming an opinion upon the matter.\"\n\n\"Alas!\" replied our visitor, \"the very horror of my situation lies in the fact that my fears are so vague, and my suspicions depend so entirely upon small points, which might seem trivial to another, that even he to whom of all others I have a right to look for help and advice looks upon all that I tell him about it as the fancies of a nervous woman. He does not say so, but I can read it from his soothing answers and averted eyes. But I have heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart. You may advise me how to walk amid the dangers which encompass me.\"\n\n\"I am all attention, madam.\"\n\n\"My name is Helen Stoner, and I am living with my stepfather, who is the last survivor of one of the oldest Saxon families in England, the Roylotts of Stoke Moran, on the western border of Surrey.\"\n\nHolmes nodded his head. \"The name is familiar to me,\" said he.\n\n\"The family was at one time among the richest in England, and the estates extended over the borders into Berkshire in the north, and Hampshire in the west. In the last century, however, four successive heirs were of a dissolute and wasteful disposition, and the family ruin was eventually completed by a gambler in the days of the Regency. Nothing was left save a few acres of ground, and the two-hundred-year-old house, which is itself crushed under a heavy mortgage. The last squire dragged out his existence there, living the horrible life of an aristocratic pauper; but his only son, my stepfather, seeing that he must adapt himself to the new conditions, obtained an advance from a relative, which enabled him to take a medical degree and went out to Calcutta, where, by his professional skill and his force of character, he established a large practice. In a fit of anger, however, caused by some robberies which had been perpetrated in the house, he beat his native butler to death and narrowly escaped a capital sentence. As it was, he suffered a long term of imprisonment and afterwards returned to England a morose and disappointed man.\n\n\"When Dr. Roylott was in India he married my mother, Mrs. Stoner, the young widow of Major-General Stoner, of the Bengal Artillery. My sister Julia and I were twins, and we were only two years old at the time of my mother's re-marriage. She had a considerable sum of money\u2014not less than \u00a31000 a year\u2014and this she bequeathed to Dr. Roylott entirely while we resided with him, with a provision that a certain annual sum should be allowed to each of us in the event of our marriage. Shortly after our return to England my mother died\u2014she was killed eight years ago in a railway accident near Crewe. Dr. Roylott then abandoned his attempts to establish himself in practice in London and took us to live with him in the old ancestral house at Stoke Moran. The money which my mother had left was enough for all our wants, and there seemed to be no obstacle to our happiness.\n\n\"But a terrible change came over our stepfather about this time. Instead of making friends and exchanging visits with our neighbours, who had at first been overjoyed to see a Roylott of Stoke Moran back in the old family seat, he shut himself up in his house and seldom came out save to indulge in ferocious quarrels with whoever might cross his path. Violence of temper approaching to mania has been hereditary in the men of the family, and in my stepfather's case it had, I believe, been intensified by his long residence in the tropics. A series of disgraceful brawls took place, two of which ended in the police-court, until at last he became the terror of the village, and the folks would fly at his approach, for he is a man of immense strength, and absolutely uncontrollable in his anger.\n\n\"Last week he hurled the local blacksmith over a parapet into a stream, and it was only by paying over all the money which I could gather together that I was able to avert another public exposure. He had no friends at all save the wandering gypsies, and he would give these vagabonds leave to encamp upon the few acres of bramble-covered land which represent the family estate, and would accept in return the hospitality of their tents, wandering away with them sometimes for weeks on end. He has a passion also for Indian animals, which are sent over to him by a correspondent, and he has at this moment a cheetah and a baboon, which wander freely over his grounds and are feared by the villagers almost as much as their master.\n\n\"You can imagine from what I say that my poor sister Julia and I had no great pleasure in our lives. No servant would stay with us, and for a long time we did all the work of the house. She was but thirty at the time of her death, and yet her hair had already begun to whiten, even as mine has.\"\n\n\"Your sister is dead, then?\"\n\n\"She died just two years ago, and it is of her death that I wish to speak to you. You can understand that, living the life which I have described, we were little likely to see anyone of our own age and position. We had, however, an aunt, my mother's maiden sister, Miss Honoria Westphail, who lives near Harrow, and we were occasionally allowed to pay short visits at this lady's house. Julia went there at Christmas two years ago, and met there a half-pay major of marines, to whom she became engaged. My stepfather learned of the engagement when my sister returned and offeredno objection to the marriage; but within a fortnight of the day which had been fixed for the wedding, the terrible event occurred which has deprived me of my only companion.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes had been leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed and his head sunk in a cushion, but he half opened his lids now and glanced across at his visitor.\n\n\"Pray be precise as to details,\" said he.\n\n\"It is easy for me to be so, for every event of that dreadful time is seared into my memory. The manor-house is, as I have already said, very old, and only one wing is now inhabited. The bedrooms in this wing are on the ground floor, the sitting-rooms being in the central block of the buildings. Of these bedrooms the first is Dr. Roylott's, the second my sister's, and the third my own. There is no communication between them, but they all open out into the same corridor. Do I make myself plain?\"\n\n\"Perfectly so.\"\n\n\"The windows of the three rooms open out upon the lawn. That fatal night Dr. Roylott had gone to his room early, though we knew that he had not retired to rest, for my sister was troubled by the smell of the strong Indian cigars which it was his custom to smoke. She left her room, therefore, and came into mine, where she sat for some time, chatting about her approaching wedding. At eleven o'clock she rose to leave me, but she paused at the door and looked back.\n\n\"'Tell me, Helen,' said she, 'have you ever heard anyone whistle in the dead of the night?'\n\n\"'Never,' said I.\n\n\"'I suppose that you could not possibly whistle, yourself, in your sleep?'\n\n\"'Certainly not. But why?'\n\n\"'Because during the last few nights I have always, about three in the morning, heard a low, clear whistle. I am a light sleeper, and it has awakened me. I cannot tell where it came from\u2014perhaps from the next room, perhaps from the lawn. I thought that I would just ask you whether you had heard it.'\n\n\"'No, I have not. It must be those wretched gypsies in the plantation.'\n\n\"'Very likely. And yet if it were on the lawn, I wonder that you did not hear it also.'\n\n\"'Ah, but I sleep more heavily than you.'\n\n\"'Well, it is of no great consequence, at any rate.' She smiled back at me, closed my door, and a few moments later I heard her key turn in the lock.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" said Holmes. \"Was it your custom always to lock yourselves in at night?\"\n\n\"Always.\"\n\n\"And why?\"\n\n\"I think that I mentioned to you that the doctor kept a cheetah and a baboon. We had no feeling of security unless our doors were locked.\"\n\n\"Quite so. Pray proceed with your statement.\"\n\n\"I could not sleep that night. A vague feeling of impending misfortune impressed me. My sister and I, you will recollect, were twins, and you know how subtle are the links which bind two souls which are so closely allied. It was a wild night. The wind was howling outside, and the rain was beating and splashing against the windows. Suddenly, amid all the hubbub of the gale, there burst forth the wild scream of a terrified woman. I knew that it was my sister's voice. I sprang from my bed, wrapped a shawl round me, and rushed into the corridor. As I opened my door I seemed to hear a low whistle, such as my sister described, and a few moments later a clanging sound, as if a mass of metal had fallen. As I ran down the passage, my sister's door was unlocked, and revolved slowly upon its hinges. I stared at it horror-stricken, not knowing what was about to issue from it. By the light of the corridor-lamp I saw my sister appear at the opening, her face blanched with terror, her hands groping for help, her whole figure swaying to and fro like that of a drunkard. I ran to her and threw my arms round her, but at that moment her knees seemed to give way and she fell to the ground. She writhed as one who is in terrible pain, and her limbs were dreadfully convulsed. At first I thought that she had not recognized me, but as I bent over her she suddenly shrieked out in a voice which I shall never forget, 'Oh, my God! Helen! It was the band! The speckled band!' There was something else which she would fain have said, and she stabbed with her finger into the air in the direction of the doctor's room, but a fresh convulsion seized her and choked her words. I rushed out, calling loudly for my stepfather, and I met him hastening from his room in his dressing-gown. When he reached my sister's side she was unconscious, and though he poured brandy down her throat and sent for medical aid from the village, all efforts were in vain, for she slowly sank and died without having recovered her consciousness. Such was the dreadful end of my beloved sister.\"\n\n\"One moment,\" said Holmes; \"are you sure about this whistle and metallic sound? Could you swear to it?\"\n\n\"That was what the county coroner asked me at the inquiry. It is my strong impression that I heard it, and yet, among the crash of the gale and the creaking of an old house, I may possibly have been deceived.\"\n\n\"Was your sister dressed?\"\n\n\"No, she was in her night-dress. In her right hand was found the charred stump of a match, and in her left a match-box.\"\n\n\"Showing that she had struck a light and looked about her when the alarm took place. That is important. And what conclusions did the coroner come to?\"\n\n\"He investigated the case with great care, for Dr. Roylott's conduct had long been notorious in the county, but he was unable to find any satisfactory cause of death. My evidence showed that the door had been fastened upon the inner side, and the windows were blocked by old-fashioned shutters with broad iron bars, which were secured every night. The walls were carefully sounded, and were shown to be quite solid all round, and the flooring was also thoroughly examined, with the same result. The chimney is wide, but is barred up by four large staples. It is certain, therefore, that my sister was quite alone when she met her end. Besides, there were no marks of any violence upon her.\"\n\n\"How about poison?\"\n\n\"The doctors examined her for it, but without success.\"\n\n\"What do you think that this unfortunate lady died of, then?\"\n\n\"It is my belief that she died of pure fear and nervous shock, though what it was that frightened her I cannot imagine.\"\n\n\"Were there gypsies in the plantation at the time?\"\n\n\"Yes, there are nearly always some there.\"\n\n\"Ah, and what did you gather from this allusion to a band\u2014a speckled band?\"\n\n\"Sometimes I have thought that it was merely the wild talk of delirium, sometimes that it may have referred to some band of people, perhaps to these very gypsies in the plantation. I do not know whether the spotted handkerchiefs which so many of them wear over their heads might have suggested the strange adjective which she used.\"\n\nHolmes shook his head like a man who is far from being satisfied.\n\n\"These are very deep waters,\" said he; \"pray go on with your narrative.\"\n\n\"Two years have passed since then, and my life has been until lately lonelier than ever. A month ago, however, a dear friend, whom I have known for many years, has done me the honour to ask my hand in marriage. His name is Armitage\u2014Percy Armitage\u2014the second son of Mr. Armitage, of Crane Water, near Reading. My stepfather has offered no opposition to the match, and we are to be married in the course of the spring. Two days ago some repairs were started in the west wing of the building, and my bedroom wall has been pierced, so that I have had to move into the chamber in which my sister died, and to sleep in the very bed in which she slept. Imagine, then, my thrill of terror when last night, as I lay awake, thinking over her terrible fate, I suddenly heard in the silence of the night the low whistle which had been the herald of her own death. I sprang up and lit the lamp, but nothing was to be seen in the room. I was too shaken to go to bed again, however, so I dressed, and as soon as it was daylight I slipped down, got a dog-cart at the Crown Inn, which is opposite, and drove to Leatherhead, from whence I have come on this morning with the one object of seeing you and asking your advice.\"\n\n\"You have done wisely,\" said my friend. \"But have you told me all?\"\n\n\"Yes, all.\"\n\n\"Miss Roylott, you have not. You are screening your stepfather.\"\n\n\"Why, what do you mean?\"\n\nFor answer Holmes pushed back the frill of black lace which fringed the hand that lay upon our visitor's knee. Five little livid spots, the marks of four fingers and a thumb, were printed upon the white wrist.\n\n\"You have been cruelly used,\" said Holmes.\n\nThe lady coloured deeply and covered over her injured wrist. \"He is a hard man,\" she said, \"and perhaps he hardly knows his own strength.\"\n\nThere was a long silence, during which Holmes leaned his chin upon his hands and stared into the crackling fire.\n\n\"This is a very deep business,\" he said at last. \"There are a thousand details which I should desire to know before I decide upon our course of action. Yet we have not a moment to lose. If we were to come to Stoke Moran to-day, would it be possible for us to see over these rooms without the knowledge of your stepfather?\"\n\n\"As it happens, he spoke of coming into town to-day upon some most important business. It is probable that he will be away all day, and that there would be nothing to disturb you. We have a housekeeper now, but she is old and foolish, and I could easily get her out of the way.\"\n\n\"Excellent. You are not averse to this trip, Watson?\"\n\n\"By no means.\"\n\n\"Then we shall both come. What are you going to do yourself?\"\n\n\"I have one or two things which I would wish to do now that I am in town. But I shall return by the twelve o'clock train, so as to be there in time for your coming.\"\n\n\"And you may expect us early in the afternoon. I have myself some small business matters to attend to. Will you not wait and breakfast?\"\n\n\"No, I must go. My heart is lightened already since I have confided my trouble to you. I shall look forward to seeing you again this afternoon.\" She dropped her thick black veil over her face and glided from the room.\n\n\"And what do you think of it all, Watson?\" asked Sherlock Holmes, leaning back in his chair.\n\n\"It seems to me to be a most dark and sinister business.\"\n\n\"Dark enough and sinister enough.\"\n\n\"Yet if the lady is correct in saying that the flooring and walls are sound, and that the door, window, and chimney are impassable, then her sister must have been undoubtedly alone when she met her mysterious end.\"\n\n\"What becomes, then, of these nocturnal whistles, and what of the very peculiar words of the dying woman?\"\n\n\"I cannot think.\"\n\n\"When you combine the ideas of whistles at night, the presence of a band of gypsies who are on intimate terms with this old doctor, the fact that we have every reason to believe that the doctor has an interest in preventing his stepdaughter's marriage, the dying allusion to a band, and, finally, the fact that Miss Helen Stoner heard a metallic clang, which might have been caused by one of those metal bars that secured the shutters falling back into its place, I think that there is good ground to think that the mystery may be cleared along those lines.\"\n\n\"But what, then, did the gypsies do?\"\n\n\"I cannot imagine.\"\n\n\"I see many objections to any such theory.\"\n\n\"And so do I. It is precisely for that reason that we are going to Stoke Moran this day. I want to see whether the objections are fatal, or if they may be explained away. But what in the name of the devil!\"\n\nThe ejaculation had been drawn from my companion by the fact that our door had been suddenly dashed open, and that a huge man had framed himself in the aperture. His costume was a peculiar mixture of the professional and of the agricultural, having a black top-hat, a long frock-coat, and a pair of high gaiters, with a hunting-crop swinging in his hand. So tall was he that his hat actually brushed the cross bar of the doorway, and his breadth seemed to span it across from side to side. A large face, seared with a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow with the sun, and marked with every evil passion, was turned from one to the other of us, while his deep-set, bile-shot eyes and his high, thin, fleshless nose, gave him somewhat the resemblance to a fierce old bird of prey.\n\n\"Which of you is Holmes?\" asked this apparition.\n\n\"My name, sir; but you have the advantage of me,\" said my companion quietly.\n\n\"I am Dr. Grimesby Roylott, of Stoke Moran.\"\n\n\"Indeed, Doctor,\" said Holmes blandly. \"Pray take a seat.\"\n\n\"I will do nothing of the kind. My stepdaughter has been here. I have traced her. What has she been saying to you?\"\n\n\"It is a little cold for the time of the year,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"What has she been saying to you?\" screamed the old man furiously.\n\n\"But I have heard that the crocuses promise well,\" continued my companion imperturbably.\n\n\"Ha! You put me off, do you?\" said our new visitor, taking a step forward and shaking his hunting-crop. \"I know you, you scoundrel! I have heard of you before. You are Holmes, the meddler.\"\n\nMy friend smiled.\n\n\"Holmes, the busybody!\"\n\nHis smile broadened.\n\n\"Holmes, the Scotland Yard Jack-in-office!\"\n\nHolmes chuckled heartily. \"Your conversation is most entertaining,\" said he. \"When you go out close the door, for there is a decided draught.\"\n\n\"I will go when I have said my say. Don't you dare to meddle with my affairs. I know that Miss Stoner has been here. I traced her! I am a dangerous man to fall foul of! See here.\" He stepped swiftly forward, seized the poker, and bent it into a curve with his huge brown hands.\n\n\"See that you keep yourself out of my grip,\" he snarled, and hurling the twisted poker into the fireplace he strode out of the room.\n\n\"He seems a very amiable person,\" said Holmes, laughing. \"I am not quite so bulky, but if he had remained I might have shown him that my grip was not much more feeble than his own.\" As he spoke he picked up the steel poker and, with a sudden effort, straightened it out again.\n\n\"Fancy his having the insolence to confound me with the official detective force! This incident gives zest to our investigation, however, and I only trust that our little friend will not suffer from her imprudence in allowing this brute to trace her. And now, Watson, we shall order breakfast, and afterwards I shall walk down to Doctors' Commons, where I hope to get some data which may help us in this matter.\"\n\nIt was nearly one o'clock when Sherlock Holmes returned from his excursion. He held in his hand a sheet of blue paper, scrawled over with notes and figures.\n\n\"I have seen the will of the deceased wife,\" said he. \"To determine its exact meaning I have been obliged to work out the present prices of the investments with which it is concerned. The total income, which at the time of the wife's death was little short of \u00a31100, is now, through the fall in agricultural prices, not more than \u00a3750. Each daughter can claim an income of \u00a3250, in case of marriage. It is evident, therefore, that if both girls had married, this beauty would have had a mere pittance, while even one of them would cripple him to a very serious extent. My morning's work has not been wasted, since it has proved that he has the very strongest motives for standing in the way of anything of the sort. And now, Watson, this is too serious for dawdling, especially as the old man is aware that we are interesting ourselves in his affairs; so if you are ready, we shall call a cab and drive to Waterloo. I should be very much obliged if you would slip your revolver into your pocket. An Eley's No. 2 is an excellent argument with gentlemen who can twist steel pokers into knots. That and a tooth-brush are, I think, all that we need.\"\n\nAt Waterloo we were fortunate in catching a train for Leatherhead, where we hired a trap at the station inn and drove for four or five miles through the lovely Surrey lanes. It was a perfect day, with a bright sun and a few fleecy clouds in the heavens. The trees and wayside hedges were just throwing out their first green shoots, and the air was full of the pleasant smell of the moist earth. To me at least there was a strange contrast between the sweet promise of the spring and this sinister quest upon which we were engaged. My companion sat in the front of the trap, his arms folded, his hat pulled down over his eyes, and his chin sunk upon his breast, buried in the deepest thought. Suddenly, however, he started, tapped me on the shoulder, and pointed over the meadows.\n\n\"Look there!\" said he.\n\nA heavily timbered park stretched up in a gentle slope, thickening into a grove at the highest point. From amid the branches there jutted out the gray gables and high roof-tree of a very old mansion.\n\n\"Stoke Moran?\" said he.\n\n\"Yes, sir, that be the house of Dr. Grimesby Roylott,\" remarked the driver.\n\n\"There is some building going on there,\" said Holmes; \"that is where we are going.\"\n\n\"There's the village,\" said the driver, pointing to a cluster of roofs some distance to the left; \"but if you want to get to the house, you'll find it shorter to get over this stile, and so by the foot-path over the fields. There it is, where the lady is walking.\"\n\n\"And the lady, I fancy, is Miss Stoner,\" observed Holmes, shading his eyes. \"Yes, I think we had better do as you suggest.\"\n\nWe got off, paid our fare, and the trap rattled back on its way to Leatherhead.\n\n\"I thought it as well,\" said Holmes as we climbed the stile, \"that this fellow should think we had come here as architects, or on some definite business. It may stop his gossip. Good-afternoon, Miss Stoner. You see that we have been as good as our word.\"\n\nOur client of the morning had hurried forward to meet us with a face which spoke her joy. \"I have been waiting so eagerly for you,\" she cried, shaking hands with us warmly. \"All has turned out splendidly. Dr. Roylott has gone to town, and it is unlikely that he will be back before evening.\"\n\n\"We have had the pleasure of making the doctor's acquaintance,\" said Holmes, and in a few words he sketched out what had occurred. Miss Stoner turned white to the lips as she listened.\n\n\"Good heavens!\" she cried, \"he has followed me, then.\"\n\n\"So it appears.\"\n\n\"He is so cunning that I never know when I am safe from him. What will he say when he returns?\"\n\n\"He must guard himself, for he may find that there is some-one more cunning than himself upon his track. You must lock yourself up from him to-night. If he is violent, we shall take you away to your aunt's at Harrow. Now, we must make the best use of our time, so kindly take us at once to the rooms which we are to examine.\"\n\nThe building was of gray, lichen-blotched stone, with a high central portion and two curving wings, like the claws of a crab, thrown out on each side. In one of these wings the windows were broken and blocked with wooden boards, while the roof was partly caved in, a picture of ruin. The central portion was in little better repair, but the right-hand block was comparatively modern, and the blinds in the windows, with the blue smoke curling up from the chimneys, showed that this was where the family resided. Some scaffolding had been erected against the end wall, and the stone-work had been broken into, but there were no signs of any workmen at the moment of our visit. Holmes walked slowly up and down the ill-trimmed lawn and examined with deep attention the outsides of the windows.\n\n\"This, I take it, belongs to the room in which you used to sleep, the centre one to your sister's, and the one next to the main building to Dr. Roylott's chamber?\"\n\n\"Exactly so. But I am now sleeping in the middle one.\"\n\n\"Pending the alterations, as I understand. By the way, there does not seem to be any very pressing need for repairs at that end wall.\"\n\n\"There were none. I believe that it was an excuse to move me from my room.\"\n\n\"Ah! that is suggestive. Now, on the other side of this narrow wing runs the corridor from which these three rooms open. There are windows in it, of course?\"\n\n\"Yes, but very small ones. Too narrow for anyone to pass through.\"\n\n\"As you both locked your doors at night, your rooms were unapproachable from that side. Now, would you have the kindness to go into your room and bar your shutters?\"\n\nMiss Stoner did so, and Holmes, after a careful examination through the open window, endeavoured in every way to force the shutter open, but without success. There was no slit through which a knife could be passed to raise the bar. Then with his lens he tested the hinges, but they were of solid iron, built firmly into the massive masonry. \"Hum!\" said he, scratching his chin in some perplexity, \"my theory certainly presents some difficulties. No one could pass these shutters if they were bolted. Well, we shall see if the inside throws any light upon the matter.\"\n\nA small side door led into the whitewashed corridor from which the three bedrooms opened. Holmes refused to examine the third chamber, so we passed at once to the second, that in which Miss Stoner was now sleeping, and in which her sister had met with her fate. It was a homely little room, with a low ceiling and a gaping fireplace, after the fashion of old country-houses. A brown chest of drawers stood in one corner, a narrow white-counterpaned bed in another, and a dressing-table on the left-hand side of the window. These articles, with two small wicker-work chairs, made up all the furniture in the room save for a square of Wilton carpet in the centre. The boards round and the panelling of the walls were of brown, worm-eaten oak, so old and discoloured that it may have dated from the original building of the house. Holmes drew one of the chairs into a corner and sat silent, while his eyes travelled round and round and up and down, taking in every detail of the apartment.\n\n\"Where does that bell communicate with?\" he asked at last, pointing to a thick bell-rope which hung down beside the bed, the tassel actually lying upon the pillow.\n\n\"It goes to the housekeeper's room.\"\n\n\"It looks newer than the other things?\"\n\n\"Yes, it was only put there a couple of years ago.\"\n\n\"Your sister asked for it, I suppose?\"\n\n\"No, I never heard of her using it. We used always to get what we wanted for ourselves.\"\n\n\"Indeed, it seemed unnecessary to put so nice a bell-pull there. You will excuse me for a few minutes while I satisfy myself as to this floor.\" He threw himself down upon his face with his lens in his hand and crawled swiftly backward and forward, examining minutely the cracks between the boards. Then he did the same with the wood-work with which the chamber was panelled. Finally he walked over to the bed and spent some time in staring at it and in running his eye up and down the wall. Finally he took the bell-rope in his hand and gave it a brisk tug.\n\n\"Why, it's a dummy,\" said he.\n\n\"Won't it ring?\"\n\n\"No, it is not even attached to a wire. This is very interesting. You can see now that it is fastened to a hook just above where the little opening for the ventilator is.\"\n\n\"How very absurd! I never noticed that before.\"\n\n\"Very strange!\" muttered Holmes, pulling at the rope. \"There are one or two very singular points about this room. For example, what a fool a builder must be to open a ventilator into another room, when, with the same trouble, he might have communicated with the outside air!\"\n\n\"That is also quite modern,\" said the lady.\n\n\"Done about the same time as the bell-rope?\" remarked Holmes.\n\n\"Yes, there were several little changes carried out about that time.\"\n\n\"They seem to have been of a most interesting character\u2014dummy bell-ropes, and ventilators which do not ventilate. With your permission, Miss Stoner, we shall now carry our researches into the inner apartment.\"\n\nDr. Grimesby Roylott's chamber was larger than that of his stepdaughter, but was as plainly furnished. A camp-bed, a small wooden shelf full of books, mostly of a technical character, an armchair beside the bed, a plain wooden chair against the wall, a round table, and a large iron safe were the principal things which met the eye. Holmes walked slowly round and examined each and all of them with the keenest interest.\n\n\"What's in here?\" he asked, tapping the safe.\n\n\"My stepfather's business papers.\"\n\n\"Oh! you have seen inside, then?\"\n\n\"Only once, some years ago. I remember that it was full of papers.\"\n\n\"There isn't a cat in it, for example?\"\n\n\"No. What a strange idea!\"\n\n\"Well, look at this!\" He took up a small saucer of milk which stood on the top of it.\n\n\"No; we don't keep a cat. But there is a cheetah and a baboon.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes, of course! Well, a cheetah is just a big cat, and yet a saucer of milk does not go very far in satisfying its wants, I daresay. There is one point which I should wish to determine.\" He squatted down in front of the wooden chair and examined the seat of it with the greatest attention.\n\n\"Thank you. That is quite settled,\" said he, rising and putting his lens in his pocket. \"Hello! Here is something interesting!\"\n\nThe object which had caught his eye was a small dog lash hung on one corner of the bed. The lash, however, was curled upon itself and tied so as to make a loop of whipcord.\n\n\"What do you make of that, Watson?\"\n\n\"It's a common enough lash. But I don't know why it should be tied.\"\n\n\"That is not quite so common, is it? Ah, me! it's a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brains to crime it is the worst of all. I think that I have seen enough now, Miss Stoner, and with your permission we shall walk out upon the lawn.\"\n\nI had never seen my friend's face so grim or his brow so dark as it was when we turned from the scene of this investigation. We had walked several times up and down the lawn, neither Miss Stoner nor myself liking to break in upon his thoughts before he roused himself from his reverie.\n\n\"It is very essential, Miss Stoner,\" said he, \"that you should absolutely follow my advice in every respect.\"\n\n\"I shall most certainly do so.\"\n\n\"The matter is too serious for any hesitation. Your life may depend upon your compliance.\"\n\n\"I assure you that I am in your hands.\"\n\n\"In the first place, both my friend and I must spend the night in your room.\"\n\nBoth Miss Stoner and I gazed at him in astonishment.\n\n\"Yes, it must be so. Let me explain. I believe that that is the village inn over there?\"\n\n\"Yes, that is the Crown.\"\n\n\"Very good. Your windows would be visible from there?\"\n\n\"Certainly.\"\n\n\"You must confine yourself to your room, on pretence of a headache, when your stepfather comes back. Then when you hear him retire for the night, you must open the shutters of your window, undo the hasp, put your lamp there as a signal to us, and then withdraw quietly with everything which you are likely to want into the room which you used to occupy. I have no doubt that, in spite of the repairs, you could manage there for one night.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, easily.\"\n\n\"The rest you will leave in our hands.\"\n\n\"But what will you do?\"\n\n\"We shall spend the night in your room, and we shall investigate the cause of this noise which has disturbed you.\"\n\n\"I believe, Mr. Holmes, that you have already made up your mind,\" said Miss Stoner, laying her hand upon my companion's sleeve.\n\n\"Perhaps I have.\"\n\n\"Then, for pity's sake, tell me what was the cause of my sister's death.\"\n\n\"I should prefer to have clearer proofs before I speak.\"\n\n\"You can at least tell me whether my own thought is correct, and if she died from some sudden fright.\"\n\n\"No, I do not think so. I think that there was probably some more tangible cause. And now, Miss Stoner, we must leave you, for if Dr. Roylott returned and saw us our journey would be in vain. Good-bye, and be brave, for if you will do what I have told you you may rest assured that we shall soon drive away the dangers that threaten you.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes and I had no difficulty in engaging a bedroom and sitting-room at the Crown Inn. They were on the upper floor, and from our window we could command a view of the avenue gate; and of the inhabited wing of Stoke Moran Manor House. At dusk we saw Dr. Grimesby Roylott drive past, his huge form looming up beside the little figure of the lad who drove him. The boy had some slight difficulty in undoing the heavy iron gates, and we heard the hoarse roar of the doctor's voice and saw the fury with which he shook his clinched fists at him. The trap drove on, and a few minutes later we saw a sudden light spring up among the trees as the lamp was lit in one of the sitting-rooms.\n\n\"Do you know, Watson,\" said Holmes as we sat together in the gathering darkness, \"I have really some scruples as to taking you to-night. There is a distinct element of danger.\"\n\n\"Can I be of assistance?\"\n\n\"Your presence might be invaluable.\"\n\n\"Then I shall certainly come.\"\n\n\"It is very kind of you.\"\n\n\"You speak of danger. You have evidently seen more in these rooms than was visible to me.\"\n\n\"No, but I fancy that I may have deduced a little more. I imagine that you saw all that I did.\"\n\n\"I saw nothing remarkable save the bell-rope, and what purpose that could answer I confess is more than I can imagine.\"\n\n\"You saw the ventilator, too?\"\n\n\"Yes, but I do not think that it is such a very unusual thing to have a small opening between two rooms. It was so small that a rat could hardly pass through.\"\n\n\"I knew that we should find a ventilator before ever we came to Stoke Moran.\"\n\n\"My dear Holmes!\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, I did. You remember in her statement she said that her sister could smell Dr. Roylott's cigar. Now, of course that suggested at once that there must be a communication between the two rooms. It could only be a small one, or it would have been remarked upon at the coroner's inquiry. I deduced a ventilator.\"\n\n\"But what harm can there be in that?\"\n\n\"Well, there is at least a curious coincidence of dates. A ventilator is made, a cord is hung, and a lady who sleeps in the bed dies. Does not that strike you?\"\n\n\"I cannot as yet see any connection.\"\n\n\"Did you observe anything very peculiar about that bed?\"\n\n\"It was clamped to the floor. Did you ever see a bed fastened like that before?\"\n\n\"I cannot say that I have.\"\n\n\"The lady could not move her bed. It must always be in the same relative position to the ventilator and to the rope\u2014or so we may call it, since it was clearly never meant for a bell-pull.\"\n\n\"Holmes,\" I cried, \"I seem to see dimly what you are hinting at. We are only just in time to prevent some subtle and horrible crime.\"\n\n\"Subtle enough and horrible enough. When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge. Palmer and Pritchard were among the heads of their profession. This man strikes even deeper, but I think, Watson, that we shall be able to strike deeper still. But we shall have horrors enough before the night is over; for goodness' sake let us have a quiet pipe and turn our minds for a few hours to something more cheerful.\"\n\nAbout nine o'clock the light among the trees was extinguished, and all was dark in the direction of the Manor House. Two hours passed slowly away, and then, suddenly, just at the stroke of eleven, a single bright light shone out right in front of us.\n\n\"That is our signal,\" said Holmes, springing to his feet; \"it comes from the middle window.\"\n\nAs we passed out he exchanged a few words with the landlord, explaining that we were going on a late visit to an acquaintance, and that it was possible that we might spend the night there. A moment later we were out on the dark road, a chill wind blowing in our faces, and one yellow light twinkling in front of us through the gloom to guide us on our sombre errand.\n\nThere was little difficulty in entering the grounds, for unrepaired breaches gaped in the old park wall. Making our way among the trees, we reached the lawn, crossed it, and were about to enter through the window when out from a clump of laurel bushes there darted what seemed to be a hideous and distorted child, who threw itself upon the grass with writhing limbs and then ran swiftly across the lawn into the darkness.\n\n\"My God!\" I whispered; \"did you see it?\"\n\nHolmes was for the moment as startled as I. His hand closed like a vise upon my wrist in his agitation. Then he broke into a low laugh and put his lips to my ear.\n\n\"It is a nice household,\" he murmured. \"That is the baboon.\"\n\nI had forgotten the strange pets which the doctor affected. There was a cheetah, too; perhaps we might find it upon our shoulders at any moment. I confess that I felt easier in my mind when, after following Holmes's example and slipping off my shoes, I found myself inside the bedroom. My companion noiselessly closed the shutters, moved the lamp onto the table, and cast his eyes round the room. All was as we had seen it in the daytime. Then creeping up to me and making a trumpet of his hand, he whispered into my ear again so gently that it was all that I could do to distinguish the words:\n\n\"The least sound would be fatal to our plans.\"\n\nI nodded to show that I had heard.\n\n\"We must sit without light. He would see it through the ventilator.\"\n\nI nodded again.\n\n\"Do not go asleep; your very life may depend upon it. Have your pistol ready in case we should need it. I will sit on the side of the bed, and you in that chair.\"\n\nI took out my revolver and laid it on the corner of the table.\n\nHolmes had brought up a long thin cane, and this he placed upon the bed beside him. By it he laid the box of matches and the stump of a candle. Then he turned down the lamp, and we were left in darkness.\n\nHow shall I ever forget that dreadful vigil? I could not hear a sound, not even the drawing of a breath, and yet I knew that my companion sat open-eyed, within a few feet of me, in the same state of nervous tension in which I was myself. The shutters cut off the least ray of light, and we waited in absolute darkness. From outside came the occasional cry of a night-bird, and once at our very window a long drawn catlike whine, which told us that the cheetah was indeed at liberty. Far away we could hear the deep tones of the parish clock, which boomed out every quarter of an hour. How long they seemed, those quarters! Twelve struck; and one and two and three, and still we sat waiting silently for whatever might befall.\n\nSuddenly there was the momentary gleam of a light up in the direction of the ventilator, which vanished immediately, but was succeeded by a strong smell of burning oil and heated metal. Someone in the next room had lit a dark-lantern. I heard a gentle sound of movement, and then all was silent once more, though the smell grew stronger. For half an hour I sat with straining ears. Then suddenly another sound became audible\u2014a very gentle, soothing sound, like that of a small jet of steam escaping continually from a kettle. The instant that we heard it, Holmes sprang from the bed, struck a match, and lashed furiously with his cane at the bell-pull.\n\n\"You see it, Watson?\" he yelled. \"You see it?\"\n\nBut I saw nothing. At the moment when Holmes struck the light I heard a low, clear whistle, but the sudden glare flashing into my weary eyes made it impossible for me to tell what it was at which my friend lashed so savagely. I could, however, see that his face was deadly pale and filled with horror and loathing.\n\nHe had ceased to strike and was gazing up at the ventilator when suddenly there broke from the silence of the night the most horrible cry to which I have ever listened. It swelled up louder and louder, a hoarse yell of pain and fear and anger all mingled in the one dreadful shriek. They say that away down in the village, and even in the distant parsonage, that cry raised the sleepers from their beds. It struck cold to our hearts, and I stood gazing at Holmes, and he at me, until the last echoes of it had died away into the silence from which it rose.\n\n\"What can it mean?\" I gasped.\n\n\"It means that it is all over,\" Holmes answered. \"And perhaps, after all, it is for the best. Take your pistol, and we will enter Dr. Roylott's room.\"\n\nWith a grave face he lit the lamp and led the way down the corridor. Twice he struck at the chamber door without any reply from within. Then he turned the handle and entered, I at his heels, with the cocked pistol in my hand.\n\nIt was a singular sight which met our eyes. On the table stood a dark-lantern with the shutter half open, throwing a brilliant beam of light upon the iron safe, the door of which was ajar. Beside this table, on the wooden chair, sat Dr. Grimesby Roylott, clad in a long gray dressing-gown, his bare ankles protruding beneath, and his feet thrust into red heelless Turkish slippers. Across his lap lay the short stock with the long lash which we had noticed during the day. His chin was cocked upward and his eyes were fixed in a dreadful, rigid stare at the corner of the ceiling. Round his brow he had a peculiar yellow band, with brownish speckles, which seemed to be bound tightly round his head. As we entered he made neither sound nor motion.\n\n\"The band! the speckled band!\" whispered Holmes.\n\nI took a step forward. In an instant his strange headgear began to move, and there reared itself from among his hair the squat diamond-shaped head and puffed neck of a loathsome serpent.\n\n\"It is a swamp adder!\" cried Holmes; \"the deadliest snake in India. He has died within ten seconds of being bitten. Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another. Let us thrust this creature back into its den, and we can then remove Miss Stoner to some place of shelter and let the county police know what has happened.\"\n\nAs he spoke he drew the dog-whip swiftly from the dead man's lap, and throwing the noose round the reptile's neck he drew it from its horrid perch and, carrying it at arm's length, threw it into the iron safe, which he closed upon it.\n\nSuch are the true facts of the death of Dr. Grimesby Roylott, of Stoke Moran. It is not necessary that I should prolong a narrative which has already run to too great a length by telling how we broke the sad news to the terrified girl, how we conveyed her by the morning train to the care of her good aunt at Harrow, of how the slow process of official inquiry came to the conclusion that the doctor met his fate while indiscreetly playing with a dangerous pet. The little which I had yet to learn of the case was told me by Sherlock Holmes as we travelled back next day.\n\n\"I had,\" said he, \"come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data. The presence of the gypsies, and the use of the word 'band,' which was used by the poor girl, no doubt to explain the appearance which she had caught a hurried glimpse of by the light of her match, were sufficient to put me upon an entirely wrong scent. I can only claim the merit that I instantly reconsidered my position when, however, it became clear to me that whatever danger threatened the occupant of the room could not come either from the window or the door. My attention was speedily drawn, as I have already remarked to you, to this ventilator, and to the bell-rope which hung down to the bed. The discovery that this was a dummy, and that the bed was clamped to the floor, instantly gave rise to the suspicion that the rope was there as a bridge for something passing through the hole and coming to the bed. The idea of a snake instantly occurredto me, and when I coupled it with my knowledge that the doctor was furnished with a supply of creatures from India, I felt that I was probably on the right track. The idea of using a form of poison which could not possibly be discovered by any chemical test was just such a one as would occur to a clever and ruthless man who had had an Eastern training. The rapidity with which such a poison would take effect would also, from his point of view, be an advantage. It would be a sharp-eyed coroner, indeed, who could distinguish the two little dark punctures which would show where the poison fangs had done their work. Then I thought of the whistle. Of course he must recall the snake before the morning light revealed it to the victim. He had trained it, probably by the use of the milk which we saw, to return to him when summoned. He would put it through this ventilator at the hour that he thought best, with the certainty that it would crawl down the rope and land on the bed. It might or might not bite the occupant, perhaps she might escape every night for a week, but sooner or later she must fall a victim.\n\n\"I had come to these conclusions before ever I had entered his room. An inspection of his chair showed me that he had been in the habit of standing on it, which of course would be necessary in order that he should reach the ventilator. The sight of the safe, the saucer of milk, and the loop of whipcord were enough to finally dispel any doubts which may have remained. The metallic clang heard by Miss Stoner was obviously caused by her stepfather hastily closing the door of his safe upon its terrible occupant. Having once made up my mind, you know the steps which I took in order to put the matter to the proof. I heard the creature hiss as I have no doubt that you did also, and I instantly lit the light and attacked it.\"\n\n\"With the result of driving it through the ventilator.\"\n\n\"And also with the result of causing it to turn upon its master at the other side. Some of the blows of my cane came home and roused its snakish temper, so that it flew upon the first person it saw. In this way I am no doubt indirectly responsible for Dr. Grimesby Roylott's death, and I cannot say that it is likely to weigh very heavily upon my conscience.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE ENGINEER'S THUMB", + "text": "Of all the problems which have been submitted to my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, for solution during the years of our intimacy, there were only two which I was the means of introducing to his notice\u2014that of Mr. Hatherley's thumb, and that of Colonel Warburton's madness. Of these the latter may have afforded a finer field for an acute and original observer, but the other was so strange in its inception and so dramatic in its details that it may be the more worthy of being placed upon record, even if it gave my friend fewer openings for those deductive methods of reasoning by which he achieved such remarkable results. The story has, I believe, been told more than once in the newspapers, but, like all such narratives, its effect is much less striking when set forth en bloc in a single half-column of print than when the facts slowly evolve before your own eyes, and the mystery clears gradually away as each new discovery furnishes a step which leads on to the complete truth. At the time the circumstances made a deep impression upon me, and the lapse of two years has hardly served to weaken the effect.\n\nIt was in the summer of '89, not long after my marriage, that the events occurred which I am now about to summarize. I had returned to civil practice and had finally abandoned Holmes in his Baker Street rooms, although I continually visited him and occasionally even persuaded him to forgo his Bohemian habits so far as to come and visit us. My practice had steadily increased, and as I happened to live at no very great distance from Paddington Station, I got a few patients from among the officials. One of these, whom I had cured of a painful and lingering disease, was never weary of advertising my virtues and of endeavouring to send me on every sufferer over whom he might have any influence.\n\nOne morning, at a little before seven o'clock, I was awakened by the maid tapping at the door to announce that two men had come from Paddington and were waiting in the consulting-room. I dressed hurriedly, for I knew by experience that railway cases were seldom trivial, and hastened downstairs. As I descended, my old ally, the guard, came out of the room and closed the door tightly behind him.\n\n\"I've got him here,\" he whispered, jerking his thumb over his shoulder; \"he's all right.\"\n\n\"What is it, then?\" I asked, for his manner suggested that it was some strange creature which he had caged up in my room.\n\n\"It's a new patient,\" he whispered. \"I thought I'd bring him round myself; then he couldn't slip away. There he is, all safe and sound. I must go now, Doctor; I have my dooties, just the same as you.\" And off he went, this trusty tout, without even giving me time to thank him.\n\nI entered my consulting-room and found a gentleman seated by the table. He was quietly dressed in a suit of heather tweed, with a soft cloth cap which he had laid down upon my books. Round one of his hands he had a handkerchief wrapped, which was mottled all over with bloodstains. He was young, not more than five-and-twenty, I should say, with a strong, masculine face; but he was exceedingly pale and gave me the impression of a man who was suffering from some strong agitation, which it took all his strength of mind to control.\n\n\"I am sorry to knock you up so early, Doctor,\" said he, \"but I have had a very serious accident during the night. I came in by train this morning, and on inquiring at Paddington as to where I might find a doctor, a worthy fellow very kindly escorted me here. I gave the maid a card, but I see that she has left it upon the side-table.\"\n\nI took it up and glanced at it. \"Mr. Victor Hatherley, hydraulic engineer, 16A, Victoria Street (3d floor).\" That was the name, style, and abode of my morning visitor. \"I regret that I have kept you waiting,\" said I, sitting down in my library-chair. \"You are fresh from a night journey, I understand, which is in itself a monotonous occupation.\"\n\n\"Oh, my night could not be called monotonous,\" said he, and laughed. He laughed very heartily, with a high, ringing note, leaning back in his chair and shaking his sides. All my medical instincts rose up against that laugh.\n\n\"Stop it!\" I cried; \"pull yourself together!\" and I poured out some water from a carafe.\n\nIt was useless, however. He was off in one of those hysterical outbursts which come upon a strong nature when some great crisis is over and gone. Presently he came to himself once more, very weary and pale-looking.\n\n\"I have been making a fool of myself,\" he gasped.\n\n\"Not at all. Drink this.\" I dashed some brandy into the water, and the colour began to come back to his bloodless cheeks.\n\n\"That's better!\" said he. \"And now, Doctor, perhaps you would kindly attend to my thumb, or rather to the place where my thumb used to be.\"\n\nHe unwound the handkerchief and held out his hand. It gave even my hardened nerves a shudder to look at it. There were four protruding fingers and a horrid red, spongy surface where the thumb should have been. It had been hacked or torn right out from the roots.\n\n\"Good heavens!\" I cried, \"this is a terrible injury. It must have bled considerably.\"\n\n\"Yes, it did. I fainted, when it was done, and I think that I must have been senseless for a long time. When I came to I found that it was still bleeding, so I tied one end of my handkerchief very tightly round the wrist and braced it up with a twig.\"\n\n\"Excellent! You should have been a surgeon.\"\n\n\"It is a question of hydraulics, you see, and came within my own province.\"\n\n\"This has been done,\" said I, examining the wound, \"by a very heavy and sharp instrument.\"\n\n\"A thing like a cleaver,\" said he.\n\n\"An accident, I presume?\"\n\n\"By no means.\"\n\n\"What! a murderous attack?\"\n\n\"Very murderous indeed.\"\n\n\"You horrify me.\"\n\nI sponged the wound, cleaned it, dressed it, and finally covered it over with cotton wadding and carbolized bandages. He lay back without wincing, though he bit his lip from time to time.\n\n\"How is that?\" I asked when I had finished.\n\n\"Capital! Between your brandy and your bandage, I feel a new man. I was very weak, but I have had a good deal to go through.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you had better not speak of the matter. It is evidently trying to your nerves.\"\n\n\"Oh, no, not now. I shall have to tell my tale to the police; but, between ourselves, if it were not for the convincing evidence of this wound of mine, I should be surprised if they believed my statement; for it is a very extraordinary one, and I have not much in the way of proof with which to back it up; and, even if they believe me, the clues which I can give them are so vague that it is a question whether justice will be done.\"\n\n\"Ha!\" cried I, \"if it is anything in the nature of a problem which you desire to see solved, I should strongly recommend you to come to my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, before you go to the official police.\"\n\n\"Oh, I have heard of that fellow,\" answered my visitor, \"and I should be very glad if he would take the matter up, though of course I must use the official police as well. Would you give me an introduction to him?\"\n\n\"I'll do better. I'll take you round to him myself.\"\n\n\"I should be immensely obliged to you.\"\n\n\"We'll call a cab and go together. We shall just be in time to have a little breakfast with him. Do you feel equal to it?\"\n\n\"Yes; I shall not feel easy until I have told my story.\"\n\n\"Then my servant will call a cab, and I shall be with you in an instant.\" I rushed upstairs, explained the matter shortly to my wife, and in five minutes was inside a hansom, driving with my new acquaintance to Baker Street.\n\nSherlock Holmes was, as I expected, lounging about his sitting-room in his dressing-gown, reading the agony column of The Times and smoking his before-breakfast pipe, which was composed of all the plugs and dottles left from his smokes of the day before, all carefully dried and collected on the corner of the mantelpiece. He received us in his quietly genial fashion, ordered fresh rashers and eggs, and joined us in a hearty meal. When it was concluded he settled our new acquaintance upon the sofa, placed a pillow beneath his head, and laid a glass of brandy and water within his reach.\n\n\"It is easy to see that your experience has been no common one, Mr. Hatherley,\" said he. \"Pray, lie down there and make yourself absolutely at home. Tell us what you can, but stop when you are tired and keep up your strength with a little stimulant.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" said my patient, \"but I have felt another man since the doctor bandaged me, and I think that your breakfast has completed the cure. I shall take up as little of your valuable time as possible, so I shall start at once upon my peculiar experiences.\"\n\nHolmes sat in his big armchair with the weary, heavy-lidded expression which veiled his keen and eager nature, while I sat opposite to him, and we listened in silence to the strange story which our visitor detailed to us.\n\n\"You must know,\" said he, \"that I am an orphan and a bachelor, residing alone in lodgings in London. By profession I am a hydraulic engineer, and I have had considerable experience of my work during the seven years that I was apprenticed to Venner & Matheson, the well-known firm, of Greenwich. Two years ago, having served my time, and having also come into a fair sum of money through my poor father's death, I determined to start in business for myself and took professional chambers in Victoria Street.\n\n\"I suppose that everyone finds his first independent start in business a dreary experience. To me it has been exceptionally so. During two years I have had three consultations and one small job, and that is absolutely all that my profession has brought me. My gross takings amount to \u00a327 l0s. Every day, from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon, I waited in my little den, until at last my heart began to sink, and I came to believe that I should never have any practice at all.\n\n\"Yesterday, however, just as I was thinking of leaving the office, my clerk entered to say there was a gentleman waiting who wished to see me upon business. He brought up a card, too, with the name of 'Colonel Lysander Stark' engraved upon it. Close at his heels came the colonel himself, a man rather over the middle size, but of an exceeding thinness. I do not think that I have ever seen so thin a man. His whole face sharpened away into nose and chin, and the skin of his cheeks was drawn quite tense over his outstanding bones. Yet this emaciation seemed to be his natural habit, and due to no disease, for his eye was bright, his step brisk, and his bearing assured. He was plainly but neatly dressed, and his age, I should judge, would be nearer forty than thirty.\n\n\"'Mr. Hatherley?' said he, with something of a German accent. 'You have been recommended to me, Mr. Hatherley, as being a man who is not only proficient in his profession but is also discreet and capable of preserving a secret.'\n\n\"I bowed, feeling as flattered as any young man would at such an address. 'May I ask who it was who gave me so good a character?'\n\n\"'Well, perhaps it is better that I should not tell you that just at this moment. I have it from the same source that you are both an orphan and a bachelor and are residing alone in London.'\n\n\"'That is quite correct,' I answered; 'but you will excuse me if I say that I cannot see how all this bears upon my professional qualifications. I understand that it was on a professional matter that you wished to speak to me?'\n\n\"'Undoubtedly so. But you will find that all I say is really to the point. I have a professional commission for you, but absolute secrecy is quite essential\u2014absolute secrecy, you understand, and of course we may expect that more from a man who is alone than from one who lives in the bosom of his family.'\n\n\"'If I promise to keep a secret,' said I, 'you may absolutely depend upon my doing so.'\n\n\"He looked very hard at me as I spoke, and it seemed to me that I had never seen so suspicious and questioning an eye.\n\n\"'Do you promise, then?' said he at last.\n\n\"'Yes, I promise.'\n\n\"'Absolute and complete silence before, during, and after? No reference to the matter at all, either in word or writing?'\n\n\"'I have already given you my word.'\n\n\"'Very good.' He suddenly sprang up, and darting like lightning across the room he flung open the door. The passage outside was empty.\n\n\"'That's all right,' said he, coming back. 'I know the clerks are sometimes curious as to their master's affairs. Now we can talk in safety.' He drew up his chair very close to mine and began to stare at me again with the same questioning and thoughtful look.\n\n\"A feeling of repulsion, and of something akin to fear had begun to rise within me at the strange antics of this fleshless man. Even my dread of losing a client could not restrain me from showing my impatience.\n\n\"'I beg that you will state your business, sir,' said I; 'my time is of value.' Heaven forgive me for that last sentence, but the words came to my lips.\n\n\"'How would fifty guineas for a night's work suit you?' he asked.\n\n\"'Most admirably.'\n\n\"'I say a night's work, but an hour's would be nearer the mark. I simply want your opinion about a hydraulic stamping machine which has got out of gear. If you show us what is wrong we shall soon set it right ourselves. What do you think of such a commission as that?'\n\n\"'The work appears to be light and the pay munificent.'\n\n\"'Precisely so. We shall want you to come to-night by the last train.'\n\n\"'Where to?'\n\n\"'To Eyford, in Berkshire. It is a little place near the borders of Oxfordshire, and within seven miles of Reading. There is a train from Paddington which would bring you there at about 11:15.'\n\n\"'Very good.'\n\n\"'I shall come down in a carriage to meet you.'\n\n\"'There is a drive, then?'\n\n\"'Yes, our little place is quite out in the country. It is a good seven miles from Eyford Station.'\n\n\"'Then we can hardly get there before midnight. I suppose there would be no chance of a train back. I should be compelled to stop the night.'\n\n\"'Yes, we could easily give you a shake-down.'\n\n\"'That is very awkward. Could I not come at some more convenient hour?'\n\n\"'We have judged it best that you should come late. It is to recompense you for any inconvenience that we are paying to you, a young and unknown man, a fee which would buy an opinion from the very heads of your profession. Still, of course, if you would like to draw out of the business, there is plenty of time to do so.'\n\n\"I thought of the fifty guineas, and of how very useful they would be to me. 'Not at all,' said I, 'I shall be very happy to accommodate myself to your wishes. I should like, however, to understand a little more clearly what it is that you wish me to do.'\n\n\"'Quite so. It is very natural that the pledge of secrecy which we have exacted from you should have aroused your curiosity. I have no wish to commit you to anything without your having it all laid before you. I suppose that we are absolutely safe from eavesdroppers?'\n\n\"'Entirely.'\n\n\"'Then the matter stands thus. You are probably aware that fuller's-earth is a valuable product, and that it is only found in one or two places in England?'\n\n\"'I have heard so.'\n\n\"'Some little time ago I bought a small place\u2014a very small place\u2014within ten miles of Reading. I was fortunate enough to discover that there was a deposit of fuller's-earth in one of my fields. On examining it, however, I found that this deposit was a comparatively small one, and that it formed a link between two very much larger ones upon the right and left\u2014both of them, however, in the grounds of my neighbours. These good people were absolutely ignorant that their land contained that which was quite as valuable as a gold-mine. Naturally, it was to my interest to buy their land before they discovered its true value, but unfortunately I had no capital by which I could do this. I took a few of my friends into the secret, however, and they suggested that we should quietly and secretly work our own little deposit, and that in this way we should earn the money which would enable us to buy the neighbouring fields. This we have now been doing for some time, and in order to help us in our operations we erected a hydraulic press. This press, as I have already explained, has got out of order, and we wish your advice upon the subject. We guard our secret very jealously, however, and if it once became known that we had hydraulic engineers coming to our little house, it would soon rouse inquiry, and then, if the facts came out, it would be good-bye to any chance of getting these fields and carrying out our plans. That is why I have made you promise me that you will not tell a human being that you are going to Eyford to-night. I hope that I make it all plain?'\n\n\"'I quite follow you,' said I. 'The only point which I could not quite understand was what use you could make of a hydraulic press in excavating fuller's-earth, which, as I understand, is dug out like gravel from a pit.'\n\n\"'Ah!' said he carelessly, 'we have our own process. We compress the earth into bricks, so as to remove them without revealing what they are. But that is a mere detail. I have taken you fully into my confidence now, Mr. Hatherley, and I have shown you how I trust you.' He rose as he spoke. 'I shall expect you, then, at Eyford at 11:15.'\n\n\"'I shall certainly be there.'\n\n\"'And not a word to a soul.' He looked at me with a last, long, questioning gaze, and then, pressing my hand in a cold, dank grasp, he hurried from the room.\n\n\"Well, when I came to think it all over in cool blood I was very much astonished, as you may both think, at this sudden commission which had been intrusted to me. On the one hand, of course, I was glad, for the fee was at least tenfold what I should have asked had I set a price upon my own services, and it was possible that this order might lead to other ones. On the other hand, the face and manner of my patron had made an unpleasant impression upon me, and I could not think that his explanation of the fuller's-earth was sufficient to explain the necessity for my coming at midnight, and his extreme anxiety lest I should tell anyone of my errand. However, I threw all fears to the winds, ate a hearty supper, drove to Paddington, and started off, having obeyed to the letter the injunction as to holding my tongue.\n\n\"At Reading I had to change not only my carriage but my station. However, I was in time for the last train to Eyford, and I reached the little dim-lit station after eleven o'clock. I was the only passenger who got out there, and there was no one upon the platform save a single sleepy porter with a lantern. As I passed out through the wicket gate, however. I found my acquaintance of the morning waiting in the shadow upon the other side. Without a word he grasped my arm and hurried me into a carriage, the door of which was standing open. He drew up the windows on either side, tapped on the wood-work, and away we went as fast as the horse could go.\"\n\n\"One horse?\" interjected Holmes.\n\n\"Yes, only one.\"\n\n\"Did you observe the colour?\"\n\n\"Yes, I saw it by the side-lights when I was stepping into the carriage. It was a chestnut.\"\n\n\"Tired-looking or fresh?\"\n\n\"Oh, fresh and glossy.\"\n\n\"Thank you. I am sorry to have interrupted you. Pray continue your most interesting statement.\"\n\n\"Away we went then, and we drove for at least an hour. Colonel Lysander Stark had said that it was only seven miles, but I should think, from the rate that we seemed to go, and from the time that we took, that it must have been nearer twelve. He sat at my side in silence all the time, and I was aware, more than once when I glanced in his direction, that he was looking at me with great intensity. The country roads seem to be not very good in that part of the world, for we lurched and jolted terribly. I tried to look out of the windows to see something of where we were, but they were made of frosted glass, and I could make out nothing save the occasional bright blur of a passing light. Now and then I hazarded some remark to break the monotony of the journey, but the colonel answered only in monosyllables, and the conversation soon flagged. At last, however, the bumping of the road was exchanged for the crisp smoothness of a gravel-drive, and the carriage came to a stand. Colonel Lysander Stark sprang out, and, as I followed after him, pulled me swiftly into a porch which gaped in front of us. We stepped, as it were, right out of the carriage and into the hall, so that I failed to catch the most fleeting glance of the front of the house. The instant that I had crossed the threshold the door slammed heavily behind us, and I heard faintly the rattle of the wheels as the carriage drove away.\n\n\"It was pitch dark inside the house, and the colonel fumbled about looking for matches and muttering under his breath. Suddenly a door opened at the other end of the passage, and a long, golden bar of light shot out in our direction. It grew broader, and a woman appeared with a lamp in her hand, which she held above her head, pushing her face forward and peering at us. I could see that she was pretty, and from the gloss with which the light shone upon her dark dress I knew that it was a rich material. She spoke a few words in a foreign tongue in a tone as though asking a question, and when my companion answered in a gruff monosyllable she gave such a start that the lamp nearly fell from her hand. Colonel Stark went up to her, whispered something in her ear, and then, pushing her back into the room from whence she had come, he walked towards me again with the lamp in his hand.\n\n\"'Perhaps you will have the kindness to wait in this room for a few minutes,' said he, throwing open another door. It was a quiet, little, plainly furnished room, with a round table in the centre, on which several German books were scattered. Colonel Stark laid down the lamp on the top of a harmonium beside the door. 'I shall not keep you waiting an instant, ' said he, and vanished into the darkness.\n\n\"I glanced at the books upon the table, and in spite of my ignorance of German I could see that two of them were treatises on science, the others being volumes of poetry. Then I walked across to the window, hoping that I might catch some glimpse of the country-side, but an oak shutter, heavily barred, was folded across it. It was a wonderfully silent house. There was an old clock ticking loudly somewhere in the passage, but otherwise everything was deadly still. A vague feeling of uneasiness began to steal over me. Who were these German people, and what were they doing living in this strange, out-of-the-way place? And where was the place? I was ten miles or so from Eyford, that was all I knew, but whether north, south, east, or west I had no idea. For that matter, Reading, and possibly other large towns, were within that radius, so the place might not be so secluded, after all. Yet it was quite certain, from the absolute stillness, that we were in the country. I paced up and down the room, humming a tune under my breath to keep up my spirits and feeling that I was thoroughly earning my fifty-guinea fee.\n\n\"Suddenly, without any preliminary sound in the midst of the utter stillness, the door of my room swung slowly open. The woman was standing in the aperture, the darkness of the hall behind her, the yellow light from my lamp beating upon her eager and beautiful face. I could see at a glance that she was sick with fear, and the sight sent a chill to my own heart. She held up one shaking finger to warn me to be silent, and she shot a few whispered words of broken English at me, her eyes glancing back, like those of a frightened horse, into the gloom behind her.\n\n\"'I would go,' said she, trying hard, as it seemed to me, to speak calmly; 'I would go. I should not stay here. There is no good for you to do.'\n\n\"'But, madam,' said I, 'I have not yet done what I came for. I cannot possibly leave until I have seen the machine.'\n\n\"'It is not worth your while to wait,' she went on. 'You can pass through the door; no one hinders.' And then, seeing that I smiled and shook my head, she suddenly threw aside her constraint and made a step forward, with her hands wrung together. 'For the love of Heaven!' she whispered, 'get away from here before it is too late!'\n\n\"But I am somewhat headstrong by nature, and the more ready to engage in an affair when there is some obstacle in the way. I thought of my fifty-guinea fee, of my wearisome journey, and of the unpleasant night which seemed to be before me. Was it all to go for nothing? Why should I slink away without having carried out my commission, and without the payment which was my due? This woman might, for all I knew, be a monomaniac. With a stout bearing, therefore, though her manner had shaken me more than I cared to confess, I still shook my head and declared my intention of remaining where I was. She was about to renew her entreaties when a door slammed overhead, and the sound of several footsteps was heard upon the stairs. She listened for an instant, threw up her hands with a despairing gesture, and vanished as suddenly and as noiselessly as she had come.\n\n\"The newcomers were Colonel Lysander Stark and a short thick man with a chinchilla beard growing out of the creases of his double chin, who was introduced to me as Mr. Ferguson.\n\n\"'This is my secretary and manager,' said the colonel. 'By the way, I was under the impression that I left this door shut just now. I fear that you have felt the draught.'\n\n\"'On the contrary,' said I, 'I opened the door myself because I felt the room to be a little close.'\n\n\"He shot one of his suspicious looks at me. 'Perhaps we had better proceed to business, then,' said he. 'Mr. Ferguson and I will take you up to see the machine.'\n\n\"'I had better put my hat on, I suppose.'\n\n\"'Oh, no, it is in the house.'\n\n\"'What, you dig fuller's-earth in the house?'\n\n\"'No, no. This is only where we compress it. But never mind that. All we wish you to do is to examine the machine and to let us know what is wrong with it.'\n\n\"We went upstairs together, the colonel first with the lamp, the fat manager and I behind him. It was a labyrinth of an old house, with corridors, passages, narrow winding staircases, and little low doors, the thresholds of which were hollowed out by the generations who had crossed them. There were no carpets and no signs of any furniture above the ground floor, while the plaster was peeling off the walls, and the damp was breaking through in green, unhealthy blotches. I tried to put on as unconcerned an air as possible, but I had not forgotten the warnings of the lady, even though I disregarded them, and I kept a keen eye upon my two companions. Ferguson appeared to be a morose and silent man, but I could see from the little that he said that he was at least a fellow-countryman.\n\n\"Colonel Lysander Stark stopped at last before a low door, which he unlocked. Within was a small, square room, in which the three of us could hardly get at one time. Ferguson remained outside, and the colonel ushered me in.\n\n\"'We are now,' said he, 'actually within the hydraulic press, and it would be a particularly unpleasant thing for us if anyone were to turn it on. The ceiling of this small chamber is really the end of the descending piston, and it comes down with the force of many tons upon this metal floor. There are small lateral columns of water outside which receive the force, and which transmit and multiply it in the manner which is familiar to you. The machine goes readily enough, but there is some stiffness in the working of it, and it has lost a little of its force. Perhaps you will have the goodness to look it over and, to show us how we can set it right.'\n\n\"I took the lamp from him, and I examined the machine very thoroughly. It was indeed a gigantic one, and capable of exercising enormous pressure. When I passed outside, however, and pressed down the levers which controlled it, I knew at once by the whishing sound that there was a slight leakage, which allowed a regurgitation of water through one of the side cylinders. An examination showed that one of the india-rubber bands which was round the head of a driving-rod had shrunk so as not quite to fill the socket along which it worked. This was clearly the cause of the loss of power, and I pointed it out to my companions, who followed my remarks very carefully and asked several practical questions as to how they should proceed to set it right. When I had made it clear to them, I returned to the main chamber of the machine and took a good look at it to satisfy my own curiosity. It was obvious at a glance that the story of the fuller's-earth was the merest fabrication, for it would be absurd to suppose that so powerful an engine could be designed for so inadequate a purpose. The walls were of wood, but the floor consisted of a large iron trough, and when I came to examine it I could see a crust of metallic deposit all over it. I had stooped and was scraping at this to see exactly what it was when I heard a muttered exclamation in German and saw the cadaverous face of the colonel looking down at me.\n\n\"'What are you doing there?' he asked.\n\n\"I felt angry at having been tricked by so elaborate a story as that which he had told me. 'I was admiring your fuller's-earth,' said I; 'I think that I should be better able to advise you as to your machine if I knew what the exact purpose was for which it was used.'\n\n\"The instant that I uttered the words I regretted the rashness of my speech. His face set hard, and a baleful light sprang up in his gray eyes.\n\n\"'Very well,' said he, 'you shall know all about the machine.' He took a step backward, slammed the little door, and turned the key in the lock. I rushed towards it and pulled at the handle, but it was quite secure, and did not give in the least to my kicks and shoves. 'Hello!' I yelled. 'Hello! Colonel! Let me out!'\n\n\"And then suddenly in the silence I heard a sound which sent my heart into my mouth. It was the clank of the levers and the swish of the leaking cylinder. He had set the engine at work. The lamp still stood upon the floor where I had placed it when examining the trough. By its light I saw that the black ceiling was coming down upon me, slowly, jerkily, but, as none knew better than myself, with a force which must within a minute grind me to a shapeless pulp. I threw myself, screaming, against the door, and dragged with my nails at the lock. I implored the colonel to let me out, but the remorseless clanking of the levers drowned my cries. The ceiling was only a foot or two above my head, and with my hand upraised I could feel its hard, rough surface. Then it flashed through my mind that the pain of my death would depend very much upon the position in which I met it. If I lay on my face the weight would come upon my spine, and I shuddered to think of that dreadful snap. Easier the other way, perhaps; and yet, had I the nerve to lie and look up at that deadly black shadow wavering down upon me? Already I was unable to stand erect, when my eye caught something which brought a gush of hope back to my heart.\n\n\"I have said that though the floor and ceiling were of iron, the walls were of wood. As I gave a last hurried glance around, I saw a thin line of yellow light between two of the boards, which broadened and broadened as a small panel was pushed backward. For an instant I could hardly believe that here was indeed a door which led away from death. The next instant I threw myself through, and lay half-fainting upon the other side. The panel had closed again behind me, but the crash of the lamp, and a few moments afterwards the clang of the two slabs of metal, told me how narrow had been my escape.\n\n\"I was recalled to myself by a frantic plucking at my wrist, and I found myself lying upon the stone floor of a narrow corridor, while a woman bent over me and tugged at me with her left hand, while she held a candle in her right. It was the same good friend whose warning I had so foolishly rejected.\n\n\"'Come! come!' she cried breathlessly. 'They will be here in a moment. They will see that you are not there. Oh, do not waste the so-precious time, but come!'\n\n\"This time, at least, I did not scorn her advice. I staggered to my feet and ran with her along the corridor and down a winding stair. The latter led to another broad passage, and just as we reached it we heard the sound of running feet and the shouting of two voices, one answering the other from the floor on which we were and from the one beneath. My guide stopped and looked about her like one who is at her wit's end. Then she threw open a door which led into a bedroom, through the window of which the moon was shining brightly.\n\n\"'It is your only chance,' said she. 'It is high, but it may be that you can jump it.'\n\n\"As she spoke a light sprang into view at the further end of the passage, and I saw the lean figure of Colonel Lysander Stark rushing forward with a lantern in one hand and a weapon like a butcher's cleaver in the other. I rushed across the bedroom, flung open the window, and looked out. How quiet and sweet and wholesome the garden looked in the moonlight, and it could not be more than thirty feet down. I clambered out upon the sill, but I hesitated to jump until I should have heard what passed between my saviour and the ruffian who pursued me. If she were ill-used, then at any risks I was determined to go back to her assistance. The thought had hardly flashed through my mind before he was at the door, pushing his way past her; but she threw her arms round him and tried to hold him back.\n\n\"'Fritz! Fritz!' she cried in English, 'remember your promise after the last time. You said it should not be again. He will be silent! Oh, he will be silent!'\n\n\"'You are mad, Elise!' he shouted, struggling to break away from her. 'You will be the ruin of us. He has seen too much. Let me pass, I say!' He dashed her to one side, and, rushing to the window, cut at me with his heavy weapon. I had let myself go, and was hanging by the hands to the sill, when his blow fell. I was conscious of a dull pain, my grip loosened, and I fell into the garden below.\n\n\"I was shaken but not hurt by the fall; so I picked myself up and rushed off among the bushes as hard as I could run, for I understood that I was far from being out of danger yet. Suddenly, however, as I ran, a deadly dizziness and sickness came over me. I glanced down at my hand, which was throbbing painfully, and then, for the first time, saw that my thumb had been cut off and that the blood was pouring from my wound. I endeavoured to tie my handkerchief round it, but there came a sudden buzzing in my ears, and next moment I fell in a dead faint among the rose-bushes.\n\n\"How long I remained unconscious I cannot tell. It must have been a very long time, for the moon had sunk, and a bright morning was breaking when I came to myself. My clothes were all sodden with dew, and my coat-sleeve was drenched with blood from my wounded thumb. The smarting of it recalled in an instant all the particulars of my night's adventure, and I sprang to my feet with the feeling that I might hardly yet be safe from my pursuers. But to my astonishment, when I came to look round me, neither house nor garden were to be seen. I had been lying in an angle of the hedge close by the highroad, and just a little lower down was a long building, which proved, upon my approaching it, to be the very station at which I had arrived upon the previous night. Were it not for the ugly wound upon my hand, all that had passed during those dreadful hours might have been an evil dream.\n\n\"Half dazed, I went into the station and asked about the morning train. There would be one to Reading in less than an hour. The same porter was on duty, I found, as had been there when I arrived. I inquired of him whether he had ever heard of Colonel Lysander Stark. The name was strange to him. Had he observed a carriage the night before waiting for me? No, he had not. Was there a police-station anywhere near? There was one about three miles off.\n\n\"It was too far for me to go, weak and ill as I was. I determined to wait until I got back to town before telling my story to the police. It was a little past six when I arrived, so I went first to have my wound dressed, and then the doctor was kind enough to bring me along here. I put the case into your hands and shall do exactly what you advise.\"\n\nWe both sat in silence for some little time after listening to this extraordinary narrative. Then Sherlock Holmes pulled down from the shelf one of the ponderous commonplace books in which he placed his cuttings.\n\n\"Here is an advertisement which will interest you,\" said he. \"It appeared in all the papers about a year ago. Listen to this: etc., etc. Ha! That represents the last time that the colonel needed to have his machine overhauled, I fancy.\"\n\n\"Lost, on the 9th inst., Mr. Jeremiah Hayling, aged twenty-six, a hydraulic engineer. Left his lodgings at ten o'clock at night, and has not been heard of since. Was dressed in\u2014\n\n\"Good heavens!\" cried my patient. \"Then that explains what the girl said.\"\n\n\"Undoubtedly. It is quite clear that the colonel was a cool and desperate man, who was absolutely determined that nothing should stand in the way of his little game, like those out-and-out pirates who will leave no survivor from a captured ship. Well, every moment now is precious, so if you feel equal to it we shall go down to Scotland Yard at once as a preliminary to starting for Eyford.\"\n\nSome three hours or so afterwards we were all in the train together, bound from Reading to the little Berkshire village. There were Sherlock Holmes, the hydraulic engineer, Inspector Bradstreet, of Scotland Yard, a plain-clothes man, and myself. Bradstreet had spread an ordnance map of the county out upon the seat and was busy with his compasses drawing a circle with Eyford for its centre.\n\n\"There you are,\" said he. \"That circle is drawn at a radius of ten miles from the village. The place we want must be somewhere near that line. You said ten miles, I think, sir.\"\n\n\"It was an hour's good drive.\"\n\n\"And you think that they brought you back all that way when you were unconscious?\"\n\n\"They must have done so. I have a confused memory, too, of having been lifted and conveyed somewhere.\"\n\n\"What I cannot understand,\" said I, \"is why they should have spared you when they found you lying fainting in the garden. Perhaps the villain was softened by the woman's entreaties.\"\n\n\"I hardly think that likely. I never saw a more inexorable face in my life.\"\n\n\"Oh, we shall soon clear up all that,\" said Bradstreet. \"Well, I have drawn my circle, and I only wish I knew at what point upon it the folk that we are in search of are to be found.\"\n\n\"I think I could lay my finger on it,\" said Holmes quietly.\n\n\"Really, now!\" cried the inspector, \"you have formed your opinion! Come, now, we shall see who agrees with you. I say it is south, for the country is more deserted there.\"\n\n\"And I say east,\" said my patient.\n\n\"I am for west,\" remarked the plain-clothes man. \"There are several quiet little villages up there.\"\n\n\"And I am for north,\" said I, \"because there are no hills there, and our friend says that he did not notice the carriage go up any.\"\n\n\"Come,\" cried the inspector, laughing; \"it's a very pretty diversity of opinion. We have boxed the compass among us. Who do you give your casting vote to?\"\n\n\"You are all wrong.\"\n\n\"But we can't all be.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, you can. This is my point.\" He placed his finger in the centre of the circle. \"This is where we shall find them.\"\n\n\"But the twelve-mile drive?\" gasped Hatherley.\n\n\"Six out and six back. Nothing simpler. You say yourself that the horse was fresh and glossy when you got in. How could it be that if it had gone twelve miles over heavy roads?\"\n\n\"Indeed, it is a likely ruse enough,\" observed Bradstreet thoughtfully. \"Of course there can be no doubt as to the nature of this gang.\"\n\n\"None at all,\" said Holmes. \"They are coiners on a large scale, and have used the machine to form the amalgam which has taken the place of silver.\"\n\n\"We have known for some time that a clever gang was at work,\" said the inspector. \"They have been turning out half-crowns by the thousand. We even traced them as far as Reading, but could get no farther, for they had covered their traces in a way that showed that they were very old hands. But now, thanks to this lucky chance, I think that we have got them right enough.\"\n\nBut the inspector was mistaken, for those criminals were not destined to fall into the hands of justice. As we rolled into Eyford Station we saw a gigantic column of smoke which streamed up from behind a small clump of trees in the neighbourhood and hung like an immense ostrich feather over the landscape.\n\n\"A house on fire?\" asked Bradstreet as the train steamed off again on its way.\n\n\"Yes, sir!\" said the station-master.\n\n\"When did it break out?\"\n\n\"I hear that it was during the night, sir, but it has got worse, and the whole place is in a blaze.\"\n\n\"Whose house is it?\"\n\n\"Dr. Becher's.\"\n\n\"Tell me,\" broke in the engineer, \"is Dr. Becher a German, very thin, with a long, sharp nose?\"\n\nThe station-master laughed heartily. \"No, sir, Dr. Becher is an Englishman, and there isn't a man in the parish who has a better-lined waistcoat. But he has a gentleman staying with him, a patient, as I understand, who is a foreigner, and he looks as if a little good Berkshire beef would do him no harm.\"\n\nThe station-master had not finished his speech before we were all hastening in the direction of the fire. The road topped a low hill, and there was a great widespread whitewashed building in front of us, spouting fire at every chink and window, while in the garden in front three fire-engines were vainly striving to keep the flames under.\n\n\"That's it!\" cried Hatherley, in intense excitement. \"There is the gravel-drive, and there are the rose-bushes where I lay. That second window is the one that I jumped from.\"\n\n\"Well, at least,\" said Holmes, \"you have had your revenge upon them. There can be no question that it was your oil-lamp which, when it was crushed in the press, set fire to the wooden walls, though no doubt they were too excited in the chase after you to observe it at the time. Now keep your eyes open in this crowd for your friends of last night, though I very much fear that they are a good hundred miles off by now.\"\n\nAnd Holmes's fears came to be realized, for from that day to this no word has ever been heard either of the beautiful woman, the sinister German, or the morose Englishman. Early that morning a peasant had met a cart containing several people and some very bulky boxes driving rapidly in the direction of Reading, but there all traces of the fugitives disappeared, and even Holmes's ingenuity failed ever to discover the least clue as to their whereabouts.\n\nThe firemen had been much perturbed at the strange arrangements which they had found within, and still more so by discovering a newly severed human thumb upon a window-sill of the second floor. About sunset, however, their efforts were at last successful, and they subdued the flames, but not before the roof had fallen in, and the whole place been reduced to such absolute ruin that, save some twisted cylinders and iron piping, not a trace remained of the machinery which had cost our unfortunate acquaintance so dearly. Large masses of nickel and of tin were discovered stored in an out-house, but no coins were to be found, which may have explained the presence of those bulky boxes which have been already referred to.\n\nHow our hydraulic engineer had been conveyed from the garden to the spot where he recovered his senses might have remained forever a mystery were it not for the soft mould, which told us a very plain tale. He had evidently been carried down by two persons, one of whom had remarkably small feet and the other unusually large ones. On the whole, it was most probable that the silent Englishman, being less bold or less murderous than his companion, had assisted the woman to bear the unconscious man out of the way of danger.\n\n\"Well,\" said our engineer ruefully as we took our seats to return once more to London, \"it has been a pretty business for me! I have lost my thumb and I have lost a fifty-guinea fee, and what have I gained?\"\n\n\"Experience,\" said Holmes, laughing. \"Indirectly it may be of value, you know; you have only to put it into words to gain the reputation of being excellent company for the remainder of your existence.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE NOBLE BACHELOR", + "text": "The Lord St. Simon marriage, and its curious termination, have long ceased to be a subject of interest in those exalted circles in which the unfortunate bridegroom moves. Fresh scandals have eclipsed it, and their more piquant details have drawn the gossips away from this four-year-old drama. As I have reason to believe, however, that the full facts have never been revealed to the general public, and as my friend Sherlock Holmes had a considerable share in clearing the matter up, I feel that no memoir of him would be complete without some little sketch of this remarkable episode.\n\nIt was a few weeks before my own marriage, during the days when I was still sharing rooms with Holmes in Baker Street, that he came home from an afternoon stroll to find a letter on the table waiting for him. I had remained indoors all day, for the weather had taken a sudden turn to rain, with high autumnal winds, and the Jezail bullet which I had brought back in one of my limbs as a relic of my Afghan campaign throbbed with dull persistence. With my body in one easy-chair and my legs upon another, I had surrounded myself with a cloud of newspapers until at last, saturated with the news of the day, I tossed them all aside and lay listless, watching the huge crest and monogram upon the envelope upon the table and wondering lazily who my friend's noble correspondent could be.\n\n\"Here is a very fashionable epistle,\" I remarked as he entered. \"Your morning letters, if I remember right, were from a fish-monger and a tide-waiter.\"\n\n\"Yes, my correspondence has certainly the charm of variety,\" he answered, smiling, \"and the humbler are usually the more interesting. This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie.\"\n\nHe broke the seal and glanced over the contents.\n\n\"Oh, come, it may prove to be something of interest, after all.\"\n\n\"Not social, then?\"\n\n\"No, distinctly professional.\"\n\n\"And from a noble client?\"\n\n\"One of the highest in England.\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, I congratulate you.\"\n\n\"I assure you, Watson, without affectation, that the status of my client is a matter of less moment to me than the interest of his case. It is just possible, however, that that also may not be wanting in this new investigation. You have been reading the papers diligently of late, have you not?\"\n\n\"It looks like it,\" said I ruefully, pointing to a huge bundle in the corner. \"I have had nothing else to do.\"\n\n\"It is fortunate, for you will perhaps be able to post me up. I read nothing except the criminal news and the agony column. The latter is always instructive. But if you have followed recent events so closely you must have read about Lord St. Simon and his wedding?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, with the deepest interest.\"\n\n\"That is well. The letter which I hold in my hand is from Lord St. Simon. I will read it to you, and in return you must turn over these papers and let me have whatever bears upon the matter. This is what he says:\n\n\u2002\"MY DEAR MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES:\n\n\u2002\"Lord Backwater tells me that I may place implicit reliance upon your judgment and discretion. I have determined, therefore, to call upon you and to consult you in reference to the very painful event which has occurred in connection with my wedding. Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, is acting already in the matter, but he assures me that he sees no objection to your cooperation, and that he even thinks that it might be of some assistance. I will call at four o'clock in the afternoon, and, should you have any other engagement at that time, I hope that you will postpone it, as this matter is of paramount importance.\n\n\u2002\"Yours faithfully,\n\n\u2002\"ST. SIMON.\n\n\"It is dated from Grosvenor Mansions, written with a quill pen, and the noble lord has had the misfortune to get a smear of ink upon the outer side of his right little finger,\" remarked Holmes as he folded up the epistle.\n\n\"He says four o'clock. It is three now. He will be here in an hour.\"\n\n\"Then I have just time, with your assistance, to get clear upon the subject. Turn over those papers and arrange the extracts in their order of time, while I take a glance as to who our client is.\" He picked a red-covered volume from a line of books of reference beside the mantelpiece. \"Here he is,\" said he, sitting down and flattening it out upon his knee. \"Lord Robert Walsingham de Vere St. Simon, second son of the Duke of Balmoral. Hum! Arms: Azure, three caltrops in chief over a fess sable. Born in 1846. He's forty-one years of age, which is mature for marriage. Was Under-Secretary for the colonies in a late administration. The Duke, his father, was at one time Secretary for Foreign Affairs. They inherit Plantagenet blood by direct descent, and Tudor on the distaff side. Ha! Well, there is nothing very instructive in all this. I think that I must turn to you, Watson, for something more solid.\"\n\n\"I have very little difficulty in finding what I want,\" said I, \"for the facts are quite recent, and the matter struck me as remarkable. I feared to refer them to you, however, as I knew that you had an inquiry on hand and that you disliked the intrusion of other matters.\"\n\n\"Oh, you mean the little problem of the Grosvenor Square furniture van. That is quite cleared up now\u2014though, indeed, it was obvious from the first. Pray give me the results of your newspaper selections.\"\n\n\"Here is the first notice which I can find. It is in the personal column of the Morning Post, and dates, as you see, some weeks back:\n\n\"A marriage has been arranged [it says] and will, if rumour is correct, very shortly take place, between Lord Robert St. Simon, second son of the Duke of Balmoral, and Miss Hatty Doran, the only daughter of Aloysius Doran. Esq., of San Francisco. Cal., U. S. A.\n\nThat is all.\"\n\n\"Terse and to the point,\" remarked Holmes, stretching his long, thin legs towards the fire.\n\n\"There was a paragraph amplifying this in one of the society papers of the same week. Ah, here it is:\n\n\"There will soon be a call for protection in the marriage market, for the present free-trade principle appears to tell heavily against our home product. One by one the management of the noble houses of Great Britain is passing into the hands of our fair cousins from across the Atlantic. An important addition has been made during the last week to the list of the prizes which have been borne away by these charming invaders. Lord St. Simon, who has shown himself for over twenty years proof against the little god's arrows, has now definitely announced his approaching marriage with Miss Hatty Doran, the fascinating daughter of a California millionaire. Miss Doran, whose graceful figure and striking face attracted much attention at the West-bury House festivities, is an only child, and it is currently reported that her dowry will run to considerably over the six figures, with expectancies for the future. As it is an open secret that the Duke of Balmoral has been compelled to sell his pictures within the last few years, and as Lord St. Simon has no property of his own save the small estate of Birchmoor, it is obvious that the Californian heiress is not the only gainer by an alliance which will enable her to make the easy and common transition from a Republican lady to a British peeress.\"\n\n\"Anything else?\" asked Holmes, yawning.\n\n\"Oh, yes; plenty. Then there is another note in the Morning Post to say that the marriage would be an absolutely quiet one, that it would be at St. George's, Hanover Square, that only half a dozen intimate friends would be invited, and that the party would return to the furnished house at Lancaster Gate which has been taken by Mr. Aloysius Doran. Two days later\u2014that is, on Wednesday last\u2014there is a curt announcement that the wedding had taken place, and that the honeymoon would be passed at Lord Backwater's place, near Petersfield. Those are all the notices which appeared before the disappearance of the bride.\"\n\n\"Before the what?\" asked Holmes with a start.\n\n\"The vanishing of the lady.\"\n\n\"When did she vanish, then?\"\n\n\"At the wedding breakfast.\"\n\n\"Indeed. This is more interesting than it promised to be; quite dramatic, in fact.\"\n\n\"Yes; it struck me as being a little out of the common.\"\n\n\"They often vanish before the ceremony, and occasionally during the honeymoon; but I cannot call to mind anything quite so prompt as this. Pray let me have the details.\"\n\n\"I warn you that they are very incomplete.\"\n\n\"Perhaps we may make them less so.\"\n\n\"Such as they are, they are set forth in a single article of a morning paper of yesterday, which I will read to you. It is headed, 'Singular Occurrence at a Fashionable Wedding':\n\n\"The family of Lord Robert St. Simon has been thrown into the greatest consternation by the strange and painful episodes which have taken place in connection with his wedding. The ceremony, as shortly announced in the papers of yesterday, occurred on the previous morning; but it is only now that it has been possible to confirm the strange rumours which have been so persistently floating about. In spite of the attempts of the friends to hush the matter up, so much public attention has now been drawn to it that no good purpose can be served by affecting to disregard what is a common subject for conversation.\n\n\"The ceremony, which was performed at St. George's, Hanover Square, was a very quiet one, no one being present save the father of the bride, Mr. Aloysius Doran, the Duchess of Balmoral, Lord Backwater, Lord Eustace, and Lady Clara St. Simon (the younger brother and sister of the bridegroom), and Lady Alicia Whittington. The whole party proceeded afterwards to the house of Mr. Aloysius Doran, at Lancaster Gate, where breakfast had been prepared. It appears that some little trouble was caused by a woman, whose name has not been ascertained, who endeavoured to force her way into the house after the bridal party, alleging that she had some claim upon Lord St. Simon. It was only after a painful and prolonged scene that she was ejected by the butler and the footman. The bride, who had fortunately entered the house before this unpleasant interruption, had sat down to breakfast with the rest, when she complained of a sudden indisposition and retired to her room. Her prolonged absence having caused some comment, her father followed her, but learned from her maid that she had only come up to her chamber for an instant, caught up an ulster and bonnet, and hurried down to the passage. One of the footmen declared that he had seen a lady leave the house thus apparelled, but had refused to credit that it was his mistress, believing her to be with the company. On ascertaining that his daughter had disappeared, Mr. Aloysius Doran, in conjunction with the bridegroom, instantly put themselves in communication with the police, and very energetic inquiries are being made, which will probably result in a speedy clearing up of this very singular business. Up to a late hour last night, however, nothing had transpired as to the whereabouts of the missing lady. There are rumours of foul play in the matter, and it is said that the police have caused the arrest of the woman who had caused the original disturbance, in the belief that, from jealousy or some other motive, she may have been concerned in the strange disappearance of the bride.\"\n\n\"And is that all?\"\n\n\"Only one little item in another of the morning papers, but it is a suggestive one.\"\n\n\"And it is\u2014\"\n\n\"That Miss Flora Millar, the lady who had caused the disturbance, has actually been arrested. It appears that she was formerly a danseuse at the Allegro, and that she has known the bridegroom for some years. There are no further particulars, and the whole case is in your hands now\u2014so far as it has been set forth in the public press.\"\n\n\"And an exceedingly interesting case it appears to be. I would not have missed it for worlds. But there is a ring at the bell, Watson, and as the clock makes it a few minutes after four, I have no doubt that this will prove to be our noble client. Do not dream of going, Watson, for I very much prefer having a witness, if only as a check to my own memory.\"\n\n\"Lord Robert St. Simon,\" announced our page-boy, throwing open the door. A gentleman entered, with a pleasant, cultured face, high-nosed and pale, with something perhaps of petulance about the mouth, and with the steady, well-opened eye of a man whose pleasant lot it had ever been to command and to be obeyed. His manner was brisk, and yet his general appearance gave an undue impression of age, for he had a slight forward stoop and a little bend of the knees as he walked. His hair, too, as he swept off his very curly-brimmed hat, was grizzled round the edges and thin upon the top. As to his dress, it was careful to the verge of foppish-ness, with high collar, black frock-coat, white waistcoat, yellow gloves, patent-leather shoes, and light-coloured gaiters. He advanced slowly into the room, turning his head from left to right, and swinging in his right hand the cord which held his golden eyeglasses.\n\n\"Goodday, Lord St. Simon,\" said Holmes, rising and bowing. \"Pray take the basket-chair. This is my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson. Draw up a little to the fire, and we will talk this matter over.\"\n\n\"A most painful matter to me, as you can most readily imagine, Mr. Holmes. I have been cut to the quick. I understand that you have already managed several delicate cases of this sort, sir, though I presume that they were hardly from the same class of society.\"\n\n\"No, I am descending.\"\n\n\"I beg pardon.\"\n\n\"My last client of the sort was a king.\"\n\n\"Oh, really! I had no idea. And which king?\"\n\n\"The King of Scandinavia.\"\n\n\"What! Had he lost his wife?\"\n\n\"You can understand,\" said Holmes suavely, \"that I extend to the affairs of my other clients the same secrecy which I promise to you in yours.\"\n\n\"Of course! Very right! very right! I'm sure I beg pardon. As to my own case, I am ready to give you any information which may assist you in forming an opinion.\"\n\n\"Thank you. I have already learned all that is in the public prints, nothing more. I presume that I may take it as correct\u2014this article, for example, as to the disappearance of the bride.\"\n\nLord St. Simon glanced over it. \"Yes, it is correct, as far as it goes.\"\n\n\"But it needs a great deal of supplementing before anyone could offer an opinion. I think that I may arrive at my facts most directly by questioning you.\"\n\n\"Pray do so.\"\n\n\"When did you first meet Miss Hatty Doran?\"\n\n\"In San Francisco, a year ago.\"\n\n\"You were travelling in the States?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Did you become engaged then?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"But you were on a friendly footing?\"\n\n\"I was amused by her society, and she could see that I was amused.\"\n\n\"Her father is very rich?\"\n\n\"He is said to be the richest man on the Pacific slope.\"\n\n\"And how did he make his money?\"\n\n\"In mining. He had nothing a few years ago. Then he struck gold, invested it, and came up by leaps and bounds.\"\n\n\"Now, what is your own impression as to the young lady's\u2014your wife's character?\"\n\nThe nobleman swung his glasses a little faster and stared down into the fire. \"You see, Mr. Holmes,\" said he, \"my wife was twenty before her father became a rich man. During that time she ran free in a mining camp and wandered through woods or mountains, so that her education has come from Nature rather than from the schoolmaster. She is what we call in England a tomboy, with a strong nature, wild and free, unfettered by any sort of traditions. She is impetuous\u2014volcanic, I was about to say. She is swift in making up her mind and fearless in carrying out her resolutions. On the other hand, I would not have given her the name which I have the honour to bear\"\u2014he gave a little stately cough\u2014\"had not I thought her to be at bottom a noble woman. I believe that she is capable of heroic self-sacrifice and that anything dishonourable would be repugnant to her.\"\n\n\"Have you her photograph?\"\n\n\"I brought this with me.\" He opened a locket and showed us the full face of a very lovely woman. It was not a photograph but an ivory miniature, and the artist had brought out the full effect of the lustrous black hair, the large dark eyes, and the exquisite mouth. Holmes gazed long and earnestly at it. Then he closed the locket and handed it back to Lord St. Simon.\n\n\"The young lady came to London, then, and you renewed your acquaintance?\"\n\n\"Yes, her father brought her over for this last London season. I met her several times, became engaged to her, and have now married her.\"\n\n\"She brought, I understand, a considerable dowry?\"\n\n\"A fair dowry. Not more than is usual in my family.\"\n\n\"And this, of course, remains to you, since the marriage is a fait accompli?\"\n\n\"I really have made no inquiries on the subject.\"\n\n\"Very naturally not. Did you see Miss Doran on the day before the wedding?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Was she in good spirits?\"\n\n\"Never better. She kept talking of what we should do in our future lives.\"\n\n\"Indeed! That is very interesting. And on the morning of the wedding?\"\n\n\"She was as bright as possible\u2014at least until after the ceremony.\"\n\n\"And did you observe any change in her then?\"\n\n\"Well, to tell the truth, I saw then the first signs that I had ever seen that her temper was just a little sharp. The incident, however, was too trivial to relate and can have no possible bearing upon the case.\"\n\n\"Pray let us have it, for all that.\"\n\n\"Oh, it is childish. She dropped her bouquet as we went towards the vestry. She was passing the front pew at the time, and it fell over into the pew. There was a moment's delay, but the gentleman in the pew handed it up to her again, and it did not appear to be the worse for the fall. Yet when I spoke to her of the matter, she answered me abruptly; and in the carriage, on our way home, she seemed absurdly agitated over this trifling cause.\"\n\n\"Indeed! You say that there was a gentleman in the pew. Some of the general public were present, then?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes. It is impossible to exclude them when the church is open.\"\n\n\"This gentleman was not one of your wife's friends?\"\n\n\"No, no; I call him a gentleman by courtesy, but he was quite a common-looking person. I hardly noticed his appearance. But really I think that we are wandering rather far from the point.\"\n\n\"Lady St. Simon, then, returned from the wedding in a less cheerful frame of mind than she had gone to it. What did she do on reentering her father's house?\"\n\n\"I saw her in conversation with her maid.\"\n\n\"And who is her maid?\"\n\n\"Alice is her name. She is an American and came from California with her.\"\n\n\"A confidential servant?\"\n\n\"A little too much so. It seemed to me that her mistress allowed her to take great liberties. Still, of course, in America they look upon these things in a different way.\"\n\n\"How long did she speak to this Alice?\"\n\n\"Oh, a few minutes. I had something else to think of.\"\n\n\"You did not overhear what they said?\"\n\n\"Lady St. Simon said something about 'jumping a claim.' She was accustomed to use slang of the kind. I have no idea what she meant.\"\n\n\"American slang is very expressive sometimes. And what did your wife do when she finished speaking to her maid?\"\n\n\"She walked into the breakfast-room.\"\n\n\"On your arm?\"\n\n\"No, alone. She was very independent in little matters like that. Then, after we had sat down for ten minutes or so, she rose hurriedly, muttered some words of apology, and left the room. She never came back.\"\n\n\"But this maid, Alice, as I understand, deposes that she went to her room, covered her bride's dress with a long ulster, put on a bonnet, and went out.\"\n\n\"Quite so. And she was afterwards seen walking into Hyde Park in company with Flora Millar, a woman who is now in custody, and who had already made a disturbance at Mr. Doran's house that morning.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes. I should like a few particulars as to this young lady, and your relations to her.\"\n\nLord St. Simon shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows. \"We have been on a friendly footing for some years\u2014I may say on a very friendly footing. She used to be at the Allegro. I have not treated her un-generously, and she had no just cause of complaint against me, but you know what women are, Mr. Holmes. Flora was a dear little thing, but exceedingly hot-headed and devotedly attached to me. She wrote me dreadful letters when she heard that I was about to be married, and, to tell the truth, the reason why I had the marriage celebrated so quietly was that I feared lest there might be a scandal in the church. She came to Mr. Doran's door just after we returned, and she endeavoured to push her way in, uttering very abusive expressions towards my wife, and even threatening her, but I had foreseen the possibility of something of the sort, and I had two police fellows there in private clothes, who soon pushed her out again. She was quiet when she saw that there was no good in making a row.\"\n\n\"Did your wife hear all this?\"\n\n\"No, thank goodness, she did not.\"\n\n\"And she was seen walking with this very woman afterwards?\"\n\n\"Yes. That is what Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, looks upon as so serious. It is thought that Flora decoyed my wife out and laid some terrible trap for her.\"\n\n\"Well, it is a possible supposition.\"\n\n\"You think so, too?\"\n\n\"I did not say a probable one. But you do not yourself look upon this as likely?\"\n\n\"I do not think Flora would hurt a fly.\"\n\n\"Still, jealousy is a strange transformer of characters. Pray what is your own theory as to what took place?\"\n\n\"Well, really, I came to seek a theory, not to propound one. I have given you all the facts. Since you ask me, however, I may say that it has occurred to me as possible that the excitement of this affair, the consciousness that she had made so immense a social stride, had the effect of causing some little nervous disturbance in my wife.\"\n\n\"In short, that she had become suddenly deranged?\"\n\n\"Well, really, when I consider that she has turned her back\u2014I will not say upon me, but upon so much that many have aspired to without success\u2014I can hardly explain it in any other fashion.\"\n\n\"Well, certainly that is also a conceivable hypothesis,\" said Holmes, smiling. \"And now, Lord St. Simon, I think that I have nearly all my data. May I ask whether you were seated at the breakfast-table so that you could see out of the window?\"\n\n\"We could see the other side of the road and the Park.\"\n\n\"Quite so. Then I do not think that I need to detain you longer. I shall communicate with you.\"\n\n\"Should you be fortunate enough to solve this problem,\" said our client, rising.\n\n\"I have solved it.\"\n\n\"Eh? What was that?\"\n\n\"I say that I have solved it.\"\n\n\"Where, then, is my wife?\"\n\n\"That is a detail which I shall speedily supply.\"\n\nLord St. Simon shook his head. \"I am afraid that it will take wiser heads than yours or mine,\" he remarked, and bowing in a stately, old-fashioned manner he departed.\n\n\"It is very good of Lord St. Simon to honour my head by putting it on a level with his own,\" said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. \"I think that I shall have a whisky and soda and a cigar after all this cross-questioning. I had formed my conclusions as to the case before our client came into the room.\"\n\n\"My dear Holmes!\"\n\n\"I have notes of several similar cases, though none, as I remarked before, which were quite as prompt. My whole examination served to turn my conjecture into a certainty. Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.\"\n\n\"But I have heard all that you have heard.\"\n\n\"Without, however, the knowledge of pre\u00ebxisting cases which serves me so well. There was a parallel instance in Aberdeen some years back, and something on very much the same lines at Munich the year after the Franco-Prussian War. It is one of these cases\u2014but, hello, here is Lestrade! Good-afternoon, Lestrade! You will find an extra tumbler upon the sideboard, and there are cigars in the box.\"\n\nThe official detective was attired in a pea-jacket and cravat, which gave him a decidedly nautical appearance, and he carried a black canvas bag in his hand. With a short greeting he seated himself and lit the cigar which had been offered to him.\n\n\"What's up, then?\" asked Holmes with a twinkle in his eye. \"You look dissatisfied.\"\n\n\"And I feel dissatisfied. It is this infernal St. Simon marriage case. I can make neither head nor tail of the business.\"\n\n\"Really! You surprise me.\"\n\n\"Who ever heard of such a mixed affair? Every clue seems to slip through my fingers. I have been at work upon it all day.\"\n\n\"And very wet it seems to have made you,\" said Holmes, laying his hand upon the arm of the pea-jacket.\n\n\"Yes, I have been dragging the Serpentine.\"\n\n\"In heaven's name, what for?\"\n\n\"In search of the body of Lady St. Simon.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes leaned back in his chair and laughed heartily.\n\n\"Have you dragged the basin of Trafalgar Square fountain?\" he asked.\n\n\"Why? What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Because you have just as good a chance of finding this lady in the one as in the other.\"\n\nLestrade shot an angry glance at my companion. \"I suppose you know all about it,\" he snarled.\n\n\"Well, I have only just heard the facts, but my mind is made up.\"\n\n\"Oh, indeed! Then you think that the Serpentine plays no part in the matter?\"\n\n\"I think it very unlikely.\"\n\n\"Then perhaps you will kindly explain how it is that we found this in it?\" He opened his bag as he spoke, and tumbled onto the floor a wedding-dress of watered silk, a pair of white satin shoes, and a bride's wreath and veil, all discoloured and soaked in water. \"There,\" said he, putting a new wedding-ring upon the top of the pile. \"There is a little nut for you to crack, Master Holmes.\"\n\n\"Oh, indeed!\" said my friend, blowing blue rings into the air. \"You dragged them from the Serpentine?\"\n\n\"No. They were found floating near the margin by a park-keeper. They have been identified as her clothes, and it seemed to me that if the clothes were there the body would not be far off.\"\n\n\"By the same brilliant reasoning, every man's body is to be found in the neighbourhood of his wardrobe. And pray what did you hope to arrive at through this?\"\n\n\"At some evidence implicating Flora Millar in the disappearance.\"\n\n\"I am afraid that you will find it difficult.\"\n\n\"Are you, indeed, now?\" cried Lestrade with some bitterness. \"I am afraid, Holmes, that you are not very practical with your deductions and your inferences. You have made two blunders in as many minutes. This dress does implicate Miss Flora Millar.\"\n\n\"And how?\"\n\n\"In the dress is a pocket. In the pocket is a card-case. In the card-case is a note. And here is the very note.\" He slapped it down upon the table in front of him. \"Listen to this:\n\n\"You will see me when all is ready. Come at once.\n\n\"F. H. M.\n\nNow my theory all along has been that Lady St. Simon was decoyed away by Flora Millar, and that she, with confederates, no doubt, was responsible for her disappearance. Here, signed with her initials, is the very note which was no doubt quietly slipped into her hand at the door and which lured her within their reach.\"\n\n\"Very good, Lestrade,\" said Holmes, laughing. \"You really are very fine indeed. Let me see it.\" He took up the paper in a listless way, but his attention instantly became riveted, and he gave a little cry of satisfaction. \"This is indeed important,\" said he.\n\n\"Ha! you find it so?\"\n\n\"Extremely so. I congratulate you warmly.\"\n\nLestrade rose in his triumph and bent his head to look. \"Why,\" he shrieked, \"you're looking at the wrong side!\"\n\n\"On the contrary, this is the right side.\"\n\n\"The right side? You're mad! Here is the note written in pencil over here.\"\n\n\"And over here is what appears to be the fragment of a hotel bill, which interests me deeply.\"\n\n\"There's nothing in it. I looked at it before,\" said Lestrade.\n\n\"Oct. 4th, rooms 8s., breakfast 2s. 6d., cocktail ls., lunch 2s. 6d., glass sherry, 8d.\n\nI see nothing in that.\"\n\n\"Very likely not. It is most important, all the same. As to the note, it is important also, or at least the initials are, so I congratulate you again.\"\n\n\"I've wasted time enough,\" said Lestrade, rising. \"I believe in hard work and not in sitting by the fire spinning fine theories. Goodday, Mr. Holmes, and we shall see which gets to the bottom of the matter first.\" He gathered up the garments, thrust them into the bag, and made for the door.\n\n\"Just one hint to you, Lestrade,\" drawled Holmes before his rival vanished; \"I will tell you the true solution of the matter. Lady St. Simon is a myth. There is not, and there never has been, any such person.\"\n\nLestrade looked sadly at my companion. Then he turned to me, tapped his forehead three times, shook his head solemnly, and hurried away.\n\nHe had hardly shut the door behind him when Holmes rose to put on his overcoat. \"There is something in what the fellow says about outdoor work,\" he remarked, \"so I think, Watson, that I must leave you to your papers for a little.\"\n\nIt was after five o'clock when Sherlock Holmes left me, but I had no time to be lonely, for within an hour there arrived a confectioner's man with a very large flat box. This he unpacked with the help of a youth whom he had brought with him, and presently, to my very great astonishment, a quite epicurean little cold supper began to be laid out upon our humble lodging-house mahogany. There were a couple of brace of cold woodcock, a pheasant, a p\u00e2t\u00e9 de foie gras pie with a group of ancient and cobwebby bottles. Having laid out all these luxuries, my two visitors vanished away, like the genii of the Arabian Nights, with no explanation save that the things had been paid for and were ordered to this address.\n\nJust before nine o'clock Sherlock Holmes stepped briskly into the room. His features were gravely set, but there was a light in his eye which made me think that he had not been disappointed in his conclusions.\n\n\"They have laid the supper, then,\" he said, rubbing his hands.\n\n\"You seem to expect company. They have laid for five.\"\n\n\"Yes, I fancy we may have some company dropping in,\" said he. \"I am surprised that Lord St. Simon has not already arrived. Ha! I fancy that I hear his step now upon the stairs.\"\n\nIt was indeed our visitor of the afternoon who came bustling in, dangling his glasses more vigorously than ever, and with a very perturbed expression upon his aristocratic features.\n\n\"My messenger reached you, then?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"Yes, and I confess that the contents startled me beyond measure. Have you good authority for what you say?\"\n\n\"The best possible.\"\n\nLord St. Simon sank into a chair and passed his hand over his forehead.\n\n\"What will the Duke say,\" he murmured, \"when he hears that one of the family has been subjected to such humiliation?\"\n\n\"It is the purest accident. I cannot allow that there is any humiliation.\"\n\n\"Ah, you look on these things from another standpoint.\"\n\n\"I fail to see that anyone is to blame. I can hardly see how the lady could have acted otherwise, though her abrupt method of doing it was undoubtedly to be regretted. Having no mother, she had no one to advise her at such a crisis.\"\n\n\"It was a slight, sir, a public slight,\" said Lord St. Simon, tapping his fingers upon the table.\n\n\"You must make allowance for this poor girl, placed in so unprecedented a position.\"\n\n\"I will make no allowance. I am very angry indeed, and I have been shamefully used.\"\n\n\"I think that I heard a ring,\" said Holmes. \"Yes, there are steps on the landing. If I cannot persuade you to take a lenient view of the matter, Lord St. Simon, I have brought an advocate here who may be more successful.\" He opened the door and ushered in a lady and gentleman. \"Lord St. Simon,\" said he, \"allow me to introduce you to Mr. and Mrs. Francis Hay Moulton. The lady, I think, you have already met.\"\n\nAt the sight of these newcomers our client had sprung from his seat and stood very erect, with his eyes cast down and his hand thrust into the breast of his frock-coat, a picture of offended dignity. The lady had taken a quick step forward and had held out her hand to him, but he still refused to raise his eyes. It was as well for his resolution, perhaps, for her pleading face was one which it was hard to resist.\n\n\"You're angry, Robert,\" said she. \"Well, I guess you have every cause to be.\"\n\n\"Pray make no apology to me,\" said Lord St. Simon bitterly.\n\n\"Oh, yes, I know that I have treated you real bad and that I should have spoken to you before I went; but I was kind of rattled, and from the time when I saw Frank here again I just didn't know what I was doing or saying. I only wonder I didn't fall down and do a faint right there before the altar.\"\n\n\"Perhaps, Mrs. Moulton, you would like my friend and me to leave the room while you explain this matter?\"\n\n\"If I may give an opinion,\" remarked the strange gentleman, \"we've had just a little too much secrecy over this business already. For my part, I should like all Europe and America to hear the rights of it.\" He was a small, wiry, sunburnt man, clean-shaven, with a sharp face and alert manner.\n\n\"Then I'll tell our story right away,\" said the lady. \"Frank here and I met in '84, in McQuire's camp, near the Rockies, where pa was working a claim. We were engaged to each other, Frank and I; but then one day father struck a rich pocket and made a pile; while poor Frank here had a claim that petered out and came to nothing. The richer pa grew the poorer was Frank; so at last pa wouldn't hear of our engagement lasting any longer, and he took me away to 'Frisco. Frank wouldn't throw up his hand, though; so he followed me there, and he saw me without pa knowing anything about it. It would only have made him mad to know, so we just fixed it all up for ourselves. Frank said that he would go and make his pile, too, and never come back to claim me until he had as much as pa. So then I promised to wait for him to the end of time and pledged myself not to marry anyone else while he lived. 'Why shouldn't we be married right away, then,' said he, 'and then I will feel sure of you; and I won't claim to be your husband until I come back?' Well, we talked it over, and he had fixed it all up so nicely, with a clergyman all ready in waiting, that we just did it right there; and then Frank went off to seek his fortune, and I went back to pa.\n\n\"The next I heard of Frank was that he was in Montana, and then he went prospecting in Arizona, and then I heard of him from New Mexico. After that came a long newspaper story about how a miners' camp had been attacked by Apache Indians, and there was my Frank's name among the killed. I fainted dead away, and I was very sick for months after. Pa thought I had a decline and took me to half the doctors in 'Frisco. Not a word of news came for a year and more, so that I never doubted that Frank was really dead. Then Lord St. Simon came to 'Frisco, and we came to London, and a marriage was arranged, and pa was very pleased, but I felt all the time that no man on this earth would ever take the place in my heart that had been given to my poor Frank.\n\n\"Still, if I had married Lord St. Simon, of course I'd have done my duty by him. We can't command our love, but we can our actions. I went to the altar with him with the intention to make him just as good a wife as it was in me to be. But you may imagine what I felt when, just as I came to the altar rails, I glanced back and saw Frank standing and looking at me out of the first pew. I thought it was his ghost at first; but when I looked again there he was still, with a kind of question in his eyes; as if to ask me whether I were glad or sorry to see him. I wonder I didn't drop. I know that everything was turning round, and the words of the clergyman were just like the buzz of a bee in my ear. I didn't know what to do. Should I stop the service and make a scene in the church? I glanced at him again, and he seemed to know what I was thinking, for he raised his finger to his lips to tell me to be still. Then I saw him scribble on a piece of paper, and I knew that he was writing me a note. As I passed his pew on the way out I dropped my bouquet over to him, and he slipped the note into my hand when he returned me the flowers. It was only a line asking me to join him when he made the sign to me to do so. Of course I never doubted for a moment that my first duty was now to him, and I determined to do just whatever he might direct.\n\n\"When I got back I told my maid, who had known him in California, and had always been his friend. I ordered her to say nothing, but to get a few things packed and my ulster ready. I know I ought to have spoken to Lord St. Simon, but it was dreadful hard before his mother and all those great people. I just made up my mind to run away and explain afterwards. I hadn't been at the table ten minutes before I saw Frank out of the window at the other side of the road. He beckoned to me and then began walking into the Park. I slipped out, put on my things, and followed him. Some woman came talking something or other about Lord St. Simon to me\u2014seemed to me from the little I heard as if he had a little secret of his own before marriage also\u2014but I managed to get away from her and soon overtook Frank. We got into a cab together, and away we drove to some lodgings he had taken in Gordon Square, and that was my true wedding after all those years of waiting. Frank had been a prisoner among the Apaches, had escaped, came on to 'Frisco, found that I had given him up for dead and had gone to England, followed me there, and had come upon me at last on the very morning of my second wedding.\"\n\n\"I saw it in a paper,\" explained the American. \"It gave the name and the church but not where the lady lived.\"\n\n\"Then we had a talk as to what we should do, and Frank was all for openness, but I was so ashamed of it all that I felt as if I should like to vanish away and never see any of them again\u2014just sending a line to pa, perhaps, to show him that I was alive. It was awful to me to think of all those lords and ladies sitting round that breakfast-table and waiting for me to come back. So Frank took my wedding-clothes and things and made a bundle of them, so that I should not be traced, and dropped them away somewhere where no one could find them. It is likely that we should have gone on to Paris to-morrow, only that this good gentleman, Mr. Holmes, came round to us this evening, though how he found us is more than I can think, and he showed us very clearly and kindly that I was wrong and that Frank was right, and that we should be putting ourselves in the wrong if we were so secret. Then he offered to give us a chance of talking to Lord St. Simon alone, and so we came right away round to his rooms at once. Now, Robert, you have heard it all, and I am very sorry if I have given you pain, and I hope that you do not think very meanly of me.\"\n\nLord St. Simon had by no means relaxed his rigid attitude, but had listened with a frowning brow and a compressed lip to this long narrative.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" he said, \"but it is not my custom to discuss my most intimate personal affairs in this public manner.\"\n\n\"Then you won't forgive me? You won't shake hands before I go?\"\n\n\"Oh, certainly, if it would give you any pleasure.\" He put out his hand and coldly grasped that which she extended to him.\n\n\"I had hoped,\" suggested Holmes, \"that you would have joined us in a friendly supper.\"\n\n\"I think that there you ask a little too much,\" responded his Lordship. \"I may be forced to acquiesce in these recent developments, but I can hardly be expected to make merry over them. I think that with your permission I will now wish you all a very good-night.\" He included us all in a sweeping bow and stalked out of the room.\n\n\"Then I trust that you at least will honour me with your company,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"It is always a joy to meet an American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.\"\n\n\"The case has been an interesting one,\" remarked Holmes when our visitors had left us, \"because it serves to show very clearly how simple the explanation may be of an affair which at first sight seems to be almost inexplicable. Nothing could be more natural than the sequence of events as narrated by this lady, and nothing stranger than the result when viewed, for instance, by Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard.\"\n\n\"You were not yourself at fault at all, then?\"\n\n\"From the first, two facts were very obvious to me, the one that the lady had been quite willing to undergo the wedding ceremony, the other that she had repented of it within a few minutes of returning home. Obviously something had occurred during the morning, then, to cause her to change her mind. What could that something be? She could not have spoken to anyone when she was out, for she had been in the company of the bridegroom. Had she seen someone, then? If she had, it must be someone from America because she had spent so short a time in this country that she could hardly have allowed anyone to acquire so deep an influence over her that the mere sight of him would induce her to change her plans so completely. You see we have already arrived, by a process of exclusion, at the idea that she might have seen an American. Then who could this American be, and why should he possess so much influence over her? It might be a lover; it might be a husband. Her young womanhood had, I knew, been spent in rough scenes and under strange conditions. So far I had got before I ever heard Lord St. Simon's narrative. When he told us of a man in a pew, of the change in the bride's manner, of so transparent a device for obtaining a note as the dropping of a bouquet, of her resort to her confidential maid, and of her very significant allusion to claim-jumping\u2014which in miners' parlance means taking possession of that which another person has a prior claim to\u2014the whole situation became absolutely clear. She had gone off with a man, and the man was either a lover or was a previous husband\u2014the chances being in favour of the latter.\"\n\n\"And how in the world did you find them?\"\n\n\"It might have been difficult, but friend Lestrade held information in his hands the value of which he did not himself know. The initials were, of course, of the highest importance, but more valuable still was it to know that within a week he had settled his bill at one of the most select London hotels.\"\n\n\"How did you deduce the select?\"\n\n\"By the select prices. Eight shillings for a bed and eightpence for a glass of sherry pointed to one of the most expensive hotels. There are not many in London which charge at that rate. In the second one which I visited in Northumberland Avenue, I learned by an inspection of the book that Francis H. Moulton, an American gentleman, had left only the day before; and on looking over the entries against him, I came upon the very items which I had seen in the duplicate bill. His letters were to be forwarded to 226 Gordon Square; so thither I travelled, and being fortunate enough to find the loving couple at home, I ventured to give them some paternal advice and to point out to them that it would be better in every way that they should make their position a little clearer both to the general public and to Lord St. Simon in particular. I invited them to meet him here, and, as you see, I made him keep the appointment.\"\n\n\"But with no very good result,\" I remarked. \"His conduct was certainly not very gracious.\"\n\n\"Ah, Watson,\" said Holmes, smiling, \"perhaps you would not be very gracious either, if, after all the trouble of wooing and wedding, you found yourself deprived in an instant of wife and of fortune. I think that we may judge Lord St. Simon very mercifully and thank our stars that we are never likely to find ourselves in the same position. Draw your chair up and hand me my violin, for the only problem we have still to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE BERYL CORONET", + "text": "\"Holmes,\" said I as I stood one morning in our bow-window look-Hing down the street, \"here is a madman coming along. It seems rather sad that his relatives should allow him to come out alone.\"\n\nMy friend rose lazily from his armchair and stood with his hands in the pockets of his dressing-gown, looking over my shoulder. It was a bright, crisp February morning, and the snow of the day before still lay deep upon the ground, shimmering brightly in the wintry sun. Down the centre of Baker Street it had been ploughed into a brown crumbly band by the traffic, but at either side and on the heaped-up edges of the foot-paths it still lay as white as when it fell. The gray pavement had been cleaned and scraped, but was still dangerously slippery, so that there were fewer passengers than usual. Indeed, from the direction of the Metropolitan Station no one was coming save the single gentleman whose eccentric conduct had drawn my attention.\n\nHe was a man of about fifty, tall, portly, and imposing, with a massive, strongly marked face and a commanding figure. He was dressed in a sombre yet rich style, in black frock-coat, shining hat, neat brown gaiters, and well-cut pearl-gray trousers. Yet his actions were in absurd contrast to the dignity of his dress and features, for he was running hard, with occasional little springs, such as a weary man gives who is little accustomed to set any tax upon his legs. As he ran he jerked his hands up and down, waggled his head, and writhed his face into the most extraordinary contortions.\n\n\"What on earth can be the matter with him?\" I asked. \"He is looking up at the numbers of the houses.\"\n\n\"I believe that he is coming here,\" said Holmes, rubbing his hands.\n\n\"Here?\"\n\n\"Yes; I rather think he is coming to consult me professionally. I think that I recognize the symptoms. Ha! did I not tell you?\" As he spoke, the man, puffing and blowing, rushed at our door and pulled at our bell until the whole house resounded with the clanging.\n\nA few moments later he was in our room, still puffing, still gesticulating, but with so fixed a look of grief and despair in his eyes that our smiles were turned in an instant to horror and pity. For a while he could not get his words out, but swayed his body and plucked at his hair like one who has been driven to the extreme limits of his reason. Then, suddenly springing to his feet, he beat his head against the wall with such force that we both rushed upon him and tore him away to the centre of the room. Sherlock Holmes pushed him down into the easy-chair and, sitting beside him, patted his hand and chatted with him in the easy, soothing tones which he knew so well how to employ.\n\n\"You have come to me to tell your story, have you not?\" said he. \"You are fatigued with your haste. Pray wait until you have recovered yourself, and then I shall be most happy to look into any little problem which you may submit to me.\"\n\nThe man sat for a minute or more with a heaving chest, fighting against his emotion. Then he passed his handkerchief over his brow, set his lips tight, and turned his face towards us.\n\n\"No doubt you think me mad?\" said he.\n\n\"I see that you have had some great trouble,\" responded Holmes.\n\n\"God knows I have!\u2014a trouble which is enough to unseat my reason, so sudden and so terrible is it. Public disgrace I might have faced, although I am a man whose character has never yet borne a stain. Private affliction also is the lot of every man; but the two coming together, and in so frightful a form, have been enough to shake my very soul. Besides, it is not I alone. The very noblest in the land may suffer unless some way be found out of this horrible affair.\"\n\n\"Pray compose yourself, sir,\" said Holmes, \"and let me have a clear account of who you are and what it is that has befallen you.\"\n\n\"My name,\" answered our visitor, \"is probably familiar to your ears. I am Alexander Holder, of the banking firm of Holder & Stevenson, of Threadneedle Street.\"\n\nThe name was indeed well known to us as belonging to the senior partner in the second largest private banking concern in the City of London. What could have happened, then, to bring one of the foremost citizens of London to this most pitiable pass? We waited, all curiosity, until with another effort he braced himself to tell his story.\n\n\"I feel that time is of value,\" said he; \"that is why I hastened here when the police inspector suggested that I should secure your cooperation. I came to Baker Street by the Underground and hurried from there on foot, for the cabs go slowly through this snow. That is why I was so out of breath, for I am a man who takes very little exercise. I feel better now, and I will put the facts before you as shortly and yet as clearly as I can.\n\n\"It is, of course, well known to you that in a successful banking business as much depends upon our being able to find remunerative investments for our funds as upon our increasing our connection and the number of our depositors. One of our most lucrative means of laying out money is in the shape of loans, where the security is unimpeachable. We have done a good deal in this direction during the last few years, and there are many noble families to whom we have advanced large sums upon the security of their pictures, libraries, or plate.\n\n\"Yesterday morning I was seated in my office at the bank when a card was brought in to me by one of the clerks. I started when I saw the name, for it was that of none other than\u2014well, perhaps even to you I had better say no more than that it was a name which is a household word all over the earth\u2014one of the highest, noblest, most exalted names in England. I was overwhelmed by the honour and attempted, when he entered, to say so, but he plunged at once into business with the air of a man who wishes to hurry quickly through a disagreeable task.\n\n\"'Mr. Holder,' said he, 'I have been informed that you are in the habit of advancing money.'\n\n\"'The firm does so when the security is good,' I answered.\n\n\"'It is absolutely essential to me,' said he, 'that I should have \u00a350,000 at once. I could, of course, borrow so trifling a sum ten times over from my friends, but I much prefer to make it a matter of business and to carry out that business myself. In my position you can readily understand that it is unwise to place one's self under obligations.'\n\n\"'For how long, may I ask, do you want this sum?' I asked.\n\n\"'Next Monday I have a large sum due to me, and I shall then most certainly repay what you advance, with whatever interest you think it right to charge. But it is very essential to me that the money should be paid at once.'\n\n\"'I should be happy to advance it without further parley from my own private purse,' said I, 'were it not that the strain would be rather more than it could bear. If, on the other hand, I am to do it in the name of the firm, then in justice to my partner I must insist that, even in your case, every businesslike precaution should be taken.'\n\n\"'I should much prefer to have it so,' said he, raising up a square, black morocco case which he had laid beside his chair. 'You have doubtless heard of the Beryl Coronet?'\n\n\"'One of the most precious public possessions of the empire,' said I.\n\n\"'Precisely.' He opened the case, and there, imbedded in soft, flesh-coloured velvet, lay the magnificent piece of jewellery which he had named. 'There are thirty-nine enormous beryls,' said he, 'and the price of the gold chasing is incalculable. The lowest estimate would put the worth of the coronet at double the sum which I have asked. I am prepared to leave it with you as my security.'\n\n\"I took the precious case into my hands and looked in some perplexity from it to my illustrious client.\n\n\"'You doubt its value?' he asked.\n\n\"'Not at all. I only doubt\u2014'\n\n\"'The propriety of my leaving it. You may set your mind at rest about that. I should not dream of doing so were it not absolutely certain that I should be able in four days to reclaim it. It is a pure matter of form. Is the security sufficient?'\n\n\"'Ample.'\n\n\"'You understand, Mr. Holder, that I am giving you a strong proof of the confidence which I have in you, founded upon all that I have heard of you. I rely upon you not only to be discreet and to refrain from all gossip upon the matter but, above all, to preserve this coronet with every possible precaution because I need not say that a great public scandal would be caused if any harm were to befall it. Any injury to it would be almost as serious as its complete loss, for there are no beryls in the world to match these, and it would be impossible to replace them. I leave it with you, however, with every confidence, and I shall call for it in person on Monday morning.'\n\n\"Seeing that my client was anxious to leave, I said no more; but, calling for my cashier, I ordered him to pay over fifty \u00a31000 notes. When I was alone once more, however, with the precious case lying upon the table in front of me, I could not but think with some misgivings of the immense responsibility which it entailed upon me. There could be no doubt that, as it was a national possession, a horrible scandal would ensue if any misfortune should occur to it. I already regretted having ever consented to take charge of it. However, it was too late to alter the matter now, so I locked it up in my private safe and turned once more to my work.\n\n\"When evening came I felt that it would be an imprudence to leave so precious a thing in the office behind me. Bankers' safes had been forced before now, and why should not mine be? If so, how terrible would be the position in which I should find myself! I determined, therefore, that for the next few days I would always carry the case backward and forward with me, so that it might never be really out of my reach. With this intention, I called a cab and drove out to my house at Streatham, carrying the jewel with me. I did not breathe freely until I had taken it upstairs and locked it in the bureau of my dressing-room.\n\n\"And now a word as to my household, Mr. Holmes, for I wish you to thoroughly understand the situation. My groom and my page sleep out of the house, and may be set aside altogether. I have three maid-servants who have been with me a number of years and whose absolute reliability is quite above suspicion. Another, Lucy Parr, the second waiting-maid, has only been in my service a few months. She came with an excellent character, however, and has always given me satisfaction. She is a very pretty girl and has attracted admirers who have occasionally hung about the place. That is the only drawback which we have found to her, but we believe her to be a thoroughly good girl in every way.\n\n\"So much for the servants. My family itself is so small that it will not take me long to describe it. I am a widower and have an only son, Arthur. He has been a disappointment to me, Mr. Holmes\u2014a grievous disappointment. I have no doubt that I am myself to blame. People tell me that I have spoiled him. Very likely I have. When my dear wife died I felt that he was all I had to love. I could not bear to see the smile fade even for a moment from his face. I have never denied him a wish. Perhaps it would have been better for both of us had I been sterner, but I meant it for the best.\n\n\"It was naturally my intention that he should succeed me in my business, but he was not of a business turn. He was wild, wayward, and, to speak the truth, I could not trust him in the handling of large sums of money. When he was young he became a member of an aristocratic club, and there, having charming manners, he was soon the intimate of a number of men with long purses and expensive habits. He learned to play heavily at cards and to squander money on the turf, until he had again and again to come to me and implore me to give him an advance upon his allowance, that he might settle his debts of honour. He tried more than once to break away from the dangerous company which he was keeping, but each time the influence of his friend, Sir George Burnwell, was enough to draw him back again.\n\n\"And, indeed, I could not wonder that such a man as Sir George Burnwell should gain an influence over him, for he has frequently brought him to my house, and I have found myself that I could hardly resist the fascination of his manner. He is older than Arthur, a man of the world to his finger-tips, one who had been everywhere, seen everything, a brilliant talker, and a man of great personal beauty. Yet when I think of him in cold blood, far away from the glamour of his presence, I am convinced from his cynical speech and the look which I have caught in his eyes that he is one who should be deeply distrusted. So I think, and so, too, thinks my little Mary, who has a woman's quick insight into character.\n\n\"And now there is only she to be described. She is my niece; but when my brother died five years ago and left her alone in the world I adopted her, and have looked upon her ever since as my daughter. She is a sun-beam in my house\u2014sweet, loving, beautiful, a wonderful manager and housekeeper, yet as tender and quiet and gentle as a woman could be. She is my right hand. I do not know what I could do without her. In only one matter has she ever gone against my wishes. Twice my boy has asked her to marry him, for he loves her devotedly, but each time she has refused him. I think that if anyone could have drawn him into the right path it would have been she, and that his marriage might have changed his whole life; but now, alas! it is too late\u2014forever too late!\n\n\"Now, Mr. Holmes, you know the people who live under my roof, and I shall continue with my miserable story.\n\n\"When we were taking coffee in the drawing-room that night after dinner, I told Arthur and Mary my experience, and of the precious treasure which we had under our roof, suppressing only the name of my client. Lucy Parr, who had brought in the coffee, had, I am sure, left the room; but I cannot swear that the door was closed. Mary and Arthur were much interested and wished to see the famous coronet, but I thought it better not to disturb it.\n\n\"'Where have you put it?' asked Arthur.\n\n\"'In my own bureau.'\n\n\"'Well, I hope to goodness the house won't be burgled during the night,' said he.\n\n\"'It is locked up,' I answered.\n\n\"'Oh, any old key will fit that bureau. When I was a youngster I have opened it myself with the key of the box-room cupboard.'\n\n\"He often had a wild way of talking, so that I thought little of what he said. He followed me to my room, however, that night with a very grave face.\n\n\"'Look here, dad,' said he with his eyes cast down, 'can you let me have \u00a3200?'\n\n\"'No, I cannot!' I answered sharply. 'I have been far too generous with you in money matters.'\n\n\"'You have been very kind,' said he, 'but I must have this money, or else I can never show my face inside the club again.'\n\n\"'And a very good thing, too!' I cried.\n\n\"'Yes, but you would not have me leave it a dishonoured man,' said he. 'I could not bear the disgrace. I must raise the money in some way, and if you will not let me have it, then I must try other means.'\n\n\"I was very angry, for this was the third demand during the month. 'You shall not have a farthing from me,' I cried, on which he bowed and left the room without another word.\n\n\"When he was gone I unlocked my bureau, made sure that my treasure was safe, and locked it again. Then I started to go round the house to see that all was secure\u2014a duty which I usually leave to Mary but which I thought it well to perform myself that night. As I came down the stairs I saw Mary herself at the side window of the hall, which she closed and fastened as I approached.\n\n\"'Tell me, dad,' said she, looking, I thought, a little disturbed, 'did you give Lucy, the maid, leave to go out to-night?'\n\n\"'Certainly not.'\n\n\"'She came in just now by the back door. I have no doubt that she has only been to the side gate to see someone, but I think that it is hardly safe and should be stopped.'\n\n\"'You must speak to her in the morning, or I will if you prefer it. Are you sure that everything is fastened?'\n\n\"'Quite sure, dad.'\n\n\"'Then, good-night.' I kissed her and went up to my bedroom again, where I was soon asleep.\n\n\"I am endeavouring to tell you everything, Mr. Holmes, which may have any bearing upon the case, but I beg that you will question me upon any point which I do not make clear.\"\n\n\"On the contrary, your statement is singularly lucid.\"\n\n\"I come to a part of my story now in which I should wish to be particularly so. I am not a very heavy sleeper, and the anxiety in my mind tended, no doubt, to make me even less so than usual. About two in the morning, then, I was awakened by some sound in the house. It had ceased ere I was wide awake, but it had left an impression behind it as though a window had gently closed somewhere. I lay listening with all my ears. Suddenly, to my horror, there was a distinct sound of footsteps moving softly in the next room. I slipped out of bed, all palpitating with fear, and peeped round the corner of my dressing-room door.\n\n\"'Arthur!' I screamed, 'you villain! you thief! How dare you touch that coronet?'\n\n\"The gas was half up, as I had left it, and my unhappy boy, dressed only in his shirt and trousers, was standing beside the light, holding, the coronet in his hands. He appeared to be wrenching at it, or bending it with all his strength. At my cry he dropped it from his grasp and turned as pale as death. I snatched it up and examined it. One of the gold corners, with three of the beryls in it, was missing.\n\n\"'You blackguard!' I shouted, beside myself with rage. 'You have destroyed it! You have dishonoured me forever! Where are the jewels which you have stolen?'\n\n\"'Stolen!' he cried.\n\n\"'Yes, thief!' I roared, shaking him by the shoulder.\n\n\"'There are none missing. There cannot be any missing,' said he.\n\n\"'There are three missing. And you know where they are. Must I call you a liar as well as a thief? Did I not see you trying to tear off another piece?'\n\n\"'You have called me names enough,' said he; 'I will not stand it any longer. I shall not say another word about this business, since you have chosen to insult me. I will leave your house in the morning and make my own way in the world.'\n\n\"'You shall leave it in the hands of the police!' I cried, half-mad with grief and rage. 'I shall have this matter probed to the bottom.'\n\n\"'You shall learn nothing from me,' said he with a passion such as I should not have thought was in his nature. 'If you choose to call the police, let the police find what they can.'\n\n\"By this time the whole house was astir, for I had raised my voice in my anger. Mary was the first to rush into my room, and, at the sight of the coronet and of Arthur's face, she read the whole story and, with a scream, fell down senseless on the ground. I sent the house-maid for the police and put the investigation into their hands at once. When the inspector and a constable entered the house, Arthur, who had stood sullenly with his arms folded, asked me whether it was my intention to charge him with theft. I answered that it had ceased to be a private matter, but had become a public one, since the ruined coronet was national property. I was determined that the law should have its way in everything.\n\n\"'At least,' said he, 'you will not have me arrested at once. It would be to your advantage as well as mine if I might leave the house for five minutes.'\n\n\"'That you may get away, or perhaps that you may conceal what you have stolen,' said I. And then, realizing the dreadful position in which I was placed, I implored him to remember that not only my honour but that of one who was far greater than I was at stake; and that he threatened to raise a scandal which would convulse the nation. He might avert it all if he would but tell me what he had done with the three missing stones.\n\n\"'You may as well face the matter,' said I; 'you have been caught in the act, and no confession could make your guilt more heinous. If you but make such reparation as is in your power, by telling us where the beryls are, all shall be forgiven and forgotten.'\n\n\"'Keep your forgiveness for those who ask for it,' he answered, turning away from me with a sneer. I saw that he was too hardened for any words of mine to influence him. There was but one way for it. I called in the inspector and gave him into custody. A search was made at once not only of his person but of his room and of every portion of the house where he could possibly have concealed the gems; but no trace of them could be found, nor would the wretched boy open his mouth for all our persuasions and our threats. This morning he was removed to a cell, and I, after going through all the police formalities, have hurried round to you to implore you to use your skill in unravelling the matter. The police have openly confessed that they can at present make nothing of it. You may go to any expense which you think necessary. I have already offered a reward of \u00a31000. My God, what shall I do! I have lost my honour, my gems, and my son in one night. Oh, what shall I do!\"\n\nHe put a hand on either side of his head and rocked himself to and fro, droning to himself like a child whose grief has got beyond words.\n\nSherlock Holmes sat silent for some few minutes, with his brows knitted and his eyes fixed upon the fire.\n\n\"Do you receive much company?\" he asked.\n\n\"None save my partner with his family and an occasional friend of Arthur's. Sir George Burnwell has been several times lately. No one else, I think.\"\n\n\"Do you go out much in society?\"\n\n\"Arthur does. Mary and I stay at home. We neither of us care for it.\"\n\n\"That is unusual in a young girl.\"\n\n\"She is of a quiet nature. Besides, she is not so very young. She is four-and-twenty.\"\n\n\"This matter, from what you say, seems to have been a shock to her also.\"\n\n\"Terrible! She is even more affected than I.\"\n\n\"You have neither of you any doubt as to your son's guilt?\"\n\n\"How can we have when I saw him with my own eyes with the coronet in his hands.\"\n\n\"I hardly consider that a conclusive proof. Was the remainder of the coronet at all injured?\"\n\n\"Yes, it was twisted.\"\n\n\"Do you not think, then, that he might have been trying to straighten it?\"\n\n\"God bless you! You are doing what you can for him and for me. But it is too heavy a task. What was he doing there at all? If his purpose were innocent, why did he not say so?\"\n\n\"Precisely. And if it were guilty, why did he not invent a lie? His silence appears to me to cut both ways. There are several singular points about the case. What did the police think of the noise which awoke you from your sleep?\"\n\n\"They considered that it might be caused by Arthur's closing his bedroom door.\"\n\n\"A likely story! As if a man bent on felony would slam his door so as to wake a household. What did they say, then, of the disappearance of these gems?\"\n\n\"They are still sounding the planking and probing the furniture in the hope of finding them.\"\n\n\"Have they thought of looking outside the house?\"\n\n\"Yes, they have shown extraordinary energy. The whole garden has already been minutely examined.\"\n\n\"Now, my dear sir,\" said Holmes, \"is it not obvious to you now that this matter really strikes very much deeper than either you or the police were at first inclined to think? It appeared to you to be a simple case; to me it seems exceedingly complex. Consider what is involved by your theory. You suppose that your son came down from his bed, went, at great risk, to your dressing-room, opened your bureau, took out your coronet, broke off by main force a small portion of it, went off to some other place, concealed three gems out of the thirty-nine, with such skill that nobody can find them, and then returned with the other thirty-six into the room in which he exposed himself to the greatest danger of being discovered. I ask you now, is such a theory tenable?\"\n\n\"But what other is there?\" cried the banker with a gesture of despair. \"If his motives were innocent, why does he not explain them?\"\n\n\"It is our task to find that out,\" replied Holmes; \"so now, if you please, Mr. Holder, we will set off for Streatham together, and devote an hour to glancing a little more closely into details.\"\n\nMy friend insisted upon my accompanying them in their expedition, which I was eager enough to do, for my curiosity and sympathy were deeply stirred by the story to which we had listened. I confess that the guilt of the banker's son appeared to me to be as obvious as it did to his unhappy father, but still I had such faith in Holmes's judgment that I felt that there must be some grounds for hope as long as he was dissatisfied with the accepted explanation. He hardly spoke a word the whole way out to the southern suburb, but sat with his chin upon his breast and his hat drawn over his eyes, sunk in the deepest thought. Our client appeared to have taken fresh heart at the little glimpse of hope which had been presented to him, and he even broke into a desultory chat with me over his business affairs. A short railway journey and a shorter walk brought us to Fairbank, the modest residence of the great financier.\n\nFairbank was a good-sized square house of white stone, standing back a little from the road. A double carriage-sweep, with a snow-clad lawn, stretched down in front to two large iron gates which closed the entrance. On the right side was a small wooden thicket, which led into a narrow path between two neat hedges stretching from the road to the kitchen door, and forming the tradesmen's entrance. On the left ran a lane which led to the stables, and was not itself within the grounds at all, being a public, though little used, thoroughfare. Holmes left us standing at the door and walked slowly all round the house, across the front, down the tradesmen's path, and so round by the garden behind into the stable lane. So long was he that Mr. Holder and I went into the dining-room and waited by the fire until he should return. We were sitting there in silence when the door opened and a young lady came in. She was rather above the middle height, slim, with dark hair and eyes, which seemed the darker against the absolute pallor of her skin. I do not think that I have ever seen such deadly paleness in a woman's face. Her lips, too, were bloodless, but her eyes were flushed with crying. As she swept silently into the room she impressed me with a greater sense of grief than the banker had done in the morning, and it was the more striking in her as she was evidently a woman of strong character, with immense capacity for self-restraint. Disregarding my presence, she went straight to her uncle and passed her hand over his head with a sweet womanly caress.\n\n\"You have given orders that Arthur should be liberated, have you not, dad?\" she asked.\n\n\"No, no, my girl, the matter must be probed to the bottom.\"\n\n\"But I am so sure that he is innocent. You know what woman's instincts are. I know that he has done no harm and that you will be sorry for having acted so harshly.\"\n\n\"Why is he silent, then, if he is innocent?\"\n\n\"Who knows? Perhaps because he was so angry that you should suspect him.\"\n\n\"How could I help suspecting him, when I actually saw him with the coronet in his hand?\"\n\n\"Oh, but he had only picked it up to look at it. Oh, do, do take my word for it that he is innocent. Let the matter drop and say no more. It is so dreadful to think of our dear Arthur in prison!\"\n\n\"I shall never let it drop until the gems are found\u2014never, Mary! Your affection for Arthur blinds you as to the awful consequences to me. Far from hushing the thing up, I have brought a gentleman down from London to inquire more deeply into it.\"\n\n\"This gentleman?\" she asked, facing round to me.\n\n\"No, his friend. He wished us to leave him alone. He is round in the stable lane now.\"\n\n\"The stable lane?\" She raised her dark eyebrows. \"What can he hope to find there? Ah! this, I suppose, is he. I trust, sir, that you will succeed in proving, what I feel sure is the truth, that my cousin Arthur is innocent of this crime.\"\n\n\"I fully share your opinion, and I trust, with you, that we may prove it,\" returned Holmes, going back to the mat to knock the snow from his shoes. \"I believe I have the honour of addressing Miss Mary Holder. Might I ask you a question or two?\"\n\n\"Pray do, sir, if it may help to clear this horrible affair up.\"\n\n\"You heard nothing yourself last night?\"\n\n\"Nothing, until my uncle here began to speak loudly. I heard that, and I came down.\"\n\n\"You shut up the windows and doors the night before. Did you fasten all the windows?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Were they all fastened this morning?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"You have a maid who has a sweetheart? I think that you remarked to your uncle last night that she had been out to see him?\"\n\n\"Yes, and she was the girl who waited in the drawing-room, and who may have heard uncle's remarks about the coronet.\"\n\n\"I see. You infer that she may have gone out to tell her sweetheart, and that the two may have planned the robbery.\"\n\n\"But what is the good of all these vague theories,\" cried the banker impatiently, \"when I have told you that I saw Arthur with the coronet in his hands?\"\n\n\"Wait a little, Mr. Holder. We must come back to that. About this girl, Miss Holder. You saw her return by the kitchen door, I presume?\"\n\n\"Yes; when I went to see if the door was fastened for the night I met her slipping in. I saw the man, too, in the gloom.\"\n\n\"Do you know him?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes! he is the green-grocer who brings our vegetables round. His name is Francis Prosper.\"\n\n\"He stood,\" said Holmes, \"to the left of the door\u2014that is to say, farther up the path than is necessary to reach the door?\"\n\n\"Yes, he did.\"\n\n\"And he is a man with a wooden leg?\"\n\nSomething like fear sprang up in the young lady's expressive black eyes. \"Why, you are like a magician,\" said she. \"How do you know that?\" She smiled, but there was no answering smile in Holmes's thin, eager face.\n\n\"I should be very glad now to go upstairs,\" said he. \"I shall probably wish to go over the outside of the house again. Perhaps I had better take a look at the lower windows before I go up.\"\n\nHe walked swiftly round from one to the other, pausing only at the large one which looked from the hall onto the stable lane. This he opened and made a very careful examination of the sill with his powerful magnifying lens. \"Now we shall go upstairs,\" said he at last.\n\nThe banker's dressing-room was a plainly furnished little chamber, with a gray carpet, a large bureau, and a long mirror. Holmes went to the bureau first and looked hard at the lock.\n\n\"Which key was used to open it?\" he asked.\n\n\"That which my son himself indicated\u2014that of the cupboard of the lumber-room.\"\n\n\"Have you it here?\"\n\n\"That is it on the dressing-table.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes took it up and opened the bureau.\n\n\"It is a noiseless lock,\" said he. \"It is no wonder that it did not wake you. This case, I presume, contains the coronet. We must have a look at it.\" He opened the case, and taking out the diadem he laid it upon the table. It was a magnificent specimen of the jeweller's art, and the thirty-six stones were the finest that I have ever seen. At one side of the coronet was a cracked edge, where a corner holding three gems had been torn away.\n\n\"Now, Mr. Holder,\" said Holmes, \"here is the corner which corresponds to that which has been so unfortunately lost. Might I beg that you will break it off.\"\n\nThe banker recoiled in horror. \"I should not dream of trying,\" said he.\n\n\"Then I will.\" Holmes suddenly bent his strength upon it, but without result. \"I feel it give a little,\" said he; \"but, though I am exceptionally strong in the fingers, it would take me all my time to break it. An ordinary man could not do it. Now, what do you think would happen if I did break it, Mr. Holder? There would be a noise like a pistol shot. Do you tell me that all this happened within a few yards of your bed and that you heard nothing of it?\"\n\n\"I do not know what to think. It is all dark to me.\"\n\n\"But perhaps it may grow lighter as we go. What do you think, Miss Holder?\"\n\n\"I confess that I still share my uncle's perplexity.\"\n\n\"Your son had no shoes or slippers on when you saw him?\"\n\n\"He had nothing on save only his trousers and shirt.\"\n\n\"Thank you. We have certainly been favoured with extraordinary luck during this inquiry, and it will be entirely our own fault if we do not succeed in clearing the matter up. With your permission, Mr. Holder, I shall now continue my investigations outside.\"\n\nHe went alone, at his own request, for he explained that any unnecessary footmarks might make his task more difficult. For an hour or more he was at work, returning at last with his feet heavy with snow and his features as inscrutable as ever.\n\n\"I think that I have seen now all that there is to see, Mr. Holder,\" said he; \"I can serve you best by returning to my rooms.\"\n\n\"But the gems, Mr. Holmes. Where are they?\"\n\n\"I cannot tell.\"\n\nThe banker wrung his hands. \"I shall never see them again!\" he cried. \"And my son? You give me hopes?\"\n\n\"My opinion is in no way altered.\"\n\n\"Then, for God's sake, what was this dark business which was acted in my house last night?\"\n\n\"If you can call upon me at my Baker Street rooms to-morrow morning between nine and ten I shall be happy to do what I can to make it clearer. I understand that you give me carte blanche to act for you, provided only that I get back the gems, and that you place no limit on the sum I may draw.\"\n\n\"I would give my fortune to have them back.\"\n\n\"Very good. I shall look into the matter between this and then. Good-bye; it is just possible that I may have to come over here again before evening.\"\n\nIt was obvious to me that my companion's mind was now made up about the case, although what his conclusions were was more than I could even dimly imagine. Several times during our homeward journey I endeavoured to sound him upon the point, but he always glided away to some other topic, until at last I gave it over in despair. It was not yet three when we found ourselves in our rooms once more. He hurried to his chamber, and was down again in a few minutes dressed as a common loafer. With his collar turned up, his shiny, seedy coat, his red cravat, and his worn boots, he was a perfect sample of the class.\n\n\"I think that this should do,\" said he, glancing into the glass above the fireplace. \"I only wish that you could come with me, Watson, but I fear that it won't do. I may be on the trail in this matter, or I may be following a will-o'-the-wisp, but I shall soon know which it is. I hope that I may be back in a few hours.\" He cut a slice of beef from the joint upon the sideboard, sandwiched it between two rounds of bread, and thrusting this rude meal into his pocket he started off upon his expedition.\n\nI had just finished my tea when he returned, evidently in excellent spirits, swinging an old elastic-sided boot in his hand. He chucked it down into a corner and helped himself to a cup of tea.\n\n\"I only looked in as I passed,\" said he. \"I am going right on.\"\n\n\"Where to?\"\n\n\"Oh, to the other side of the West End. It may be some time before I get back. Don't wait up for me in case I should be late.\"\n\n\"How are you getting on?\"\n\n\"Oh, so so. Nothing to complain of. I have been out to Streatham since I saw you last, but I did not call at the house. It is a very sweet little problem, and I would not have missed it for a good deal. However, I must not sit gossiping here, but must get these disreputable clothes off and return to my highly respectable self.\"\n\nI could see by his manner that he had stronger reasons for satisfaction than his words alone would imply. His eyes twinkled, and there was even a touch of colour upon his sallow cheeks. He hastened upstairs, and a few minutes later I heard the slam of the hall door, which told me that he was off once more upon his congenial hunt.\n\nI waited until midnight, but there was no sign of his return, so I retired to my room. It was no uncommon thing for him to be away for days and nights on end when he was hot upon a scent, so that his lateness caused me no surprise. I do not know at what hour he came in, but when I came down to breakfast in the morning there he was with a cup of coffee in one hand and the paper in the other, as fresh and trim as possible.\n\n\"You will excuse my beginning without you, Watson,\" said he, \"but you remember that our client has rather an early appointment this morning.\"\n\n\"Why, it is after nine now,\" I answered. \"I should not be surprised if that were he. I thought I heard a ring.\"\n\nIt was, indeed, our friend the financier. I was shocked by the change which had come over him, for his face which was naturally of a broad and massive mould, was now pinched and fallen in, while his hair seemed to me at least a shade whiter. He entered with a weariness and lethargy which was even more painful than his violence of the morning before, and he dropped heavily into the armchair which I pushed forward for him.\n\n\"I do not know what I have done to be so severely tried,\" said he. \"Only two days ago I was a happy and prosperous man, without a care in the world. Now I am left to a lonely and dishonoured age. One sorrow comes close upon the heels of another. My niece, Mary, has deserted me.\"\n\n\"Deserted you?\"\n\n\"Yes. Her bed this morning had not been slept in, her room was empty, and a note for me lay upon the hall table. I had said to her last night, in sorrow and not in anger, that if she had married my boy all might have been well with him. Perhaps it was thoughtless of me to say so. It is to that remark that she refers in this note:\n\n\u2002\"MY DEAREST UNCLE:\n\n\u2002\"I feel that I have brought trouble upon you, and that if I had acted differently this terrible misfortune might never have occurred. I cannot, with this thought in my mind, ever again be happy under your roof, and I feel that I must leave you forever. Do not worry about my future, for that is provided for; and, above all, do not search for me, for it will be fruitless labour and an ill-service to me. In life or in death, I am ever\n\n\u2002\"Your loving\n\n\u2002\"MARY.\n\n\"What could she mean by that note, Mr. Holmes? Do you think it points to suicide?\"\n\n\"No, no, nothing of the kind. It is perhaps the best possible solution. I trust, Mr. Holder, that you are nearing the end of your troubles.\"\n\n\"Ha! You say so! You have heard something, Mr. Holmes; you have learned something! Where are the gems?\"\n\n\"You would not think \u00a31000 apiece an excessive sum for them?\"\n\n\"I would pay ten.\"\n\n\"That would be unnecessary. Three thousand will cover the matter. And there is a little reward, I fancy. Have you your check-book? Here is a pen. Better make it out for \u00a34000.\"\n\nWith a dazed face the banker made out the required check. Holmes walked over to his desk, took out a little triangular piece of gold with three gems in it, and threw it down upon the table.\n\nWith a shriek of joy our client clutched it up.\n\n\"You have it!\" he gasped. \"I am saved! I am saved!\"\n\nThe reaction of joy was as passionate as his grief had been, and he hugged his recovered gems to his bosom.\n\n\"There is one other thing you owe, Mr. Holder,\" said Sherlock Holmes rather sternly.\n\n\"Owe!\" He caught up a pen. \"Name the sum, and I will pay it.\"\n\n\"No, the debt is not to me. You owe a very humble apology to that noble lad, your son, who has carried himself in this matter as I should be proud to see my own son do, should I ever chance to have one.\"\n\n\"Then it was not Arthur who took them?\"\n\n\"I told you yesterday, and I repeat to-day, that it was not.\"\n\n\"You are sure of it! Then let us hurry to him at once to let him know that the truth is known.\"\n\n\"He knows it already. When I had cleared it all up I had an interview with him, and finding that he would not tell me the story, I told it to him, on which he had to confess that I was right and to add the very few details which were not yet quite clear to me. Your news of this morning, however, may open his lips.\"\n\n\"For heaven's sake, tell me, then, what is this extraordinary mystery!\"\n\n\"I will do so, and I will show you the steps by which I reached it. And let me say to you, first, that which it is hardest for me to say and for you to hear: there has been an understanding between Sir George Burnwell and your niece Mary. They have now fled together.\"\n\n\"My Mary? Impossible!\"\n\n\"It is unfortunately more than possible; it is certain. Neither you nor your son knew the true character of this man when you admitted him into your family circle. He is one of the most dangerous men in England\u2014a ruined gambler, an absolutely desperate villain, a man without heart or conscience. Your niece knew nothing of such men. When he breathed his vows to her, as he had done to a hundred before her, she flattered herself that she alone had touched his heart. The devil knows best what he said, but at least she became his tool and was in the habit of seeing him nearly every evening.\"\n\n\"I cannot, and I will not, believe it!\" cried the banker with an ashen face.\n\n\"I will tell you, then, what occurred in your house last night. Your niece, when you had, as she thought, gone to your room, slipped down and talked to her lover through the window which leads into the stable lane. His footmarks had pressed right through the snow, so long had he stood there. She told him of the coronet. His wicked lust for gold kindled at the news, and he bent her to his will. I have no doubt that she loved you, but there are women in whom the love of a lover extinguishes all other loves, and I think that she must have been one. She had hardly listened to his instructions when she saw you coming downstairs, on which she closed the window rapidly and told you about one of the servants' escapade with her wooden-legged lover, which was all perfectly true.\n\n\"Your boy, Arthur, went to bed after his interview with you, but he slept badly on account of his uneasiness about his club debts. In the middle of the night he heard a soft tread pass his door, so he rose and, looking out, was surprised to see his cousin walking very stealthily along the passage until she disappeared into your dressing-room. Petrified with astonishment, the lad slipped on some clothes and waited there in the dark to see what would come of this strange affair. Presently she emerged from the room again, and in the light of the passage-lamp your son saw that she carried the precious coronet in her hands. She passed down the stairs, and he, thrilling with horror, ran along and slipped behind the curtain near your door, whence he could see what passed in the hall beneath. He saw her stealthily open the window, hand out the coronet to someone in the gloom, and then closing it once more hurry back to her room, passing quite close to where he stood hid behind the curtain.\n\n\"As long as she was on the scene he could not take any action without a horrible exposure of the woman whom he loved. But the instant that she was gone he realized how crushing a misfortune this would be for you, and how all-important it was to set it right. He rushed down, just as he was, in his bare feet, opened the window, sprang out into the snow, and ran down the lane, where he could see a dark figure in the moonlight. Sir George Burnwell tried to get away, but Arthur caught him, and there was a struggle between them, your lad tugging at one side of the coronet, and his opponent at the other. In the scuffle, your son struck Sir George and cut him over the eye. Then something suddenly snapped, and your son, finding that he had the coronet in his hands, rushed back, closed the window, ascended to your room, and had just observed that the coronet had been twisted in the struggle and was endeavouring to straighten it when you appeared upon the scene.\"\n\n\"Is it possible?\" gasped the banker.\n\n\"You then roused his anger by calling him names at a moment when he felt that he had deserved your warmest thanks. He could not explain the true state of affairs without betraying one who certainly deserved little enough consideration at his hands. He took the more chivalrous view, however, and preserved her secret.\"\n\n\"And that was why she shrieked and fainted when she saw the coronet,\" cried Mr. Holder. \"Oh, my God! what a blind fool I have been! And his asking to be allowed to go out for five minutes! The dear fellow wanted to see if the missing piece were at the scene of the struggle. How cruelly I have misjudged him!\"\n\n\"When I arrived at the house,\" continued Holmes, \"I at once went very carefully round it to observe if there were any traces in the snow which might help me. I knew that none had fallen since the evening before, and also that there had been a strong frost to preserve impressions. I passed along the tradesmen's path, but found it all trampled down and indistinguishable. Just beyond it, however, at the far side of the kitchen door, a woman had stood and talked with a man, whose round impressions on one side showed that he had a wooden leg. I could even tell that they had been disturbed, for the woman had run back swiftly to the door, as was shown by the deep toe and light heel marks, while Wooden-leg had waited a little, and then had gone away. I thought at the time that this might be the maid and her sweetheart, of whom you had already spoken to me, and inquiry showed it was so. I passed round the garden without seeing anything more than random tracks, which I took to be the police; but when I got into the stable lane a very long and complex story was written in the snow in front of me.\n\n\"There was a double line of tracks of a booted man, and a second double line which I saw with delight belonged to a man with naked feet. I was at once convinced from what you had told me that the latter was your son. The first had walked both ways, but, the other had run swiftly, and as his tread was marked in places over the depression of the boot, it was obvious that he had passed after the other. I followed them up and found they led to the hall window, where Boots had worn all the snow away while waiting. Then I walked to the other end, which was a hundred yards or more down the lane. I saw where Boots had faced round, where the snow was cut up as though there had been a struggle, and, finally, where a few drops of blood had fallen, to show me that I was not mistaken. Boots had then run down the lane, and another little smudge of blood showed that it was he who had been hurt. When he came to the highroad at the other end, I found that the pavement had been cleared, so there was an end to that clue.\n\n\"On entering the house, however, I examined, as you remember, the sill and framework of the hall window with my lens, and I could at once see that someone had passed out. I could distinguish the outline of an instep where the wet foot had been placed in coming in. I was then beginning to be able to form an opinion as to what had occurred. A man had waited outside the window; someone had brought the gems; the deed had been overseen by your son; he had pursued the thief; had struggled with him; they had each tugged at the coronet, their united strength causing injuries which neither alone could have effected. He had returned with the prize, but had left a fragment in the grasp of his opponent. So far I was clear. The question now was, who was the man and who was it brought him the coronet?\n\n\"It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Now, I knew that it was not you who had brought it down, so there only remained your niece and the maids. But if it were the maids, why should your son allow himself to be accused in their place? There could be no possible reason. As he loved his cousin, however, there was an excellent explanation why he should retain her secret\u2014the more so as the secret was a disgraceful one. When I remembered that you had seen her at that window, and how she had fainted on seeing the coronet again, my conjecture became a certainty.\n\n\"And who could it be who was her confederate? A lover evidently, for who else could outweigh the love and gratitude which she must feel to you? I knew that you went out little, and that your circle of friends was a very limited one. But among them was Sir George Burnwell. I had heard of him before as being a man of evil reputation among women. It must have been he who wore those boots and retained the missing gems. Even though he knew that Arthur had discovered him, he might still flatter himself that he was safe, for the lad could not say a word without compromising his own family.\n\n\"Well, your own good sense will suggest what measures I took next. I went in the shape of a loafer to Sir George's house, managed to pick up an acquaintance with his valet, learned that his master had cut his head the night before, and, finally, at the expense of six shillings, made all sure by buying a pair of his cast-off shoes. With these I journeyed down to Streatham and saw that they exactly fitted the tracks.\"\n\n\"I saw an ill-dressed vagabond in the lane yesterday evening,\" said Mr. Holder.\n\n\"Precisely. It was I. I found that I had my man, so I came home and changed my clothes. It was a delicate part which I had to play then, for I saw that a prosecution must be avoided to avert scandal, and I knew that so astute a villain would see that our hands were tied in the matter. I went and saw him. At first, of course, he denied everything. But when I gave him every particular that occurred, he tried to bluster and took down a life-preserver from the wall. I knew my man, however, and I clapped a pistol to his head before he could strike. Then he became a little more reasonable. I told him that we would give him a price for the stones he held\u2014\u00a31000 apiece. That brought out the first signs of grief that he had shown. 'Why, dash it all!' said he, 'I've let them go at six hundred for the three!' I soon managed to get the address of the receiver who had them, on promising him that there would be no prosecution. Off I set to him, and after much chaffering I got our stones at \u00a31000 apiece. Then I looked in upon your son, told him that all was right, and eventually got to my bed about two o'clock, after what I may call a really hard day's work.\"\n\n\"A day which has saved England from a great public scandal,\" said the banker, rising. \"Sir, I cannot find words to thank you, but you shall not find me ungrateful for what you have done. Your skill has indeed exceeded all that I have heard of it. And now I must fly to my dear boy to apologize to him for the wrong which I have done him. As to what you tell me of poor Mary, it goes to my very heart. Not even your skill can inform me where she is now.\"\n\n\"I think that we may safely say,\" returned Holmes, \"that she is wherever Sir George Burnwell is. It is equally certain, too, that whatever her sins are, they will soon receive a more than sufficient punishment.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES", + "text": "\"To the man who loves art for its own sake,\" remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of the Daily Telegraph, \"it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is pleasant to me to observe, Watson, that you have so far grasped this truth that in these little records of our cases which you have been good enough to draw up, and, I am bound to say, occasionally to embellish, you have given prominence not so much to the many causes c\u00e9l\u00e8bres and sensational trials in which I have figured but rather to those incidents which may have been trivial in themselves, but which have given room for those faculties of deduction and of logical synthesis which I have made my special province.\"\n\n\"And yet,\" said I, smiling, \"I cannot quite hold myself absolved from the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my records.\"\n\n\"You have erred, perhaps,\" he observed, taking up a glowing cinder with the tongs and lighting with it the long cherry-wood pipe which was wont to replace his clay when he was in a disputatious rather than a meditative mood\u2014\"you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing.\"\n\n\"It seems to me that I have done you full justice in the matter,\" I remarked with some coldness, for I was repelled by the egotism which I had more than once observed to be a strong factor in my friend's singular character.\n\n\"No, it is not selfishness or conceit,\" said he, answering, as was his wont, my thoughts rather than my words. \"If I claim full justice for my art, it is because it is an impersonal thing\u2014a thing beyond myself. Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell. You have degraded what should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales.\"\n\nIt was a cold morning of the early spring, and we sat after breakfast on either side of a cheery fire in the old room at Baker Street. A thick fog rolled down between the lines of dun-coloured houses, and the opposing windows loomed like dark, shapeless blurs through the heavy yellow wreaths. Our gas was lit and shone on the white cloth and glimmer of china and metal, for the table had not been cleared yet. Sherlock Holmes had been silent all the morning, dipping continuously into the advertisement columns of a succession of papers until at last, having apparently given up his search, he had emerged in no very sweet temper to lecture me upon my literary shortcomings.\n\n\"At the same time,\" he remarked after a pause, during which he had sat puffing at his long pipe and gazing down into the fire, \"you can hardly be open to a charge of sensationalism, for out of these cases which you have been so kind as to interest yourself in, a fair proportion do not treat of crime, in its legal sense, at all. The small matter in which I endeavoured to help the King of Bohemia, the singular experience of Miss Mary Sutherland, the problem connected with the man with the twisted lip, and the incident of the noble bachelor, were all matters which are outside the pale of the law. But in avoiding the sensational, I fear that you may have bordered on the trivial.\"\n\n\"The end may have been so,\" I answered, \"but the methods I hold to have been novel and of interest.\"\n\n\"Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a compositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction! But, indeed, if you are trivial, I cannot blame you, for the days of the great cases are past. Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools. I think that I have touched bottom at last, however. This note I had this morning marks my zero-point, I fancy. Read it!\" He tossed a crumpled letter across to me.\n\nIt was dated from Montague Place upon the preceding evening, and ran thus:\n\n\u2002DEAR MR. HOLMES:\n\n\u2002I am very anxious to consult you as to whether I should or should not accept a situation which has been offered to me as governess. I shall call at half-past ten tomorrow if I do not inconvenience you.\n\n\u2002Yours faithfully,\n\n\u2002VIOLET HUNTER.\n\n\"Do you know the young lady?\" I asked.\n\n\"Not I.\"\n\n\"It is half-past ten now.\"\n\n\"Yes, and I have no doubt that is her ring.\"\n\n\"It may turn out to be of more interest than you think. You remember that the affair of the blue carbuncle, which appeared to be a mere whim at first, developed into a serious investigation. It may be so in this case, also.\"\n\n\"Well, let us hope so. But our doubts will very soon be solved, for here, unless I am much mistaken, is the person in question.\"\n\nAs he spoke the door opened and a young lady entered the room. She was plainly but neatly dressed, with a bright, quick face, freckled like a plover's egg, and with the brisk manner of a woman who has had her own way to make in the world.\n\n\"You will excuse my troubling you, I am sure,\" said she, as my companion rose to greet her, \"but I have had a very strange experience, and as I have no parents or relations of any sort from whom I could ask advice, I thought that perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me what I should do.\"\n\n\"Pray take a seat, Miss Hunter. I shall be happy to do anything that I can to serve you.\"\n\nI could see that Holmes was favourably impressed by the manner and speech of his new client. He looked her over in his searching fashion, and then composed himself, with his lids drooping and his finger-tips together, to listen to her story.\n\n\"I have been a governess for five years,\" said she, \"in the family of Colonel Spence Munro, but two months ago the colonel received an appointment at Halifax, in Nova Scotia, and took his children over to America with him, so that I found myself without a situation. I advertised, and I answered advertisements, but without success. At last the little money which I had saved began to run short, and I was at my wit's end as to what I should do.\n\n\"There is a well-known agency for governesses in the West End called Westaway's, and there I used to call about once a week in order to see whether anything had turned up which might suit me. Westaway was the name of the founder of the business, but it is really managed by Miss Stoper. She sits in her own little office, and the ladies who are seeking employment wait in an anteroom, and are then shown in one by one, when she consults her ledgers and sees whether she has anything which would suit them.\n\n\"Well, when I called last week I was shown into the little office as usual, but I found that Miss Stoper was not alone. A prodigiously stout man with a very smiling face and a great heavy chin which rolled down in fold upon fold over his throat sat at her elbow with a pair of glasses on his nose, looking very earnestly at the ladies who entered. As I came in he gave quite a jump in his chair and turned quickly to Miss Stoper.\n\n\"'That will do,' said he; 'I could not ask for anything better. Capital! capital!' He seemed quite enthusiastic and rubbed his hands together in the most genial fashion. He was such a comfortable-looking man that it was quite a pleasure to look at him.\n\n\"'You are looking for a situation, miss?' he asked.\n\n\"'Yes, sir.'\n\n\"'As governess?'\n\n\"'Yes, sir.'\n\n\"'And what salary do you ask?'\n\n\"'I had \u00a34 a month in my last place with Colonel Spence Munro.'\n\n\"'Oh, tut, tut! sweating\u2014rank sweating!' he cried, throwing his fat hands out into the air like a man who is in a boiling passion. 'How could anyone offer so pitiful a sum to a lady with such attractions and accomplishments?'\n\n\"'My accomplishments, sir, may be less than you imagine,' said I. 'A little French, a little German, music, and drawing\u2014'\n\n\"'Tut, tut!' he cried. 'This is all quite beside the question. The point is, have you or have you not the bearing and deportment of a lady? There it is in a nutshell. If you have not, you are not fitted for the rearing of a child who may some day play a considerable part in the history of the country. But if you have, why, then, how could any gentleman ask you to condescend to accept anything under the three figures? Your salary with me, madam, would commence at \u00a3100 a year.'\n\n\"You may imagine, Mr. Holmes, that to me, destitute as I was, such an offer seemed almost too good to be true. The gentleman, however, seeing perhaps the look of incredulity upon my face, opened a pocket-book and took out a note.\n\n\"'It is also my custom,' said he, smiling in the most pleasant fashion until his eyes were just two little shining slits amid the white creases of his face, 'to advance to my young ladies half their salary beforehand, so that they may meet any little expenses of their journey and their wardrobe.'\n\n\"It seemed to me that I had never met so fascinating and so thoughtful a man. As I was already in debt to my tradesmen, the advance was a great convenience, and yet there was something unnatural about the whole transaction which made me wish to know a little more before I quite committed myself.\n\n\"'May I ask where you live, sir?' said I.\n\n\"'Hampshire. Charming rural place. The Copper Beeches, five miles on the far side of Winchester. It is the most lovely country, my dear young lady, and the dearest old country-house.'\n\n\"'And my duties, sir? I should be glad to know what they would be.'\n\n\"'One child\u2014one dear little romper just six years old. Oh, if you could see him killing cockroaches with a slipper! Smack! smack! smack! Three gone before you could wink!' He leaned back in his chair and laughed his eyes into his head again.\n\n\"I was a little startled at the nature of the child's amusement, but the father's laughter made me think that perhaps he was joking.\n\n\"'My sole duties, then,' I asked, 'are to take charge of a single child?'\n\n\"'No, no, not the sole, not the sole, my dear young lady,' he cried. 'Your duty would be, as I am sure your good sense would suggest, to obey any little commands my wife might give, provided always that they were such commands as a lady might with propriety obey. You see no difficulty, heh?'\n\n\"'I should be happy to make myself useful.'\n\n\"'Quite so. In dress now, for example. We are faddy people, you know\u2014faddy but kind-hearted. If you were asked to wear any dress which we might give you, you would not object to our little whim. Heh?'\n\n\"'No,' said I, considerably astonished at his words.\n\n\"'Or to sit here, or sit there, that would not be offensive to you?'\n\n\"'Oh, no.'\n\n\"'Or to cut your hair quite short before you come to us?'\n\n\"I could hardly believe my ears. As you may observe, Mr. Holmes, my hair is somewhat luxuriant, and of a rather peculiar tint of chestnut. It has been considered artistic. I could not dream of sacrificing it in this offhand fashion.\n\n\"'I am afraid that that is quite impossible.' said I. He had been watching me eagerly out of his small eyes, and I could see a shadow pass over his face as I spoke.\n\n\"'I am afraid that it is quite essential,' said he. 'It is a little fancy of my wife's, and ladies' fancies, you know, madam, ladies' fancies must be consulted. And so you won't cut your hair?'\n\n\"'No, sir, I really could not,' I answered firmly.\n\n'Ah, very well; then that quite settles the matter. It is a pity, because in other respects you would really have done very nicely. In that case. Miss Stoper, I had best inspect a few more of your young ladies.'\n\n\"The manageress had sat all this while busy with her papers without a word to either of us, but she glanced at me now with so much annoyance upon her face that I could not help suspecting that she had lost a handsome commission through my refusal.\n\n\"'Do you desire your name to be kept upon the books?' she asked.\n\n\"'If you please, Miss Stoper.'\n\n\"'Well, really, it seems rather useless, since you refuse the most excellent offers in this fashion,' said she sharply. 'You can hardly expect us to exert ourselves to find another such opening for you. Good-day to you, Miss Hunter.' She struck a gong upon the table, and I was shown out by the page.\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes, when I got back to my lodgings and found little enough in the cupboard, and two or three bills upon the table, I began to ask myself whether I had not done a very foolish thing. After all, if these people had strange fads and expected obedience on the most extraordinary matters, they were at least ready to pay for their eccentricity. Very few governesses in England are getting \u00a3100 a year. Besides, what use was my hair to me? Many people are improved by wearing it short, and perhaps I should be among the number. Next day I was inclined to think that I had made a mistake, and by the day after I was sure of it. I had almost overcome my pride so far as to go back to the agency and inquire whether the place was still open when I received this letter from the gentleman himself. I have it here, and I will read it to you:\n\n\"The Copper Beeches, near Winchester.\n\n\u2002\"DEAR MISS HUNTER:\n\n\u2002\"Miss Stoper has very kindly given me your address, and I write from here to ask you whether you have reconsidered your decision. My wife is very anxious that you should come, for she has been much attracted by my description of you. We are willing to give \u00a330 a quarter, or \u00a3120 a year, so as to recompense you for any little inconvenience which our fads may cause you. They are not very exacting, after all. My wife is fond of a particular shade of electric blue, and would like you to wear such a dress indoors in the morning. You need not, however, go to the expense of purchasing one, as we have one belonging to my dear daughter Alice (now in Philadelphia), which would, I should think, fit you very well. Then, as to sitting here or there, or amusing yourself in any manner indicated, that need cause you no inconvenience. As regards your hair, it is no doubt a pity, especially as I could not help remarking its beauty during our short interview, but I am afraid that I must remain firm upon this point, and I only hope that the increased salary may recompense you for the loss. Your duties, as far as the child is concerned, are very light. Now do try to come, and I shall meet you with the dog-cart at Winchester. Let me know your train.\n\n\u2002\"Yours faithfully,\n\n\u2002\"JEPHRO RUCASTLE.\n\n\"That is the letter which I have just received, Mr. Holmes, and my mind is made up that I will accept it. I thought, however, that before taking the final step I should like to submit the whole matter to your consideration.\"\n\n\"Well, Miss Hunter, if your mind is made up, that settles the question,\" said Holmes, smiling.\n\n\"But you would not advise me to refuse?\"\n\n\"I confess that it is not the situation which I should like to see a sister of mine apply for.\"\n\n\"What is the meaning of it all, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Ah, I have no data. I cannot tell. Perhaps you have yourself formed some opinion?\"\n\n\"Well, there seems to me to be only one possible solution. Mr. Rucastle seemed to be a very kind, good-natured man. Is it not possible that his wife is a lunatic, that he desires to keep the matter quiet for fear she should be taken to an asylum, and that he humours her fancies, in every way in order to prevent an outbreak?\"\n\n\"That is a possible solution\u2014in fact, as matters stand, it is the most probable one. But in any case it does not seem to be a nice household for a young lady.\"\n\n\"But the money, Mr. Holmes, the money!\"\n\n\"Well, yes, of course the pay is good\u2014too good. That is what makes me uneasy. Why should they give you \u00a3120 a year, when they could have their pick for \u00a340? There must be some strong reason behind.\"\n\n\"I thought that if I told you the circumstances you would understand afterwards if I wanted your help. I should feel so much stronger if I felt that you were at the back of me.\"\n\n\"Oh, you may carry that feeling away with you. I assure you that your little problem promises to be the most interesting which has come my way for some months. There is something distinctly novel about some of the features. If you should find yourself in doubt or in danger\u2014\"\n\n\"Danger! What danger do you foresee?\"\n\nHolmes shook his head gravely. \"It would cease to be a danger if we could define it,\" said he. \"But at any time, day or night, a telegram would bring me down to your help.\"\n\n\"That is enough.\" She rose briskly from her chair with the anxiety all swept from her face. \"I shall go down to Hampshire quite easy in my mind now. I shall write to Mr. Rucastle at once, sacrifice my poor hair tonight, and start for Winchester tomorrow.\" With a few grateful words to Holmes she bade us both good-night and bustled off upon her way.\n\n\"At least,\" said I as we heard her quick, firm steps descending the stairs, \"she seems to be a young lady who is very well able to take care of herself.\"\n\n\"And she would need to be,\" said Holmes gravely. \"I am much mistaken if we do not hear from her before many days are past.\"\n\nIt was not very long before my friend's prediction was fulfilled. A fortnight went by, during which I frequently found my thoughts turning in her direction and wondering, what strange side-alley of human experience this lonely woman had strayed into. The unusual salary, the curious conditions, the light duties, all pointed to something abnormal, though whether a fad or a plot, or whether the man were a philanthropist or a villain, it was quite beyond my powers to determine. As to Holmes, I observed that he sat frequently for half an hour on end, with knitted brows and an abstracted air, but he swept the matter away with a wave of his hand when I mentioned it. \"Data! data! data!\" he cried impatiently. \"I can't make bricks without clay.\" And yet he would always wind up by muttering that no sister of his should ever have accepted such a situation.\n\nThe telegram which we eventually received came late one night just as I was thinking of turning in and Holmes was settling down to one of those all-night chemical researches which he frequently indulged in, when I would leave him stooping over a retort and a test-tube at night and find him in the same position when I came down to breakfast in the morning. He opened the yellow envelope, and then, glancing at the message, threw it across to me.\n\n\"Just look up the trains in Bradshaw,\" said he, and turned back to his chemical studies.\n\nThe summons was a brief and urgent one.\n\nPlease be at the Black Swan Hotel at Winchester at midday tomorrow [it said]. Do come! I am at my wit's end.\n\nHUNTER.\n\n\"Will you come with me?\" asked Holmes, glancing up.\n\n\"I should wish to.\"\n\n\"Just look it up, then.\"\n\n\"There is a train at half-past nine,\" said I, glancing over my Bradshaw. \"It is due at Winchester at 11:30.\"\n\n\"That will do very nicely. Then perhaps I had better postpone my analysis of the acetones, as we may need to be at our best in the morning.\"\n\nBy eleven o'clock the next day we were well upon our way to the old English capital. Holmes had been buried in the morning papers all the way down, but after we had passed the Hampshire border he threw them down and began to admire the scenery. It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, which set an edge to a man's energy. All over the countryside, away to the rolling hills around Aldershot, the little red and gray roofs of the farm-steadings peeped out from amid the light green of the new foliage.\n\n\"Are they not fresh and beautiful?\" I cried with all the enthusiasm of a man fresh from the fogs of Baker Street.\n\nBut Holmes shook his head gravely.\n\n\"Do you know, Watson,\" said he, \"that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.\"\n\n\"Good heavens!\" I cried. \"Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?\"\n\n\"They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.\"\n\n\"You horrify me!\"\n\n\"But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser. Had this lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I should never have had a fear for her. It is the five miles of country which makes the danger. Still, it is clear that she is not personally threatened.\"\n\n\"No. If she can come to Winchester to meet us she can get away.\"\n\n\"Quite so. She has her freedom.\"\n\n\"What can be the matter, then? Can you suggest no explanation?\"\n\n\"I have devised seven separate explanations, each of which would cover the facts as far as we know them. But which of these is correct can only be determined by the fresh information which we, shall no doubt find waiting for us. Well, there is the tower of the cathedral, and we shall soon learn all that Miss Hunter has to tell.\"\n\nThe Black Swan is an inn of repute in the High Street, at no distance from the station, and there we found the young lady waiting for us. She had engaged a sitting-room, and our lunch awaited us upon the table.\n\n\"I am so delighted that you have come,\" she said earnestly. \"It is so very kind of you both; but indeed I do not know what I should do. Your advice will be altogether invaluable to me.\"\n\n\"Pray tell us what has happened to you.\"\n\n\"I will do so, and I must be quick, for I have promised Mr. Rucastle to be back before three. I got his leave to come into town this morning, though he little knew for what purpose.\"\n\n\"Let us have everything in its due order.\" Holmes thrust his long thin legs out towards the fire and composed himself to listen.\n\n\"In the first place, I may say that I have met, on the whole, with no actual ill-treatment from Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle. It is only fair to them to say that. But I cannot understand them, and I am not easy in my mind about them.\"\n\n\"What can you not understand?\"\n\n\"Their reasons for their conduct. But you shall have it all just as it occurred. When I came down, Mr. Rucastle met me here and drove me in his dog-cart to the Copper Beeches. It is, as he said, beautifully situated, but it is not beautiful in itself, for it is a large square block of a house, whitewashed, but all stained and streaked with damp and bad weather. There are grounds round it, woods on three sides, and on the fourth a field which slopes down to the Southampton highroad, which curves past about a hundred yards from the front door. This ground in front belongs to the house, but the woods all round are part of Lord Southerton's preserves. A clump of copper beeches immediately in front of the hall door has given its name to the place.\n\n\"I was driven over by my employer, who was as amiable as ever, and was introduced by him that evening to his wife and the child. There was no truth, Mr. Holmes, in the conjecture which seemed to us to be probable in your rooms at Baker Street. Mrs. Rucastle is not mad. I found her to be a silent, pale-faced woman, much younger than her husband, not more than thirty, I should think, while he can hardly be less than forty-five. From their conversation I have gathered that they have been married about seven years, that he was a widower, and that his only child by the first wife was the daughter who has gone to Philadelphia. Mr. Rucastle told me in private that the reason why she had left them was that she had an unreasoning aversion to her stepmother. As the daughter could not have been less than twenty, I can quite imagine that her position must have been uncomfortable with her father's young wife.\n\n\"Mrs. Rucastle seemed to me to be colourless in mind as well as in feature. She impressed me neither favourably nor the reverse. She was a nonentity. It was easy to see that she was passionately devoted both to her husband and to her little son. Her light gray eyes wandered continually from one to the other, noting every little want and forestalling it if possible. He was kind to her also in his bluff, boisterous fashion, and on the whole they seemed to be a happy couple. And yet she had sonic secret sorrow, this woman. She would often be lost in deep thought, with the saddest look upon her face. More than once I have surprised her in tears. I have thought sometimes that it was the disposition of her child which weighed upon her mind, for I have never met so utterly spoiled and so ill-natured a little creature. He is small for his age, with a head which is quite disproportionately large. His whole life appears to be spent in an alternation between savage fits of passion and gloomy intervals of sulking. Giving pain to any creature weaker than himself seems to be his one idea of amusement, and he shows quite remarkable talent in planning the capture of mice, little birds, and insects. But I would rather not talk about the creature, Mr. Holmes, and, indeed, he has little to do with my story.\"\n\n\"I am glad of all details,\" remarked my friend, \"whether they seem to you to be relevant or not.\"\n\n\"I shall try not to miss anything of importance. The one unpleasant thing about the house, which struck me at once, was the appearance and conduct of the servants. There are only two, a man and his wife. Toller, for that is his name, is a rough, uncouth man, with grizzled hair and whiskers, and a perpetual smell of drink. Twice since I have been with them he has been quite drunk, and yet Mr. Rucastle seemed to take no notice of it. His wife is a very tall and strong woman with a sour face, as silent as Mrs. Rucastle and much less amiable. They are a most unpleasant couple, but fortunately I spend most of my time in the nursery and my own room, which are next to each other in one corner of the building.\n\n\"For two days after my arrival at the Copper Beeches my life was very quiet; on the third, Mrs. Rucastle came down just after breakfast and whispered something to her husband.\n\n\"'Oh, yes,' said he, turning to me, 'we are very much obliged to you, Miss Hunter, for falling in with our whims so far as to cut your hair. I assure you that it has not detracted in the tiniest iota from your appearance. We shall now see how the electric-blue dress will become you. You will find it laid out upon the bed in your room, and if you would be so good as to put it on we should both be extremely obliged.'\n\n\"The dress which I found waiting for me was of a peculiar shade of blue. It was of excellent material, a sort of beige, but it bore unmistakable signs of having been worn before. It could not have been a better fit if I had been measured for it. Both Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle expressed a delight at the look of it, which seemed quite exaggerated in its vehemence. They were waiting for me in the drawing-room, which is a very large room, stretching along the entire front of the house, with three long windows reaching down to the floor. A chair had been placed close to the central window, with its back turned towards it. In this I was asked to sit, and then Mr. Rucastle, walking up and down on the other side of the room, began to tell me a series of the funniest stories that I have ever listened to. You cannot imagine how comical he was, and I laughed until I was quite weary. Mrs. Rucastle, however, who has evidently no sense of humour, never so much as smiled, but sat with her hands in her lap, and a sad, anxious look upon her face. After an hour or so, Mr. Rucastle suddenly remarked that it was time to commence the duties of the day, and that I might change my dress and go to little Edward in the nursery.\n\n\"Two days later this same performance was gone through under exactly similar circumstances. Again I changed my dress, again I sat in the window, and again I laughed very heartily at the funny stories of which my employer had an immense repertoire, and which he told inimitably. Then he handed me a yellow-backed novel, and moving my chair a little sideways, that my own shadow might not fail upon the page, he begged me to read aloud to him. I read for about ten minutes, beginning in the heart of a chapter, and then suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, he ordered me to cease and to change my dress.\n\n\"You can easily imagine, Mr. Holmes, how curious I became as to what the meaning of this extraordinary performance could possibly be. They were always very careful, I observed, to turn my face away from the window, so that I became consumed with the desire to see what was going on behind my back. At first it seemed to be impossible, but I soon devised a means. My hand-mirror had been broken, so a happy thought seized me, and I concealed a piece of the glass in my handkerchief. On the next occasion, in the midst of my laughter, I put my handkerchief up to my eyes, and was able with a little management to see all that there was behind me. I confess that I was disappointed. There was nothing. At least that was my first impression. At the second glance, however, I perceived that there was a man standing in the Southampton Road, a small bearded man in a gray suit, who seemed to be looking in my direction. The road is an important highway, and there are usually people there. This man, however, was leaning against the railings which bordered our field and was looking earnestly up. I lowered my handkerchief and glanced at Mrs. Rucastle to find her eyes fixed upon me with a most searching gaze. She said nothing, but I am convinced that she had divined that I had a mirror in my hand and had seen what was behind me. She rose at once.\n\n\"'Jephro,' said she, 'there is an impertinent fellow upon the road there who stares up at Miss Hunter.'\n\n\"'No friend of yours, Miss Hunter?' he asked.\n\n\"'No, I know no one in these parts.'\n\n\"'Dear me! How very impertinent! Kindly turn round and motion to him to go away.'\n\n\"'Surely it would be better to take no notice.'\n\n\"'No, no, we should have him loitering here always. Kindly turn round and wave him away like that.'\n\n\"I did as I was told, and at the same instant Mrs. Rucastle drew down the blind. That was a week ago, and from that time I have not sat again in the window, nor have I worn the blue dress, nor seen the man in the road.\"\n\n\"Pray continue,\" said Holmes. \"Your narrative promises to be a most interesting one.\"\n\n\"You will find it rather disconnected, I fear, and there may prove to be little relation between the different incidents of which I speak. On the very first day that I was at the Copper Beeches, Mr. Rucastle took me to a small outhouse which stands near the kitchen door. As we approached it I heard the sharp rattling of a chain, and the sound as of a large animal moving about.\n\n\"'Look in here!' said Mr. Rucastle, showing me a slit between two planks. 'Is he not a beauty?'\n\n\"I looked through and was conscious of two glowing eyes, and of a vague figure huddled up in the darkness.\n\n\"'Don't be frightened,' said my employer, laughing at the start which I had given. 'It's only Carlo, my mastiff. I call him mine, but really old Toller, my groom, is the only man who can do anything with him. We feed him once a day, and not too much then, so that he is always as keen as mustard. Toller lets him loose every night, and God help the trespasser whom he lays his fangs upon. For goodness' sake don't you ever on any pretext set your foot over the threshold at night, for it's as much as your life is worth.'\n\n\"The warning was no idle one, for two nights later I happened to look out of my bedroom window about two o'clock in the morning. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and the lawn in front of the house was silvered over and almost as bright as day. I was standing, rapt in the peaceful beauty of the scene, when I was aware that something was moving under the shadow of the copper beeches. As it emerged into the moonshine I saw what it was. It was a giant dog, as large as a calf, tawny tinted, with hanging jowl, black muzzle, and huge projecting bones. It walked slowly across the lawn and vanished into the shadow upon the other side. That dreadful sentinel sent a chill to my heart which I do not think that any burglar could have done.\n\n\"And now I have a very strange experience to tell you. I had, as you know, cut off my hair in London, and I had placed it in a great coil at the bottom of my trunk. One evening, after the child was in bed, I began to amuse myself by examining the furniture of my room and by rearranging my own little things. There was an old chest of drawers in the room, the two upper ones empty and open, the lower one locked. I had filled the first two with my linen, and as I had still much to pack away I was naturally annoyed at not having the use of the third drawer. It struck me that it might have been fastened by a mere oversight, so I took out my bunch of keys and tried to open it. The very first key fitted to perfection, and I drew the drawer open. There was only one thing in it, but I am sure that you would never guess what it was. It was my coil of hair.\n\n\"I took it up and examined it. It was of the same peculiar tint, and the same thickness. But then the impossibility of the thing obtruded itself upon me. How could my hair have been locked in the drawer? With trembling hands I undid my trunk, turned out the contents, and drew from the bottom my own hair. I laid the two tresses together, and I assure you that they were identical. Was it not extraordinary? Puzzle as I would, I could make nothing at all of what it meant. I returned the strange hair to the drawer, and I said nothing of the matter to the Rucastles as I felt that I had put myself in the wrong by opening a drawer which they had locked.\n\n\"I am naturally observant, as you may have remarked, Mr. Holmes, and I soon had a pretty good plan of the whole house in my head. There was one wing, however, which appeared not to be inhabited at all. A door which faced that which led into the quarters of the Tollers opened into this suite, but it was invariably locked. One day, however, as I ascended the stair, I met Mr. Rucastle coming out through this door, his keys in his hand, and a look on his face which made him a very different person to the round, jovial man to whom I was accustomed. His cheeks were red, his brow was all crinkled with anger, and the veins stood out at his temples with passion. He locked the door and hurried past me without a word or a look.\n\n\"This aroused my curiosity; so when I went out for a walk in the grounds with my charge, I strolled round to the side from which I could see the windows of this part of the house. There were four of them in a row, three of which were simply dirty, while the fourth was shuttered up. They were evidently all deserted. As I strolled up and down, glancing at them occasionally, Mr. Rucastle came out to me, looking as merry and jovial as ever.\n\n\"'Ah!' said he, 'you must not think me rude if I passed you without a word, my dear young lady. I was preoccupied with business matters.'\n\n\"I assured him that I was not offended. 'By the way,' said I, 'you seem to have quite a suite of spare rooms up there, and one of them has the shutters up.'\n\n\"He looked surprised and, as it seemed to me, a little startled at my remark.\n\n\"'Photography is one of my hobbies,' said he. 'I have made my dark room up there. But, dear me! what an observant young lady we have come upon. Who would have believed it? Who would have ever believed it?' He spoke in a jesting tone, but there was no jest in his eyes as he looked at me. I read suspicion there and annoyance, but no jest.\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes, from the moment that I understood that there was something about that suite of rooms which I was not to know, I was all on fire to go over them. It was not mere curiosity, though I have my share of that. It was more a feeling of duty\u2014a feeling that some good might come from my penetrating to this place. They talk of woman's instinct; perhaps it was woman's instinct which gave me that feeling. At any rate, it was there, and I was keenly on the lookout for any chance to pass the forbidden door.\n\n\"It was only yesterday that the chance came. I may tell you that, besides Mr. Rucastle, both Toller and his wife find something to do in these deserted rooms, and I once saw him carrying a large black linen bag with him through the door. Recently he has been drinking hard, and yesterday evening he was very drunk; and when I came upstairs there was the key in the door. I have no doubt at all that he had left it there. Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle were both downstairs, and the child was with them, so that I had an admirable opportunity. I turned the key gently in the lock, opened the door, and slipped through.\n\n\"There was a little passage in front of me, unpapered and uncarpeted, which turned at a right angle at the farther end. Round this corner were three doors in a line, the first and third of which were open. They each led into an empty room, dusty and cheerless, with two windows in the one and one in the other, so thick with dirt that the evening light glimmered dimly through them. The centre door was closed, and across the outside of it had been fastened one of the broad bars of an iron bed, padlocked at one end to a ring in the wall, and fastened at the other with stout cord. The door itself was locked as well, and the key was not there. This barricaded door corresponded clearly with the shuttered window outside, and yet I could see by the glimmer from beneath it that the room was not in darkness. Evidently there was a skylight which let in light from above. As I stood in the passage gazing at the sinister door and wondering what secret it might veil, I suddenly heard the sound of steps within the room and saw a shadow pass backward and forward against the little slit of dim light which shone out from under the door. A mad, unreasoning terror rose up in me at the sight, Mr. Holmes. My overstrung nerves failed me suddenly, and I turned and ran\u2014ran as though some dreadful hand were behind me clutching at the skirt of my dress. I rushed down the passage, through the door, and straight into the arms of Mr. Rucastle, who was waiting outside.\n\n\"'So,' said he, smiling, 'it was you, then. I thought that it must be when I saw the door open.'\n\n\"'Oh, I am so frightened!' I panted.\n\n\"'My dear young lady! my dear young lady!'\u2014you cannot think how caressing and soothing his manner was\u2014'and what has frightened you, my dear young lady?'\n\n\"But his voice was just a little too coaxing. He overdid it. I was keenly on my guard against him.\n\n\"'I was foolish enough to go into the empty wing,' I answered. 'But it is so lonely and eerie in this dim light that I was frightened and ran out again. Oh, it is so dreadfully still in there!'\n\n\"'Only that?' said he, looking at me keenly.\n\n\"'Why, what did you think?' I asked.\n\n\"'Why do you think that I lock this door?'\n\n\"'I am sure that I do not know.'\n\n\"'It is to keep people out who have no business there. Do you see?' He was still smiling in the most amiable manner.\n\n\"'I am sure if I had known\u2014'\n\n\"'Well, then, you know now. And if you ever put your foot over that threshold again'\u2014here in an instant the smile hardened into a grin of rage, and he glared down at me with the face of a demon\u2014'I'Il throw you to the mastiff.'\n\n\"I was so terrified that I do not know what I did. I suppose that I must have rushed past him into my room. I remember nothing until I found myself lying on my bed trembling all over. Then I thought of you, Mr. Holmes. I could not live there longer without some advice. I was frightened of the house, of the man, of the woman, of the servants, even of the child. They were all horrible to me. If I could only bring you down all would be well. Of course I might have fled from the house, but my curiosity was almost as strong as my fears. My mind was soon made up. I would send you a wire. I put on my hat and cloak, went down to the office, which is about half a mile from the house, and then returned, feeling very much easier. A horrible doubt came into my mind as I approached the door lest the dog might be loose, but I remembered that Toller had drunk himself into a state of insensibility that evening and I knew that he was the only one in the household who had any influence with the savage creature, or who would venture to set him free. I slipped in in safety and lay awake half the night in my joy at the thought of seeing you. I had no difficulty in getting leave to come into Winchester this morning, but I must be back before three o'clock, for Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle are going on a visit, and will be away all the evening, so that I must look after the child. Now I have told you all my adventures, Mr. Holmes, and I should be very glad if you could tell me what it all means, and, above all, what I should do.\"\n\nHolmes and I had listened spellbound to this extraordinary story. My friend rose now and paced up and down the room, his hands in his pockets, and an expression of the most profound gravity upon his face.\n\n\"Is Toller still drunk?\" he asked.\n\n\"Yes. I heard his wife tell Mrs. Rucastle that she could do nothing with him.\"\n\n\"That is well. And the Rucastles go out tonight?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Is there a cellar with a good strong lock?\"\n\n\"Yes, the wine-cellar.\"\n\n\"You seem to me to have acted all through this matter like a very brave and sensible girl, Miss Hunter. Do you think that you could perform one more feat? I should not ask it of you if I did not think you a quite exceptional woman.\"\n\n\"I will try. What is it?\"\n\n\"We shall be at the Copper Beeches by seven o'clock, my friend and I. The Rucastles will be gone by that time, and Toller will, we hope, be incapable. There only remains Mrs. Toller, who might give the alarm. If you could send her into the cellar on some errand, and then turn the key upon her, you would facilitate matters immensely.\"\n\n\"I will do it.\"\n\n\"Excellent! We shall then look thoroughly into the affair. Of course there is only one feasible explanation. You have been brought there to personate someone, and the real person is imprisoned in this chamber. That is obvious. As to who this prisoner is, I have no doubt that it is the daughter, Miss Alice Rucastle, if I remember right, who was said to have gone to America. You were chosen, doubtless, as resembling her in height, figure, and the colour of your hair. Hers had been cut off, very possibly in some illness through which she has passed, and so, of course, yours had to be sacrificed also. By a curious chance you came upon her tresses. The man in the road was undoubtedly some friend of hers\u2014possibly her fianc\u00e9\u2014and no doubt, as you wore the girl's dress and were so like her, he was convinced from your laughter, whenever he saw you, and afterwards from your gesture, that Miss Rucastle was perfectly happy, and that she no longer desired his attentions. The dog is let loose at night to prevent him from endeavouring to communicate with her. So much is fairly clear. The most serious point in the case is the disposition of the child.\"\n\n\"What on earth has that to do with it?\" I ejaculated.\n\n\"My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining light as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children. This child's disposition is abnormally cruel, merely for cruelty's sake, and whether he derives this from his smiling father, as I should suspect, or from his mother, it bodes evil for the poor girl who is in their power.\"\n\n\"I am sure that you are right, Mr. Holmes,\" cried our client. \"A thousand things come back to me which make me certain that you have hit it. Oh, let us lose not an instant in bringing help to this poor creature.\"\n\n\"We must be circumspect, for we are dealing with a very cunning man. We can do nothing until seven o'clock. At that hour we shall be with you, and it will not be long before we solve the mystery.\"\n\nWe were as good as our word, for it was just seven when we reached the Copper Beeches, having put up our trap at a wayside public-house. The group of trees, with their dark leaves shining like burnished metal in the light of the setting sun, were sufficient to mark the house even had Miss Hunter not been standing smiling on the door-step.\n\n\"Have you managed it?\" asked Holmes.\n\nA loud thudding noise came from somewhere downstairs. \"That is Mrs. Toller in the cellar,\" said she. \"Her husband lies snoring on the kitchen rug. Here are his keys, which are the duplicates of Mr. Rucastle's.\"\n\n\"You have done well indeed!\" cried Holmes with enthusiasm. \"Now lead the way, and we shall soon see the end of this black business.\"\n\nWe passed up the stair, unlocked the door, followed on down a passage, and found ourselves in front of the barricade which Miss Hunter had described. Holmes cut the cord and removed the transverse bar. Then he tried the various keys in the lock, but without success. No sound came from within, and at the silence Holmes's face clouded over.\n\n\"I trust that we are not too late,\" said he. \"I think, Miss Hunter, that we had better go in without you. Now, Watson, put your shoulder to it, and we shall see whether we cannot make our way in.\"\n\nIt was an old rickety door and gave at once before our united strength. Together we rushed into the room. It was empty. There was no furniture save a little pallet bed, a small table, and a basketful of linen. The skylight above was open and the prisoner gone.\n\n\"There has been some villainy here,\" said Holmes; \"this beauty has guessed Miss Hunter's intentions and has carried his victim off.\"\n\n\"But how?\"\n\n\"Through the skylight. We shall soon see how he managed it.\" He swung himself up onto the roof. \"Ah, yes,\" he cried, \"here's the end of a long light ladder against the eaves. That is how he did it.\"\n\n\"But it is impossible,\" said Miss Hunter; \"the ladder was not there when the Rucastles went away.\"\n\n\"He has come back and done it. I tell you that he is a clever and dangerous man. I should not be very much surprised if this were he whose step I hear now upon the stair. I think, Watson, that it would be as well for you to have your pistol ready.\"\n\nThe words were hardly out of his mouth before a man appeared at the door of the room, a very fat and burly man, with a heavy stick in his hand. Miss Hunter screamed and shrunk against the wall at the sight of him, but Sherlock Holmes sprang forward and confronted him.\n\n\"You villain!\" said he, \"where's your daughter?\"\n\nThe fat man cast his eyes round, and then up at the open skylight.\n\n\"It is for me to ask you that,\" he shrieked, \"you thieves! Spies and thieves! I have caught you, have I? You are in my power. I'll serve you!\" He turned and clattered down the stairs as hard as he could go.\n\n\"He's gone for the dog!\" cried Miss Hunter.\n\n\"I have my revolver,\" said I.\n\n\"Better close the front door,\" cried Holmes, and we all rushed down the stairs together. We had hardly reached the hall when we heard the baying of a hound, and then a scream of agony, with a horrible worrying sound which it was dreadful to listen to. An elderly man with a red face and shaking limbs came staggering out at a side door.\n\n\"My God!\" he cried. \"Someone has loosed the dog. It's not been fed for two days. Quick, quick, or it'll be too late!\"\n\nHolmes and I rushed out and round the angle of the house, with Toller hurrying behind us. There was the huge famished brute, its black muzzle buried in Rucastle's throat, while he writhed and screamed upon the ground. Running up, I blew its brains out, and it fell over with its keen white teeth still meeting in the great creases of his neck. With much labour we separated them and carried him, living but horribly mangled, into the house. We laid him upon the drawing-room sofa, and having dispatched the sobered Toller to bear the news to his wife, I did what I could to relieve his pain. We were all assembled round him when the door opened, and a tall, gaunt woman entered the room.\n\n\"Mrs. Toller!\" cried Miss Hunter.\n\n\"Yes, miss. Mr. Rucastle let me out when he came back before he went up to you. Ah, miss, it is a pity you didn't let me know what you were planning, for I would have told you that your pains were wasted.\"\n\n\"Ha!\" said Holmes, looking keenly at her. \"It is clear that Mrs. Toller knows more about this matter than anyone else.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. I do, and I am ready enough to tell what I know.\"\n\n\"Then, pray, sit down, and let us hear it, for there are several points on which I must confess that I am still in the dark.\"\n\n\"I will soon make it clear to you,\" said she; \"and I'd have done so before now if I could ha' got out from the cellar. If there's police-court business over this, you'll remember that I was the one that stood your friend, and that I was Miss Alice's friend too.\n\n\"She was never happy at home, Miss Alice wasn't, from the time that her father married again. She was slighted like and had no say in anything, but it never really became bad for her until after she met Mr. Fowler at a friend's house. As well as I could learn, Miss Alice had rights of her own by will, but she was so quiet and patient, she was, that she never said a word about them, but just left everything in Mr. Rucastle's hands. He knew he was safe with her; but when there was a chance of a husband coming forward, who would ask for all that the law would give him, then her father thought it time to put a stop on it. He wanted her to sign a paper, so that whether she married or not, he could use her money. When she wouldn't do it, he kept on worrying her until she got brain-fever, and for six weeks was at death's door. Then she got better at last, all worn to a shadow, and with her beautiful hair cut off; but that didn't make no change in her young man, and he stuck to her as true as man could be.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Holmes, \"I think that what you have been good enough to tell us makes the matter fairly clear, and that I can deduce all that remains. Mr. Rucastle then, I presume, took to this system of imprisonment?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"And brought Miss Hunter down from London in order to get rid of the disagreeable persistence of Mr. Fowler.\"\n\n\"That was it, sir.\"\n\n\"But Mr. Fowler being a persevering man, as a good seaman should be, blockaded the house, and having met you succeeded by certain arguments, metallic or otherwise, in convincing you that your interests were the same as his.\"\n\n\"Mr. Fowler was a very kind-spoken, free-handed gentleman,\" said Mrs. Toller serenely.\n\n\"And in this way he managed that your good man should have no want of drink, and that a ladder should be ready at the moment when your master had gone out.\"\n\n\"You have it, sir, just as it happened.\"\n\n\"I am sure we owe you an apology, Mrs. Toller,\" said Holmes, \"for you have certainly cleared up everything which puzzled us. And here comes the country surgeon and Mrs. Rucastle, so I think, Watson, that we had best escort Miss Hunter back to Winchester, as it seems to me that our locus standi now is rather a questionable one.\"\n\nAnd thus was solved the mystery of the sinister house with the copper beeches in front of the door. Mr. Rucastle survived, but was always a broken man, kept alive solely through the care of his devoted wife. They still live with their old servants, who probably know so much of Rucastle's past life that he finds it difficult to part from them. Mr. Fowler and Miss Rucastle were married, by special license, in Southampton the day after their flight, and he is now the holder of a government appointment in the island of Mauritius. As to Miss Violet Hunter, my friend Holmes, rather to my disappointment, manifested no further interest in her when once she had ceased to be the centre of one of his problems, and she is now the head of a private school at Walsall, where I believe that she has met with considerable success." + }, + { + "title": "MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES", + "text": "[ SILVER BLAZE ]\n\n\"I am afraid, Watson, that I shall have to go,\" said Holmes as we sat down together to our breakfast one morning.\n\n\"Go! Where to?\"\n\n\"To Dartmoor; to King's Pyland.\"\n\nI was not surprised. Indeed, my only wonder was that he had not already been mixed up in this extraordinary case, which was the one topic of conversation through the length and breadth of England. For a whole day my companion had rambled about the room with his chin upon his chest and his brows knitted, charging and recharging his pipe with the strongest black tobacco, and absolutely deaf to any of my questions or remarks. Fresh editions of every paper had been sent up by our news agent, only to be glanced over and tossed down into a corner. Yet, silent as he was, I knew perfectly well what it was over which he was brooding. There was but one problem before the public which could challenge his powers of analysis, and that was the singular disappearance of the favourite for the Wessex Cup, and the tragic murder of its trainer. When, therefore, he suddenly announced his intention of setting out for the scene of the drama, it was only what I had both expected and hoped for.\n\n\"I should be most happy to go down with you if I should not be in the way,\" said I.\n\n\"My dear Watson, you would confer a great favour upon me by coming. And I think that your time will not be misspent, for there are points about the case which promise to make it an absolutely unique one. We have, I think, just time to catch our train at Paddington, and I will go further into the matter upon our journey. You would oblige me by bringing with you your very excellent field-glass.\"\n\nAnd so it happened that an hour or so later I found myself in the corner of a first-class carriage flying along en route for Exeter, while Sherlock Holmes, with his sharp, eager face framed in his ear-flapped travelling-cap, dipped rapidly into the bundle of fresh papers which he had procured at Paddington. We had left Reading far behind us before he thrust the last one of them under the seat and offered me his cigar-case.\n\n\"We are going well,\" said he, looking out of the window and glancing at his watch. \"Our rate at present is fifty-three and a half miles an hour.\"\n\n\"I have not observed the quarter-mile posts,\" said I.\n\n\"Nor have I. But the telegraph posts upon this line are sixty yards apart, and the calculation is a simple one. I presume that you have looked into this matter of the murder of John Straker and the disappearance of Silver Blaze?\"\n\n\"I have seen what the Telegraph and the Chronicle have to say.\"\n\n\"It is one of those cases where the art of the reasoner should be used rather for the sifting of details than for the acquiring of fresh evidence. The tragedy has been so uncommon, so complete, and of such personal importance to so many people that we are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture, and hypothesis. The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact\u2014of absolute undeniable fact\u2014from the embellishments of theorists and reporters. Then, having established ourselves upon this sound basis, it is our duty to see what inferences may be drawn and what are the special points upon which the whole mystery turns. On Tuesday evening I received telegrams from both Colonel Ross, the owner of the horse, and from Inspector Gregory, who is looking after the case, inviting my co\u00f6peration.\"\n\n\"Tuesday evening!\" I exclaimed. \"And this is Thursday morning. Why didn't you go down yesterday?\"\n\n\"Because I made a blunder, my dear Watson\u2014which is, I am afraid, a more common occurrence than anyone would think who only knew me through your memoirs. The fact is that I could not believe it possible that the most remarkable horse in England could long remain concealed, especially in so sparsely inhabited a place as the north of Dartmoor. From hour to hour yesterday I expected to hear that he had been found, and that his abductor was the murderer of John Straker. When, however, another morning had come and I found that beyond the arrest of young Fitzroy Simpson nothing had been done, I felt that it was time for me to take action. Yet in some ways I feel that yesterday has not been wasted.\"\n\n\"You have formed a theory, then?\"\n\n\"At least I have got a grip of the essential facts of the case. I shall enumerate them to you, for nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person, and I can hardly expect your cooperation if I do not show you the position from which we start.\"\n\nI lay back against the cushions, puffing at my cigar, while Holmes, leaning forward, with his long, thin forefinger checking off the points upon the palm of his left hand, gave me a sketch of the events which had led to our journey.\n\n\"Silver Blaze,\" said he, \"is from the Isonomy stock and holds as brilliant a record as his famous ancestor. He is now in his fifth year and has brought in turn each of the prizes of the turf to Colonel Ross, his fortunate owner. Up to the time of the catastrophe he was the first favourite for the Wessex Cup, the betting being three to one on him. He has always, however, been a prime favourite with the racing public and has never yet disappointed them, so that even at those odds enormous sums of money have been laid upon him. It is obvious, therefore, that there were many people who had the strongest interest in preventing Silver Blaze from being there at the fall of the flag next Tuesday.\n\n\"The fact was, of course, appreciated at King's Pyland, where the colonel's training-stable is situated. Every precaution was taken to guard the favourite. The trainer, John Straker, is a retired jockey who rode in Colonel Ross's colours before he became too heavy for the weighing-chair. He has served the colonel for five years as jockey and for seven as trainer, and has always shown himself to be a zealous and honest servant. Under him were three lads, for the establishment was a small one containing only four horses in all. One of these lads sat up each night in the stable, while the others slept in the loft. All three bore excellent characters. John Straker, who is a married man, lived in a small villa about two hundred yards from the stables. He has no children, keeps one maidservant, and is comfortably off. The country round is very lonely, but about half a mile to the north there is a small cluster of villas which have been built by a Tavistock contractor for the use of invalids and others who may wish to enjoy the pure Dartmoor air. Tavistock itself lies two miles to the west, while across the moor, also about two miles distant, is the larger training establishment of Mapleton, which belongs to Lord Backwater and is managed by Silas Brown. In every other direction the moor is a complete wilderness, inhabited only by a few roaming gypsies. Such was the general situation last Monday night when the catastrophe occurred.\n\n\"On that evening the horses had been exercised and watered as usual, and the stables were locked up at nine o'clock. Two of the lads walked up to the trainer's house, where they had supper in the kitchen, while the third, Ned Hunter, remained on guard. At a few minutes after nine the maid, Edith Baxter, carried down to the stables his supper, which consisted of a dish of curried mutton. She took no liquid, as there was a water-tap in the stables, and it was the rule that the lad on duty should drink nothing else. The maid carried a lantern with her, as it was very dark and the path ran across the open moor.\n\n\"Edith Baxter was within thirty yards of the stables when a man appeared out of the darkness and called to her to stop. As she stepped into the circle of yellow light thrown by the lantern she saw that he was a person of gentlemanly bearing, dressed in a gray suit of tweeds, with a cloth cap. He wore gaiters and carried a heavy stick with a knob to it. She was most impressed, however, by the extreme pallor of his face and by the nervousness of his manner. His age, she thought, would be rather over thirty than under it.\n\n\"'Can you tell me where I am?' he asked. 'I had almost made up my mind to sleep on the moor when I saw the light of your lantern.'\n\n\"'You are close to the King's Pyland training stables,' said she.\n\n\"'Oh, indeed! What a stroke of luck!' he cried. 'I understand that a stable-boy sleeps there alone every night. Perhaps that is his supper which you are carrying to him. Now I am sure that you would not be too proud to earn the price of a new dress, would you?' He took a piece of white paper folded up out of his waistcoat pocket. 'See that the boy has this to-night, and you shall have the prettiest frock that money can buy.'\n\n\"She was frightened by the earnestness of his manner and ran past him to the window through which she was accustomed to hand the meals. It was already opened, and Hunter was seated at the small table inside. She had begun to tell him of what had happened when the stranger came up again.\n\n\"'Good-evening,' said he, looking through the window. 'I wanted to have a word with you.' The girl has sworn that as he spoke she noticed the corner of the little paper packet protruding from his closed hand.\n\n\"'What business have you here?' asked the lad.\n\n\"'It's business that may put something into your pocket,' said the other. 'You've two horses in for the Wessex Cup\u2014Silver Blaze and Bayard. Let me have the straight tip and you won't be a loser. Is it a fact that at the weights Bayard could give the other a hundred yards in five furlongs, and that the stable have put their money on him?'\n\n\"'So, you're one of those damned touts!' cried the lad. 'I'll show you how we serve them in King's Pyland.' He sprang up and rushed across the stable to unloose the dog. The girl fled away to the house, but as she ran she looked back and saw that the stranger was leaning through the window. A minute later, however, when Hunter rushed out with the hound he was gone, and though he ran all round the buildings he failed to find any trace of him.\"\n\n\"One moment,\" I asked. \"Did the stable-boy, when he ran out with the dog, leave the door unlocked behind him?\"\n\n\"Excellent, Watson, excellent!\" murmured my companion. \"The importance of the point struck me so forcibly that I sent a special wire to Dartmoor yesterday to clear the matter up. The boy locked the door before he left it. The window, I may add, was not large enough for a man to get through.\n\n\"Hunter waited until his fellow-grooms had returned, when he sent a message to the trainer and told him what had occurred. Straker was excited at hearing the account, although he does not seem to have quite realized its true significance. It left him, however, vaguely uneasy, and Mrs. Straker, waking at one in the morning, found that he was dressing. In reply to her inquiries, he said that he could not sleep on account of his anxiety about the horses, and that he intended to walk down to the stables to see that all was well. She begged him to remain at home, as she could hear the rain pattering against the window, but in spite of her entreaties he pulled on his large mackintosh and left the house.\n\n\"Mrs. Straker awoke at seven in the morning to find that her husband had not yet returned. She dressed herself hastily, called the maid, and set off for the stables. The door was open; inside, huddled together upon a chair, Hunter was sunk in a state of absolute stupor, the favourite's stall was empty, and there were no signs of his trainer.\n\n\"The two lads who slept in the chaff-cutting loft above the harness-room were quickly aroused. They had heard nothing during the night, for they are both sound sleepers. Hunter was obviously under the influence of some powerful drug, and as no sense could be got out of him, he was left to sleep it off while the two lads and the two women ran out in search of the absentees. They still had hopes that the trainer had for some reason taken out the horse for early exercise, but on ascending the knoll near the house, from which all the neighbouring moors were visible, they not only could see no signs of the missing favourite, but they perceived something which warned them that they were in the presence of a tragedy.\n\n\"About a quarter of a mile from the stables John Straker's overcoat was flapping from a furze-bush. Immediately beyond there was a bowl-shaped depression in the moor, and at the bottom of this was found the dead body of the unfortunate trainer. His head had been shattered by a savage blow from some heavy weapon, and he was wounded on the thigh, where there was a long, clean cut, inflicted evidently by some very sharp instrument. It was clear, however, that Straker had defended himself vigorously against his assailants, for in his right hand he held a small knife, which was clotted with blood up to the handle, while in his left he clasped a red and black silk cravat, which was recognized by the maid as having been worn on the preceding evening by the stranger who had visited the stables. Hunter, on recovering from his stupor, was also quite positive as to the ownership of the cravat. He was equally certain that the same stranger had, while standing at the window, drugged his curried mutton, and so deprived the stables of their watchman. As to the missing horse, there were abundant proofs in the mud which lay at the bottom of the fatal hollow that he had been there at the time of the struggle. But from that morning he has disappeared, and although a large reward has been offered, and all the gypsies of Dartmoor are on the alert, no news has come of him. Finally, an analysis has shown that the remains of his supper left by the stable-lad contained an appreciable quantity of powdered opium, while the people at the house partook of the same dish on the same night without any ill effect.\n\n\"Those are the main facts of the case, stripped of all surmise, and stated as baldly as possible. I shall now recapitulate what the police have done in the matter.\n\n\"Inspector Gregory, to whom the case has been committed, is an extremely competent officer. Were he but gifted with imagination he might rise to great heights in his profession. On his arrival he promptly found and arrested the man upon whom suspicion naturally rested. There was little difficulty in finding him, for he inhabited one of those villas which I have mentioned. His name, it appears, was Fitzroy Simpson. He was a man of excellent birth and education, who had squandered a fortune upon the turf, and who lived now by doing a little quiet and genteel book-making in the sporting clubs of London. An examination of his betting-book shows that bets to the amount of five thousand pounds had been registered by him against the favourite. On being arrested he volunteered the statement that he had come down to Dartmoor in the hope of getting some information about the King's Pyland horses, and also about Desborough, the second favourite, which was in charge of Silas Brown at the Mapleton stables. He did not attempt to deny that he had acted as described upon the evening before, but declared that he had no sinister designs and had simply wished to obtain first-hand information. When confronted with his cravat he turned very pale and was utterly unable to account for its presence in the hand of the murdered man. His wet clothing showed that he had been out in the storm of the night before, and his stick, which was a penang-lawyer weighted with lead, was just such a weapon as might, by repeated blows, have inflicted the terrible injuries to which the trainer had succumbed. On the other hand, there was no wound upon his person, while the state of Straker's knife would show that one at least of his assailants must bear his mark upon him. There you have it all in a nutshell, Watson, and if you can give me any light I shall be infinitely obliged to you.\"\n\nI had listened with the greatest interest to the statement which Holmes, with characteristic clearness, had laid before me. Though most of the facts were familiar to me, I had not sufficiently appreciated their relative importance, nor their connection to each other.\n\n\"Is it not possible,\" I suggested; \"that the incised wound upon Straker may have been caused by his own knife in the convulsive struggles which follow any brain injury?\"\n\n\"It is more than possible; it is probable,\" said Holmes. \"In that case one of the main points in favour of the accused disappears.\"\n\n\"And yet,\" said I, \"even now I fail to understand what the theory of the police can be.\"\n\n\"I am afraid that whatever theory we state has very grave objections to it,\" returned my companion. \"The police imagine, I take it, that this Fitzroy Simpson, having drugged the lad, and having in some way obtained a duplicate key, opened the stable door and took out the horse, with the intention, apparently, of kidnapping him altogether. His bridle is missing, so that Simpson must have put this on. Then, having left the door open behind him, he was leading the horse away over the moor when he was either met or overtaken by the trainer. A row naturally ensued. Simpson beat out the trainer's brains with his heavy stick without receiving any injury from the small knife which Straker used in self-defence, and then the thief either led the horse on to some secret hiding-place, or else it may have bolted during the struggle, and be now wandering out on the moors. That is the case as it appears to the police, and improbable as it is, all other explanations are more improbable still. However, I shall very quickly test the matter when I am once upon the spot, and until then I cannot really see how we can get much further than our present position.\"\n\nIt was evening before we reached the little town of Tavistock, which lies, like the boss of a shield, in the middle of the huge circle of Dartmoor. Two gentlemen were awaiting us in the station\u2014the one a tall, fair man with lion-like-hair and beard and curiously penetrating light blue eyes; the other a small, alert person, very neat and dapper, in a frock-coat and gaiters, with trim little side-whiskers and an eyeglass. The latterwas Colonel Ross, the well-known sportsman; the other, Inspector Gregory; a man who was rapidly making his name in the English detective service.\n\n\"I am delighted that you have come down, Mr. Holmes,\" said the colonel. \"The inspector here has done all that could possibly be suggested, but I wish to leave no stone unturned in trying to avenge poor Straker and in recovering my horse.\"\n\n\"Have there been any fresh developments?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"I am sorry to say that we have made very little progress,\" said the inspector. \"We have an open carriage outside, and as you would no doubt like to see the place before the light fails, we might talk it over as we drive.\"\n\nA minute later we were all seated in a comfortable landau and were rattling through the quaint old Devonshire city. Inspector Gregory was full of his case and poured out a stream of remarks, while Holmes threw in an occasional question or interjection. Colonel Ross leaned back with his arms folded and his hat tilted over his eyes, while I listened with interest to the dialogue of the two detectives. Gregory was formulating his theory, which was almost exactly what Holmes had foretold in the train.\n\n\"The net is drawn pretty close round Fitzroy Simpson,\" he remarked, \"and I believe myself that he is our man. At the same time I recognize that the evidence is purely circumstantial, and that some new development may upset it.\"\n\n\"How about Straker's knife?\"\n\n\"We have quite come to the conclusion that he wounded himself in his fall.\"\n\n\"My friend Dr. Watson made that suggestion to me as we came down. If so, it would tell against this man Simpson.\"\n\n\"Undoubtedly. He has neither a knife nor any sign of a wound. The evidence against him is certainly very strong. He had a great interest in the disappearance of the favourite. He lies under suspicion of having poisoned the stable-boy; he was undoubtedly out in the storm; he was armed with a heavy stick, and his cravat was found in the dead man's hand. I really think we have enough to go before a jury.\"\n\nHolmes shook his head. \"A clever counsel would tear it all to rags,\" said he, \"Why should he take the horse out of the stable? If he wished to injure it, why could he not do it there? Has a duplicate key been found in his possession? What chemist sold him the powdered opium? Above all, where could he, a stranger to the district, hide a horse, and such a horse as this? What is his own explanation as to the paper which he wished the maid to give to the stable-boy?\"\n\n\"He says that it was a ten-pound note. One was found in his purse. But your other difficulties are not so formidable as they seem. He is not a stranger to the district. He has twice lodged at Tavistock in the summer. The opium was probably brought from London. The key, having served its purpose, would be hurled away. The horse may be at the bottom of one of the pits or old mines upon the moor.\"\n\n\"What does he say about the cravat?\"\n\n\"He acknowledges that it is his and declares that he had lost it. But a new element has been introduced into the case which may account for his leading the horse from the stable.\"\n\nHolmes pricked up his ears.\n\n\"We have found traces which show that a party of gypsies encamped on Monday night within a mile of the spot where the murder took place. On Tuesday they were gone. Now, presuming that there was some understanding between Simpson and these gypsies, might he not have been leading the horse to them when he was overtaken, and may they not have him now?\"\n\n\"It is certainly possible.\"\n\n\"The moor is being scoured for these gypsies. I have also examined every stable and outhouse in Tavistock, and for a radius of ten miles.\"\n\n\"There is another training-stable quite close, I understand?\"\n\n\"Yes, and that is a factor which we must certainly not neglect. As Desborough, their horse, was second in the betting, they had an interest in the disappearance of the favourite. Silas Brown, the trainer, is known to have had large bets upon the event, and he was no friend to poor Straker. We have, however, examined the stables, and there is nothing to connect him with the affair.\"\n\n\"And nothing to connect this man Simpson with the interests of the Mapleton stables?\"\n\n\"Nothing at all.\"\n\nHolmes leaned back in the carriage, and the conversation ceased. A few minutes later our driver pulled up at a neat little red-brick villa with overhanging eaves which stood by the road. Some distance off, across a paddock, lay a long gray-tiled outbuilding. In every other direction the low curves of the moor, bronze-coloured from the fading ferns, stretched away to the sky-line, broken only by the steeples of Tavistock, and by a cluster of houses away to the westward which marked the Mapleton stables. We all sprang out with the exception of Holmes, who continued to lean back with his eyes fixed upon the sky in front of him, entirely absorbed in his own thoughts. It was only when I touched his arm that he roused himself with a violent start and stepped out of the carriage.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" said he, turning to Colonel Ross, who had looked at him in some surprise. \"I was day-dreaming.\" There was a gleam in his eyes and a suppressed excitement in his manner which convinced me, used as I was to his ways, that his hand was upon a clue, though I could not imagine where he had found it.\n\n\"Perhaps you would prefer at once to go on to the scene of the crime, Mr. Holmes?\" said Gregory.\n\n\"I think that I should prefer to stay here a little and go into one or two questions of detail. Straker was brought back here, I presume?\"\n\n\"Yes, he lies upstairs. The inquest is to-morrow.\"\n\n\"He has been in your service some years, Colonel Ross?\"\n\n\"I have always found him an excellent servant.\"\n\n\"I presume that you made an inventory of what he had in his pockets at the time of his death, Inspector?\"\n\n\"I have the things themselves in the sitting-room if you would care to see them.\"\n\n\"I should be very glad.\" We all filed into the front room and sat round the central table while the inspector unlocked a square tin box and laid a small heap of things before us. There was a box of vestas, two inches of tallow candle, an A D Pbrier-root pipe, a pouch of sealskin with half an ounce of long-cut Cavendish, a silver watch with a gold chain, five sovereigns in gold, an aluminum pencil-case, a few papers, and an ivory-handled knife with a very delicate, inflexible blade marked Weiss & Co., London.\n\n\"This is a very singular knife,\" said Holmes, lifting it up and examining it minutely. \"I presume, as I see blood-stains upon it, that it is the one which was found in the dead man's grasp. Watson, this knife is surely in your line?\"\n\n\"It is what we call a cataract knife,\" said I.\n\n\"I thought so. A very delicate blade devised for very delicate work. A strange thing for a man to carry with him upon a rough expedition, especially as it would not shut in his pocket.\"\n\n\"The tip was guarded by a disc of cork which we found beside his body,\" said the inspector. \"His wife tells us that the knife had lain upon the dressing-table, and that he had picked it up as he left the room. It was a poor weapon, but perhaps the best that he could lay his hands on at the moment.\"\n\n\"Very possibly. How about these papers?\"\n\n\"Three of them are receipted hay-dealers' accounts. One of them is a letter of instructions from Colonel Ross. This other is a milliner's account for thirty-seven pounds fifteen made out by Madame Lesurier, of Bond Street, to William Derbyshire. Mrs. Straker tells us that Derbyshire was a friend of her husband's, and that occasionally his letters were addressed here.\"\n\n\"Madame Derbyshire had somewhat expensive tastes,\" remarked Holmes, glancing down the account. \"Twenty-two guineas is rather heavy for a single costume. However, there appears to be nothing more to learn, and we may now go down to the scene of the crime.\"\n\nAs we emerged from the sitting-room a woman, who had been waiting in the passage, took a step forward and laid her hand upon the inspector's sleeve. Her face was haggard and thin and eager, stamped with the print of a recent horror.\n\n\"Have you got them? Have you found them?\" she panted.\n\n\"No, Mrs. Straker. But Mr. Holmes here has come from London to help us, and we shall do all that is possible.\"\n\n\"Surely I met you in Plymouth at a garden-party some little time ago, Mrs. Straker?\" said Holmes.\n\n\"No, sir; you are mistaken.\"\n\n\"Dear me! Why, I could have sworn to it. You wore a costume of dove-coloured silk with ostrich-feather trimming.\"\n\n\"I never had such a dress, sir,\" answered the lady.\n\n\"Ah, that quite settles it,\" said Holmes. And with an apology he followed the inspector outside. A short walk across the moor took us to the hollow in which the body had been found. At the brink of it was the furze-bush upon which the coat had been hung.\n\n\"There was no wind that night, I understand,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"None, but very heavy rain.\"\n\n\"In that case the overcoat was not blown against the furze-bush, but placed there.\"\n\n\"Yes, it was laid across the bush.\"\n\n\"You fill me with interest. I perceive that the ground has been trampled up a good deal. No doubt many feet have been here since Monday night.\"\n\n\"A piece of matting has been laid here at the side, and we have all stood upon that.\"\n\n\"Excellent.\"\n\n\"In this bag I have one of the boots which Straker wore, one of Fitzroy Simpson's shoes, and a cast horseshoe of Silver Blaze.\"\n\n\"My dear Inspector, you surpass yourself!\" Holmes took the bag, and, descending into the hollow, he pushed the matting into a more central position. Then stretching himself upon his face and leaning his chin upon his hands, he made a careful study of the trampled mud in front of him. \"Hullo!\" said he suddenly. \"What's this?\" It was a wax vesta, half burned, which was so coated with mud that it looked at first like a little chip of wood.\n\n\"I cannot think how I came to overlook it,\" said the inspector with an expression of annoyance.\n\n\"It was invisible, buried in the mud. I only saw it because I was looking for it.\"\n\n\"What! you expected to find it?\"\n\n\"I thought it not unlikely.\"\n\nHe took the boots from the bag and compared the impressions of each of them with marks upon the ground. Then he clambered up to the rim of the hollow and crawled about among the ferns and bushes.\n\n\"I am afraid that there are no more tracks,\" said the inspector. \"I have examined the ground very carefully for a hundred yards in each direction.\"\n\n\"Indeed!\" said Holmes, rising. \"I should not have the impertinence to do it again after what you say. But I should like to take a little walk over the moor before it grows dark that I may know my ground to-morrow, and I think that I shall put this horseshoe into my pocket for luck.\"\n\nColonel Ross, who had shown some signs of impatience at my companion's quiet and systematic method of work, glanced at his watch. \"I wish you would come back with me, Inspector,\" said he. \"There are several points on which I should like your advice, and especially as to whether we do not owe it to the public to remove our horse's name from the entries for the cup.\"\n\n\"Certainly not,\" cried Holmes with decision. \"I should let the name stand.\"\n\nThe colonel bowed. \"I am very glad to have had your opinion, sir,\" said he. \"You will find us at poor Straker's house when you have finished your walk, and we can drive together into Tavistock.\"\n\nHe turned back with the inspector, while Holmes and I walked slowly across the moor. The sun was beginning to sink behind the stable of Mapleton, and the long sloping plain in front of us was tinged with gold, deepening into rich, ruddy browns where the faded ferns and brambles caught the evening light. But the glories of the landscape were all wasted upon my companion, who was sunk in the deepest thought.\n\n\"It's this way, Watson,\" said he at last. \"We may leave the question of who killed John Straker for the instant and confine ourselves to finding out what has become of the horse. Now, supposing that he broke away during or after the tragedy, where could he have gone to? The horse is a very gregarious creature. If left to himself his instincts would have been either to return to King's Pyland or go over to Mapleton. Why should he run wild upon the moor? He would surely have been seen by now. And why should gypsies kidnap him? These people always clear out when they hear of trouble, for they do not wish to be pestered by the police. They could not hope to sell such a horse. They would run a great risk and gain nothing by taking him. Surely that is clear.\"\n\n\"Where is he, then?\"\n\n\"I have already said that he must have gone to King's Pyland or to Mapleton. He is not at King's Pyland. Therefore he is at Mapleton. Let us take that as a working hypothesis and see what it leads us to. This part of the moor, as the inspector remarked, is very hard and dry. But it falls away towards Mapleton, and you can see from here that there is a long hollow over yonder, which must have been very wet on Monday night. If our supposition is correct, then the horse must have crossed that, and there is the point where we should look for his tracks.\"\n\nWe had been walking briskly during this conversation, and a few more minutes brought us to the hollow in question. At Holmes's request I walked down the bank to the right, and he to the left, but I had not taken fifty paces before I heard him give a shout and saw him waving his hand to me. The track of a horse was plainly outlined in the soft earth in front of him, and the shoe which he took from his pocket exactly fitted the impression.\n\n\"See the value of imagination,\" said Holmes. \"It is the one quality which Gregory lacks. We imagined what might have happened, acted upon the supposition, and find ourselves justified. Let us proceed.\"\n\nWe crossed the marshy bottom and passed over a quarter of a mile of dry, hard turf. Again the ground sloped, and again we came on the tracks. Then we lost them for half a mile, but only to pick them up once more quite close to Mapleton. It was Holmes who saw them first, and he stood pointing, with a look of triumph upon his face. A man's track was visible beside the horse's.\n\n\"The horse was alone before,\" I cried.\n\n\"Quite so. It was alone before. Hullo, what is this?\"\n\nThe double track turned sharp off and took the direction of King's Pyland. Holmes whistled, and we both followed along after it. His eyes were on the trail, but I happened to look a little to one side and saw to my surprise the same tracks coming back again in the opposite direction.\n\n\"One for you, Watson,\" said Holmes when I pointed it out. \"You have saved us a long walk, which would have brought us back on our own traces. Let us follow the return track.\"\n\nWe had not to go far. It ended at the paving of asphalt which led up to the gates of the Mapleton stables. As we approached, a groom ran out from them.\n\n\"We don't want any loiterers about here,\" said he.\n\n\"I only wished to ask a question,\" said Holmes, with his finger and thumb in his waistcoat pocket. \"Should I be too early to see your master, Mr. Silas Brown, if I were to call at five o'clock to-morrow morning?\"\n\n\"Bless you, sir, if anyone is about he will be, for he is always the first stirring. But here he is, sir, to answer your questions for himself. No, sir, no, it is as much as my place is worth to let him see me touch your money. Afterwards, if you like.\"\n\nAs Sherlock Holmes replaced the half-crown which he had drawn from his pocket, a fierce-looking elderly man strode out from the gate with a hunting-crop swinging in his hand.\n\n\"What's this, Dawson!\" he cried. \"No gossiping! Go about your business! And you, what the devil do you want here?\"\n\n\"Ten minutes' talk with you, my good sir,\" said Holmes in the sweetest of voices.\n\n\"I've no time to talk to every gadabout. We want no strangers here. Be off, or you may find a dog at your heels.\"\n\nHolmes leaned forward and whispered something in the trainer's ear. He started violently and flushed to the temples.\n\n\"It's a lie!\" he shouted. \"An infernal lie!\"\n\n\"Very good. Shall we argue about it here in public or talk it over in your parlour?\"\n\n\"Oh, come in if you wish to.\"\n\nHolmes smiled. \"I shall not keep you more than a few minutes, Watson,\" said he. \"Now, Mr. Brown, I am quite at your disposal.\"\n\nIt was twenty minutes, and the reds had all faded into grays before Holmes and the trainer reappeared. Never have I seen such a change as had been brought about in Silas Brown in that short time. His face was ashy pale, beads of perspiration shone upon his brow, and his hands shook until the hunting-crop wagged like a branch in the wind. His bullying, overbearing manner was all gone too, and he cringed along at my companion's side like a dog with its master.\n\n\"Your instructions will be done. It shall all be done,\" said he.\n\n\"There must be no mistake,\" said Holmes, looking round at him. The other winced as he read the menace in his eyes.\n\n\"Oh, no, there shall be no mistake. It shall be there. Should I change it first or not?\"\n\nHolmes thought a little and then burst out laughing. \"No, don't,\" said he, \"I shall write to you about it. No tricks, now, or\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, you can trust me, you can trust me!\"\n\n\"Yes, I think I can. Well, you shall hear from me to-morrow.\" He turned upon his heel, disregarding the trembling hand which the other held out to him, and we set off for King's Pyland.\n\n\"A more perfect compound of the bully, coward, and sneak than Master Silas Brown I have seldom met with,\" remarked Holmes as we trudged along together.\n\n\"He has the horse, then?\"\n\n\"He tried to bluster out of it, but I described to him so exactly what his actions had been upon that morning that he is convinced that I was watching him. Of course you observed the peculiarly square toes in the impressions, and that his own boots exactly corresponded to them. Again, of course no subordinate would have dared to do such a thing. I described to him how, when according to his custom he was the first down, he perceived a strange horse wandering over the moor. How he went out to it, and his astonishment at recognizing, from the white forehead which has given the favourite its name, that chance had put in his power the only horse which could beat the one upon which he had put his money. Then I described how his first impulse had been to lead him back to King's Pyland, and how the devil had shown him how he could hide the horse until the race was over, and how he had led it back and concealed it at Mapleton. When I told him every detail he gave it up and thought only of saving his own skin.\"\n\n\"But his stables had been searched?\"\n\n\"Oh, an old horse-faker like him has many a dodge.\"\n\n\"But are you not afraid to leave the horse in his power now, since he has every interest in injuring it?\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, he will guard it as the apple of his eye. He knows that his only hope of mercy is to produce it safe.\"\n\n\"Colonel Ross did not impress me as a man who would be likely to show much mercy in any case.\"\n\n\"The matter does not rest with Colonel Ross. I follow my own methods and tell as much or as little as I choose. That is the advantage of being unofficial. I don't know whether you observed it, Watson, but the colonel's manner has been just a trifle cavalier to me. I am inclined now to have a little amusement at his expense. Say nothing to him about the horse.\"\n\n\"Certainly not without your permission.\"\n\n\"And of course this is all quite a minor point compared to the question of who killed John Straker.\"\n\n\"And you will devote yourself to that?\"\n\n\"On the contrary, we both go back to London by the night train.\"\n\nI was thunderstruck by my friend's words. We had only been a few hours in Devonshire, and that he should give up an investigation which he had begun so brilliantly was quite incomprehensible to me. Not a word more could I draw from him until we were back at the trainer's house. The colonel and the inspector were awaiting us in the parlour.\n\n\"My friend and I return to town by the night-express,\" said Holmes. \"We have had a charming little breath of your beautiful Dartmoor air.\"\n\nThe inspector opened his eyes, and the colonel's lip curled in a sneer.\n\n\"So you despair of arresting the murderer of poor Straker,\" said he.\n\nHolmes shrugged his shoulders. \"There are certainly grave difficulties in the way,\" said he. \"I have every hope, however, that your horse will start upon Tuesday, and I beg that you will have your jockey in readiness. Might I ask for a photograph of Mr. John Straker?\"\n\nThe inspector took one from an envelope and handed it to him.\n\n\"My dear Gregory, you anticipate all my wants. If I might ask you to wait here for an instant, I have a question which I should like to put to the maid.\"\n\n\"I must say that I am rather disappointed in our London consultant,\" said Colonel Ross bluntly as my friend left the room. \"I do not see that we are any further than when he came.\"\n\n\"At least you have his assurance that your horse will run,\" said I.\n\n\"Yes, I have his assurance,\" said the colonel with a shrug of his shoulders. \"I should prefer to have the horse.\"\n\nI was about to make some reply in defence of my friend when he entered the room again.\n\n\"Now, gentlemen,\" said he, \"I am quite ready for Tavistock.\"\n\nAs we stepped into the carriage one of the stable-lads held the door open for us. A sudden idea seemed to occur to Holmes, for he leaned forward and touched the lad upon the sleeve.\n\n\"You have a few sheep in the paddock,\" he said. \"Who attends to them?\"\n\n\"I do, sir.\"\n\n\"Have you noticed anything amiss with them of late?\"\n\n\"Well, sir, not of much account, but three of them have gone lame, sir.\"\n\nI could see that Holmes was extremely pleased, for he chuckled and rubbed his hands together.\n\n\"A long shot, Watson, a very long shot,\" said he, pinching my arm. \"Gregory, let me recommend to your attention this singular epidemic among the sheep. Drive on, coachman!\"\n\nColonel Ross still wore an expression which showed the poor opinion which he had formed of my companion's ability, but I saw by the inspector's face that his attention had been keenly aroused.\n\n\"You consider that to be important?\" he asked.\n\n\"Exceedingly so.\"\n\n\"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?\"\n\n\"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.\"\n\n\"The dog did nothing in the night-time.\"\n\n\"That was the curious incident,\" remarked Sherlock Holmes.\n\nFour days later Holmes and I were again in the train, bound for Winchester to see the race for the Wessex Cup. Colonel Ross met us by appointment outside the station, and we drove in his drag to the course beyond the town. His face was grave, and his manner was cold in the extreme.\n\n\"I have seen nothing of my horse,\" said he.\n\n\"I suppose that you would know him when you saw him?\" asked Holmes.\n\nThe colonel was very angry. \"I have been on the turf for twenty years and never was asked such a question as that before,\" said he. \"A child would know Silver Blaze with his white forehead and his mottled off-foreleg.\"\n\n\"How is the betting?\"\n\n\"Well, that is the curious part of it. You could have got fifteen to one yesterday, but the price has become shorter and shorter, until you can hardly get three to one now.\"\n\n\"Hum!\" said Holmes. \"Somebody knows something, that is clear.\"\n\nAs the drag drew up in the enclosure near the grandstand I glanced at the card to see the entries.\n\nWessex Plate [it ran] 50 sovs. each h ft with 1000 sovs. added, for four and five year olds. Second, \u00a3300. Third, \u00a3200. New course (one mile and five furlongs).\n\n1. Mr. Heath Newton's The Negro. Red cap. Cinnamon jacket.\n\n2. Colonel Wardlaw's Pugilist. Pink cap. Blue and black jacket.\n\n3. Lord Backwater's Desborough. Yellow cap and sleeves.\n\n4. Colonel Ross's Silver Blaze. Black cap. Red jacket.\n\n5. Duke of Balmoral's Iris. Yellow and black stripes.\n\n6. Lord Singleford's Rasper. Purple cap. Black sleeves.\n\n\"We scratched our other one and put all hopes on your word,\" said the colonel. \"Why, what is that? Silver Blaze favourite?\"\n\n\"Five to four against Silver Blaze!\" roared the ring. \"Five to four against Silver Blaze! Five to fifteen against Desborough! Five to four on the field!\"\n\n\"There are the numbers up,\" I cried. \"They are all six there.\"\n\n\"All six there? Then my horse is running,\" cried the colonel in great agitation. \"But I don't see him. My colours have not passed.\"\n\n\"Only five have passed. This must be he.\"\n\nAs I spoke a powerful bay horse-swept out from the weighing enclosure and cantered past us, bearing on its back the well-known black and red of the colonel.\n\n\"That's not my horse,\" cried the owner. \"That beast has not a white hair upon its body. What is this that you have done, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Well, well, let us see how he gets on,\" said my friend imperturbably. For a few minutes he gazed through my field-glass. \"Capital! An excellent start!\" he cried suddenly. \"There they are, coming round the curve!\"\n\nFrom our drag we had a superb view as they came up the straight. The six horses were so close together that a carpet could have covered them, but halfway up the yellow of the Mapleton stable showed to the front. Before they reached us, however, Desborough's bolt was shot, and the colonel's horse, coming away with a rush, passed the post a good six lengths before its rival, the Duke of Balmoral's Iris making a bad third.\n\n\"It's my race, anyhow,\" gasped the colonel, passing his hand over his eyes. \"I confess that I can make neither head nor tail of it. Don't you think that you have kept up your mystery long enough, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Certainly, Colonel, you shall know everything. Let us all go round and have a look at the horse together. Here he is,\" he continued as we made our way into the weighing enclosure, where only owners and their friends find admittance. \"You have only to wash his face and his leg in spirits of wine, and you will find that he is the same old Silver Blaze as ever.\"\n\n\"You take my breath away!\"\n\n\"I found him in the hands of a faker and took the liberty of running him just as he was sent over.\"\n\n\"My dear sir, you have done wonders. The horse looks very fit and well. It never went better in its life. I owe you a thousand apologies for having doubted your ability. You have done me a great service by recovering my horse. You would do me a greater still if you could lay your hands on the murderer of John Straker.\"\n\n\"I have done so,\" said Holmes quietly.\n\nThe colonel and I stared at him in amazement. \"You have got him! Where is he, then?\"\n\n\"He is here.\"\n\n\"Here! Where?\"\n\n\"In my company at the present moment.\"\n\nThe colonel flushed angrily. \"I quite recognize that I am under obligations to you, Mr. Holmes,\" said he, \"but I must regard what you have just said as either a very bad joke or an insult.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes laughed. \"I assure you that I have not associated you with the crime, Colonel,\" said he. \"The real murderer is standing immediately behind you.\" He stepped past and laid his hand upon the glossy neck of the thoroughbred.\n\n\"The horse!\" cried both the colonel and myself.\n\n\"Yes, the horse. And it may lessen his guilt if I say that it was done in self-defence, and that John Straker was a man who was entirely unworthy of your confidence. But there goes the bell, and as I stand to win a little on this next race, I shall defer a lengthy explanation until a more fitting time.\"\n\nWe had the corner of a Pullman car to ourselves that evening as we whirled back to London, and I fancy that the journey was a short one to Colonel Ross as well as to myself as we listened to our companion's narrative of the events which had occurred at the Dartmoor training-stables upon that Monday night, and the means by which he had unravelled them.\n\n\"I confess,\" said he, \"that any theories which I had formed from the newspaper reports were entirely erroneous. And yet there were indications there, had they not been overlaid by other details which concealed their true import. I went to Devonshire with the conviction that Fitzroy Simpson was the true culprit, although, of course, I saw that the evidence against him was by no means complete. It was while I was in the carriage, just as we reached the trainer's house, that the immense significance of the curried mutton occurred to me. You may remember that I was distrait and remained sitting after you had all alighted. I was marvelling in my own mind how I could possibly have overlooked so obvious a clue.\"\n\n\"I confess,\" said the colonel. \"that even now I cannot see how it helps us.\"\n\n\"It was the first link in my chain of reasoning. Powdered opium is by no means tasteless. The flavour is not disagreeable, but it is perceptible. Were it mixed with any ordinary dish the eater would undoubtedly detect it and would probably eat no more. A curry was exactly the medium which would disguise this taste. By no possible supposition could this stranger, Fitzroy Simpson, have caused curry to be served in the trainer's family that night, and it is surely too monstrous a coincidence to suppose that he happened to come along with powdered opium upon the very night when a dish happened to be served which would disguise the flavour. That is unthinkable. Therefore Simpson becomes eliminated from the case, and our attention centres upon Straker and his wife, the only two people who could have chosen curried mutton for supper that night. The opium was added after the dish was set aside for the stable-boy, for the others had the same for supper with no ill effects. Which of them, then, had access to that dish without the maid seeing them?\n\n\"Before deciding that question I had grasped the significance of the silence of the dog, for one true inference invariably suggests others. The Simpson incident had shown me that a dog was kept in the stables, and yet, though someone had been in and had fetched out a horse, he had not barked enough to arouse the two lads in the loft. Obviously the midnight visitor was someone whom the dog knew well.\n\n\"I was already convinced, or almost convinced, that John Straker went down to the stables in the dead of the night and took out Silver Blaze. For what purpose? For a dishonest one, obviously, or why should he drug his own stable-boy? And yet I was at a loss to know why. There have been cases before now where trainers have made sure of great sums of money by laying against their own horses through agents and then preventing them from winning by fraud. Sometimes it is a pulling jockey. Sometimes it is some surer and subtler means. What was it here? I hoped that the contents of his pockets might help me to form a conclusion.\n\n\"And they did so. You cannot have forgotten the singular knife which was found in the dead man's hand, a knife which certainly no sane man would choose for a weapon. It was, as Dr. Watson told us, a form of knife which is used for the most delicate operations known in surgery. And it was to be used for a delicate operation that night. You must know, with your wide experience of turf matters, Colonel Ross, that it is possible to make a slight nick upon the tendons of a horse's ham, and to do it subcutaneously, so as to leave absolutely no trace. A horse so treated would develop a slight lameness, which would be put down to a strain in exercise or a touch of rheumatism, but never to foul play.\"\n\n\"Villain! Scoundrel!\" cried the colonel.\n\n\"We have here the explanation of why John Straker wished to take the horse out on to the moor. So spirited a creature would have certainly roused the soundest of sleepers when it felt the prick of the knife. It was absolutely necessary to do it in the open air.\"\n\n\"I have been blind!\" cried the colonel. \"Of course that was why he needed the candle and struck the match.\"\n\n\"Undoubtedly. But in examining his belongings I was fortunate enough to discover not only the method of the crime but even its motives. As a man of the world, Colonel, you know that men do not carry other people's bills about in their pockets. We have most of us quite enough to do to settle our own. I at once concluded that Straker was leading a double life and keeping a second establishment. The nature of the bill showed that there was a lady in the case, and one who had expensive tastes. Liberal as you are with your servants, one can hardly expect that they can buy twenty-guinea walking dresses for their ladies. I questioned Mrs. Straker as to the dress without her knowing it, and, having satisfied myself that it had never reached her, I made a note of the milliner's address and felt that by calling there with Straker's photograph I could easily dispose of the mythical Derbyshire.\n\n\"From that time on all was plain. Straker had led out the horse to a hollow where his light would be invisible. Simpson in his flight had dropped his cravat, and Straker had picked it up\u2014with some idea, perhaps, that he might use it in securing the horse's leg. Once in the hollow, he had got behind the horse and had struck a light; but the creature, frightened at the sudden glare, and with the strange instinct of animals feeling that some mischief was intended, had lashed out, and the steel shoe had struck Straker full on the forehead. He had already, in spite of the rain, taken off his overcoat in order to do his delicate task, and so, as he fell, his knife gashed his thigh. Do I make it clear?\"\n\n\"Wonderful!\" cried the colonel. \"Wonderful! You might have been there!\"\n\n\"My final shot was, I confess, a very long one. It struck me that so astute a man as Straker would not undertake this delicate tendon-nicking without a little practise. What could he practise on? My eyes fell upon the sheep, and I asked a question which, rather to my surprise, showed that my surmise was correct.\n\n\"When I returned to London I called upon the milliner, who had recognized Straker as an excellent customer of the name of Derbyshire, who had a very dashing wife, with a strong partiality for expensive dresses. I have no doubt that this woman had plunged him over head and ears in debt, and so led him into this miserable plot.\"\n\n\"You have explained all but one thing,\" cried the colonel. \"Where was the horse?\"\n\n\"Ah, it bolted, and was cared for by one of your neighbours. We must have an amnesty in that direction. I think. This is Clapham Junction, if I am not mistaken, and we shall be in Victoria in less than ten minutes. If you care to smoke a cigar in our rooms, Colonel, I shall be happy to give you any other details which might interest you.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE YELLOW FACE", + "text": "[In publishing these short sketches based upon the numerous cases in which my companion's singular gifts have made us the listeners to, and eventually the actors in, some strange drama, it is only natural that I should dwell rather upon his successes than upon his failures. And this not so much for the sake of his reputation\u2014for, indeed, it was when he was at his wit's end that his energy and his versatility were most admirable\u2014but because where he failed it happened too often that no one else succeeded, and that the tale was left forever without a conclusion. Now and again, however, it chanced that even when he erred the truth was still discovered. I have notes of some half-dozen cases of the kind: the adventure of the Musgrave Ritual and that which I am about to recount are the two which present the strongest features of interest.]\n\nSherlock Holmes was a man who seldom took exercise for exercise's sake. Few men were capable of greater muscular effort, and he was undoubtedly one of the finest boxers of his weight that I have ever seen; but he looked upon aimless bodily exertion as a waste of energy, and he seldom bestirred himself save where there was some professional object to be served. Then he was absolutely untiring and indefatigable. That he should have kept himself in training under such circumstances is remarkable, but his diet was usually of the sparest, and his habits were simple to the verge of austerity. Save for the occasional use of cocaine, he had no vices, and he only turned to the drug as a protest against the monotony of existence when cases were scanty and the papers uninteresting.\n\nOne day in early spring he had so far relaxed as to go for a walk with me in the Park, where the first faint shoots of green were breaking out upon the elms, and the sticky spear-heads of the chestnuts were just beginning to burst into their five-fold leaves. For two hours we rambled about together, in silence for the most part, as befits two men who know each other intimately. It was nearly five before we were back in Baker Street once more.\n\n\"Beg pardon, sir,\" said our page-boy as he opened the door. \"There's been a gentleman here asking for you, sir.\"\n\nHolmes glanced reproachfully at me. \"So much for afternoon walks!\" said he. \"Has this gentleman gone, then?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Didn't you ask him in?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, he came in.\"\n\n\"How long did he wait?\"\n\n\"Half an hour, sir. He was a very restless gentleman, sir, a-walkin' and a-stampin' all the time he was here. I was waitin' outside the door, sir, and I could hear him. At last he outs into the passage, and he cries, 'Is that man never goin' to come?' Those were his very words, sir. 'You'll only need to wait a little longer,' says I. 'Then I'll wait in the open air, for I feel half choked,' says he. 'I'll be back before long.' And with that he ups and he outs, and all I could say wouldn't hold him back.\"\n\n\"Well, well, you did your best,\" said Holmes as we walked into our room. \"It's very annoying, though, Watson. I was badly in need of a case, and this looks, from the man's impatience, as if it were of importance. Hullo! that's not your pipe on the table. He must have left his behind him. A nice old brier with a good long stem of what the tobacconists call amber. I wonder how many real amber mouthpieces there are in London? Some people think that a fly in it is a sign. Well, he must have been disturbed in his mind to leave a pipe behind him which he evidently values highly.\"\n\n\"How do you know that he values it highly?\" I asked.\n\n\"Well, I should put the original cost of the pipe at seven and sixpence. Now it has, you see, been twice mended, once in the wooden stem and once in the amber. Each of these mends, done, as you observe, with silver bands, must have cost more than the pipe did originally. The man must value the pipe highly when he prefers to patch it up rather than buy a new one with the same money.\"\n\n\"Anything else?\" I asked, for Holmes was turning the pipe about in his hand and staring at it in his peculiar pensive way. He held it up and tapped on it with his long, thin forefinger, as a professor might who was lecturing on a bone.\n\n\"Pipes are occasionally of extraordinary interest,\" said he. \"Nothing has more individuality, save perhaps watches and bootlaces. The indications here, however, are neither very marked nor very important. The owner is obviously a muscular man, left-handed, with an excellent set of teeth, careless in his habits, and with no need to practise economy.\"\n\nMy friend threw out the information in a very offhand way, but I saw that he cocked his eye at me to see if I had followed his reasoning.\n\n\"You think a man must be well-to-do if he smokes a seven-shilling pipe?\" said I.\n\n\"This is Grosvenor mixture at eightpence an ounce,\" Holmes answered, knocking a little out on his palm. \"As he might get an excellent smoke for half the price, he has no need to practise economy.\"\n\n\"And the other points?\"\n\n\"He has been in the habit of lighting his pipe at lamps and gas-jets. You can see that it is quite charred all down one side. Of course a match could not have done that. Why should a man hold a match to the side of his pipe? But you cannot light it at a lamp without getting the bowl charred. And it is all on the right side of the pipe. From that I gather that he is a left-handed man. You hold your own pipe to the lamp and see how naturally you, being right-handed, hold the left side to the flame. You might do it once the other way, but not as a constancy. This has always been held so. Then he has bitten through his amber. It takes a muscular, energetic fellow, and one with a good set of teeth, to do that. But if I am not mistaken I hear him upon the stair, so we shall have something more interesting than his pipe to study.\"\n\nAn instant later our door opened, and a tall young man entered the room. He was well but quietly dressed in a dark gray suit and carried a brown wideawake in his hand. I should have put him at about thirty, though he was really some years older.\n\n\"I beg your pardon,\" said he with some embarrassment, \"I suppose I should have knocked. Yes, of course I should have knocked. The fact is that I am a little upset, and you must put it all down to that.\" He passed his hand over his forehead like a man who is half dazed, and then fell rather than sat down upon a chair.\n\n\"I can see that you have not slept for a night or two,\" said Holmes in his easy, genial way. \"That tries a man's nerves more than work, and more even than pleasure. May I ask how I can help you?\"\n\n\"I wanted your advice, sir. I don't know what to do, and my whole life seems to have gone to pieces.\"\n\n\"You wish to employ me as a consulting detective?\"\n\n\"Not that only. I want your opinion as a judicious man\u2014as a man of the world. I want to know what I ought to do next. I hope to God you'll be able to tell me.\"\n\nHe spoke in little, sharp, jerky outbursts, and it seemed to me that to speak at all was very painful to him, and that his will all through was overriding his inclinations.\n\n\"It's a very delicate thing,\" said he. \"One does not like to speak of one's domestic affairs to strangers. It seems dreadful to discuss the conduct of one's wife with two men whom I have never seen before. It's horrible to have to do it. But I've got to the end of my tether, and I must have advice.\"\n\n\"My dear Mr. Grant Munro\u2014\" began Holmes.\n\nOur visitor sprang from his chair. \"What!\" he cried, \"you know my name?\"\n\n\"If you wish to preserve your incognito,\" said Holmes, smiling, \"I would suggest that you cease to write your name upon the lining of your hat, or else that you turn the crown towards the person whom you are addressing. I was about to say that my friend and I have listened to a good many strange secrets in this room, and that we have had the good fortune to bring peace to many troubled souls. I trust that we may do as much for you. Might I beg you, as time may prove to be of importance, to furnish me with the facts of your case without further delay?\"\n\nOur visitor again passed his hand over his forehead, as if he found it bitterly hard. From every gesture and expression I could see that he was a reserved, self-contained man, with a dash of pride in his nature, more likely to hide his wounds than to expose them. Then suddenly, with a fierce gesture of his closed hand, like one who throws reserve to the winds, he began:\n\n\"The facts are these, Mr. Holmes,\" said he. \"I am a married man and have been so for three years. During that time my wife and I have loved each other as fondly and lived as happily as any two that ever were joined. We have not had a difference, not one, in thought or word or deed. And now, since last Monday, there has suddenly sprung up a barrier between us, and I find that there is something in her life and in her thoughts of which I know as little as if she were the woman who brushes by me in the street. We are estranged, and I want to know why.\n\n\"Now there is one thing that I want to impress upon you before I go any further, Mr. Holmes. Effie loves me. Don't let there be any mistake about that. She loves me with her whole heart and soul, and never more than now. I know it. I feel it. I don't want to argue about that. A man can tell easily enough when a woman loves him. But there's this secret between us, and we can never be the same until it is cleared.\"\n\n\"Kindly let me have the facts, Mr. Munro,\" said Holmes with some impatience.\n\n\"I'll tell you what I know about Effie's history. She was a widow when I met her first, though quite young\u2014only twenty-five. Her name then was Mrs. Hebron. She went out to America when she was young and lived in the town of Atlanta, where she married this Hebron, who was a lawyer with a good practice. They had one child, but the yellow fever broke out badly in the place, and both husband and child died of it. I have seen his death certificate. This sickened her of America, and she came back to live with a maiden aunt at Pinner, in Middlesex. I may mention that her husband had left her comfortably off, and that she had a capital of about four thousand five hundred pounds, which had been so well invested by him that it returned an average of seven per cent. She had only been six months at Pinner when I met her; we fell in love with each other, and we married a few weeks afterwards.\n\n\"I am a hop merchant myself, and as I have an income of seven or eight hundred, we found ourselves comfortably off and took a nice eighty-pound-a-year villa at Norbury. Our little place was very countrified, considering that it is so close to town. We had an inn, and two houses a little above us, and a single cottage at the other side of the field which faces us, and except those there were no houses until you got halfway to the station. My business took me into town at certain seasons, but in summer I had less to do, and then in our country home my wife and I were just as happy as could be wished. I tell you that there never was a shadow between us until this accursed affair began.\n\n\"There's one thing I ought to tell you before I go further. When we married, my wife made over all her property to me\u2014rather against my will, for I saw how awkward it would be if my business affairs went wrong. However, she would have it so, and it was done. Well, about six weeks ago she came to me.\n\n\"'Jack,' said she, 'when you took my money you said that if ever I wanted any I was to ask you for it.'\n\n\"'Certainly,' said I. 'It's all your own.'\n\n\"'Well,' said she, 'I want a hundred pounds.'\n\n\"I was a bit staggered at this, for I had imagined it was simply a new dress or something of the kind that she was after.\n\n\"'What on earth for?' I asked.\n\n\"'Oh,' said she in her playful way, 'you said that you were only my banker, and bankers never ask questions, you know.'\n\n\"'If you really mean it, of course you shall have the money,' said I.\n\n\"'Oh, yes, I really mean it.'\n\n\"'And you won't tell me what you want it for?'\n\n\"'Some day, perhaps, but not just at present, Jack.'\n\n\"So I had to be content with that, though it was the first time that there had ever been any secret between us. I gave her a check, and I never thought any more of the matter. It may have nothing to do with what came afterwards, but I thought it only right to mention it.\n\n\"Well, I told you just now that there is a cottage not far from our house. There is just a field between us, but to reach it you have to go along the road and then turn down a lane. Just beyond it is a nice little grove of Scotch firs, and I used to be very fond of strolling down there, for trees are always a neighbourly kind of thing. The cottage had been standing empty this eight months, and it was a pity, for it was a pretty two-storied place, with an old-fashioned porch and a honeysuckle about it. I have stood many a time and thought what a neat little homestead it would make.\n\n\"Well, last Monday evening I was taking a stroll down that way when I met an empty van coming up the lane and saw a pile of carpets and things lying about on the grass-plot beside the porch. It was clear that the cottage had at last been let. I walked past it, and then stopping, as an idle man might, I ran my eye over it and wondered what sort of folk they were who had come to live so near us. And as I looked I suddenly became aware that a face was watching me out of one of the upper windows.\n\n\"I don't know what there was about that face, Mr. Holmes, but it seemed to send a chill right down my back. I was some little way off, so that I could not make out the features, but there was something unnatural and inhuman about the face. That was the impression that I had, and I moved quickly forward to get a nearer view of the person who was watching me. But as I did so the face suddenly disappeared, so suddenly that it seemed to have been plucked away into the darkness of the room. I stood for five minutes thinking the business over and trying to analyze my impressions. I could not tell if the face was that of a man or a woman. It had been too far from me for that. But its colour was what had impressed me most. It was of a livid chalky white, and with something set and rigid about it which was shockingly unnatural. So disturbed was I that I determined to see a little more of the new inmates of the cottage. I approached and knocked at the door, which was instantly opened by a tall, gaunt woman with a harsh, forbidding face.\n\n\"'What may you be wantin'?' she asked in a Northern accent.\n\n\"'I am your neighbour over yonder,' said I, nodding towards my house. 'I see that you have only just moved in, so I thought that if I could be of any help to you in any\u2014'\n\n\"'Ay, We'll just ask ye when we want ye,' said she, and shut the door in my face. Annoyed at the churlish rebuff, I turned my back and walked home. All evening, though I tried to think of other things, my mind would still turn to the apparition at the window and the rudeness of the woman. I determined to say nothing about the former to my wife, for she is a nervous, highly strung woman, and I had no wish that she should share the unpleasant impression which had been produced upon myself. I remarked to her, however, before I fell asleep, that the cottage was now occupied, to which she returned no reply.\n\n\"I am usually an extremely sound sleeper. It has been a standing jest in the family that nothing could ever wake me during the night. And yet somehow on that particular night, whether it may have been the slight excitement produced by my little adventure or not I know not, but I slept much more lightly than usual. Half in my dreams I was dimly conscious that something was going on in the room, and gradually became aware that my wife had dressed herself and was slipping on her mantle and her bonnet. My lips were parted to murmur out some sleepy words of surprise or remonstrance at this untimely preparation, when suddenly my half-opened eyes fell upon her face, illuminated by the candle-light, and astonishment held me dumb. She wore an expression such as I had never seen before\u2014such as I should have thought her incapable of assuming. She was deadly pale and breathing fast, glancing furtively towards the bed as she fastened her mantle to see if she had disturbed me. Then, thinking that I was still asleep, she slipped noiselessly from the room, and an instant later I heard a sharp creaking which could only come from the hinges of the front door. I sat up in bed and rapped my knuckles against the rail to make certain that I was truly awake. Then I took my watch from under the pillow. It was three in the morning. What on this earth could my wife be doing out on the country road at three in the morning?\n\n\"I had sat for about twenty minutes turning the thing over in my mind and trying to find some possible explanation. The more I thought, the more extraordinary and inexplicable did it appear. I was still puzzling over it when I heard the door gently close again, and her footsteps coming up the stairs.\n\n\"'Where in the world have you been, Effie?' I asked as she entered.\n\n\"She gave a violent start and a kind of gasping cry when I spoke, and that cry and start troubled me more than all the rest, for there was something indescribably guilty about them. My wife had always been a woman of a frank, open nature, and it gave me a chill to see her slinking into her own room and crying out and wincing when her own husband spoke to her.\n\n\"'You awake, Jack!' she cried with a nervous laugh. 'Why, I thought that nothing could awake you.'\n\n\"'Where have you been?' I asked, more sternly.\n\n\"'I don't wonder that you are surprised,' said she, and I could see that her fingers were trembling as she undid the fastenings of her mantle. 'Why, I never remember having done such a thing in my life before. The fact is that I felt as though I were choking and had a perfect longing for a breath of fresh air. I really think that I should have fainted if I had not gone out. I stood at the door for a few minutes, and now I am quite myself again.'\n\n\"All the time that she was telling me this story she never once looked in my direction, and her voice was quite unlike her usual tones. It was evident to me that she was saying what was false. I said nothing in reply, but turned my face to the wall, sick at heart, with my mind filled with a thousand venomous doubts and suspicions. What was it that my wife was concealing from me? Where had she been during that strange expedition? I felt that I should have no peace until I knew, and yet I shrank from asking her again after once she had told me what was false. All the rest of the night I tossed and tumbled, framing theory after theory, each more unlikely than the last.\n\n\"I should have gone to the City that day, but I was too disturbed in my mind to be able to pay attention to business matters. My wife seemed to be as upset as myself, and I could see from the little questioning glances which she kept shooting at me that she understood that I disbelieved her statement, and that she was at her wit's end what to do. We hardly exchanged a word during breakfast, and immediately afterwards I went out for a walk that I might think the matter out in the fresh morning air.\n\n\"I went as far as the Crystal Palace, spent an hour in the grounds, and was back in Norbury by one o'clock. It happened that my way took me past the cottage, and I stopped for an instant to look at the windows and to see if I could catch a glimpse of the strange face which had looked out at me on the day before. As I stood there, imagine my surprise, Mr. Holmes, when the door suddenly opened and my wife walked out.\n\n\"I was struck dumb with astonishment at the sight of her, but my emotionswere nothing to those which showed themselves upon her face when our eyes met. She seemed for an instant to wish to shrink back inside the house again; and then, seeing how useless all concealment must be, she came forward, with a very white face and frightened eyes which be-lied the smile upon her lips.\n\n\"'Ah, Jack,' she said, 'I have just been in to see if I can be of any assistance to our new neighbours. Why do you look at me like that, Jack? You are not angry with me?'\n\n\"'So,' said I, 'this is where you went during the night.'\n\n\"'What do you mean?' she cried.\n\n\"'You came here. I am sure of it. Who are these people that you should visit them at such an hour?'\n\n\"'I have not been here before.'\n\n\"'How can you tell me what you know is false?' I cried. 'Your very voice changes as you speak. When have I ever had a secret from you? I shall enter that cottage, and I shall probe the matter to the bottom.'\n\n\"'No, no, Jack, for God's sake!' she gasped in uncontrollable emotion. Then, as I approached the door, she seized my sleeve and pulled me back with convulsive strength.\n\n\"'I implore you not to do this, Jack,' she cried. 'I swear that I will tell you everything some day, but nothing but misery can come of it if you enter that cottage.' Then, as I tried to shake her off, she clung to me in a frenzy of entreaty.\n\n\"'Trust me, Jack!' she cried. 'Trust me only this once. You will never have cause to regret it. You know that I would not have a secret from you if it were not for your own sake. Our whole lives are at stake in this. If you come home with me all will be well. If you force your way into that cottage all is over between us.'\n\n\"There was such earnestness, such despair, in her manner that her words arrested me, and I stood irresolute before the door.\n\n\"'I will trust you on one condition, and on one condition only,' said I at last. 'It is that this mystery comes to an end from now. You are at liberty to preserve your secret, but you must promise me that there shall be no more nightly visits, no more doings which are kept from my knowledge. I am willing to forget those which are past if you will promise that there shall be no more in the future.'\n\n\"'I was sure that you would trust me,' she cried with a great sigh of relief. 'It shall be just as you wish. Come away\u2014oh, come away up to the house.'\n\n\"Still pulling at my sleeve, she led me away from the cottage. As we went I glanced back, and there was that yellow livid face watching us out of the upper window. What link could there be between that creature and my wife? Or how could the coarse, rough woman whom I had seen the day before be connected with her? It was a strange puzzle, and yet I knew that my mind could never know ease again until I had solved it.\n\n\"For two days after this I stayed at home, and my wife appeared to abide loyally by our engagement, for, as far as I know, she never stirred out of the house. On the third day, however, I had ample evidence that her solemn promise was not enough to hold her back from this secret influence which drew her away from her husband and her duty.\n\n\"I had gone into town on that day, but I returned by the 2:40 instead of the 3:36, which is my usual train. As I entered the house the maid ran into the hall with a startled face.\n\n\"'Where is your mistress?' I asked.\n\n\"'I think that she has gone out for a walk,' she answered.\n\n\"My mind was instantly filled with suspicion. I rushed upstairs to make sure that she was not in the house. As I did so I happened to glance out of one of the upper windows and saw the maid with whom I had just been speaking running across the field in the direction of the cottage. Then of course I saw exactly what it all meant. My wife had gone over there and had asked the servant to call her if I should return. Tingling with anger, I rushed down and hurried across, determined to end the matter once and forever. I saw my wife and the maid hurrying back along the lane, but I did not stop to speak with them. In the cottage lay the secret which was casting a shadow over my life. I vowed that, come what might, it should be a secret no longer. I did not even knock when I reached it, but turned the handle and rushed into the passage.\n\n\"It was all still and quiet upon the ground floor. In the kitchen a kettle was singing on the fire, and a large black cat lay coiled up in the basket; but there was no sign of the woman whom I had seen before. I ran into the other room, but it was equally deserted. Then I rushed up the stairs only to find two other rooms empty and deserted at the top. There was no one at all in the whole house. The furniture and pictures were of the most common and vulgar description, save in the one chamber at the window of which I had seen the strange face. That was comfortable and elegant, and all my suspicions rose into a fierce, bitter flame when I saw that on the mantelpiece stood a copy of a full-length photograph of my wife, which had been taken at my request only three months ago.\n\n\"I stayed long enough to make certain that the house was absolutely empty. Then I left it, feeling a weight at my heart such as I had never had before. My wife came out into the hall as I entered my house; but I was too hurt and angry to speak with her, and, pushing past her, I made my way into my study. She followed me, however, before I could close the door.\n\n\"'I am sorry that I broke my promise, Jack,' said she, 'but if you knew all the circumstances I am sure that you would forgive me.'\n\n\"'Tell me everything, then,' said I.\n\n\"'I cannot, Jack, I cannot,' she cried.\n\n\"'Until you tell me who it is that has been living in that cottage, and who it is to whom you have given that photograph, there can never be any confidence between us,' said I, and breaking away from her I left the house. That was yesterday, Mr. Holmes, and I have not seen her since, nor do I know anything more about this strange business. It is the first shadow that has come between us, and it has so shaken me that I do not know what I should do for the best. Suddenly this morning it occurred to me that you were the man to advise me, so I have hurried to you now, and I place myself unreservedly in your hands. If there is any point which I have not made clear, pray question me about it. But, above all, tell me quickly what I am to do, for this misery is more than I can bear.\"\n\nHolmes and I had listened with the utmost interest to this extraordinary statement, which had been delivered in the jerky, broken fashion of a man who is under the influence of extreme emotion. My companion sat silent now for some time, with his chin upon his hand, lost in thought.\n\n\"Tell me,\" said he at last, \"could you swear that this was a man's face which you saw at the window?\"\n\n\"Each time that I saw it I was some distance away from it, so that it is impossible for me to say.\"\n\n\"You appear, however, to have been disagreeably impressed by it.\"\n\n\"It seemed to be of an unusual colour and to have a strange rigidity about the features. When I approached it vanished with a jerk.\"\n\n\"How long is it since your wife asked you for a hundred pounds?\"\n\n\"Nearly two months.\"\n\n\"Have you ever seen a photograph of her first husband?\"\n\n\"No, there was a great fire at Atlanta very shortly after his death, and all her papers were destroyed.\"\n\n\"And yet she had a certificate of death. You say that you saw it.\"\n\n\"Yes, she got a duplicate after the fire.\"\n\n\"Did you ever meet anyone who knew her in America?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Did she ever talk of revisiting the place?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Or get letters from it?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Thank you. I should like to think over the matter a little now. If the cottage is now permanently deserted we may have some difficulty. If, on the other hand, as I fancy is more likely, the inmates were warned of your coming and left before you entered yesterday, then they may be back now, and we should clear it all up easily. Let me advise you, then, to return to Norbury and to examine the windows of the cottage again. If you have reason to believe that it is inhabited, do not force your way in, but send a wire to my friend and me. We shall be with you within an hour of receiving it, and we shall then very soon get to the bottom of the business.\"\n\n\"And if it is still empty?\"\n\n\"In that case I shall come out to-morrow and talk it over with you. Good-by, and, above all, do not fret until you know that you really have a cause for it.\"\n\n\"I am afraid that this is a bad business, Watson,\" said my companion as he returned after accompanying Mr. Grant Munro to the door. \"What do you make of it?\"\n\n\"It had an ugly sound,\" I answered.\n\n\"Yes. There's blackmail in it, or I am much mistaken.\"\n\n\"And who is the blackmailer?\"\n\n\"Well, it must be the creature who lives in the only comfortable room in the place and has her photograph above his fireplace. Upon my word, Watson, there is something very attractive about that livid face at the window, and I would not have missed the case for worlds.\"\n\n\"You have a theory?\"\n\n\"Yes, a provisional one. But I shall be surprised if it does not turn out to be correct. This woman's first husband is in that cottage.\"\n\n\"Why do you think so?\"\n\n\"How else can we explain her frenzied anxiety that her second one should not enter it? The facts, as I read them, are something like this: This woman was married in America. Her husband developed some hateful qualities, or shall we say he contracted some loathsome disease and became a leper or an imbecile? She flies from him at last, returns to England, changes her name, and starts her life, as she thinks, afresh. She has been married three years and believes that her position is quite secure, having shown her husband the death certificate of some man whose name she has assumed, when suddenly her whereabouts is discovered by her first husband, or, we may suppose, by some unscrupulous woman who has attached herself to the invalid. They write to the wife and threaten to come and expose her. She asks for a hundred pounds and endeavours to buy them off. They come in spite of it, and when the husband mentions casually to the wife that there are newcomers in the cottage, she knows in some way that they are her pursuers. She waits until her husband is asleep and then she rushes down to endeavour to persuade them to leave her in peace. Having no success, she goes again next morning, and her husband meets her, as he has told us, as she comes out. She promises him then not to go there again, but two days afterwards the hope of getting rid of those dreadful neighbours was too strong for her, and she made another attempt, taking down with her the photograph which had probably been demanded from her. In the midst of this interview the maid rushed in to say that the master had come home, on which the wife, knowing that he would come straight down to the cottage, hurried the inmates out at the back door, into the grove of fir-trees, probably, which was mentioned as standing near. In this way he found the place deserted. I shall be very much surprised, however, if it is still so when he reconnoitres it this evening. What do you think of my theory?\"\n\n\"It is all surmise.\"\n\n\"But at least it covers all the facts. When new facts come to our knowledge which cannot be covered by it, it will be time enough to reconsider it. We can do nothing more until we have a message from our friend at Norbury.\"\n\nBut we had not a very long time to wait for that. It came just as we had finished our tea.\n\nThe cottage is still tenanted [it said]. Have seen the face again at the window. Will meet the seven-o'clock train and will take no steps until you arrive.\n\nHe was waiting on the platform when we stepped out, and we could see in the light of the station lamps that he was very pale, and quivering with agitation.\n\n\"They are still there, Mr. Holmes,\" said he, laying his hand hard upon my friend's sleeve. \"I saw lights in the cottage as I came down. We shall settle it now once and for all.\"\n\n\"What is your plan, then?\" asked Holmes as he walked down the dark tree-lined road.\n\n\"I am going to force my way in and see for myself who is in the house. I wish you both to be there as witnesses.\"\n\n\"You are quite determined to do this in spite of your wife's warning that it is better that you should not solve the mystery?\"\n\n\"Yes, I am determined.\"\n\n\"Well, I think that you are in the right. Any truth is better than indefinite doubt. We had better go up at once. Of course, legally, we are putting ourselves hopelessly in the wrong; but I think that it is worth it.\"\n\nIt was a very dark night, and a thin rain began to fall as we turned from the highroad into a narrow lane, deeply rutted, with hedges on either side. Mr. Grant Munro pushed impatiently forward, however, and we stumbled after him as best we could.\n\n\"There are the lights of my house,\" he murmured, pointing to a glimmer among the trees. \"And here is the cottage which I am going to enter.\"\n\nWe turned a corner in the lane as he spoke, and there was the building close beside us. A yellow bar falling across the black foreground showed that the door was not quite closed, and one window in the upper story was brightly illuminated. As we looked, we saw a dark blur moving across the blind.\n\n\"There is that creature!\" cried Grant Munro. \"You can see for yourselves that someone is there. Now follow me, and we shall soon know all.\"\n\nWe approached the door, but suddenly a woman appeared out of the shadow and stood in the golden track of the lamplight. I could not see her face in the darkness, but her arms were thrown out in an attitude of entreaty.\n\n\"For God's sake, don't, Jack!\" she cried. \"I had a presentiment that you would come this evening. Think better of it, dear! Trust me again, and you will never have cause to regret it.\"\n\n\"I have trusted you too long, Effie,\" he cried sternly. \"Leave go of me! I must pass you. My friends and I are going to settle this matter once and forever!\" He pushed her to one side, and we followed closely after him. As he threw the door open an old woman ran out in front of him and tried to bar his passage, but he thrust her back, and an instant afterwards we were all upon the stairs. Grant Munro rushed into the lighted room at the top, and we entered at his heels.\n\nIt was a cosy, well-furnished apartment, with two candles burning upon the table and two upon the mantelpiece. In the corner, stooping over a desk, there sat what appeared to be a little girl. Her face was turned away as we entered, but we could see that she was dressed in a red frock, and that she had long white gloves on. As she whisked round to us. I gave a cry of surprise and horror. The face which she turned towards us was of the strangest livid tint, and the features were absolutely devoid of any expression. An instant later the mystery was explained. Holmes, with a laugh, passed his hand behind the child's ear, a mask peeled off from her countenance, and there was a little coal-black negress, with all her white teeth flashing in amusement at our amazed faces. I burst out laughing, out of sympathy with her merriment; but Grant Munro stood staring, with his hand clutching his throat.\n\n\"My God!\" he cried. \"What can be the meaning of this?\"\n\n\"I will tell you the meaning of it,\" cried the lady, sweeping into the room with a proud, set face. \"You have forced me, against my own judgment, to tell you, and, now we must both make the best of it. My husband died at Atlanta. My child survived.\"\n\n\"Your child?\"\n\nShe drew a large silver locket from her bosom. \"You have never seen this open.\"\n\n\"I understood that it did not open.\"\n\nShe touched a spring; and the front hinged back. There was a portrait within of a man strikingly handsome and intelligent-looking, but bearing unmistakable signs upon his features of his African descent.\n\n\"That is John Hebron, of Atlanta,\" said the lady, \"and a nobler man never walked the earth. I cut myself off from my race in order to wed him, but never once while he lived did I for an instant regret it. It was our misfortune that our only child took after his people rather than mine. It is often so in such matches, and little Lucy is darker far than ever her father was. But dark or fair, she is my own dear little girlie, and her mother's pet.\" The little creature ran across at the words and nestled up against the lady's dress. \"When I left her in America,\" she continued, \"it was only because her health was weak, and the change might have done her harm. She was given to the care of a faithful Scotch woman who had once been our servant. Never for an instant did I dream of disowning her as my child. But when chance threw you in my way, Jack, and I learned to love you, I feared to tell you about my child. God forgive me, I feared that I should lose you, and I had not the courage to tell you. I had to choose between you, and in my weakness I turned away from my own little girl. For three years I have kept her existence a secret from you, but I heard from the nurse, and I knew that all was well with her. At last, however, there came an overwhelming desire to see the child once more. I struggled against it, but in vain. Though I knew the danger, I determined to have the child over, if it were but for a few weeks. I sent a hundred pounds to the nurse, and I gave her instructions about this cottage, so that she might come as a neighbour, without my appearing to be in any way connected with her. I pushed my precautions so far as to order her to keep the child in the house during the daytime, and to cover up her little face and hands so that even those who might see her at the window should not gossip about there being a black child in the neighbourhood. If I had been less cautious I might have been more wise, but I was half crazy with fear that you should learn the truth.\n\n\"It was you who told me first that the cottage was occupied. I should have waited for the morning, but I could not sleep for excitement, and so at last I slipped out, knowing how difficult it is to awake you. But you saw me go, and that was the beginning of my troubles. Next day you had my secret at your mercy, but you nobly refrained from pursuing your advantage. Three days later, however, the nurse and child only just escaped from the back door as you rushed in at the front one. And now to-night you at last know all, and I ask you what is to become of us, my child and me?\" She clasped her hands and waited for an answer.\n\nIt was a long ten minutes before Grant Munro broke the silence, and when his answer came it was one of which I love to think. He lifted the little child, kissed her, and then, still carrying her, he held his other hand out to his wife and turned towards the door.\n\n\"We can talk it over more comfortably at home,\" said he. \"I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.\"\n\nHolmes and I followed them down the lane, and my friend plucked at my sleeve as we came out.\n\n\"I think,\" said he, \"that we shall be of more use in London than in Norbury.\"\n\nNot another word did he say of the case until late that night, when he was turning away, with his lighted candle, for his bedroom.\n\n\"Watson,\" said he, \"if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little overconfident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE STOCKBROKER'S CLERK", + "text": "Shortly after my marriage I had bought a connection in the Paddington district. Old Mr. Farquhar, from whom I purchased it, had at one time an excellent general practice; but his age, and an affliction of the nature of St. Vitus's dance from which he suffered, had very much thinned it. The public not unnaturally goes on the principle that he who would heal others must himself be whole, and looks askance at the curative powers of the man whose own case is beyond the reach of his drugs. Thus as my predecessor weakened his practice declined, until when I purchased it from him it had sunk from twelve hundred to little more than three hundred a year. I had confidence, however, in my own youth and energy and was convinced that in a very few years the concern would be as flourishing as ever.\n\nFor three months after taking over the practice I was kept very closely at work and saw little of my friend Sherlock Holmes, for I was too busy to visit Baker Street, and he seldom went anywhere himself save upon professional business. I was surprised, therefore, when, one morning in June, as I sat reading the British Medical Journal after breakfast, I heard a ring at the bell, followed by the high, somewhat strident tones of my old companion's voice.\n\n\"Ah, my dear Watson,\" said he, striding into the room, \"I am very delighted to see you! I trust that Mrs. Watson has entirely recovered from all the little excitements connected with our adventure of the Sign of Four.\"\n\n\"Thank you, we are both very well,\" said I, shaking him warmly by the hand.\n\n\"And I hope, also,\" he continued, sitting down in the rocking-chair, \"that the cares of medical practice have not entirely obliterated the interest which you used to take in our little deductive problems.\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" I answered, \"it was only last night that I was looking over my old notes, and classifying some of our past results.\"\n\n\"I trust that you don't consider your collection closed.\"\n\n\"Not at all. I should wish nothing better than to have some more of such experiences.\"\n\n\"To-day, for example?\"\n\n\"Yes, to-day, if you like.\"\n\n\"And as far off as Birmingham?\"\n\n\"Certainly, if you wish it.\"\n\n\"And the practice?\"\n\n\"I do my neighbour's when he goes. He is always ready to work off the debt.\"\n\n\"Ha! nothing could be better,\" said Holmes, leaning back in his chair and looking keenly at me from under his half-closed lids. \"I perceive that you have been unwell lately. Summer colds are always a little trying.\"\n\n\"I was confined to the house by a severe chill for three days last week. I thought, however, that I had cast off every trace of it.\"\n\n\"So you have. You look remarkably robust.\"\n\n\"How, then, did you know of it?\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, you know my methods.\"\n\n\"You deduced it, then?\"\n\n\"Certainly.\"\n\n\"And from what?\"\n\n\"From your slippers.\"\n\nI glanced down at the new patent-leathers which I was wearing. \"How on earth\u2014\" I began, but Holmes answered my question before it was asked.\n\n\"Your slippers are new,\" he said. \"You could not have had them more than a few weeks. The soles which you are at this moment presenting to me are slightly scorched. For a moment I thought they might have got wet and been burned in the drying. But near the instep there is a small circular wafer of paper with the shopman's hieroglyphics upon it. Damp would of course have removed this. You had, then, been sitting with your feet outstretched to the fire, which a man would hardly do even in so wet a June as this if he were in his full health.\"\n\nLike all Holmes's reasoning the thing seemed simplicity itself when it was once explained. He read the thought upon my features, and his smile had a tinge of bitterness.\n\n\"I am afraid that I rather give myself away when I explain,\" said he. \"Results without causes are much more impressive. You are ready to come to Birmingham, then?\"\n\n\"Certainly. What is the case?\"\n\n\"You shall hear it all in the train. My client is outside in a four-wheeler. Can you come at once?\"\n\n\"In an instant.\" I scribbled a note to my neighbour, rushed upstairs to explain the matter to my wife, and joined Holmes upon the doorstep.\n\n\"Your neighbour is a doctor,\" said he, nodding at the brass plate.\n\n\"Yes, he bought a practice as I did.\"\n\n\"An old-established one?\"\n\n\"Just the same as mine. Both have been ever since the houses were built.\"\n\n\"Ah! then you got hold of the best of the two.\"\n\n\"I think I did. But how do you know?\"\n\n\"By the steps, my boy. Yours are worn three inches deeper than his. But this gentleman in the cab is my client, Mr. Hall Pycroft. Allow me to introduce you to him. Whip your horse up, cabby, for we have only just time to catch our train.\"\n\nThe man whom I found myself facing was a well-built, fresh-complexioned young fellow, with a frank, honest face and a slight, crisp, yellow moustache. He wore a very shiny top-hat and a neat suit of sober black, which made him look what he was\u2014a smart young City man, of the class who have been labelled cockneys, but who give us our crack volunteer regiments, and who turn out more fine athletes and sportsmen than any body of men in these islands. His round, ruddy face was naturally full of cheeriness, but the corners of his mouth seemed to me to be pulled down in a half-comical distress. It was not, however, until we were in a first-class carriage and well started upon our journey to Birmingham that I was able to learn what the trouble was which had driven him to Sherlock Holmes.\n\n\"We have a clear run here of seventy minutes,\" Holmes remarked. \"I want you, Mr. Hall Pycroft, to tell my friend your very interesting experience exactly as you have told it to me, or with more detail if possible. It will be of use to me to hear the succession of events again. It is a case, Watson, which may prove to have something in it, or may prove to have nothing, but which, at least, presents those unusual and outr\u00e9 features which are as dear to you as they are to me. Now, Mr. Pycroft, I shall not interrupt you again.\"\n\nOur young companion looked at me with a twinkle in his eye.\n\n\"The worst of the story is,\" said he, \"that I show myself up as such a confounded fool. Of course it may work out all right, and I don't see that I could have done otherwise; but if I have lost my crib and get nothing in exchange I shall feel what a soft Johnny I have been. I'm not very good at telling a story, Dr. Watson, but it is like this with me:\n\n\"I used to have a billet at Coxon & Woodhouse's, of Draper Gardens, but they were let in early in the spring through the Venezuelan loan, as no doubt you remember, and came a nasty cropper. I have been with them five years, and old Coxon gave me a ripping good testimonial when the smash came, but of course we clerks were all turned adrift, the twenty-seven of us. I tried here and tried there, but there were lots of other chaps on the same lay as myself, and it was a perfect frost for a long time. I had been taking three pounds a week at Coxon's, and I had saved about seventy of them, but I soon worked my way through that and out at the other end. I was fairly at the end of my tether at last, and could hardly find the stamps to answer the advertisements or the envelopes to stick them to. I had worn out my boots paddling up office stairs, and I seemed just as far from getting a billet as ever.\n\n\"At last I saw a vacancy at Mawson & Williams's, the great stockbroking firm in Lombard Street. I dare say E. C. is not much in your line, but I can tell you that this is about the richest house in London. The advertisement was to be answered by letter only: I sent in my testimonial and application, but without the least hope of getting it. Back came an answer by return, saying that if I would appear next Monday I might take over my new duties at once, provided that my appearance was satisfactory. No one knows how these things are worked. Some people say that the manager just plunges his hand into the heap and takes the first that comes. Anyhow it was my innings that time, and I don't ever wish to feel better pleased. The screw was a pound a week rise, and the duties just about the same as at Coxon's.\n\n\"And now I come to the queer part of the business. I was in diggings out Hampstead way, 17 Potter's Terrace. Well, I was sitting doing a smoke that very evening after I had been promised the appointment, when up came my landlady with a card which had 'Arthur Pinner, Financial Agent,' printed upon it. I had never heard the name before and could not imagine what he wanted with me, but of course I asked her to show him up. In he walked, a middle-sized, dark-haired, dark-eyed, black-bearded man, with a touch of the sheeny about his nose. He had a brisk kind of way with him and spoke sharply, like a man who knew the value of time.\n\n\"'Mr. Hall Pycroft, I believe?' said he.\n\n\"'Yes, sir,' I answered, pushing a chair towards him.\n\n\"'Lately engaged at Coxon & Woodhouse's?'\n\n\"'Yes, sir.'\n\n\"'And now on the staff of Mawson's.'\n\n\"'Quite so.'\n\n\"'Well,' said he, 'the fact is that I have heard some really extraordinary stories about your financial ability. You remember Parker, who used to be Coxon's manager. He can never say enough about it.'\n\n\"Of course I was pleased to hear this. I had always been pretty sharp in the office, but I had never dreamed that I was talked about in the City in this fashion.\n\n\"'You have a good memory?' said he.\n\n\"'Pretty fair,' I answered modestly.\n\n\"'Have you kept in touch with the market while you have been out of work?' he asked.\n\n\"'Yes. I read the stock-exchange list every morning.'\n\n\"'Now that shows real application!' he cried. 'That is the way to prosper! You won't mind my testing you, will you? Let me see. How are Ayrshires?'\n\n\"'A hundred and six and a quarter to a hundred and five and seven-eighths.'\n\n\"'And New Zealand consolidated?'\n\n\"'A hundred and four.'\n\n\"'And British Broken Hills?'\n\n\"'Seven to seven-and-six.'\n\n\"'Wonderful!' he cried with his hands up. 'This quite fits in with all that I had heard. My boy, my boy, you are very much too good to be a clerk at Mawson's!'\n\n\"This outburst rather astonished me, as you can think. 'Well,' said I, 'other people don't think quite so much of me as you seem to do, Mr. Pinner. I had a hard enough fight to get this berth, and I am very glad to have it.'\n\n\"'Pooh, man; you should soar above it. You are not in your true sphere. Now, I'll tell you how it stands with me. What I have to offer is little enough when measured by your ability, but when compared with Mawson's it's light to dark. Let me see. When do you go to Mawson's?'\n\n\"'On Monday.'\n\n\"'Ha, ha! I think I would risk a little sporting flutter that you don't go there at all.'\n\n\"'Not go to Mawson's?'\n\n\"'No, sir. By that day you will be the business manager of the Franco-Midland Hardware Company, Limited, with a hundred and thirty-four branches in the towns and villages of France, not counting one in Brussels and one in San Remo.'\n\n\"This took my breath away. 'I never heard of it,' said I.\n\n\"'Very likely not. It has been kept very quiet, for the capital was all privately subscribed, and it's too good a thing to let the public into. My brother, Harry Pinner, is promoter, and joins the board after allotment as managing director. He knew I was in the swim down here and asked me to pick up a good man cheap. A young, pushing man with plenty of snap about him. Parker spoke of you, and that brought me here to-night. We can only offer you a beggarly five hundred to start with.'\n\n\"'Five hundred a year!' I shouted.\n\n\"'Only that at the beginning; but you are to have an overriding commission of one per cent on all business done by your agents, and you may take my word for it that this will come to more than your salary.'\n\n\"'But I know nothing about hardware.'\n\n\"'Tut, my boy, you know about figures.'\n\n\"My head buzzed, and I could hardly sit still in my chair. But suddenly a little chill of doubt came upon me.\n\n\"'I must be frank with you,' said I. 'Mawson only gives me two hundred, but Mawson is safe. Now, really, I know so little about your company that\u2014'\n\n\"'Ah, smart, smart!' he cried in a kind of ecstasy of delight. 'You are the very man for us. You are not to be talked over, and quite right, too. Now, here's a note for a hundred pounds, and if you think that we can do business you may just slip it into your pocket as an advance upon your salary.'\n\n\"'That is very handsome,' said I. 'When should I take over my new duties?'\n\n\"'Be in Birmingham to-morrow at one,' said he. 'I have a note in my pocket here which you will take to my brother. You will find him at l26B Corporation Street, where the temporary offices of the company are situated. Of course he must confirm your engagement, but between ourselves it will be all right.'\n\n\"'Really, I hardly know how to express my gratitude, Mr. Pinner,' said I.\n\n\"'Not at all, my boy. You have only got your deserts. There are one or two small things\u2014mere formalities\u2014which I must arrange with you. You have a bit of paper beside you there. Kindly write upon it \"I am perfectly willing to act as business manager to the Franco-Midland Hardware Company, Limited, at a minimum salary of \u00a3500.'\"\n\n\"I did as he asked, and he put the paper in his pocket.\n\n\"'There is one other detail,' said he. 'What do you intend to do about Mawson's?'\n\n\"I had forgotten all about Mawson's in my joy. 'I'll write and resign,' said I.\n\n\"'Precisely what I don't want you to do. I had a row over you with Mawson's manager. I had gone up to ask him about you, and he was very offensive; accused me of coaxing you away from the service of the firm, and that sort of thing. At last I fairly lost my temper. \"If you want good men you should pay them a good price,\" said I.\n\n\"' \"He would rather have our small price than your big one,\" said he.\n\n\"' \"I'll lay you a fiver,\" said I, \"that when he has my offer you'll never so much as hear from him again.\"\n\n\"' \"Done!\" said he. \"We picked him out of the gutter, and he won't leave us so easily.\" Those were his very words.'\n\n\"'The impudent scoundrel!' I cried. 'I've never so much as seen him in my life. Why should I consider him in any way? I shall certainly not write if you would rather I didn't.'\n\n\"'Good! That's a promise,' said he, rising from his chair. 'Well, I'm delighted to have got so good a man for my brother. Here's your advance of a hundred pounds, and here is the letter. Make a note of the address, 126B Corporation Street, and remember that one o'clock to-morrow is your appointment. Good-night, and may you have all the fortune that you deserve!'\n\n\"That's just about all that passed between us, as near as I can remember. You can imagine, Dr. Watson, how pleased I was at such an extraordinary bit of good fortune. I sat up half the night hugging myself over it, and next day I was off to Birmingham in a train that would take me in plenty time for my appointment. I took my things to a hotel in New Street, and then I made my way to the address which had been given me.\n\n\"It was a quarter of an hour before my time, but I thought that would make no difference. 126B was a passage between two large shops, which led to a winding stone stair, from which there were many flats, let as offices to companies or professional men. The names of the occupants were painted at the bottom on the wall, but there was no such name as the Franco-Midland Hardware Company, Limited. I stood for a few minutes with my heart in my boots, wondering whether the whole thing was an elaborate hoax or not, when up came a man and addressed me. He was very like the chap I had seen the night before, the same figure and voice, but he was clean-shaven and his hair was lighter.\n\n\"'Are you Mr. Hall Pycroft?' he asked.\n\n\"'Yes,' said I.\n\n\"'Oh! I was expecting you, but you are a trifle before your time. I had a note from my brother this morning in which he sang your praises very loudly.'\n\n\"'I was just looking for the offices when you came.'\n\n\"'We have not got our name up yet, for we only secured these temporary premises last week. Come up with me, and we will talk the matter over.'\n\n\"I followed him to the top of a very lofty stair, and there, right under the slates, were a couple of empty, dusty little rooms, uncarpeted and uncurtained, into which he led me. I had thought of a great office with shining tables and rows of clerks, such as I was used to, and I daresay I stared rather straight at the two deal chairs and one little table, which with a ledger and a waste-paper basket, made up the whole furniture.\n\n\"'Don't be disheartened, Mr. Pycroft,' said my new acquaintance, seeing the length of my face. 'Rome was not built in a day, and we have lots of money at our backs, though we don't cut much dash yet in offices. Pray sit down, and let me have your letter.'\n\n\"I gave it to him, and he read it over very carefully.\n\n\"'You seem to have made a vast impression upon my brother Arthur,' said he, 'and I know that he is a pretty shrewd judge. He swears by London, you know; and I by Birmingham; but this time I shall follow his advice. Pray consider yourself definitely engaged.'\n\n\"'What are my duties?' I asked.\n\n\"'You will eventually manage the great depot in Paris, which will pour a flood of English crockery into the shops of a hundred and thirty-four agents in France. The purchase will be completed in a week, and meanwhile you will remain in Birmingham and make yourself useful.'\n\n\"'How?'\n\n\"For answer, he took a big red book out of a drawer.\n\n\"'This is a directory of Paris,' said he, 'with the trades after the names of the people. I want you to take it home with you, and to mark off all the hardware-sellers, with their addresses. It would be of the greatest use to me to have them.'\n\n\"'Surely, there are classified lists?' I suggested.\n\n\"'Not reliable ones. Their system is different from ours. Stick at it, and let me have the lists by Monday, at twelve. Good-day, Mr. Pycroft. If you continue to show zeal and intelligence you will find the company a good master.'\n\n\"I went back to the hotel with the big book under my arm, and with very conflicting feelings in my breast. On the one hand, I was definitely engaged and had a hundred pounds in my pocket; on the other, the look of the offices, the absence of name on the wall, and other of the points which would strike a business man had left a bad impression as to the position of my employers. However, come what might, I had my money, so I settled down to my task. All Sunday I was kept hard at work, and yet by Monday I had only got as far as H. I went round to my employer, found him in the same dismantled kind of room, and was told to keep at it until Wednesday, and then come again. On Wednesday it was still unfinished, so I hammered away until Friday\u2014that is, yesterday. Then I brought it round to Mr. Harry Pinner.\n\n\"'Thank you very much,' said he, 'I fear that I underrated the difficulty of the task. This list will be of very material assistance to me.'\n\n\"'It took some time,' said I.\n\n\"'And now,' said he, 'I want you to make a list of the furniture shops, for they all sell crockery.'\n\n\"'Very good.'\n\n\"'And you can come up to-morrow evening at seven and let me know how you are getting on. Don't overwork yourself. A couple of hours at Day's Music Hall in the evening would do you no harm after your labours.' He laughed as he spoke, and I saw with a thrill that his second tooth upon the left-hand side had been very badly stuffed with gold.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes rubbed his hands with delight, and I stared with astonishment at our client.\n\n\"You may well look surprised, Dr. Watson, but it is this way,\" said he: \"When I was speaking to the other chap in London, at the time that he laughed at my not going to Mawson's, I happened to notice that his tooth was stuffed in this very identical fashion. The glint of the gold in each case caught my eye, you see. When I put that with the voice and figure being the same, and only those things altered which might be changed by a razor or a wig, I could not doubt that it was the same man. Of course you expect two brothers to be alike, but not that they should have the same tooth stuffed in the same way. He bowed me out, and I found myself in the street, hardly knowing whether I was on my head or my heels. Back I went to my hotel, put my head in a basin of cold water, and tried to think it out. Why had he sent me from London to Birmingham? Why had he got there before me? And why had he written a letter from himself to himself? It was altogether too much for me, and I could make no sense of it. And then suddenly it struck me that what was dark to me might be very light to Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I had just time to get up to town by the night train to see him this morning, and to bring you both back with me to Birmingham.\"\n\nThere was a pause after the stockbroker's clerk had concluded his surprising experience. Then Sherlock Holmes cocked his eye at me, leaning back on the cushions with a pleased and yet critical face, like a connoisseur who has just taken his first sip of a comet vintage.\n\n\"Rather fine, Watson, is it not?\" said he. \"There are points in it which please me. I think that you will agree with me that an interview with Mr. Arthur Harry Pinner in the temporary offices of the Franco-Midland Hardware Company, Limited, would be a rather interesting experience for both of us.\"\n\n\"But how can we do it?\" I asked.\n\n\"Oh, easily enough,\" said Hall Pycroft cheerily. \"You are two friends of mine who are in want of a billet, and what could be more natural than that I should bring you both round to the managing director?\"\n\n\"Quite so, of course,\" said Holmes. \"I should like to have a look at the gentleman and see if I can make anything of his little game. What qualities have you, my friend, which would make your services so valuable? Or is it possible that\u2014\" He began biting his nails and staring blankly out of the window, and we hardly drew another word from him until we were in New Street.\n\nAt seven o'clock that evening we were walking, the three of us, down Corporation Street to the company's offices.\n\n\"It is no use our being at all before our time,\" said our client. \"He only comes there to see me, apparently, for the place is deserted up to the very hour he names.\"\n\n\"That is suggestive,\" remarked Holmes.\n\n\"By Jove, I told you so!\" cried the clerk. \"That's he walking ahead of us there.\"\n\nHe pointed to a smallish, dark, well-dressed man who was bustling along the other side of the road. As we watched him he looked across at a boy who was bawling out the latest edition of the evening paper, and, running over among the cabs and buses, he bought one from him. Then, clutching it in his hand, he vanished through a doorway.\n\n\"There he goes!\" cried Hall Pycroft. \"These are the company's offices into which he has gone. Come with me, and I'll fix it up as easily as possible.\"\n\nFollowing his lead, we ascended five stones, until we found ourselves outside a half-opened door, at which our client tapped. A voice within bade us enter, and we entered a bare, unfurnished room such as Hall Pycroft had described. At the single table sat the man whom we had seen in the street, with his evening paper spread out in front of him, and as he looked up at us it seemed to me that I had never looked upon a face which bore such marks of grief, and of something beyond grief\u2014of a horror such as comes to few men in a lifetime. His brow glistened with perspiration, his cheeks were of the dull, dead white of a fish's belly, and his eyes were wild and staring. He looked at his clerk as though he failed to recognize him, and I could see by the astonishment depicted upon our conductor's face that this was by no means the usual appearance of his employer.\n\n\"You look ill, Mr. Pinner!\" he exclaimed.\n\n\"Yes, I am not very well,\" answered the other, making obvious efforts to pull himself together and licking his dry lips before he spoke. \"Who are these gentlemen whom you have brought with you?\"\n\n\"One is Mr. Harris, of Bermondsey, and the other is Mr. Price, of this town,\" said our clerk glibly. \"They are friends of mine and gentlemen of experience, but they have been out of a place for some little time, and they hoped that perhaps you might find an opening for them in the company's employment.\"\n\n\"Very possibly! very possibly!\" cried Mr. Pinner with a ghastly smile. \"Yes, I have no doubt that we shall be able to do something for you. What is your particular line, Mr. Harris?\"\n\n\"I am an accountant,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Ah, yes, we shall want something of the sort. And you, Mr. Price?\"\n\n\"A clerk,\" said I.\n\n\"I have every hope that the company may accommodate you. I will let you know about it as soon as we come to any conclusion. And now I beg that you will go. For God's sake leave me to myself!\"\n\nThese last words were shot out of him, as though the constraint which he was evidently setting upon himself had suddenly and utterly burst asunder. Holmes and I glanced at each other, and Hall Pycroft took a step towards the table.\n\n\"You forget, Mr. Pinner, that I am here by appointment to receive some directions from you,\" said he.\n\n\"Certainly, Mr. Pycroft, certainly,\" the other resumed in a calmer tone. \"You may wait here a moment and there is no reason why your friends should not wait with you. I will be entirely at your service in three minutes, if I might trespass upon your patience so far.\" He rose with a very courteous air, and, bowing to us, he passed out through a door at the farther end of the room, which he closed behind him.\n\n\"What now?\" whispered Holmes. \"Is he giving us the slip?\"\n\n\"Impossible,\" answered Pycroft.\n\n\"Why so?\"\n\n\"That door leads into an inner room.\"\n\n\"There is no exit?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\n\"Is it furnished?\"\n\n\"It was empty yesterday.\"\n\n\"Then what on earth can he be doing? There is something which I don't understand in this matter. If ever a man was three parts mad with terror, that man's name is Pinner. What can have put the shivers on him?\"\n\n\"He suspects that we are detectives,\" I suggested.\n\n\"That's it,\" cried Pycroft.\n\nHolmes shook his head. \"He did not turn pale. He was pale when we entered the room,\" said he. \"It is just possible that\u2014\"\n\nHis words were interrupted by a sharp rat-tat from the direction of the inner door.\n\n\"What the deuce is he knocking at his own door for?\" cried the clerk.\n\nAgain and much louder came the rat-tat-tat. We all gazed expectantly at the closed door. Glancing at Holmes, I saw his face turn rigid, and he leaned forward in intense excitement. Then suddenly came a low guggling, gargling sound, and a brisk drumming upon woodwork. Holmes sprang frantically across the room and pushed at the door. It was fastened on the inner side. Following his example, we threw ourselves upon it with all our weight. One hinge snapped, then the other, and down came the door with a crash. Rushing over it, we found ourselves in the inner room. It was empty.\n\nBut it was only for a moment that we were at fault. At one corner, the corner nearest the room which we had left, there was a second door. Holmes sprang to it and pulled it open. A coat and waistcoat were lying on the floor, and from a hook behind the door, with his own braces round his neck, was hanging the managing director of the Franco-Midland Hardware Company. His knees were drawn up, his head hung at a dreadful angle to his body, and the clatter of his heels against the door made the noise which had broken in upon our conversation. In an instant I had caught him round the waist, and held him up while Holmes and Pycroft untied the elastic bands which had disappeared between the livid creases of skin. Then we carried him into the other room, where he lay with a clay-coloured face, puffing his purple lips in and out with every breath\u2014a dreadful wreck of all that he had been but five minutes before.\n\n\"What do you think of him, Watson?\" asked Holmes.\n\nI stooped over him and examined him. His pulse was feeble and intermittent, but his breathing grew longer, and there was a little shivering of his eyelids, which showed a thin white slit of ball beneath.\n\n\"It has been touch and go with him,\" said I, \"but he'll live now. Just open that window, and hand me the water carafe.\" I undid his collar, poured the cold water over his face, and raised and sank his arms until he drew a long, natural breath. \"It's only a question of time now,\" said I as I turned away from him.\n\nHolmes stood by the table, with his hands deep in his trousers' pockets and his chin upon his breast.\n\n\"I suppose we ought to call the police in now,\" said he. \"And yet I confess that I'd like to give them a complete case when they come.\"\n\n\"It's a blessed mystery to me,\" cried Pycroft, scratching his head. \"Whatever they wanted to bring me all the way up here for, and then\u2014\"\n\n\"Pooh! All that is clear enough,\" said Holmes impatiently. \"It is this last sudden move.\"\n\n\"You understand the rest, then?\"\n\n\"I think that it is fairly obvious. What do you say, Watson?\"\n\nI shrugged my shoulders. \"I must confess that I am out of my depths,\" said I.\n\n\"Oh, surely if you consider the events at first they can only point to one conclusion.\"\n\n\"What do you make of them?\"\n\n\"Well, the whole thing hinges upon two points. The first is the making of Pycroft write a declaration by which he entered the service of this preposterous company. Do you not see how very suggestive that is?\"\n\n\"I am afraid I miss the point.\"\n\n\"Well, why did they want him to do it? Not as a business matter, for these arrangements are usually verbal, and there was no earthly business reason why this should be an exception. Don't you see, my young friend, that they were very anxious to obtain a specimen of your handwriting, and had no other way of doing it?\"\n\n\"And why?\"\n\n\"Quite so. Why? When we answer that we have made some progress with our little problem. Why? There can be only one adequate reason. Someone wanted to learn to imitate your writing and had to procure a specimen of it first. And now if we pass on to the second point we find that each throws light upon the other. That point is the request made by Pinner that you should not resign your place, but should leave the manager of this important business in the full expectation that a Mr. Hall Pycroft, whom he had never seen, was about to enter the office upon the Monday morning.\"\n\n\"My God!\" cried our client, \"what a blind beetle I have been!\"\n\n\"Now you see the point about the handwriting. Suppose that someone turned up in your place who wrote a completely different hand from that in which you had applied for the vacancy, of course the game would have been up. But in the interval the rogue had learned to imitate you, and his position was therefore secure, as I presume that nobody in the office had ever set eyes upon you.\"\n\n\"Not a soul,\" groaned Hall Pycroft.\n\n\"Very good. Of course it was of the utmost importance to prevent you from thinking better of it, and also to keep you from coming into contact with anyone who might tell you that your double was at work in Mawson's office. Therefore they gave you a handsome advance on your salary, and ran you off to the Midlands, where they gave you enough work to do to prevent your going to London, where you might have burst their little game up. That is all plain enough.\"\n\n\"But why should this man pretend to be his own brother?\"\n\n\"Well, that is pretty clear also. There are evidently only two of them in it. The other is impersonating you at the office. This one acted as your engager, and then found that he could not find you an employer without admitting a third person into his plot. That he was most unwilling to do. He changed his appearance as far as he could, and trusted that the likeness, which you could not fail to observe, would be put down to a family resemblance. But for the happy chance of the gold stuffing, your suspicions would probably never have been aroused.\"\n\nHall Pycroft shook his clenched hands in the air. \"Good Lord!\" he cried, \"while I have been fooled in this way, what has this other Hall Pycroft been doing at Mawson's? What should we do, Mr. Holmes? Tell me what to do.\"\n\n\"We must wire to Mawson's.\"\n\n\"They shut at twelve on Saturdays.\"\n\n\"Never mind. There may be some door-keeper or attendant\u2014\"\n\n\"Ah, yes, they keep a permanent guard there on account of the value of the securities that they hold. I remember hearing it talked of in the City.\"\n\n\"Very good, we shall wire to him and see if all is well, and if a clerk of your name is working there. That is clear enough, but what is not so clear is why at sight of us one of the rogues should instantly walk out of the room and hang himself.\"\n\n\"The paper!\" croaked a voice behind us. The man was sitting up, blanched and ghastly, with returning reason in his eyes, and hands which rubbed nervously at the broad red band which still encircled his throat.\n\n\"The paper! Of course!\" yelled Holmes in a paroxysm of excitement. \"Idiot that I was! I thought so much of our visit that the paper never entered my head for an instant. To be sure, the secret must lie there.\" He flattened it out upon the table, and a cry of triumph burst from his lips. \"Look at this, Watson,\" he cried. \"It is a London paper, an early edition of the Evening Standard. Here is what we want. Look at the headlines: 'Crime in the City. Murder at Mawson & Williams's. Gigantic Attempted Robbery. Capture of the Criminal.' Here, Watson, we are all equally anxious to hear it, so kindly read it aloud to us.\"\n\nIt appeared from its position in the paper to have been the one event of importance in town, and the account of it ran in this way:\n\n\"A desperate attempt at robbery, culminating in the death of one man and the capture of the criminal, occurred this afternoon in the City. For some time back Mawson & Williams, the famous financial house, have been the guardians of securities which amount in the aggregate to a sum of considerably over a million sterling. So conscious was the manager of the responsibility which devolved upon him in consequence of the great interests at stake that safes of the very latest construction have been employed, and an armed watchman has been left day and night in the building. It appears that last week a new clerk named Hall Pycroft was engaged by the firm. This person appears to have been none other than Beddington, the famous forger and cracks-man, who, with his brother, has only recently emerged from a five years' spell of penal servitude. By some means, which are not yet clear, he succeeded in winning, under a false name, this official position in the office, which he utilized in order to obtain mouldings of various locks, and a thorough knowledge of the position of the strongroom and the safes.\n\n\"It is customary at Mawson's for the clerks to leave at midday on Saturday. Sergeant Tuson, of the City police, was somewhat surprised, therefore, to see a gentleman with a carpet-bag come down the steps at twenty minutes past one. His suspicions being aroused, the sergeant followed the man, and with the aid of Constable Pollock succeeded, after a most desperate resistance, in arresting him. It was at once clear that a daring and gigantic robbery had been committed. Nearly a hundred thousand pounds' worth of American railway bonds, with a large amount of scrip in mines and other companies, was discovered in the bag. On examining the premises the body of the unfortunate watchman was found doubled up and thrust into the largest of the safes, where it would not have been discovered until Monday morning had it not been for the prompt action of Sergeant Tuson. The man's skull had been shattered by a blow from a poker delivered from behind. There could be no doubt that Beddington had obtained entrance by pretending that he had left something behind him, and having murdered the watchman, rapidly rifled the large safe, and then made off with his booty. His brother, who usually works with him, has not appeared in this job as far as can at present be ascertained, although the police are making energetic inquiries as to his whereabouts.\"\n\n\"Well, we may save the police some little trouble in that direction,\" said Holmes, glancing at the haggard figure huddled up by the window. \"Human nature is a strange mixture, Watson. You see that even a villain and murderer can inspire such affection that his brother turns to suicide when he learns that his neck is forfeited. However, we have no choice as to our action. The doctor and I will remain on guard, Mr. Pycroft, if you will have the kindness to step out for the police.\"\n\n[ THE \"GLORIA SCOTT\" ]\n\n\"I have some papers here,\" said my friend Sherlock Holmes as we sat one winter's night on either side of the fire, \"which I really think, Watson, that it would be worth your while to glance over. These are the documents in the extraordinary case of the Gloria Scott, and this is the message which struck Justice of the Peace Trevor dead with horror when he read it.\"\n\nHe had picked from a drawer a little tarnished cylinder, and undoing the tape, he handed me a short note scrawled upon a half-sheet of slate-gray paper.\n\nThe supply of game for London is going steadily up [it ran]. Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now told to receive all orders for fly-paper and for preservation of your hen-pheasant's life.\n\nAs I glanced up from reading this enigmatical message, I saw Holmes chuckling at the expression upon my face.\n\n\"You look a little bewildered,\" said he.\n\n\"I cannot see how such a message as this could inspire horror. It seems to me to be rather grotesque than otherwise.\"\n\n\"Very likely. Yet the fact remains that the reader, who was a fine, robust old man, was knocked clean down by it as if it had been the butt end of a pistol.\"\n\n\"You arouse my curiosity,\" said I. \"But why did you say just now that there were very particular reasons why I should study this case?\"\n\n\"Because it was the first in which I was ever engaged.\"\n\nI had often endeavoured to elicit from my companion what had first turned his mind in the direction of criminal research, but had never caught him before in a communicative humour. Now he sat forward in his armchair and spread out the documents upon his knees. Then he lit his pipe and sat for some time smoking and turning them over.\n\n\"You never heard me talk of Victor Trevor?\" he asked. \"He was the only friend I made during the two years I was at college. I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather fond of moping in my rooms and working out my own little methods of thought, so that I never mixed much with the men of my year. Bar fencing and boxing I had few athletic tastes, and then my line of study was quite distinct from that of the other fellows, so that we had no points of contact at all. Trevor was the only man I knew, and that only through the accident of his bull terrier freezing on to my ankle one morning as I went down to chapel.\n\n\"It was a prosaic way of forming a friendship, but it was effective. I was laid by the heels for ten days, and Trevor used to come in to inquire after me. At first it was only a minute's chat, but soon his visits lengthened, and before the end of the term we were close friends. He was a hearty, full-blooded fellow, full of spirits and energy, the very opposite to me in most respects, but we had some subjects in common, and it was a bond of union when I found that he was as friendless as I. Finally he invited me down to his father's place at Donnithorpe, in Norfolk, and I accepted his hospitality for a month of the long vacation.\n\n\"Old Trevor was evidently a man of some wealth and consideration, a J. P., and a landed proprietor. Donnithorpe is a little hamlet just to the north of Langmere, in the country of the Broads. The house was an old-fashioned, widespread, oak-beamed brick building, with a fine lime-lined avenue leading up to it. There was excellent wild-duck shooting in the fens, remarkably good fishing, a small but select library, taken over, as I understood, from a former occupant, and a tolerable cook, so that he would be a fastidious man who could not put in a pleasant month there.\n\n\"Trevor senior was a widower, and my friend his only son.\n\n\"There had been a daughter, I heard, but she had died of diphtheria while on a visit to Birmingham. The father interested me extremely. He was a man of little culture, but with a considerable amount of rude strength, both physically and mentally. He knew hardly any books, but he had travelled far, had seen much of the world, and had remembered all that he had learned. In person he was a thick-set, burly man with a shock of grizzled hair, a brown, weather-beaten face, and blue eyes which were keen to the verge of fierceness. Yet he had a reputation for kindness and charity on the countryside, and was noted for the leniency of his sentences from the bench.\n\n\"One evening, shortly after my arrival, we were sitting over a glass of port after dinner, when young Trevor began to talk about those habits of observation and inference which I had already formed into a system, although I had not yet appreciated the part which they were to play in my life. The old man evidently thought that his son was exaggerating in his description of one or two trivial feats which I had performed.\n\n\"'Come, now, Mr. Holmes,' said he, laughing good-humouredly. 'I'm an excellent subject, if you can deduce anything from me.'\n\n\"'I fear there is not very much,' I answered. 'I might suggest that you have gone about in fear of some personal attack within the last twelvemonth.'\n\n\"The laugh faded from his lips, and he stared at me in great surprise.\n\n\"'Well, that's true enough,' said he. 'You know, Victor,' turning to his son, 'when we broke up that poaching gang they swore 'to knife us, and Sir Edward Holly has actually been attacked. I've always been on my guard since then, though I have no idea how you know it.'\n\n\"'You have a very handsome stick,' I answered. 'By the inscription I observed that you had not had it more than a year. But you have taken some pains to bore the head of it and pour melted lead into the hole so as to make it a formidable weapon. I argued that you would not take such precautions unless you had some danger to fear.'\n\n\"'Anything else?' he asked, smiling.\n\n\"'You have boxed a good deal in your youth.'\n\n\"'Right again. How did you know it? Is my nose knocked a little out of the straight?'\n\n\"'No,' said I. 'It is your ears. They have the peculiar flattening and thickening which marks the boxing man.'\n\n\"'Anything else?'\n\n\"'You have done a good deal of digging by your callosities.'\n\n\"'Made all my money at the gold fields.'\n\n\"'You have been in New Zealand.'\n\n\"'Right again.'\n\n\"'You have visited Japan.'\n\n\"'Quite true.'\n\n\"'And you have been most intimately associated with someone whose initials were J. A., and whom you afterwards were eager to entirely forget.'\n\n\"Mr. Trevor stood slowly up, fixed his large blue eyes upon me with a strange wild stare, and then pitched forward, with his face among the nutshells which strewed the cloth, in a dead faint.\n\n\"You can imagine, Watson, how shocked both his son and I were. His attack did not last long, however, for when we undid his collar and sprinkled the water from one of the finger-glasses over his face, he gave a gasp or two and sat up.\n\n\"'Ah, boys,' said he, forcing a smile, 'I hope I haven't frightened you. Strong as I look, there is a weak place in my heart, and it does not take much to knock me over. I don't know how you manage this, Mr. Holmes, but it seems to me that all the detectives of fact and of fancy would be children in your hands. That's your line of life, sir, and you may take the word of a man who has seen something of the world.'\n\n\"And that recommendation, with the exaggerated estimate of my ability with which he prefaced it, was, if you will believe me, Watson, the very first thing which ever made me feel that a profession might be made out of what had up to that time been the merest hobby. At the moment, however, I was too much concerned at the sudden illness of my host to think of anything else.\n\n\"'I hope that I have said nothing to pain you?' said I.\n\n\"'Well, you certainly touched upon rather a tender point. Might I ask how you know, and how much you know?' He spoke now in a half-jesting fashion, but a look of terror still lurked at the back of his eyes.\n\n\"'It is simplicity itself,' said I. 'When you bared your arm to draw that fish into the boat I saw that J. A. had been tattooed in the bend of the elbow. The letters were still legible, but it was perfectly clear from their blurred appearance, and from the staining of the skin round them, that efforts had been made to obliterate them. It was obvious, then, that those initials had once been very familiar to you, and that you had afterwards wished to forget them.'\n\n\"'What an eye you have!' he cried with a sigh of relief. 'It is just as you say. But we won't talk of it. Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst. Come into the billiard-room and have a quiet cigar.'\n\n\"From that day, amid all his cordiality, there was always a touch of suspicion in Mr. Trevor's manner towards me. Even his son remarked it. 'You've given the governor such a turn,' said he, 'that he'll never be sure again of what you know and what you don't know.' He did not mean to show it, I am sure, but it was so strongly in his mind that it peeped out at every action. At last I became so convinced that I was causing him uneasiness that I drew my visit to a close. On the very day, however, before I left, an incident occurred which proved in the sequel to be of importance.\n\n\"We were sitting out upon the lawn on garden chairs, the three of us, basking in the sun and admiring the view across the Broads, when a maid came out to say that there was a man at the door who wanted to see Mr. Trevor.\n\n\"'What is his name?' asked my host.\n\n\"'He would not give any.'\n\n\"'What does he want, then?'\n\n\"'He says that you know him, and that he only wants a moment's conversation.'\n\n\"'Show him round here.' An instant afterwards there appeared a little wizened fellow with a cringing manner and a shambling style of walking. He wore an open jacket, with a splotch of tar on the sleeve, a red-and-black check shirt, dungaree trousers, and heavy boots badly worn. His face was thin and brown and crafty, with a perpetual smile upon it, which showed an irregular line of yellow teeth, and his crinkled hands were half closed in a way that is distinctive of sailors. As he came slouching across the lawn I heard Mr. Trevor make a sort of hiccoughing noise in his throat, and, jumping out of his chair, he ran into the house. He was back in a moment, and I smelt a strong reek of brandy as he passed me.\n\n\"'Well, my man,' said he. 'What can I do for you?'\n\n\"The sailor stood looking at him with puckered eyes, and with the same loose-lipped smile upon his face.\n\n\"'You don't know me?' he asked.\n\n\"'Why, dear me, it is surely Hudson,' said Mr. Trevor in a tone of surprise.\n\n\"'Hudson it is, sir,' said the seaman. 'Why, it's thirty year and more since I saw you last. Here you are in your house, and me still picking my salt meat out of the harness cask.'\n\n\"'Tut, you will find that I have not forgotten old times,' cried Mr. Trevor, and, walking towards the sailor, he said something in a low voice. 'Go into the kitchen,' he continued out loud, 'and you will get food and drink. I have no doubt that I shall find you a situation.'\n\n\"'Thank you, sir,' said the seaman, touching his forelock. 'I'm just off a two-yearer in an eight-knot tramp, short-handed at that, and I wants a rest. I thought I'd get it either with Mr. Beddoes or with you.'\n\n\"'Ah!' cried Mr. Trevor. 'You know where Mr. Beddoes is?'\n\n\"'Bless you, sir, I know where all my old friends are,' said the fellow with a sinister smile, and he slouched off after the maid to the kitchen. Mr. Trevor mumbled something to us about having been shipmate with the man when he was going back to the diggings, and then, leaving us on the lawn, he went indoors. An hour later, when we entered the house, we found him stretched dead drunk upon the dining-room sofa. The whole incident left a most ugly impression upon my mind, and I was not sorry next day to leave Donnithorpe behind me, for I felt that my presence must be a source of embarrassment to my friend.\n\n\"All this occurred during the first month of the long vacation. I went up to my London rooms, where I spent seven weeks working out a few experiments in organic chemistry. One day, however, when the autumn was far advanced and the vacation drawing to a close, I received a telegram from my friend imploring me to return to Donnithorpe, and saying that he was in great need of my advice and assistance. Of course I dropped everything and set out for the North once more.\n\n\"He met me with the dog-cart at the station, and I saw at a glance that the last two months had been very trying ones for him. He had grown thin and careworn, and had lost the loud, cheery manner for which he had been remarkable.\n\n\"'The governor is dying,' were the first words he said.\n\n\"'Impossible!' I cried. 'What is the matter?'\n\n\"'Apoplexy. Nervous shock. He's been on the verge all day. I doubt if we shall find him alive.'\n\n\"I was, as you may think, Watson, horrified at this unexpected news.\n\n\"'What has caused it?' I asked.\n\n\"'Ah, that is the point. Jump in and we can talk it over while we drive. You remember that fellow who came upon the evening before you left us?'\n\n\"'Perfectly.'\n\n\"'Do you know who it was that we let into the house that day?'\n\n\"'I have no idea.'\n\n\"'It was the devil, Holmes,' he cried.\n\n\"I stared at him in astonishment.\n\n\"'Yes, it was the devil himself. We have not had a peaceful hour since\u2014not one. The governor has never held up his head from that evening, and now the life has been crushed out of him and his heart broken, all through this accursed Hudson.'\n\n\"'What power had he, then?'\n\n\"'Ah, that is what I would give so much to know. The kindly, charitable good old governor\u2014how could he have fallen into the clutches of such a ruffian! But I am so glad that you have come, Holmes. I trust very much to your judgment and discretion, and I know that you will advise me for the best.'\n\n\"We were dashing along the smooth white country road, with the long stretch of the Broads in front of us glimmering in the red light of the setting sun. From a grove upon our left I could already see the high chimneys and the flagstaff which marked the squire's dwelling.\n\n\"'My father made the fellow gardener,' said my companion, 'and then, as that did not satisfy him, he was promoted to be butler. The house seemed to be at his mercy, and he wandered about and did what he chose in it. The maids complained of his drunken habits and his vile language. The dad raised their wages all round to recompense them for the annoyance. The fellow would take the boat and my father's best gun and treat himself to little shooting trips. And all this with such a sneering, leering, insolent face that I would have knocked him down twenty times over if he had been a man of my own age. I tell you, Holmes, I have had to keep a tight hold upon myself all this time; and now I am asking myself whether, if I had let myself go a little more, I might not have been a wiser man.\n\n\"'Well, matters went from bad to worse with us, and this animal Hudson became more and more intrusive, until at last, on his making some insolent reply to my father in my presence one day, I took him by the shoulders and turned him out of the room. He slunk away with a livid face and two venomous eyes which uttered more threats than his tongue could do. I don't know what passed between the poor dad and him after that, but the dad came to me next day and asked me whether I would mind apologizing to Hudson. I refused, as you can imagine, and asked my father how he could allow such a wretch to take such liberties with himself and his household.\n\n\"' \"Ah, my boy,\" said he, \"it is all very well to talk, but you don't know how I am placed. But you shall know, Victor. I'll see that you shall know, come what may. You wouldn't believe harm of your poor old father, would you, lad?\" He was very much moved and shut himself up in the study all day, where I could see through the window that he was writing busily.\n\n\"'That evening there came what seemed to me to be a grand release, for Hudson told us that he was going to leave us. He walked into the dining-room as we sat after dinner and announced his intention in the thick voice of a half-drunken man.\n\n\"' \"I've had enough of Norfolk,\" said he. \"I'll run down to Mr. Beddoes in Hampshire. He'll be as glad to see me as you were, I daresay.\"\n\n\"' \"You're not going away in an unkind spirit, Hudson, I hope,\" said my father with a tameness which made my blood boil.\n\n\"' \"I've not had my 'pology,\" said he sulkily, glancing in my direction.\n\n\"' \"Victor, you will acknowledge that you have used this worthy fellow rather roughly,\" said the dad, turning to me.\n\n\"' \"On the contrary, I think that we have both shown extraordinary patience towards him,\" I answered.\n\n\"' \"Oh, you do, do you?\" he snarled. \"Very good, mate. We'll see about that!\"\n\n\"'He slouched out of the room and half an hour afterwards left the house, leaving my father in a state of pitiable nervousness. Night after night I heard him pacing his room, and it was just as he was recovering his confidence that the blow did at last fall.'\n\n\"'And how?' I asked eagerly.\n\n\"'In a most extraordinary fashion. A letter arrived for my father yesterday evening, bearing the Fordingham postmark. My father read it, clapped both his hands to his head, and began running round the room in little circles like a man who has been driven out of his senses. When I at last drew him down on to the sofa, his mouth and eyelids were all puckered on one side, and I saw that he had a stroke. Dr. Fordham came over at once. We put him to bed, but the paralysis has spread, he has shown no sign of returning consciousness, and I think that we shall hardly find him alive.'\n\n\"'You horrify me, Trevor!' I cried. 'What then could have been in this letter to cause so dreadful a result?'\n\n\"'Nothing. There lies the inexplicable part of it. The message was absurd and trivial. Ah, my God, it is as I feared!'\n\n\"As he spoke we came round the curve of the avenue and saw in the fading light that every blind in the house had been drawn down. As we dashed up to the door, my friend's face convulsed with grief, a gentleman in black emerged from it.\n\n\"'When did it happen, doctor?' asked Trevor.\n\n\"'Almost immediately after you left.'\n\n\"'Did he recover consciousness?'\n\n\"'For an instant before the end.'\n\n\"'Any message for me?'\n\n\"'Only that the papers were in the back drawer of the Japanese cabinet.'\n\n\"My friend ascended with the doctor to the chamber of death, while I remained in the study, turning the whole matter over and over in my head, and feeling as sombre as ever I had done in my life. What was the past of this Trevor, pugilist, traveller, and gold-digger, and how had he placed himself in the power of this acid-faced seaman? Why, too, should he faint at an allusion to the half-effaced initials upon his arm and die of fright when he had a letter from Fordingham? Then I remembered that Fordingham was in Hampshire, and that this Mr. Beddoes, whom the seaman had gone to visit and presumably to blackmail, had also been mentioned as living in Hampshire. The letter, then, might either come from Hudson, the seaman, saying that he had betrayed the guilty secret which appeared to exist, or it might come from Beddoes, warning an old confederate that such a betrayal was imminent. So far it seemed clear enough. But then how could this letter be trivial and grotesque, as described by the son? He must have misread it. If so, it must have been one of those ingenious secret codes which mean one thing while they seem to mean another. I must see this letter. If there was a hidden meaning in it, I was confident that I could pluck it forth. For an hour I sat pondering over it in the gloom, until at last a weeping maid brought in a lamp, and close at her heels came my friend Trevor, pale but composed, with these very papers which lie upon my knee held in his grasp. He sat down opposite to me, drew the lamp to the edge of the table, and handed me a short note scribbled, as you see, upon a single sheet of gray paper. 'The supply of game for London is going steadily up,' it ran. 'Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now told to receive all orders for fly-paper and for preservation of your hen-pheasant's life.'\n\n\"I daresay my face looked as bewildered as yours did just now when first I read this message. Then I reread it very carefully. It was evidently as I had thought, and some secret meaning must lie buried in this strange combination of words. Or could it be that there was a prearranged significance to such phrases as 'fly-paper' and 'hen-pheasant'? Such a meaning would be arbitrary and could not be deduced in any way. And yet I was loath to believe that this was the case, and the presence of the word Hudson seemed to show that the subject of the message was as I had guessed, and that it was from Beddoes rather than the sailor. I tried it backward, but the combination 'life pheasant's hen' was not encouraging. Then I tried alternate words, but neither 'the of for' nor 'supply game London' promised to throw any light upon it.\n\n\"And then in an instant the key of the riddle was in my hands, and I saw that every third word, beginning with the first, would give a message which might well drive old Trevor to despair.\n\n\"It was short and terse, the warning, as I now read it to my companion:\n\n\"'The game is up. Hudson has told all. Fly for your life.'\n\n\"Victor Trevor sank his face into his shaking hands. 'It must be that, I suppose,' said he. 'This is worse than death, for it means disgrace as well. But what is the meaning of these \"head-keepers\" and \"hen-pheasants\"?'\n\n\"'It means nothing to the message, but it might mean a good deal to us if we had no other means of discovering the sender. You see that he has begun by writing \"The... game... is,\" and so on. Afterwards he had, to fulfil the prearranged cipher, to fill in any two words in each space. He would naturally use the first words which came to his mind, and if there were so many which referred to sport among them, you may be tolerably sure that he is either an ardent shot or interested in breeding. Do you know anything of this Beddoes?'\n\n\"'Why, now that you mention it,' said he, 'I remember that my poor father used to have an invitation from him to shoot over his preserves every autumn.'\n\n\"'Then it is undoubtedly from him that the note comes,' said I. 'It only remains for us to find out what this secret was which the sailor Hudson seems to have held over the heads of these two wealthy and respected men.'\n\n\"'Alas, Holmes, I fear that it is one of sin and shame!' cried my friend. 'But from you I shall have no secrets. Here is the statement which was drawn up by my father when he knew that the danger from Hudson had become imminent. I found it in the Japanese cabinet, as he told the doctor. Take it and read it to me, for I have neither the strength nor the courage to do it myself.'\n\n\"These are the very papers, Watson, which he handed to me, and I will read them to you, as I read them in the old study that night to him. They are endorsed outside, as you see, 'Some particulars of the voyage of the bark Gloria Scott, from her leaving Falmouth on the 8th October, 1855, to her destruction in N. Lat. 15\u00b0 20', W. Long. 25\u00b0 14', on. Nov. 6th.' It is in the form of a letter, and runs in this way.\n\n\"'My dear, dear son, now that approaching disgrace begins to darken the closing years of my life, I can write with all truth and honesty that it is not the terror of the law, it is not the loss of my position in the county, nor is it my fall in the eyes of all who have known me, which cuts me to the heart; but it is the thought that you should come to blush for me\u2014you who love me and who have seldom, I hope, had reason to do other than respect me. But if the blow falls which is forever hanging over me, then I should wish you to read this, that you may know straight from me how far I have been to blame. On the other hand, if all should go well (which may kind God Almighty grant!), then, if by any chance this paper should be still undestroyed and should fall into your hands, I conjure you, by all you hold sacred, by the memory of your dear mother, and by the love which has been between us, to hurl it into the fire and to never give one thought to it again.\n\n\"'If then your eye goes on to read this line, I know that I shall already have been exposed and dragged from my home, or, as is more likely, for you know that my heart is weak, be lying with my tongue sealed forever in death. In either case the time for suppression is past, and every word which I tell you is the naked truth, and this I swear as I hope for mercy.\n\n\"'My name, dear lad, is not Trevor. I was James Armitage in my younger days, and you can understand now the shock that it was to me a few weeks ago when your college friend addressed me in words which seemed to imply that he had surprised my secret. As Armitage it was that I entered a London banking-house, and as Armitage I was convicted of breaking my country's laws, and was sentenced to transportation. Do not think very harshly of me, laddie. It was a debt of honour, so called, which I had to pay, and I used money which was not my own to do it, in the certainty that I could replace it before there could be any possibility of its being missed. But the most dreadful ill-luck pursued me. The money which I had reckoned upon never came to hand, and a premature examination of accounts exposed my deficit. The case might have been dealt leniently with, but the laws were more harshly administered thirty years ago than now, and on my twenty-third birthday I found myself chained as a felon with thirty-seven other convicts in the 'tween-decks of the bark Gloria Scott, bound for Australia.\n\n\"'It was the year '55, when the Crimean War was at its height, and the old convict ships had been largely used as transports in the Black Sea. The government was compelled, therefore, to use smaller and less suitable vessels for sending out their prisoners. The Gloria Scott had been in the Chinese tea-trade, but she was an old-fashioned, heavy-bowed, broad-beamed craft, and the new clippers had cut her out. She was a five-hundred-ton boat; and besides her thirty-eight jail-birds, she carried twenty-six of a crew, eighteen soldiers, a captain, three mates, a doctor, a chaplain, and four warders. Nearly a hundred souls were in her, all told, when we set sail from Falmouth.\n\n\"'The partitions between the cells of the convicts instead of being of thick oak, as is usual in convict-ships, were quite thin and frail. The man next to me, upon the aft side, was one whom I had particularly noticed when we were led down the quay. He was a young man with a clear, hairless face, a long, thin nose, and rather nut-cracker jaws. He carried his head very jauntily in the air, had a swaggering style of walking, and was, above all else, remarkable for his extraordinary height. I don't think any of our heads would have come up to his shoulder, and I am sure that he could not have measured less than six and a half feet. It was strange among so many sad and weary faces to see one which was full of energy and resolution. The sight of it was to me like a fire in a snowstorm. I was glad, then, to find that he was my neighbour, and gladder still when, in the dead of the night, I heard a whisper close to my ear and found that he had managed to cut an opening in the board which separated us.\n\n\"' \"Hullo, chummy!\" said he, \"what's your name, and what are you here for?\"\n\n\"'I answered him, and asked in turn who I was talking with.\n\n\"' \"I'm Jack Prendergast,\" said he, \"and by God! you'll learn to bless my name before you've done with me.\"\n\n\"'I remembered hearing of his case, for it was one which had made an immense sensation throughout the country some time before my own arrest. He was a man of good family and of great ability, but of incurably vicious habits, who had by an ingenious system of fraud obtained huge sums of money from the leading London merchants.\n\n\"' \"Ha, ha! You remember my case!\" said he proudly.\n\n\"' \"Very well, indeed.\"\n\n\"' \"Then maybe you remember something queer about it?\"\n\n\"' \"What was that, then?\"\n\n\"' \"I'd had nearly a quarter of a million, hadn't I?\"\n\n\"' \"So it was said.\"\n\n\"' \"But none was recovered, eh?\"\n\n\"' \"No.\"\n\n\"' \"Well, where d'ye suppose the balance is?\" he asked.\n\n\"' \"I have no idea,\" said I.\n\n\"' \"Right between my finger and thumb,\" he cried. \"By God! I've got more pounds to my name than you've hairs on your head. And if you've money, my son, and know how to handle it and spread it, you can do anything . Now, you don't think it likely that a man who could do anything is going to wear his breeches out sitting in the stinking hold of a rat-gutted, beetle-ridden, mouldy old coffin of a Chin China coaster. No, sir, such a man will look after himself and will look after his chums. You may lay to that! You hold on to him, and you may kiss the Book that he'll haul you through.\"\n\n\"'That was his style of talk, and at first I thought it meant nothing; but after a while, when he had tested me and sworn me in with all possible solemnity, he let me understand that there really was a plot to gain command of the vessel. A dozen of the prisoners had hatched it before they came aboard, Prendergast was the leader, and his money was the motive power.\n\n\"' \"I'd a partner,\" said he, \"a rare good man, as true as a stock to a barrel. He's got the dibbs, he has, and where do you think he is at this moment? Why, he's the chaplain of this ship\u2014the chaplain, no less! He came aboard with a black coat, and his papers right, and money enough in his box to buy the thing right up from keel to main-truck. The crew are his, body and soul. He could buy 'em at so much a gross with a cash discount, and he did it before ever they signed on. He's got two of the warders and Mereer, the second mate, and he'd get the captain himself, if he thought him worth it.\"\n\n\"' \"What are we to do, then?\" I asked.\n\n\"' \"What do you think?\" said he. \"We'll make the coats of some of these soldiers redder than ever the tailor did.\"\n\n\"' \"But they are armed,\" said I.\n\n\"' \"And so shall we be, my boy. There's a brace of pistols for every mother's son of us; and if we can't carry this ship, with the crew at our back, it's time we were all sent to a young misses' boarding-school. You speak to your mate upon the left to-night, and see if he is to be trusted.\"\n\n\"'I did so and found my other neighbour to be a young fellow in much the same position as myself, whose crime had been forgery. His name was Evans, but he afterwards changed it, like myself, and he is now a rich and prosperous man in the south of England. He was ready enough to join the conspiracy, as the only means of saving ourselves, and before we had crossed the bay there were only two of the prisoners who were not in the secret. One of these was of weak mind, and we did not dare to trust him, and the other was suffering from jaundice and could not be of any use to us.\n\n\"'From the beginning there was really nothing to prevent us from taking possession of the ship. The crew were a set of ruffians, specially picked for the job. The sham chaplain came into our cells to exhort us, carrying a black bag, supposed to be full of tracts, and so often did he come that by the third day we had each stowed away at the foot of our beds a file, a brace of pistols, a pound of powder, and twenty slugs. Two of the warders were agents of Prendergast, and the second mate was his right-hand man. The captain, the two mates, two warders, Lieutenant Martin, his eighteen soldiers, and the doctor were all that we had against us. Yet, safe as it was, we determined to neglect no precaution, and to make our attack suddenly by night. It came, however, more quickly than we expected, and in this way.\n\n\"'One evening, about the third week after our start, the doctor had come down to see one of the prisoners who was ill, and, putting his hand down on the bottom of his bunk, he felt the outline of the pistols. If he had been silent he might have blown the whole thing, but he was a nervous little chap, so he gave a cry of surprise and turned so pale that the man knew what was up in an instant and seized him. He was gagged before he could give the alarm and tied down upon the bed. He had unlocked the door that led to the deck, and we were through it in a rush. The two sentries were shot down, and so was a corporal who came running to see what was the matter. There were two more soldiers at the door of the stateroom, and their muskets seemed not to be loaded, for they never fired upon us, and they were shot while trying to fix their bayonets. Then we rushed on into the captain's cabin, but as we pushed open the door there was an explosion from within, and there he lay with his brains smeared over the chart of the Atlantic which was pinned upon the table, while the chaplain stood with a smoking pistol in his hand at his elbow. The two mates had both been seized by the crew, and the whole business seemed to be settled.\n\n\"'The stateroom was next the cabin, and we flocked in there and flopped down on the settees, all speaking together, for we were just mad with the feeling that we were free once more. There were lockers all round, and Wilson, the sham chaplain, knocked one of them in, and pulled out a dozen of brown sherry. We cracked off the necks of the bottles, poured the stuff out into tumblers, and were just tossing them off when in an instant without warning there came the roar of muskets in our ears, and the saloon was so full of smoke that we could not see across the table. When it cleared again the place was a shambles. Wilson and eight others were wriggling on the top of each other on the floor, and the blood and the brown sherry on that table turn me sick now when I think of it. We were so cowed by the sight that I think we should have given the job up if it had not been for Prendergast. He bellowed like a bull and rushed for the door with all that were left alive at his heels. Out we ran, and there on the poop were the lieutenant and ten of his men. The swing skylights above the saloon table had been a bit open, and they had fired on us through the slit. We got on them before they could load, and they stood to it like men; but we had the upper hand of them, and in five minutes it was all over. My God! was there ever a slaughter-house like that ship! Prendergast was like a raging devil, and he picked the soldiers up as if they had been children and threw them overboard alive or dead. There was one sergeant that was horribly wounded and yet kept on swimming for a surprising time until someone in mercy blew out his brains. When the fighting was over there was no one left of our enemies except just the warders, the mates, and the doctor.\n\n\"'It was over them that the great quarrel arose. There were many of us who were glad enough to win back our freedom, and yet who had no wish to have murder on our souls. It was one thing to knock the soldiers over with their muskets in their hands, and it was another to stand by while men were being killed in cold blood. Eight of us, five convicts and three sailors, said that we would not see it done. But there was no moving Prendergast and those who were with him. Our only chance of safety lay in making a clean job of it, said he, and he would not leave a tongue with power to wag in a witness-box. It nearly came to our sharing the fate of the prisoners, but at last he said that if we wished we might take a boat and go. We jumped at the offer, for we were already sick of these bloodthirsty doings, and we saw that there would be worse before it was done. We were given a suit of sailor togs each, a barrel of water, two casks, one of junk and one of biscuits, and a compass. Prendergast threw us over a chart, told us that we were shipwrecked mariners whose ship had foundered in Lat. 15\u00b0 and Long. 25\u00b0 west, and then cut the painter and let us go.\n\n\"'And now I come to the most surprising part of my story, my dear son. The seamen had hauled the fore-yard aback during the rising, but now as we left them they brought it square again, and as there was a light wind from the north and east the bark began to draw slowly away from us. Our boat lay, rising and falling, upon the long, smooth rollers, and Evans and I, who were the most educated of the party, were sitting in the sheets working out our position and planning what coast we should make for. It was a nice question, for the Cape Verdes were about five hundred miles to the north of us, and the African coast about seven hundred to the east. On the whole, as the wind was coming round to the north, we thought that Sierra Leone might be best and turned our head in that direction, the bark being at that time nearly hull down on our starboard quarter. Suddenly as we looked at her we saw a dense black cloud of smoke shoot up from her, which hung like a monstrous tree upon the sky-line. A few seconds later a roar like thunder burst upon our ears, and as the smoke thinned away there was no sign left of the Gloria Scott. In an instant we swept the boat's head round again and pulled with all our strength for the place where the haze still trailing over the water marked the scene of this catastrophe.\n\n\"'It was a long hour before we reached it, and at first we feared that we had come too late to save anyone. A splintered boat and a number of crates and fragments of spars rising and falling on the waves showed us where the vessel had foundered; but there was no sign of life, and we had turned away in despair, when we heard a cry for help and saw at some distance a piece of wreckage with a man lying stretched across it. When we pulled him aboard the boat he proved to be a young seaman of the name of Hudson, who was so burned and exhausted that he could give us no account of what had happened until the following morning.\n\n\"'It seemed that after we had left, Prendergast and his gang had proceeded to put to death the five remaining prisoners. The two warders had been shot and thrown overboard, and so also had the third mate. Prendergast then descended into the 'tween-decks and with his own hands cut the throat of the unfortunate surgeon. There only remained the first mate, who was a bold and active man. When he saw the convict approaching him with the bloody knife in his hand he kicked off his bonds, which he had somehow contrived to loosen, and rushing down the deck he plunged into the after-hold. A dozen convicts, who descended with their pistols in search of him, found him with a match-box in his hand seated beside an open powder-barrel, which was one of the hundred carried on board, and swearing that he would blow all hands up if he were in any way molested. An instant later the explosion occurred, though Hudson thought it was caused by the misdirected bullet of one of the convicts rather than the mate's match. Be the cause what it may, it was the end of the Gloria Scott and of the rabble who held command of her.\n\n\"'Such, in a few words, my dear boy, is the history of this terrible business in which I was involved. Next day we were picked up by the brig Hotspur, bound for Australia, whose captain found no difficulty in believing that we were the survivors of a passenger ship which had foundered. The transport ship Gloria Scott was set down by the Admiralty as being lost at sea, and no word has ever leaked out as to her true fate. After an excellent voyage the Hotspur landed us at Sydney, where Evans and I changed our names and made our way to the diggings, where, among the crowds who were gathered from all nations, we had no difficulty in losing our former identities. The rest I need not relate. We prospered, we travelled, we came back as rich colonials to England, and we bought country estates. For more than twenty years we have led peaceful and useful lives, and we hoped that our past was forever buried. Imagine, then, my feelings when in the seaman who came to us I recognized instantly the man who had been picked off the wreck. He had tracked us down somehow and had set himself to live upon our fears. You will understand now how it was that I strove to keep the peace with him, and you will in some measure sympathize with me in the fears which fill me, now that he has gone from me to his other victim with threats upon his tongue.'\n\n\"Underneath is written in a hand so shaky as to be hardly legible, 'Beddoes writes in cipher to say H. has told all. Sweet Lord, have mercy on our souls!'\n\n\"That was the narrative which I read that night to young Trevor, and I think, Watson, that under the circumstances it was a dramatic one. The good fellow was heart-broken at it, and went out to the Terai tea planting, where I hear that he is doing well. As to the sailor and Beddoes, neither of them was ever heard of again after that day on which the letter of warning was written. They both disappeared utterly and completely. No complaint had been lodged with the police, so that Beddoes had mistaken a threat for a deed. Hudson had been seen lurking about, and it was believed by the police that he had done away with Beddoes and had fled. For myself I believe that the truth was exactly the opposite. I think that it is most probable that Beddoes, pushed to desperation and believing himself to have been already betrayed, had revenged himself upon Hudson, and had fled from the country with as much money as he could lay his hands on. Those are the facts of the case, Doctor, and if they are of any use to your collection, I am sure that they are very heartily at your service.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE MUSGRAVE RITUAL", + "text": "An anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend Sherlock Holmes was that, although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind, and although also he affected a certain quiet primness of dress, he was none the less in his personal habits one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction. Not that I am in the least conventional in that respect myself. The rough-and-tumble work in Afghanistan, coming on the top of natural Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical man. But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs. I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air pastime; and when Holmes, in one of his queer humours, would sit in an armchair with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V. R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it.\n\nOur chambers were always full of chemicals and of criminal relics which had a way of wandering into unlikely positions, and of turning up in the butter-dish or in even less desirable places. But his papers were my great crux. He had a horror of destroying documents, especially those which were connected with his past cases, and yet it was only once in every year or two that he would muster energy to docket and arrange them; for, as I have mentioned somewhere in these incoherent memoirs, the outbursts of passionate energy when he performed the remarkable feats with which his name is associated were followed by reactions of lethargy during which he would lie about with his violin and his books, hardly moving save from the sofa to the table. Thus month after month his papers accumulated until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner. One winter's night, as we sat together by the fire, I ventured to suggest to him that, as he had finished pasting extracts into his commonplace book, he might employ the next two hours in making our room a little more habitable. He could not deny the justice of my request, so with a rather rueful face he went off to his bedroom, from which he returned presently pulling a large tin box behind him. This he placed in the middle of the floor, and, squatting down upon a stool in front of it, he threw back the lid. I could see that it was already a third full of bundles of paper tied up with red tape into separate packages.\n\n\"There are cases enough here, Watson,\" said he, looking at me with mischievous eyes. \"I think that if you knew all that I had in this box you would ask me to pull some out instead of putting others in.\"\n\n\"These are the records of your early work, then?\" I asked. \"I have often wished that I had notes of those cases.\"\n\n\"Yes, my boy, these were all done prematurely before my biographer had come to glorify me.\" He lifted bundle after bundle in a tender, caressing sort of way. \"They are not all successes, Watson,\" said he. \"But there are some pretty little problems among them. Here's the record of the Tarleton murders, and the case of Vamberry, the wine merchant, and the adventure of the old Russian woman, and the singular affair of the aluminum crutch, as well as a full account of Ricoletti of the club-foot, and his abominable wife. And here\u2014ah, now, this really is something a little recherch\u00e9.\"\n\nHe dived his arm down to the bottom of the chest and brought up a small wooden box with a sliding lid such as children's toys are kept in. From within he produced a crumpled piece of paper, an old-fashioned brass key, a peg of wood with a ball of string attached to it, and three rusty old discs of metal.\n\n\"Well, my boy, what do you make of this lot?\" he asked, smiling at my expression.\n\n\"It is a curious collection.\"\n\n\"Very curious; and the story that hangs round it will strike you as being more curious still.\"\n\n\"These relics have a history, then?\"\n\n\"So much so that they are history.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by that?\"\n\nSherlock Holmes picked them up one by one and laid them along the edge of the table. Then he reseated himself in his chair and looked them over with a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes.\n\n\"These,\" said he, \"are all that I have left to remind me of the adventure of the Musgrave Ritual.\"\n\nI had heard him mention the case more than once, though I had never been able to gather the details. \"I should be so glad,\" said I, \"if you would give me an account of it.\"\n\n\"And leave the litter as it is?\" he cried mischievously. \"Your tidiness won't bear much strain, after all, Watson. But I should be glad that you should add this case to your annals, for there are points in it which make it quite unique in the criminal records of this or, I believe, of any other country. A collection of my trifling achievements would certainly be incomplete which contained no account of this very singular business.\n\n\"You may remember how the affair of the Gloria Scott, and my conversation with the unhappy man whose fate I told you of, first turned my attention in the direction of the profession which has become my life's work. You see me now when my name has become known far and wide, and when I am generally recognized both by the public and by the official force as being a final court of appeal in doubtful cases. Even when you knew me first, at the time of the affair which you have commemorated in 'A Study in Scarlet,' I had already established a considerable, though not a very lucrative, connection. You can hardly realize, then, how difficult I found it at first, and how long I had to wait before I succeeded in making any headway.\n\n\"When I first came up to London I had rooms in Montague Street, just round the corner from the British Museum, and there I waited, filling in my too abundant leisure time by studying all those branches of science which might make me more efficient. Now and again cases came in my way, principally through the introduction of old fellow-students, for during my last years at the university there was a good deal of talk there about myself and my methods. The third of these cases was that of the Musgrave Ritual, and it is to the interest which was aroused by that singular chain of events, and the large issues which proved to be at stake, that I trace my first stride towards the position which I now hold.\n\n\"Reginald Musgrave had been in the same college as myself, and I had some slight acquaintance with him. He was not generally popular among the undergraduates, though it always seemed to me that what was set down as pride was really an attempt to cover extreme natural diffidence. In appearance he was a man of an exceedingly aristocratic type, thin, high-nosed, and large-eyed, with languid and yet courtly manners. He was indeed a scion of one of the very oldest families in the kingdom, though his branch was a cadet one which had separated from the northern Musgraves some time in the sixteenth century and had established itself in western Sussex, where the Manor House of Hurlstone is perhaps the oldest inhabited building in the county. Something of his birth-place seemed to cling to the man, and I never looked at his pale, keen face or the poise of his head without associating him with gray archways and mullioned windows and all the venerable wreckage of a feudal keep. Once or twice we drifted into talk, and I can remember that more than once he expressed a keen interest in my methods of observation and inference.\n\n\"For four years I had seen nothing of him until one morning he walked into my room in Montague Street. He had changed little, was dressed like a young man of fashion\u2014he was always a bit of a dandy\u2014and preserved the same quiet, suave manner which had formerly distinguished him.\n\n\"'How has all gone with you, Musgrave?' I asked after we had cordially shaken hands.\n\n\"'You probably heard of my poor father's death,' said he; 'he was carried off about two years ago. Since then I have of course had the Hurlstone estate to manage, and as I am member for my district as well, my life has been a busy one. But I understand, Holmes, that you are turning to practical ends those powers with which you used to amaze us?'\n\n\"'Yes,' said I, 'I have taken to living by my wits.'\n\n\"'I am delighted to hear it, for your advice at present would be exceedingly valuable to me. We have had some very strange doings at Hurlstone, and the police have been able to throw no light upon the matter. It is really the most extraordinary and inexplicable business.\n\n\"You can imagine with what eagerness I listened to him, Watson, for the very chance for which I had been panting during all those months of inaction seemed to have come within my reach. In my inmost heart I believed that I could succeed where others failed, and now I had the opportunity to test myself.\n\n\"'Pray let me have the details,' I cried.\n\n\"Reginald Musgrave sat down opposite to me and lit the cigarette which I had pushed towards him.\n\n\"'You must know,' said he, 'that though I am a bachelor, I have to keep up a considerable staff of servants at Hurlstone, for it is a rambling old place and takes a good deal of looking after. I preserve, too, and in the pheasant months I usually have a house-party, so that it would not do to be short-handed. Altogether there are eight maids, the cook, the butler, two footmen, and a boy. The garden and the stables of course have a separate staff.\n\n\"'Of these servants the one who had been longest in our service was Brunton, the butler. He was a young schoolmaster out of place when he was first taken up by my father, but he was a man of great energy and character, and he soon became quite invaluable in the household. He was a well-grown, handsome man, with a splendid forehead, and though he has been with us for twenty years he cannot be more than forty now. With his personal advantages and his extraordinary gifts\u2014for he can speak several languages and play nearly every musical instrument\u2014it is wonderful that he should have been satisfied so long in such a position, but I suppose that he was comfortable and lacked energy to make any change. The butler of Hurlstone is always a thing that is remembered by all who visit us.\n\n\"'But this paragon has one fault. He is a bit of a Don Juan, and you can imagine that for a man like him it is not a very difficult part to play in a quiet country district. When he was married it was all right, but since he has been a widower we have had no end of trouble with him. A few months ago we were in hopes that he was about to settle down again, for he became engaged to Rachel Howells, our second housemaid; but he has thrown her over since then and taken up with Janet Tregellis, the daughter of the head game-keeper. Rachel\u2014who is a very good girl, but of an excitable Welsh temperament\u2014had a sharp touch of brain-fever and goes about the house now\u2014or did until yesterday\u2014like a black-eyed shadow of her former self. That was our first drama at Hurlstone; but a second one came to drive it from our minds, and it was prefaced by the disgrace and dismissal of butler Brunton.\n\n\"'This was how it came about. I have said that the man was intelligent, and this very intelligence has caused his ruin, for it seems to have led to an insatiable curiosity about things which did not in the least concern him. I had no idea of the lengths to which this would carry him until the merest accident opened my eyes to it.\n\n\"'I have said that the house is a rambling one. One day last week\u2014on Thursday night, to be more exact\u2014I found that I could not sleep, having foolishly taken a cup of strong caf\u00e9 noir after my dinner. After struggling against it until two in the morning, I felt that it was quite hopeless, so I rose and lit the candle with the intention of continuing a novel which I was reading. The book, however, had been left in the billiard-room, so I pulled on my dressing-gown and started off to get it.\n\n\"'In order to reach the billiard-room I had to descend a flight of stairs and then to cross the head of a passage which led to the library and the gun-room. You can imagine my surprise when, as I looked down this corridor, I saw a glimmer of light coming from the open door of the library. I had myself extinguished the lamp and closed the door before coming to bed. Naturally my first thought was of burglars. The corridors at Hurlstone have their walls largely decorated with trophies of old weapons. From one of these I picked a battle-axe, and then, leaving my candle behind me, I crept on tiptoe down the passage and peeped in at the open door.\n\n\"'Brunton, the butler, was in the library. He was sitting, fully dressed, in an easy-chair, with a slip of paper which looked like a map upon his knee, and his forehead sunk forward upon his hand in deep thought. I stood dumb with astonishment, watching him from the darkness. A small taper on the edge of the table shed a feeble light which sufficed to show me that he was fully dressed. Suddenly, as I looked, he rose from his chair, and, walking over to a bureau at the side, he unlocked it and drew out one of the drawers. From this he took a paper, and, returning to his seat, he flattened it out beside the taper on the edge of the table and began to study it with minute attention. My indignation at this calm examination of our family documents overcame me so far that I took a step forward, and Brunton, looking up, saw me standing in the doorway. He sprang to his feet, his face turned livid with fear, and he thrust into his breast the chart-like paper which he had been originally studying.\n\n\"' \"So!\" said I. \"This is how you repay the trust which we have reposed in you. You will leave my service to-morrow.\"\n\n\"'He bowed with the look of a man who is utterly crushed and slunk past me without a word. The taper was still on the table, and by its light I glanced to see what the paper was which Brunton had taken from the bureau. To my surprise it was nothing of any importance at all, but simply a copy of the questions and answers in the singular old observance called the Musgrave Ritual. It is a sort of ceremony peculiar to our family, which each Musgrave for centuries past has gone through on his coming of age\u2014a thing of private interest, and perhaps of some little importance to the arch\u00e6ologist, like our own blazonings and charges, but of no practical use whatever.'\n\n\"'We had better come back to the paper afterwards,' said I.\n\n\"'If you think it really necessary,' he answered with some hesitation. 'To continue my statement, however: I relocked the bureau, using the key which Brunton had left, and I had turned to go when I was surprised to find that the butler had returned, and was standing before me.\n\n\"' \"Mr. Musgrave, sir,\" he cried in a voice which was hoarse with emotion, \"I can't bear disgrace, sir. I've always been proud above my station in life, and disgrace would kill me. My blood will be on your head, sir\u2014it will, indeed\u2014if you drive me to despair. If you cannot keep me after what has passed, then for God's sake let me give you notice and leave in a month, as if of my own free will. I could stand that, Mr. Musgrave, but not to be cast out before all the folk that I know so well.\"\n\n\"' \"You don't deserve much consideration, Brunton,\" I answered. \"Your conduct has been most infamous. However, as you have been a long time in the family, I have no wish to bring public disgrace upon you. A month, however, is too long. Take yourself away in a week, and give what reason you like for going.\"\n\n\"' \"Only a week, sir?\" he cried in a despairing voice. \"A fortnight\u2014say at least a fortnight!\"\n\n\"' \"A week,\" I repeated, \"and you may consider yourself to have been very leniently dealt with.\"\n\n\"'He crept away, his face sunk upon his breast, like a broken man, while I put out the light and returned to my room.\n\n\"'For two days after this Brunton was most assiduous in his attention to his duties. I made no allusion to what had passed and waited with some curiosity to see how he would cover his disgrace. On the third morning, however, he did not appear, as was his custom, after breakfast to receive my instructions for the day. As I left the dining-room I happened to meet Rachel Howells, the maid. I have told you that she had only recently recovered from an illness and was looking so wretchedly pale and wan that I remonstrated with her for being at work.\n\n\"' \"You should be in bed,\" I said. \"Come back to your duties when you are stronger.\"\n\n\"'She looked at me with so strange an expression that I began to suspect that her brain was affected.\n\n\"' \"I am strong enough, Mr. Musgrave,\" said she.\n\n\"' \"We will see what the doctor says,\" I answered. \"You must stop work now, and when you go downstairs just say that I wish to see Brunton.\"\n\n\"' \"The butler is gone,\" said she.\n\n\"' \"Gone! Gone where?\"\n\n\"' \"He is gone. No one has seen him. He is not in his room. Oh, yes, he is gone, he is gone!\" She fell back against the wall with shriek after shriek of laughter, while I, horrified at this sudden hysterical attack, rushed to the bell to summon help. The girl was taken to her room, still screaming and sobbing, while I made inquiries about Brunton. There was no doubt about it that he had disappeared. His bed had not been slept in, he had been seen by no one since he had retired to his room the night before, and yet it was difficult to see how he could have left the house, as both windows and doors were found to be fastened in the morning. His clothes, his watch, and even his money were in his room, but the black suit which he usually wore was missing. His slippers, too, were gone, but his boots were left behind. Where then could butler Brunton have gone in the night, and what could have become of him now?\n\n\"'Of course we searched the house from cellar to garret, but there was no trace of him. It is, as I have said, a labyrinth of an old house, especially the original wing, which is now practically uninhabited; but we ransacked every room and cellar without discovering the least sign of the missing man. It was incredible to me that he could have gone away leaving all his property behind him, and yet where could he be? I called in the local police, but without success. Rain had fallen on the night before, and we examined the lawn and the paths all round the house, but in vain. Matters were in this state, when a new development quite drew our attention away from the original mystery.\n\n\"'For two days Rachel Howells had been so ill, sometimes delirious, sometimes hysterical, that a nurse had been employed to sit up with her at night. On the third night after Brunton's disappearance, the nurse, finding her patient sleeping nicely, had dropped into a nap in the armchair, when she woke in the early morning to find the bed empty, the window open, and no signs of the invalid. I was instantly aroused, and, with the two footmen, started off at once in search of the missing girl. It was not difficult to tell the direction which she had taken, for, starting from under her window, we could follow her footmarks easily across the lawn to the edge of the mere, where they vanished close to the gravel path which leads out of the grounds. The lake there is eight feet deep, and you can imagine our feelings when we saw that the trail of the poor demented girl came to an end at the edge of it.\n\n\"'Of course, we had the drags at once and set to work to recover the remains, but no trace of the body could we find. On the other hand, we brought to the surface an object of a most unexpected kind. It was a linen bag which contained within it a mass of old rusted and discoloured metal and several dull-coloured pieces of pebble or glass. This strange find was all that we could get from the mere, and, although we made every possible search and inquiry yesterday, we know nothing of the fate either of Rachel Howells or of Richard Brunton. The county police are at their wit's end, and I have come up to you as a last resource.\n\n\"You can imagine, Watson, with what eagerness I listened to this extraordinary sequence of events, and endeavoured to piece them together, and to devise some common thread upon which they might all hang. The butler was gone. The maid was gone. The maid had loved the butler, but had afterwards had cause to hate him. She was of Welsh blood, fiery and passionate. She had been terribly excited immediately after his disappearance. She had flung into the lake a bag containing some curious contents. These were all factors which had to be taken into consideration, and yet none of them got quite to the heart of the matter. What was the starting-point of this chain of events? There lay the end of this tangled line.\n\n\"'I must see that paper, Musgrave,' said I, 'which this butler of yours thought it worth his while to consult, even at the risk of the loss of his place.'\n\n\"'It is rather an absurd business, this ritual of ours,' he answered. 'But it has at least the saving grace of antiquity to excuse it. I have a copy of the questions and answers here if you care to run your eye over them.'\n\n\"He handed me the very paper which I have here, Watson, and this is the strange catechism to which each Musgrave had to submit when he came to man's estate. I will read you the questions and answers as they stand.\n\n\"'Whose was it?'\n\n\"'His who is gone.'\n\n\"'Who shall have it?'\n\n\"'He who will come.'\n\n\"'Where was the sun?'\n\n\"'Over the oak.'\n\n\"'Where was the shadow?'\n\n\"'Under the elm.'\n\n\"'How was it stepped?'\n\n\"'North by ten and by ten, east by five and by five, south by two and by two, west by one and by one, and so under.'\n\n\"'What shall we give for it?'\n\n\"'All that is ours.'\n\n\"'Why should we give it?'\n\n\"'For the sake of the trust.'\n\n\"'The original has no date, but is in the spelling of the middle of the seventeenth century,' remarked Musgrave. 'I am afraid, however, that it can be of little help to you in solving this mystery.'\n\n\"'At least,' said I, 'it gives us another mystery, and one which is even more interesting than the first. It may be that the solution of the one may prove to be the solution of the other. You will excuse me, Musgrave, if I say that your butler appears to me to have been a very clever man, and to have had a clearer insight than ten generations of his masters.'\n\n\"'I hardly follow you,' said Musgrave. 'The paper seems to me to be of no practical importance.'\n\n\"'But to me it seems immensely practical, and I fancy that Brunton took the same view. He had probably seen it before that night on which you caught him.'\n\n\"'It is very possible. We took no pains to hide it.'\n\n\"'He simply wished, I should imagine, to refresh his memory upon that last occasion. He had, as I understand, some sort of map or chart which he was comparing with the manuscript, and which he thrust into his pocket when you appeared.'\n\n\"'That is true. But what could he have to do with this old family custom of ours, and what does this rigmarole mean?'\n\n\"'I don't think that we should have much difficulty in determining that,' said I; 'with your permission we will take the first train down to Sussex and go a little more deeply into the matter upon the spot.'\n\n\"The same afternoon saw us both at Hurlstone. Possibly you have seen pictures and read descriptions of the famous old building, so I will confine my account of it to saying that it is built in the shape of an L, the long arm being the more modern portion, and the shorter the ancient nucleus from which the other has developed. Over the low, heavy-lintelled door, in the centre of this old part, is chiselled the date, 1607, but experts are agreed that the beams and stonework are really much older than this. The enormously thick walls and tiny windows of this part had in the last century driven the family into building the new wing, and the old one was used now as a storehouse and a cellar, when it was used at all. A splendid park with fine old timber surrounds the house, and the lake, to which my client had referred, lay close to the avenue, about two hundred yards from the building.\n\n\"I was already firmly convinced, Watson, that there were not three separate mysteries here, but one only, and that if I could read the Musgrave Ritual aright I should hold in my hand the clue which would lead me to the truth concerning both the butler Brunton and the maid Howells. To that then I turned all my energies. Why should this servant be so anxious to master this old formula? Evidently because he saw something in it which had escaped all those generations of country squires, and from which he expected some personal advantage. What was it then, and how had it affected his fate?\n\n\"It was perfectly obvious to me, on reading the Ritual, that the measurements must refer to some spot to which the rest of the document alluded, and that if we could find that spot we should be in a fair way towards finding what the secret was which the old Musgraves had thought it necessary to embalm in so curious a fashion. There were two guides given us to start with, an oak and an elm. As to the oak there could be no question at all. Right in front of the house, upon the left-hand side of the drive, there stood a patriarch among oaks, one of the most magnificent trees that I have ever seen.\n\n\"'That was there when your Ritual was drawn up,' said I as we drove past it.\n\n\"'It was there at the Norman Conquest in all probability,' he answered. 'It has a girth of twenty-three feet.'\n\n\"Here was one of my fixed points secured.\n\n\"'Have you any old elms?' I asked.\n\n\"'There used to be a very old one over yonder, but it was struck by lightning ten years ago, and we cut down the stump.'\n\n\"'You can see where it used to be?'\n\n\"'Oh, yes.'\n\n\"'There are no other elms?'\n\n\"'No old ones, but plenty of beeches.'\n\n\"'I should like to see where it grew.'\n\n\"We had driven up in a dog-cart, and my client led me away at once, without our entering the house, to the scar on the lawn where the elm had stood. It was nearly midway between the oak and the house. My investigation seemed to be progressing.\n\n\"'I suppose it is impossible to find out how high the elm was?' I asked.\n\n\"'I can give you it at once. It was sixty-four feet.'\n\n\"'How do you come to know it?' I asked in surprise.\n\n\"'When my old tutor used to give me an exercise in trigonometry, it always took the shape of measuring heights. When I was a lad I worked out every tree and building in the estate.'\n\n\"This was an unexpected piece of luck. My data were coming more quickly than I could have reasonably hoped.\n\n\"'Tell me,' I asked, 'did your butler ever ask you such a question?'\n\n\"Reginald Musgrave looked at me in astonishment. 'Now that you call it to my mind,' he answered, 'Brunton did ask me about the height of the tree some months ago in connection with some little argument with the groom.'\n\n\"This was excellent news, Watson, for it showed me that I was on the right road. I looked up at the sun. It was low in the heavens, and I calculated that in less than an hour it would lie just above the topmost branches of the old oak. One condition mentioned in the Ritual would then be fulfilled. And the shadow of the elm must mean the farther end of the shadow, otherwise the trunk would have been chosen as the guide. I had, then, to find where the far end of the shadow would fall when the sun was just clear of the oak.\"\n\n\"That must have been difficult, Holmes, when the elm was no longer there.\"\n\n\"Well, at least I knew that if Brunton could do it, I could also. Besides, there was no real difficulty. I went with Musgrave to his study and whittled myself this peg, to which I tied this long string with a knot at each yard. Then I took two lengths of a fishing-rod, which came to just six feet, and I went back with my client to where the elm had been. The sun was just grazing the top of the oak. I fastened the rod on end, marked out the direction of the shadow, and measured it. It was nine feet in length.\n\n\"Of course the calculation now was a simple one. If a rod of six feet threw a shadow of nine, a tree of sixty-four feet would throw one of ninety-six, and the line of the one would of course be the line of the other. I measured out the distance, which brought me almost to the wall of the house, and I thrust a peg into the spot. You can imagine my exultation, Watson, when within two inches of my peg I saw a conical depression in the ground. I knew that it was the mark made by Brunton in his measurements, and that I was still upon his trail.\n\n\"From this starting-point I proceeded to step, having first taken the cardinal points by my pocket-compass. Ten steps with each foot took me along parallel with the wall of the house, and again I marked my spot with a peg. Then I carefully paced off five to the east and two to the south. It brought me to the very threshold of the old door. Two steps to the west meant now that I was to go two paces down the stone-flagged passage, and this was the place indicated by the Ritual.\n\n\"Never have I felt such a cold chill of disappointment, Watson. For a moment it seemed to me that there must be some radical mistake in my calculations. The setting sun shone full upon the passage floor, and I could see that the old, foot-worn gray stones with which it was paved were firmly cemented together, and had certainly not been moved for many a long year. Brunton had not been at work here. I tapped upon the floor, but it sounded the same all over, and there was no sign of any crack or crevice. But, fortunately, Musgrave, who had begun to appreciate the meaning of my proceedings, and who was now as excited as myself, took out his manuscript to check my calculations.\n\n\"'And under,' he cried. 'You have omitted the \"and under.\"'\n\n\"I had thought that it meant that we were to dig, but now, of course, I saw at once that I was wrong. 'There is a cellar under this then?' I cried.\n\n\"'Yes, and as old as the house. Down here, through this door.'\n\n\"We went down a winding stone stair, and my companion, striking a match, lit a large lantern which stood on a barrel in the corner. In an instant it was obvious that we had at last come upon the true place, and that we had not been the only people to visit the spot recently.\n\n\"It had been used for the storage of wood, but the billets, which had evidently been littered over the floor, were now piled at the sides, so as to leave a clear space in the middle. In this space lay a large and heavy flag-stone with a rusted iron ring in the centre to which a thick shepherd's-check muffler was attached.\n\n\"'By Jove!' cried my client. 'That's Brunton's muffler. I have seen it on him and could swear to it. What has the villain been doing here?'\n\n\"At my suggestion a couple of the county police were summoned to be present, and I then endeavoured to raise the stone by pulling on the cravat. I could only move it slightly, and it was with the aid of one of the constables that I succeeded at last in carrying it to one side. A black hole yawned beneath into which we all peered, while Musgrave, kneeling at the side, pushed down the lantern.\n\n\"A small chamber about seven feet deep and four feet square lay open to us. At one side of this was a squat, brassbound wooden box, the lid of which was hinged upward, with this curious old-fashioned key projecting from the lock. It was furred outside by a thick layer of dust, and damp and worms had eaten through the wood, so that a crop of livid fungi was growing on the inside of it. Several discs of metal, old coins apparently, such as I hold here, were scattered over the bottom of the box, but it contained nothing else.\n\n\"At the moment, however, we had no thought for the old chest, for our eyes were riveted upon that which crouched beside it. It was the figure of a man, clad in a suit of black, who squatted down upon his hams with his forehead sunk upon the edge of the box and his two arms thrown out on each side of it. The attitude had drawn all the stagnant blood to the face, and no man could have recognized that distorted liver-coloured countenance; but his height, his dress, and his hair were all sufficient to show my client, when we had drawn the body up, that it was indeed his missing butler. He had been dead some days, but there was no wound or bruise upon his person to show how he had met his dreadful end. When his body had been carried from the cellar we found ourselves still confronted with a problem which was almost as formidable as that with which we had started.\n\n\"I confess that so far, Watson, I had been disappointed in my investigation. I had reckoned upon solving the matter when once I had found the place referred to in the Ritual; but now I was there, and was apparently as far as ever from knowing what it was which the family had concealed with such elaborate precautions. It is true that I had thrown a light upon the fate of Brunton, but now I had to ascertain how that fate had come upon him, and what part had been played in the matter by the woman who had disappeared. I sat down upon a keg in the corner and thought the whole matter carefully over.\n\n\"You know my methods in such cases, Watson. I put myself in the man's place, and, having first gauged his intelligence, I try to imagine how I should myself have proceeded under the same circumstances. In this case the matter was simplified by Brunton's intelligence being quite first-rate, so that it was unnecessary to make any allowance for the personal equation, as the astronomers have dubbed it. He knew that something valuable was concealed. He had spotted the place. He found that the stone which covered it was just too heavy for a man to move unaided. What would he do next? He could not get help from outside, even if he had someone whom he could trust, without the unbarring of doors and considerable risk of detection. It was better, if he could, to have his help-mate inside the house. But whom could he ask? This girl had been devoted to him. A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman's love, however badly he may have treated her. He would try by a few attentions to make his peace with the girl Howells, and then would engage her as his accomplice. Together they would come at night to the cellar, and their united force would suffice to raise the stone. So far I could follow their actions as if I had actually seen them.\n\n\"But for two of them, and one a woman, it must have been heavy work, the raising of that stone. A burly Sussex policeman and I had found it no light job. What would they do to assist them? Probably what I should have done myself. I rose and examined carefully the different billets of wood which were scattered round the floor. Almost at once I came upon what I expected. One piece, about three feet in length, had a very marked indentation at one end, while several were flattened at the sides as if they had been compressed by some considerable weight. Evidently, as they had dragged the stone up, they had thrust the chunks of wood into the chink until at last when the opening was large enough to crawl through, they would hold it open by a billet placed lengthwise, which might very well become indented at the lower end, since the whole weight of the stone would press it down on to the edge of this other slab. So far I was still on safe ground.\n\n\"And now how was I to proceed to reconstruct this midnight drama? Clearly, only one could fit into the hole, and that one was Brunton. The girl must have waited above. Brunton then unlocked the box, handed up the contents presumably\u2014since they were not to be found\u2014and then\u2014and then what happened?\n\n\"What smouldering fire of vengeance had suddenly sprung into flame in this passionate Celtic woman's soul when she saw the man who had wronged her\u2014wronged her, perhaps, far more than we suspected\u2014in her power? Was it a chance that the wood had slipped and that the stone had shut Brunton into what had become his sepulchre? Had she only been guilty of silence as to his fate? Or had some sudden blow from her hand dashed the support away and sent the slab crashing down into its place? Be that as it might, I seemed to see that woman's figure still clutching at her treasure trove and flying wildly up the winding stair, with her ears ringing perhaps with the muffled screams from behind her and with the drumming of frenzied hands against the slab of stone which was choking her faithless lover's life out.\n\n\"Here was the secret of her blanched face, her shaken nerves, her peals of hysterical laughter on the next morning. But what had been in the box? What had she done with that? Of course, it must have been the old metal and pebbles which my client had dragged from the mere. She had thrown them in there at the first opportunity to remove the last trace of her crime.\n\n\"For twenty minutes I had sat motionless, thinking the matter out. Musgrave still stood with a very pale face, swinging his lantern and peering, down into the hole.\n\n\"'These are coins of Charles the First,' said he, holding out the few which had been in the box; 'you see we were right in fixing our date for the Ritual.'\n\n\"'We may find something else of Charles the First,' I cried, as the probable meaning of the first two questions of the Ritual broke suddenly upon me. 'Let me see the contents of the bag which you fished from the mere.'\n\n\"We ascended to his study, and he laid the d\u00e9bris before me. I could understand his regarding it as of small importance when I looked at it, for the metal was almost black and the stones lustreless and dull. I rubbed one of them on my sleeve, however, and it glowed afterwards like a spark in the dark hollow of my hand. The metal work was in the form of a double ring, but it had been bent and twisted out of its original shape.\n\n\"'You must bear in mind,' said I, 'that the royal party made head in England even after the death of the king, and that when they at last fled they probably left many of their most precious possessions buried behind them, with the intention of returning for them in more peaceful times.'\n\n\"'My ancestor, Sir Ralph Musgrave, was a prominent Cavalier and the right-hand man of Charles the Second in his wanderings,' said my friend.\n\n\"'Ah, indeed!' I answered. 'Well now, I think that really should give us the last link that we wanted. I must congratulate you on coming into the possession, though in rather a tragic manner, of a relic which is of great intrinsic value, but of even greater importance as a historical curiosity.'\n\n\"'What is it, then?' he gasped in astonishment.\n\n\"'It is nothing less than the ancient crown of the kings of England.'\n\n\"'The crown!'\n\n\"'Precisely. Consider what the Ritual says. How does it run? \"Whose was it?\" \"His who is gone.\" That was after the execution of Charles. Then, \"Who shall have it?\" \"He who will come.\" That was Charles the Second, whose advent was already foreseen. There can, I think, be no doubt that this battered and shapeless diadem once encircled the brows of the royal Stuarts.'\n\n\"'And how came it in the pond?'\n\n\"'Ah, that is a question that will take some time to answer.' And with that I sketched out to him the whole long chain of surmise and of proof which I had constructed. The twilight had closed in and the moon was shining brightly in the sky before my narrative was finished.\n\n\"'And how was it then that Charles did not get his crown when he returned? ' asked Musgrave, pushing back the relic into its linen bag.\n\n\"'Ah, there you lay your finger upon the one point which we shall probably never be able to clear up. It is likely that the Musgrave who held the secret died in the interval, and by some oversight left this guide to his descendant without explaining the meaning of it. From that day to this it has been handed down from father to son, until at last it came within reach of a man who tore its secret out of it and lost his life in the venture.'\n\n\"And that's the story of the Musgrave Ritual, Watson. They have the crown down at Hurlstone\u2014though they had some legal bother and a considerablesum to pay before they were allowed to retain it. I am sure that if you mentioned my name they would be happy to show it to you. Of the woman nothing was ever heard, and the probability is that she got away out of England and carried herself and the memory of her crime to some land beyond the seas.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE REIGATE PUZZLE", + "text": "It was some time before the health of my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes recovered from the strain caused by his immense exertions in the spring of '87. The whole question of the Netherland-Sumatra Company and of the colossal schemes of Baron Maupertuis are too recent in the minds of the public, and are too intimately concerned with politics and finance to be fitting subjects for this series of sketches. They led, however, in an indirect fashion to a singular and complex problem which gave my friend an opportunity of demonstrating the value of a fresh weapon among the many with which he waged his lifelong battle against crime.\n\nOn referring to my notes I see that it was upon the fourteenth of April that I received a telegram from Lyons which informed me that Holmes was lying ill in the Hotel Dulong. Within twenty-four hours I was in his sick-room and was relieved to find that there was nothing formidable in his symptoms. Even his iron constitution, however, had broken down under the strain of an investigation which had extended over two months, during which period he had never worked less than fifteen hours a day and had more than once, as he assured me, kept to his task for five days at a stretch. Even the triumphant issue of his labours could not save him from reaction after so terrible an exertion, and at a time when Europe was ringing with his name and when his room was literally ankle-deep with congratulatory telegrams I found him a prey to the blackest depression. Even the knowledge that he had succeeded where the police of three countries had failed, and that he had outman\u0153uvred at every point the most accomplished swindler in Europe, was insufficient to rouse him from his nervous prostration.\n\nThree days later we were back in Baker Street together; but it was evident that my friend would be much the better for a change, and the thought of a week of springtime in the country was full of attractions to me also. My old friend, Colonel Hayter, who had come under my professional care in Afghanistan, had now taken a house near Reigate in Surrey and had frequently asked me to come down to him upon a visit. On the last occasion he had remarked that if my friend would only come with me he would be glad to extend his hospitality to him also. A little diplomacy was needed, but when Holmes understood that the establishment was a bachelor one, and that he would be allowed the fullest freedom, he fell in with my plans and a week after our return from Lyons we were under the colonel's roof. Hayter was a fine old soldier who had seen much of the world, and he soon found, as I had expected, that Holmes and he had much in common.\n\nOn the evening of our arrival we were sitting in the colonel's gun-room after dinner, Holmes stretched upon the sofa, while Hayter and I looked over his little armory of Eastern weapons.\n\n\"By the way,\" said he suddenly, \"I think I'll take one of these pistols upstairs with me in case we have an alarm.\"\n\n\"An alarm!\" said I.\n\n\"Yes, we've had a scare in this part lately. Old Acton, who is one of our county magnates, had his house broken into last Monday. No great damage done, but the fellows are still at large.\"\n\n\"No clue?\" asked Holmes, cocking his eye at the colonel.\n\n\"None as yet. But the affair is a petty one, one of our little country crimes, which must seem too small for your attention, Mr. Holmes, after this great international affair.\"\n\nHolmes waved away the compliment, though his smile showed that it had pleased him.\n\n\"Was there any feature of interest?\"\n\n\"I fancy not. The thieves ransacked the library and got very little for their pains. The whole place was turned upside down, drawers burst open, and presses ransacked, with the result that an odd volume of Pope's Homer, two plated candlesticks, an ivory letter-weight, a small oak barometer, and a ball of twine are all that have vanished.\"\n\n\"What an extraordinary assortment!\" I exclaimed.\n\n\"Oh, the fellows evidently grabbed hold of everything they could get.\"\n\nHolmes grunted from the sofa.\n\n\"The county police ought to make something of that,\" said he; \"why, it is surely obvious that\u2014\"\n\nBut I held up a warning finger.\n\n\"You are here for a rest, my dear fellow. For heaven's sake don't get started on a new problem when your nerves are all in shreds.\"\n\nHolmes shrugged his shoulders with a glance of comic resignation towards the colonel, and the talk drifted away into less dangerous channels.\n\nIt was destined, however, that all my professional caution should be wasted; for next morning the problem obtruded itself upon us in such a way that it was impossible to ignore it, and our country visit took a turn which neither of us could have anticipated. We were at breakfast when the colonel's butler rushed in, with all his propriety shaken out of him.\n\n\"Have you heard the news, sir?\" he gasped. \"At the Cunningham's, sir!\"\n\n\"Burglary!\" cried the colonel, with his coffee-cup in mid-air.\n\n\"Murder!\"\n\nThe colonel whistled. \"By Jove!\" said he. \"Who's killed, then? The J. P. or his son?\"\n\n\"Neither, sir. It was William the coachman. Shot through the heart, sir, and never spoke again.\"\n\n\"Who shot him, then?\"\n\n\"The burglar, sir. He was off like a shot and got clean away. He'd just broke in at the pantry window when William came on him and met his end in saving his master's property.\"\n\n\"What time?\"\n\n\"It was last night, sir, somewhere about twelve.\"\n\n\"Ah, then, we'll step over afterwards,\" said the colonel, coolly settling down to his breakfast again. \"It's a baddish business,\" he added when the butler had gone; \"he's our leading man about here, is old Cunningham, and a very decent fellow too. He'll be cut up over this, for the man has been in his service for years and was a good servant. It's evidently the same villains who broke into Acton's.\"\n\n\"And stole that very singular collection,\" said Holmes thoughtfully.\n\n\"Precisely.\"\n\n\"Hum! It may prove the simplest matter in the world, but all the same at first glance this is just a little curious, is it not? A gang of burglars acting in the country might be expected to vary the scene of their operations, and not to crack two cribs in the same district within a few days. When you spoke last night of taking precautions I remember that it passed through my mind that this was probably the last parish in England to which the thief or thieves would be likely to turn their attention\u2014which shows that I have still much to learn.\"\n\n\"I fancy it's some local practitioner,\" said the colonel. \"In that case, of course, Acton's and Cunningham's are just the places he would go for, since they are far the largest about here.\"\n\n\"And richest?\"\n\n\"Well, they ought to be, but they've had a lawsuit for some years which has sucked the blood out of both of them, I fancy. Old Acton has some claim on half Cunningham's estate, and the lawyers have been at it with both hands.\"\n\n\"If it's a local villain there should not be much difficulty in running him down,\" said Holmes with a yawn. \"All right, Watson, I don't intend to meddle.\"\n\n\"Inspector Forrester, sir,\" said the butler, throwing open the door.\n\nThe official, a smart, keen-faced young fellow, stepped into the room. \"Good-morning, Colonel,\" said he. \"I hope I don't intrude, but we hear that Mr. Holmes of Baker Street is here.\"\n\nThe colonel waved his hand towards my friend, and the inspector bowed.\n\n\"We thought that perhaps you would care to step across, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"The fates are against you, Watson,\" said he, laughing. \"We were chatting about the matter when you came in, Inspector. Perhaps you can let us have a few details.\" As he leaned back in his chair in the familiar attitude I knew that the case was hopeless.\n\n\"We had no clue in the Acton affair. But here we have plenty to go on, and there's no doubt it is the same party in each case. The man was seen.\"\n\n\"Ah!\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. But he was off like a deer after the shot that killed poor William Kirwan was fired. Mr. Cunningham saw him from the bedroom window, and Mr. Alec Cunningham saw him from the back passage. It was quarter to twelve when the alarm broke out. Mr. Cunningham had just got into bed, and Mr. Alec was smoking a pipe in his dressing-gown. They both heard William, the coachman, calling for help, and Mr. Alec ran down to see what was the matter. The back door was open, and as he came to the foot of the stairs he saw two men wrestling together outside. One of them fired a shot, the other dropped, and the murderer rushed across the garden and over the hedge. Mr. Cunningham, looking out of his bedroom, saw the fellow as he gained the road, but lost sight of him at once. Mr. Alec stopped to see if he could help the dying man, and so the villain got clean away. Beyond the fact that he was a middle-sized man and dressed in some dark stuff, we have no personal clue; but we are making energetic inquiries, and if he is a stranger we shall soon find him out.\"\n\n\"What was this William doing there? Did he say anything before he died?\"\n\n\"Not a word. He lives at the lodge with his mother, and as he was a very faithful fellow we imagine that he walked up to the house with the intention of seeing that all was right there. Of course this Acton business has put everyone on their guard. The robber must have just burst open the door\u2014the lock has been forced\u2014when William came upon him.\"\n\n\"Did William say anything to his mother before going out?\"\n\n\"She is very old and deaf, and we can get no information from her. The shock has made her half-witted, but I understand that she was never very bright. There is one very important circumstance, however. Look at this!\"\n\nHe took a small piece of torn paper from a notebook and spread it out upon his knee.\n\n\"This was found between the finger and thumb of the dead man. It appears to be a fragment torn from a larger sheet. You will observe that the hour mentioned upon it is the very time at which the poor fellow met his fate. You see that his murderer might have torn the rest of the sheet from him or he might have taken this fragment from the murderer. It reads almost as though it were an appointment.\"\n\nHolmes took up the scrap of paper, a facsimile of which is here reproduced.\n\n\"Presuming that it is an appointment,\" continued the inspector, \"it is of course a conceivable theory that this William Kirwan, though he had the reputation of being an honest man, may have been in league with the thief. He may have met him there, may even have helped him to break in the door, and then they may have fallen out between themselves.\"\n\n\"This writing is of extraordinary interest,\" said Holmes, who had been examining it with intense concentration. \"These are much deeper waters than I had thought.\" He sank his head upon his hands, while the inspector smiled at the effect which his case had had upon the famous London specialist.\n\n\"Your last remark,\" said Holmes presently, \"as to the possibility of there being an understanding between the burglar and the servant, and this being a note of appointment from one to the other, is an ingenious and not entirely impossible supposition. But this writing opens up\u2014\" He sank his head into his hands again and remained for some minutes in the deepest thought. When he raised his face again I was surprised to see that his cheek was tinged with colour, and his eyes as bright as before his illness. He sprang to his feet with all his old energy.\n\n\"I'll tell you what,\" said he, \"I should like to have a quiet little glance into the details of this case. There is something in it which fascinates me extremely. If you will permit me, Colonel, I will leave my friend Watson and you, and I will step round with the inspector to test the truth of one or two little fancies of mine. I will be with you again in half an hour.\"\n\nAn hour and a half had elapsed before the inspector returned alone.\n\n\"Mr. Holmes is walking up and down in the field outside,\" said he. \"He wants us all four to go up to the house together.\"\n\n\"To Mr. Cunningham's?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"What for?\"\n\nThe inspector shrugged his shoulders. \"I don't quite know, sir. Between ourselves, I think Mr. Holmes has not quite got over his illness yet. He's been behaving very queerly, and he is very much excited.\"\n\n\"I don't think you need alarm yourself,\" said I. \"I have usually found that there was method in his madness.\"\n\n\"Some folk might say there was madness in his method,\" muttered the inspector. \"But he's all on fire to start, Colonel, so we had best go out if you are ready.\"\n\nWe found Holmes pacing up and down in the field, his chin sunk upon his breast, and his hands thrust into his trousers pockets.\n\n\"The matter grows in interest,\" said he. \"Watson, your country trip has been a distinct success. I have had a charming morning.\"\n\n\"You have been up to the scene of the crime, I understand,\" said the colonel.\n\n\"Yes, the inspector and I have made quite a little reconnaissance together.\"\n\n\"Any success?\"\n\n\"Well, we have seen some very interesting things. I'll tell you what we did as we walk. First of all, we saw the body of this unfortunate man. He certainly died from a revolver wound as reported.\"\n\n\"Had you doubted it, then?\"\n\n\"Oh, it is as well to test everything. Our inspection was not wasted. We then had an interview with Mr. Cunningham and his son, who were able to point out the exact spot where the murderer had broken through the garden-hedge in his flight. That was of great interest.\"\n\n\"Naturally.\"\n\n\"Then we had a look at this poor fellow's mother. We could get no information from her, however, as she is very old and feeble.\"\n\n\"And what is the result of your investigations?\"\n\n\"The conviction that the crime is a very peculiar one. Perhaps our visit now may do something to make it less obscure. I think that we are both agreed, Inspector, that the fragment of paper in the dead man's hand, bearing, as it does, the very hour of his death written upon it, is of extreme importance.\"\n\n\"It should give a clue, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"It does give a clue. Whoever wrote that note was the man who brought William Kirwan out of his bed at that hour. But where is the rest of that sheet of paper?\"\n\n\"I examined the ground carefully in the hope of finding it,\" said the inspector.\n\n\"It was torn out of the dead man's hand. Why was someone so anxious to get possession of it? Because it incriminated him. And what would he do with it? Thrust it into his pocket, most likely, never noticing that a corner of it had been left in the grip of the corpse. If we could get the rest of that sheet it is obvious that we should have gone a long way towards solving the mystery.\"\n\n\"Yes, but how can we get at the criminal's pocket before we catch the criminal?\"\n\n\"Well, well, it was worth thinking over. Then there is another obvious point. The note was sent to William. The man who wrote it could not have taken it; otherwise, of course, he might have delivered his own message by word of mouth. Who brought the note, then? Or did it come through the post?\"\n\n\"I have made inquiries,\" said the inspector. \"William received a letter by the afternoon post yesterday. The envelope was destroyed by him.\"\n\n\"Excellent!\" cried Holmes, clapping the inspector on the back. \"You've seen the postman. It is a pleasure to work with you. Well, here is the lodge, and if you will come up, Colonel, I will show you the scene of the crime.\"\n\nWe passed the pretty cottage where the murdered man had lived and walked up an oak-lined avenue to the fine old Queen Anne house, which bears the date of Malplaquet upon the lintel of the door. Holmes and the inspector led us round it until we came to the side gate, which is separated by a stretch of garden from the hedge which lines the road. A constable was standing at the kitchen door.\n\n\"Throw the door open, officer,\" said Holmes. \"Now, it was on those stairs that young Mr. Cunningham stood and saw the two men struggling just where we are. Old Mr. Cunningham was at that window\u2014the second on the left\u2014and he saw the fellow get away just to the left of that bush. So did the son. They are both sure of it on account of the bush. Then Mr. Alec ran out and knelt beside the wounded man. The ground is very hard, you see, and there are no marks to guide us.\" As he spoke two men came down the garden path, from round the angle of the house. The one was an elderly man, with a strong, deep-lined, heavy-eyed face; the other a dashing young fellow, whose bright, smiling expression and showy dress were in strange contrast with the business which had brought us there.\n\n\"Still at it, then?\" said he to Holmes. \"I thought you Londoners were never at fault. You don't seem to be so very quick, after all.\"\n\n\"Ah, you must give us a little time,\" said Holmes good-humouredly.\n\n\"You'll want it,\" said young Alec Cunningham. \"Why, I don't see that we have any clue at all.\"\n\n\"There's only one,\" answered the inspector. \"We thought that if we could only find\u2014Good heavens, Mr. Holmes! what is the matter?\"\n\nMy poor friend's face had suddenly assumed the most dreadful expression. His eyes rolled upward, his features writhed in agony, and with a suppressed groan he dropped on his face upon the ground. Horrified at the suddenness and severity of the attack, we carried him into the kitchen, where he lay back in a large chair and breathed heavily for some minutes. Finally, with a shamefaced apology for his weakness, he rose once more.\n\n\"Watson would tell you that I have only just recovered from a severe illness,\" he explained. \"I am liable to these sudden nervous attacks.\"\n\n\"Shall I send you home in my trap?\" asked old Cunningham.\n\n\"Well, since I am here, there is one point on which I should like to feel sure. We can very easily verify it.\"\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"Well, it seems to me that it is just possible that the arrival of this poor fellow William was not before, but after, the entrance of the burglar into the house. You appear to take it for granted that although the door was forced the robber never got in.\"\n\n\"I fancy that is quite obvious,\" said Mr. Cunningham gravely. \"Why, my son Alec had not yet gone to bed, and he would certainly have heard anyone moving about.\"\n\n\"Where was he sitting?\"\n\n\"I was smoking in my dressing-room.\"\n\n\"Which window is that?\"\n\n\"The last on the left, next my father's.\"\n\n\"Both of your lamps were lit, of course?\"\n\n\"Undoubtedly.\"\n\n\"There are some very singular points here,\" said Holmes, smiling. \"Is it not extraordinary that a burglar\u2014and a burglar who had some previous experience\u2014should deliberately break into a house at a time when he could see from the lights that two of the family were still afoot?\"\n\n\"He must have been a cool hand.\"\n\n\"Well, of course, if the case were not an odd one we should not have been driven to ask you for an explanation,\" said young Mr. Alec. \"But as to your ideas that the man had robbed the house before William tackled him, I think it a most absurd notion. Wouldn't we have found the place disarranged and missed the things which he had taken?\"\n\n\"It depends on what the things were,\" said Holmes. \"You must remember that we are dealing with a burglar who is a very peculiar fellow, and who appears to work on lines of his own. Look, for example, at the queer lot of things which he took from Acton's\u2014what was it?\u2014a ball of string, a letter-weight, and I don't know what other odds and ends.\"\n\n\"Well, we are quite in your hands, Mr. Holmes,\" said old Cunningham. \"Anything which you or the inspector may suggest will most certainly be done.\"\n\n\"In the first place,\" said Holmes, \"I should like you to offer a reward\u2014coming from yourself, for the officials may take a little time before they would agree upon the sum, and these things cannot be done too promptly. I have jotted down the form here, if you would not mind signing it. Fifty pounds was quite enough, I thought.\"\n\n\"I would willingly give five hundred,\" said the J. P., taking the slip of paper and the pencil which Holmes handed to him. \"This is not quite correct, however,\" he added, glancing over the document.\n\n\"I wrote it rather hurriedly.\"\n\n\"You see you begin, 'Whereas, at about a quarter to one on Tuesday morning an attempt was made,' and so on. It was at a quarter to twelve, as a matter of fact.\"\n\nI was pained at the mistake, for I knew how keenly Holmes would feel any slip of the kind. It was his specialty to be accurate as to fact, but his recent illness had shaken him, and this one little incident was enough to show me that he was still far from being himself. He was obviously embarrassed for an instant, while the inspector raised his eyebrows, and Alec Cunningham burst into a laugh. The old gentleman corrected the mistake, however, and handed the paper back to Holmes.\n\n\"Get it printed as soon as possible,\" he said; \"I think your idea is an excellent one.\"\n\nHolmes put the slip of paper carefully away into his pocketbook.\n\n\"And now,\" said he. \"it really would be a good thing that we should all go over the house together and make certain that this rather erratic burglar did not, after all, carry anything away with him.\"\n\nBefore entering, Holmes made an examination of the door which had been forced. It was evident that a chisel or strong knife had been thrust in, and the lock forced back with it. We could see the marks in the wood where it had been pushed in.\n\n\"You don't use bars, then?\" he asked.\n\n\"We have never found it necessary.\"\n\n\"You don't keep a dog?\"\n\n\"Yes, but he is chained on the other side of the house.\"\n\n\"When do the servants go to bed?\"\n\n\"About ten.\"\n\n\"I understand that William was usually in bed also at that hour?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"It is singular that on this particular night he should have been up. Now, I should be very glad if you would have the kindness to show us over the house, Mr. Cunningham.\"\n\nA stone-flagged passage, with the kitchens branching away from it, led by a wooden staircase directly to the first floor of the house. It came out upon the landing opposite to a second more ornamental stair which came up from the front hall. Out of this landing opened the drawing-room and several bedrooms, including those of Mr. Cunningham and his son. Holmes walked slowly, taking keen note of the architecture of the house. I could tell from his expression that he was on a hot scent, and yet I could not in the least imagine in what direction his inferences were leading him.\n\n\"My good sir,\" said Mr. Cunningham, with some impatience, \"this is surely very unnecessary. That is my room at the end of the stairs, and my son's is the one beyond it. I leave it to your judgment whether it was possible for the thief to have come up here without disturbing us.\"\n\n\"You must try round and get on a fresh scent, I fancy,\" said the son with a rather malicious smile.\n\n\"Still, I must ask you to humour me a little further. I should like, for example, to see how far the windows of the bedrooms command the front. This, I understand, is your son's room\"\u2014he pushed open the door\u2014\"and that, I presume is the dressing-room in which he sat smoking when the alarm was given. Where does the window of that look out to?\" He stepped across the bedroom, pushed open the door, and glanced round the other chamber.\n\n\"I hope that you are satisfied now?\" said Mr. Cunningham tartly.\n\n\"Thank you, I think I have seen all that I wished.\"\n\n\"Then if it is really necessary we can go into my room.\"\n\n\"If it is not too much trouble.\"\n\nThe J. P. shrugged his shoulders and led the way into his own chamber, which was a plainly furnished and commonplace room. As we moved across it in the direction of the window, Holmes fell back until he and I were the last of the group. Near the foot of the bed stood a dish of oranges and a carafe of water. As we passed it Holmes, to my unutterable astonishment, leaned over in front of me and deliberately knocked the whole thing over. The glass smashed into a thousand pieces and the fruit rolled about into every corner of the room.\n\n\"You've done it now, Watson,\" said he coolly. \"A pretty mess you've made of the carpet.\"\n\nI stooped in some confusion and began to pick up the fruit, understanding for some reason my companion desired me to take the blame upon myself. The others did the same and set the table on its legs again.\n\n\"Hullo!\" cried the inspector, \"where's he got to?\"\n\nHolmes had disappeared.\n\n\"Wait here an instant,\" said young Alec Cunningham. \"The fellow is off his head, in my opinion. Come with me, father, and see where he has got to!\"\n\nThey rushed out of the room, leaving the inspector, the colonel, and me staring at each other.\n\n\"'Pon my word, I am inclined to agree with Master Alec,\" said the official. \"It may be the effect of this illness, but it seems to me that\u2014\"\n\nHis words were cut short by a sudden scream of \"Help! Help! Murder!\" With a thrill I recognized the voice as that of my friend. I rushed madly from the room on to the landing. The cries, which had sunk down into a hoarse, inarticulate shouting, came from the room which we had first visited. I dashed in, and on into the dressing-room beyond. The two Cunninghams were bending over the prostrate figure of Sherlock Holmes, the younger clutching his throat with both hands, while the elder seemed to be twisting one of his wrists. In an instant the three of us had torn them away from him, and Holmes staggered to his feet, very pale and evidently greatly exhausted.\n\n\"Arrest these men, Inspector,\" he gasped.\n\n\"On what charge?\"\n\n\"That of murdering their coachman, William Kirwan.\"\n\nThe inspector stared about him in bewilderment. \"Oh, come now, Mr. Holmes,\" said he at last, \"I'm sure you don't really mean to\u2014\"\n\n\"Tut, man, look at their faces!\" cried Holmes curtly.\n\nNever certainly have I seen a plainer confession of guilt upon human countenances. The older man seemed numbed and dazed, with a heavy, sullen expression upon his strongly marked face. The son, on the other hand, had dropped all that jaunty, dashing style which had characterized him, and the ferocity of a dangerous wild beast gleamed in his dark eyes and distorted his handsome features. The inspector said nothing, but, stepping to the door, he blew his whistle. Two of his constables came at the call.\n\n\"I have no alternative, Mr. Cunningham,\" said he. \"I trust that this may all prove to be an absurd mistake, but you can see that\u2014Ah, would you? Drop it!\" He struck out with his hand, and a revolver which the younger man was in the act of cocking clattered down upon the floor.\n\n\"Keep that,\" said Holmes, quietly putting his foot upon it; \"you will find it useful at the trial. But this is what we really wanted.\" He held up a little crumpled piece of paper.\n\n\"The remainder of the sheet!\" cried the inspector.\n\n\"Precisely.\"\n\n\"And where was it?\"\n\n\"Where I was sure it must be. I'll make the whole matter clear to you presently. I think, Colonel, that you and Watson might return now, and I will be with you again in an hour at the furthest. The inspector and I must have a word with the prisoners, but you will certainly see me back at luncheon time.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes was as good as his word, for about one o'clock he rejoined us in the colonel's smoking-room. He was accompanied by a little elderly gentleman, who was introduced to me as the Mr. Acton whose house had been the scene of the original burglary.\n\n\"I wished Mr. Acton to be present while I demonstrated this small matter to you,\" said Holmes, \"for it is natural that he should take a keen interest in the details. I am afraid, my dear Colonel, that you must regret the hour that you took in such a stormy petrel as I am.\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" answered the colonel warmly, \"I consider it the greatest privilege to have been permitted to study your methods of working: I confess that they quite surpass my expectations, and that I am utterly unable to account for your result. I have not yet seen the vestige of a clue.\"\n\n\"I am afraid that my explanation may disillusion you, but it has always been my habit to hide none of my methods, either from my friend Watson or from anyone who might take an intelligent interest in them. But, first, as I am rather shaken by the knocking about which I had in the dressing-room, I think that I shall help myself to a dash of your brandy, Colonel. My strength has been rather tried of late.\"\n\n\"I trust you had no more of those nervous attacks.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes laughed heartily. \"We will come to that in its turn,\" said he. \"I will lay an account of the case before you in its due order, showing you the various points which guided me in my decision. Pray interrupt me if there is any inference which is not perfectly clear to you.\n\n\"It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which vital. Otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated. Now, in this case there was not the slightest doubt in my mind from the first that the key of the whole matter must be looked for in the scrap of paper in the dead man's hand.\n\n\"Before going into this, I would draw your attention to the fact that, if Alec Cunningham's narrative was correct, and if the assailant, after shooting William Kirwan, had instantly fled, then it obviously could not be he who tore the paper from the dead man's hand. But if it was not he, it must have been Alec Cunningham himself, for by the time that the old man had descended several servants were upon the scene. The point is a simple one, but the inspector had overlooked it because he had started with the supposition that these county magnates had had nothing to do with the matter. Now, I make a point of never having any prejudices, and of following docilely wherever fact may lead me, and so, in the very first stage of the investigation, I found myself looking a little askance at the part which had been played by Mr. Alec Cunningham.\n\n\"And now I made a very careful examination of the corner of paper which the inspector had submitted to us. It was at once clear to me that it formed part of a very remarkable document. Here it is. Do you not now observe something very suggestive about it?\"\n\n\"It has a very irregular look,\" said the colonel.\n\n\"My dear sir,\" cried Holmes, \"there cannot be the least doubt in the world that it has been written by two persons doing alternate words. When I draw your attention to the strong t's of 'at' and 'to,' and ask you to compare them with the weak ones of 'quarter' and 'twelve,' you will instantly recognize the fact. A very brief analysis of these four words would enable you to say with the utmost confidence that the 'learn' and the 'maybe' are written in the stronger hand, and the 'what' in the weaker.\"\n\n\"By Jove, it's as clear as day!\" cried the colonel. \"Why on earth should two men write a letter in such a fashion?\"\n\n\"Obviously the business was a bad one, and one of the men who distrusted the other was determined that, whatever was done, each should have an equal hand in it. Now, of the two men, it is clear that the one who wrote the 'at' and 'to' was the ringleader.\"\n\n\"How do you get at that?\"\n\n\"We might deduce it from the mere character of the one hand compared with the other. But we have more assured reasons than that for supposing it. If you examine this scrap with attention you will come to the conclusion that the man with the stronger hand wrote all his words first, leaving blanks for the other to fill up. These blanks were not always sufficient, and you can see that the second man had a squeeze to fit his 'quarter' in between the 'at' and the 'to,' showing that the latter were already written. The man who wrote all his words first is undoubtedly the man who planned the affair.\"\n\n\"Excellent!\" cried Mr. Acton.\n\n\"But very superficial,\" said Holmes. \"We come now, however, to a point which is of importance. You may not be aware that the deduction of a man's age from his writing is one which has been brought to considerable accuracy by experts. In normal cases one can place a man in his true decade with tolerable confidence. I say normal cases, because ill-health and physical weakness reproduce the signs of old age, even when the invalid is a youth. In this case, looking at the bold, strong hand of the one, and the rather broken-backed appearance of the other, which still retains its legibility although the t's have begun to lose their crossing, we can say that the one was a young man and the other was advanced in years without being positively decrepit.\"\n\n\"Excellent!\" cried Mr. Acton again.\n\n\"There is a further point, however, which is subtler and of greater interest. There is something in common between these hands. They belong to men who are blood-relatives. It may be most obvious to you in the Greek e's, but to me there are many small points which indicate the same thing. I have no doubt at all that a family mannerism can be traced in these two specimens of writing. I am only, of course, giving you the leading results now of my examination of the paper. There were twenty-three other deductions which would be of more interest to experts than to you. They all tend to deepen the impression upon my mind that the Cunninghams, father and son, had written this letter.\n\n\"Having got so far, my next step was, of course, to examine into the details of the crime, and to see how far they would help us. I went up to the house with the inspector and saw all that was to be seen. The wound upon the dead man was, as I was able to determine with absolute confidence, fired from a revolver at the distance of something over four yards. There was no powder-blackening on the clothes. Evidently, therefore, Alec Cunningham had lied when he said that the two men were struggling when the shot was fired. Again, both father and son agreed as to the place where the man escaped into the road. At that point, however, as it happens, there is a broadish ditch, moist at the bottom. As there were no indications of boot-marks about this ditch, I was absolutely sure not only that the Cunninghams had again lied but that there had never been any unknown man upon the scene at all.\n\n\"And now I have to consider the motive of this singular crime. To get at this, I endeavoured first of all to solve the reason of the original burglary at Mr. Acton's. I understood, from something which the colonel told us, that a lawsuit had been going on between you, Mr. Acton, and the Cunninghams. Of course, it instantly occurred to me that they had broken into your library with the intention of getting at some document which might be of importance in the case.\"\n\n\"Precisely so,\" said Mr. Acton. \"There can be no possible doubt as to their intentions. I have the clearest claim upon half of their present estate, and if they could have found a single paper\u2014which, fortunately, was in the strong-box of my solicitors\u2014they would undoubtedly have crippled our case.\"\n\n\"There you are,\" said Holmes, smiling. \"It was a dangerous, reckless attempt in which I seem to trace the influence of young Alec. Having found nothing, they tried to divert suspicion by making it appear to be an ordinary burglary, to which end they carried off whatever they could lay their hands upon. That is all clear enough, but there was much that was still obscure. What I wanted, above all, was to get the missing part of that note. I was certain that Alec had torn it out of the dead man's hand, and almost certain that he must have thrust it into the pocket of his dressing-gown. Where else could he have put it? The only question was whether it was still there. It was worth an effort to find out, and for that object we all went up to the house.\n\n\"The Cunninghams joined us, as you doubtless remember, outside the kitchen door. It was, of course, of the very first importance that they should not be reminded of the existence of this paper, otherwise they would naturally destroy it without delay. The inspector was about to tell them the importance which we attached to it when, by the luckiest chance in the world, I tumbled down in a sort of fit and so changed the conversation.\"\n\n\"Good heavens!\" cried the colonel, laughing, \"do you mean to say all our sympathy was wasted and your fit an imposture?\"\n\n\"Speaking professionally, it was admirably done,\" cried I, looking in amazement at this man who was forever confounding me with some new phase of his astuteness.\n\n\"It is an art which is often useful,\" said he. \"When I recovered I managed, by a device which had perhaps some little merit of ingenuity, to get old Cunningham to write the word 'twelve,' so that I might compare it with the 'twelve' upon the paper.\"\n\n\"Oh, what an ass I have been!\" I exclaimed.\n\n\"I could see that you were commiserating me over my weakness,\" said Holmes, laughing. \"I was sorry to cause you the sympathetic pain which I know that you felt. We then went upstairs together, and, having entered the room and seen the dressing-gown hanging up behind the door, I contrived, by upsetting a table, to engage their attention for the moment and slipped back to examine the pockets. I had hardly got the paper, however\u2014which was, as I had expected, in one of them\u2014when the two Cunninghams were on me, and would, I verily believe, have murdered me then and there but for your prompt and friendly aid. As it is, I feel that young man's grip on my throat now, and the father has twisted my wrist round in the effort to get the paper out of my hand. They saw that I must know all about it, you see, and the sudden change from absolute security to complete despair made them perfectly desperate.\n\n\"I had a little talk with old Cunningham afterwards as to the motive of the crime. He was tractable enough, though his son was a perfect demon, ready to blow out his own or anybody else's brains if he could have got to his revolver. When Cunningham saw that the case against him was so strong he lost all heart and made a clean breast of everything. It seems that William had secretly followed his two masters on the night when they made their raid upon Mr. Acton's and, having thus got them into his power, proceeded, under threats of exposure, to levy blackmail upon them. Mr. Alec, however, was a dangerous man to play games of that sort with. It was a stroke of positive genius on his part to see in the burglary scare which was convulsing the countryside an opportunity of plausibly getting rid of the man whom he feared. William was decoyed up and shot, and had they only got the whole of the note and paid a little more attention to detail in their accessories, it is very possible that suspicion might never have been aroused.\"\n\n\"And the note?\" I asked.\n\nSherlock Holmes placed the subjoined paper before us.\n\n\"It is very much the sort of thing that I expected,\" said he. \"Of course, we do not yet know what the relations may have been between Alec Cunningham, William Kirwan, and Annie Morrison. The result shows that the trap was skilfully baited. I am sure that you cannot fail to be delighted with the traces of heredity shown in the p's and in the tails of the g's. The absence of the i-dots in the old man's writing is also most characteristic. Watson, I think our quiet rest in the country has been a distinct success, and I shall certainly return much invigorated to Baker Street to-morrow.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE CROOKED MAN", + "text": "One summer night, a few months after my marriage, I was seated by my own hearth smoking a last pipe and nodding over a novel, for my day's work had been an exhausting one. My wife had already gone upstairs, and the sound of the locking of the hall door some time before told me that the servants had also retired. I had risen from my seat and was knocking out the ashes of my pipe when I suddenly heard the clang of the bell.\n\nI looked at the clock. It was a quarter to twelve. This could not be a visitor at so late an hour. A patient evidently, and possibly an all-night sitting. With a wry face I went out into the hall and opened the door. To my astonishment it was Sherlock Holmes who stood upon my step.\n\n\"Ah, Watson,\" said he, \"I hoped that I might not be too late to catch you.\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, pray come in.\"\n\n\"You look surprised, and no wonder! Relieved, too, I fancy! Hum! You still smoke the Arcadia mixture of your bachelor days, then! There's no mistaking that fluffy ash upon your coat. It's easy to tell that you have been accustomed to wear a uniform, Watson. You'll never pass as a pure-bred civilian as long as you keep that habit of carrying your handkerchief in your sleeve. Could you put me up to-night?\"\n\n\"With pleasure.\"\n\n\"You told me that you had bachelor quarters for one, and I see that you have no gentleman visitor at present. Your hat-stand proclaims as much.\"\n\n\"I shall be delighted if you will stay.\"\n\n\"Thank you. I'll fill the vacant peg then. Sorry to see that you've had the British workman in the house. He's a token of evil. Not the drains, I hope?\"\n\n\"No, the gas.\"\n\n\"Ah! He has left two nail-marks from his boot upon your linoleum just where the light strikes it. No, thank you, I had some supper at Waterloo, but I'll smoke a pipe with you with pleasure.\"\n\nI handed him my pouch, and he seated himself opposite to me and smoked for some time in silence. I was well aware that nothing but business of importance would have brought him to me at such an hour, so I waited patiently until he should come round to it.\n\n\"I see that you are professionally rather busy just now,\" said he, glancing very keenly across at me.\n\n\"Yes, I've had a busy day,\" I answered. \"It may seem very foolish in your eyes,\" I added, \"but really I don't know how you deduced it.\"\n\nHolmes chuckled to himself.\n\n\"I have the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson,\" said he. \"When your round is a short one you walk, and when it is a long one you use a hansom. As I perceive that your boots, although used, are by no means dirty, I cannot doubt that you are at present busy enough to justify the hansom.\"\n\n\"Excellent!\" I cried.\n\n\"Elementary,\" said he. \"It is one of those instances where the reasoner can produce an effect which seems remarkable to his neighbour, because the latter has missed the one little point which is the basis of the deduction. The same may be said, my dear fellow, for the effect of some of these little sketches of yours, which is entirely meretricious, depending as it does upon your retaining in your own hands some factors in the problem which are never imparted to the reader. Now, at present I am in the position of these same readers, for I hold in this hand several threads of one of the strangest cases which ever perplexed a man's brain, and yet I lack the one or two which are needful to complete my theory. But I'll have them, Watson, I'll have them!\" His eyes kindled and a slight flush sprang into his thin cheeks. For an instant the veil had lifted upon his keen, intense nature, but for an instant only. When I glanced again his face had resumed that red-Indian composure which had made so many regard him as a machine rather than a man.\n\n\"The problem presents features of interest,\" said he. \"I may even say exceptional features of interest. I have already looked into the matter, and have come, as I think, within sight of my solution. If you could accompany me in that last step you might be of considerable service to me.\"\n\n\"I should be delighted.\"\n\n\"Could you go as far as Aldershot to-morrow?\"\n\n\"I have no doubt Jackson would take my practice.\"\n\n\"Very good. I want to start by the 11:10 from Waterloo.\"\n\n\"That would give me time.\"\n\n\"Then, if you are not too sleepy, I will give you a sketch of what has happened, and of what remains to be done.\"\n\n\"I was sleepy before you came. I am quite wakeful now.\"\n\n\"I will compress the story as far as may be done without omitting anything vital to the case. It is conceivable that you may even have read some account of the matter. It is the supposed murder of Colonel Barclay, of the Royal Munsters, at Aldershot, which I am investigating.\"\n\n\"I have heard nothing of it.\"\n\n\"It has not excited much attention yet, except locally. The facts are only two days old. Briefly they are these:\n\n\"The Royal Munsters is, as you know, one of the most famous Irish regiments in the British Army. It did wonders both in the Crimea and the Mutiny, and has since that time distinguished itself upon every possible occasion. It was commanded up to Monday night by James Barclay, a gallant veteran, who started as a full private, was raised to commissioned rank for his bravery at the time of the Mutiny, and so lived to command the regiment in which he had once carried a musket.\n\n\"Colonel Barclay had married at the time when he was a sergeant, and his wife, whose maiden name was Miss Nancy Devoy, was the daughter of a former colour-sergeant in the same corps. There was, therefore, as can be imagined, some little social friction when the young couple (for they were still young) found themselves in their new surroundings. They appear, however, to have quickly adapted themselves, and Mrs. Barclay has always, I understand, been as popular with the ladies of the regiment as her husband was with his brother officers. I may add that she was a woman of great beauty, and that even now, when she has been married for upward of thirty years, she is still of a striking and queenly appearance.\n\n\"Colonel Barclay's family life appears to have been a uniformly happy one. Major Murphy, to whom I owe most of my facts, assures me that he has never heard of any misunderstanding between the pair. On the whole, he thinks that Barclay's devotion to his wife was greater than his wife's to Barclay. He was acutely uneasy if he were absent from her for a day. She, on the other hand, though devoted and faithful, was less obtrusively affectionate. But they were regarded in the regiment as the very model of a middle-aged couple. There was absolutely nothing in their mutual relations to prepare people for the tragedy which was to follow.\n\n\"Colonel Barclay himself seems to have had some singular traits in his character. He was a dashing, jovial old soldier in his usual mood, but there were occasions on which he seemed to show himself capable of considerable violence and vindictiveness. This side of his nature, however, appears never to have been turned towards his wife. Another fact which had struck Major Murphy and three out of five of the other officers with whom I conversed was the singular sort of depression which came upon him at times. As the major expressed it, the smile has often been struck from his mouth, as if by some invisible hand, when he has been joining in the gaieties and chaff of the mess-table. For days on end, when the mood was on him, he has been sunk in the deepest gloom. This and a certain tinge of superstition were the only unusual traits in his character which his brother officers had observed. The latter peculiarity took the form of a dislike to being left alone, especially after dark. This puerile feature in a nature which was conspicuously manly had often given rise to comment and conjecture.\n\n\"The first battalion of the Royal Munsters (which is the old One Hundred and Seventeenth) has been stationed at Aldershot for some years. The married officers live out of barracks, and the colonel has during all this time occupied a villa called 'Lachine,' about half a mile from the north camp. The house stands in its own grounds, but the west side of it is not more than thirty yards from the highroad. A coachman and two maids form the staff of servants. These with their master and mistress were the sole occupants of Lachine, for the Barclays had no children, nor was it usual for them to have resident visitors.\n\n\"Now for the events at Lachine between nine and ten on the evening of last Monday.\n\n\"Mrs. Barclay was, it appears, a member of the Roman Catholic Church and had interested herself very much in the establishment of the Guild of St. George, which was formed in connection with the Watt Street Chapel for the purpose of supplying the poor with cast-off clothing. A meeting of the Guild had been held that evening at eight, and Mrs. Barclay had hurried over her dinner in order to be present at it. When leaving the house she was heard by the coachman to make some commonplace remark to her husband, and to assure him that she would be back before very long. She then called for Miss Morrison, a young lady who lives in the next villa, and the two went off together to their meeting. It lasted forty minutes, and at a quarter-past nine Mrs. Barclay returned home, having left Miss Morrison at her door as she passed.\n\n\"There is a room which is used as a morning-room at Lachine. This faces the road and opens by a large glass folding-door on to the lawn. The lawn is thirty yards across and is only divided from the highway by a low wall with an iron rail above it. It was into this room that Mrs. Barclay went upon her return. The blinds were not down, for the room was seldom used in the evening, but Mrs. Barclay herself lit the lamp and then rang the bell, asking Jane Stewart, the housemaid, to bring her a cup of tea, which was quite contrary to her usual habits. The colonel had been sitting in the dining-room, but, hearing that his wife had returned, he joined her in the morning-room. The coachman saw him cross the hall and enter it. He was never seen again alive.\n\n\"The tea which had been ordered was brought up at the end of ten minutes; but the maid, as she approached the door, was surprised to hear the voices of her master and mistress in furious altercation. She knocked without receiving any answer, and even turned the handle, but only to find that the door was locked upon the inside. Naturally enough she ran down to tell the cook, and the two women with the coachman came up into the hall and listened to the dispute which was still raging. They all agreed that only two voices were to be heard, those of Barclay and of his wife. Barclay's remarks were subdued and abrupt so that none of them were audible to the listeners. The lady's, on the other hand, were most bitter, and when she raised her voice could be plainly heard. 'You coward!' she repeated over and over again. 'What can be done now? What can be done now? Give me back my life. I will never so much as breathe the same air with you again! You coward! You coward!' Those were scraps of her conversation, ending in a sudden dreadful cry in the man's voice, with a crash, and a piercing scream from the woman. Convinced that some tragedy had occurred, the coachman rushed to the door and strove to force it, while scream after scream issued from within. He was unable, however, to make his way in, and the maids were too distracted with fear to be of any assistance to him. A sudden thought struck him, however, and he ran through the hall door and round to the lawn upon which the long French windows open. One side of the window was open, which I understand was quite usual in the summertime, and he passed without difficulty into the room. His mistress had ceased to scream and was stretched insensible upon a couch. While with his feet tilted over the side of an armchair, and his head upon the ground near the corner of the fender, was lying the unfortunate soldier stone dead in a pool of his own blood.\n\n\"Naturally, the coachman's first thought, on finding that he could do nothing for his master, was to open the door. But here an unexpected and singular difficulty presented itself. The key was not in the inner side of the door, nor could he find it anywhere in the room. He went out again, therefore, through the window, and, having obtained the help of a policeman and of a medical man, he returned. The lady, against whom naturally the strongest suspicion rested, was removed to her room, still in a state of insensibility. The colonel's body was then placed upon the sofa and a careful examination made of the scene of the tragedy.\n\n\"The injury from which the unfortunate veteran was suffering was found to be a jagged cut some two inches long at the back part of his head, which had evidently been caused by a violent blow from a blunt weapon. Nor was it difficult to guess what that weapon may have been. Upon the floor, close to the body, was lying a singular club of hard carved wood with a bone handle. The colonel possessed a varied collection of weapons brought from the different countries in which he had fought, and it is conjectured by the police that this club was among his trophies. The servants deny having seen it before, but among the numerous curiosities in the house it is possible that it may have been overlooked. Nothing else of importance was discovered in the room by the police, save the inexplicable fact that neither upon Mrs. Barclay's person nor upon that of the victim nor in any part of the room was the missing key to be found. The door had eventually to be opened by a locksmith from Aldershot.\n\n\"That was the state of things, Watson, when upon the Tuesday morning I, at the request of Major Murphy, went down to Aldershot to supplement the efforts of the police. I think that you will acknowledge that the problem was already one of interest, but my observations soon made me realize that it was in truth much more extraordinary than would at first sight appear.\n\n\"Before examining the room I cross-questioned the servants, but only succeeded in eliciting the facts which I have already stated. One other detail of interest was remembered by Jane Stewart, the housemaid. You will remember that on hearing the sound of the quarrel she descended and returned with the other servants. On that first occasion, when she was alone, she says that the voices of her master and mistress were sunk so low that she could hardly hear anything, and judged by their tones rather than their words that they had fallen out. On my pressing her, however, she remembered that she heard the word David uttered twice by the lady. The point is of the utmost importance as guiding us towards the reason of the sudden quarrel. The colonel's name, you remember, was James.\n\n\"There was one thing in the case which had made the deepest impression both upon the servants and the police. This was the contortion of the colonel's face. It had set, according to their account, into the most dreadful expression of fear and horror which a human countenance is capable of assuming. More than one person fainted at the mere sight of him, so terrible was the effect. It was quite certain that he had foreseen his fate, and that it had caused him the utmost horror. This, of course, fitted in well enough with the police theory, if the colonel could have seen his wife making a murderous attack upon him. Nor was the fact of the wound being on the back of his head a fatal objection to this, as he might have turned to avoid the blow. No information could be got from the lady herself, who was temporarily insane from an acute attack of brain-fever.\n\n\"From the police I learned that Miss Morrison, who you remember went out that evening with Mrs. Barclay, denied having any knowledge of what it was which had caused the ill-humour in which her companion had returned.\n\n\"Having gathered these facts, Watson, I smoked several pipes over them, trying to separate those which were crucial from others which were merely incidental. There could be no question that the most distinctive and suggestive point in the case was the singular disappearance of the door-key. A most careful search had failed to discover it in the room. Therefore it must have been taken from it. But neither the colonel nor the colonel's wife could have taken it. That was perfectly clear. Therefore a third person must have entered the room. And that third person could only have come in through the window. It seemed to me that a careful examination of the room and the lawn might possibly reveal some traces of this mysterious individual. You know my methods, Watson. There was not one of them which I did not apply to the inquiry. And it ended by my discovering traces, but very different ones from those which I had expected. There had been a man in the room, and he had crossed the lawn coming from the road. I was able to obtain five very clear impressions of his footmarks: one in the roadway itself, at the point where he had climbed the low wall, two on the lawn, and two very faint ones upon the stained boards near the window where he had entered. He had apparently rushed across the lawn, for his toe-marks were much deeper than his heels. But it was not the man who surprised me. It was his companion.\"\n\n\"His companion!\"\n\nHolmes pulled a large sheet of tissue-paper out of his pocket and carefully unfolded it upon his knee.\n\n\"What do you make of that?\" he asked.\n\nThe paper was covered with the tracings of the footmarks of some small animal. It had five well-marked footpads, an indication of long nails, and the whole print might be nearly as large as a dessert-spoon.\n\n\"It's a dog,\" said I.\n\n\"Did you ever hear of a dog running up a curtain? I found distinct traces that this creature had done so.\"\n\n\"A monkey, then?\"\n\n\"But it is not the print of a monkey.\"\n\n\"What can it be, then?\"\n\n\"Neither dog nor cat nor monkey nor any creature that we are familiar with. I have tried to reconstruct it from the measurements. Here are four prints where the beast has been standing motionless. You see that it is no less than fifteen inches from fore-foot to hind. Add to that the length of neck and head, and you get a creature not much less than two feet long\u2014probably more if there is any tail. But now observe this other measurement. The animal has been moving, and we have the length of its stride. In each case it is only about three inches. You have an indication, you see, of a long body with very short legs attached to it. It has not been considerate enough to leave any of its hair behind it. But its general shape must be what I have indicated, and it can run up a curtain, and it is carnivorous.\n\n\"How do you deduce that?\"\n\n\"Because it ran up the curtain. A canary's cage was hanging in the window, and its aim seems to have been to get at the bird.\"\n\n\"Then what was the beast?\"\n\n\"Ah, if I could give it a name it might go a long way towards solving the case. On the whole, it was probably some creature of the weasel and stoat tribe\u2014and yet it is larger than any of these that I have seen.\"\n\n\"But what had it to do with the crime?\"\n\n\"That, also, is still obscure. But we have learned a good deal, you perceive. We know that a man stood in the road looking at the quarrel between the Barclays\u2014the blinds were up and the room lighted. We know, also, that he ran across the lawn, entered the room, accompanied by a strange animal, and that he either struck the colonel or, as is equally possible, that the colonel fell down from sheer fright at the sight of him, and cut his head on the corner of the fender. Finally we have the curious fact that the intruder carried away the key with him when he left.\"\n\n\"Your discoveries seem to have left the business more obscure than it was before,\" said I.\n\n\"Quite so. They undoubtedly showed that the affair was much deeper than was at first conjectured. I thought the matter over, and I came to the conclusion that I must approach the case from another aspect. But really, Watson, I am keeping you up, and I might just as well tell you all this on our way to Aldershot to-morrow.\"\n\n\"Thank you, you have gone rather too far to stop.\"\n\n\"It is quite certain that when Mrs. Barclay left the house at half-past seven she was on good terms with her husband. She was never, as I think I have said, ostentatiously affectionate, but she was heard by the coachman chatting with the colonel in a friendly fashion. Now, it was equally certain that, immediately on her return, she had gone to the room in which she was least likely to see her husband, had flown to tea as an agitated woman will, and finally, on his coming in to her, had broken into violent recriminations. Therefore something had occurred between seven-thirty and nine o'clock which had completely altered her feelings towards him. But Miss Morrison had been with her during the whole of that hour and a half. It was absolutely certain, therefore, in spite of her denial, that she must know something of the matter.\n\n\"My first conjecture was that possibly there had been some passages between this young lady and the old soldier, which the former had now confessed to the wife. That would account for the angry return, and also for the girl's denial that anything had occurred. Nor would it be entirely incompatible with most of the words overheard. But there was the reference to David, and there was the known affection of the colonel for his wife to weigh against it, to say nothing of the tragic intrusion of this other man, which might, of course, be entirely disconnected with what had gone before. It was not easy to pick one's steps, but, on the whole, I was inclined to dismiss the idea that there had been anything between the colonel and Miss Morrison, but more than ever convinced that the young lady held the clue as to what it was which had turned Mrs. Barclay to hatred of her husband. I took the obvious course, therefore, of calling upon Miss M., of explaining to her that I was perfectly certain that she held the facts in her possession, and of assuring her that her friend, Mrs. Barclay, might find herself in the dock upon a capital charge unless the matter were cleared up.\n\n\"Miss Morrison is a little ethereal slip of a girl, with timid eyes and blond hair, but I found her by no means wanting in shrewdness and common sense. She sat thinking for some time after I had spoken, and then, turning to me with a brisk air of resolution, she broke into a remarkable statement which I will condense for your benefit.\n\n\"'I promised my friend that I would say nothing of the matter, and a promise is a promise,' said she; 'but if I can really help her when so serious a charge is laid against her, and when her own mouth, poor darling, is closed by illness, then I think I am absolved from my promise. I will tell you exactly what happened upon Monday evening.\n\n\"'We were returning from the Watt Street Mission about a quarter to nine o'clock. On our way we had to pass through Hudson Street, which is a very quiet thoroughfare. There is only one lamp in it, upon the left-hand side, and as we approached this lamp I saw a man coming towards us with his back very bent, and something like a box slung over one of his shoulders. He appeared to be deformed, for he carried his head low and walked with his knees bent. We were passing him when he raised his face to look at us in the circle of light thrown by the lamp, and as he did so he stopped and screamed out in a dreadful voice, \"My God, it's Nancy!\" Mrs. Barclay turned as white as death and would have fallen down had the dreadful-looking creature not caught hold of her. I was going to call for the police, but she, to my surprise, spoke quite civilly to the fellow.\n\n\"' \"I thought you had been dead this thirty years, Henry,\" said she in a shaking voice.\n\n\"' \"So I have,\" said he, and it was awful to hear the tones that he said it in. He had a very dark, fearsome face, and a gleam in his eyes that comes back to me in my dreams. His hair and whiskers were shot with gray, and his face was all crinkled and puckered like a withered apple.\n\n\"' \"Just walk on a little way, dear,\" said Mrs. Barclay; \"I want to have a word with this man. There is nothing to be afraid of.\" She tried to speak boldly, but she was still deadly pale and could hardly get her words out for the trembling of her lips.\n\n\"'I did as she asked me, and they talked together for a few minutes. Then she came down the street with her eyes blazing, and I saw the crippled wretch standing by the lamp-post and shaking his clenched fists in the air as if he were mad with rage. She never said a word until we were at the door here, when she took me by the hand and begged me to tell no one what had happened.\n\n\"' \"It's an old acquaintance of mine who has come down in the world,\" said she. When I promised her I would say nothing she kissed me, and I have never seen her since. I have told you now the whole truth, and if I withheld it from the police it is because I did not realize then the danger in which my dear friend stood. I know that it can only be to her advantage that everything should be known.'\n\n\"There was her statement, Watson, and to me, as you can imagine, it was like a light on a dark night. Everything which had been disconnected before began at once to assume its true place, and I had a shadowy presentiment of the whole sequence of events. My next step obviously was to find the man who had produced such a remarkable impression upon Mrs. Barclay. If he were still in Aldershot it should not be a very difficult matter. There are not such a very great number of civilians, and a deformed man was sure to have attracted attention. I spent a day in the search, and by evening\u2014this very evening, Watson\u2014I had run him down. The man's name is Henry Wood, and he lives in lodgings in this same street in which the ladies met him. He has only been five days in the place. In the character of a registration-agent I had a most interesting gossip with his landlady. The man is by trade a conjurer and performer, going round the canteens after nightfall, and giving a little entertainment at each. He carries some creature about with him in that box, about which the landlady seemed to be in considerable trepidation, for she had never seen an animal like it. He uses it in some of his tricks according to her account. So much the woman was able to tell me, and also that it was a wonder the man lived, seeing how twisted he was, and that he spoke in a strange tongue sometimes, and that for the last two nights she had heard him groaning and weeping in his bedroom. He was all right, as far as money went, but in his deposit he had given her what looked like a bad florin. She showed it to me, Watson, and it was an Indian rupee.\n\n\"So now, my dear fellow, you see exactly how we stand and why it is I want you. It is perfectly plain that after the ladies parted from this man he followed them at a distance, that he saw the quarrel between husband and wife through the window, that he rushed in, and that the creature which he carried in his box got loose. That is all very certain. But he is the only person in this world who can tell us exactly what happened in that room.\"\n\n\"And you intend to ask him?\"\n\n\"Most certainly\u2014but in the presence of a witness.\"\n\n\"And I am the witness?\"\n\n\"If you will be so good. If he can clear the matter up, well and good. If he refuses, we have no alternative but to apply for a warrant.\"\n\n\"But how do you know he'll be there when we return?\"\n\n\"You may be sure that I took some precautions. I have one of my Baker Street boys mounting guard over him who would stick to him like a burr, go where he might. We shall find him in Hudson Street to-morrow, Watson, and meanwhile I should be the criminal myself if I kept you out of bed any longer.\"\n\nIt was midday when we found ourselves at the scene of the tragedy, and, under my companion's guidance, we made our way at once to Hudson Street. In spite of his capacity for concealing his emotions I could easily see that Holmes was in a state of suppressed excitement, while I was myself tingling with that half-sporting, half-intellectual pleasure which I invariably experienced when I associated myself with him in his investigations.\n\n\"This is the street,\" said he as we turned into a short thoroughfare lined with plain two-storied brick houses. \"Ah, here is Simpson to report.\"\n\n\"He's in all right, Mr. Holmes,\" cried a small street Arab, running up to us.\n\n\"Good, Simpson!\" said Holmes, patting him on the head. \"Come along, Watson. This is the house.\" He sent in his card with a message that he had come on important business, and a moment later we were face to face with the man whom we had come to see. In spite of the warm weather he was crouching over a fire, and the little room was like an oven. The man sat all twisted and huddled in his chair in a way which gave an indescribable impression of deformity; but the face which he turned towards us, though worn and swarthy, must at some time have been remarkable for its beauty. He looked suspiciously at us now out of yellow-shot, bilious eyes, and, without speaking or rising, he waved towards two chairs.\n\n\"Mr. Henry Wood, late of India, I believe,\" said Holmes affably. \"I've come over this little matter of Colonel Barclay's death.\"\n\n\"What should I know about that?\"\n\n\"That's what I want to ascertain. You know, I suppose, that unless the matter is cleared up, Mrs. Barclay, who is an old friend of yours, will in all probability be tried for murder.\"\n\nThe man gave a violent start.\n\n\"I don't know who you are,\" he cried, \"nor how you come to know what you do know, but will you swear that this is true that you tell me?\"\n\n\"Why, they are only waiting for her to come to her senses to arrest her.\"\n\n\"My God! Are you in the police yourself?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"What business is it of yours, then?\"\n\n\"It's every man's business to see justice done.\"\n\n\"You can take my word that she is innocent.\"\n\n\"Then you are guilty.\"\n\n\"No, I am not.\"\n\n\"Who killed Colonel James Barclay, then?\"\n\n\"It was a just Providence that killed him. But, mind you this, that if I had knocked his brains out, as it was in my heart to do, he would have had no more than his due from my hands. If his own guilty conscience had not struck him down it is likely enough that I might have had his blood upon my soul. You want me to tell the story. Well, I don't know why I shouldn't, for there's no cause for me to be ashamed of it.\n\n\"It was in this way, sir. You see me now with my back like a camel and my ribs all awry, but there was a time when Corporal Henry Wood was the smartest man in the One Hundred and Seventeenth foot. We were in India, then, in cantonments, at a place we'll call Bhurtee. Barclay, who died the other day, was sergeant in the same company as myself, and the belle of the regiment, ay, and the finest girl that ever had the breath of life between her lips, was Nancy Devoy, the daughter of the colour-sergeant. There were two men that loved her, and one that she loved, and you'll smile when you look at this poor thing huddled before the fire and hear me say that it was for my good looks that she loved me.\n\n\"Well, though I had her heart, her father was set upon her marrying Barclay. I was a harum-scarum, reckless lad, and he had had an education and was already marked for the sword-belt. But the girl held true to me, and it seemed that I would have had her when the Mutiny broke out, and all hell was loose in the country.\n\n\"We were shut up in Bhurtee, the regiment of us with half a battery of artillery, a company of Sikhs, and a lot of civilians and women-folk. There were ten thousand rebels round us, and they were as keen as a set of terriers round a rat-cage. About the second week of it our water gave out, and it was a question whether we could communicate with General Neill's column, which was moving up-country. It was our only chance, for we could not hope to fight our way out with all the women and children, so I volunteered to go out and to warn General Neill of our danger. My offer was accepted, and I talked it over with Sergeant Barclay, who was supposed to know the ground better than any other man, and who drew up a route by which I might get through the rebel lines. At ten o'clock the same night I started off upon my journey. There were a thousand lives to save, but it was of only one that I was thinking when I dropped over the wall that night.\n\n\"My way ran down a dried-up watercourse, which we hoped would screen me from the enemy's sentries; but as I crept round the corner of it I walked right into six of them, who were crouching down in the dark waiting for me. In an instant I was stunned with a blow and bound hand and foot. But the real blow was to my heart and not to my head, for as I came to and listened to as much as I could understand of their talk, I heard enough to tell me that my comrade, the very man who had arranged the way I was to take, had betrayed me by means of a native servant into the hands of the enemy.\n\n\"Well, there's no need for me to dwell on that part of it. You know now what James Barclay was capable of. Bhurtee was relieved by Neill next day, but the rebels took me away with them in their retreat, and it was many a long year before ever I saw a white face again. I was tortured and tried to get away, and was captured and tortured again. You can see for yourselves the state in which I was left. Some of them that fled into Nepal took me with them, and then afterwards I was up past Darjeeling. The hill-folk up there murdered the rebels who had me, and I became their slave for a time until I escaped; but instead of going south I had to go north, until I found myself among the Afghans. There I wandered about for many a year, and at last came back to the Punjab, where I lived mostly among the natives and picked up a living by the conjuring tricks that I had learned. What use was it for me, a wretched cripple, to go back to England or to make myself known to my old comrades? Even my wish for revenge would not make me do that. I had rather that Nancy and my old pals should think of Harry Wood as having died with a straight back, than see him living and crawling with a stick like a chimpanzee. They never doubted that I was dead, and I meant that they never should. I heard that Barclay had married Nancy, and that he was rising rapidly in the regiment, but even that did not make me speak.\n\n\"But when one gets old one has a longing for home. For years I've been dreaming of the bright green fields and the hedges of England. At last I determined to see them before I died. I saved enough to bring me across, and then I came here where the soldiers are, for I know their ways and how to amuse them and so earn enough to keep me.\"\n\n\"Your narrative is most interesting,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"I have already heard of your meeting with Mrs. Barclay, and your mutual recognition. You then, as I understand, followed her home and saw through the window an altercation between her husband and her, in which she doubtless cast his conduct to you in his teeth. Your own feelings overcame you, and you ran across the lawn and broke in upon them.\"\n\n\"I did, sir, and at the sight of me he looked as I have never seen a man look before, and over he went with his head on the fender. But he was dead before he fell. I read death on his face as plain as I can read that text over the fire. The bare sight of me was like a bullet through his guilty heart.\"\n\n\"And then?\"\n\n\"Then Nancy fainted, and I caught up the key of the door from her hand, intending to unlock it and get help. But as I was doing it it seemed to me better to leave it alone and get away, for the thing might look black against me, and anyway my secret would be out if I were taken. In my haste I thrust the key into my pocket, and dropped my stick while I was chasing Teddy, who had run up the curtain. When I got him into his box, from which he had slipped, I was off as fast as I could run.\"\n\n\"Who's Teddy?\" asked Holmes.\n\nThe man leaned over and pulled up the front of a kind of hutch in the corner. In an instant out there slipped a beautiful reddish-brown creature, thin and lithe, with the legs of a stoat, a long, thin nose, and a pair of the finest red eyes that ever I saw in an animal's head.\n\n\"It's a mongoose,\" I cried.\n\n\"Well, some call them that, and some call them ichneumon,\" said the man. \"Snake-catcher is what I call them, and Teddy is amazing quick on cobras. I have one here without the fangs, and Teddy catches it every night to please the folk in the canteen.\n\n\"Any other point, sir?\"\n\n\"Well, we may have to apply to you again if Mrs. Barclay should prove to be in serious trouble.\"\n\n\"In that case, of course, I'd come forward.\"\n\n\"But if not, there is no object in raking up this scandal against a dead man, foully as he has acted. You have at least the satisfaction of knowing that for thirty years of his life his conscience bitterly reproached him for his wicked deed. Ah, there goes Major Murphy on the other side of the street. Good-bye, Wood. I want to learn if anything has happened since yesterday.\"\n\nWe were in time to overtake the major before he reached the corner.\n\n\"Ah, Holmes,\" he said, \"I suppose you have heard that all this fuss has come to nothing?\"\n\n\"What then?\"\n\n\"The inquest is just over. The medical evidence showed conclusively that death was due to apoplexy. You see it was quite a simple case, after all.\"\n\n\"Oh, remarkably superficial,\" said Holmes, smiling. \"Come, Watson, I don't think we shall be wanted in Aldershot any more.\"\n\n\"There's one thing,\" said I as we walked down to the station. \"If the husband's name was James, and the other was Henry, what was this talk about David?\"\n\n\"That one word, my dear Watson, should have told me the whole story had I been the ideal reasoner which you are so fond of depicting. It was evidently a term of reproach.\"\n\n\"Of reproach?\"\n\n\"Yes; David strayed a little occasionally, you know, and on one occasion in the same direction as Sergeant James Barclay. You remember the small affair of Uriah and Bathsheba? My Biblical knowledge is a trifle rusty, I fear, but you will find the story in the first or second of Samuel.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE RESIDENT PATIENT", + "text": "In glancing over the somewhat incoherent series of Memoirs with which I have endeavoured to illustrate a few of the mental peculiarities of my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have been struck by the difficulty which I have experienced in picking out examples which shall in every way answer my purpose. For in those cases in which Holmes has performed some tour de force of analytical reasoning, and has demonstrated the value of his peculiar methods of investigation, the facts themselves have often been so slight or so commonplace that I could not feel justified in laying them before the public. On the other hand, it has frequently happened that he has been concerned in some research where the facts have been of the most remarkable and dramatic character, but where the share which he has himself taken in determining their causes has been less pronounced than I, as his biographer, could wish. The small matter which I have chronicled under the heading of \"A Study in Scarlet,\" and that other later one connected with the loss of the Gloria Scott, may serve as examples of this Scylla and Charybdis which are forever threatening the historian. It may be that in the business of which I am now about to write the part which my friend played is not sufficiently accentuated; and yet the whole train of circumstances is so remarkable that I cannot bring myself to omit it entirely from this series.\n\nIt had been a close, rainy day in October. \"Unhealthy weather, Watson,\" said my friend. \"But the evening has brought a breeze with it. What do you say to a ramble through London?\"\n\nI was weary of our little sitting-room and gladly acquiesced. For three hours we strolled about together, watching the ever-changing kaleidoscope of life as it ebbs and flows through Fleet Street and the Strand. His characteristic talk, with its keen observance of detail and subtle power of inference, held me amused and enthralled. It was ten o'clock before we reached Baker Street again. A brougham was waiting at our door.\n\n\"Hum! A doctor's\u2014general practitioner, I perceive,\" said Holmes. \"Not been long in practice, but has a good deal to do. Come to consult us, I fancy! Lucky we came back!\"\n\nI was sufficiently conversant with Holmes's methods to be able to follow his reasoning, and to see that the nature and state of the various medical instruments in the wicker basket which hung in the lamp-light inside the brougham had given him the data for his swift deduction. The light in our window above showed that this late visit was indeed intended for us. With some curiosity as to what could have sent a brother medico to us at such an hour, I followed Holmes into our sanctum.\n\nA pale, taper-faced man with sandy whiskers rose up from a chair by the fire as we entered. His age may not have been more than three or four and thirty, but his haggard expression and unhealthy hue told of a life which had sapped his strength and robbed him of his youth. His manner was nervous and shy, like that of a sensitive gentleman, and the thin white hand which he laid on the mantelpiece as he rose was that of an artist rather than of a surgeon. His dress was quiet and sombre\u2014a black frock-coat, dark trousers, and a touch of colour about his necktie.\n\n\"Good-evening, Doctor,\" said Holmes cheerily. \"I am glad to see that you have only been waiting a very few minutes.\"\n\n\"You spoke to my coachman, then?\"\n\n\"No, it was the candle on the side-table that told me. Pray resume your seat and let me know how I can serve you.\"\n\n\"My name is Dr. Percy Trevelyan,\" said our visitor, \"and I live at 403 Brook Street.\"\n\n\"Are you not the author of a monograph upon obscure nervous lesions?\" I asked.\n\nHis pale cheeks flushed with pleasure at hearing that his work was known to me.\n\n\"I so seldom hear of the work that I thought it was quite dead,\" said he. \"My publishers gave me a most discouraging account of its sale. You are yourself, I presume, a medical man.\"\n\n\"A retired army surgeon.\"\n\n\"My own hobby has always been nervous disease. I should wish to make it an absolute specialty, but of course a man must take what he can get at first. This, however, is beside the question, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and I quite appreciate how valuable your time is. The fact is that a very singular train of events has occurred recently at my house in Brook Street, and tonight they came to such a head that I felt it was quite impossible for me to wait another hour before asking for your advice and assistance.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes sat down and lit his pipe. \"You are very welcome to both,\" said he. \"Pray let me have a detailed account of what the circumstances are which have disturbed you.\"\n\n\"One or two of them are so trivial,\" said Dr. Trevelyan, \"that really I am almost ashamed to mention them. But the matter is so inexplicable, and the recent turn which it has taken is so elaborate, that I shall lay it all before you, and you shall judge what is essential and what is not.\n\n\"I am compelled, to begin with, to say something of my own college career. I am a London University man, you know, and I am sure that you will not think that I am unduly singing my own praises if I say that my student career was considered by my professors to be a very promising one. After I had graduated I continued to devote myself to research, occupying a minor position in King's College Hospital, and I was fortunate enough to excite considerable interest by my research into the pathology of catalepsy, and finally to win the Bruce Pinkerton prize and medal by the monograph on nervous lesions to which your friend has just alluded. I should not go too far if I were to say that there was a general impression at that time that a distinguished career lay before me.\n\n\"But the one great stumbling-block lay in my want of capital. As you will readily understand, a specialist who aims high is compelled to start in one of a dozen streets in the Cavendish Square quarter, all of which entail enormous rents and furnishing expenses. Besides this preliminary outlay, he must be prepared to keep himself for some years, and to hire a presentable carriage and horse. To do this was quite beyond my power, and I could only hope that by economy I might in ten years' time save enough to enable me to put up my plate. Suddenly, however, an unexpected incident opened up quite a new prospect to me.\n\n\"This was a visit from a gentleman of the name of Blessington, who was a complete stranger to me. He came up into my room one morning, and plunged into business in an instant.\n\n\"'You are the same Percy Trevelyan who has had so distinguished a career and won a great prize lately?' said he.\n\n\"I bowed.\n\n\"'Answer me frankly,' he continued, 'for you will find it to your interest to do so. You have all the cleverness which makes a successful man. Have you the tact?'\n\n\"I could not help smiling at the abruptness of the question.\n\n\"'I trust that I have my share,' I said.\n\n\"'Any bad habits? Not drawn towards drink, eh?'\n\n\"'Really, sir!' I cried.\n\n\"'Quite right! That's all right! But I was bound to ask. With all these qualities, why are you not in practice?'\n\n\"I shrugged my shoulders.\n\n\"'Come, come!' said he in his bustling way. 'It's the old story. More in your brains than in your pocket, eh? What would you say if I were to start you in Brook Street?'\n\n\"I stared at him in astonishment.\n\n\"'Oh, it's for my sake, not for yours,' he cried. 'I'll be perfectly frank with you, and if it suits you it will suit me very well. I have a few thousands to invest, d'ye see, and I think I'll sink them in you.'\n\n\"'But why?' I gasped.\n\n\"'Well, it's just like any other speculation, and safer than most.'\n\n\"'What am I to do, then?'\n\n\"'I'll tell you. I'll take the house, furnish it, pay the maids, and run the whole place. All you have to do is just to wear out your chair in the consulting-room. I'll let you have pocket-money and everything. Then you hand over to me three quarters of what you earn, and you keep the other quarter for yourself.'\n\n\"This was the strange proposal, Mr. Holmes, with which the man Blessington approached me. I won't weary you with the account of how we bargained and negotiated. It ended in my moving into the house next Lady Day. and starting in practice on very much the same conditions as he had suggested. He came himself to live with me in the character of a resident patient. His heart was weak, it appears, and he needed constant medical supervision. He turned the two best rooms of the first floor into a sitting-room and bedroom for himself. He was a man of singular habits, shunning company and very seldom going out. His life was irregular, but in one respect he was regularity itself. Every evening, at the same hour, he walked into the consulting-room, examined the books, put down five and three-pence for every guinea that I had earned, and carried the rest off to the strong-box in his own room.\n\n\"I may say with confidence that he never had occasion to regret his speculation. From the first it was a success. A few good cases and the reputation which I had won in the hospital brought me rapidly to the front, and during the last few years I have made him a rich man.\n\n\"So much, Mr. Holmes, for my past history and my relations with Mr. Blessington. It only remains for me now to tell you what has occurred to bring me here tonight.\n\n\"Some weeks ago Mr. Blessington came down to me in, as it seemed to me, a state of considerable agitation. He spoke of some burglary which, he said, had been committed in the West End, and he appeared, I remember, to be quite unnecessarily excited about it, declaring that a day should not pass before we should add stronger bolts to our windows and doors. For a week he continued to be in a peculiar state of restlessness, peering continually out of the windows, and ceasing to take the short walk which had usually been the prelude to his dinner. From his manner it struck me that he was in mortal dread of something or somebody, but when I questioned him upon the point he became so offensive that I was compelled to drop the subject. Gradually, as time passed, his fears appeared to die away, and he renewed his former habits, when a fresh event reduced him to the pitiable state of prostration in which he now lies.\n\n\"What happened was this. Two days ago I received the letter which I now read to you. Neither address nor date is attached to it.\n\n\"A Russian nobleman who is now resident in England [it runs], would be glad to avail himself of the professional assistance of Dr. Percy Trevelyan. He has been for some years a victim to cataleptic attacks, on which, as is well known, Dr. Trevelyan is an authority. He proposes to call at about a quarter-past six to-morrow evening, if Dr. Trevelyan will make it convenient to be at home.\n\n\"This letter interested me deeply, because the chief difficulty in the study of catalepsy is the rareness of the disease. You may believe, then, that I was in my consulting-room when, at the appointed hour, the page showed in the patient.\n\n\"He was an elderly man, thin, demure, and commonplace\u2014by no means the conception one forms of a Russian nobleman. I was much more struck by the appearance of his companion. This was a tall young man, surprisingly handsome, with a dark, fierce face, and the limbs and chest of a Hercules. He had his hand under the other's arm as they entered, and helped him to a chair with a tenderness which one would hardly have expected from his appearance.\n\n\"'You will excuse my coming in, Doctor,' said he to me, speaking English with a slight lisp. 'This is my father, and his health is a matter of the most overwhelming importance to me.'\n\n\"I was touched by this filial anxiety. 'You would, perhaps, care to remain during the consultation?' said I.\n\n\"'Not for the world,' he cried with a gesture of horror. 'It is more painful to me than I can express. If I were to see my father in one of these dreadful seizures I am convinced that I should never survive it. My own nervous system is an exceptionally sensitive one. With your permission, I will remain in the waiting-room while you go into my father's case.'\n\n\"To this, of course, I assented, and the young man withdrew. The patient and I then plunged into a discussion of his case, of which I took exhaustive notes. He was not remarkable for intelligence, and his answers were frequently obscure, which I attributed to his limited acquaintance with our language. Suddenly, however, as I sat writing, he ceased to give any answer at all to my inquiries, and on my turning towards him I was shocked to see that he was sitting bolt upright in his chair, staring at me with a perfectly blank and rigid face. He was again in the grip of his mysterious malady.\n\n\"My first feeling, as I have just said, was one of pity and horror. My second, I fear, was rather one of professional satisfaction. I made notes of my patient's pulse and temperature, tested the rigidity of his muscles, and examined his reflexes. There was nothing markedly abnormal in any of these conditions, which harmonized with my former experiences. I had obtained good results in such cases by the inhalation of nitrite of amyl, and the present seemed an admirable opportunity of testing its virtues. The bottle was downstairs in my laboratory, so, leaving my patient seated in his chair, I ran down to get it. There was some little delay in finding it\u2014five minutes, let us say\u2014and then I returned. Imagine my amazement to find the room empty and the patient gone.\n\n\"Of course, my first act was to run into the waiting-room. The son had gone also. The hall door had been closed, but not shut. My page who admits patients is a new boy and by no means quick. He waits downstairs and runs up to show patients out when I ring the consulting-room bell. He had heard nothing, and the affair remained a complete mystery. Mr. Blessington came in from his walk shortly afterwards, but I did not say anything to him upon the subject, for, to tell the truth, I have got in the way of late of holding as little communication with him as possible.\n\n\"Well, I never thought that I should see anything more of the Russian and his son, so you can imagine my amazement when, at the very same hour this evening, they both came marching into my consulting-room, just as they had done before.\n\n\"'I feel that I owe you a great many apologies for my abrupt departure yesterday, Doctor,' said my patient.\n\n\"'I confess that I was very much surprised at it,' said I.\n\n\"'Well, the fact is,' he remarked, 'that when I recover from these attacks my mind is always very clouded as to all that has gone before. I woke up in a strange room, as it seemed to me, and made my way out into the street in a sort of dazed way when you were absent.'\n\n\"'And I,' said the son, 'seeing my father pass the door of the waiting-room, naturally thought that the consultation had come to an end. It was not until we had reached home that I began to realize the true state of affairs.'\n\n\"'Well,' said I, laughing, 'there is no harm done except that you puzzled me terribly; so if you, sir, would kindly step into the waiting-room I shall be happy to continue our consultation which was brought to so abrupt an ending.'\n\n\"For half an hour or so I discussed the old gentleman's symptoms with him, and then, having prescribed for him, I saw him go off upon the arm of his son.\n\n\"I have told you that Mr. Blessington generally chose this hour of the day for his exercise. He came in shortly afterwards and passed upstairs. An instant later I heard him running down, and he burst into my consulting-room like a man who is mad with panic:\n\n\"'Who has been in my room?' he cried.\n\n\"'No one,' said I.\n\n\"'It's a lie!' he yelled. 'Come up and look!'\n\n\"I passed over the grossness of his language, as he seemed half out of his mind with fear. When I went upstairs with him he pointed to several footprints upon the light carpet.\n\n\"'Do you mean to say those are mine?' he cried.\n\n\"They were certainly very much larger than any which he could have made, and were evidently quite fresh. It rained hard this afternoon, as you know, and my patients were the only people who called. It must have been the case, then, that the man in the waiting-room had, for some unknown reason, while I was busy with the other, ascended to the room of my resident patient. Nothing had been touched or taken, but there were the footprints to prove that the intrusion was an undoubted fact.\n\n\"Mr. Blessington seemed more excited over the matter than I should have thought possible, though of course it was enough to disturb anybody's peace of mind. He actually sat crying in an armchair, and I could hardly get him to speak coherently. It was his suggestion that I should come round to you, and of course I at once saw the propriety of it, for certainly the incident is a very singular one, though he appears to completely overrate its importance. If you would only come back with me in my brougham, you would at least be able to soothe him, though I can hardly hope that you will be able to explain this remarkable occurrence.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes had listened to this long narrative with an intentness which showed me that his interest was keenly aroused. His face was as impassive as ever, but his lids had drooped more heavily over his eyes, and his smoke had curled up more thickly from his pipe to emphasize each curious episode in the doctor's tale. As our visitor concluded, Holmes sprang up without a word, handed me my hat, picked his own from the table, and followed Dr. Trevelyan to the door. Within a quarter of an hour we had been dropped at the door of the physician's residence in Brook Street, one of those sombre, flat-faced houses which one associates with a West End practice. A small page admitted us, and we began at once to ascend the broad, well-carpeted stair.\n\nBut a singular interruption brought us to a standstill. The light at the top was suddenly whisked out, and from the darkness came a reedy, quavering voice.\n\n\"I have a pistol,\" it cried. \"I give you my word that I'll fire if you come any nearer.\"\n\n\"This really grows outrageous, Mr. Blessington,\" cried Dr. Trevelyan.\n\n\"Oh, then it is you, Doctor,\" said the voice with a great heave of relief. \"But those other gentlemen, are they what they pretend to be?\"\n\nWe were conscious of a long scrutiny out of the darkness.\n\n\"Yes, yes, it's all right,\" said the voice at last. \"You can come up, and I am sorry if my precautions have annoyed you.\"\n\nHe relit the stair gas as he spoke, and we saw before us a singular-looking man, whose appearance, as well as his voice, testified to his jangled nerves. He was very fat, but had apparently at some time been much fatter, so that the skin hung about his face in loose pouches, like the cheeks of a bloodhound. He was of a sickly colour, and his thin, sandy hair seemed to bristle up with the intensity of his emotion. In his hand he held a pistol, but he thrust it into his pocket as we advanced.\n\n\"Good-evening, Mr. Holmes,\" said he. \"I am sure I am very much obliged to you for coming round. No one ever needed your advice more than I do. I suppose that Dr. Trevelyan has told you of this most unwarrantable intrusion into my rooms.\"\n\n\"Quite so,\" said Holmes. \"Who are these two men, Mr. Blessington, and why do they wish to molest you?\"\n\n\"Well, well,\" said the resident patient in a nervous fashion, \"of course it is hard to say that. You can hardly expect me to answer that, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"Do you mean that you don't know?\"\n\n\"Come in here, if you please. Just have the kindness to step in here.\"\n\nHe led the way into his bedroom, which was large and comfortably furnished.\n\n\"You see that,\" said he, pointing to a big black box at the end of his bed. \"I have never been a very rich man, Mr. Holmes\u2014never made but one investment in my life, as Dr. Trevelyan would tell you. But I don't believe in bankers. I would never trust a banker, Mr. Holmes. Between ourselves, what little I have is in that box, so you can understand what it means to me when unknown people force themselves into my rooms.\"\n\nHolmes looked at Blessington in his questioning way and shook his head.\n\n\"I cannot possibly advise you if you try to deceive me,\" said he.\n\n\"But I have told you everything.\"\n\nHolmes turned on his heel with a gesture of disgust. \"Good-night, Dr. Trevelyan,\" said he.\n\n\"And no advice for me?\" cried Blessington in a breaking voice.\n\n\"My advice to you, sir, is to speak the truth.\"\n\nA minute later we were in the street and walking for home. We had crossed Oxford Street and were halfway down Harley Street before I could get a word from my companion.\n\n\"Sorry to bring you out on such a fool's errand, Watson,\" he said at last. \"It is an interesting case, too, at the bottom of it.\"\n\n\"I can make little of it,\" I confessed.\n\n\"Well, it is quite evident that there are two men\u2014more, perhaps, but at least two\u2014who are determined for some reason to get at this fellow Blessington. I have no doubt in my mind that both on the first and on the second occasion that young man penetrated to Blessington's room, while his confederate, by an ingenious device, kept the doctor from interfering.\"\n\n\"And the catalepsy?\"\n\n\"A fraudulent imitation, Watson, though I should hardly dare to hint as much to our specialist. It is a very easy complaint to imitate. I have done it myself.\"\n\n\"And then?\"\n\n\"By the purest chance Blessington was out on each occasion. Their reason for choosing so unusual an hour for a consultation was obviously to insure that there should be no other patient in the waiting-room. It just happened, however, that this hour coincided with Blessington's constitutional, which seems to show that they were not very well acquainted with his daily routine. Of course, if they had been merely after plunder they would at least have made some attempt to search for it. Besides, I can read in a man's eye when it is his own skin that he is frightened for. It is inconceivable that this fellow could have made two such vindictive enemies as these appear to be without knowing of it. I hold it, therefore, to be certain that he does know who these men are, and that for reasons of his own he suppresses it. It is just possible that to-morrow may find him in a more communicative mood.\"\n\n\"Is there not one alternative,\" I suggested, \"grotesquely improbable, no doubt, but still just conceivable? Might the whole story of the cataleptic Russian and his son be a concoction of Dr. Trevelyan's, who has, for his own purposes, been in Blessington's rooms?\"\n\nI saw in the gas-light that Holmes wore an amused smile at this brilliant departure of mine.\n\n\"My dear fellow,\" said he, \"it was one of the first solutions which occurred to me, but I was soon able to corroborate the doctor's tale. This young man has left prints upon the stair-carpet which made it quite superfluous for me to ask to see those which he had made in the room. When I tell you that his shoes were square-toed instead of being pointed like Blessington's, and were quite an inch and a third longer than the doctor's, you will acknowledge that there can be no doubt as to his individuality. But we may sleep on it now, for I shall be surprised if we do not hear something further from Brook Street in the morning.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes's prophecy was soon fulfilled, and in a dramatic fashion. At half-past seven next morning, in the first dim glimmer of daylight, I found him standing by my bedside in his dressing-gown.\n\n\"There's a brougham waiting for us, Watson,\" said he.\n\n\"What's the matter, then?\"\n\n\"The Brook Street business.\"\n\n\"Any fresh news?\"\n\n\"Tragic, but ambiguous,\" said he, pulling up the blind. \"Look at this\u2014a sheet from a notebook, with 'For God's sake come at once. P. T.,' scrawled upon it in pencil. Our friend, the doctor, was hard put to it when he wrote this. Come along, my dear fellow, for it's an urgent call.\"\n\nIn a quarter of an hour or so we were back at the physician's house. He came running out to meet us with a face of horror.\n\n\"Oh, such a business!\" he cried with his hands to his temples.\n\n\"What then?\"\n\n\"Blessington has committed suicide!\"\n\nHolmes whistled.\n\n\"Yes, he hanged himself during the night.\"\n\nWe had entered, and the doctor had preceded us into what was evidently his waiting-room.\n\n\"I really hardly know what I am doing,\" he cried. \"The police are already upstairs. It has shaken me most dreadfully.\"\n\n\"When did you find it out?\"\n\n\"He has a cup of tea taken in to him early every morning. When the maid entered, about seven, there the unfortunate fellow was hanging in the middle of the room. He had tied his cord to the hook on which the heavy lamp used to hang, and he had jumped off from the top of the very box that he showed us yesterday.\"\n\nHolmes stood for a moment in deep thought.\n\n\"With your permission,\" said he at last, \"I should like to go upstairs and look into the matter.\"\n\nWe both ascended, followed by the doctor.\n\nIt was a dreadful sight which met us as we entered the bedroom door. I have spoken of the impression of flabbiness which this man Blessington conveyed. As he dangled from the hook it was exaggerated and intensified until he was scarce human in his appearance. The neck was drawn out like a plucked chicken's, making the rest of him seem the more obese and unnatural by the contrast. He was clad only in his long night-dress, and his swollen ankles and ungainly feet protruded starkly from beneath it. Beside him stood a smart-looking police-inspector, who was taking notes in a pocketbook.\n\n\"Ah, Mr. Holmes,\" said he heartily as my friend entered, \"I am delighted to see you.\"\n\n\"Good-morning, Lanner,\" answered Holmes; \"you won't think me an intruder, I am sure. Have you heard of the events which led up to this affair?\"\n\n\"Yes, I heard something of them.\"\n\n\"Have you formed any opinion?\"\n\n\"As far as I can see, the man has been driven out of his senses by fright. The bed has been well slept in, you see. There's his impression, deep enough. It's about five in the morning, you know, that suicides are most common. That would be about his time for hanging himself. It seems to have been a very deliberate affair.\"\n\n\"I should say that he has been dead about three hours, judging by the rigidity of the muscles,\" said I.\n\n\"Noticed anything peculiar about the room?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"Found a screw-driver and some screws on the wash-hand stand. Seems to have smoked heavily during the night, too. Here are four cigar-ends that I picked out of the fireplace.\"\n\n\"Hum!\" said Holmes, \"have you got his cigar-holder?\"\n\n\"No, I have seen none.\"\n\n\"His cigar-case, then?\"\n\n\"Yes, it was in his coat-pocket.\"\n\nHolmes opened it and smelled the single cigar which it contained.\n\n\"Oh, this is a Havana, and these others are cigars of the peculiar sort which are imported by the Dutch from their East Indian colonies. They are usually wrapped in straw, you know, and are thinner for their length than any other brand.\" He picked up the four ends and examined them with his pocket-lens.\n\n\"Two of these have been smoked from a holder and two without,\" said he. \"Two have been cut by a not very sharp knife, and two have had the ends bitten off by a set of excellent teeth. This is no suicide, Mr. Lanner. It is a very deeply planned and cold-blooded murder.\"\n\n\"Impossible!\" cried the inspector.\n\n\"And why?\"\n\n\"Why should anyone murder a man in so clumsy a fashion as by hanging him?\"\n\n\"That is what we have to find out.\"\n\n\"How could they get in?\"\n\n\"Through the front door.\"\n\n\"It was barred in the morning.\"\n\n\"Then it was barred after them.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"I saw their traces. Excuse me a moment, and I may be able to give you some further information about it.\"\n\nHe went over to the door, and turning the lock he examined it in his methodical way. Then he took out the key, which was on the inside, and inspected that also. The bed, the carpet, the chairs, the mantelpiece, the dead body, and the rope were each in turn examined, until at last he professed himself satisfied, and with my aid and that of the inspector cut down the wretched object and laid it reverently under a sheet.\n\n\"How about this rope?\" he asked.\n\n\"It is cut off this,\" said Dr. Trevelyan, drawing a large coil from under the bed. \"He was morbidly nervous of fire, and always kept this beside him, so that he might escape by the window in case the stairs were burning.\"\n\n\"That must have saved them trouble,\" said Holmes thoughtfully. \"Yes, the actual facts are very plain, and I shall be surprised if by the afternoon I cannot give you the reasons for them as well. I will take this photograph of Blessington, which I see upon the mantelpiece, as it may help me in my inquiries.\"\n\n\"But you have told us nothing!\" cried the doctor.\n\n\"Oh, there can be no doubt as to the sequence of events,\" said Holmes. \"There were three of them in it: the young man, the old man, and a third, to whose identity I have no clue. The first two, I need hardly remark, are the same who masqueraded as the Russian count and his son, so we can give a very full description of them. They were admitted by a confederate inside the house. If I might offer you a word of advice, Inspector, it would be to arrest the page, who, as I understand, has only recently come into your service, Doctor.\"\n\n\"The young imp cannot be found,\" said Dr. Trevelyan; \"the maid and the cook have just been searching for him.\"\n\nHolmes shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"He has played a not unimportant part in this drama,\" said he. \"The three men having ascended the stairs, which they did on tiptoe, the elder man first, the younger man second, and the unknown man in the rear\u2014\"\n\n\"My dear Holmes!\" I ejaculated.\n\n\"Oh, there could be no question as to the superimposing of the footmarks. I had the advantage of learning which was which last night. They ascended, then, to Mr. Blessington's room, the door of which they found to be locked. With the help of a wire, however, they forced round the key. Even without the lens you will perceive, by the scratches on this ward, where the pressure was applied.\n\n\"On entering the room their first proceeding must have been to gag Mr. Blessington. He may have been asleep, or he may have been so paralyzed with terror as to have been unable to cry out. These walls are thick, and it is conceivable that his shriek, if he had time to utter one, was unheard.\n\n\"Having secured him, it is evident to me that a consultation of some sort was held. Probably it was something in the nature of a judicial proceeding. It must have lasted for some time, for it was then that these cigars were smoked. The older man sat in that wicker chair; it was he who used the cigar-holder. The younger man sat over yonder; he knocked his ash off against the chest of drawers. The third fellow paced up and down. Blessington, I think, sat upright in the bed, but of that I cannot be absolutely certain.\n\n\"Well, it ended by their taking Blessington and hanging him. The matter was so prearranged that it is my belief that they brought with them some sort of block or pulley which might serve as a gallows. That screw-driver and those screws were, as I conceive, for fixing it up. Seeing the hook, however, they naturally saved themselves the trouble. Having finished their work they made off, and the door was barred behind them by their confederate.\"\n\nWe had all listened, with the deepest interest to this sketch of the night's doings, which Holmes had deduced from signs so subtle and minute that, even when he had pointed them out to us, we could scarcely follow him in his reasonings. The inspector hurried away on the instant to make inquiries about the page, while Holmes and I returned to Baker Street for breakfast.\n\n\"I'll be back by three,\" said he when we had finished our meal. \"Both the inspector and the doctor will meet me here at that hour, and I hope by that time to have cleared up any little obscurity which the case may still present.\"\n\nOur visitors arrived at the appointed time; but it was a quarter to four before my friend put in an appearance. From his expression as he entered, however, I could see that all had gone well with him.\n\n\"Any news, Inspector?\"\n\n\"We have got the boy, sir.\"\n\n\"Excellent, and I have got the men.\"\n\n\"You have got them!\" we cried, all three.\n\n\"Well, at least I have got their identity. This so-called Blessington is, as I expected, well known at headquarters, and so are his assailants. Their names are Biddle, Hayward, and Moffat.\"\n\n\"The Worthingdon bank gang,\" cried the inspector.\n\n\"Precisely,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Then Blessington must have been Sutton.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Why, that makes it as clear as crystal,\" said the inspector.\n\nBut Trevelyan and I looked at each other in bewilderment.\n\n\"You must surely remember the great Worthingdon bank business,\" said Holmes. \"Five men were in it\u2014these four and a fifth called Cartwright. Tobin, the caretaker, was murdered, and the thieves got away with seven thousand pounds. This was in 1875. They were all five arrested, but the evidence against them was by no means conclusive. This Blessington or Sutton, who was the worst of the gang, turned informer. On his evidence Cartwright was hanged and the other three got fifteen years apiece. When they got out the other day, which was some years before their full term, they set themselves, as you perceive, to hunt down the traitor and to avenge the death of their comrade upon him. Twice they tried to get at him and failed; a third time, you see, it came off. Is there anything further which I can explain, Dr. Trevelyan?\"\n\n\"I think you have made it all remarkably clear,\" said the doctor. \"No doubt the day on which he was so perturbed was the day when he had seen of their release in the newspapers.\"\n\n\"Quite so. His talk about a burglary was the merest blind.\"\n\n\"But why could he not tell you this?\"\n\n\"Well, my dear sir, knowing the vindictive character of his old associates, he was trying to hide his own identity from everybody as long as he could. His secret was a shameful one, and he could not bring himself to divulge it. However, wretch as he was, he was still living under the shield of British law, and I have no doubt, Inspector, that you will see that, though that shield may fail to guard, the sword of justice is still there to avenge.\"\n\nSuch were the singular circumstances in connection with the Resident Patient and the Brook Street Doctor. From that night nothing has been seen of the three murderers by the police, and it is surmised at Scotland Yard that they were among the passengers of the ill-fated steamer Norah Creina, which was lost some years ago with all hands upon the Portuguese coast, some leagues to the north of Oporto. The proceedings against the page broke down for want of evidence, and the Brook Street Mystery, as it was called, has never until now been fully dealt with in any public print." + }, + { + "title": "THE GREEK INTERPRETER", + "text": "During my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Sherlock Holmes I had never heard him refer to his relations, and hardly ever to his own early life. This reticence upon his part had increased the somewhat inhuman effect which he produced upon me, until sometimes I found myself regarding him as an isolated phenomenon, a brain without a heart, as deficient in human sympathy as he was pre\u00ebminent in intelligence. His aversion to women and his disinclination to form new friendships were both typical of his unemotional character, but not more so than his complete suppression of every reference to his own people. I had come to believe that he was an orphan with no relatives living; but one day, to my very great surprise, he began to talk to me about his brother.\n\nIt was after tea on a summer evening, and the conversation, which had roamed in a desultory, spasmodic fashion from golf clubs to the causes of the change in the obliquity of the ecliptic, came round at last to the question of atavism and hereditary aptitudes. The point under discussion was, how far any singular gift in an individual was due to his ancestry and how far to his own early training.\n\n\"In your own case,\" said I, \"from all that you have told me, it seems obvious that your faculty of observation and your peculiar facility for deduction are due to your own systematic training.\"\n\n\"To some extent,\" he answered thoughtfully. \"My ancestors were country squires, who appear to have led much the same life as is natural to their class. But, none the less, my turn that way is in my veins, and may have come with my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist. Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.\"\n\n\"But how do you know that it is hereditary?\"\n\n\"Because my brother Mycroft possesses it in a larger degree than I do.\"\n\nThis was news to me indeed. If there were another man with such singular powers in England, how was it that neither police nor public had heard of him? I put the question, with a hint that it was my companion's modesty which made him acknowledge his brother as his superior. Holmes laughed at my suggestion.\n\n\"My dear Watson,\" said he, \"I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one's self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one's own powers. When I say, therefore, that Mycroft has better powers of observation than I, you may take it that I am speaking the exact and literal truth.\"\n\n\"Is he your junior?\"\n\n\"Seven years my senior.\"\n\n\"How comes it that he is unknown?\"\n\n\"Oh, he is very well known in his own circle.\"\n\n\"Where, then?\"\n\n\"Well, in the Diogenes Club, for example.\"\n\nI had never heard of the institution, and my face must have proclaimed as much, for Sherlock Homes pulled out his watch.\n\n\"The Diogenes Club is the queerest club in London, and Mycroft one of the queerest men. He's always there from quarter to five to twenty to eight. It's six now, so if you care for a stroll this beautiful evening I shall be very happy to introduce you to two curiosities.\"\n\nFive minutes later we were in the street, walking towards Regent's Circus.\n\n\"You wonder,\" said my companion, \"why it is that Mycroft does not use his powers for detective work. He is incapable of it.\"\n\n\"But I thought you said\u2014\"\n\n\"I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an armchair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right. Again and again I have taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterwards proved to be the correct one. And yet he was absolutely incapable of working out the practical points which must be gone into before a case could be laid before a judge or jury.\"\n\n\"It is not his profession, then?\"\n\n\"By no means. What is to me a means of livelihood is to him the merest hobby of a dilettante. He has an extraordinary faculty for figures, and audits the books in some of the government departments. Mycroft lodges in Pall Mall, and he walks round the corner into Whitehall every morning and back every evening. From year's end to year's end he takes no other exercise, and is seen nowhere else, except only in the Diogenes Club, which is just opposite his rooms.\"\n\n\"I cannot recall the name.\"\n\n\"Very likely not. There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.\"\n\nWe had reached Pall Mall as we talked, and were walking down it from the St. James's end. Sherlock Holmes stopped at a door some little distance from the Carlton, and, cautioning me not to speak, he led the way into the hall. Through the glass panelling I caught a glimpse of a large and luxurious room, in which a considerable number of men were sitting about and reading papers, each in his own little nook. Holmes showed me into a small chamber which looked out into Pall Mall, and then, leaving me for a minute, he came back with a companion whom I knew could only be his brother.\n\nMycroft Holmes was a much larger and stouter man than Sherlock. His body was absolutely corpulent, but his face, though massive, had preserved something of the sharpness of expression which was so remarkable in that of his brother. His eyes, which were of a peculiarly light, watery gray, seemed to always retain that far-away, introspective look which I had only observed in Sherlock's when he was exerting his full powers.\n\n\"I am glad to meet you, sir,\" said he, putting out a broad, fat hand like the flipper of a seal. \"I hear of Sherlock everywhere since you became his chronicler. By the way, Sherlock, I expected to see you round last week to consult me over that Manor House case. I thought you might be a little out of your depth.\"\n\n\"No, I solved it,\" said my friend, smiling.\n\n\"It was Adams, of course.\"\n\n\"Yes, it was Adams.\"\n\n\"I was sure of it from the first.\" The two sat down together in the bow-window of the club. \"To anyone who wishes to study mankind this is the spot,\" said Mycroft. \"Look at the magnificent types! Look at these two men who are coming towards us, for example.\"\n\n\"The billiard-marker and the other?\"\n\n\"Precisely. What do you make of the other?\"\n\nThe two men had stopped opposite the window. Some chalk marks over the waistcoat pocket were the only signs of billiards which I could see in one of them. The other was a very small, dark fellow, with his hat pushed back and several packages under his arm.\n\n\"An old soldier, I perceive,\" said Sherlock.\n\n\"And very recently discharged,\" remarked the brother.\n\n\"Served in India, I see.\"\n\n\"And a non-commissioned officer.\"\n\n\"Royal Artillery, I fancy,\" said Sherlock.\n\n\"And a widower.\"\n\n\"But with a child.\"\n\n\"Children, my dear boy, children.\"\n\n\"Come,\" said I, laughing, \"this is a little too much.\"\n\n\"Surely,\" answered Holmes, \"it is not hard to say that a man with that bearing, expression of authority, and sun-baked skin, is a soldier, is more than a private, and is not long from India.\"\n\n\"That he has not left the service long is shown by his still wearing his ammunition boots, as they are called,\" observed Mycroft.\n\n\"He had not the cavalry stride, yet he wore his hat on one side, as is shown by the lighter skin on that side of his brow. His weight is against his being a sapper. He is in the artillery.\"\n\n\"Then, of course, his complete mourning shows that he has lost someone very dear. The fact that he is doing his own shopping looks as though it were his wife. He has been buying things for children, you perceive. There is a rattle, which shows that one of them is very young. The wife probably died in childbed. The fact that he has a picture-book under his arm shows that there is another child to be thought of.\"\n\nI began to understand what my friend meant when he said that his brother possessed even keener faculties than he did himself. He glanced across at me and smiled. Mycroft took snuff from a tortoise-shell box and brushed away the wandering grains from his coat front with a large, red silk handkerchief.\n\n\"By the way, Sherlock,\" said he, \"I have had something quite after your own heart\u2014a most singular problem\u2014submitted to my judgment. I really had not the energy to follow it up save in a very incomplete fashion, but it gave me a basis for some pleasing speculations. If you would care to hear the facts\u2014\"\n\n\"My dear Mycroft, I should be delighted.\"\n\nThe brother scribbled a note upon a leaf of his pocket-book, and, ringing the bell, he handed it to the waiter.\n\n\"I have asked Mr. Melas to step across,\" said he. \"He lodges on the floor above me, and I have some slight acquaintance with him, which led him to come to me in his perplexity. Mr. Melas is a Greek by extraction, as I understand, and he is a remarkable linguist. He earns his living partly as interpreter in the law courts and partly by acting as guide to any wealthy Orientals who may visit the Northumberland Avenue hotels. I think I will leave him to tell his very remarkable experience in his own fashion.\"\n\nA few minutes later we were joined by a short, stout man whose olive face and coal black hair proclaimed his Southern origin, though his speech was that of an educated Englishman. He shook hands eagerly with Sherlock Holmes, and his dark eyes sparkled with pleasure when he understood that the specialist was anxious to hear his story.\n\n\"I do not believe that the police credit me\u2014on my word, I do not,\" said he in a wailing voice. \"Just because they have never heard of it before, they think that such a thing cannot be. But I know that I shall never be easy in my mind until I know what has become of my poor man with the sticking-plaster upon his face.\"\n\n\"I am all attention,\" said Sherlock Holmes.\n\n\"This is Wednesday evening,\" said Mr. Melas. \"Well, then, it was Monday night\u2014only two days ago, you understand\u2014that all this happened. I am an interpreter, as perhaps my neighbour there has told you. I interpret all languages\u2014or nearly all\u2014but as I am a Greek by birth and with a Grecian name, it is with that particular tongue that I am principally associated. For many years I have been the chief Greek interpreter in London, and my name is very well known in the hotels.\n\n\"It happens not unfrequently that I am sent for at strange hours by foreigners who get into difficulties, or by travellers who arrive late and wish my services. I was not surprised, therefore, on Monday night when a Mr. Latimer, a very fashionably dressed young man, came up to my rooms and asked me to accompany him in a cab which was waiting at the door. A Greek friend had come to see him upon business, he said, and as he could speak nothing but his own tongue, the services of an interpreter were indispensable. He gave me to understand that his house was some little distance off, in Kensington, and he seemed to be in a great hurry, bustling me rapidly into the cab when we had descended to the street.\n\n\"I say into the cab, but I soon became doubtful as to whether it was not a carriage in which I found myself. It was certainly more roomy than the ordinary four-wheeled disgrace to London, and the fittings, though frayed, were of rich quality. Mr. Latimer seated himself opposite to me and we started off through Charing Cross and up the Shaftesbury Avenue. We had come out upon Oxford Street and I had ventured some remark as to this being a roundabout way to Kensington, when my words were arrested by the extraordinary conduct of my companion.\n\n\"He began by drawing a most formidable-looking bludgeon loaded with lead from his pocket, and switching it backward and forward several times, as if to test its weight and strength. Then he placed it without a word upon the seat beside him. Having done this, he drew up the windows on each side, and I found to my astonishment that they were covered with paper so as to prevent my seeing through them.\n\n\"'I am sorry to cut off your view, Mr. Melas,' said he. 'The fact is that I have no intention that you should see what the place is to which we are driving. It might possibly be inconvenient to me if you could find your way there again.'\n\n\"As you can imagine, I was utterly taken aback by such an address. My companion was a powerful, broad-shouldered young fellow, and, apart from the weapon, I should not have had the slightest chance in a struggle with him.\n\n\"'This is very extraordinary conduct, Mr. Latimer,' I stammered. 'You must be aware that what you are doing is quite illegal.'\n\n\"'It is somewhat of a liberty, no doubt,' said he, 'but we'll make it up to you. I must warn you, however, Mr. Melas, that if at any time to-night you attempt to raise an alarm or do anything which is against my interest, you will find it a very serious thing. I beg you to remember that no one knows where you are, and that, whether you are in this carriage or in my house, you are equally in my power.'\n\n\"His words were quiet, but he had a rasping way of saying them, which was very menacing. I sat in silence wondering what on earth could be his reason for kidnapping me in this extraordinary fashion. Whatever it might be, it was perfectly clear that there was no possible use in my resisting, and that I could only wait to see what might befall.\n\n\"For nearly two hours we drove without my having the least clue as to where we were going. Sometimes the rattle of the stones told of a paved causeway, and at others our smooth, silent course suggested asphalt; but, save by this variation in sound, there was nothing at all which could in the remotest way help me to form a guess as to where we were. The paper over each window was impenetrable to light, and a blue curtain was drawn across the glasswork in front. It was a quarter-past seven when we left Pall Mall, and my watch showed me that it was ten minutes to nine when we at last came to a standstill. My companion let down the window, and I caught a glimpse of a low, arched doorway with a lamp burning above it. As I was hurried from the carriage it swung open, and I found myself inside the house, with a vague impression of a lawn and trees on each side of me as I entered. Whether these were private grounds, however, or bona-fide country was more than I could possibly venture to say.\n\n\"There was a coloured gas-lamp inside which was turned so low that I could see little save that the hall was of some size and hung with pictures. In the dim light I could make out that the person who had opened the door was a small, mean-looking, middle-aged man with rounded shoulders. As he turned towards us the glint of the light showed me that he was wearing glasses.\n\n\"'Is this Mr. Melas, Harold?' said he.\n\n\"'Yes.'\n\n\"'Well done, well done! No ill-will, Mr. Melas, I hope, but we could not get on without you. If you deal fair with us you'll not regret it, but if you try any tricks, God help you!' He spoke in a nervous, jerky fashion, and with little giggling laughs in between, but somehow he impressed me with fear more than the other.\n\n\"'What do you want with me?' I asked.\n\n\"'Only to ask a few questions of a Greek gentleman who is visiting us, and to let us have the answers. But say no more than you are told to say, or\u2014' here came the nervous giggle again\u2014'you had better never have been born.'\n\n\"As he spoke he opened a door and showed the way into a room which appeared to be very richly furnished, but again the only light was afforded by a single lamp half-turned down. The chamber was certainly large, and the way in which my feet sank into the carpet as I stepped across it told me of its richness. I caught glimpses of velvet chairs, a high white marble mantel-piece, and what seemed to be a suit of Japanese armour at one side of it. There was a chair just under the lamp, and the elderly man motioned that I should sit in it. The younger had left us, but he suddenly returned through another door, leading with him a gentleman clad in some sort of loose dressing-gown who moved slowly towards us. As he came into the circle of dim light which enabled me to see him more clearly I was thrilled with horror at his appearance. He was deadly pale and terribly emaciated, with the protruding, brilliant eyes of a man whose spirit was greater than his strength. But what shocked me more than any signs of physical weakness was that his face was grotesquely criss-crossed with sticking-plaster, and that one large pad of it was fastened over his mouth.\n\n\"'Have you the slate, Harold?' cried the older man, as this strange being fell rather than sat down into a chair. 'Are his hands loose? Now, then, give him the pencil. You are to ask the questions, Mr. Melas, and he will write the answers. Ask him first of all whether he is prepared to sign the papers?\"\n\n\"The man's eyes flashed fire.\n\n\"'Never!' he wrote in Greek upon the slate.\n\n\"'On no conditions?' I asked at the bidding of our tyrant.\n\n\"'Only if I see her married in my presence by a Greek priest whom I know.'\n\n\"The man giggled in his venomous way.\n\n\"'You know what awaits you, then?'\n\n\"'I care nothing for myself.'\n\n\"These are samples of the questions and answers which made up our strange half-spoken, half-written conversation. Again and again I had to ask him whether he would give in and sign the documents. Again and again I had the same indignant reply. But soon a happy thought came to me. I took to adding on little sentences of my own to each question, innocent ones at first, to test whether either of our companions knew anything of the matter, and then, as I found that they showed no sign I played a more dangerous game. Our conversation ran something like this:\n\n\"'You can do no good by this obstinacy. Who are you?'\n\n\"'I care not. I am a stranger in London.'\n\n\"'Your fate will be on your own head. How long have you been here?'\n\n\"'Let it be so. Three weeks.'\n\n\"'The property can never be yours. What ails you?'\n\n\"'It shall not go to villains. They are starving me.'\n\n\"'You shall go free if you sign. What house is this?'\n\n\"'I will never sign. I do not know.'\n\n\"'You are not doing her any service. What is your name?'\n\n\"'Let me hear her say so. Kratides.'\n\n\"'You shall see her if you sign. Where are you from?'\n\n\"'Then I shall never see her. Athens.'\n\n\"Another five minutes, Mr. Holmes, and I should have wormed out the whole story under their very noses. My very next question might have cleared the matter up, but at that instant the door opened and a woman stepped into the room. I could not see her clearly enough to know more than that she was tall and graceful, with black hair, and clad in some sort of loose white gown.\n\n\"'Harold,' said she, speaking English with a broken accent. 'I could not stay away longer. It is so lonely up there with only\u2014Oh, my God, it is Paul!'\n\n\"These last words were in Greek, and at the same instant the man with a convulsive effort tore the plaster from his lips, and screaming out 'Sophy! Sophy!' rushed into the woman's arms. Their embrace was but for an instant, however, for the younger man seized the woman and pushed her out of the room, while the elder easily overpowered his emaciated victim and dragged him away through the other door. For a moment I was left alone in the room, and I sprang to my feet with some vague idea that I might in some way get a clue to what this house was in which I found myself. Fortunately, however, I took no steps, for looking up I saw that the older man was standing in the doorway, with his eyes fixed upon me.\n\n\"'That will do, Mr. Melas,' said he. 'You perceive that we have taken you into our confidence over some very private business. We should not have troubled you, only that our friend who speaks Greek and who began these negotiations has been forced to return to the East. It was quite necessary for us to find someone to take his place, and we were fortunate in hearing of your powers.'\n\n\"I bowed.\n\n\"'There are five sovereigns here,' said he, walking up to me, 'which will, I hope, be a sufficient fee. But remember,' he added, tapping me lightly on the chest and giggling, 'if you speak to a human soul about this\u2014one human soul, mind\u2014well, may God have mercy upon your soul!'\n\n\"I cannot tell you the loathing and horror with which this insignificant-looking man inspired me. I could see him better now as the lamp-light shone upon him. His features were peaky and sallow, and his little pointed beard was thready and ill-nourished. He pushed his face forward as he spoke and his lips and eyelids were continually twitching like a man with St. Vitus's dance. I could not help thinking that his strange, catchy little laugh was also a symptom of some nervous malady. The terror of his face lay in his eyes, however, steel gray, and glistening coldly with a malignant, inexorable cruelty in their depths.\n\n\"'We shall know if you speak of this,' said he. 'We have our own means of information. Now you will find the carriage waiting, and my friend will see you on your way.'\n\n\"I was hurried through the hall and into the vehicle, again obtaining that momentary glimpse of trees and a garden. Mr. Latimer followed closely at my heels and took his place opposite to me without a word. In silence we again drove for an interminable distance with the windows raised, until at last, just after midnight, the carriage pulled up.\n\n\"'You will get down here, Mr. Melas,' said my companion. 'I am sorry to leave you so far from your house, but there is no alternative. Any attempt upon your part to follow the carriage can only end in injury to yourself.'\n\n\"He opened the door as he spoke, and I had hardly time to spring out when the coachman lashed the horse and the carriage rattled away. I looked around me in astonishment. I was on some sort of a heathy common mottled over with dark clumps of furze-bushes. Far away stretched a line of houses, with a light here and there in the upper windows. On the other side I saw the red signal-lamps of a railway.\n\n\"The carriage which had brought me was already out of sight. I stood gazing round and wondering where on earth I might be, when I saw someone coming towards me in the darkness. As he came up to me I made out that he was a railway porter.\n\n\"'Can you tell me what place this is?' I asked.\n\n\"'Wandsworth Common,' said he.\n\n\"'Can I get a train into town?'\n\n\"'If you walk on a mile or so to Clapham Junction,' said he, 'you'll just be in time for the last to Victoria.'\n\n\"So that was the end of my adventure, Mr. Holmes. I do not know where I was, nor whom I spoke with, nor anything save what I have told you. But I know that there is foul play going on, and I want to help that unhappy man if I can. I told the whole story to Mr. Mycroft Holmes next morning, and subsequently to the police.\"\n\nWe all sat in silence for some little time after listening to this extraordinary narrative. Then Sherlock looked across at his brother.\n\n\"Any steps?\" he asked.\n\nMycroft picked up the Daily News, which was lying on the side-table.\n\n\"Anybody supplying any information as to the whereabouts of a Greek gentleman named Paul Kratides, from Athens, who is unable to speak English, will be rewarded. A similar reward paid to anyone giving information about a Greek lady whose first name is Sophy. X 2473.\n\n\"That was in all the dailies. No answer.\"\n\n\"How about the Greek legation?\"\n\n\"I have inquired. They know nothing.\"\n\n\"A wire to the head of the Athens police, then?\"\n\n\"Sherlock has all the energy of the family,\" said Mycroft, turning to me. \"Well, you take the case up by all means and let me know if you do any good.\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" answered my friend, rising from his chair. \"I'll let you know, and Mr. Melas also. In the meantime, Mr. Melas, I should certainly be on my guard if I were you, for of course they must know through these advertisements that you have betrayed them.\"\n\nAs we walked home together, Holmes stopped at a telegraph office and sent off several wires.\n\n\"You see, Watson,\" he remarked, \"our evening has been by no means wasted. Some of my most interesting cases have come to me in this way through Mycroft. The problem which we have just listened to, although it can admit of but one explanation, has still some distinguishing features.\"\n\n\"You have hopes of solving it?\"\n\n\"Well, knowing as much as we do, it will be singular indeed if we fail to discover the rest. You must yourself have formed some theory which will explain the facts to which we have listened.\"\n\n\"In a vague way, yes.\"\n\n\"What was your idea, then?\"\n\n\"It seemed to me to be obvious that this Greek girl had been carried off by the young Englishman named Harold Latimer.\"\n\n\"Carried off from where?\"\n\n\"Athens, perhaps.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes shook his head. \"This young man could not talk a word of Greek. The lady could talk English fairly well. Inference\u2014that she had been in England some little time, but he had not been in Greece.\"\n\n\"Well, then, we will presume that she had once come on a visit to England, and that this Harold had persuaded her to fly with him.\"\n\n\"That is more probable.\"\n\n\"Then the brother\u2014for that, I fancy, must be the relationship\u2014comes over from Greece to interfere. He imprudently puts himself into the power of the young man and his older associate. They seize him and use violence towards him in order to make him sign some papers to make over the girl's fortune\u2014of which he may be trustee\u2014to them. This he refuses to do. In order to negotiate with him they have to get an interpreter, and they pitch upon this Mr. Melas, having used some other one before. The girl is not told of the arrival of her brother and finds it out by the merest accident.\"\n\n\"Excellent, Watson!\" cried Holmes. \"I really fancy that you are not far from the truth. You see that we hold all the cards, and we have only to fear some sudden act of violence on their part. If they give us time we must have them.\"\n\n\"But how can we find where this house lies?\"\n\n\"Well, if our conjecture is correct and the girl's name is or was Sophy Kratides, we should have no difficulty in tracing her. That must be our main hope, for the brother is, of course, a complete stranger. It is clear that some time has elapsed since this Harold established these relations with the girl\u2014some weeks, at any rate\u2014since the brother in Greece has had time to hear of it and come across. If they have been living in the same place during this time, it is probable that we shall have some answer to Mycroft's advertisement.\"\n\nWe had reached our house in Baker Street while we had been talking. Holmes ascended the stair first, and as he opened the door of our room he gave a start of surprise. Looking over his shoulder, I was equally astonished. His brother Mycroft was sitting smoking in the armchair.\n\n\"Come in, Sherlock! Come in, sir,\" said he blandly, smiling at our surprised faces. \"You don't expect such energy from me, do you, Sherlock? But somehow this case attracts me.\"\n\n\"How did you get here?\"\n\n\"I passed you in a hansom.\"\n\n\"There has been some new development?\"\n\n\"I had an answer to my advertisement.\"\n\n\"Ah!\"\n\n\"Yes, it came within a few minutes of your leaving.\"\n\n\"And to what effect?\"\n\nMycroft Holmes took out a sheet of paper.\n\n\"Here it is,\" said he, \"written with a J pen on royal cream paper by a middle-aged man with a weak constitution.\n\n\u2002\"SIR [he says]:\n\n\u2002\"In answer to your advertisement of to-day's date. I beg to inform you that I know the young lady in question very well. If you should care to call upon me I could give you some particulars as to her painful history. She is living at present at The Myrtles, Beckenham.\n\n\u2002\"Yours faithfully,\n\n\u2002\"J. DAVENPORT.\n\n\"He writes from Lower Brixton\" said Mycroft Holmes. \"Do you not think that we might drive to him now, Sherlock, and learn these particulars?\"\n\n\"My dear Mycroft, the brother's life is more valuable than the sister's story. I think we should call at Scotland Yard for Inspector Gregson and go straight out to Beckenham. We know that a man is being done to death, and every hour may be vital.\"\n\n\"Better pick up Mr. Melas on our way,\" I suggested. \"We may need an interpreter.\"\n\n\"Excellent,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"Send the boy for a four-wheeler, and we shall be off at once.\" He opened the table-drawer as he spoke, and I noticed that he slipped his revolver into his pocket. \"Yes,\" said he in answer to my glance, \"I should say, from what we have heard, that we are dealing with a particularly dangerous gang.\"\n\nIt was almost dark before we found ourselves in Pall Mall, at the rooms of Mr. Melas. A gentleman had just called for him, and he was gone.\n\n\"Can you tell me where?\" asked Mycroft Holmes.\n\n\"I don't know, sir,\" answered the woman who had opened the door; \"I only know that he drove away, with the gentleman in a carriage.\"\n\n\"Did the gentleman give a name?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"He wasn't a tall, handsome, dark young man?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, sir. He was a little gentleman, with glasses, thin in the face, but very pleasant in his ways, for he was laughing all the time that he was talking.\"\n\n\"Come along!\" cried Sherlock Holmes abruptly. \"This grows serious,\" he observed as we drove to Scotland Yard. \"These men have got hold of Melas again. He is a man of no physical courage, as they are well aware from their experience the other night. This villain was able to terrorize him the instant that he got into his presence. No doubt they want his professional services, but, having used him, they may be inclined to punish him for what they will regard as his treachery.\"\n\nOur hope was that, by taking train, we might get to Beckenham as soon as or sooner than the carriage. On reaching Scotland Yard, however, it was more than an hour before we could get Inspector Gregson and comply with the legal formalities which would enable us to enter the house. It was a quarter to ten before we reached London Bridge, and half past before the four of us alighted on the Beckenham platform. A drive of half a mile brought us to The Myrtles\u2014a large, dark house standing back from the road in its own grounds. Here we dismissed our cab and made our way up the drive together.\n\n\"The windows are all dark,\" remarked the inspector. \"The house seems deserted.\"\n\n\"Our birds are flown and the nest empty,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Why do you say so?\"\n\n\"A carriage heavily loaded with luggage has passed out during the last hour.\"\n\nThe inspector laughed. \"I saw the wheel-tracks in the light of the gate-lamp, but where does the luggage come in?\"\n\n\"You may have observed the same wheel-tracks going the other way. But the outward-bound ones were very much deeper\u2014so much so that we can say for a certainty that there was a very considerable weight on the carriage.\"\n\n\"You get a trifle beyond me there,\" said the inspector, shrugging his shoulders. \"It will not be an easy door to force, but we will try if we cannot make someone hear us.\"\n\nHe hammered loudly at the knocker and pulled at the bell, but without any success. Holmes had slipped away, but he came back in a few minutes.\n\n\"I have a window open,\" said he.\n\n\"It is a mercy that you are on the side of the force, and not against it, Mr. Holmes,\" remarked the inspector as he noted the clever way in which my friend had forced back the catch. \"Well, I think that under the circumstances we may enter without an invitation.\"\n\nOne after the other we made our way into a large apartment, which was evidently that in which Mr. Melas had found himself. The inspector had lit his lantern, and by its light we could see the two doors, the curtain, the lamp, and the suit of Japanese mail as he had described them. On the table lay two glasses, an empty brandy-bottle, and the remains of a meal.\n\n\"What is that?\" asked Holmes suddenly.\n\nWe all stood still and listened. A low moaning sound was coming from somewhere over our heads. Holmes rushed to the door and out into the hall. The dismal noise came from upstairs. He dashed up, the inspector and I at his heels, while his brother Mycroft followed as quickly as his great bulk would permit.\n\nThree doors faced us upon the second floor, and it was from the central of these that the sinister sounds were issuing, sinking sometimes into a dull mumble and rising again into a shrill whine. It was locked, but the key had been left on the outside. Holmes flung open the door and rushed in, but he was out again in an instant, with his hand to his throat.\n\n\"It's charcoal,\" he cried. \"Give it time. It will clear.\"\n\nPeering in, we could see that the only light in the room came from a dull blue flame which flickered from a small brass tripod in the centre. It threw a livid, unnatural circle upon the floor, while in the shadows beyond we saw the vague loom of two figures which crouched against the wall. From the open door there reeked a horrible poisonous exhalation which set us gasping and coughing. Holmes rushed to the top of the stairs to draw in the fresh air, and then, dashing into the room, he threw up the window and hurled the brazen tripod out into the garden.\n\n\"We can enter in a minute,\" he gasped, darting out again. \"Where is a candle? I doubt if we could strike a match in that atmosphere. Hold the light at the door and we shall get them out, Mycroft, now!\"\n\nWith a rush we got to the poisoned men and dragged them out into the well-lit hall. Both of them were blue-lipped and insensible, with swollen, congested faces and protruding eyes. Indeed, so distorted were their features that, save for his black beard and stout figure, we might have failed to recognize in one of them the Greek interpreter who had parted from us only a few hours before at the Diogenes Club. His hands and feet were securely strapped together, and he bore over one eye the marks of a violent blow. The other, who was secured in a similar fashion, was a tall man in the last stage of emaciation, with several strips of sticking-plaster arranged in a grotesque pattern over his face. He had ceased to moan as we laid him down, and a glance showed me that for him at least our aid had come too late. Mr. Melas, however, still lived, and in less than an hour, with the aid of ammonia and brandy, I had the satisfaction of seeing him open his eyes, and of knowing that my hand had drawn him back from that dark valley in which all paths meet.\n\nIt was a simple story which he had to tell, and one which did but confirm our own deductions. His visitor, on entering his rooms, had drawn a life-preserver from his sleeve, and had so impressed him with the fear of instant and inevitable death that he had kidnapped him for the second time. Indeed, it was almost mesmeric, the effect which this giggling ruffian had produced upon the unfortunate linguist, for he could not speak of him save with trembling hands and a blanched cheek. He had been taken swiftly to Beckenham, and had acted as interpreter in a second interview, even more dramatic than the first, in which the two Englishmen had menaced their prisoner with instant death if he did not comply with their demands. Finally, finding him proof against every threat, they had hurled him back into his prison, and after reproaching Melas with his treachery, which appeared from the newspaper advertisement, they had stunned him with a blow from a stick, and he remembered nothing more until he found us bending over him.\n\nAnd this was the singular case of the Grecian Interpreter, the explanation of which is still involved in some mystery. We were able to find out, by communicating with the gentleman who had answered the advertisement, that the unfortunate young lady came of a wealthy Grecian family, and that she had been on a visit to some friends in England. While there she had met a young man named Harold Latimer, who had acquired an ascendency over her and had eventually persuaded her to fly with him. Her friends, shocked at the event, had contented themselves with informing her brother at Athens, and had then washed their hands of the matter. The brother, on his arrival in England, had imprudently placed himself in the power of Latimer and of his associate, whose name was Wilson Kemp\u2014a man of the foulest antecedents. These two, finding that through his ignorance of the language he was helpless in their hands, had kept him a prisoner, and had endeavoured by cruelty and starvation to make him sign away his own and his sister's property. They had kept him in the house without the girl's knowledge, and the plaster over the face had been for the purpose of making recognition difficult in case she should ever catch a glimpse of him. Her feminine perceptions, however, had instantly seen through the disguise when, on the occasion of the interpreter's visit, she had seen him for the first time. The poor girl, however, was herself a prisoner, for there was no one about the house except the man who acted as coachman, and his wife, both of whom were tools of the conspirators. Finding that their secret was out, and that their prisoner was not to be coerced, the two villains with the girl had fled away at a few hours' notice from the furnished house which they had hired, having first, as they thought, taken vengeance both upon the man who had defied and the one who had betrayed them.\n\nMonths afterwards a curious newspaper cutting reached us from Buda-Pesth. It told how two Englishmen who had been travelling with a woman had met with a tragic end. They had each been stabbed, it seems, and the Hungarian police were of opinion that they had quarrelled and had inflicted mortal injuries upon each other. Holmes, however, is, I fancy, of a different way of thinking, and he holds to this day that, if one could find the Grecian girl, one might learn how the wrongs of herself and her brother came to be avenged." + }, + { + "title": "THE NAVAL TREATY", + "text": "The July which immediately succeeded my marriage was made memorable by three cases of interest, in which I had the privilege of being associated with Sherlock Holmes and of studying his methods. I find them recorded in my notes under the headings of \"The Adventure of the Second Stain,\" \"The Adventure of the Naval Treaty,\" and \"The Adventure of the Tired Captain.\" The first of these, however, deals with interests of such importance and implicates so many of the first families in the kingdom that for many years it will be impossible to make it public. No case, however, in which Holmes was engaged has ever illustrated the value of his analytical methods so clearly or has impressed those who were associated with him so deeply. I still retain an almost verbatim report of the interview in which he demonstrated the true facts of the case to Monsieur Dubugue of the Paris police, and Fritz von Waldbaum, the well-known specialist of Dantzig, both of whom had wasted their energies upon what proved to be side-issues. The new century will have come, however, before the story can be safely told. Meanwhile I pass on to the second on my list, which promised also at one time to be of national importance and was marked by several incidents which give it a quite unique character.\n\nDuring my school-days I had been intimately associated with a lad named Percy Phelps, who was of much the same age as myself, though he was two classes ahead of me. He was a very brilliant boy and carried away every prize which the school had to offer, finishing his exploits by winning a scholarship which sent him on to continue his triumphant career at Cambridge. He was, I remember, extremely well connected, and even when we were all little boys together we knew that his mother's brother was Lord Holdhurst, the great conservative politician. This gaudy relationship did him little good at school. On the contrary, it seemed rather a piquant thing to us to chevy him about the playground and hit him over the shins with a wicket. But it was another thing when he came out into the world. I heard vaguely that his abilities and the influences which he commanded had won him a good position at the Foreign Office, and then he passed completely out of my mind until the following letter recalled his existence:\n\nBriarbrae, Woking.\n\n\u2002MY DEAR WATSON:\n\n\u2002I have no doubt that you can remember \"Tadpole\" Phelps, who was in the fifth form when you were in the third. It is possible even that you may have heard that through my uncle's influence I obtained a good appointment at the Foreign Office, and that I was in a situation of trust and honour until a horrible misfortune came suddenly to blast my career.\n\n\u2002There is no use writing the details of that dreadful event. In the event of your acceding to my request it is probable that I shall have to narrate them to you. I have only just recovered from nine weeks of brain-fever and am still exceedingly weak. Do you think that you could bring your friend Mr. Holmes down to see me? I should like to have his opinion of the case, though the authorities assure me that nothing more can be done. Do try to bring him down, and as soon as possible. Every minute seems an hour while I live in this state of horrible suspense. Assure him that if I have not asked his advice sooner it was not because I did not appreciate his talents, but because I have been off my head ever since the blow fell. Now I am clear again, though I dare not think of it too much for fear of a relapse. I am still so weak that I have to write, as you see, by dictating. Do try to bring him.\n\n\u2002Your old school-fellow,\n\n\u2002PERCY PHELPS.\n\nThere was something that touched me as I read this letter, something pitiable in the reiterated appeals to bring Holmes. So moved was I that even had it been a difficult matter I should have tried it, but of course I knew well that Holmes loved his art, so that he was ever as ready to bring his aid as his client could be to receive it. My wife agreed with me that not a moment should be lost in laying the matter before him, and so within an hour of breakfast-time I found myself back once more in the old rooms in Baker Street.\n\nHolmes was seated at his side-table clad in his dressing-gown and working hard over a chemical investigation. A large curved retort was boiling furiously in the bluish flame of a Bunsen burner, and the distilled drops were condensing into a two-litre measure. My friend hardly glanced up as I entered, and I, seeing that his investigation must be of importance, seated myself in an armchair and waited. He dipped into this bottle or that, drawing out a few drops of each with his glass pipette, and finally brought a test-tube containing a solution over to the table. In his right hand he held a slip of litmus-paper.\n\n\"You come at a crisis, Watson,\" said he. \"If this paper remains blue, all is well. If it turns red, it means a man's life.\" He dipped it into the test-tube and it flushed at once into a dull, dirty crimson. \"Hum! I thought as much!\" he cried. \"I will be at your service in an instant, Watson. You will find tobacco in the Persian slipper.\" He turned to his desk and scribbled off several telegrams, which were handed over to the page-boy. Then he threw himself down into the chair opposite and drew up his knees until his fingers clasped round his long, thin shins.\n\n\"A very commonplace little murder,\" said he. \"You've got something better, I fancy. You are the stormy petrel of crime, Watson. What is it?\"\n\nI handed him the letter, which he read with the most concentrated attention.\n\n\"It does not tell us very much, does it?\" he remarked as he handed it back to me.\n\n\"Hardly anything.\"\n\n\"And yet the writing is of interest.\"\n\n\"But the writing is not his own.\"\n\n\"Precisely. It is a woman's.\"\n\n\"A man's surely,\" I cried.\n\n\"No, a woman's, and a woman of rare character. You see, at the commencement of an investigation it is something to know that your client is in close contact with someone who, for good or evil, has an exceptional nature. My interest is already awakened in the case. If you are ready we will start at once for Woking and see this diplomatist who is in such evil case and the lady to whom he dictates his letters.\"\n\nWe were fortunate enough to catch an early train at Waterloo, and in a little under an hour we found ourselves among the fir-woods and the heather of Woking. Briarbrae proved to be a large detached house standing in extensive grounds within a few minutes' walk of the station. On sending in our cards we were shown into an elegantly appointed drawing-room, where we were joined in a few minutes by a rather stout man who received us with much hospitality. His age may have been nearer forty than thirty, but his cheeks were so ruddy and his eyes so merry that he still conveyed the impression of a plump and mischievous boy.\n\n\"I am so glad that you have come,\" said he, shaking our hands with effusion. \"Percy has been inquiring for you all morning. Ah, poor old chap, he clings to any straw! His father and his mother asked me to see you, for the mere mention of the subject is very painful to them.\"\n\n\"We have had no details yet,\" observed Holmes. \"I perceive that you are not yourself a member of the family.\"\n\nOur acquaintance looked surprised, and then, glancing down, he began to laugh.\n\n\"Of course you saw theJHmonogram on my locket,\" said he. \"For a moment I thought you had done something clever. Joseph Harrison is my name, and as Percy is to marry my sister Annie I shall at least be a relation by marriage. You will find my sister in his room, for she has nursed him hand and foot this two months back. Perhaps we'd better go in at once, for I know how impatient he is.\"\n\nThe chamber into which we were shown was on the same floor as the drawing-room. It was furnished partly as a sitting and partly as a bedroom, with flowers arranged daintily in every nook and corner. A young man, very pale and worn, was lying upon a sofa near the open window, through which came the rich scent of the garden and the balmy summer air. A woman was sitting beside him, who rose as we entered.\n\n\"Shall I leave, Percy?\" she asked.\n\nHe clutched her hand to detain her. \"How are you, Watson?\" said he cordially. \"I should never have known you under that moustache, and I daresay you would not be prepared to swear to me. This I presume is your celebrated friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes?\"\n\nI introduced him in a few words, and we both sat down. The stout young man had left us, but his sister still remained with her hand in that of the invalid. She was a striking-looking woman, a little short and thick for symmetry, but with a beautiful olive complexion, large, dark, Italian eyes, and a wealth of deep black hair. Her rich tints made the white face of her companion, the more worn and haggard by the contrast.\n\n\"I won't waste your time,\" said he, raising himself upon the sofa. \"I'll plunge into the matter without further preamble. I was a happy and successful man, Mr. Holmes, and on the eve of being married, when a sudden and dreadful misfortune wrecked all my prospects in life.\n\n\"I was, as Watson may have told you, in the Foreign Office, and through the influence of my uncle, Lord Holdhurst, I rose rapidly to a responsible position. When my uncle became foreign minister in this administration he gave me several missions of trust, and as I always brought them to a successful conclusion, he came at last to have the utmost confidence in my ability and tact.\n\n\"Nearly ten weeks ago\u2014to be more accurate, on the twenty-third of May\u2014he called me into his private room, and, after complimenting me on the good work which I had done, he informed me that he had a new commission of trust for me to execute.\n\n\"'This,' said he, taking a gray roll of paper from his bureau, 'is the original of that secret treaty between England and Italy of which, I regret to say, some rumours have already got into the public press. It is of enormous importance that nothing further should leak out. The French or the Russian embassy would pay an immense sum to learn the contents of these papers. They should not leave my bureau were it not that it is absolutely necessary to have them copied. You have a desk in your office?'\n\n\"'Yes, sir.'\n\n\"'Then take the treaty and lock it up there. I shall give directions that you may remain behind when the others go, so that you may copy it at your leisure without fear of being overlooked. When you have finished, relock both the original and the draft in the desk, and hand them over to me personally tomorrow morning.'\n\n\"I took the papers and\u2014\"\n\n\"Excuse me an instant,\" said Holmes. \"Were you alone during this conversation?\"\n\n\"Absolutely.\"\n\n\"In a large room?\"\n\n\"Thirty feet each way.\"\n\n\"In the centre?\"\n\n\"Yes, about it.\"\n\n\"And speaking low?\"\n\n\"My uncle's voice is always remarkably low. I hardly spoke at all.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Holmes, shutting his eyes; \"pray go on.\"\n\n\"I did exactly what he indicated and waited until the other clerks had departed. One of them in my room, Charles Gorot, had some arrears of work to make up, so I left him there and went out to dine. When I returned he was gone. I was anxious to hurry my work, for I knew that Joseph\u2014the Mr. Harrison whom you saw just now\u2014was in town, and that he would travel down to Woking by the eleven-o'clock train, and I wanted if possible to catch it.\n\n\"When I came to examine the treaty I saw at once that it was of such importance that my uncle had been guilty of no exaggeration in what he said. Without going into details, I may say that it defined the position of Great Britain towards the Triple Alliance, and foreshadowed the policy which this country would pursue in the event of the French fleet gaining a complete ascendency over that of Italy in the Mediterranean. The questions treated in it were purely naval. At the end were the signatures of the high dignitaries who had signed it. I glanced my eyes over it, and then settled down to my task of copying.\n\n\"It was a long document, written in the French language, and containing twenty-six separate articles. I copied as quickly as I could, but at nine o'clock I had only done nine articles, and it seemed hopeless for me to attempt to catch my train. I was feeling drowsy and stupid, partly from my dinner and also from the effects of a long day's work. A cup of coffee would clear my brain. A commissionaire remains all night in a little lodge at the foot of the stairs and is in the habit of making coffee at his spirit-lamp for any of the officials who may be working over-time. I rang the bell, therefore, to summon him.\n\n\"To my surprise, it was a woman who answered the summons, a large, coarse-faced, elderly woman, in an apron. She explained that she was the commissionaire's wife, who did the charing, and I gave her the order for the coffee.\n\n\"I wrote two more articles, and then, feeling more drowsy than ever, I rose and walked up and down the room to stretch my legs. My coffee had not yet come, and I wondered what the cause of the delay could be. Opening the door, I started down the corridor to find out. There was a straight passage, dimly lighted, which led from the room in which I had been working, and was the only exit from it. It ended in a curving staircase, with the commissionaire's lodge in the passage at the bottom. Halfway down this staircase is a small landing, with another passage run-ning into it at right angles. This second one leads by means of a second small stair to a side door, used by servants, and also as a short cut by clerks when coming from Charles Street. Here is a rough chart of the place.\"\n\n\"Thank you. I think that I quite follow you,\" said Sherlock Holmes.\n\n\"It is of the utmost importance that you should notice this point. I went down the stairs and into the hall, where I found the commissionaire fast asleep in his box, with the kettle boiling furiously upon the spirit-lamp. I took off the kettle and blew out the lamp, for the water was spurting over the floor. Then I put out my hand and was about to shake the man, who was still sleeping soundly, when a bell over his head rang loudly, and he woke with a start.\n\n\"'Mr. Phelps, sir!' said he, looking at me in bewilderment.\n\n\"'I came down to see if my coffee was ready.'\n\n\"'I was boiling the kettle when I fell asleep, sir.' He looked at me and then up at the still quivering bell with an ever-growing astonishment upon his face.\n\n\"'If you was here, sir, then who rang the bell?' he asked.\n\n\"'The bell!' I cried. 'What bell is it?'\n\n\"'It's the bell of the room you were working in.'\n\n\"A cold hand seemed to close round my heart. Someone, then, was in that room where my precious treaty lay upon the table. I ran frantically up the stairs and along the passage. There was no one in the corridors, Mr. Holmes. There was no one in the room. All was exactly as I left it, save only that the papers which had been committed to my care had been taken from the desk on which they lay. The copy was there, and the original was gone.\"\n\nHolmes sat up in his chair and rubbed his hands. I could see that the problem was entirely to his heart. \"Pray what did you do then?\" he murmured.\n\n\"I recognized in an instant that the thief must have come up the stairs from the side door. Of course I must have met him if he had come the other way.\"\n\n\"You were satisfied that he could not have been concealed in the room all the time, or in the corridor which you have just described as dimly lighted?\"\n\n\"It is absolutely impossible. A rat could not conceal himself either in the room or the corridor. There is no cover at all.\"\n\n\"Thank you. Pray proceed.\"\n\n\"The commissionaire, seeing by my pale face that something was to be feared, had followed me upstairs. Now we both rushed along the corridor and down the steep steps which led to Charles Street. The door at the bottom was closed but unlocked. We flung it open and rushed out. I can distinctly remember that as we did so there came three chimes from a neighbouring clock. It was a quarter to ten.\"\n\n\"That is of enormous importance,\" said Holmes, making a note upon his shirtcuff.\n\n\"The night was very dark, and a thin, warm rain was falling. There was no one in Charles Street, but a great traffic was going on, as usual, in Whitehall, at the extremity. We rushed along the pavement, bare-headed as we were, and at the far corner we found a policeman standing.\n\n\"'A robbery has been committed,' I gasped. 'A document of immense value has been stolen from the Foreign Office. Has anyone passed this way?'\n\n\"'I have been standing here for a quarter of an hour, sir,' said he, 'only one person has passed during that time\u2014a woman, tall and elderly, with a Paisley shawl.'\n\n\"'Ah, that is only my wife,' cried the commissionaire; 'has no one else passed?'\n\n\"'No one.'\n\n\"'Then it must be the other way that the thief took,' cried the fellow, tugging at my sleeve.\n\n\"But I was not satisfied, and the attempts which he made to draw me away increased my suspicions.\n\n\"'Which way did the woman go?' I cried.\n\n\"'I don't know, sir. I noticed her pass, but I had no special reason for watching her. She seemed to be in a hurry.'\n\n\"'How long ago was it?'\n\n\"'Oh, not very many minutes.'\n\n\"'Within the last five?'\n\n\"'Well, it could not be more than five.'\n\n\"'You're only wasting your time, sir, and every minute now is of importance, ' cried the commissionaire; 'take my word for it that my old woman has nothing to do with it and come down to the other end of the street. Well, if you won't, I will.' And with that he rushed off in the other direction.\n\n\"But I was after him in an instant and caught him by the sleeve.\n\n\"'Where do you live?' said I.\n\n\"'16 Ivy Lane, Brixton,' he answered. 'But don't let yourself be drawn away upon a false scent, Mr. Phelps. Come to the other end of the street and let us see if we can hear of anything.'\n\n\"Nothing was to be lost by following his advice. With the policeman we both hurried down, but only to find the street full of traffic, many people coming and going, but all only too eager to get to a place of safety upon so wet a night. There was no lounger who could tell us who had passed.\n\n\"Then we returned to the office and searched the stairs and the passage without result. The corridor which led to the room was laid down with a kind of creamy linoleum which shows an impression very easily. We examined it very carefully, but found no outline of any footmark.\"\n\n\"Had it been raining all evening?\"\n\n\"Since about seven.\"\n\n\"How is it, then, that the woman who came into the room about nine left no traces with her muddy boots?\"\n\n\"I am glad you raised the point. It occurred to me at the time. The charwomen are in the habit of taking off their boots at the commissionaire's office, and putting on list slippers.\"\n\n\"That is very clear. There were no marks, then, though the night was a wet one? The chain of events is certainly one of extraordinary interest. What did you do next?\"\n\n\"We examined the room also. There is no possibility of a secret door, and the windows are quite thirty feet from the ground. Both of them were fastened on the inside. The carpet prevents any possibility of a trapdoor, and the ceiling is of the ordinary whitewashed kind. I will pledge my life that whoever stole my papers could only have come through the door.\"\n\n\"How about the fireplace?\"\n\n\"They use none. There is a stove. The bell-rope hangs from the wire just to the right of my desk. Whoever rang it must have come right up to the desk to do it. But why should any criminal wish to ring the bell? It is a most insoluble mystery.\"\n\n\"Certainly the incident was unusual. What were your next steps? You examined the room, I presume, to see if the intruder had left any traces\u2014any cigar-end or dropped glove or hairpin or other trifle?\"\n\n\"There was nothing of the sort.\"\n\n\"No smell?\"\n\n\"Well, we never thought of that.\"\n\n\"Ah, a scent of tobacco would have been worth a great deal to us in such an investigation.\"\n\n\"I never smoke myself, so I think I should have observed it if there had been any smell of tobacco. There was absolutely no clue of any kind: The only tangible fact was that the commissionaire's wife\u2014Mrs. Tangey was the name\u2014had hurried out of the place. He could give no explanation save that it was about the time when the woman always went home. The policeman and I agreed that our best plan would be to seize the woman before she could get rid of the papers, presuming that she had them.\n\n\"The alarm had reached Scotland Yard by this time, and Mr. Forbes, the detective, came round at once and took up the case with a great deal of energy. We hired a hansom, and in half an hour we were at the address which had been given to us. A young woman opened the door, who proved to be Mrs. Tangey's eldest daughter. Her mother had not come back yet, and we were shown into the front room to wait.\n\n\"About ten minutes later a knock came at the door, and here we made the one serious mistake for which I blame myself. Instead of opening the door ourselves, we allowed the girl to do so. We heard her say, 'Mother, there are two men in the house waiting to see you,' and an instant afterwards we heard the patter of feet rushing down the passage. Forbes flung open the door, and we both ran into the back room or kitchen, but the woman had got there before us. She stared at us with defiant eyes, and then, suddenly recognizing me, an expression of absolute astonishment came over her face.\n\n\"'Why, if it isn't Mr. Phelps, of the office!' she cried.\n\n\"'Come, come, who did you think we were when you ran away from us?' asked my companion.\n\n\"'I thought you were the brokers,' said she, 'we have had some trouble with a tradesman.'\n\n\"'That's not quite good enough,' answered Forbes. 'We have reason to believe that you have taken a paper of importance from the Foreign Office, and that you ran in here to dispose of it. You must come back with us to Scotland Yard to be searched.'\n\n\"It was in vain that she protested and resisted. A four-wheeler was brought, and we all three drove back in it. We had first made an examination of the kitchen, and especially of the kitchen fire, to see whether she might have made away with the papers during the instant that she was alone. There were no signs, however, of any ashes or scraps. When we reached Scotland Yard she was handed over at once to the female searcher. I waited in an agony of suspense until she came back with her report. There were no signs of the papers.\n\n\"Then for the first time the horror of my situation came in its full force. Hitherto I had been acting, and action had numbed thought. I had been so confident of regaining the treaty at once that I had not dared to think of what would be the consequence if I failed to do so. But now there was nothing more to be done, and I had leisure to realize my position. It was horrible. Watson there would tell you that I was a nervous, sensitive boy at school. It is my nature. I thought of my uncle and of his colleagues in the Cabinet, of the shame which I had brought upon him, upon myself, upon everyone connected with me. What though I was the victim of an extraordinary accident? No allowance is made for accidents where diplomatic interests are at stake. I was ruined, shamefully, hopelessly ruined. I don't know what I did. I fancy I must have made a scene. I have a dim recollection of a group of officials who crowded round me, endeavouring to soothe me. One of them drove down with me to Waterloo, and saw me into the Woking train. I believe that he would have come all the way had it not been that Dr. Ferrier, who lives near me, was going down by that very train. The doctor most kindly took charge of me, and it was well he did so, for I had a fit in the station, and before we reached home I was practically a raving maniac.\n\n\"You can imagine the state of things here when they were roused from their beds by the doctor's ringing and found me in this condition. Poor Annie here and my mother were broken-hearted. Dr. Ferrier had just heard enough from the detective at the station to be able to give an idea of what had happened, and his story did not mend matters. It was evident to all that I was in for a long illness, so Joseph was bundled out of this cheery bedroom, and it was turned into a sickroom for me. Here I have lain, Mr. Holmes, for over nine weeks, unconscious, and raving with brain-fever. If it had not been for Miss Harrison here and for the doctor's care, I should not be speaking to you now. She has nursed me by day and a hired nurse has looked after me by night, for in my mad fits I was capable of anything. Slowly my reason has cleared, but it is only during the last three days that my memory has quite returned. Sometimes I wish that it never had. The first thing that I did was to wire to Mr. Forbes, who had the case in hand. He came out, and assures me that, though everything has been done, no trace of a clue has been discovered. The commissionaire and his wife have been examined in every way without any light being thrown upon the matter. The suspicions of the police then rested upon young Gorot, who, as you may remember, stayed over-time in the office that night. His remaining behind and his French name were really the only two points which could suggest suspicion; but, as a matter of fact, I did not begin work until he had gone, and his people are of Huguenot extraction, but as English in sympathy and tradition as you and I are. Nothing was found to implicate him in any way, and there the matter dropped. I turn to you, Mr. Holmes, as absolutely my last hope. If you fail me, then my honour as well as my position are forever forfeited.\"\n\nThe invalid sank back upon his cushions, tired out by this long recital, while his nurse poured him out a glass of some stimulating medicine. Holmes sat silently, with his head thrown back and his eyes closed, in an attitude which might seem listless to a stranger, but which I knew betokened the most intense self-absorption.\n\n\"Your statement has been so explicit,\" said he at last, \"that you have really left me very few questions to ask. There is one of the very utmost importance, however. Did you tell anyone that you had this special task to perform?\"\n\n\"No one.\"\n\n\"Not Miss Harrison here, for example?\"\n\n\"No. I had not been back to Woking between getting the order and executing the commission.\"\n\n\"And none of your people had by chance been to see you?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\n\"Did any of them know their way about in the office?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, all of them had been shown over it.\"\n\n\"Still, of course, if you said nothing to anyone about the treaty these inquiries are irrelevant.\"\n\n\"I said nothing.\"\n\n\"Do you know anything of the commissionaire?\"\n\n\"Nothing except that he is an old soldier.\"\n\n\"What regiment?\"\n\n\"Oh, I have heard\u2014Coldstream Guards.\"\n\n\"Thank you. I have no doubt I can get details from Forbes. The authorities are excellent at amassing facts, though they do not always use them to advantage. What a lovely thing a rose is!\"\n\nHe walked past the couch to the open window and held up the drooping stalk of a moss-rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects.\n\n\"There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion,\" said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. \"It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.\"\n\nPercy Phelps and his nurse looked at Holmes during this demonstration with surprise and a good deal of disappointment written upon their faces. He had fallen into a reverie, with the moss-rose between his fingers. It had lasted some minutes before the young lady broke in upon it.\n\n\"Do you see any prospect of solving this mystery, Mr. Holmes?\" she asked with a touch of asperity in her voice.\n\n\"Oh, the mystery!\" he answered, coming back with a start to the realities of life. \"Well, it would be absurd to deny that the case is a very abstruseand complicated one, but I can promise you that I will look into the matter and let you know any points which may strike me.\"\n\n\"Do you see any clue?\"\n\n\"You have furnished me with seven, but of course I must test them before I can pronounce upon their value.\"\n\n\"You suspect someone?\"\n\n\"I suspect myself.\"\n\n\"What!\"\n\n\"Of coming to conclusions too rapidly.\"\n\n\"Then go to London and test your conclusions.\"\n\n\"Your advice is very excellent, Miss Harrison,\" said Holmes, rising. \"I think, Watson, we cannot do better. Do not allow yourself to indulge in false hopes, Mr. Phelps. The affair is a very tangled one.\"\n\n\"I shall be in a fever until I see you again,\" cried the diplomatist.\n\n\"Well, I'll come out by the same train tomorrow, though it's more than likely that my report will be a negative one.\"\n\n\"God bless you for promising to come,\" cried our client. \"It gives me fresh life to know that something is being done. By the way, I have had a letter from Lord Holdhurst.\"\n\n\"Ha! what did he say?\"\n\n\"He was cold, but not harsh, I dare say my severe illness prevented him from being that. He repeated that the matter was of the utmost importance, and added that no steps would be taken about my future\u2014by which he means, of course, my dismissal\u2014until my health was restored and I had an opportunity of repairing my misfortune.\"\n\n\"Well, that was reasonable and considerate,\" said Holmes. \"Come, Watson, for we have a good day's work before us in town.\"\n\nMr. Joseph Harrison drove us down to the station, and we were soon whirling up in a Portsmouth train. Holmes was sunk in profound thought and hardly opened his mouth until we had passed Clapham Junction.\n\n\"It's a very cheery thing to come into London by any of these lines which run high and allow you to look down upon the houses like this.\"\n\nI thought he was joking, for the view was sordid enough, but he soon explained himself.\n\n\"Look at those big, isolated clumps of buildings rising up above the slates, like brick islands in a lead-coloured sea.\"\n\n\"The board-schools.\"\n\n\"Light-houses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future. I suppose that man Phelps does not drink?\"\n\n\"I should not think so.\"\n\n\"Nor should I, but we are bound to take every possibility into account. The poor devil has certainly got himself into very deep water, and it's a question whether we shall ever be able to get him ashore. What do you think of Miss Harrison?\"\n\n\"A girl of strong character.\"\n\n\"Yes, but she is a good sort, or I am mistaken. She and her brother are the only children of an iron-master somewhere up Northumberland way. He got engaged to her when travelling last winter, and she came down to be introduced to his people, with her brother as escort. Then came the smash, and she stayed on to nurse her lover, while brother Joseph, finding himself pretty snug, stayed on, too. I've been making a few independent inquiries, you see. But to-day must be a day of inquiries.\"\n\n\"My practice\u2014\" I began.\n\n\"Oh, if you find your own cases more interesting than mine\u2014\" said Holmes with some asperity.\n\n\"I was going to say that my practice could get along very well for a day or two, since it is the slackest time in the year.\"\n\n\"Excellent,\" said he, recovering his good-humour. \"Then we'll look into this matter together. I think that we should begin by seeing Forbes. He can probably tell us all the details we want until we know from what side the case is to be approached.\"\n\n\"You said you had a clue?\"\n\n\"Well, we have several, but we can only test their value by further inquiry. The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless. Now this is not purposeless. Who is it who profits by it? There is the French ambassador, there is the Russian, there is whoever might sell it to either of these, and there is Lord Holdhurst.\"\n\n\"Lord Holdhurst!\"\n\n\"Well, it is just conceivable that a statesman might find himself in a position where he was not sorry to have such a document accidentally destroyed.\"\n\n\"Not a statesman with the honourable record of Lord Holdhurst?\"\n\n\"It is a possibility and we cannot afford to disregard it. We shall see the noble lord to-day and find out if he can tell us anything. Meanwhile I have already set inquiries on foot.\"\n\n\"Already?\"\n\n\"Yes, I sent wires from Woking station to every evening paper in London. This advertisement will appear in each of them.\"\n\nHe handed over a sheet torn from a notebook. On it was scribbled in pencil:\n\n\u00a310 reward. The number of the cab which dropped a fare at or about the door of the Foreign Office in Charles Street at quarter to ten in the evening of May 23d. Apply 221B, Baker Street.\n\n\"You are confident that the thief came in a cab?\"\n\n\"If not, there is no harm done. But if Mr. Phelps is correct in stating that there is no hiding-place either in the room or the corridors, then the person must have come from outside. If he came from outside on so wet a night, and yet left no trace of damp upon the linoleum, which was examined within a few minutes of his passing, then it is exceedingly probable that he came in a cab. Yes, I think that we may safely deduce a cab.\"\n\n\"It sounds plausible.\"\n\n\"That is one of the clues of which I spoke. It may lead us to something. And then, of course, there is the bell\u2014which is the most distinctive feature of the case. Why should the bell ring? Was it the thief who did it out of bravado? Or was it someone who was with the thief who did it in order to prevent the crime? Or was it an accident? Or was it\u2014?\" He sank back into the state of intense and silent thought from which he had emerged; but it seemed to me, accustomed as I was to his every mood, that some new possibility had dawned suddenly upon him.\n\nIt was twenty past three when we reached our terminus, and after a hasty luncheon at the buffet we pushed on at once to Scotland Yard. Holmes had already wired to Forbes, and we found him waiting to receive us\u2014a small, foxy man with a sharp but by no means amiable expression. He was decidedly frigid in his manner to us, especially when he heard the errand upon which we had come.\n\n\"I've heard of your methods before now, Mr. Holmes,\" said he tartly. \"You are ready enough to use all the information that the police can lay at your disposal, and then you try to finish the case yourself and bring discredit on them.\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" said Holmes, \"out of my last fifty-three cases my name has only appeared in four, and the police have had all the credit in forty-nine. I don't blame you for not knowing this, for you are young and inexperienced, but if you wish to get on in your new duties you will work with me and not against me.\"\n\n\"I'd be very glad of a hint or two,\" said the detective, changing his manner. \"I've certainly had no credit from the case so far.\"\n\n\"What steps have you taken?\"\n\n\"Tangey, the commissionaire, has been shadowed. He left the Guards with a good character, and we can find nothing against him. His wife is a bad lot, though. I fancy she knows more about this than appears.\"\n\n\"Have you shadowed her?\"\n\n\"We have set one of our women on to her. Mrs. Tangey drinks, and our woman has been with her twice when she was well on, but she could get nothing out of her.\"\n\n\"I understand that they have had brokers in the house?\"\n\n\"Yes, but they were paid off.\"\n\n\"Where did the money come from?\"\n\n\"That was all right. His pension was due. They have not shown any sign of being in funds.\"\n\n\"What explanation did she give of having answered the bell when Mr. Phelps rang for the coffee?\"\n\n\"She said that her husband was very tired and she wished to relieve him.\"\n\n\"Well, certainly that would agree with his being found a little later asleep in his chair. There is nothing against them then but the woman's character. Did you ask her why she hurried away that night? Her haste attracted the attention of the police constable.\"\n\n\"She was later than usual and wanted to get home.\"\n\n\"Did you point out to her that you and Mr. Phelps, who started at least twenty minutes after her, got home before her?\"\n\n\"She explains that by the difference between a 'bus and a hansom.\"\n\n\"Did she make it clear why, on reaching her house, she ran into the back kitchen?\"\n\n\"Because she had the money there with which to pay off the brokers.\"\n\n\"She has at least an answer for everything. Did you ask her whether in leaving she met anyone or saw anyone loitering about Charles Street?\"\n\n\"She saw no one but the constable.\"\n\n\"Well, you seem to have cross-examined her pretty thoroughly. What else have you done?\"\n\n\"The clerk Gorot has been shadowed all these nine weeks, but without result. We can show nothing against him.\"\n\n\"Anything else?\"\n\n\"Well, we have nothing else to go upon\u2014no evidence of any kind.\"\n\n\"Have you formed any theory about how that bell rang?\"\n\n\"Well, I must confess that it beats me. It was a cool hand, whoever it was, to go and give the alarm like that.\"\n\n\"Yes, it was a queer thing to do. Many thanks to you for what you have told me. If I can put the man into your hands you shall hear from me. Come along, Watson.\"\n\n\"Where are we going to now?\" I asked as we left the office.\n\n\"We are now going to interview Lord Holdhurst, the cabinet minister and future premier of England.\"\n\nWe were fortunate in finding that Lord Holdhurst was still in his chambers in Downing Street, and on Holmes sending in his card we were instantly shown up. The statesman received us with that old-fashioned courtesy for which he is remarkable and seated us on the two luxuriant lounges on either side of the fireplace. Standing on the rug between us, with his slight, tall figure, his sharp features, thoughtful face, and curling hair prematurely tinged with gray, he seemed to represent that not too common type, a nobleman who is in truth noble.\n\n\"Your name is very familiar to me, Mr. Holmes,\" said he, smiling. \"And of course I cannot pretend to be ignorant of the object of your visit. There has only been one occurrence in these offices which could call for your attention. In whose interest are you acting, may I ask?\"\n\n\"In that of Mr. Percy Phelps,\" answered Holmes.\n\n\"Ah, my unfortunate nephew! You can understand that our kinship makes it the more impossible for me to screen him in any way. I fear that the incident must have a very prejudicial effect upon his career.\"\n\n\"But if the document is found?\"\n\n\"Ah, that, of course, would be different.\"\n\n\"I had one or two questions which I wished to ask you, Lord Holdhurst.\"\n\n\"I shall be happy to give you any information in my power.\"\n\n\"Was it in this room that you gave your instructions as to the copying of the document?\"\n\n\"It was.\"\n\n\"Then you could hardly have been overheard?\"\n\n\"It is out of the question.\"\n\n\"Did you ever mention to anyone that it was your intention to give anyone the treaty to be copied?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"You are certain of that?\"\n\n\"Absolutely.\"\n\n\"Well, since you never said so, and Mr. Phelps never said so, and nobody else knew anything of the matter, then the thief's presence in the room was purely accidental. He saw his chance and he took it.\"\n\nThe statesman smiled. \"You take me out of my province there,\" said he.\n\nHolmes considered for a moment. \"There is another very important point which I wish to discuss with you,\" said he. \"You feared, as I understand, that very grave results might follow from the details of this treaty becoming known.\"\n\nA shadow passed over the expressive face of the statesman. \"Very grave results indeed.\"\n\n\"And have they occurred?\"\n\n\"Not yet.\"\n\n\"If the treaty had reached, let us say, the French or Russian Foreign Office, you would expect to hear of it?\"\n\n\"I should,\" said Lord Holdhurst with a wry face.\n\n\"Since nearly ten weeks have elapsed, then, and nothing has been heard, it is not unfair to suppose that for some reason the treaty has not reached them.\"\n\nLord Holdhurst shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"We can hardly suppose, Mr. Holmes, that the thief took the treaty in order to frame it and hang it up.\"\n\n\"Perhaps he is waiting for a better price.\"\n\n\"If he waits a little longer he will get no price at all. The treaty will cease to be secret in a few months.\"\n\n\"That is most important,\" said Holmes. \"Of course, it is a possible supposition that the thief has had a sudden illness\u2014\"\n\n\"An attack of brain-fever, for example?\" asked the statesman, flashing a swift glance at him.\n\n\"I did not say so,\" said Holmes imperturbably. \"And now, Lord Holdhurst, we have already taken up too much of your valuable time, and we shall wish you good-day.\"\n\n\"Every success to your investigation, be the criminal who it may,\" answered the nobleman as he bowed us out at the door.\n\n\"He's a fine fellow,\" said Holmes as we came out into Whitehall. \"But he has a struggle to keep up his position. He is far from rich and has many calls. You noticed, of course, that his boots had been resoled. Now, Watson, I won't detain you from your legitimate work any longer. I shall do nothing more to-day unless I have an answer to my cab advertisement. But I should be extremely obliged to you if you would come down with me to Woking tomorrow by the same train which we took yesterday.\"\n\nI met him accordingly next morning and we travelled down to Woking together. He had had no answer to his advertisement, he said, and no fresh light had been thrown upon the case. He had, when he so willed it, the utter immobility of countenance of a red Indian, and I could not gather from his appearance whether he was satisfied or not with the position of the case. His conversation, I remember, was about the Bertillon system of measurements, and he expressed his enthusiastic admiration of the French savant.\n\nWe found our client still under the charge of his devoted nurse, but looking considerably better than before. He rose from the sofa and greeted us without difficulty when we entered.\n\n\"Any news?\" he asked eagerly.\n\n\"My report, as I expected, is a negative one,\" said Holmes. \"I have seen Forbes, and I have seen your uncle, and I have set one or two trains of inquiry upon foot which may lead to something.\"\n\n\"You have not lost heart, then?\"\n\n\"By no means.\"\n\n\"God bless you for saying that!\" cried Miss Harrison. \"If we keep our courage and our patience the truth must come out.\"\n\n\"We have more to tell you than you have for us,\" said Phelps, reseating himself upon the couch.\n\n\"I hoped you might have something.\"\n\n\"Yes, we have had an adventure during the night, and one which might have proved to be a serious one.\" His expression grew very grave as he spoke, and a look of something akin to fear sprang up in his eyes. \"Do you know,\" said he, \"that I begin to believe that I am the unconscious centre of some monstrous conspiracy, and that my life is aimed at as well as my honour?\"\n\n\"Ah!\" cried Holmes.\n\n\"It sounds incredible, for I have not, as far as I know, an enemy in the world. Yet from last night's experience I can come to no other conclusion.\"\n\n\"Pray let me hear it.\"\n\n\"You must know that last night was the very first night that I have ever slept without a nurse in the room. I was so much better that I thought I could dispense with one. I had a night-light burning, however. Well, about two in the morning I had sunk into a light sleep when I was suddenly aroused by a slight noise. It was like the sound which a mouse makes when it is gnawing a plank, and I lay listening to it for some time under the impression that it must come from that cause. Then it grew louder, and suddenly there came from the window a sharp metallic snick. I sat up in amazement. There could be no doubt what the sounds were now. The first ones had been caused by someone forcing an instrument through the slit between the sashes, and the second by the catch being pressed back.\n\n\"There was a pause then for about ten minutes, as if the person were waiting to see whether the noise had awakened me. Then I heard a gentle creaking as the window was very slowly opened. I could stand it no longer, for my nerves are not what they used to be. I sprang out of bed and flung open the shutters. A man was crouching at the window. I could see little of him, for he was gone like a flash. He was wrapped in some sort of cloak which came across the lower part of his face. One thing only I am sure of, and that is that he had some weapon in his hand. It looked to me like a long knife. I distinctly saw the gleam of it as he turned to run.\"\n\n\"This is most interesting,\" said Holmes. \"Pray what did you do then?\"\n\n\"I should have followed him through the open window if I had been stronger. As it was, I rang the bell and roused the house. It took some little time, for the bell rings in the kitchen and the servants all sleep upstairs. I shouted, however, and that brought Joseph down, and he roused the others. Joseph and the groom found marks on the bed outside the window, but the weather has been so dry lately that they found it hopeless to follow the trail across the grass. There's a place, however, on the wooden fence which skirts the road which shows signs, they tell me, as if someone had got over, and had snapped the top of the rail in doing so. I have said nothing to the local police yet, for I thought I had best have your opinion first.\"\n\nThis tale of our client's appeared to have an extraordinary effect upon Sherlock Holmes. He rose from his chair and paced about the room in uncontrollable excitement.\n\n\"Misfortunes never come single,\" said Phelps, smiling, though it was evident that his adventure had somewhat shaken him.\n\n\"You have certainly had your share,\" said Holmes. \"Do you think you could walk round the house with me?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, I should like a little sunshine. Joseph will come, too.\"\n\n\"And I also,\" said Miss Harrison.\n\n\"I am afraid not,\" said Holmes, shaking his head. \"I think I must ask you to remain sitting exactly where you are.\"\n\nThe young lady resumed her seat with an air of displeasure. Her brother, however, had joined us and we set off all four together. We passed round the lawn to the outside of the young diplomatist's window. There were, as he had said, marks upon the bed, but they were hopelessly blurred and vague. Holmes stooped over them for an instant, and then rose shrugging his shoulders.\n\n\"I don't think anyone could make much of this,\" said he. \"Let us go round the house and see why this particular room was chosen by the burglar. I should have thought those larger windows of the drawing-room and dining-room would have had more attractions for him.\"\n\n\"They are more visible from the road,\" suggested Mr. Joseph Harrison.\n\n\"Ah, yes, of course. There is a door here which he might have attempted. What is it for?\"\n\n\"It is the side entrance for trades-people. Of course it is locked at night.\"\n\n\"Have you ever had an alarm like this before?\"\n\n\"Never,\" said our client.\n\n\"Do you keep plate in the house, or anything to attract burglars?\"\n\n\"Nothing of value.\"\n\nHolmes strolled round the house with his hands in his pockets and a negligent air which was unusual with him.\n\n\"By the way,\" said he to Joseph Harrison, \"you found some place, I understand, where the fellow scaled the fence. Let us have a look at that!\"\n\nThe plump young man led us to a spot where the top of one of the wooden rails had been cracked. A small fragment of the wood was hanging down. Holmes pulled it off and examined it critically.\n\n\"Do you think that was done last night? It looks rather old, does it not?\"\n\n\"Well, possibly so.\"\n\n\"There are no marks of anyone jumping down upon the other side. No, I fancy we shall get no help here. Let us go back to the bedroom and talk the matter over.\"\n\nPercy Phelps was walking very slowly, leaning upon the arm of his future brother-in-law. Holmes walked swiftly across the lawn, and we were at the open window of the bedroom long before the others came up.\n\n\"Miss Harrison,\" said Holmes, speaking with the utmost intensity of manner, \"you must stay where you are all day. Let nothing prevent you from staying where you are all day. It is of the utmost importance.\"\n\n\"Certainly, if you wish it, Mr. Holmes,\" said the girl in astonishment.\n\n\"When you go to bed lock the door of this room on the outside and keep the key. Promise to do this.\"\n\n\"But Percy?\"\n\n\"He will come to London with us.\"\n\n\"And am I to remain here?\"\n\n\"It is for his sake. You can serve him. Quick! Promise!\"\n\nShe gave a quick nod of assent just as the other two came up.\n\n\"Why do you sit moping there, Annie?\" cried her brother. \"Come out into the sunshine!\"\n\n\"No, thank you, Joseph. I have a slight headache and this room is deliciously cool and soothing.\"\n\n\"What do you propose now, Mr. Holmes?\" asked our client.\n\n\"Well, in investigating this minor affair we must not lose sight of our main inquiry. It would be a very great help to me if you would come up to London with us.\"\n\n\"At once?\"\n\n\"Well, as soon as you conveniently can. Say in an hour.\"\n\n\"I feel quite strong enough, if I can really be of any help.\"\n\n\"The greatest possible.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you would like me to stay there tonight?\"\n\n\"I was just going to propose it.\"\n\n\"Then, if my friend of the night comes to revisit me, he will find the bird flown. We are all in your hands, Mr. Holmes, and you must tell us exactly what you would like done. Perhaps you would prefer that Joseph came with us so as to look after me?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, my friend Watson is a medical man, you know, and he'll look after you. We'll have our lunch here, if you will permit us, and then we shall all three set off for town together.\"\n\nIt was arranged as he suggested, though Miss Harrison excused herself from leaving the bedroom, in accordance with Holmes's suggestion. What the object of my friends man\u0153uvres was I could not conceive, unless it were to keep the lady away from Phelps, who, rejoiced by his returning health and by the prospect of action, lunched with us in the dining-room. Holmes had a still more startling surprise for us, however, for, after accompanying us down to the station and seeing us into our carriage, he calmly announced that he had no intention of leaving Woking.\n\n\"There are one or two small points which I should desire to clear up before I go,\" said he. \"Your absence, Mr. Phelps, will in some ways rather assist me. Watson, when you reach London you would oblige me by driving at once to Baker Street with our friend here, and remaining with him until I see you again. It is fortunate that you are old school-fellows, as you must have much to talk over. Mr. Phelps can have the spare bedroom tonight, and I will be with you in time for breakfast, for there is a train which will take me into Waterloo at eight.\"\n\n\"But how about our investigation in London?\" asked Phelps ruefully.\n\n\"We can do that tomorrow. I think that just at present I can be of more immediate use here.\"\n\n\"You might tell them at Briarbrae that I hope to be back tomorrow night,\" cried Phelps, as we began to move from the platform.\n\n\"I hardly expect to go back to Briarbrae,\" answered Holmes, and waved his hand to us cheerily as we shot out from the station.\n\nPhelps and I talked it over on our journey, but neither of us could devise a satisfactory reason for this new development.\n\n\"I suppose he wants to find out some clues as to the burglary last night, if a burglar it was. For myself, I don't believe it was an ordinary thief.\"\n\n\"What is your own idea, then?\"\n\n\"Upon my word, you may put it down to my weak nerves or not, but I believe there is some deep political intrigue going on around me, and that for some reason that passes my understanding my life is aimed at by the conspirators. It sounds high-flown and absurd, but consider the facts! Why should a thief try to break in at a bedroom window where there could be no hope of any plunder, and why should he come with a long knife in his hand?\"\n\n\"You are sure it was not a house-breaker's jimmy?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, it was a knife. I saw the flash of the blade quite distinctly.\"\n\n\"But why on earth should you be pursued with such animosity?\"\n\n\"Ah, that is the question.\"\n\n\"Well, if Holmes takes the same view, that would account for his action, would it not? Presuming that your theory is correct, if he can lay his hands upon the man who threatened you last night he will have gone a long way towards finding who took the naval treaty. It is absurd to suppose that you have two enemies, one of whom robs you, while the other threatens your life.\"\n\n\"But Holmes said that he was not going to Briarbrae.\"\n\n\"I have known him for some time,\" said I, \"but I never knew him do anything yet without a very good reason,\" and with that our conversation drifted off on to other topics.\n\nBut it was a weary day for me. Phelps was still weak after his long illness, and his misfortunes made him querulous and nervous. In vain I endeavoured to interest him in Afghanistan, in India, in social questions, in anything which might take his mind out of the groove. He would always come back to his lost treaty, wondering, guessing, speculating as to what Holmes was doing, what steps Lord Holdhurst was taking, what news we should have in the morning. As the evening wore on his excitement became quite painful.\n\n\"You have implicit faith in Holmes?\" he asked.\n\n\"I have seen him do some remarkable things.\"\n\n\"But he never brought light into anything quite so dark as this?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, I have known him solve questions which presented fewer clues than yours.\"\n\n\"But not where such large interests are at stake?\"\n\n\"I don't know that. To my certain knowledge he has acted on behalf of three of the reigning houses of Europe in very vital matters.\"\n\n\"But you know him well, Watson. He is such an inscrutable fellow that I never quite know what to make of him. Do you think he is hopeful? Do you think he expects to make a success of it?\"\n\n\"He has said nothing.\"\n\n\"That is a bad sign.\"\n\n\"On the contrary. I have noticed that when he is off the trail he generally says so. It is when he is on a scent and is not quite absolutely sure yet that it is the right one that he is most taciturn. Now, my dear fellow, we can't help matters by making ourselves nervous about them, so let me implore you to go to bed and so be fresh for whatever may await us tomorrow.\"\n\nI was able at last to persuade my companion to take my advice, though I knew from his excited manner that there was not much hope of sleep for him. Indeed, his mood was infectious, for I lay tossing half the night myself, brooding over this strange problem and inventing a hundred theories, each of which was more impossible than the last. Why had Holmes remained at Woking? Why had he asked Miss Harrison to remain in the sickroom all day? Why had he been so careful not to inform the people at Briarbrae that he intended to remain near them? I cudgelled my brains until I fell asleep in the endeavour to find some explanation which would cover all these facts.\n\nIt was seven o'clock when I awoke, and I set off at once for Phelps's room to find him haggard and spent after a sleepless night. His first question was whether Holmes had arrived yet.\n\n\"He'll be here when he promised,\" said I, \"and not an instant sooner or later.\"\n\nAnd my words were true, for shortly after eight a hansom dashed up to the door and our friend got out of it. Standing in the window we saw that his left hand was swathed in a bandage and that his face was very grim and pale. He entered the house, but it was some little time before he came upstairs.\n\n\"He looks like a beaten man,\" cried Phelps.\n\nI was forced to confess that he was right. \"After all,\" said I, \"the clue of the matter lies probably here in town.\"\n\nPhelps gave a groan.\n\n\"I don't know how it is,\" said he, \"but I had hoped for so much from his return. But surely his hand was not tied up like that yesterday. What can be the matter?\"\n\n\"You are not wounded, Holmes?\" I asked as my friend entered the room.\n\n\"Tut, it is only a scratch through my own clumsiness,\" he answered, nodding his good-morning to us. \"This case of yours, Mr. Phelps, is certainly one of the darkest which I have ever investigated.\"\n\n\"I feared that you would find it beyond you.\"\n\n\"It has been a most remarkable experience.\"\n\n\"That bandage tells of adventures,\" said I. \"Won't you tell us what has happened?\"\n\n\"After breakfast, my dear Watson. Remember that I have breathed thirty miles of Surrey air this morning. I suppose that there has been no answer from my cabman advertisement? Well, well, we cannot expect to score every time.\"\n\nThe table was all laid, and just as I was about to ring Mrs. Hudson entered with the tea and coffee. A few minutes later she brought in three covers, and we all drew up to the table, Holmes ravenous, I curious, and Phelps in the gloomiest state of depression.\n\n\"Mrs. Hudson has risen to the occasion,\" said Holmes, uncovering a dish of curried chicken. \"Her cuisine is a little limited, but she has as good an idea of breakfast as a Scotchwoman. What have you there, Watson?\"\n\n\"Ham and eggs,\" I answered.\n\n\"Good! What are you going to take, Mr. Phelps\u2014curried fowl or eggs, or will you help yourself?\"\n\n\"Thank you. I can eat nothing,\" said Phelps.\n\n\"Oh, come! Try the dish before you.\"\n\n\"Thank you, I would really rather not.\"\n\n\"Well, then,\" said Holmes with a mischievous twinkle, \"I suppose that you have no objection to helping me?\"\n\nPhelps raised the cover, and as he did so he uttered a scream and sat there staring with a face as white as the plate upon which he looked. Across the centre of it was lying a little cylinder of blue-gray paper. He caught it up, devoured it with his eyes, and then danced madly about the room, pressing it to his bosom and shrieking out in his delight. Then he fell back into an armchair, so limp and exhausted with his own emotions that we had to pour brandy down his throat to keep him from fainting.\n\n\"There! there!\" said Holmes soothingly, patting him upon the shoulder. \"It was too bad to spring it on you like this, but Watson here will tell you that I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.\"\n\nPhelps seized his hand and kissed it. \"God bless you!\" he cried. \"You have saved my honour.\"\n\n\"Well, my own was at stake, you know,\" said Holmes. \"I assure you it is just as hateful to me to fail in a case as it can be to you to blunder over a commission.\"\n\nPhelps thrust away the precious document into the innermost pocket of his coat.\n\n\"I have not the heart to interrupt your breakfast any further, and yet I am dying to know how you got it and where it was.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes swallowed a cup of coffee and turned his attention to the ham and eggs. Then he rose, lit his pipe, and settled himself down into his chair.\n\n\"I'll tell you what I did first, and how I came to do it afterwards,\" said he. \"After leaving you at the station I went for a charming walk through some admirable Surrey scenery to a pretty little village called Ripley, where I had my tea at an inn and took the precaution of filling my flask and of putting a paper of sandwiches in my pocket. There I remained until evening, when I set off for Woking again and found myself in the highroad outside Briarbrae just after sunset.\n\n\"Well, I waited until the road was clear\u2014it is never a very frequented one at any time, I fancy\u2014and then I clambered over the fence into the grounds.\"\n\n\"Surely the gate was open!\" ejaculated Phelps.\n\n\"Yes, but I have a peculiar taste in these matters. I chose the place where the three fir-trees stand, and behind their screen I got over without the least chance of anyone in the house being able to see me. I crouched down among the bushes on the other side and crawled from one to the other\u2014witness the disreputable state of my trouser knees\u2014until I had reached the clump of rhododendrons just opposite to your bedroom window. There I squatted down and awaited developments.\n\n\"The blind was not down in your room, and I could see Miss Harrison sitting there reading by the table. It was quarter-past ten when she closed her book, fastened the shutters, and retired.\n\n\"I heard her shut the door and felt quite sure that she had turned the key in the lock.\"\n\n\"The key!\" ejaculated Phelps.\n\n\"Yes, I had given Miss Harrison instructions to lock the door on the outside and take the key with her when she went to bed. She carried out every one of my injunctions to the letter, and certainly without her co\u00f6peration you would not have that paper in your coat-pocket. She departed then and the lights went out, and I was left squatting in the rhododendron-bush.\n\n\"The night was fine, but still it was a very weary vigil. Of course it has the sort of excitement about it that the sportsman feels when he lies beside the watercourse and waits for the big game. It was very long, though\u2014almost as long, Watson, as when you and I waited in that deadly room when we looked into the little problem of the Speckled Band. There was a church-clock down at Woking which struck the quarters, and I thought more than once that it had stopped. At last, however, about two in the morning, I suddenly heard the gentle sound of a bolt being pushed back and the creaking of a key. A moment later the servants' door was opened, and Mr. Joseph Harrison stepped out into the moonlight.\"\n\n\"Joseph!\" ejaculated Phelps.\n\n\"He was bare-headed, but he had a black cloak thrown over his shoulder, so that he could conceal his face in an instant if there were any alarm. He walked on tiptoe under the shadow of the wall, and when he reached the window he worked a long-bladed knife through the sash and pushed back the catch. Then he flung open the window, and putting his knife through the crack in the shutters, he thrust the bar up and swung them open.\n\n\"From where I lay I had a perfect view of the inside of the room and of every one of his movements. He lit the two candles which stood upon the mantelpiece, and then he proceeded to turn back the corner of the carpet in the neighbourhood of the door. Presently he stooped and picked out a square piece of board, such as is usually left to enable plumbers to get at the joints of the gas-pipes. This one covered, as a matter of fact, the T joint which gives off the pipe which supplies the kitchen underneath. Out of this hiding-place he drew that little cylinder of paper, pushed down the board, rearranged the carpet, blew out the candles, and walked straight into my arms as I stood waiting for him outside the window.\n\n\"Well, he has rather more viciousness than I gave him credit for, has Master Joseph. He flew at me with his knife, and I had to grass him twice, and got a cut over the knuckles, before I had the upper hand of him. He looked murder out of the only eye he could see with when we had finished, but he listened to reason and gave up the papers. Having got them I let my man go, but I wired full particulars to Forbes this morning. If he is quick enough to catch his bird, well and good. But if, as I shrewdly suspect, he finds the nest empty before he gets there, why, all the better for the government. I fancy that Lord Holdhurst, for one, and Mr. Percy Phelps for another, would very much rather that the affair never got as far as a police-court.\"\n\n\"My God!\" gasped our client. \"Do you tell me that during these long ten weeks of agony the stolen papers were within the very room with me all the time?\"\n\n\"So it was.\"\n\n\"And Joseph! Joseph a villain and a thief!\"\n\n\"Hum! I am afraid Joseph's character is a rather deeper and more dangerous one than one might judge from his appearance. From what I have heard from him this morning, I gather that he has lost heavily in dabbling with stocks, and that he is ready to do anything on earth to better his fortunes. Being an absolutely selfish man, when a chance presents itself he did not allow either his sister's happiness or your reputation to hold his hand.\"\n\nPercy Phelps sank back in his chair. \"My head whirls,\" said he. \"Your words have dazed me.\"\n\n\"The principal difficulty in your case,\" remarked Holmes in his didactic fashion, \"lay in the fact of there being too much evidence. What was vital was overlaid and hidden by what was irrelevant. Of all the facts which were presented to us we had to pick just those which we deemed to be essential, and then piece them together in their order, so as to reconstruct this very remarkable chain of events. I had already begun to suspect Joseph from the fact that you had intended to travel home with him that night, and that therefore it was a likely enough thing that he should call for you, knowing the Foreign Office well, upon his way. When I heard that someone had been so anxious to get into the bedroom, in which no one but Joseph could have concealed anything\u2014you told us in your narrative how you had turned Joseph out when you arrived with the doctor\u2014my suspicions all changed to certainties, especially as the attempt was made on the first night upon which the nurse was absent, showing that the intruder was well acquainted with the ways of the house.\"\n\n\"How blind I have been!\"\n\n\"The facts of the case, as far as I have worked them out, are these: This Joseph Harrison entered the office through the Charles Street door, and knowing his way he walked straight into your room the instant after you left it. Finding no one there he promptly rang the bell, and at the instant that he did so his eyes caught the paper upon the table. A glance showed him that chance had put in his way a State document of immense value, and in an instant he had thrust it into his pocket and was gone. A few minutes elapsed, as you remember, before the sleepy commissionaire drew your attention to the bell, and those were just enough to give the thief time to make his escape.\n\n\"He made his way to Woking by the first train, and, having examined his booty and assured himself that it really was of immense value, he had concealed it in what he thought was a very safe place, with the intention of taking it out again in a day or two, and carrying it to the French embassy, or wherever he thought that a long price was to be had. Then came your sudden return. He, without a moment's warning, was bundled out of his room, and from that time onward there were always at least two of you there to prevent him from regaining his treasure. The situation to him must have been a maddening one. But at last he thought he saw his chance. He tried to steal in, but was baffled by your wakefulness. You may remember that you did not take your usual draught that night.\"\n\n\"I remember.\"\n\n\"I fancy that he had taken steps to make that draught efficacious, and that he quite relied upon your being unconscious. Of course, I understood that he would repeat the attempt whenever it could be done with safety. Your leaving the room gave him the chance he wanted. I kept Miss Harrison in it all day so that he might not anticipate us. Then, having given him the idea that the coast was clear, I kept guard as I have described. I already knew that the papers were probably in the room, but I had no desire to rip up all the planking and skirting in search of them. I let him take them, therefore, from the hiding-place, and so saved myself an infinity of trouble. Is there any other point which I can make clear?\"\n\n\"Why did he try the window on the first occasion,\" I asked, \"when he might have entered by the door?\"\n\n\"In reaching the door he would have to pass seven bedrooms. On the other hand, he could get out on to the lawn with ease. Anything else?\"\n\n\"You do not think,\" asked Phelps, \"that he had any murderous intention? The knife was only meant as a tool.\"\n\n\"It may be so,\" answered Holmes, shrugging his shoulders. \"I can only say for certain that Mr. Joseph Harrison is a gentleman to whose mercy I should be extremely unwilling to trust.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE FINAL PROBLEM", + "text": "It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was distinguished. In an incoherent and, as I deeply feel, an entirely inadequate fashion, I have endeavoured to give some account of my strange experiences in his company from the chance which first brought us together at the period of the \"Study in Scarlet,\" up to the time of his interference in the matter of the \"Naval Treaty\"\u2014an interference which had the unquestionable effect of preventing a serious international complication. It was my intention to have stopped there, and to have said nothing of that event which has created a void in my life which the lapse of two years has done little to fill. My hand has been forced, however, by the recent letters in which Colonel James Moriarty defends the memory of his brother, and I have no choice but to lay the facts before the public exactly as they occurred. I alone know the absolute truth of the matter, and I am satisfied that the time has come when no good purpose is to be served by its suppression. As far as I know, there have been only three accounts in the public press: that in the Journal de Gen\u00e8ve on May 6th, 1891, the Reuter's dispatch in the English papers on May 7th, and finally the recent letters to which I have alluded. Of these the first and second were extremely condensed, while the last is, as I shall now show, an absolute perversion of the facts. It lies with me to tell for the first time what really took place between Professor Moriarty and Mr. Sherlock Holmes.\n\nIt may be remembered that after my marriage, and my subsequent start in private practice, the very intimate relations which had existed between Holmes and myself became to some extent modified. He still came to me from time to time when he desired a companion in his investigations, but these occasions grew more and more seldom, until I find that in the year 1890 there were only three cases of which I retain any record. During the winter of that year and the early spring of 1891, I saw in the papers that he had been engaged by the French government upon a matter of supreme importance, and I received two notes from Holmes, dated from Narbonne and from N\u00eemes, from which I gathered that his stay in France was likely to be a long one. It was with some surprise, therefore, that I saw him walk into my consulting-room upon the evening of April 24th. It struck me that he was looking even paler and thinner than usual.\n\n\"Yes, I have been using myself up rather too freely,\" he remarked, in answer to my look rather than to my words; \"I have been a little pressed of late. Have you any objection to my closing your shutters?\"\n\nThe only light in the room came from the lamp upon the table at which I had been reading. Holmes edged his way round the wall, and, flinging the shutters together, he bolted them securely.\n\n\"You are afraid of something?\" I asked.\n\n\"Well, I am.\"\n\n\"Of what?\"\n\n\"Of air-guns.\"\n\n\"My dear Holmes, what do you mean?\"\n\n\"I think that you know me well enough, Watson, to understand that I am by no means a nervous man. At the same time, it is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you. Might I trouble you for a match?\" He drew in the smoke of his cigarette as if the soothing influence was grateful to him.\n\n\"I must apologize for calling so late,\" said he, \"and I must further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house presently by scrambling over your back garden wall.\"\n\n\"But what does it all mean?\" I asked.\n\nHe held out his hand, and I saw in the light of the lamp that two of his knuckles were burst and bleeding.\n\n\"It's not an airy nothing, you see,\" said he, smiling. \"On the contrary, it is solid enough for a man to break his hand over. Is Mrs. Watson in?\"\n\n\"She is away upon a visit.\"\n\n\"Indeed! You are alone?\"\n\n\"Quite.\"\n\n\"Then it makes it the easier for me to propose that you should come away with me for a week to the Continent.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"Oh, anywhere. It's all the same to me.\"\n\nThere was something very strange in all this. It was not Holmes's nature to take an aimless holiday, and something about his pale, worn face told me that his nerves were at their highest tension. He saw the question in my eyes, and, putting his finger-tips together and his elbows upon his knees, he explained the situation.\n\n\"You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?\" said he.\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"Ay, there's the genius and the wonder of the thing!\" he cried. \"The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That's what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime. I tell you Watson, in all seriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had reached its summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some more placid line in life. Between ourselves, the recent cases in which I have been of assistance to the royal family of Scandinavia, and to the French republic, have left me in such a position that I could continue to live in the quiet fashion which is most congenial to me, and to concentrate my attention upon my chemical researches. But I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.\"\n\n\"What has he done, then?\"\n\n\"His career has been an extraordinary one. He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the binomial theorem, which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it he won the mathematical chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him. But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers. Dark rumours gathered round him in the university town, and eventually he was compelled to resign his chair and to come down to London, where he set up as an army coach. So much is known to the world, but what I am telling you now is what I have myself discovered.\n\n\"As you are aware, Watson, there is no one who knows the higher criminal world of London so well as I do. For years past I have continually been conscious of some power behind the malefactor, some deep organizing power which forever stands in the way of the law, and throws its shield over the wrong-doer. Again and again in cases of the most varying sorts\u2014forgery cases, robberies, murders\u2014I have felt the presence of this force, and I have deduced its action in many of those undiscovered crimes in which I have not been personally consulted. For years I have endeavoured to break through the veil which shrouded it, and at last the time came when I seized my thread and followed it, until it led me, after a thousand cunning windings, to ex-Professor Moriarty, of mathematical celebrity.\n\n\"He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed\u2014the word is passed to the professor, the matter is organized and carried out. The agent may be caught. In that case money is found for his bail or his defence. But the central power which uses the agent is never caught\u2014never so much as suspected. This was the organization which I deduced, Watson, and which I devoted my whole energy to exposing and breaking up.\n\n\"But the professor was fenced round with safeguards so cunningly devised that, do what I would, it seemed impossible to get evidence which would convict in a court of law. You know my powers, my dear Watson, and yet at the end of three months I was forced to confess that I had at last met an antagonist who was my intellectual equal. My horror at his crimes was lost in my admiration at his skill. But at last he made a trip\u2014only a little, little trip\u2014but it was more than he could afford, when I was so close upon him. I had my chance, and, starting from that point, I have woven my net round him until now it is all ready to close. In three days\u2014that is to say, on Monday next\u2014matters will be ripe, and the professor, with all the principal members of his gang, will be in the hands of the police. Then will come the greatest criminal trial of the century, the clearing up of over forty mysteries, and the rope for all of them; but if we move at all prematurely, you understand, they may slip out of our hands even at the last moment.\n\n\"Now, if I could have done this without the knowledge of Professor Moriarty, all would have been well. But he was too wily for that. He saw every step which I took to draw my toils round him. Again and again he strove to break away, but I as often headed him off. I tell you, my friend, that if a detailed account of that silent contest could be written, it would take its place as the most brilliant bit of thrust-and-parry work in the history of detection. Never have I risen to such a height, and never have I been so hard pressed by an opponent. He cut deep, and yet I just undercut him. This morning the last steps were taken, and three days only were wanted to complete the business. I was sitting in my room thinking the matter over when the door opened and Professor Moriarty stood before me.\n\n\"My nerves are fairly proof, Watson, but I must confess to a start when I saw the very man who had been so much in my thoughts standing there on my threshold. His appearance was quite familiar to me. He is extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out in a white curve, and his two eyes are deeply sunken in his head. He is clean-shaven, pale, and ascetic-looking, retaining something of the professor in his features. His shoulders are rounded from much study, and his face protrudes forward and is forever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion. He peered at me with great curiosity in his puckered eyes.\n\n\"'You have less frontal development than I should have expected,' said he at last. 'It is a dangerous habit to finger loaded firearms in the pocket of one's dressing-gown.'\n\n\"The fact is that upon his entrance I had instantly recognized the extreme personal danger in which I lay. The only conceivable escape for him lay in silencing my tongue. In an instant I had slipped the revolver from the drawer into my pocket and was covering him through the cloth. At his remark I drew the weapon out and laid it cocked upon the table. He still smiled and blinked, but there was something about his eyes which made me feel very glad that I had it there.\n\n\"'You evidently don't know me,' said he.\n\n\"'On the contrary,' I answered, 'I think it is fairly evident that I do. Pray take a chair. I can spare you five minutes if you have anything to say.'\n\n\"'All that I have to say has already crossed your mind,' said he.\n\n\"'Then possibly my answer has crossed yours,' I replied.\n\n\"'You stand fast?'\n\n\"'Absolutely.'\n\n\"He clapped his hand into his pocket, and I raised the pistol from the table. But he merely drew out a memorandum-book in which he had scribbled some dates.\n\n\"'You crossed my path on the fourth of January,' said he. 'On the twenty-third you incommoded me; by the middle of February I was seriously inconvenienced by you; at the end of March I was absolutely hampered in my plans; and now, at the close of April, I find myself placed in such a position through your continual persecution that I am in positive danger of losing my liberty. The situation is becoming an impossible one.'\n\n\"'Have you any suggestion to make?' I asked.\n\n\"'You must drop it, Mr. Holmes,' said he, swaying his face about. 'You really must, you know.'\n\n\"'After Monday,' said I.\n\n\"'Tut, tut!' said he. 'I am quite sure that a man of your intelligence will see that there can be but one outcome to this affair. It is necessary that you should withdraw. You have worked things in such a fashion that we have only one resource left. It has been an intellectual treat to me to see the way in which you have grappled with this affair, and I say, unaffectedly, that it would be a grief to me to be forced to take any extreme measure. You smile, sir, but I assure you that it really would.'\n\n\"'Danger is part of my trade,' I remarked.\n\n\"'This is not danger,' said he. 'It is inevitable destruction. You stand in the way not merely of an individual but of a mighty organization, the full extent of which you, with all your cleverness, have been unable to realize. You must stand clear, Mr. Holmes, or be trodden under foot.'\n\n\"'I am afraid,' said I, rising, 'that in the pleasure of this conversation I am neglecting business of importance which awaits me elsewhere.'\n\n\"He rose also and looked at me in silence, shaking his head sadly.\n\n\"'Well, well,' said he at last. 'It seems a pity, but I have done what I could. I know every move of your game. You can do nothing before Monday. It has been a duel between you and me, Mr. Holmes. You hope to place me in the dock. I tell you that I will never stand in the dock. You hope to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me. If you are clever enough to bring destruction upon me, rest assured that I shall do as much to you.'\n\n\"'You have paid me several compliments, Mr. Moriarty,' said I. 'Let me pay you one in return when I say that if I were assured of the former eventuality I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept the latter.'\n\n\"'I can promise you the one, but not the other,' he snarled, and so turned his rounded back upon me and went peering and blinking out of the room.\n\n\"That was my singular interview with Professor Moriarty. I confess that it left an unpleasant effect upon my mind. His soft, precise fashion of speech leaves a conviction of sincerity which a mere bully could not produce. Of course, you will say: 'Why not take police precautions against him?' The reason is that I am well convinced that it is from his agents the blow would fall. I have the best of proofs that it would be so.\"\n\n\"You have already been assaulted?\"\n\n\"My dear Watson, Professor Moriarty is not a man who lets the grass grow under his feet. I went out about midday to transact some business in Oxford Street. As I passed the corner which leads from Bentinck Street on to the Welbeck Street crossing a two-horse van furiously driven whizzed round and was on me like a flash. I sprang for the foot-path and saved myself by the fraction of a second. The van dashed round by Marylebone Lane and was gone in an instant. I kept to the pavement after that, Watson, but as I walked down Vere Street a brick came down from the roof of one of the houses and was shattered to fragments at my feet. I called the police and had the place examined. There were slates and bricks piled up on the roof preparatory to some repairs, and they would have me believe that the wind had toppled over one of these. Of course I knew better, but I could prove nothing. I took a cab after that and reached my brother's rooms in Pall Mall, where I spent the day. Now I have come round to you, and on my way I was attacked by a rough with a bludgeon. I knocked him down, and the police have him in custody; but I can tell you with the most absolute confidence that no possible connection will ever be traced between the gentleman upon whose front teeth I have barked my knuckles and the retiring mathematical coach, who is, I daresay, working out problems upon a black-board ten miles away. You will not wonder, Watson, that my first act on entering your rooms was to close your shutters, and that I have been compelled to ask your permission to leave the house by some less conspicuous exit than the front door.\"\n\nI had often admired my friend's courage, but never more than now, as he sat quietly checking off a series of incidents which must have combined to make up a day of horror.\n\n\"You will spend the night here?\" I said.\n\n\"No, my friend, you might find me a dangerous guest. I have my plans laid, and all will be well. Matters have gone so far now that they can move without my help as far as the arrest goes, though my presence is necessary for a conviction. It is obvious, therefore, that I cannot do better than get away for the few days which remain before the police are at liberty to act. It would be a great pleasure to me, therefore, if you could come on to the Continent with me.\"\n\n\"The practice is quiet,\" said I, \"and I have an accommodating neighbour. I should be glad to come.\"\n\n\"And to start to-morrow morning?\"\n\n\"If necessary.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, it is most necessary. Then these are your instructions, and I beg, my dear Watson, that you will obey them to the letter, for you are now playing a double-handed game with me against the cleverest rogue and the most powerful syndicate of criminals in Europe. Now listen! You will dispatch whatever luggage you intend to take by a trusty messenger unaddressed to Victoria to-night. In the morning you will send for a hansom, desiring your man to take neither the first nor the second which may present itself. Into this hansom you will jump, and you will drive to the Strand end of the Lowther Arcade, handing the address to the cabman upon a slip of paper, with a request that he will not throw it away. Have your fare ready, and the instant that your cab stops, dash through the Arcade, timing yourself to reach the other side at a quarter-past nine. You will find a small brougham waiting close to the curb, driven by a fellow with a heavy black cloak tipped at the collar with red. Into this you will step, and you will reach Victoria in time for the Continental express.\"\n\n\"Where shall I meet you?\"\n\n\"At the station. The second first-class carriage from the front will be reserved for us.\"\n\n\"The carriage is our rendezvous, then?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nIt was in vain that I asked Holmes to remain for the evening. It was evident to me that he thought he might bring trouble to the roof he was under, and that that was the motive which impelled him to go. With a few hurried words as to our plans for the morrow he rose and came out with me into the garden, clambering over the wall which leads into Mortimer Street, and immediately whistling for a hansom, in which I heard him drive away.\n\nIn the morning I obeyed Holmes's injunctions to the letter. A hansom was procured with such precautions as would prevent its being one which was placed ready for us, and I drove immediately after breakfast to the Lowther Arcade, through which I hurried at the top of my speed. A brougham was waiting with a very massive driver wrapped in a dark cloak, who, the instant that I had stepped in, whipped up the horse and rattled off to Victoria Station. On my alighting there he turned the carriage, and dashed away again without so much as a look in my direction.\n\nSo far all had gone admirably. My luggage was waiting for me, and I had no difficulty in finding the carriage which Holmes had indicated, the less so as it was the only one in the train which was marked \"Engaged.\" My only source of anxiety now was the non-appearance of Holmes. The station clock marked only seven minutes from the time when we were due to start. In vain I searched among the groups of travellers and leave-takers for the lithe figure of my friend. There was no sign of him. I spent a few minutes in assisting a venerable Italian priest, who was endeavouring to make a porter understand, in his broken English, that his luggage was to be booked through to Paris. Then, having taken another look round, I returned to my carriage, where I found that the porter, in spite of the ticket, had given me my decrepit Italian friend as a travelling companion. It was useless for me to explain to him that his presence was an intrusion, for my Italian was even more limited than his English, so I shrugged my shoulders resignedly, and continued to look out anxiously for my friend. A chill of fear had come over me, as I thought that his absence might mean that some blow had fallen during the night. Already the doors had all been shut and the whistle blown, when\u2014\n\n\"My dear Watson,\" said a voice, \"you have not even condescended to say good-morning.\"\n\nI turned in uncontrollable astonishment. The aged ecclesiastic had turned his face towards me. For an instant the wrinkles were smoothed away, the nose drew away from the chin, the lower lip ceased to protrude and the mouth to mumble, the dull eyes regained their fire, the drooping figure expanded. The next the whole frame collapsed again, and Holmes had gone as quickly as he had come.\n\n\"Good heavens!\" I cried, \"how you startled me!\"\n\n\"Every precaution is still necessary,\" he whispered. \"I have reason to think that they are hot upon our trail. Ah, there is Moriarty himself.\"\n\nThe train had already begun to move as Holmes spoke. Glancing back, I saw a tall man pushing his way furiously through the crowd, and waving his hand as if he desired to have the train stopped. It was too late, however, for we were rapidly gathering momentum, and an instant later had shot clear of the station.\n\n\"With all our precautions, you see that we have cut it rather fine,\" said Holmes, laughing. He rose, and throwing off the black cassock and hat which had formed his disguise, he packed them away in a hand-bag.\n\n\"Have you seen the morning paper, Watson?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"You haven't seen about Baker Street, then?\"\n\n\"Baker Street?\"\n\n\"They set fire to our rooms last night. No great harm was done.\"\n\n\"Good heavens, Holmes, this is intolerable!\"\n\n\"They must have lost my track completely after their bludgeonman was arrested. Otherwise they could not have imagined that I had returned to my rooms. They have evidently taken the precaution of watching you, however, and that is what has brought Moriarty to Victoria. You could not have made any slip in coming?\"\n\n\"I did exactly what you advised.\"\n\n\"Did you find your brougham?\"\n\n\"Yes, it was waiting.\"\n\n\"Did you recognize your coachman?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"It was my brother Mycroft. It is an advantage to get about in such a case without taking a mercenary into your confidence. But we must plan what we are to do about Moriarty now.\"\n\n\"As this is an express, and as the boat runs in connection with it, I should think we have shaken him off very effectively.\"\n\n\"My dear Watson, you evidently did not realize my meaning when I said that this man may be taken as being quite on the same intellectual plane as myself. You do not imagine that if I were the pursuer I should allow myself to be baffled by so slight an obstacle. Why, then, should you think so meanly of him?\"\n\n\"What will he do?\"\n\n\"What I should do.\"\n\n\"What would you do, then?\"\n\n\"Engage a special.\"\n\n\"But it must be late.\"\n\n\"By no means. This train stops at Canterbury; and there is always at least a quarter of an hour's delay at the boat. He will catch us there.\"\n\n\"One would think that we were the criminals. Let us have him arrested on his arrival.\"\n\n\"It would be to ruin the work of three months. We should get the big fish, but the smaller would dart right and left out of the net. On Monday we should have them all. No, an arrest is inadmissible.\"\n\n\"What then?\"\n\n\"We shall get out at Canterbury.\"\n\n\"And then?\"\n\n\"Well, then we must make a cross-country journey to Newhaven, and so over to Dieppe. Moriarty will again do what I should do. He will get on to Paris, mark down our luggage, and wait for two days at the depot. In the meantime we shall treat ourselves to a couple of carpet-bags, encourage the manufactures of the countries through which we travel, and make our way at our leisure into Switzerland, via Luxembourg and Basle.\"\n\nAt Canterbury, therefore, we alighted, only to find that we should have to wait an hour before we could get a train to Newhaven.\n\nI was still looking rather ruefully after the rapidly disappearing luggage-van which contained my wardrobe, when Holmes pulled my sleeve and pointed up the line.\n\n\"Already, you see,\" said he.\n\nFar away, from among the Kentish woods there rose a thin spray of smoke. A minute later a carriage and engine could be seen flying along the open curve which leads to the station. We had hardly time to take our place behind a pile of luggage when it passed with a rattle and a roar, beating a blast of hot air into our faces.\n\n\"There he goes,\" said Holmes, as we watched the carriage swing and rock over the points. \"There are limits, you see, to our friend's intelligence. It would have been a coup-de-ma\u00eetre had he deduced what I would deduce and acted accordingly.\"\n\n\"And what would he have done had he overtaken us?\"\n\n\"There cannot be the least doubt that he would have made a murderous attack upon me. It is, however, a game at which two may play. The question now is whether we should take a premature lunch here, or run our chance of starving before we reach the buffet at Newhaven.\"\n\nWe made our way to Brussels that night and spent two days there, moving on upon the third day as far as Strasbourg. On the Monday morning Holmes had telegraphed to the London police, and in the evening we found a reply waiting for us at our hotel. Holmes tore it open, and then with a bitter curse hurled it into the grate.\n\n\"I might have known it!\" he groaned. \"He has escaped!\"\n\n\"Moriarty?\"\n\n\"They have secured the whole gang with the exception of him. He has given them the slip. Of course, when I had left the country there was no one to cope with him. But I did think that I had put the game in their hands. I think that you had better return to England, Watson.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because you will find me a dangerous companion now. This man's occupation is gone. He is lost if he returns to London. If I read his character right he will devote his whole energies to revenging himself upon me. He said as much in our short interview, and I fancy that he meant it. I should certainly recommend you to return to your practice.\"\n\nIt was hardly an appeal to be successful with one who was an old campaigner as well as an old friend. We sat in the Strasbourg salle-\u00e0-manger arguing the question for half an hour, but the same night we had resumed our journey and were well on our way to Geneva.\n\nFor a charming week we wandered up the valley of the Rhone, and then, branching off at Leuk, we made our way over the Gemini Pass, still deep in snow, and so, by way of Interlaken, to Meiringen. It was a lovely trip, the dainty green of the spring below, the virgin white of the winter above; but it was clear to me that never for one instant did Holmes forget the shadow which lay across him. In the homely Alpine villages or in the lonely mountain passes, I could still tell by his quick glancing eyes and his sharp scrutiny of every face that passed us, that he was well convinced that, walk where we would, we could not walk ourselves clear of the danger which was dogging our footsteps.\n\nOnce, I remember, as we passed over the Gemini, and walked along the border of the melancholy Daubensee, a large rock which had been dislodged from the ridge upon our right clattered down and roared into the lake behind us. In an instant Holmes had raced up on to the ridge, and, standing upon a lofty pinnacle, craned his neck in every direction. It was in vain that our guide assured him that a fall of stones was a common chance in the springtime at that spot. He said nothing, but he smiled at me with the air of a man who sees the fulfilment of that which he had expected.\n\nAnd yet for all his watchfulness he was never depressed. On the contrary, I can never recollect having seen him in such exuberant spirits. Again and again he recurred to the fact that if he could be assured that society was freed from Professor Moriarty he would cheerfully bring his own career to a conclusion.\n\n\"I think that I may go so far as to say, Watson, that I have not lived wholly in vain,\" he remarked. \"If my record were closed to-night I could still survey it with equanimity. The air of London is the sweeter for my presence. In over a thousand cases I am not aware that I have ever used my powers upon the wrong side. Of late I have been tempted to look into the problems furnished by nature rather than those more superficial ones for which our artificial state of society is responsible. Your memoirs will draw to an end, Watson, upon the day that I crown my career by the capture or extinction of the most dangerous and capable criminal in Europe.\"\n\nI shall be brief, and yet exact, in the little which remains for me to tell. It is not a subject on which I would willingly dwell, and yet I am conscious that a duty devolves upon me to omit no detail.\n\nIt was on the third of May that we reached the little village of Meiringen, where we put up at the Englischer Hof, then kept by Peter Steiler the elder. Our landlord was an intelligent man and spoke excellent English, having served for three years as waiter at the Grosvenor Hotel in London. At his advice, on the afternoon of the fourth we set off together, with the intention of crossing the hills and spending the night at the hamlet of Rosenlaui. We had strict injunctions, however, on no account to pass the falls of Reichenbach, which are about halfway up the hills, without making a small detour to see them.\n\nIt is, indeed, a fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house. The shaft into which the river hurls itself is an immense chasm, lined by glistening coal-black rock, and narrowing into a creaming, boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over and shoots the stream onward over its jagged lip. The long sweep of green water roaring forever down, and the thick flickering curtain of spray hissing forever upward, turn a man giddy with their constant whirl and clamour. We stood near the edge peering down at the gleam of the breaking water far below us against the black rocks, and listening to the half-human shout which came booming up with the spray out of the abyss.\n\nThe path has been cut halfway round the fall to afford a complete view, but it ends abruptly, and the traveller has to return as he came. We had turned to do so, when we saw a Swiss lad come running along it with a letter in his hand. It bore the mark of the hotel which we had just left and was addressed to me by the landlord. It appeared that within a very few minutes of our leaving, an English lady had arrived who was in the last stage of consumption. She had wintered at Davos Platz and was journeying now to join her friends at Lucerne, when a sudden hemorrhage had overtaken her. It was thought that she could hardly live a few hours, but it would be a great consolation to her to see an English doctor, and, if I would only return, etc. The good Steiler assured me in a postscript that he would himself look upon my compliance as a very great favour, since the lady absolutely refused to see a Swiss physician, and he could not but feel that he was incurring a great responsibility.\n\nThe appeal was one which could not be ignored. It was impossible to refuse the request of a fellow-countrywoman dying in a strange land. Yet I had my scruples about leaving Holmes. It was finally agreed, however, that he should retain the young Swiss messenger with him as guide and companion while I returned to Meiringen. My friend would stay some little time at the fall, he said, and would then walk slowly over the hill to Rosenlaui, where I was to rejoin him in the evening. As I turned away I saw Holmes, with his back against a rock and his arms folded, gazing down at the rush of the waters. It was the last that I was ever destined to see of him in this world.\n\nWhen I was near the bottom of the descent I looked back. It was impossible, from that position, to see the fall, but I could see the curving path which winds over the shoulder of the hills and leads to it. Along this a man was, I remember, walking very rapidly.\n\nI could see his black figure clearly outlined against the green behind him. I noted him, and the energy with which he walked, but he passed from my mind again as I hurried on upon my errand.\n\nIt may have been a little over an hour before I reached Meiringen. Old Steiler was standing at the porch of his hotel.\n\n\"Well,\" said I, as I came hurrying up. \"I trust that she is no worse?\"\n\nA look of surprise passed over his face, and at the first quiver of his eyebrows my heart turned to lead in my breast.\n\n\"You did not write this?\" I said, pulling the letter from my pocket. \"There is no sick Englishwoman in the hotel?\"\n\n\"Certainly not!\" he cried. \"But it has the hotel mark upon it! Ha, it must have been written by that tall Englishman who came in after you had gone. He said\u2014\"\n\nBut I waited for none of the landlord's explanation. In a tingle of fear I was already running down the village street, and making for the path which I had so lately descended. It had taken me an hour to come down. For all my efforts two more had passed before I found myself at the fall of Reichenbach once more. There was Holmes's Alpine-stock still leaning against the rock by which I had left him. But there was no sign of him, and it was in vain that I shouted. My only answer was my own voice reverberating in a rolling echo from the cliffs around me.\n\nIt was the sight of that Alpine-stock which turned me cold and sick. He had not gone to Rosenlaui, then. He had remained on that three-foot path, with sheer wall on one side and sheer drop on the other, until his enemy had overtaken him. The young Swiss had gone too. He had probably been in the pay of Moriarty and had left the two men together. And then what had happened? Who was to tell us what had happened then?\n\nI stood for a minute or two to collect myself, for I was dazed with the horror of the thing. Then I began to think of Holmes's own methods and to try to practise them in reading this tragedy. It was, alas, only too easy to do. During our conversation we had not gone to the end of the path, and the Alpine-stock marked the place where we had stood. The blackish soil is kept forever soft by the incessant drift of spray, and a bird would leave its tread upon it. Two lines of footmarks were clearly marked along the farther end of the path, both leading away from me. There were none returning. A few yards from the end the soil was all ploughed up into a patch of mud, and the brambles and ferns which fringed the chasm were torn and bedraggled. I lay upon my face and peered over with the spray spouting up all around me. It had darkened since I left, and now I could only see here and there the glistening of moisture upon the black walls, and far away down at the end of the shaft the gleam of the broken water. I shouted; but only that same half-human cry of the fall was borne back to my ears.\n\nBut it was destined that I should, after all, have a last word of greeting from my friend and comrade. I have said that his Alpine-stock had been left leaning against a rock which jutted on to the path. From the top of this boulder the gleam of something bright caught my eye, and raising my hand I found that it came from the silver cigarette-case which he used to carry. As I took it up a small square of paper upon which it had lain fluttered down on to the ground. Unfolding it, I found that it consisted of three pages torn from his notebook and addressed to me. It was characteristic of the man that the direction was as precise, and the writing as firm and clear, as though it had been written in his study.\n\n\u2002MY DEAR WATSON [it said]:\n\n\u2002I write these few lines through the courtesy of Mr. Moriarty, who awaits my convenience for the final discussion of those questions which lie between us. He has been giving me a sketch of the methods by which he avoided the English police and kept himself informed of our movements. They certainly confirm the very high opinion which I had formed of his abilities. I am pleased to think that I shall be able to free society from any further effects of his presence, though I fear that it is at a cost which will give pain to my friends, and especially, my dear Watson, to you. I have already explained to you, however, that my career had in any case reached its crisis, and that no possible conclusion to it could be more congenial to me than this. Indeed, if I may make a full confession to you, I was quite convinced that the letter from Meiringen was a hoax, and I allowed you to depart on that errand under the persuasion that some development of this sort would follow. Tell Inspector Patterson that the papers which he needs to convict the gang are in pigeonhole M., done up in a blue envelope and inscribed \"Moriarty.\" I made every disposition of my property before leaving England and handed it to my brother Mycroft. Pray give my greetings to Mrs. Watson, and believe me to be, my dear fellow,\n\n\u2002Very sincerely yours,\n\n\u2002SHERLOCK HOLMES.\n\nA few words may suffice to tell the little that remains. An examination by experts leaves little doubt that a personal contest between the two men ended, as it could hardly fail to end in such a situation, in their reeling over, locked in each other's arms. Any attempt at recovering the bodies was absolutely hopeless, and there, deep down in that dreadful cauldron of swirling water and seething foam, will lie for all time the most dangerous criminal and the foremost champion of the law of their generation. The Swiss youth was never found again, and there can be no doubt that he was one of the numerous agents whom Moriarty kept in his employ. As to the gang, it will be within the memory of the public how completely the evidence which Holmes had accumulated exposed their organization, and how heavily the hand of the dead man weighed upon them. Of their terrible chief few details came out during the proceedings, and if I have now been compelled to make a clear statement of his career, it is due to those injudicious champions who have endeavoured to clear his memory by attacks upon him whom I shall ever regard as the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known.\n\n\u2042\n\n[ THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES ]\n\n[ Mr. Sherlock Holmes ]\n\nMr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a \"Penang lawyer.\" Just under the head was a broad silver band, nearly an inch across. \"To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.,\" was engraved upon it, with the date \"1884.\" It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry\u2014dignified, solid, and reassuring.\n\n\"Well, Watson, what do you make of it?\"\n\nHolmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation.\n\n\"How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head.\"\n\n\"I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me,\" said he. \"But, tell me, Watson, what do you make of our visitor's stick? Since we have been so unfortunate as to miss him and have no notion of his errand, this accidental souvenir becomes of importance. Let me hear you reconstruct the man by an examination of it.\"\n\n\"I think,\" said I, following as far as I could the methods of my companion, \"that Dr. Mortimer is a successful, elderly medical man, well-esteemed, since those who know him give him this mark of their appreciation.\"\n\n\"Good!\" said Holmes. \"Excellent!\"\n\n\"I think also that the probability is in favour of his being a country practitioner who does a great deal of his visiting on foot.\"\n\n\"Why so?\"\n\n\"Because this stick, though originally a very handsome one, has been so knocked about that I can hardly imagine a town practitioner carrying it. The thick iron ferrule is worn down, so it is evident that he has done a great amount of walking with it.\"\n\n\"Perfectly sound!\" said Holmes.\n\n\"And then again, there is the 'friends of the C.C.H.' I should guess that to be the Something Hunt, the local hunt to whose members he has possiblygiven some surgical assistance, and which has made him a small presentation in return.\"\n\n\"Really, Watson, you excel yourself,\" said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. \"I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.\"\n\nHe had never said as much before, and I must admit that his words gave me keen pleasure, for I had often been piqued by his indifference to my admiration and to the attempts which I had made to give publicity to his methods. I was proud, too, to think that I had so far mastered his system as to apply it in a way which earned his approval. He now took the stick from my hands and examined it for a few minutes with his naked eyes. Then with an expression of interest he laid down his cigarette, and, carrying the cane to the window, he looked over it again with a convex lens.\n\n\"Interesting, though elementary,\" said he as he returned to his favourite corner of the settee. \"There are certainly one or two indications upon the stick. It gives us the basis for several deductions.\"\n\n\"Has anything escaped me?\" I asked with some self-importance. \"I trust that there is nothing of consequence which I have overlooked?\"\n\n\"I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance. The man is certainly a country practitioner. And he walks a good deal.\"\n\n\"Then I was right.\"\n\n\"To that extent.\"\n\n\"But that was all.\"\n\n\"No, no, my dear Watson, not all\u2014by no means all. I would suggest, for example, that a presentation to a doctor is more likely to come from a hospital than from a hunt, and that when the initials 'C.C.' are placed before that hospital the words 'Charing Cross' very naturally suggest themselves.\"\n\n\"You may be right.\"\n\n\"The probability lies in that direction. And if we take this as a working hypothesis we have a fresh basis from which to start our construction of this unknown visitor.\"\n\n\"Well, then, supposing that 'C.C.H.' does stand for 'Charing Cross Hospital,' what further inferences may we draw?\"\n\n\"Do none suggest themselves? You know my methods. Apply them!\"\n\n\"I can only think of the obvious conclusion that the man has practiced in town before going to the country.\"\n\n\"I think that we might venture a little farther than this. Look at it in this light. On what occasion would it be most probable that such a presentation would be made? When would his friends unite to give him a pledge of their good will? Obviously at the moment when Dr. Mortimer withdrew from the service of the hospital in order to start in practice for himself. We know there has been a presentation. We believe there has been a change from a town hospital to a country practice. Is it, then, stretching our inference too far to say that the presentation was on the occasion of the change?\"\n\n\"It certainly seems probable.\"\n\n\"Now, you will observe that he could not have been on the staff of the hospital, since only a man well-established in a London practice could hold such a position, and such a one would not drift into the country. What was he, then? If he was in the hospital and yet not on the staff he could only have been a house-surgeon or a house-physician\u2014little more than a senior student. And he left five years ago\u2014the date is on the stick. So your grave, middle-aged family practitioner vanishes into thin air, my dear Watson, and there emerges a young fellow under thirty, amiable, unambitious, absent-minded, and the possessor of a favourite dog, which I should describe roughly as being larger than a terrier and smaller than a mastiff.\"\n\nI laughed incredulously as Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his settee and blew little wavering rings of smoke up to the ceiling.\n\n\"As to the latter part, I have no means of checking you,\" said I, \"but at least it is not difficult to find out a few particulars about the man's age and professional career.\" From my small medical shelf I took down the Medical Directory and turned up the name. There were several Mortimers, but only one who could be our visitor. I read his record aloud.\n\n\"Mortimer, James, M.R.C.S., 1882, Grimpen, Dartmoor, Devon. House-surgeon, from 1882 to 1884, at Charing Cross Hospital. Winner of the Jackson prize for Comparative Pathology, with essay entitled 'Is Disease a Reversion?' Corresponding member of the Swedish Pathological Society. Author of 'Some Freaks of Atavism' (Lancet 1882). 'Do We Progress?' (Journal of Psychology, March, 1883). Medical Officer for the parishes of Grimpen, Thorsley, and High Barrow.\"\n\n\"No mention of that local hunt, Watson,\" said Holmes with a mischievous smile, \"but a country doctor, as you very astutely observed. I think that I am fairly justified in my inferences. As to the adjectives, I said, if I remember right, amiable, unambitious, and absent-minded. It is my experience that it is only an amiable man in this world who receives testimonials, only an unambitious one who abandons a London career for the country, and only an absent-minded one who leaves his stick and not his visiting-card after waiting an hour in your room.\"\n\n\"And the dog?\"\n\n\"Has been in the habit of carrying this stick behind his master. Being a heavy stick the dog has held it tightly by the middle, and the marks of his teeth are very plainly visible. The dog's jaw, as shown in the space between these marks, is too broad in my opinion for a terrier and not broad enough for a mastiff. It may have been\u2014yes, by Jove, it is a curly-haired spaniel.\"\n\nHe had risen and paced the room as he spoke. Now he halted in the recess of the window. There was such a ring of conviction in his voice that I glanced up in surprise.\n\n\"My dear fellow, how can you possibly be so sure of that?\"\n\n\"For the very simple reason that I see the dog himself on our very door-step, and there is the ring of its owner. Don't move, I beg you, Watson. He is a professional brother of yours, and your presence may be of assistance to me. Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill. What does Dr. James Mortimer, the man of science, ask of Sherlock Holmes, the specialist in crime? Come in!\"\n\nThe appearance of our visitor was a surprise to me, since I had expected a typical country practitioner. He was a very tall, thin man, with a long nose like a beak, which jutted out between two keen, gray eyes, set closely together and sparkling brightly from behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. He was clad in a professional but rather slovenly fashion, for his frock-coat was dingy and his trousers frayed. Though young, his long back was already bowed, and he walked with a forward thrust of his head and a general air of peering benevolence. As he entered his eyes fell upon the stick in Holmes's hand, and he ran towards it with an exclamation of joy. \"I am so very glad,\" said he. \"I was not sure whether I had left it here or in the Shipping Office. I would not lose that stick for the world.\"\n\n\"A presentation, I see,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"From Charing Cross Hospital?\"\n\n\"From one or two friends there on the occasion of my marriage.\"\n\n\"Dear, dear, that's bad!\" said Holmes, shaking his head.\n\nDr. Mortimer blinked through his glasses in mild astonishment.\n\n\"Why was it bad?\"\n\n\"Only that you have disarranged our little deductions. Your marriage, you say?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. I married, and so left the hospital, and with it all hopes of a consulting practice. It was necessary to make a home of my own.\"\n\n\"Come, come, we are not so far wrong, after all,\" said Holmes. \"And now, Dr. James Mortimer\u2014\"\n\n\"Mister, sir, Mister\u2014a humble M.R.C.S.\"\n\n\"And a man of precise mind, evidently.\"\n\n\"A dabbler in science, Mr. Holmes, a picker up of shells on the shores of the great unknown ocean. I presume that it is Mr. Sherlock Holmes whom I am addressing and not\u2014\"\n\n\"No, this is my friend Dr. Watson.\"\n\n\"Glad to meet you, sir. I have heard your name mentioned in connection with that of your friend. You interest me very much, Mr. Holmes. I had hardly expected so dolichocephalic a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum. It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes waved our strange visitor into a chair. \"You are an enthusiast in your line of thought, I perceive, sir, as I am in mine,\" said he. \"I observe from your forefinger that you make your own cigarettes. Have no hesitation in lighting one.\"\n\nThe man drew out paper and tobacco and twirled the one up in the other with surprising dexterity. He had long, quivering fingers as agile and restless as the antennae of an insect.\n\nHolmes was silent, but his little darting glances showed me the interest which he took in our curious companion.\n\n\"I presume, sir,\" said he at last, \"that it was not merely for the purpose of examining my skull that you have done me the honour to call here last night and again to-day?\"\n\n\"No, sir, no; though I am happy to have had the opportunity of doing that as well. I came to you, Mr. Holmes, because I recognized that I am myself an unpractical man and because I am suddenly confronted with a most serious and extraordinary problem. Recognizing, as I do, that you are the second highest expert in Europe\u2014\"\n\n\"Indeed, sir! May I inquire who has the honour to be the first?\" asked Holmes with some asperity.\n\n\"To the man of precisely scientific mind the work of Monsieur Bertillon must always appeal strongly.\"\n\n\"Then had you not better consult him?\"\n\n\"I said, sir, to the precisely scientific mind. But as a practical man of affairs it is acknowledged that you stand alone. I trust, sir, that I have not inadvertently\u2014\"\n\n\"Just a little,\" said Holmes. \"I think, Dr. Mortimer, you would do wisely if without more ado you would kindly tell me plainly what the exact nature of the problem is in which you demand my assistance.\"" + }, + { + "title": "The Curse of the Baskervilles", + "text": "\"I have in my pocket a manuscript,\" said Dr. James Mortimer.\n\n\"I observed it as you entered the room,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"It is an old manuscript.\"\n\n\"Early eighteenth century, unless it is a forgery.\"\n\n\"How can you say that, sir?\"\n\n\"You have presented an inch or two of it to my examination all the time that you have been talking. It would be a poor expert who could not give the date of a document within a decade or so. You may possibly have read my little monograph upon the subject. I put that at 1730.\"\n\n\"The exact date is 1742.\" Dr. Mortimer drew it from his breast-pocket. \"This family paper was committed to my care by Sir Charles Baskerville, whose sudden and tragic death some three months ago created so much excitement in Devonshire. I may say that I was his personal friend as well as his medical attendant. He was a strong-minded man, sir, shrewd, practical, and as unimaginative as I am myself. Yet he took this document very seriously, and his mind was prepared for just such an end as did eventually overtake him.\"\n\nHolmes stretched out his hand for the manuscript and flattened it upon his knee.\n\n\"You will observe, Watson, the alternative use of the long s and the short. It is one of several indications which enabled me to fix the date.\"\n\nI looked over his shoulder at the yellow paper and the faded script. At the head was written: \"Baskerville Hall,\" and below, in large, scrawling figures: \"1742.\"\n\n\"It appears to be a statement of some sort.\"\n\n\"Yes, it is a statement of a certain legend which runs in the Baskerville family.\"\n\n\"But I understand that it is something more modern and practical upon which you wish to consult me?\"\n\n\"Most modern. A most practical, pressing matter, which must be decided within twenty-four hours. But the manuscript is short and is intimately connected with the affair. With your permission I will read it to you.\"\n\nHolmes leaned back in his chair, placed his finger-tips together, and closed his eyes, with an air of resignation. Dr. Mortimer turned the manuscript to the light and read in a high, cracking voice the following curious, old-world narrative:\n\n\"Of the origin of the Hound of the Baskervilles there have been many statements, yet as I come in a direct line from Hugo Baskerville, and as I had the story from my father, who also had it from his, I have set it down with all belief that it occurred even as is here set forth. And I would have you believe, my sons, that the same Justice which punishes sin may also most graciously forgive it, and that no ban is so heavy but that by prayer and repentance it may be removed. Learn then from this story not to fear the fruits of the past, but rather to be circumspect in the future, that those foul passions whereby our family has suffered so grievously may not again be loosed to our undoing.\n\n\"Know then that in the time of the Great Rebellion (the history of which by the learned Lord Clarendon I most earnestly commend to your attention) this Manor of Baskerville was held by Hugo of that name, nor can it be gainsaid that he was a most wild, profane, and godless man. This, in truth, his neighbours might have pardoned, seeing that saints have never flourished in those parts, but there was in him a certain wanton and cruel humour which made his name a by-word through the West. It chanced that this Hugo came to love (if, indeed, so dark a passion may be known under so bright a name) the daughter of a yeoman who held lands near the Baskerville estate. But the young maiden, being discreet and of good repute, would ever avoid him, for she feared his evil name. So it came to pass that one Michaelmas this Hugo, with five or six of his idle and wicked companions, stole down upon the farm and carried off the maiden, her father and brothers being from home, as he well knew. When they had brought her to the Hall the maiden was placed in an upper chamber, while Hugo and his friends sat down to a long carouse, as was their nightly custom. Now, the poor lass upstairs was like to have her wits turned at the singing and shouting and terrible oaths which came up to her from below, for they say that the words used by Hugo Baskerville, when he was in wine, were such as might blast the man who said them. At last in the stress of her fear she did that which might have daunted the bravest or most active man, for by the aid of the growth of ivy which covered (and still covers) the south wall she came down from under the eaves, and so homeward across the moor, there being three leagues betwixt the Hall and her father's farm.\n\n\"It chanced that some little time later Hugo left his guests to carry food and drink\u2014with other worse things, perchance\u2014to his captive, and so found the cage empty and the bird escaped. Then, as it would seem, he became as one that hath a devil, for, rushing down the stairs into the dining-hall, he sprang upon the great table, flagons and trenchers flying before him, and he cried aloud before all the company that he would that very night render his body and soul to the Powers of Evil if he might but overtake the wench. And while the revellers stood aghast at the fury of the man, one more wicked or, it may be, more drunken than the rest, cried out that they should put the hounds upon her. Whereat Hugo ran from the house, crying to his grooms that they should saddle his mare and unkennel the pack, and giving the hounds a kerchief of the maid's, he swung them to the line, and so off full cry in the moonlight over the moor.\n\n\"Now, for some space the revellers stood agape, unable to understand all that had been done in such haste. But anon their bemused wits awoke to the nature of the deed which was like to be done upon the moorlands. Everything was now in an uproar, some calling for their pistols, some for their horses, and some for another flask of wine. But at length some sense came back to their crazed minds, and the whole of them, thirteen in number, took horse and started in pursuit. The moon shone clear above them, and they rode swiftly abreast, taking that course which the maid must needs have taken if she were to reach her own home.\n\n\"They had gone a mile or two when they passed one of the night shepherds upon the moorlands, and they cried to him to know if he had seen the hunt. And the man, as the story goes, was so crazed with fear that he could scarce speak, but at last he said that he had indeed seen the unhappy maiden, with the hounds upon her track. 'But I have seen more than that,' said he, 'for Hugo Baskerville passed me upon his black mare, and there ran mute behind him such a hound of hell as God forbid should ever be at my heels.' So the drunken squires cursed the shepherd and rode onward. But soon their skins turned cold, for there came a galloping across the moor, and the black mare, dabbled with white froth, went past with trailing bridle and empty saddle. Then the revellers rode close together, for a great fear was on them, but they still followed over the moor, though each, had he been alone, would have been right glad to have turned his horse's head. Riding slowly in this fashion they came at last upon the hounds. These, though known for their valour and their breed, were whimpering in a cluster at the head of a deep dip or goyal, as we call it, upon the moor, some slinking away and some, with starting hackles and staring eyes, gazing down the narrow valley before them.\n\n\"The company had come to a halt, more sober men, as you may guess, than when they started. The most of them would by no means advance, but three of them, the boldest, or it may be the most drunken, rode forward down the goyal. Now, it opened into a broad space in which stood two of those great stones, still to be seen there, which were set by certain forgotten peoples in the days of old. The moon was shining bright upon the clearing, and there in the centre lay the unhappy maid where she had fallen, dead of fear and of fatigue. But it was not the sight of her body, nor yet was it that of the body of Hugo Baskerville lying near her, which raised the hair upon the heads of these three dare-devil roysterers, but it was that, standing over Hugo, and plucking at his throat, there stood a foul thing, a great, black-beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon. And even as they looked the thing tore the throat out of Hugo Baskerville, on which, as it turned its blazing eyes and dripping jaws upon them, the three shrieked with fear and rode for dear life, still screaming, across the moor. One, it is said, died that very night of what he had seen, and the other twain were but broken men for the rest of their days.\n\n\"Such is the tale, my sons, of the coming of the hound which is said to have plagued the family so sorely ever since. If I have set it down it is because that which is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but hinted at and guessed. Nor can it be denied that many of the family have been unhappy in their deaths, which have been sudden, bloody, and mysterious. Yet may we shelter ourselves in the infinite goodness of Providence, which would not forever punish the innocent beyond that third or fourth generation which is threatened in Holy Writ. To that Providence, my sons, I hereby commend you, and I counsel you by way of caution to forbear from crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted.\n\n\"[This from Hugo Baskerville to his sons Rodger and John, with instructions that they say nothing thereof to their sister Elizabeth.]\"\n\nWhen Dr. Mortimer had finished reading this singular narrative he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and stared across at Mr. Sherlock Holmes. The latter yawned and tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire.\n\n\"Well?\" said he.\n\n\"Do you not find it interesting?\"\n\n\"To a collector of fairy tales.\"\n\nDr. Mortimer drew a folded newspaper out of his pocket.\n\n\"Now, Mr. Holmes, we will give you something a little more recent. This is the Devon County Chronicle of May 14th of this year. It is a short account of the facts elicited at the death of Sir Charles Baskerville which occurred a few days before that date.\"\n\nMy friend leaned a little forward and his expression became intent. Our visitor readjusted his glasses and began:\n\n\"The recent sudden death of Sir Charles Baskerville, whose name has been mentioned as the probable Liberal candidate for Mid-Devon at the next election, has cast a gloom over the county. Though Sir Charles had resided at Baskerville Hall for a comparatively short period his amiability of character and extreme generosity had won the affection and respect of all who had been brought into contact with him. In these days of nouveaux riches it is refreshing to find a case where the scion of an old county family which has fallen upon evil days is able to make his own fortune and to bring it back with him to restore the fallen grandeur of his line. Sir Charles, as is well known, made large sums of money in South African speculation. More wise than those who go on until the wheel turns against them, he realized his gains and returned to England with them. It is only two years since he took up his residence at Baskerville Hall, and it is common talk how large were those schemes of reconstruction and improvement which have been interrupted by his death. Being himself childless, it was his openly expressed desire that the whole countryside should, within his own lifetime, profit by his good fortune, and many will have personal reasons for bewailing his untimely end. His generous donations to local and county charities have been frequently chronicled in these columns.\n\n\"The circumstances connected with the death of Sir Charles cannot be said to have been entirely cleared up by the inquest, but at least enough has been done to dispose of those rumours to which local superstition has given rise. There is no reason whatever to suspect foul play, or to imagine that death could be from any but natural causes. Sir Charles was a widower, and a man who may be said to have been in some ways of an eccentric habit of mind. In spite of his considerable wealth he was simple in his personal tastes, and his indoor servants at Baskerville Hall consisted of a married couple named Barrymore, the husband acting as butler and the wife as housekeeper. Their evidence, corroborated by that of several friends, tends to show that Sir Charles's health has for some time been impaired, and points especially to some affection of the heart, manifesting itself in changes of colour, breathlessness, and acute attacks of nervous depression. Dr. James Mortimer, the friend and medical attendant of the deceased, has given evidence to the same effect.\n\n\"The facts of the case are simple. Sir Charles Baskerville was in the habit every night before going to bed of walking down the famous yew alley of Baskerville Hall. The evidence of the Barrymores shows that this had been his custom. On the fourth of May Sir Charles had declared his intention of starting next day for London, and had ordered Barrymore to prepare his luggage. That night he went out as usual for his nocturnal walk, in the course of which he was in the habit of smoking a cigar. He never returned. At twelve o'clock Barrymore, finding the hall door still open, became alarmed, and, lighting a lantern, went in search of his master. The day had been wet, and Sir Charles's foot-marks were easily traced down the alley. Halfway down this walk there is a gate which leads out on to the moor. There were indications that Sir Charles had stood for some little time here. He then proceeded down the alley, and it was at the far end of it that his body was discovered. One fact which has not been explained is the statement of Barrymore that his master's footprints altered their character from the time that he passed the moor-gate, and that he appeared from thence onward to have been walking upon his toes. One Murphy, a gipsy horse-dealer, was on the moor at no great distance at the time, but he appears by his own confession to have been the worse for drink. He declares that he heard cries but is unable to state from what direction they came. No signs of violence were to be discovered upon Sir Charles's person, and though the doctor's evidence pointed to an almost incredible facial distortion\u2014so great that Dr. Mortimer refused at first to believe that it was indeed his friend and patient who lay before him\u2014it was explained that that is a symptom which is not unusual in cases of dyspn\u0153a and death from cardiac exhaustion. This explanation was borne out by the post-mortem examination, which showed long-standing organic disease, and the coroner's jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence. It is well that this is so, for it is obviously of the utmost importance that Sir Charles's heir should settle at the Hall and continue the good work which has been so sadly interrupted. Had the prosaic finding of the coroner not finally put an end to the romantic stories which have been whispered in connection with the affair, it might have been difficult to find a tenant for Baskerville Hall. It is understood that the next of kin is Mr. Henry Baskerville, if he be still alive, the son of Sir Charles Baskerville's younger brother. The young man when last heard of was in America, and inquiries are being instituted with a view to informing him of his good fortune.\"\n\nDr. Mortimer refolded his paper and replaced it in his pocket.\n\n\"Those are the public facts, Mr. Holmes, in connection with the death of Sir Charles Baskerville.\"\n\n\"I must thank you,\" said Sherlock Holmes, \"for calling my attention to a case which certainly presents some features of interest. I had observed some newspaper comment at the time, but I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases. This article, you say, contains all the public facts?\"\n\n\"It does.\"\n\n\"Then let me have the private ones.\" He leaned back, put his finger-tips together, and assumed his most impassive and judicial expression.\n\n\"In doing so,\" said Dr. Mortimer, who had begun to show signs of some strong emotion, \"I am telling that which I have not confided to anyone. My motive for withholding it from the coroner's inquiry is that a man of science shrinks from placing himself in the public position of seeming to indorse a popular superstition. I had the further motive that Baskerville Hall, as the paper says, would certainly remain untenanted if anything were done to increase its already rather grim reputation. For both these reasons I thought that I was justified in telling rather less than I knew, since no practical good could result from it, but with you there is no reason why I should not be perfectly frank.\n\n\"The moor is very sparsely inhabited, and those who live near each other are thrown very much together. For this reason I saw a good deal of Sir Charles Baskerville. With the exception of Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, and Mr. Stapleton, the naturalist, there are no other men of education within many miles. Sir Charles was a retiring man, but the chance of his illness brought us together, and a community of interests in science kept us so. He had brought back much scientific information from South Africa, and many a charming evening we have spent together discussing the comparative anatomy of the Bushman and the Hottentot.\n\n\"Within the last few months it became increasingly plain to me that Sir Charles's nervous system was strained to the breaking point. He had taken this legend which I have read you exceedingly to heart\u2014so much so that, although he would walk in his own grounds, nothing would induce him to go out upon the moor at night. Incredible as it may appear to you, Mr. Holmes, he was honestly convinced that a dreadful fate overhung his family, and certainly the records which he was able to give of his ancestors were not encouraging. The idea of some ghastly presence constantly haunted him, and on more than one occasion he has asked me whether I had on my medical journeys at night ever seen any strange creature or heard the baying of a hound. The latter question he put to me several times, and always with a voice which vibrated with excitement.\n\n\"I can well remember driving up to his house in the evening, some three weeks before the fatal event. He chanced to be at his hall door. I had descended from my gig and was standing in front of him, when I saw his eyes fix themselves over my shoulder and stare past me with an expression of the most dreadful horror. I whisked round and had just time to catch a glimpse of something which I took to be a large black calf passing at the head of the drive. So excited and alarmed was he that I was compelled to go down to the spot where the animal had been and look around for it. It was gone, however, and the incident appeared to make the worst impression upon his mind. I stayed with him all the evening, and it was on that occasion, to explain the emotion which he had shown, that he confided to my keeping that narrative which I read to you when first I came. I mention this small episode because it assumes some importance in view of the tragedy which followed, but I was convinced at the time that the matter was entirely trivial and that his excitement had no justification.\n\n\"It was at my advice that Sir Charles was about to go to London. His heart was, I knew, affected, and the constant anxiety in which he lived, however chimerical the cause of it might be, was evidently having a serious effect upon his health. I thought that a few months among the distractions of town would send him back a new man. Mr. Stapleton, a mutual friend who was much concerned at his state of health, was of the same opinion. At the last instant came this terrible catastrophe.\n\n\"On the night of Sir Charles's death Barrymore the butler, who made the discovery, sent Perkins the groom on horseback to me, and as I was sitting up late I was able to reach Baskerville Hall within an hour of the event. I checked and corroborated all the facts which were mentioned at the inquest. I followed the footsteps down the yew alley, I saw the spot at the moor-gate where he seemed to have waited, I remarked the change in the shape of the prints after that point, I noted that there were no other footsteps save those of Barrymore on the soft gravel, and finally I carefully examined the body, which had not been touched until my arrival. Sir Charles lay on his face, his arms out, his fingers dug into the ground, and his features convulsed with some strong emotion to such an extent that I could hardly have sworn to his identity. There was certainly no physical injury of any kind. But one false statement was made by Barrymore at the inquest. He said that there were no traces upon the ground round the body. He did not observe any. But I did\u2014some little distance off, but fresh and clear.\"\n\n\"Footprints?\"\n\n\"Footprints.\"\n\n\"A man's or a woman's?\"\n\nDr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered:\n\n\"Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!\"" + }, + { + "title": "The Problem", + "text": "I confess that at these words a shudder passed through me. There was a thrill in the doctor's voice which showed that he was himself deeply moved by that which he told us. Holmes leaned forward in his excitement and his eyes had the hard, dry glitter which shot from them when he was keenly interested.\n\n\"You saw this?\"\n\n\"As clearly as I see you.\"\n\n\"And you said nothing?\"\n\n\"What was the use?\"\n\n\"How was it that no one else saw it?\"\n\n\"The marks were some twenty yards from the body and no one gave them a thought. I don't suppose I should have done so had I not known this legend.\"\n\n\"There are many sheep-dogs on the moor?\"\n\n\"No doubt, but this was no sheep-dog.\"\n\n\"You say it was large?\"\n\n\"Enormous.\"\n\n\"But it had not approached the body?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"What sort of night was it?\"\n\n\"Damp and raw.\"\n\n\"But not actually raining?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"What is the alley like?\"\n\n\"There are two lines of old yew hedge, twelve feet high and impenetrable. The walk in the centre is about eight feet across.\"\n\n\"Is there anything between the hedges and the walk?\"\n\n\"Yes, there is a strip of grass about six feet broad on either side.\"\n\n\"I understand that the yew hedge is penetrated at one point by a gate?\"\n\n\"Yes, the wicket-gate which leads on to the moor.\"\n\n\"Is there any other opening?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\n\"So that to reach the yew alley one either has to come down it from the house or else to enter it by the moor-gate?\"\n\n\"There is an exit through a summer-house at the far end.\"\n\n\"Had Sir Charles reached this?\"\n\n\"No; he lay about fifty yards from it.\"\n\n\"Now, tell me, Dr. Mortimer\u2014and this is important\u2014the marks which you saw were on the path and not on the grass?\"\n\n\"No marks could show on the grass.\"\n\n\"Were they on the same side of the path as the moor-gate?\"\n\n\"Yes; they were on the edge of the path on the same side as the moor-gate.\"\n\n\"You interest me exceedingly. Another point. Was the wicket-gate closed?\"\n\n\"Closed and padlocked.\"\n\n\"How high was it?\"\n\n\"About four feet high.\"\n\n\"Then anyone could have got over it?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And what marks did you see by the wicket-gate?\"\n\n\"None in particular.\"\n\n\"Good heaven! Did no one examine?\"\n\n\"Yes, I examined, myself.\"\n\n\"And found nothing?\"\n\n\"It was all very confused. Sir Charles had evidently stood there for five or ten minutes.\"\n\n\"How do you know that?\"\n\n\"Because the ash had twice dropped from his cigar.\"\n\n\"Excellent! This is a colleague, Watson, after our own heart. But the marks?\"\n\n\"He had left his own marks all over that small patch of gravel. I could discern no others.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes struck his hand against his knee with an impatient gesture.\n\n\"If I had only been there!\" he cried. \"It is evidently a case of extraordinary interest, and one which presented immense opportunities to the scientific expert. That gravel page upon which I might have read so much has been long ere this smudged by the rain and defaced by the clogs of curious peasants. Oh, Dr. Mortimer, Dr. Mortimer, to think that you should not have called me in! You have indeed much to answer for.\"\n\n\"I could not call you in, Mr. Holmes, without disclosing these facts to the world, and I have already given my reasons for not wishing to do so. Besides, besides\u2014\"\n\n\"Why do you hesitate?\"\n\n\"There is a realm in which the most acute and most experienced of detectives is helpless.\"\n\n\"You mean that the thing is supernatural?\"\n\n\"I did not positively say so.\"\n\n\"No, but you evidently think it.\"\n\n\"Since the tragedy, Mr. Holmes, there have come to my ears several incidents which are hard to reconcile with the settled order of Nature.\"\n\n\"For example?\"\n\n\"I find that before the terrible event occurred several people had seen a creature upon the moor which corresponds with this Baskerville demon, and which could not possibly be any animal known to science. They all agreed that it was a huge creature, luminous, ghastly, and spectral. I have cross-examined these men, one of them a hard-headed countryman, one a farrier, and one a moorland farmer, who all tell the same story of this dreadful apparition, exactly corresponding to the hell-hound of the legend. I assure you that there is a reign of terror in the district, and that it is a hardy man who will cross the moor at night.\"\n\n\"And you, a trained man of science, believe it to be supernatural?\"\n\n\"I do not know what to believe.\"\n\nHolmes shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"I have hitherto confined my investigations to this world,\" said he. \"In a modest way I have combated evil, but to take on the Father of Evil himself would, perhaps, be too ambitious a task. Yet you must admit that the footmark is material.\"\n\n\"The original hound was material enough to tug a man's throat out, and yet he was diabolical as well.\"\n\n\"I see that you have quite gone over to the supernaturalists. But now, Dr. Mortimer, tell me this. If you hold these views, why have you come to consult me at all? You tell me in the same breath that it is useless to investigate Sir Charles's death, and that you desire me to do it.\"\n\n\"I did not say that I desired you to do it.\"\n\n\"Then, how can I assist you?\"\n\n\"By advising me as to what I should do with Sir Henry Baskerville, who arrives at Waterloo Station\"\u2014Dr. Mortimer looked at his watch\u2014\"in exactly one hour and a quarter.\"\n\n\"He being the heir?\"\n\n\"Yes. On the death of Sir Charles we inquired for this young gentleman and found that he had been farming in Canada. From the accounts which have reached us he is an excellent fellow in every way. I speak now not as a medical man but as a trustee and executor of Sir Charles's will.\"\n\n\"There is no other claimant, I presume?\"\n\n\"None. The only other kinsman whom we have been able to trace was Rodger Baskerville, the youngest of three brothers of whom poor Sir Charles was the elder. The second brother, who died young, is the father of this lad Henry. The third, Rodger, was the black sheep of the family. He came of the old masterful Baskerville strain and was the very image, they tell me, of the family picture of old Hugo. He made England too hot to hold him, fled to Central America, and died there in 1876 of yellow fever. Henry is the last of the Baskervilles. In one hour and five minutes I meet him at Waterloo Station. I have had a wire that he arrived at Southampton this morning. Now, Mr. Holmes, what would you advise me to do with him?\"\n\n\"Why should he not go to the home of his fathers?\"\n\n\"It seems natural, does it not? And yet, consider that every Baskerville who goes there meets with an evil fate. I feel sure that if Sir Charles could have spoken with me before his death he would have warned me against bringing this, the last of the old race, and the heir to great wealth, to that deadly place. And yet it cannot be denied that the prosperity of the whole poor, bleak countryside depends upon his presence. All the good work which has been done by Sir Charles will crash to the ground if there is no tenant of the Hall. I fear lest I should be swayed too much by my own obvious interest in the matter, and that is why I bring the case before you and ask for your advice.\"\n\nHolmes considered for a little time.\n\n\"Put into plain words, the matter is this,\" said he. \"In your opinion there is a diabolical agency which makes Dartmoor an unsafe abode for a Baskerville\u2014that is your opinion?\"\n\n\"At least I might go the length of saying that there is some evidence that this may be so.\"\n\n\"Exactly. But surely, if your supernatural theory be correct, it could work the young man evil in London as easily as in Devonshire. A devil with merely local powers like a parish vestry would be too inconceivable a thing.\"\n\n\"You put the matter more flippantly, Mr. Holmes, than you would probably do if you were brought into personal contact with these things. Your advice, then, as I understand it, is that the young man will be as safe in Devonshire as in London. He comes in fifty minutes. What would you recommend?\"\n\n\"I recommend, sir, that you take a cab, call off your spaniel who is scratching at my front door, and proceed to Waterloo to meet Sir Henry Baskerville.\"\n\n\"And then?\"\n\n\"And then you will say nothing to him at all until I have made up my mind about the matter.\"\n\n\"How long will it take you to make up your mind?\"\n\n\"Twenty-four hours. At ten o'clock to-morrow, Dr. Mortimer, I will be much obliged to you if you will call upon me here, and it will be of help to me in my plans for the future if you will bring Sir Henry Baskerville with you.\"\n\n\"I will do so, Mr. Holmes.\" He scribbled the appointment on his shirtcuff and hurried off in his strange, peering, absent-minded fashion. Holmes stopped him at the head of the stair.\n\n\"Only one more question, Dr. Mortimer. You say that before Sir Charles Baskerville's death several people saw this apparition upon the moor?\"\n\n\"Three people did.\"\n\n\"Did any see it after?\"\n\n\"I have not heard of any.\"\n\n\"Thank you. Good-morning.\"\n\nHolmes returned to his seat with that quiet look of inward satisfaction which meant that he had a congenial task before him.\n\n\"Going out, Watson?\"\n\n\"Unless I can help you.\"\n\n\"No, my dear fellow, it is at the hour of action that I turn to you for aid. But this is splendid, really unique from some points of view. When you pass Bradley's, would you ask him to send up a pound of the strongest shag tobacco? Thank you. It would be as well if you could make it convenient not to return before evening. Then I should be very glad to compare impressions as to this most interesting problem which has been submitted to us this morning.\"\n\nI knew that seclusion and solitude were very necessary for my friend in those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed every particle of evidence, constructed alternative theories, balanced one against the other, and made up his mind as to which points were essential and which immaterial. I therefore spent the day at my club and did not return to Baker Street until evening. It was nearly nine o'clock when I found myself in the sitting-room once more.\n\nMy first impression as I opened the door was that a fire had broken out, for the room was so filled with smoke that the light of the lamp upon the table was blurred by it. As I entered, however, my fears were set at rest, for it was the acrid fumes of strong coarse tobacco which took me by the throat and set me coughing. Through the haze I had a vague vision of Holmes in his dressing-gown coiled up in an armchair with his black clay pipe between his lips. Several rolls of paper lay around him.\n\n\"Caught cold, Watson?\" said he.\n\n\"No, it's this poisonous atmosphere.\"\n\n\"I suppose it is pretty thick, now that you mention it.\"\n\n\"Thick! It is intolerable.\"\n\n\"Open the window, then! You have been at your club all day, I perceive.\"\n\n\"My dear Holmes!\"\n\n\"Am I right?\"\n\n\"Certainly, but how\u2014?\"\n\nHe laughed at my bewildered expression.\n\n\"There is a delightful freshness about you, Watson, which makes it a pleasure to exercise any small powers which I possess at your expense. A gentleman goes forth on a showery and miry day. He returns immaculate in the evening with the gloss still on his hat and his boots. He has been a fixture therefore all day. He is not a man with intimate friends. Where, then, could he have been? Is it not obvious?\"\n\n\"Well, it is rather obvious.\"\n\n\"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. Where do you think that I have been?\"\n\n\"A fixture also.\"\n\n\"On the contrary, I have been to Devonshire.\"\n\n\"In spirit?\"\n\n\"Exactly. My body has remained in this armchair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible amount of tobacco. After you left I sent down to Stamford's for the Ordnance map of this portion of the moor, and my spirit has hovered over it all day. I flatter myself that I could find my way about.\"\n\n\"A large-scale map, I presume?\"\n\n\"Very large.\" He unrolled one section and held it over his knee. \"Here you have the particular district which concerns us. That is Baskerville Hall in the middle.\"\n\n\"With a wood round it?\"\n\n\"Exactly. I fancy the yew alley, though not marked under that name, must stretch along this line, with the moor, as you perceive, upon the right of it. This small clump of buildings here is the hamlet of Grimpen, where our friend Dr. Mortimer has his headquarters. Within a radius of five miles there are, as you see, only a very few scattered dwellings. Here is Lafter Hall, which was mentioned in the narrative. There is a house indicated here which may be the residence of the naturalist\u2014Stapleton, if I remember right, was his name. Here are two moorland farm-houses, High Tor and Foulmire. Then fourteen miles away the great convict prison of Princetown. Between and around these scattered points extends the desolate, lifeless moor. This, then, is the stage upon which tragedy has been played, and upon which we may help to play it again.\"\n\n\"It must be a wild place.\"\n\n\"Yes, the setting is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men\u2014\"\n\n\"Then you are yourself inclining to the supernatural explanation.\"\n\n\"The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not? There are two questions waiting for us at the outset. The one is whether any crime has been committed at all; the second is, what is the crime and how was it committed? Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one. I think we'll shut that window again, if you don't mind. It is a singular thing, but I find that a concentrated atmosphere helps a concentration of thought. I have not pushed it to the length of getting into a box to think, but that is the logical outcome of my convictions. Have you turned the case over in your mind?\"\n\n\"Yes, I have thought a good deal of it in the course of the day.\"\n\n\"What do you make of it?\"\n\n\"It is very bewildering.\"\n\n\"It has certainly a character of its own. There are points of distinction about it. That change in the footprints, for example. What do you make of that?\"\n\n\"Mortimer said that the man had walked on tiptoe down that portion of the alley.\"\n\n\"He only repeated what some fool had said at the inquest. Why should a man walk on tiptoe down the alley?\"\n\n\"What then?\"\n\n\"He was running, Watson\u2014running desperately, running for his life, running until he burst his heart and fell dead upon his face.\"\n\n\"Running from what?\"\n\n\"There lies our problem. There are indications that the man was crazed with fear before ever he began to run.\"\n\n\"How can you say that?\"\n\n\"I am presuming that the cause of his fears came to him across the moor. If that were so, and it seems most probable, only a man who had lost his wits would have run from the house instead of towards it. If the gipsy's evidence may be taken as true, he ran with cries for help in the direction where help was least likely to be. Then, again, whom was he waiting for that night, and why was he waiting for him in the yew alley rather than in his own house?\"\n\n\"You think that he was waiting for someone?\"\n\n\"The man was elderly and infirm. We can understand his taking an evening stroll, but the ground was damp and the night inclement. Is it natural that he should stand for five or ten minutes, as Dr. Mortimer, with more practical sense than I should have given him credit for, deduced from the cigar ash?\"\n\n\"But he went out every evening.\"\n\n\"I think it unlikely that he waited at the moor-gate every evening. On the contrary, the evidence is that he avoided the moor. That night he waited there. It was the night before he made his departure for London. The thing takes shape, Watson. It becomes coherent. Might I ask you to hand me my violin, and we will postpone all further thought upon this business until we have had the advantage of meeting Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry Baskerville in the morning.\"" + }, + { + "title": "Sir Henry Baskerville", + "text": "Our breakfast table was cleared early, and Holmes waited in his dressing-gown for the promised interview. Our clients were punctual to their appointment, for the clock had just struck ten when Dr. Mortimer was shown up, followed by the young baronet. The latter was a small, alert, dark-eyed man about thirty years of age, very sturdily built, with thick black eyebrows and a strong, pugnacious face. He wore a ruddy-tinted tweed suit and had the weather-beaten appearance of one who has spent most of his time in the open air, and yet there was something in his steady eye and the quiet assurance of his bearing which indicated the gentleman.\n\n\"This is Sir Henry Baskerville,\" said Dr. Mortimer.\n\n\"Why, yes,\" said he, \"and the strange thing is, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, that if my friend here had not proposed coming round to you this morning I should have come on my own account. I understand that you think out little puzzles, and I've had one this morning which wants more thinking out than I am able to give it.\"\n\n\"Pray take a seat, Sir Henry. Do I understand you to say that you have yourself had some remarkable experience since you arrived in London?\"\n\n\"Nothing of much importance, Mr. Holmes. Only a joke, as like as not. It was this letter, if you can call it a letter, which reached me this morning.\"\n\nHe laid an envelope upon the table, and we all bent over it. It was of common quality, grayish in colour. The address, \"Sir Henry Baskerville, Northumberland Hotel,\" was printed in rough characters; the post-mark \"Charing Cross,\" and the date of posting the preceding evening.\n\n\"Who knew that you were going to the Northumberland Hotel?\" asked Holmes, glancing keenly across at our visitor.\n\n\"No one could have known. We only decided after I met Dr. Mortimer.\"\n\n\"But Dr. Mortimer was no doubt already stopping there?\"\n\n\"No, I had been staying with a friend,\" said the doctor. \"There was no possible indication that we intended to go to this hotel.\"\n\n\"Hum! Someone seems to be very deeply interested in your movements.\" Out of the envelope he took a half-sheet of foolscap paper folded into four. This he opened and spread flat upon the table. Across the middle of it a single sentence had been formed by the expedient of pasting printed words upon it. It ran:\n\nAs you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor.\n\nThe word \"moor\" only was printed in ink.\n\n\"Now,\" said Sir Henry Baskerville, \"perhaps you will tell me, Mr. Holmes, what in thunder is the meaning of that, and who it is that takes so much interest in my affairs?\"\n\n\"What do you make of it, Dr. Mortimer? You must allow that there is nothing supernatural about this, at any rate?\"\n\n\"No, sir, but it might very well come from someone who was convinced that the business is supernatural.\"\n\n\"What business?\" asked Sir Henry sharply. \"It seems to me that all you gentlemen know a great deal more than I do about my own affairs.\"\n\n\"You shall share our knowledge before you leave this room, Sir Henry. I promise you that,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"We will confine ourselves for the present with your permission to this very interesting document, which must have been put together and posted yesterday evening. Have you yesterday's Times, Watson?\"\n\n\"It is here in the corner.\"\n\n\"Might I trouble you for it\u2014the inside page, please, with the leading articles?\" He glanced swiftly over it, running his eyes up and down the columns. \"Capital article this on free trade. Permit me to give you an extract from it.\n\nYou may be cajoled into imagining that your own special trade or your own industry will be encouraged by a protective tariff, but it stands to reason that such legislation must in the long run keep away wealth from the country, diminish the value of our imports, and lower the general conditions of life in this island.\n\n\"What do you think of that, Watson?\" cried Holmes in high glee, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. \"Don't you think that is an admirable sentiment?\"\n\nDr. Mortimer looked at Holmes with an air of professional interest, and Sir Henry Baskerville turned a pair of puzzled dark eyes upon me.\n\n\"I don't know much about the tariff and things of that kind,\" said he, \"but it seems to me we've got a bit off the trail so far as that note is concerned.\"\n\n\"On the contrary, I think we are particularly hot upon the trail, Sir Henry. Watson here knows more about my methods than you do, but I fear that even he has not quite grasped the significance of this sentence.\"\n\n\"No, I confess that I see no connection.\"\n\n\"And yet, my dear Watson, there is so very close a connection that the one is extracted out of the other. 'You,' 'your,' 'your,' 'life,' 'reason,' 'value,' 'keep away,' 'from the.' Don't you see now whence these words have been taken?\"\n\n\"By thunder, you're right! Well, if that isn't smart!\" cried Sir Henry.\n\n\"If any possible doubt remained it is settled by the fact that 'keep away' and 'from the' are cut out in one piece.\"\n\n\"Well, now\u2014so it is!\"\n\n\"Really, Mr. Holmes, this exceeds anything which I could have imagined,\" said Dr. Mortimer, gazing at my friend in amazement. \"I could understand anyone saying that the words were from a newspaper; but that you should name which, and add that it came from the leading article, is really one of the most remarkable things which I have ever known. How did you do it?\"\n\n\"I presume, Doctor, that you could tell the skull of a negro from that of an Esquimau?\"\n\n\"Most certainly.\"\n\n\"But how?\"\n\n\"Because that is my special hobby. The differences are obvious. The supra-orbital crest, the facial angle, the maxillary curve, the\u2014\"\n\n\"But this is my special hobby, and the differences are equally obvious. There is as much difference to my eyes between the leaded bourgeois type of a Times article and the slovenly print of an evening half-penny paper as there could be between your negro and your Esquimau. The detection of types is one of the most elementary branches of knowledge to the special expert in crime, though I confess that once when I was very young I confused the Leeds Mercury with the Western Morning News. But a Times leader is entirely distinctive, and these words could have been taken from nothing else. As it was done yesterday the strong probability was that we should find the words in yesterday's issue.\"\n\n\"So far as I can follow you, then, Mr. Holmes,\" said Sir Henry Baskerville, \"someone cut out this message with a scissors\u2014\"\n\n\"Nail-scissors,\" said Holmes. \"You can see that it was a very short-bladed scissors, since the cutter had to take two snips over 'keep away.'\"\n\n\"That is so. Someone, then, cut out the message with a pair of short-bladed scissors, pasted it with paste\u2014\"\n\n\"Gum,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"With gum on to the paper. But I want to know why the word 'moor' should have been written?\"\n\n\"Because he could not find it in print. The other words were all simple and might be found in any issue, but 'moor' would be less common.\"\n\n\"Why, of course, that would explain it. Have you read anything else in this message, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"There are one or two indications, and yet the utmost pains have been taken to remove all clues. The address, you observe, is printed in rough characters. But the Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated. We may take it, therefore, that the letter was composed by an educated man who wished to pose as an uneducated one, and his effort to conceal his own writing suggests that that writing might be known, or come to be known, by you. Again, you will observe that the words are not gummed on in an accurate line, but that some are much higher than others. 'Life,' for example, is quite out of its proper place. That may point to carelessness or it may point to agitation and hurry upon the part of the cutter. On the whole I incline to the latter view, since the matter was evidently important, and it is unlikely that the composer of such a letter would be careless. If he were in a hurry it opens up the interesting question why he should be in a hurry, since any letter posted up to early morning would reach Sir Henry before he would leave his hotel. Did the composer fear an interruption\u2014and from whom?\"\n\n\"We are coming now rather into the region of guesswork,\" said Dr. Mortimer.\n\n\"Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculation. Now, you would call it a guess, no doubt, but I am almost certain that this address has been written in a hotel.\"\n\n\"How in the world can you say that?\"\n\n\"If you examine it carefully you will see that both the pen and the ink have given the writer trouble. The pen has spluttered twice in a single word and has run dry three times in a short address, showing that there was very little ink in the bottle. Now, a private pen or ink-bottle is seldom allowed to be in such a state, and the combination of the two must be quite rare. But you know the hotel ink and the hotel pen, where it is rare to get anything else. Yes, I have very little hesitation in saying that could we examine the waste-paper baskets of the hotels around Charing Cross until we found the remains of the mutilated Times leader we could lay our hands straight upon the person who sent this singular message. Halloa! Halloa! What's this?\"\n\nHe was carefully examining the foolscap, upon which the words were pasted, holding it only an inch or two from his eyes.\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" said he, throwing it down. \"It is a blank half-sheet of paper, without even a water-mark upon it. I think we have drawn as much as we can from this curious letter; and now, Sir Henry, has anything else of interest happened to you since you have been in London?\"\n\n\"Why, no, Mr. Holmes. I think not.\"\n\n\"You have not observed anyone follow or watch you?\"\n\n\"I seem to have walked right into the thick of a dime novel,\" said our visitor. \"Why in thunder should anyone follow or watch me?\"\n\n\"We are coming to that. You have nothing else to report to us before we go into this matter?\"\n\n\"Well, it depends upon what you think worth reporting.\"\n\n\"I think anything out of the ordinary routine of life well worth reporting.\"\n\nSir Henry smiled.\n\n\"I don't know much of British life yet, for I have spent nearly all my time in the States and in Canada. But I hope that to lose one of your boots is not part of the ordinary routine of life over here.\"\n\n\"You have lost one of your boots?\"\n\n\"My dear sir,\" cried Dr. Mortimer, \"it is only mislaid. You will find it when you return to the hotel. What is the use of troubling Mr. Holmes with trifles of this kind?\"\n\n\"Well, he asked me for anything outside the ordinary routine.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said Holmes, \"however foolish the incident may seem. You have lost one of your boots, you say?\"\n\n\"Well, mislaid it, anyhow. I put them both outside my door last night, and there was only one in the morning. I could get no sense out of the chap who cleans them. The worst of it is that I only bought the pair last night in the Strand, and I have never had them on.\"\n\n\"If you have never worn them, why did you put them out to be cleaned?\"\n\n\"They were tan boots and had never been varnished. That was why I put them out.\"\n\n\"Then I understand that on your arrival in London yesterday you went out at once and bought a pair of boots?\"\n\n\"I did a good deal of shopping. Dr. Mortimer here went round with me. You see, if I am to be squire down there I must dress the part, and it may be that I have got a little careless in my ways out West. Among other things I bought these brown boots\u2014gave six dollars for them\u2014and had one stolen before ever I had them on my feet.\"\n\n\"It seems a singularly useless thing to steal,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"I confess that I share Dr. Mortimer's belief that it will not be long before the missing boot is found.\"\n\n\"And, now, gentlemen,\" said the baronet with decision, \"it seems to me that I have spoken quite enough about the little that I know. It is time that you kept your promise and gave me a full account of what we are all driving at.\"\n\n\"Your request is a very reasonable one,\" Holmes answered. \"Dr. Mortimer, I think you could not do better than to tell your story as you told it to us.\"\n\nThus encouraged, our scientific friend drew his papers from his pocket and presented the whole case as he had done upon the morning before. Sir Henry Baskerville listened with the deepest attention and with an occasional exclamation of surprise.\n\n\"Well, I seem to have come into an inheritance with a vengeance,\" said he when the long narrative was finished. \"Of course, I've heard of the hound ever since I was in the nursery. It's the pet story of the family, though I never thought of taking it seriously before. But as to my uncle's death\u2014well, it all seems boiling up in my head, and I can't get it clear yet. You don't seem quite to have made up your mind whether it's a case for a policeman or a clergyman.\"\n\n\"Precisely.\"\n\n\"And now there's this affair of the letter to me at the hotel. I suppose that fits into its place.\"\n\n\"It seems to show that someone knows more than we do about what goes on upon the moor,\" said Dr. Mortimer.\n\n\"And also,\" said Holmes, \"that someone is not ill-disposed towards you, since they warn you of danger.\"\n\n\"Or it may be that they wish, for their own purposes, to scare me away.\"\n\n\"Well, of course, that is possible also. I am very much indebted to you, Dr. Mortimer, for introducing me to a problem which presents several interesting alternatives. But the practical point which we now have to decide, Sir Henry, is whether it is or is not advisable for you to go to Baskerville Hall.\"\n\n\"Why should I not go?\"\n\n\"There seems to be danger.\"\n\n\"Do you mean danger from this family fiend or do you mean danger from human beings?\"\n\n\"Well, that is what we have to find out.\"\n\n\"Whichever it is, my answer is fixed. There is no devil in hell, Mr. Holmes, and there is no man upon earth who can prevent me from going to the home of my own people, and you may take that to be my final answer.\" His dark brows knitted and his face flushed to a dusky red as he spoke. It was evident that the fiery temper of the Baskervilles was not extinct in this their last representative. \"Meanwhile,\" said he, \"I have hardly had time to think over all that you have told me. It's a big thing for a man to have to understand and to decide at one sitting. I should like to have a quiet hour by myself to make up my mind. Now, look here, Mr. Holmes, it's half-past eleven now and I am going back right away to my hotel. Suppose you and your friend, Dr. Watson, come round and lunch with us at two. I'll be able to tell you more clearly then how this thing strikes me.\"\n\n\"Is that convenient to you, Watson?\"\n\n\"Perfectly.\"\n\n\"Then you may expect us. Shall I have a cab called?\"\n\n\"I'd prefer to walk, for this affair has flurried me rather.\"\n\n\"I'll join you in a walk, with pleasure,\" said his companion.\n\n\"Then we meet again at two o'clock. Au revoir, and good-morning!\"\n\nWe heard the steps of our visitors descend the stair and the bang of the front door. In an instant Holmes had changed from the languid dreamer to the man of action.\n\n\"Your hat and boots, Watson, quick! Not a moment to lose!\" He rushed into his room in his dressing-gown and was back again in a few seconds in a frock-coat. We hurried together down the stairs and into the street. Dr. Mortimer and Baskerville were still visible about two hundred yards ahead of us in the direction of Oxford Street.\n\n\"Shall I run on and stop them?\"\n\n\"Not for the world, my dear Watson. I am perfectly satisfied with your company if you will tolerate mine. Our friends are wise, for it is certainly a very fine morning for a walk.\"\n\nHe quickened his pace until we had decreased the distance which divided us by about half. Then, still keeping a hundred yards behind, we followed into Oxford Street and so down Regent Street. Once our friends stopped and stared into a shop window, upon which Holmes did the same. An instant afterwards he gave a little cry of satisfaction, and, following the direction of his eager eyes, I saw that a hansom cab with a man inside which had halted on the other side of the street was now proceeding slowly onward again.\n\n\"There's our man, Watson! Come along! We'll have a good look at him, if we can do no more.\"\n\nAt that instant I was aware of a bushy black beard and a pair of piercing eyes turned upon us through the side window of the cab. Instantly the trapdoor at the top flew up, something was screamed to the driver, and the cab flew madly off down Regent Street. Holmes looked eagerly round for another, but no empty one was in sight. Then he dashed in wild pursuit amid the stream of the traffic, but the start was too great, and already the cab was out of sight.\n\n\"There now!\" said Holmes bitterly as he emerged panting and white with vexation from the tide of vehicles. \"Was ever such bad luck and such bad management, too? Watson, Watson, if you are an honest man you will record this also and set it against my successes!\"\n\n\"Who was the man?\"\n\n\"I have not an idea.\"\n\n\"A spy?\"\n\n\"Well, it was evident from what we have heard that Baskerville has been very closely shadowed by someone since he has been in town. How else could it be known so quickly that it was the Northumberland Hotel which he had chosen? If they had followed him the first day I argued that they would follow him also the second. You may have observed that I twice strolled over to the window while Dr. Mortimer was reading his legend.\"\n\n\"Yes, I remember.\"\n\n\"I was looking out for loiterers in the street, but I saw none. We are dealing with a clever man, Watson. This matter cuts very deep, and though I have not finally made up my mind whether it is a benevolent or a malevolent agency which is in touch with us, I am conscious always of power and design. When our friends left I at once followed them in the hopes of marking down their invisible attendant. So wily was he that he had not trusted himself upon foot, but he had availed himself of a cab so that he could loiter behind or dash past them and so escape their notice. His method had the additional advantage that if they were to take a cab he was all ready to follow them. It has, however, one obvious disadvantage.\"\n\n\"It puts him in the power of the cabman.\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"What a pity we did not get the number!\"\n\n\"My dear Watson, clumsy as I have been, you surely do not seriously imagine that I neglected to get the number? No. 2704 is our man. But that is no use to us for the moment.\"\n\n\"I fail to see how you could have done more.\"\n\n\"On observing the cab I should have instantly turned and walked in the other direction. I should then at my leisure have hired a second cab and followed the first at a respectful distance, or, better still, have driven to the Northumberland Hotel and waited there. When our unknown had followed Baskerville home we should have had the opportunity of playing his own game upon himself and seeing where he made for. As it is, by an indiscreet eagerness, which was taken advantage of with extraordinary quickness and energy by our opponent, we have betrayed ourselves and lost our man.\"\n\nWe had been sauntering slowly down Regent Street during this conversation, and Dr. Mortimer, with his companion, had long vanished in front of us.\n\n\"There is no object in our following them,\" said Holmes. \"The shadow has departed and will not return. We must see what further cards we have in our hands and play them with decision. Could you swear to that man's face within the cab?\"\n\n\"I could swear only to the beard.\"\n\n\"And so could I\u2014from which I gather that in all probability it was a false one. A clever man upon so delicate an errand has no use for a beard save to conceal his features. Come in here, Watson!\"\n\nHe turned into one of the district messenger offices, where he was warmly greeted by the manager.\n\n\"Ah, Wilson, I see you have not forgotten the little case in which I had the good fortune to help you?\"\n\n\"No, sir, indeed I have not. You saved my good name, and perhaps my life.\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, you exaggerate. I have some recollection, Wilson, that you had among your boys a lad named Cartwright, who showed some ability during the investigation.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, he is still with us.\"\n\n\"Could you ring him up?\u2014thank you! And I should be glad to have change of this five-pound note.\"\n\nA lad of fourteen, with a bright, keen face, had obeyed the summons of the manager. He stood now gazing with great reverence at the famous detective.\n\n\"Let me have the Hotel Directory,\" said Holmes. \"Thank you! Now, Cartwright, there are the names of twenty-three hotels here, all in the immediate neighbourhood of Charing Cross. Do you see?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"You will visit each of these in turn.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"You will begin in each case by giving the outside porter one shilling. Here are twenty-three shillings.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"You will tell him that you want to see the waste-paper of yesterday. You will say that an important telegram has miscarried and that you are looking for it. You understand?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"But what you are really looking for is the centre page of the Times with some holes cut in it with scissors. Here is a copy of the Times. It is this page. You could easily recognize it, could you not?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"In each case the outside porter will send for the hall porter, to whom also you will give a shilling. Here are twenty-three shillings. You will then learn in possibly twenty cases out of the twenty-three that the waste of the day before has been burned or removed. In the three other cases you will be shown a heap of paper and you will look for this page of the Times among it. The odds are enormously against your finding it. There are ten shillings over in case of emergencies. Let me have a report by wire at Baker Street before evening. And now, Watson, it only remains for us to find out by wire the identity of the cabman, No. 2704, and then we will drop into one of the Bond Street picture galleries and fill in the time until we are due at the hotel.\"" + }, + { + "title": "Three Broken Threads", + "text": "Sherlock Holmes had, in a very remarkable degree, the power of detaching his mind at will. For two hours the strange business in which we had been involved appeared to be forgotten, and he was entirely absorbed in the pictures of the modern Belgian masters. He would talk of nothing but art, of which he had the crudest ideas, from our leaving the gallery until we found ourselves at the Northumberland Hotel.\n\n\"Sir Henry Baskerville is upstairs expecting you,\" said the clerk. \"He asked me to show you up at once when you came.\"\n\n\"Have you any objection to my looking at your register?\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Not in the least.\"\n\nThe book showed that two names had been added after that of Baskerville. One was Theophilus Johnson and family, of Newcastle; the other Mrs. Oldmore and maid, of High Lodge, Alton.\n\n\"Surely that must be the same Johnson whom I used to know,\" said Holmes to the porter. \"A lawyer, is he not, gray-headed, and walks with a limp?\"\n\n\"No, sir, this is Mr. Johnson, the coal-owner, a very active gentleman, not older than yourself.\"\n\n\"Surely you are mistaken about his trade?\"\n\n\"No, sir! he has used this hotel for many years, and he is very well known to us.\"\n\n\"Ah, that settles it. Mrs. Oldmore, too; I seem to remember the name. Excuse my curiosity, but often in calling upon one friend one finds another.\"\n\n\"She is an invalid lady, sir. Her husband was once mayor of Gloucester. She always comes to us when she is in town.\"\n\n\"Thank you; I am afraid I cannot claim her acquaintance. We have established a most important fact by these questions, Watson,\" he continued in a low voice as we went upstairs together. \"We know now that the people who are so interested in our friend have not settled down in his own hotel. That means that while they are, as we have seen, very anxious to watch him, they are equally anxious that he should not see them. Now, this is a most suggestive fact.\"\n\n\"What does it suggest?\"\n\n\"It suggests\u2014halloa, my dear fellow, what on earth is the matter?\"\n\nAs we came round the top of the stairs we had run up against Sir Henry Baskerville himself. His face was flushed with anger, and he held an old and dusty boot in one of his hands. So furious was he that he was hardly articulate, and when he did speak it was in a much broader and more Western dialect than any which we had heard from him in the morning.\n\n\"Seems to me they are playing me for a sucker in this hotel,\" he cried. \"They'll find they've started in to monkey with the wrong man unless they are careful. By thunder, if that chap can't find my missing boot there will be trouble. I can take a joke with the best, Mr. Holmes, but they've got a bit over the mark this time.\"\n\n\"Still looking for your boot?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, and mean to find it.\"\n\n\"But, surely, you said that it was a new brown boot?\"\n\n\"So it was, sir. And now it's an old black one.\"\n\n\"What! you don't mean to say\u2014?\"\n\n\"That's just what I do mean to say. I only had three pairs in the world\u2014the new brown, the old black, and the patent leathers, which I am wearing. Last night they took one of my brown ones, and to-day they have sneaked one of the black. Well, have you got it? Speak out, man, and don't stand staring!\"\n\nAn agitated German waiter had appeared upon the scene.\n\n\"No, sir; I have made inquiry all over the hotel, but I can hear no word of it.\"\n\n\"Well, either that boot comes back before sundown or I'll see the manager and tell him that I go right straight out of this hotel.\"\n\n\"It shall be found, sir\u2014I promise you that if you will have a little patience it will be found.\"\n\n\"Mind it is, for it's the last thing of mine that I'll lose in this den of thieves. Well, well, Mr. Holmes, you'll excuse my troubling you about such a trifle\u2014\"\n\n\"I think it's well worth troubling about.\"\n\n\"Why, you look very serious over it.\"\n\n\"How do you explain it?\"\n\n\"I just don't attempt to explain it. It seems the very maddest, queerest thing that ever happened to me.\"\n\n\"The queerest perhaps\u2014\" said Holmes thoughtfully.\n\n\"What do you make of it yourself?\"\n\n\"Well, I don't profess to understand it yet. This case of yours is very complex, Sir Henry. When taken in conjunction with your uncle's death I am not sure that of all the five hundred cases of capital importance which I have handled there is one which cuts so deep. But we hold several threads in our hands, and the odds are that one or other of them guides us to the truth. We may waste time in following the wrong one, but sooner or later we must come upon the right.\"\n\nWe had a pleasant luncheon in which little was said of the business which had brought us together. It was in the private sitting-room to which we afterwards repaired that Holmes asked Baskerville what were his intentions.\n\n\"To go to Baskerville Hall.\"\n\n\"And when?\"\n\n\"At the end of the week.\"\n\n\"On the whole,\" said Holmes, \"I think that your decision is a wise one. I have ample evidence that you are being dogged in London, and amid the millions of this great city it is difficult to discover who these people are or what their object can be. If their intentions are evil they might do you a mischief, and we should be powerless to prevent it. You did not know, Dr. Mortimer, that you were followed this morning from my house?\"\n\nDr. Mortimer started violently.\n\n\"Followed! By whom?\"\n\n\"That, unfortunately, is what I cannot tell you. Have you among your neighbours or acquaintances on Dartmoor any man with a black, full beard?\"\n\n\"No\u2014or, let me see\u2014why, yes. Barrymore, Sir Charles's butler, is a man with a full, black beard.\"\n\n\"Ha! Where is Barrymore?\"\n\n\"He is in charge of the Hall.\"\n\n\"We had best ascertain if he is really there, or if by any possibility he might be in London.\"\n\n\"How can you do that?\"\n\n\"Give me a telegraph form. 'Is all ready for Sir Henry?' That will do. Address to Mr. Barrymore. Baskerville Hall. What is the nearest telegraph-office? Grimpen. Very good, we will send a second wire to the postmaster, Grimpen: 'Telegram to Mr. Barrymore to be delivered into his own hand. If absent, please return wire to Sir Henry Baskerville, Northumberland Hotel.' That should let us know before evening whether Barrymore is at his post in Devonshire or not.\"\n\n\"That's so,\" said Baskerville. \"By the way, Dr. Mortimer, who is this Barrymore, anyhow?\"\n\n\"He is the son of the old caretaker, who is dead. They have looked after the Hall for four generations now. So far as I know, he and his wife are as respectable a couple as any in the county.\"\n\n\"At the same time,\" said Baskerville, \"it's clear enough that so long as there are none of the family at the Hall these people have a mighty fine home and nothing to do.\"\n\n\"That is true.\"\n\n\"Did Barrymore profit at all by Sir Charles's will?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"He and his wife had five hundred pounds each.\"\n\n\"Ha! Did they know that they would receive this?\"\n\n\"Yes; Sir Charles was very fond of talking about the provisions of his will.\"\n\n\"That is very interesting.\"\n\n\"I hope,\" said Dr. Mortimer, \"that you do not look with suspicious eyes upon everyone who received a legacy from Sir Charles, for I also had a thousand pounds left to me.\"\n\n\"Indeed! And anyone else?\"\n\n\"There were many insignificant sums to individuals, and a large number of public charities. The residue all went to Sir Henry.\"\n\n\"And how much was the residue?\"\n\n\"Seven hundred and forty thousand pounds.\"\n\nHolmes raised his eyebrows in surprise. \"I had no idea that so gigantic a sum was involved,\" said he.\n\n\"Sir Charles had the reputation of being rich, but we did not know how very rich he was until we came to examine his securities. The total value of the estate was close on to a million.\"\n\n\"Dear me! It is a stake for which a man might well play a desperate game. And one more question, Dr. Mortimer. Supposing that anything happened to our young friend here\u2014you will forgive the unpleasant hypothesis! \u2014who would inherit the estate?\"\n\n\"Since Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles's younger brother, died unmarried, the estate would descend to the Desmonds, who are distant cousins. James Desmond is an elderly clergyman in Westmoreland.\"\n\n\"Thank you. These details are all of great interest. Have you met Mr. James Desmond?\"\n\n\"Yes; he once came down to visit Sir Charles. He is a man of venerable appearance and of saintly life. I remember that he refused to accept any settlement from Sir Charles, though he pressed it upon him.\"\n\n\"And this man of simple tastes would be the heir to Sir Charles's thousands.\"\n\n\"He would be the heir to the estate because that is entailed. He would also be the heir to the money unless it were willed otherwise by the present owner, who can, of course, do what he likes with it.\"\n\n\"And have you made your will, Sir Henry?\"\n\n\"No, Mr. Holmes, I have not. I've had no time, for it was only yesterday that I learned how matters stood. But in any case I feel that the money should go with the title and estate. That was my poor uncle's idea. How is the owner going to restore the glories of the Baskervilles if he has not money enough to keep up the property? House, land, and dollars must go together.\"\n\n\"Quite so. Well, Sir Henry, I am of one mind with you as to the advisability of your going down to Devonshire without delay. There is only one provision which I must make. You certainly must not go alone.\"\n\n\"Dr. Mortimer returns with me.\"\n\n\"But Dr. Mortimer has his practice to attend to, and his house is miles away from yours. With all the good will in the world he may be unable to help you. No, Sir Henry, you must take with you someone, a trusty man, who will be always by your side.\"\n\n\"Is it possible that you could come yourself, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"If matters came to a crisis I should endeavour to be present in person; but you can understand that, with my extensive consulting practice and with the constant appeals which reach me from many quarters, it is impossible for me to be absent from London for an indefinite time. At the present instant one of the most revered names in England is being besmirched by a blackmailer, and only I can stop a disastrous scandal. You will see how impossible it is for me to go to Dartmoor.\"\n\n\"Whom would you recommend, then?\"\n\nHolmes laid his hand upon my arm.\n\n\"If my friend would undertake it there is no man who is better worth having at your side when you are in a tight place. No one can say so more confidently than I.\"\n\nThe proposition took me completely by surprise, but before I had time to answer, Baskerville seized me by the hand and wrung it heartily.\n\n\"Well, now, that is real kind of you, Dr. Watson,\" said he. \"You see how it is with me, and you know just as much about the matter as I do. If you will come down to Baskerville Hall and see me through I'll never forget it.\"\n\nThe promise of adventure had always a fascination for me, and I was complimented by the words of Holmes and by the eagerness with which the baronet hailed me as a companion.\n\n\"I will come, with pleasure,\" said I. \"I do not know how I could employ my time better.\"\n\n\"And you will report very carefully to me,\" said Holmes. \"When a crisis comes, as it will do, I will direct how you shall act. I suppose that by Saturday all might be ready?\"\n\n\"Would that suit Dr. Watson?\"\n\n\"Perfectly.\"\n\n\"Then on Saturday, unless you hear to the contrary, we shall meet at the ten-thirty train from Paddington.\"\n\nWe had risen to depart when Baskerville gave a cry of triumph, and diving into one of the corners of the room he drew a brown boot from under a cabinet.\n\n\"My missing boot!\" he cried.\n\n\"May all our difficulties vanish as easily!\" said Sherlock Holmes.\n\n\"But it is a very singular thing,\" Dr. Mortimer remarked. \"I searched this room carefully before lunch.\"\n\n\"And so did I,\"' said Baskerville. \"Every inch of it.\"\n\n\"There was certainly no boot in it then.\"\n\n\"In that case the waiter must have placed it there while we were lunching.\"\n\nThe German was sent for but professed to know nothing of the matter, nor could any inquiry clear it up. Another item had been added to that constant and apparently purposeless series of small mysteries which had succeeded each other so rapidly. Setting aside the whole grim story of Sir Charles's death, we had a line of inexplicable incidents all within the limits of two days, which included the receipt of the printed letter, the black-bearded spy in the hansom, the loss of the new brown boot, the loss of the old black boot, and now the return of the new brown boot. Holmes sat in silence in the cab as we drove back to Baker Street, and I knew from his drawn brows and keen face that his mind, like my own, was busy in endeavouring to frame some scheme into which all these strange and apparently disconnected episodes could be fitted. All afternoon and late into the evening he sat lost in tobacco and thought.\n\nJust before dinner two telegrams were handed in. The first ran:\n\nHave just heard that Barrymore is at the Hall.\n\nBASKERVILLE.\n\nThe second:\n\nVisited twenty-three hotels as directed, but sorry to report unable to trace cut sheet of Times.\n\nCARTWRIGHT.\n\n\"There go two of my threads, Watson. There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you. We must cast round for another scent.\"\n\n\"We have still the cabman who drove the spy.\"\n\n\"Exactly. I have wired to get his name and address from the Official Registry. I should not be surprised if this were an answer to my question.\"\n\nThe ring at the bell proved to be something even more satisfactory than an answer, however, for the door opened and a rough-looking fellow entered who was evidently the man himself.\n\n\"I got a message from the head office that a gent at this address had been inquiring for No. 2704,\" said he. \"I've driven my cab this seven years and never a word of complaint. I came here straight from the Yard to ask you to your face what you had against me.\"\n\n\"I have nothing in the world against you, my good man,\" said Holmes. \"On the contrary, I have half a sovereign for you if you will give me a clear answer to my questions.\"\n\n\"Well, I've had a good day and no mistake,\" said the cabman with a grin. \"What was it you wanted to ask, sir?\"\n\n\"First of all your name and address, in case I want you again.\"\n\n\"John Clayton, 3 Turpey Street, the Borough. My cab is out of Shipley's Yard, near Waterloo Station.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes made a note of it.\n\n\"Now, Clayton, tell me all about the fare who came and watched this house at ten o'clock this morning and afterwards followed the two gentlemen down Regent Street.\"\n\nThe man looked surprised and a little embarrassed. \"Why, there's no good my telling you things, for you seem to know as much as I do already,\" said he. \"The truth is that the gentleman told me that he was a detective and that I was to say nothing about him to anyone.\"\n\n\"My good fellow, this is a very serious business, and you may find yourself in a pretty bad position if you try to hide anything from me. You say that your fare told you that he was a detective?\"\n\n\"Yes, he did.\"\n\n\"When did he say this?\"\n\n\"When he left me.\"\n\n\"Did he say anything more?\"\n\n\"He mentioned his name.\"\n\nHolmes cast a swift glance of triumph at me. \"Oh, he mentioned his name, did he? That was imprudent. What was the name that he mentioned?\"\n\n\"His name,\" said the cabman, \"was Mr. Sherlock Holmes.\"\n\nNever have I seen my friend more completely taken aback than by the cabman's reply. For an instant he sat in silent amazement. Then he burst into a hearty laugh.\n\n\"A touch, Watson\u2014an undeniable touch!\" said he. \"I feel a foil as quick and supple as my own. He got home upon me very prettily that time. So his name was Sherlock Holmes, was it?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, that was the gentleman's name.\"\n\n\"Excellent! Tell me where you picked him up and all that occurred.\"\n\n\"He hailed me at half-past nine in Trafalgar Square. He said that he was a detective, and he offered me two guineas if I would do exactly what he wanted all day and ask no questions. I was glad enough to agree. First we drove down to the Northumberland Hotel and waited there until two gentlemen came out and took a cab from the rank. We followed their cab until it pulled up somewhere near here.\"\n\n\"This very door,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Well, I couldn't be sure of that, but I dare say my fare knew all about it. We pulled up halfway down the street and waited an hour and a half. Then the two gentlemen passed us, walking, and we followed down Baker Street and along\u2014\"\n\n\"I know,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Until we got three-quarters down Regent Street. Then my gentleman threw up the trap, and he cried that I should drive right away to Waterloo Station as hard as I could go. I whipped up the mare and we were there under the ten minutes. Then he paid up his two guineas, like a good one, and away he went into the station. Only just as he was leaving he turned round and he said: 'It might interest you to know that you have been driving Mr. Sherlock Holmes.' That's how I come to know the name.\"\n\n\"I see. And you saw no more of him?\"\n\n\"Not after he went into the station.\"\n\n\"And how would you describe Mr. Sherlock Holmes?\"\n\nThe cabman scratched his head. \"Well, he wasn't altogether such an easy gentleman to describe. I'd put him at forty years of age, and he was of a middle height, two or three inches shorter than you, sir. He was dressed like a toff, and he had a black beard, cut square at the end, and a pale face. I don't know as I could say more than that.\"\n\n\"Colour of his eyes?\"\n\n\"No, I can't say that.\"\n\n\"Nothing more that you can remember?\"\n\n\"No, sir; nothing.\"\n\n\"Well, then, here is your half-sovereign. There's another one waiting for you if you can bring any more information. Good-night!\"\n\n\"Good-night, sir, and thank you!\"\n\nJohn Clayton departed chuckling, and Holmes turned to me with a shrug of his shoulders and a rueful smile.\n\n\"Snap goes our third thread, and we end where we began,\" said he. \"The cunning rascal! He knew our number, knew that Sir Henry Baskerville had consulted me, spotted who I was in Regent Street, conjectured that I had got the number of the cab and would lay my hands on the driver, and so sent back this audacious message. I tell you, Watson, this time we have got a foeman who is worthy of our steel. I've been checkmated in London. I can only wish you better luck in Devonshire. But I'm not easy in my mind about it.\"\n\n\"About what?\"\n\n\"About sending you. It's an ugly business, Watson, an ugly, dangerous business, and the more I see of it the less I like it. Yes, my dear fellow, you may laugh, but I give you my word that I shall be very glad to have you back safe and sound in Baker Street once more.\"" + }, + { + "title": "Baskerville Hall", + "text": "Sir Henry Baskerville and Dr. Mortimer were ready upon the appointed day, and we started as arranged for Devonshire. Mr. Sherlock Holmes drove with me to the station and gave me his last parting injunctions and advice.\n\n\"I will not bias your mind by suggesting theories or suspicions, Watson,\" said he; \"I wish you simply to report facts in the fullest possible manner to me, and you can leave me to do the theorizing.\"\n\n\"What sort of facts?\" I asked.\n\n\"Anything which may seem to have a bearing however indirect upon the case, and especially the relations between young Baskerville and his neighbours or any fresh particulars concerning the death of Sir Charles. I have made some inquiries myself in the last few days, but the results have, I fear, been negative. One thing only appears to be certain, and that is that Mr. James Desmond, who is the next heir, is an elderly gentleman of a very amiable disposition, so that this persecution does not arise from him. I really think that we may eliminate him entirely from our calculations. There remain the people who will actually surround Sir Henry Baskerville upon the moor.\"\n\n\"Would it not be well in the first place to get rid of this Barrymore couple?\"\n\n\"By no means. You could not make a greater mistake. If they are innocent it would be a cruel injustice, and if they are guilty we should be giving up all chance of bringing it home to them. No, no, we will preserve them upon our list of suspects. Then there is a groom at the Hall, if I remember right. There are two moorland farmers. There is our friend Dr. Mortimer, whom I believe to be entirely honest, and there is his wife, of whom we know nothing. There is this naturalist, Stapleton, and there is his sister, who is said to be a young lady of attractions. There is Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who is also an unknown factor, and there are one or two other neighbours. These are the folk who must be your very special study.\"\n\n\"I will do my best.\"\n\n\"You have arms, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Yes, I thought it as well to take them.\"\n\n\"Most certainly. Keep your revolver near you night and day, and never relax your precautions.\"\n\nOur friends had already secured a first-class carriage and were waiting for us upon the platform.\n\n\"No, we have no news of any kind,\" said Dr. Mortimer in answer to my friend's questions. \"I can swear to one thing, and that is that we have not been shadowed during the last two days. We have never gone out without keeping a sharp watch, and no one could have escaped our notice.\"\n\n\"You have always kept together, I presume?\"\n\n\"Except yesterday afternoon. I usually give up one day to pure amusement when I come to town, so I spent it at the Museum of the College of Surgeons.\"\n\n\"And I went to look at the folk in the park,\" said Baskerville. \"But we had no trouble of any kind.\"\n\n\"It was imprudent, all the same,\" said Holmes, shaking his head and looking very grave. \"I beg, Sir Henry, that you will not go about alone. Some great misfortune will befall you if you do. Did you get your other boot?\"\n\n\"No, sir, it is gone forever.\"\n\n\"Indeed. That is very interesting. Well, good-bye,\" he added as the train began to glide down the platform. \"Bear in mind, Sir Henry, one of the phrases in that queer old legend which Dr. Mortimer has read to us and avoid the moor in those hours of darkness when the powers of evil are exalted.\"\n\nI looked back at the platform when we had left it far behind and saw the tall, austere figure of Holmes standing motionless and gazing after us.\n\nThe journey was a swift and pleasant one, and I spent it in making the more intimate acquaintance of my two companions and in playing with Dr. Mortimer's spaniel. In a very few hours the brown earth had become ruddy, the brick had changed to granite, and red cows grazed in well-hedged fields where the lush grasses and more luxuriant vegetation spoke of a richer, if a damper, climate. Young Baskerville stared eagerly out of the window and cried aloud with delight as he recognized the familiar features of the Devon scenery.\n\n\"I've been over a good part of the world since I left it, Dr. Watson,\" said he; \"but I have never seen a place to compare with it.\"\n\n\"I never saw a Devonshire man who did not swear by his county,\" I remarked.\n\n\"It depends upon the breed of men quite as much as on the county,\" said Dr. Mortimer. \"A glance at our friend here reveals the rounded head of the Celt, which carries inside it the Celtic enthusiasm and power of attachment. Poor Sir Charles's head was of a very rare type, half Gaelic, half Ivernian in its characteristics. But you were very young when you last saw Baskerville Hall, were you not?\"\n\n\"I was a boy in my teens at the time of my father's death and had never seen the Hall, for he lived in a little cottage on the South Coast. Thence I went straight to a friend in America. I tell you it is all as new to me as it is to Dr. Watson, and I'm as keen as possible to see the moor.\"\n\n\"Are you? Then your wish is easily granted, for there is your first sight of the moor,\" said Dr. Mortimer, pointing out of the carriage window.\n\nOver the green squares of the fields and the low curve of a wood there rose in the distance a gray, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance, like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his eyes fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so deep. There he sat, with his tweed suit and his American accent, in the corner of a prosaic railway-carriage, and yet as I looked at his dark and expressive face I felt more than ever how true a descendant he was of that long line of high-blooded, fiery, and masterful men. There were pride, valour, and strength in his thick brows, his sensitive nostrils, and his large hazel eyes. If on that forbidding moor a difficult and dangerous quest should lie before us, this was at least a comrade for whom one might venture to take a risk with the certainty that he would bravely share it.\n\nThe train pulled up at a small wayside station and we all descended. Outside, beyond the low, white fence, a wagonette with a pair of cobs was waiting. Our coming was evidently a great event, for station-master and porters clustered round us to carry out our luggage. It was a sweet, simple country spot, but I was surprised to observe that by the gate there stood two soldierly men in dark uniforms who leaned upon their short rifles and glanced keenly at us as we passed. The coachman, a hard-faced, gnarled little fellow, saluted Sir Henry Baskerville, and in a few minutes we were flying swiftly down the broad, white road. Rolling pasture lands curved upward on either side of us, and old gabled houses peeped out from amid the thick green foliage, but behind the peaceful and sunlit countryside there rose ever, dark against the evening sky, the long, gloomy curve of the moor, broken by the jagged and sinister hills.\n\nThe wagonette swung round into a side road, and we curved upward through deep lanes worn by centuries of wheels, high banks on either side, heavy with dripping moss and fleshy hart's-tongue ferns. Bronzing bracken and mottled bramble gleamed in the light of the sinking sun. Still steadily rising, we passed over a narrow granite bridge and skirted a noisy stream which gushed swiftly down, foaming and roaring amid the gray boulders. Both road and stream wound up through a valley dense with scrub oak and fir. At every turn Baskerville gave an exclamation of delight, looking eagerly about him and asking countless questions. To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year. Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed. The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation\u2014sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw before the carriage of the returning heir of the Baskervilles.\n\n\"Halloa!\" cried Dr. Mortimer, \"what is this?\"\n\nA steep curve of heath-clad land, an outlying spur of the moor, lay in front of us. On the summit, hard and clear like an equestrian statue upon its pedestal, was a mounted soldier, dark and stern, his rifle poised ready over his forearm. He was watching the road along which we travelled.\n\n\"What is this, Perkins?\" asked Dr. Mortimer.\n\nOur driver half turned in his seat.\n\n\"There's a convict escaped from Princetown, sir. He's been out three days now, and the warders watch every road and every station, but they've had no sight of him yet. The farmers about here don't like it, sir, and that's a fact.\"\n\n\"Well, I understand that they get five pounds if they can give information.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, but the chance of five pounds is but a poor thing compared to the chance of having your throat cut. You see, it isn't like any ordinary convict. This is a man that would stick at nothing.\"\n\n\"Who is he, then?\"\n\n\"It is Selden, the Notting Hill murderer.\"\n\nI remembered the case well, for it was one in which Holmes had taken an interest on account of the peculiar ferocity of the crime and the wanton brutality which had marked all the actions of the assassin. The commutation of his death sentence had been due to some doubts as to his complete sanity, so atrocious was his conduct. Our wagonette had topped a rise and in front of us rose the huge expanse of the moor, mottled with gnarled and craggy cairns and tors. A cold wind swept down from it and set us shivering. Somewhere there, on that desolate plain, was lurking this fiendish man, hiding in a burrow like a wild beast, his heart full of malignancy against the whole race which had cast him out. It needed but this to complete the grim suggestiveness of the barren waste, the chilling wind, and the darkling sky. Even Baskerville fell silent and pulled his overcoat more closely around him.\n\nWe had left the fertile country behind and beneath us. We looked back on it now, the slanting rays of a low sun turning the streams to threads of gold and glowing on the red earth new turned by the plough and the broad tangle of the woodlands. The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders. Now and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled and roofed with stone, with no creeper to break its harsh outline. Suddenly we looked down into a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm. Two high, narrow towers rose over the trees. The driver pointed with his whip.\n\n\"Baskerville Hall,\" said he.\n\nIts master had risen and was staring with flushed cheeks and shining eyes. A few minutes later we had reached the lodge-gates, a maze of fantastic tracery in wrought iron, with weather-bitten pillars on either side, blotched with lichens, and surmounted by the boars' heads of the Baskervilles. The lodge was a ruin of black granite and bared ribs of rafters, but facing it was a new building, half constructed, the first fruit of Sir Charles's South African gold.\n\nThrough the gateway we passed into the avenue, where the wheels were again hushed amid the leaves, and the old trees shot their branches in a sombre tunnel over our heads. Baskerville shuddered as he looked up the long, dark drive to where the house glimmered like a ghost at the farther end.\n\n\"Was it here?\" he asked in a low voice.\n\n\"No, no, the yew alley is on the other side.\"\n\nThe young heir glanced round with a gloomy face.\n\n\"It's no wonder my uncle felt as if trouble were coming on him in such a place as this,\" said he. \"It's enough to scare any man. I'll have a row of electric lamps up here inside of six months, and you won't know it again, with a thousand candle-power Swan and Edison right here in front of the hall door.\"\n\nThe avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf, and the house lay before us. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy block of building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in ivy, with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat of arms broke through the dark veil. From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenellated, and pierced with many loopholes. To right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite. A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke.\n\n\"Welcome, Sir Henry! Welcome to Baskerville Hall!\"\n\nA tall man had stepped from the shadow of the porch to open the door of the wagonette. The figure of a woman was silhouetted against the yellow light of the hall. She came out and helped the man to hand down our bags.\n\n\"You don't mind my driving straight home, Sir Henry?\" said Dr. Mortimer. \"My wife is expecting me.\"\n\n\"Surely you will stay and have some dinner?\"\n\n\"No, I must go. I shall probably find some work awaiting me. I would stay to show you over the house, but Barrymore will be a better guide than I. Good-bye, and never hesitate night or day to send for me if I can be of service.\"\n\nThe wheels died away down the drive while Sir Henry and I turned into the hall, and the door clanged heavily behind us. It was a fine apartment in which we found ourselves, large, lofty, and heavily raftered with huge baulks of age-blackened oak. In the great old-fashioned fireplace behind the high iron dogs a log-fire crackled and snapped. Sir Henry and I held out our hands to it, for we were numb from our long drive. Then we gazed round us at the high, thin window of old stained glass, the oak panelling, the stags' heads, the coats of arms upon the walls, all dim and sombre in the subdued light of the central lamp.\n\n\"It's just as I imagined it,\" said Sir Henry. \"Is it not the very picture of an old family home? To think that this should be the same hall in which for five hundred years my people have lived. It strikes me solemn to think of it.\"\n\nI saw his dark face lit up with a boyish enthusiasm as he gazed about him. The light beat upon him where he stood, but long shadows trailed down the walls and hung like a black canopy above him. Barrymore had returned from taking our luggage to our rooms. He stood in front of us now with the subdued manner of a well-trained servant. He was a remarkable-looking man, tall, handsome, with a square black beard and pale, distinguished features.\n\n\"Would you wish dinner to be served at once, sir?\"\n\n\"Is it ready?\"\n\n\"In a very few minutes, sir. You will find hot water in your rooms. My wife and I will be happy, Sir Henry, to stay with you until you have made your fresh arrangements, but you will understand that under the new conditions this house will require a considerable staff.\"\n\n\"What new conditions?\"\n\n\"I only meant, sir, that Sir Charles led a very retired life, and we were able to look after his wants. You would, naturally, wish to have more company, and so you will need changes in your household.\"\n\n\"Do you mean that your wife and you wish to leave?\"\n\n\"Only when it is quite convenient to you, sir.\"\n\n\"But your family have been with us for several generations, have they not? I should be sorry to begin my life here by breaking an old family connection.\"\n\nI seemed to discern some signs of emotion upon the butler's white face.\n\n\"I feel that also, sir, and so does my wife. But to tell the truth, sir, we were both very much attached to Sir Charles and his death gave us a shock and made these surroundings very painful to us. I fear that we shall never again be easy in our minds at Baskerville Hall.\"\n\n\"But what do you intend to do?\"\n\n\"I have no doubt, sir, that we shall succeed in establishing ourselves in some business. Sir Charles's generosity has given us the means to do so. And now, sir, perhaps I had best show you to your rooms.\"\n\nA square balustraded gallery ran round the top of the old hall, approached by a double stair. From this central point two long corridors extended the whole length of the building, from which all the bedrooms opened. My own was in the same wing as Baskerville's and almost next door to it. These rooms appeared to be much more modern than the central part of the house, and the bright paper and numerous candles did something to remove the sombre impression which our arrival had left upon my mind.\n\nBut the dining-room which opened out of the hall was a place of shadow and gloom. It was a long chamber with a step separating the dais where the family sat from the lower portion reserved for their dependents. At one end a minstrel's gallery overlooked it. Black beams shot across above our heads, with a smoke-darkened ceiling beyond them. With rows of flaring torches to light it up, and the colour and rude hilarity of an old-time banquet, it might have softened; but now, when two black-clothed gentlemen sat in the little circle of light thrown by a shaded lamp, one's voice became hushed and one's spirit subdued. A dim line of ancestors, in every variety of dress, from the Elizabethan knight to the buck of the Regency, stared down upon us and daunted us by their silent company. We talked little, and I for one was glad when the meal was over and we were able to retire into the modern billiard-room and smoke a cigarette.\n\n\"My word, it isn't a very cheerful place,\" said Sir Henry. \"I suppose one can tone down to it, but I feel a bit out of the picture at present. I don't wonder that my uncle got a little jumpy if he lived all alone in such a house as this. However, if it suits you, we will retire early to-night, and perhaps things may seem more cheerful in the morning.\"\n\nI drew aside my curtains before I went to bed and looked out from my window. It opened upon the grassy space which lay in front of the hall door. Beyond, two copses of trees moaned and swung in a rising wind. A half moon broke through the rifts of racing clouds. In its cold light I saw beyond the trees a broken fringe of rocks, and the long, low curve of the melancholy moor. I closed the curtain, feeling that my last impression was in keeping with the rest.\n\nAnd yet it was not quite the last. I found myself weary and yet wakeful, tossing restlessly from side to side, seeking for the sleep which would not come. Far away a chiming clock struck out the quarters of the hours, but otherwise a deathly silence lay upon the old house. And then suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable. It was the sob of a woman, the muffled, strangling gasp of one who is torn by an uncontrollable sorrow. I sat up in bed and listened intently. The noise could not have been far away and was certainly in the house. For half an hour I waited with every nerve on the alert, but there came no other sound save the chiming clock and the rustle of the ivy on the wall." + }, + { + "title": "The Stapletons of Merripit House", + "text": "The fresh beauty of the following morning did something to efface from our minds the grim and gray impression which had been left upon both of us by our first experience of Baskerville Hall. As Sir Henry and I sat at breakfast the sunlight flooded in through the high mullioned windows, throwing watery patches of colour from the coats of arms which covered them. The dark panelling glowed like bronze in the golden rays, and it was hard to realize that this was indeed the chamber which had struck such a gloom into our souls upon the evening before.\n\n\"I guess it is ourselves and not the house that we have to blame!\" said the baronet. \"We were tired with our journey and chilled by our drive, so we took a gray view of the place. Now we are fresh and well, so it is all cheerful once more.\"\n\n\"And yet it was not entirely a question of imagination,\" I answered. \"Did you, for example, happen to hear someone, a woman I think, sobbing in the night?\"\n\n\"That is curious, for I did when I was half asleep fancy that I heard something of the sort. I waited quite a time, but there was no more of it, so I concluded that it was all a dream.\"\n\n\"I heard it distinctly, and I am sure that it was really the sob of a woman.\"\n\n\"We must ask about this right away.\" He rang the bell and asked Barrymore whether he could account for our experience. It seemed to me that the pallid features of the butler turned a shade paler still as he listened to his master's question.\n\n\"There are only two women in the house, Sir Henry,\" he answered. \"One is the scullery-maid, who sleeps in the other wing. The other is my wife, and I can answer for it that the sound could not have come from her.\"\n\nAnd yet he lied as he said it, for it chanced that after breakfast I met Mrs. Barrymore in the long corridor with the sun full upon her face. She was a large, impassive, heavy-featured woman with a stern set expression of mouth. But her telltale eyes were red and glanced at me from between swollen lids. It was she, then, who wept in the night, and if she did so her husband must know it. Yet he had taken the obvious risk of discovery in declaring that it was not so. Why had he done this? And why did she weep so bitterly? Already round this pale-faced, handsome, black-bearded man there was gathering an atmosphere of mystery and of gloom. It was he who had been the first to discover the body of Sir Charles, and we had only his word for all the circumstances which led up to the old man's death. Was it possible that it was Barrymore, after all, whom we had seen in the cab in Regent Street? The beard might well have been the same. The cabman had described a somewhat shorter man, but such an impression might easily have been erroneous. How could I settle the point forever? Obviously the first thing to do was to see the Grimpen postmaster and find whether the test telegram had really been placed in Barrymore's own hands. Be the answer what it might, I should at least have something to report to Sherlock Holmes.\n\nSir Henry had numerous papers to examine after breakfast, so that the time was propitious for my excursion. It was a pleasant walk of four miles along the edge of the moor, leading me at last to a small gray hamlet, in which two larger buildings, which proved to be the inn and the house of Dr. Mortimer, stood high above the rest. The postmaster, who was also the village grocer, had a clear recollection of the telegram.\n\n\"Certainly, sir,\" said he, \"I had the telegram delivered to Mr. Barrymore exactly as directed.\"\n\n\"Who delivered it?\"\n\n\"My boy here. James, you delivered that telegram to Mr. Barrymore at the Hall last week, did you not?\"\n\n\"Yes, father, I delivered it.\"\n\n\"Into his own hands?\" I asked.\n\n\"Well, he was up in the loft at the time, so that I could not put it into his own hands, but I gave it into Mrs. Barrymore's hands, and she promised to deliver it at once.\"\n\n\"Did you see Mr. Barrymore?\"\n\n\"No, sir; I tell you he was in the loft.\"\n\n\"If you didn't see him, how do you know he was in the loft?\"\n\n\"Well, surely his own wife ought to know where he is,\" said the postmaster testily. \"Didn't he get the telegram? If there is any mistake it is for Mr. Barrymore himself to complain.\"\n\nIt seemed hopeless to pursue the inquiry any farther, but it was clear that in spite of Holmes's ruse we had no proof that Barrymore had not been in London all the time. Suppose that it were so\u2014suppose that the same man had been the last who had seen Sir Charles alive, and the first to dog the new heir when he returned to England. What then? Was he the agent of others or had he some sinister design of his own? What interest could he have in persecuting the Baskerville family? I thought of the strange warning clipped out of the leading article of the Times. Was that his work or was it possibly the doing of someone who was bent upon counteracting his schemes? The only conceivable motive was that which had been suggested by Sir Henry, that if the family could be scared away a comfortable and permanent home would be secured for the Barrymores. But surely such an explanation as that would be quite inadequate to account for the deep and subtle scheming which seemed to be weaving an invisible net round the young baronet. Holmes himself had said that no more complex case had come to him in all the long series of his sensational investigations. I prayed, as I walked back along the gray, lonely road, that my friend might soon be freed from his preoccupations and able to come down to take this heavy burden of responsibility from my shoulders.\n\nSuddenly my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of running feet behind me and by a voice which called me by name. I turned, expecting to see Dr. Mortimer, but to my surprise it was a stranger who was pursuing me. He was a small, slim, clean-shaven, prim-faced man, flaxen-haired and lean-jawed, between thirty and forty years of age, dressed in a gray suit and wearing a straw hat. A tin box for botanical specimens hung over his shoulder and he carried a green butterfly-net in one of his hands.\n\n\"You will, I am sure, excuse my presumption, Dr. Watson,\" said he as he came panting up to where I stood. \"Here on the moor we are homely folk and do not wait for formal introductions. You may possibly have heard my name from our mutual friend, Mortimer. I am Stapleton, of Merripit House.\"\n\n\"Your net and box would have told me as much,\" said I, \"for I knew that Mr. Stapleton was a naturalist. But how did you know me?\"\n\n\"I have been calling on Mortimer, and he pointed you out to me from the window of his surgery as you passed. As our road lay the same way I thought that I would overtake you and introduce myself. I trust that Sir Henry is none the worse for his journey?\"\n\n\"He is very well, thank you.\"\n\n\"We were all rather afraid that after the sad death of Sir Charles the new baronet might refuse to live here. It is asking much of a wealthy man to come down and bury himself in a place of this kind, but I need not tell you that it means a very great deal to the countryside. Sir Henry has, I suppose, no superstitious fears in the matter?\"\n\n\"I do not think that it is likely.\"\n\n\"Of course you know the legend of the fiend dog which haunts the family?\"\n\n\"I have heard it.\"\n\n\"It is extraordinary how credulous the peasants are about here! Any number of them are ready to swear that they have seen such a creature upon the moor.\" He spoke with a smile, but I seemed to read in his eyes that he took the matter more seriously. \"The story took a great hold upon the imagination of Sir Charles, and I have no doubt that it led to his tragic end.\"\n\n\"But how?\"\n\n\"His nerves were so worked up that the appearance of any dog might have had a fatal effect upon his diseased heart. I fancy that he really did see something of the kind upon that last night in the yew alley. I feared that some disaster might occur, for I was very fond of the old man, and I knew that his heart was weak.\"\n\n\"How did you know that?\"\n\n\"My friend Mortimer told me.\"\n\n\"You think, then, that some dog pursued Sir Charles, and that he died of fright in consequence?\"\n\n\"Have you any better explanation?\"\n\n\"I have not come to any conclusion.\"\n\n\"Has Mr. Sherlock Holmes?\"\n\nThe words took away my breath for an instant, but a glance at the placid face and steadfast eyes of my companion showed that no surprise was intended.\n\n\"It is useless for us to pretend that we do not know you, Dr. Watson,\" said he. \"The records of your detective have reached us here, and you could not celebrate him without being known yourself. When Mortimer told me your name he could not deny your identity. If you are here, then it follows that Mr. Sherlock Holmes is interesting himself in the matter, and I am naturally curious to know what view he may take.\"\n\n\"I am afraid that I cannot answer that question.\"\n\n\"May I ask if he is going to honour us with a visit himself?\"\n\n\"He cannot leave town at present. He has other cases which engage his attention.\"\n\n\"What a pity! He might throw some light on that which is so dark to us. But as to your own researches, if there is any possible way in which I can be of service to you I trust that you will command me. If I had any indication of the nature of your suspicions or how you propose to investigate the case, I might perhaps even now give you some aid or advice.\"\n\n\"I assure you that I am simply here upon a visit to my friend, Sir Henry, and that I need no help of any kind.\"\n\n\"Excellent!\" said Stapleton. \"You are perfectly right to be wary and discreet. I am justly reproved for what I feel was an unjustifiable intrusion, and I promise you that I will not mention the matter again.\"\n\nWe had come to a point where a narrow grassy path struck off from the road and wound away across the moor. A steep, boulder-sprinkled hill lay upon the right which had in bygone days been cut into a granite quarry. The face which was turned towards us formed a dark cliff, with ferns and brambles growing in its niches. From over a distant rise there floated a gray plume of smoke.\n\n\"A moderate walk along this moor-path brings us to Merripit House,\" said he. \"Perhaps you will spare an hour that I may have the pleasure of introducing you to my sister.\"\n\nMy first thought was that I should be by Sir Henry's side. But then I remembered the pile of papers and bills with which his study table was littered. It was certain that I could not help with those. And Holmes had expressly said that I should study the neighbours upon the moor. I accepted Stapleton's invitation, and we turned together down the path.\n\n\"It is a wonderful place, the moor,\" said he, looking round over the undulating downs, long green rollers, with crests of jagged granite foaming up into fantastic surges. \"You never tire of the moor. You cannot think the wonderful secrets which it contains. It is so vast, and so barren, and so mysterious.\"\n\n\"You know it well, then?\"\n\n\"I have only been here two years. The residents would call me a newcomer. We came shortly after Sir Charles settled. But my tastes led me to explore every part of the country round, and I should think that there are few men who know it better than I do.\"\n\n\"Is it hard to know?\"\n\n\"Very hard. You see, for example, this great plain to the north here with the queer hills breaking out of it. Do you observe anything remarkable about that?\"\n\n\"It would be a rare place for a gallop.\"\n\n\"You would naturally think so and the thought has cost several their lives before now. You notice those bright green spots scattered thickly over it?\"\n\n\"Yes, they seem more fertile than the rest.\"\n\nStapleton laughed.\n\n\"That is the great Grimpen Mire,\" said he. \"A false step yonder means death to man or beast. Only yesterday I saw one of the moor ponies wander into it. He never came out. I saw his head for quite a long time craning out of the bog-hole, but it sucked him down at last. Even in dry seasons it is a danger to cross it, but after these autumn rains it is an awful place. And yet I can find my way to the very heart of it and return alive. By George, there is another of those miserable ponies!\"\n\nSomething brown was rolling and tossing among the green sedges. Then a long, agonized, writhing neck shot upward and a dreadful cry echoed over the moor. It turned me cold with horror, but my companion's nerves seemed to be stronger than mine.\n\n\"It's gone!\" said he. \"The mire has him. Two in two days, and many more, perhaps, for they get in the way of going there in the dry weather and never know the difference until the mire has them in its clutches. It's a bad place, the great Grimpen Mire.\"\n\n\"And you say you can penetrate it?\"\n\n\"Yes, there are one or two paths which a very active man can take. I have found them out.\"\n\n\"But why should you wish to go into so horrible a place?\"\n\n\"Well, you see the hills beyond? They are really islands cut off on all sides by the impassable mire, which has crawled round them in the course of years. That is where the rare plants and the butterflies are, if you have the wit to reach them.\"\n\n\"I shall try my luck some day.\"\n\nHe looked at me with a surprised face.\n\n\"For God's sake put such an idea out of your mind,\" said he. \"Your blood would be upon my head. I assure you that there would not be the least chance of your coming back alive. It is only by remembering certain complex landmarks that I am able to do it.\"\n\n\"Halloa!\" I cried. \"What is that?\"\n\nA long, low moan, indescribably sad, swept over the moor. It filled the whole air, and yet it was impossible to say whence it came. From a dull murmur it swelled into a deep roar, and then sank back into a melancholy, throbbing murmur once again. Stapleton looked at me with a curious expression in his face.\n\n\"Queer place, the moor!\" said he.\n\n\"But what is it?\"\n\n\"The peasants say it is the Hound of the Baskervilles calling for its prey. I've heard it once or twice before, but never quite so loud.\"\n\nI looked round, with a chill of fear in my heart, at the huge swelling plain, mottled with the green patches of rushes. Nothing stirred over the vast expanse save a pair of ravens, which croaked loudly from a tor behind us.\n\n\"You are an educated man. You don't believe such nonsense as that?\" said I. \"What do you think is the cause of so strange a sound?\"\n\n\"Bogs make queer noises sometimes. It's the mud settling, or the water rising, or something.\"\n\n\"No, no, that was a living voice.\"\n\n\"Well, perhaps it was. Did you ever hear a bittern booming?\"\n\n\"No, I never did.\"\n\n\"It's a very rare bird\u2014practically extinct\u2014in England now, but all things are possible upon the moor. Yes, I should not be surprised to learn that what we have heard is the cry of the last of the bitterns.\"\n\n\"It's the weirdest, strangest thing that ever I heard in my life.\"\n\n\"Yes, it's rather an uncanny place altogether. Look at the hillside yonder. What do you make of those?\"\n\nThe whole steep slope was covered with gray circular rings of stone, a score of them at least.\n\n\"What are they? Sheep-pens?\"\n\n\"No, they are the homes of our worthy ancestors. Prehistoric man lived thickly on the moor, and as no one in particular has lived there since, we find all his little arrangements exactly as he left them. These are his wigwams with the roofs off. You can even see his hearth and his couch if you have the curiosity to go inside.\"\n\n\"But it is quite a town. When was it inhabited?\"\n\n\"Neolithic man\u2014no date.\"\n\n\"What did he do?\"\n\n\"He grazed his cattle on these slopes, and he learned to dig for tin when the bronze sword began to supersede the stone axe. Look at the great trench in the opposite hill. That is his mark. Yes, you will find some very singular points about the moor, Dr. Watson. Oh, excuse me an instant! It is surely Cyclopides.\"\n\nA small fly or moth had fluttered across our path, and in an instant Stapleton was rushing with extraordinary energy and speed in pursuit of it. To my dismay the creature flew straight for the great mire, and my acquaintance never paused for an instant, bounding from tuft to tuft behind it, his green net waving in the air. His gray clothes and jerky, zigzag, irregular progress made him not unlike some huge moth himself. I was standing watching his pursuit with a mixture of admiration for his extraordinary activity and fear lest he should lose his footing in the treacherous mire when I heard the sound of steps and, turning round, found a woman near me upon the path. She had come from the direction in which the plume of smoke indicated the position of Merripit House, but the dip of the moor had hid her until she was quite close.\n\nI could not doubt that this was the Miss Stapleton of whom I had been told, since ladies of any sort must be few upon the moor, and I remembered that I had heard someone describe her as being a beauty. The woman who approached me was certainly that, and of a most uncommon type. There could not have been a greater contrast between brother and sister, for Stapleton was neutral tinted, with light hair and gray eyes, while she was darker than any brunette whom I have seen in England\u2014slim, elegant, and tall. She had a proud, finely cut face, so regular that it might have seemed impassive were it not for the sensitive mouth and the beautiful dark, eager eyes. With her perfect figure and elegant dress she was, indeed, a strange apparition upon a lonely moorland path. Her eyes were on her brother as I turned, and then she quickened her pace towards me. I had raised my hat and was about to make some explanatory remark when her own words turned all my thoughts into a new channel.\n\n\"Go back!\" she said. \"Go straight back to London, instantly.\"\n\nI could only stare at her in stupid surprise. Her eyes blazed at me, and she tapped the ground impatiently with her foot.\n\n\"Why should I go back?\" I asked.\n\n\"I cannot explain.\" She spoke in a low, eager voice, with a curious lisp in her utterance. \"But for God's sake do what I ask you. Go back and never set foot upon the moor again.\"\n\n\"But I have only just come.\"\n\n\"Man, man!\" she cried. \"Can you not tell when a warning is for your own good? Go back to London! Start to-night! Get away from this place at all costs! Hush, my brother is coming! Not a word of what I have said. Would you mind getting that orchid for me among the mare's-tails yonder? We are very rich in orchids on the moor, though, of course, you are rather late to see the beauties of the place.\"\n\nStapleton had abandoned the chase and came back to us breathing hard and flushed with his exertions.\n\n\"Halloa, Beryl!\" said he, and it seemed to me that the tone of his greeting was not altogether a cordial one.\n\n\"Well, Jack, you are very hot.\"\n\n\"Yes, I was chasing a Cyclopides. He is very rare and seldom found in the late autumn. What a pity that I should have missed him!\" He spoke unconcernedly, but his small light eyes glanced incessantly from the girl to me.\n\n\"You have introduced yourselves, I can see.\"\n\n\"Yes. I was telling Sir Henry that it was rather late for him to see the true beauties of the moor.\"\n\n\"Why, who do you think this is?\"\n\n\"I imagine that it must be Sir Henry Baskerville.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" said I. \"Only a humble commoner, but his friend. My name is Dr. Watson.\"\n\nA flush of vexation passed over her expressive face. \"We have been talking at cross purposes,\" said she.\n\n\"Why, you had not very much time for talk,\" her brother remarked with the same questioning eyes.\n\n\"I talked as if Dr. Watson were a resident instead of being merely a visitor,\" said she. \"It cannot much matter to him whether it is early or late for the orchids. But you will come on, will you not, and see Merripit House?\"\n\nA short walk brought us to it, a bleak moorland house, once the farm of some grazier in the old prosperous days, but now put into repair and turned into a modern dwelling. An orchard surrounded it, but the trees, as is usual upon the moor, were stunted and nipped, and the effect of the whole place was mean and melancholy. We were admitted by a strange, wizened, rusty-coated old manservant, who seemed in keeping with the house. Inside, however, there were large rooms furnished with an elegance in which I seemed to recognize the taste of the lady. As I looked from their windows at the interminable granite-flecked moor rolling unbroken to the farthest horizon I could not but marvel at what could have brought this highly educated man and this beautiful woman to live in such a place.\n\n\"Queer spot to choose, is it not?\" said he as if in answer to my thought. \"And yet we manage to make ourselves fairly happy, do we not, Beryl?\"\n\n\"Quite happy,\" said she, but there was no ring of conviction in her words.\n\n\"I had a school,\" said Stapleton. \"It was in the north country. The work to a man of my temperament was mechanical and uninteresting, but the privilege of living with youth, of helping to mould those young minds, and of impressing them with one's own character and ideals was very dear to me. However, the fates were against us. A serious epidemic broke out in the school and three of the boys died. It never recovered from the blow, and much of my capital was irretrievably swallowed up. And yet, if it were not for the loss of the charming companionship of the boys, I could rejoice over my own misfortune, for, with my strong tastes for botany and zoology, I find an unlimited field of work here, and my sister is as devoted to Nature as I am. All this, Dr. Watson, has been brought upon your head by your expression as you surveyed the moor out of our window.\"\n\n\"It certainly did cross my mind that it might be a little dull\u2014less for you, perhaps, than for your sister.\"\n\n\"No, no, I am never dull,\" said she quickly.\n\n\"We have books, we have our studies, and we have interesting neighbours. Dr. Mortimer is a most learned man in his own line. Poor Sir Charles was also an admirable companion. We knew him well and miss him more than I can tell. Do you think that I should intrude if I were to call this afternoon and make the acquaintance of Sir Henry?\"\n\n\"I am sure that he would be delighted.\"\n\n\"Then perhaps you would mention that I propose to do so. We may in our humble way do something to make things more easy for him until he becomes accustomed to his new surroundings. Will you come upstairs, Dr. Watson, and inspect my collection of Lepidoptera? I think it is the most complete one in the south-west of England. By the time that you have looked through them lunch will be almost ready.\"\n\nBut I was eager to get back to my charge. The melancholy of the moor, the death of the unfortunate pony, the weird sound which had been associated with the grim legend of the Baskervilles, all these things tinged my thoughts with sadness. Then on the top of these more or less vague impressions there had come the definite and distinct warning of Miss Stapleton, delivered with such intense earnestness that I could not doubt that some grave and deep reason lay behind it. I resisted all pressure to stay for lunch, and I set off at once upon my return journey, taking the grass-grown path by which we had come.\n\nIt seems, however, that there must have been some short cut for those who knew it, for before I had reached the road I was astounded to see Miss Stapleton sitting upon a rock by the side of the track. Her face was beautifully flushed with her exertions, and she held her hand to her side.\n\n\"I have run all the way in order to cut you off, Dr. Watson,\" said she. \"I had not even time to put on my hat. I must not stop, or my brother may miss me. I wanted to say to you how sorry I am about the stupid mistake I made in thinking that you were Sir Henry. Please forget the words I said, which have no application whatever to you.\"\n\n\"But I can't forget them, Miss Stapleton,\" said I. \"I am Sir Henry's friend, and his welfare is a very close concern of mine. Tell me why it was that you were so eager that Sir Henry should return to London.\"\n\n\"A woman's whim, Dr. Watson. When you know me better you will understand that I cannot always give reasons for what I say or do.\"\n\n\"No, no. I remember the thrill in your voice. I remember the look in your eyes. Please, please, be frank with me, Miss Stapleton, for ever since I have been here I have been conscious of shadows all round me. Life has become like that great Grimpen Mire, with little green patches everywhere into which one may sink and with no guide to point the track. Tell me then what it was that you meant, and I will promise to convey your warning to Sir Henry.\"\n\nAn expression of irresolution passed for an instant over her face, but her eyes had hardened again when she answered me.\n\n\"You make too much of it, Dr. Watson,\" said she. \"My brother and I were very much shocked by the death of Sir Charles. We knew him very intimately, for his favourite walk was over the moor to our house. He was deeply impressed with the curse which hung over his family, and when this tragedy came I naturally felt that there must be some grounds for the fears which he had expressed. I was distressed therefore when another member of the family came down to live here, and I felt that he should be warned of the danger which he will run. That was all which I intended to convey.\"\n\n\"But what is the danger?\"\n\n\"You know the story of the hound?\"\n\n\"I do not believe in such nonsense.\"\n\n\"But I do. If you have any influence with Sir Henry, take him away from a place which has always been fatal to his family. The world is wide. Why should he wish to live at the place of danger?\"\n\n\"Because it is the place of danger. That is Sir Henry's nature. I fear that unless you can give me some more definite information than this it would be impossible to get him to move.\"\n\n\"I cannot say anything definite, for I do not know anything definite.\"\n\n\"I would ask you one more question, Miss Stapleton. If you meant no more than this when you first spoke to me, why should you not wish your brother to overhear what you said? There is nothing to which he, or anyone else, could object.\"\n\n\"My brother is very anxious to have the Hall inhabited, for he thinks that it is for the good of the poor folk upon the moor. He would be very angry if he knew that I had said anything which might induce Sir Henry to go away. But I have done my duty now and I will say no more. I must get back, or he will miss me and suspect that I have seen you. Good-bye!\" She turned and had disappeared in a few minutes among the scattered boulders, while I, with my soul full of vague fears, pursued my way to Baskerville Hall." + }, + { + "title": "First Report of Dr. Watson", + "text": "From this point onward I will follow the course of events by transcribing my own letters to Mr. Sherlock Holmes which lie before me on the table. One page is missing, but otherwise they are exactly as written and show my feelings and suspicions of the moment more accurately than my memory, clear as it is upon these tragic events, can possibly do.\n\nBaskerville Hall, October 13th.\n\nMY DEAR HOLMES:\n\nMy previous letters and telegrams have kept you pretty well up to date as to all that has occurred in this most God-forsaken corner of the world. The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one's soul, its vastness, and also its grim charm. When you are once out upon its bosom you have left all traces of modern England behind you, but, on the other hand, you are conscious everywhere of the homes and the work of the prehistoric people. On all sides of you as you walk are the houses of these forgotten folk, with their graves and the huge monoliths which are supposed to have marked their temples. As you look at their gray stone huts against the scarred hillsides you leave your own age behind you, and if you were to see a skin-clad, hairy man crawl out from the low door, fitting a flint-tipped arrow on to the string of his bow, you would feel that his presence there was more natural than your own. The strange thing is that they should have lived so thickly on what must always have been most unfruitful soil. I am no antiquarian, but I could imagine that they were some unwarlike and harried race who were forced to accept that which none other would occupy.\n\nAll this, however, is foreign to the mission on which you sent me and will probably be very uninteresting to your severely practical mind. I can still remember your complete indifference as to whether the sun moved round the earth or the earth round the sun. Let me, therefore, return to the facts concerning Sir Henry Baskerville.\n\nIf you have not had any report within the last few days it is because up to to-day there was nothing of importance to relate. Then a very surprising circumstance occurred, which I shall tell you in due course. But, first of all, I must keep you in touch with some of the other factors in the situation.\n\nOne of these, concerning which I have said little, is the escaped convict upon the moor. There is strong reason now to believe that he has got right away, which is a considerable relief to the lonely householders of this district. A fortnight has passed since his flight, during which he has not been seen and nothing has been heard of him. It is surely inconceivable that he could have held out upon the moor during all that time. Of course, so far as his concealment goes there is no difficulty at all. Any one of these stone huts would give him a hiding-place. But there is nothing to eat unless he were to catch and slaughter one of the moor sheep. We think, therefore, that he has gone, and the outlying farmers sleep the better in consequence.\n\nWe are four able-bodied men in this household, so that we could take good care of ourselves, but I confess that I have had uneasy moments when I have thought of the Stapletons. They live miles from any help. There are one maid, an old manservant, the sister, and the brother, the latter not a very strong man. They would be helpless in the hands of a desperate fellow like this Notting Hill criminal if he could once effect an entrance. Both Sir Henry and I were concerned at their situation, and it was suggested that Perkins the groom should go over to sleep there, but Stapleton would not hear of it.\n\nThe fact is that our friend, the baronet, begins to display a considerable interest in our fair neighbour. It is not to be wondered at, for time hangs heavily in this lonely spot to an active man like him, and she is a very fascinating and beautiful woman. There is something tropical and exotic about her which forms a singular contrast to her cool and unemotional brother. Yet he also gives the idea of hidden fires. He has certainly a very marked influence over her, for I have seen her continually glance at him as she talked as if seeking approbation for what she said. I trust that he is kind to her. There is a dry glitter in his eyes and a firm set of his thin lips, which goes with a positive and possibly a harsh nature. You would find him an interesting study.\n\nHe came over to call upon Baskerville on that first day, and the very next morning he took us both to show us the spot where the legend of the wicked Hugo is supposed to have had its origin. It was an excursion of some miles across the moor to a place which is so dismal that it might have suggested the story. We found a short valley between rugged tors which led to an open, grassy space flecked over with the white cotton grass. In the middle of it rose two great stones, worn and sharpened at the upper end until they looked like the huge corroding fangs of some monstrous beast. In every way it corresponded with the scene of the old tragedy. Sir Henry was much interested and asked Stapleton more than once whether he did really believe in the possibility of the interference of the supernatural in the affairs of men. He spoke lightly, but it was evident that he was very much in earnest. Stapleton was guarded in his replies, but it was easy to see that he said less than he might, and that he would not express his whole opinion out of consideration for the feelings of the baronet. He told us of similar cases, where families had suffered from some evil influence, and he left us with the impression that he shared the popular view upon the matter.\n\nOn our way back we stayed for lunch at Merripit House, and it was there that Sir Henry made the acquaintance of Miss Stapleton. From the first moment that he saw her he appeared to be strongly attracted by her, and I am much mistaken if the feeling was not mutual. He referred to her again and again on our walk home, and since then hardly a day has passed that we have not seen something of the brother and sister. They dine here to-night, and there is some talk of our going to them next week. One would imagine that such a match would be very welcome to Stapleton, and yet I have more than once caught a look of the strongest disapprobation in his face when Sir Henry has been paying some attention to his sister. He is much attached to her, no doubt, and would lead a lonely life without her, but it would seem the height of selfishness if he were to stand in the way of her making so brilliant a marriage. Yet I am certain that he does not wish their intimacy to ripen into love, and I have several times observed that he has taken pains to prevent them from being t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate. By the way, your instructions to me never to allow Sir Henry to go out alone will become very much more onerous if a love affair were to be added to our other difficulties. My popularity would soon suffer if I were to carry out your orders to the letter.\n\nThe other day\u2014Thursday, to be more exact\u2014Dr. Mortimer lunched with us. He has been excavating a barrow at Long Down and has got a prehistoric skull which fills him with great joy. Never was there such a single-minded enthusiast as he! The Stapletons came in afterwards, and the good doctor took us all to the yew alley at Sir Henry's request to show us exactly how everything occurred upon that fatal night. It is a long, dismal walk, the yew alley, between two high walls of clipped hedge, with a narrow band of grass upon either side. At the far end is an old tumble-down summer-house. Halfway down is the moor-gate, where the old gentleman left his cigar-ash. It is a white wooden gate with a latch. Beyond it lies the wide moor. I remembered your theory of the affair and tried to picture all that had occurred. As the old man stood there he saw something coming across the moor, something which terrified him so that he lost his wits and ran and ran until he died of sheer horror and exhaustion. There was the long, gloomy tunnel down which he fled. And from what? A sheep-dog of the moor? Or a spectral hound, black, silent, and monstrous? Was there a human agency in the matter? Did the pale, watchful Barrymore know more than he cared to say? It was all dim and vague, but always there is the dark shadow of crime behind it.\n\nOne other neighbour I have met since I wrote last. This is Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who lives some four miles to the south of us. He is an elderly man, red-faced, white-haired, and choleric. His passion is for the British law, and he has spent a large fortune in litigation. He fights for the mere pleasure of fighting and is equally ready to take up either side of a question, so that it is no wonder that he has found it a costly amusement. Sometimes he will shut up a right of way and defy the parish to make him open it. At others he will with his own hands tear down some other man's gate and declare that a path has existed there from time immemorial, defying the owner to prosecute him for trespass. He is learned in old manorial and communal rights, and he applies his knowledge sometimes in favour of the villagers of Fernworthy and sometimes against them, so that he is periodically either carried in triumph down the village street or else burned in effigy, according to his latest exploit. He is said to have about seven lawsuits upon his hands at present, which will probably swallow up the remainder of his fortune and so draw his sting and leave him harmless for the future. Apart from the law he seems a kindly, good-natured person, and I only mention him because you were particular that I should send some description of the people who surround us. He is curiously employed at present, for, being an amateur astronomer, he has an excellent telescope, with which he lies upon the roof of his own house and sweeps the moor all day in the hope of catching a glimpse of the escaped convict. If he would confine his energies to this all would be well, but there are rumours that he intends to prosecute Dr. Mortimer for opening a grave without the consent of the next of kin because he dug up the neolithic skull in the barrow on Long Down. He helps to keep our lives from being monotonous and gives a little comic relief where it is badly needed.\n\nAnd now, having brought you up to date in the escaped convict, the Stapletons, Dr. Mortimer, and Frankland, of Lafter Hall, let me end on that which is most important and tell you more about the Barrymores, and especially about the surprising development of last night.\n\nFirst of all about the test telegram, which you sent from London in order to make sure that Barrymore was really here. I have already explained that the testimony of the postmaster shows that the test was worthless and that we have no proof one way or the other. I told Sir Henry how the matter stood, and he at once, in his downright fashion, had Barrymore up and asked him whether he had received the telegram himself. Barrymore said that he had.\n\n\"Did the boy deliver it into your own hands?\" asked Sir Henry.\n\nBarrymore looked surprised, and considered for a little time.\n\n\"No,\" said he, \"I was in the box-room at the time, and my wife brought it up to me.\"\n\n\"Did you answer it yourself?\"\n\n\"No; I told my wife what to answer and she went down to write it.\"\n\nIn the evening he recurred to the subject of his own accord.\n\n\"I could not quite understand the object of your questions this morning, Sir Henry,\" said he. \"I trust that they do not mean that I have done anything to forfeit your confidence?\"\n\nSir Henry had to assure him that it was not so and pacify him by giving him a considerable part of his old wardrobe, the London outfit having now all arrived.\n\nMrs. Barrymore is of interest to me. She is a heavy, solid person, very limited, intensely respectable, and inclined to be puritanical. You could hardly conceive a less emotional subject. Yet I have told you how, on the first night here, I heard her sobbing bitterly, and since then I have more than once observed traces of tears upon her face. Some deep sorrow gnaws ever at her heart. Sometimes I wonder if she has a guilty memory which haunts her, and sometimes I suspect Barrymore of being a domestic tyrant. I have always felt that there was something singular and questionable in this man's character, but the adventure of last night brings all my suspicions to a head.\n\nAnd yet it may seem a small matter in itself. You are aware that I am not a very sound sleeper, and since I have been on guard in this house my slumbers have been lighter than ever. Last night, about two in the morning, I was aroused by a stealthy step passing my room. I rose, opened my door, and peeped out. A long black shadow was trailing down the corridor. It was thrown by a man who walked softly down the passage with a candle held in his hand. He was in shirt and trousers, with no covering to his feet. I could merely see the outline, but his height told me that it was Barrymore. He walked very slowly and circumspectly, and there was something indescribably guilty and furtive in his whole appearance.\n\nI have told you that the corridor is broken by the balcony which runs round the hall, but that it is resumed upon the farther side. I waited until he had passed out of sight and then I followed him. When I came round the balcony he had reached the end of the farther corridor, and I could see from the glimmer of light through an open door that he had entered one of the rooms. Now, all these rooms are unfurnished and unoccupied, so that his expedition became more mysterious than ever. The light shone steadily as if he were standing motionless. I crept down the passage as noiselessly as I could and peeped round the corner of the door.\n\nBarrymore was crouching at the window with the candle held against the glass. His profile was half turned towards me, and his face seemed to be rigid with expectation as he stared out into the blackness of the moor. For some minutes he stood watching intently. Then he gave a deep groan and with an impatient gesture he put out the light. Instantly I made my way back to my room, and very shortly came the stealthy steps passing once more upon their return journey. Long afterwards when I had fallen into a light sleep I heard a key turn somewhere in a lock, but I could not tell whence the sound came. What it all means I cannot guess, but there is some secret business going on in this house of gloom which sooner or later we shall get to the bottom of. I do not trouble you with my theories, for you asked me to furnish you only with facts. I have had a long talk with Sir Henry this morning, and we have made a plan of campaign founded upon my observations of last night. I will not speak about it just now, but it should make my next report interesting reading." + }, + { + "title": "Second Report of Dr. Watson", + "text": "[ The Light Upon the Moor ]\n\nBaskerville Hall, Oct. 15th.\n\nMY DEAR HOLMES:\n\nIf I was compelled to leave you without much news during the early days of my mission you must acknowledge that I am making up for lost time, and that events are now crowding thick and fast upon us. In my last report I ended upon my top note with Barrymore at the window, and now I have quite a budget already which will, unless I am much mistaken, considerably surprise you. Things have taken a turn which I could not have anticipated. In some ways they have within the last forty-eight hours become much clearer and in some ways they have become more complicated. But I will tell you all and you shall judge for yourself.\n\nBefore breakfast on the morning following my adventure I went down the corridor and examined the room in which Barrymore had been on the night before. The western window through which he had stared so intently has, I noticed, one peculiarity above all other windows in the house\u2014it commands the nearest outlook on to the moor. There is an opening between two trees which enables one from this point of view to look right down upon it, while from all the other windows it is only a distant glimpse which can be obtained. It follows, therefore, that Barrymore, since only this window would serve the purpose, must have been looking out for something or somebody upon the moor. The night was very dark, so that I can hardly imagine how he could have hoped to see anyone. It had struck me that it was possible that some love intrigue was on foot. That would have accounted for his stealthy movements and also for the uneasiness of his wife. The man is a striking-looking fellow, very well equipped to steal the heart of a country girl, so that this theory seemed to have something to support it. That opening of the door which I had heard after I had returned to my room might mean that he had gone out to keep some clandestine appointment. So I reasoned with myself in the morning, and I tell you the direction of my suspicions, however much the result may have shown that they were unfounded.\n\nBut whatever the true explanation of Barrymore's movements might be, I felt that the responsibility of keeping them to myself until I could explain them was more than I could bear. I had an interview with the baronet in his study after breakfast, and I told him all that I had seen. He was less surprised than I had expected.\n\n\"I knew that Barrymore walked about nights, and I had a mind to speak to him about it,\" said he. \"Two or three times I have heard his steps in the passage, coming and going, just about the hour you name.\"\n\n\"Perhaps then he pays a visit every night to that particular window,\" I suggested.\n\n\"Perhaps he does. If so, we should be able to shadow him and see what it is that he is after. I wonder what your friend Holmes would do if he were here.\"\n\n\"I believe that he would do exactly what you now suggest,\" said I. \"He would follow Barrymore and see what he did.\"\n\n\"Then we shall do it together.\"\n\n\"But surely he would hear us.\"\n\n\"The man is rather deaf, and in any case we must take our chance of that. We'll sit up in my room to-night and wait until he passes.\" Sir Henry rubbed his hands with pleasure, and it was evident that he hailed the adventure as a relief to his somewhat quiet life upon the moor.\n\nThe baronet has been in communication with the architect who prepared the plans for Sir Charles, and with a contractor from London, so that we may expect great changes to begin here soon. There have been decorators and furnishers up from Plymouth, and it is evident that our friend has large ideas and means to spare no pains or expense to restore the grandeur of his family. When the house is renovated and refurnished, all that he will need will be a wife to make it complete. Between ourselves there are pretty clear signs that this will not be wanting if the lady is willing, for I have seldom seen a man more infatuated with a woman than he is with our beautiful neighbour, Miss Stapleton. And yet the course of true love does not run quite as smoothly as one would under the circumstances expect. Today, for example, its surface was broken by a very unexpected ripple, which has caused our friend considerable perplexity and annoyance.\n\nAfter the conversation which I have quoted about Barrymore, Sir Henry put on his hat and prepared to go out. As a matter of course I did the same.\n\n\"What, are you coming, Watson?\" he asked, looking at me in a curious way.\n\n\"That depends on whether you are going on the moor,\" said I.\n\n\"Yes, I am.\"\n\n\"Well, you know what my instructions are. I am sorry to intrude, but you heard how earnestly Holmes insisted that I should not leave you, and especially that you should not go alone upon the moor.\"\n\nSir Henry put his hand upon my shoulder with a pleasant smile.\n\n\"My dear fellow,\" said he, \"Holmes, with all his wisdom, did not foresee some things which have happened since I have been on the moor. You understand me? I am sure that you are the last man in the world who would wish to be a spoil-sport. I must go out alone.\"\n\nIt put me in a most awkward position. I was at a loss what to say or what to do, and before I had made up my mind he picked up his cane and was gone.\n\nBut when I came to think the matter over my conscience reproached me bitterly for having on any pretext allowed him to go out of my sight. I imagined what my feelings would be if I had to return to you and to confess that some misfortune had occurred through my disregard for your instructions. I assure you my cheeks flushed at the very thought. It might not even now be too late to overtake him, so I set off at once in the direction of Merripit House.\n\nI hurried along the road at the top of my speed without seeing anything of Sir Henry, until I came to the point where the moor path branches off. There, fearing that perhaps I had come in the wrong direction after all, I mounted a hill from which I could command a view\u2014the same hill which is cut into the dark quarry. Thence I saw him at once. He was on the moor path, about a quarter of a mile off, and a lady was by his side who could only be Miss Stapleton. It was clear that there was already an understanding between them and that they had met by appointment. They were walking slowly along in deep conversation, and I saw her making quick little movements of her hands as if she were very earnest in what she was saying, while he listened intently, and once or twice shook his head in strong dissent. I stood among the rocks watching them, very much puzzled as to what I should do next. To follow them and break into their intimate conversation seemed to be an outrage, and yet my clear duty was never for an instant to let him out of my sight. To act the spy upon a friend was a hateful task. Still, I could see no better course than to observe him from the hill, and to clear my conscience by confessing to him afterwards what I had done. It is true that if any sudden danger had threatened him I was too far away to be of use, and yet I am sure that you will agree with me that the position was very difficult, and that there was nothing more which I could do.\n\nOur friend, Sir Henry, and the lady had halted on the path and were standing deeply absorbed in their conversation, when I was suddenly aware that I was not the only witness of their interview. A wisp of green floating in the air caught my eye, and another glance showed me that it was carried on a stick by a man who was moving among the broken ground. It was Stapleton with his butterfly-net. He was very much closer to the pair than I was, and he appeared to be moving in their direction. At this instant Sir Henry suddenly drew Miss Stapleton to his side. His arm was round her, but it seemed to me that she was straining away from him with her face averted. He stooped his head to hers, and she raised one hand as if in protest. Next moment I saw them spring apart and turn hurriedly round. Stapleton was the cause of the interruption. He was running wildly towards them, his absurd net dangling behind him. He gesticulated and almost danced with excitement in front of the lovers. What the scene meant I could not imagine, but it seemed to me that Stapleton was abusing Sir Henry, who offered explanations, which became more angry as the other refused to accept them. The lady stood by in haughty silence. Finally Stapleton turned upon his heel and beckoned in a peremptory way to his sister, who, after an irresolute glance at Sir Henry, walked off by the side of her brother. The naturalist's angry gestures showed that the lady was included in his displeasure. The baronet stood for a minute looking after them, and then he walked slowly back the way that he had come, his head hanging, the very picture of dejection.\n\nWhat all this meant I could not imagine, but I was deeply ashamed to have witnessed so intimate a scene without my friend's knowledge. I ran down the hill therefore and met the baronet at the bottom. His face was flushed with anger and his brows were wrinkled, like one who is at his wit's ends what to do.\n\n\"Halloa, Watson! Where have you dropped from?\" said he. \"You don't mean to say that you came after me in spite of all?\"\n\nI explained everything to him: how I had found it impossible to remain behind, how I had followed him, and how I had witnessed all that had occurred. For an instant his eyes blazed at me, but my frankness disarmed his anger, and he broke at last into a rather rueful laugh.\n\n\"You would have thought the middle of that prairie a fairly safe place for a man to be private,\" said he, \"but, by thunder, the whole countryside seems to have been out to see me do my wooing\u2014and a mighty poor wooing at that! Where had you engaged a seat?\"\n\n\"I was on that hill.\"\n\n\"Quite in the back row, eh? But her brother was well up to the front. Did you see him come out on us?\"\n\n\"Yes, I did.\"\n\n\"Did he ever strike you as being crazy\u2014this brother of hers?\"\n\n\"I can't say that he ever did.\"\n\n\"I dare say not. I always thought him sane enough until to-day, but you can take it from me that either he or I ought to be in a straitjacket. What's the matter with me, anyhow? You've lived near me for some weeks, Watson. Tell me straight, now! Is there anything that would prevent me from making a good husband to a woman that I loved?\"\n\n\"I should say not.\"\n\n\"He can't object to my worldly position, so it must be myself that he has this down on. What has he against me? I never hurt man or woman in my life that I know of. And yet he would not so much as let me touch the tips of her fingers.\"\n\n\"Did he say so?\"\n\n\"That, and a deal more. I tell you, Watson, I've only known her these few weeks, but from the first I just felt that she was made for me, and she, too\u2014she was happy when she was with me, and that I'll swear. There's a light in a woman's eyes that speaks louder than words. But he has never let us get together, and it was only to-day for the first time that I saw a chance of having a few words with her alone. She was glad to meet me, but when she did it was not love that she would talk about, and she wouldn't have let me talk about it either if she could have stopped it. She kept coming back to it that this was a place of danger, and that she would never be happy until I had left it. I told her that since I had seen her I was in no hurry to leave it, and that if she really wanted me to go, the only way to work it was for her to arrange to go with me. With that I offered in as many words to marry her, but before she could answer, down came this brother of hers, running at us with a face on him like a madman. He was just white with rage, and those light eyes of his were blazing with fury. What was I doing with the lady? How dared I offer her attentions which were distasteful to her? Did I think that because I was a baronet I could do what I liked? If he had not been her brother I should have known better how to answer him. As it was I told him that my feelings towards his sister were such as I was not ashamed of, and that I hoped that she might honour me by becoming my wife. That seemed to make the matter no better, so then I lost my temper too, and I answered him rather more hotly than I should perhaps, considering that she was standing by. So it ended by his going off with her, as you saw, and here am I as badly puzzled a man as any in this county. Just tell me what it all means, Watson, and I'll owe you more than ever I can hope to pay.\"\n\nI tried one or two explanations, but, indeed, I was completely puzzled myself. Our friend's title, his fortune, his age, his character, and his appearance are all in his favour, and I know nothing against him unless it be this dark fate which runs in his family. That his advances should be rejected so brusquely without any reference to the lady's own wishes and that the lady should accept the situation without protest is very amazing. However, our conjectures were set at rest by a visit from Stapleton himself that very afternoon. He had come to offer apologies for his rudeness of the morning, and after a long private interview with Sir Henry in his study the upshot of their conversation was that the breach is quite healed, and that we are to dine at Merripit House next Friday as a sign of it.\n\n\"I don't say now that he isn't a crazy man,\" said Sir Henry; \"I can't forget the look in his eyes when he ran at me this morning, but I must allow that no man could make a more handsome apology than he has done.\"\n\n\"Did he give any explanation of his conduct?\"\n\n\"His sister is everything in his life, he says. That is natural enough, and I am glad that he should understand her value. They have always been together, and according to his account he has been a very lonely man with only her as a companion, so that the thought of losing her was really terrible to him. He had not understood, he said, that I was becoming attached to her, but when he saw with his own eyes that it was really so, and that she might be taken away from him, it gave him such a shock that for a time he was not responsible for what he said or did. He was very sorry for all that had passed, and he recognized how foolish and how selfish it was that he should imagine that he could hold a beautiful woman like his sister to himself for her whole life. If she had to leave him he had rather it was to a neighbour like myself than to anyone else. But in any case it was a blow to him, and it would take him some time before he could prepare himself to meet it. He would withdraw all opposition upon his part if I would promise for three months to let the matter rest and to be content with cultivating the lady's friendship during that time without claiming her love. This I promised, and so the matter rests.\"\n\nSo there is one of our small mysteries cleared up. It is something to have touched bottom anywhere in this bog in which we are floundering. We know now why Stapleton looked with disfavour upon his sister's suitor\u2014even when that suitor was so eligible a one as Sir Henry. And now I pass on to another thread which I have extricated out of the tangled skein, the mystery of the sobs in the night, of the tear-stained face of Mrs. Barrymore, of the secret journey of the butler to the western lattice window. Congratulate me, my dear Holmes, and tell me that I have not disappointed you as an agent\u2014that you do not regret the confidence which you showed in me when you sent me down. All these things have by one night's work been thoroughly cleared.\n\nI have said \"by one night's work,\" but, in truth, it was by two nights' work, for on the first we drew entirely blank. I sat up with Sir Henry in his rooms until nearly three o'clock in the morning, but no sound of any sort did we hear except the chiming clock upon the stairs. It was a most melancholy vigil and ended by each of us falling asleep in our chairs. Fortunately we were not discouraged, and we determined to try again. The next night we lowered the lamp and sat smoking cigarettes without making the least sound. It was incredible how slowly the hours crawled by, and yet we were helped through it by the same sort of patient interest which the hunter must feel as he watches the trap into which he hopes the game may wander. One struck, and two, and we had almost for the second time given it up in despair when in an instant we both sat bolt upright in our chairs, with all our weary senses keenly on the alert once more. We had heard the creak of a step in the passage.\n\nVery stealthily we heard it pass along until it died away in the distance. Then the baronet gently opened his door and we set out in pursuit. Already our man had gone round the gallery, and the corridor was all in darkness. Softly we stole along until we had come into the other wing. We were just in time to catch a glimpse of the tall, black-bearded figure, his shoulders rounded, as he tiptoed down the passage. Then he passed through the same door as before, and the light of the candle framed it in the darkness and shot one single yellow beam across the gloom of the corridor. We shuffled cautiously towards it, trying every plank before we dared to put our whole weight upon it. We had taken the precaution of leaving our boots behind us, but, even so, the old boards snapped and creaked beneath our tread. Sometimes it seemed impossible that he should fail to hear our approach. However, the man is fortunately rather deaf, and he was entirely preoccupied in that which he was doing. When at last we reached the door and peeped through we found him crouching at the window, candle in hand, his white, intent face pressed against the pane, exactly as I had seen him two nights before.\n\nWe had arranged no plan of campaign, but the baronet is a man to whom the most direct way is always the most natural. He walked into the room, and as he did so Barrymore sprang up from the window with a sharp hiss of his breath and stood, livid and trembling, before us. His dark eyes, glaring out of the white mask of his face, were full of horror and astonishment as he gazed from Sir Henry to me.\n\n\"What are you doing here, Barrymore?\"\n\n\"Nothing, sir.\" His agitation was so great that he could hardly speak, and the shadows sprang up and down from the shaking of his candle. \"It was the window, sir. I go round at night to see that they are fastened.\"\n\n\"On the second floor?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, all the windows.\"\n\n\"Look here, Barrymore,\" said Sir Henry sternly, \"we have made up our minds to have the truth out of you, so it will save you trouble to tell it sooner rather than later. Come, now! No lies! What were you doing at that window?\"\n\nThe fellow looked at us in a helpless way, and he wrung his hands together like one who is in the last extremity of doubt and misery.\n\n\"I was doing no harm, sir. I was holding a candle to the window.\"\n\n\"And why were you holding a candle to the window?\"\n\n\"Don't ask me, Sir Henry\u2014don't ask me! I give you my word, sir, that it is not my secret, and that I cannot tell it. If it concerned no one but myself I would not try to keep it from you.\"\n\nA sudden idea occurred to me, and I took the candle from the trembling hand of the butler.\n\n\"He must have been holding it as a signal,\" said I. \"Let us see if there is any answer.\" I held it as he had done, and stared out into the darkness of the night. Vaguely I could discern the black bank of the trees and the lighter expanse of the moor, for the moon was behind the clouds. And then I gave a cry of exultation, for a tiny pin-point of yellow light had suddenly transfixed the dark veil, and glowed steadily in the centre of the black square framed by the window.\n\n\"There it is!\" I cried.\n\n\"No, no, sir, it is nothing\u2014nothing at all!\" the butler broke in; \"I assure you, sir\u2014\"\n\n\"Move your light across the window, Watson!\" cried the baronet. \"See, the other moves also! Now, you rascal, do you deny that it is a signal? Come, speak up! Who is your confederate out yonder, and what is this conspiracy that is going on?\"\n\nThe man's face became openly defiant.\n\n\"It is my business, and not yours. I will not tell.\"\n\n\"Then you leave my employment right away.\"\n\n\"Very good, sir. If I must I must.\"\n\n\"And you go in disgrace. By thunder, you may well be ashamed of yourself. Your family has lived with mine for over a hundred years under this roof, and here I find you deep in some dark plot against me.\"\n\n\"No, no, sir; no, not against you!\" It was a woman's voice, and Mrs. Barrymore, paler and more horror-struck than her husband, was standing at the door. Her bulky figure in a shawl and skirt might have been comic were it not for the intensity of feeling upon her face.\n\n\"We have to go, Eliza. This is the end of it. You can pack our things,\" said the butler.\n\n\"Oh, John, John, have I brought you to this? It is my doing, Sir Henry\u2014all mine. He has done nothing except for my sake, and because I asked him.\"\n\n\"Speak out, then! What does it mean?\"\n\n\"My unhappy brother is starving on the moor. We cannot let him perish at our very gates. The light is a signal to him that food is ready for him, and his light out yonder is to show the spot to which to bring it.\"\n\n\"Then your brother is\u2014\"\n\n\"The escaped convict, sir\u2014Selden, the criminal.\"\n\n\"That's the truth, sir,\" said Barrymore. \"I said that it was not my secret and that I could not tell it to you. But now you have heard it, and you will see that if there was a plot it was not against you.\"\n\nThis, then, was the explanation of the stealthy expeditions at night and the light at the window. Sir Henry and I both stared at the woman in amazement. Was it possible that this stolidly respectable person was of the same blood as one of the most notorious criminals in the country?\n\n\"Yes, sir, my name was Selden, and he is my younger brother. We humoured him too much when he was a lad and gave him his own way in everything until he came to think that the world was made for his pleasure, and that he could do what he liked in it. Then as he grew older he met wicked companions, and the devil entered into him until he broke my mother's heart and dragged our name in the dirt. From crime to crime he sank lower and lower until it is only the mercy of God which has snatched him from the scaffold; but to me, sir, he was always the little curly-headed boy that I had nursed and played with as an elder sister would. That was why he broke prison, sir. He knew that I was here and that we could not refuse to help him. When he dragged himself here one night, weary and starving, with the warders hard at his heels, what could we do? We took him in and fed him and cared for him. Then you returned, sir, and my brother thought he would be safer on the moor than anywhere else until the hue and cry was over, so he lay in hiding there. But every second night we made sure if he was still there by putting a light in the window, and if there was an answer my husband took out some bread and meat to him. Every day we hoped that he was gone, but as long as he was there we could not desert him. That is the whole truth, as I am an honest Christian woman, and you will see that if there is blame in the matter it does not lie with my husband but with me, for whose sake he has done all that he has.\"\n\nThe woman's words came with an intense earnestness which carried conviction with them.\n\n\"Is this true, Barrymore?\"\n\n\"Yes, Sir Henry. Every word of it.\"\n\n\"Well, I cannot blame you for standing by your own wife. Forget what I have said. Go to your room, you two, and we shall talk further about this matter in the morning.\"\n\nWhen they were gone we looked out of the window again. Sir Henry had flung it open, and the cold night wind beat in upon our faces. Far away in the black distance there still glowed that one tiny point of yellow light.\n\n\"I wonder he dares,\" said Sir Henry.\n\n\"It may be so placed as to be only visible from here.\"\n\n\"Very likely. How far do you think it is?\"\n\n\"Out by the Cleft Tor, I think.\"\n\n\"Not more than a mile or two off.\"\n\n\"Hardly that.\"\n\n\"Well, it cannot be far if Barrymore had to carry out the food to it. And he is waiting, this villain, beside that candle. By thunder, Watson, I am going out to take that man!\"\n\nThe same thought had crossed my own mind. It was not as if the Barrymores had taken us into their confidence. Their secret had been forced from them. The man was a danger to the community, an unmitigated scoundrel for whom there was neither pity nor excuse. We were only doing our duty in taking this chance of putting him back where he could do no harm. With his brutal and violent nature, others would have to pay the price if we held our hands. Any night, for example, our neighbours the Stapletons might be attacked by him, and it may have been the thought of this which made Sir Henry so keen upon the adventure.\n\n\"I will come,\" said I.\n\n\"Then get your revolver and put on your boots. The sooner we start the better, as the fellow may put out his light and be off.\"\n\nIn five minutes we were outside the door, starting upon our expedition. We hurried through the dark shrubbery, amid the dull moaning of the autumn wind and the rustle of the falling leaves. The night air was heavy with the smell of damp and decay. Now and again the moon peeped out for an instant, but clouds were driving over the face of the sky, and just as we came out on the moor a thin rain began to fall. The light still burned steadily in front.\n\n\"Are you armed?\" I asked.\n\n\"I have a hunting-crop.\"\n\n\"We must close in on him rapidly, for he is said to be a desperate fellow. We shall take him by surprise and have him at our mercy before he can resist.\"\n\n\"I say, Watson,\" said the baronet, \"what would Holmes say to this? How about that hour of darkness in which the power of evil is exalted?\"\n\nAs if in answer to his words there rose suddenly out of the vast gloom of the moor that strange cry which I had already heard upon the borders of the great Grimpen Mire. It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing. The baronet caught my sleeve and his face glimmered white through the darkness.\n\n\"My God, what's that, Watson?\"\n\n\"I don't know. It's a sound they have on the moor. I heard it once before.\"\n\nIt died away, and an absolute silence closed in upon us. We stood straining our ears, but nothing came.\n\n\"Watson,\" said the baronet, \"it was the cry of a hound.\"\n\nMy blood ran cold in my veins, for there was a break in his voice which told of the sudden horror which had seized him.\n\n\"What do they call this sound?\" he asked.\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"The folk on the countryside.\"\n\n\"Oh, they are ignorant people. Why should you mind what they call it?\"\n\n\"Tell me, Watson. What do they say of it?\"\n\nI hesitated but could not escape the question.\n\n\"They say it is the cry of the Hound of the Baskervilles.\"\n\nHe groaned and was silent for a few moments.\n\n\"A hound it was,\" he said at last, \"but it seemed to come from miles away, over yonder, I think.\"\n\n\"It was hard to say whence it came.\"\n\n\"It rose and fell with the wind. Isn't that the direction of the great Grimpen Mire?\"\n\n\"Yes, it is.\"\n\n\"Well, it was up there. Come now, Watson, didn't you think yourself that it was the cry of a hound? I am not a child. You need not fear to speak the truth.\"\n\n\"Stapleton was with me when I heard it last. He said that it might be the calling of a strange bird.\"\n\n\"No, no, it was a hound. My God, can there be some truth in all these stories? Is it possible that I am really in danger from so dark a cause? You don't believe it, do you, Watson?\"\n\n\"No, no.\"\n\n\"And yet it was one thing to laugh about it in London, and it is another to stand out here in the darkness of the moor and to hear such a cry as that. And my uncle! There was the footprint of the hound beside him as he lay. It all fits together. I don't think that I am a coward, Watson, but that sound seemed to freeze my very blood. Feel my hand!\"\n\nIt was as cold as a block of marble.\n\n\"You'll be all right to-morrow.\"\n\n\"I don't think I'll get that cry out of my head. What do you advise that we do now?\"\n\n\"Shall we turn back?\"\n\n\"No, by thunder; we have come out to get our man, and we will do it. We after the convict, and a hell-hound, as likely as not, after us. Come on! We'll see it through if all the fiends of the pit were loose upon the moor.\"\n\nWe stumbled slowly along in the darkness, with the black loom of the craggy hills around us, and the yellow speck of light burning steadily in front. There is nothing so deceptive as the distance of a light upon a pitch-dark night, and sometimes the glimmer seemed to be far away upon the horizon and sometimes it might have been within a few yards of us. But at last we could see whence it came, and then we knew that we were indeed very close. A guttering candle was stuck in a crevice of the rocks which flanked it on each side so as to keep the wind from it and also to prevent it from being visible, save in the direction of Baskerville Hall. A boulder of granite concealed our approach, and crouching behind it we gazed over it at the signal light. It was strange to see this single candle burning there in the middle of the moor, with no sign of life near it\u2014just the one straight yellow flame and the gleam of the rock on each side of it.\n\n\"What shall we do now?\" whispered Sir Henry.\n\n\"Wait here. He must be near his light. Let us see if we can get a glimpse of him.\"\n\nThe words were hardly out of my mouth when we both saw him. Over the rocks, in the crevice of which the candle burned, there was thrust out an evil yellow face, a terrible animal face, all seamed and scored with vile passions. Foul with mire, with a bristling beard, and hung with matted hair, it might well have belonged to one of those old savages who dwelt in the burrows on the hillsides. The light beneath him was reflected in his small, cunning eyes which peered fiercely to right and left through the darkness like a crafty and savage animal who has heard the steps of the hunters.\n\nSomething had evidently aroused his suspicions. It may have been that Barrymore had some private signal which we had neglected to give, or the fellow may have had some other reason for thinking that all was not well, but I could read his fears upon his wicked face. Any instant he might dash out the light and vanish in the darkness. I sprang forward therefore, and Sir Henry did the same. At the same moment the convict screamed out a curse at us and hurled a rock which splintered up against the boulder which had sheltered us. I caught one glimpse of his short, squat, strongly-built figure as he sprang to his feet and turned to run. At the same moment by a lucky chance the moon broke through the clouds. We rushed over the brow of the hill, and there was our man running with great speed down the other side, springing over the stones in his way with the activity of a mountain goat. A lucky long shot of my revolver might have crippled him, but I had brought it only to defend myself if attacked and not to shoot an unarmed man who was running away.\n\nWe were both swift runners and in fairly good training, but we soon found that we had no chance of overtaking him. We saw him for a long time in the moonlight until he was only a small speck moving swiftly among the boulders upon the side of a distant hill. We ran and ran until we were completely blown, but the space between us grew ever wider. Finally we stopped and sat panting on two rocks, while we watched him disappearing in the distance.\n\nAnd it was at this moment that there occurred a most strange and unexpected thing. We had risen from our rocks and were turning to go home, having abandoned the hopeless chase. The moon was low upon the right, and the jagged pinnacle of a granite tor stood up against the lower curve of its silver disc. There, outlined as black as an ebony statue on that shining background, I saw the figure of a man upon the tor. Do not think that it was a delusion, Holmes. I assure you that I have never in my life seen anything more clearly. As far as I could judge, the figure was that of a tall, thin man. He stood with his legs a little separated, his arms folded, his head bowed, as if he were brooding over that enormous wilderness of peat and granite which lay before him. He might have been the very spirit of that terrible place. It was not the convict. This man was far from the place where the latter had disappeared. Besides, he was a much taller man. With a cry of surprise I pointed him out to the baronet, but in the instant during which I had turned to grasp his arm the man was gone. There was the sharp pinnacle of granite still cutting the lower edge of the moon, but its peak bore no trace of that silent and motionless figure.\n\nI wished to go in that direction and to search the tor, but it was some distance away. The baronet's nerves were still quivering from that cry, which recalled the dark story of his family, and he was not in the mood for fresh adventures. He had not seen this lonely man upon the tor and could not feel the thrill which his strange presence and his commanding attitude had given to me. \"A warder, no doubt,\" said he. \"The moor has been thick with them since this fellow escaped.\" Well, perhaps his explanation may be the right one, but I should like to have some further proof of it. To-day we mean to communicate to the Princetown people where they should look for their missing man, but it is hard lines that we have not actually had the triumph of bringing him back as our own prisoner. Such are the adventures of last night, and you must acknowledge, my dear Holmes, that I have done you very well in the matter of a report. Much of what I tell you is no doubt quite irrelevant, but still I feel that it is best that I should let you have all the facts and leave you to select for yourself those which will be of most service to you in helping you to your conclusions. We are certainly making some progress. So far as the Barrymores go we have found the motive of their actions, and that has cleared up the situation very much. But the moor with its mysteries and its strange inhabitants remains as inscrutable as ever. Perhaps in my next I may be able to throw some light upon this also. Best of all would it be if you could come down to us. In any case you will hear from me again in the course of the next few days." + }, + { + "title": "Extract from the Diary of Dr. Watson", + "text": "So far I have been able to quote from the reports which I have forwarded during these early days to Sherlock Holmes. Now, however, I have arrived at a point in my narrative where I am compelled to abandon this method and to trust once more to my recollections, aided by the diary which I kept at the time. A few extracts from the latter will carry me on to those scenes which are indelibly fixed in every detail upon my memory. I proceed, then, from the morning which followed our abortive chase of the convict and our other strange experiences upon the moor.\n\nOctober 16th. A dull and foggy day with a drizzle of rain. The house is banked in with rolling clouds, which rise now and then to show the dreary curves of the moor, with thin, silver veins upon the sides of the hills, and the distant boulders gleaming where the light strikes upon their wet faces. It is melancholy outside and in. The baronet is in a black reaction after the excitements of the night. I am conscious myself of a weight at my heart and a feeling of impending danger\u2014ever present danger, which is the more terrible because I am unable to define it.\n\nAnd have I not cause for such a feeling? Consider the long sequence of incidents which have all pointed to some sinister influence which is at work around us. There is the death of the last occupant of the Hall, fulfilling so exactly the conditions of the family legend, and there are the repeated reports from peasants of the appearance of a strange creature upon the moor. Twice I have with my own ears heard the sound which resembled the distant baying of a hound. It is incredible, impossible, that it should really be outside the ordinary laws of nature. A spectral hound which leaves material footmarks and fills the air with its howling is surely not to be thought of. Stapleton may fall in with such a superstition, and Mortimer also; but if I have one quality upon earth it is common sense, and nothing will persuade me to believe in such a thing. To do so would be to descend to the level of these poor peasants, who are not content with a mere fiend dog but must needs describe him with hell-fire shooting from his mouth and eyes. Holmes would not listen to such fancies, and I am his agent. But facts are facts, and I have twice heard this crying upon the moor. Suppose that there were really some huge hound loose upon it; that would go far to explain everything. But where could such a hound lie concealed, where did it get its food, where did it come from, how was it that no one saw it by day? It must be confessed that the natural explanation offers almost as many difficulties as the other. And always, apart from the hound, there is the fact of the human agency in London, the man in the cab, and the letter which warned Sir Henry against the moor. This at least was real, but it might have been the work of a protecting friend as easily as of an enemy. Where is that friend or enemy now? Has he remained in London, or has he followed us down here? Could he\u2014could he be the stranger whom I saw upon the tor?\n\nIt is true that I have had only the one glance at him, and yet there are some things to which I am ready to swear. He is no one whom I have seen down here, and I have now met all the neighbours. The figure was far taller than that of Stapleton, far thinner than that of Frankland. Barrymore it might possibly have been, but we had left him behind us, and I am certain that he could not have followed us. A stranger then is still dogging us, just as a stranger dogged us in London. We have never shaken him off. If I could lay my hands upon that man, then at last we might find ourselves at the end of all our difficulties. To this one purpose I must now devote all my energies.\n\nMy first impulse was to tell Sir Henry all my plans. My second and wisest one is to play my own game and speak as little as possible to anyone. He is silent and distrait. His nerves have been strangely shaken by that sound upon the moor. I will say nothing to add to his anxieties, but I will take my own steps to attain my own end.\n\nWe had a small scene this morning after breakfast. Barrymore asked leave to speak with Sir Henry, and they were closeted in his study some little time. Sitting in the billiard-room I more than once heard the sound of voices raised, and I had a pretty good idea what the point was which was under discussion. After a time the baronet opened his door and called for me.\n\n\"Barrymore considers that he has a grievance,\" he said. \"He thinks that it was unfair on our part to hunt his brother-in-law down when he, of his own free will, had told us the secret.\"\n\nThe butler was standing very pale but very collected before us.\n\n\"I may have spoken too warmly, sir,\" said he, \"and if I have, I am sure that I beg your pardon. At the same time, I was very much surprised when I heard you two gentlemen come back this morning and learned that you had been chasing Selden. The poor fellow has enough to fight against without my putting more upon his track.\"\n\n\"If you had told us of your own free will it would have been a different thing,\" said the baronet, \"you only told us, or rather your wife only told us, when it was forced from you and you could not help yourself.\"\n\n\"I didn't think you would have taken advantage of it, Sir Henry\u2014indeed I didn't.\"\n\n\"The man is a public danger. There are lonely houses scattered over the moor, and he is a fellow who would stick at nothing. You only want to get a glimpse of his face to see that. Look at Mr. Stapleton's house, for example, with no one but himself to defend it. There's no safety for anyone until he is under lock and key.\"\n\n\"He'll break into no house, sir. I give you my solemn word upon that. But he will never trouble anyone in this country again. I assure you, Sir Henry, that in a very few days the necessary arrangements will have been made and he will be on his way to South America. For God's sake, sir, I beg of you not to let the police know that he is still on the moor. They have given up the chase there, and he can lie quiet until the ship is ready for him. You can't tell on him without getting my wife and me into trouble. I beg you, sir, to say nothing to the police.\"\n\n\"What do you say, Watson?\"\n\nI shrugged my shoulders. \"If he were safely out of the country it would relieve the tax-payer of a burden.\"\n\n\"But how about the chance of his holding someone up before he goes?\"\n\n\"He would not do anything so mad, sir. We have provided him with all that he can want. To commit a crime would be to show where he was hiding.\"\n\n\"That is true,\" said Sir Henry. \"Well, Barrymore\u2014\"\n\n\"God bless you, sir, and thank you from my heart! It would have killed my poor wife had he been taken again.\"\n\n\"I guess we are aiding and abetting a felony, Watson? But, after what we have heard, I don't feel as if I could give the man up, so there is an end of it. All right, Barrymore, you can go.\"\n\nWith a few broken words of gratitude the man turned, but he hesitated and then came back.\n\n\"You've been so kind to us, sir, that I should like to do the best I can for you in return. I know something, Sir Henry, and perhaps I should have said it before, but it was long after the inquest that I found it out. I've never breathed a word about it yet to mortal man. It's about poor Sir Charles's death.\"\n\nThe baronet and I were both upon our feet. \"Do you know how he died?\"\n\n\"No, sir, I don't know that.\"\n\n\"What then?\"\n\n\"I know why he was at the gate at that hour. It was to meet a woman.\"\n\n\"To meet a woman! He?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"And the woman's name?\"\n\n\"I can't give you the name, sir, but I can give you the initials. Her initials were L. L.\"\n\n\"How do you know this, Barrymore?\"\n\n\"Well, Sir Henry, your uncle had a letter that morning. He had usually a great many letters, for he was a public man and well known for his kind heart, so that everyone who was in trouble was glad to turn to him. But that morning, as it chanced, there was only this one letter, so I took the more notice of it. It was from Coombe Tracey, and it was addressed in a woman's hand.\"\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"Well, sir, I thought no more of the matter, and never would have done had it not been for my wife. Only a few weeks ago she was cleaning out Sir Charles's study\u2014it had never been touched since his death\u2014and she found the ashes of a burned letter in the back of the grate. The greater part of it was charred to pieces, but one little slip, the end of a page, hung together, and the writing could still be read, though it was gray on a black ground. It seemed to us to be a postscript at the end of the letter, and it said: 'Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o'clock.' Beneath it were signed the initials L. L.\"\n\n\"Have you got that slip?\"\n\n\"No, sir, it crumbled all to bits after we moved it.\"\n\n\"Had Sir Charles received any other letters in the same writing?\"\n\n\"Well, sir, I took no particular notice of his letters. I should not have noticed this one, only it happened to come alone.\"\n\n\"And you have no idea who L. L. is?\"\n\n\"No, sir. No more than you have. But I expect if we could lay our hands upon that lady we should know more about Sir Charles's death.\"\n\n\"I cannot understand, Barrymore, how you came to conceal this important information.\"\n\n\"Well, sir, it was immediately after that our own trouble came to us. And then again, sir, we were both of us very fond of Sir Charles, as we well might be considering all that he has done for us. To rake this up couldn't help our poor master, and it's well to go carefully when there's a lady in the case. Even the best of us\u2014\"\n\n\"You thought it might injure his reputation?\"\n\n\"Well, sir, I thought no good could come of it. But now you have been kind to us, and I feel as if it would be treating you unfairly not to tell you all that I know about the matter.\"\n\n\"Very good, Barrymore; you can go.\" When the butler had left us Sir Henry turned to me. \"Well, Watson, what do you think of this new light?\"\n\n\"It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before.\"\n\n\"So I think. But if we can only trace L. L. it should clear up the whole business. We have gained that much. We know that there is someone who has the facts if we can only find her. What do you think we should do?\"\n\n\"Let Holmes know all about it at once. It will give him the clue for which he has been seeking. I am much mistaken if it does not bring him down.\"\n\nI went at once to my room and drew up my report of the morning's conversation for Holmes. It was evident to me that he had been very busy of late, for the notes which I had from Baker Street were few and short, with no comments upon the information which I had supplied and hardly any reference to my mission. No doubt his blackmailing case is absorbing all his faculties. And yet this new factor must surely arrest his attention and renew his interest. I wish that he were here.\n\nOctober 17th. All day to-day the rain poured down, rustling on the ivy and dripping from the eaves. I thought of the convict out upon the bleak, cold, shelterless moor. Poor devil! Whatever his crimes, he has suffered something to atone for them. And then I thought of that other one\u2014the face in the cab, the figure against the moon. Was he also out in that deluge\u2014the unseen watcher, the man of darkness? In the evening I put on my waterproof and I walked far upon the sodden moor, full of dark imaginings, the rain beating upon my face and the wind whistling about my ears. God help those who wander into the great mire now, for even the firm uplands are becoming a morass. I found the black tor upon which I had seen the solitary watcher, and from its craggy summit I looked out myself across the melancholy downs. Rain squalls drifted across their russet face, and the heavy, slate-coloured clouds hung low over the landscape, trailing in gray wreaths down the sides of the fantastic hills. In the distant hollow on the left, half hidden by the mist, the two thin towers of Baskerville Hall rose above the trees. They were the only signs of human life which I could see, save only those prehistoric huts which lay thickly upon the slopes of the hills. Nowhere was there any trace of that lonely man whom I had seen on the same spot two nights before.\n\nAs I walked back I was overtaken by Dr. Mortimer driving in his dog-cart over a rough moorland track which led from the outlying farmhouse of Foulmire. He has been very attentive to us, and hardly a day has passed that he has not called at the Hall to see how we were getting on. He insisted upon my climbing into his dog-cart, and he gave me a lift homeward. I found him much troubled over the disappearance of his little spaniel. It had wandered on to the moor and had never come back. I gave him such consolation as I might, but I thought of the pony on the Grimpen Mire, and I do not fancy that he will see his little dog again.\n\n\"By the way, Mortimer,\" said I as we jolted along the rough road, \"I suppose there are few people living within driving distance of this whom you do not know?\"\n\n\"Hardly any, I think.\"\n\n\"Can you, then, tell me the name of any woman whose initials are L. L.?\"\n\nHe thought for a few minutes.\n\n\"No,\" said he. \"There are a few gipsies and labouring folk for whom I can't answer, but among the farmers or gentry there is no one whose initials are those. Wait a bit though,\" he added after a pause. \"There is Laura Lyons\u2014her initials are L. L.\u2014but she lives in Coombe Tracey.\"\n\n\"Who is she?\" I asked.\n\n\"She is Frankland's daughter.\"\n\n\"What! Old Frankland the crank?\"\n\n\"Exactly. She married an artist named Lyons, who came sketching on the moor. He proved to be a blackguard and deserted her. The fault from what I hear may not have been entirely on one side. Her father refused to have anything to do with her because she had married without his consent and perhaps for one or two other reasons as well. So, between the old sinner and the young one the girl has had a pretty bad time.\"\n\n\"How does she live?\"\n\n\"I fancy old Frankland allows her a pittance, but it cannot be more, for his own affairs are considerably involved. Whatever she may have deserved one could not allow her to go hopelessly to the bad. Her story got about, and several of the people here did something to enable her to earn an honest living. Stapleton did for one, and Sir Charles for another. I gave a trifle myself. It was to set her up in a typewriting business.\"\n\nHe wanted to know the object of my inquiries, but I managed to satisfy his curiosity without telling him too much, for there is no reason why we should take anyone into our confidence. To-morrow morning I shall find my way to Coombe Tracey, and if I can see this Mrs. Laura Lyons, of equivocal reputation, a long step will have been made towards clearing one incident in this chain of mysteries. I am certainly developing the wisdom of the serpent, for when Mortimer pressed his questions to an inconvenient extent I asked him casually to what type Frankland's skull belonged, and so heard nothing but craniology for the rest of our drive. I have not lived for years with Sherlock Holmes for nothing.\n\nI have only one other incident to record upon this tempestuous and melancholy day. This was my conversation with Barrymore just now, which gives me one more strong card which I can play in due time.\n\nMortimer had stayed to dinner, and he and the baronet played \u00e9cart\u00e9 afterwards. The butler brought me my coffee into the library, and I took the chance to ask him a few questions.\n\n\"Well,\" said I, \"has this precious relation of yours departed, or is he still lurking out yonder?\"\n\n\"I don't know, sir. I hope to heaven that he has gone, for he has brought nothing but trouble here! I've not heard of him since I left out food for him last, and that was three days ago.\"\n\n\"Did you see him then?\"\n\n\"No, sir, but the food was gone when next I went that way.\"\n\n\"Then he was certainly there?\"\n\n\"So you would think, sir, unless it was the other man who took it.\"\n\nI sat with my coffee-cup halfway to my lips and stared at Barrymore.\n\n\"You know that there is another man then?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir; there is another man upon the moor.\"\n\n\"Have you seen him?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"How do you know of him then?\"\n\n\"Selden told me of him, sir, a week ago or more. He's in hiding, too, but he's not a convict as far as I can make out. I don't like it, Dr. Watson\u2014I tell you straight, sir, that I don't like it.\" He spoke with a sudden passion of earnestness.\n\n\"Now, listen to me, Barrymore! I have no interest in this matter but that of your master. I have come here with no object except to help him. Tell me, frankly, what it is that you don't like.\"\n\nBarrymore hesitated for a moment, as if he regretted his outburst or found it difficult to express his own feelings in words.\n\n\"It's all these goings-on, sir,\" he cried at last, waving his hand towards the rain-lashed window which faced the moor. \"There's foul play somewhere, and there's black villainy brewing, to that I'll swear! Very glad I should be, sir, to see Sir Henry on his way back to London again!\"\n\n\"But what is it that alarms you?\"\n\n\"Look at Sir Charles's death! That was bad enough, for all that the coroner said. Look at the noises on the moor at night. There's not a man would cross it after sundown if he was paid for it. Look at this stranger hiding out yonder, and watching and waiting! What's he waiting for? What does it mean? It means no good to anyone of the name of Baskerville, and very glad I shall be to be quit of it all on the day that Sir Henry's new servants are ready to take over the Hall.\"\n\n\"But about this stranger,\" said I. \"Can you tell me anything about him? What did Selden say? Did he find out where he hid, or what he was doing?\"\n\n\"He saw him once or twice, but he is a deep one and gives nothing away. At first he thought that he was the police, but soon he found that he had some lay of his own. A kind of gentleman he was, as far as he could see, but what he was doing he could not make out.\"\n\n\"And where did he say that he lived?\"\n\n\"Among the old houses on the hillside\u2014the stone huts where the old folk used to live.\"\n\n\"But how about his food?\"\n\n\"Selden found out that he has got a lad who works for him and brings all he needs. I dare say he goes to Coombe Tracey for what he wants.\"\n\n\"Very good, Barrymore. We may talk further of this some other time.\" When the butler had gone I walked over to the black window, and I looked through a blurred pane at the driving clouds and at the tossing outline of the wind-swept trees. It is a wild night indoors, and what must it be in a stone hut upon the moor. What passion of hatred can it be which leads a man to lurk in such a place at such a time! And what deep and earnest purpose can he have which calls for such a trial! There, in that hut upon the moor, seems to lie the very centre of that problem which has vexed me so sorely. I swear that another day shall not have passed before I have done all that man can do to reach the heart of the mystery." + }, + { + "title": "The Man on the Tor", + "text": "The extract from my private diary which forms the last chapter has brought my narrative up to the eighteenth of October, a time when these strange events began to move swiftly towards their terrible conclusion. The incidents of the next few days are indelibly graven upon my recollection, and I can tell them without reference to the notes made at the time. I start them from the day which succeeded that upon which I had established two facts of great importance, the one that Mrs. Laura Lyons of Coombe Tracey had written to Sir Charles Baskerville and made an appointment with him at the very place and hour that he met his death, the other that the lurking man upon the moor was to be found among the stone huts upon the hillside. With these two facts in my possession I felt that either my intelligence or my courage must be deficient if I could not throw some further light upon these dark places.\n\nI had no opportunity to tell the baronet what I had learned about Mrs. Lyons upon the evening before, for Dr. Mortimer remained with him at cards until it was very late. At breakfast, however, I informed him about my discovery and asked him whether he would care to accompany me to Coombe Tracey. At first he was very eager to come, but on second thoughts it seemed to both of us that if I went alone the results might be better. The more formal we made the visit the less information we might obtain. I left Sir Henry behind, therefore, not without some prickings of conscience, and drove off upon my new quest.\n\nWhen I reached Coombe Tracey I told Perkins to put up the horses, and I made inquiries for the lady whom I had come to interrogate. I had no difficulty in finding her rooms, which were central and well appointed. A maid showed me in without ceremony, and as I entered the sitting-room a lady, who was sitting before a Remington typewriter, sprang up with a pleasant smile of welcome. Her face fell, however, when she saw that I was a stranger, and she sat down again and asked me the object of my visit.\n\nThe first impression left by Mrs. Lyons was one of extreme beauty. Her eyes and hair were of the same rich hazel colour, and her cheeks, though considerably freckled, were flushed with the exquisite bloom of the brunette, the dainty pink which lurks at the heart of the sulphur rose. Admiration was, I repeat, the first impression. But the second was criticism. There was something subtly wrong with the face, some coarseness of expression, some hardness, perhaps, of eye, some looseness of lip which marred its perfect beauty. But these, of course, are afterthoughts. At the moment I was simply conscious that I was in the presence of a very handsome woman, and that she was asking me the reasons for my visit. I had not quite understood until that instant how delicate my mission was.\n\n\"I have the pleasure,\" said I, \"of knowing your father.\"\n\nIt was a clumsy introduction, and the lady made me feel it.\n\n\"There is nothing in common between my father and me,\" she said. \"I owe him nothing, and his friends are not mine. If it were not for the late Sir Charles Baskerville and some other kind hearts I might have starved for all that my father cared.\"\n\n\"It was about the late Sir Charles Baskerville that I have come here to see you.\"\n\nThe freckles started out on the lady's face.\n\n\"What can I tell you about him?\" she asked, and her fingers played nervously over the stops of her typewriter.\n\n\"You knew him, did you not?\"\n\n\"I have already said that I owe a great deal to his kindness. If I am able to support myself it is largely due to the interest which he took in my unhappy situation.\"\n\n\"Did you correspond with him?\"\n\nThe lady looked quickly up with an angry gleam in her hazel eyes.\n\n\"What is the object of these questions?\" she asked sharply.\n\n\"The object is to avoid a public scandal. It is better that I should ask them here than that the matter should pass outside our control.\"\n\nShe was silent and her face was still very pale. At last she looked up with something reckless and defiant in her manner.\n\n\"Well, I'll answer,\" she said. \"What are your questions?\"\n\n\"Did you correspond with Sir Charles?\"\n\n\"I certainly wrote to him once or twice to acknowledge his delicacy and his generosity.\"\n\n\"Have you the dates of those letters?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Have you ever met him?\"\n\n\"Yes, once or twice, when he came into Coombe Tracey. He was a very retiring man, and he preferred to do good by stealth.\"\n\n\"But if you saw him so seldom and wrote so seldom, how did he know enough about your affairs to be able to help you, as you say that he has done?\"\n\nShe met my difficulty with the utmost readiness.\n\n\"There were several gentlemen who knew my sad history and united to help me. One was Mr. Stapleton, a neighbour and intimate friend of Sir Charles's. He was exceedingly kind, and it was through him that Sir Charles learned about my affairs.\"\n\nI knew already that Sir Charles Baskerville had made Stapleton his almoner upon several occasions, so the lady's statement bore the impress of truth upon it.\n\n\"Did you ever write to Sir Charles asking him to meet you?\" I continued.\n\nMrs. Lyons flushed with anger again.\n\n\"Really, sir, this is a very extraordinary question.\"\n\n\"I am sorry, madam, but I must repeat it.\"\n\n\"Then I answer, certainly not.\"\n\n\"Not on the very day of Sir Charles's death?\"\n\nThe flush had faded in an instant, and a deathly face was before me. Her dry lips could not speak the \"No\" which I saw rather than heard.\n\n\"Surely your memory deceives you,\" said I. \"I could even quote a passage of your letter. It ran 'Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o'clock.'\"\n\nI thought that she had fainted, but she recovered herself by a supreme effort.\n\n\"Is there no such thing as a gentleman?\" she gasped.\n\n\"You do Sir Charles an injustice. He did burn the letter. But sometimes a letter may be legible even when burned. You acknowledge now that you wrote it?\"\n\n\"Yes, I did write it,\" she cried, pouring out her soul in a torrent of words. \"I did write it. Why should I deny it? I have no reason to be ashamed of it. I wished him to help me. I believed that if I had an interview I could gain his help, so I asked him to meet me.\"\n\n\"But why at such an hour?\"\n\n\"Because I had only just learned that he was going to London next day and might be away for months. There were reasons why I could not get there earlier.\"\n\n\"But why a rendezvous in the garden instead of a visit to the house?\"\n\n\"Do you think a woman could go alone at that hour to a bachelor's house?\"\n\n\"Well, what happened when you did get there?\"\n\n\"I never went.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Lyons!\"\n\n\"No, I swear it to you on all I hold sacred. I never went. Something intervened to prevent my going.\"\n\n\"What was that?\"\n\n\"That is a private matter. I cannot tell it.\"\n\n\"You acknowledge then that you made an appointment with Sir Charles at the very hour and place at which he met his death, but you deny that you kept the appointment.\"\n\n\"That is the truth.\"\n\nAgain and again I cross-questioned her, but I could never get past that point.\n\n\"Mrs. Lyons,\" said I as I rose from this long and inconclusive interview, \"you are taking a very great responsibility and putting yourself in a very false position by not making an absolutely clean breast of all that you know. If I have to call in the aid of the police you will find how seriously you are compromised. If your position is innocent, why did you in the first instance deny having written to Sir Charles upon that date?\"\n\n\"Because I feared that some false conclusion might be drawn from it and that I might find myself involved in a scandal.\"\n\n\"And why were you so pressing that Sir Charles should destroy your letter?\"\n\n\"If you have read the letter you will know.\"\n\n\"I did not say that I had read all the letter.\"\n\n\"You quoted some of it.\"\n\n\"I quoted the postscript. The letter had, as I said, been burned and it was not all legible. I ask you once again why it was that you were so pressing that Sir Charles should destroy this letter which he received on the day of his death.\"\n\n\"The matter is a very private one.\"\n\n\"The more reason why you should avoid a public investigation.\"\n\n\"I will tell you, then. If you have heard anything of my unhappy history you will know that I made a rash marriage and had reason to regret it.\"\n\n\"I have heard so much.\"\n\n\"My life has been one incessant persecution from a husband whom I abhor. The law is upon his side, and every day I am faced by the possibility that he may force me to live with him. At the time that I wrote this letter to Sir Charles I had learned that there was a prospect of my regaining my freedom if certain expenses could be met. It meant everything to me\u2014peace of mind, happiness, self-respect\u2014everything. I knew Sir Charles's generosity, and I thought that if he heard the story from my own lips he would help me.\"\n\n\"Then how is it that you did not go?\"\n\n\"Because I received help in the interval from another source.\"\n\n\"Why then, did you not write to Sir Charles and explain this?\"\n\n\"So I should have done had I not seen his death in the paper next morning.\"\n\nThe woman's story hung coherently together, and all my questions were unable to shake it. I could only check it by finding if she had, indeed, instituted divorce proceedings against her husband at or about the time of the tragedy.\n\nIt was unlikely that she would dare to say that she had not been to Baskerville Hall if she really had been, for a trap would be necessary to take her there, and could not have returned to Coombe Tracey until the early hours of the morning. Such an excursion could not be kept secret. The probability was, therefore, that she was telling the truth, or, at least, a part of the truth. I came away baffled and disheartened. Once again I had reached that dead wall which seemed to be built across every path by which I tried to get at the object of my mission. And yet the more I thought of the lady's face and of her manner the more I felt that something was being held back from me. Why should she turn so pale? Why should she fight against every admission until it was forced from her? Why should she have been so reticent at the time of the tragedy? Surely the explanation of all this could not be as innocent as she would have me believe. For the moment I could proceed no farther in that direction, but must turn back to that other clue which was to be sought for among the stone huts upon the moor.\n\nAnd that was a most vague direction. I realized it as I drove back and noted how hill after hill showed traces of the ancient people. Barrymore's only indication had been that the stranger lived in one of these abandoned huts, and many hundreds of them are scattered throughout the length and breadth of the moor. But I had my own experience for a guide since it had shown me the man himself standing upon the summit of the Black Tor. That, then, should be the centre of my search. From there I should explore every hut upon the moor until I lighted upon the right one. If this man were inside it I should find out from his own lips, at the point of my revolver if necessary, who he was and why he had dogged us so long. He might slip away from us in the crowd of Regent Street, but it would puzzle him to do so upon the lonely moor. On the other hand, if I should find the hut and its tenant should not be within it I must remain there, however long the vigil, until he returned. Holmes had missed him in London. It would indeed be a triumph for me if I could run him to earth where my master had failed.\n\nLuck had been against us again and again in this inquiry, but now at last it came to my aid. And the messenger of good fortune was none other than Mr. Frankland, who was standing, gray-whiskered and red-faced, outside the gate of his garden, which opened on to the highroad along which I travelled.\n\n\"Good-day, Dr. Watson,\" cried he with unwonted good humour, \"you must really give your horses a rest and come in to have a glass of wine and to congratulate me.\"\n\nMy feelings towards him were very far from being friendly after what I had heard of his treatment of his daughter, but I was anxious to send Perkins and the wagonette home, and the opportunity was a good one. I alighted and sent a message to Sir Henry that I should walk over in time for dinner. Then I followed Frankland into his dining-room.\n\n\"It is a great day for me, sir\u2014one of the red-letter days of my life,\" he cried with many chuckles. \"I have brought off a double event. I mean to teach them in these parts that law is law, and that there is a man here who does not fear to invoke it. I have established a right of way through the centre of old Middleton's park, slap across it, sir, within a hundred yards of his own front door. What do you think of that? We'll teach these magnates that they cannot ride roughshod over the rights of the commoners, confound them! And I've closed the wood where the Fernworthy folk used to picnic. These infernal people seem to think that there are no rights of property, and that they can swarm where they like with their papers and their bottles. Both cases decided, Dr. Watson, and both in my favour. I haven't had such a day since I had Sir John Morland for trespass because he shot in his own warren.\"\n\n\"How on earth did you do that?\"\n\n\"Look it up in the books, sir. It will repay reading\u2014Frankland v. Morland, Court of Queen's Bench. It cost me \u00a3200, but I got my verdict.\"\n\n\"Did it do you any good?\"\n\n\"None, sir, none. I am proud to say that I had no interest in the matter. I act entirely from a sense of public duty. I have no doubt, for example, that the Fernworthy people will burn me in effigy to-night. I told the police last time they did it that they should stop these disgraceful exhibitions. The County Constabulary is in a scandalous state, sir, and it has not afforded me the protection to which I am entitled. The case of Frankland v. Regina will bring the matter before the attention of the public. I told them that they would have occasion to regret their treatment of me, and already my words have come true.\"\n\n\"How so?\" I asked.\n\nThe old man put on a very knowing expression.\n\n\"Because I could tell them what they are dying to know; but nothing would induce me to help the rascals in any way.\"\n\nI had been casting round for some excuse by which I could get away from his gossip, but now I began to wish to hear more of it. I had seen enough of the contrary nature of the old sinner to understand that any strong sign of interest would be the surest way to stop his confidences.\n\n\"Some poaching case, no doubt?\" said I with an indifferent manner.\n\n\"Ha, ha, my boy, a very much more important matter than that! What about the convict on the moor?\"\n\nI started. \"You don't mean that you know where he is?\" said I.\n\n\"I may not know exactly where he is, but I am quite sure that I could help the police to lay their hands on him. Has it never struck you that the way to catch that man was to find out where he got his food and so trace it to him?\"\n\nHe certainly seemed to be getting uncomfortably near the truth. \"No doubt,\" said I; \"but how do you know that he is anywhere upon the moor?\"\n\n\"I know it because I have seen with my own eyes the messenger who takes him his food.\"\n\nMy heart sank for Barrymore. It was a serious thing to be in the power of this spiteful old busybody. But his next remark took a weight from my mind.\n\n\"You'll be surprised to hear that his food is taken to him by a child. I see him every day through my telescope upon the roof. He passes along the same path at the same hour, and to whom should he be going except to the convict?\"\n\nHere was luck indeed! And yet I suppressed all appearance of interest. A child! Barrymore had said that our unknown was supplied by a boy. It was on his track, and not upon the convict's, that Frankland had stumbled. If I could get his knowledge it might save me a long and weary hunt. But incredulity and indifference were evidently my strongest cards.\n\n\"I should say that it was much more likely that it was the son of one of the moorland shepherds taking out his father's dinner.\"\n\nThe least appearance of opposition struck fire out of the old autocrat. His eyes looked malignantly at me, and his gray whiskers bristled like those of an angry cat.\n\n\"Indeed, sir!\" said he, pointing out over the wide-stretching moor. \"Do you see that Black Tor over yonder? Well, do you see the low hill beyond with the thornbush upon it? It is the stoniest part of the whole moor. Is that a place where a shepherd would be likely to take his station? Your suggestion, sir, is a most absurd one.\"\n\nI meekly answered that I had spoken without knowing all the facts. My submission pleased him and led him to further confidences.\n\n\"You may be sure, sir, that I have very good grounds before I come to an opinion. I have seen the boy again and again with his bundle. Every day, and sometimes twice a day, I have been able\u2014but wait a moment, Dr. Watson. Do my eyes deceive me, or is there at the present moment something moving upon that hillside?\"\n\nIt was several miles off, but I could distinctly see a small dark dot against the dull green and gray.\n\n\"Come, sir, come!\" cried Frankland, rushing upstairs. \"You will see with your own eyes and judge for yourself.\"\n\nThe telescope, a formidable instrument mounted upon a tripod, stood upon the flat leads of the house. Frankland clapped his eye to it and gave a cry of satisfaction.\n\n\"Quick, Dr. Watson, quick, before he passes over the hill!\"\n\nThere he was, sure enough, a small urchin with a little bundle upon his shoulder, toiling slowly up the hill. When he reached the crest I saw the ragged uncouth figure outlined for an instant against the cold blue sky. He looked round him with a furtive and stealthy air, as one who dreads pursuit. Then he vanished over the hill.\n\n\"Well! Am I right?\"\n\n\"Certainly, there is a boy who seems to have some secret errand.\"\n\n\"And what the errand is even a county constable could guess. But not one word shall they have from me, and I bind you to secrecy also, Dr. Watson. Not a word! You understand!\"\n\n\"Just as you wish.\"\n\n\"They have treated me shamefully\u2014shamefully. When the facts come out in Frankland v. Regina I venture to think that a thrill of indignation will run through the country. Nothing would induce me to help the police in any way. For all they cared it might have been me, instead of my effigy, which these rascals burned at the stake. Surely you are not going! You will help me to empty the decanter in honour of this great occasion!\"\n\nBut I resisted all his solicitations and succeeded in dissuading him from his announced intention of walking home with me. I kept the road as long as his eye was on me, and then I struck off across the moor and made for the stony hill over which the boy had disappeared. Everything was working in my favour, and I swore that it should not be through lack of energy or perseverance that I should miss the chance which fortune had thrown in my way.\n\nThe sun was already sinking when I reached the summit of the hill, and the long slopes beneath me were all golden-green on one side and gray shadow on the other. A haze lay low upon the farthest sky-line, out of which jutted the fantastic shapes of Belliver and Vixen Tor. Over the wide expanse there was no sound and no movement. One great gray bird, a gull or curlew, soared aloft in the blue heaven. He and I seemed to be the only living things between the huge arch of the sky and the desert beneath it. The barren scene, the sense of loneliness, and the mystery and urgency of my task all struck a chill into my heart. The boy was nowhere to be seen. But down beneath me in a cleft of the hills there was a circle of the old stone huts, and in the middle of them there was one which retained sufficient roof to act as a screen against the weather. My heart leaped within me as I saw it. This must be the burrow where the stranger lurked. At last my foot was on the threshold of his hiding place\u2014his secret was within my grasp.\n\nAs I approached the hut, walking as warily as Stapleton would do when with poised net he drew near the settled butterfly, I satisfied myself that the place had indeed been used as a habitation. A vague pathway among the boulders led to the dilapidated opening which served as a door. All was silent within. The unknown might be lurking there, or he might be prowling on the moor. My nerves tingled with the sense of adventure. Throwing aside my cigarette, I closed my hand upon the butt of my revolver and, walking swiftly up to the door, I looked in. The place was empty.\n\nBut there were ample signs that I had not come upon a false scent. This was certainly where the man lived. Some blankets rolled in a waterproof lay upon that very stone slab upon which neolithic man had once slumbered. The ashes of a fire were heaped in a rude grate. Beside it lay some cooking utensils and a bucket half-full of water. A litter of empty tins showed that the place had been occupied for some time, and I saw, as my eyes became accustomed to the checkered light, a pannikin and a half-full bottle of spirits standing in the corner. In the middle of the hut a flat stone served the purpose of a table, and upon this stood a small cloth bundle\u2014the same, no doubt, which I had seen through the telescope upon the shoulder of the boy. It contained a loaf of bread, a tinned tongue, and two tins of preserved peaches. As I set it down again, after having examined it, my heart leaped to see that beneath it there lay a sheet of paper with writing upon it. I raised it, and this was what I read, roughly scrawled in pencil: \"Dr. Watson has gone to Coombe Tracey.\"\n\nFor a minute I stood there with the paper in my hands thinking out the meaning of this curt message. It was I, then, and not Sir Henry, who was being dogged by this secret man. He had not followed me himself, but he had set an agent\u2014the boy, perhaps\u2014upon my track, and this was his report. Possibly I had taken no step since I had been upon the moor which had not been observed and reported. Always there was this feeling of an unseen force, a fine net drawn round us with infinite skill and delicacy, holding us so lightly that it was only at some supreme moment that one realized that one was indeed entangled in its meshes.\n\nIf there was one report there might be others, so I looked round the hut in search of them. There was no trace, however, of anything of the kind, nor could I discover any sign which might indicate the character or intentions of the man who lived in this singular place, save that he must be of Spartan habits and cared little for the comforts of life. When I thought of the heavy rains and looked at the gaping roof I understood how strong and immutable must be the purpose which had kept him in that inhospitable abode. Was he our malignant enemy, or was he by chance our guardian angel? I swore that I would not leave the hut until I knew.\n\nOutside the sun was sinking low and the west was blazing with scarlet and gold. Its reflection was shot back in ruddy patches by the distant pools which lay amid the great Grimpen Mire. There were the two towers of Baskerville Hall, and there a distant blur of smoke which marked the village of Grimpen. Between the two, behind the hill, was the house of the Stapletons. All was sweet and mellow and peaceful in the golden evening light, and yet as I looked at them my soul shared none of the peace of Nature but quivered at the vagueness and the terror of that interview which every instant was bringing nearer. With tingling nerves but a fixed purpose, I sat in the dark recess of the hut and waited with sombre patience for the coming of its tenant.\n\nAnd then at last I heard him. Far away came the sharp clink of a boot striking upon a stone. Then another and yet another, coming nearer and nearer. I shrank back into the darkest corner and cocked the pistol in my pocket, determined not to discover myself until I had an opportunity of seeing something of the stranger. There was a long pause which showed that he had stopped. Then once more the footsteps approached and a shadow fell across the opening of the hut.\n\n\"It is a lovely evening, my dear Watson,\" said a well-known voice. \"I really think that you will be more comfortable outside than in.\"" + }, + { + "title": "Death on the Moor", + "text": "For a moment or two I sat breathless, hardly able to believe my ears. Then my senses and my voice came back to me, while a crushing weight of responsibility seemed in an instant to be lifted from my soul. That cold, incisive, ironical voice could belong to but one man in all the world.\n\n\"Holmes!\" I cried\u2014\"Holmes!\"\n\n\"Come out,\" said he, \"and please be careful with the revolver.\"\n\nI stooped under the rude lintel, and there he sat upon a stone outside, his gray eyes dancing with amusement as they fell upon my astonished features. He was thin and worn, but clear and alert, his keen face bronzed by the sun and roughened by the wind. In his tweed suit and cloth cap he looked like any other tourist upon the moor, and he had contrived, with that catlike love of personal cleanliness which was one of his characteristics, that his chin should be as smooth and his linen as perfect as if he were in Baker Street.\n\n\"I never was more glad to see anyone in my life,\" said I as I wrung him by the hand.\n\n\"Or more astonished, eh?\"\n\n\"Well, I must confess to it.\"\n\n\"The surprise was not all on one side, I assure you. I had no idea that you had found my occasional retreat, still less that you were inside it, until I was within twenty paces of the door.\"\n\n\"My footprint, I presume?\"\n\n\"No, Watson; I fear that I could not undertake to recognize your footprint amid all the footprints of the world. If you seriously desire to deceive me you must change your tobacconist; for when I see the stub of a cigarette marked Bradley, Oxford Street, I know that my friend Watson is in the neighbourhood. You will see it there beside the path. You threw it down, no doubt, at that supreme moment when you charged into the empty hut.\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"I thought as much\u2014and knowing your admirable tenacity I was convinced that you were sitting in ambush, a weapon within reach, waiting for the tenant to return. So you actually thought that I was the criminal?\"\n\n\"I did not know who you were, but I was determined to find out.\"\n\n\"Excellent, Watson! And how did you localize me? You saw me, perhaps, on the night of the convict hunt, when I was so imprudent as to allow the moon to rise behind me?\"\n\n\"Yes, I saw you then.\"\n\n\"And have no doubt searched all the huts until you came to this one?\"\n\n\"No, your boy had been observed, and that gave me a guide where to look.\"\n\n\"The old gentleman with the telescope, no doubt. I could not make it out when first I saw the light flashing upon the lens.\" He rose and peeped into the hut. \"Ha, I see that Cartwright has brought up some supplies. What's this paper? So you have been to Coombe Tracey, have you?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"To see Mrs. Laura Lyons?\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"Well done! Our researches have evidently been running on parallel lines, and when we unite our results I expect we shall have a fairly full knowledge of the case.\"\n\n\"Well, I am glad from my heart that you are here, for indeed the responsibility and the mystery were both becoming too much for my nerves. But how in the name of wonder did you come here, and what have you been doing? I thought that you were in Baker Street working out that case of blackmailing.\"\n\n\"That was what I wished you to think.\"\n\n\"Then you use me, and yet do not trust me!\" I cried with some bitterness. \"I think that I have deserved better at your hands, Holmes.\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, you have been invaluable to me in this as in many other cases, and I beg that you will forgive me if I have seemed to play a trick upon you. In truth, it was partly for your own sake that I did it, and it was my appreciation of the danger which you ran which led me to come down and examine the matter for myself. Had I been with Sir Henry and you it is confident that my point of view would have been the same as yours, and my presence would have warned our very formidable opponents to be on their guard. As it is, I have been able to get about as I could not possibly have done had I been living in the Hall, and I remain an unknown factor in the business, ready to throw in all my weight at a critical moment.\"\n\n\"But why keep me in the dark?\"\n\n\"For you to know could not have helped us and might possibly have led to my discovery. You would have wished to tell me something, or in your kindness you would have brought me out some comfort or other, and so an unnecessary risk would be run. I brought Cartwright down with me\u2014you remember the little chap at the express office\u2014and he has seen after my simple wants: a loaf of bread and a clean collar. What does man want more? He has given me an extra pair of eyes upon a very active pair of feet, and both have been invaluable.\"\n\n\"Then my reports have all been wasted!\"\u2014My voice trembled as I recalled the pains and the pride with which I had composed them.\n\nHolmes took a bundle of papers from his pocket.\n\n\"Here are your reports, my dear fellow, and very well thumbed, I assure you. I made excellent arrangements, and they are only delayed one day upon their way. I must compliment you exceedingly upon the zeal and the intelligence which you have shown over an extraordinarily difficult case.\"\n\nI was still rather raw over the deception which had been practised upon me, but the warmth of Holmes's praise drove my anger from my mind. I felt also in my heart that he was right in what he said and that it was really best for our purpose that I should not have known that he was upon the moor.\n\n\"That's better,\" said he, seeing the shadow rise from my face. \"And now tell me the result of your visit to Mrs. Laura Lyons\u2014it was not difficult for me to guess that it was to see her that you had gone, for I am already aware that she is the one person in Coombe Tracey who might be of service to us in the matter. In fact, if you had not gone to-day it is exceedingly probable that I should have gone to-morrow.\"\n\nThe sun had set and dusk was settling over the moor. The air had turned chill and we withdrew into the hut for warmth. There, sitting together in the twilight, I told Holmes of my conversation with the lady. So interested was he that I had to repeat some of it twice before he was satisfied.\n\n\"This is most important,\" said he when I had concluded. \"It fills up a gap which I had been unable to bridge in this most complex affair. You are aware, perhaps, that a close intimacy exists between this lady and the man Stapleton?\"\n\n\"I did not know of a close intimacy.\"\n\n\"There can be no doubt about the matter. They meet, they write, there is a complete understanding between them. Now, this puts a very powerful weapon into our hands. If I could only use it to detach his wife\u2014\"\n\n\"His wife?\"\n\n\"I am giving you some information now, in return for all that you have given me. The lady who has passed here as Miss Stapleton is in reality his wife.\"\n\n\"Good heavens, Holmes! Are you sure of what you say? How could he have permitted Sir Henry to fall in love with her?\"\n\n\"Sir Henry's falling in love could do no harm to anyone except Sir Henry. He took particular care that Sir Henry did not make love to her, as you have yourself observed. I repeat that the lady is his wife and not his sister.\"\n\n\"But why this elaborate deception?\"\n\n\"Because he foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in the character of a free woman.\"\n\nAll my unspoken instincts, my vague suspicions, suddenly took shape and centred upon the naturalist. In that impassive, colourless man, with his straw hat and his butterfly-net, I seemed to see something terrible\u2014a creature of infinite patience and craft, with a smiling face and a murderous heart.\n\n\"It is he, then, who is our enemy\u2014it is he who dogged us in London?\"\n\n\"So I read the riddle.\"\n\n\"And the warning\u2014it must have come from her!\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\nThe shape of some monstrous villainy, half seen, half guessed, loomed through the darkness which had girt me so long.\n\n\"But are you sure of this, Holmes? How do you know that the woman is his wife?\"\n\n\"Because he so far forgot himself as to tell you a true piece of autobiography upon the occasion when he first met you, and I dare say he has many a time regretted it since. He was once a schoolmaster in the north of England. Now, there is no one more easy to trace than a schoolmaster. There are scholastic agencies by which one may identify any man who has been in the profession. A little investigation showed me that a school had come to grief under atrocious circumstances, and that the man who had owned it\u2014the name was different\u2014had disappeared with his wife. The descriptions agreed. When I learned that the missing man was devoted to entomology the identification was complete.\"\n\nThe darkness was rising, but much was still hidden by the shadows.\n\n\"If this woman is in truth his wife, where does Mrs. Laura Lyons come in?\" I asked.\n\n\"That is one of the points upon which your own researches have shed a light. Your interview with the lady has cleared the situation very much. I did not know about a projected divorce between herself and her husband. In that case, regarding Stapleton as an unmarried man, she counted no doubt upon becoming his wife.\"\n\n\"And when she is undeceived?\"\n\n\"Why, then we may find the lady of service. It must be our first duty to see her\u2014both of us\u2014to-morrow. Don't you think, Watson, that you are away from your charge rather long? Your place should be at Baskerville Hall.\"\n\nThe last red streaks had faded away in the west and night had settled upon the moor. A few faint stars were gleaming in a violet sky.\n\n\"One last question, Holmes,\" I said as I rose. \"Surely there is no need of secrecy between you and me. What is the meaning of it all? What is he after?\"\n\nHolmes's voice sank as he answered:\n\n\"It is murder, Watson\u2014refined, cold-blooded, deliberate murder. Do not ask me for particulars. My nets are closing upon him, even as his are upon Sir Henry, and with your help he is already almost at my mercy. There is but one danger which can threaten us. It is that he should strike before we are ready to do so. Another day\u2014two at the most\u2014and I have my case complete, but until then guard your charge as closely as ever a fond mother watched her ailing child. Your mission to-day has justified itself, and yet I could almost wish that you had not left his side. Hark!\"\n\nA terrible scream\u2014a prolonged yell of horror and anguish burst out of the silence of the moor. That frightful cry turned the blood to ice in my veins.\n\n\"Oh, my God!\" I gasped. \"What is it? What does it mean?\"\n\nHolmes had sprung to his feet, and I saw his dark, athletic outline at the door of the hut, his shoulders stooping, his head thrust forward, his face peering into the darkness.\n\n\"Hush!\" he whispered. \"Hush!\"\n\nThe cry had been loud on account of its vehemence, but it had pealed out from somewhere far off on the shadowy plain. Now it burst upon our ears, nearer, louder, more urgent than before.\n\n\"Where is it?\" Holmes whispered; and I knew from the thrill of his voice that he, the man of iron, was shaken to the soul. \"Where is it, Watson?\"\n\n\"There, I think.\" I pointed into the darkness.\n\n\"No, there!\"\n\nAgain the agonized cry swept through the silent night, louder and much nearer than ever. And a new sound mingled with it, a deep, muttered rumble, musical and yet menacing, rising and falling like the low, constant murmur of the sea.\n\n\"The hound!\" cried Holmes. \"Come, Watson, come! Great heavens, if we are too late!\"\n\nHe had started running swiftly over the moor, and I had followed at his heels. But now from somewhere among the broken ground immediately in front of us there came one last despairing yell, and then a dull, heavy thud. We halted and listened. Not another sound broke the heavy silence of the windless night.\n\nI saw Holmes put his hand to his forehead like a man distracted. He stamped his feet upon the ground.\n\n\"He has beaten us, Watson. We are too late.\"\n\n\"No, no, surely not!\"\n\n\"Fool that I was to hold my hand. And you, Watson, see what comes of abandoning your charge! But, by Heaven, if the worst has happened we'll avenge him!\"\n\nBlindly we ran through the gloom, blundering against boulders, forcing our way through gorse bushes, panting up hills and rushing down slopes, heading always in the direction whence those dreadful sounds had come. At every rise Holmes looked eagerly round him, but the shadows were thick upon the moor, and nothing moved upon its dreary face.\n\n\"Can you see anything?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"But, hark, what is that?\"\n\nA low moan had fallen upon our ears. There it was again upon our left! On that side a ridge of rocks ended in a sheer cliff which overlooked a stone-strewn slope. On its jagged face was spread-eagled some dark, irregular object. As we ran towards it the vague outline hardened into a definite shape. It was a prostrate man face downward upon the ground, the head doubled under him at a horrible angle, the shoulders rounded and the body hunched together as if in the act of throwing a somersault. So grotesque was the attitude that I could not for the instant realize that that moan had been the passing of his soul. Not a whisper, not a rustle, rose now from the dark figure over which we stooped. Holmes laid his hand upon him and held it up again with an exclamation of horror. The gleam of the match which he struck shone upon his clotted fingers and upon the ghastly pool which widened slowly from the crushed skull of the victim. And it shone upon something else which turned our hearts sick and faint within us\u2014the body of Sir Henry Baskerville!\n\nThere was no chance of either of us forgetting that peculiar ruddy tweed suit\u2014the very one which he had worn on the first morning that we had seen him in Baker Street. We caught the one clear glimpse of it, and then the match flickered and went out, even as the hope had gone out of our souls. Holmes groaned, and his face glimmered white through the darkness.\n\n\"The brute! the brute!\" I cried with clenched hands. \"Oh, Holmes, I shall never forgive myself for having left him to his fate.\"\n\n\"I am more to blame than you, Watson. In order to have my case well rounded and complete, I have thrown away the life of my client. It is the greatest blow which has befallen me in my career. But how could I know\u2014how could I know\u2014that he would risk his life alone upon the moor in the face of all my warnings?\"\n\n\"That we should have heard his screams\u2014my God, those screams!\u2014and yet have been unable to save him! Where is this brute of a hound which drove him to his death? It may be lurking among these rocks at this instant. And Stapleton, where is he? He shall answer for this deed.\"\n\n\"He shall. I will see to that. Uncle and nephew have been murdered\u2014the one frightened to death by the very sight of a beast which he thought to be supernatural, the other driven to his end in his wild flight to escape from it. But now we have to prove the connection between the man and the beast. Save from what we heard, we cannot even swear to the existence of the latter, since Sir Henry has evidently died from the fall. But, by heavens, cunning as he is, the fellow shall be in my power before another day is past!\"\n\nWe stood with bitter hearts on either side of the mangled body, overwhelmed by this sudden and irrevocable disaster which had brought all our long and weary labours to so piteous an end. Then as the moon rose we climbed to the top of the rocks over which our poor friend had fallen, and from the summit we gazed out over the shadowy moor, half silver and half gloom. Far away, miles off, in the direction of Grimpen, a single steady yellow light was shining. It could only come from the lonely abode of the Stapletons. With a bitter curse I shook my fist at it as I gazed.\n\n\"Why should we not seize him at once?\"\n\n\"Our case is not complete. The fellow is wary and cunning to the last degree. It is not what we know, but what we can prove. If we make one false move the villain may escape us yet.\"\n\n\"What can we do?\"\n\n\"There will be plenty for us to do to-morrow. To-night we can only perform the last offices to our poor friend.\"\n\nTogether we made our way down the precipitous slope and approached the body, black and clear against the silvered stones. The agony of those contorted limbs struck me with a spasm of pain and blurred my eyes with tears.\n\n\"We must send for help, Holmes! We cannot carry him all the way to the Hall. Good heavens, are you mad?\"\n\nHe had uttered a cry and bent over the body. Now he was dancing and laughing and wringing my hand. Could this be my stern, self-contained friend? These were hidden fires, indeed!\n\n\"A beard! A beard! The man has a beard!\"\n\n\"A beard?\"\n\n\"It is not the baronet\u2014it is\u2014why, it is my neighbour, the convict!\"\n\nWith feverish haste we had turned the body over, and that dripping beard was pointing up to the cold, clear moon. There could be no doubt about the beetling forehead, the sunken animal eyes. It was indeed the same face which had glared upon me in the light of the candle from over the rock\u2014the face of Selden, the criminal.\n\nThen in an instant it was all clear to me. I remembered how the baronet had told me that he had handed his old wardrobe to Barrymore. Barrymore had passed it on in order to help Selden in his escape. Boots, shirt, cap\u2014it was all Sir Henry's. The tragedy was still black enough, but this man had at least deserved death by the laws of his country. I told Holmes how the matter stood, my heart bubbling over with thankfulness and joy.\n\n\"Then the clothes have been the poor devil's death,\" said he. \"It is clear enough that the hound has been laid on from some article of Sir Henry's\u2014the boot which was abstracted in the hotel, in all probability\u2014and so ran this man down. There is one very singular thing, however: How came Selden, in the darkness, to know that the hound was on his trail?\"\n\n\"He heard him.\"\n\n\"To hear a hound upon the moor would not work a hard man like this convict into such a paroxysm of terror that he would risk recapture by screaming wildly for help. By his cries he must have run a long way after he knew the animal was on his track. How did he know?\"\n\n\"A greater mystery to me is why this hound, presuming that all our conjectures are correct\u2014\"\n\n\"I presume nothing.\"\n\n\"Well, then, why this hound should be loose to-night. I suppose that it does not always run loose upon the moor. Stapleton would not let it go unless he had reason to think that Sir Henry would be there.\"\n\n\"My difficulty is the more formidable of the two, for I think that we shall very shortly get an explanation of yours, while mine may remain forever a mystery. The question now is, what shall we do with this poor wretch's body? We cannot leave it here to the foxes and the ravens.\"\n\n\"I suggest that we put it in one of the huts until we can communicate with the police.\"\n\n\"Exactly. I have no doubt that you and I could carry it so far. Halloa, Watson, what's this? It's the man himself, by all that's wonderful and audacious! Not a word to show your suspicions\u2014not a word, or my plans crumble to the ground.\"\n\nA figure was approaching us over the moor, and I saw the dull red glow of a cigar. The moon shone upon him, and I could distinguish the dapper shape and jaunty walk of the naturalist. He stopped when he saw us, and then came on again.\n\n\"Why, Dr. Watson, that's not you, is it? You are the last man that I should have expected to see out on the moor at this time of night. But, dear me, what's this? Somebody hurt? Not\u2014don't tell me that it is our friend Sir Henry!\" He hurried past me and stooped over the dead man. I heard a sharp intake of his breath and the cigar fell from his fingers.\n\n\"Who\u2014who's this?\" he stammered.\n\n\"It is Selden, the man who escaped from Princetown.\"\n\nStapleton turned a ghastly face upon us, but by a supreme effort he had overcome his amazement and his disappointment. He looked sharply from Holmes to me.\n\n\"Dear me! What a very shocking affair! How did he die?\"\n\n\"He appears to have broken his neck by falling over these rocks. My friend and I were strolling on the moor when we heard a cry.\"\n\n\"I heard a cry also. That was what brought me out. I was uneasy about Sir Henry.\"\n\n\"Why about Sir Henry in particular?\" I could not help asking.\n\n\"Because I had suggested that he should come over. When he did not come I was surprised, and I naturally became alarmed for his safety when I heard cries upon the moor. By the way\"\u2014his eyes darted again from my face to Holmes's\u2014\"did you hear anything else besides a cry?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Holmes; \"did you?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, then?\"\n\n\"Oh, you know the stories that the peasants tell about a phantom hound, and so on. It is said to be heard at night upon the moor. I was wondering if there were any evidence of such a sound to-night.\"\n\n\"We heard nothing of the kind,\" said I.\n\n\"And what is your theory of this poor fellow's death?\"\n\n\"I have no doubt that anxiety and exposure have driven him off his head. He has rushed about the moor in a crazy state and eventually fallen over here and broken his neck.\"\n\n\"That seems the most reasonable theory,\" said Stapleton, and he gave a sigh which I took to indicate his relief. \"What do you think about it, Mr. Sherlock Holmes?\"\n\nMy friend bowed his compliments.\n\n\"You are quick at identification,\" said he.\n\n\"We have been expecting you in these parts since Dr. Watson came down. You are in time to see a tragedy.\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed. I have no doubt that my friend's explanation will cover the facts. I will take an unpleasant remembrance back to London with me to-morrow.\"\n\n\"Oh, you return to-morrow?\"\n\n\"That is my intention.\"\n\n\"I hope your visit has cast some light upon those occurrences which have puzzled us?\"\n\nHolmes shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"One cannot always have the success for which one hopes. An investigator needs facts and not legends or rumours. It has not been a satisfactory case.\"\n\nMy friend spoke in his frankest and most unconcerned manner. Stapleton still looked hard at him. Then he turned to me.\n\n\"I would suggest carrying this poor fellow to my house, but it would give my sister such a fright that I do not feel justified in doing it. I think that if we put something over his face he will be safe until morning.\"\n\nAnd so it was arranged. Resisting Stapleton's offer of hospitality, Holmes and I set off to Baskerville Hall, leaving the naturalist to return alone. Looking back we saw the figure moving slowly away over the broad moor, and behind him that one black smudge on the silvered slope which showed where the man was lying who had come so horribly to his end." + }, + { + "title": "Fixing the Nets", + "text": "\"We're at close grips at last,\" said Holmes as we walked together across the moor. \"What a nerve the fellow has! How he pulled himself together in the face of what must have been a paralyzing shock when he found that the wrong man had fallen a victim to his plot. I told you in London, Watson, and I tell you now again, that we have never had a foeman more worthy of our steel.\"\n\n\"I am sorry that he has seen you.\"\n\n\"And so was I at first. But there was no getting out of it.\"\n\n\"What effect do you think it will have upon his plans now that he knows you are here?\"\n\n\"It may cause him to be more cautious, or it may drive him to desperate measures at once. Like most clever criminals, he may be too confident in his own cleverness and imagine that he has completely deceived us.\"\n\n\"Why should we not arrest him at once?\"\n\n\"My dear Watson, you were born to be a man of action. Your instinct is always to do something energetic. But supposing, for argument's sake, that we had him arrested to-night, what on earth the better off should we be for that? We could prove nothing against him. There's the devilish cunning of it! If he were acting through a human agent we could get some evidence, but if we were to drag this great dog to the light of day it would not help us in putting a rope round the neck of its master.\"\n\n\"Surely we have a case.\"\n\n\"Not a shadow of one\u2014only surmise and conjecture. We should be laughed out of court if we came with such a story and such evidence.\"\n\n\"There is Sir Charles's death.\"\n\n\"Found dead without a mark upon him. You and I know that he died of sheer fright, and we know also what frightened him; but how are we to get twelve stolid jurymen to know it? What signs are there of a hound? Where are the marks of its fangs? Of course we know that a hound does not bite a dead body and that Sir Charles was dead before ever the brute overtook him. But we have to prove all this, and we are not in a position to do it.\"\n\n\"Well, then, to-night?\"\n\n\"We are not much better off to-night. Again, there was no direct connection between the hound and the man's death. We never saw the hound. We heard it, but we could not prove that it was running upon this man's trail. There is a complete absence of motive. No, my dear fellow; we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that we have no case at present, and that it is worth our while to run any risk in order to establish one.\"\n\n\"And how do you propose to do so?\"\n\n\"I have great hopes of what Mrs. Laura Lyons may do for us when the position of affairs is made clear to her. And I have my own plan as well. Sufficient for to-morrow is the evil thereof; but I hope before the day is past to have the upper hand at last.\"\n\nI could draw nothing further from him, and he walked, lost in thought, as far as the Baskerville gates.\n\n\"Are you coming up?\"\n\n\"Yes; I see no reason for further concealment. But one last word, Watson. Say nothing of the hound to Sir Henry. Let him think that Selden's death was as Stapleton would have us believe. He will have a better nerve for the ordeal which he will have to undergo to-morrow, when he is engaged, if I remember your report aright, to dine with these people.\"\n\n\"And so am I.\"\n\n\"Then you must excuse yourself and he must go alone. That will be easily arranged. And now, if we are too late for dinner, I think that we are both ready for our suppers.\"\n\nSir Henry was more pleased than surprised to see Sherlock Holmes, for he had for some days been expecting that recent events would bring him down from London. He did raise his eyebrows, however, when he found that my friend had neither any luggage nor any explanations for its absence. Between us we soon supplied his wants, and then over a belated supper we explained to the baronet as much of our experience as it seemed desirable that he should know. But first I had the unpleasant duty of breaking the news to Barrymore and his wife. To him it may have been an unmitigated relief, but she wept bitterly in her apron. To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.\n\n\"I've been moping in the house all day since Watson went off in the morning,\" said the baronet. \"I guess I should have some credit, for I have kept my promise. If I hadn't sworn not to go about alone I might have had a more lively evening, for I had a message from Stapleton asking me over there.\"\n\n\"I have no doubt that you would have had a more lively evening,\" said Holmes drily. \"By the way, I don't suppose you appreciate that we have been mourning over you as having broken your neck?\"\n\nSir Henry opened his eyes. \"How was that?\"\n\n\"This poor wretch was dressed in your clothes. I fear your servant who gave them to him may get into trouble with the police.\"\n\n\"That is unlikely. There was no mark on any of them, as far as I know.\"\n\n\"That's lucky for him\u2014in fact, it's lucky for all of you, since you are all on the wrong side of the law in this matter. I am not sure that as a conscientious detective my first duty is not to arrest the whole household. Watson's reports are most incriminating documents.\"\n\n\"But how about the case?\" asked the baronet. \"Have you made anything out of the tangle? I don't know that Watson and I are much the wiser since we came down.\"\n\n\"I think that I shall be in a position to make the situation rather more clear to you before long. It has been an exceedingly difficult and most complicated business. There are several points upon which we still want light\u2014but it is coming all the same.\"\n\n\"We've had one experience, as Watson has no doubt told you. We heard the hound on the moor, so I can swear that it is not all empty superstition. I had something to do with dogs when I was out West, and I know one when I hear one. If you can muzzle that one and put him on a chain I'll be ready to swear you are the greatest detective of all time.\"\n\n\"I think I will muzzle him and chain him all right if you will give me your help.\"\n\n\"Whatever you tell me to do I will do.\"\n\n\"Very good; and I will ask you also to do it blindly, without always asking the reason.\"\n\n\"Just as you like.\"\n\n\"If you will do this I think the chances are that our little problem will soon be solved. I have no doubt\u2014\"\n\nHe stopped suddenly and stared fixedly up over my head into the air. The lamp beat upon his face, and so intent was it and so still that it might have been that of a clear-cut classical statue, a personification of alertness and expectation.\n\n\"What is it?\" we both cried.\n\nI could see as he looked down that he was repressing some internal emotion. His features were still composed, but his eyes shone with amused exultation.\n\n\"Excuse the admiration of a connoisseur,\" said he as he waved his hand towards the line of portraits which covered the opposite wall. \"Watson won't allow that I know anything of art, but that is mere jealousy because our views upon the subject differ. Now, these are a really very fine series of portraits.\"\n\n\"Well, I'm glad to hear you say so,\" said Sir Henry, glancing with some surprise at my friend. \"I don't pretend to know much about these things, and I'd be a better judge of a horse or a steer than of a picture. I didn't know that you found time for such things.\"\n\n\"I know what is good when I see it, and I see it now. That's a Kneller, I'll swear, that lady in the blue silk over yonder, and the stout gentleman with the wig ought to be a Reynolds. They are all family portraits, I presume?\"\n\n\"Every one.\"\n\n\"Do you know the names?\"\n\n\"Barrymore has been coaching me in them, and I think I can say my lessons fairly well.\"\n\n\"Who is the gentleman with the telescope?\"\n\n\"That is Rear-Admiral Baskerville, who served under Rodney in the West Indies. The man with the blue coat and the roll of paper is Sir William Baskerville, who was Chairman of Committees of the House of Commons under Pitt.\"\n\n\"And this Cavalier opposite to me\u2014the one with the black velvet and the lace?\"\n\n\"Ah, you have a right to know about him. That is the cause of all the mischief, the wicked Hugo, who started the Hound of the Baskervilles. We're not likely to forget him.\"\n\nI gazed with interest and some surprise upon the portrait.\n\n\"Dear me!\" said Holmes, \"he seems a quiet, meek-mannered man enough, but I dare say that there was a lurking devil in his eyes. I had pictured him as a more robust and ruffianly person.\"\n\n\"There's no doubt about the authenticity, for the name and the date, 1647, are on the back of the canvas.\"\n\nHolmes said little more, but the picture of the old roysterer seemed to have a fascination for him, and his eyes were continually fixed upon it during supper. It was not until later, when Sir Henry had gone to his room, that I was able to follow the trend of his thoughts. He led me back into the banqueting-hall, his bedroom candle in his hand, and he held it up against the time-stained portrait on the wall.\n\n\"Do you see anything there?\"\n\nI looked at the broad plumed hat, the curling love-locks, the white lace collar, and the straight, severe face which was framed between them. It was not a brutal countenance, but it was prim, hard, and stern, with a firm-set, thin-lipped mouth, and a coldly intolerant eye.\n\n\"Is it like anyone you know?\"\n\n\"There is something of Sir Henry about the jaw.\"\n\n\"Just a suggestion, perhaps. But wait an instant!\" He stood upon a chair, and, holding up the light in his left hand, he curved his right arm over the broad hat and round the long ringlets.\n\n\"Good heavens!\" I cried in amazement.\n\nThe face of Stapleton had sprung out of the canvas.\n\n\"Ha, you see it now. My eyes have been trained to examine faces and not their trimmings. It is the first quality of a criminal investigator that he should see through a disguise.\"\n\n\"But this is marvellous. It might be his portrait.\"\n\n\"Yes, it is an interesting instance of a throwback, which appears to be both physical and spiritual. A study of family portraits is enough to convert a man to the doctrine of reincarnation. The fellow is a Baskerville\u2014that is evident.\"\n\n\"With designs upon the succession.\"\n\n\"Exactly. This chance of the picture has supplied us with one of our most obvious missing links. We have him, Watson, we have him, and I dare swear that before to-morrow night he will be fluttering in our net as helpless as one of his own butterflies. A pin, a cork, and a card, and we add him to the Baker Street collection!\" He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody.\n\nI was up betimes in the morning, but Holmes was afoot earlier still, for I saw him as I dressed, coming up the drive.\n\n\"Yes, we should have a full day to-day,\" he remarked, and he rubbed his hands with the joy of action. \"The nets are all in place, and the drag is about to begin. We'll know before the day is out whether we have caught our big, lean-jawed pike, or whether he has got through the meshes.\"\n\n\"Have you been on the moor already?\"\n\n\"I have sent a report from Grimpen to Princetown as to the death of Selden. I think I can promise that none of you will be troubled in the matter. And I have also communicated with my faithful Cartwright, who would certainly have pined away at the door of my hut, as a dog does at his master's grave, if I had not set his mind at rest about my safety.\"\n\n\"What is the next move?\"\n\n\"To see Sir Henry. Ah, here he is!\"\n\n\"Good-morning, Holmes,\" said the baronet. \"You look like a general who is planning a battle with his chief of the staff.\"\n\n\"That is the exact situation. Watson was asking for orders.\"\n\n\"And so do I.\"\n\n\"Very good. You are engaged, as I understand, to dine with our friends the Stapletons to-night.\"\n\n\"I hope that you will come also. They are very hospitable people, and I am sure that they would be very glad to see you.\"\n\n\"I fear that Watson and I must go to London.\"\n\n\"To London?\"\n\n\"Yes, I think that we should be more useful there at the present juncture.\"\n\nThe baronet's face perceptibly lengthened.\n\n\"I hoped that you were going to see me through this business. The Hall and the moor are not very pleasant places when one is alone.\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, you must trust me implicitly and do exactly what I tell you. You can tell your friends that we should have been happy to have come with you, but that urgent business required us to be in town. We hope very soon to return to Devonshire. Will you remember to give them that message?\"\n\n\"If you insist upon it.\"\n\n\"There is no alternative, I assure you.\"\n\nI saw by the baronet's clouded brow that he was deeply hurt by what he regarded as our desertion.\n\n\"When do you desire to go?\" he asked coldly.\n\n\"Immediately after breakfast. We will drive in to Coombe Tracey, but Watson will leave his things as a pledge that he will come back to you. Watson, you will send a note to Stapleton to tell him that you regret that you cannot come.\"\n\n\"I have a good mind to go to London with you,\" said the baronet. \"Why should I stay here alone?\"\n\n\"Because it is your post of duty. Because you gave me your word that you would do as you were told, and I tell you to stay.\"\n\n\"All right, then, I'll stay.\"\n\n\"One more direction! I wish you to drive to Merripit House. Send back your trap, however, and let them know that you intend to walk home.\"\n\n\"To walk across the moor?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"But that is the very thing which you have so often cautioned me not to do.\"\n\n\"This time you may do it with safety. If I had not every confidence in your nerve and courage I would not suggest it, but it is essential that you should do it.\"\n\n\"Then I will do it.\"\n\n\"And as you value your life do not go across the moor in any direction save along the straight path which leads from Merripit House to the Grimpen Road, and is your natural way home.\"\n\n\"I will do just what you say.\"\n\n\"Very good. I should be glad to get away as soon after breakfast as possible, so as to reach London in the afternoon.\"\n\nI was much astounded by this programme, though I remembered that Holmes had said to Stapleton on the night before that his visit would terminate next day. It had not crossed my mind, however, that he would wish me to go with him, nor could I understand how we could both be absent at a moment which he himself declared to be critical. There was nothing for it, however, but implicit obedience; so we bade good-bye to our rueful friend, and a couple of hours afterwards we were at the station of Coombe Tracey and had dispatched the trap upon its return journey. A small boy was waiting upon the platform.\n\n\"Any orders, sir?\"\n\n\"You will take this train to town, Cartwright. The moment you arrive you will send a wire to Sir Henry Baskerville, in my name, to say that if he finds the pocketbook which I have dropped he is to send it by registered post to Baker Street.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"And ask at the station office if there is a message for me.\"\n\nThe boy returned with a telegram, which Holmes handed to me. It ran:\n\nWire received. Coming down with unsigned warrant. Arrive five-forty.\n\nLESTRADE.\n\n\"That is in answer to mine of this morning. He is the best of the professionals, I think, and we may need his assistance. Now, Watson, I think that we cannot employ our time better than by calling upon your acquaintance, Mrs. Laura Lyons.\"\n\nHis plan of campaign was beginning to be evident. He would use the baronet in order to convince the Stapletons that we were really gone, while we should actually return at the instant when we were likely to be needed. That telegram from London, if mentioned by Sir Henry to the Stapletons, must remove the last suspicions from their minds. Already I seemed to see our nets drawing closer around that lean-jawed pike.\n\nMrs. Laura Lyons was in her office, and Sherlock Holmes opened his interview with a frankness and directness which considerably amazed her.\n\n\"I am investigating the circumstances which attended the death of the late Sir Charles Baskerville,\" said he. \"My friend here, Dr. Watson, has informed me of what you have communicated, and also of what you have withheld in connection with that matter.\"\n\n\"What have I withheld?\" she asked defiantly.\n\n\"You have confessed that you asked Sir Charles to be at the gate at ten o'clock. We know that that was the place and hour of his death. You have withheld what the connection is between these events.\"\n\n\"There is no connection.\"\n\n\"In that case the coincidence must indeed be an extraordinary one. But I think that we shall succeed in establishing a connection, after all. I wish to be perfectly frank with you, Mrs. Lyons. We regard this case as one of murder, and the evidence may implicate not only your friend Mr. Stapleton but his wife as well.\"\n\nThe lady sprang from her chair.\n\n\"His wife!\" she cried.\n\n\"The fact is no longer a secret. The person who has passed for his sister is really his wife.\"\n\nMrs. Lyons had resumed her seat. Her hands were grasping the arms of her chair, and I saw that the pink nails had turned white with the pressure of her grip.\n\n\"His wife!\" she said again. \"His wife! He is not a married man.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"Prove it to me! Prove it to me! And if you can do so\u2014!\" The fierce flash of her eyes said more than any words.\n\n\"I have come prepared to do so,\" said Holmes, drawing several papers from his pocket. \"Here is a photograph of the couple taken in York four years ago. It is indorsed 'Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur,' but you will have no difficulty in recognizing him, and her also, if you know her by sight. Here are three written descriptions by trustworthy witnesses of Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur, who at that time kept St. Oliver's private school. Read them and see if you can doubt the identity of these people.\"\n\nShe glanced at them, and then looked up at us with the set, rigid face of a desperate woman.\n\n\"Mr. Holmes,\" she said, \"this man had offered me marriage on condition that I could get a divorce from my husband. He has lied to me, the villain, in every conceivable way. Not one word of truth has he ever told me. And why\u2014why? I imagined that all was for my own sake. But now I see that I was never anything but a tool in his hands. Why should I preserve faith with him who never kept any with me? Why should I try to shield him from the consequences of his own wicked acts? Ask me what you like, and there is nothing which I shall hold back. One thing I swear to you, and that is that when I wrote the letter I never dreamed of any harm to the old gentleman, who had been my kindest friend.\"\n\n\"I entirely believe you, madam,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"The recital of these events must be very painful to you, and perhaps it will make it easier if I tell you what occurred, and you can check me if I make any material mistake. The sending of this letter was suggested to you by Stapleton?\"\n\n\"He dictated it.\"\n\n\"I presume that the reason he gave was that you would receive help from Sir Charles for the legal expenses connected with your divorce?\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"And then after you had sent the letter he dissuaded you from keeping the appointment?\"\n\n\"He told me that it would hurt his self-respect that any other man should find the money for such an object, and that though he was a poor man himself he would devote his last penny to removing the obstacles which divided us.\"\n\n\"He appears to be a very consistent character. And then you heard nothing until you read the reports of the death in the paper?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"And he made you swear to say nothing about your appointment with Sir Charles?\"\n\n\"He did. He said that the death was a very mysterious one, and that I should certainly be suspected if the facts came out. He frightened me into remaining silent.\"\n\n\"Quite so. But you had your suspicions?\"\n\nShe hesitated and looked down.\n\n\"I knew him,\" she said. \"But if he had kept faith with me I should always have done so with him.\"\n\n\"I think that on the whole you have had a fortunate escape,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"You have had him in your power and he knew it, and yet you are alive. You have been walking for some months very near to the edge of a precipice. We must wish you good-morning now, Mrs. Lyons, and it is probable that you will very shortly hear from us again.\"\n\n\"Our case becomes rounded off, and difficulty after difficulty thins away in front of us,\" said Holmes as we stood waiting for the arrival of the express from town. \"I shall soon be in the position of being able to put into a single connected narrative one of the most singular and sensational crimes of modern times. Students of criminology will remember the analogous incidents in Godno, in Little Russia, in the year '66, and of course there are the Anderson murders in North Carolina, but this case possesses some features which are entirely its own. Even now we have no clear case against this very wily man. But I shall be very much surprised if it is not clear enough before we go to bed this night.\"\n\nThe London express came roaring into the station, and a small, wiry bulldog of a man had sprung from a first-class carriage. We all three shook hands, and I saw at once from the reverential way in which Lestrade gazed at my companion that he had learned a good deal since the days when they had first worked together. I could well remember the scorn which the theories of the reasoner used then to excite in the practical man.\n\n\"Anything good?\" he asked.\n\n\"The biggest thing for years,\" said Holmes. \"We have two hours before we need think of starting. I think we might employ it in getting some dinner and then, Lestrade, we will take the London fog out of your throat by giving you a breath of the pure night air of Dartmoor. Never been there? Ah, well, I don't suppose you will forget your first visit.\"" + }, + { + "title": "The Hound of the Baskervilles", + "text": "One of Sherlock Holmes's defects\u2014if, indeed, one may call it a defect\u2014was that he was exceedingly loath to communicate his full plans to any other person until the instant of their fulfilment. Partly it came no doubt from his own masterful nature, which loved to dominate and surprise those who were around him. Partly also from his professional caution, which urged him never to take any chances. The result, however, was very trying for those who were acting as his agents and assistants. I had often suffered under it, but never more so than during that long drive in the darkness. The great ordeal was in front of us; at last we were about to make our final effort, and yet Holmes had said nothing, and I could only surmise what his course of action would be. My nerves thrilled with anticipation when at last the cold wind upon our faces and the dark, void spaces on either side of the narrow road told me that we were back upon the moor once again. Every stride of the horses and every turn of the wheels was taking us nearer to our supreme adventure.\n\nOur conversation was hampered by the presence of the driver of the hired wagonette, so that we were forced to talk of trivial matters when our nerves were tense with emotion and anticipation. It was a relief to me, after that unnatural restraint, when we at last passed Frankland's house and knew that we were drawing near to the Hall and to the scene of action. We did not drive up to the door but got down near the gate of the avenue. The wagonette was paid off and ordered to return to Coombe Tracey forthwith, while we started to walk to Merripit House.\n\n\"Are you armed, Lestrade?\"\n\nThe little detective smiled.\n\n\"As long as I have my trousers I have a hip-pocket, and as long as I have my hip-pocket I have something in it.\"\n\n\"Good! My friend and I are also ready for emergencies.\"\n\n\"You're mighty close about this affair, Mr. Holmes. What's the game now?\"\n\n\"A waiting game.\"\n\n\"My word, it does not seem a very cheerful place,\" said the detective with a shiver, glancing round him at the gloomy slopes of the hill and at the huge lake of fog which lay over the Grimpen Mire. \"I see the lights of a house ahead of us.\"\n\n\"That is Merripit House and the end of our journey. I must request you to walk on tiptoe and not to talk above a whisper.\"\n\nWe moved cautiously along the track as if we were bound for the house, but Holmes halted us when we were about two hundred yards from it.\n\n\"This will do,\" said he. \"These rocks upon the right make an admirable screen.\"\n\n\"We are to wait here?\"\n\n\"Yes, we shall make our little ambush here. Get into this hollow, Lestrade. You have been inside the house, have you not, Watson? Can you tell the position of the rooms? What are those latticed windows at this end?\"\n\n\"I think they are the kitchen windows.\"\n\n\"And the one beyond, which shines so brightly?\"\n\n\"That is certainly the dining-room.\"\n\n\"The blinds are up. You know the lie of the land best. Creep forward quietly and see what they are doing\u2014but for heaven's sake don't let them know that they are watched!\"\n\nI tiptoed down the path and stooped behind the low wall which surrounded the stunted orchard. Creeping in its shadow I reached a point whence I could look straight through the uncurtained window.\n\nThere were only two men in the room, Sir Henry and Stapleton. They sat with their profiles towards me on either side of the round table. Both of them were smoking cigars, and coffee and wine were in front of them. Stapleton was talking with animation, but the baronet looked pale and distrait. Perhaps the thought of that lonely walk across the ill-omened moor was weighing heavily upon his mind.\n\nAs I watched them Stapleton rose and left the room, while Sir Henry filled his glass again and leaned back in his chair, puffing at his cigar. I heard the creak of a door and the crisp sound of boots upon gravel. The steps passed along the path on the other side of the wall under which I crouched. Looking over, I saw the naturalist pause at the door of an outhouse in the corner of the orchard. A key turned in a lock, and as he passed in there was a curious scuffling noise from within. He was only a minute or so inside, and then I heard the key turn once more and he passed me and re\u00ebntered the house. I saw him rejoin his guest, and I crept quietly back to where my companions were waiting to tell them what I had seen.\n\n\"You say, Watson, that the lady is not there?\" Holmes asked when I had finished my report.\n\n\"Where can she be, then, since there is no light in any other room except the kitchen?\"\n\n\"I cannot think where she is.\"\n\nI have said that over the great Grimpen Mire there hung a dense, white fog. It was drifting slowly in our direction and banked itself up like a wall on that side of us, low but thick and well defined. The moon shone on it, and it looked like a great shimmering ice-field, with the heads of the distant tors as rocks borne upon its surface. Holmes's face was turned towards it, and he muttered impatiently as he watched its sluggish drift.\n\n\"It's moving towards us, Watson.\"\n\n\"Is that serious?\"\n\n\"Very serious, indeed\u2014the one thing upon earth which could have disarranged my plans. He can't be very long, now. It is already ten o'clock. Our success and even his life may depend upon his coming out before the fog is over the path.\"\n\nThe night was clear and fine above us. The stars shone cold and bright, while a half-moon bathed the whole scene in a soft, uncertain light. Before us lay the dark bulk of the house, its serrated roof and bristling chimneys hard outlined against the silver-spangled sky. Broad bars of golden light from the lower windows stretched across the orchard and the moor. One of them was suddenly shut off. The servants had left the kitchen. There only remained the lamp in the dining-room where the two men, the murderous host and the unconscious guest, still chatted over their cigars.\n\nEvery minute that white woolly plain which covered one-half of the moor was drifting closer and closer to the house. Already the first thin wisps of it were curling across the golden square of the lighted window. The farther wall of the orchard was already invisible, and the trees were standing out of a swirl of white vapour. As we watched it the fog-wreaths came crawling round both corners of the house and rolled slowly into one dense bank, on which the upper floor and the roof floated like a strange ship upon a shadowy sea. Holmes struck his hand passionately upon the rock in front of us and stamped his feet in his impatience.\n\n\"If he isn't out in a quarter of an hour the path will be covered. In half an hour we won't be able to see our hands in front of us.\"\n\n\"Shall we move farther back upon higher ground?\"\n\n\"Yes, I think it would be as well.\"\n\nSo as the fog-bank flowed onward we fell back before it until we were half a mile from the house, and still that dense white sea, with the moon silvering its upper edge, swept slowly and inexorably on.\n\n\"We are going too far,\" said Holmes. \"We dare not take the chance of his being overtaken before he can reach us. At all costs we must hold our ground where we are.\" He dropped on his knees and clapped his ear to the ground. \"Thank God, I think that I hear him coming.\"\n\nA sound of quick steps broke the silence of the moor. Crouching among the stones we stared intently at the silver-tipped bank in front of us. The steps grew louder, and through the fog, as through a curtain, there stepped the man whom we were awaiting. He looked round him in surprise as he emerged into the clear, starlit night. Then he came swiftly along the path, passed close to where we lay, and went on up the long slope behind us. As he walked he glanced continually over either shoulder, like a man who is ill at ease.\n\n\"Hist!\" cried Holmes, and I heard the sharp click of a cocking pistol. \"Look out! It's coming!\"\n\nThere was a thin, crisp, continuous patter from somewhere in the heart of that crawling bank. The cloud was within fifty yards of where we lay, and we glared at it, all three, uncertain what horror was about to break from the heart of it. I was at Holmes's elbow, and I glanced for an instant at his face. It was pale and exultant, his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. But suddenly they started forward in a rigid, fixed stare, and his lips parted in amazement. At the same instant Lestrade gave a yell of terror and threw himself face downward upon the ground. I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog. A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.\n\nWith long bounds the huge black creature was leaping down the track, following hard upon the footsteps of our friend. So paralyzed were we by the apparition that we allowed him to pass before we had recovered our nerve. Then Holmes and I both fired together, and the creature gave a hideous howl, which showed that one at least had hit him. He did not pause, however, but bounded onward. Far away on the path we saw Sir Henry looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down.\n\nBut that cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night. I am reckoned fleet of foot, but he outpaced me as much as I outpaced the little professional. In front of us as we flew up the track we heard scream after scream from Sir Henry and the deep roar of the hound. I was in time to see the beast spring upon its victim, hurl him to the ground, and worry at his throat. But the next instant Holmes had emptied five barrels of his revolver into the creature's flank. With a last howl of agony and a vicious snap in the air, it rolled upon its back, four feet pawing furiously, and then fell limp upon its side. I stooped, panting, and pressed my pistol to the dreadful, shimmering head, but it was useless to press the trigger. The giant hound was dead.\n\nSir Henry lay insensible where he had fallen. We tore away his collar, and Holmes breathed a prayer of gratitude when we saw that there was no sign of a wound and that the rescue had been in time. Already our friend's eyelids shivered and he made a feeble effort to move. Lestrade thrust his brandy-flask between the baronet's teeth, and two frightened eyes were looking up at us.\n\n\"My God!\" he whispered. \"What was it? What, in heaven's name, was it?\"\n\n\"It's dead, whatever it is,\" said Holmes. \"We've laid the family ghost once and forever.\"\n\nIn mere size and strength it was a terrible creature which was lying stretched before us. It was not a pure bloodhound and it was not a pure mastiff; but it appeared to be a combination of the two\u2014gaunt, savage, and as large as a small lioness. Even now, in the stillness of death, the huge jaws seemed to be dripping with a bluish flame and the small, deep-set, cruel eyes were ringed with fire. I placed my hand upon the glowing muzzle, and as I held them up my own fingers smouldered and gleamed in the darkness.\n\n\"Phosphorus,\" I said.\n\n\"A cunning preparation of it,\" said Holmes, sniffing at the dead animal. \"There is no smell which might have interfered with his power of scent. We owe you a deep apology, Sir Henry, for having exposed you to this fright. I was prepared for a hound, but not for such a creature as this. And the fog gave us little time to receive him.\"\n\n\"You have saved my life.\"\n\n\"Having first endangered it. Are you strong enough to stand?\"\n\n\"Give me another mouthful of that brandy and I shall be ready for anything. So! Now, if you will help me up. What do you propose to do?\"\n\n\"To leave you here. You are not fit for further adventures tonight. If you will wait, one or other of us will go back with you to the Hall.\"\n\nHe tried to stagger to his feet; but he was still ghastly pale and trembling in every limb. We helped him to a rock, where he sat shivering with his face buried in his hands.\n\n\"We must leave you now,\" said Holmes. \"The rest of our work must be done, and every moment is of importance. We have our case, and now we only want our man.\n\n\"It's a thousand to one against our finding him at the house,\" he continued as we retraced our steps swiftly down the path. \"Those shots must have told him that the game was up.\"\n\n\"We were some distance off, and this fog may have deadened them.\"\n\n\"He followed the hound to call him off\u2014of that you may be certain. No, no, he's gone by this time! But we'll search the house and make sure.\"\n\nThe front door was open, so we rushed in and hurried from room to room to the amazement of a doddering old manservant, who met us in the passage. There was no light save in the dining-room, but Holmes caught up the lamp and left no corner of the house unexplored. No sign could we see of the man whom we were chasing. On the upper floor, however, one of the bedroom doors was locked.\n\n\"There's someone in here,\" cried Lestrade. \"I can hear a movement. Open this door!\"\n\nA faint moaning and rustling came from within. Holmes struck the door just over the lock with the flat of his foot and it flew open. Pistol in hand, we all three rushed into the room.\n\nBut there was no sign within it of that desperate and defiant villain whom we expected to see. Instead we were faced by an object so strange and so unexpected that we stood for a moment staring at it in amazement.\n\nThe room had been fashioned into a small museum, and the walls were lined by a number of glass-topped cases full of that collection of butterflies and moths the formation of which had been the relaxation of this complex and dangerous man. In the centre of this room there was an upright beam, which had been placed at some period as a support for the old worm-eaten baulk of timber which spanned the roof. To this post a figure was tied, so swathed and muffled in the sheets which had been used to secure it that one could not for the moment tell whether it was that of a man or a woman. One towel passed round the throat and was secured at the back of the pillar. Another covered the lower part of the face, and over it two dark eyes\u2014eyes full of grief and shame and a dreadful questioning\u2014stared back at us. In a minute we had torn off the gag, unswathed the bonds, and Mrs. Stapleton sank upon the floor in front of us. As her beautiful head fell upon her chest I saw the clear red weal of a whiplash across her neck.\n\n\"The brute!\" cried Holmes. \"Here, Lestrade, your brandy-bottle! Put her in the chair! She has fainted from ill-usage and exhaustion.\"\n\nShe opened her eyes again.\n\n\"Is he safe?\" she asked. \"Has he escaped?\"\n\n\"He cannot escape us, madam.\"\n\n\"No, no, I did not mean my husband. Sir Henry? Is he safe?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And the hound?\"\n\n\"It is dead.\"\n\nShe gave a long sigh of satisfaction.\n\n\"Thank God! Thank God! Oh, this villain! See how he has treated me!\" She shot her arms out from her sleeves, and we saw with horror that they were all mottled with bruises. \"But this is nothing\u2014nothing! It is my mind and soul that he has tortured and defiled. I could endure it all, ill-usage, solitude, a life of deception, everything, as long as I could still cling to the hope that I had his love, but now I know that in this also I have been his dupe and his tool.\" She broke into passionate sobbing as she spoke.\n\n\"You bear him no good will, madam,\" said Holmes. \"Tell us then where we shall find him. If you have ever aided him in evil, help us now and so atone.\"\n\n\"There is but one place where he can have fled,\" she answered. \"There is an old tin mine on an island in the heart of the mire. It was there that he kept his hound and there also he had made preparations so that he might have a refuge. That is where he would fly.\"\n\nThe fog-bank lay like white wool against the window. Holmes held the lamp towards it.\n\n\"See,\" said he. \"No one could find his way into the Grimpen Mire tonight.\"\n\nShe laughed and clapped her hands. Her eyes and teeth gleamed with fierce merriment.\n\n\"He may find his way in, but never out,\" she cried. \"How can he see the guiding wands tonight? We planted them together, he and I, to mark the pathway through the mire. Oh, if I could only have plucked them out to-day. Then indeed you would have had him at your mercy!\"\n\nIt was evident to us that all pursuit was in vain until the fog had lifted. Meanwhile we left Lestrade in possession of the house while Holmes and I went back with the baronet to Baskerville Hall. The story of the Stapletons could no longer be withheld from him, but he took the blow bravely when he learned the truth about the woman whom he had loved. But the shock of the night's adventures had shattered his nerves, and before morning he lay delirious in a high fever under the care of Dr. Mortimer. The two of them were destined to travel together round the world before Sir Henry had become once more the hale, hearty man that he had been before he became master of that ill-omened estate.\n\nAnd now I come rapidly to the conclusion of this singular narrative, in which I have tried to make the reader share those dark fears and vague surmises which clouded our lives so long and ended in so tragic a manner. On the morning after the death of the hound the fog had lifted and we were guided by Mrs. Stapleton to the point where they had found a pathway through the bog. It helped us to realize the horror of this woman's life when we saw the eagerness and joy with which she laid us on her husband's track. We left her standing upon the thin peninsula of firm, peaty soil which tapered out into the widespread bog. From the end of it a small wand planted here and there showed where the path zigzagged from tuft to tuft of rushes among those green-scummed pits and foul quagmires which barred the way to the stranger. Rank reeds and lush, slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay and a heavy miasmatic vapour onto our faces, while a false step plunged us more than once thigh-deep into the dark, quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations around our feet. Its tenacious grip plucked at our heels as we walked, and when we sank into it it was as if some malignant hand was tugging us down into those obscene depths, so grim and purposeful was the clutch in which it held us. Once only we saw a trace that someone had passed that perilous way before us. From amid a tuft of cotton grass which bore it up out of the slime some dark thing was projecting. Holmes sank to his waist as he stepped from the path to seize it, and had we not been there to drag him out he could never have set his foot upon firm land again. He held an old black boot in the air. \"Meyers, Toronto,\" was printed on the leather inside.\n\n\"It is worth a mud bath,\" said he. \"It is our friend Sir Henry's missing boot.\"\n\n\"Thrown there by Stapleton in his flight.\"\n\n\"Exactly. He retained it in his hand after using it to set the hound upon the track. He fled when he knew the game was up, still clutching it. And he hurled it away at this point of his flight. We know at least that he came so far in safety.\"\n\nBut more than that we were never destined to know, though there was much which we might surmise. There was no chance of finding footsteps in the mire, for the rising mud oozed swiftly in upon them, but as we at last reached firmer ground beyond the morass we all looked eagerly for them. But no slightest sign of them ever met our eyes. If the earth told a true story, then Stapleton never reached that island of refuge towards which he struggled through the fog upon that last night. Somewhere in the heart of the great Grimpen Mire, down in the foul slime of the huge morass which had sucked him in, this cold and cruel-hearted man is forever buried.\n\nMany traces we found of him in the bog-girt island where he had hid his savage ally. A huge driving-wheel and a shaft half-filled with rubbish showed the position of an abandoned mine. Beside it were the crumbling remains of the cottages of the miners, driven away no doubt by the foul reek of the surrounding swamp. In one of these a staple and chain with a quantity of gnawed bones showed where the animal had been confined. A skeleton with a tangle of brown hair adhering to it lay among the d\u00e9bris.\n\n\"A dog!\" said Holmes. \"By Jove, a curly-haired spaniel. Poor Mortimer will never see his pet again. Well, I do not know that this place contains any secret which we have not already fathomed. He could hide his hound, but he could not hush its voice, and hence came those cries which even in daylight were not pleasant to hear. On an emergency he could keep the hound in the outhouse at Merripit, but it was always a risk, and it was only on the supreme day, which he regarded as the end of all his efforts, that he dared do it. This paste in the tin is no doubt the luminous mixture with which the creature was daubed. It was suggested, of course, by the story of the family hell-hound, and by the desire to frighten old Sir Charles to death. No wonder the poor devil of a convict ran and screamed, even as our friend did, and as we ourselves might have done, when he saw such a creature bounding through the darkness of the moor upon his track. It was a cunning device, for, apart from the chance of driving your victim to his death, what peasant would venture to inquire too closely into such a creature should he get sight of it, as many have done, upon the moor? I said it in London, Watson, and I say it again now, that never yet have we helped to hunt down a more dangerous man than he who is lying yonder\"\u2014he swept his long arm towards the huge mottled expanse of green-splotched bog which stretched away until it merged into the russet slopes of the moor." + }, + { + "title": "A Retrospection", + "text": "It was the end of November, and Holmes and I sat, upon a raw and foggy night, on either side of a blazing fire in our sitting-room in Baker Street. Since the tragic upshot of our visit to Devonshire he had been engaged in two affairs of the utmost importance, in the first of which he had exposed the atrocious conduct of Colonel Upwood in connection with the famous card scandal of the Nonpareil Club, while in the second he had defended the unfortunate Mme. Montpensier from the charge of murder which hung over her in connection with the death of her step-daughter, Mlle. Car\u00e8re, the young lady who, as it will be remembered, was found six months later alive and married in New York. My friend was in excellent spirits over the success which had attended a succession of difficult and important cases, so that I was able to induce him to discuss the details of the Baskerville mystery. I had waited patiently for the opportunity, for I was aware that he would never permit cases to overlap, and that his clear and logical mind would not be drawn from its present work to dwell upon memories of the past. Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer were, however, in London, on their way to that long voyage which had been recommended for the restoration of his shattered nerves. They had called upon us that very afternoon, so that it was natural that the subject should come up for discussion.\n\n\"The whole course of events,\" said Holmes, \"from the point of view of the man who called himself Stapleton was simple and direct, although to us, who had no means in the beginning of knowing the motives of his actions and could only learn part of the facts, it all appeared exceedingly complex. I have had the advantage of two conversations with Mrs. Stapleton, and the case has now been so entirely cleared up that I am not aware that there is anything which has remained a secret to us. You will find a few notes upon the matter under the heading B in my indexed list of cases.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you would kindly give me a sketch of the course of events from memory.\"\n\n\"Certainly, though I cannot guarantee that I carry all the facts in my mind. Intense mental concentration has a curious way of blotting out what has passed. The barrister who has his case at his fingers' ends and is able to argue with an expert upon his own subject finds that a week or two of the courts will drive it all out of his head once more. So each of my cases displaces the last, and Mlle. Car\u00e8re has blurred my recollection of Baskerville Hall. To-morrow some other little problem may be submitted to my notice which will in turn dispossess the fair French lady and the infamous Upwood. So far as the case of the hound goes, however, I will give you the course of events as nearly as I can, and you will suggest anything which I may have forgotten.\n\n\"My inquiries show beyond all question that the family portrait did not lie, and that this fellow was indeed a Baskerville. He was a son of that Rodger Baskerville, the younger brother of Sir Charles, who fled with a sinister reputation to South America, where he was said to have died unmarried. He did, as a matter of fact, marry, and had one child, this fellow, whose real name is the same as his father's. He married Beryl Garcia, one of the beauties of Costa Rica, and, having purloined a considerable sum of public money, he changed his name to Vandeleur and fled to England, where he established a school in the east of Yorkshire. His reason for attempting this special line of business was that he had struck up an acquaintance with a consumptive tutor upon the voyage home, and that he had used this man's ability to make the undertaking a success. Fraser, the tutor, died, however, and the school which had begun well sank from disrepute into infamy. The Vandeleurs found it convenient to change their name to Stapleton, and he brought the remains of his fortune, his schemes for the future, and his taste for entomology to the south of England. I learned at the British Museum that he was a recognized authority upon the subject, and that the name of Vandeleur has been permanently attached to a certain moth which he had, in his Yorkshire days, been the first to describe.\n\n\"We now come to that portion of his life which has proved to be of such intense interest to us. The fellow had evidently made inquiry and found that only two lives intervened between him and a valuable estate. When he went to Devonshire his plans were, I believe, exceedingly hazy, but that he meant mischief from the first is evident from the way in which he took his wife with him in the character of his sister. The idea of using her as a decoy was clearly already in his mind, though he may not have been certain how the details of his plot were to be arranged. He meant in the end to have the estate, and he was ready to use any tool or run any risk for that end. His first act was to establish himself as near to his ancestral home as he could, and his second was to cultivate a friendship with Sir Charles Baskerville and with the neighbours.\n\n\"The baronet himself told him about the family hound, and so prepared the way for his own death. Stapleton, as I will continue to call him, knew that the old man's heart was weak and that a shock would kill him. So much he had learned from Dr. Mortimer. He had heard also that Sir Charles was superstitious and had taken this grim legend very seriously. His ingenious mind instantly suggested a way by which the baronet could be done to death, and yet it would be hardly possible to bring home the guilt to the real murderer.\n\n\"Having conceived the idea he proceeded to carry it out with considerable finesse. An ordinary schemer would have been content to work with a savage hound. The use of artificial means to make the creature diabolical was a flash of genius upon his part. The dog he bought in London from Ross and Mangles, the dealers in Fulham Road. It was the strongest and most savage in their possession. He brought it down by the North Devon line and walked a great distance over the moor so as to get it home without exciting any remarks. He had already on his insect hunts learned to penetrate the Grimpen Mire, and so had found a safe hiding-place for the creature. Here he kennelled it and waited his chance.\n\n\"But it was some time coming. The old gentleman could not be decoyed outside of his grounds at night. Several times Stapleton lurked about with his hound, but without avail. It was during these fruitless quests that he, or rather his ally, was seen by peasants, and that the legend of the demon dog received a new confirmation. He had hoped that his wife might lure Sir Charles to his ruin, but here she proved unexpectedly independent. She would not endeavour to entangle the old gentleman in a sentimental attachment which might deliver him over to his enemy. Threats and even, I am sorry to say, blows refused to move her. She would have nothing to do with it, and for a time Stapleton was at a deadlock.\n\n\"He found a way out of his difficulties through the chance that Sir Charles, who had conceived a friendship for him, made him the minister of his charity in the case of this unfortunate woman, Mrs. Laura Lyons. By representing himself as a single man he acquired complete influence over her, and he gave her to understand that in the event of her obtaining a divorce from her husband he would marry her. His plans were suddenly brought to a head by his knowledge that Sir Charles was about to leave the Hall on the advice of Dr. Mortimer, with whose opinion he himself pretended to coincide. He must act at once, or his victim might get beyond his power. He therefore put pressure upon Mrs. Lyons to write this letter, imploring the old man to give her an interview on the evening before his departure for London. He then, by a specious argument, prevented her from going, and so had the chance for which he had waited.\n\n\"Driving back in the evening from Coombe Tracey he was in time to get his hound, to treat it with his infernal paint, and to bring the beast round to the gate at which he had reason to expect that he would find the old gentleman waiting. The dog, incited by its master, sprang over the wicket-gate and pursued the unfortunate baronet, who fled screaming down the yew alley. In that gloomy tunnel it must indeed have been a dreadful sight to see that huge black creature, with its flaming jaws and blazing eyes, bounding after its victim. He fell dead at the end of the alley from heart disease and terror. The hound had kept upon the grassy border while the baronet had run down the path, so that no track but the man's was visible. On seeing him lying still the creature had probably approached to sniff at him, but finding him dead had turned away again. It was then that it left the print which was actually observed by Dr. Mortimer. The hound was called off and hurried away to its lair in the Grimpen Mire, and a mystery was left which puzzled the authorities, alarmed the countryside, and finally brought the case within the scope of our observation.\n\n\"So much for the death of Sir Charles Baskerville. You perceive the devilish cunning of it, for really it would be almost impossible to make a case against the real murderer. His only accomplice was one who could never give him away, and the grotesque, inconceivable nature of the device only served to make it more effective. Both of the women concerned in the case, Mrs. Stapleton and Mrs. Laura Lyons, were left with a strong suspicion against Stapleton. Mrs. Stapleton knew that he had designs upon the old man, and also of the existence of the hound. Mrs. Lyons knew neither of these things, but had been impressed by the death occurring at the time of an uncancelled appointment which was only known to him. However, both of them were under his influence, and he had nothing to fear from them. The first half of his task was successfully accomplished, but the more difficult still remained.\n\n\"It is possible that Stapleton did not know of the existence of an heir in Canada. In any case he would very soon learn it from his friend Dr. Mortimer, and he was told by the latter all details about the arrival of Henry Baskerville. Stapleton's first idea was that this young stranger from Canada might possibly be done to death in London without coming down to Devonshire at all. He distrusted his wife ever since she had refused to help him in laying a trap for the old man, and he dared not leave her long out of his sight for fear he should lose his influence over her. It was for this reason that he took her to London with him. They lodged, I find, at the Mexborough Private Hotel, in Craven Street, which was actually one of those called upon by my agent, in search of evidence. Here he kept his wife imprisoned in her room while he, disguised in a beard, followed Dr. Mortimer to Baker Street and afterwards to the station and to the Northumberland Hotel. His wife had some inkling of his plans; but she had such a fear of her husband\u2014a fear founded upon brutal ill-treatment\u2014that she dare not write to warn the man whom she knew to be in danger. If the letter should fall into Stapleton's hands her own life would not be safe. Eventually, as we know, she adopted the expedient of cutting out the words which would form the message, and addressing the letter in a disguised hand. It reached the baronet, and gave him the first warning of his danger.\n\n\"It was very essential for Stapleton to get some article of Sir Henry's attire so that, in case he was driven to use the dog, he might always have the means of setting him upon his track. With characteristic promptness and audacity he set about this at once, and we cannot doubt that the boots or chamber-maid of the hotel was well bribed to help him in his design. By chance, however, the first boot which was procured for him was a new one and, therefore, useless for his purpose. He then had it returned and obtained another\u2014a most instructive incident, since it proved conclusively to my mind that we were dealing with a real hound, as no other supposition could explain this anxiety to obtain an old boot and this indifference to a new one. The more outr\u00e9 and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.\n\n\"Then we had the visit from our friends next morning, shadowed always by Stapleton in the cab. From his knowledge of our rooms and of my appearance, as well as from his general conduct, I am inclined to think that Stapleton's career of crime has been by no means limited to this single Baskerville affair. It is suggestive that during the last three years there have been four considerable burglaries in the west country, for none of which was any criminal ever arrested. The last of these, at Folkestone Court, in May, was remarkable for the cold-blooded pistolling of the page, who surprised the masked and solitary burglar. I cannot doubt that Stapleton recruited his waning resources in this fashion, and that for years he has been a desperate and dangerous man.\n\n\"We had an example of his readiness of resource that morning when he got away from us so successfully, and also of his audacity in sending back my own name to me through the cabman. From that moment he understood that I had taken over the case in London, and that therefore there was no chance for him there. He returned to Dartmoor and awaited the arrival of the baronet.\"\n\n\"One moment!\" said I. \"You have, no doubt, described the sequence of events correctly, but there is one point which you have left unexplained. What became of the hound when its master was in London?\"\n\n\"I have given some attention to this matter and it is undoubtedly of importance. There can be no question that Stapleton had a confidant, though it is unlikely that he ever placed himself in his power by sharing all his plans with him. There was an old manservant at Merripit House, whose name was Anthony. His connection with the Stapletons can be traced for several years, as far back as the schoolmastering days, so that he must have been aware that his master and mistress were really husband and wife. This man has disappeared and has escaped from the country. It is suggestive that Anthony is not a common name in England, while Antonio is so in all Spanish or Spanish-American countries. The man, like Mrs. Stapleton herself, spoke good English, but with a curious lisping accent. I have myself seen this old man cross the Grimpen Mire by the path which Stapleton had marked out. It is very probable, therefore, that in the absence of his master it was he who cared for the hound, though he may never have known the purpose for which the beast was used.\n\n\"The Stapletons then went down to Devonshire, whither they were soon followed by Sir Henry and you. One word now as to how I stood myself at that time. It may possibly recur to your memory that when I examined the paper upon which the printed words were fastened I made a close inspection for the water-mark. In doing so I held it within a few inches of my eyes, and was conscious of a faint smell of the scent known as white jessamine. There are seventy-five perfumes, which it is very necessary that a criminal expert should be able to distinguish from each other, and cases have more than once within my own experience depended upon their prompt recognition. The scent suggested the presence of a lady, and already my thoughts began to turn towards the Stapletons. Thus I had made certain of the hound, and had guessed at the criminal before ever we went to the west country.\n\n\"It was my game to watch Stapleton. It was evident, however, that I could not do this if I were with you, since he would be keenly on his guard. I deceived everybody, therefore, yourself included, and I came down secretly when I was supposed to be in London. My hardships were not so great as you imagined, though such trifling details must never interfere with the investigation of a case. I stayed for the most part at Coombe Tracey, and only used the hut upon the moor when it was necessary to be near the scene of action. Cartwright had come down with me, and in his disguise as a country boy he was of great assistance to me. I was dependent upon him for food and clean linen. When I was watching Stapleton, Cartwright was frequently watching you, so that I was able to keep my hand upon all the strings.\n\n\"I have already told you that your reports reached me rapidly, being forwarded instantly from Baker Street to Coombe Tracey. They were of great service to me, and especially that one incidentally truthful piece of biography of Stapleton's. I was able to establish the identity of the man and the woman and knew at last exactly how I stood. The case had been considerably complicated through the incident of the escaped convict and the relations between him and the Barrymores. This also you cleared up in a very effective way, though I had already come to the same conclusions from my own observations.\n\n\"By the time that you discovered me upon the moor I had a complete knowledge of the whole business, but I had not a case which could go to a jury. Even Stapleton's attempt upon Sir Henry that night which ended in the death of the unfortunate convict did not help us much in proving murder against our man. There seemed to be no alternative but to catch him red-handed, and to do so we had to use Sir Henry, alone and apparently unprotected, as a bait. We did so, and at the cost of a severe shock to our client we succeeded in completing our case and driving Stapleton to his destruction. That Sir Henry should have been exposed to this is, I must confess, a reproach to my management of the case, but we had no means of foreseeing the terrible and paralyzing spectacle which the beast presented, nor could we predict the fog which enabled him to burst upon us at such short notice. We succeeded in our object at a cost which both the specialist and Dr. Mortimer assure me will be a temporary one. A long journey may enable our friend to recover not only from his shattered nerves but also from his wounded feelings. His love for the lady was deep and sincere, and to him the saddest part of all this black business was that he should have been deceived by her.\n\n\"It only remains to indicate the part which she had played throughout. There can be no doubt that Stapleton exercised an influence over her which may have been love or may have been fear, or very possibly both, since they are by no means incompatible emotions. It was, at least, absolutely effective. At his command she consented to pass as his sister, though he found the limits of his power over her when he endeavoured to make her the direct accessory to murder. She was ready to warn Sir Henry so far as she could without implicating her husband, and again and again she tried to do so. Stapleton himself seems to have been capable of jealousy, and when he saw the baronet paying court to the lady, even though it was part of his own plan, still he could not help interrupting with a passionate outburst which revealed the fiery soul which his self-contained manner so cleverly concealed. By encouraging the intimacy he made it certain that Sir Henry would frequently come to Merripit House and that he would sooner or later get the opportunity which he desired. On the day of the crisis, however, his wife turned suddenly against him. She had learned something of the death of the convict, and she knew that the hound was being kept in the outhouse on the evening that Sir Henry was coming to dinner. She taxed her husband with his intended crime, and a furious scene followed in which he showed her for the first time that she had a rival in his love. Her fidelity turned in an instant to bitter hatred, and he saw that she would betray him. He tied her up, therefore, that she might have no chance of warning Sir Henry, and he hoped, no doubt, that when the whole countryside put down the baronet's death to the curse of his family, as they certainly would do, he could win his wife back to accept an accomplished fact and to keep silent upon what she knew. In this I fancy that in any case he made a miscalculation, and that, if we had not been there, his doom would none the less have been sealed. A woman of Spanish blood does not condone such an injury so lightly. And now, my dear Watson, without referring to my notes, I cannot give you a more detailed account of this curious case. I do not know that anything essential has been left unexplained.\"\n\n\"He could not hope to frighten Sir Henry to death as he had done the old uncle with his bogie hound.\"\n\n\"The beast was savage and half-starved. If its appearance did not frighten its victim to death, at least it would paralyze the resistance which might be offered.\"\n\n\"No doubt. There only remains one difficulty. If Stapleton came into the succession, how could he explain the fact that he, the heir, had been living unannounced under another name so close to the property? How could he claim it without causing suspicion and inquiry?\"\n\n\"It is a formidable difficulty, and I fear that you ask too much when you expect me to solve it. The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer. Mrs. Stapleton has heard her husband discuss the problem on several occasions. There were three possible courses. He might claim the property from South America, establish his identity before the British authorities there, and so obtain the fortune without ever coming to England at all; or he might adopt an elaborate disguise during the short time that he need be in London; or, again, he might furnish an accomplice with the proofs and papers, putting him in as heir, and retaining a claim upon some proportion of his income. We cannot doubt from what we know of him that he would have found some way out of the difficulty. And now, my dear Watson, we have had some weeks of severe work, and for one evening, I think, we may turn our thoughts into more pleasant channels. I have a box for 'Les Huguenots,' Have you heard the De Reszkes? Might I trouble you then to be ready in half an hour, and we can stop at Marcini's for a little dinner on the way?\"" + } + ] + }, + { + "title": "Tales of Unease", + "author": "Arthur Conan Doyle", + "genres": [ + "short stories", + "horror", + "gothic", + "mystery" + ], + "tags": [], + "chapters": [ + { + "title": "TALES OF UNEASE", + "text": "[ The Ring of Thoth ]\n\nMr John Vansittart Smith FRS of 147a Gower Street was a man whose energy of purpose and clearness of thought might have placed him in the very first rank of scientific observers. He was the victim, however, of a universal ambition which prompted him to aim at distinction in many subjects rather than pre-eminence in one. In his early days he had shown an aptitude for zoology and for botany which caused his friends to look upon him as a second Darwin, but when a professorship was almost within his reach he had suddenly discontinued his studies and turned his whole attention to chemistry. Here his researches upon the spectra of the metals had won him his fellowship in the Royal Society; but again he played the coquette with his subject, and after a year\"s absence from the laboratory, he joined the Oriental Society, and delivered a paper on the hieroglyphic and demotic inscriptions of El Kab, thus giving a crowning example both of the versatility and of the inconstancy of his talents.\n\nThe most fickle of wooers, however, is apt to be caught at last, and so it was with John Vansittart Smith. The more he burrowed his way into Egyptology, the more impressed he became by the vast field which it opened to the enquirer and by the extreme importance of a subject which promised to throw a light upon the first germs of human civilisation and the origin of the greater part of our arts and sciences. So struck was Mr Smith that he straightway married an Egyptological young lady who had written upon the sixth dynasty, and having thus secured a sound base of operations he set himself to collect materials for a work which should unite the research of Lepsius and the ingenuity of Champollion. The preparation of this magnum opus entailed many hurried visits to the magnificent Egyptian collections of the Louvre, upon the last of which, no longer ago than the middle of last October, he became involved in a most strange and noteworthy adventure.\n\nThe trains had been slow and the Channel had been rough, so that the student arrived in Paris in a somewhat befogged and feverish condition. On reaching the H\u00f4tel de France, in the Rue Laffitte, he had thrown himself upon a sofa for a couple of hours, but finding that he was unable to sleep, he determined, in spite of his fatigue, to make his way to the Louvre, settle the point which he had come to decide, and take the evening train back to Dieppe. Having come to his conclusion, he donned his greatcoat, for it was a raw rainy day, and made his way across the Boulevard des Italiens and down the Avenue de l\"Op\u00e9ra. Once in the Louvre he was on familiar ground, and he speedily made his way to the collection of papyri which it was his intention to consult.\n\nThe warmest admirers of John Vansittart Smith could hardly claim for him that he was a handsome man. His high-beaked nose and prominent chin had something of the same acute and incisive character which distinguished his intellect. He held his head in a birdlike fashion, and birdlike, too, was the pecking motion with which, in conversation, he threw out his objections and retorts. As he stood, with the high collar of his greatcoat raised to his ears, he might have seen from the reflection in the glass case before him that his appearance was a singular one. Yet it came upon him as a sudden jar when an English voice behind him exclaimed in very audible tones, \"What a queer-looking mortal!\"\n\nThe student had a large amount of petty vanity in his composition which manifested itself by an ostentatious and overdone disregard of all personal considerations. He straightened his lips and looked rigidly at the roll of papyrus, while his heart filled with bitterness against the whole race of travelling Britons.\n\n\"Yes,\" said another voice, \"he really is an extraordinary fellow.\"\n\n\"Do you know,\" said the first speaker, \"one could almost believe that by the continual contemplation of mummies the chap has become half a mummy himself!\"\n\n\"He has certainly an Egyptian cast of countenance,\" said the other.\n\nJohn Vansittart Smith spun round upon his heel with the intention of shaming his countrymen by a corrosive remark or two. To his surprise and relief, the two young fellows who had been conversing had their shoulders turned towards him and were gazing at one of the Louvre attendants who was polishing some brasswork at the other side of the room.\n\n\"Carter will be waiting for us at the Palais Royal,\" said one tourist to the other, glancing at his watch, and they clattered away, leaving the student to his labours.\n\n\"I wonder what these chatterers call an Egyptian cast of countenance,\" thought John Vansittart Smith, and he moved his position slightly in order to catch a glimpse of the man\"s face. He started as his eyes fell upon it. It was indeed the very face with which his studies had made him familiar. The regular statuesque features, broad brow, well-rounded chin and dusky complexion were the exact counterpart of the innumerable statues, mummy-cases and pictures which adorned the walls of the apartment. The thing was beyond all coincidence. The man must be an Egyptian. The national angularity of the shoulders and narrowness of the hips were alone sufficient to identify him.\n\nJohn Vansittart Smith shuffled towards the attendant with some intention of addressing him. He was not light of touch in conversation, and found it difficult to strike the happy mean between the brusqueness of the superior and the geniality of the equal. As he came nearer, the man presented his side face to him, but kept his gaze still bent upon his work. Vansittart Smith, fixing his eyes upon the fellow\"s skin, was conscious of a sudden impression that there was something inhuman and preternatural about its appearance. Over the temple and cheek-bone it was as glazed and as shiny as varnished parchment. There was no suggestion of pores. One could not fancy a drop of moisture upon that arid surface. From brow to chin, however, it was cross-hatched by a million delicate wrinkles, which shot and interlaced as though Nature in some Maori mood had tried how wild and intricate a pattern she could devise.\n\n\"O\u00f9 est la collection de Memphis?\" asked the student, with the awkward air of a man who is devising a question merely for the purpose of opening a conversation.\n\n\"C\"est l\u00e0,\" replied the man brusquely, nodding his head at the other side of the room.\n\n\"Vous \u00eates un Egyptien, n\"est-ce pas?\" asked the Englishman.\n\nThe attendant looked up and turned his strange dark eyes upon his questioner. They were vitreous, with a misty dry shininess such as Vansittart Smith had never seen in a human head before. As he gazed into them he saw some strong emotion gather in their depths, which rose and deepened until it broke into a look of something akin both to horror and to hatred.\n\n\"Non, monsieur; je suis fran\u00e7ais.\" The man turned abruptly and bent low over his polishing. The student gazed at him for a moment in astonishment, and then turning to a chair in a retired corner behind one of the doors he proceeded to make notes of his researches among the papyri. His thoughts, however, refused to return into their natural groove. They would run upon the enigmatical attendant with the sphinx-like face and the parchment skin.\n\n\"Where have I seen such eyes?\" said Vansittart Smith to himself. \"There is something saurian about them, something reptilian. There\"s the membrana nictitans of the snakes,\" he mused, bethinking himself of his zoological studies. \"It gives a shiny effect. But there was something more here. There was a sense of power, of wisdom \u2013 so I read them \u2013 and of weariness, utter weariness, and ineffable despair. It may be all imagination, but I never had so strong an impression. By Jove, I must have another look at them!\" He rose and paced round the Egyptian rooms, but the man who had excited his curiosity had disappeared.\n\nThe student sat down again in his quiet corner, and continued to work at his notes. He had gained the information which he required from the papyri, and it only remained to write it down while it was still fresh in his memory. For a time his pencil travelled rapidly over the paper, but soon the lines became less level, the words more blurred and finally the pencil tinkled down upon the floor and the head of the student dropped heavily forward upon his chest. Tired out by his journey, he slept so soundly in his lonely post behind the door that neither the clanking civil guard, nor the footsteps of sightseers, nor even the loud hoarse bell which gives the signal for closing, were sufficient to arouse him.\n\nTwilight deepened into darkness, the bustle from the Rue de Rivoli waxed and then waned, distant Notre Dame clanged out the hour of midnight, and still the dark and lonely figure sat silently in the shadow. It was not until close upon one in the morning that, with a sudden gasp and an intaking of the breath, Vansittart Smith returned to consciousness. For a moment it flashed upon him that he had dropped asleep in his study chair at home. The moon was shining fitfully though the unshuttered window, however, and as his eye ran along the lines of mummies and the endless array of polished cases, he remembered clearly where he was and how he came there. The student was not a nervous man. He possessed that love of a novel situation which is peculiar to his race. Stretching out his cramped limbs, he looked at his watch and burst into a chuckle as he observed the hour. The episode would make an admirable anecdote to be introduced into his next paper as a relief to the graver and heavier speculations. He was a little cold, but wide awake and much refreshed. It was no wonder that the guardians had overlooked him, for the door threw its heavy black shadow right across him.\n\nThe complete silence was impressive. Neither outside nor inside was there a creak or a murmur. He was alone with the dead men of a dead civilisation. What though the outer city reeked of the garish nineteenth century! In all this chamber there was scarce an article, from the shrivelled ear of wheat to the pigment-box of the painter, which had not held its own against four thousand years. Here was the flotsam and jetsam washed up by the great ocean of time from that far-off empire. From stately Thebes, from lordly Luxor, from the great temples of Heliopolis, from a hundred rifled tombs, these relics had been brought. The student glanced round at the long-silent figures who flickered vaguely up through the gloom, at the busy toilers who were now so restful, and he fell into a reverent and thoughtful mood. An unwonted sense of his own youth and insignificance came over him. Leaning back in his chair, he gazed dreamily down the long vista of rooms, all silvery with the moonshine, which extended through the whole wing of the widespread building. His eyes fell upon the yellow glare of a distant lamp.\n\nJohn Vansittart Smith sat up on his chair with his nerves all on edge. The light was advancing slowly towards him, pausing from time to time, and then coming jerkily onwards. The bearer moved noiselessly. In the utter silence there was no suspicion of the pat of a footfall. An idea of robbers entered the Englishman\"s head. He snuggled up farther into the corner. The light was two rooms off. Now it was in the next chamber, and still there was no sound. With something approaching to a thrill of fear, the student observed a face, floating in the air as it were, behind the flare of the lamp. The figure was wrapped in shadow, but the light fell full upon the strange, eager face. There was no mistaking the metallic, glistening eyes and the cadaverous skin. It was the attendant with whom he had conversed.\n\nVansittart Smith\"s first impulse was to come forward and address him. A few words of explanation would set the matter clear, and lead doubtless to his being conducted to some side-door from which he might make his way to his hotel. As the man entered the chamber, however, there was something so stealthy in his movements, and so furtive in his expression, that the Englishman altered his intention. This was clearly no ordinary official walking the rounds. The fellow wore felt-soled slippers, stepped with a rising chest, and glanced quickly from left to right, while his hurried, gasping breathing thrilled the flame of his lamp. Vansittart Smith crouched silently back into the corner and watched him keenly, convinced that his errand was one of secret and probably sinister import.\n\nThere was no hesitation in the other\"s movements. He stepped lightly and swiftly across to one of the great cases, and drawing a key from his pocket, he unlocked it. From the upper shelf he pulled down a mummy, which he bore away with him, and laid it with much care and solicitude upon the ground. By it he placed his lamp, and then squatting down beside it in Eastern fashion he began with long, quivering fingers to undo the cerecloths and bandages which girt it round As the crackling rolls of linen peeled off one after the other, a strong aromatic odour filled the chamber, and fragments of scented wood and of spices pattered down upon the marble floor.\n\nIt was clear to John Vansittart Smith that this mummy had never been unswathed before. The operation interested him keenly. He thrilled all over with curiosity, and his birdlike head protruded farther and farther from behind the door. When, however, the last roll had been removed from the four-thousand-year-old head, it was all that he could do to stifle an outcry of amazement. First, a cascade of long, black, glossy tresses poured over the workman\"s hands and arms. A second turn of the bandage revealed a low, white forehead, with a pair of delicately arched eyebrows. A third uncovered a pair of bright, deeply fringed eyes and a straight, well-cut nose, while a fourth and last showed a sweet, full, sensitive mouth and a beautifully curved chin. The whole face was one of extraordinary loveliness, save for the one blemish that in the centre of the forehead there was a single irregular, coffee-coloured splotch. It was a triumph of the embalmer\"s art. Vansittart Smith\"s eyes grew larger and larger as he gazed upon it, and he chirruped in his throat with satisfaction.\n\nIts effect upon the Egyptologist was as nothing, however, compared with that which it produced upon the strange attendant. He threw his hands up into the air, burst into a harsh clatter of words, and then, hurling himself down upon the ground beside the mummy, he threw his arms round her and kissed her repeatedly upon the lips and brow. \"Ma petite!\" he groaned in French. \"Ma pauvre petite!\" His voice broke with emotion, and his innumerable wrinkles quivered and writhed, but the student observed in the lamplight that his shining eyes were still dry and tearless as two beads of steel. For some minutes he lay, with a twitching face, crooning and moaning over the beautiful head. Then he broke into a sudden smile, said some words in an unknown tongue, and sprang to his feet with the vigorous air of one who has braced himself for an effort.\n\nIn the centre of the room there was a large, circular case which contained, as the student had frequently remarked, a magnificent collection of early Egyptian rings and precious stones. To this the attendant strode, and unlocking it, threw it open. On the ledge at the side he placed his lamp, and beside it a small earthenware jar which he had drawn from his pocket. He then took a handful of rings from the case, and with a most serious and anxious face he proceeded to smear each in turn with some liquid substance from the earthen pot, holding them to the light as he did so. He was clearly disappointed with the first lot, for he threw them petulantly back into the case and drew out some more. One of these, a massive ring with a large crystal set in it, he seized and eagerly tested with the contents of the jar. Instantly he uttered a cry of joy, and threw out his arms in a wild gesture which upset the pot and set the liquid streaming across the floor to the very feet of the Englishman. The attendant drew a red handkerchief from his bosom, and mopping up the mess, he followed it into the corner, where in a moment he found himself face to face with his observer.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" said John Vansittart Smith, with all imaginable politeness; \"I have been unfortunate enough to fall asleep behind this door.\"\n\n\"And you have been watching me?\" the other asked in English, with a most venomous look on his corpse-like face.\n\nThe student was a man of veracity. \"I confess,\" said he, \"that I have noticed your movements, and that they have aroused my curiosity and interest in the highest degree.\"\n\nThe man drew a long, flamboyantly bladed knife from his bosom. \"You have had a very narrow escape,\" he said; \"had I seen you ten minutes ago, I should have driven this through your heart. As it is, if you touch me or interfere with me in any way you are a dead man.\"\n\n\"I have no wish to interfere with you,\" the student answered. \"My presence here is entirely accidental. All I ask is that you will have the extreme kindness to show me out through some side-door.\" He spoke with great suavity, for the man was still pressing the tip of his dagger against the palm of his left hand, as though to assure himself of its sharpness, while his face preserved its malignant expression.\n\n\"If I thought \u2013 \" said he. \"But no, perhaps it is as well. What is your name?\"\n\nThe Englishman gave it.\n\n\"Vansittart Smith,\" the other repeated. \"Are you the same Vansittart Smith who gave a paper in London upon El Kab? I saw a report of it. Your knowledge of the subject is contemptible.\"\n\n\"Sir!\" cried the Egyptologist.\n\n\"Yet it is superior to that of many who make even greater pretensions. The whole keystone of our old life in Egypt was not the inscriptions or monuments of which you make so much, but was our hermetic philosophy and mystic knowledge of which you say little or nothing.\"\n\n\"Our old life!\" repeated the scholar, wide-eyed; and then suddenly, \"Good God, look at the mummy\"s face!\"\n\nThe strange man turned and flashed his light upon the dead woman, uttering a long, doleful cry as he did so. The action of the air had already undone all the art of the embalmer. The skin had fallen away, the eyes had sunk inwards, the discoloured lips had writhed away from the yellow teeth, and the brown mark upon the forehead alone showed that it was indeed the same face which had shown such youth and beauty a few short minutes before.\n\nThe man flapped his hands together in grief and horror. Then mastering himself by a strong effort he turned his hard eyes once more upon the Englishman.\n\n\"It does not matter,\" he said, in a shaking voice. \"It does not really matter. I came here tonight with the fixed determination to do something. It is now done. All else is as nothing. I have found my quest. The old curse is broken. I can rejoin her. What matter about her inanimate shell so long as her spirit is awaiting me at the other side of the veil!\"\n\n\"These are wild words,\" said Vansittart Smith. He was becoming more and more convinced that he had to do with a madman.\n\n\"Time presses, and I must go,\" continued the other. \"The moment is at hand for which I have waited this weary time. But I must show you out first. Come with me.\"\n\nTaking up the lamp, he turned from the disordered chamber and led the student swiftly through the long series of the Egyptian, Assyrian and Persian apartments. At the end of the latter he pushed open a small door let into the wall and descended a winding, stone stair. The Englishman felt the cold, fresh air of the night upon his brow. There was a door opposite him which appeared to communicate with the street. To the right of this another door stood ajar, throwing a spurt of yellow light across the passage. \"Come in here!\" said the attendant shortly.\n\nVansittart Smith hesitated. He had hoped that he had come to the end of his adventure. Yet his curiosity was strong within him. He could not leave the matter unsolved, so he followed his strange companion into the lighted chamber.\n\nIt was a small room, such as is devoted to a concierge. A wood fire sparkled in the grate. At one side stood a truckle bed, and at the other a coarse, wooden chair, with a round table in the centre, which bore the remains of a meal. As the visitor\"s eye glanced round he could not but remark with an ever-recurring thrill that all the small details of the room were of the most quaint design and antique workmanship. The candlesticks, the vases upon the chimney-piece, the fire-irons, the ornaments upon the walls were all such as he had been wont to associate with the remote past. The gnarled, heavy-eyed man sat himself down upon the edge of the bed, and motioned his guest into the chair.\n\n\"There may be design in this,\" he said, still speaking excellent English. \"It may be decreed that I should leave some account behind as a warning to all rash mortals who would set their wits up against the workings of nature. I leave it with you. Make such use as you will of it. I speak to you now with my feet upon the threshold of the other world.\n\n\"I am, as you surmised, an Egyptian \u2013 not one of the down-trodden race of slaves who now inhabit the delta of the Nile, but a survivor of that fiercer and harder people who tamed the Hebrew, drove the Ethiopian back into the southern deserts, and built those mighty works which have been the envy and the wonder of all after generations. It was in the reign of Tuthmosis, sixteen hundred years before the birth of Christ, that I first saw the light. You shrink away from me. Wait, and you will see that I am more to be pitied than to be feared.\n\n\"My name was Sosra. My father had been the chief priest of Osiris in the great temple of Abaris, which stood in those days upon the Bubastic branch of the Nile. I was brought up in the temple and was trained in all those mystic arts which are spoken of in your own Bible. I was an apt pupil. Before I was sixteen I had learned all the wisest priest could teach me. From that time on I studied nature\"s secrets for myself, and shared my knowledge with no man.\n\n\"Of all the questions that attracted me there were none over which I laboured so long as over those which concern themselves with the nature of life. I probed deeply into the vital principle. The aim of medicine had been to drive away disease when it appeared. It seemed to me that a method might be devised which should so fortify the body as to prevent weakness or death from ever taking hold of it. It is useless that I should recount my researches. You would scarce comprehend them if I did. They were carried out partly upon animals, partly upon slaves and partly on myself. Suffice it that their result was to furnish me with a substance which, when injected into the blood, would endow the body with strength to resist the effects of time, of violence or of disease. It would not indeed confer immortality, but its potency would endure for many thousands of years. I used it upon a cat, and afterwards drugged the creature with the most deadly poisons. That cat is alive in Lower Egypt at the present moment. There was nothing of mystery or magic in the matter. It was simply a chemical discovery, which may well be made again.\n\n\"Love of life runs high in the young. It seemed to me that I had broken away from all human care now that I had abolished pain and driven death to such a distance. With a light heart I poured the accursed stuff into my veins. Then I looked round for someone whom I could benefit. There was a young priest of Thoth, Parmes by name, who had won my goodwill by his earnest nature and his devotion to his studies. To him I whispered my secret, and at his request I injected him with my elixir. I should now, I reflected, never be without a companion of the same age as myself.\n\n\"After this grand discovery I relaxed my studies to some extent, but Parmes continued his with redoubled energy. Every day I could see him working with his flasks and his distiller in the Temple of Thoth, but he said little to me as to the result of his labours. For my own part, I used to walk through the city and look around me with exultation as I reflected that all this was destined to pass away, and that only I should remain. The people would bow to me as they passed me, for the fame of my knowledge had gone abroad.\n\n\"There was war at this time, and the Great King had sent down his soldiers to the eastern boundary to drive away the Hyksos. A governor, too, was sent to Abaris, that he might hold it for the king. I had heard much of the beauty of the daughter of this governor, but one day as I walked out with Parmes we met her, borne upon the shoulders of her slaves. I was struck with love as with lightning. My heart went out from me. I could have thrown myself beneath the feet of her bearers. This was my woman. Life without her was impossible. I swore by the head of Horus that she should be mine. I swore it to the priest of Thoth. He turned away from me with a brow which was as black as midnight.\n\n\"There is no need to tell you of our wooing. She came to love me even as I loved her. I learned that Parmes had seen her before I did, and had shown her that he, too, loved her, but I could smile at his passion, for I knew that her heart was mine. The white plague had come upon the city and many were stricken, but I laid my hands upon the sick and nursed them without fear or scathe. She marvelled at my daring. Then I told her my secret, and begged her that she would let me use my art upon her.\n\n\" \"Your flower shall then be unwithered, Atma,\" I said. \"Other things may pass away, but you and I, and our great love for each other, shall outlive the tomb of King Chefru.\"\n\n\"But she was full of timid, maidenly objections. Was it right? she asked, was it not a thwarting of \"the will of the gods\"? If the great Osiris had wished that our years should be so long, would he not himself have brought it about?\n\n\"With fond and loving words I overcame her doubts, and yet she hesitated. It was a great question, she said. She would think it over for this one night. In the morning I should know of her resolution. Surely one night was not too much to ask. She wished to pray to Isis for help in her decision.\n\n\"With a sinking heart and a sad foreboding of evil I left her with her tirewomen. In the morning, when the early sacrifice was over, I hurried to her house. A frightened slave met me upon the steps. Her mistress was ill, she said, very ill. In a frenzy I broke my way through the attendants, and rushed through hall and corridor to my Atma\"s chamber. She lay upon her couch, her head high upon the pillow, with a pallid face and a glazed eye. On her forehead there blazed a single angry, purple patch. I knew that hell-mark of old. It was the scar of the white plague, the sign-manual of death.\n\n\"Why should I speak of that terrible time? For months I was mad, fevered, delirious, and yet I could not die. Never did an Arab thirst after the sweet wells as I longed after death. Could poison or steel have shortened the thread of my existence, I should soon have rejoined my love in the land with the narrow portal. I tried, but it was of no avail. The accursed influence was too strong upon me. One night as I lay upon my couch, weak and weary, Parmes, the priest of Thoth, came to my chamber. He stood in the circle of the lamplight, and he looked down upon me with eyes which were bright with a mad joy.\n\n\" \"Why did you let the maiden die?\" he asked; \"why did you not strengthen her as you strengthened me?\"\n\n\" \"I was too late,\" I answered. \"But I had forgot. You also loved her. You are my fellow in misfortune. Is it not terrible to think of the centuries which must pass ere we look upon her again? Fools, fools, that we were to take death to be our enemy!\"\n\n\" \"You may say that,\" he cried with a wild laugh; \"the words come well from your lips. For me they have no meaning.\"\n\n\" \"What mean you?\" I cried, raising myself upon my elbow. \"Surely, friend, this grief has turned your brain.\" His face was aflame with joy, and he writhed and shook like one who hath a devil.\n\n\" \"Do you know whither I go?\" he asked.\n\n\" \"Nay,\" I answered, \"I cannot tell.\"\n\n\" \"I go to her,\" said he. \"She lies embalmed in the farther tomb by the double palm tree beyond the city wall.\"\n\n\" \"Why do you go there?\" I asked.\n\n\" \"To die!\" he shrieked, \"to die! I am not bound by earthen fetters.\"\n\n\" \"But the elixir is in your blood,\" I cried.\n\n\" \"I can defy it,\" said he; \"I have found a stronger principle which will destroy it. It is working in my veins at this moment, and in an hour I shall be a dead man. I shall join her, and you shall remain behind.\"\n\n\"As I looked upon him I could see that he spoke words of truth. The light in his eye told me that he was indeed beyond the power of the elixir.\n\n\" \"You will teach me!\" I cried.\n\n\" \"Never!\" he answered.\n\n\" \"I implore you, by the wisdom of Thoth, by the majesty of Anubis!\"\n\n\" \"It is useless,\" he said coldly.\n\n\" \"Then I will find it out,\" I cried.\n\n\" \"You cannot,\" he answered; \"it came to me by chance. There is one ingredient which you can never get. Save that which is in the ring of Thoth, none will ever more be made.\"\n\n\" \"In the ring of Thoth!\" I repeated, \"where then is the ring of Thoth?\"\n\n\" \"That also you shall never know,\" he answered. \"You won her love. Who has won in the end? I leave you to your sordid earth life. My chains are broken. I must go!\" He turned upon his heel and fled from the chamber. In the morning came the news that the priest of Thoth was dead.\n\n\"My days after that were spent in study. I must find this subtle poison which was strong enough to undo the elixir. From early dawn to midnight I bent over the test-tube and the furnace. Above all, I collected the papyri and the chemical flasks of the priest of Thoth. Alas! they taught me little. Here and there some hint or stray expression would raise hope in my bosom, but no good ever came of it. Still, month after month, I struggled on. When my heart grew faint I would make my way to the tomb by the palm tree. There, standing by the dead casket from which the jewel had been rifled, I would feel her sweet presence, and would whisper to her that I would rejoin her if mortal wit could solve the riddle.\n\n\"Parmes had said that his discovery was connected with the ring of Thoth. I had some remembrance of the trinket. It was a large and weighty circlet, made not of gold but of a rarer and heavier metal brought from the mines of Mount Harbal. Platinum, you call it. The ring had, I remembered, a hollow crystal set in it, in which some few drops of liquid might be stored. Now, the secret of Parmes could not have to do with the metal alone, for there were many rings of that metal in the temple. Was it not more likely that he had stored his precious poison within the cavity of the crystal? I had scarce come to this conclusion before, in hunting through his papers, I came upon one which told me that it was indeed so, and that there was still some of the liquid unused.\n\n\"But how to find the ring? It was not upon him when he was stripped for the embalmer. Of that I made sure. Neither was it among his private effects. In vain I searched every room that he had entered, every box and vase and chattel that he had owned. I sifted the very sand of the desert in the places where he had been wont to walk; but, do what I would, I could come upon no traces of the ring of Thoth. Yet it may be that my labours would have overcome all obstacles had it not been for a new and unlooked-for misfortune.\n\n\"A great war had been waged against the Hyksos, and the captains of the Great King had been cut off in the desert, with all their bowmen and horsemen. The shepherd tribes were upon us like the locusts in a dry year. From the wilderness of Shur to the great, bitter lake there was blood by day and fire by night. Abaris was the bulwark of Egypt, but we could not keep the savages back. The city fell. The governor and the soldiers were put to the sword, and I, with many more, was led away into captivity.\n\n\"For years and years I tended cattle in the great plains by the Euphrates. My master died, and his son grew old, but I was still as far from death as ever. At last I escaped upon a swift camel, and made my way back to Egypt. The Hyksos had settled in the land which they had conquered, and their own king ruled over the country. Abaris had been torn down, the city had been burned, and of the great temple there was nothing left save an unsightly mound. Everywhere the tombs had been rifled and the monuments destroyed. Of my Atma\"s grave no sign was left. It was buried in the sands of the desert, and the palm tree which marked the spot had long disappeared. The papers of Parmes and the remains of the temple of Thoth were either destroyed or scattered far and wide over the deserts of Syria. All search after them was vain.\n\n\"From that time I gave up all hope of ever finding the ring or discovering the subtle drug. I set myself to live as patiently as might be until the effect of the elixir should wear away. How can you understand how terrible a thing time is, you who have experience only of the narrow course which lies between the cradle and the grave! I know it to my cost, I who have floated down the whole stream of history. I was old when Ilium fell. I was very old when Herodotus came to Memphis. I was bowed down with years when the new gospel came upon earth. Yet you see me much as other men are, with the cursed elixir still sweetening my blood, and guarding me against that which I would court. Now, at last, at last I have come to the end of it!\n\n\"I have travelled in all lands and I have dwelt with all nations. Every tongue is the same to me. I learned them all to help pass the weary time. I need not tell you how slowly they drifted by, the long dawn of modern civilisation, the dreary middle years, the dark times of barbarism. They are all behind me now. I have never looked with the eyes of love upon another woman. Atma knows that I have been constant to her.\n\n\"It was my custom to read all that the scholars had to say upon Ancient Egypt. I have been in many positions, sometimes affluent, sometimes poor, but I have always found enough to enable me to buy the journals which deal with such matters. Some nine months ago I was in San Francisco, and there I read an account of some discoveries made in the neighbourhood of Abaris. My heart leapt into my mouth as I read it. It said that the excavator had busied himself in exploring some tombs recently unearthed. In one there had been found an unopened mummy with an inscription upon the outer case setting forth that it contained the body of the daughter of the governor of the city in the days of Tuthmosis. It added that on removing the outer case there had been exposed a large platinum ring set with a crystal, which had been laid upon the breast of the embalmed woman. This, then, was where Parmes had hid the ring of Thoth. He might well say that it was safe, for no Egyptian would ever stain his soul by moving even the outer case of a buried friend.\n\n\"That very night I set off from San Francisco, and in a few weeks I found myself once more at Abaris, if a few sand-heaps and crumbling walls may retain the name of the great city. I hurried to the Frenchmen who were digging there and asked them for the ring. They replied that both the ring and the mummy had been sent to the Boulak Museum at Cairo. To Boulak I went, but only to be told that Mariette Bey had claimed them and had shipped them to the Louvre. I followed them, and there, at last, in the Egyptian chamber, I came, after close upon four thousand years, upon the remains of my Atma, and upon the ring for which I had sought so long.\n\n\"But how was I to lay hands upon them? How was I to have them for my very own? It chanced that the office of attendant was vacant. I went to the director. I convinced him that I knew much about Egypt. In my eagerness I said too much. He remarked that a professor\"s chair would suit me better than a seat in the conciergerie. I knew more, he said, than he did. It was only by blundering, and letting him think that he had overestimated my knowledge, that I prevailed upon him to let me move the few effects which I have retained into this chamber. It is my first and my last night here.\n\n\"Such is my story, Mr Vansittart Smith. I need not say more to a man of your perception. By a strange chance you have this night looked upon the face of the woman whom I loved in those far-off days. There were many rings with crystals in the case, and I had to test for the platinum to be sure of the one I wanted. A glance at the crystal has shown me that the liquid is indeed within it, and that I shall at last be able to shake off that accursed health which has been worse to me than the foulest disease. I have nothing more to say to you. I have unburdened myself. You may tell my story or you may withhold it at your pleasure. The choice rests with you. I owe you some amends, for you have had a narrow escape of your life this night. I was a desperate man, and not to be baulked in my purpose. Had I seen you before the thing was done, I might have put it beyond your power to oppose me or to raise an alarm. This is the door. It leads into the Rue de Rivoli. Good-night.\"\n\nThe Englishman glanced back. For a moment the lean figure of Sosra the Egyptian stood framed in the narrow doorway. The next the door had slammed, and the heavy rasping of a bolt broke on the silent night.\n\nIt was on the second day after his return to London that Mr John Vansittart Smith saw the following concise narrative in the Paris correspondence of The Times:\n\nCurious Occurrence in the Louvre \u2013 Yesterday morning a strange discovery was made in the principal Eastern chamber. The ouvriers who are employed to clean out the rooms in the morning found one of the attendants lying dead upon the floor with his arms round one of the mummies. So close was his embrace that it was only with the utmost difficulty that they were separated. One of the cases containing valuable rings had been opened and rifled. The authorities are of the opinion that the man was bearing away the mummy with some idea of selling it to a private collector, but that he was struck down in the very act by long-standing disease of the heart. It is said that he was a man of uncertain age and eccentric habits, without any living relations to mourn over his dramatic and untimely end.\n\n\u2042\n\n[ The Lord of Ch\u00e2teau Noir ]\n\nIt was in the days when the German armies had broken their way across France, and when the shattered forces of the young Republic had been swept away to the north of the Aisne and to the south of the Loire. Three broad streams of armed men had rolled slowly but irresistibly from the Rhine, now meandering to the north, now to the south, dividing, coalescing, but all uniting to form one great lake round Paris. And from this lake there welled out smaller streams, one to the north, one southward to Orl\u00e9ans, and a third westward to Normandy. Many a German trooper saw the sea for the first time when he rode his horse girth-deep into the waves at Dieppe.\n\nBlack and bitter were the thoughts of Frenchmen when they saw this weal of dishonour slashed across the fair face of their country. They had fought and they had been overborne. That swarming cavalry, those countless footmen, the masterful guns \u2013 they had tried and tried to make head against them. In battalions their invaders were not to be beaten; but man to man, or ten to ten, they were their equals. A brave Frenchman might still make a single German rue the day that he had left his own bank of the Rhine. Thus, unchronicled amid the battles and the sieges, there broke out another war, a war of individuals, with foul murder upon the one side and brutal reprisal on the other.\n\nColonel von Gramm, of the 24th Posen Infantry, had suffered severely during this new development. He commanded in the little Norman town of Les Andelys, and his outposts stretched amid the hamlets and farmhouses of the district round. No French force was within fifty miles of him, and yet morning after morning he had to listen to a black report of sentries found dead at their posts or of foraging parties which had never returned. Then the colonel would go forth in his wrath, and farmsteadings would blaze and villages tremble; but next morning there was still that same dismal tale to be told. Do what he might, he could not shake off his invisible enemies. And yet, it should not have been so hard, for from certain signs in common, in the plan and in the deed, it was certain that all these outrages came from a single source.\n\nColonel von Gramm had tried violence and it had failed. Gold might be more successful. He published it abroad over the countryside that five hundred francs would be paid for information. There was no response. Then eight hundred. The peasants were incorruptible. Then, goaded on by a murdered corporal, he rose to a thousand, and so bought the soul of Fran\u00e7ois Rejane, farm labourer, whose Norman avarice was a stronger passion than his French hatred.\n\n\"You say that you know who did these crimes?\" asked the Prussian colonel, eyeing with loathing the blue-bloused, rat-faced creature before him.\n\n\"Yes, colonel.\"\n\n\"And it was \u2013?\"\n\n\"Those thousand francs, colonel \u2013\"\n\n\"Not a sou until your story has been tested. Come! Who is it who has murdered my men?\"\n\n\"It is Count Eustace of Ch\u00e2teau Noir.\"\n\n\"You lie!\" cried the colonel, angrily. \"A gentleman and a nobleman could not have done such crimes.\"\n\nThe peasant shrugged his shoulders. \"It is evident to me that you do not know the count. It is this way, colonel. What I tell you is the truth, and I am not afraid that you should test it. The Count of Ch\u00e2teau Noir is a hard man: even at the best time he was a hard man. But of late he has been terrible. It was his son\"s death, you know. His son was under Douay, and he was taken, and then in escaping from Germany he met his death. It was the count\"s only child, and indeed we all think that it has driven him mad. With his peasants he follows the German armies. I do not know how many he has killed, but it is he who cuts the cross upon the foreheads, for it is the badge of his house.\"\n\nIt was true. The murdered sentries had each had a saltire cross slashed across their brows, as by a hunting-knife. The colonel bent his stiff back and ran his forefinger over the map which lay upon the table.\n\n\"The Ch\u00e2teau Noir is not more than four leagues,\" he said.\n\n\"Three and a kilometre, colonel.\"\n\n\"You know the place?\"\n\n\"I used to work there.\"\n\nColonel von Gramm rang the bell. \"Give this man food and detain him,\" said he to the sergeant.\n\n\"Why detain me, colonel? I can tell you no more.\n\n\"We shall need you as guide.\"\n\n\"As guide! But the count? If I were to fall into his hands? Ah, colonel \u2013\"\n\nThe Prussian commander waved him away. \"Send Captain Baumgarten to me at once,\" said he.\n\nThe officer who answered the summons was a man of middle age, heavy-jawed, blue-eyed, with a curving yellow moustache and a brick-red face which turned to an ivory white where his helmet had sheltered it. He was bald, with a shining, tightly-stretched scalp, at the back of which, as in a mirror, it was a favourite mess-joke of the subalterns to trim their moustaches. As a soldier he was slow, but reliable and brave. The colonel could trust him where a more dashing officer might be in danger.\n\n\"You will proceed to Ch\u00e2teau Noir tonight, captain,\" said he. \"A guide has been provided. You will arrest the count and bring him back. If there is an attempt at rescue, shoot him at once.\"\n\n\"How many men shall I take, colonel?\"\n\n\"Well, we are surrounded by spies, and our only chance is to pounce upon him before he knows that we are on the way. A large force will attract attention. On the other hand, you must not risk being cut off.\"\n\n\"I might march north, colonel, as if to join General Goeben. Then I could turn down this road which I see upon your map, and get to Ch\u00e2teau Noir before they could hear of us. In that case, with twenty men \u2013\"\n\n\"Very good, captain. I hope to see you with your prisoner tomorrow morning.\"\n\nIt was a cold December night when Captain Baumgarten marched out of Les Andelys with his twenty Poseners, and took the main road to the north-west. Two miles out he turned suddenly down a narrow, deeply-rutted track, and made swiftly for his man. A thin, cold rain was falling, swishing among the tall poplar trees and rustling in the fields on either side. The captain walked first with Moser, a veteran sergeant, beside him. The sergeant\"s wrist was fastened to that of the French peasant, and it had been whispered in his ear that in case of an ambush the first bullet fired would be through his head. Behind them the twenty infantrymen plodded along through the darkness, with their faces sunk to the rain and their boots squeaking in the soft, wet clay. They knew where they were going and why, and the thought upheld them, for they were bitter at the loss of their comrades. It was a cavalry job, they knew, but the cavalry were all on with the advance, and, besides, it was more fitting that the regiment should avenge its own dead men.\n\nIt was nearly eight when they left Les Andelys. At half-past eleven their guide stopped at a place where two high pillars, crowned with some heraldic stonework, flanked a huge iron gate. The wall in which it had been the opening had crumbled away, but the great gate still towered above the brambles and weeds which had overgrown its base. The Prussians made their way round it, and advanced stealthily, under the shadow of a tunnel of oak branches, up the long avenue, which was still cumbered by the leaves of last autumn. At the top they halted and reconnoitred.\n\nThe black ch\u00e2teau lay in front of them. The moon shone out between two rain-clouds and threw the old house into silver and shadow. It was shaped like an L, with a low arched door in front, and lines of small windows like the open ports of a man-of-war. Above was a dark roof breaking at the corners into little round overhanging turrets, the whole lying silent in the moonshine, with a drift of ragged clouds blackening the heavens behind it. A single light gleamed in one of the lower windows.\n\nThe captain whispered his orders to his men. Some were to creep to the front door, some to the back. Some were to watch the east, and some the west. He and the sergeant stole on tiptoe to the lighted window.\n\nIt was a small room into which they looked, very meanly furnished. An elderly man in the dress of a menial was reading a tattered paper by the light of a guttering candle. He leaned back in his wooden chair with his feet upon a box, while a bottle of white wine stood with a half-filled tumbler upon a stool beside him. The sergeant thrust his needle-gun through the glass, and the man sprang to his feet with a shriek.\n\n\"Silence, for your life! The house is surrounded and you cannot escape. Come round and open the door, or we will show you no mercy when we come in.\"\n\n\"For God\"s sake, don\"t shoot! I will open it! I will open it!\" He rushed from the room with his paper still crumpled up in his hand. An instant later, with a groaning of old locks and a rasping of bars, the low door swung open, and the Prussians poured into the stone-flagged passage.\n\n\"Where is Count Eustace de Ch\u00e2teau Noir?\"\n\n\"My master! He is out, sir.\"\n\n\"Out at this time of night? Your life for a lie!\"\n\n\"It is true, sir. He is out!\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"I do not know.\"\n\n\"Doing what?\"\n\n\"I cannot tell. No, it is no use your cocking your pistol, sir. You may kill me, but you cannot make me tell you that which I do not know.\"\n\n\"Is he often out at this hour?\"\n\n\"Frequently.\"\n\n\"And when does he come home?\"\n\n\"Before daybreak.\"\n\nCaptain Baumgarten rasped out a German oath. He had had his journey for nothing, then. The man\"s answers were only too likely to be true. It was what he might have expected. But at least he would search the house and make sure. Leaving a picket at the front door and another at the back, the sergeant and he drove the trembling butler in front of them \u2013 his shaking candle sending strange, flickering shadows over the old tapestries and the low, oak-raftered ceilings. They searched the whole house, from the huge, stone-flagged kitchen below to the dining-hall on the second floor, with its gallery for musicians and its panelling black with age, but nowhere was there a living creature. Up above in an attic they found Marie, the elderly wife of the butler; but the owner kept no other servants, and of his own presence there was no trace.\n\nIt was long, however, before Captain Baumgarten had satisfied himself upon the point. It was a difficult house to search. Thin stairs, which only one man could ascend at a time, connected lines of tortuous corridors. The walls were so thick that each room was cut off from its neighbour. Huge fireplaces yawned in each, while the windows were six feet deep in the wall. Captain Baumgarten stamped with his feet, and tore down curtains, and struck with the pommel of his sword. If there were secret hiding-places, he was not fortunate enough to find them.\n\n\"I have an idea,\" said he, at last, speaking in German to the sergeant. \"You will place a guard over this fellow, and make sure that he communicates with no one.\"\n\nYes, captain.\"\n\n\"And you will place four men in ambush at the front and at the back. It is likely enough that about daybreak our bird may return to the nest.\"\n\n\"And the others, captain?\"\n\n\"Let them have their suppers in the kitchen. This fellow will serve you with meat and wine. It is a wild night, and we shall be better here than on the country road.\"\n\n\"And yourself, captain?\"\n\n\"I will take my supper up here in the dining-hall. The logs are laid and we can light the fire. You will call me if there is any alarm. What can you give me for supper \u2013 you?\"\n\n\"Alas, monsieur, there was a time when I might have answered, \"What you wish!\" but now it is all that we can do to find a bottle of new claret and a cold pullet.\"\n\n\"That will do very well. Let a guard go about with him, sergeant, and let him feel the end of a bayonet if he plays us any tricks.\"\n\nCaptain Baumgarten was an old campaigner. In the Eastern provinces, and before that in Bohemia, he had learned the art of quartering himself upon the enemy. While the butler brought his supper he occupied himself in making his preparations for a comfortable night. He lit the candelabrum of ten candles upon the centre table. The fire was already burning up, crackling merrily, and sending spurts of blue, pungent smoke into the room. The captain walked to the window and looked out. The moon had gone in again, and it was raining heavily. He could hear the deep sough of the wind and see the dark loom of the trees, all swaying in the one direction. It was a sight which gave a zest to his comfortable quarters, and to the cold fowl and the bottle of wine which the butler had brought up for him. He was tired and hungry after his long tramp, so he threw his sword, his helmet and his revolver-belt down upon a chair and fell eagerly upon his supper. Then, with his glass of wine before him and his cigar between his lips, he tilted his chair back and looked about him.\n\nHe sat within a small circle of brilliant light which gleamed upon his silver shoulder-straps, and threw out his terracotta face, his heavy eyebrows and his yellow moustache. But outside that circle things were vague and shadowy in the old dining-hall. Two sides were oak-panelled and two were hung with faded tapestry, across which huntsmen and dogs and stags were still dimly streaming. Above the fireplace were rows of heraldic shields with the blazonings of the family and of its alliances, the fatal saltire cross breaking out on each of them.\n\nFour paintings of old seigneurs of Ch\u00e2teau Noir faced the fireplace, all men with hawk noses and bold, high features, so like each other that only the dress could distinguish the crusader from the cavalier of the Fronde. Captain Baumgarten, heavy with his repast, lay back in his chair looking up at them through the clouds of his tobacco smoke, and pondering over the strange chance which had sent him, a man from the Baltic coast, to eat his supper in the ancestral hall of these proud Norman chieftains. But the fire was hot and the captain\"s eyes were heavy. His chin sank slowly upon his chest, and the ten candles gleamed upon the broad white scalp.\n\nSuddenly a slight noise brought him to his feet. For an instant it seemed to his dazed senses that one of the pictures opposite had walked from its frame. There, beside the table, and almost within arm\"s length of him, was standing a huge man, silent, motionless, with no sign of life save his fierce, glinting eyes. He was black-haired, olive-skinned, with a pointed tuft of black beard and a great, fierce nose, towards which all his features seemed to run. His cheeks were wrinkled like a last year\"s apple, but his sweep of shoulder and bony, corded hands told of a strength which was unsapped by age. His arms were folded across his arching chest and his mouth was set in a fixed smile.\n\n\"Pray do not trouble yourself to look for your weapons,\" he said, as the Prussian cast a swift glance at the empty chair in which they had been laid. \"You have been, if you will allow me to say so, a little indiscreet to make yourself so much at home in a house every wall of which is honeycombed with secret passages. You will be amused to hear that forty men were watching you at your supper. Ah! what then?\"\n\nCaptain Baumgarten had taken a step forward with clenched fists. The Frenchman held up the revolver, which he grasped in his right hand while with the left he hurled the German back into his chair.\n\n\"Pray keep your seat,\" said he. \"You have no cause to trouble about your men. They have already been provided for. It is astonishing with these stone floors how little one can hear what goes on beneath. You have been relieved of your command, and have now only to think of yourself. May I ask what your name is?\"\n\n\"I am Captain Baumgarten, of the 24th Posen Regiment.\"\n\n\"Your French is excellent, though you incline, like most of your countrymen, to turn the p into a b. I have been amused to hear them cry, \"Avez biti\u00e9 sur moi!\" You know, doubtless, who it is who addresses you.\"\n\n\"The Count of Ch\u00e2teau Noir.\"\n\n\"Precisely. It would have been a misfortune if you had visited my ch\u00e2teau and I had been unable to have a word with you. I have had to do with many German soldiers, but never with an officer before. I have much to talk to you about.\"\n\nCaptain Baumgarten sat still in his chair. Brave as he was, there was something in this man\"s manner which made his skin creep with apprehension. His eyes glanced to right and to left, but his weapons were gone, and in a struggle he saw that he would be but a child to this gigantic adversary.\n\nThe count had picked up the claret bottle, and held it to the light: \"Tut! tut!\" said he. \"And was this the best that Pierre could do for you? I am ashamed to look you in the face, Captain Baumgarten. We must improve upon this.\"\n\nHe blew a call upon a whistle, which hung from his shooting-jacket. The old manservant was in the room in an instant.\n\n\"Chambertin from bin fifteen!\" he cried, and a minute later a grey bottle streaked with cobwebs was carried in as a nurse bears an infant. The count filled two glasses to the brim.\n\n\"Drink!\" said he. \"It is the very best in my cellars, and not to be matched between Rouen and Paris. Drink, sir, and be happy! There are cold joints below. There are two lobsters fresh from Honfleur. Will you not venture upon a second and more savoury supper?\"\n\nThe German officer shook his bead. He drained the glass, however, and his host filled it once more, pressing him to give an order for this or that dainty.\n\n\"There is nothing in my house which is not at your disposal. You have but to say the word. Well, then, you will allow me to tell you a story while you drink your wine. I have so longed to tell it to some German officer. It is about my son, my only child, Eustace, who was taken and died in escaping. It is a curious little story, and I think that I can promise you that you will never forget it.\n\n\"You must know, then, that my boy was in the artillery, a fine young fellow, Captain Baumgarten, and the pride of his mother. She died within a week of the news of his death reaching us. It was brought by a brother officer who was at his side throughout, and who escaped while my lad died. I want to tell you all that he told me.\n\n\"Eustace was taken at Weissenburg on the 4th of August. The prisoners were broken up into parties, and sent back into Germany by different routes. Eustace was taken upon the 5th to a village called Lauterburg, where he met with kindness from the German officer in command. This good colonel had the hungry lad to supper, offered him the best he had, opened a bottle of good wine, as I have tried to do for you, and gave him a cigar from his own case. Might I entreat you to take one from mine?\"\n\nThe German again shook his head. His horror of his companion had increased as he sat watching the lips that smiled and the eyes that glared.\n\n\"The colonel, as I say, was good to my boy. But, unluckily, the prisoners were moved next day across the Rhine to Ettlingen. They were not equally fortunate there. The officer who guarded them was a ruffian and a villain, Captain Baumgarten. He took a pleasure in humiliating and ill-treating the brave men who had fallen into his power. That night, upon my son answering fiercely back to some taunt of his, he struck him in the eye, like this!\"\n\nThe crash of the blow rang through the hall. The German\"s face fell forward, his hand up and blood oozing through his fingers. The count settled down in his chair once more.\n\n\"My boy was disfigured by the blow, and this villain made his appearance the object of his jeers. By the way, you look a little comical yourself at the present moment, captain, and your colonel would certainly say that you had been getting into mischief. To continue, however, my boy\"s youth and his destitution \u2013 for his pockets were empty \u2013 moved the pity of a kind-hearted major, and he advanced him ten napoleons from his own pocket, without security of any kind. Into your hands, Captain Baumgarten, I return these ten gold pieces, since I cannot learn the name of the lender. I am grateful from my heart for this kindness shown to my boy.\n\n\"The vile tyrant who commanded the escort accompanied the prisoners to Durlach, and from there to Carlsruhe. He heaped every outrage upon my lad, because the spirit of the Ch\u00e2teaux Noirs would not stoop to turn away his wrath by a feigned submission. Ay, this cowardly villain, whose heart\"s blood shall yet clot upon this hand, dared to strike my son with his open hand, to kick him, to tear hairs from his moustache \u2013 to use him thus \u2013 and thus \u2013 and thus!\"\n\nThe German writhed and struggled. He was helpless in the hands of this huge giant whose blows were raining upon him. When at last, blinded and half-senseless, he staggered to his feet, it was only to be hurled back again into the great oaken chair. He sobbed in his impotent anger and shame.\n\n\"My boy was frequently moved to tears by the humiliation of his position,\" continued the count. \"You will understand me when I say that it is a bitter thing to be helpless in the hands of an insolent and remorseless enemy. On arriving at Carlsruhe, however, his face, which had been wounded by the brutality of his guard, was bound up by a young Bavarian subaltern who was touched by his appearance. I regret to see that your eye is bleeding so. Will you permit me to bind it with my silk handkerchief?\"\n\nHe leaned forward, but the German dashed his hand aside.\n\n\"I am in your power, you monster!\" he cried; \"I can endure your brutalities, but not your hypocrisy.\"\n\nThe count shrugged his shoulders. \"I am taking things in their order, just as they occurred,\" said he. \"I was under vow to tell it to the first German officer with whom I could talk t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate. Let me see, I had got as far as the young Bavarian at Carlsruhe. I regret extremely that you will not permit me to use such slight skill in surgery as I possess. At Carlsruhe, my lad was shut up in the old caserne, where he remained for a fortnight. The worst pang of his captivity was that some unmannerly curs in the garrison would taunt him with his position as he sat by his window in the evening. That reminds me, captain, that you are not quite situated upon a bed of roses yourself, are you, now? You came to trap a wolf, my man, and now the beast has you down with his fangs in your throat. A family man, too, I should judge, by that well-filled tunic. Well, a widow the more will make little matter, and they do not usually remain widows long. Get back into the chair, you dog!\n\n\"Well, to continue my story \u2013 at the end of a fortnight my son and his friend escaped. I need not trouble you with the dangers which they ran, or with the privations which they endured. Suffice it that to disguise themselves they had to take the clothes of two peasants, whom they waylaid in a wood. Hiding by day and travelling by night, they had got as far into France as Remilly, and were within a mile \u2013 a single mile, captain \u2013 of crossing the German lines when a patrol of Uhlans came right upon them. Ah! it was hard, was it not, when they had come so far and were so near to safety?\"\n\nThe count blew a double call upon his whistle, and three hard-faced peasants entered the room.\n\n\"These must represent my Uhlans,\" said he. \"Well, then, the captain in command, finding that these men were French soldiers in civilian dress within the German lines, proceeded to hang them without trial or ceremony. I think, Jean, that the centre beam is the strongest.\"\n\nThe unfortunate soldier was dragged from his chair to where a noosed rope had been flung over one of the huge oaken rafters which spanned the room. The cord was slipped over his head, and he felt its harsh grip round his throat. The three peasants seized the other end, and looked to the count for his orders. The officer, pale, but firm, folded his arms and stared defiantly at the man who tortured him.\n\n\"You are now face to face with death, and I perceive from your lips that you are praying. My son was also face to face with death, and he prayed, also. It happened that a general officer came up, and he heard the lad praying for his mother, and it moved him so \u2013 he being himself a father \u2013 that he ordered his Uhlans away, and he remained, with his aide-de-camp only, beside the condemned men. And when he heard all the lad had to tell, that he was the only child of an old family and that his mother was in failing health, he threw off the rope as I throw off this, and he kissed him on either cheek, as I kiss you, and he bade him go, as I bid you go, and may every kind wish of that noble general, though none could stave off the fever which slew my son, descend now upon your head.\"\n\nAnd so it was that Captain Baumgarten, disfigured, blinded and bleeding, staggered out into the wind and the rain of that wild December dawn.\n\n\u2042\n\n[ The New Catacomb ]\n\n\"Look here, Burger,\" said Kennedy, \"I do wish that you would confide in me.\"\n\nThe two famous students of Roman remains sat together in Kennedy\"s comfortable room overlooking the Corso. The night was cold, and they had both pulled up their chairs to the unsatisfactory Italian stove which threw out a zone of stuffiness rather than of warmth. Outside under the bright winter stars lay the modern Rome, the long, double chain of the electric lamps, the brilliantly lighted caf\u00e9s, the rushing carriages and the dense throng upon the footpaths. But inside, in the sumptuous chamber of the rich young English archaeologist, there was only old Rome to be seen. Cracked and timeworn friezes hung upon the walls, grey old busts of senators and soldiers with their fighting heads and their hard, cruel faces peered out from the corners. On the centre table, amidst a litter of inscriptions, fragments and ornaments, there stood the famous reconstruction by Kennedy of the Baths of Caracalla, which excited such interest and admiration when it was exhibited in Berlin. Amphorae hung from the ceiling and a litter of curiosities strewed the rich red Turkey carpet. And of them all there was not one which was not of the most unimpeachable authenticity, and of the utmost rarity and value; for Kennedy, though little more than thirty, had a European reputation in this particular branch of research, and was, moreover, provided with that long purse which either proves to be a fatal handicap to the student\"s energies, or, if his mind is still true to its purpose, gives him an enormous advantage in the race for fame. Kennedy had often been seduced by whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an incisive one, capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in sharp reactions of sensuous languor. His handsome face, with its high, white forehead, its aggressive nose and its somewhat loose and sensual mouth, was a fair index of the compromise between strength and weakness in his nature.\n\nOf a very different type was his companion, Julius Burger. He came of a curious blend, a German father and an Italian mother, with the robust qualities of the north mingling strangely with the softer graces of the south. Blue Teutonic eyes lightened his sun-browned face, and above them rose a square, massive forehead, with a fringe of close yellow curls lying round it. His strong, firm jaw was clean-shaven, and his companion had frequently remarked how much it suggested those old Roman busts which peered out from the shadows in the corners of his chamber. Under its bluff German strength there lay always a suggestion of Italian subtlety, but the smile was so honest, and the eyes so frank, that one understood that this was only an indication of his ancestry, with no actual bearing upon his character. In age and in reputation, he was on the same level as his English companion, but his life and his work had both been far more arduous. Twelve years before, he had come as a poor student to Rome, and had lived ever since upon some small endowment for research which had been awarded to him by the University of Bonn. Painfully, slowly and doggedly, with extraordinary tenacity and single-mindedness, he had climbed from rung to rung of the ladder of fame, until now he was a member of the Berlin Academy, and there was every reason to believe that he would shortly be promoted to the chair of the greatest of German universities. But the singleness of purpose which had brought him to the same high level as the rich and brilliant Englishman, had caused him in everything outside their work to stand infinitely below him. He had never found a pause in his studies in which to cultivate the social graces. It was only when he spoke of his own subject that his face was filled with life and soul. At other times he was silent and embarrassed, too conscious of his own limitations in larger subjects, and impatient of that small talk which is the conventional refuge of those who have no thoughts to express.\n\nAnd yet for some years there had been an acquaintanceship which appeared to be slowly ripening into a friendship between these two very different rivals. The base and origin of this lay in the fact that in their own studies each was the only one of the younger men who had knowledge and enthusiasm enough properly to appreciate the other. Their common interests and pursuits had brought them together, and each had been attracted by the other\"s knowledge. And then gradually something had been added to this. Kennedy had been amused by the frankness and simplicity of his rival, while Burger in turn had been fascinated by the brilliancy and vivacity which had made Kennedy such a favourite in Roman society. I say \"had\", because just at the moment the young Englishman was somewhat under a cloud. A love-affair, the details of which had never quite come out, had indicated a heartlessness and callousness upon his part which shocked many of his friends. But in the bachelor circles of students and artists in which he preferred to move, there is no very rigid code of honour in such matters, and though a head might be shaken or a pair of shoulders shrugged over the flight of two and the return of one, the general sentiment was probably one of curiosity and perhaps of envy rather than of reprobation.\n\n\"Look here, Burger,\" said Kennedy, looking hard at the placid face of his companion, \"I do wish that you would confide in me.\"\n\nAs he spoke he waved his hand in the direction of a rug which lay upon the floor. On the rug stood a long, shallow fruit-basket of the light wickerwork which is used in the Campagna, and this was heaped with a litter of objects, inscribed tiles, broken inscriptions, cracked mosaics, torn papyri, rusty metal ornaments, which to the uninitiated might have seemed to have come straight from a dustman\"s bin, but which a specialist would have speedily recognized as unique of their kind. The pile of odds and ends in the flat wickerwork basket supplied exactly one of those missing links of social development which are of such interest to the student. It was the German who had brought them in, and the Englishman\"s eyes were hungry as he looked at them.\n\n\"I won\"t interfere with your treasure-trove, but I should very much like to hear about it,\" he continued, while Burger very deliberately lit a cigar. \"It is evidently a discovery of the first importance. These inscriptions will make a sensation throughout Europe.\"\n\n\"For every one here there are a million there!\" said the German. \"There are so many that a dozen savants might spend a lifetime over them, and build up a reputation as solid as the Castle of St Angelo.\"\n\nKennedy sat thinking with his fine forehead wrinkled and his fingers playing with his long, fair moustache.\n\n\"You have given yourself away, Burger!\" said he at last. \"Your words can, only apply to one thing. You have discovered a new catacomb.\"\n\n\"I had no doubt that you had already come to that conclusion from an examination of these objects.\"\n\n\"Well, they certainly appeared to indicate it, but your last remarks make it certain. There is no place except a catacomb which could contain so vast a store of relics as you describe.\"\n\n\"Quite so. There is no mystery about that. I have discovered a new catacomb.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"Ah, that is my secret, my dear Kennedy. Suffice it that it is so situated that there is not one chance in a million of anyone else coming upon it. Its date is different from that of any known catacomb, and it was reserved for the burial of the highest Christians, so that the remains and the relics are quite different from anything which has ever been seen before. If I was not aware of your knowledge and of your energy, my friend, I would not hesitate, under the pledge of secrecy, to tell you everything about it. But as it is I think that I must certainly prepare my own report of the matter before I expose myself to such formidable competition.\"\n\nKennedy loved his subject with a love which was almost a mania \u2013 a love which held him true to it amidst all the distractions which come to a wealthy and dissipated young man. He had ambition, but his ambition was secondary to his mere abstract joy and interest in everything which concerned the old life and history of the city. He yearned to see this new underworld which his companion had discovered.\n\n\"Look here, Burger,\" said he, earnestly, \"I assure you that you can trust me most implicitly in the matter. Nothing would induce me to put pen to paper about anything which I see until I have your express permission. I quite understand your feeling and I think it is most natural, but you have really nothing whatever to fear from me. On the other hand, if you don\"t tell me I shall make a systematic search, and I shall most certainly discover it. In that case, of course, I should make what use I liked of it, since I should be under no obligation to you.\"\n\nBurger smiled thoughtfully over his cigar.\n\n\"I have noticed, friend Kennedy,\" said he, \"that when I want information over any point you are not always so ready to supply it.\"\n\n\"When did you ever ask me anything that I did not tell you? You remember, for example, my giving you the material for your paper about the temple of the Vestals.\"\n\n\"Ah, well, that was not a matter of much importance. If I were to question you upon some intimate thing would you give me an answer, I wonder? This new catacomb is a very intimate thing to me, and I should certainly expect some sign of confidence in return.\"\n\n\"What you are driving at I cannot imagine,\" said the Englishman, \"but if you mean that you will answer my question about the catacomb if I answer any question which you may put to me I can assure you that I will certainly do so.\"\n\n\"Well, then,\" said Burger, leaning luxuriously back in his settee, and puffing a blue tree of cigar-smoke into the air, \"tell me all about your relations with Miss Mary Saunderson.\"\n\nKennedy sprang up in his chair and glared angrily at his impassive companion.\n\n\"What the devil do you mean?\" he cried. \"What sort of a question is this? You may mean it as a joke, but you never made a worse one.\"\n\n\"No, I don\"t mean it as a joke,\" said Burger, simply. \"I am really rather interested in the details of the matter. I don\"t know much about the world and women and social life and that sort of thing, and such an incident has the fascination of the unknown for me. I know you, and I knew her by sight \u2013 I had even spoken to her once or twice. I should very much like to hear from your own lips exactly what it was that occurred between you.\"\n\n\"I won\"t tell you a word.\"\n\n\"That\"s all right. It was only my whim to see if you would give up a secret as easily as you expected me to give up my secret of the new catacomb. You wouldn\"t, and I didn\"t expect you to. But why should you expect otherwise of me? There\"s St John\"s clock striking ten. It is quite time that I was going home.\"\n\n\"No; wait a bit, Burger,\" said Kennedy; \"this is really a ridiculous caprice of yours to wish to know about an old love-affair which has burned out months ago. You know we look upon a man who kisses and tells as the greatest coward and villain possible.\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" said the German, gathering up his basket of curiosities, \"when he tells anything about a girl which is previously unknown he must be so. But in this case, as you must be aware, it was a public matter which was the common talk of Rome, so that you are not really doing Miss Mary Saunderson any injury by discussing her case with me. But still, I respect your scruples, and so good-night!\"\n\n\"Wait a bit, Burger,\" said Kennedy, laying his hand upon the other\"s arm; \"I am very keen upon this catacomb business, and I can\"t let it drop quite so easily. Would you mind asking me something else in return \u2013 something not quite so eccentric this time?\"\n\n\"No, no; you have refused, and there is an end of it,\" said Burger, with his basket on his arm. \"No doubt you are quite right not to answer, and no doubt I am quite right also \u2013 and so again, my dear Kennedy, good-night!\"\n\nThe Englishman watched Burger cross the room, and he had his hand on the handle of the door before his host sprang up with the air of a man who is making the best of that which cannot be helped.\n\n\"Hold on, old fellow,\" said he; \"I think you are behaving in a most ridiculous fashion; but still, if this is your condition, I suppose that I must submit to it. I hate saying anything about a girl, but, as you say, it is all over Rome, and I don\"t suppose I can tell you anything which you do not know already. What was it you wanted to know?\"\n\nThe German came back to the stove, and, laying down his basket, he sank into his chair once more.\n\n\"May I have another cigar?\" said he. \"Thank you very much! I never smoke when I work, but I enjoy a chat much more when I am under the influence of tobacco. Now, as regards this young lady, with whom you had this little adventure. What in the world has become of her?\"\n\n\"She is at home with her own people.\"\n\n\"Oh, really \u2013 in England?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"What part of England \u2013 London?\"\n\n\"No, Twickenham.\"\n\n\"You must excuse my curiosity, my dear Kennedy, and you must put it down to my ignorance of the world. No doubt it is quite a simple thing to persuade a young lady to go off with you for three weeks or so, and then to hand her over to her own family at \u2013 what did you call the place?\"\n\n\"Twickenham.\"\n\n\"Quite so \u2013 at Twickenham. But it is something so entirely outside my own experience that I cannot even imagine how you set about it. For example, if you had loved this girl your love could hardly disappear in three weeks, so I presume that you could not have loved her at all. But if you did not love her why should you make this great scandal which has damaged you and ruined her?\"\n\nKennedy looked moodily into the red eye of the stove.\n\n\"That\"s a logical way of looking at it, certainly,\" said he. \"Love is a big word, and it represents a good many different shades of feeling. I liked her, and \u2013 well, you say you\"ve seen her \u2013 you know how charming she could look. But still I am willing to admit, looking back, that I could never have really loved her.\"\n\n\"Then, my dear Kennedy, why did you do it?\"\n\n\"The adventure of the thing had a great deal to do with it.\"\n\n\"What! You are so fond of adventures?\"\n\n\"Where would the variety of life be without them? It was for an adventure that I first began to pay my attentions to her. I\"ve chased a good deal of game in my time, but there\"s no chase like that of a pretty woman. There was the piquant difficulty of it also, for, as she was the companion of Lady Emily Rood, it was almost impossible to see her alone. On the top of all the other obstacles which attracted me, I learned from her own lips very early in the proceedings that she was engaged.\"\n\n\"Mein Gott! To whom?\"\n\n\"She mentioned no names.\"\n\n\"I do not think that anyone knows that. So that made the adventure more alluring, did it?\"\n\n\"Well, it did certainly give a spice to it. Don\"t you think so?\"\n\n\"I tell you that I am very ignorant about these things.\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, you can remember that the apple you stole from your neighbour\"s tree was always sweeter than that which fell from your own. And then I found that she cared for me.\"\n\n\"What \u2013 at once?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, it took about three months of sapping and mining. But at last I won her over. She understood that my judicial separation from my wife made it impossible for me to do the right thing by her \u2013 but she came all the same, and we had a delightful time, as long as it lasted.\"\n\n\"But how about the other man?\"\n\nKennedy shrugged his shoulders. \"I suppose it is the survival of the fittest,\" said he. \"If he had been the better man she would not have deserted him. Let\"s drop the subject, for I have had enough of it!\"\n\n\"Only one other thing. How did you get rid of her in three weeks?\"\n\n\"Well, we had both cooled down a bit, you understand. She absolutely refused, under any circumstances, to come back to face the people she had known in Rome. Now, of course, Rome is necessary to me, and I was already pining to be back at my work \u2013 so there was one obvious cause of separation. Then, again, her old father turned up at the hotel in London; and there was a scene, and the whole thing became so unpleasant that really \u2013 though I missed her dreadfully at first \u2013 I was very glad to slip out of it. Now, I rely upon you not to repeat anything of what I have said.\"\n\n\"My dear Kennedy, I should not dream of repeating it. But all that you say interests me very much, for it gives me an insight into your way of looking at things, which is entirely different from mine, for I have seen so little of life. And now you want to know about my new catacomb. There\"s no use my trying to describe it, for you would never find it by that. There is only one thing, and that is for me to take you there.\"\n\n\"That would be splendid.\"\n\n\"When would you like to come?\"\n\n\"The sooner the better. I am all impatience to see it.\"\n\n\"Well, it is a beautiful night \u2013 though a trifle cold. Suppose we start in an hour. We must be very careful to keep the matter to ourselves. If anyone saw us hunting in couples they would suspect that there was something going on.\"\n\n\"We can\"t be too cautious,\" said Kennedy. \"Is it far?\"\n\n\"Some miles.\"\n\n\"Not too far to walk?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, we could walk there easily.\"\n\n\"We had better do so, then. A cabman\"s suspicions would be aroused if he dropped us both at some lonely spot in the dead of the night.\"\n\n\"Quite so. I think it would be best for us to meet at the Gate of the Appian Way at midnight. I must go back to my lodgings for the matches and candles and things.\"\n\n\"All right, Burger! I think it is very kind of you to let me into this secret, and I promise you that I will write nothing about it until you have published your report. Goodbye for the present! You will find me at the Gate at twelve.\"\n\nThe cold, clear air was filled with the musical chimes from that city of clocks as Burger, wrapped in an Italian overcoat, with a lantern hanging from his hand, walked up to the rendezvous. Kennedy stepped out of the shadow to meet him.\n\n\"You are ardent in work as well as in love!\" said the German, laughing.\n\n\"Yes; I have been waiting here for nearly half an hour.\"\n\n\"I hope you left no clue as to where we were going.\"\n\n\"Not such a fool! By Jove, I am chilled to the bone! Come on, Burger, let us warm ourselves by a spurt of hard walking.\"\n\nTheir footsteps sounded loud and crisp upon the rough stone paving of the disappointing road which is all that is left of the most famous highway of the world. A peasant or two going home from the wine-shop, and a few carts of country produce coming up to Rome, were the only things which they met. They swung along, with the huge tombs looming up through the darkness upon each side of them, until they had come as far as the Catacombs of St Calixtus, and saw against a rising moon the great circular bastion of Cecilia Metella in front of them. Then Burger stopped with his hand to his side.\n\n\"Your legs are longer than mine, and you are more accustomed to walking,\" said he, laughing. \"I think that the place where we turn off is somewhere here. Yes, this is it, round the corner of the trattoria. Now, it is a very narrow path, so perhaps I had better go in front and you can follow.\"\n\nHe had lit his lantern, and by its light they were enabled to follow a narrow and devious track which wound across the marshes of the Campagna. The great Aqueduct of old Rome lay like a monstrous caterpillar across the moonlit landscape, and their road led them under one of its huge arches, and past the circle of crumbling bricks which marks the old arena. At last Burger stopped at a solitary wooden cow-house, and he drew a key from his pocket.\n\n\"Surely your catacomb is not inside a house!\" cried Kennedy.\n\n\"The entrance to it is. That is just the safeguard which we have against anyone else discovering it.\"\n\n\"Does the proprietor know of it?\"\n\n\"Not he. He had found one or two objects which made me almost certain that his house was built on the entrance to such a place. So I rented it from him, and did my excavations for myself. Come in, and shut the door behind you.\"\n\nIt was a long, empty building, with the mangers of the cows along one wall. Burger put his lantern down on the ground, and shaded its light in all directions save one by draping his overcoat round it.\n\n\"It might excite remark if anyone saw a light in this lonely place,\" said he. \"Just help me to move this boarding.\"\n\nThe flooring was loose in the corner, and plank by plank the two savants raised it and leaned it against the wall. Below there was a square aperture and a stair of old stone steps which led away down into the bowels of the earth.\n\n\"Be careful!\" cried Burger, as Kennedy, in his impatience, hurried down them. \"It is a perfect rabbits\" warren below, and if you were once to lose your way there the chances would be a hundred to one against your ever coming out again. Wait until I bring the light.\"\n\n\"How do you find your own way if it is so complicated?\"\n\n\"I had some very narrow escapes at first, but I have gradually learned to go about. There is a certain system to it, but it is one which a lost man, if he were in the dark, could not possibly find out. Even now I always spin out a ball of string behind me when I am going far into the catacomb. You can see for yourself that it is difficult, but every one of these passages divides and subdivides a dozen times before you go a hundred yards.\"\n\nThey had descended some twenty feet from the level of the byre, and they were standing now in a square chamber cut out of the soft tufa. The lantern cast a flickering light, bright below and dim above, over the cracked brown walls. In every direction were the black openings of passages which radiated from this common centre.\n\n\"I want you to follow me closely, my friend,\" said Burger. \"Do not loiter to look at anything upon the way, for the place to which I will take you contains all that you can see, and more. It will save time for us to go there direct.\"\n\nHe led the way down one of the corridors, and the Englishman followed closely at his heels. Every now and then the passage bifurcated, but Burger was evidently following some secret marks of his own, for he neither stopped nor hesitated. Everywhere along the walls, packed as in the berths upon an emigrant ship, lay the Christians of old Rome. The yellow light flickered over the shrivelled features of the mummies and gleamed upon rounded skulls and long, white arm bones crossed over fleshless chests. And everywhere as he passed Kennedy looked with wistful eyes upon inscriptions, funeral vessels, pictures, vestments, utensils, all lying as pious hands had placed them so many centuries ago. It was apparent to him, even in those hurried, passing glances, that this was the earliest and finest of the catacombs, containing such a storehouse of Roman remains as had never before come at one time under the observation of the student.\n\n\"What would happen if the light went out?\" he asked, as they hurried onwards.\n\n\"I have a spare candle and a box of matches in my pocket. By the way, Kennedy, have you any matches?\"\n\n\"No; you had better give me some.\"\n\n\"Oh, that is all right. There is no chance of our separating.\"\n\n\"How far are we going? It seems to me that we have walked at least a quarter of a mile.\"\n\n\"More than that, I think. There is really no limit to the tombs \u2013 at least, I have never been able to find any. This is a very difficult place, so I think that I will use our ball of string.\" He fastened one end of it to a projecting stone and he carried the coil in the breast of his coat, paying it out as he advanced. Kennedy saw that it was no unnecessary precaution, for the passages had become more complex and tortuous than ever, with a perfect network of intersecting corridors. But these all ended in one large circular hall with a square pedestal of tufa topped with a slab of marble at one end of it.\n\n\"By Jove!\" cried Kennedy in an ecstasy, as Burger swung his lantern over the marble. \"It is a Christian altar \u2013 probably the first one in existence. Here is the little consecration cross cut upon the corner of it. No doubt this circular space was used as a church.\"\n\n\"Precisely,\" said Burger. \"If I had more time I should like to show you all the bodies which are buried in these niches upon the walls, for they are the early popes and bishops of the church, with their mitres, their crosiers, and full canonicals. Go over to that one and look at it!\"\n\nKennedy went across, and stared at the ghastly head which lay loosely on the shredded and mouldering mitre.\n\n\"This is most interesting,\" said he, and his voice seemed to boom against the concave vault. \"As far as my experience goes, it is unique. Bring the lantern over, Burger, for I want to see them all.\"\n\nBut the German had strolled away, and was standing in the middle of a yellow circle of light at the other side of the hall.\n\n\"Do you know how many wrong turnings there are between this and the stairs?\" he asked. \"There are over two thousand. No doubt it was one of the means of protection which the Christians adopted. The odds are two thousand to one against a man getting out, even if he had a light; but if he were in the dark it would, of course, be far more difficult.\"\n\n\"So I should think.\"\n\n\"And the darkness is something dreadful. I tried it once for an experiment. Let us try it again!\" He stooped to the lantern, and in an instant it was as if an invisible hand was squeezed tightly over each of Kennedy\"s eyes. Never had he known what such darkness was. It seemed to press upon him and to smother him. It was a solid obstacle against which the body shrank from advancing. He put his hands out to push it back from him.\n\n\"That will do, Burger,\" said he, \"let\"s have the light again.\"\n\nBut his companion began to laugh, and in that circular room the sound seemed to come from every side at once.\n\n\"You seem uneasy, friend Kennedy,\" said he.\n\n\"Go on, man, light the candle!\" said Kennedy impatiently.\n\n\"It\"s very strange, Kennedy, but I could not in the least tell by the sound in which direction you stand. Could you tell where I am?\"\n\n\"No; you seem to be on every side of me.\"\n\n\"If it were not for this string which I hold in my hand I should not have a notion which way to go.\"\n\n\"I dare say not. Strike a light, man, and have an end of this nonsense.\"\n\n\"Well, Kennedy, there are two things which I understand that you are very fond of. The one is an adventure, and the other is an obstacle to surmount. The adventure must be the finding of your way out of this catacomb. The obstacle will be the darkness and the two thousand wrong turns which make the way a little difficult to find. But you need not hurry, for you have plenty of time, and when you halt for a rest now and then, I should like you just to think of Miss Mary Saunderson, and whether you treated her quite fairly.\"\n\n\"You devil, what do you mean?\" roared Kennedy. He was running about in little circles and clasping at the solid blackness with both hands.\n\n\"Goodbye,\" said the mocking voice, and it was already at some distance. \"I really do not think, Kennedy, even by your own showing that you did the right thing by that girl. There was only one little thing which you appeared not to know, and I can supply it. Miss Saunderson was engaged to a poor ungainly devil of a student, and his name was Julius Burger.\"\n\nThere was a rustle somewhere, the vague sound of a foot striking a stone, and then there fell silence upon that old Christian church \u2013 stagnant, heavy silence which closed round Kennedy and shut him in like water round a drowning man.\n\nSome two months afterwards the following paragraph made the round of the European press:\n\nOne of the most interesting discoveries of recent years is that of the new catacomb in Rome, which lies some distance to the east of the well-known vaults of St Calixtus. The finding of this important burial-place, which is exceeding rich in most interesting early Christian remains, is due to the energy and sagacity of Dr Julius Burger, the young German specialist, who is rapidly taking the first place as an authority upon ancient Rome. Although the first to publish his discovery, it appears that a less fortunate adventurer had anticipated Dr Burger. Some months ago Mr Kennedy, the well-known English student, disappeared suddenly from his rooms in the Corso, and it was conjectured that his association with a recent scandal had driven him to leave Rome. It appears now that he had in reality fallen a victim to that fervid love of archaeology which had raised him to a distinguished place among living scholars. His body was discovered in the heart of the new catacomb, and it was evident from the condition of his feet and boots that he had tramped for days through the tortuous corridors which make these subterranean tombs so dangerous to explorers. The deceased gentleman had, with inexplicable rashness, made his way into this labyrinth without, as far as can be discovered, taking with him either candles or matches, so that his sad fate was the natural result of his own temerity. What makes the matter more painful is that Dr Julius Burger was an intimate friend of the deceased. His joy at the extraordinary find which he has been so fortunate as to make has been greatly marred by the terrible fate of his comrade and fellow-worker.\n\n\u2042\n\n[ The Case of Lady Sannox ]\n\nThe relations between Douglas Stone and the notorious Lady Sannox were very well known both among the fashionable circles of which she was a brilliant member, and the scientific bodies which numbered him among their most illustrious confr\u00e8res. There was naturally, therefore, a very widespread interest when it was announced one morning that the lady had absolutely and for ever taken the veil, and that the world would see her no more. When, at the very tail of this rumour, there came the assurance that the celebrated operating surgeon, the man of steel nerves, had been found in the morning by his valet, seated on one side of his bed, smiling pleasantly upon the universe, with both legs jammed into one side of his breeches and his great brain about as valuable as a cap full of porridge, the matter was strong enough to give quite a little thrill of interest to folk who had never hoped that their jaded nerves were capable of such a sensation.\n\nDouglas Stone in his prime was one of the most remarkable men in England. Indeed, he could hardly be said to have ever reached his prime, for he was but nine-and-thirty at the time of this little incident. Those who knew him best were aware that famous as he was as a surgeon, he might have succeeded with even greater rapidity in any of a dozen lines of life. He could have cut his way to fame as a soldier, struggled to it as an explorer, bullied for it in the courts or built it out of stone and iron as an engineer. He was born to be great, for he could plan what another man dare not do, and he could do what another man dare not plan. In surgery none could follow him. His nerve, his judgement, his intuition, were things apart. Again and again his knife cut away death, but grazed the very springs of life in doing it, until his assistants were as white as the patient. His energy, his audacity, his full-blooded self-confidence \u2013 does not the memory of them still linger to the south of Marylebone Road and the north of Oxford Street?\n\nHis vices were as magnificent as his virtues, and infinitely more picturesque. Large as was his income, and it was the third largest of all professional men in London, it was far beneath the luxury of his living. Deep in his complex nature lay a rich vein of sensualism, at the sport of which he placed all the prizes of his life. The eye, the ear, the touch, the palate, all were his masters. The bouquet of old vintages, the scent of rare exotics, the curves and tints of the daintiest potteries of Europe, it was to these that the quick-running stream of gold was transformed. And then there came his sudden mad passion for Lady Sannox, when a single interview with two challenging glances and a whispered word set him ablaze. She was the loveliest woman in London and the only one to him. He was one of the handsomest men in London, but not the only one to her. She had a liking for new experiences, and was gracious to most men who wooed her. It may have been cause or it may have been effect that Lord Sannox looked fifty, though he was but six-and-thirty.\n\nHe was a quiet, silent, neutral-tinted man, this lord, with thin lips and heavy eyelids, much given to gardening and full of home-like habits. He had at one time been fond of acting, had even rented a theatre in London, and on its boards had first seen Miss Marion Dawson, to whom he had offered his hand, his title and the third of a county. Since his marriage his early hobby had become distasteful to him. Even in private theatricals it was no longer possible to persuade him to exercise the talent which he had often shown that he possessed. He was happier with a spud and a watering-can among his orchids and chrysanthemums.\n\nIt was quite an interesting problem whether he was absolutely devoid of sense or miserably wanting in spirit. Did he know his lady\"s ways and condone them or was he a mere blind, doting fool? It was a point to be discussed over the teacups in snug little drawing-rooms or with the aid of a cigar in the bow windows of clubs. Bitter and plain were the comments among men upon his conduct. There was but one who had a good word to say for him, and he was the most silent member in the smoking-room. He had seen him break in a horse at the university, and it seemed to have left an impression upon his mind.\n\nBut when Douglas Stone became the favourite, all doubts as to Lord Sannox\"s knowledge or ignorance were set for ever at rest. There was no subterfuge about Stone. In his high-handed, impetuous fashion, he set all caution and discretion at defiance. The scandal became notorious. A learned body intimated that his name had been struck from the list of its vice-presidents. Two friends implored him to consider his professional credit. He cursed them all three, and spent forty guineas on a bangle to take with him to the lady. He was at her house every evening, and she drove in his carriage in the afternoons. There was not an attempt on either side to conceal their relations; but there came at last a little incident to interrupt them.\n\nIt was a dismal winter\"s night, very cold and gusty, with the wind whooping in the chimneys and blustering against the window-panes. A thin spatter of rain tinkled on the glass with each fresh sough of the gale, drowning for the instant the dull gurgle and drip from the eaves. Douglas Stone had finished his dinner, and sat by his fire in the study, a glass of rich port upon the malachite table at his elbow. As he raised it to his lips, he held it up against the lamplight, and watched with the eye of a connoisseur the tiny scales of beeswing which floated in its rich ruby depths. The fire, as it spurted up, threw fitful lights upon his bold, clear-cut face, with its widely opened grey eyes, its thick and yet firm lips, and the deep, square jaw, which had something Roman in its strength and its animalism. He smiled from time to time as he nestled back in his luxurious chair. Indeed, he had a right to feel well pleased, for, against the advice of six colleagues, he had performed an operation that day of which only two cases were on record, and the result had been brilliant beyond all expectation. No other man in London would have had the daring to plan, or the skill to execute, such a heroic measure.\n\nBut he had promised Lady Sannox to see her that evening and it was already half-past eight. His hand was outstretched to the bell to order the carriage when he heard the dull thud of the knocker. An instant later there was the shuffling of feet in the hall and the sharp closing of a door.\n\n\"A patient to see you, sir, in the consulting room,\" said the butler.\n\n\"About himself?\"\n\n\"No, sir; I think he wants you to go out.\"\n\n\"It is too late,\" cried Douglas Stone peevishly. \"I won\"t go.\"\n\n\"This is his card, sir.\"\n\nThe butler presented it upon the gold salver which had been given to his master by the wife of a Prime Minister.\n\n\" \"Hamil Ali, Smyrna\". Hum! The fellow is a Turk, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. He seems as if he came from abroad, sir. And he\"s in a terrible way.\"\n\n\"Tut, tut! I have an engagement. I must go somewhere else. But I\"ll see him. Show him in here, Pim.\"\n\nA few moments later the butler swung open the door and ushered in a small and decrepit man, who walked with a bent back and with the forward push of the face and blink of the eyes which goes with extreme short sight. His face was swarthy, and his hair and beard of the deepest black. In one hand he held a turban of white muslin striped with red, in the other a small chamois-leather bag.\n\n\"Good evening,\" said Douglas Stone, when the butler had closed the door. \"You speak English, I presume?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. I am from Asia Minor, but I speak English when I speak slow.\"\n\n\"You wanted me to go out, I understand?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. I wanted very much that you should see my wife.\"\n\n\"I could come in the morning, but I have an engagement which prevents me from seeing your wife tonight.\"\n\nThe Turk\"s answer was a singular one. He pulled the string which closed the mouth of the chamois-leather bag, and poured a flood of gold on to the table.\n\n\"There are one hundred pounds there,\" said he, \"and I promise you that it will not take you an hour. I have a cab ready at the door.\"\n\nDouglas Stone glanced at his watch. An hour would not make it too late to visit Lady Sannox. He had been there later. And the fee was an extraordinarily high one. He had been pressed by his creditors lately, and he could not afford to let such a chance pass. He would go.\n\n\"What is the case?\" he asked.\n\n\"Oh, it is so sad a one! So sad a one! You have not, perhaps heard of the daggers of the Almohades?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"Ah, they are Eastern daggers of a great age and of a singular shape, with the hilt like what you call a stirrup. I am a curiosity dealer, you understand, and that is why I have come to England from Smyrna, but next week I go back once more. Many things I brought with me, and I have a few things left, but among them, to my sorrow, is one of these daggers.\"\n\n\"You will remember that I have an appointment, sir,\" said the surgeon, with some irritation; \"pray confine yourself to the necessary details.\"\n\n\"You will see that it is necessary. Today my wife fell down in a faint in the room in which I keep my wares, and she cut her lower lip upon this cursed dagger of the Almohades.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Douglas Stone, rising. \"And you wish me to dress the wound?\"\n\n\"No, no, it is worse than that.\"\n\n\"What then?\"\n\n\"These daggers are poisoned.\"\n\n\"Poisoned!\"\n\n\"Yes, and there is no man, East or West, who can tell now what is the poison or what the cure. But all that is known I know, for my father was in this trade before me, and we have had much to do with these poisoned weapons.\"\n\n\"What are the symptoms?\"\n\n\"Deep sleep, and death in thirty hours.\"\n\n\"And you say there is no cure. Why then should you pay me this considerable fee?\"\n\n\"No drug can cure, but the knife may.\"\n\n\"And how?\"\n\n\"The poison is slow of absorption. It remains for hours in the wound.\"\n\n\"Washing, then, might cleanse it?\"\n\n\"No more than in a snake bite. It is too subtle and too deadly.\"\n\n\"Excision of the wound, then?\"\n\n\"That is it. If it be on the finger, take the finger off. So said my father always. But think of where this wound is, and that it is my wife. It is dreadful!\"\n\nBut familiarity with such grim matters may take the finer edge from a man\"s sympathy. To Douglas Stone this was already an interesting case, and he brushed aside as irrelevant the feeble objections of the husband.\n\n\"It appears to be that or nothing,\" said he brusquely. \"It is better to lose a lip than a life.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes, I know that you are right. Well, well, it is kismet, and it must be faced. I have the cab, and you will come with me and do this thing.\"\n\nDouglas Stone took his case of bistouries from a drawer, and placed it with a roll of bandage and a compress of lint in his pocket. He must waste no more time if he was to see Lady Sannox.\n\n\"I am ready,\" said he, pulling on his overcoat. \"Will you take a glass of wine before you go out into this cold air?\"\n\nHis visitor shrank away, with a protesting hand upraised. \"You forget that I am a Mussulman, and a true follower of the Prophet,\" said he. \"But tell me what is the bottle of green glass which you have placed in your pocket?\"\n\n\"It is chloroform.\"\n\n\"Ah, that also is forbidden to us. It is a spirit, and we make no use of such things.\"\n\n\"What! You would allow your wife to go through an operation without an anaesthetic?\"\n\n\"Ah! she will feel nothing, poor soul. The deep sleep has already come on, which is the first working of the poison. And then I have given her of our Smyrna opium. Come, sir, for already an hour has passed.\"\n\nAs they stepped out into the darkness, a sheet of rain was driven in upon their faces, and the hall lamp, which dangled from the arm of a marble caryatid, went out with a fluff. Pim, the butler, pushed the heavy door to, straining hard with his shoulder against the wind, while the two men groped their way towards the yellow glare which showed where the cab was waiting. An instant later they were rattling upon their journey.\n\n\"Is it far?\" asked Douglas Stone.\n\n\"Oh, no. We have a very little quiet place off the Euston Road.\"\n\nThe surgeon pressed the spring of his repeater and listened to the little tings which told him the hour. It was a quarter past nine. He calculated the distances, and the short time which it would take him to perform so trivial an operation. He ought to reach Lady Sannox by ten o\"clock. Through the fogged windows he saw the blurred gas lamps dancing past, with occasionally the broader glare of a shop front. The rain was pelting and rattling upon the leathern top of the carriage, and the wheels swashed as they rolled through puddle and mud. Opposite to him the white headgear of his companion gleamed faintly through the obscurity. The surgeon felt in his pockets and arranged his needles, his ligatures and his safety-pins, that no time might be wasted when they arrived. He chafed with impatience and drummed his foot upon the floor.\n\nBut the cab slowed down at last and pulled up. In an instant Douglas Stone was out, and the Smyrna merchant\"s toe was at his very heel.\n\n\"You can wait,\" said he to the driver.\n\nIt was a mean-looking house in a narrow and sordid street. The surgeon, who knew his London well, cast a swift glance into the shadows, but there was nothing distinctive \u2013 no shop, no movement, nothing but a double line of dull, flat-faced houses, a double stretch of wet flagstones which gleamed in the lamplight, and a double rush of water in the gutters which swirled and gurgled towards the sewer gratings. The door which faced them was blotched and discoloured, and a faint light in the fan pane above it served to show the dust and the grime which covered it. Above, in one of the bedroom windows, there was a dull yellow glimmer. The merchant knocked loudly, and, as he turned his dark face towards the light, Douglas Stone could see that it was contracted with anxiety. A bolt was drawn, and an elderly woman with a taper stood in the doorway, shielding the thin flame with her gnarled hand.\n\n\"Is all well?\" gasped the merchant.\n\n\"She is as you left her, sir.\"\n\n\"She has not spoken?\"\n\n\"No, she is in a deep sleep.\"\n\nThe merchant closed the door, and Douglas Stone walked down the narrow passage, glancing about him in some surprise as he did so. There was no oil-cloth, no mat, no hat-rack. Deep grey dust and heavy festoons of cobwebs met his eyes everywhere. Following the old woman up the winding stair, his firm footfall echoed harshly through the silent house. There was no carpet.\n\nThe bedroom was on the second landing. Douglas Stone followed the old nurse into it, with the merchant at his heels. Here, at least, there was furniture and to spare. The floor was littered and the corners piled with Turkish cabinets, inlaid tables, coats of chain-mail, strange pipes and grotesque weapons. A single small lamp stood upon a bracket on the wall. Douglas Stone took it down, and picking his way among the lumber, walked over to a couch in the corner on which lay a woman dressed in the Turkish fashion, with yashmak and veil. The lower part of the face was exposed, and the surgeon saw a jagged cut which zigzagged along the border of the underlip.\n\n\"You will forgive the yashmak,\" said the Turk. \"You know our views about women in the East.\"\n\nBut the surgeon was not thinking about the yashmak. This was no longer a woman to him. It was a case. He stooped and examined the wound carefully.\n\n\"There are no signs of irritation,\" said he. \"We might delay the operation until local symptoms develop.\"\n\nThe husband wrung his hands in uncontrollable agitation.\n\n\"Oh! sir, sir,\" he cried. \"Do not trifle. You do not know. It is deadly. I know, and I give you my assurance that an operation is absolutely necessary. Only the knife can save her.\"\n\n\"And yet I am inclined to wait,\" said Douglas Stone.\n\n\"That is enough,\" the Turk cried, angrily. \"Every minute is of importance, and I cannot stand here and see my wife allowed to sink. It only remains for me to give you my thanks for having come, and to call in some other surgeon before it is too late.\"\n\nDouglas Stone hesitated. To refund that hundred pounds was no pleasant matter. But of course if he left the case he must return the money. And if the Turk were right and the woman died, his position before a coroner might be an embarrassing one.\n\n\"You have had personal experience of this poison?\" he asked.\n\n\"I have.\"\n\n\"And you assure me that an operation is needful?\"\n\n\"I swear it by all that I hold sacred.\"\n\n\"The disfigurement will be frightful.\"\n\n\"I can understand that the mouth will not be a pretty one to kiss.\"\n\nDouglas Stone turned fiercely upon the man. The speech was a brutal one. But the Turk has his own fashion of talk and of thought, and there was no time for wrangling. Douglas Stone drew a bistoury from his case, opened it and felt the keen straight edge with his forefinger. Then he held the lamp closer to the bed. Two dark eyes were gazing up at him through the slit in the yashmak. They were all iris, and the pupil was hardly to be seen.\n\n\"You have given her a very heavy dose of opium.\"\n\n\"Yes, she has had a good dose.\"\n\nHe glanced again at the dark eyes which looked straight at his own. They were dull and lustreless, but, even as he gazed, a little shifting sparkle came into them, and the lips quivered.\n\n\"She is not absolutely unconscious,\" said he.\n\n\"Would it not be well to use the knife while it will be painless?\"\n\nThe same thought had crossed the surgeon\"s mind. He grasped the wounded lip with his forceps, and with two swift cuts he took out a broad V-shaped piece. The woman sprang up on the couch with a dreadful gurgling scream. Her covering was torn from her face. It was a face that he knew. In spite of that protruding upper lip and that slobber of blood, it was a face that he knew. She kept on putting her hand up to the gap and screaming. Douglas Stone sat down at the foot of the couch with his knife and his forceps. The room was whirling round, and he had felt something go like a ripping seam behind his ear. A bystander would have said that his face was the more ghastly of the two. As in a dream, or as if he had been looking at something at the play, he was conscious that the Turk\"s hair and beard lay upon the table, and that Lord Sannox was leaning against the wall with his hand to his side, laughing silently. The screams had died away now, and the dreadful head had dropped back again upon the pillow, but Douglas Stone still sat motionless, and Lord Sannox still chuckled quietly to himself.\n\n\"It was really very necessary for Marion, this operation,\" said he; \"not physically, but morally, you know, morally.\"\n\nDouglas Stone stooped forwards and began to play with the fringe of the coverlet. His knife tinkled down upon the ground, but he still held the forceps and something more.\n\n\"I had long intended to make a little example,\" said Lord Sannox, suavely. \"Your note of Wednesday miscarried, and I have it here in my pocket-book. I took some pains in carrying out my idea. The wound, by the way, was from nothing more dangerous than my signet ring.\"\n\nHe glanced keenly at his silent companion, and cocked the small revolver which he held in his coat pocket. But Douglas Stone was still picking at the coverlet.\n\n\"You see you have kept your appointment after all,\" said Lord Sannox.\n\nAnd at that Douglas Stone began to laugh. He laughed long and loudly. But Lord Sannox did not laugh now. Something like fear sharpened and hardened his features. He walked from the room, and he walked on tiptoe. The old woman was waiting outside.\n\n\"Attend to your mistress when she awakes,\" said Lord Sannox. Then he went down to the street. The cab was at the door, and the driver raised his hand to his hat.\n\n\"John,\" said Lord Sannox, \"you will take the doctor home first. He will want leading downstairs, I think. Tell his butler that he has been taken ill at a case.\"\n\n\"Very good, sir.\"\n\n\"Then you can take Lady Sannox home.\"\n\n\"And how about yourself, sir?\"\n\n\"Oh, my address for the next few months will be Hotel di Roma, Venice. Just see that the letters are sent on. And tell Stevens to exhibit all the purple chrysanthemums next Monday, and to wire me the result.\"\n\n\u2042\n\n[ The Brazilian Cat ]\n\nIt is hard luck on a young fellow to have expensive tastes, great expectations, aristocratic connections, but no actual money in his pocket and no profession by which he may earn any. The fact was that my father, a good, sanguine, easy-going man, had such confidence in the wealth and benevolence of his bachelor elder brother, Lord Southerton, that he took it for granted that I, his only son, would never be called upon to earn a living for myself. He imagined that if there were not a vacancy for me on the great Southerton Estates, at least there would be found some post in that diplomatic service which still remains the special preserve of our privileged classes. He died too early to realise how false his calculations had been. Neither my uncle nor the state took the slightest notice of me or showed any interest in my career. An occasional brace of pheasants, or basket of hares, was all that ever reached me to remind me that I was heir to Otwell House and one of the richest estates in the country. In the meantime, I found myself a bachelor and man about town, living in a suite of apartments in Grosvenor Mansions, with no occupation save that of pigeon-shooting and polo-playing at Hurlingham. Month by month, I realised that it was more and more difficult to get the brokers to renew my bills or to cash any further post-obits upon an unentailed property. Ruin lay right across my path, and every day I saw it clearer, nearer and more absolutely unavoidable.\n\nWhat made me feel my own poverty the more was that, apart from the great wealth of Lord Southerton, all my other relations were fairly well-to-do. The nearest of these was Everard King, my father\"s nephew and my own first cousin, who had spent an adventurous life in Brazil and had now returned to this country to settle down on his fortune. We never knew how he made his money, but he appeared to have plenty of it, for he bought the estate of Greylands, near Clipton-on-the-Marsh, in Suffolk. For the first year of his residence in England he took no more notice of me than my miserly uncle; but at last one summer morning, to my very great relief and joy, I received a letter asking me to come down that very day and spend a short visit at Greylands Court. I was expecting a rather long visit to Bankruptcy Court at the time, and this interruption seemed almost providential. If I could only get on terms with this unknown relative of mine, I might pull through yet. For the family credit, he could not let me go entirely to the wall. I ordered my valet to pack my valise, and I set off the same evening for Clipton-on-the-Marsh.\n\nAfter changing at Ipswich, a little local train deposited me at a small, deserted station lying amidst a rolling grassy country, with a sluggish and winding river curving in and out amidst the valleys, between high, silted banks, which showed that we were within reach of the tide. No carriage was awaiting me (I found afterwards that my telegram had been delayed), so I hired a dogcart at the local inn. The driver, an excellent fellow, was full of my relative\"s praises, and I learned from him that Mr Everard King was already a name to conjure with in that part of the country. He had entertained the schoolchildren, he had thrown his grounds open to visitors, he had subscribed to charities \u2013 in short, his benevolence had been so universal that my driver could only account for it on the supposition that he had parliamentary ambitions.\n\nMy attention was drawn away from my driver\"s panegyric by the appearance of a very beautiful bird which settled on a telegraph-post beside the road. At first I thought that it was a jay, but it was larger, with a brighter plumage. The driver accounted for its presence at once by saying that it belonged to the very man whom we were about to visit. It seems that the acclimatisation of foreign creatures was one of his hobbies, and that he had brought with him from Brazil a number of birds and beasts which he was endeavouring to rear in England. When once we had passed the gates of Greylands Park we had ample evidence of this taste of his. Some small spotted deer, a curious wild pig known, I believe, as a peccary, a gorgeously feathered oriole, some sort of armadillo and a singular lumbering in-toed beast like a very fat badger were among the creatures which I observed as we drove along the winding avenue.\n\nMr Everard King, my unknown cousin, was standing in person upon the steps of his house, for he had seen us in the distance and guessed that it was I. His appearance was very homely and benevolent, short and stout, forty-five years old, perhaps, with a round, good-humoured face, burned brown with the tropical sun and shot with a thousand wrinkles. He wore white linen clothes, in true planter style, with a cigar between his lips and a large panama hat upon the back of his head. It was such a figure as one associates with a verandahed bungalow, and it looked curiously out of place in front of this broad, stone English mansion, with its solid wings and its Palladio pillars before the doorway.\n\n\"My dear!\" he cried, glancing over his shoulder; \"my dear, here is our guest! Welcome, welcome to Greylands! I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Cousin Marshall, and I take it as a great compliment that you should honour this sleepy little country place with your presence.\"\n\nNothing could be more hearty than his manner, and he set me at my ease in an instant. But it needed all his cordiality to atone for the frigidity and even rudeness of his wife, a tall, haggard woman, who came forward at his summons. She was, I believe, of Brazilian extraction, though she spoke excellent English, and I excused her manners on the score of her ignorance of our customs. She did not attempt to conceal, however, either then or afterwards, that I was no very welcome visitor at Greylands Court. Her actual words were, as a rule, courteous, but she was the possessor of a pair of particularly expressive dark eyes, and I read in them very clearly from the first that she heartily wished me back in London once more.\n\nHowever, my debts were too pressing and my designs upon my wealthy relative were too vital for me to allow them to be upset by the ill-temper of his wife, so I disregarded her coldness and reciprocated the extreme cordiality of his welcome. No pains had been spared by him to make me comfortable. My room was a charming one. He implored me to tell him anything which could add to my happiness. It was on the tip of my tongue to inform him that a blank cheque would materially help towards that end, but I felt that it might be premature in the present state of our acquaintance. The dinner was excellent, and as we sat together afterwards over his Havanas and coffee, which later he told me was specially prepared upon his own plantation, it seemed to me that all my driver\"s eulogies were justified, and that I had never met a more large-hearted and hospitable man.\n\nBut, in spite of his cheery good nature, he was a man with a strong will and a fiery temper of his own. Of this I had an example upon the following morning. The curious aversion which Mrs Everard King had conceived towards me was so strong that her manner at breakfast was almost offensive. But her meaning became unmistakable when her husband had quitted the room.\n\n\"The best train in the day is at twelve fifteen,\" said she.\n\n\"But I was not thinking of going today,\" I answered, frankly \u2013 perhaps even defiantly, for I was determined not to be driven out by this woman.\n\n\"Oh, if it rests with you \u2013 \" said she, and stopped with a most insolent expression in her eyes.\n\n\"I am sure,\" I answered, \"that Mr Everard King would tell me if I were outstaying my welcome.\"\n\n\"What\"s this? What\"s this?\" said a voice, and there he was in the room. He had overheard my last words, and a glance at our faces had told him the rest. In an instant his chubby, cheery face set into an expression of absolute ferocity.\n\n\"Might I trouble you to walk outside, Marshall,\" said he? (I may mention that my own name is Marshall King.)\n\nHe closed the door behind me, and then, for an instant, I heard him talking in a low voice of concentrated passion to his wife. This gross breach of hospitality had evidently hit upon his tenderest point. I am no eavesdropper, so I walked out on to the lawn. Presently I heard a hurried step behind me, and there was the lady, her face pale with excitement and her eyes red with tears.\n\n\"My husband has asked me to apologise to you, Mr Marshall King,\" said she, standing with downcast eyes before me.\n\n\"Please do not say another word, Mrs King.\"\n\nHer dark eyes suddenly blazed out at me.\n\n\"You fool!\" she hissed, with frantic vehemence, and turning on her heel swept back to the house.\n\nThe insult was so outrageous, so insufferable, that I could only stand staring after her in bewilderment. I was still there when my host joined me. He was his cheery, chubby self once more.\n\n\"I hope that my wife has apologised for her foolish remarks,\" said he.\n\n\"Oh, yes \u2013 yes, certainly!\"\n\nHe put his hand through my arm and walked with me up and down the lawn.\n\n\"You must not take it seriously,\" said he. \"It would grieve me inexpressibly if you curtailed your visit by one hour. The fact is \u2013 there is no reason why there should be any concealment between relatives \u2013 that my poor dear wife is incredibly jealous. She hates that anyone \u2013 male or female \u2013 should for an instant come between us. Her ideal is a desert island and an eternal t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate. That gives you the clue to her actions, which are, I confess, upon this particular point, not very far removed from mania. Tell me that you will think no more of it.\"\n\n\"No, no; certainly not.\"\n\n\"Then light this cigar and come round with me and see my little menagerie.\"\n\nThe whole afternoon was occupied by this inspection, which included all the birds, beasts and even reptiles which he had imported. Some were free, some in cages, a few actually in the house. He spoke with enthusiasm of his successes and his failures, his births and his deaths, and he would cry out in his delight, like a schoolboy, when, as we walked, some gaudy bird would flutter up from the grass, or some curious beast slink into the cover. Finally he led me down a corridor which extended from one wing of the house. At the end of this there was a heavy door with a sliding shutter in it, and beside it there projected from the wall an iron handle attached to a wheel and a drum. A line of stout bars extended across the passage.\n\n\"I am about to show you the jewel of my collection,\" said he. \"There is only one other specimen in Europe, now that the Rotterdam cub is dead. It is a Brazilian cat.\"\n\n\"But how does that differ from any other cat?\"\n\n\"You will soon see that,\" said he, laughing. \"Will you kindly draw that shutter and look through?\"\n\nI did so, and found that I was gazing into a large, empty room, with stone flags, and small, barred windows upon the farther wall. In the centre of this room, lying in the middle of a golden patch of sunlight, there was stretched a huge creature, as large as a tiger, but as black and sleek as ebony. It was simply a very enormous and very well-kept black cat, and it cuddled up and basked in that yellow pool of light exactly as a cat would do. It was so graceful, so sinewy, and so gently and smoothly diabolical, that I could not take my eyes from the opening.\n\n\"Isn\"t he splendid?\" said my host, enthusiastically.\n\n\"Glorious! I never saw such a noble creature.\"\n\n\"Some people call it a black puma, but really it is not a puma at all. That fellow is nearly eleven feet from tail to tip. Four years ago he was a little ball of black fluff, with two yellow eyes staring out of it. He was sold me as a new-born cub up in the wild country at the head-waters of the Rio Negro. They speared his mother to death after she had killed a dozen of them.\"\n\n\"They are ferocious, then?\"\n\n\"The most absolutely treacherous and bloodthirsty creatures upon earth. You talk about a Brazilian cat to an up-country Indian, and see him get the jumps. They prefer humans to game. This fellow has never tasted living blood yet, but when he does he will be a terror. At present he won\"t stand anyone but me in his den. Even Baldwin, the groom, dare not go near him. As to me, I am his mother and father in one.\"\n\nAs he spoke he suddenly, to my astonishment, opened the door and slipped in, closing it instantly behind him. At the sound of his voice the huge, lithe creature rose, yawned and rubbed its round, black head affectionately against his side, while he patted and fondled it.\n\n\"Now, Tommy, into your cage!\" said he.\n\nThe monstrous cat walked over to one side of the room and coiled itself up under a grating. Everard King came out, and taking the iron handle which I have mentioned, he began to turn it. As he did so the line of bars in the corridor began to pass through a slot in the wall and closed up the front of this grating, so as to make an effective cage. When it was in position, he opened the door once more and invited me into the room, which was heavy with the pungent, musty smell peculiar to the great carnivora.\n\n\"That\"s how we work it,\" said he. \"We give him the run of the room for exercise, and then at night we put him in his cage. You can let him out by turning the handle from the passage, or you can, as you have seen, coop him up in the same way. No, no, you should not do that!\"\n\nI had put my hand between the bars to pat the glossy, heaving flank. He pulled it back, with a serious face.\n\n\"I assure you that he is not safe. Don\"t imagine that because I can take liberties with him anyone else can. He is very exclusive in his friends \u2013 aren\"t you, Tommy? Ah, he hears his lunch coming to him! Don\"t you, boy?\"\n\nA step had sounded in the stone-flagged passage and the creature had sprung to his feet and was pacing up and down the narrow cage, his yellow eyes gleaming and his scarlet tongue rippling and quivering over the white line of his jagged teeth. A groom entered with a coarse joint upon a tray, and thrust it through the bars to him. He pounced lightly upon it, carried it off to the corner, and there, holding it between his paws, tore and wrenched at it, raising his bloody muzzle every now and then to look at us. It was a malignant and yet fascinating sight.\n\n\"You can\"t wonder that I am fond of him, can you?\" said my host, as we left the room, \"especially when you consider that I have had the rearing of him. It was no joke bringing him over from the centre of South America; but here he is safe and sound \u2013 and, as I have said, far the most perfect specimen in Europe. The people at the Zoo are dying to have him, but I really can\"t part with him. Now, I think that I have inflicted my hobby upon you long enough, so we cannot do better than follow Tommy\"s example, and go to our lunch.\"\n\nMy South American relative was so engrossed by his grounds and their curious occupants, that I hardly gave him credit at first for having any interests outside them. That he had some, and pressing ones, was soon borne in upon me by the number of telegrams which he received. They arrived at all hours, and were always opened by him with the utmost eagerness and anxiety upon his face. Sometimes I imagined that it must be the Turf, and sometimes the Stock Exchange, but certainly he had some very urgent business going forward which was not transacted upon the downs of Suffolk. During the six days of my visit he had never fewer than three or four telegrams a day, and sometimes as many as seven or eight.\n\nI had occupied these six days so well, that by the end of them I had succeeded in getting upon the most cordial terms with my cousin. Every night we had sat up late in the billiard-room, he telling me the most extraordinary stories of his adventures in America \u2013 stories so desperate and reckless, that I could hardly associate them with the brown little chubby man before me. In return, I ventured upon some of my own reminiscences of London life, which interested him so much that he vowed he would come up to Grosvenor Mansions and stay with me. He was anxious to see the faster side of city life, and certainly, though I say it, he could not have chosen a more competent guide. It was not until the last day of my visit that I ventured to approach that which was on my mind. I told him frankly about my pecuniary difficulties and my impending ruin, and I asked his advice \u2013 though I hoped for something more solid. He listened attentively, puffing hard at his cigar.\n\n\"But surely,\" said he, \"you are the heir of our relative, Lord Southerton?\"\n\n\"I have every reason to believe so, but he would never make me any allowance.\"\n\n\"No, no, I have heard of his miserly ways. My poor Marshall, your position has been a very hard one. By the way, have you heard any news of Lord Southerton\"s health lately?\"\n\n\"He has always been in a critical condition ever since my childhood.\"\n\n\"Exactly \u2013 a creaking hinge, if ever there was one. Your inheritance may be a long way off. Dear me, how awkwardly situated you are!\"\n\n\"I had some hopes, sir, that you, knowing all the facts, might be inclined to advance \u2013\"\n\n\"Don\"t say another word, my dear boy,\" he cried, with the utmost cordiality; \"we shall talk it over tonight, and I give you my word that whatever is in my power shall be done.\"\n\nI was not sorry that my visit was drawing to a close, for it is unpleasant to feel that there is one person in the house who eagerly desires your departure. Mrs King\"s sallow face and forbidding eyes had become more and more hateful to me. She was no longer actively rude \u2013 her fear of her husband prevented he \u2013 but she pushed her insane jealousy to the extent of ignoring me, never addressing me, and in every way making my stay at Greylands as uncomfortable as she could. So offensive was her manner during that last day, that I should certainly have left had it not been for that interview with my host in the evening which would, I hoped, retrieve my broken fortunes.\n\nIt was very late when it occurred, for my relative, who had been receiving even more telegrams than usual during the day, went off to his study after dinner and only emerged when the household had retired to bed. I heard him go round locking the doors, as his custom was of a night, and finally he joined me in the billiard-room. His stout figure was wrapped in a dressing-gown and he wore a pair of red Turkish slippers without any heels. Settling down into an armchair, he brewed himself a glass of grog, in which I could not help noticing that the whisky considerably predominated over the water.\n\n\"My word!\" said he, \"what a night!\"\n\nIt was, indeed. The wind was howling and screaming round the house, and the latticed windows rattled and shook as if they were coming in. The glow of the yellow lamps and the flavour of our cigars seemed the brighter and more fragrant for the contrast.\n\n\"Now, my boy,\" said my host, \"we have the house and the night to ourselves. Let me have an idea of how your affairs stand, and I will see what can be done to set them in order. I wish to hear every detail.\"\n\nThus encouraged, I entered into a long exposition, in which all my tradesmen and creditors, from my landlord to my valet, figured in turn. I had notes in my pocket-book and I marshalled my facts and gave, I flatter myself, a very businesslike statement of my own unbusinesslike ways and lamentable position. I was depressed, however, to notice that my companion\"s eyes were vacant and his attention elsewhere. When he did occasionally throw out a remark it was so entirely perfunctory and pointless, that I was sure he had not in the least followed my remarks. Every now and then he roused himself and put on some show of interest, asking me to repeat or to explain more fully, but it was always to sink once more into the same brown study. At last he rose and threw the end of his cigar into the grate.\n\n\"I\"ll tell you what, my boy,\" said he. \"I never had a head for figures, so you will excuse me. You must jot it all down upon paper, and let me have a note of the amount. I\"ll understand it when I see it in black and white.\"\n\nThe proposal was encouraging. I promised to do so.\n\n\"And now it\"s time we were in bed. By Jove, there\"s one o\"clock striking in the hall.\"\n\nThe tingling of the chiming clock broke through the deep roar of the gale. The wind was sweeping past with the rush of a great river.\n\n\"I must see my cat before I go to bed,\" said my host. \"A high wind excites him. Will you come?\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" said I.\n\n\"Then tread softly and don\"t speak, for everyone is asleep.\"\n\nWe passed quietly down the lamp-lit Persian-rugged hall, and through the door at the farther end. All was dark in the stone corridor, but a stable lantern hung on a hook, and my host took it down and lit it. There was no grating visible in the passage, so I knew that the beast was in its cage.\n\n\"Come in!\" said my relative, and opened the door.\n\nA deep growling as we entered showed that the storm had really excited the creature. In the flickering light of the lantern, we saw it, a huge black mass coiled in the corner of its den and throwing a squat, uncouth shadow upon the whitewashed wall. Its tail switched angrily among the straw.\n\n\"Poor Tommy is not in the best of tempers,\" said Everard King, holding up the lantern and looking in at him. \"What a black devil he looks, doesn\"t he? I must give him a little supper to put him in a better humour. Would you mind holding the lantern for a moment?\"\n\nI took it from his hand and he stepped to the door.\n\n\"His larder is just outside here,\" said he. \"You will excuse me for an instant, won\"t you?\" He passed out, and the door shut with a sharp metallic click behind him.\n\nThat hard crisp sound made my heart stand still. A sudden wave of terror passed over me. A vague perception of some monstrous treachery turned me cold. I sprang to the door, but there was no handle upon the inner side.\n\n\"Here!\" I cried. \"Let me out!\"\n\n\"All right! Don\"t make a row!\" said my host from the passage. \"You\"ve got the light all right.\"\n\n\"Yes, but I don\"t care about being locked in alone like this.\"\n\n\"Don\"t you?\" I heard his hearty, chuckling laugh. \"You won\"t be alone long.\"\n\n\"Let me out, sir!\" I repeated angrily. \"I tell you I don\"t allow practical jokes of this sort.\"\n\n\"Practical is the word,\" said he, with another hateful chuckle. And then suddenly I heard, amidst the roar of the storm, the creak and whine of the winch-handle turning and the rattle of the grating as it passed through the slot. Great God, he was letting loose the Brazilian cat!\n\nIn the light of the lantern I saw the bars sliding slowly before me. Already there was an opening a foot wide at the farther end. With a scream I seized the last bar with my hands and pulled with the strength of a madman. I was a madman with rage and horror. For a minute or more I held the thing motionless. I knew that he was straining with all his force upon the handle and that the leverage was sure to overcome me. I gave inch by inch, my feet sliding along the stones, and all the time I begged and prayed this inhuman monster to save me from this horrible death. I conjured him by his kinship. I reminded him that I was his guest; I begged to know what harm I had ever done him. His only answers were the tugs and jerks upon the handle, each of which, in spite of all my struggles, pulled another bar through the opening. Clinging and clutching, I was dragged across the whole front of the cage, until at last, with aching wrists and lacerated fingers, I gave up the hopeless struggle. The grating clanged back as I released it, and an instant later I heard the shuffle of the Turkish slippers in the passage, and the slam of the distant door. Then everything was silent.\n\nThe creature had never moved during this time. He lay still in the corner, and his tail had ceased switching. This apparition of a man adhering to his bars and dragged screaming across him had apparently filled him with amazement. I saw his great eyes staring steadily at me. I had dropped the lantern when I seized the bars, but it still burned upon the floor, and I made a movement to grasp it, with some idea that its light might protect me. But the instant I moved, the beast gave a deep and menacing growl. I stopped and stood still, quivering with fear in every limb. The cat (if one may call so fearful a creature by so homely a name) was not more than ten feet from me. The eyes glimmered like two disks of phosphorus in the darkness. They appalled and yet fascinated me. I could not take my own eyes from them. Nature plays strange tricks with us at such moments of intensity, and those glimmering lights waxed and waned with a steady rise and fall. Sometimes they seemed to be tiny points of extreme brilliancy \u2013 little electric sparks in the black obscurity \u2013 then they would widen and widen until all that corner of the room was filled with their shifting and sinister light. And then suddenly they went out altogether.\n\nThe beast had closed its eyes. I do not know whether there may be any truth in the old idea of the dominance of the human gaze, or whether the huge cat was simply drowsy, but the fact remains that, far from showing any symptom of attacking me, it simply rested its sleek, black head upon its huge forepaws and seemed to sleep. I stood, fearing to move lest I should rouse it into malignant life once more. But at least I was able to think clearly now that the baleful eyes were off me. Here I was shut up for the night with the ferocious beast. My own instincts, to say nothing of the words of the plausible villain who laid this trap for me, warned me that the animal was as savage as its master. How could I stave it off until morning? The door was hopeless, and so were the narrow, barred windows. There was no shelter anywhere in the bare, stone-flagged room. To cry for assistance was absurd. I knew that this den was an outhouse, and that the corridor which connected it with the house was at least a hundred feet long. Besides, with that gale thundering outside, my cries were not likely to be heard. I had only my own courage and my own wits to trust to.\n\nAnd then, with a fresh wave of horror, my eyes fell upon the lantern. The candle had burned low, and was already beginning to gutter. In ten minutes it would be out. I had only ten minutes then in which to do something, for I felt that if I were once left in the dark with that fearful beast I should be incapable of action. The very thought of it paralysed me. I cast my despairing eyes round this chamber of death, and they rested upon one spot which seemed to promise I will not say safety, but less immediate and imminent danger than the open floor.\n\nI have said that the cage had a top as well as a front, and this top was left standing when the front was wound through the slot in the wall. It consisted of bars at a few inches\" interval, with stout wire netting between, and it rested upon a strong stanchion at each end. It stood now as a great barred canopy over the crouching figure in the corner. The space between this iron shelf and the roof may have been from two to three feet. If I could only get up there, squeezed in between bars and ceiling, I should have only one vulnerable side. I should be safe from below, from behind, and from each side. Only on the open face of it could I be attacked. There, it is true, I had no protection whatever; but at least I should be out of the brute\"s path when he began to pace about his den. He would have to come out of his way to reach me. It was now or never, for once the light were out it would be impossible. With a gulp in my throat I sprang up, seized the iron edge of the top, and swung myself panting on to it. I writhed in, face downwards, and found myself looking straight into the terrible eyes and yawning jaws of the cat. Its fetid breath came up into my face like the steam from some foul pot.\n\nIt appeared, however, to be rather curious than angry. With a sleek ripple of its long black back it rose, stretched itself, and then rearing itself on its hind legs, with one forepaw against the wall, it raised the other and drew its claws across the wire meshes beneath me. One sharp, white hook tore through my trousers \u2013 for I may mention that I was still in evening dress \u2013 and dug a furrow in my knee. It was not meant as an attack, but rather as an experiment, for upon my giving a sharp cry of pain he dropped down again, and springing lightly into the room, he began walking swiftly round it, looking up every now and again in my direction. For my part I shuffled backwards until I lay with my back against the wall, screwing myself into the smallest space possible. The farther I got the more difficult it was for him to attack me.\n\nHe seemed more excited now that he had begun to move about, and he ran swiftly and noiselessly round and round the den, passing continually underneath the iron couch upon which I lay. It was wonderful to see so great a bulk passing like a shadow, with hardly the softest thudding of velvety pads. The candle was burning low \u2013 so low that I could hardly see the creature. And then, with a last flare and splutter, it went out altogether. I was alone with the cat in the dark!\n\nIt helps one to face a danger when one knows that one has done all that possibly can be done. There is nothing for it then but to quietly await the result. In this case, there was no chance of safety anywhere except the precise spot where I was. I stretched myself out, therefore, and lay silently, almost breathlessly, hoping that the beast might forget my presence if I did nothing to remind him. I reckoned that it must already be two o\"clock. At four it would be full dawn. I had not more than two hours to wait for daylight.\n\nOutside, the storm was still raging, and the rain lashed continually against the little windows. Inside, the poisonous and fetid air was overpowering. I could neither hear nor see the cat. I tried to think about other things \u2013 but only one had power enough to draw my mind from my terrible position. That was the contemplation of my cousin\"s villainy, his unparalleled hypocrisy, his malignant hatred of me. Beneath that cheerful face there lurked the spirit of a medieval assassin. And as I thought of it I saw more clearly how cunningly the thing had been arranged. He had apparently gone to bed with the others. No doubt he had his witnesses to prove it. Then, unknown to them, he had slipped down, had lured me into this den and abandoned me. His story would be so simple. He had left me to finish my cigar in the billiard-room. I had gone down on my own account to have a last look at the cat. I had entered the room without observing that the cage was opened, and I had been caught. How could such a crime be brought home to him? Suspicion, perhaps \u2013 but proof, never!\n\nHow slowly those dreadful two hours went by! Once I heard a low, rasping sound, which I took to be the creature licking its own fur. Several times those greenish eyes gleamed at me through the darkness, but never in a fixed stare, and my hopes grew stronger that my presence had been forgotten or ignored. At last the least faint glimmer of light came through the windows \u2013 I first dimly saw them as two grey squares upon the black wall, then grey turned to white, and I could see my terrible companion once more. And he, alas, could see me!\n\nIt was evident to me at once that he was in a much more dangerous and aggressive mood than when I had seen him last. The cold of the morning had irritated him, and he was hungry as well. With a continual growl he paced swiftly up and down the side of the room which was farthest from my refuge, his whiskers bristling angrily and his tail switching and lashing. As he turned at the corners his savage eyes always looked upwards at me with a dreadful menace. I knew then that he meant to kill me. Yet I found myself even at that moment admiring the sinuous grace of the devilish thing, its long, undulating, rippling movements, the gloss of its beautiful flanks, the vivid, palpitating scarlet of the glistening tongue which hung from the jet-black muzzle. And all the time that deep, threatening growl was rising and rising in an unbroken crescendo. I knew that the crisis was at hand.\n\nIt was a miserable hour to meet such a death \u2013 so cold, so comfortless, shivering in my light dress clothes upon this gridiron of torment upon which I was stretched. I tried to brace myself to it, to raise my soul above it, and at the same time, with the lucidity which comes to a perfectly desperate man, I cast round for some possible means of escape. One thing was clear to me. If that front of the cage was only back in its position once more, I could find a sure refuge behind it. Could I possibly pull it back? I hardly dared to move for fear of bringing the creature upon me. Slowly, very slowly, I put my hand forward until it grasped the edge of the front, the final bar which protruded through the wall. To my surprise it came quite easily to my jerk. Of course the difficulty of drawing it out arose from the fact that I was clinging to it. I pulled again, and three inches of it came through. It ran apparently on wheels. I pulled again... and then the cat sprang!\n\nIt was so quick, so sudden, that I never saw it happen. I simply heard the savage snarl and in an instant afterwards the blazing yellow eyes, the flattened black head with its red tongue and flashing teeth, were within reach of me. The impact of the creature shook the bars upon which I lay, until I thought (as far as I could think of anything at such a moment) that they were coming down. The cat swayed there for an instant, the head and front paws quite close to me, the hind paws clawing to find a grip upon the edge of the grating. I heard the claws rasping as they clung to the wire-netting and the breath of the beast made me sick. But its bound had been miscalculated. It could not retain its position. Slowly, grinning with rage, and scratching madly at the bars, it swung backwards and dropped heavily upon the floor. With a growl it instantly faced round to me and crouched for another spring.\n\nI knew that the next few moments would decide my fate. The creature had learned by experience. It would not miscalculate again. I must act promptly, fearlessly, if I were to have a chance of life. In an instant I had formed my plan. Pulling off my dress-coat, I threw it down over the head of the beast. At the same moment I dropped over the edge, seized the end of the front grating, and pulled it frantically out of the wall.\n\nIt came more easily than I could have expected. I rushed across the room, bearing it with me; but, as I rushed, the accident of my position put me upon the outer side. Had it been the other way, I might have come off scathless. As it was, there was a moment\"s pause as I stopped it and tried to pass in through the opening which I had left. That moment was enough to give time to the creature to toss off the coat with which I had blinded him and to spring upon me. I hurled myself through the gap and pulled the rails to behind me, but he seized my leg before I could entirely withdraw it. One stroke of that huge paw tore off my calf as a shaving of wood curls off before a plane. The next moment, bleeding and fainting, I was lying among the foul straw with a line of friendly bars between me and the creature which ramped so frantically against them.\n\nToo wounded to move and too faint to be conscious of fear, I could only lie, more dead than alive, and watch it. It pressed its broad, black chest against the bars and angled for me with its crooked paws as I have seen a kitten do before a mousetrap. It ripped my clothes, but, stretch as it would, it could not quite reach me. I have heard of the curious numbing effect produced by wounds from the great carnivora, and now I was destined to experience it, for I had lost all sense of personality and was as interested in the cat\"s failure or success as if it were some game which I was watching. And then gradually my mind drifted away into strange vague dreams, always with that black face and red tongue coming back into them, and so I lost myself in the nirvana of delirium, the blessed relief of those who are too sorely tried.\n\nTracing the course of events afterwards, I conclude that I must have been insensible for about two hours. What roused me to consciousness once more was that sharp metallic click which had been the precursor of my terrible experience. It was the shooting back of the spring lock. Then, before my senses were clear enough entirely to apprehend what they saw, I was aware of the round, benevolent face of my cousin peering in through the open door. What he saw evidently amazed him. There was the cat crouching on the floor. I was stretched upon my back in my shirtsleeves within the cage, my trousers torn to ribbons and a great pool of blood all round me. I can see his amazed face now, with the morning sunlight upon it. He peered at me, and peered again. Then he closed the door behind him, and advanced to the cage to see if I were really dead.\n\nI cannot undertake to say what happened. I was not in a fit state to witness or to chronicle such events. I can only say that I was suddenly conscious that his face was away from me \u2013 that he was looking towards the animal.\n\n\"Good old Tommy!\" he cried. \"Good old Tommy!\"\n\nThen he came near the bars, with his back still towards me.\n\n\"Down, you stupid beast!\" he roared. \"Down, sir! Don\"t you know your master?\"\n\nSuddenly even in my bemuddled brain a remembrance came of those words of his when he had said that the taste of blood would turn the cat into a fiend. My blood had done it, but he was to pay the price.\n\n\"Get away!\" he screamed. \"Get away, you devil! Baldwin! Baldwin! Oh, my God!\"\n\nAnd then I heard him fall, and rise, and fall again, with a sound like the ripping of sacking. His screams grew fainter until they were lost in the worrying snarl. And then, after I thought that he was dead, I saw, as in a nightmare, a blinded, tattered, blood-soaked figure running wildly round the room \u2013 and that was the last glimpse I had of him before I fainted once again.\n\nI was many months in my recovery \u2013 in fact, I cannot say that I have ever recovered, for to the end of my days I shall carry a stick as a sign of my night with the Brazilian cat. Baldwin, the groom, and the other servants could not tell what had occurred, when, drawn by the death-cries of their master, they found me behind the bars, and his remains \u2013 or what they afterwards discovered to be his remains - in the clutch of the creature which he had reared. They stalled him off with hot irons, and afterwards shot him through the loophole of the door before they could finally extricate me. I was carried to my bedroom, and there, under the roof of my would-be murderer, I remained between life and death for several weeks. They had sent for a surgeon from Clipton and a nurse from London, and in a month I was able to be carried to the station, and so conveyed back once more to Grosvenor Mansions.\n\nI have one remembrance of that illness, which might have been part of the ever-changing panorama conjured up by a delirious brain were it not so definitely fixed in my memory. One night, when the nurse was absent, the door of my chamber opened and a tall woman in blackest mourning slipped into the room. She came across to me and as she bent her sallow face I saw by the faint gleam of the nightlight that it was the Brazilian woman whom my cousin had married. She stared intently into my face, and her expression was more kindly than I had ever seen it.\n\n\"Are you conscious?\" she asked.\n\nI feebly nodded \u2013 for I was still very weak.\n\n\"Well, then, I only wished to say to you that you have yourself to blame. Did I not do all I could for you? From the beginning I tried to drive you from the house. By every means, short of betraying my husband, I tried to save you from him. I knew that he had a reason for bringing you here. I knew that he would never let you get away again. No one knew him as I knew him, who had suffered from him so often. I did not dare to tell you all this. He would have killed me. But I did my best for you. As things have turned out, you have been the best friend that I have ever had. You have set me free, and I fancied that nothing but death would do that. I am sorry if you are hurt, but I cannot reproach myself. I told you that you were a fool \u2013 and a fool you have been.\" She crept out of the room, the bitter, singular woman, and I was never destined to see her again. With what remained from her husband\"s property she went back to her native land, and I have heard that she afterwards took the veil at Pernambuco.\n\nIt was not until I had been back in London for some time that the doctors pronounced me to be well enough to do business. It was not a very welcome permission to me, for I feared that it would be the signal for an inrush of creditors; but it was Summers, my lawyer, who first took advantage of it.\n\n\"I am very glad to see that your lordship is so much better,\" said he. \"I have been waiting a long time to offer my congratulations.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, Summers? This is no time for joking.\"\n\n\"I mean what I say,\" he answered. \"You have been Lord Southerton for the last six weeks, but we feared that it would retard your recovery if you were to learn it.\"\n\nLord Southerton! One of the richest peers in England! I could not believe my ears. And then suddenly I thought of the time which had elapsed, and how it coincided with my injuries.\n\n\"Then Lord Southerton must have died about the same time that I was hurt?\"\n\n\"His death occurred upon that very day.\" Summers looked hard at me as I spoke, and I am convinced \u2013 for he was a very shrewd fellow \u2013 that he had guessed the true state of the case. He paused for a moment as if awaiting a confidence from me, but I could not see what was to be gained by exposing such a family scandal.\n\n\"Yes, a very curious coincidence,\" he continued, with the same knowing look. \"Of course, you are aware that your cousin Everard King was the next heir to the estates. Now, if it had been you instead of him who had been torn to pieces by this tiger, or whatever it was, then of course he would have been Lord Southerton at the present moment.\"\n\n\"No doubt,\" said I.\n\n\"And he took such an interest in it,\" said Summers. \"I happen to know that the late Lord Southerton\"s valet was in his pay, and that he used to have telegrams from him every few hours to tell him how he was getting on. That would be about the time when you were down there. Was it not strange that he should wish to be so well informed, since he knew that he was not the direct heir?\"\n\n\"Very strange,\" said I. \"And now, Summers, if you will bring me my bills and a new chequebook, we will begin to get things into order.\"\n\n\u2042\n\n[ The Brown Hand ]\n\nEveryone knows that Sir Dominick Holden, the famous Indian surgeon, made me his heir, and that his death changed me in an hour from a hard-working and impecunious medical man to a well-to-do landed proprietor. Many know also that there were at least five people between the inheritance and me, and that Sir Dominick\"s selection appeared to be altogether arbitrary and whimsical. I can assure them, however, that they are quite mistaken, and that, although I only knew Sir Dominick in the closing years of his life, there were, none the less, very real reasons why he should show his goodwill towards me. As a matter of fact, though I say it myself, no man ever did more for another than I did for my Indian uncle. I cannot expect the story to be believed, but it is so singular that I should feel that it was a breach of duty if I did not put it upon record \u2013 so here it is, and your belief or incredulity is your own affair.\n\nSir Dominick Holden, CB, KCSL, and I don\"t know what besides, was the most distinguished Indian surgeon of his day. In the army originally, he afterwards settled down into civil practice in Bombay, and visited, as a consultant, every part of India. His name is best remembered in connection with the Oriental Hospital, which he founded and supported. The time came, however, when his iron constitution began to show signs of the long strain to which he had subjected it, and his brother practitioners (who were not, perhaps, entirely disinterested upon the point) were unanimous in recommending him to return to England. He held on so long as he could, but at last he developed nervous symptoms of a very pronounced character, and so came back, a broken man, to his native county of Wiltshire. He bought a considerable estate with an ancient manor house upon the edge of Salisbury Plain, and devoted his old age to the study of comparative pathology, which has been his learned hobby all his life and in which he was a foremost authority.\n\nWe of the family were, as may be imagined, much excited by the news of the return of this rich and childless uncle to England. On his part, although by no means exuberant in his hospitality, he showed some sense of his duty to his relations, and each of us in turn had an invitation to visit him. From the accounts of my cousins it appeared to be a melancholy business, and it was with mixed feelings that I at last received my own summons to appear at Rodenhurst. My wife was so carefully excluded from the invitation that my first impulse was to refuse it, but the interests of the children had to be considered, and so, with her consent, I set out one October afternoon upon my visit to Wiltshire, with little thought of what that visit was to entail.\n\nMy uncle\"s estate was situated where the arable land of the plains begins to swell upwards into the rounded chalk hills which are characteristic of the county. As I drove from Dinton Station in the waning light of that autumn day, I was impressed by the weird nature of the scenery. The few scattered cottages of the peasants were so dwarfed by the huge evidences of prehistoric life, that the present appeared to be a dream and the past to be the obtrusive and masterful reality. The road wound through the valleys, formed by a succession of grassy hills, and the summit of each was cut and carved into the most elaborate fortifications, some circular and some square but all on a scale which has defied the winds and the rains of many centuries. Some call them Roman and some British, but their true origin and the reasons for this particular tract of country being so interlaced with entrenchments have never been finally made clear. Here and there on the long, smooth, olive-coloured slopes there rose small, rounded barrows or tumuli. Beneath them lie the cremated ashes of the race which cut so deeply into the hills, but their graves tell us nothing save that a jar full of dust represents the man who once laboured under the sun.\n\nIt was through this weird country that I approached my uncle\"s residence of Rodenhurst, and the house was, as I found, in due keeping with its surroundings. Two broken and weather-stained pillars, each surmounted by a mutilated heraldic emblem, flanked the entrance to a neglected drive. A cold wind whistled though the elms which lined it and the air was full of the drifting leaves. At the far end, under the gloomy arch of trees, a single yellow lamp burned steadily. In the dim half-light of the coming night I saw a long, low building stretching out two irregular wings, with deep eaves, a sloping gambrel roof and walls which were criss-crossed with timber balks in the fashion of the Tudors. The cheery light of a fire flickered in the broad, latticed window to the left of the low-porched door, and this, as it proved, marked the study of my uncle, for it was thither that I was led by his butler in order to make my host\"s acquaintance.\n\nHe was cowering over his fire, for the moist chill of an English autumn had set him shivering. His lamp was unlit, and I only saw the red glow of the embers beating upon a huge, craggy face, with a Red Indian nose and cheek, and deep furrows and seams from eye to chin, the sinister marks of hidden volcanic fires. He sprang up at my entrance with something of an old-world courtesy and welcomed me warmly to Rodenhurst. At the same time I was conscious, as the lamp was carried in, that it was a very critical pair of light-blue eyes which looked out at me from under shaggy eyebrows, like scouts beneath a bush, and that this outlandish uncle of mine was carefully reading off my character with all the ease of a practised observer and an experienced man of the world.\n\nFor my part I looked at him, and looked again, for I had never seen a man whose appearance was more fitted to hold one\"s attention. His figure was the framework of a giant, but he had fallen away until his coat dangled straight down in a shocking fashion from a pair of broad and bony shoulders. All his limbs were huge and yet emaciated, and I could not take my gaze from his knobby wrists and long, gnarled hands. But his eyes \u2013 those peering, light-blue eyes \u2013 they were the most arrestive of any of his peculiarities. It was not their colour alone, nor was it the ambush of hair in which they lurked; but it was the expression which I read in them. For the appearance and bearing of the man were masterful, and one expected a certain corresponding arrogance in his eyes, but instead of that I read the look which tells of a spirit cowed and crushed, the furtive, expectant look of the dog whose master has taken the whip from the rack. I formed my own medical diagnosis upon one glance at those critical and yet appealing eyes. I believed that he was stricken with some mortal ailment, that he knew himself to be exposed to sudden death and that he lived in terror of it. Such was my judgement \u2013 a false one, as the event showed; but I mention it that it may help you to realise the look which I read in his eyes.\n\nMy uncle\"s welcome was, as I have said, a courteous one, and in an hour or so I found myself seated between him and his wife at a comfortable dinner, with curious, pungent delicacies upon the table and a stealthy, quick-eyed Oriental waiter behind his chair. The old couple had come round to that tragic imitation of the dawn of life when husband and wife, having lost or scattered all those who were their intimates, find themselves face to face and alone once more, their work done, and the end nearing fast. Those who have reached that stage in sweetness and love, who can change their winter into a gentle, Indian summer, have come as victors through the ordeal of life. Lady Holden was a small, alert woman with a kindly eye, and her expression as she glanced at him was a certificate of character to her husband. And yet, though I read a mutual love in their glances, I read also mutual horror, and recognised in her face some reflection of that stealthy fear which I had detected in his. Their talk was sometimes merry and sometimes sad, but there was a forced note in their merriment and a naturalness in their sadness which told me that a heavy heart beat upon either side of me.\n\nWe were sitting over our first glass of wine, and the servants had left the room, when the conversation took a turn which produced a remarkable effect upon my host and hostess. I cannot recall what it was which started the topic of the supernatural, but it ended in my showing them that the abnormal in psychical experiences was a subject to which I had, like many neurologists, devoted a great deal of attention. I concluded by narrating my experiences when, as a member of the Psychical Research Society, I had formed one of a committee of three who spent the night in a haunted house. Our adventures were neither exciting nor convincing, but, such as it was, the story appeared to interest my auditors in a remarkable degree. They listened with an eager silence, and I caught a look of intelligence between them which I could not understand. Lady Holden immediately afterwards rose and left the room.\n\nSir Dominick pushed the cigar-box over to me, and we smoked for some little time in silence. That huge, bony hand of his was twitching as he raised it with his cheroot to his lips, and I felt that the man\"s nerves were vibrating like fiddle-strings. My instincts told me that he was on the verge of some intimate confidence, and I feared to speak lest I should interrupt it. At last he turned towards me with a spasmodic gesture, like a man who throws his last scruple to the winds.\n\n\"From the little that I have seen of you it appears to me, Dr Hardacre,\" said he, \"that you are the very man I have wanted to meet.\"\n\n\"I am delighted to hear it, sir.\"\n\n\"Your head seems to be cool and steady. You will acquit me of any desire to flatter you, for the circumstances are too serious to permit of insincerities. You have some special knowledge upon these subjects, and you evidently view them from that philosophical standpoint which robs them of all vulgar terror. I presume that the sight of an apparition would not seriously discompose you?\"\n\n\"I think not, sir.\"\n\n\"Would even interest you, perhaps?\"\n\n\"Most intensely.\"\n\n\"As a psychical observer, you would probably investigate it in as impersonal a fashion as an astronomer investigates a wandering comet?\"\n\n\"Precisely.\"\n\nHe gave a heavy sigh.\n\n\"Believe me, Dr Hardacre, there was a time when I could have spoken as you do now. My nerve was a byword in India. Even the Mutiny never shook it for an instant. And yet you see what I am reduced to \u2013 the most timorous man, perhaps, in all this county of Wiltshire. Do not speak too bravely upon this subject, or you may find yourself subjected to as long-drawn a test as I am \u2013 a test which can only end in the madhouse or the grave.\n\nI waited patiently until he should see fit to go further in his confidence. His preamble had, I need not say, filled me with interest and expectation.\n\n\"For some years, Dr Hardacre,\" he continued, \"my life and that of my wife have been made miserable by a cause which is so grotesque that it borders upon the ludicrous. And yet familiarity has never made it more easy to bear \u2013 on the contrary, as time passes my nerves become more worn and shattered by the constant attrition. If you have no physical fears, Dr Hardacre, I should very much value your opinion upon this phenomenon which troubles us so.\"\n\n\"For what it is worth my opinion is entirely at your service. May I ask the nature of the phenomenon?\"\n\n\"I think that your experiences will have a higher evidential value if you are not told in advance what you may expect to encounter. You are yourself aware of the quibbles of unconscious cerebration and subjective impressions with which a scientific sceptic may throw a doubt upon your statement. It would be as well to guard against them in advance.\"\n\n\"What shall I do, then?\"\n\n\"I will tell you. Would you mind following me this way?\" He led me out of the dining-room and down a long passage until we came to a terminal door. Inside there was a large, bare room fitted as a laboratory, with numerous scientific instruments and bottles. A shelf ran along one side, upon which there stood a long line of glass jars containing pathological and anatomical specimens.\n\n\"You see that I still dabble in some of my old studies,\" said Sir Dominick. \"These jars are the remains of what was once a most excellent collection, but unfortunately I lost the greater part of them when my house was burned down in Bombay in \"92. It was a most unfortunate affair for me \u2013 in more ways than one. I had examples of many rare conditions, and my splenic collection was probably unique. These are the survivors.\"\n\nI glanced over them and saw that they really were of a very great value and rarity from a pathological point of view: bloated organs, gaping cysts, distorted bones, odious parasites \u2013 a singular exhibition of the products of India.\n\n\"There is, as you see, a small settee here,\" said my host. \"It was far from our intention to offer a guest so meagre an accommodation, but since affairs have taken this turn, it would be a great kindness upon your part if you would consent to spend the night in this apartment. I beg that you will not hesitate to let me know if the idea should be at all repugnant to you.\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" I said, \"it is most acceptable.\"\n\n\"My own room is the second on the left, so that if you should feel that you are in need of company a call would always bring me to your side.\"\n\n\"I trust that I shall not be compelled to disturb you.\"\n\n\"It is unlikely that I shall be asleep. I do not sleep much. Do not hesitate to summon me.\"\n\nAnd so with this agreement we joined Lady Holden in the drawing-room and talked of lighter things.\n\nIt was no affectation upon my part to say that the prospect of my night\"s adventure was an agreeable one. I have no pretence to greater physical courage than my neighbours, but familiarity with a subject robs it of those vague and undefined terrors which are the most appalling to the imaginative mind. The human brain is capable of only one strong emotion at a time, and if it be filled with curiosity or scientific enthusiasm, there is no room for fear. It is true that I had my uncle\"s assurance that he had himself originally taken this point of view, but I reflected that the breakdown of his nervous system might be due to his forty years in India as much as to any psychical experiences which had befallen him. I at least was sound in nerve and brain, and it was with something of the pleasurable thrill of anticipation with which the sportsman takes his position beside the haunt of his game that I shut the laboratory door behind me, and partially undressing, lay down upon the rug-covered settee.\n\nIt was not an ideal atmosphere for a bedroom. The air was heavy with many chemical odours, that of methylated spirit predominating. Nor were the decorations of my chamber very sedative. The odious line of glass jars with their relics of disease and suffering stretched in front of my very eyes. There was no blind to the window, and a three-quarter moon streamed its white light into the room, tracing a silver square with filigree lattices upon the opposite wall. When I had extinguished my candle this one bright patch in the midst of the general gloom had certainly an eerie and discomposing aspect. A rigid and absolute silence reigned throughout the old house, so that the low swish of the branches in the garden came softly and smoothly to my ears. It may have been the hypnotic lullaby of this gentle susurrus, or it may have been the result of my tiring day, but after many dozings and many efforts to regain my clearness of perception, I fell at last into a deep and dreamless sleep.\n\nI was awakened by some sound in the room, and I instantly raised myself upon my elbow on the couch. Some hours had passed, for the square patch upon the wall had slid downwards and sideways until it lay obliquely at the end of my bed. The rest of the room was in deep shadow. At first I could see nothing; presently, as my eyes became accustomed to the faint light, I was aware, with a thrill which all my scientific absorption could not entirely prevent, that something was moving slowly along the line of the wall. A gentle, shuffling sound, as of soft slippers, came to my ears, and I dimly discerned a human figure walking stealthily from the direction of the door. As it emerged into the patch of moonlight I saw very clearly what it was and how it was employed. It was a man, short and squat, dressed in some sort of dark-grey gown, which hung straight from his shoulders to his feet. The moon shone upon the side of his face, and I saw that it was chocolate-brown in colour, with a ball of black hair like a woman\"s at the back of his head. He walked slowly, and his eyes were cast upwards towards the line of bottles which contained those gruesome remnants of humanity. He seemed to examine each jar with attention, and then to pass on to the next. When he had come to the end of the line, immediately opposite my bed, he stopped, faced me, threw up his hands with a gesture of despair, and vanished from my sight.\n\nI have said that he threw up his hands, but I should have said his arms, for as he assumed that attitude of despair I observed a singular peculiarity about his appearance. He had only one hand! As the sleeves drooped down from the upflung arms I saw the left plainly, but the right ended in a knobby and unsightly stump. In every other way his appearance was so natural, and I had both seen and heard him so clearly, that I could easily have believed that he was an Indian servant of Sir Dominick\"s who had come into my room in search of something. It was only his sudden disappearance which suggested anything more sinister to me. As it was I sprang from my couch, lit a candle, and examined the whole room carefully. There were no signs of my visitor, and I was forced to conclude that there had really been something outside the normal laws of nature in his appearance. I lay awake for the remainder of the night, but nothing else occurred to disturb me.\n\nI am an early riser, but my uncle was an even earlier one, for I found him pacing up and down the lawn at the side of the house. He ran towards me in his eagerness when he saw me come out from the door.\n\n\"Well, well!\" he cried. \"Did you see him?\"\n\n\"An Indian with one hand?\"\n\n\"Precisely.\"\n\n\"Yes, I saw him\" \u2013 and I told him all that occurred. When I had finished, he led the way into his study.\n\n\"We have a little time before breakfast,\" said he. \"It will suffice to give you an explanation of this extraordinary affair \u2013 so far as I can explain that which is essentially inexplicable. In the first place, when I tell you that for four years I have never passed one single night, either in Bombay, aboard ship or here in England, without my sleep being broken by this fellow, you will understand why it is that I am a wreck of my former self. His programme is always the same. He appears by my bedside, shakes me roughly by the shoulder, passes from my room into the laboratory, walks slowly along the line of my bottles and then vanishes. For more than a thousand times he has gone through the same routine.\"\n\n\"What does he want?\"\n\n\"He wants his hand.\"\n\n\"His hand?\"\n\n\"Yes, it came about in this way. I was summoned to Peshawar for a consultation some ten years ago, and while there I was asked to look at the hand of a native who was passing through with an Afghan caravan. The fellow came from some mountain tribe living away at the back of beyond somewhere on the other side of Kaffiristan. He talked a bastard Pushtu, and it was all I could do to understand him. He was suffering from a soft sarcomatous swelling of one of the metacarpal joints, and I made him realise that it was only by losing his hand that he could hope to save his life. After much persuasion he consented to the operation, and he asked me, when it was over, what fee I demanded. The poor fellow was almost a beggar, so that the idea of a fee was absurd, but I answered in jest that my fee should be his hand and that I proposed to add it to my pathological collection.\n\n\"To my surprise he demurred very much to the suggestion, and he explained that according to his religion it was an all-important matter that the body should be reunited after death and so make a perfect dwelling for the spirit. The belief is, of course, an old one, and the mummies of the Egyptians arose from an analogous superstition. I answered him that his hand was already off, and asked him how he intended to preserve it. He replied that he would pickle it in salt and carry it about with him. I suggested that it might be safer in my keeping than his, and that I had better means than salt for preserving it. On realising that I really intended to keep it carefully, his opposition vanished instantly. \"But remember, sahib,\" said he, \"I shall want it back when I am dead.\" I laughed at the remark, and so the matter ended. I returned to my practice, and he no doubt in the course of time was able to continue his journey to Afghanistan.\n\n\"Well, as I told you last night, I had a bad fire in my house at Bombay. Half of it was burned down and, among other things, my pathological collection was largely destroyed. What you see are the poor remains of it. The hand of the human went with the rest, but I gave the matter no particular thought at the time. That was six years ago.\n\n\"Four years ago \u2013 two years after the fire \u2013 I was awakened one night by a furious tugging at my sleeve. I sat up under the impression that my favourite mastiff was trying to arouse me. Instead of this, I saw my Indian patient of long ago, dressed in the long, grey gown which was the badge of his people. He was holding up his stump and looking reproachfully at me. He then went over to my bottles, which at that time I kept in my room, and he examined them carefully, after which he gave a gesture of anger and vanished. I realised that he had just died, and that he had come to claim my promise that I should keep his limb in safety for him.\n\n\"Well, there you have it all, Dr Hardacre. Every night at the same hour for four years this performance has been repeated. It is a simple thing in itself, but it has worn me out like water dropping on a stone. It has brought a vile insomnia with it, for I cannot sleep now for the expectation of his coming. It has poisoned my old age and that of my wife, who has been the sharer in this great trouble. But there is the breakfast gong, and she will be waiting impatiently to know how it fared with you last night. We are both much indebted to you for your gallantry, for it takes something from the weight of our misfortune when we share it, even for a single night, with a friend, and it reassures us as to our sanity, which we are sometimes driven to question.\"\n\nThis was the curious narrative which Sir Dominick confided to me \u2013 a story which to many would have appeared to be a grotesque impossibility, but which, after my experience of the night before and my previous knowledge of such things, I was prepared to accept as an absolute fact. I thought deeply over the matter, and brought the whole range of my reading and experience to bear upon it. After breakfast, I surprised my host and hostess by announcing that I was returning to London by the next train.\n\n\"My dear doctor,\" cried Sir Dominick in great distress, \"you make me feel that I have been guilty of a gross breach of hospitality in intruding this unfortunate matter upon you. I should have borne my own burden.\"\n\n\"It is, indeed, that matter which is taking me to London,\" I answered; \"but you are mistaken, I assure you, if you think that my experience of last night was an unpleasant one to me. On the contrary, I am about to ask your permission to return in the evening and spend one more night in your laboratory. I am very eager to see this visitor once again.\"\n\nMy uncle was exceedingly anxious to know what I was about to do, but my fears of raising false hopes prevented me from telling him. I was back in my own consulting-room a little after luncheon, and was confirming my memory of a passage in a recent book upon occultism which had arrested my attention when I read it.\n\nIn the case of earth-bound spirits [said my authority], some one dominant idea obsessing them at the hour of death is sufficient to hold them in this material world. They are the amphibia of this life and of the next, capable of passing from one to the other as the turtle passes from land to water. The causes which may bind a soul so strongly to a life which its body has abandoned are any violent emotion. Avarice, revenge, anxiety, love and pity have all been known to have this effect. As a rule it springs from some unfulfilled wish, and when the wish has been fulfilled the material bond relaxes. There are many cases upon record which show the singular persistence of these visitors, and also their disappearance when their wishes have been fulfilled, or in some cases when a reasonable compromise has been effected.\n\n\"A reasonable compromise effected\" \u2013 those were the words which I had brooded over all the morning, and which I now verified in the original. No actual atonement could be made here \u2013 but a reasonable compromise! I made my way as fast as a train could take me to the Shadwell Seamen\"s Hospital, where my old friend Jack Hewett was house-surgeon. Without explaining the situation I made him understand what it was that I wanted.\n\n\"A brown man\"s hand!\" said he, in amazement. \"What in the world do you want that for?\"\n\n\"Never mind. I\"ll tell you some day. I know that your wards are full of Indians.\"\n\n\"I should think so. But a hand \u2013 \" He thought a little and then struck a bell.\n\n\"Travers,\" said he to a student-dresser, \"what became of the hands of the Lascar which we took off yesterday? I mean the fellow from the East India Dock who got caught in the steam winch.\"\n\n\"They are in the post-mortem room, sir.\"\n\n\"Just pack one of them in antiseptics and give it to Dr Hardacre.\"\n\nAnd so I found myself back at Rodenhurst before dinner with this curious outcome of my day in town. I still said nothing to Sir Dominick, but I slept that night in the laboratory, and I placed the Lascar\"s hand in one of the glass jars at the end of my couch.\n\nSo interested was I in the result of my experiment that sleep was out of the question. I sat with a shaded lamp beside me and waited patiently for my visitor. This time I saw him clearly from the first. He appeared beside the door, nebulous for an instant, and then hardening into as distinct an outline as any living man. The slippers beneath his grey gown were red and heelless, which accounted for the low, shuffling sound which he made as he walked. As on the previous night he passed slowly along the line of bottles until he paused before that which contained the hand. He reached up to it, his whole figure quivering with expectation, took it down, examined it eagerly, and then, with a face which was convulsed with fury and disappointment, he hurled it down on the floor. There was a crash which resounded through the house, and when I looked up the mutilated Indian had disappeared. A moment later my door flew open and Sir Dominick rushed in.\n\n\"You are not hurt?\" he cried.\n\n\"No \u2013 but deeply disappointed.\"\n\nHe looked in astonishment at the splinters of glass and the brown hand lying upon the floor.\n\n\"Good God!\" he cried. \"What is this?\"\n\nI told him my idea and its wretched sequel. He listened intently, but shook his head.\n\n\"It was well thought of,\" said he, \"but I fear that there is no such easy end to my sufferings. But one thing I now insist upon. It is that you shall never again upon any pretext occupy this room. My fears that something might have happened to you \u2013 when I heard that crash \u2013 have been the most acute of all the agonies which I have undergone. I will not expose myself to a repetition of it.\"\n\nHe allowed me, however, to spend the remainder of that night where I was, and I lay there worrying over the problem and lamenting my own failure. With the first light of morning there was the Lascar\"s hand still lying upon the floor to remind me of my fiasco. I lay looking at it \u2013 and as I lay suddenly an idea flew like a bullet through my head and brought me quivering with excitement out of my couch. I raised the grim relic from where it had fallen. Yes, it was indeed so. The hand was the left hand of the Lascar.\n\nBy the first train I was on my way to town, and hurried at once to the Seamen\"s Hospital. I remembered that both hands of the Lascar had been amputated, but I was terrified lest the precious organ which I was in search of might have been already consumed in the crematory. My suspense was soon ended. It had still been preserved in the post-mortem room. And so I returned to Rodenhurst in the evening with my mission accomplished and the material for a fresh experiment.\n\nBut Sir Dominick Holden would not hear of my occupying the laboratory again. To all my entreaties he turned a deaf car. It offended his sense of hospitality, and he could no longer permit it. I left the hand, therefore, as I had done its fellow the night before, and I occupied a comfortable bedroom in another portion of the house, some distance from the scene of my adventures.\n\nBut in spite of that my sleep was not destined to be uninterrupted. In the dead of night my host burst into my room, a lamp in his hand. His huge, gaunt figure was enveloped in a loose dressing-gown, and his whole appearance might certainly have seemed more formidable to a weak-nerved man than that of the Indian of the night before. But it was not his entrance so much as his expression which amazed me. He had turned suddenly younger by twenty years at the least. His eyes were shining, his features radiant, and he waved one hand in triumph over his head. I sat up astounded, staring sleepily at this extraordinary visitor. But his words soon drove the sleep from my eyes.\n\n\"We have done it! We have succeeded!\" he shouted. \"My dear Hardacre, how can I ever in this world repay you?\"\n\n\"You don\"t mean to say that it is all right?\"\n\n\"Indeed I do. I was sure that you would not mind being awakened to hear such blessed news.\"\n\n\"Mind! I should think not indeed. But is it really certain?\"\n\n\"I have no doubt whatever upon the point. I owe you such a debt, my dear nephew, as I have never owed a man before, and never expected to. What can I possibly do for you that is commensurate? Providence must have sent you to my rescue. You have saved both my reason and my life, for another six months of this must have seen me either in a cell or a coffin. And my wife \u2013 it was wearing her out before my eyes. Never could I have believed that any human being could have lifted this burden off me.\" He seized my hand and wrung it in his bony grip.\n\n\"It was only an experiment \u2013 a forlorn hope \u2013 but I am delighted from my heart that it has succeeded. But how do you know that it is all right? Have you seen something?\"\n\nHe seated himself at the foot of my bed.\n\n\"I have seen enough,\" said he. \"It satisfies me that I shall be troubled no more. What has passed is easily told. You know that at a certain hour this creature always comes to me. Tonight he arrived at the usual time, and aroused me with even more violence than is his custom. I can only surmise that his disappointment of last night increased the bitterness of his anger against me. He looked angrily at me, and then went on his usual round. But in a few minutes I saw him, for the first time since this persecution began, return to my chamber. He was smiling. I saw the gleam of his white teeth through the dim light. He stood facing me at the end of my bed and three times he made the low, Eastern salaam which is their solemn leave-taking. And the third time that he bowed he raised his arms over his head, and I saw his two hands outstretched in the air. So he vanished \u2013 as I believe, for ever.\"\n\nSo that is the curious experience which won me the affection and the gratitude of my celebrated uncle, the famous Indian surgeon. His anticipations were realised, and never again was he disturbed by the visits of the restless hillman in search of his lost member. Sir Dominick and Lady Holden spent a very happy old age, unclouded, so far as I know, by any trouble, and they finally died during the great influenza epidemic within a few weeks of each other. In his lifetime he always turned to me for advice in everything which concerned that English life of which he knew so little; and I aided him also in the purchase and development of his estates. It was no great surprise to me, therefore, that I found myself eventually promoted over the heads of five exasperated cousins, and changed in a single day from a hard-working country doctor into the head of an important Wiltshire family. I, at least, have reason to bless the memory of the man with the brown hand, and the day when I was fortunate enough to relieve Rodenhurst of his unwelcome presence.\n\n\u2042\n\n[ The Horror of the Heights ]\n\nThe idea that the extraordinary narrative which has been called The Joyce-Armstrong Fragment is an elaborate practical joke evolved by some unknown person, cursed with a perverted and sinister sense of humour, has now been abandoned by all who have examined the matter. The most macabre and imaginative of plotters would hesitate before linking his morbid fancies with the unquestioned and tragic facts which reinforce the statement. Though the assertions contained in it are amazing and even monstrous, it is none the less forcing itself upon the general intelligence that they are true, and that we must readjust our ideas to the new situation. This world of ours appears to be separated by a slight and precarious margin of safety from a most singular and unexpected danger. I will endeavour in this narrative, which reproduces the original document in its necessarily somewhat fragmentary form, to lay before the reader the whole of the facts up to date, prefacing my statement by saying that, if there be any who doubt the narrative of Joyce-Armstrong, there can be no question at all as to the facts concerning Lieutenant Myrtle RN and Mr Hay Connor, who undoubtedly met their end in the manner described.\n\nThe Joyce-Armstrong Fragment was found in the field which is called Lower Haycock, lying one mile to the westward of the village of Withyham, upon the Kent and Sussex border. It was on the 15th September last that an agricultural labourer, James Flynn, in the employment of Matthew Dodd, farmer, of the Chauntry Farm, Withyham, perceived a briar pipe lying near the footpath which skirts the hedge in Lower Haycock. A few paces farther on he picked up a pair of broken binocular glasses. Finally, among some nettles in the ditch, he caught sight of a flat, canvas-backed book, which proved to be a note-book with detachable leaves, some of which had come loose and were fluttering along the base of the hedge. These he collected, but some, including the first, were never recovered, and leave a deplorable hiatus in this all-important statement. The note-book was taken by the labourer to his master, who in turn showed it to Dr J. H. Atherton, of Hartfield. This gentleman at once recognised the need for an expert examination, and the manuscript was forwarded to the Aero Club in London, where it now lies.\n\nThe first two pages of the manuscript are missing. There is also one torn away at the end of the narrative, though none of these affect the general coherence of the story. It is conjectured that the missing opening is concerned with the record of Mr Joyce-Armstrong\"s qualifications as an aeronaut, which can be gathered from other sources and are admitted to be unsurpassed among the air-pilots of England. For many years he has been looked upon as among the most daring and the most intellectual of flying men, a combination which has enabled him to both invent and test several new devices, including the common gyroscopic attachment which is known by his name. The main body of the manuscript is written neatly in ink, but the last few lines are in pencil and are so ragged as to be hardly legible \u2013 exactly, in fact, as they might be expected to appear if they were scribbled off hurriedly from the seat of a moving aeroplane. There are, it may be added, several stains, both on the last page and on the outside cover which have been pronounced by the Home Office experts to be blood \u2013 probably human and certainly mammalian. The fact that something closely resembling the organism of malaria was discovered in this blood, and that Joyce-Armstrong is known to have suffered from intermittent fever, is a remarkable example of the new weapons which modern science has placed in the hands of our detectives.\n\nAnd now a word as to the personality of the author of this epoch-making statement. Joyce-Armstrong, according to the few friends who really knew something of the man, was a poet and a dreamer, as well as a mechanic and an inventor. He was a man of considerable wealth, much of which he had spent in the pursuit of his aeronautical hobby. He had four private aeroplanes in his hangars near Devizes, and is said to have made no fewer than one hundred and seventy ascents in the course of last year. He was a retiring man with dark moods, in which he would avoid the society of his fellows. Captain Dangerfield, who knew him better than anyone, says that there were times when his eccentricity threatened to develop into something more serious. His habit of carrying a shotgun with him in his aeroplane was one manifestation of it.\n\nAnother was the morbid effect which the fall of Lieutenant Myrtle had upon his mind. Myrtle, who was attempting the height record, fell from an altitude of something over thirty thousand feet. Horrible to narrate, his head was entirely obliterated, though his body and limbs preserved their configuration. At every gathering of airmen, Joyce-Armstrong, according to Dangerfield, would ask, with an enigmatic smile: \"And where, pray, is Myrtle\"s head?\"\n\nOn another occasion, after dinner at the mess of the Flying School on Salisbury Plain, he started a debate as to what will be the most permanent danger which airmen will have to encounter. Having listened to successive opinions as to air-pockets, faulty construction and over-banking, he ended by shrugging his shoulders and refusing to put forward his own views, though he gave the impression that they differed from any advanced by his companions.\n\nIt is worth remarking that after his own complete disappearance it was found that his private affairs were arranged with a precision which may show that he had a strong premonition of disaster. With these essential explanations I will now give the narrative exactly as it stands, beginning at page three of the blood-soaked note-book:\n\nNevertheless, when I dined at Rheims with Coselli and Gustav Raymond I found that neither of them was aware of any particular danger in the higher layers of the atmosphere. I did not actually say what was in my thoughts, but I got so near to it that if they had any corresponding idea they could not have failed to express it. But then they are two empty, vainglorious fellows with no thought beyond seeing their silly names in the newspaper. It is interesting to note that neither of them had ever been much beyond the twenty-thousand-foot level. Of course, men have been higher than this both in balloons and in the ascent of mountains. It must be well above that point that the aeroplane enters the danger zone \u2013 always presuming that my premonitions are correct.\n\nAeroplaning has been with us now for more than twenty years, and one might well ask: Why should this peril be only revealing itself in our day? The answer is obvious. In the old days of weak engines, when a hundred-horse-power Gnome or Green was considered ample for every need, the flights were very restricted. Now that three hundred horse-power is the rule rather than the exception, visits to the upper layers have become easier and more common. Some of us can remember how, in our youth, Garros made a world-wide reputation by attaining nineteen thousand feet, and it was considered a remarkable achievement to fly over the Alps. Our standard now has been immeasurably raised, and there are twenty high flights for one in former years. Many of them have been undertaken with impunity. The thirty-thousand-foot level has been reached time after time with no discomfort beyond cold and asthma. What does this prove? A visitor might descend upon this planet a thousand times and never see a tiger. Yet tigers exist, and if he chanced to come down into a jungle he might be devoured. There are jungles of the upper air, and there are worse things than tigers which inhabit them. I believe in time they will map these jungles accurately out. Even at the present moment I could name two of them. One of them lies over the Pau-Biarritz district of France. Another is just over my head as I write here in my house in Wiltshire. I rather think there is a third in the Hamburg-Wiesbaden district.\n\nIt was the disappearance of the airmen that first set me thinking. Of course, everyone said that they had fallen into the sea, but that did not satisfy me at all. First, there was Verrier in France; his machine was found near Bayonne, but they never got his body. There was the case of Baxter, who also vanished, though his engine and some of the iron fixings were found in a wood in Leicestershire. In that case, Dr Middleton, of Amesbury, who was watching the flight with a telescope, declares that just before the clouds obscured his view he saw the machine, which was at an enormous height, suddenly rise perpendicularly upwards in a succession of jerks in a manner that he would have thought to be impossible. That was the last seen of Baxter. There was a correspondence in the papers, but it never led to anything. There were several other similar cases, and then there was the death of Hay Connor. What a cackle there was about an unsolved mystery of the air, and what columns in the halfpenny papers, and yet how little was ever done to get to the bottom of the business! He came down in a tremendous vol plan\u00e9 from an unknown height. He never got off his machine and died in his pilot\"s seat. Died of what? \"Heart disease\", said the doctors. Rubbish! Hay Connor\"s heart was as sound as mine is. What did Venables say? Venables was the only man who was at his side when he died. He said that he was shivering and looked like a man who had been badly scared. \"Died of fright,\" said Venables, but could not imagine what he was frightened about. Only said one word to Venables, which sounded like, \"Monstrous.\" They could make nothing of that at the inquest. But I could make something of it. Monsters! That was the last word of poor Harry Hay Connor. And he did die of fright, just as Venables thought.\n\nAnd then there was Myrtle\"s head. Do you really believe \u2013 does anybody really believe \u2013 that a man\"s head could be driven clean into his body by the force of a fall? Well, perhaps it may be possible, but I, for one, have never believed that it was so with Myrtle. And the grease upon his clothes \u2013 \"all slimy with grease,\" said somebody at the inquest. Queer that nobody got thinking after that! I did \u2013 but, then, I had been thinking for a good long time. I\"ve made three ascents \u2013 how Dangerfield used to chaff me about my shotgun \u2013 but I\"ve never been high enough. Now, with this new light Paul Veroner machine and its one hundred and seventy-five Robur, I should easily touch the thirty thousand tomorrow. I\"ll have a shot at the record. Maybe I shall have a shot at something else as well. Of course, it\"s dangerous. If a fellow wants to avoid danger he had best keep out of flying altogether and subside finally into flannel slippers and a dressing-gown. But I\"ll visit the air-jungle tomorrow \u2013 and if there\"s anything there I shall know it. If I return, I\"ll find myself a bit of a celebrity. If I don\"t, this note-book may explain what I am trying to do, and how I lost my life in doing it. But no drivel about accidents or mysteries, if you please.\n\nI chose my Paul Veroner monoplane for the job. There\"s nothing like a monoplane when real work is to be done. Beaumont found that out in very early days. For one thing it doesn\"t mind damp, and the weather looks as if we should be in the clouds all the time. It\"s a bonny little model and answers my hand like a tender-mouthed horse. The engine is a ten-cylinder rotary Robur working up to one hundred and seventy-five. It has all the modern improvements \u2013 enclosed fuselage, high-curved landing skids, brakes, gyroscopic steadiers and three speeds, worked by an alteration of the angle of the planes upon the Venetian-blind principle. I took a shotgun with me and a dozen cartridges filled with buckshot. You should have seen the face of Perkins, my old mechanic, when I directed him to put them in. I was dressed like an Arctic explorer, with two jerseys under my overalls, thick socks inside my padded boots, a storm-cap with flaps and my talc goggles. It was stifling outside the hangars, but I was going for the summit of the Himalayas, and had to dress for the part. Perkins knew there was something on and implored me to take him with me. Perhaps I should if I were using the biplane, but a monoplane is a one-man show \u2013 if you want to get the last foot of lift out of it. Of course, I took an oxygen bag; the man who goes for the altitude record without one will either be frozen or smothered \u2013 or both.\n\nI had a good look at the planes, the rudder-bar and the elevating lever before I got in. Everything was in order so far as I could see. Then I switched on my engine and found that she was running sweetly. When they let her go she rose almost at once upon the lowest speed. I circled my home field once or twice just to warm her up, and then with a wave to Perkins and the others, I flattened out my planes and put her on her highest. She skimmed like a swallow down wind for eight or ten miles until I turned her nose up a little and she began to climb in a great spiral for the cloud-bank above me. It\"s all-important to rise slowly and adapt yourself to the pressure as you go.\n\nIt was a close, warm day for an English September, and there was the hush and heaviness of impending rain. Now and then there came sudden puffs of wind from the south-west \u2013 one of them so gusty and unexpected that it caught me napping and turned me half-round for an instant. I remember the time when gusts and whirls and air-pockets used to be things of danger \u2013 before we learned to put an overmastering power into our engines. Just as I reached the cloud-banks, with the altimeter marking three thousand, down came the rain. My word, how it poured! It drummed upon my wings and lashed against my face, blurring my glasses so that I could hardly see. I got down on to a low speed, for it was painful to travel against it. As I got higher it became hail, and I had to turn tail to it. One of my cylinders was out of action \u2013 a dirty plug, I should imagine, but still I was rising steadily with plenty of power. After a bit the trouble passed, whatever it was, and I heard the full, deep-throated purr \u2013 the ten singing as one. That\"s where the beauty of our modern silencers comes in. We can at last control our engines by ear. How they squeal and squeak and sob when they are in trouble! All those cries for help were wasted in the old days, when every sound was swallowed up by the monstrous racket of the machine. If only the early aviators could come back to see the beauty and perfection of the mechanism which have been bought at the cost of their lives!\n\nAbout nine-thirty I was nearing the clouds. Down below me, all blurred and shadowed with rain, lay the vast expanse of Salisbury Plain. Half a dozen flying machines were doing hackwork at the thousand-foot level, looking like little black swallows against the green background. I dare say they were wondering what I was doing up in cloud-land. Suddenly a grey curtain drew across beneath me and the wet folds of vapour were swirling round my face. It was clammily cold and miserable. But I was above the hail-storm, and that was something gained. The cloud was as dark and thick as a London fog. In my anxiety to get clear, I cocked her nose up until the automatic alarm-bell rang, and I actually began to slide backwards. My sopped and dripping wings had made me heavier than I thought, but presently I was in lighter cloud, and soon had cleared the first layer. There was a second \u2013 opal-coloured and fleecy \u2013 at a great height above my head, a white, unbroken ceiling above, and a dark, unbroken floor below, with the monoplane labouring upwards upon a vast spiral between them. It is deadly lonely in these cloud-spaces. Once a great flight of some small water-birds went past me, flying very fast to the westwards. The quick whir of their wings and their musical cry were cheery to my ear. I fancy that they were teal, but I am a wretched zoologist. Now that we humans have become birds we must really learn to know our brethren by sight.\n\nThe wind down beneath me whirled and swayed the broad cloud-plain. Once a great eddy formed in it, a whirlpool of vapour, and through it, as down a funnel, I caught sight of the distant world. A large white biplane was passing at a vast depth beneath me. I fancy it was the morning mail service betwixt Bristol and London. Then the drift swirled inwards again and the great solitude was unbroken.\n\nJust after ten I touched the lower edge of the upper cloud-stratum. It consisted of fine diaphanous vapour drifting swiftly from the westward. The wind had been steadily rising all this time and it was now blowing a sharp breeze \u2013 twenty-eight an hour by my gauge. Already it was very cold, though my altimeter only marked nine thousand. The engines were working beautifully, and we went droning steadily upwards. The cloud-bank was thicker than I had expected, but at last it thinned out into a golden mist before me, and then in an instant I had shot out from it, and there was an unclouded sky and a brilliant sun above my head \u2013 all blue and gold above, all shining silver below, one vast, glimmering plain as far as my eyes could reach. It was a quarter past ten o\"clock, and the barograph needle pointed to twelve thousand eight hundred. Up I went and up, my ears concentrated upon the deep purring of my motor, my eyes busy always with the watch, the revolution indicator, the petrol lever and the oil pump. No wonder aviators are said to be a fearless race. With so many things to think of there is no time to trouble about oneself. About this time I noted how unreliable is the compass when above a certain height from earth. At fifteen thousand feet mine was pointing east and a point south. The sun and the wind gave me my true bearings.\n\nI had hoped to reach an eternal stillness in these high altitudes, but with every thousand feet of ascent the gale grew stronger. My machine groaned and trembled in every joint and rivet as she faced it, and swept away like a sheet of paper when I banked her on the turn, skimming down wind at a greater pace, perhaps, than ever mortal man has moved. Yet I had always to turn again and tack up in the wind\"s eye, for it was not merely a height record that I was after. By all my calculations it was above little Wiltshire that my air-jungle lay, and all my labour might be lost if I struck the outer layers at some farther point.\n\nWhen I reached the nineteen-thousand-foot level, which was about midday, the wind was so severe that I looked with some anxiety to the stays of my wings, expecting momentarily to see them snap or slacken. I even cast loose the parachute behind me, and fastened its hook into the ring of my leathern belt, so as to be ready for the worst. Now was the time when a bit of scamped work by the mechanic is paid for with the life of the aeronaut. But she held together bravely. Every cord and strut was humming and vibrating like so many harp-strings, but it was glorious to see how, for all the beating and the buffeting, she was still the conqueror of nature and the mistress of the sky. There is surely something divine in man himself that he should rise so superior to the limitations which creation seem to impose \u2013 rise, too, by such unselfish, heroic devotion as this air-conquest has shown. Talk of human degeneration! When has such a story as this been written in the annals of our race?\n\nThese were the thoughts in my head as I climbed that monstrous, inclined plane with the wind sometimes beating in my face and sometimes whistling behind my ears, while the cloud-land beneath me fell away to such a distance that the folds and hummocks of silver had all smoothed out into one flat, shining plain. But suddenly I had a horrible and unprecedented experience. I have known before what it is to be in what our neighbours have called a tourbillon, but never on such a scale as this. That huge, sweeping river of wind of which I have spoken had, as it appears, whirlpools within it which were as monstrous as itself. Without a moment\"s warning I was dragged suddenly into the heart of one. I spun round for a minute or two with such velocity that I almost lost my senses, and then fell suddenly, left wing foremost, down the vacuum funnel in the centre. I dropped like a stone and lost nearly a thousand feet. It was only my belt that kept me in my seat, and the shock and breathlessness left me hanging half-insensible over the side of the fuselage. But I am always capable of a supreme effort \u2013 it is my one great merit as an aviator. I was conscious that the descent was slower. The whirlpool was a cone rather than a funnel, and I had come to the apex. With a terrific wrench, throwing my weight all to one side, I levelled my planes and brought her head away from the wind. In an instant I had shot out of the eddies and was skimming down the sky. Then, shaken but victorious, I turned her nose up and began once more my steady grind on the upward spiral. I took a large sweep to avoid the danger-spot of the whirlpool, and soon I was safely above it. Just after one o\"clock I was twenty-one thousand feet above the sea-level. To my great joy I had topped the gale, and with every hundred feet of ascent the air grew stiller. On the other hand, it was very cold, and I was conscious of that peculiar nausea which goes with rarefaction of the air. For the first time I unscrewed the mouth of my oxygen bag and took an occasional whiff of the glorious gas. I could feel it running like a cordial through my veins, and I was exhilarated almost to the point of drunkenness. I shouted and sang as I soared upwards into the cold, still, outer world.\n\nIt is very clear to me that the insensibility which came upon Glaisher, and in a lesser degree upon Coxwell, when, in 1862, they ascended in a balloon to the height of thirty thousand feet, was due to the extreme speed with which a perpendicular ascent is made. Doing it at an easy gradient and accustoming oneself to the lessened barometric pressure by slow degrees, there are no such dreadful symptoms. At the same great height I found that even without my oxygen inhaler I could breathe without undue distress. It was bitterly cold, however, and my thermometer was at zero Fahrenheit. At one-thirty, I was nearly seven miles above the surface of the earth, and still ascending steadily. I found, however, that the rarefied air was giving markedly less support to my planes, and that my angle of ascent had to be considerably lowered in consequence. It was already clear that even with my light weight and strong engine-power there was a point in front of me where I should be held. To make matters worse, one of my sparking-plugs was in trouble again and there was intermittent misfiring in the engine. My heart was heavy with the fear of failure.\n\nIt was about that time that I had a most extraordinary experience. Something whizzed past me in a trail of smoke and exploded with a loud, hissing sound, sending forth a cloud of steam. For the instant I could not imagine what had happened. Then I remembered that the earth is for ever being bombarded by meteor stones, and would be hardly inhabitable were they not in nearly every case turned to vapour in the outer layers of the atmosphere. Here is a new danger for the high-altitude man, for two others passed me when I was nearing the forty-thousand-foot mark. I cannot doubt that at the edge of the earth\"s envelope the risk would be a very real one.\n\nMy barograph needle marked forty-one thousand three hundred when I became aware that I could go no farther. Physically, the strain was not as yet greater than I could bear but my machine had reached its limit. The attenuated air gave no firm support to the wings and the least tilt developed into side-slip, while she seemed sluggish on her controls. Possibly, had the engine been at its best, another thousand feet might have been within our capacity, but it was still misfiring, and two out of the ten cylinders appeared to be out of action. If I had not already reached the zone for which I was searching then I should never see it upon this journey. But was it not possible that I had attained it? Soaring in circles like a monstrous hawk upon the forty-thousand-foot level I let the monoplane guide herself, and with my Mannheim glass I made a careful observation of my surroundings. The heavens were perfectly clear; there was no indication of those dangers which I had imagined.\n\n\"I have said that I was soaring in circles. It struck me suddenly that I would do well to take a wider sweep and open up a new air-tract. If the hunter entered an earth-jungle he would drive through it if he wished to find his game. My reasoning had led me to believe that the air-jungle which I had imagined lay somewhere over Wiltshire. This should be to the south and west of me. I took my bearings from the sun, for the compass was hopeless, and no trace of earth was to be seen \u2013 nothing but the distant, silver cloud-plain. However, I got my direction as best I might and kept her head straight to the mark. I reckoned that my petrol supply would not last for more than another hour or so, but I could afford to use it to the last drop, since a single magnificent vol plan\u00e9 could at any time take me to the earth.\n\nSuddenly I was aware of something new. The air in front of me had lost its crystal clearness. It was full of long, ragged wisps of something which I can only compare to very fine cigarette smoke. It hung about in wreaths and coils, turning and twisting slowly in the sunlight. As the monoplane shot through it, I was aware of a faint taste of oil upon my lips, and there was a greasy scum upon the woodwork of the machine. Some infinitely fine organic matter appeared to be suspended in the atmosphere. There was no life there. It was inchoate and diffuse, extending for many square acres and then fringing off into the void. No, it was not life. But might it not be the remains of life? Above all, might it not be the food of life, of monstrous life, even as the humble grease of the ocean is the food for the mighty whale? The thought was in my mind when my eyes looked upwards and I saw the most wonderful vision that ever man has seen. Can I hope to convey it to you even as I saw it myself last Thursday?\n\nConceive a jellyfish such as sails in our summer seas, bell-shaped and of enormous size \u2013 far larger, I should judge, than the dome of St Paul\"s. It was of a light pink colour veined with a delicate green, but the whole huge fabric so tenuous that it was but a fairy outline against the dark blue sky. It pulsated with a delicate and regular rhythm. From it there depended two long, drooping, green tentacles, which swayed slowly backwards and forwards. This gorgeous vision passed gently with noiseless dignity over my head, as light and fragile as a soap-bubble, and drifted upon its stately way.\n\nI had half-turned my monoplane, that I might look after this beautiful creature, when, in a moment, I found myself amidst a perfect fleet of them, of all sizes, but none so large as the first. Some were quite small, but the majority about as big as an average balloon, and with much the same curvature at the top. There was in them a delicacy of texture and colouring which reminded me of the finest Venetian glass. Pale shades of pink and green were the prevailing tints, but all had a lovely iridescence where the sun shimmered through their dainty forms. Some hundreds of them drifted past me, a wonderful fairy squadron of strange unknown argosies of the sky \u2013 creatures whose forms and substance were so attuned to these pure heights that one could not conceive anything so delicate within actual sight or sound of earth.\n\nBut soon my attention was drawn to a new phenomenon \u2013 the serpents of the outer air. These were long, thin, fantastic coils of vapour-like material, which turned and twisted with great speed, flying round and round at such a pace that the eyes could hardly follow them. Some of these ghost-like creatures were twenty or thirty feet long, but it was difficult to tell their girth, for their outline was so hazy that it seemed to fade away into the air around them. These air-snakes were of a very light grey or smoke colour, with some darker lines within, which gave the impression of a definite organism. One of them whisked past my very face, and I was conscious of a cold, clammy contact, but their composition was so unsubstantial that I could not connect them with any thought of physical danger, any more than the beautiful bell-like creatures which had preceded them. There was no more solidity in their frames than in the floating spume from a broken wave.\n\nBut a more terrible experience was in store for me. Floating downwards from a great height there came a purplish patch of vapour, small as I saw it first, but rapidly enlarging as it approached me, until it appeared to be hundreds of square feet in size. Though fashioned of some transparent, jelly-like substance, it was none the less of much more definite outline and solid consistence than anything which I had seen before. There were more traces, too, of a physical organisation, especially two vast, shadowy, circular plates upon either side, which may have been eyes, and a perfectly solid white projection between them which was as curved and cruel as the beak of a vulture.\n\nThe whole aspect of this monster was formidable and threatening, and it kept changing its colour from a very light mauve to a dark, angry purple so thick that it cast a shadow as it drifted between my monoplane and the sun. On the upper curve of its huge body there were three great projections which I can only describe as enormous bubbles, and I was convinced as I looked at them that they were charged with some extremely light gas which served to buoy up the misshapen and semi-solid mass in the rarefied air. The creature moved swiftly along, keeping pace easily with the monoplane, and for twenty miles or more it formed my horrible escort, hovering over me like a bird of prey which is waiting to pounce. Its method of progression \u2013 done so swiftly that it was not easy to follow \u2013 was to throw out a long, glutinous streamer in front of it, which in turn seemed to draw forward the rest of the writhing body. So elastic and gelatinous was it that never for two successive minutes was it the same shape, and yet each change made it more threatening and loathsome than the last.\n\nI knew that it meant mischief. Every purple flush of its hideous body told me so. The vague, goggling eyes which were turned always upon me were cold and merciless in their viscid hatred. I dipped the nose of my monoplane downwards to escape it. As I did so, as quick as a flash there shot out a long tentacle from this mass of floating blubber, and it fell as light and sinuous as a whiplash across the front of my machine. There was a loud hiss as it lay for a moment across the hot engine, and it whisked itself into the air again, while the huge, flat body drew itself together as if in sudden pain. I dipped to a vol piqu\u00e9, but again a tentacle fell over the monoplane and this time was shorn off by the propeller as easily as it might have cut through a smoke wreath. A long, gliding, sticky, serpent-like coil came from behind and caught me round the waist, dragging me out of the fuselage. I tore at it, my fingers sinking into the smooth, glue-like surface, and for an instant I disengaged myself, but only to be caught round the boot by another coil, which gave me a jerk that tilted me almost on to my back.\n\nAs I fell over I blazed off both barrels of my gun, though, indeed, it was like attacking an elephant with a pea-shooter to imagine that any human weapon could cripple that mighty bulk. And yet I aimed better than I knew, for, with a loud report, one of the great blisters upon the creature\"s back exploded with the puncture of the buckshot. It was very clear that my conjecture was right, and that these vast, clear bladders were distended with some lifting gas, for in an instant the huge, cloud-like body turned sideways, writhing desperately to find its balance, while the white beak snapped and gaped in horrible fury. But already I had shot away on the steepest glide that I dared to attempt, my engine still full on, the flying propeller and the force of gravity shooting me downwards like an aerolite. Far behind me I saw a dull, purplish smudge growing swiftly smaller and merging into the blue sky behind it. I was safe out of the deadly jungle of the outer air.\n\nOnce out of danger I throttled my engine, for nothing tears a machine to pieces quicker than running on full power from a height. It was a glorious, spiral vol plan\u00e9 from nearly eight miles of altitude \u2013 first, to the level of the silver cloud-bank, then to that of the storm-cloud beneath it, and finally, in beating rain, to the surface of the earth. I saw the Bristol Channel beneath me as I broke from the clouds, but, having still some petrol in my tank, I got twenty miles inland before I found myself stranded in a field half a mile from the village of Ashcombe. There I got three tins of petrol from a passing motor-car, and at ten minutes past six that evening I alighted gently in my own home meadow at Devizes, after such a journey as no mortal upon earth has ever yet taken and lived to tell the tale. I have seen the beauty and I have seen the horror of the heights \u2013 and greater beauty or greater horror than that is not within the ken of man.\n\nAnd now it is my plan to go once again before I give my results to the world. My reason for this is that I must surely have something to show by way of proof before I lay such a tale before my fellow-men. It is true that others will soon follow and will confirm what I have said, and yet I should wish to carry conviction from the first. Those lovely iridescent bubbles of the air should not be hard to capture. They drift slowly upon their way, and the swift monoplane could intercept their leisurely course. It is likely enough that they would dissolve in the heavier layers of the atmosphere, and that some small heap of amorphous jelly might be all that I should bring to earth with me. And yet something there would surely be by which I could substantiate my story. Yes, I will go, even if I run a risk by doing so. These purple horrors would not seem to be numerous. It is probable that I shall not see one. If I do I shall dive at once. At the worst there is always the shotgun and my knowledge of...\n\nHere a page of the manuscript is unfortunately missing. On the next page is written, in large, straggling writing:\n\nForty-three thousand feet. I shall never see earth again. They are beneath me, three of them. God help me; it is a dreadful death to die!\n\nSuch in its entirety is The Joyce-Armstrong Fragment. Of the man nothing has since been seen. Pieces of his shattered monoplane have been picked up in the preserves of Mr Budd-Lushington upon the borders of Kent and Sussex, within a few miles of the spot where the note-book was discovered. If the unfortunate aviator\"s theory is correct that this air-jungle, as he called it, existed only over the south-west of England, then it would seem that he had fled from it at the full speed of his monoplane, but had been overtaken and devoured by these horrible creatures at some spot in the outer atmosphere above the place where the grim relics were found. The picture of that monoplane skimming down the sky, with the nameless terrors flying as swiftly beneath it and cutting it off always from the earth while they gradually closed in upon their victim, is one upon which a man who valued his sanity would prefer not to dwell. There are many, as I am aware, who still jeer at the facts which I have here set down, but even they must admit that Joyce-Armstrong has disappeared, and I would commend to them his own words: \"This note-book may explain what I am trying to do, and how I lost my life in doing it. But no drivel about accidents or mysteries, if you please.\"\n\n\u2042\n\n[ The Terror of the Blue John Gap ]\n\nThe following narrative was found among the papers of Dr James Hardcastle, who died of phthisis on February 4th, 1908, at 36 Upper Coventry Flats, South Kensington. Those who knew him best, while refusing to express an opinion upon this particular statement, are unanimous in asserting that he was a man of a sober and scientific turn of mind, absolutely devoid of imagination, and most unlikely to invent any abnormal series of events. The paper was contained in an envelope, which was docketed, \"A Short Account of the Circumstances which Occurred near the Misses Allerton\"s Farm in North-West Derbyshire in the Spring of Last Year\". The envelope was sealed, and on the other side was written in pencil:\n\nDear Seaton \u2013 It may interest and perhaps pain you to know that the incredulity with which you met my story has prevented me from ever opening my mouth upon the subject again. I leave this record after my death, and perhaps strangers may be found to have more confidence in me than my friend.\n\nEnquiry has failed to elicit who this Seaton may have been. I may add that the visit of the deceased to Allerton\"s Farm, and the general nature of the alarm there, apart from his particular explanation, have been absolutely established. With this foreword I append his account exactly as he left it. It is in the form of a diary, some entries in which have been expanded, while a few have been erased.\n\nApril 17 \u2013 Already I feel the benefit of this wonderful upland air. The farm of the Allertons lies fourteen hundred and twenty feet above sea-level, so it may well be a bracing climate. Beyond the usual morning cough I have very little discomfort, and, what with the fresh milk and the home-grown mutton, I have every chance of putting on weight. I think Saunderson will be pleased.\n\nThe two Miss Allertons are charmingly quaint and kind, two dear little hard-working old maids, who are ready to lavish all the heart which might have gone out to husband and to children upon an invalid stranger. Truly, the old maid is a most useful person, one of the reserve forces of the community. They talk of the superfluous woman, but what would the poor superfluous man do without her kindly presence? By the way, in their simplicity they very quickly let out the reason why Saunderson recommended their farm. The professor rose from the ranks himself, and I believe that in his youth he was not above scaring crows in these very fields.\n\nIt is a most lonely spot, and the walks are picturesque in the extreme. The farm consists of grazing land lying at the bottom of an irregular valley. On each side are the fantastic limestone hills, formed of rock so soft that you can break it away with your hands. All this country is hollow. Could you strike it with some gigantic hammer it would boom like a drum, or possibly cave in altogether and expose some huge subterranean sea. A great sea there must surely be, for on all sides the streams run into the mountain itself, never to reappear. There are gaps everywhere amid the rocks, and when you pass through them you find yourself in great caverns, which wind down into the bowels of the earth. I have a small bicycle lamp, and it is a perpetual joy to me to carry it into these weird solitudes, and to see the wonderful silver and black effect when I throw its light upon the stalactites which drape the lofty roofs. Shut off the lamp, and you are in the blackest darkness. Turn it on, and it is a scene from The Arabian Nights.\n\nBut there is one of these strange openings in the earth which has a special interest, for it is the handiwork, not of nature, but of man. I had never heard of Blue John when I came to these parts. It is the name given to a peculiar mineral of a beautiful purple shade, which is only found at one or two places in the world. It is so rare that an ordinary vase of Blue John would be valued at a great price. The Romans, with that extraordinary instinct of theirs, discovered that it was to be found in this valley, and sank a horizontal shaft deep into the mountain side. The opening of their mine has been called the Blue John Gap, a clean-cut arch in the rock, the mouth all overgrown with bushes. It is a goodly passage which the Roman miners cut, and it intersects some of the great water-worn caves, so that if you enter the Blue John Gap you would do well to mark your steps and to have a good store of candles or you may never make your way back to the daylight again. I have not yet gone deeply into it, but this very day I stood at the mouth of the arched tunnel and, peering down into the black recesses beyond, I vowed that when my health returned I would devote some holiday to exploring those mysterious depths and finding out for myself how far the Roman penetrated into the Derbyshire hills.\n\nStrange how superstitious these countrymen are! I should have thought better of young Armitage, for he is a man of some education and character, and a very fine fellow for his station in life. I was standing at the Blue John Gap when he came across the field to me.\n\n\"Well, doctor,\" said he, \"you\"re not afraid, anyhow.\"\n\n\"Afraid!\" I answered. \"Afraid of what?\"\n\n\"Of it,\" said he, with a jerk of his thumb towards the black vault, \"of the Terror that lives in the Blue John Cave.\"\n\nHow absurdly easy it is for a legend to arise in a lonely countryside! I examined him as to the reasons for his weird belief. It seems that from time to time sheep have been missing from the fields, carried bodily away, according to Armitage. That they could have wandered away of their own accord and disappeared among the mountains was an explanation to which he would not listen. On one occasion a pool of blood had been found, and some tufts of wool. That also, I pointed out, could be explained in a perfectly natural way. Further, the nights upon which sheep disappeared were invariably very dark, cloudy nights with no moon. This I met with the obvious retort that those were the nights which a commonplace sheep-stealer would naturally choose for his work. On one occasion a gap had been made in a wall, and some of the stones scattered for a considerable distance. Human agency again, in my opinion. Finally, Armitage clinched all his arguments by telling me that he had actually heard the Creature \u2013 indeed, that anyone could hear it who remained long enough at the Gap. It was a distant roaring of an immense volume. I could not but smile at this, knowing, as I do, the strange reverberations which come out of an underground water system running amid the chasms of a limestone formation. My incredulity annoyed Armitage so that he turned and left me with some abruptness.\n\nAnd now comes the queer point about the whole business. I was still standing near the mouth of the cave turning over in my mind the various statements of Armitage, and reflecting how readily they could be explained away, when suddenly, from the depth of the tunnel beside me, there issued a most extraordinary sound. How shall I describe it? First of all, it seemed to be a great distance away, far down in the bowels of the earth. Secondly, in spite of this suggestion of distance, it was very loud. Lastly, it was not a boom, nor a crash, such as one would associate with falling water or tumbling rock, but it was a high whine, tremulous and vibrating, almost like the whinnying of a horse. It was certainly a most remarkable experience, and one which for a moment, I must admit, gave a new significance to Armitage\"s words. I waited by the Blue John Gap for half an hour or more, but there was no return of the sound, so at last I wandered back to the farmhouse, rather mystified by what had occurred. Decidedly I shall explore that cavern when my strength is restored. Of course, Armitage\"s explanation is too absurd for discussion, and yet that sound was certainly very strange. It still rings in my ears as I write.\n\nApril 20 \u2013 In the last three days I have made several expeditions to the Blue John Gap, and have even penetrated some short distance, but my bicycle lantern is so small and weak that I dare not trust myself very far. I shall do the thing more systematically. I have heard no sound at all, and could almost believe that I had been the victim of some hallucination suggested, perhaps, by Armitage\"s conversation. Of course, the whole idea is absurd, and yet I must confess that those bushes at the entrance of the cave do present an appearance as if some heavy creature had forced its way through them. I begin to be keenly interested. I have said nothing to the Miss Allertons, for they are quite superstitious enough already, but I have bought some candles and mean to investigate for myself.\n\nI observed this morning that among the numerous tufts of sheep\"s wool which lay among the bushes near the cavern there was one which was smeared with blood. Of course, my reason tells me that if sheep wander into such rocky places they are likely to injure themselves, and yet somehow that splash of crimson gave me a sudden shock, and for a moment I found myself shrinking back in horror from the old Roman arch. A fetid breath seemed to ooze from the black depths into which I peered. Could it indeed be possible that some nameless thing, some dreadful presence, was lurking down yonder? I should have been incapable of such feelings in the days of my strength, but one grows more nervous and fanciful when one\"s health is shaken.\n\nFor the moment I weakened in my resolution, and was ready to leave the secret of the old mine, if one exists, for ever unsolved. But tonight my interest has returned and my nerves have grown more steady. Tomorrow I trust that I shall have gone more deeply into this matter.\n\nApril 22 \u2013 Let me try and set down as accurately as I can my extraordinary experience of yesterday. I started in the afternoon, and made my way to the Blue John Gap. I confess that my misgivings returned as I gazed into its depths, and I wished that I had brought a companion to share my exploration. Finally, with a return of resolution, I lit my candle, pushed my way through the briars, and descended into the rocky shaft.\n\nIt went down at an acute angle for some fifty feet, the floor being covered with broken stone. Thence there extended a long, straight passage cut in the solid rock. I am no geologist, but the lining of this corridor was certainly of some harder material than limestone, for there were points where I could actually see the tool-marks which the old miners had left in their excavation, as fresh as if they had been done yesterday. Down this strange, old-world corridor I stumbled, my feeble flame throwing a dim circle of light around me, which made the shadows beyond the more threatening and obscure. Finally, I came to a spot where the Roman tunnel opened into a water-worn cavern \u2013 a huge hall, hung with long white icicles of lime deposit. From this central chamber I could dimly perceive that a number of passages worn by the subterranean streams wound away into the depths of the earth. I was standing there wondering whether I had better return, or whether I dare venture farther into this dangerous labyrinth, when my eyes fell upon something at my feet which strongly arrested my attention.\n\nThe greater part of the floor of the cavern was covered with boulders of rock or with hard incrustations of lime, but at this particular point there had been a drip from the distant roof which had left a patch of soft mud. In the very centre of this there was a huge mark \u2013 an ill-defined blotch, deep, broad and irregular, as if a great boulder had fallen upon it. No loose stone lay near, however, nor was there anything to account for the impression. It was far too large to be caused by any possible animal, and besides, there was only the one, and the patch of mud was of such a size that no reasonable stride could have covered it. As I rose from the examination of that singular mark and then looked round into the black shadows which hemmed me in, I must confess that I felt for a moment a most unpleasant sinking of my heart, and that, do what I could, the candle trembled in my outstretched hand.\n\nI soon recovered my nerve, however, when I reflected how absurd it was to associate so huge and shapeless a mark with the track of any known animal. Even an elephant could not have produced it. I determined, therefore, that I would not be scared by vague and senseless fears from carrying out my exploration. Before proceeding, I took good note of a curious rock formation in the wall by which I could recognise the entrance of the Roman tunnel. The precaution was very necessary, for the great cave, so far as I could see it, was intersected by passages. Having made sure of my position, and reassured myself by examining my spare candles and my matches, I advanced slowly over the rocky and uneven surface of the cavern.\n\nAnd now I come to the point where I met with such sudden and desperate disaster. A stream, some twenty feet broad, ran across my path, and I walked for some little distance along the bank to find a spot where I could cross dry-shod. Finally, I came to a place where a single flat boulder lay near the centre, which I could reach in a stride. As it chanced, however, the rock had been cut away and made top-heavy by the rush of the stream, so that it tilted over as I landed on it and shot me into the ice-cold water. My candle went out, and I found myself floundering about in utter and absolute darkness.\n\nI staggered to my feet again, more amused than alarmed by my adventure. The candle had fallen from my hand, and was lost in the stream, but I had two others in my pocket, so that it was of no importance. I got one of them ready, and drew out my box of matches to light it. Only then did I realise my position. The box had been soaked in my fall into the river. It was impossible to strike the matches.\n\nA cold hand seemed to close round my heart as I realised my position. The darkness was opaque and horrible. It was so utter that one put one\"s hand up to one\"s face as if to press off something solid. I stood still, and by an effort I steadied myself. I tried to reconstruct in my mind a map of the floor of the cavern as I had last seen it. Alas! the bearings which had impressed themselves upon my mind were high on the wall, and not to be found by touch. Still, I remembered in a general way how the sides were situated, and I hoped that by groping my way along them I should at last come to the opening of the Roman tunnel. Moving very slowly, and continually striking against the rocks, I set out on this desperate quest.\n\nBut I very soon realised how impossible it was. In that black, velvety darkness one lost all one\"s bearings in an instant. Before I had made a dozen paces, I was utterly bewildered as to my whereabouts. The rippling of the stream, which was the one sound audible, showed me where it lay, but the moment that I left its bank I was utterly lost. The idea of finding my way back in absolute darkness through that limestone labyrinth was clearly an impossible one.\n\nI sat down upon a boulder and reflected upon my unfortunate plight. I had not told anyone that I proposed to come to the Blue John mine, and it was unlikely that a search party would come after me. Therefore I must trust to my own resources to get clear of the danger. There was only one hope, and that was that the matches might dry. When I fell into the river, only half of me had got thoroughly wet. My left shoulder had remained above the water. I took the box of matches, therefore, and put it into my left armpit. The moist air of the cavern might possibly be counteracted by the heat of my body, but even so, I knew that I could not hope to get a light for many hours. Meanwhile there was nothing for it but to wait.\n\nBy good luck I had slipped several biscuits into my pocket before I left the farmhouse. These I now devoured, and washed them down with a draught from that wretched stream which had been the cause of all my misfortunes. Then I felt about for a comfortable seat among the rocks, and, having discovered a place where I could get a support for my back, I stretched out my legs and settled myself down to wait. I was wretchedly damp and cold, but I tried to cheer myself with the reflection that modern science prescribed open windows and walks in all weather for my disease. Gradually, lulled by the monotonous gurgle of the stream, and by the absolute darkness, I sank into an uneasy slumber.\n\nHow long this lasted I cannot say. It may have been for an hour, it may have been for several. Suddenly I sat up on my rock couch, with every nerve thrilling and every sense acutely on the alert. Beyond all doubt I had heard a sound \u2013 some sound very distinct from the gurgling of the waters. It had passed, but the reverberation of it still lingered in my ear. Was it a search party? They would most certainly have shouted, and vague as this sound was which had wakened me, it was very distinct from the human voice. I sat palpitating and hardly daring to breathe. There it was again! And again! Now it had become continuous. It was a tread \u2013 yes, surely it was the tread of some living creature. But what a tread it was! It gave one the impression of enormous weight carried upon sponge-like feet, which gave forth a muffled but ear-filling sound. The darkness was as complete as ever, but the tread was regular and decisive. And it was coming beyond all question in my direction.\n\nMy skin grew cold and my hair stood on end as I listened to that steady and ponderous footfall. There was some creature there, and surely by the speed of its advance, it was one which could see in the dark. I crouched low on my rock and tried to blend myself into it. The steps grew nearer still, then stopped, and presently I was aware of a loud lapping and gurgling. The creature was drinking at the stream. Then again there was silence, broken by a succession of long sniffs and snorts of tremendous volume and energy. Had it caught the scent of me? My own nostrils were filled by a low fetid odour, mephitic and abominable. Then I heard the steps again. They were on my side of the stream now. The stones rattled within a few yards of where I lay. Hardly daring to breathe, I crouched upon my rock. Then the steps drew away. I heard the splash as it returned across the river, and the sound died away into the distance in the direction from which it had come.\n\nFor a long time I lay upon the rock, too much horrified to move. I thought of the sound which I had heard coming from the depths of the cave, of Armitage\"s fears, of the strange impression in the mud, and now came this final and absolute proof that there was indeed some inconceivable monster, something utterly unearthly and dreadful, which lurked in the hollow of the mountain. Of its nature or form I could frame no conception, save that it was both light-footed and gigantic. The combat between my reason, which told me that such things could not be, and my senses, which told me that they were, raged within me as I lay. Finally, I was almost ready to persuade myself that this experience had been part of some evil dream, and that my abnormal condition might have conjured up an hallucination. But there remained one final experience which removed the last possibility of doubt from my mind.\n\nI had taken my matches from my armpit and felt them. They seemed perfectly hard and dry. Stooping down into a crevice of the rocks, I tried one of them. To my delight it took fire at once. I lit the candle, and with a terrified backward glance into the obscure depths of the cavern, I hurried in the direction of the Roman passage. As I did so I passed the patch of mud on which I had seen the huge imprint. Now I stood astonished before it, for there were three similar imprints upon its surface, enormous in size, irregular in outline, of a depth which indicated the ponderous weight which had left them. Then a great terror surged over me. Stooping and shading my candle with my hand, I ran in a frenzy of fear to the rocky archway, hastened up it, and never stopped until, with weary feet and panting lungs, I rushed up the final slope of stones, broke through the tangle of briars, and flung myself exhausted upon the soft grass under the peaceful light of the stars. It was three in the morning when I reached the farmhouse, and today I am all unstrung and quivering after my terrific adventure. As yet I have told no one. I must move warily in the matter. What would the poor lonely women, or the uneducated yokels here think of it if I were to tell them my experience? Let me go to someone who can understand and advise.\n\nApril 25 \u2013 I was laid up in bed for two days after my incredible adventure in the cavern. I use the adjective with a very definite meaning, for I have had an experience since which has shocked me almost as much as the other. I have said that I was looking round for someone who could advise me. There is a Dr Mark Johnson who practises some few miles away, to whom I had a note of recommendation from Professor Saunderson. To him I drove, when I was strong enough to get about, and I recounted to him my whole strange experience. He listened intently, and then carefully examined me, paying special attention to my reflexes and to the pupils of my eyes. When he had finished, he refused to discuss my adventure, saying that it was entirely beyond him, but he gave me the card of a Mr Picton at Castleton, with the advice that I should instantly go to him and tell him the story exactly as I had done to himself. He was, according to my adviser, the very man who was pre-eminently suited to help me. I went on to the station, therefore, and made my way to the little town, which is some ten miles away. Mr Picton appeared to be a man of importance, as his brass plate was displayed upon the door of a considerable building on the outskirts of the town. I was about to ring his bell, when some misgiving came into my mind, and, crossing to a neighbouring shop, I asked the man behind the counter if he could tell me anything of Mr Picton. \"Why,\" said he, \"he is the best mad doctor in Derbyshire, and yonder is his asylum.\" You can imagine that it was not long before I had shaken the dust of Castleton from my feet and returned to the farm, cursing all unimaginative pedants who cannot conceive that there may be things in creation which have never yet chanced to come across their mole\"s vision. After all, now that I am cooler, I can afford to admit that I was no more sympathetic to Armitage than Dr Johnson has been to me.\n\nApril 27 \u2013 When I was a student I had the reputation of being a man of courage and enterprise. I remember that when there was a ghost-hunt at Coltbridge it was I who sat up in the haunted house. Is it advancing years (after all, I am only thirty-five) or is it this physical malady which has caused degeneration? Certainly my heart quails when I think of that horrible cavern in the hill, and the certainty that it has some monstrous occupant. What shall I do? There is not an hour in the day that I do not debate the question. If I say nothing, then the mystery remains unsolved. If I do say anything, then I have the alternative of mad alarm over the whole countryside, or of absolute incredulity which may end in consigning me to an asylum. On the whole, I think that my best course is to wait, and to prepare for some expedition which shall be more deliberate and better thought out than the last. As a first step I have been to Castleton and obtained a few essentials \u2013 a large acetylene lantern for one thing, and a good double-barrelled sporting rifle for another. The latter I have hired, but I have bought a dozen heavy game cartridges, which would bring down a rhinoceros. Now I am ready for my troglodyte friend. Give me better health and a little spate of energy, and I shall try conclusions with him yet. But who and what is he? Ah! there is the question which stands between me and my sleep. How many theories do I form, only to discard each in turn! It is all so utterly unthinkable. And yet the cry, the footmark, the tread in the cavern \u2013 no reasoning can get past these. I think of the old-world legends of dragons and of other monsters. Were they, perhaps, not such fairy-tales as we have thought? Can it be that there is some fact which underlies them, and am I, of all mortals, the one who is chosen to expose it?\n\nMay 3 \u2013 For several days I have been laid up by the vagaries of an English spring, and during those days there have been developments, the true and sinister meaning of which no one can appreciate save myself. I may say that we have had cloudy and moonless nights of late, which according to my information were the seasons upon which sheep disappeared. Well, sheep have disappeared. Two of the Misses Allerton\"s, one of old Pearson\"s of the Cat Walk, and one of Mrs Moulton\"s. Four in all during three nights. No trace is left of them at all, and the countryside is buzzing with rumours of gypsies and of sheep-stealers.\n\nBut there is something more serious than that. Young Armitage has disappeared also. He left his moorland cottage early on Wednesday night and has never been heard of since. He was an unattached man, so there is less sensation than would otherwise be the case. The popular explanation is that he owes money, and has found a situation in some other part of the country, whence he will presently write for his belongings. But I have grave misgivings. Is it not much more likely that the recent tragedy of the sheep has caused him to take some steps which may have ended in his own destruction? He may, for example, have lain in wait for the creature and been carried off by it into the recesses of the mountain. What an inconceivable fate for a civilised Englishman of the twentieth century! And yet I feel that it is possible and even probable. But in that case, how far am I answerable both for his death and for any other mishap which may occur? Surely with the knowledge I already possess it must be my duty to see that something is done, or if necessary to do it myself. It must be the latter, for this morning I went down to the local police-station and told my story. The inspector entered it all in a large book and bowed me out with commendable gravity, but I heard a burst of laughter before I had got down his garden path. No doubt he was recounting my adventure to his family.\n\nJune 10 \u2013 I am writing this, propped up in bed, six weeks after my last entry in this journal. I have gone through a terrible shock both to mind and body, arising from such an experience as has seldom befallen a human being before. But I have attained my end. The danger from the Terror which dwells in the Blue John Gap has passed never to return. Thus much at least I, a broken invalid, have done for the common good. Let me now recount what occurred as clearly as I may.\n\nThe night of Friday, May 3rd, was dark and cloudy \u2013 the very night for the monster to walk. About eleven o\"clock I went from the farmhouse with my lantern and my rifle, having first left a note upon the table of my bedroom in which I said that, if I were missing, search should be made for me in the direction of the Gap. I made my way to the mouth of the Roman shaft, and, having perched myself among the rocks close to the opening, I shut off my lantern and waited patiently with my loaded rifle ready to my hand.\n\nIt was a melancholy vigil. All down the winding valley I could see the scattered lights of the farmhouses, and the church clock of Chapel-le-Dale tolling the hours came faintly to my ears. These tokens of my fellow-men served only to make my own position seem the more lonely, and to call for a greater effort to overcome the terror which tempted me continually to get back to the farm and abandon for ever this dangerous quest. And yet there lies deep in every man a rooted self-respect which makes it hard for him to turn back from that which he has once undertaken. This feeling of personal pride was my salvation now, and it was that alone which held me fast when every instinct of my nature was dragging me away. I am glad now that I had the strength. In spite of all that it has cost me, my manhood is at least above reproach.\n\nTwelve o\"clock struck in the distant church, then one, then two. It was the darkest hour of the night. The clouds were drifting low, and there was not a star in the sky. An owl was hooting somewhere among the rocks, but no other sound, save the gentle sough of the wind, came to my ears. And then suddenly I heard it! From far away down the tunnel came those muffled steps, so soft and yet so ponderous. I heard also the rattle of stones as they gave way under that giant tread. They drew nearer. They were close upon me. I heard the crashing of the bushes round the entrance, and then dimly through the darkness I was conscious of the loom of some enormous shape, some monstrous inchoate creature, passing swiftly and very silently out from the tunnel. I was paralysed with fear and amazement. Long as I had waited, now that it had actually come I was unprepared for the shock. I lay motionless and breathless, whilst the great dark mass whisked by me and was swallowed up in the night.\n\nBut now I nerved myself for its return. No sound came from the sleeping countryside to tell of the horror which was loose. In no way could I judge how far off it was, what it was doing or when it might be back. But not a second time should my nerve fail me, not a second time should it pass unchallenged. I swore it between my clenched teeth as I laid my cocked rifle across the rock.\n\nAnd yet it nearly happened. There was no warning of approach now as the creature passed over the grass. Suddenly, like a dark, drifting shadow, the huge bulk loomed up once more before me, making for the entrance of the cave. Again came that paralysis of volition which held my crooked forefinger impotent upon the trigger. But with a desperate effort, I shook it off. Even as the brushwood rustled, and the monstrous beast blended with the shadow of the Gap, I fired at the retreating form. In the blaze of the gun I caught a glimpse of a great shaggy mass, something with rough and bristling hair of a withered grey colour fading away to white in its lower parts, the huge body supported upon short, thick, curving legs. I had just that glance, and then I heard the rattle of the stones as the creature tore down into its burrow. In an instant, with a triumphant revulsion of feeling, I had cast my fears to the wind and, uncovering my powerful lantern, with my rifle in my hand, I sprang down from my rock and rushed after the monster down the old Roman shaft.\n\nMy splendid lamp cast a brilliant flood of vivid light in front of me, very different from the yellow glimmer which had aided me down the same passage only twelve days before. As I ran, I saw the great beast lurching along before me, its huge bulk filling up the whole space from wall to wall. Its hair looked like coarse faded oakum and hung down in long, dense masses which swayed as it moved. It was like an enormous unclipped sheep in its fleece, but in size it was far larger than the largest elephant, and its breadth seemed to be nearly as great as its height. It fills me with amazement now to think that I should have dared to follow such a horror into the bowels of the earth, but when one\"s blood is up, and when one\"s quarry seems to be flying, the old primeval hunting-spirit awakes and prudence is cast to the wind. Rifle in hand, I ran at the top of my speed upon the trail of the monster.\n\nI had seen that the creature was swift. Now I was to find out to my cost that it was also very cunning. I had imagined that it was in panic flight, and that I had only to pursue it. The idea that it might turn upon me never entered my excited brain. I have already explained that the passage down which I was racing opened into a great central cave. Into this I rushed, fearful lest I should lose all trace of the beast. But he had turned upon his own traces, and in a moment we were face to face.\n\nThat picture, seen in the brilliant white light of the lantern, is etched for ever upon my brain. He had reared up on his hind legs as a bear would do, and stood above me, enormous, menacing \u2013 such a creature as no nightmare had ever brought to my imagination. I have said that he reared like a bear, and there was something bear-like \u2013 if one could conceive a bear which was tenfold the bulk of any bear seen upon earth \u2013 in his whole pose and attitude, in his great crooked forelegs with their ivory-white claws, in his rugged skin and in his red, gaping mouth, fringed with monstrous fangs. Only in one point did he differ from the bear, or from any other creature which walks the earth, and even at that supreme moment a shudder of horror passed over me as I observed that the eyes which glistened in the glow of my lantern were huge, projecting bulbs, white and sightless. For a moment his great paws swung over my head. The next he fell forward upon me, I and my broken lantern crashed to the earth and I remember no more.\n\nWhen I came to myself I was back in the farmhouse of the Allertons. Two days had passed since my terrible adventure in the Blue John Gap. It seems that I had lain all night in the cave, insensible from concussion of the brain, with my left arm and two ribs badly fractured. In the morning my note had been found, a search party of a dozen farmers assembled, and I had been tracked down and carried back to my bedroom, where I had lain in high delirium ever since. There was, it seems, no sign of the creature, and no bloodstain which would show that my bullet had found him as he passed. Save for my own plight and the marks upon the mud, there was nothing to prove that what I said was true.\n\nSix weeks have now elapsed, and I am able to sit out once more in the sunshine. Just opposite me is the steep hillside, grey with shaly rock, and yonder on its flank is the dark cleft which marks the opening of the Blue John Gap. But it is no longer a source of terror. Never again through that ill-omened tunnel shall any strange shape flit out into the world of men. The educated and the scientific, the Dr Johnsons and the like, may smile at my narrative, but the poorer folk of the countryside had never a doubt as to its truth. On the day after my recovering consciousness they assembled in their hundreds round the Blue John Gap. As the Castleton Courier said:\n\nIt was useless for our correspondent, or for any of the adventurous gentlemen who had come from Matlock, Buxton and other parts, to offer to descend, to explore the cave to the end and finally to test the extraordinary narrative of Dr James Hardcastle. The country people had taken the matter into their own hands, and from an early hour of the morning they had worked hard in stopping up the entrance of the tunnel. There is a sharp slope where the shaft begins, and great boulders, rolled along by many willing hands, were thrust down it until the Gap was absolutely sealed. So ends the episode which has caused such excitement throughout the country. Local opinion is fiercely divided upon the subject. On the one hand are those who point to Dr Hardcastle\"s impaired health, and to the possibility of cerebral lesions of tubercular origin giving rise to strange hallucinations. Some id\u00e9e fixe, according to these gentlemen, caused the doctor to wander down the tunnel, and a fall among the rocks was sufficient to account for his injuries. On the other hand, a legend of a strange creature in the Gap has existed for some months back, and the farmers look upon Dr Hardcastle\"s narrative and his personal injuries as a final corroboration. So the matter stands, and so the matter will continue to stand, for no definite solution seems to us to be now possible. It transcends human wit to give any scientific explanation which could cover the alleged facts.\n\nPerhaps before the Courier published these words they would have been wise to send their representative to me. I have thought the matter out, as no one else has had occasion to do, and it is possible that I might have removed some of the more obvious difficulties of the narrative and brought it one degree nearer to scientific acceptance. Let me then write down the only explanation which seems to me to elucidate what I know to my cost to have been a series of facts. My theory may seem to be wildly improbable, but at least no one can venture to say that it is impossible.\n\nMy view is \u2013 and it was formed, as is shown by my diary, before my personal adventure \u2013 that in this part of England there is a vast subterranean lake or sea, which is fed by the great number of streams which pass down through the limestone. Where there is a large collection of water there must also be some evaporation, mists or rain, and a possibility of vegetation. This in turn suggests that there may be animal life, arising, as the vegetable life would also do, from those seeds and types which had been introduced at an early period of the world\"s history, when communication with the outer air was more easy. This place had then developed a fauna and flora of its own, including such monsters as the one which I had seen, which may well have been the old cave-bear, enormously enlarged and modified by its new environment. For countless aeons the internal and the external creation had kept apart, growing steadily away from each other. Then there had come some rift in the depths of the mountain which had enabled one creature to wander up and, by means of the Roman tunnel, to reach the open air. Like all subterranean life, it had lost the power of sight, but this had no doubt been compensated for by nature in other directions. Certainly it had some means of finding its way about, and of hunting down the sheep upon the hillside. As to its choice of dark nights, it is part of my theory that light was painful to those great white eyeballs, and that it was only a pitch-black world which it could tolerate. Perhaps, indeed, it was the glare of my lantern which saved my life at that awful moment when we were face to face. So I read the riddle. I leave these facts behind me, and if you can explain them, do so; or if you choose to doubt them, do so. Neither your belief nor your incredulity can alter them, nor affect one whose task is nearly over.\n\nSo ended the strange narrative of Dr James Hardcastle.\n\n\u2042\n\n[ The Captain of the Polestar ]\n\nSeptember 11 \u2013 Lat. 81\u00b0 40\" N; long. 2\u00b0 E. Still lying-to amid enormous ice-fields. The one which stretches away to the north of us, and to which our ice-anchor is attached, cannot be smaller than an English county. To the right and left unbroken sheets extend to the horizon. This morning the mate reported that there were signs of pack ice to the southward. Should this form of sufficient thickness to bar our return, we shall be in a position of danger, as the food, I hear, is already running somewhat short. It is late in the season, and the nights are beginning to reappear. This morning I saw a star twinkling just over the fore-yard, the first since the beginning of May. There is considerable discontent among the crew, many of whom are anxious to get back home to be in time for the herring season, when labour always commands a high price upon the Scotch coast. As yet their displeasure is only signified by sullen countenances and black looks, but I heard from the second mate this afternoon that they contemplated sending a deputation to the captain to explain their grievance. I much doubt how he will receive it, as he is a man of fierce temper and very sensitive about anything approaching an infringement of his rights. I shall venture after dinner to say a few words to him upon the subject. I have always found that he will tolerate from me what he would resent from any other member of the crew. Amsterdam Island, at the north-west corner of Spitzbergen, is visible upon our starboard quarter \u2013 a rugged line of volcanic rocks, intersected by white seams, which represent glaciers. It is curious to think that at the present moment there is probably no human being nearer to us than the Danish settlements in the south of Greenland \u2013 a good nine hundred miles as the crow flies. A captain takes a great responsibility upon himself when he risks his vessel under such circumstances. No whaler has ever remained in these latitudes till so advanced a period of the year.\n\n9.00 p.m. \u2013 I have spoken to Captain Craigie, and though the result has been hardly satisfactory, I am bound to say that he listened to what I had to say very quietly and even deferentially. When I had finished he put on that air of iron determination which I have frequently observed upon his face, and paced rapidly backwards and forwards across the narrow cabin for some minutes. At first I feared that I had seriously offended him, but he dispelled the idea by sitting down again and putting his hand upon my arm with a gesture which almost amounted to a caress. There was a depth of tenderness too in his wild dark eyes which surprised me considerably. \"Look here, doctor,\" he said, \"I\"m sorry I ever took you \u2013 I am indeed \u2013 and I would give fifty pounds this minute to see you standing safe upon the Dundee quay. It\"s hit or miss with me this time. There are fish to the north of us. How dare you shake your head, sir, when I tell you I saw them blowing from the masthead?\" \u2013 this in a sudden burst of fury, though I was not conscious of having shown any signs of doubt. \"Two-and-twenty fish in as many minutes as I am a living man, and not one under ten foot. [Footnote: a whale is measured among whalers not by the length of its body, but by the length of its whalebone.] Now, doctor, do you think I can leave the country when there is only one infernal strip of ice between me and my fortune? If it came on to blow from the north tomorrow we could fill the ship and be away before the frost could catch us. If it came on to blow from the south \u2013 well, I suppose the men are paid for risking their lives, and as for myself it matters but little to me, for I have more to bind me to the other world than to this one. I confess that I am sorry for you, though. I wish I had old Angus Tait who was with me last voyage, for he was a man that would never be missed, and you \u2013 you said once that you were engaged, did you not?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I answered, snapping the spring of the locket which hung from my watch-chain, and holding up the little vignette of Flora.\n\n\"Curse you!\" he yelled, springing out of his seat, with his very beard bristling with passion. \"What is your happiness to me? What have I to do with her that you must dangle her photograph before my eyes?\" I almost thought that he was about to strike me in the frenzy of his rage, but with another imprecation he dashed open the door of the cabin and rushed out upon deck, leaving me considerably astonished at his extraordinary violence. It is the first time that he has ever shown me anything but courtesy and kindness. I can hear him pacing excitedly up and down overhead as I write these lines.\n\nI should like to give a sketch of the character of this man, but it seems presumptuous to attempt such a thing upon paper, when the idea in my own mind is at best a vague and uncertain one. Several times I have thought that I grasped the clue which might explain it, only to be disappointed by his presenting himself in some new light which would upset all my conclusions. It may be that no human eye but my own shall ever rest upon these lines, yet as a psychological study I shall attempt to leave some record of Captain Nicholas Craigie.\n\nA man\"s outer case generally gives some indication of the soul within. The captain is tall and well-formed, with dark, handsome face and a curious way of twitching his limbs, which may arise from nervousness or be simply an outcome of his excessive energy. His jaw and whole cast of countenance is manly and resolute, but the eyes are the distinctive feature of his face. They are of the very darkest hazel, bright and eager, with a singular mixture of recklessness in their expression, and of something else which I have sometimes thought was more allied with horror than any other emotion. Generally the former predominated, but on occasions, and more particularly when he was thoughtfully inclined, the look of fear would spread and deepen until it imparted a new character to his whole countenance. It is at these times that he is most subject to tempestuous fits of anger, and he seems to be aware of it, for I have known him lock himself up so that no one might approach him until his dark hour was passed. He sleeps badly, and I have heard him shouting during the night, but his cabin is some little distance from mine and I could never distinguish the words which he said.\n\nThis is one phase of his character, and the most disagreeable one. It is only through my close association with him, thrown together as we are day after day, that I have observed it. Otherwise he is an agreeable companion, well read and entertaining, and as gallant a seaman as ever trod a deck. I shall not easily forget the way in which he handled the ship when we were caught by a gale among the loose ice at the beginning of April. I have never seen him so cheerful, and even hilarious, as he was that night, as he paced backwards and forwards upon the bridge amid the flashing of the lightning and the howling of the wind. He has told me several times that the thought of death was a pleasant one to him, which is a sad thing for a young man to say; he cannot be much more than thirty, though his hair and moustache are already slightly grizzled. Some great sorrow must have overtaken him and blighted his whole life. Perhaps I should be the same if I lost my Flora \u2013 God knows! I think if it were not for her that I should care very little whether the wind blew from the north or the south tomorrow. There, I hear him come down the companion, and he has locked himself up in his room, which shows that he is still in an unamiable mood. And so to bed, as old Pepys would say, for the candle is burning down (we have to use them now since the nights are closing in) and the steward has turned in, so there are no hopes of another one.\n\nSeptember 12 \u2013 Calm, clear day, and still lying in the same position. What wind there is comes from the south-east, but it is very slight. Captain is in a better humour, and apologised to me at breakfast for his rudeness. He still looks somewhat distrait, however, and retains that wild look in his eyes which in a Highlander would mean that he was \"fey\" \u2013 at least so our chief engineer remarked to me, and he has some reputation among the Celtic portion of our crew as a seer and expounder of omens.\n\nIt is strange that superstition should have obtained such mastery over this hard-headed and practical race. I could not have believed to what an extent it is carried had I not observed it for myself. We have had a perfect epidemic of it this voyage, until I have felt inclined to serve out rations of sedatives and nerve-tonics with the Saturday allowance of grog. The first symptom of it was that shortly after leaving Shetland the men at the wheel used to complain that they heard plaintive cries and screams in the wake of the ship, as if something were following it and were unable to overtake it. This fiction has been kept up during the whole voyage, and on dark nights at the beginning of the seal-fishing it was only with great difficulty that men could be induced to do their spell. No doubt what they heard was either the creaking of the rudder-chains or the cry of some passing sea-bird. I have been fetched out of bed several times to listen to it, but I need hardly say that I was never able to distinguish anything unnatural. The men, however, are so absurdly positive upon the subject that it is hopeless to argue with them. I mentioned the matter to the captain once, but to my surprise he took it very gravely, and indeed appeared to be considerably disturbed by what I told him. I should have thought that he at least would have been above such vulgar delusions.\n\nAll this disquisition upon superstition leads me up to the fact that Mr Manson, our second mate, saw a ghost last night \u2013 or, at least, says that he did, which of course is the same thing. It is quite refreshing to have some new topic of conversation after the eternal routine of bears and whales which has served us for so many months. Manson swears the ship is haunted; and that he would not stay in her a day if he had any other place to go to. Indeed the fellow is honestly frightened, and I had to give him some chloral and bromide of potassium this morning to steady him down. He seemed quite indignant when I suggested that he had been having an extra glass the night before, and I was obliged to pacify him by keeping as grave a countenance as possible during his story, which he certainly narrated in a very straightforward and matter-of-fact way.\n\n\"I was on the bridge,\" he said, \"about four bells in the middle watch, just when the night was at its darkest. There was a bit of a moon, but the clouds were blowing across it so that you couldn\"t see far from the ship. John McLeod, the harpooner, came aft from the fo\"c\"sle-head and reported a strange noise on the starboard bow. I went forward and we both heard it, sometimes like a bairn crying and sometimes like a wench in pain. I\"ve been seventeen years to the country and I never heard seal, old or young, make a sound like that. As we were standing there on the fo\"c\"sle-head the moon came out from behind a cloud, and we both saw a sort of white figure moving across the ice-field in the same direction that we had heard the cries. We host sight of it for a while, but it came back on the port bow, and we could just make it out like a shadow on the ice. I sent a hand aft for the rifles, and McLeod and I went down on to the pack, thinking that maybe it might be a bear. When we got on the ice I lost sight of McLeod, but I pushed on in the direction where I could still hear the cries. I followed them for a mile or maybe more, and then running round a hummock I came right on to the top of it, standing and waiting for me seemingly. I don\"t know what it was. It wasn\"t a bear, anyway. It was tall and white and straight, and if it wasn\"t a man nor a woman, I\"ll stake my davy it was something worse. I made for the ship as hard as I could run, and precious glad I was to find myself aboard. I signed articles to do my duty by the ship, and on the ship I\"ll stay, but you don\"t catch me on the ice again after sundown.\"\n\nThat is his story, given as far as I can in his own words. I fancy what he saw must, in spite of his denial, have been a young bear erect upon its hind legs, an attitude which they often assume when alarmed. In the uncertain light this would bear a resemblance to a human figure, especially to a man whose nerves were already somewhat shaken. Whatever it may have been, the occurrence is unfortunate, for it has produced a most unpleasant effect upon the crew. Their looks are more sullen than before, and their discontent more open. The double grievance of being debarred from the herring fishing and of being detained in what they choose to call a haunted vessel, may lead them to do something rash. Even the harpooners, who are the oldest and steadiest among them, are joining in the general agitation.\n\nApart from this absurd outbreak of superstition, things are looking rather more cheerful. The pack which was forming to the south of us has partly cleared away, and the water is so warm as to lead me to believe that we are lying in one of those branches of the Gulf Stream which run up between Greenland and Spitzbergen. There are numerous small medusae and sea-lemons about the ship, with abundance of shrimps, so that there is every possibility of \"fish\" being sighted. Indeed one was seen blowing about dinner-time, but in such a position that it was impossible for the boats to follow it.\n\nSeptember 13 \u2013 Had an interesting conversation with the chief mate, Mr Milne, upon the bridge. It seems that our captain is as great an enigma to the seamen, and even to the owners of the vessel, as he has been to me. Mr Milne tells me that when the ship is paid off, upon returning from a voyage, Captain Craigie disappears and is not seen again until the approach of another season, when he walks quietly into the office of the company and asks whether his services will be required. He has no friend in Dundee, nor does anyone pretend to be acquainted with his early history. His position depends entirely upon his skill as a seaman, and the name for courage and coolness which he had earned in the capacity of mate, before being entrusted with a separate command. The unanimous opinion seems to be that he is not a Scotchman, and that his name is an assumed one. Mr Milne thinks that he has devoted himself to whaling simply for the reason that it is the most dangerous occupation which he could select, and that he courts death in every possible manner. He mentioned several instances of this, one of which is rather curious, if true. It seems that on one occasion he did not put in an appearance at the office, and a substitute had to be selected in his place. That was at the time of the last Russian and Turkish War. When he turned up again next spring he had a puckered wound in the side of his neck which he used to endeavour to conceal with his cravat. Whether the mate\"s inference that he had been engaged in the war is true or not I cannot say. It was certainly a strange coincidence.\n\nThe wind is veering round in an easterly direction, but is still very slight. I think the ice is lying closer than it did yesterday. As far as the eye can reach on every side there is one wide expanse of spotless white, only broken by an occasional rift or the dark shadow of a hummock. To the south there is the narrow lane of blue water which is our sole means of escape, and which is closing up every day. The captain is taking a heavy responsibility upon himself. I hear that the tank of potatoes has been finished, and even the biscuits are running short, but he preserves the same impassable countenance, and spends the greater part of the day at the crow\"s nest, sweeping the horizon with his glass. His manner is very variable, and he seems to avoid my society, but there has been no repetition of the violence which he showed the other night.\n\n7.30 p.m. \u2013 My deliberate opinion is that we are commanded by a madman. Nothing else can account for the extraordinary vagaries of Captain Craigie. It is fortunate that I have kept this journal of our voyage, as it will serve to justify us in case we have to put him under any sort of restraint, a step which I should only consent to as a last resource. Curiously enough it was he himself who suggested lunacy and not mere eccentricity as the secret of his strange conduct. He was standing upon the bridge about an hour ago, peering as usual through his glass, while I was walking up and down the quarter-deck. The majority of the men were below at their tea, for the watches have not been regularly kept of late. Tired of walking, I leaned against the bulwarks, and admired the mellow glow cast by the sinking sun upon the great ice-fields which surround us. I was suddenly aroused from the reverie into which I had fallen by a hoarse voice at my elbow, and starting round I found that the captain had descended and was standing by my side. He was staring out over the ice with an expression in which horror, surprise and something approaching to joy were contending for the mastery. In spite of the cold, great drops of perspiration were coursing down his forehead, and he was evidently fearfully excited. His limbs twitched like those of a man upon the verge of an epileptic fit, and the lines about his mouth were drawn and hard.\n\n\"Look!\" he gasped, seizing me by the wrist, but still keeping his eyes upon the distant ice and moving his head slowly in a horizontal direction, as if following some object which was moving across the field of vision. \"Look! There, man, there! Between the hummocks! Now coming out from behind the far one! You see her \u2013 you must see her! There still! Flying from me, by God, flying from me \u2013 and gone!\"\n\nHe uttered the last two words in a whisper of concentrated agony which shall never fade from my remembrance. Clinging to the ratlines he endeavoured to climb up upon the top of the bulwarks as if in the hope of obtaining a last glance at the departing object. His strength was not equal to the attempt, however, and he staggered back against the saloon skylights, where he leaned panting and exhausted. His face was so livid that I expected him to become unconscious, so I lost no time in leading him down the companion and stretching him upon one of the sofas in the cabin. I then poured him out some brandy, which I held to his lips, and which had a wonderful effect upon him, bringing the blood back into his white face and steadying his poor shaking limbs. He raised himself up upon his elbow, and looking round to see that we were alone, he beckoned to me to come and sit beside him.\n\n\"You saw it, didn\"t you?\" he asked, still in the same subdued awesome tone so foreign to the nature of the man.\n\n\"No, I saw nothing.\"\n\nHis head sank back again upon the cushions. \"No, he wouldn\"t without the glass,\" he murmured. \"He couldn\"t. It was the glass that showed her to me, and then the eyes of love \u2013 the eyes of love. I say, doc, don\"t let the steward in! He\"ll think I\"m mad. Just, bolt the door, will you!\"\n\nI rose and did what he had commanded.\n\nHe lay quiet for a while, lost in thought apparently, and then raised himself up upon his elbow again, and asked for some more brandy.\n\n\"You don\"t think I am, do you, doc?\" he asked, as I was putting the bottle back into the after-locker. \"Tell me now, as man to man, do you think that I am mad?\"\n\n\"I think you have something on your mind,\" I answered, \"which is exciting you and doing you a good deal of harm.\"\n\n\"Right there, lad!\" he cried, his eyes sparkling from the effects of the brandy. \"Plenty on my mind \u2013 plenty! But I can work out the latitude and the longitude, and I can handle my sextant and manage my logarithms. You couldn\"t prove me mad in a court of law, could you, now?\" It was curious to hear the man lying back and coolly arguing out the question of his own sanity.\n\n\"Perhaps not,\" I said; \"but still I think you would be wise to get home as soon as you can, and settle down to a quiet life for a while.\"\n\n\"Get home, eh?\" he muttered, with a sneer upon his face. \"One word for me and two for yourself, lad. Settle down with Flora \u2013 pretty little Flora. Are bad dreams signs of madness?\"\n\n\"Sometimes,\" I answered.\n\n\"What else? What would be the first symptoms?\"\n\n\"Pains in the head, noises in the ears, flashes before the eyes, delusions \u2013\"\n\n\"Ah! what about them?\" he interrupted. \"What would you call a delusion?\"\n\n\"Seeing a thing which is not there is a delusion \u2013\"\n\n\"But she was there!\" he groaned to himself. \"She was there!\" and rising, he unbolted the door and walked with slow and uncertain steps to his own cabin, where I have no doubt that he will remain until tomorrow morning. His system seems to have received a terrible shock, whatever it may have been that he imagined himself to have seen. The man becomes a greater mystery every day, though I fear that the solution which he has himself suggested is the correct one, and that his reason is affected. I do not think that a guilty conscience has anything to do with his behaviour. The idea is a popular one among the officers and, I believe, the crew; but I have seen nothing to support it. He has not the air of a guilty man, but of one who has had terrible usage at the hands of fortune, and who should be regarded as a martyr rather than a criminal.\n\nThe wind is veering round to the south tonight. God help us if it blocks that narrow pass which is our only road to safety! Situated as we are on the edge of the main Arctic pack, or the \"barrier\" as it is called by the whalers, any wind from the north has the effect of shredding out the ice around us and allowing our escape, while a wind from the south blows up all the loose ice behind us, and hems us in between two packs. God help us, I say again!\n\nSeptember 14 \u2013 Sunday, and a day of rest. My fears have been confirmed, and the thin strip of blue water has disappeared from the southward. Nothing but the great motionless ice-fields around us, with their weird hummocks and fantastic pinnacles. There is a deathly silence over their wide expanse which is horrible. No lapping of the waves now, no cries of seagulls or straining of sails, but one deep universal silence in which the murmurs of the seamen and the creak of their boots upon the white shining deck seem discordant and out of place. Our only visitor was an Arctic fox, a rare animal upon the pack, though common enough upon the land. He did not come near the ship, however, but after surveying us from a distance fled rapidly across the ice. This was curious conduct, as they generally know nothing of man, and being of an inquisitive nature, become so familiar that they are easily captured. Incredible as it may seem, even this little incident produced a bad effect upon the crew. \"Yon puir beastie kens mair, ay, an\" sees mair nor you nor me!\" was the comment of one of the leading harpooners, and the others nodded their acquiescence. It is vain to attempt to argue against such puerile superstition. They have made up their minds that there is a curse upon the ship, and nothing will ever persuade them to the contrary.\n\nThe captain remained in seclusion all day except for about half an hour in the afternoon, when he came out upon the quarter-deck. I observed that he kept his eye fixed upon the spot where the vision of yesterday had appeared, and was quite prepared for another outburst, but none such came. He did not seem to see me, although I was standing close beside him. Divine service was read as usual by the chief engineer. It is a curious thing that in whaling vessels the Church of England Prayer Book is always employed, although there is never a member of that church among either officers or crew. Our men are all Roman Catholics or Presbyterians, the former predominating. Since a ritual is used which is foreign to both, neither can complain that the other is preferred to them, and they listen with all attention and devotion, so that the system has something to recommend it.\n\nA glorious sunset, which made the great fields of ice look like a lake of blood. I have never seen a finer and at the same time more weird effect. Wind is veering round. If it will blow twenty-four hours from the north all will yet be well.\n\nSeptember 15 \u2013 Today is Flora\"s birthday. Dear lass! it is well that she cannot see her boy, as she used to call me, shut up among the ice-fields with a crazy captain and a few weeks\" provisions. No doubt she scans the shipping list in the Scotsman every morning to see if we are reported from Shetland. I have to set an example to the men and look cheery and unconcerned; but God knows, my heart is very heavy at times.\n\nThe thermometer is at nineteen Fahrenheit today. There is but little wind, and what there is comes from an unfavourable quarter. Captain is in an excellent humour; I think he imagines he has seen some other omen or vision, poor fellow, during the night, for he came into my room early in the morning and, stooping down over my bunk, whispered, \"It wasn\"t a delusion, doc; it\"s all right!\" After breakfast he asked me to find out how much food was left, which the second mate and I proceeded to do. It is even less than we had expected. Forward they have half a tank full of biscuits, three barrels of salt meat, and a very limited supply of coffee beans and sugar. In the after-hold and lockers there are a good many luxuries, such as tinned salmon, soups, haricot mutton, etc., but they will go a very short way among a crew of fifty men. There are two barrels of flour in the store-room, and an unlimited supply of tobacco. Altogether there is about enough to keep the men on half rations for eighteen or twenty days \u2013 certainly not more. When we reported the state of things to the captain, he ordered all hands to be piped and addressed them from the quarter-deck. I never saw him to better advantage. With his tall, well-knit figure and dark animated face, he seemed a man born to command, and he discussed the situation in a cool sailor-like way which showed that while appreciating the danger he had an eye for every loophole of escape.\n\n\"My lads,\" he said, \"no doubt you think I brought you into this fix, if it is a fix, and maybe some of you feel bitter against me on account of it. But you must remember that for many a season no ship that comes to the country has brought in as much oil-money as the old Polestar, and every one of you has had his share of it. You can leave your wives behind you in comfort, while other poor fellows come back to find their lassies on the parish. If you have to thank me for the one you have to thank me for the other, and we may call it quits. We\"ve tried a bold venture before this and succeeded, so now that we\"ve tried one and failed we\"ve no cause to cry out about it. If the worst comes to the worse, we can make the land across the ice, and lay in a stock of seals which will keep us alive until the spring. It won\"t come to that, though, for you\"ll see the Scotch coast again before three weeks are out. At present every man must go on half rations, share and share alike, and no favour to any. Keep up your hearts and you\"ll pull through this as you\"ve pulled through many a danger before.\" These few simple words of his had a wonderful effect upon the crew. His former unpopularity was forgotten, and the old harpooner whom I have already mentioned for his superstition, led off three cheers, which were heartily joined in by all hands.\n\nSeptember 16 \u2013 The wind has veered round to the north during the night, and the ice shows some symptoms of opening out. The men are in a good humour in spite of the short allowance upon which they have been placed. Steam is kept up in the engine-room, that there may be no delay should an opportunity for escape present itself. The captain is in exuberant spirits, though he still retains that wild \"fey\" expression which I have already remarked upon. This burst of cheerfulness puzzles me more than his former gloom. I cannot understand it. I think I mentioned in an early part of this journal that one of his oddities is that he never permits any person to enter his cabin, but insists upon making his own bed, such as it is, and performing every other office for himself. To my surprise he handed me the key today and requested me to go down there and take the time by his chronometer while he measured the altitude of the sun at noon. It is a bare little room, containing a washing-stand and a few books, but little else in the way of luxury, except some pictures upon the walls. The majority of these are small cheap oleographs, but there was one watercolour sketch of the head of a young lady which arrested my attention. It was evidently a portrait, and not one of those fancy types of female beauty which sailors particularly affect. No artist could have evolved from his own mind such a curious mixture of character and weakness. The languid, dreamy eyes, with their drooping lashes, and the broad, low brow, unruffled by thought or care, were in strong contrast with the clean-cut, prominent jaw and the resolute set of the lower lip. Underneath it in one of the corners was written, M.B., aet. 19. That anyone in the short space of nineteen years of existence could develop such strength of will as was stamped upon her face seemed to me at the time to be well-nigh incredible. She must have been an extraordinary woman. Her features have thrown such a glamour over me that, though I had but a fleeting glance at them, I could, were I a draughtsman, reproduce them line for line upon this page of the journal. I wonder what part she has played in our captain\"s life. He has hung her picture at the end of his berth, so that his eyes continually rest upon it. Were he a less reserved man I should make some remark upon the subject. Of the other things in his cabin there was nothing worthy of mention \u2013 uniform coats, a camp-stool, small looking-glass, tobacco-box and numerous pipes, including an oriental hookah \u2013 which, by the by, gives some colour to Mr Milne\"s story about his participation in the war, though the connection may seem rather a distant one.\n\n11.20 p.m. \u2013 Captain just gone to bed after a long and interesting conversation on general topics. When he chooses he can be a most fascinating companion, being remarkably well read, and having the power of expressing his opinion forcibly without appearing to be dogmatic. I hate to have my intellectual toes trod upon. He spoke about the nature of the soul, and sketched out the views of Aristotle and Plato upon the subject in a masterly manner. He seems to have a leaning for metempsychosis and the doctrines of Pythagoras. In discussing them we touched upon modern spiritualism, and I made some joking allusion to the impostures of Slade, upon which, to my surprise, he warned me most impressively against confusing the innocent with the guilty, and argued that it would be as logical to brand Christianity as an error because Judas, who professed that religion, was a villain. He shortly afterwards bade me good-night and retired to his room.\n\nThe wind is freshening up, and blows steadily from the north. The nights are as dark now as they are in England. I hope tomorrow may set us free from our frozen fetters.\n\nSeptember 17 \u2013 The Bogie again. Thank heaven that I have strong nerves! The superstition of these poor fellows, and the circumstantial accounts which they give, with the utmost earnestness and self-conviction, would horrify any man not accustomed to their ways. There are many versions of the matter, but the sum-total of them all is that something uncanny has been flitting round the ship all night, and that Sandie McDonald of Peterhead and \"lang\" Peter Williamson of Shetland saw it, as also did Mr Milne on the bridge \u2013 so, having three witnesses, they can make a better case of it than the second mate did. I spoke to Milne after breakfast, and told him that he should be above such nonsense, and that as an officer he ought to set the men a better example. He shook his weathebeaten head ominously, but answered with characteristic caution, \"Mebbe, aye, mebbe na, doctor,\" he said, \"I didna ca\" it a ghaist. I canna\" say I preen my faith in sea-bogles an\" the like, though there\"s a mony as claims to ha\" seen a\" that and waur. I\"m no easy feared, but maybe your ain bluid would run a bit cauld, mun, if instead o\" speerin\" aboot it in daylicht ye were wi\" me last night, an\" seed an awfu\" like shape, white an\" gruesome, whiles here, whiles there, an\" it greetin\" and ca\"ing in the darkness like a bit lambie that hae lost its mither. Ye would na\" be sae ready to put it a\" doon to auld wives\" clavers then, I\"m thinkin\".\" I saw it was hopeless to reason with him, so contented myself with begging him as a personal favour to call me up the next time the spectre appeared \u2013 a request to which he acceded with many ejaculations expressive of his hopes that such an opportunity might never arise.\n\nAs I had hoped, the white desert behind us has become broken by many thin streaks of water which intersect it in all directions. Our latitude today was 80\u00b0 52\" N, which shows that there is a strong southerly drift upon the pack. Should the wind continue favourable it will break up as rapidly as it formed. At present we can do nothing but smoke and wait and hope for the best. I am rapidly becoming a fatalist. When dealing with such uncertain factors as wind and ice a man can be nothing else. Perhaps it was the wind and sand of the Arabian deserts which gave the minds of the original followers of Mahomet their tendency to bow to kismet.\n\nThese spectral alarms have a very bad effect upon the captain. I feared that it might excite his sensitive mind, and endeavoured to conceal the absurd story from him, but unfortunately he overheard one of the men making an allusion to it and insisted upon being informed about it. As I had expected, it brought out all his latent lunacy in an exaggerated form. I can hardly believe that this is the same man who discoursed philosophy last night with the most critical acumen and coolest judgement. He is pacing backwards and forwards upon the quarter-deck like a caged tiger, stopping now and again to throw out his hands with a yearning gesture, and stare impatiently out over the ice. He keeps up a continual mutter to himself, and once he called out, \"But a little time, love \u2013 but a little time!\" Poor fellow, it is sad to see a gallant seaman and accomplished gentleman reduced to such a pass and to think that imagination and delusion can cow a mind to which real danger was but the salt of life. Was ever a man in such a position as I, between a demented captain and a ghost-seeing mate? I sometimes think I am the only really sane man aboard the vessel \u2013 except perhaps the second engineer, who is a kind of ruminant, and would care nothing for all the fiends in the Red Sea so long as they would leave him alone and not disarrange his tools.\n\nThe ice is still opening rapidly, and there is every probability of our being able to make a start tomorrow morning. They will think I am inventing when I tell them at home all the strange things that have befallen me.\n\n12.00 p.m. \u2013 I have been a good deal startled, though I feel steadier now, thanks to a stiff glass of brandy. I am hardly myself yet, however, as this handwriting will testify. The fact is, that I have gone through a very strange experience and am beginning to doubt whether I was justified in branding everyone on board as madmen because they professed to have seen things which did not seem reasonable to my understanding. Pshaw! I am a fool to let such a trifle unnerve me; and yet, coming as it does after all these alarms, it has an additional significance, for I cannot doubt either Mr Manson\"s story or that of the mate, now that I have experienced that which I used formerly to scoff at.\n\nAfter all it was nothing very alarming \u2013 a mere sound, and that was all. I cannot expect that anyone reading this, if anyone ever should read it, will sympathise with my feelings or realise the effect which it produced upon me at the time. Supper was over, and I had gone on deck to have a quiet pipe before turning in. The night was very dark \u2013 so dark that, standing under the quarter-boat, I was unable to see the officer upon the bridge. I think I have already mentioned the extraordinary silence which prevails in these frozen seas. In other parts of the world, be they ever so barren, there is some slight vibration of the air \u2013 some faint hum, be it from the distant haunts of men, or from the leaves of the trees, or the wings of the birds, or even the faint rustle of the grass that covers the ground. One may not actively perceive the sound, and yet if it were withdrawn it would be missed. It is only here in these Arctic seas that stark, unfathomable stillness obtrudes itself upon you all in its gruesome reality. You find your tympanum straining to catch some little murmur, and dwelling eagerly upon every accidental sound within the vessel. In this state I was leaning against the bulwarks when there arose from the ice almost directly underneath me a cry, sharp and shrill, upon the silent air of the night, beginning, as it seemed to me, at a note such as prima donna never reached, and mounting from that ever higher and higher until it culminated in a long wail of agony, which might have been the last cry of a lost soul. The ghastly scream is still ringing in my ears. Grief, unutterable grief, seemed to be expressed in it, and a great longing, and yet through it all there was an occasional wild note of exultation. It shrilled out from close beside me, and yet as I glared into the darkness I could discern nothing. I waited some little time but without hearing any repetition of the sound, so I came below, more shaken than I have ever been in my life before. As I came down the companion I met Mr Milne coming up to relieve the watch. \"Weel, doctor,\" he said, \"maybe that\"s auld wives\" clavers tae? Did ye no hear it skirling? Maybe that\"s a supersteetion? What d\"ye think o\"t noo?\" I was obliged to apologise to the honest fellow, and acknowledge that I was as puzzled by it as he was. Perhaps tomorrow things may look different. At present I dare hardly write all that I think. Reading it again in days to come, when I have shaken off all these associations, I should despise myself for having been so weak.\n\nSeptember 18 \u2013 Passed a restless and uneasy night, still haunted by that strange sound. The captain does not look as if he had had much repose either, for his face is haggard and his eyes bloodshot. I have not told him of my adventure of last night, nor shall I. He is already restless and excited, standing up, sitting down, and apparently utterly unable to keep still.\n\nA fine lead appeared in the pack this morning, as I had expected, and we were able to cast off our ice-anchor and steam about twelve miles in a west-sou\"-westerly direction. We were then brought to a halt by a great floe as massive as any which we have left behind us. It bars our progress completely, so we can do nothing but anchor again and wait until it breaks up, which it will probably do within twenty-four hours, if the wind holds. Several bladder-nosed seals were seen swimming in the water, and one was shot, an immense creature more than eleven feet long. They are fierce, pugnacious animals, and are said to be more than a match for a bear. Fortunately they are slow and clumsy in their movements, so that there is little danger in attacking them upon the ice.\n\nThe captain evidently does not think we have seen the last of our troubles, though why he should take a gloomy view of the situation is more than I can fathom since everyone else on board considers that we have had a miraculous escape and are sure now to reach the open sea.\n\n\"I suppose you think it\"s all right now, doctor?\" he said, as we sat together after dinner.\n\n\"I hope so,\" I answered.\n\n\"We mustn\"t be too sure \u2013 and yet no doubt you are right. We\"ll all be in the arms of our own true loves before long, lad, won\"t we? But we mustn\"t be too sure \u2013 we mustn\"t be too sure.\"\n\nHe sat silent a little, swinging his leg thoughtfully backwards and forwards. \"Look here,\" he continued; \"it\"s a dangerous place this, even at its best \u2013 a treacherous, dangerous place. I have known men cut off very suddenly in a land like this. A slip would do it sometimes \u2013 a single slip, and down you go through a crack, and only a bubble on the green water to show where it was that you sank. It\"s a queer thing,\" he continued with a nervous laugh, \"but all the years I\"ve been in this country I never once thought of making a will \u2013 not that I have anything to leave in particular, but still when a man is exposed to danger he should have everything arranged and ready \u2013 don\"t you think so?\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" I answered, wondering what on earth he was driving at.\n\n\"He feels better for knowing it\"s all settled,\" he went on. \"Now if anything should ever befall me, I hope that you will look after things for me. There is very little in the cabin, but such as it is I should like it to be sold, and the money divided in the same proportion as the oil-money among the crew. The chronometer I wish you to keep yourself as some slight remembrance of our voyage. Of course all this is a mere precaution, but I thought I would take the opportunity of speaking to you about it. I suppose I might rely upon you if there were any necessity?\"\n\n\"Most assuredly,\" I answered; \"and since you are taking this step, I may as well \u2013\"\n\n\"You! you!\" he interrupted. \"You\"re all right. What the devil is the matter with you? There, I didn\"t mean to be peppery, but I don\"t like to hear a young fellow, that has hardly begun life, speculating about death. Go up on deck and get some fresh air into your lungs instead of talking nonsense in the cabin, and encouraging me to do the same.\"\n\nThe more I think of this conversation of ours the less do I like it. Why should the man be settling his affairs at the very time when we seem to be emerging from all danger? There must be some method in his madness. Can it be that he contemplates suicide? I remember that upon one occasion he spoke in a deeply reverent manner of the heinousness of the crime of self-destruction. I shall keep my eye upon him, however, and though I cannot obtrude upon the privacy of his cabin, I shall at least make a point of remaining on deck as long as he stays up.\n\nMr Milne pooh-poohs my fears, and says it is only the \"skipper\"s little way\". He himself takes a very rosy view of the situation. According to him we shall be out of the ice by the day after tomorrow, pass Jan Meyen two days after that, and sight Shetland in little more than a week. I hope he may not be too sanguine. His opinion may be fairly balanced against the gloomy precautions of the captain, for he is an old and experienced seaman and weighs his words well before uttering them.\n\nThe long-impending catastrophe has come at last. I hardly know what to write about it. The captain is gone. He may come back to us again alive, but I fear me \u2013 I fear me. It is now seven o\"clock of the morning of the 19th of September. I have spent the whole night traversing the great ice-floe in front of us with a party of seamen in the hope of coming upon some trace of him, but in vain. I shall try to give some account of the circumstances which attended upon his disappearance. Should anyone ever chance to read the words which I put down, I trust they will remember that I do not write from conjecture or from hearsay, but that I, a sane and educated man, am describing accurately what actually occurred before my very eyes. My inferences are my own, but I shall be answerable for the facts.\n\nThe captain remained in excellent spirits after the conversation which I have recorded. He appeared to be nervous and impatient, however, frequently changing his position, and moving his limbs in an aimless choreic way which is characteristic of him at times. In a quarter of an hour he went upon deck seven times, only to descend after a few hurried paces. I followed him each time, for there was something about his face which confirmed my resolution of not letting him out of my sight. He seemed to observe the effect which his movements had produced, for he endeavoured by an overdone hilarity, laughing boisterously at the very smallest of jokes, to quiet my apprehensions.\n\nAfter supper he went on to the poop once more, and I with him. The night was dark and very still, save for the melancholy soughing of the wind among the spars. A thick cloud was coming up from the north-west, and the ragged tentacles which it threw out in front of it were drifting across the face of the moon, which only shone now and again through a rift in the wrack. The captain paced rapidly backwards and forwards, and then seeing me still dogging him, he came across and hinted that he thought I should be better below \u2013 which, I need hardly say, had the effect of strengthening my resolution to remain on deck.\n\nI think he forgot about my presence after this, for he stood silently leaning over the taffrail and peering out across the great desert of snow, part of which lay in shadow while part glittered mistily in the moonlight. Several times I could see by his movements that he was referring to his watch, and once he muttered a short sentence, of which I could only catch the one word \"ready\". I confess to having felt an eerie feeling creeping over me as I watched the loom of his tall figure through the darkness and noted how completely he fulfilled the idea of a man who is keeping a tryst. A tryst with whom? Some vague perception began to dawn upon me as I pieced one fact with another, but I was utterly unprepared for the sequel.\n\nBy the sudden intensity of his attitude I felt that he saw something. I crept up behind him. He was staring with an eager questioning gaze at what seemed to be a wreath of mist, blown swiftly in a line with the ship. It was a dim nebulous body, devoid of shape, sometimes more, sometimes less apparent, as the light fell on it. The moon was dimmed in its brilliancy at the moment by a canopy of thinnest cloud, like the coating of an anemone.\n\n\"Coming, lass, coming,\" cried the skipper, in a voice of unfathomable tenderness and compassion, like one who soothes a beloved one by some favour long looked for, and as pleasant to bestow as to receive.\n\nWhat followed happened in an instant. I had no power to interfere. He gave one spring to the top of the bulwarks and another which took him on to the ice, almost to the feet of the pale misty figure. He held out his hands as if to clasp it, and so ran into the darkness with outstretched arms and loving words. I still stood rigid and motionless, straining my eyes after his retreating form, until his voice died away in the distance. I never thought to see him again, but at that moment the moon shone out brilliantly through a chink in the cloudy heaven and illuminated the great field of ice. Then I saw his dark figure already a very long way off, running with prodigious speed across the frozen plain. That was the last glimpse which we caught of him \u2013 perhaps the last we ever shall. A party was organised to follow him, and I accompanied them, but the men\"s hearts were not in the work and nothing was found. Another will be formed within a few hours. I can hardly believe I have not been dreaming or suffering from some hideous nightmare as I write these things down.\n\n7.30 p.m. \u2013 Just returned dead beat and utterly tired out from a second unsuccessful search for the captain. The floe is of enormous extent, for though we have traversed at least twenty miles of its surface, there has been no sign of its coming to an end. The frost has been so severe of late that the overlying snow is frozen as hard as granite, otherwise we might have had the footsteps to guide us. The crew are anxious that we should cast off and steam round the floe and so to the southward, for the ice has opened up during the night, and the sea is visible upon the horizon. They argue that Captain Craigie is certainly dead, and that we are all risking our lives to no purpose by remaining when we have an opportunity of escape. Mr Milne and I have had the greatest difficulty in persuading them to wait until tomorrow night, and have been compelled to promise that we will not under any circumstances delay our departure longer than that. We propose therefore to take a few hours\" sleep and then to start upon a final search.\n\nSeptember 20, evening \u2013 I crossed the ice this morning with a party of men exploring the southern part of the floe, while Mr Milne went off in a northerly direction. We pushed on for ten or twelve miles without seeing a trace of any living thing, except a single bird, which fluttered a great way over our heads, and which by its flight I should judge to have been a falcon. The southern extremity of the ice-field tapered away into a long narrow spit which projected out into the sea. When we came to the base of this promontory, the men halted, but I begged them to continue to the extreme end of it, that we might have the satisfaction of knowing that no possible chance had been neglected.\n\nWe had hardly gone a hundred yards before McDonald of Peterhead cried out that he saw something in front of us and began to run. We all got a glimpse of it and ran too. At first it was only a vague darkness against the white ice, but as we raced along together it took the shape of a man, and eventually of the man of whom we were in search. He was lying face downwards upon a frozen bank. Many little crystals of ice and feathers of snow had drifted on to him as he lay, and sparkled upon his dark seaman\"s jacket. As we came up some wandering puff of wind caught these tiny flakes in its vortex, and they whirled up into the air, partially descended again, and then, caught once more in the current, sped rapidly away in the direction of the sea. To my eyes it seemed but a snowdrift, but many of my companions averred that it started up in the shape of a woman, stooped over the corpse and kissed it, and then hurried away across the floe. I have learned never to ridicule any man\"s opinion, however strange it may seem. Sure it is that Captain Nicholas Craigie had met with no painful end, for there was a bright smile upon his blue pinched features, and his hands were still outstretched as though grasping at the strange visitor which had summoned him away into the dim world that lies beyond the grave.\n\nWe buried him the same afternoon with the ship\"s ensign around him and a thirty-two-pound shot at his feet. I read the burial service, while the rough sailors wept like children, for there were many who owed much to his kind heart and who showed now the affection which his strange ways had repelled during his lifetime. He went off the grating with a dull, sullen splash, and as I looked into the green water I saw him go down, down, down until he was but a little flickering patch of white hanging upon the outskirts of eternal darkness. Then even that faded away and he was gone. There he shall lie, with his secret and his sorrows and his mystery all still buried in his breast, until that great day when the sea shall give up its dead and Nicholas Craigie come out from among the ice with the smile upon his face and his stiffened arms outstretched in greeting. I pray that his lot may be a happier one in that life than it has been in this.\n\nI shall not continue my journal. Our road to home lies plain and clear before us and the great ice-field will soon be but a remembrance of the past. It will be some time before I get over the shock produced by recent events. When I began this record of our voyage I little thought of how I should be compelled to finish it. I am writing these final words in the lonely cabin, still starting at times and fancying I hear the quick nervous step of the dead man upon the deck above me. I entered his cabin tonight, as was my duty, to make a list of his effects in order that they might be entered in the official log. All was as it had been upon my previous visit, save that the picture which I have described as having hung at the end of his bed had been cut out of its frame, as with a knife, and was gone. With this last link in a strange chain of evidence I close my diary of the voyage of the Polestar.\n\nNote by Dr John McAlister Ray senior \u2013 I have read over the strange events connected with the death of the captain of the Polestar as narrated in the journal of my son. That everything occurred exactly as he describes it I have the fullest confidence, and, indeed, the most positive certainty, for I know him to be a strong-nerved and unimaginative man with the strictest regard for veracity. Still, the story is, on the face of it, so vague and so improbable that I was long opposed to its publication. Within the last few days, however, I have had independent testimony upon the subject which throws a new light upon it. I had run down to Edinburgh to attend a meeting of the British Medical Association, when I chanced to come across Dr P\u2014, an old college chum of mine, now practising at Saltash, in Devonshire. Upon my telling him of this experience of my son\"s, he declared to me that he was familiar with the captain, and proceeded, to my no small surprise, to give me a description of him which tallied remarkably well with that given in the journal, except that he depicted him as a younger man. According to his account, he had been engaged to a young lady of singular beauty residing upon the Cornish coast. During his absence at sea his betrothed had died under circumstances of peculiar horror.\n\n\u2042\n\n[ How It Happened ]\n\nShe was a writing medium. This is what she wrote:\n\nI can remember some things upon that evening most distinctly, and others are like some vague, broken dreams. That is what makes it so difficult to tell a connected story. I have no idea now what it was that had taken me to London and brought me back so late. It just merges into all my other visits to London. But from the time that I got out at the little country station everything is extraordinarily clear. I can live it again \u2013 every instant of it.\n\nI remember so well walking down the platform and looking at the illuminated clock at the end which told me that it was half-past eleven. I remember also my wondering whether I could get home before midnight. Then I remember the big motor, with its glaring headlights and glitter of polished brass, waiting for me outside. It was my new thirty-horse-power Robur, which had only been delivered that day. I remember also asking Perkins, my chauffeur, how she had gone, and his saying that he thought she was excellent.\n\n\"I\"ll try her myself,\" said I, and I climbed into the driver\"s seat.\n\n\"The gears are not the same,\" said he. \"Perhaps, sir, I had better drive.\"\n\n\"No; I should like to try her,\" said I.\n\nAnd so we started on the five-mile drive for home.\n\nMy old car had the gears as they used always to be in notches on a bar. In this car you passed the gear-lever through a gate to get on the higher ones. It was not difficult to master, and soon I thought that I understood it. It was foolish, no doubt, to begin to learn a new system in the dark, but one often does foolish things and one has not always to pay the full price for them. I got along very well until I came to Claystall Hill. It is one of the worst hills in England, a mile and a half long and one in six in places, with three fairly sharp curves. My park gate stands at the very foot of it upon the main London road.\n\nWe were just over the brow of this hill, where the grade is steepest, when the trouble began. I had been on the top speed and wanted to get her on the free; but she stuck between gears, and I had to get her back on the top again. By this time she was going at a great rate, so I clapped on both brakes, and one after the other they gave way. I didn\"t mind so much when I felt my footbrake snap, but when I put all my weight on my side-brake, and the lever clanged to its full limit without a catch, it brought a cold sweat out of me. By this time we were fairly tearing down the slope. The lights were brilliant, and I brought her round the first curve all right. Then we did the second one, though it was a close shave for the ditch. There was a mile of straight then with the third curve beneath it and after that the gate of the park. If I could shoot into that harbour all would be well, for the slope up to the house would bring her to a stand.\n\nPerkins behaved splendidly. I should like that to be known. He was perfectly cool and alert. I had thought at the very beginning of taking the bank, and he read my intention.\n\n\"I wouldn\"t do it, sir,\" said he. \"At this pace it must go over and we should have it on the top of us.\"\n\nOf course he was right. He got to the electric switch and had it off, so we were in the free; but we were still running at a fearful pace. He laid his hands on the wheel.\n\n\"I\"ll keep her steady,\" said he, \"if you care to jump and chance it. We can never get round that curve. Better jump, sir.\"\n\n\"No,\" said I; \"I\"ll stick it out. You can jump if you like.\"\n\n\"I\"ll stick it with you, sir,\" said he.\n\nIf it had been the old car I should have jammed the gear-lever into the reverse and seen what would happen. I expect she would have stripped her gears or smashed up somehow, but it would have been a chance. As it was, I was helpless. Perkins tried to climb across, but you couldn\"t do it going at that pace. The wheels were whirring like a high wind and the big body creaking and groaning with the strain. But the lights were brilliant, and one could steer to an inch. I remember thinking what an awful and yet majestic sight we should appear to anyone who met us. It was a narrow road and we were just a great, roaring, golden death to anyone who came in our path.\n\nWe got round the corner with one wheel three feet high upon the bank. I thought we were surely over, but after staggering for a moment she righted and darted onwards. That was the third corner and the last one. There was only the park gate now. It was facing us but, as luck would have it, not facing us directly. It was about twenty yards to the left up the main road into which we ran. Perhaps I could have done it, but I expect that the steering-gear had been jarred when we ran on the bank. The wheel did not turn easily. We shot out of the lane. I saw the open gate on the left. I whirled round my wheel with all the strength of my wrists. Perkins and I threw our bodies across, and then the next instant, going at fifty miles an hour, my right wheel struck full on the right-hand pillar of my own gate. I heard the crash. I was conscious of flying through the air, and then \u2013 and then \u2013!\n\nWhen I became aware of my own existence once more I was among some brushwood in the shadow of the oaks upon the lodge side of the drive. A man was standing beside me. I imagined at first that it was Perkins, but when I looked again I saw that it was Stanley, a man whom I had known at college some years before, and for whom I had a really genuine affection. There was always something peculiarly sympathetic to me in Stanley\"s personality; and I was proud to think that I had some similar influence upon him. At the present moment I was surprised to see him, but I was like a man in a dream, giddy and shaken and quite prepared to take things as I found them without questioning them.\n\n\"What a smash!\" I said. \"Good Lord, what an awful smash!\"\n\nHe nodded his head, and even in the gloom I could see that he was smiling the gentle, wistful smile which I connected with him.\n\nI was quite unable to move. Indeed, I had not any desire to try to move. But my senses were exceedingly alert. I saw the wreck of the motor lit up by the moving lanterns. I saw the little group of people and heard the hushed voices. There were the lodge-keeper and his wife, and one or two more. They were taking no notice of me, but were very busy round the car. Then suddenly I heard a cry of pain.\n\n\"The weight is on him. Lift it easy,\" cried a voice.\n\n\"It\"s only my leg!\" said another one, which I recognised as Perkins\"s. \"Where\"s master?\" he cried.\n\n\"Here I am,\" I answered, but they did not seem to hear me. They were all bending over something which lay in front of the car.\n\nStanley laid his hand upon my shoulder, and his touch was inexpressibly soothing. I felt light and happy, in spite of all.\n\n\"No pain, of course?\" said he.\n\n\"None,\" said I.\n\n\"There never is,\" said he.\n\nAnd then suddenly a wave of amazement passed over me. Stanley! Stanley! Why, Stanley had surely died of enteric at Bloemfontein in the Boer War!\n\n\"Stanley!\" I cried, and the words seemed to choke my throat \u2013 \"Stanley, you are dead.\"\n\n\u2042\n\n[ Playing with Fire ]\n\nI cannot pretend to say what occurred on the 14th of April last at No. 17 Badderly Gardens. Put down in black and white, my surmise might seem too crude, too grotesque, for serious consideration. And yet that something did occur, and that it was of a nature which will leave its mark upon every one of us for the rest of our lives, is as certain as the unanimous testimony of five witnesses can make it. I will not enter into any argument or speculation. I will only give a plain statement, which will be submitted to John Moir, Harvey Deacon and Mrs Delamere and withheld from publication unless they are prepared to corroborate every detail. I cannot obtain the sanction of Paul Le Duc, for he appears to have left the country.\n\nIt was John Moir (the well-known senior partner of Moir, Moir, and Sanderson) who had originally turned our attention to occult subjects. He had, like many very hard and practical men of business, a mystic side to his nature, which had led him to the examination, and eventually to the acceptance, of those elusive phenomena which are grouped together with much that is foolish, and much that is fraudulent, under the common heading of spiritualism. His researches, which had begun with an open mind, ended unhappily in dogma, and he became as positive and fanatical as any other bigot. He represented in our little group the body of men who have turned these singular phenomena into a new religion.\n\nMrs Delamere, our medium, was his sister, the wife of Delamere, the rising sculptor. Our experience had shown us that to work on these subjects without a medium was as futile as for an astronomer to make observations without a telescope. On the other hand, the introduction of a paid medium was hateful to all of us. Was it not obvious that he or she would feel bound to return some result for money received, and that the temptation to fraud would be an overpowering one? No phenomena could be relied upon which were produced at a guinea an hour. But, fortunately, Moir had discovered that his sister was mediumistic \u2013 in other words, that she was a battery of that animal magnetic force which is the only form of energy which is subtle enough to be acted upon from the spiritual plane as well as from our own material one. Of course, when I say this, I do not mean to beg the question; but I am simply indicating the theories upon which we were ourselves, rightly or wrongly, explaining what we saw. The lady came, not altogether with the approval of her husband, and though she never gave indications of any very great psychic force, we were able, at least, to obtain those usual phenomena of message-tilting which are at the same time so puerile and so inexplicable. Every Sunday evening we met in Harvey Deacon\"s studio at Badderly Gardens, the next house to the corner of Merton Park Road.\n\nHarvey Deacon\"s imaginative work in art would prepare anyone to find that he was an ardent lover of everything which was outr\u00e9 and sensational. A certain picturesqueness in the study of the occult had been the quality which had originally attracted him to it, but his attention was speedily arrested by some of those phenomena to which I have referred, and he was coming rapidly to the conclusion that what he had looked upon as an amusing romance and an after-dinner entertainment was really a very formidable reality. He is a man with a remarkably clear and logical brain \u2013 a true descendant of his ancestor, the well-known Scotch professor \u2013 and he represented in our small circle the critical element, the man who has no prejudices, is prepared to follow facts as far as he can see them, and refuses to theorise in advance of his data. His caution annoyed Moir as much as the latter\"s robust faith amused Deacon, but each in his own way was equally keen upon the matter.\n\nAnd I? What am I to say that I represented? I was not the devotee. I was not the scientific critic. Perhaps the best that I can claim for myself is that I was the dilettante man about town, anxious to be in the swim of every fresh movement, thankful for any new sensation which would take me out of myself and open up fresh possibilities of existence. I am not an enthusiast myself, but I like the company of those who are. Moir\"s talk, which made me feel as if we had a private pass-key through the door of death, filled me with a vague contentment. The soothing atmosphere of the seance with the darkened lights was delightful to me. In a word, the thing amused me, and so I was there.\n\nIt was, as I have said, upon the 14th of April last that the very singular event which I am about to put upon record took place. I was the first of the men to arrive at the studio, but Mrs Delamere was already there, having had afternoon tea with Mrs Harvey Deacon. The two ladies and Deacon himself were standing in front of an unfinished picture of his upon the easel. I am not an expert in art, and I have never professed to understand what Harvey Deacon meant by his pictures; but I could see in this instance that it was all very clever and imaginative, fairies and animals and allegorical figures of all sorts. The ladies were loud in their praises, and indeed the colour effect was a remarkable one.\n\n\"What do you think of it, Markham?\" he asked.\n\n\"Well, it\"s above me,\" said I. \"These beasts \u2013 what are they?\"\n\n\"Mythical monsters, imaginary creatures, heraldic emblems \u2013 a sort of weird, bizarre procession of them.\"\n\n\"With a white horse in front!\"\n\n\"It\"s not a horse,\" said he, rather testily \u2013 which was surprising, for he was a very good-humoured fellow as a rule, and hardly ever took himself seriously.\n\n\"What is it, then?\"\n\n\"Can\"t you see the horn in front? It\"s a unicorn. I told you they were heraldic beasts. Can\"t you recognise one?\"\n\n\"Very sorry, Deacon,\" said I, for he really seemed to be annoyed.\n\nHe laughed at his own irritation.\n\n\"Excuse me, Markham!\" said he; \"the fact is that I have had an awful job over the beast. All day I have been painting him in and painting him out, and trying to imagine what a real, live, ramping unicorn would look like. At last I got him, as I hoped; so when you failed to recognise it, it took me on the raw.\"\n\n\"Why, of course it\"s a unicorn,\" said I, for he was evidently depressed at my obtuseness. \"I can see the horn quite plainly, but I never saw a unicorn except beside the Royal Arms, and so I never thought of the creature. And these others are griffins and cockatrices, and dragons of sorts?\"\n\n\"Yes, I had no difficulty with them. It was the unicorn which bothered me. However, there\"s an end of it until tomorrow.\" He turned the picture round upon the easel, and we all chatted about other subjects.\n\nMoir was late that evening, and when he did arrive he brought with him, rather to our surprise, a small, stout Frenchman, whom he introduced as Monsieur Paul Le Duc. I say to our surprise, for we held a theory that any intrusion into our spiritual circle deranged the conditions, and introduced an element of suspicion. We knew that we could trust each other, but all our results were vitiated by the presence of an outsider. However, Moir soon reconciled us to the innovation. Monsieur Paul Le Duc was a famous student of occultism, a seer, a medium and a mystic. He was travelling in England with a letter of introduction to Moir from the president of the Parisian brothers of the Rosy Cross. What more natural than that he should bring him to our little seance or that we should feel honoured by his presence?\n\nHe was, as I have said, a small, stout man, undistinguished in appearance, with a broad, smooth, clean-shaven face, remarkable only for a pair of large, brown, velvety eyes, staring vaguely out in front of him. He was well dressed, with the manners of a gentleman, and his curious little turns of English speech set the ladies smiling. Mrs Deacon had a prejudice against our researches and left the room, upon which we lowered the lights, as was our custom, and drew up our chairs to the square mahogany table which stood in the centre of the studio. The light was subdued, but sufficient to allow us to see each other quite plainly. I remember that I could even observe the curious, podgy little square-topped hands which the Frenchman laid upon the table.\n\n\"What a fun!\" said he. \"It is many years since I have sat in this fashion, and it is to me amusing. Madame is medium. Does madame make the trance?\"\n\n\"Well, hardly that,\" said Mrs Delamere. \"But I am always conscious of extreme sleepiness.\"\n\n\"It is the first stage. Then you encourage it, and there comes the trance. When the trance comes, then out jumps your little spirit and in jumps another little spirit, and so you have direct talking or writing. You leave your machine to be worked by another. Hein? But what have unicorns to do with it?\"\n\nHarvey Deacon started in his chair. The Frenchman was moving his head slowly round and staring into the shadows which draped the walls.\n\n\"What a fun!\" said he. \"Always unicorns. Who has been thinking so hard upon a subject so bizarre?\"\n\n\"This is wonderful!\" cried Deacon. \"I have been trying to paint one all day. But how could you know it?\"\n\n\"You have been thinking of them in this room.\"\n\n\"Certainly.\"\n\n\"But thoughts are things, my friend. When you imagine a thing you make a thing. You did not know it, hein? But I can see your unicorns because it is not only with my eye that I can see.\"\n\n\"Do you mean to say that I create a thing which has never existed by merely thinking of it?\"\n\n\"But certainly. It is the fact which lies under all other facts. That is why an evil thought is also a danger.\"\n\n\"They are, I suppose, upon the astral plane?\" said Moir.\n\n\"Ah, well, these are but words, my friends. They are there \u2013 somewhere \u2013 everywhere \u2013 I cannot tell myself. I see them. I could touch them.\"\n\n\"You could not make us see them.\"\n\n\"It is to materialise them. Hold! It is an experiment. But the power is wanting. Let us see what power we have, and then arrange what we shall do. May I place you as I wish?\"\n\n\"You evidently know a great deal more about it than we do,\" said Harvey Deacon; \"I wish that you would take complete control.\"\n\n\"It may be that the conditions are not good. But we will try what we can do. Madame will sit where she is, I next, and this gentleman beside me. Meester Moir will sit next to madame, because it is well to have blacks and blondes in turn. So! And now with your permission I will turn the lights all out.\"\n\n\"What is the advantage of the dark?\" I asked.\n\n\"Because the force with which we deal is a vibration of ether and so also is light. We have the wires all for ourselves now \u2013 hein? You will not be frightened in the darkness, madame? What a fun is such a seance!\"\n\nAt first the darkness appeared to be absolutely pitchy, but in a few minutes our eyes became so far accustomed to it that we could just make out each other\"s presence \u2013 very dimly and vaguely, it is true. I could see nothing else in the room \u2013 only the black loom of the motionless figures. We were all taking the matter much more seriously than we had ever done before.\n\n\"You will place your hands in front. It is hopeless that we touch, since we are so few round so large a table. You will compose yourself, madame, and if sleep should come to you you will not fight against it. And now we sit in silence and we expect \u2013 hein?\"\n\nSo we sat in silence and expected, staring out into the blackness in front of us. A clock ticked in the passage. A dog barked intermittently far away. Once or twice a cab rattled past in the street, and the gleam of its lamps through the chink in the curtains was a cheerful break in that gloomy vigil. I felt those physical symptoms with which previous seances had made me familiar \u2013 the coldness of the feet, the tingling in the hands, the glow of the palms, the feeling of a cold wind upon the back. Strange little shooting pains came in my forearms, especially as it seemed to me in my left one, which was nearest to our visitor \u2013 due no doubt to disturbance of the vascular system, but worthy of some attention all the same. At the same time I was conscious of a strained feeling of expectancy which was almost painful. From the rigid, absolute silence of my companions, I gathered that their nerves were as tense as my own.\n\nAnd then suddenly a sound came out of the darkness \u2013 a low, sibilant sound, the quick, thin breathing of a woman. Quicker and thinner yet it came, as between clenched teeth, to end in a loud gasp with a dull rustle of cloth.\n\n\"What\"s that? Is it all right?\" someone asked in the darkness.\n\n\"Yes, all is right,\" said the Frenchman. \"It is madame. She is in her trance. Now, gentlemen, if you will wait quiet you will see something, I think, which will interest you much.\"\n\nStill the ticking in the hall. Still the breathing, deeper and fuller now, from the medium. Still the occasional flash, more welcome than ever, of the passing lights of the hansoms. What a gap we were bridging, the half-raised veil of the eternal on the one side and the cabs of London on the other. The table was throbbing with a mighty pulse. It swayed steadily, rhythmically, with an easy swooping, scooping motion under our fingers. Sharp little raps and cracks came from its substance, file-firing, volley-firing, the sounds of a fagot burning briskly on a frosty night.\n\n\"There is much power,\" said the Frenchman. \"See it on the table!\"\n\nI had thought it was some delusion of my own, but all could see it now. There was a greenish-yellow phosphorescent light \u2013 or I should say a luminous vapour rather than a light \u2013 which lay over the surface of the table. It rolled and wreathed and undulated in dim glimmering folds, turning and swirling like clouds of smoke. I could see the white, square-ended hands of the French medium in this baleful light.\n\n\"What a fun!\" he cried. \"It is splendid!\"\n\n\"Shall we call the alphabet?\" asked Moir.\n\n\"But no \u2013 for we can do much better,\" said our visitor. \"It is but a clumsy thing to tilt the table for every letter of the alphabet, and with such a medium as madame we should do better than that.\"\n\n\"Yes, you will do better,\" said a voice.\n\n\"Who was that? Who spoke? Was that you, Markham?\"\n\n\"No, I did not speak.\"\n\n\"It was madame who spoke.\"\n\n\"But it was not her voice.\n\n\"Is that you, Mrs Delamere?\"\n\n\"It is not the medium, but it is the power which uses the organs of the medium,\" said the strange, deep voice.\n\n\"Where is Mrs Delamere? It will not hurt her, I trust.\"\n\n\"The medium is happy in another plane of existence. She has taken my place, as I have taken hers.\"\n\n\"Who are you?\"\n\n\"It cannot matter to you who I am. I am one who has lived as you are living and who has died as you will die.\" We heard the creak and grate of a cab pulling up next door. There was an argument about the fare and the cabman grumbled hoarsely down the street. The green-yellow cloud still swirled faintly over the table, dull elsewhere, but glowing into a dim luminosity in the direction of the medium. It seemed to be piling itself up in front of her. A sense of fear and cold struck into my heart. It seemed to me that lightly and flippantly we had approached the most real and august of sacraments, that communion with the dead of which the fathers of the church had spoken.\n\n\"Don\"t you think we are going too far? Should we not break up this seance?\" I cried.\n\nBut the others were all earnest to see the end of it. They laughed at my scruples.\n\n\"All the powers are made for use,\" said Harvey Deacon. \"If we can do this, we should do this. Every new departure of knowledge has been called unlawful in its inception. It is right and proper that we should enquire into the nature of death.\"\n\n\"It is right and proper,\" said the voice.\n\n\"There, what more could you ask?\" cried Moir, who was much excited. \"Let us have a test. Will you give us a test that you are really there?\"\n\n\"What test do you demand?\"\n\n\"Well, now \u2013 I have some coins in my pocket. Will you tell me how many?\"\n\n\"We come back in the hope of teaching and of elevating, and not to guess childish riddles.\"\n\n\"Ha, ha, Meester Moir, you catch it that time,\" cried the Frenchman. \"But surely this is very good sense what the control is saying.\"\n\n\"It is a religion, not a game,\" said the cold, hard voice.\n\n\"Exactly \u2013 the very view I take of it,\" cried Moir. \"I am sure I am very sorry if I have asked a foolish question. You will not tell me who you are?\"\n\n\"What does it matter?\"\n\n\"Have you been a spirit long?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"How long?\"\n\n\"We cannot reckon time as you do. Our conditions are different.\"\n\n\"Are you happy?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"You would not wish to come back to life?\"\n\n\"No \u2013 certainly not.\"\n\n\"Are you busy?\"\n\n\"We could not be happy if we were not busy.\"\n\n\"What do you do?\"\n\n\"I have said that the conditions are entirely different.\"\n\n\"Can you give us no idea of your work?\"\n\n\"We labour for our own improvement and for the advancement of others.\"\n\n\"Do you like coming here tonight?\"\n\n\"I am glad to come if I can do any good by coming.\"\n\n\"Then to do good is your object?\"\n\n\"It is the object of all life on every plane.\"\n\n\"You see, Markham, that should answer your scruples.\"\n\nIt did, for my doubts had passed and only interest remained.\n\n\"Have you pain in your life?\" I asked.\n\n\"No; pain is a thing of the body.\"\n\n\"Have you mental pain?\"\n\n\"Yes; one may always be sad or anxious.\"\n\n\"Do you meet the friends whom you have known on earth?\"\n\n\"Some of them.\"\n\n\"Why only some of them?\"\n\n\"Only those who are sympathetic.\"\n\n\"Do husbands meet wives?\"\n\n\"Those who have truly loved.\"\n\n\"And the others?\"\n\n\"They are nothing to each other.\"\n\n\"There must be a spiritual connection?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Is what we are doing right?\"\n\n\"If done in the right spirit.\"\n\n\"What is the wrong spirit?\"\n\n\"Curiosity and levity.\"\n\n\"May harm come of that?\"\n\n\"Very serious harm.\"\n\n\"What sort of harm?\"\n\n\"You may call up forces over which you have no control.\"\n\n\"Evil forces?\"\n\n\"Undeveloped forces.\"\n\n\"You say they\"re dangerous. Dangerous to body or mind?\"\n\n\"Sometimes to both.\"\n\nThere was a pause, and the blackness seemed to grow blacker still while the yellow-green fog swirled and smoked upon the table.\n\n\"Any questions you would like to ask, Moir?\" said Harvey Deacon.\n\n\"Only this \u2013 do you pray in your world?\"\n\n\"One should pray in every world.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because it is the acknowledgement of forces outside ourselves.\"\n\n\"What religion do you hold over there?\"\n\n\"We differ exactly as you do.\"\n\n\"You have no certain knowledge?\"\n\n\"We have only faith.\"\n\n\"These questions of religion,\" said the Frenchman, \"they are of interest to you serious English people, but they are not so much fun. It seems to me that with this power here we might be able to have some great experience \u2013 hein? Something of which we could talk.\"\n\n\"But nothing could be more interesting than this,\" said Moir.\n\n\"Well, if you think so, that is very well,\" the Frenchman answered, peevishly. \"For my part, it seems to me that I have heard all this before, and that tonight I should weesh to try some experiment with all this force which is given to us. But if you have other questions, then ask them, and when you are finish we can try something more.\"\n\nBut the spell was broken. We asked and asked, but the medium sat silent in her chair. Only her deep, regular breathing showed that she was there. The mist still swirled upon the table.\n\n\"You have disturbed the harmony. She will not answer.\"\n\n\"But we have learned already all that she can tell \u2013 hein? For my part I wish to see something that I have never seen before.\"\n\n\"What then?\"\n\n\"You will let me try?\"\n\n\"What would you do?\"\n\n\"I have said to you that thoughts are things. Now I wish to prove it to you, and to show you that which is only a thought. Yes, yes, I can do it and you will see. Now I ask you only to sit still and say nothing, and keep ever your hands quiet upon the table.\"\n\nThe room was blacker and more silent than ever. The same feeling of apprehension which had lain heavily upon me at the beginning of the seance was back at my heart once more. The roots of my hair were tingling.\n\n\"It is working! It is working!\" cried the Frenchman, and there was a crack in his voice as he spoke which told me that he also was strung to his tightest.\n\nThe luminous fog drifted slowly off the table and wavered and flickered across the room. There in the farther and darkest corner it gathered and glowed, hardening down into a shining core \u2013 a strange, shifty, luminous and yet non-illuminating patch of radiance, bright itself but throwing no rays into the darkness. It had changed from a greenish-yellow to a dusky sullen red. Then round this centre there coiled a dark, smoky substance, thickening, hardening, growing denser and blacker. And then the light went out, smothered in that which had grown round it.\n\n\"It has gone.\"\n\n\"Hush \u2013 there\"s something in the room.\"\n\nWe heard it in the corner where the light had been, something which breathed deeply and fidgeted in the darkness.\n\n\"What is it? Le Duc, what have you done?\"\n\n\"It is all right. No harm will come.\" The Frenchman\"s voice was treble with agitation.\n\n\"Good heavens, Moir, there\"s a large animal in the room. Here it is, close by my chair! Go away! Go away!\" It was Harvey Deacon\"s voice, and then came the sound of a blow upon some hard object. And then... And then... how can I tell you what happened then?\n\nSome huge thing hurtled against us in the darkness, rearing, stamping, smashing, springing, snorting. The table was splintered. We were scattered in every direction. It clattered and scrambled amongst us, rushing with horrible energy from one corner of the room to another. We were all screaming with fear, grovelling upon our hands and knees to get away from it. Something trod upon my left hand and I felt the bones splinter under the weight.\n\n\"A light! A light!\" someone yelled.\n\n\"Moir, you have matches, matches!\"\n\n\"No, I have none. Deacon, where are the matches? For God\"s sake, the matches!\"\n\n\"I can\"t find them. Here, you Frenchman, stop it!\"\n\n\"It is beyond me. Oh, mon Dieu, I cannot stop it. The door! Where is the door?\"\n\nMy hand, by good luck, lit upon the handle as I groped about in the darkness. The hard-breathing, snorting, rushing creature tore past me and butted with a fearful crash against the oaken partition. The instant that it had passed I turned the handle and next moment we were all outside, and the door shut behind us. From within came a horrible crashing and rending and stamping.\n\n\"What is it? In heaven\"s name, what is it?\"\n\n\"A horse. I saw it when the door opened. But Mrs Delamere \u2013?\"\n\n\"We must fetch her out. Come on, Markham; the longer we wait the less we shall like it.\"\n\nHe flung open the door and we rushed in. She was there on the ground amidst the splinters of her chair. We seized her and dragged her swiftly out, and as we gained the door I looked over my shoulder into the darkness. There were two strange eyes glowing at us, a rattle of hoofs and I had just time to slam the door when there came a crash upon it which split it from top to bottom.\n\n\"It\"s coming through! It\"s coming!\"\n\n\"Run, run for your lives!\" cried the Frenchman.\n\nAnother crash, and something shot through the riven door. It was a long white spike, gleaming in the lamplight. For a moment it shone before us, and then with a snap it disappeared again.\n\n\"Quick! Quick! This way!\" Harvey Deacon shouted. \"Carry her in! Here! Quick!\"\n\nWe had taken refuge in the dining-room and shut the heavy oak door. We laid the senseless woman upon the sofa, and as we did so, Moir, the hard man of business, drooped and fainted across the hearthrug. Harvey Deacon was as white as a corpse, jerking and twitching like an epileptic. With a crash we heard the studio door fly to pieces, and the snorting and stamping were in the passage, up and down, up and down, shaking the house with their fury. The Frenchman had sunk his face on his hands, and sobbed like a frightened child.\n\n\"What shall we do?\" I shook him roughly by the shoulder. \"Is a gun any use?\"\n\n\"No, no. The power will pass. Then it will end.\"\n\n\"You might have killed us all \u2013 you unspeakable fool \u2013 with your infernal experiments.\"\n\n\"I did not know. How could I tell that it would be frightened? It is mad with terror. It was his fault. He struck it.\"\n\nHarvey Deacon sprang up. \"Good heavens!\" he cried. A terrible scream had sounded through the house. \"It\"s my wife! Here, I\"m going out. If it\"s the Evil One himself I am going out!\"\n\nHe had thrown open the door and rushed out into the passage. At the end of it, at the foot of the stairs, Mrs Deacon was lying senseless, struck down by the sight which she had seen. But there was nothing else.\n\nWith eyes of horror we looked about us, but all was perfectly quiet and still. I approached the black square of the studio door, expecting with every slow step that some atrocious shape would hurl itself out of it. But nothing came, and all was silent inside the room. Peeping and peering, our hearts in our mouths, we came to the very threshold and stared into the darkness. There was still no sound, but in one direction there was also no darkness. A luminous, glowing cloud, with an incandescent centre, hovered in the corner of the room. Slowly it dimmed and faded, growing thinner and fainter, until at last the same dense, velvety blackness filled the whole studio. And with the last flickering gleam of that baleful light the Frenchman broke into a shout of joy.\n\n\"What a fun!\" he cried. \"No one is hurt, and only the door broken and the ladies frightened. But, my friends, we have done what has never been done before.\"\n\n\"And as far as I can help,\" said Harvey Deacon, \"it will certainly never be done again.\"\n\nAnd that was what befell on the 14th of April last at No. 17 Badderly Gardens. I began by saying that it would seem too grotesque to dogmatise as to what it was which actually did occur; but I give my impressions, our impressions (since they are corroborated by Harvey Deacon and John Moir), for what they are worth. You may, if it pleases you, imagine that we were the victims of an elaborate and extraordinary hoax. Or you may think with us that we underwent a very real and a very terrible experience. Or perhaps you may know more than we do of such occult matters and can inform us of some similar occurrence. In this latter case a letter to William Markham, 146M, Albany, would help to throw a light upon that which is very dark to us.\n\n\u2042\n\n[ The Leather Funnel ]\n\nMy friend Lionel Dacre lived in the Avenue de Wagram, Paris. His house was that small one with the iron railings and grass plot in front of it, on the left-hand side as you pass down from the Arc de Triomphe. I fancy that it had been there long before the avenue was constructed, for the grey tiles were stained with lichens and the walls were mildewed and discoloured with age. It looked a small house from the street, five windows in front, if I remember right, but it deepened into a single long chamber at the back. It was here that Dacre had that singular library of occult literature and the fantastic curiosities which served as a hobby for himself and an amusement for his friends. A wealthy man of refined and eccentric tastes, he had spent much of his life and fortune in gathering together what was said to be a unique private collection of Talmudic, cabalistic and magical works, many of them of great rarity and value. His tastes leaned toward the marvellous and the monstrous, and I have heard that his experiments in the direction of the unknown have passed all the bounds of civilisation and of decorum. To his English friends he never alluded to such matters, and took the tone of the student and virtuoso; but a Frenchman whose tastes were of the same nature has assured me that the worst excesses of the Black Mass have been perpetrated in that large and lofty hall, which is lined with the shelves of his books and the cases of his museum.\n\nDacre\"s appearance was enough to show that his deep interest in these psychic matters was intellectual rather than spiritual. There was no trace of asceticism upon his heavy face, but there was much mental force in his huge, dome-like skull, which curved upward from amongst his thinning locks like a snow-peak above its fringe of fir trees. His knowledge was greater than his wisdom and his powers were far superior to his character. The small bright eyes, buried deeply in his fleshy face, twinkled with intelligence and an unabated curiosity of life, but they were the eyes of a sensualist and an egotist. Enough of the man, for he is dead now, poor devil, dead at the very time that he had made sure that he had at last discovered the elixir of life. It is not with his complex character that I have to deal, but with the very strange and inexplicable incident which had its rise in my visit to him in the early spring of the year \"82.\n\nI had known Dacre in England, for my researches in the Assyrian Room of the British Museum had been conducted at the time when he was endeavouring to establish a mystic and esoteric meaning in the Babylonian tablets, and this community of interests had brought us together. Chance remarks had led to daily conversation, and that to something verging upon friendship. I had promised him that on my next visit to Paris I would call upon him. At the time when I was able to fulfil my compact I was living in a cottage at Fontainebleau, and as the evening trains were inconvenient, he asked me to spend the night in his house.\n\n\"I have only that one spare couch,\" said he, pointing to a broad sofa in his large salon; \"I hope that you will manage to be comfortable there.\"\n\nIt was a singular bedroom, with its high walls of brown volumes, but there could be no more agreeable furniture to a bookworm like myself, and there is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book. I assured him that I could desire no more charming chamber and no more congenial surroundings.\n\n\"If the fittings are neither convenient nor conventional, they are at least costly,\" said he, looking round at his shelves. \"I have expended nearly a quarter of a million of money upon these objects which surround you. Books, weapons, gems, carvings, tapestries, images \u2013 there is hardly a thing here which has not its history, and it is generally one worth telling.\"\n\nHe was seated as he spoke at one side of the open fireplace, and I at the other. His reading-table was on his right, and the strong lamp above it ringed it with a very vivid circle of golden light. A half-rolled palimpsest lay in the centre and around it were many quaint articles of bric-\u00e0-brac. One of these was a large funnel, such as is used for filling wine casks. It appeared to be made of black wood and to be rimmed with discoloured brass.\n\n\"That is a curious thing,\" I remarked. \"What is the history of that?\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said he, \"it is the very question which I have had occasion to ask myself. I would give a good deal to know. Take it in your hands and examine it.\"\n\nI did so, and found that what I had imagined to be wood was in reality leather, though age had dried it into an extreme hardness. It was a large funnel, and might hold a quart when full. The brass rim encircled the wide end, but the narrow was also tipped with metal.\n\n\"What do you make of it?\" asked Dacre.\n\n\"I should imagine that it belonged to some vintner or maltster in the Middle Ages,\" said I. \"I have seen in England leathern drinking flagons of the seventeenth century \u2013 \"black jacks\" as they were called \u2013 which were of the same colour and hardness as this filler.\"\n\n\"I dare say the date would be about the same,\" said Dacre, \"and, no doubt, also, it was used for filling a vessel with liquid. If my suspicions are correct, however, it was a queer vintner who used it, and a very singular cask which was filled. Do you observe nothing strange at the spout end of the funnel.\"\n\nAs I held it to the light I observed that at a spot some five inches above the brass tip the narrow neck of the leather funnel was all haggled and scored, as if someone had notched it round with a blunt knife. Only at that point was there any roughening of the dead black surface.\n\n\"Someone has tried to cut off the neck.\"\n\n\"Would you call it a cut?\"\n\n\"It is torn and lacerated. It must have taken some strength to leave these marks on such tough material, whatever the instrument may have been. But what do you think of it? I can tell that you know more than you say.\"\n\nDacre smiled, and his little eyes twinkled with knowledge.\n\n\"Have you included the psychology of dreams among your learned studies?\" he asked.\n\n\"I did not even know that there was such a psychology.\"\n\n\"My dear sir, that shelf above the gem case is filled with volumes, from Albertus Magnus onward, which deal with no other subject. It is a science in itself.\"\n\n\"A science of charlatans.\"\n\n\"The charlatan is always the pioneer. From the astrologer came the astronomer, from the alchemist the chemist, from the mesmerist the experimental psychologist. The quack of yesterday is the professor of tomorrow. Even such subtle and elusive things as dreams will in time be reduced to system and order. When that time comes the researches of our friends on the bookshelf yonder will no longer be the amusement of the mystic but the foundations of a science.\"\n\n\"Supposing that is so, what has the science of dreams to do with a large, black, brass-rimmed funnel?\"\n\n\"I will tell you. You know that I have an agent who is always on the lookout for rarities and curiosities for my collection. Some days ago he heard of a dealer upon one of the quais who had acquired some old rubbish found in a cupboard in an ancient house at the back of the Rue Mathurin, in the Quartier Latin. The dining-room of this old house is decorated with a coat of arms, chevrons and bars rouge upon a field argent, which proves, upon enquiry, to be the shield of Nicholas de la Reynie, a high official of King Louis XIV. There can be no doubt that the other articles in the cupboard date back to the early days of that king. The inference is, therefore, that they were all the property of this Nicholas de la Reynie, who was, as I understand, the gentleman specially concerned with the maintenance and execution of the Draconic laws of that epoch.\"\n\n\"What then?\"\n\n\"I would ask you now to take the funnel into your hands once more and to examine the upper brass rim. Can you make out any lettering upon it?\"\n\nThere were certainly some scratches upon it, almost obliterated by time. The general effect was of several letters, the last of which bore some resemblance to a B.\n\n\"You make it a B?\"\n\n\"Yes, I do.\"\n\n\"So do I. In fact, I have no doubt whatever that it is a B.\"\n\n\"But the nobleman you mentioned would have had R for his initial.\"\n\n\"Exactly! That\"s the beauty of it. He owned this curious object and yet he had someone else\"s initials upon it. Why did he do this?\"\n\n\"I can\"t imagine; can you?\"\n\n\"Well, I might, perhaps, guess. Do you observe something drawn a little farther along the rim?\"\n\n\"I should say it was a crown.\"\n\n\"It is undoubtedly a crown; but if you examine it in a good light, you will convince yourself that it is not an ordinary crown. It is a heraldic crown \u2013 a badge of rank, and it consists of an alternation of four pearls and strawberry leaves, the proper badge of a marquis. We may infer, therefore, that the person whose initials end in B was entitled to wear that coronet.\"\n\n\"Then this common leather filler belonged to a marquis?\"\n\nDacre gave a peculiar smile.\n\n\"Or to some member of the family of a marquis,\" said he. \"So much we have clearly gathered from this engraved rim.\"\n\n\"But what has all this to do with dreams?\" I do not know whether it was from a look upon Dacre\"s face or from some subtle suggestion in his manner, but a feeling of repulsion, of unreasoning horror, came upon me as I looked at the gnarled old lump of leather.\n\n\"I have more than once received important information through my dreams,\" said my companion in the didactic manner which he loved to affect. \"I make it a rule now when I am in doubt upon any material point to place the article in question beside me as I sleep, and to hope for some enlightenment. The process does not appear to me to be very obscure, though it has not yet received the blessing of orthodox science. According to my theory, any object which has been intimately associated with any supreme paroxysm of human emotion, whether it be joy or pain, will retain a certain atmosphere or association which it is capable of communicating to a sensitive mind. By a sensitive mind I do not mean an abnormal one, but such a trained and educated mind as you or I possess.\"\n\n\"You mean, for example, that if I slept beside that old sword upon the wall, I might dream of some bloody incident in which that very sword took part?\"\n\n\"An excellent example, for, as a matter of fact, that sword was used in that fashion by me, and I saw in my sleep the death of its owner, who perished in a brisk skirmish which I have been unable to identify but which occurred at the time of the wars of the Frondists. If you think of it, some of our popular observances show that the fact has already been recognised by our ancestors, although we, in our wisdom, have classed it among superstitions.\"\n\n\"For example?\"\n\n\"Well, the placing of the bride\"s cake beneath the pillow in order that the sleeper may have pleasant dreams. That is one of several instances which you will find set forth in a small brochure which I am myself writing upon the subject. But to come back to the point, I slept one night with this funnel beside me and I had a dream which certainly throws a curious light upon its use and origin.\"\n\n\"What did you dream?\"\n\n\"I dreamed \u2013 \" He paused, and an intent look of interest came over his massive face. \"By Jove, that\"s well thought of,\" said he. \"This really will be an exceedingly interesting experiment. You are yourself a psychic subject \u2013 with nerves which respond readily to any impression.\"\n\n\"I have never tested myself in that direction.\"\n\n\"Then we shall test you tonight. Might I ask you as a very great favour, when you occupy that couch tonight, to sleep with this old funnel placed by the side of your pillow?\"\n\nThe request seemed to me a grotesque one; but I have myself, in my complex nature, a hunger after all which is bizarre and fantastic. I had not the faintest belief in Dacre\"s theory, nor any hopes for success in such an experiment; yet it amused me that the experiment should be made. Dacre, with great gravity, drew a small stand to the head of my settee, and placed the funnel upon it. Then, after a short conversation, he wished me good-night and left me.\n\nI sat for some little time smoking by the smouldering fire, and turning over in my mind the curious incident which had occurred and the strange experience which might lie before me. Sceptical as I was, there was something impressive in the assurance of Dacre\"s manner, and my extraordinary surroundings, the huge room with the strange and often sinister objects which were hung round it, struck solemnity into my soul. Finally I undressed, and turning out the lamp, I lay down. After long tossing I fell asleep. Let me try to describe as accurately as I can the scene which came to me in my dreams. It stands out now in my memory more clearly than anything which I have seen with my waking eyes.\n\nThere was a room which bore the appearance of a vault. Four spandrels from the corners ran up to join a sharp, cup-shaped roof. The architecture was rough, but very strong. It was evidently part of a great building.\n\nThree men in black, with curious, top-heavy, black velvet hats, sat in a line upon a red-carpeted dais. Their faces were very solemn and sad. On the left stood two long-gowned men with portfolios in their hands, which seemed to be stuffed with papers. Upon the right, looking towards me, was a small woman with blonde hair and singular, light-blue eyes \u2013 the eyes of a child. She was past her first youth, but could not yet be called middle-aged. Her figure was inclined to stoutness and her bearing was proud and confident. Her face was pale, but serene. It was a curious face, comely and yet feline, with a subtle suggestion of cruelty about the straight, strong little mouth and chubby jaw. She was draped in some sort of loose, white gown. Beside her stood a thin, eager priest, who whispered in her ear and continually raised a crucifix before her eyes. She turned her head and looked fixedly past the crucifix at the three men in black, who were, I felt, her judges.\n\nAs I gazed the three men stood up and said something, but I could distinguish no words, though I was aware that it was the central one who was speaking. They then swept out of the room, followed by the two men with the papers. At the same instant several rough-looking fellows in stout jerkins came bustling in and removed first the red carpet, and then the boards which formed the dais, so as to entirely clear the room. When the screen was removed I saw some singular articles of furniture behind it. One looked like a bed with wooden rollers at each end, and a winch handle to regulate its length. Another was a wooden horse. There were several other curious objects, and a number of swinging cords, which played over pulleys. It was not unlike a modern gymnasium.\n\nWhen the room had been cleared there appeared a new figure upon the scene. This was a tall, thin person clad in black, with a gaunt and austere face. The aspect of the man made me shudder. His clothes were all shining with grease and mottled with stains. He bore himself with a slow and impressive dignity, as if he took command of all things from the instant of his entrance. In spite of his rude appearance and sordid dress, it was now his business, his room, his to command. He carried a coil of light ropes over his left forearm. The lady looked him up and down with a searching glance, but her expression was unchanged. It was confident \u2013 even defiant. But it was very different with the priest. His face was ghastly white, and I saw the moisture glisten and run on his high, sloping forehead. He threw up his hands in prayer and he stooped continually to mutter frantic words in the lady\"s ear.\n\nThe man in black now advanced, and taking one of the cords from his left arm, he bound the woman\"s hands together. She held them meekly towards him as he did so. Then he took her arm with a rough grip and led her towards the wooden horse, which was little higher than her waist. On to this she was lifted and laid, with her back upon it and her face to the ceiling, while the priest, quivering with horror, had rushed out of the room. The woman\"s lips were moving rapidly and though I could hear nothing I knew that she was praying. Her feet hung down on either side of the horse, and I saw that the rough varlets in attendance had fastened cords to her ankles and secured the other ends to iron rings in the stone floor.\n\nMy heart sank within me as I saw these ominous preparations, and yet I was held by the fascination of horror and I could not take my eyes from the strange spectacle. A man had entered the room with a bucket of water in either hand. Another followed with a third bucket. They were laid beside the wooden horse. The second man had a wooden dipper \u2013 a bowl with a straight handle \u2013 in his other hand. This he gave to the man in black. At the same moment one of the varlets approached with a dark object in his hand, which even in my dream filled me with a vague feeling of familiarity. It was a leathern filler. With horrible energy he thrust it \u2013 but I could stand no more. My hair stood on end with horror. I writhed, I struggled, I broke through the bonds of sleep, and I burst with a shriek into my own life, and found myself lying shivering with terror in the huge library, with the moonlight flooding through the window and throwing strange silver and black traceries upon the opposite wall. Oh, what a blessed relief to feel that I was back in the nineteenth century \u2013 back out of that medieval vault into a world where men had human hearts within their bosoms. I sat up on my couch, trembling in every limb, my mind divided between thankfulness and horror. To think that such things were ever done \u2013 that they could be done without God striking the villains dead. Was it all a fantasy or did it really stand for something which had happened in the black, cruel days of the world\"s history? I sank my throbbing head upon my shaking hands. And then, suddenly, my heart seemed to stand still in my bosom, and I could not even scream, so great was my terror. Something was advancing towards me through the darkness of the room.\n\nIt is a horror coming upon a horror which breaks a man\"s spirit. I could not reason, I could not pray; I could only sit like a frozen image and glare at the dark figure which was coming down the great room. And then it moved out into the white lane of moonlight, and I breathed once more. It was Dacre, and his face showed that he was as frightened as myself.\n\n\"Was that you? For God\"s sake what\"s the matter?\" he asked in a husky voice.\n\n\"Oh, Dacre, I am glad to see you! I have been down into hell. It was dreadful.\"\n\n\"Then it was you who screamed?\"\n\n\"I dare say it was.\"\n\n\"It rang through the house. The servants are all terrified.\" He struck a match and lit the lamp. \"I think we may get the fire to burn up again,\" he added, throwing some logs upon the embers. \"Good God, my dear chap, how white you are! You look as if you had seen a ghost.\"\n\n\"So I have \u2013 several ghosts.\"\n\n\"The leather funnel has acted, then?\"\n\n\"I wouldn\"t sleep near the infernal thing again for all the money you could offer me.\"\n\nDacre chuckled.\n\n\"I expected that you would have a lively night of it,\" said he. \"You took it out of me in return, for that scream of yours wasn\"t a very pleasant sound at two in the morning. I suppose from what you say that you have seen the whole dreadful business.\"\n\n\"What dreadful business?\"\n\n\"The torture of the water \u2013 the \"Extraordinary Question\", as it was called in the genial days of \"Le Roi Soleil\". Did you stand it out to the end?\"\n\n\"No, thank God, I awoke before it really began.\"\n\n\"Ah! it is just as well for you. I held out till the third bucket. Well, it is an old story, and they are all in their graves now, anyhow, so what does it matter how they got there? I suppose that you have no idea what it was that you have seen?\"\n\n\"The torture of some criminal. She must have been a terrible malefactor indeed if her crimes are in proportion to her penalty.\"\n\n\"Well, we have that small consolation,\" said Dacre, wrapping his dressing-gown round him and crouching closer to the fire. \"They were in proportion to her penalty. That is to say, if I am correct in the lady\"s identity.\"\n\n\"How could you possibly know her identity?\"\n\nFor answer Dacre took down an old vellum-covered volume from the shelf.\n\n\"Just listen to this,\" said he; \"it is in the French of the seventeenth century, but I will give a rough translation as I go. You will judge for yourself whether I have solved the riddle or not.\n\n\"The prisoner was brought before the Grand Chambers and Tournelles of Parliament, sitting as a court of justice, charged with the murder of Master Dreux d\"Aubray, her father, and of her two brothers, MM. d\"Aubray, one being civil lieutenant and the other a counsellor of Parliament. In person it seemed hard to believe that she had really done such wicked deeds, for she was of a mild appearance and of short stature, with a fair skin and blue eyes. Yet the court, having found her guilty, condemned her to the ordinary and to the extraordinary question in order that she might be forced to name her accomplices, after which she should be carried in a cart to the Place de Gr\u00e8ve, there to have her head cut off, her body being afterwards burned and her ashes scattered to the winds.\n\n\"The date of this entry is July 16, 1676.\"\n\n\"It is interesting,\" said I, \"but not convincing. How do you prove the two women to be the same?\"\n\n\"I am coming to that. The narrative goes on to tell of the woman\"s behaviour when questioned. \"When the executioner approached her she recognised him by the cords which he held in his hands, and she at once held out her own hands to him, looking at him from head to foot without uttering a word.\" How\"s that?\"\n\n\"Yes, it was so.\"\n\n\"She gazed without wincing upon the wooden horse and rings which had twisted so many limbs and caused so many shrieks of agony. When her eyes fell upon the three pails of water, which were all ready for her, she said with a smile, \"All that water must have been brought here for the purpose of drowning me, monsieur. You have no idea, I trust, of making a person of my small stature swallow it all.\"\n\n\"Shall I read the details of the torture?\"\n\n\"No, for heaven\"s sake, don\"t.\"\n\n\"Here is a sentence which must surely show you that what is here recorded is the very scene which you have gazed upon tonight: \"The good Abb\u00e9 Pirot, unable to contemplate the agonies which were to be suffered by his penitent, had hurried from the room.\" Does that convince you?\"\n\n\"It does entirely. There can be no question that it is indeed the same event. But who, then, is this lady whose appearance was so attractive and whose end was so horrible?\"\n\nFor answer Dacre came across to me and placed the small lamp upon the table which stood by my bed. Lifting up the ill-omened filler, he turned the brass rim so that the light fell full upon it. Seen in this way the engraving seemed clearer than on the night before.\n\n\"We have already agreed that this is the badge of a marquis or of a marquise,\" said he. \"We have also settled that the last letter is B.\"\n\n\"It is undoubtedly so.\"\n\n\"I now suggest to you that the other letters from left to right are M, M, a small d, A, a small d and then the final B.\"\n\n\"Yes, I am sure that you are right. I can make out the two small d\"s quite plainly.\"\n\n\"What I have read to you tonight,\" said Dacre, \"is the official record of the trial of Marie Madeleine d\"Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers, one of the most famous poisoners and murderers of all time.\"\n\nI sat in silence, overwhelmed at the extraordinary nature of the incident and at the completeness of the proof with which Dacre had exposed its real meaning. In a vague way I remembered some details of the woman\"s career, her unbridled debauchery, the cold-blooded and protracted torture of her sick father, the murder of her brothers for motives of petty gain. I recollected also that the bravery of her end had done something to atone for the horror of her life, and that all Paris had sympathised with her last moments and blessed her as a martyr within a few days of the time when they had cursed her as a murderess. One objection, and one only, occurred to my mind.\n\n\"How came her initials and her badge of rank upon the filler? Surely they did not carry their medieval homage to the nobility to the point of decorating instruments of torture with their titles?\"\n\n\"I was puzzled with the same point,\" said Dacre, \"but it admits of a simple explanation. The case excited extraordinary interest at the time, and nothing could be more natural than that La Reynie, the head of the police, should retain this filler as a grim souvenir. It was not often that a marchioness of France underwent the extraordinary question. That he should engrave her initials upon it for the information of others was surely a very ordinary proceeding upon his part.\"\n\n\"And this?\" I asked, pointing to the marks upon the leathern neck.\n\n\"She was a cruel tigress,\" said Dacre, as he turned away. \"I think it is evident that like other tigresses her teeth were both strong and sharp.\"\n\n\u2042\n\n[ Lot No. 249 ]\n\nOf the dealings of Edward Bellingham with William Monkhouse Lee and of the cause of the great terror of Abercrombie Smith it may be that no absolute and final judgement will ever be delivered. It is true that we have the full and clear narrative of Smith himself and such corroboration as he could look for from Thomas Styles the servant, from the Reverend Plumptree Peterson, Fellow of Old\"s, and from such other people as chanced to gain some passing glance at this or that incident in a singular chain of events. Yet in the main, the story must rest upon Smith alone, and the most will think that it is more likely that one brain, however outwardly sane, has some subtle warp in its texture, some strange flaw in its workings, than that the path of nature has been overstepped in open day in so famed a centre of learning and light as the University of Oxford. Yet when we think how narrow and how devious this path of nature is, how dimly we can trace it, for all our lamps of science, and how from the darkness which girds it round great and terrible possibilities loom ever shadowly upwards, it is a bold and confident man who will put a limit to the strange bypaths into which the human spirit may wander.\n\nIn a certain wing of what we will call Old College in Oxford there is a corner turret of an exceeding great age. The heavy arch which spans the open door has bent downwards in the centre under the weight of its years, and the grey, lichen-blotched blocks of stone are bound and knitted together with withes and strands of ivy, as though the old mother had set herself to brace them up against wind and weather. From the door a stone stair curves upward spirally, passing two landings and terminating in a third one, its steps all shapeless and hollowed by the tread of so many generations of the seekers after knowledge. Life has flowed like water down this winding stair, and, waterlike, has left these smooth-worn grooves behind it. From the long-gowned, pedantic scholars of Plantagenet days down to the young bloods of a later age, how full and strong had been that tide of young, English life. And what was left now of all those hopes, those strivings, those fiery energies, save here and there in some old-world churchyard a few scratches upon a stone, and perchance a handful of dust in a mouldering coffin? Yet here were the silent stair and the grey, old wall, with bend and saltire and many another heraldic device still to be read upon its surface, like grotesque shadows thrown back from the days that had passed.\n\nIn the month of May, in the year 1884, three young men occupied the sets of rooms which opened on to the separate landings of the old stair. Each set consisted simply of a sitting-room and of a bedroom, while the two corresponding rooms upon the ground-floor were used, the one as a coal-cellar and the other as the living-room of the servant, or scout, Thomas Styles, whose duty it was to wait upon the three men above him. To right and to left was a line of lecture-rooms and of offices, so that the dwellers in the old turret enjoyed a certain seclusion, which made the chambers popular among the more studious undergraduates. Such were the three who occupied them now \u2013 Abercrombie Smith above, Edward Bellingham beneath him and William Monkhouse Lee upon the lowest storey.\n\nIt was ten o\"clock on a bright, spring night, and Abercrombie Smith lay back in his armchair, his feet upon the fender and his briar-root pipe between his lips. In a similar chair, and equally at his ease, there lounged on the other side of the fireplace his old school friend Jephro Hastie. Both men were in flannels, for they had spent their evening upon the river, but apart from their dress no one could look at their hard-cut, alert faces without seeing that they were open-air men \u2013 men whose minds and tastes turned naturally to all that was manly and robust. Hastie, indeed, was stroke of his college boat, and Smith was an even better oar, but a coming examination had already cast its shadow over him and held him to his work, save for the few hours a week which health demanded. A litter of medical books upon the table, with scattered bones, models and anatomical plates, pointed to the extent as well as the nature of his studies, while a couple of single-sticks and a set of boxing-gloves above the mantelpiece hinted at the means by which, with Hastie\"s help, he might take his exercise in its most compressed and least-distant form. They knew each other very well \u2013 so well that they could sit now in that soothing silence which is the very highest development of companionship.\n\n\"Have some whisky,\" said Abercrombie Smith at last between two cloudbursts. \"Scotch in the jug and Irish in the bottle.\"\n\n\"No, thanks. I\"m in for the sculls. I don\"t liquor when I\"m training. How about you?\"\n\n\"I\"m reading hard. I think it best to leave it alone.\"\n\nHastie nodded, and they relapsed into a contented silence. \"By the way, Smith,\" asked Hastie, presently, \"have you made the acquaintance of either of the fellows on your stair yet?\"\n\n\"Just a nod when we pass. Nothing more.\"\n\n\"Hum! I should be inclined to let it stand at that. I know something of them both. Not much, but as much as I want. I don\"t think I should take them to my bosom if I were you. Not that there\"s much amiss with Monkhouse Lee.\"\n\n\"Meaning the thin one?\"\n\n\"Precisely. He is a gentlemanly little fellow. I don\"t think there is any vice in him. But then you can\"t know him without knowing Bellingham.\"\n\n\"Meaning the fat one?\"\n\n\"Yes, the fat one. And he\"s a man whom I, for one, would rather not know.\"\n\nAbercrombie Smith raised his eyebrows and glanced across at his companion. \"What\"s up, then?\" he asked. \"Drink? Cards? Cad? You used not to be censorious.\"\n\n\"Ah! you evidently don\"t know the man or you wouldn\"t ask. There\"s something damnable about him \u2013 something reptilian. My gorge always rises at him. I should put him down as a man with secret vices \u2013 an evil liver. He\"s no fool, though. They say that he is one of the best men in his line that they have ever had in the college.\"\n\n\"Medicine or classics?\"\n\n\"Eastern languages. He\"s a demon at them. Chillingworth met him somewhere above the second cataract last long, and he told me that he just prattled to the Arabs as if he had been born and nursed and weaned among them. He talked Coptic to the Copts, and Hebrew to the Jews, and Arabic to the Bedouins, and they were all ready to kiss the hem of his frock-coat. There are some old hermit Johnnies up in those parts who sit on rocks and scowl and spit at the casual stranger. Well, when they saw this chap Bellingham, before he had said five words they just lay down on their bellies and wriggled. Chillingworth said that he never saw anything like it. Bellingham seemed to take it as his right, too, and strutted about among them and talked down to them like a Dutch uncle. Pretty good for an undergrad of Old\"s, wasn\"t it?\"\n\n\"Why do you say you can\"t know Lee without knowing Bellingham?\"\n\n\"Because Bellingham is engaged to his sister Eveline. Such a bright little girl, Smith! I know the whole family well. It\"s disgusting to see that brute with her. A toad and a dove, that\"s what they always remind me of.\"\n\nAbercrombie Smith grinned and knocked his ashes out against the side of the grate.\n\n\"You show every card in your hand, old chap,\" said he. \"What a prejudiced, green-eyed, evil-thinking old man it is! You have really nothing against the fellow except that.\"\n\n\"Well, I\"ve known her ever since she was as long as that cherry-wood pipe, and I don\"t like to see her taking risks. And it is a risk. He looks beastly. And he has a beastly temper, a venomous temper. You remember his row with Long Norton?\"\n\n\"No; you always forget that I am a freshman.\"\n\n\"Ah, it was last winter. Of course. Well, you know the towpath along by the river. There were several fellows going along it, Bellingham in front, when they came on an old market-woman coming the other way. It had been raining \u2013 you know what those fields are like when it has rained \u2013 and the path ran between the river and a great puddle that was nearly as broad. Well, what does this swine do but keep the path and push the old girl into the mud, where she and her marketings came to terrible grief. It was a blackguard thing to do, and Long Norton, who is as gentle a fellow as ever stepped, told him what he thought of it. One word led to another, and it ended in Norton laying his stick across the fellow\"s shoulders. There was the deuce of a fuss about it and it\"s a treat to see the way in which Bellingham looks at Norton when they meet now. By Jove, Smith, it\"s nearly eleven o\"clock!\"\n\n\"No hurry. Light your pipe again.\"\n\n\"Not I. I\"m supposed to be in training. Here I\"ve been sitting gossiping when I ought to have been safely tucked up. I\"ll borrow your skull, if you can share it. Williams has had mine for a month. I\"ll take the little bones of your ear, too, if you are sure you won\"t need them. Thanks very much. Never mind a bag, I can carry them very well under my arm. Good night, my son, and take my tip as to your neighbour.\"\n\nWhen Hastie, bearing his anatomical plunder, had clattered off down the winding stair, Abercrombie Smith hurled his pipe into the wastepaper basket, and drawing his chair nearer to the lamp, plunged into a formidable, green-covered volume, adorned with great, coloured maps of that strange, internal kingdom of which we are the hapless and helpless monarchs. Though a freshman at Oxford, the student was not so in medicine, for he had worked for four years at Glasgow and at Berlin, and this coming examination would place him finally as a member of his profession. With his firm mouth, broad forehead and clear-cut, somewhat hard-featured face, he was a man who, if he had no brilliant talent, was yet so dogged, so patient and so strong that he might in the end overtop a more showy genius. A man who can hold his own among Scotchmen and North Germans is not a man to be easily set back. Smith had left a name at Glasgow and at Berlin, and he was bent now upon doing as much at Oxford, if hard work and devotion could accomplish it.\n\nHe had sat reading for about an hour, and the hands of the noisy carriage clock upon the side-table were rapidly closing together upon the twelve, when a sudden sound fell upon the student\"s ear \u2013 a sharp, rather shrill sound, like the hissing intake of a man\"s breath who gasps under some strong emotion. Smith laid down his book and slanted his ear to listen. There was no one on either side or above him, so that the interruption came certainly from the neighbour beneath \u2013 the same neighbour of whom Hastie had given so unsavoury an account. Smith knew him only as a flabby, pale-faced man of silent and studious habits, a man whose lamp threw a golden bar from the old turret even after he had extinguished his own. This community in lateness had formed a certain silent bond between them. It was soothing to Smith when the hours stole on towards dawning to feel that there was another so close who set as small a value upon his sleep as he did. Even now, as his thoughts turned towards him, Smith\"s feelings were kindly. Hastie was a good fellow, but he was rough, strong-fibred, with no imagination or sympathy. He could not tolerate departures from what he looked upon as the model type of manliness. If a man could not be measured by a public-school standard, then he was beyond the pale with Hastie. Like so many who are themselves robust, he was apt to confuse the constitution with the character, to ascribe to want of principle what was really a want of circulation. Smith, with his stronger mind, knew his friend\"s habit, and made allowance for it now as his thoughts turned towards the man beneath him.\n\nThere was no return of the singular sound, and Smith was about to turn to his work once more, when suddenly there broke out in the silence of the night a hoarse cry, a positive scream \u2013 the call of a man who is moved and shaken beyond all control. Smith sprang out of his chair and dropped his book. He was a man of fairly firm fibre, but there was something in this sudden, uncontrollable shriek of horror which chilled his blood and prickled in his skin. Coming in such a place and at such an hour, it brought a thousand fantastic possibilities into his head. Should he rush down or was it better to wait? He had all the national hatred of making a scene, and he knew so little of his neighbour that he would not lightly intrude upon his affairs. For a moment he stood in doubt and even as he balanced the matter there was a quick rattle of footsteps upon the stairs, and young Monkhouse Lee, half-dressed and as white as ashes, burst into his room.\n\n\"Come down!\" he gasped. \"Bellingham\"s ill.\"\n\nAbercrombie Smith followed him closely downstairs into the sitting-room which was beneath his own, and intent as he was upon the matter in hand, he could not but take an amazed glance around him as he crossed the threshold. It was such a chamber as he had never seen before \u2013 a museum rather than a study. Walls and ceiling were thickly covered with a thousand strange relics from Egypt and the East. Tall, angular figures bearing burdens or weapons stalked in an uncouth frieze round the apartments. Above were bull-headed, stork-headed, cat-headed, owl-headed statues, with viper-crowned, almond-eyed monarchs, and strange, beetle-like deities cut out of the blue Egyptian lapis lazuli. Horus and Isis and Osiris peeped down from every niche and shelf; while across the ceiling a true son of Old Nile, a great, hanging-jawed crocodile, was slung in a double noose.\n\nIn the centre of this singular chamber was a large, square table, littered with papers, bottles and the dried leaves of some graceful, palm-like plant. These varied objects had all been heaped together in order to make room for a mummy case, which had been conveyed from the wall, as was evident from the gap there, and laid across the front of the table. The mummy itself, a horrid, black, withered thing, like a charred head on a gnarled bush, was lying half out of the case, with its claw-like hand and bony forearm resting upon the table. Propped up against the sarcophagus was an old yellow scroll of papyrus and in front of it, in a wooden armchair, sat the owner of the room, his head thrown back, his widely opened eyes directed in a horrified stare to the crocodile above him and his blue, thick lips puffing loudly with every expiration.\n\n\"My God! he\"s dying!\" cried Monkhouse Lee, distractedly.\n\nHe was a slim, handsome young fellow, olive-skinned and dark-eyed, of a Spanish rather than of an English type, with a Celtic intensity of manner which contrasted with the Saxon phlegm of Abercrombie Smith.\n\n\"Only a faint, I think,\" said the medical student. \"Just give me a hand with him. You take his feet. Now on to the sofa. Can you kick all those little wooden devils off? What a litter it is! Now he will be all right if we undo his collar and give him some water. What has he been up to at all?\"\n\n\"I don\"t know. I heard him cry out. I ran up. I know him pretty well, you know. It is very good of you to come down.\"\n\n\"His heart is going like a pair of castanets,\" said Smith, laying his band on the breast of the unconscious man. \"He seems to me to be frightened all to pieces. Chuck the water over him! What a face he has got on him!\"\n\nIt was indeed a strange and most repellent face, for colour and outline were equally unnatural. It was white, not with the ordinary pallor of fear, but with an absolutely bloodless white, like the under side of a sole. He was very fat, but gave the impression of having at some time been considerably fatter, for his skin hung loosely in creases and folds, and was shot with a meshwork of wrinkles. Short, stubbly brown hair bristled up from his scalp, with a pair of thick, wrinkled ears protruding at the sides. His light-grey eyes were still open, the pupils dilated and the balls projecting in a fixed and horrid stare. It seemed to Smith as he looked down upon him that he had never seen nature\"s danger signals flying so plainly upon a man\"s countenance, and his thoughts turned more seriously to the warning which Hastie had given him an hour before.\n\n\"What the deuce can have frightened him so?\" he asked.\n\n\"It\"s the mummy.\"\n\n\"The mummy? How, then?\"\n\n\"I don\"t know. It\"s beastly and morbid. I wish he would drop it. It\"s the second fright he has given me. It was the same last winter. I found him just like this, with that horrid thing in front of him.\"\n\n\"What does he want with the mummy, then?\"\n\n\"Oh, he\"s a crank, you know. It\"s his hobby. He knows more about these things than any man in England. But I wish he wouldn\"t! Ah, he\"s beginning to come to.\"\n\nA faint tinge of colour had begun to steal back into Bellingham\"s ghastly cheeks, and his eyelids shivered like a sail after a calm. He clasped and unclasped his hands, drew a long, thin breath between his teeth, and suddenly jerking up his head, threw a glance of recognition around him. As his eyes fell upon the mummy, he sprang off the sofa, seized the roll of papyrus, thrust it into a drawer, turned the key, and then staggered back on to the sofa.\n\n\"What\"s up?\" he asked. \"What do you chaps want?\"\n\n\"You\"ve been shrieking out and making no end of a fuss,\" said Monkhouse Lee. \"If our neighbour here from above hadn\"t come down, I\"m sure I don\"t know what I should have done with you.\"\n\n\"Ah, it\"s Abercrombie Smith,\" said Bellingham, glancing up at him. \"How very good of you to come in! What a fool I am! Oh, my God, what a fool I am!\"\n\nHe sank his head on to his hands, and burst into peal after peal of hysterical laughter.\n\n\"Look here! Drop it!\" cried Smith, shaking him roughly by the shoulder. \"Your nerves are all in a jangle. You must drop these little midnight games with mummies or you\"ll be going off your chump. You\"re all on wires now.\"\n\n\"I wonder,\" said Bellingham, \"whether you would be as cool as I am if you had seen \u2013\"\n\n\"What then?\"\n\n\"Oh, nothing. I meant that I wonder if you could sit up at night with a mummy without trying your nerves. I have no doubt that you are quite right. I dare say that I have been taking it out of myself too much lately. But I am all right now. Please don\"t go, though. Just wait for a few minutes until I am quite myself.\"\n\n\"The room is very close,\" remarked Lee, throwing open the window and letting in the cool night air.\n\n\"It\"s balsamic resin,\" said Bellingham. He lifted up one of the dried palmate leaves from the table and frizzled it over the chimney of the lamp. It broke away into heavy smoke wreaths, and a pungent, biting odour filled the chamber. \"It\"s the sacred plant \u2013 the plant of the priests,\" he remarked. \"Do you know anything of Eastern languages, Smith?\"\n\n\"Nothing at all. Not a word.\"\n\nThe answer seemed to lift a weight from the Egyptologist\"s mind.\n\n\"By the way,\" he continued, \"how long was it from the time that you ran down, until I came to my senses?\"\n\n\"Not long. Some four or five minutes.\"\n\n\"I thought it could not be very long,\" said he, drawing a long breath. \"But what a strange thing unconsciousness is! There is no measurement to it. I could not tell from my own sensations if it were seconds or weeks. Now that gentleman on the table was packed up in the days of the eleventh dynasty, some forty centuries ago, and yet if he could find his tongue, he would tell us that this lapse of time has been but a closing of the eyes and a reopening of them. He is a singularly fine mummy, Smith.\"\n\nSmith stepped over to the table and looked down with a professional eye at the black and twisted form in front of him. The features, though horribly discoloured, were perfect, and two little nut-like eyes still lurked in the depths of the black, hollow sockets. The blotched skin was drawn tightly from bone to bone, and a tangled wrap of black, coarse hair fell over the ears. Two thin teeth, like those of a rat, overlay the shrivelled lower lip. In its crouching position, with bent joints and craned head, there was a suggestion of energy about the horrid thing which made Smith\"s gorge rise. The gaunt ribs, with their parchment-like covering, were exposed, and the sunken, leaden-hued abdomen, with the long slit where the embalmer had left his mark; but the lower limbs were wrapped round with coarse, yellow bandages. A number of little clove-like pieces of myrrh and of cassia were sprinkled over the body and lay scattered on the inside of the case.\n\n\"I don\"t know his name,\" said Bellingham, passing his hand over the shrivelled head. \"You see the outer sarcophagus with the inscriptions is missing. Lot 249 is all the title he has now. You see it printed on his case. That was his number in the auction at which I picked him up.\"\n\n\"He has been a very pretty sort of fellow in his day,\" remarked Abercrombie Smith.\n\n\"He has been a giant. His mummy is six feet seven in length, and that would be a giant over there, for they were never a very robust race. Feel these great, knotted bones, too. He would be a nasty fellow to tackle.\"\n\n\"Perhaps these very hands helped to build the stones into the pyramids,\" suggested Monkhouse Lee, looking down with disgust in his eyes at the crooked, unclean talons.\n\n\"No fear. This fellow has been pickled in natron, and looked after in the most approved style. They did not serve hodsmen in that fashion. Salt or bitumen was enough for them. It has been calculated that this sort of thing cost about seven hundred and thirty pounds in our money. Our friend was a noble at the least. What do you make of that small inscription near his feet, Smith?\"\n\n\"I told you that I know no Eastern tongue.\"\n\n\"Ah, so you did. It is the name of the embalmer, I take it. A very conscientious worker he must have been. I wonder how many modern works will survive four thousand years?\"\n\nHe kept on speaking lightly and rapidly, but it was evident to Abercrombie Smith that he was still palpitating with fear. His hands shook, his lower lip trembled and, look where he would, his eye always came sliding round to his gruesome companion. Through all his fear, however, there was a suspicion of triumph in his tone and manner. His eyes shone, and his footstep, as he paced the room, was brisk and jaunty. He gave the impression of a man who has gone through an ordeal, the marks of which he still bears upon him, but which has helped him to his end.\n\n\"You\"re not going yet?\" he cried, as Smith rose from the sofa.\n\nAt the prospect of solitude, his fears seemed to crowd back upon him and he stretched out a hand to detain him.\n\n\"Yes, I must go. I have my work to do. You are all right now. I think that with your nervous system you should take up some less morbid study.\"\n\n\"Oh, I am not nervous as a rule; and I have unwrapped mummies before.\"\n\n\"You fainted last time,\" observed Monkhouse Lee.\n\n\"Ah, yes, so I did. Well, I must have a nerve tonic or a course of electricity. You are not going, Lee?\"\n\n\"I\"ll do whatever you wish, Ned.\"\n\n\"Then I\"ll come down with you and have a shakedown on your sofa. Good night, Smith. I am so sorry to have disturbed you with my foolishness.\"\n\nThey shook hands, and as the medical student stumbled up the spiral and irregular stair he heard a key turn in a door and the steps of his two new acquaintances as they descended to the lower floor.\n\nIn this strange way began the acquaintance between Edward Bellingham and Abercrombie Smith, an acquaintance which the latter, at least, had no desire to push further. Bellingham, however, appeared to have taken a fancy to his rough-spoken neighbour, and made his advances in such a way that he could hardly be repulsed without absolute brutality. Twice he called to thank Smith for his assistance, and many times afterwards he looked in with books, papers and such other civilities as two bachelor neighbours can offer each other. He was, as Smith soon found, a man of wide reading, with catholic tastes and an extraordinary memory. His manner, too, was so pleasing and suave that one came, after a time, to overlook his repellent appearance. For a jaded and wearied man he was no unpleasant companion, and Smith found himself, after a time, looking forward to his visits, and even returning them.\n\nClever as he undoubtedly was, however, the medical student seemed to detect a dash of insanity in the man. He broke out at times into a high, inflated style of talk which was in contrast with the simplicity of his life.\n\n\"It is a wonderful thing,\" he cried, \"to feel that one can command powers of good and of evil \u2013 a ministering angel or a demon of vengeance.\" And again, of Monkhouse Lee, he said, \"Lee is a good fellow, an honest fellow, but he is without strength or ambition. He would not make a fit partner for a man with a great enterprise. He would not make a fit partner for me.\"\n\nAt such hints and innuendoes stolid Smith, puffing solemnly at his pipe, would simply raise his eyebrows and shake his head, with little interjections of medical wisdom as to earlier hours and fresher air.\n\nOne habit Bellingham had developed of late which Smith knew to be a frequent herald of a weakening mind. He appeared to be forever talking to himself. At late hours of the night, when there could be no visitor with him, Smith could still hear his voice beneath him in a low, muffled monologue, sunk almost to a whisper, and yet very audible in the silence. This solitary babbling annoyed and distracted the student, so that he spoke more than once to his neighbour about it. Bellingham, however, flushed up at the charge, and denied curtly that he had uttered a sound; indeed, he showed more annoyance over the matter than the occasion seemed to demand.\n\nHad Abercrombie Smith had any doubt as to his own ears he had not to go far to find corroboration. Tom Styles, the little wrinkled manservant who had attended to the wants of the lodgers in the turret for a longer time than any man\"s memory could carry him, was sorely put to it over the same matter.\n\n\"If you please, sir,\" said he, as he tidied down the top chamber one morning, \"do you think Mr Bellingham is all right, sir?\"\n\n\"All right, Styles?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. Right in his head, sir.\"\n\n\"Why should he not be, then?\"\n\n\"Well, I don\"t know, sir. His habits has changed of late. He\"s not the same man he used to be, though I make free to say that he was never quite one of my gentlemen, like Mr Hastie or yourself, sir. He\"s took to talkin\" to himself something awful. I wonder it don\"t disturb you. I don\"t know what to make of him, sir.\"\n\n\"I don\"t know what business it is of yours, Styles.\"\n\n\"Well, I takes an interest, Mr Smith. It may be forward of me, but I can\"t help it. I feel sometimes as if I was mother and father to my young gentlemen. It all falls on me when things go wrong and the relations come. But Mr Bellingham, sir. I want to know what it is that walks about his room sometimes when he\"s out and when the door\"s locked on the outside.\"\n\n\"Eh? you\"re talking nonsense, Styles.\"\n\n\"Maybe so, sir; but I heard it mor\"n once with my own ears.\"\n\n\"Rubbish, Styles.\"\n\n\"Very good, sir. You\"ll ring the bell if you want me.\"\n\nAbercrombie Smith gave little heed to the gossip of the old manservant, but a small incident occurred a few days later which left an unpleasant effect upon his mind, and brought the words of Styles forcibly to his memory.\n\nBellingham had come up to see him late one night, and was entertaining him with an interesting account of the rock tombs of Beni Hassan in Upper Egypt, when Smith, whose hearing was remarkably acute, distinctly heard the sound of a door opening on the landing below.\n\n\"There\"s some fellow gone in or out of your room,\" he remarked.\n\nBellingham sprang up and stood helpless for a moment, with the expression of a man who is half-incredulous and half-afraid.\n\n\"I surely locked it. I am almost positive that I locked it,\" he stammered. \"No one could have opened it.\"\n\n\"Why, I hear someone coming up the steps now,\" said Smith.\n\nBellingham rushed out through the door, slammed it loudly behind him, and hurried down the stairs. About halfway down Smith heard him stop and thought he caught the sound of whispering. A moment later the door beneath him shut, a key creaked in a lock, and Bellingham, with beads of moisture upon his pale face, ascended the stairs once more and re-entered the room.\n\n\"It\"s all right,\" he said, throwing himself down in a chair. \"It was that fool of a dog. He had pushed the door open. I don\"t know how I came to forget to lock it.\"\n\n\"I didn\"t know you kept a dog,\" said Smith, looking very thoughtfully at the disturbed face of his companion.\n\n\"Yes, I haven\"t had him long. I must get rid of him. He\"s a great nuisance.\"\n\n\"He must be, if you find it so hard to shut him up. I should have thought that shutting the door would have been enough, without locking it.\"\n\n\"I want to prevent old Styles from letting him out. He\"s of some value, you know, and it would be awkward to lose him.\"\n\n\"I am a bit of a dog-fancier myself,\" said Smith, still gazing hard at his companion from the corner of his eyes. \"Perhaps you\"ll let me have a look at it.\"\n\n\"Certainly. But I am afraid it cannot be tonight; I have an appointment. Is that clock right? Then I am a quarter of an hour late already. You\"ll excuse me, I am sure.\"\n\nHe picked up his cap and hurried from the room. In spite of his appointment, Smith heard him re-enter his own chamber and lock his door upon the inside.\n\nThis interview left a disagreeable impression upon the medical student\"s mind. Bellingham had lied to him, and lied so clumsily that it looked as if he had desperate reasons for concealing the truth. Smith knew that his neighbour had no dog. He knew, also, that the step which he had heard upon the stairs was not the step of an animal. But if it were not, then what could it be? There was old Styles\" statement about the something which used to pace the room at times when the owner was absent. Could it be a woman? Smith rather inclined to the view. If so, it would mean disgrace and expulsion to Bellingham if it were discovered by the authorities, so that his anxiety and falsehoods might be accounted for. And yet it was inconceivable that an undergraduate could keep a woman in his rooms without being instantly detected. Be the explanation what it might, there was something ugly about it, and Smith determined, as he turned to his books, to discourage all further attempts at intimacy on the part of his soft-spoken and ill-favoured neighbour.\n\nBut his work was destined to interruption that night. He had hardly caught up the broken threads when a firm, heavy footfall came three steps at a time from below, and Hastie, in blazer and flannels, burst into the room.\n\n\"Still at it!\" said he, plumping down into his wonted armchair. \"What a chap you are to stew! I believe an earthquake might come and knock Oxford into a cocked hat, and you would sit perfectly placid with your books among the ruins. However, I won\"t bore you long. Three whiffs of baccy, and I am off.\"\n\n\"What\"s the news, then?\" asked Smith, cramming a plug of bird\"s-eye into his briar with his forefinger.\n\n\"Nothing very much. Wilson made seventy for the freshmen against the eleven. They say that they will play him instead of Buddicomb, for Buddicomb is clean off colour. He used to be able to bowl a little, but it\"s nothing but half-volleys and long hops now.\"\n\n\"Medium right,\" suggested Smith, with the intense gravity which comes upon a \"varsity man when he speaks of athletics.\n\n\"Inclining to fast, with a work from leg. Comes with the arm about three inches or so. He used to be nasty on a wet wicket. Oh, by the way, have you heard about Long Norton?\"\n\n\"What\"s that?\"\n\n\"He\"s been attacked.\"\n\n\"Attacked?\"\n\n\"Yes, just as he was turning out of the High Street, and within a hundred yards of the gate of Old\"s.\"\n\n\"But who \u2013\"\n\n\"Ah, that\"s the rub! If you said \"what\", you would be more grammatical. Norton swears that it was not human, and, indeed, from the scratches on his throat, I should be inclined to agree with him.\"\n\n\"What, then? Have we come down to spooks?\" Abercrombie Smith puffed his scientific contempt.\n\n\"Well, no; I don\"t think that is quite the idea, either. I am inclined to think that if any showman has lost a great ape lately, and the brute is in these parts, a jury would find a true bill against it. Norton passes that way every night, you know, about the same hour. There\"s a tree that hangs low over the path \u2013 the big elm from Rainy\"s garden. Norton thinks the thing dropped on him out of the tree. Anyhow, he was nearly strangled by two arms which, he says, were as strong and as thin as steel bands. He saw nothing; only those beastly arms that tightened and tightened on him. He yelled his head nearly off, and a couple of chaps came running, and the thing went over the wall like a cat. He never got a fair sight of it the whole time. It gave Norton a shake up, I can tell you. I tell him it has been as good as a change at the seaside for him.\"\n\n\"A garrotter, most likely,\" said Smith.\n\n\"Very possibly. Norton says not; but we don\"t mind what he says. The garrotter had long nails, and was pretty smart at swinging himself over walls. By the way, your beautiful neighbour would be pleased if he heard about it. He had a grudge against Norton, and he\"s not a man, from what I know of him, to forget his little debts. But hallo, old chap, what have you got in your noddle?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" Smith answered curtly.\n\nHe had started in his chair, and the look had flashed over his face which comes upon a man who is struck suddenly by some unpleasant idea.\n\n\"You looked as if something I had said had taken you on the raw. By the way, you have made the acquaintance of Master B since I looked in last, have you not? Young Monkhouse Lee told me something to that effect.\"\n\n\"Yes; I know him slightly. He has been up here once or twice.\"\n\n\"Well, you\"re big enough and ugly enough to take care of yourself. He\"s not what I should call exactly a healthy sort of Johnny, though, no doubt, he\"s very clever, and all that. But you\"ll soon find out for yourself. Lee is all right; he\"s a very decent little fellow. Well, so long, old chap! I row Mullins for the vice-chancellor\"s pot on Wednesday week, so mind you come down, in case I don\"t see you before.\"\n\nBovine Smith laid down his pipe and turned stolidly to his books once more. But with all the will in the world, he found it very hard to keep his mind upon his work. It would slip away to brood upon the man beneath him, and upon the little mystery which hung round his chambers. Then his thoughts turned to this singular attack of which Hastie had spoken, and to the grudge which Bellingham was said to owe the object of it. The two ideas would persist in rising together in his mind, as though there were some close and intimate connection between them. And yet the suspicion was so dim and vague that it could not be put down in words.\n\n\"Confound the chap!\" cried Smith, as he shied his book on pathology across the room. \"He has spoiled my night\"s reading and that\"s reason enough, if there were no other, why I should steer clear of him in the future.\"\n\nFor ten days the medical student confined himself so closely to his studies that he neither saw nor heard anything of either of the men beneath him. At the hours when Bellingham had been accustomed to visit him, he took care to sport his oak, and though he more than once heard a knocking at his outer door, he resolutely refused to answer it. One afternoon, however, he was descending the stairs when, just as he was passing it, Bellingham\"s door flew open, and young Monkhouse Lee came out with his eyes sparkling and a dark flush of anger upon his olive cheeks. Close at his heels followed Bellingham, his fat, unhealthy face all quivering with malignant passion.\n\n\"You fool!\" he hissed. \"You\"ll be sorry.\"\n\n\"Very likely,\" cried the other. \"Mind what I say. It\"s off! I won\"t hear of it!\"\n\n\"You\"ve promised, anyhow.\"\n\n\"Oh, I\"ll keep that! I won\"t speak. But I\"d rather little Eva was in her grave. Once for all, it\"s off. She\"ll do what I say. We don\"t want to see you again.\"\n\nSo much Smith could not avoid hearing, but he hurried on, for he had no wish to be involved in their dispute. There had been a serious breach between them, that was clear enough, and Lee was going to cause the engagement with his sister to be broken off. Smith thought of Hastie\"s comparison of the toad and the dove, and was glad to think that the matter was at an end. Bellingham\"s face when he was in a passion was not pleasant to look upon. He was not a man to whom an innocent girl could be trusted for life. As he walked, Smith wondered languidly what could have caused the quarrel, and what the promise might be which Bellingham had been so anxious that Monkhouse Lee should keep.\n\nIt was the day of the sculling match between Hastie and Mullins, and a stream of men were making their way down to the banks of the Isis. A May sun was shining brightly, and the yellow path was barred with the black shadows of the tall elm-trees. On either side the grey colleges lay back from the road, the hoary old mothers of minds looking out from their high, mullioned windows at the tide of young life which swept so merrily past them. Black-clad tutors, prim officials, pale, reading men, brown-faced, straw-hatted young athletes in white sweaters or many-coloured blazers, all were hurrying towards the blue, winding river which curves through the Oxford meadows.\n\nAbercrombie Smith, with the intuition of an old oarsman, chose his position at the point where he knew that the struggle, if there were a struggle, would come. Far off he heard the hum which announced the start, the gathering roar of the approach, the thunder of running feet and the shouts of the men in the boats beneath him. A spray of half-clad, deep-breathing runners shot past him, and craning over their shoulders, he saw Hastie pulling a steady thirty-six, while his opponent, with a jerky forty, was a good boat\"s length behind him. Smith gave a cheer for his friend and, pulling out his watch, was starting off again for his chambers, when he felt a touch upon his shoulder and found that young Monkhouse Lee was beside him.\n\n\"I saw you there,\" he said, in a timid, deprecating way. \"I wanted to speak to you, if you could spare me a half-hour. This cottage is mine. I share it with Harrington of King\"s. Come in and have a cup of tea.\"\n\n\"I must be back presently,\" said Smith. \"I am hard on the grind at present. But I\"ll come in for a few minutes with pleasure. I wouldn\"t have come out only Hastie is a friend of mine.\"\n\n\"So he is of mine. Hasn\"t he a beautiful style? Mullins wasn\"t in it. But come into the cottage. It\"s a little den of a place, but it is pleasant to work in during the summer months.\"\n\nIt was a small, square, white building, with green doors and shutters and a rustic trellis-work porch, standing back some fifty yards from the river\"s bank. Inside, the main room was roughly fitted up as a study \u2013 deal table, unpainted shelves with books and a few cheap oleographs upon the wall. A kettle sang upon a spirit-stove and there were tea things upon a tray on the table.\n\n\"Try that chair and have a cigarette,\" said Lee. \"Let me pour you out a cup of tea. It\"s so good of you to come in, for I know that your time is a good deal taken up. I wanted to say to you that, if I were you, I should change my rooms at once.\"\n\nSmith sat staring with a lighted match in one hand and his unlit cigarette in the other.\n\n\"Yes; it must seem very extraordinary, and the worst of it is that I cannot give my reasons, for I am under a solemn promise \u2013 a very solemn promise. But I may go so far as to say that I don\"t think Bellingham is a very safe man to live near. I intend to camp out here as much as I can for a time.\"\n\n\"Not safe! What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Ah, that\"s what I mustn\"t say. But do take my advice and move your rooms. We had a grand row today. You must have heard us, for you came down the stairs.\"\n\n\"I saw that you had fallen out.\"\n\n\"He\"s a horrible chap, Smith. That is the only word for him. I have had doubts about him ever since that night when he fainted \u2013 you remember, when you came down. I taxed him today and he told me things that made my hair rise, and wanted me to stand in with him. I\"m not strait-laced, but I am a clergyman\"s son, you know, and I think there are some things which are quite beyond the pale. I only thank God that I found him out before it was too late, for he was to have married into my family.\"\n\n\"This is all very fine, Lee,\" said Abercrombie Smith curtly. \"But either you are saying a great deal too much or a great deal too little.\"\n\n\"I give you a warning.\"\n\n\"If there is real reason for warning, no promise can bind you. If I see a rascal about to blow a place up with dynamite no pledge will stand in my way of preventing him.\"\n\n\"Ah, but I cannot prevent him, and I can do nothing but warn you.\"\n\n\"Without saying what you warn me against.\"\n\n\"Against Bellingham.\"\n\n\"But that is childish. Why should I fear him, or any man?\"\n\n\"I can\"t tell you. I can only entreat you to change your rooms. You are in danger where you are. I don\"t even say that Bellingham would wish to injure you. But it might happen, for he is a dangerous neighbour just now.\"\n\n\"Perhaps I know more than you think,\" said Smith, looking keenly at the young man\"s boyish, earnest face. \"Suppose I tell you that someone else shares Bellingham\"s rooms.\"\n\nMonkhouse Lee sprang from his chair in uncontrollable excitement.\n\n\"You know, then?\" he gasped.\n\n\"A woman.\"\n\nLee dropped back again with a groan.\n\n\"My lips are sealed,\" he said. \"I must not speak.\"\n\n\"Well, anyhow,\" said Smith, rising, \"it is not likely that I should allow myself to be frightened out of rooms which suit me very nicely. It would be a little too feeble for me to move out all my goods and chattels because you say that Bellingham might in some unexplained way do me an injury. I think that I\"ll just take my chance, and stay where I am, and as I see that it\"s nearly five o\"clock, I must ask you to excuse me.\"\n\nHe bade the young student adieu in a few curt words and made his way homeward through the sweet spring evening, feeling half-ruffled, half-amused, as any other strong, unimaginative man might who has been menaced by a vague and shadowy danger.\n\nThere was one little indulgence which Abercrombie Smith always allowed himself however closely his work might press upon him. Twice a week, on the Tuesday and the Friday, it was his invariable custom to walk over to Farlingford, the residence of Dr Plumptree Peterson, situated about a mile and a half out of Oxford. Peterson had been a close friend of Smith\"s elder brother, Francis, and as he was a bachelor, fairly well-to-do, with a good cellar and a better library, his house was a pleasant goal for a man who was in need of a brisk walk. Twice a week, then, the medical student would swing out there along the dark country roads and spend a pleasant hour in Peterson\"s comfortable study, discussing, over a glass of old port, the gossip of the \"varsity or the latest developments of medicine or of surgery.\n\nOn the day which followed his interview with Monkhouse Lee, Smith shut up his books at a quarter past eight, the hour when he usually started for his friend\"s house. As he was leaving his room, however, his eyes chanced to fall upon one of the books which Bellingham had lent him, and his conscience pricked him for not having returned it. However repellent the man might be, he should not be treated with discourtesy. Taking the book, he walked downstairs and knocked at his neighbour\"s door. There was no answer; but on turning the handle he found that it was unlocked. Pleased at the thought of avoiding an interview, he stepped inside and placed the book with his card upon the table.\n\nThe lamp was turned half down, but Smith could see the details of the room plainly enough. It was all much as he had seen it before \u2013 the frieze, the animal-headed gods, the hanging crocodile and the table littered over with papers and dried leaves. The mummy case stood upright against the wall, but the mummy itself was missing. There was no sign of any second occupant of the room, and he felt as he withdrew that he had probably done Bellingham an injustice. Had he a guilty secret to preserve, he would hardly leave his door open so that all the world might enter.\n\nThe spiral stair was as black as pitch, and Smith was slowly making his way down its irregular steps, when he was suddenly conscious that something had passed him in the darkness. There was a faint sound, a whiff of air, a light brushing past his elbow, but so slight that he could scarcely be certain of it. He stopped and listened, but the wind was rustling among the ivy outside and he could hear nothing else.\n\n\"Is that you, Styles?\" he shouted.\n\nThere was no answer, and all was still behind him. It must have been a sudden gust of air, for there were crannies and cracks in the old turret. And yet he could almost have sworn that he heard a footfall by his very side. He had emerged into the quadrangle, still turning the matter over in his head, when a man came running swiftly across the smooth-cropped lawn.\n\n\"Is that you, Smith?\"\n\n\"Hallo, Hastie!\"\n\n\"For God\"s sake come at once! Young Lee is drowned! Here\"s Harrington of King\"s with the news. The doctor is out. You\"ll do, but come along at once. There may be life in him.\"\n\n\"Have you brandy?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"I\"ll bring some. There\"s a flask on my table.\"\n\nSmith bounded up the stairs, taking three at a time, seized the flask and was rushing down with it, when, as he passed Bellingham\"s room, his eyes fell upon something which left him gasping and staring upon the landing.\n\nThe door, which he had closed behind him, was now open, and right in front of him, with the lamplight shining upon it, was the mummy case. Three minutes ago it had been empty. He could swear to that. Now it framed the lank body of its horrible occupant, who stood, grim and stark, with his black, shrivelled face towards the door. The form was lifeless and inert, but it seemed to Smith as he gazed that there still lingered a lurid spark of vitality, some faint sign of consciousness in the little eyes which lurked in the depths of the hollow sockets. So astounded and shaken was he that he had forgotten his errand and was still staring at the lean, sunken figure when the voice of his friend below recalled him to himself.\n\n\"Come on, Smith!\" he shouted. \"It\"s life and death, you know. Hurry up! Now, then,\" he added, as the medical student reappeared, \"let us do a sprint. It is well under a mile, and we should do it in five minutes. A human life is better worth running for than a pot.\"\n\nNeck and neck they dashed through the darkness, and did not pull up until, panting and spent, they had reached the little cottage by the river. Young Lee, limp and dripping like a broken water-plant, was stretched upon the sofa, the green scum of the river upon his black hair and a fringe of white foam upon his leaden-hued lips. Beside him knelt his fellow-student, Harrington, endeavouring to chafe some warmth back into his rigid limbs.\n\n\"I think there\"s life in him,\" said Smith, with his hand to the lad\"s side. \"Put your watch glass to his lips. Yes, there\"s dimming on it. You take one arm, Hastie. Now work it as I do, and we\"ll soon pull him round.\"\n\nFor ten minutes they worked in silence, inflating and depressing the chest of the unconscious man. At the end of that time a shiver ran through his body, his lips trembled and he opened his eyes. The three students burst out into an irrepressible cheer.\n\n\"Wake up, old chap. You\"ve frightened us quite enough.\"\n\n\"Have some brandy. Take a sip from the flask.\"\n\n\"He\"s all right now,\" said his companion Harrington. \"Heavens, what a fright I got! I was reading here, and he had gone out for a stroll as far as the river, when I heard a scream and a splash. Out I ran, and by the time I could find him and fish him out, all life seemed to have gone. Then Simpson couldn\"t get a doctor, for he has a game leg, and I had to run, and I don\"t know what I\"d have done without you fellows. That\"s right, old chap. Sit up.\"\n\nMonkhouse Lee had raised himself on his hands, and looked wildly about him.\n\n\"What\"s up?\" he asked. \"I\"ve been in the water. Ah, yes; I remember.\"\n\nA look of fear came into his eyes, and he sank his face into his hands.\n\n\"How did you fall in?\"\n\n\"I didn\"t fall in.\"\n\n\"How then?\"\n\n\"I was thrown in. I was standing by the bank and something from behind picked me up like a feather and hurled me in. I heard nothing and I saw nothing. But I know what it was, for all that.\"\n\n\"And so do I,\" whispered Smith.\n\nLee looked up with a quick glance of surprise.\n\n\"You\"ve learned, then?\" he said. \"You remember the advice I gave you?\"\n\n\"Yes, and I begin to think that I shall take it.\"\n\n\"I don\"t know what the deuce you fellows are talking about,\" said Hastie, \"but I think, if I were you, Harrington, I should get Lee to bed at once. It will be time enough to discuss the why and the wherefore when he is a little stronger. I think, Smith, you and I can leave him alone now. I am walking back to college; if you are coming in that direction, we can have a chat.\"\n\nBut it was little chat that they had upon their homeward path. Smith\"s mind was too full of the incidents of the evening, the absence of the mummy from his neighbour\"s rooms, the step that passed him on the stair, the reappearance \u2013 the extraordinary, inexplicable reappearance of the grisly thing \u2013 and then this attack upon Lee, corresponding so closely to the previous outrage upon another man against whom Bellingham bore a grudge. All this settled in his thoughts, together with the many little incidents which had previously turned him against his neighbour and the singular circumstances under which he was first called in to him. What had been a dim suspicion, a vague, fantastic conjecture, had suddenly taken form and stood out in his mind as a grim fact, a thing not to be denied. And yet, how monstrous it was! how unheard of! how entirely beyond all bounds of human experience. An impartial judge, or even the friend who walked by his side, would simply tell him that his eyes had deceived him, that the mummy had been there all the time, that young Lee had tumbled into the river as any other man tumbles into a river, and the blue pill was the best thing for a disordered liver. He felt that he would have said as much if the positions had been reversed. And yet he could swear that Bellingham was a murderer at heart and that he wielded a weapon such as no man had ever used in all the grim history of crime.\n\nHastie had branched off to his rooms with a few crisp and emphatic comments upon his friend\"s unsociability, and Abercrombie Smith crossed the quadrangle to his corner turret with a strong feeling of repulsion for his chambers and their associations. He would take Lee\"s advice and move his quarters as soon as possible, for how could a man study when his ear was ever straining for every murmur or footstep in the room below? He observed, as he crossed over the lawn, that the light was still shining in Bellingham\"s window, and as he passed up the staircase the door opened and the man himself looked out at him. With his fat, evil face he was like some bloated spider fresh from the weaving of his poisonous web.\n\n\"Good-evening,\" said he. \"Won\"t you come in?\"\n\n\"No,\" cried Smith fiercely.\n\n\"No? You are as busy as ever? I wanted to ask you about Lee. I was sorry to hear that there was a rumour that something was amiss with him.\" His features were grave, but there was the gleam of a hidden laugh in his eyes as he spoke. Smith saw it, and he could have knocked him down for it.\n\n\"You\"ll be sorrier still to hear that Monkhouse Lee is doing very well, and is out of all danger,\" he answered. \"Your hellish tricks have not come off this time. Oh, you needn\"t try to brazen it out. I know all about it.\"\n\nBellingham took a step back from the angry student and half-closed the door as if to protect himself.\n\n\"You are mad,\" he said. \"What do you mean? Do you assert that I had anything to do with Lee\"s accident?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" thundered Smith. \"You and that bag of bones behind you; you worked it between you. I tell you what it is, Master B, they have given up burning folk like you, but we still keep a hangman, and, by George! if any man in this college meets his death while you are here, I\"ll have you up, and if you don\"t swing for it, it won\"t be my fault. You\"ll find that your filthy Egyptian tricks won\"t answer in England.\"\n\n\"You\"re a raving lunatic,\" said Bellingham.\n\n\"All right. You just remember what I say, for you\"ll find that I\"ll be better than my word.\"\n\nThe door slammed and Smith went fuming up to his chamber, where he locked the door upon the inside and spent half the night in smoking his old briar and brooding over the strange events of the evening.\n\nNext morning Abercrombie Smith heard nothing of his neighbour, but Harrington called upon him in the afternoon to say that Lee was almost himself again. All day Smith stuck fast to his work, but in the evening he determined to pay the visit to his friend Dr Peterson upon which he had started the night before. A good walk and a friendly chat would be welcome to his jangled nerves.\n\nBellingham\"s door was shut as he passed, but glancing back when he was some distance from the turret, he saw his neighbour\"s head at the window outlined against the lamplight, his face pressed apparently against the glass as he gazed out into the darkness. It was a blessing to be away from all contact with him, if but for a few hours, and Smith stepped out briskly and breathed the soft spring air into his lungs. The half-moon lay in the west between two Gothic pinnacles, and threw upon the silvered street a dark tracery from the stonework above. There was a brisk breeze and light, fleecy clouds drifted swiftly across the sky. Old\"s was on the very border of the town, and in five minutes Smith found himself beyond the houses and between the hedges of a May-scented, Oxfordshire lane.\n\nIt was a lonely and little-frequented road which led to his friend\"s house. Early as it was, Smith did not meet a single soul upon his way. He walked briskly along until he came to the avenue gate which opened into the long gravel drive leading up to Farlingford. In front of him he could see the cosy, red light of the windows glimmering through the foliage. He stood with his hand upon the iron latch of the swinging gate and he glanced back at the road along which he had come. Something was coming swiftly down it.\n\nIt moved in the shadow of the hedge, silently and furtively, a dark, crouching figure, dimly visible against the black background. Even as he gazed back at it, it had lessened its distance by twenty paces and was fast closing upon him. Out of the darkness he had a glimpse of a scraggy neck and of two eyes that will ever haunt him in his dreams. He turned and with a cry of terror he ran for his life up the avenue. There were the red lights, the signals of safety, almost within a stone\"s-throw of him. He was a famous runner, but never had he run as he ran that night.\n\nThe heavy gate had swung into place behind him but he heard it dash open again before his pursuer. As he rushed madly and wildly through the night, he could hear a swift, dry patter behind him, and could see, as he threw back a glance, that this horror was bounding like a tiger at his heels, with blazing eyes and one stringy arm out-thrown. Thank God, the door was ajar. He could see the thin bar of light which shot from the lamp in the hall. Nearer yet sounded the clatter from behind. He heard a hoarse gurgling at his very shoulder. With a shriek he flung himself against the door, slammed and bolted it behind him, and sank half-fainting on to the hall chair.\n\n\"My goodness, Smith, what\"s the matter?\" asked Peterson, appearing at the door of his study.\n\n\"Give me some brandy.\"\n\nPeterson disappeared and came rushing out again with a glass and a decanter.\n\n\"You need it,\" he said, as his visitor drank off what he poured out for him. \"Why, man, you are as white as a cheese.\"\n\nSmith laid down his glass, rose up, and took a deep breath. \"I am my own man again now,\" said he. \"I was never so unmanned before. But, with your leave, Peterson, I will sleep here tonight, for I don\"t think I could face that road again except by daylight. It\"s weak, I know, but I can\"t help it.\"\n\nPeterson looked at his visitor with a very questioning eye.\n\n\"Of course you shall sleep here if you wish. I\"ll tell Mrs Burney to make up the spare bed. Where are you off to now?\"\n\n\"Come up with me to the window that overlooks the door. I want you to see what I have seen.\"\n\nThey went up to the window of the upper hall whence they could look down upon the approach to the house. The drive and the fields on either side lay quiet and still, bathed in the peaceful moonlight.\n\n\"Well, really, Smith,\" remarked Peterson, \"it is well that I know you to be an abstemious man. What in the world can have frightened you?\"\n\n\"I\"ll tell you presently. But where can it have gone? Ah, now, look, look! See the curve of the road just beyond your gate.\"\n\n\"Yes, I see; you needn\"t pinch my arm off. I saw someone pass. I should say a man, rather thin, apparently, and tall, very tall. But what of him? And what of yourself? You are still shaking like an aspen leaf.\"\n\n\"I have been within hand-grip of the devil, that\"s all. But come down to your study, and I shall tell you the whole story.\"\n\nHe did so. Under the cheery lamplight with a glass of wine on the table beside him and the portly form and florid face of his friend in front, he narrated, in their order, all the events, great and small, which had formed so singular a chain, from the night on which he had found Bellingham fainting in front of the mummy case until this horrid experience of an hour ago.\n\n\"There now,\" he said as he concluded, \"that\"s the whole, black business. It is monstrous and incredible, but it is true.\"\n\nDr Plumptree Peterson sat for some time in silence with a very puzzled expression upon his face.\n\n\"I never heard of such a thing in my life, never!\" he said at last. \"You have told me the facts. Now tell me your inferences.\"\n\n\"You can draw your own.\"\n\n\"But I should like to hear yours. You have thought over the matter, and I have not.\"\n\n\"Well, it must be a little vague in detail, but the main points seem to me to be clear enough. This fellow Bellingham, in his Eastern studies, has got hold of some infernal secret by which a mummy \u2013 or possibly only this particular mummy \u2013 can be temporarily brought to life. He was trying this disgusting business on the night when he fainted. No doubt the sight of the creature moving had shaken his nerve, even though he had expected it. You remember that almost the first words he said were to call out upon himself as a fool. Well, he got more hardened afterwards, and carried the matter through without fainting. The vitality which he could put into it was evidently only a passing thing, for I have seen it continually in its case as dead as this table. He has some elaborate process, I fancy, by which he brings the thing to pass. Having done it, he naturally bethought him that he might use the creature as an agent. It has intelligence and it has strength. For some purpose he took Lee into his confidence; but Lee, like a decent Christian, would have nothing to do with such a business. Then they had a row, and Lee vowed that he would tell his sister of Bellingham\"s true character. Bellingham\"s game was to prevent him, and he nearly managed it by setting this creature of his on his track. He had already tried its powers upon another man \u2013 Norton \u2013 towards whom he had a grudge. It is the merest chance that he has not two murders upon his soul. Then, when I taxed him with the matter, he had the strongest reasons for wishing to get me out of the way before I could convey my knowledge to anyone else. He got his chance when I went out, for he knew my habits and where I was bound for. I have had a narrow shave, Peterson, and it is mere luck you didn\"t find me on your doorstep in the morning. I\"m not a nervous man as a rule, and I never thought to have the fear of death put upon me as it was tonight.\"\n\n\"My dear boy, you take the matter too seriously,\" said his companion. \"Your nerves are out of order with your work, and you make too much of it. How could such a thing as this stride about the streets of Oxford, even at night, without being seen?\"\n\n\"It has been seen. There is quite a scare in the town about an escaped ape, as they imagine the creature to be. It is the talk of the place.\"\n\n\"Well, it\"s a striking chain of events. And yet, my dear fellow, you must allow that each incident in itself is capable of a more natural explanation.\"\n\n\"What! even my adventure of tonight?\"\n\n\"Certainly. You come out with your nerves all unstrung, and your head full of this theory of yours. Some gaunt, half-famished tramp steals after you, and seeing you run, is emboldened to pursue you. Your fears and imagination do the rest.\"\n\n\"It won\"t do, Peterson; it won\"t do.\"\n\n\"And again, in the instance of your finding the mummy case empty, and then a few moments later with an occupant, you know that it was lamplight, that the lamp was half turned down, and that you had no special reason to look hard at the case. It is quite possible that you may have overlooked the creature in the first instance.\"\n\n\"No, no; it is out of the question.\"\n\n\"And then Lee may have fallen into the river, and Norton been garrotted. It is certainly a formidable indictment that you have against Bellingham; but if you were to place it before a police magistrate, he would simply laugh in your face.\"\n\n\"I know he would. That is why I mean to take the matter into my own hands.\"\n\n\"Eh?\"\n\n\"Yes; I feel that a public duty rests upon me, and, besides, I must do it for my own safety, unless I choose to allow myself to be hunted by this beast out of the college, and that would be a little too feeble. I have quite made up my mind what I shall do. And first of all, may I use your paper and pens for an hour?\"\n\n\"Most certainly. You will find all that you want upon that side-table.\"\n\nAbercrombie Smith sat down before a sheet of foolscap, and for an hour and then for a second hour his pen travelled swiftly over it. Page after page was finished and tossed aside while his friend leaned back in his armchair, looking across at him with patient curiosity. At last, with an exclamation of satisfaction, Smith sprang to his feet, gathered his papers up into order, and laid the last one upon Peterson\"s desk.\n\n\"Kindly sign this as a witness,\" he said.\n\n\"A witness? Of what?\"\n\n\"Of my signature and of the date. The date is the most important. Why, Peterson, my life might hang upon it.\"\n\n\"My dear Smith, you are talking wildly. Let me beg you to go to bed.\"\n\n\"On the contrary, I never spoke so deliberately in my life. And I will promise to go to bed the moment you have signed it.\"\n\n\"But what is it?\"\n\n\"It is a statement of all that I have been telling you tonight. I wish you to witness it.\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" said Peterson, signing his name under that of his companion. \"There you are! But what is the idea?\"\n\n\"You will kindly retain it, and produce it in case I am arrested.\"\n\n\"Arrested? For what?\"\n\n\"For murder. It is quite on the cards. I wish to be ready for every event. There is only one course open to me, and I am determined to take it.\"\n\n\"For heaven\"s sake, don\"t do anything rash!\"\n\n\"Believe me, it would be far more rash to adopt any other course. I hope that we won\"t need to bother you, but it will ease my mind to know that you have this statement of my motives. And now I am ready to take your advice and to go to roost, for I want to be at my best in the morning.\"\n\nAbercrombie Smith was not an entirely pleasant man to have as an enemy. Slow and easy-tempered, he was formidable when driven to action. He brought to every purpose in life the same deliberate resoluteness which had distinguished him as a scientific student. He had laid his studies aside for a day, but he intended that the day should not be wasted. Not a word did he say to his host as to his plans, but by nine o\"clock he was well on his way to Oxford. In the High Street he stopped at Clifford\"s, the gun-maker\"s, and bought a heavy revolver with a box of central-fire cartridges. Six of them he slipped into the chambers, and half-cocking the weapon, placed it in the pocket of his coat. He then made his way to Hastie\"s rooms, where the big oarsman was lounging over his breakfast, with the Sporting Times propped up against the coffee-pot.\n\n\"Hallo! What\"s up?\" he asked. \"Have some coffee?\"\n\n\"No, thank you. I want you to come with me, Hastie, and do what I ask you.\"\n\n\"Certainly, my boy.\"\n\n\"And bring a heavy stick with you.\"\n\n\"Hallo!\" Hastie stared. \"Here\"s a hunting crop that would fell an ox.\"\n\n\"One other thing. You have a box of amputating knives. Give me the longest of them.\"\n\n\"There you are. You seem to be fairly on the war trail. Anything else?\"\n\n\"No; that will do.\" Smith placed the knife inside his coat, and led the way to the quadrangle. \"We are neither of us chickens, Hastie,\" said he. \"I think I can do this job alone, but I take you as a precaution. I am going to have a little talk with Bellingham. If I have only him to deal with, I won\"t, of course, need you. If I shout, however, up you come, and lam out with your whip as hard as you can lick. Do you understand?\"\n\n\"All right. I\"ll come if I hear you bellow.\"\n\n\"Stay here, then. I may be a little time, but don\"t budge until I come down.\"\n\n\"I\"m a fixture.\"\n\nSmith ascended the stairs, opened Bellingham\"s door and stepped in. Bellingham was seated behind his table, writing. Beside him, among his litter of strange possessions, towered the mummy case, with its sale number 249 still stuck upon its front, and its hideous occupant stiff and stark within it. Smith looked very deliberately round him, closed the door, and then, stepping across to the fireplace, struck a match and set the fire alight. Bellingham sat staring, with amazement and rage upon his bloated face.\n\n\"Well, really now, you make yourself at home,\" he gasped.\n\nSmith sat himself deliberately down, placing his watch upon the table, drew out his pistol, cocked it, and laid it in his lap. Then he took the long amputating knife from his bosom, and threw it down in front of Bellingham.\n\n\"Now, then,\" said he, \"just get to work and cut up that mummy.\"\n\n\"Oh, is that it?\" said Bellingham with a sneer.\n\n\"Yes, that is it. They tell me that the law can\"t touch you. But I have a law that will set matters straight. If in five minutes you have not set to work, I swear by the God who made me that I will put a bullet through your brain!\"\n\n\"You would murder me?\"\n\nBellingham had half-risen, and his face was the colour of putty.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And for what?\"\n\n\"To stop your mischief. One minute has gone.\"\n\n\"But what have I done?\"\n\n\"I know and you know.\"\n\n\"This is mere bullying.\"\n\n\"Two minutes are gone.\"\n\n\"But you must give reasons. You are a madman \u2013 a dangerous madman. Why should I destroy my own property? It is a valuable mummy.\"\n\n\"You must cut it up, and you must burn it.\"\n\n\"I will do no such thing.\"\n\n\"Four minutes are gone.\"\n\nSmith took up the pistol and he looked towards Bellingham with an inexorable face. As the second-hand stole round, he raised his hand and the finger twitched upon the trigger.\n\n\"There! there! I\"ll do it!\" screamed Bellingham.\n\nIn frantic haste he caught up the knife and hacked at the figure of the mummy, ever glancing round to see the eye and the weapon of his terrible visitor bent upon him. The creature crackled and snapped under every stab of the keen blade. A thick, yellow dust rose up from it. Spices and dried essences rained down upon the floor. Suddenly, with a rending crack, its backbone snapped asunder, and it fell, a brown heap of sprawling limbs, upon the floor.\n\n\"Now into the fire!\" said Smith.\n\nThe flames leaped and roared as the dried and tinder-like debris was piled upon it. The little room was like the stoke-hole of a steamer and the sweat ran down the faces of the two men; but still the one stooped and worked, while the other sat watching him with a set face. A thick, fat smoke oozed out from the fire, and a heavy smell of burned resin and singed hair filled the air. In a quarter of an hour a few charred and brittle sticks were all that was left of Lot No. 249.\n\n\"Perhaps that will satisfy you,\" snarled Bellingham, with hate and fear in his little grey eyes as he glanced back at his tormentor.\n\n\"No; I must make a clean sweep of all your materials. We must have no more devil\"s tricks. In with all these leaves! They may have something to do with it.\"\n\n\"And what now?\" asked Bellingham, when the leaves also had been added to the blaze.\n\n\"Now the roll of papyrus which you had on the table that night. It is in that drawer, I think.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" shouted Bellingham. \"Don\"t burn that! Why, man, you don\"t know what you do. It is unique; it contains wisdom which is nowhere else to be found.\"\n\n\"Out with it!\"\n\n\"But look here, Smith, you can\"t really mean it. I\"ll share the knowledge with you. I\"ll teach you all that is in it. Or, stay, let me only copy it before you burn it!\"\n\nSmith stepped forward and turned the key in the drawer. Taking out the yellow, curled roll of paper, he threw it into the fire, and pressed it down with his heel. Bellingham screamed, and grabbed at it; but Smith pushed him back and stood over it until it was reduced to a formless, grey ash.\n\n\"Now, Master B,\" said he, \"I think I have pretty well drawn your teeth. You\"ll hear from me again if you return to your old tricks. And now good-morning, for I must go back to my studies.\"\n\nAnd such is the narrative of Abercrombie Smith as to the singular events which occurred in Old College, Oxford, in the spring of \"84. As Bellingham left the university immediately afterwards, and was last heard of in the Sudan, there is no one who can contradict his statement. But the wisdom of men is small, and the ways of nature are strange, and who shall put a bound to the dark things which may be found by those who seek for them?\n\n\u2042\n\n[ The Los Amigos Fiasco ]\n\nI used to be the leading practitioner of Los Amigos. Of course, everyone has heard of the great electrical generating gear there. The town is widespread and there are dozens of little townlets and villages all around which receive their supply from the same centre, so that the works are on a very large scale. The Los Amigos folk say that they are the largest upon earth, but then we claim that for everything in Los Amigos except the gaol and the death rate. Those are said to be the smallest.\n\nNow, with so fine an electrical supply, it seemed to be a sinful waste of hemp that the Los Amigos criminals should perish in the old-fashioned manner. And then came the news of the electrocutions in the East, and how the results had not after all been so instantaneous as had been hoped. The Western engineers raised their eyebrows when they read of the puny shocks by which these men had perished, and they vowed in Los Amigos that when an irreclaimable came their way he should be dealt handsomely by, and have the run of all the big dynamos. There should be no reserve, said the engineers, but he should have all that they had got. And what the result of that would be none could predict, save that it must be absolutely blasting and deadly. Never before had a man been so charged with electricity as they would charge him. He was to be smitten by the essence of ten thunderbolts. Some prophesied combustion, and some disintegration and disappearance. They were waiting eagerly to settle the question by actual demonstration, and it was just at that moment that Duncan Warner came that way.\n\nWarner had been wanted by the law, and by nobody else, for many years. Desperado, murderer, train robber and road agent, he was a man beyond the pale of human pity. He had deserved a dozen deaths, and the Los Amigos folk grudged him so gaudy a one as that. He seemed to feel himself to be unworthy of it, for he made two frenzied attempts at escape. He was a powerful, muscular man, with a lion head, tangled black locks, and a sweeping beard which covered his broad chest. When he was tried, there was no finer head in all the crowded court. It\"s no new thing to find the best face looking from the dock. But his good looks could not balance his bad deeds. His advocate did all he knew, but the cards lay against him, and Duncan Warner was handed over to the mercy of the big Los Amigos dynamos.\n\nI was there at the committee meeting when the matter was discussed. The town council had chosen four experts to look after the arrangements. Three of them were admirable. There was Joseph McConnor, the very man who had designed the dynamos, and there was Joshua Westmacott, the chairman of the Los Amigos Electrical Supply Company Limited. Then there was myself, as the chief medical man, and lastly an old German of the name of Peter Stulpnagel. The Germans were a strong body at Los Amigos, and they all voted for their man. That was how he got on the committee. It was said that he had been a wonderful electrician at home, and he was eternally working with wires and insulators and Leyden jars; but, as he never seemed to get any further, or to have any results worth publishing, he came at last to be regarded as a harmless crank who had made science his hobby. We three practical men smiled when we heard that he had been elected as our colleague, and at the meeting we fixed it all up very nicely among ourselves without much thought of the old fellow who sat with his ears scooped forward in his hands, for he was a trifle hard of hearing, taking no more part in the proceedings than the gentlemen of the press who scribbled their notes on the back benches.\n\nWe did not take long to settle it all. In New York a strength of some two thousand volts had been used, and death had not been instantaneous. Evidently their shock had been too weak. Los Amigos should not fall into that error. The charge should be six times greater, and therefore, of course, it would be six times more effective. Nothing could possibly be more logical. The whole concentrated force of the great dynamos should be employed on Duncan Warner.\n\nSo we three settled it, and had already risen to break up the meeting, when our silent companion opened his mouth for the first time.\n\n\"Gentlemen,\" said he, \"you appear to me to show an extraordinary ignorance upon the subject of electricity. You have not mastered the first principles of its actions upon a human being.\"\n\nThe committee was about to break into an angry reply to this brusque comment, but the chairman of the Electrical Company tapped his forehead to claim its indulgence for the crankiness of the speaker.\n\n\"Pray tell us, sir,\" said he, with an ironical smile, \"what is there in our conclusions with which you find fault?\"\n\n\"With your assumption that a large dose of electricity will merely increase the effect of a small dose. Do you not think it possible that it might have an entirely different result? Do you know anything, by actual experiment, of the effect of such powerful shocks?\"\n\n\"We know it by analogy,\" said the chairman pompously. \"All drugs increase their effect when they increase their dose; for example \u2013 for example \u2013\"\n\n\"Whisky,\" said Joseph McConnor.\n\n\"Quite so. Whisky. You see it there.\"\n\nPeter Stulpnagel smiled and shook his head. \"Your argument is not very good,\" said he. \"When I used to take whisky, I used to find that one glass would excite me, but that six would send me to sleep, which is just the opposite. Now, suppose that electricity were to act in just the opposite way also, what then?\"\n\nWe three practical men burst out laughing. We had known that our colleague was queer, but we never had thought that he would be as queer as this.\n\n\"What then?\" repeated Peter Stulpnagel.\n\n\"We\"ll take our chances,\" said the chairman.\n\n\"Pray consider,\" said Peter, \"that workmen who have touched the wires, and who have received shocks of only a few hundred volts, have died instantly. The fact is well known. And yet when a much greater force was used upon a criminal at New York, the man struggled for some little time. Do you not clearly see that the smaller dose is the more deadly?\"\n\n\"I think, gentlemen, that this discussion has been carried on quite long enough,\" said the chairman, rising again. \"The point, I take it, has already been decided by the majority of the committee, and Duncan Warner shall be electrocuted on Tuesday by the full strength of the Los Amigos dynamos. Is it not so?\"\n\n\"I agree,\" said Joseph McConnor.\n\n\"I agree,\" said I.\n\n\"And I protest,\" said Peter Stulpnagel.\n\n\"Then the motion is carried, and your protest will be duly entered in the minutes,\" said the chairman, and so the sitting was dissolved.\n\nThe attendance at the electrocution was a very small one. We four members of the committee were, of course, present with the executioner, who was to act under our orders. The others were the United States marshal, the governor of the gaol, the chaplain and three members of the press. The room was a small, brick chamber, forming an out-house to the Central Electrical Station. It had been used as a laundry, and had an oven and copper at one side, but no other furniture save a single chair for the condemned man. A metal plate for his feet was placed in front of it, to which ran a thick, insulated wire. Above, another wire depended from the ceiling, which could be connected with a small, metallic rod projecting from a cap which was to be placed upon his head. When this connection was established Duncan Warner\"s hour was come.\n\nThere was a solemn hush as we waited for the coming of the prisoner. The practical engineers looked a little pale and fidgeted nervously with the wires. Even the hardened marshal was ill at ease, for a mere hanging was one thing and this blasting of flesh and blood a very different one. As to the pressmen, their faces were whiter than the sheets which lay before them. The only man who appeared to feel none of the influence of these preparations was the little German crank, who strolled from one to the other with a smile on his lips and mischief in his eyes. More than once he even went so far as to burst into a shout of laughter, until the chaplain sternly rebuked him for his ill-timed levity.\n\n\"How can you so far forget yourself, Mr Stulpnagel,\" said he, \"as to jest in the presence of death?\"\n\nBut the German was quite unabashed. \"If I were in the presence of death I should not jest,\" said he, \"but since I am not I may do what I choose.\"\n\nThis flippant reply was about to draw another and a sterner reproof from the chaplain when the door was swung open and two warders entered leading Duncan Warner between them. He glanced round him with a set face, stepped resolutely forward and seated himself upon the chair.\n\n\"Touch her off!\" said he.\n\nIt was barbarous to keep him in suspense. The chaplain murmured a few words in his ear, the attendant placed the cap upon his head, and then, while we all held our breath, the wire and the metal were brought in contact.\n\n\"Great Scott!\" shouted Duncan Warner.\n\nHe had bounded in his chair as the frightful shock crashed through his system. But he was not dead. On the contrary, his eyes gleamed far more brightly than they had done before. There was only one change, but it was a singular one. The black had passed from his hair and beard as the shadow passes from a landscape. They were both as white as snow. And yet there was no other sign of decay. His skin was smooth and plump and lustrous as a child\"s.\n\nThe marshal looked at the committee with a reproachful eye. \"There seems to be some hitch here, gentlemen,\" said he.\n\nWe three practical men looked at each other.\n\nPeter Stulpnagel smiled pensively.\n\n\"I think that another one should do it,\" said I.\n\nAgain the connection was made, and again Duncan Warner sprang in his chair and shouted, but, indeed, were it not that he still remained in the chair, none of us would have recognised him. His hair and his beard had shredded off in an instant, and the room looked like a barber\"s shop on a Saturday night. There he sat, his eyes still shining, his skin radiant with the glow of perfect health, but with a scalp as bald as a Dutch cheese and a chin without so much as a trace of down. He began to revolve one of his arms, slowly and doubtfully at first, but with more confidence as he went on.\n\n\"That jint,\" said he, \"has puzzled half the doctors on the Pacific Slope. It\"s as good as new, and as limber as a hickory twig.\"\n\n\"You are feeling pretty well?\" asked the old German.\n\n\"Never better in my life,\" said Duncan Warner cheerily.\n\nThe situation was a painful one. The marshal glared at the committee. Peter Stulpnagel grinned and rubbed his hands. The engineers scratched their heads. The bald-headed prisoner revolved his arm and looked pleased.\n\n\"I think that one more shock \u2013 \" began the chairman.\n\n\"No, sir,\" said the marshal; \"we\"ve had foolery enough for one morning. We are here for an execution, and an execution we\"ll have.\"\n\n\"What do you propose?\"\n\n\"There\"s a hook handy upon the ceiling. Fetch a rope, and we\"ll soon set this matter straight.\"\n\nThere was another awkward delay while the warders departed for the cord. Peter Stulpnagel bent over Duncan Warner and whispered something in his ear. The desperado stared in surprise.\n\n\"You don\"t say?\" he asked.\n\nThe German nodded.\n\n\"What! No ways?\"\n\nPeter shook his head, and the two began to laugh as though they shared some huge joke between them.\n\nThe rope was brought, and the marshal himself slipped the noose over the criminal\"s neck. Then the two warders, the assistant and he swung their victim into the air. For half an hour he hung \u2013 a dreadful sight \u2013 from the ceiling. Then in solemn silence they lowered him down, and one of the warders went out to order the shell to be brought round. But as he touched ground again what was our amazement when Duncan Warner put his hands up to his neck, loosened the noose, and took a long, deep breath.\n\n\"Paul Jefferson\"s sale is goin\" well,\" he remarked. \"I could see the crowd from up yonder,\" and he nodded at the hook in the ceiling.\n\n\"Up with him again!\" shouted the marshal, \"we\"ll get the life out of him somehow.\"\n\nIn an instant the victim was up at the hook once more. They kept him there for an hour, but when he came down he was perfectly garrulous.\n\n\"Old man Plunket goes too much to the Arcady Saloon,\" said he. \"Three times he\"s been there in an hour; and him with a family. Old man Plunket would do well to swear off.\"\n\nIt was monstrous and incredible, but there it was. There was no getting round it. The man was there talking when he ought to have been dead. We all sat staring in amazement, but United States Marshal Carpenter was not a man to be euchred so easily. He motioned the others to one side, so that the prisoner was left standing alone.\n\n\"Duncan Warner,\" said he slowly, \"you are here to play your part and I am here to play mine. Your game is to live if you can, and my game is to carry out the sentence of the law. You\"ve beat us on electricity. I\"ll give you one there. And you\"ve beat us on hanging, for you seem to thrive on it. But it\"s my turn to beat you now, for my duty has to be done.\"\n\nHe pulled a six-shooter from his coat as he spoke and fired all the shots through the body of the prisoner. The room was so filled with smoke that we could see nothing, but when it cleared the prisoner was still standing there, looking down in disgust at the front of his coat.\n\n\"Coats must be cheap where you come from,\" said he. \"Thirty dollars it cost me, and look at it now. The six holes in front are bad enough, but four of the balls have passed out, and a pretty fine state the back must be in.\n\nThe marshal\"s revolver fell from his hand, and he dropped his arms to his sides, a beaten man.\n\n\"Maybe some of you gentlemen can tell me what this means,\" said he, looking helplessly at the committee.\n\nPeter Stulpnagel took a step forward. \"I\"ll tell you all about it,\" said he.\n\n\"You seem to be the only person who knows anything.\"\n\n\"I am the only person who knows anything. I should have warned these gentlemen; but, as they would not listen to me, I have allowed them to learn by experience. What you have done with your electricity is that you have increased the man\"s vitality until he can defy death for centuries.\"\n\n\"Centuries!\"\n\n\"Yes, it will take the wear of hundreds of years to exhaust the enormous nervous energy with which you have drenched him. Electricity is life, and you have charged him with it to the utmost. Perhaps in fifty years you might execute him, but I am not sanguine about it.\"\n\n\"Great Scott! What shall I do with him?\" cried the unhappy marshal.\n\nPeter Stulpnagel shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"It seems to me that it does not much matter what you do with him now,\" said he.\n\n\"Maybe we could drain the electricity out of him again. Suppose we hang him up by the heels?\"\n\n\"No, no, it\"s out of the question.\"\n\n\"Well, well, he shall do no more mischief in Los Amigos, anyhow,\" said the marshal, with decision. \"He shall go into the new gaol. The prison will wear him out.\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" said Peter Stulpnagel, \"I think that it is much more probable that he will wear out the prison.\"\n\nIt was rather a fiasco, and for years we didn\"t talk more about it than we could help, but it\"s no secret now, and I thought you might like to jot down the facts in your case-book.\n\n\u2042\n\n[ The Nightmare Room ]\n\nThe sitting-room of the Masons was a very singular apartment. At one end it was furnished with considerable luxury. The deep sofas, the low, luxurious chairs, the voluptuous statuettes and the rich curtains hanging from deep and ornamental screens of metalwork made a fitting frame for the lovely woman who was the mistress of the establishment. Mason, a young but wealthy man of affairs, had clearly spared no pains and no expense to meet every want and every whim of his beautiful wife. It was natural that he should do so, for she had given up much for his sake. The most famous dancer in France, the heroine of a dozen extraordinary romances, she had resigned her life of glittering pleasure in order to share the fate of the young American whose austere ways differed so widely from her own. In all that wealth could buy he tried to make amends for what she had lost. Some might perhaps have thought it in better taste had he not proclaimed this fact \u2013 had he not even allowed it to be printed \u2013 but save for some personal peculiarities of the sort, his conduct was that of a husband who has never for an instant ceased to be a lover. Even the presence of spectators would not prevent the public exhibition of his overpowering affection.\n\nBut the room was singular. At first it seemed familiar, and yet a longer acquaintance made one realise its sinister peculiarities. It was silent \u2013 very silent. No footfall could be heard upon those rich carpets and heavy rugs. A struggle \u2013 even the fall of a body \u2013 would make no sound. It was strangely colourless also, in a light which seemed always subdued. Nor was it all furnished in equal taste. One would have said that when the young banker had lavished thousands upon this boudoir, this inner jewel-case for his precious possession, he had failed to count the cost and had suddenly been arrested by a threat to his own solvency. It was luxurious where it looked out upon the busy street below. At the farther side it was bare, spartan, and reflected rather the taste of a most ascetic man than of a pleasure-loving woman. Perhaps that was why she only came there for a few hours, sometimes two, sometimes four, in the day, but while she was there she lived intensely, and within this nightmare room Lucille Mason was a very different and a more dangerous woman than elsewhere.\n\nDangerous \u2013 that was the word. Who could doubt it who saw her delicate figure stretched upon the great bearskin which draped the sofa. She was leaning upon her right elbow, her delicate but determined chin resting upon her hand, while her eyes, large and languishing, adorable but inexorable, stared out in front of her with a fixed intensity which had in it something vaguely terrible. It was a lovely face \u2013 a child\"s face, and yet nature had placed there some subtle mark, some indefinable expression, which told that a devil lurked within. It had been noticed that dogs shrank from her and that children screamed and ran from her caresses. There are instincts which are deeper than reason.\n\nUpon this particular afternoon something had greatly moved her. A letter was in her hand, which she read and reread with a tightening of those delicate little eyebrows and a grim setting of those delicious lips. Suddenly she started, and a shadow of fear softened the feline menace of her features. She raised herself upon her arm, and her eyes were fixed eagerly upon the door. She was listening intently \u2013 listening for something which she dreaded. For a moment a smile of relief played over her expressive face. Then with a look of horror she stuffed her letter into her dress. She had hardly done so before the door opened, and a young man came briskly into the room. It was Archie Mason, her husband \u2013 the man whom she had loved, the man for whom she had sacrificed her European fame, the man whom now she regarded as the one obstacle to a new and wonderful experience.\n\nThe American was a man of about thirty, clean-shaven, athletic, dressed to perfection in a closely cut suit which outlined his perfect figure. He stood at the door with his arms folded, looking intently at his wife, with a face which might have been a handsome, sun-tinted mask save for those vivid eyes. She still leaned upon her elbow, but her eyes were fixed on his. There was something terrible in the silent exchange. Each interrogated the other, and each conveyed the thought that the answer to their question was vital. He might have been asking, \"What have you done?\" She in her turn seemed to be saying, \"What do you know?\" Finally, he walked forward, sat down upon the bearskin beside her and, taking her delicate ear gently between his fingers, turned her face towards his.\n\n\"Lucille,\" he said, \"are you poisoning me?\"\n\nShe sprang back from his touch with horror in her face and protests upon her lips. Too moved to speak, her surprise and her anger showed themselves rather in her darting hands and her convulsed features. She tried to rise, but his grasp tightened upon her wrist. Again he asked a question, but this time it had deepened in its terrible significance.\n\n\"Lucille, why are you poisoning me?\"\n\n\"You are mad, Archie! Mad!\" she gasped.\n\nHis answer froze her blood. With pale parted lips and blanched cheeks, she could only stare at him in helpless silence whilst he drew a small bottle from his pocket and held it before her eyes.\n\n\"It is from your jewel-case!\" he cried.\n\nTwice she tried to speak and failed. At last the words came slowly one by one from her contorted lips: \"At least I never used it.\"\n\nAgain his hand sought his pocket. From it he drew a sheet of paper, which he unfolded and held before her.\n\n\"It is the certificate of Dr Angus. It shows the presence of twelve grains of antimony. I have also the evidence of Du Val, the chemist who sold it.\"\n\nHer face was terrible to look at. There was nothing to say. She could only lie with that fixed hopeless stare like some fierce creature in a fatal trap.\n\n\"Well?\" he asked.\n\nThere was no answer save a movement of desperation and appeal.\n\n\"Why?\" he said. \"I want to know why.\" As he spoke his eye caught the edge of the letter which she had thrust into her bosom. In an instant he had snatched it. With a cry of despair she tried to regain it, but he held her off with one hand while his eyes raced over it.\n\n\"Campbell!\" he gasped. \"It is Campbell!\"\n\nShe had found her courage again. There was nothing more to conceal. Her face set hard and firm. Her eyes were deadly as daggers.\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, \"it is Campbell.\"\n\n\"My God! Campbell of all men!\"\n\nHe rose and walked swiftly about the room. Campbell, the grandest man that he had ever known, a man whose whole life had been one long record of self-denial, of courage, of every quality which marks the chosen man. And yet, he, too, had fallen a victim to this siren, and had been dragged down to such a level that he had betrayed, in intention if not in actual deed, the man whose hand he shook in friendship. It was incredible \u2013 and yet here was the passionate, pleading letter imploring his wife to fly and share the fate of a penniless man. Every word of the letter showed that Campbell had at least no thought of Mason\"s death, which would have removed all difficulties. That devilish solution was the outcome of the deep and wicked brain which brooded within that perfect habitation.\n\nMason was a man in a million, a philosopher, a thinker, with a broad and tender sympathy for others. For an instant his soul had been submerged in his bitterness. He could for that brief period have slain both his wife and Campbell, and gone to his own death with the serene mind of a man who has done his plain duty. But already, as he paced the room, milder thoughts bad begun to prevail. How could he blame Campbell? He knew the absolute witchery of this woman. It was not only her wonderful physical beauty. She had a unique power of seeming to take an interest in a man, in writhing into his inmost conscience, in penetrating those parts of his nature which were too sacred for the world, and in seeming to stimulate him towards ambition and even towards virtue. It was just there that the deadly cleverness of her net was shown. He remembered how it had been in his own case. She was free then \u2013 or so he thought \u2013 and he had been able to marry her. But suppose she had not been free. Suppose she had been married. And suppose she had taken possession of his soul in the same way. Would he have stopped there? Would he have been able to draw off with his unfulfilled longings? He was bound to admit that with all his New England strength he could not have done so. Why, then, should he feel so bitter with his unfortunate friend who was in the same position? It was pity and sympathy which filled his mind as he thought of Campbell.\n\nAnd she? There she lay upon the sofa, a poor broken butterfly, her dreams dispersed, her plot detected, her future dark and perilous. Even for her, poisoner as she was, his heart relented. He knew something of her history. He knew her as a spoiled child from birth, untamed, unchecked, sweeping everything easily before her from her cleverness, her beauty and her charm. She had never known an obstacle. And now one had risen across her path, and she had madly and wickedly tried to remove it. But if she had wished to remove it, was not that in itself a sign that he had been found wanting \u2013 that he was not the man who could bring her peace of mind and contentment of heart? He was too stern and self-contained for that sunny volatile nature. He was of the north, and she of the south; drawn strongly together for a time by the law of opposites, they were not made for permanent union. He should have seen this \u2013 he should have understood it. It was on him, with his superior brain, that the responsibility for the situation lay. His heart softened towards her as it would to a little child who was in helpless trouble. For a time he had paced the room in silence, his lips compressed, his hands clenched till his nails had marked his palms. Now with a sudden movement he sat beside her and took her cold and inert hand in his. One thought beat in his brain. \"Is it chivalry, or is it weakness?\" The question sounded in his ears, it framed itself before his eyes, he could almost fancy that it materialised itself and that he saw it in letters which all the world could read.\n\nIt had been a hard struggle, but he had conquered.\n\n\"You shall choose between us, dear,\" he said. \"If really you are sure \u2013 sure, you understand \u2013 that Campbell could make you happy as a husband, I will not be the obstacle.\"\n\n\"A divorce!\" she gasped.\n\nHis hand closed upon the bottle of poison. \"You can call it that,\" said he.\n\nA new strange light shone in her eyes as she looked at him. This was a man who had been unknown to her. The hard, practical American had vanished. In his place she seemed to have a glimpse of a hero and a saint, a man who could rise to an inhuman height of unselfish virtue. Both her hands were round that which held the fatal phial.\n\n\"Archie,\" she cried, \"you could forgive me even that!\"\n\nHe smiled at her. \"You are only a little wayward kiddie after all.\"\n\nHer arms were outstretched to him when there was a tap at the door, and the maid entered in the strange silent fashion in which all things moved in that nightmare room. There was a card on the tray. She glanced at it.\n\n\"Captain Campbell! I will not see him.\"\n\nMason sprang to his feet. \"On the contrary, he is most welcome. Show him up this instant.\"\n\nA few minutes later a tall, sunburned young soldier had been ushered into the room. He came forward with a smile upon his pleasant features, but as the door closed behind him and the faces before him resumed their natural expressions, he paused irresolutely and glanced from one to the other.\n\n\"Well?\" he asked.\n\nMason stepped forward and laid his hand upon his shoulder. \"I bear you no ill-will,\" he said.\n\n\"Ill-will?\"\n\n\"Yes, I know all. But I might have done the same myself had the position been reversed.\"\n\nCampbell stepped back and looked a question at the lady. She nodded and shrugged her graceful shoulders.\n\nMason smiled. \"You need not fear that it is a trap for a confession. We have had a frank talk upon the matter. See, Jack, you were always a sportsman. Here\"s a bottle. Never mind how it came here. If one or other of us drink it, it would clear the situation.\" His manner was wild, almost delirious. \"Lucille, which shall it be?\"\n\nThere had been a strange force at work in the nightmare room. A third man was there, though not one of the three who had stood in the crisis of their life\"s drama had time or thought for him. How long he had been there \u2013 how much he had heard \u2013 none could say. In the corner farthest from the little group he lay crouched against the wall, a sinister snake-like figure, silent and scarcely moving save for a nervous twitching of his clenched right hand. He was concealed from view by a square case and by a dark cloth drawn cunningly above it, so as to screen his features. Intent, watching eagerly every new phase of the drama, the moment had almost come for his intervention. But the three thought little of that. Absorbed in the interplay of their own emotions they had lost sight of a force stronger than themselves \u2013 a force which might at any moment dominate the scene.\n\n\"Are you game, Jack?\" asked Mason.\n\nThe soldier nodded.\n\n\"No! \u2013 for God\"s sake, no!\" cried the woman.\n\nMason had uncorked the bottle, and turning to the side-table he drew out a pack of cards. Cards and bottle stood together.\n\n\"We can\"t put the responsibility on her,\" he said. \"Come, Jack, the best of three.\"\n\nThe soldier approached the table. He fingered the fatal cards. The woman, leaning upon her hand, bent her face forward and stared with fascinated eyes.\n\nThen and only then the bolt fell.\n\nThe stranger had risen, pale and grave.\n\nAll three were suddenly aware of his presence. They faced him with eager enquiry in their eyes. He looked at them coldly, sadly, with something of the master in his bearing.\n\n\"How is it?\" they asked, all together.\n\n\"Rotten!\" he answered. \"Rotten! We\"ll take the whole reel once more tomorrow.\"" + } + ] + }, + { + "title": "The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume II", + "author": "Arthur Conan Doyle", + "genres": [ + "mystery" + ], + "tags": [ + "short stories" + ], + "chapters": [ + { + "title": "THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES", + "text": "[ THE ADVENTURE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE ]\n\nIt was in the spring of the year 1894 that all London was interested, and the fashionable world dismayed, by the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair under most unusual and inexplicable circumstances. The public has already learned those particulars of the crime which came out in the police investigation, but a good deal was suppressed upon that occasion, since the case for the prosecution was so overwhelmingly strong that it was not necessary to bring forward all the facts. Only now, at the end of nearly ten years, am I allowed to supply those missing links which make up the whole of that remarkable chain. The crime was of interest in itself, but that interest was as nothing to me compared to the inconceivable sequel, which afforded me the greatest shock and surprise of any event in my adventurous life. Even now, after this long interval, I find myself thrilling as I think of it, and feeling once more that sudden flood of joy, amazement, and incredulity which utterly submerged my mind. Let me say to that public, which has shown some interest in those glimpses which I have occasionally given them of the thoughts and actions of a very remarkable man, that they are not to blame me if I have not shared my knowledge with them, for I should have considered it my first duty to do so, had I not been barred by a positive prohibition from his own lips, which was only withdrawn upon the third of last month.\n\nIt can be imagined that my close intimacy with Sherlock Holmes had interested me deeply in crime, and that after his disappearance I never failed to read with care the various problems which came before the public. And I even attempted, more than once, for my own private satisfaction, to employ his methods in their solution, though with indifferent success. There was none, however, which appealed to me like this tragedy of Ronald Adair. As I read the evidence at the inquest, which led up to a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown, I realized more clearly than I had ever done the loss which the community had sustained by the death of Sherlock Holmes. There were points about this strange business which would, I was sure, have specially appealed to him, and the efforts of the police would have been supplemented, or more probably anticipated, by the trained observation and the alert mind of the first criminal agent in Europe. All day, as I drove upon my round, I turned over the case in my mind and found no explanation which appeared to me to be adequate. At the risk of telling a twice-told tale, I will recapitulate the facts as they were known to the public at the conclusion of the inquest.\n\nThe Honourable Ronald Adair was the second son of the Earl of Maynooth, at that time governor of one of the Australian colonies. Adair's mother had returned from Australia to undergo the operation for cataract, and she, her son Ronald, and her daughter Hilda were living together at 427 Park Lane. The youth moved in the best society\u2014had, so far as was known, no enemies and no particular vices. He had been engaged to Miss Edith Woodley, of Carstairs, but the engagement had been broken off by mutual consent some months before, and there was no sign that it had left any very profound feeling behind it. For the rest of the man's life moved in a narrow and conventional circle, for his habits were quiet and his nature unemotional. Yet it was upon this easy-going young aristocrat that death came, in most strange and unexpected form, between the hours of ten and eleven-twenty on the night of March 30, 1894.\n\nRonald Adair was fond of cards\u2014playing continually, but never for such stakes as would hurt him. He was a member of the Baldwin, the Cavendish, and the Bagatelle card clubs. It was shown that, after dinner on the day of his death, he had played a rubber of whist at the latter club. He had also played there in the afternoon. The evidence of those who had played with him\u2014Mr. Murray, Sir John Hardy, and Colonel Moran\u2014showed that the game was whist, and that there was a fairly equal fall of the cards. Adair might have lost five pounds, but not more. His fortune was a considerable one, and such a loss could not in any way affect him. He had played nearly every day at one club or other, but he was a cautious player, and usually rose a winner. It came out in evidence that, in partnership with Colonel Moran, he had actually won as much as four hundred and twenty pounds in a sitting, some weeks before, from Godfrey Milner and Lord Balmoral. So much for his recent history as it came out at the inquest.\n\nOn the evening of the crime, he returned from the club exactly at ten. His mother and sister were out spending the evening with a relation. The servant deposed that she heard him enter the front room on the second floor, generally used as his sitting-room. She had lit a fire there, and as it smoked she had opened the window. No sound was heard from the room until eleven-twenty, the hour of the return of Lady Maynooth and her daughter. Desiring to say good-night, she attempted to enter her son's room. The door was locked on the inside, and no answer could be got to their cries and knocking. Help was obtained, and the door forced. The unfortunate young man was found lying near the table. His head had been horribly mutilated by an expanding revolver bullet, but no weapon of any sort was to be found in the room. On the table lay two banknotes for ten pounds each and seventeen pounds ten in silver and gold, the money arranged in little piles of varying amount. There were some figures also upon a sheet of paper, with the names of some club friends opposite to them, from which it was conjectured that before his death he was endeavouring to make out his losses or winnings at cards.\n\nA minute examination of the circumstances served only to make the case more complex. In the first place, no reason could be given why the young man should have fastened the door upon the inside. There was the possibility that the murderer had done this, and had afterwards escaped by the window. The drop was at least twenty feet, however, and a bed of crocuses in full bloom lay beneath. Neither the flowers nor the earth showed any sign of having been disturbed, nor were there any marks upon the narrow strip of grass which separated the house from the road. Apparently, therefore, it was the young man himself who had fastened the door. But how did he come by his death? No one could have climbed up to the window without leaving traces. Suppose a man had fired through the window, he would indeed be a remarkable shot who could with a revolver inflict so deadly a wound. Again, Park Lane is a frequented thoroughfare; there is a cab stand within a hundred yards of the house. No one had heard a shot. And yet there was the dead man, and there the revolver bullet, which had mushroomed out, as soft-nosed bullets will, and so inflicted a wound which must have caused instantaneous death. Such were the circumstances of the Park Lane Mystery, which were further complicated by entire absence of motive, since, as I have said, young Adair was not known to have any enemy, and no attempt had been made to remove the money or valuables in the room.\n\nAll day I turned these facts over in my mind, endeavouring to hit some theory which could reconcile them all, and to find that line of least resistance which my poor friend had declared to be the starting-point of every investigation. I confess that I made little progress. In the evening I strolled across the Park, and found myself about six o'clock at the Oxford Street end of Park Lane. A group of loafers upon the pavements, all staring up at a particular window, directed me to the house which I had come to see. A tall, thin man with coloured glasses, whom I strongly suspected of being a plain-clothes detective, was pointing out some theory of his own, while the others crowded round to listen to what he said. I got as near him as I could, but his observations seemed to me to be absurd, so I withdrew again in some disgust. As I did so I struck against an elderly, deformed man, who had been behind me, and I knocked down several books which he was carrying. I remember that as I picked them up, I observed the title of one of them, The Origin of Tree Worship, and it struck me that the fellow must be some poor bibliophile, who, either as a trade or as a hobby, was a collector of obscure volumes. I endeavoured to apologize for the accident, but it was evident that these books which I had so unfortunately maltreated were very precious objects in the eyes of their owner. With a snarl of contempt he turned upon his heel, and I saw his curved back and white side-whiskers disappear among the throng.\n\nMy observations of No. 427 Park Lane did little to clear up the problem in which I was interested. The house was separated from the street by a low wall and railing, the whole not more than five feet high. It was perfectly easy, therefore, for anyone to get into the garden, but the window was entirely inaccessible, since there was no waterpipe or anything which could help the most active man to climb it. More puzzled than ever, I retraced my steps to Kensington. I had not been in my study five minutes when the maid entered to say that a person desired to see me. To my astonishment it was none other than my strange old book collector, his sharp, wizened face peering out from a frame of white hair, and his precious volumes, a dozen of them at least, wedged under his right arm.\n\n\"You're surprised to see me, sir,\" said he, in a strange, croaking voice.\n\nI acknowledged that I was.\n\n\"Well, I've a conscience, sir, and when I chanced to see you go into this house, as I came hobbling after you, I thought to myself, I'll just step in and see that kind gentleman, and tell him that if I was a bit gruff in my manner there was not any harm meant, and that I am much obliged to him for picking up my books.\"\n\n\"You make too much of a trifle,\" said I. \"May I ask how you knew who I was?\"\n\n\"Well, sir, if it isn't too great a liberty, I am a neighbour of yours, for you'll find my little bookshop at the corner of Church Street, and very happy to see you, I am sure. Maybe you collect yourself, sir. Here's British Birds, and Catullus, and The Holy War\u2014a bargain, every one of them. With five volumes you could just fill that gap on that second shelf. It looks untidy, does it not, sir?\"\n\nI moved my head to look at the cabinet behind me. When I turned again, Sherlock Holmes was standing smiling at me across my study table. I rose to my feet, stared at him for some seconds in utter amazement, and then it appears that I must have fainted for the first and the last time in my life. Certainly a gray mist swirled before my eyes, and when it cleared I found my collar-ends undone and the tingling after-taste of brandy upon my lips. Holmes was bending over my chair, his flask in his hand.\n\n\"My dear Watson,\" said the well-remembered voice, \"I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea that you would be so affected.\"\n\nI gripped him by the arms.\n\n\"Holmes!\" I cried. \"Is it really you? Can it indeed be that you are alive? Is it possible that you succeeded in climbing out of that awful abyss?\"\n\n\"Wait a moment,\" said he. \"Are you sure that you are really fit to discuss things? I have given you a serious shock by my unnecessarily dramatic reappearance.\"\n\n\"I am all right, but indeed, Holmes, I can hardly believe my eyes. Good heavens! to think that you\u2014you of all men\u2014should be standing in my study.\" Again I gripped him by the sleeve, and felt the thin, sinewy arm beneath it. \"Well, you're not a spirit, anyhow,\" said I. \"My dear chap, I'm overjoyed to see you. Sit down, and tell me how you came alive out of that dreadful chasm.\"\n\nHe sat opposite to me, and lit a cigarette in his old, nonchalant manner. He was dressed in the seedy frockcoat of the book merchant, but the rest of that individual lay in a pile of white hair and old books upon the table. Holmes looked even thinner and keener than of old, but there was a dead-white tinge in his aquiline face which told me that his life recently had not been a healthy one.\n\n\"I am glad to stretch myself, Watson,\" said he. \"It is no joke when a tall man has to take a foot off his stature for several hours on end. Now, my dear fellow, in the matter of these explanations, we have, if I may ask for your cooperation, a hard and dangerous night's work in front of us. Perhaps it would be better if I gave you an account of the whole situation when that work is finished.\"\n\n\"I am full of curiosity. I should much prefer to hear now.\"\n\n\"You'll come with me to-night?\"\n\n\"When you like and where you like.\"\n\n\"This is, indeed, like the old days. We shall have time for a mouthful of dinner before we need go. Well, then, about that chasm. I had no serious difficulty in getting out of it, for the very simple reason that I never was in it.\"\n\n\"You never were in it?\"\n\n\"No, Watson, I never was in it. My note to you was absolutely genuine. I had little doubt that I had come to the end of my career when I perceived the somewhat sinister figure of the late Professor Moriarty standing upon the narrow pathway which led to safety. I read an inexorable purpose in his gray eyes. I exchanged some remarks with him, therefore, and obtained his courteous permission to write the short note which you afterwards received. I left it with my cigarette-box and my stick, and I walked along the pathway, Moriarty still at my heels. When I reached the end I stood at bay. He drew no weapon, but he rushed at me and threw his long arms around me. He knew that his own game was up, and was only anxious to revenge himself upon me. We tottered together upon the brink of the fall. I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me. I slipped through his grip, and he with a horrible scream kicked madly for a few seconds, and clawed the air with both his hands. But for all his efforts he could not get his balance, and over he went. With my face over the brink, I saw him fall for a long way. Then he struck a rock, bounded off, and splashed into the water.\"\n\nI listened with amazement to this explanation, which Holmes delivered between the puffs of his cigarette.\n\n\"But the tracks!\" I cried. \"I saw, with my own eyes, that two went down the path and none returned.\"\n\n\"It came about in this way. The instant that the Professor had disappeared, it struck me what a really extraordinarily lucky chance Fate had placed in my way. I knew that Moriarty was not the only man who had sworn my death. There were at least three others whose desire for vengeance upon me would only be increased by the death of their leader. They were all most dangerous men. One or other would certainly get me. On the other hand, if all the world was convinced that I was dead they would take liberties, these men, they would soon lay themselves open, and sooner or later I could destroy them. Then it would be time for me to announce that I was still in the land of the living. So rapidly does the brain act that I believe I had thought this all out before Professor Moriarty had reached the bottom of the Reichenbach Fall.\n\n\"I stood up and examined the rocky wall behind me. In your picturesque account of the matter, which I read with great interest some months later, you assert that the wall was sheer. That was not literally true. A few small footholds presented themselves, and there was some indication of a ledge. The cliff is so high that to climb it all was an obvious impossibility, and it was equally impossible to make my way along the wet path without leaving some tracks. I might, it is true, have reversed my boots, as I have done on similar occasions, but the sight of three sets of tracks in one direction would certainly have suggested a deception. On the whole, then, it was best that I should risk the climb. It was not a pleasant business, Watson. The fall roared beneath me. I am not a fanciful person, but I give you my word that I seemed to hear Moriarty's voice screaming at me out of the abyss. A mistake would have been fatal. More than once, as tufts of grass came out in my hand or my foot slipped in the wet notches of the rock, I thought that I was gone. But I struggled upward, and at last I reached a ledge several feet deep and covered with soft green moss, where I could lie unseen, in the most perfect comfort. There I was stretched, when you, my dear Watson, and all your following were investigating in the most sympathetic and inefficient manner the circumstances of my death.\n\n\"At last, when you had all formed your inevitable and totally erroneous conclusions, you departed for the hotel, and I was left alone. I had imagined that I had reached the end of my adventures, but a very unexpected occurrence showed me that there were surprises still in store for me. A huge rock, falling from above, boomed past me, struck the path, and bounded over into the chasm. For an instant I thought that it was an accident, but a moment later, looking up, I saw a man's head against the darkening sky, and another stone struck the very ledge upon which I was stretched, within a foot of my head. Of course, the meaning of this was obvious. Moriarty had not been alone. A confederate\u2014and even that one glance had told me how dangerous a man that confederate was\u2014had kept guard while the Professor had attacked me. From a distance, unseen by me, he had been a witness of his friend's death and of my escape. He had waited, and then making his way round to the top of the cliff, he had endeavoured to succeed where his comrade had failed.\n\n\"I did not take long to think about it, Watson. Again I saw that grim face look over the cliff, and I knew that it was the precursor of another stone. I scrambled down on to the path. I don't think I could have done it in cold blood. It was a hundred times more difficult than getting up. But I had no time to think of the danger, for another stone sang past me as I hung by my hands from the edge of the ledge. Halfway down I slipped, but, by the blessing of God, I landed, torn and bleeding, upon the path. I took to my heels, did ten miles over the mountains in the darkness, and a week later I found myself in Florence, with the certainty that no one in the world knew what had become of me.\n\n\"I had only one confidant\u2014my brother Mycroft. I owe you many apologies, my dear Watson, but it was all-important that it should be thought I was dead, and it is quite certain that you would not have written so convincing an account of my unhappy end had you not yourself thought that it was true. Several times during the last three years I have taken up my pen to write to you, but always I feared lest your affectionate regard for me should tempt you to some indiscretion which would betray my secret. For that reason I turned away from you this evening when you upset my books, for I was in danger at the time, and any show of surprise and emotion upon your part might have drawn attention to my identity and led to the most deplorable and irreparable results. As to Mycroft, I had to confide in him in order to obtain the money which I needed. The course of events in London did not run so well as I had hoped, for the trial of the Moriarty gang left two of its most dangerous members, my own most vindictive enemies, at liberty. I travelled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhassa, and spending some days with the head lama. You may have read of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure that it never occurred to you that you were receiving news of your friend. I then passed through Persia, looked in at Mecca, and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khal ifa at Khartoum, the results of which I have communicated to the Foreign Office. Returning to France, I spent some months in a research into the coal-tar derivatives, which I conducted in a laboratory at Montpellier, in the south of France. Having concluded this to my satisfaction and learning that only one of my enemies was now left in London, I was about to return when my movements were hastened by the news of this very remarkable Park Lane Mystery, which not only appealed to me by its own merits, but which seemed to offer some most peculiar personal opportunities. I came over at once to London, called in my own person at Baker Street, threw Mrs. Hudson into violent hysterics, and found that Mycroft had preserved my rooms and my papers exactly as they had always been. So it was, my dear Watson, that at two o'clock to-day I found myself in my old armchair in my own old room, and only wishing that I could have seen my old friend Watson in the other chair which he has so often adorned.\"\n\nSuch was the remarkable narrative to which I listened on that April evening\u2014a narrative which would have been utterly incredible to me had it not been confirmed by the actual sight of the tall, spare figure and the keen, eager face, which I had never thought to see again. In some manner he had learned of my own sad bereavement, and his sympathy was shown in his manner rather than in his words. \"Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson,\" said he; \"and I have a piece of work for us both to-night which, if we can bring it to a successful conclusion, will in itself justify a man's life on this planet.\" In vain I begged him to tell me more. \"You will hear and see enough before morning,\" he answered. \"We have three years of the past to discuss. Let that suffice until half-past nine, when we start upon the notable adventure of the empty house.\"\n\nIt was indeed like old times when, at that hour, I found myself seated beside him in a hansom, my revolver in my pocket, and the thrill of ad venture in my heart. Holmes was cold and stern and silent. As the gleam of the street-lamps flashed upon his austere features, I saw that his brows were drawn down in thought and his thin lips compressed. I knew not what wild beast we were about to hunt down in the dark jungle of criminal London, but I was well assured, from the bearing of this master huntsman, that the adventure was a most grave one\u2014while the sardonic smile which occasionally broke through his ascetic gloom boded little good for the object of our quest.\n\nI had imagined that we were bound for Baker Street, but Holmes stopped the cab at the corner of Cavendish Square. I observed that as he stepped out he gave a most searching glance to right and left, and at every subsequent street corner he took the utmost pains to assure that he was not followed. Our route was certainly a singular one. Holmes's knowledge of the byways of London was extraordinary, and on this occasion he passed rapidly and with an assured step through a network of mews and stables, the very existence of which I had never known. We emerged at last into a small road, lined with old, gloomy houses, which led us into Manchester Street, and so to Blandford Street. Here he turned swiftly down a narrow passage, passed through a wooden gate into a deserted yard, and then opened with a key the back door of a house. We entered together, and he closed it behind us.\n\nThe place was pitch dark, but it was evident to me that it was an empty house. Our feet creaked and crackled over the bare planking, and my outstretched hand touched a wall from which the paper was hanging in ribbons. Holmes's cold, thin fingers closed round my wrist and led me forward down a long hall, until I dimly saw the murky fanlight over the door. Here Holmes turned suddenly to the right, and we found ourselves in a large, square, empty room, heavily shadowed in the corners, but faintly lit in the centre from the lights of the street beyond. There was no lamp near, and the window was thick with dust, so that we could only just discern each other's figures within. My companion put his hand upon my shoulder and his lips close to my ear.\n\n\"Do you know where we are?\" he whispered.\n\n\"Surely that is Baker Street,\" I answered, staring through the dim window.\n\n\"Exactly. We are in Camden House, which stands opposite to our own old quarters.\"\n\n\"But why are we here?\"\n\n\"Because it commands so excellent a view of that picturesque pile. Might I trouble you, my dear Watson, to draw a little nearer to the window, taking every precaution not to show yourself, and then to look up at our old rooms\u2014the starting-point of so many of your little fairy-tales? We will see if my three years of absence have entirely taken away my power to surprise you.\"\n\nI crept forward and looked across at the familiar window. As my eyes fell upon it, I gave a gasp and a cry of amazement. The blind was down, and a strong light was burning in the room. The shadow of a man who was seated in a chair within was thrown in hard, black outline upon the luminous screen of the window. There was no mistaking the poise of the head, the squareness of the shoulders, the sharpness of the features. The face was turned half-round, and the effect was that of one of those black silhouettes which our grandparents loved to frame. It was a perfect reproduction of Holmes. So amazed was I that I threw out my hand to make sure that the man himself was standing beside me. He was quivering with silent laughter.\n\n\"Well?\" said he.\n\n\"Good heavens!\" I cried. \"It is marvellous.\"\n\n\"I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety,\" said he, and I recognized in his voice the joy and pride which the artist takes in his own creation. \"It really is rather like me, is it not?\"\n\n\"I should be prepared to swear that it was you.\"\n\n\"The credit of the execution is due to Monsieur Oscar Meunier, of Grenoble, who spent some days in doing the moulding. It is a bust in wax. The rest I arranged myself during my visit to Baker Street this afternoon.\"\n\n\"But why?\"\n\n\"Because, my dear Watson, I had the strongest possible reason for wishing certain people to think that I was there when I was really elsewhere.\"\n\n\"And you thought the rooms were watched?\"\n\n\"I knew that they were watched.\"\n\n\"By whom?\"\n\n\"By my old enemies, Watson. By the charming society whose leader lies in the Reichenbach Fall. You must remember that they knew, and only they knew, that I was still alive. Sooner or later they believed that I should come back to my rooms. They watched them continuously, and this morning they saw me arrive.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"Because I recognized their sentinel when I glanced out of my window. He is a harmless enough fellow, Parker by name, a garroter by trade, and a remarkable performer upon the jew's-harp. I cared nothing for him. But I cared a great deal for the much more formidable person who was behind him, the bosom friend of Moriarty, the man who dropped the rocks over the cliff, the most cunning and dangerous criminal in London. That is the man who is after me to-night, Watson, and that is the man who is quite unaware that we are after him.\"\n\nMy friend's plans were gradually revealing themselves. From this convenient retreat, the watchers were being watched and the trackers tracked. That angular shadow up yonder was the bait, and we were the hunters. In silence we stood together in the darkness and watched the hurrying figures who passed and repassed in front of us. Holmes was silent and motionless; but I could tell that he was keenly alert, and that his eyes were fixed intently upon the stream of passers-by. It was a bleak and boisterous night, and the wind whistled shrilly down the long street. Many people were moving to and fro, most of them muffled in their coats and cravats. Once or twice it seemed to me that I had seen the same figure before, and I especially noticed two men who appeared to be sheltering themselves from the wind in the doorway of a house some distance up the street. I tried to draw my companion's attention to them; but he gave a little ejaculation of impatience, and continued to stare into the street. More than once he fidgeted with his feet and tapped rapidly with his fingers upon the wall. It was evident to me that he was becoming uneasy, and that his plans were not working out altogether as he had hoped. At last, as midnight approached and the street gradually cleared, he paced up and down the room in uncontrollable agitation. I was about to make some remark to him, when I raised my eyes to the lighted window, and again experienced almost as great a surprise as before. I clutched Holmes's arm, and pointed upward.\n\n\"The shadow has moved!\" I cried.\n\nIt was indeed no longer the profile, but the back, which was turned towards us.\n\nThree years had certainly not smoothed the asperities of his temper or his impatience with a less active intelligence than his own.\n\n\"Of course it has moved,\" said he. \"Am I such a farcical bungler, Watson, that I should erect an obvious dummy, and expect that some of the sharpest men in Europe would be deceived by it? We have been in this room two hours, and Mrs. Hudson has made some change in that figure eight times, or once in every quarter of an hour. She works it from the front, so that her shadow may never be seen. Ah!\" He drew in his breath with a shrill, excited intake. In the dim light I saw his head thrown forward, his whole attitude rigid with attention. Outside the street was absolutely deserted. Those two men might still be crouching in the doorway, but I could no longer see them. All was still and dark, save only that brilliant yellow screen in front of us with the black figure outlined upon its centre. Again in the utter silence I heard that thin, sibilant note which spoke of intense suppressed excitement. An instant later he pulled me back into the blackest corner of the room, and I felt his warning hand upon my lips. The fingers which clutched me were quivering. Never had I known my friend more moved, and yet the dark street still stretched lonely and motionless before us.\n\nBut suddenly I was aware of that which his keener senses had already distinguished. A low, stealthy sound came to my ears, not from the direction of Baker Street, but from the back of the very house in which we lay concealed. A door opened and shut. An instant later steps crept down the passage\u2014steps which were meant to be silent, but which reverberated harshly through the empty house. Holmes crouched back against the wall, and I did the same, my hand closing upon the handle of my revolver. Peering through the gloom, I saw the vague outline of a man, a shade blacker than the blackness of the open door. He stood for an instant, and then he crept forward, crouching, menacing, into the room. He was within three yards of us, this sinister figure, and I had braced myself to meet his spring, before I realized that he had no idea of our presence. He passed close beside us, stole over to the window, and very softly and noiselessly raised it for half a foot. As he sank to the level of this opening, the light of the street, no longer dimmed by the dusty glass, fell full upon his face. The man seemed to be beside himself with excitement. His two eyes shone like stars, and his features were working convulsively. He was an elderly man, with a thin, projecting nose, a high, bald forehead, and a huge grizzled moustache. An opera hat was pushed to the back of his head, and an evening dress shirt-front gleamed out through his open overcoat. His face was gaunt and swarthy, scored with deep, savage lines. In his hand he carried what appeared to be a stick, but as he laid it down upon the floor it gave a metallic clang. Then from the pocket of his overcoat he drew a bulky object, and he busied himself in some task which ended with a loud, sharp click, as if a spring or bolt had fallen into its place. Still kneeling upon the floor he bent forward and threw all his weight and strength upon some lever, with the result that there came a long, whirling, grinding noise, ending once more in a powerful click. He straightened himself then, and I saw that what he held in his hand was a sort of gun, with a curiously misshapen butt. He opened it at the breech, put something in, and snapped the breech-lock. Then, crouching down, he rested the end of the barrel upon the ledge of the open window, and I saw his long moustache droop over the stock and his eye gleam as it peered along the sights. I heard a little sigh of satisfaction as he cuddled the butt into his shoulder, and saw that amazing target, the black man on the yellow ground, standing clear at the end of his foresight. For an instant he was rigid and motionless. Then his finger tightened on the trigger. There was a strange, loud whiz and a long, silvery tinkle of broken glass. At that instant Holmes sprang like a tiger on to the marksman's back, and hurled him flat upon his face. He was up again in a moment, and with convulsive strength he seized Holmes by the throat, but I struck him on the head with the butt of my revolver, and he dropped again upon the floor. I fell upon him, and as I held him my comrade blew a shrill call upon a whistle. There was the clatter of running feet upon the pavement, and two policemen in uniform, with one plain-clothes detective, rushed through the front entrance and into the room.\n\n\"That you, Lestrade?\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Holmes. I took the job myself. It's good to see you back in London, sir.\"\n\n\"I think you want a little unofficial help. Three undetected murders in one year won't do, Lestrade. But you handled the Molesey Mystery with less than your usual\u2014that's to say, you handled it fairly well.\"\n\nWe had all risen to our feet, our prisoner breathing hard, with a stalwart constable on each side of him. Already a few loiterers had begun to collect in the street. Holmes stepped up to the window, closed it, and dropped the blinds. Lestrade had produced two candles, and the policemen had uncovered their lanterns. I was able at last to have a good look at our prisoner.\n\nIt was a tremendously virile and yet sinister face which was turned towards us: With the brow of a philosopher above and the jaw of a sensualist below, the man must have started with great capacities for good or for evil. But one could not look upon his cruel blue eyes, with their drooping, cynical lids, or upon the fierce, aggressive nose and the threatening, deep-lined brow, without reading Nature's plainest danger-signals. He took no heed of any of us, but his eyes were fixed upon Holmes's face with an expression in which hatred and amazement were equally blended. \"You fiend!\" he kept on muttering. \"You clever, clever fiend!\"\n\n\"Ah, Colonel!\" said Holmes, arranging his rumpled collar. \" 'Journeys end in lovers' meetings,' as the old play says. I don't think I have had the pleasure of seeing you since you favoured me with those attentions as I lay on the ledge above the Reichenbach Fall.\"\n\nThe colonel still stared at my friend like a man in a trance. \"You cunning, cunning fiend!\" was all that he could say.\n\n\"I have not introduced you yet,\" said Holmes. \"This, gentlemen, is Colonel Sebastian Moran, once of Her Majesty's Indian Army, and the best heavy-game shot that our Eastern Empire has ever produced. I believe I am correct, Colonel, in saying that your bag of tigers still remains unrivalled?\"\n\nThe fierce old man said nothing, but still glared at my companion. With his savage eyes and bristling moustache he was wonderfully like a tiger himself.\n\n\"I wonder that my very simple stratagem could deceive so old a shikari,\" said Holmes. \"It must be very familiar to you. Have you not tethered a young kid under a tree, lain above it with your rifle, and waited for the bait to bring up your tiger? This empty house is my tree, and you are my tiger. You have possibly had other guns in reserve in case there should be several tigers, or in the unlikely supposition of your own aim failing you. These,\" he pointed around, \"are my other guns. The parallel is exact.\"\n\nColonel Moran sprang forward with a snarl of rage, but the constables dragged him back. The fury upon his face was terrible to look at.\n\n\"I confess that you had one small surprise for me,\" said Holmes. \"I did not anticipate that you would yourself make use of this empty house and this convenient front window. I had imagined you as operating from the street, where my friend Lestrade and his merry men were awaiting you. With that exception, all has gone as I expected.\"\n\nColonel Moran turned to the official detective.\n\n\"You may or may not have just cause for arresting me,\" said he, \"but at least there can be no reason why I should submit to the gibes of this person. If I am in the hands of the law, let things be done in a legal way.\"\n\n\"Well, that's reasonable enough,\" said Lestrade. \"Nothing further you have to say, Mr. Holmes, before we go?\"\n\nHolmes had picked up the powerful air-gun from the floor, and was examining its mechanism.\n\n\"An admirable and unique weapon,\" said he, \"noiseless and of tremendous power: I knew Von Herder, the blind German mechanic, who constructed it to the order of the late Professor Moriarty. For years I have been aware of its existence, though I have never before had the opportunity of handling it. I commend it very specially to your attention, Lestrade, and also the bullets which fit it.\"\n\n\"You can trust us to look after that, Mr. Holmes,\" said Lestrade, as the whole party moved towards the door. \"Anything further to say?\"\n\n\"Only to ask what charge you intend to prefer?\"\n\n\"What charge, sir? Why, of course, the attempted murder of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.\"\n\n\"Not so, Lestrade. I do not propose to appear in the matter at all. To you, and to you only, belongs the credit of the remarkable arrest which you have effected. Yes, Lestrade, I congratulate you! With your usual happy mixture of cunning and audacity, you have got him.\"\n\n\"Got him! Got whom, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"The man that the whole force has been seeking in vain\u2014Colonel Sebastian Moran, who shot the Honourable Ronald Adair with an expanding bullet from an air-gun through the open window of the second-floor front of No. 427 Park Lane, upon the thirtieth of last month. That's the charge, Lestrade. And now, Watson, if you can endure the draught from a broken window, I think that half an hour in my study over a cigar may afford you some profitable amusement.\"\n\nOur old chambers had been left unchanged through the supervision of Mycroft Holmes and the immediate care of Mrs. Hudson. As I entered I saw, it is true, an unwonted tidiness, but the old landmarks were all in their place. There were the chemical corner and the acid-stained, deal-topped table. There upon a shelf was the row of formidable scrap-books and books of reference which many of our fellow-citizens would have been so glad to burn. The diagrams, the violin-case, and the pipe-rack\u2014even the Persian slipper which contained the tobacco\u2014all met my eyes as I glanced round me. There were two occupants of the room\u2014one, Mrs. Hudson, who beamed upon us both as we entered\u2014the other, the strange dummy which had played so important a part in the evening's adventures. It was a wax-coloured model of my friend, so admirably done that it was a perfect facsimile. It stood on a small pedestal table with an old dressing-gown of Holmes's so draped round it that the illusion from the street was absolutely perfect.\n\n\"I hope you observed all precautions, Mrs. Hudson?\" said Holmes.\n\n\"I went to it on my knees, sir, just as you told me.\"\n\n\"Excellent. You carried the thing out very well. Did you observe where the bullet went?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. I'm afraid it has spoilt your beautiful bust, for it passed right through the head and flattened itself on the wall. I picked it up from the carpet. Here it is!\"\n\nHolmes held it out to me. \"A soft revolver bullet, as you perceive, Watson. There's genius in that, for who would expect to find such a thing fired from an air-gun? All right, Mrs. Hudson. I am much obliged for your assistance. And now, Watson, let me see you in your old seat once more, for there are several points which I should like to discuss with you.\"\n\nHe had thrown off the seedy frockcoat, and now he was the Holmes of old in the mouse-coloured dressing-gown which he took from his effigy.\n\n\"The old shikari's nerves have not lost their steadiness, nor his eyes their keenness,\" said he, with a laugh, as he inspected the shattered forehead of his bust.\n\n\"Plumb in the middle of the back of the head and smack through the brain. He was the best shot in India, and I expect that there are few better in London. Have you heard the name?\"\n\n\"No, I have not.\"\n\n\"Well, well, such is fame! But, then, if I remember right, you had not heard the name of Professor James Moriarty, who had one of the great brains of the century. Just give me down my index of biographies from the shelf.\"\n\nHe turned over the pages lazily, leaning back in his chair and blowing great clouds from his cigar.\n\n\"My collection of M's is a fine one,\" said he. \"Moriarty himself is enough to make any letter illustrious, and here is Morgan the poisoner, and Merridew of abominable memory, and Mathews; who knocked out my left canine in the waiting-room at Charing Cross, and, finally, here is our friend of to-night.\"\n\nHe handed over the book, and I read:\n\nMoran, Sebastian, Colonel. Unemployed. Formerly 1st Bangalore Pioneers. Born London, 1840. Son of Sir Augustus Moran, C.B., once British Minister to Persia. Educated Eton and Oxford. Served in Jowaki Campaign, Afghan Campaign, Charasiab (despatches), Sher pur, and Cabul. Author of Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas (1881); Three Months in the Jungle (1884). Address: Conduit Street. Clubs: The Anglo-Indian, the Tankerville, the Bagatelle Card Club.\n\nOn the margin was written, in Holmes's precise hand:\n\nThe second most dangerous man in London.\n\n\"This is astonishing,\" said I, as I handed back the volume. \"The man's career is that of an honourable soldier.\"\n\n\"It is true,\" Holmes answered. \"Up to a certain point he did well. He was always a man of iron nerve, and the story is still told in India how he crawled down a drain after a wounded man-eating tiger. There are some trees, Watson, which grow to a certain height, and then suddenly develop some unsightly eccentricity. You will see it often in humans. I have a theory that the individual represents in his development the whole procession of his ancestors, and that such a sudden turn to good or evil stands for some strong influence which came into the line of his pedigree. The person becomes, as it were, the epitome of the history of his own family.\"\n\n\"It is surely rather fanciful.\"\n\n\"Well, I don't insist upon it. Whatever the cause, Colonel Moran began to go wrong. Without any open scandal, he still made India too hot to hold him. He retired, came to London, and again acquired an evil name. It was at this time that he was sought out by Professor Moriarty, to whom for a time he was chief of the staff. Moriarty supplied him liberally with money, and used him only in one or two very high-class jobs, which no ordinary criminal could have undertaken. You may have some recollection of the death of Mrs. Stewart, of Lauder, in 1887. Not? Well, I am sure Moran was at the bottom of it, but nothing could be proved. So cleverly was the colonel concealed that, even when the Moriarty gang was broken up, we could not incriminate him. You remember at that date, when I called upon you in your rooms, how I put up the shutters for fear of air-guns? No doubt you thought me fanciful. I knew exactly what I was doing, for I knew of the existence of this remarkable gun, and I knew also that one of the best shots in the world would be behind it. When we were in Switzerland he followed us with Moriarty, and it was undoubtedly he who gave me that evil five minutes on the Reichenbach ledge.\n\n\"You may think that I read the papers with some attention during my sojourn in France, on the look-out for any chance of laying him by the heels. So long as he was free in London, my life would really not have been worth living. Night and day the shadow would have been over me, and sooner or later his chance must have come. What could I do? I could not shoot him at sight, or I should myself be in the dock. There was no use appealing to a magistrate. They cannot interfere on the strength of what would appear to them to be a wild suspicion. So I could do nothing. But I watched the criminal news, knowing that sooner or later I should get him. Then came the death of this Ronald Adair. My chance had come at last. Knowing what I did, was it not certain that Colonel Moran had done it? He had played cards with the lad, he had followed him home from the club, he had shot him through the open window. There was not a doubt of it. The bullets alone are enough to put his head in a noose. I came over at once. I was seen by the sentinel, who would, I knew, direct the colonel's attention to my presence. He could not fail to connect my sudden return with his crime, and to be terribly alarmed. I was sure that he would make an attempt to get me out of the way at once, and would bring round his murderous weapon for that purpose. I left him an excellent mark in the window, and, having warned the police that they might be needed\u2014by the way, Watson, you spotted their presence in that doorway with unerring accuracy\u2014I took up what seemed to me to be a judicious post for observation, never dreaming that he would choose the same spot for his attack. Now, my dear Watson, does anything remain for me to explain?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said I. \"You have not made it clear what was Colonel Moran's motive in murdering the Honourable Ronald Adair?\"\n\n\"Ah! my dear Watson, there we come into those realms of conjecture, where the most logical mind may be at fault. Each may form his own hypothesis upon the present evidence, and yours is as likely to be correct as mine.\"\n\n\"You have formed one, then?\"\n\n\"I think that it is not difficult to explain the facts. It came out in evidence that Colonel Moran and young Adair had, between them, won a considerable amount of money. Now, Moran undoubtedly played foul\u2014of that I have long been aware. I believe that on the day of the murder Adair had discovered that Moran was cheating. Very likely he had spoken to him privately, and had threatened to expose him unless he voluntarily resigned his membership of the club, and promised not to play cards again. It is unlikely that a youngster like Adair would at once make a hideous scandal by exposing a well known man so much older than himself. Probably he acted as I suggest. The exclusion from his clubs would mean ruin to Moran, who lived by his ill-gotten card-gains. He therefore murdered Adair, who at the time was endeavouring to work out how much money he should himself return, since he could not profit by his partner's foul play. He locked the door lest the ladies should surprise him and insist upon knowing what he was doing with these names and coins. Will it pass?\"\n\n\"I have no doubt that you have hit upon the truth.\"\n\n\"It will be verified or disproved at the trial. Meanwhile, come what may, Colonel Moran will trouble us no more. The famous air-gun of Von Herder will embellish the Scotland Yard Museum, and once again Mr. Sherlock Holmes is free to devote his life to examine those interesting little problems which the complex life of London so plentifully presents.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE NORWOOD BUILDER", + "text": "[ From the point of view of the criminal expert,\" said Mr. Sherlock ]\n\nHolmes, \"London has become a singularly uninteresting city since the death of the late lamented Professor Moriarty.\"\n\n\"I can hardly think that you would find many decent citizens to agree with you,\" I answered.\n\n\"Well, well, I must not be selfish,\" said he, with a smile, as he pushed back his chair from the breakfast-table. \"The community is certainly the gainer, and no one the loser, save the poor out-of-work specialist, whose occupation has gone. With that man in the field, one's morning paper presented infinite possibilities. Often it was only the smallest trace, Watson, the faintest indication, and yet it was enough to tell me that the great malignant brain was there, as the gentlest tremors of the edges of the web remind one of the foul spider which lurks in the centre. Petty thefts, wanton assaults, purposeless outrage\u2014to the man who held the clue all could be worked into one connected whole. To the scientific student of the higher criminal world, no capital in Europe offered the advantages which London then possessed. But now\u2014\" He shrugged his shoulders in humorous deprecation of the state of things which he had himself done so much to produce.\n\nAt the time of which I speak, Holmes had been back for some months, and I at his request had sold my practice and returned to share the old quarters in Baker Street. A young doctor, named Verner, had purchased my small Kensington practice, and given with astonishingly little demur the highest price that I ventured to ask\u2014an incident which only explained itself some years later, when I found that Verner was a distant relation of Holmes, and that it was my friend who had really found the money.\n\nOur months of partnership had not been so uneventful as he had stated, for I find, on looking over my notes, that this period includes the case of the papers of ex-President Murillo, and also the shocking affair of the Dutch steamship Friesland, which so nearly cost us both our lives. His cold and proud nature was always averse, however, from anything in the shape of public applause, and he bound me in the most stringent terms to say no further word of himself, his methods, or his successes\u2014a prohibition which, as I have explained, has only now been removed.\n\nMr. Sherlock Holmes was leaning back in his chair after his whimsical protest, and was unfolding his morning paper in a leisurely fashion, when our attention was arrested by a tremendous ring at the bell, followed immediately by a hollow drumming sound, as if someone were beating on the outer door with his fist. As it opened there came a tumultuous rush into the hall, rapid feet clattered up the stair, and an instant later a wild-eyed and frantic young man, pale, dishevelled, and palpitating, burst into the room. He looked from one to the other of us, and under our gaze of a inquiry he became conscious that some apology was needed for this unceremonious entry.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Mr. Holmes,\" he cried. \"You mustn't blame me. I am nearly mad. Mr. Holmes, I am the unhappy John Hector McFarlane.\"\n\nHe made the announcement as if the name alone would explain both his visit and its manner, but I could see, by my companion's unresponsive face, that it meant no more to him than to me.\n\n\"Have a cigarette, Mr. McFarlane,\" said he, pushing his case across. \"I am sure that, with your symptoms, my friend Dr. Watson here would prescribe a sedative. The weather has been so very warm these last few days. Now, if you feel a little more composed, I should be glad if you would sit down in that chair, and tell us very slowly and quietly who you are, and what it is that you want. You mentioned your name, as if I should recognize it, but I assure you that, beyond the obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a Freemason, and an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.\"\n\nFamiliar as I was with my friend's methods, it was not difficult for me to follow his deductions, and to observe the untidiness of attire, the sheaf of legal papers, the watch-charm, and the breathing which had prompted them. Our client, however, stared in amazement.\n\n\"Yes, I am all that, Mr. Holmes; and, in addition, I am the most unfortunate man at this moment in London. For heaven's sake, don't abandon me, Mr. Holmes! If they come to arrest me before I have finished my story, make them give me time, so that I may tell you the whole truth. I could go to jail happy if I knew that you were working for me outside.\"\n\n\"Arrest you!\" said Holmes. \"This is really most grati\u2014most interesting. On what charge do you expect to be arrested?\"\n\n\"Upon the charge of murdering Mr. Jonas Oldacre, of Lower Norwood.\"\n\nMy companion's expressive face showed a sympathy which was not, I am afraid, entirely unmixed with satisfaction.\n\n\"Dear me,\" said he, \"it was only this moment at breakfast that I was saying to my friend, Dr. Watson, that sensational cases had disappeared out of our papers.\"\n\nOur visitor stretched forward a quivering hand and picked up the Daily Telegraph, which still lay upon Holmes's knee.\n\n\"If you had looked at it, sir, you would have seen at a glance what the errand is on which I have come to you this morning. I feel as if my name and my misfortune must be in every man's mouth.\" He turned it over to expose the central page. \"Here it is, and with your permission I will read it to you. Listen to this, Mr. Holmes. The headlines are: 'Mysterious Affair at Lower Norwood. Disappearance of a Well Known Builder. Suspicion of Murder and Arson. A Clue to the Criminal.' That is the clue which they are already following, Mr. Holmes, and I know that it leads infallibly to me. I have been followed from London Bridge Station, and I am sure that they are only waiting for the warrant to arrest me. It will break my mother's heart\u2014it will break her heart!\" He wrung his hands in an agony of apprehension, and swayed backward and forward in his chair.\n\nI looked with interest upon this man, who was accused of being the perpetrator of a crime of violence. He was flaxen-haired and handsome, in a washed-out negative fashion, with frightened blue eyes, and a clean-shaven face, with a weak, sensitive mouth. His age may have been about twenty-seven, his dress and bearing that of a gentleman. From the pocket of his light summer overcoat protruded the bundle of endorsed papers which proclaimed his profession.\n\n\"We must use what time we have,\" said Holmes. \"Watson, would you have the kindness to take the paper and to read the paragraph in question?\"\n\nUnderneath the vigorous headlines which our client had quoted, I read the following suggestive narrative:\n\n\"Late last night, or early this morning, an incident occurred at Lower Norwood which points, it is feared, to a serious crime. Mr. Jonas Oldacre is a well known resident of that suburb, where he has carried on his business as a builder for many years. Mr. Oldacre is a bachelor, fifty-two years of age, and lives in Deep Dene House, at the Sydenham end of the road of that name. He has had the reputation of being a man of eccentric habits, secretive and retiring. For some years he has practically withdrawn from the business, in which he is said to have massed considerable wealth. A small timber-yard still exists, however, at the back of the house, and last night, about twelve o' clock, an alarm was given that one of the stacks was on fire. The engines were soon upon the spot, but the dry wood burned with great fury, and it was impossible to arrest the conflagration until the stack had been entirely consumed. Up to this point the incident bore the appearance of an ordinary accident, but fresh indications seem to point to serious crime. Surprise was expressed at the absence of the master of the establishment from the scene of the fire, and an inquiry followed, which showed that he had disappeared from the house. An examination of his room revealed that the bed had not been slept in, that a safe which stood in it was open, that a number of important papers were scattered about the room, and finally, that there were signs of a murderous struggle, slight traces of blood being found within the room, and an oaken walking-stick, which also showed stains of blood upon the handle. It is known that Mr. Jonas Oldacre had received a late visitor in his bedroom upon that night, and the stick found has been identified as the property of this person, who is a young London solicitor named John Hector McFarlane, junior partner of Graham and McFarlane, of 426 Gresham Buildings, E. C. The police believe that they have evidence in their possession which supplies a very convincing motive for the crime, and altogether it cannot be doubted that sensational developments will follow.\n\n\"LATER.\u2014It is rumoured as we go to press that Mr. John Hector McFarlane has actually been arrested on the charge of the murder of Mr. Jonas Oldacre. It is at least certain that a warrant has been issued. There have been further and sinister developments in the investigation at Norwood. Besides the signs of a struggle in the room of the unfortunate builder it is now known that the French windows of his bedroom (which is on the ground floor) were found to be open, that there were marks as if some bulky object had been dragged across to the wood-pile, and, finally, it is asserted that charred remains have been found among the charcoal ashes of the fire. The police theory is that a most sensational crime has been committed, that the victim was clubbed to death in his own bedroom, his papers rifled, and his dead body dragged across to the wood-stack, which was then ignited so as to hide all traces of the crime. The conduct of the criminal investigation has been left in the experienced hands of Inspector Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, who is following up the clues with his accustomed energy and sagacity.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes listened with closed eyes and fingertips together to this remarkable account.\n\n\"The case has certainly some points of interest,\" said he, in his languid fashion. \"May I ask, in the first place, Mr. McFarlane, how it is that you are still at liberty, since there appears to be enough evidence to justify your arrest?\"\n\n\"I live at Torrington Lodge, Blackheath, with my parents, Mr. Holmes, but last night, having to do business very late with Mr. Jonas Oldacre, I stayed at an hotel in Norwood, and came to my business from there. I knew nothing of this affair until I was in the train, when I read what you have just heard. I at once saw the horrible danger of my position, and I hurried to put the case into your hands. I have no doubt that I should have been arrested either at my city office or at my home. A man followed me from London Bridge Station, and I have no doubt\u2014Great heaven! what is that?\"\n\nIt was a clang of the bell, followed instantly by heavy steps upon the stair. A moment later, our old friend Lestrade appeared in the doorway. Over his shoulder I caught a glimpse of one or two uniformed policemen outside.\n\n\"Mr. John Hector McFarlane?\" said Lestrade.\n\nOur unfortunate client rose with a ghastly face.\n\n\"I arrest you for the wilful murder of Mr. Jonas Oldacre, of Lower Norwood.\"\n\nMcFarlane turned to us with a gesture of despair, and sank into his chair once more like one who is crushed.\n\n\"One moment, Lestrade,\" said Holmes. \"Half an hour more or less can make no difference to you, and the gentleman was about to give us an account of this very interesting affair, which might aid us in clearing it up.\"\n\n\"I think there will be no difficulty in clearing it up,\" said Lestrade, grimly.\n\n\"None the less, with your permission, I should be much interested to hear his account.\"\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes, it is difficult for me to refuse you anything, for you have been of use to the force once or twice in the past, and we owe you a good turn at Scotland Yard,\" said Lestrade. \"At the same time I must remain with my prisoner, and I am bound to warn him that anything he may say will appear in evidence against him.\"\n\n\"I wish nothing better,\" said our client. \"All I ask is that you should hear and recognize the absolute truth.\"\n\nLestrade looked at his watch. \"I'll give you half an hour,\" said he.\n\n\"I must explain first,\" said McFarlane. \"that I knew nothing of Mr. Jonas Oldacre. His name was familiar to me, for many years ago my parents were acquainted with him, but they drifted apart. I was very much surprised, therefore, when yesterday, about three o'clock in the afternoon, he walked into my office in the city. But I was still more astonished when he told me the object of his visit. He had in his hand several sheets of a notebook, covered with scribbled writing\u2014here they are\u2014and he laid them on my table.\n\n\"'Here is my will,' said he. 'I want you, Mr. McFarlane, to cast it into proper legal shape. I will sit here while you do so.'\n\n\"I set myself to copy it, and you can imagine my astonishment when I found that, with some reservations, he had left all his property to me. He was a strange little ferret-like man, with white eyelashes, and when I looked up at him I found his keen gray eyes fixed upon me with an amused expression. I could hardly believe my own senses as I read the terms of the will; but he explained that he was a bachelor with hardly any living relation, that he had known my parents in his youth, and that he had always heard of me as a very deserving young man, and was assured that his money would be in worthy hands. Of course, I could only stammer out my thanks. The will was duly finished, signed, and witnessed by my clerk. This is it on the blue paper, and these slips, as I have explained, are the rough draft. Mr. Jonas Oldacre then informed me that there were a number of documents\u2014building leases, title-deeds, mortgages, scrip, and so forth\u2014which it was necessary that I should see and understand. He said that his mind would not be easy until the whole thing was settled, and he begged me to come out to his house at Norwood that night, bringing the will with me, and to arrange matters. 'Remember, my boy, not one word to your parents about the affair until everything is settled. We will keep it as a little surprise for them.' He was very insistent upon this point, and made me promise it faithfully.\n\n\"You can imagine, Mr. Holmes, that I was not in a humour to refuse him anything that he might ask. He was my benefactor, and all my desire was to carry out his wishes in every particular. I sent a telegram home, therefore, to say that I had important business on hand, and that it was impossible for me to say how late I might be. Mr. Oldacre had told me that he would like me to have supper with him at nine, as he might not be home before that hour. I had some difficulty in finding his house, however, and it was nearly half-past before I reached it. I found him\u2014\"\n\n\"One moment!\" said Holmes. \"Who opened the door?\"\n\n\"A middle-aged woman, who was, I suppose, his housekeeper.\"\n\n\"And it was she, I presume, who mentioned your name?\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said McFarlane.\n\n\"Pray proceed.\"\n\nMcFarlane wiped his damp brow, and then continued his narrative:\n\n\"I was shown by this woman into a sitting-room, where a frugal supper was laid out. Afterwards, Mr. Jonas Oldacre led me into his bedroom, in which there stood a heavy safe. This he opened and took out a mass of documents, which we went over together. It was between eleven and twelve when we finished. He remarked that we must not disturb the housekeeper. He showed me out through his own French window, which had been open all this time.\"\n\n\"Was the blind down?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"I will not be sure, but I believe that it was only half down. Yes, I remember how he pulled it up in order to swing open the window. I could not find my stick, and he said, 'Never mind, my boy, I shall see a good deal of you now, I hope, and I will keep your stick until you come back to claim it.' I left him there, the safe open, and the papers made up in packets upon the table. It was so late that I could not get back to Blackheath, so I spent the night at the Anerley Arms, and I knew nothing more until I read of this horrible affair in the morning.\"\n\n\"Anything more that you would like to ask, Mr. Holmes?\" said Lestrade, whose eyebrows had gone up once or twice during this remarkable explanation.\n\n\"Not until I have been to Blackheath.\"\n\n\"You mean to Norwood,\" said Lestrade.\n\n\"Oh, yes, no doubt that is what I must have meant,\" said Holmes, with his enigmatical smile. Lestrade had learned by more experiences than he would care to acknowledge that that razor-like brain could cut through that which was impenetrable to him. I saw him look curiously at my companion.\n\n\"I think I should like to have a word with you presently, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,\" said he. \"Now, Mr. McFarlane, two of my constables are at the door, and there is a four-wheeler waiting.\" The wretched young man arose, and with a last beseeching glance at us walked from the room. The officers conducted him to the cab, but Lestrade remained.\n\nHolmes had picked up the pages which formed the rough draft of the will, and was looking at them with the keenest interest upon his face.\n\n\"There are some points about that document, Lestrade, are there not?\" said he, pushing them over.\n\nThe official looked at them with a puzzled expression.\n\n\"I can read the first few lines, and these in the middle of the second page, and one or two at the end. Those are as clear as print,\" said he, \"but the writing in between is very bad, and there are three places where I cannot read it at all.\"\n\n\"What do you make of that?\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Well, what do you make of it?\"\n\n\"That it was written in a train. The good writing represents stations, the bad writing movement, and the very bad writing passing over points. A scientific expert would pronounce at once that this was drawn up on a suburban line, since nowhere save in the immediate vicinity of a great city could there be so quick a succession of points. Granting that his whole journey was occupied in drawing up the will, then the train was an express, only stopping once between Norwood and London Bridge.\"\n\nLestrade began to laugh.\n\n\"You are too much for me when you begin to get on your theories, Mr. Holmes,\" said he. \"How does this bear on the case?\"\n\n\"Well, it corroborates the young man's story to the extent that the will was drawn up by Jonas Oldacre in his journey yesterday. It is curious\u2014is it not?\u2014that a man should draw up so important a document in so haphazard a fashion. It suggests that he did not think it was going to be of much practical importance. If a man drew up a will which he did not intend ever to be effective, he might do it so.\"\n\n\"Well, he drew up his own death warrant at the same time,\" said Lestrade.\n\n\"Oh, you think so?\"\n\n\"Don't you?\"\n\n\"Well, it is quite possible, but the case is not clear to me yet.\"\n\n\"Not clear? Well, if that isn't clear, what could be clear? Here is a young man who learns suddenly that, if a certain older man dies, he will succeed to a fortune. What does he do? He says nothing to anyone, but he arranges that he shall go out on some pretext to see his client that night. He waits until the only other person in the house is in bed, and then in the solitude of a man's room he murders him, burns his body in the wood-pile, and departs to a neighbouring hotel. The blood-stains in the room and also on the stick are very slight. It is probable that he imagined his crime to be a bloodless one, and hoped that if the body were consumed it would hide all traces of the method of his death\u2014traces which, for some reason, must have pointed to him. Is not all this obvious?\"\n\n\"It strikes me, my good Lestrade, as being just a trifle too obvious,\" said Holmes. \"You do not add imagination to your other great qualities, but if you could for one moment put yourself in the place of this young man, would you choose the very night after the will had been made to commit your crime? Would it not seem dangerous to you to make so very close a relation between the two incidents? Again, would you choose an occasion when you are known to be in the house, when a servant has let you in? And, finally, would you take the great pains to conceal the body, and yet leave your own stick as a sign that you were the criminal? Confess, Lestrade, that all this is very unlikely.\"\n\n\"As to the stick, Mr. Holmes, you know as well as I do that a criminal is often flurried, and does such things, which a cool man would avoid. He was very likely afraid to go back to the room. Give me another theory that would fit the facts.\"\n\n\"I could very easily give you half a dozen,\" said Holmes. \"Here, for example, is a very possible and even probable one. I make you a free present of it. The older man is showing documents which are of evident value. A passing tramp sees them through the window, the blind of which is only half down. Exit the solicitor. Enter the tramp! He seizes a stick, which he observes there, kills Oldacre, and departs after burning the body.\"\n\n\"Why should the tramp burn the body?\"\n\n\"For the matter of that, why should McFarlane?\"\n\n\"To hide some evidence.\"\n\n\"Possibly the tramp wanted to hide that any murder at all had been committed.\"\n\n\"And why did the tramp take nothing?\"\n\n\"Because they were papers that he could not negotiate.\"\n\nLestrade shook his head, though it seemed to me that his manner was less absolutely assured than before.\n\n\"Well, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, you may look for your tramp, and while you are finding him we will hold on to our man. The future will show which is right. Just notice this point, Mr. Holmes: that so far as we know, none of the papers were removed, and that the prisoner is the one man in the world who had no reason for removing them, since he was heir-at-law, and would come into them in any case.\"\n\nMy friend seemed struck by this remark.\n\n\"I don't mean to deny that the evidence is in some ways very strongly in favour of your theory,\" said he. \"I only wish to point out that there are other theories possible. As you say, the future will decide. Good-morning! I dare say that in the course of the day I shall drop in at Norwood and see how you are getting on.\"\n\nWhen the detective departed, my friend rose and made his preparations for the day's work with the alert air of a man who has a congenial task before him.\n\n\"My first movement, Watson,\" said he, as he bustled into his frock coat, \"must, as I said, be in the direction of Blackheath.\"\n\n\"And why not Norwood?\"\n\n\"Because we have in this case one singular incident coming close to the heels of another singular incident. The police are making the mistake of concentrating their attention upon the second, because it happens to be the one which is actually criminal. But it is evident to me that the logical way to approach the case is to begin by trying to throw some light upon the first incident\u2014the curious will, so suddenly made, and to so unexpected an heir. It may do something to simplify what followed. No, my dear fellow, I don't think you can help me. There is no prospect of danger, or I should not dream of stirring out without you. I trust that when I see you in the evening, I will be able to report that I have been able to do something for this unfortunate youngster, who has thrown himself upon my protection.\"\n\nIt was late when my friend returned, and I could see, by a glance at his haggard and anxious face, that the high hopes with which he had started had not been fulfilled. For an hour he droned away upon his violin, endeavouring to soothe his own ruffled spirits. At last he flung down the instrument, and plunged into a detailed account of his misadventures.\n\n\"It's all going wrong, Watson\u2014all as wrong as it can go. I kept a bold face before Lestrade, but, upon my soul, I believe that for once the fellow is on the right track and we are on the wrong. All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over Lestrade's facts.\"\n\n\"Did you go to Blackheath?\"\n\n\"Yes, Watson, I went there, and I found very quickly that the late lamented Oldacre was a pretty considerable blackguard. The father was away in search of his son. The mother was at home\u2014a little, fluffy, blue-eyed person, in a tremor of fear and indignation. Of course, she would not admit even the possibility of his guilt. But she would not express either surprise or regret over the fate of Oldacre. On the contrary, she spoke of him with such bitterness that she was unconsciously considerably strengthening the case of the police for, of course, if her son had heard her speak of the man in this fashion, it would predispose him towards hatred and violence. 'He was more like a malignant and cunning ape than a human being,' said she, 'and he always was, ever since he was a young man.'\n\n\"'You knew him at that time?' said I.\n\n\"'Yes, I knew him well, in fact, he was an old suitor of mine. Thank heaven that I had the sense to turn away from him and to marry a better, if poorer, man. I was engaged to him, Mr. Holmes, when I heard a shocking story of how he had turned a cat loose in an aviary, and I was so horrified at his brutal cruelty that I would have nothing more to do with him.' She rummaged in a bureau, and presently she produced a photograph of a woman, shamefully defaced and mutilated with a knife. 'That is my own photograph,' she said. 'He sent it to me in that state, with his curse, upon my wedding morning.'\n\n\"'Well,' said I, 'at least he has forgiven you now, since he has left all his property to your son.'\n\n\"'Neither my son nor I want anything from Jonas Oldacre, dead or alive!' she cried, with a proper spirit. 'There is a God in heaven, Mr. Holmes, and that same God who has punished that wicked man will show, in His own good time, that my son's hands are guiltless of his blood.'\n\n\"Well, I tried one or two leads, but could get at nothing which would help our hypothesis, and several points which would make against it. I gave it up at last, and off I went to Norwood.\n\n\"This place, Deep Dene House, is a big modern villa of staring brick, standing back in its own grounds, with a laurel-clumped lawn in front of it. To the right and some distance back from the road was the timber-yard which had been the scene of the fire. Here's a rough plan on a leaf of my notebook. This window on the left is the one which opens into Oldacre's room. You can look into it from the road, you see. That is about the only bit of consolation I have had to-day. Lestrade was not there, but his head constable did the honours. They had just found a great treasure-trove. They had spent the morning raking among the ashes of the burned wood-pile, and besides the charred organic remains they had secured several discoloured metal discs. I examined them with care, and there was no doubt that they were trouser buttons. I even distinguished that one of them was marked with the name of 'Hyams,' who was Oldacre's tailor. I then worked the lawn very carefully for signs and traces, but this drought has made everything as hard as iron. Nothing was to be seen save that some body or bundle had been dragged through a low privet hedge which is in a line with the wood-pile. All that, of course, fits in with the official theory. I crawled about the lawn with an August sun on my back. but I got up at the end of an hour no wiser than before.\n\n\"Well, after this fiasco I went into the bedroom and examined that also. The blood-stains were very slight, mere smears and discolourations, but undoubtedly fresh. The stick had been removed, but there also the marks were slight. There is no doubt about the stick belonging to our client. He admits it. Footmarks of both men could be made out on the carpet, but none of any third person, which again is a trick for the other side. They were piling up their score all the time and we were at a standstill.\n\n\"Only one little gleam of hope did I get\u2014and yet it amounted to nothing. I examined the contents of the safe, most of which had been taken out and left on the table. The papers had been made up into sealed envelopes, one or two of which had been opened by the police. They were not, so far as I could judge, of any great value, nor did the bank-book show that Mr. Oldacre was in such very affluent circumstances. But it seemed to me that all the papers were not there. There were allusions to some deeds\u2014possibly the more valuable\u2014which I could not find. This, of course, if we could definitely prove it, would turn Lestrade's argument against himself; for who would steal a thing if he knew that he would shortly inherit it?\n\n\"Finally, having drawn every other cover and picked up no scent, I tried my luck with the housekeeper. Mrs. Lexington is her name\u2014a little, dark, silent person, with suspicious and sidelong eyes. She could tell us something if she would\u2014I am convinced of it. But she was as close as wax. Yes, she had let Mr. McFarlane in at half-past nine. She wished her hand had withered before she had done so. She had gone to bed at half-past ten. Her room was at the other end of the house, and she could hear nothing of what passed. Mr. McFarlane had left his hat, and to the best of her belief his stick, in the hall. She had been awakened by the alarm of fire. Her poor, dear master had certainly been murdered. Had he any enemies? Well, every man had enemies, but Mr. Oldacre kept himself very much to himself, and only met people in the way of business. She had seen the buttons, and was sure that they belonged to the clothes which he had worn last night. The wood-pile was very dry, for it had not rained for a month. It burned like tinder, and by the time she reached the spot, nothing could be seen but flames. She and all the firemen smelled the burned flesh from inside it. She knew nothing of the papers, nor of Mr. Oldacre's private affairs.\n\n\"So, my dear Watson, there's my report of a failure. And yet\u2014and yet\u2014\" he clenched his thin hands in a paroxysm of conviction\u2014\"I know it's all wrong. I feel it in my bones. There is something that has not come out, and that housekeeper knows it. There was a sort of sulky defiance in her eyes, which only goes with guilty knowledge. However, there's no good talking any more about it, Watson; but unless some lucky chance comes our way I fear that the Norwood Disappearance Case will not figure in that chronicle of our successes which I foresee that a patient public will sooner or later have to endure.\"\n\n\"Surely.\" said I, \"the man's appearance would go far with any jury?\"\n\n\"That is a dangerous argument, my dear Watson. You remember that terrible murderer, Bert Stevens, who wanted us to get him off in '87? Was there ever a more mild-mannered, Sunday-school young man?\"\n\n\"It is true.\"\n\n\"Unless we succeed in establishing an alternative theory, this man is lost. You can hardly find a flaw in the case which can now be presented against him, and all further investigation has served to strengthen it. By the way, there is one curious little point about those papers which may serve us as the starting-point for an inquiry. On looking over the bank book I found that the low state of the balance was principally due to large checks which have been made out during the last year to Mr. Cornelius. I confess that I should be interested to know who this Mr. Cornelius may be with whom a retired builder has had such very large transactions. Is it possible that he has had a hand in the affair? Cornelius might be a broker, but we have found no scrip to correspond with these large payments. Failing any other indication, my researches must now take the direction of an inquiry at the bank for the gentleman who has cashed these checks. But I fear, my dear fellow, that our case will end ingloriously by Lestrade hanging our client, which will certainly be a triumph for Scotland Yard.\"\n\nI do not know how far Sherlock Holmes took any sleep that night, but when I came down to breakfast I found him pale and harassed, his bright eyes the brighter for the dark shadows round them. The carpet round his chair was littered with cigarette-ends and with the early editions of the morning papers. An open telegram lay upon the table.\n\n\"What do you think of this, Watson?\" he asked, tossing it across.\n\nIt was from Norwood, and ran as follows:\n\nImportant fresh evidence to hand. McFarlane's guilt definitely established. Advise you to abandon case.\n\nLESTRADE.\n\n\"This sounds serious,\" said I.\n\n\"It is Lestrade's little cock-a-doodle of victory,\" Holmes answered; with a bitter smile. \"And yet it may be premature to abandon the case. After all, important fresh evidence is a two-edged thing, and may possibly cut in a very different direction to that which Lestrade imagines. Take your breakfast, Watson, and we will go out together and see what we can do. I feel as if I shall need your company and your moral support to-day.\"\n\nMy friend had no breakfast himself, for it was one of his peculiarities that in his more intense moments he would permit himself no food, and I have known him presume upon his iron strength until he has fainted from pure inanition. \"At present I cannot spare energy and nerve force for digestion,\" he would say in answer to my medical remonstrances. I was not surprised, therefore, when this morning he left his untouched meal behind him, and started with me for Norwood. A crowd of morbid sightseers were still gathered round Deep Dene House, which was just such a suburban villa as I had pictured. Within the gates Lestrade met us, his face flushed with victory, his manner grossly triumphant.\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes, have you proved us to be wrong yet? Have you found your tramp?\" he cried.\n\n\"I have formed no conclusion whatever,\" my companion answered.\n\n\"But we formed ours yesterday, and now it proves to be correct, so you must acknowledge that we have been a little in front of you this time, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"You certainly have the air of something unusual having occurred,\" said Holmes.\n\nLestrade laughed loudly.\n\n\"You don't like being beaten any more than the rest of us do,\" said he. \"A man can't expect always to have it his own way, can he, Dr. Watson? Step this way, if you please, gentlemen, and I think I can convince you once for all that it was John McFarlane who did this crime.\"\n\nHe led us through the passage and out into a dark hall beyond.\n\n\"This is where young McFarlane must have come out to get his hat after the crime was done,\" said he. \"Now look at this.\" With dramatic suddenness he struck a match, and by its light exposed a stain of blood upon the whitewashed wall. As he held the match nearer, I saw that it was more than a stain. It was the well-marked print of a thumb.\n\n\"Look at that with your magnifying glass, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"Yes, I am doing so.\"\n\n\"You are aware that no two thumbmarks are alike?\"\n\n\"I have heard something of the kind.\"\n\n\"Well, then, will you please compare that print with this wax impression of young McFarlane's right thumb, taken by my orders this morning?\"\n\nAs he held the waxen print close to the blood-stain, it did not take a magnifying glass to see that the two were undoubtedly from the same thumb. It was evident to me that our unfortunate client was lost.\n\n\"That is final,\" said Lestrade.\n\n\"Yes, that is final,\" I involuntarily echoed.\n\n\"It is final,\" said Holmes.\n\nSomething in his tone caught my ear, and I turned to look at him. An extraordinary change had come over his face. It was writhing with inward merriment. His two eyes were shining like stars. It seemed to me that he was making desperate efforts to restrain a convulsive attack of laughter.\n\n\"Dear me! Dear me!\" he said at last. \"Well, now, who would have thought it? And how deceptive appearances may be, to be sure! Such a nice young man to look at! It is a lesson to us not to trust our own judgment, is it not, Lestrade?\"\n\n\"Yes, some of us are a little too much inclined to be cock-sure, Mr. Holmes,\" said Lestrade. The man's insolence was maddening, but we could not resent it.\n\n\"What a providential thing that this young man should press his right thumb against the wall in taking his hat from the peg! Such a very natural action, too, if you come to think if it.\" Holmes was outwardly calm, but his whole body gave a wriggle of suppressed excitement as he spoke.\n\n\"By the way, Lestrade, who made this remarkable discovery?\"\n\n\"It was the housekeeper, Mrs. Lexington, who drew the night constable's attention to it.\"\n\n\"Where was the night constable?\"\n\n\"He remained on guard in the bedroom where the crime was committed, so as to see that nothing was touched.\"\n\n\"But why didn't the police see this mark yesterday?\"\n\n\"Well, we had no particular reason to make a careful examination of the hall. Besides, it's not in a very prominent place, as you see.\"\n\n\"No, no\u2014of course not. I suppose there is no doubt that the mark was there yesterday?\"\n\nLestrade looked at Holmes as if he thought he was going out of his mind. I confess that I was myself surprised both at his hilarious manner and at his rather wild observation.\n\n\"I don't know whether you think that McFarlane came out of jail in the dead of the night in order to strengthen the evidence against himself,\" said Lestrade. \"I leave it to any expert in the world whether that is not the mark of his thumb.\"\n\n\"It is unquestionably the mark of his thumb.\"\n\n\"There, that's enough.\" said Lestrade. \"I am a practical man, Mr. Holmes, and when I have got my evidence I come to my conclusions. If you have anything to say, you will find me writing my report in the sitting-room.\"\n\nHolmes had recovered his equanimity, though I still seemed to detect gleams of amusement in his expression.\n\n\"Dear me, this is a very sad development, Watson, is it not?\" said he. \"And yet there are singular points about it which hold out some hopes for our client.\"\n\n\"I am delighted to hear it,\" said I, heartily. \"I was afraid it was all up with him.\"\n\n\"I would hardly go so far as to say that, my dear Watson. The fact is that there is one really serious flaw in this evidence to which our friend attaches so much importance.\"\n\n\"Indeed, Holmes! What is it?\"\n\n\"Only this: that I know that that mark was not there when I examined the hall yesterday. And now, Watson, let us have a little stroll round in the sunshine.\"\n\nWith a confused brain, but with a heart into which some warmth of hope was returning, I accompanied my friend in a walk round the garden. Holmes took each face of the house in turn, and examined it with great interest. He then led the way inside, and went over the whole building from basement to attic. Most of the rooms were unfurnished, but none the less Holmes inspected them all minutely. Finally, on the top corridor, which ran outside three untenanted bedrooms, he again was seized with a spasm of merriment.\n\n\"There are really some very unique features about this case, Watson,\" said he. \"I think it is time now that we took our friend Lestrade into our confidence. He has had his little smile at our expense, and perhaps we may do as much by him, if my reading of this problem proves to be correct. Yes, yes, I think I see how we should approach it.\"\n\nThe Scotland Yard inspector was still writing in the parlour when Holmes interrupted him.\n\n\"I understood that you were writing a report of this case\" said he.\n\n\"So I am.\"\n\n\"Don't you think it may be a little premature? I can't help thinking that your evidence is not complete.\"\n\nLestrade knew my friend too well to disregard his words. He laid down his pen and looked curiously at him.\n\n\"What do you mean, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Only that there is an important witness whom you have not seen.\"\n\n\"Can you produce him?\"\n\n\"I think I can.\"\n\n\"Then do so.\"\n\n\"I will do my best. How many constables have you?\"\n\n\"There are three within call.\"\n\n\"Excellent!\" said Holmes. \"May I ask if they are all large, able-bodied men with powerful voices?\"\n\n\"I have no doubt they are, though I fail to see what their voices have to do with it.\"\n\n\"Perhaps I can help you to see that and one or two other things as well,\" said Holmes. \"Kindly summon your men, and I will try.\"\n\nFive minutes later, three policemen had assembled in the hall.\n\n\"In the outhouse you will find a considerable quantity of straw,\" said Holmes. \"I will ask you to carry in two bundles of it. I think it will be of the greatest assistance in producing the witness whom I require. Thank you very much. I believe you have some matches in your pocket, Watson. Now, Mr. Lestrade, I will ask you all to accompany me to the top landing.\"\n\nAs I have said, there was a broad corridor there, which ran outside three empty bedrooms. At one end of the corridor we were all marshalled by Sherlock Holmes, the constables grinning and Lestrade staring at my friend with amazement, expectation, and derision chasing each other across his features. Holmes stood before us with the air of a conjurer who is performing a trick.\n\n\"Would you kindly send one of your constables for two buckets of water? Put the straw on the floor here, free from the wall on either side. Now I think that we are all ready.\"\n\nLestrade's face had begun to grow red and angry.\n\n\"I don't know whether you are playing a game with us, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,\" said he. \"If you know anything, you can surely say it without all this tomfoolery.\"\n\n\"I assure you, my good Lestrade, that I have an excellent reason for everything that I do. You may possibly remember that you chaffed me a little, some hours ago, when the sun seemed on your side of the hedge, so you must not grudge me a little pomp and ceremony now. Might I ask you, Watson, to open that window, and then to put a match to the edge of the straw?\"\n\nI did so, and driven by the draught, a coil of gray smoke swirled down the corridor, while the dry straw crackled and flamed.\n\n\"Now we must see if we can find this witness for you, Lestrade. Might I ask you all to join in the cry of 'Fire!'? Now then; one, two, three\u2014\"\n\n\"Fire!\" we all yelled.\n\n\"Thank you. I will trouble you once again.\"\n\n\"Fire!\"\n\n\"Just once more, gentlemen, and all together.\"\n\n\"Fire!\" The shout must have rung over Norwood.\n\nIt had hardly died away when an amazing thing happened. A door suddenly flew open out of what appeared to be solid wall at the end of the corridor, and a little, wizened man darted out of it, like a rabbit out of its burrow.\n\n\"Capital!\" said Holmes, calmly. \"Watson, a bucket of water over the straw. That will do! Lestrade, allow me to present you with your principal missing witness, Mr. Jonas Oldacre.\"\n\nThe detective stared at the newcomer with blank amazement. The latter was blinking in the bright light of the corridor, and peering at us and at the smouldering fire. It was an odious face\u2014crafty, vicious, malignant, with shifty, light-gray eyes and white lashes.\n\n\"What's this, then?\" said Lestrade, at last. \"What have you been doing all this time, eh?\"\n\nOldacre gave an uneasy laugh; shrinking back from the furious red face of the angry detective.\n\n\"I have done no harm.\"\n\n\"No harm? You have done your best to get an innocent man hanged. If it wasn't for this gentleman here, I am not sure that you would not have succeeded.\"\n\nThe wretched creature began to whimper.\n\n\"I am sure, sir, it was only my practical joke.\"\n\n\"Oh! a joke, was it? You won't find the laugh on your side. I promise you. Take him down, and keep him in the sitting-room until I come. Mr. Holmes,\" he continued, when they had gone, \"I could not speak before the constables, but I don't mind saying, in the presence of Dr. Watson, that this is the brightest thing that you have done yet, though it is a mystery to me how you did it. You have saved an innocent man's life, and you have prevented a very grave scandal, which would have ruined my reputation in the Force.\"\n\nHolmes smiled, and clapped Lestrade upon the shoulder.\n\n\"Instead of being ruined, my good sir, you will find that your reputation has been enormously enhanced. Just make a few alterations in that report which you were writing, and they will understand how hard it is to throw dust in the eyes of Inspector Lestrade.\"\n\n\"And you don't want your name to appear?\"\n\n\"Not at all. The work is its own reward. Perhaps I shall get the credit also at some distant day, when I permit my zealous historian to lay out his foolscap once more\u2014eh, Watson? Well, now, let us see where this rat has been lurking.\"\n\nA lath-and-plaster partition had been run across the passage six feet from the end, with a door cunningly concealed in it. It was lit within by slits under the eaves. A few articles of furniture and a supply of food and water were within, together with a number of books and papers.\n\n\"There's the advantage of being a builder,\" said Holmes, as we came out. \"He was able to fix up his own little hiding-place without any confederate\u2014save, of course, that precious housekeeper of his, whom I should lose no time in adding to your bag, Lestrade.\"\n\n\"I'll take your advice. But how did you know of this place, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"I made up my mind that the fellow was in hiding in the house. When I paced one corridor and found it six feet shorter than the corresponding one below, it was pretty clear where he was. I thought he had not the nerve to lie quiet before an alarm of fire. We could, of course, have gone in and taken him, but it amused me to make him reveal himself. Besides, I owed you a little mystification, Lestrade, for your chaff in the morning.\"\n\n\"Well, sir, you certainly got equal with me on that. But how in the world did you know that he was in the house at all?\"\n\n\"The thumbmark, Lestrade. You said it was final; and so it was, in a very different sense. I knew it had not been there the day before. I pay a good deal of attention to matters of detail, as you may have observed, and I had examined the hall, and was sure that the wall was clear. Therefore, it had been put on during the night.\"\n\n\"But how?\"\n\n\"Very simply. When those packets were sealed up, Jonas Oldacre got McFarlane to secure one of the seals by putting his thumb upon the soft wax. It would be done so quickly and so naturally, that I daresay the young man himself has no recollection of it. Very likely it just so happened, and Oldacre had himself no notion of the use he would put it to. Brooding over the case in that den of his, it suddenly struck him what absolutely damning evidence he could make against McFarlane by using that thumbmark. It was the simplest thing in the world for him to take a wax impression from the seal, to moisten it in as much blood as he could get from a pin-prick, and to put the mark upon the wall during the night, either with his own hand or with that of his housekeeper. If you examine among those documents which he took with him into his retreat, I will lay you a wager that you find the seal with the thumbmark upon it.\"\n\n\"Wonderful!\" said Lestrade. \"Wonderful! It's all as clear as crystal, as you put it. But what is the object of this deep deception, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\nIt was amusing to me to see how the detective's overbearing manner had changed suddenly to that of a child asking questions of its teacher.\n\n\"Well, I don't think that is very hard to explain. A very deep, malicious, vindictive person is the gentleman who is now waiting for us downstairs. You know that he was once refused by McFarlane's mother? You don't! I told you that you should go to Blackheath first and Norwood afterwards. Well, this injury, as he would consider it, has rankled in his wicked, scheming brain, and all his life he has longed for vengeance, but never seen his chance. During the last year or two, things have gone against him\u2014secret speculation, I think\u2014and he finds himself in a bad way. He determines to swindle his creditors, and for this purpose he pays large checks to a certain Mr. Cornelius, who is, I imagine, himself under another name. I have not traced these checks yet, but I have no doubt that they were banked under that name at some provincial town where Oldacre from time to time led a double existence. He intended to change his name altogether, draw this money, and vanish, starting life again elsewhere.\n\n\"Well, that's likely enough.\"\n\n\"It would strike him that in disappearing he might throw all pursuit off his track, and at the same time have an ample and crushing revenge upon his old sweetheart, if he could give the impression that he had been murdered by her only child. It was a masterpiece of villainy, and he carried it out like a master. The idea of the will, which would give an obvious motive for the crime, the secret visit unknown to his own parents, the retention of the stick, the blood, and the animal remains and buttons in the wood-pile, all were admirable. It was a net from which it seemed to me, a few hours ago, that there was no possible escape. But he had not that supreme gift of the artist, the knowledge of when to stop. He wished to improve that which was already perfect\u2014to draw the rope tighter yet round the neck of his unfortunate victim\u2014and so he ruined all. Let us descend, Lestrade. There are just one or two questions that I would ask him.\"\n\nThe malignant creature was seated in his own parlour, with a policeman upon each side of him.\n\n\"It was a joke, my good sir\u2014a practical joke, nothing more,\" he whined incessantly. \"I assure you, sir, that I simply concealed myself in order to see the effect of my disappearance, and I am sure that you would not be so unjust as to imagine that I would have allowed any harm to befall poor young Mr. McFarlane.\"\n\n\"That's for a jury to decide,\" said Lestrade. \"Anyhow, we shall have you on a charge of conspiracy, if not for attempted murder.\"\n\n\"And you'll probably find that your creditors will impound the banking account of Mr. Cornelius,\" said Holmes.\n\nThe little man started, and turned his malignant eyes upon my friend.\n\n\"I have to thank you for a good deal,\" said he. \"Perhaps I'll pay my debt some day.\"\n\nHolmes smiled indulgently.\n\n\"I fancy that, for some few years, you will find your time very fully occupied,\" said he. \"By the way, what was it you put into the wood-pile besides your old trousers? A dead dog, or rabbits, or what? You won't tell? Dear me, how very unkind of you! Well, well, I daresay that a couple of rabbits would account both for the blood and for the charred ashes. If ever you write an account, Watson, you can make rabbits serve your turn.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE DANCING MEN", + "text": "Holmes had been seated for some hours in silence with his long, thin back curved over a chemical vessel in which he was brewing a particularly malodorous product. His head was sunk upon his breast, and he looked from my point of view like a strange, lank bird, with dull gray plumage and a black top-knot.\n\n\"So, Watson,\" said he, suddenly, \"you do not propose to invest in South African securities?\"\n\nI gave a start of astonishment. Accustomed as I was to Holmes's curious faculties, this sudden intrusion into my most intimate thoughts was utterly inexplicable.\n\n\"How on earth do you know that?\" I asked.\n\nHe wheeled round upon his stool, with a steaming test-tube in his hand, and a gleam of amusement in his deep-set eyes.\n\n\"Now, Watson, confess yourself utterly taken aback,\" said he.\n\n\"I am.\"\n\n\"I ought to make you sign a paper to that effect.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because in five minutes you will say that it is all so absurdly simple.\"\n\n\"I am sure that I shall say nothing of the kind.\"\n\n\"You see, my dear Watson\"\u2014he propped his test-tube in the rack, and began to lecture with the air of a professor addressing his class\u2014\"it is not really difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor and each simple in itself. If, after doing so, one simply knocks out all the central inferences and presents one's audience with the starting-point and the conclusion, one may produce a startling, though possibly a meretricious, effect. Now, it was not really difficult, by an inspection of the groove between your left forefinger and thumb, to feel sure that you did not propose to invest your small capital in the gold fields.\"\n\n\"I see no connection.\"\n\n\"Very likely not; but I can quickly show you a close connection. Here are the missing links of the very simple chain: 1. You had chalk between your left finger and thumb when you returned from the club last night. 2. You put chalk there when you play billiards, to steady the cue. 3. You never play billiards except with Thurston. 4. You told me, four weeks ago, that Thurston had an option on some South African property which would expire in a month, and which he desired you to share with him. 5. Your check book is locked in my drawer, and you have not asked for the key. 6. You do not propose to invest your money in this manner.\"\n\n\"How absurdly simple!\" I cried.\n\n\"Quite so!\" said he, a little nettled. \"Every problem becomes very childish when once it is explained to you. Here is an unexplained one. See what you can make of that, friend Watson.\" He tossed a sheet of paper upon the table, and turned once more to his chemical analysis.\n\nI looked with amazement at the absurd hieroglyphics upon the paper.\n\n\"Why, Holmes, it is a child's drawing,\" I cried.\n\n\"Oh, that's your idea!\"\n\n\"What else should it be?\"\n\n\"That is what Mr. Hilton Cubitt, of Riding Thorpe Manor, Norfolk, is very anxious to know. This little conundrum came by the first post, and he was to follow by the next train. There's a ring at the bell, Watson. I should not be very much surprised if this were he.\"\n\nA heavy step was heard upon the stairs, and an instant later there entered a tall, ruddy, clean-shaven gentleman, whose clear eyes and florid cheeks told of a life led far from the fogs of Baker Street. He seemed to bring a whiff of his strong, fresh, bracing, east-coast air with him as he entered. Having shaken hands with each of us, he was about to sit down, when his eye rested upon the paper with the curious markings, which I had just examined and left upon the table.\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes, what do you make of these?\" he cried. \"They told me that you were fond of queer mysteries, and I don't think you can find a queerer one than that. I sent the paper on ahead, so that you might have time to study it before I came.\"\n\n\"It is certainly rather a curious production,\" said Holmes. \"At first sight it would appear to be some childish prank. It consists of a number of absurd little figures dancing across the paper upon which they are drawn. Why should you attribute any importance to so grotesque an object?\"\n\n\"I never should, Mr. Holmes. But my wife does. It is frightening her to death. She says nothing, but I can see terror in her eyes. That's why I want to sift the matter to the bottom.\"\n\nHolmes held up the paper so that the sunlight shone full upon it. It was a page torn from a notebook. The markings were done in pencil, and ran in this way:\n\nHolmes examined it for some time, and then, folding it carefully up, he placed it in his pocketbook.\n\n\"This promises to be a most interesting and unusual case,\" said he. \"You gave me a few particulars in your letter, Mr. Hilton Cubitt, but I should be very much obliged if you would kindly go over it all again for the benefit of my friend, Dr. Watson.\"\n\n\"I'm not much of a story-teller,\" said our visitor, nervously clasping and unclasping his great, strong hands. \"You'll just ask me anything that I don't make clear. I'll begin at the time of my marriage last year, but I want to say first of all that, though I'm not a rich man, my people have been at Riding Thorpe for a matter of five centuries, and there is no better known family in the County of Norfolk. Last year I came up to London for the Jubilee, and I stopped at a boardinghouse in Russell Square, because Parker, the vicar of our parish, was staying in it. There was an American young lady there\u2014Patrick was the name\u2014Elsie Patrick. In some way we became friends, until before my month was up I was as much in love as man could be. We were quietly married at a registry office, and we returned to Norfolk a wedded couple. You'll think it very mad, Mr. Holmes, that a man of a good old family should marry a wife in this fashion, knowing nothing of her past or of her people, but if you saw her and knew her, it would help you to understand.\n\n\"She was very straight about it, was Elsie. I can't say that she did not give me every chance of getting out of it if I wished to do so. 'I have had some very disagreeable associations in my life,' said she, 'I wish to forget all about them. I would rather never allude to the past, for it is very painful to me. If you take me, Hilton, you will take a woman who has nothing that she need be personally ashamed of; but you will have to be content with my word for it, and to allow me to be silent as to all that passed up to the time when I became yours. If these conditions are too hard, then go back to Norfolk, and leave me to the lonely life in which you found me.' It was only the day before our wedding that she said those very words to me. I told her that I was content to take her on her own terms, and I have been as good as my word.\n\n\"Well, we have been married now for a year, and very happy we have been. But about a month ago, at the end of June, I saw for the first time signs of trouble. One day my wife received a letter from America. I saw the American stamp. She turned deadly white, read the letter, and threw it into the fire. She made no allusion to it afterwards, and I made none, for a promise is a promise, but she has never known an easy hour from that moment. There is always a look of fear upon her face\u2014a look as if she were waiting and expecting. She would do better to trust me. She would find that I was her best friend. But until she speaks, I can say nothing. Mind you, she is a truthful woman, Mr. Holmes, and whatever trouble there may have been in her past life it has been no fault of hers. I am only a simple Norfolk squire, but there is not a man in England who ranks his family honour more highly than I do. She knows it well, and she knew it well before she married me. She would never bring any stain upon it\u2014of that I am sure.\n\n\"Well, now I come to the queer part of my story. About a week ago\u2014it was the Tuesday of last week\u2014I found on one of the window-sills a number of absurd little dancing figures like these upon the paper. They were scrawled with chalk. I thought that it was the stable-boy who had drawn them, but the lad swore he knew nothing about it. Anyhow, they had come there during the night. I had them washed out, and I only mentioned the matter to my wife afterwards. To my surprise, she took it very seriously, and begged me if any more came to let her see them. None did come for a week, and then yesterday morning I found this paper lying on the sundial in the garden. I showed it to Elsie, and down she dropped in a dead faint. Since then she has looked like a woman in a dream, half dazed, and with terror always lurking in her eyes. It was then that I wrote and sent the paper to you, Mr. Holmes. It was not a thing that I could take to the police, for they would have laughed at me, but you will tell me what to do. I am not a rich man, but if there is any danger threatening my little woman, I would spend my last copper to shield her.\"\n\nHe was a fine creature, this man of the old English soil\u2014simple, straight, and gentle, with his great, earnest blue eyes and broad, comely face. His love for his wife and his trust in her shone in his features. Holmes had listened to his story with the utmost attention, and now he sat for some time in silent thought.\n\n\"Don't you think, Mr. Cubitt,\" said he, at last, \"that your best plan would be to make a direct appeal to your wife, and to ask her to share her secret with you?\"\n\nHilton Cubitt shook his massive head.\n\n\"A promise is a promise, Mr. Holmes. If Elsie wished to tell me she would. If not, it is not for me to force her confidence. But I am justified in taking my own line\u2014and I will.\"\n\n\"Then I will help you with all my heart. In the first place, have you heard of any strangers being seen in your neighbourhood?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"I presume that it is a very quiet place. Any fresh face would cause comment?\"\n\n\"In the immediate neighbourhood, yes. But we have several small watering-places not very far away. And the farmers take in lodgers.\"\n\n\"These hieroglyphics have evidently a meaning. If it is a purely arbitrary one, it may be impossible for us to solve it. If, on the other hand, it is systematic, I have no doubt that we shall get to the bottom of it. But this particular sample is so short that I can do nothing, and the facts which you have brought me are so indefinite that we have no basis for an investigation. I would suggest that you return to Norfolk, that you keep a keen lookout, and that you take an exact copy of any fresh dancing men which may appear. It is a thousand pities that we have not a reproduction of those which were done in chalk upon the window-sill. Make a discreet inquiry also as to any strangers in the neighbourhood. When you have collected some fresh evidence, come to me again. That is the best advice which I can give you, Mr. Hilton Cubitt. If there are any pressing fresh developments, I shall be always ready to run down and see you in your Norfolk home.\"\n\nThe interview left Sherlock Holmes very thoughtful, and several times in the next few days I saw him take his slip of paper from his notebook and look long and earnestly at the curious figures inscribed upon it. He made no allusion to the affair, however, until one afternoon a fortnight or so later. I was going out when he called me back.\n\n\"You had better stay here, Watson.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because I had a wire from Hilton Cubitt this morning. You remember Hilton Cubitt, of the dancing men? He was to reach Liverpool Street at one-twenty. He may be here at any moment. I gather from his wire that there have been some new incidents of importance.\"\n\nWe had not long to wait, for our Norfolk squire came straight from the station as fast as a hansom could bring him. He was looking worried and depressed, with tired eyes and a lined forehead.\n\n\"It's getting on my nerves, this business, Mr. Holmes,\" said he, as he sank, like a wearied man, into an armchair. \"It's bad enough to feel that you are surrounded by unseen, unknown folk, who have some kind of design upon you, but when, in addition to that, you know that it is just killing your wife by inches, then it becomes as much as flesh and blood can endure. She's wearing away under it\u2014just wearing away before my eyes.\"\n\n\"Has she said anything yet?\"\n\n\"No, Mr. Holmes, she has not. And yet there have been times when the poor girl has wanted to speak, and yet could not quite bring herself to take the plunge. I have tried to help her, but I daresay I did it clumsily, and scared her from it. She has spoken about my old family, and our reputation in the county, and our pride in our unsullied honour, and I always felt it was leading to the point, but somehow it turned off before we got there.\"\n\n\"But you have found out something for yourself?\"\n\n\"A good deal, Mr. Holmes. I have several fresh dancing-men pictures for you to examine, and, what is more important, I have seen the fellow.\"\n\n\"What, the man who draws them?\"\n\n\"Yes, I saw him at his work. But I will tell you everything in order. When I got back after my visit to you, the very first thing I saw next morning was a fresh crop of dancing men. They had been drawn in chalk upon the black wooden door of the tool-house, which stands beside the lawn in full view of the front windows. I took an exact copy, and here it is.\" He unfolded a paper and laid it upon the table. Here is a copy of the hieroglyphics:\n\n\"Excellent!\" said Holmes. \"Excellent! Pray continue.\"\n\n\"When I had taken the copy, I rubbed out the marks, but, two mornings later, a fresh inscription had appeared. I have a copy of it here\":\n\nHolmes rubbed his hands and chuckled with delight.\n\n\"Our material is rapidly accumulating,\" said he.\n\n\"Three days later a message was left scrawled upon paper, and placed under a pebble upon the sundial. Here it is. The characters are, as you see, exactly the same as the last one. After that I determined to lie in wait, so I got out my revolver and I sat up in my study, which overlooks the lawn and garden. About two in the morning I was seated by the window, all being dark save for the moonlight outside, when I heard steps behind me, and there was my wife in her dressing-gown. She implored me to come to bed. I told her frankly that I wished to see who it was who played such absurd tricks upon us. She answered that it was some senseless practical joke, and that I should not take any notice of it.\n\n\"'If it really annoys you, Hilton, we might go and travel, you and I, and so avoid this nuisance.'\n\n\"'What, be driven out of our own house by a practical joker?' said I. 'Why, we should have the whole county laughing at us.'\n\n\"'Well, come to bed,' said she, 'and we can discuss it in the morning.'\n\n\"Suddenly, as she spoke, I saw her white face grow whiter yet in the moonlight, and her hand tightened upon my shoulder. Something was moving in the shadow of the tool-house. I saw a dark, creeping figure which crawled round the corner and squatted in front of the door. Seizing my pistol, I was rushing out, when my wife threw her arms round me and held me with convulsive strength. I tried to throw her off, but she clung to me most desperately. At last I got clear, but by the time I had opened the door and reached the house the creature was gone. He had left a trace of his presence, however, for there on the door was the very same arrangement of dancing men which had already twice appeared, and which I have copied on that paper. There was no other sign of the fellow anywhere, though I ran all over the grounds. And yet the amazing thing is that he must have been there all the time, for when I examined the door again in the morning, he had scrawled some more of his pictures under the line which I had already seen.\"\n\n\"Have you that fresh drawing?\"\n\n\"Yes, it is very short, but I made a copy of it, and here it is.\" Again he produced a paper. The new dance was in this form:\n\n\"Tell me,\" said Holmes\u2014and could see by his eyes that he was much excited\u2014\"was this a mere addition to the first or did it appear to be entirely separate?\"\n\n\"It was on a different panel of the door.\"\n\n\"Excellent! This is by far the most important of all for our purpose. It fills me with hopes. Now, Mr. Hilton Cubitt, please continue your most interesting statement.\"\n\n\"I have nothing more to say, Mr. Holmes, except that I was angry with my wife that night for having held me back when I might have caught the skulking rascal. She said that she feared that I might come to harm. For an instant it had crossed my mind that perhaps what she really feared was that he might come to harm, for I could not doubt that she knew who this man was, and what he meant by these strange signals. But there is a tone in my wife's voice, Mr. Holmes, and a look in her eyes which forbid doubt, and I am sure that it was indeed my own safety that was in her mind. There's the whole case, and now I want your advice as to what I ought to do. My own inclination is to put half a dozen of my farm lads in the shrubbery, and when this fellow comes again to give him such a hiding that he will leave us in peace for the future.\"\n\n\"I fear it is too deep a case for such simple remedies,\" said Holmes. \"How long can you stay in London?\"\n\n\"I must go back today. I would not leave my wife alone all night for anything. She is very nervous, and begged me to come back.\"\n\n\"I daresay you are right. But if you could have stopped, I might possibly have been able to return with you in a day or two. Meanwhile you will leave me these papers, and I think that it is very likely that I shall be able to pay you a visit shortly and to throw some light upon your case.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes preserved his calm professional manner until our visitor had left us, although it was easy for me, who knew him so well, to see that he was profoundly excited. The moment that Hilton Cubitt's broad back had disappeared through the door my comrade rushed to the table, laid out all the slips of paper containing dancing men in front of him, and threw himself into an intricate and elaborate calculation. For two hours I watched him as he covered sheet after sheet of paper with figures and letters, so completely absorbed in his task that he had evidently forgotten my presence. Sometimes he was making progress and whistled and sang at his work; sometimes he was puzzled, and would sit for long spells with a furrowed brow and a vacant eye. Finally he sprang from his chair with a cry of satisfaction, and walked up and down the room rubbing his hands together. Then he wrote a long telegram upon a cable form. \"If my answer to this is as I hope, you will have a very pretty case to add to your collection, Watson,\" said he. \"I expect that we shall be able to go down to Norfolk tomorrow, and to take our friend some very definite news as to the secret of his annoyance.\"\n\nI confess that I was filled with curiosity, but I was aware that Holmes liked to make his disclosures at his own time and in his own way, so I waited until it should suit him to take me into his confidence.\n\nBut there was a delay in that answering telegram, and two days of impatience followed, during which Holmes pricked up his ears at every ring of the bell. On the evening of the second there came a letter from Hilton Cubitt. All was quiet with him, save that a long inscription had appeared that morning upon the pedestal of the sundial. He inclosed a copy of it, which is here reproduced:\n\nHolmes bent over this grotesque frieze for some minutes, and then suddenly sprang to his feet with an exclamation of surprise and dismay. His face was haggard with anxiety.\n\n\"We have let this affair go far enough,\" said he. \"Is there a train to North Walsham to-night?\"\n\nI turned up the time-table. The last had just gone. \"Then we shall breakfast early and take the very first in the morning,\" said Holmes. \"Our presence is most urgently needed. Ah! here is our expected cablegram. One moment, Mrs. Hudson, there may be an answer. No, that is quite as I expected. This message makes it even more essential that we should not lose an hour in letting Hilton Cubitt know how matters stand, for it is a singular and a dangerous web in which our simple Norfolk squire is entangled.\"\n\nSo, indeed, it proved, and as I come to the dark conclusion of a story which had seemed to me to be only childish and bizarre, I experience once again the dismay and horror with which I was filled. Would that I had some brighter ending to communicate to my readers, but these are the chronicles of fact, and I must follow to their dark crisis the strange chain of events which for some days made Riding Thorpe Manor a household word through the length and breadth of England.\n\nWe had hardly alighted at North Walsham, and mentioned the name of our destination, when the stationmaster hurried towards us. \"I suppose that you are the detectives from London?\" said he.\n\nA look of annoyance passed over Holmes's face.\n\n\"What makes you think such a thing?\"\n\n\"Because Inspector Martin from Norwich has just passed through. But maybe you are the surgeons. She's not dead\u2014or wasn't by last accounts. You may be in time to save her yet\u2014though it be for the gallows.\"\n\nHolmes's brow was dark with anxiety.\n\n\"We are going to Riding Thorpe Manor,\" said he, \"but we have heard nothing of what has passed there.\"\n\n\"It's a terrible business,\" said the stationmaster. \"They are shot, both Mr. Hilton Cubitt and his wife. She shot him and then herself\u2014so the servants say. He's dead and her life is despaired of. Dear, dear, one of the oldest families in the county of Norfolk, and one of the most honoured.\"\n\nWithout a word Holmes hurried to a carriage, and during the long seven miles' drive he never opened his mouth. Seldom have I seen him so utterly despondent. He had been uneasy during all our journey from town, and I had observed that he had turned over the morning papers with anxious attention, but now this sudden realization of his worst fears left him in a blank melancholy. He leaned back in his seat, lost in gloomy speculation. Yet there was much around to interest us, for we were passing through as singular a countryside as any in England, where a few scattered cottages represented the population of to-day, while on every hand enormous square-towered churches bristled up from the flat green landscape and told of the glory and prosperity of old East Anglia. At last the violet rim of the German Ocean appeared over the green edge of the Norfolk coast, and the driver pointed with his whip to two old brick and timber gables which projected from a grove of trees. \"That's Riding Thorpe Manor,\" said he.\n\nAs we drove up to the porticoed front door, I observed in front of it, beside the tennis lawn, the black tool-house and the pedestalled sundial with which we had such strange associations. A dapper little man, with a quick, alert manner and a waxed moustache, had just descended from a high dog-cart. He introduced himself as Inspector Martin, of the Norfolk Constabulary, and he was considerably astonished when he heard the name of my companion.\n\n\"Why, Mr. Holmes, the crime was only committed at three this morning. How could you hear of it in London and get to the spot as soon as I?\"\n\n\"I anticipated it. I came in the hope of preventing it.\"\n\n\"Then you must have important evidence, of which we are ignorant, for they were said to be a most united couple.\"\n\n\"I have only the evidence of the dancing men,\" said Holmes. \"I will explain the matter to you later. Meanwhile, since it is too late to prevent this tragedy, I am very anxious that I should use the knowledge which I possess in order to insure that justice be done. Will you associate me in your investigation, or will you prefer that I should act independently?\"\n\n\"I should be proud to feel that we were acting together, Mr. Holmes,\" said the inspector, earnestly.\n\n\"In that case I should be glad to hear the evidence and to examine the premises without an instant of unnecessary delay.\"\n\nInspector Martin had the good sense to allow my friend to do things in his own fashion, and contented himself with carefully noting the results. The local surgeon, an old, white-haired man, had just come down from Mrs. Hilton Cubitt's room, and he reported that her injuries were serious, but not necessarily fatal. The bullet had passed through the front of her brain, and it would probably be some time before she could regain consciousness. On the question of whether she had been shot or had shot herself, he would not venture to express any decided opinion. Certainly the bullet had been discharged at very close quarters. There was only the one pistol found in the room, two barrels of which had been emptied. Mr. Hilton Cubitt had been shot through the heart. It was equally conceivable that he had shot her and then himself, or that she had been the criminal, for the revolver lay upon the floor midway between them.\n\n\"Has he been moved?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"We have moved nothing except the lady. We could not leave her lying wounded upon the floor.\"\n\n\"How long have you been here, Doctor?\"\n\n\"Since four o'clock.\"\n\n\"Anyone else?\"\n\n\"Yes, the constable here.\"\n\n\"And you have touched nothing?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"You have acted with great discretion. Who sent for you?\"\n\n\"The housemaid, Saunders.\"\n\n\"Was it she who gave the alarm?\"\n\n\"She and Mrs. King, the cook.\"\n\n\"Where are they now?\"\n\n\"In the kitchen, I believe.\"\n\n\"Then I think we had better hear their story at once.\"\n\nThe old hall, oak-panelled and high-windowed, had been turned into a court of investigation. Holmes sat in a great, old-fashioned chair, his inexorable eyes gleaming out of his haggard face. I could read in them a set purpose to devote his life to this quest until the client whom he had failed to save should at last be avenged. The trim Inspector Martin, the old, gray-headed country doctor, myself, and a stolid village policeman made up the rest of that strange company.\n\nThe two women told their story clearly enough. They had been aroused from their sleep by the sound of an explosion, which had been followed a minute later by a second one. They slept in adjoining rooms, and Mrs. King had rushed in to Saunders. Together they had descended the stairs. The door of the study was open, and a candle was burning upon the table. Their master lay upon his face in the centre of the room. He was quite dead. Near the window his wife was crouching, her head leaning against the wall. She was horribly wounded, and the side of her face was red with blood. She breathed heavily, but was incapable of saying anything. The passage, as well as the room, was full of smoke and the smell of powder. The window was certainly shut and fastened upon the inside. Both women were positive upon the point. They had at once sent for the doctor and for the constable. Then, with the aid of the groom and the stable-boy, they had conveyed their injured mistress to her room. Both she and her husband had occupied the bed. She was clad in her dress\u2014he in his dressing-gown, over his night clothes. Nothing had been moved in the study. So far as they knew, there had never been any quarrel between husband and wife. They had always looked upon them as a very united couple.\n\nThese were the main points of the servants' evidence. In answer to Inspector Martin, they were clear that every door was fastened upon the inside, and that no one could have escaped from the house. In answer to Holmes, they both remembered that they were conscious of the smell of powder from the moment that they ran out of their rooms upon the top floor. \"I commend that fact very carefully to your attention,\" said Holmes to his professional colleague. \"And now I think that we are in a position to undertake a thorough examination of the room.\"\n\nThe study proved to be a small chamber, lined on three sides with books, and with a writing-table facing an ordinary window, which looked out upon the garden. Our first attention was given to the body of the unfortunate squire, whose huge frame lay stretched across the room. His disordered dress showed that he had been hastily aroused from sleep. The bullet had been fired at him from the front, and had remained in his body, after penetrating the heart. His death had certainly been instantaneous and painless. There was no powder-marking either upon his dressing-gown or on his hands. According to the country surgeon, the lady had stains upon her face, but none upon her hand.\n\n\"The absence of the latter means nothing, though its presence may mean everything,\" said Holmes. \"Unless the powder from a badly fitting cartridge happens to spurt backward, one may fire many shots without leaving a sign. I would suggest that Mr. Cubitt's body may now be removed. I suppose, Doctor, you have not recovered the bullet which wounded the lady?\"\n\n\"A serious operation will be necessary before that can be done. But there are still four cartridges in the revolver. Two have been fired and two wounds inflicted, so that each bullet can be accounted for.\"\n\n\"So it would seem,\" said Holmes. \"Perhaps you can account also for the bullet which has so obviously struck the edge of the window?\"\n\nHe had turned suddenly, and his long, thin finger was pointing to a hole which had been drilled right through the lower windowsash, about an inch above the bottom.\n\n\"By George!\" cried the inspector. \"How ever did you see that?\"\n\n\"Because I looked for it.\"\n\n\"Wonderful!\" said the country doctor. \"You are certainly right, sir. Then a third shot has been fired, and therefore a third person must have been present. But who could that have been, and how could he have got away?\"\n\n\"That is the problem which we are now about to solve,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"You remember, Inspector Martin, when the servants said that on leaving their room they were at once conscious of a smell of powder, I remarked that the point was an extremely important one?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir; but I confess I did not quite follow you.\"\n\n\"It suggested that at the time of the firing, the window as well as the door of the room had been open. Otherwise the fumes of powder could not have been blown so rapidly through the house. A draught in the room was necessary for that. Both door and window were only open for a very short time, however.\"\n\n\"How do you prove that?\"\n\n\"Because the candle was not guttered.\"\n\n\"Capital!\" cried the inspector. \"Capital!\"\n\n\"Feeling sure that the window had been open at the time of the tragedy, I conceived that there might have been a third person in the affair, who stood outside this opening and fired through it. Any shot directed at this person might hit the sash. I looked, and there, sure enough, was the bullet mark!\"\n\n\"But how came the window to be shut and fastened?\"\n\n\"The woman's first instinct would be to shut and fasten the window. But, halloa! what is this?\"\n\nIt was a lady's handbag which stood upon the study table\u2014a trim little handbag of crocodile-skin and silver. Holmes opened it and turned the contents out. There were twenty fifty-pound notes of the Bank of England, held together by an india-rubber band\u2014nothing else.\n\n\"This must be preserved, for it will figure in the trial,\" said Holmes, as he handed the bag with its contents to the inspector. \"It is now necessary that we should try to throw some light upon this third bullet, which has clearly, from the splintering of the wood, been fired from inside the room. I should like to see Mrs. King, the cook, again. You said, Mrs. King, that you were awakened by a loud explosion. When you said that, did you mean that it seemed to you to be louder than the second one?\"\n\n\"Well, sir, it wakened me from my sleep, so it is hard to judge. But it did seem very loud.\"\n\n\"You don't think that it might have been two shots fired almost at the same instant?\"\n\n\"I am sure I couldn't say, sir.\"\n\n\"I believe that it was undoubtedly so. I rather think, Inspector Martin, that we have now exhausted all that this room can teach us. If you will kindly step round with me, we shall see what fresh evidence the garden has to offer.\"\n\nA flower-bed extended up to the study window, and we all broke into an exclamation as we approached it. The flowers were trampled down, and the soft soil was imprinted all over with footmarks. Large, masculine feet they were, with peculiarly long, sharp toes. Holmes hunted about among the grass and leaves like a retriever after a wounded bird. Then, with a cry of satisfaction, he bent forward and picked up a little brazen cylinder.\n\n\"I thought so,\" said he; \"the revolver had an ejector, and here is the third cartridge. I really think, Inspector Martin, that our case is almost complete.\"\n\nThe country inspector's face had shown his intense amazement at the rapid and masterful progress of Holmes's investigation. At first he had shown some disposition to assert his own position, but now he was overcome with admiration, and ready to follow without question wherever Holmes led.\n\n\"Whom do you suspect?\" he asked.\n\n\"I'll go into that later. There are several points in this problem which I have not been able to explain to you yet. Now that I have got so far, I had best proceed on my own lines, and then clear the whole matter up once and for all.\"\n\n\"Just as you wish, Mr. Holmes, so long as we get our man.\"\n\n\"I have no desire to make mysteries, but it is impossible at the moment of action to enter into long and complex explanations. I have the threads of this affair all in my hand. Even if this lady should never recover consciousness, we can still reconstruct the events of last night, and insure that justice be done. First of all, I wish to know whether there is any inn in this neighbourhood known as 'Elrige's'?\"\n\nThe servants were cross-questioned, but none of them had heard of such a place. The stable-boy threw a light upon the matter by remembering that a farmer of that name lived some miles off, in the direction of East Ruston.\n\n\"Is it a lonely farm?\"\n\n\"Very lonely, sir.\"\n\n\"Perhaps they have not heard yet of all that happened here during the night?\"\n\n\"Maybe not, sir.\"\n\nHolmes thought for a little, and then a curious smile played over his face.\n\n\"Saddle a horse, my lad,\" said he. \"I shall wish you to take a note to Elrige's Farm.\"\n\nHe took from his pocket the various slips of the dancing men. With these in front of him he worked for some time at the study-table. Finally he handed a note to the boy, with directions to put it into the hands of the person to whom it was addressed, and especially to answer no questions of any sort which might be put to him. I saw the outside of the note, addressed in straggling, irregular characters, very unlike Holmes's usual precise hand. It was consigned to Mr. Abe Slaney, Elrige's Farm, East Ruston, Norfolk.\n\n\"I think, Inspector,\" Holmes remarked, \"that you would do well to telegraph for an escort, as, if my calculations prove to be correct, you may have a particularly dangerous prisoner to convey to the county jail. The boy who takes this note could no doubt forward your telegram. If there is an afternoon train to town, Watson, I think we should do well to take it, as I have a chemical analysis of some interest to finish, and this investigation draws rapidly to a close.\"\n\nWhen the youth had been dispatched with the note, Sherlock Holmes gave his instructions to the servants. If any visitor were to call asking for Mrs. Hilton Cubitt, no information should be given as to her condition, but he was to be shown at once into the drawing-room. He impressed these points upon them with the utmost earnestness. Finally he led the way into the drawing-room, with the remark that the business was now out of our hands, and that we must while away the time as best we might until we could see what was in store for us. The doctor had departed to his patients and only the inspector and myself remained.\n\n\"I think that I can help you to pass an hour in an interesting and profitable manner,\" said Holmes, drawing his chair up to the table, and spreading out in front of him the various papers upon which were recorded the antics of the dancing men. \"As to you, friend Watson, I owe you every atonement for having allowed your natural curiosity to remain so long unsatisfied. To you, Inspector, the whole incident may appeal as a remarkable professional study. I must tell you, first of all, the interesting circumstances connected with the previous consultations which Mr. Hilton Cubitt has had with me in Baker Street.\" He then shortly recapitulated the facts which have already been recorded. \"I have here in front of me these singular productions, at which one might smile, had they not proved themselves to be the forerunners of so terrible a tragedy. I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret writings, and am myself the author of a trifling monograph upon the subject, in which I analyze one hundred and sixty separate ciphers, but I confess that this is entirely new to me. The object of those who invented the system has apparently been to conceal that these characters convey a message, and to give the idea that they are the mere random sketches of children.\n\n\"Having once recognized, however, that the symbols stood for letters, and having applied the rules which guide us in all forms of secret writings, the solution was easy enough. The first message submitted to me was so short that it was impossible for me to do more than to say, with some confidence, that the symbolstood for E. As you are aware, E is the most common letter in the English alphabet, and it predominates to so marked an extent that even in a short sentence one would expect to find it most often. Out of fifteen symbols in the first message, four were the same, so it was reasonable to set this down as E. It is true that in some cases the figure was bearing a flag, and in some cases not, but it was probable, from the way in which the flags were distributed, that they were used to break the sentence up into words. I accepted this as a hypothesis, and noted that E was represented by.\n\n\"But now came the real difficulty of the inquiry. The order of the English letters after E is by no means well marked, and any preponderance which may be shown in an average of a printed sheet may be reversed in a single short sentence. Speaking roughly, T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R, D, and L are the numerical order in which letters occur; but T, A, O, and I are very nearly abreast of each other, and it would be an endless task to try each combination until a meaning was arrived at. I therefore waited for fresh material. In my second interview with Mr. Hilton Cubitt he was able to give me two other short sentences and one message, which appeared\u2014since there was no flag\u2014to be a single word. Here are the symbols. Now, in the single word I have already got the two E's coming second and fourth in a word of five letters. It might be 'sever,' or 'lever,' or 'never.' There can be no question that the latter as a reply to an appeal is far the most probable, and the circumstances pointed to its being a reply written by the lady. Accepting it as correct, we are now able to say that the symbolsstand respectively for N, V, and R.\n\n\"Even now I was in considerable difficulty, but a happy thought put me in possession of several other letters. It occurred to me that if these appeals came, as I expected, from someone who had been intimate with the lady in her early life, a combination which contained two E's with three letters between might very well stand for the name 'ELSIE.' On examination I found that such a combination formed the termination of the message which was three times repeated. It was certainly some appeal to 'Elsie.' In this way I had got my L, S, and I. But what appeal could it be? There were only four letters in the word which preceded 'Elsie,' and it ended in E. Surely the word must be 'COME.' I tried all other four letters ending in E, but could find none to fit the case. So now I was in possession of C, O, and M, and I was in a position to attack the first message once more, dividing it into words and putting dots for each symbol which was still unknown. So treated, it worked out in this fashion:\n\n. M . ERE .. E SL . NE.\n\n\"Now the first letter can only be A, which is a most useful discovery, since it occurs no fewer than three times in this short sentence, and the H is also apparent in the second word. Now it becomes:\n\nAM HERE A. E SLANE.\n\nOr, filling in the obvious vacancies in the name:\n\nAM HERE ABE SLANEY.\n\nI had so many letters now that I could proceed with considerable confidence to the second message, which worked out in this fashion:\n\nA . ELRI . ES.\n\nHere I could only make sense by putting T and G for the missing letters, and supposing that the name was that of some house or inn at which the writer was staying.\"\n\nInspector Martin and I had listened with the utmost interest to the full and clear account of how my friend had produced results which had led to so complete a command over our difficulties.\n\n\"What did you do then, sir?\" asked the inspector.\n\n\"I had every reason to suppose that this Abe Slaney was an American, since Abe is an American contraction, and since a letter from America had been the starting-point of all the trouble. I had also every cause to think that there was some criminal secret in the matter. The lady's allusions to her past, and her refusal to take her husband into her confidence, both pointed in that direction. I therefore cabled to my friend, Wilson Hargreave, of the New York Police Bureau, who has more than once made use of my knowledge of London crime. I asked him whether the name of Abe Slaney was known to him. Here is his reply: 'The most dangerous crook in Chicago.' On the very evening upon which I had his answer, Hilton Cubitt sent me the last message from Slaney. Working with known letters, it took this form:\n\nELSIE . RE . ARE TO MEET THY GO.\n\nThe addition of a P and a D completed a message which showed me that the rascal was proceeding from persuasion to threats, and my knowledge of the crooks of Chicago prepared me to find that he might very rapidly put his words into action. I at once came to Norfolk with my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson, but, unhappily, only in time to find that the worst had already occurred.\"\n\n\"It is a privilege to be associated with you in the handling of a case,\" said the inspector, warmly. \"You will excuse me, however, if I speak frankly to you. You are only answerable to yourself, but I have to answer to my superiors. If this Abe Slaney, living at Elrige's, is indeed the murderer, and if he has made his escape while I am seated here, I should certainly get into serious trouble.\"\n\n\"You need not be uneasy. He will not try to escape.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"To fly would be a confession of guilt.\"\n\n\"Then let us go to arrest him.\"\n\n\"I expect him here every instant.\"\n\n\"But why should he come?\"\n\n\"Because I have written, and asked him.\"\n\n\"But this is incredible, Mr. Holmes! Why should he come because you have asked him? Would not such a request rather rouse his suspicions and cause him to fly?\"\n\n\"I think I have known how to frame the letter,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"In fact, if I am not very much mistaken, here is the gentleman himself coming up the drive.\"\n\nA man was striding up the path which led to the door. He was a tall, handsome, swarthy fellow, clad in a suit of gray flannel, with a Panama hat, a bristling black beard, and a great, aggressive hooked nose, and flourishing a cane as he walked. He swaggered up the path as if the place belonged to him, and we heard his loud, confident peal at the bell.\n\n\"I think, gentlemen,\" said Holmes, quietly, \"that we had best take up our position behind the door. Every precaution is necessary when dealing with such a fellow. You will need your handcuffs, Inspector. You can leave the talking to me.\"\n\nWe waited in silence for a minute\u2014one of those minutes which one can never forget. Then the door opened and the man stepped in. In an instant Holmes clapped a pistol to his head, and Martin slipped the handcuffs over his wrists. It was all done so swiftly and deftly that the fellow was helpless before he knew that he was attacked. He glared from one to the other of us with a pair of blazing black eyes. Then he burst into a bitter laugh.\n\n\"Well, gentlemen, you have the drop on me this time. I seem to have knocked up against something hard. But I came here in answer to a letter from Mrs. Hilton Cubitt. Don't tell me that she is in this? Don't tell me that she helped to set a trap for me?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Hilton Cubitt was seriously injured, and is at death's door.\"\n\nThe man gave a hoarse cry of grief, which rang through the house.\n\n\"You're crazy!\" he cried, fiercely. \"It was he that was hurt, not she. Who would have hurt little Elsie? I may have threatened her\u2014God forgive me!\u2014but I would not have touched a hair of her pretty head. Take it back\u2014you! Say that she is not hurt!\"\n\n\"She was found, badly wounded, by the side of her dead husband.\"\n\nHe sank with a deep groan on to the settee, and buried his face in his manacled hands. For five minutes he was silent. Then he raised his face once more, and spoke with the cold composure of despair.\n\n\"I have nothing to hide from you, gentlemen,\" said he. \"If I shot the man he had his shot at me, and there's no murder in that. But if you think I could have hurt that woman, then you don't know either me or her. I tell you, there was never a man in this world loved a woman more than I loved her. I had a right to her. She was pledged to me years ago. Who was this Englishman that he should come between us? I tell you that I had the first right to her, and that I was only claiming my own.\"\n\n\"She broke away from your influence when she found the man that you are,\" said Holmes, sternly. \"She fled from America to avoid you, and she married an honourable gentleman in England. You dogged her and followed her and made her life a misery to her, in order to induce her to abandon the husband whom she loved and respected in order to fly with you, whom she feared and hated. You have ended by bringing about the death of a noble man and driving his wife to suicide. That is your record in this business, Mr. Abe Slaney, and you will answer for it to the law.\"\n\n\"If Elsie dies, I care nothing what becomes of me,\" said the American. He opened one of his hands, and looked at a note crumpled up in his palm. \"See here, mister,\" he cried, with a gleam of suspicion in his eyes, \"you're not trying to scare me over this, are you? If the lady is hurt as bad as you say, who was it that wrote this note?\" He tossed it forward on to the table.\n\n\"I wrote it, to bring you here.\"\n\n\"You wrote it? There was no one on earth outside the Joint who knew the secret of the dancing men. How came you to write it?\"\n\n\"What one man can invent another can discover,\" said Holmes. \"There is a cab coming to convey you to Norwich, Mr. Slaney. But, meanwhile, you have time to make some small reparation for the injury you have wrought. Are you aware that Mrs. Hilton Cubitt has herself lain under grave suspicion of the murder of her husband, and that it was only my presence here, and the knowledge which I happened to possess, which has saved her from the accusation? The least that you owe her is to make it clear to the whole world that she was in no way, directly or indirectly, responsible for his tragic end.\"\n\n\"I ask nothing better,\" said the American. \"I guess the very best case I can make for myself is the absolute naked truth.\"\n\n\"It is my duty to warn you that it will be used against you,\" cried the inspector, with the magnificent fair play of the British criminal law.\n\nSlaney shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"I'll chance that,\" said he. \"First of all, I want you gentlemen to understand that I have known this lady since she was a child. There were seven of us in a gang in Chicago, and Elsie's father was the boss of the Joint. He was a clever man, was old Patrick. It was he who invented that writing, which would pass as a child's scrawl unless you just happened to have the key to it. Well, Elsie learned some of our ways, but she couldn't stand the business, and she had a bit of honest money of her own, so she gave us all the slip and got away to London. She had been engaged to me, and she would have married me, I believe, if I had taken over another profession. but she would have nothing to do with anything on the cross. It was only after her marriage to this Englishman that I was able to find out where she was. I wrote to her, but got no answer. After that I came over, and, as letters were no use, I put my messages where she could read them.\n\n\"Well, I have been here a month now. I lived in that farm, where I had a room down below, and could get in and out every night, and no one the wiser. I tried all I could to coax Elsie away. I knew that she read the messages, for once she wrote an answer under one of them. Then my temper got the better of me, and I began to threaten her. She sent me a letter then, imploring me to go away, and saying that it would break her heart if any scandal should come upon her husband. She said that she would come down when her husband was asleep at three in the morning, and speak with me through the end window, if I would go away afterwards and leave her in peace. She came down and brought money with her, trying to bribe me to go. This made me mad and I caught her arm and tried to pull her through the window. At that moment in rushed the husband with his revolver in his hand. Elsie had sunk down upon the floor, and we were face to face. I was heeled also, and I held up my gun to scare him off and let me get away. He fired and missed me. I pulled off almost at the same instant, and down he dropped. I made away across the garden, and as I went I heard the window shut behind me. That's God's truth, gentlemen, every word of it; and I heard no more about it until that lad came riding up with a note which made me walk in here, like a jay, and give myself into your hands.\"\n\nA cab had driven up whilst the American had been talking. Two uniformed policemen sat inside. Inspector Martin rose and touched his prisoner on the shoulder.\n\n\"It is time for us to go.\"\n\n\"Can I see her first?\"\n\n\"No, she is not conscious. Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I only hope that, if ever again I have an important case, I shall have the good fortune to have you by my side.\"\n\nWe stood at the window and watched the cab drive away. As I turned back, my eye caught the pellet of paper which the prisoner had tossed upon the table. It was the note with which Holmes had decoyed him.\n\n\"See if you can read it, Watson,\" said he, with a smile.\n\nIt contained no word, but this little line of dancing men:\n\n\"If you use the code which I have explained,\" said Holmes, \"you will find that it simply means 'Come here at once.' I was convinced that it was an invitation which he would not refuse, since he could never imagine that it could come from anyone but the lady. And so, my dear Watson, we have ended by turning the dancing men to good when they have so often been the agents of evil, and I think that I have fulfilled my promise of giving you something unusual for your notebook. Three-forty is our train, and I fancy we should be back in Baker Street for dinner.\"\n\nOnly one word of epilogue. The American, Abe Slaney, was condemned to death at the winter assizes at Norwich, but his penalty was changed to penal servitude in consideration of mitigating circumstances, and the certainty that Hilton Cubitt had fired the first shot. Of Mrs. Hilton Cubitt I only know that I have heard she recovered entirely, and that she still remains a widow, devoting her whole life to the care of the poor and to the administration of her husband's estate." + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE SOLITARY CYCLIST", + "text": "From the years 1894 to 1901 inclusive, Mr. Sherlock Holmes was a very busy man. It is safe to say that there was no public case of any difficulty in which he was not consulted during those eight years, and there were hundreds of private cases, some of them of the most intricate and extraordinary character, in which he played a prominent part. Many startling successes and a few unavoidable failures were the outcome of this long period of continuous work. As I have preserved very full notes of all these cases, and was myself personally engaged in many of them, it may be imagined that it is no easy task to know which I should select to lay before the public. I shall, however, preserve my former rule, and give the preference to those cases which derive their interest not so much from the brutality of the crime as from the ingenuity and dramatic quality of the solution. For this reason I will now lay before the reader the facts connected with Miss Violet Smith, the solitary cyclist of Charlington, and the curious sequel of our investigation, which culminated in unexpected tragedy. It is true that the circumstance did not admit of any striking illustration of those powers for which my friend was famous, but there were some points about the case which made it stand out in those long records of crime from which I gather the material for these little narratives.\n\nOn referring to my notebook for the year 1895, I find that it was upon Saturday, the 23d of April, that we first heard of Miss Violet Smith. Her visit was, I remember, extremely unwelcome to Holmes, for he was immersed at the moment in a very abstruse and complicated problem concerning the peculiar persecution to which John Vincent Harden, the well known tobacco millionaire, had been subjected. My friend, who loved above all things precision and concentration of thought, resented anything which distracted his attention from the matter in hand. And yet, without a harshness which was foreign to his nature, it was impossible to refuse to listen to the story of the young and beautiful woman, tall, graceful, and queenly, who presented herself at Baker Street late in the evening, and implored his assistance and advice. It was vain to urge that his time was already fully occupied, for the young lady had come with the determination to tell her story, and it was evident that nothing short of force could get her out of the room until she had done so. With a resigned air and a somewhat weary smile, Holmes begged the beautiful intruder to take a seat, and to inform us what it was that was troubling her.\n\n\"At least it cannot be your health,\" said he, as his keen eyes darted over her; \"so ardent a bicyclist must be full of energy.\"\n\nShe glanced down in surprise at her own feet, and I observed the slight roughening of the side of the sole caused by the friction of the edge of the pedal.\n\n\"Yes, I bicycle a good deal, Mr. Holmes, and that has something to do with my visit to you to-day.\"\n\nMy friend took the lady's ungloved hand, and examined it with as close an attention and as little sentiment as a scientist would show to a specimen.\n\n\"You will excuse me, I am sure. It is my business,\" said he, as he dropped it. \"I nearly fell into the error of supposing that you were typewriting. Of course, it is obvious that it is music. You observe the spatulate finger-ends, Watson, which is common to both professions? There is a spirituality about the face, however\"\u2014she gently turned it towards the light\u2014\"which the typewriter does not generate. This lady is a musician.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Holmes, I teach music.\"\n\n\"In the country, I presume, from your complexion.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, near Farnham, on the borders of Surrey.\"\n\n\"A beautiful neighbourhood, and full of the most interesting associations. You remember, Watson, that it was near there that we took Archie Stamford, the forger. Now, Miss Violet, what has happened to you, near Farnham, on the borders of Surrey?\"\n\nThe young lady, with great clearness and composure, made the following curious statement:\n\n\"My father is dead, Mr. Holmes. He was James Smith, who conducted the orchestra at the old Imperial Theatre. My mother and I were left without a relation in the world except one uncle, Ralph Smith, who went to Africa twenty-five years ago, and we have never had a word from him since. When father died, we were left very poor, but one day we were told that there was an advertisement in the Times, inquiring for our whereabouts. You can imagine how excited we were, for we thought that someone had left us a fortune. We went at once to the lawyer whose name was given in the paper. There we met two gentlemen, Mr. Carruthers and Mr. Woodley, who were home on a visit from South Africa. They said that my uncle was a friend of theirs, that he had died some months before in great poverty in Johannesburg, and that he had asked them with his last breath to hunt up his relations, and see that they were in no want. It seemed strange to us that Uncle Ralph, who took no notice of us when he was alive, should be so careful to look after us when he was dead, but Mr. Carruthers explained that the reason was that my uncle had just heard of the death of his brother, and so felt responsible for our fate.\"\n\n\"Excuse me,\" said Holmes. \"When was this interview?\"\n\n\"Last December\u2014four months ago.\"\n\n\"Pray proceed.\"\n\n\"Mr. Woodley seemed to me to be a most odious person. He was for ever making eyes at me\u2014a coarse, puffy-faced, red-moustached young man, with his hair plastered down on each side of his forehead. I thought that he was perfectly hateful\u2014and I was sure that Cyril would not wish me to know such a person.\"\n\n\"Oh, Cyril is his name!\" said Holmes, smiling.\n\nThe young lady blushed and laughed.\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Holmes, Cyril Morton, an electrical engineer, and we hope to be married at the end of the summer. Dear me, how did I get talking about him? What I wished to say was that Mr. Woodley was perfectly odious, but that Mr. Carruthers, who was a much older man, was more agreeable. He was a dark, sallow, clean-shaven, silent person, but he had polite manners and a pleasant smile. He inquired how we were left, and on finding that we were very poor, he suggested that I should come and teach music to his only daughter, aged ten. I said that I did not like to leave my mother, on which he suggested that I should go home to her every weekend, and he offered me a hundred a year, which was certainly splendid pay. So it ended by my accepting, and I went down to Chiltern Grange, about six miles from Farnham. Mr. Carruthers was a widower, but he had engaged a lady housekeeper, a very respectable, elderly person, called Mrs. Dixon, to look after his establishment. The child was a dear, and everything promised well. Mr. Carruthers was very kind and very musical, and we had most pleasant evenings together. Every week end I went home to my mother in town.\n\n\"The first flaw in my happiness was the arrival of the red-moustached Mr. Woodley. He came for a visit of a week, and oh! it seemed three months to me. He was a dreadful person\u2014a bully to everyone else, but to me something infinitely worse. He made odious love to me, boasted of his wealth, said that if I married him I could have the finest diamonds in London, and finally, when I would have nothing to do with him, he seized me in his arms one day after dinner\u2014he was hideously strong\u2014and swore that he would not let me go until I had kissed him. Mr. Carruthers came in and tore him from me, on which he turned upon his own host, knocking him down and cutting his face open. That was the end of his visit, as you can imagine. Mr. Carruthers apologized to me next day, and assured me that I should never be exposed to such an insult again. I have not seen Mr. Woodley since.\n\n\"And now, Mr. Holmes, I come at last to the special thing which has caused me to ask your advice to-day. You must know that every Saturday forenoon I ride on my bicycle to Farnham Station, in order to get the 12:22 to town. The road from Chiltern Grange is a lonely one, and at one spot it is particularly so, for it lies for over a mile between Charlington Heath upon one side and the woods which lie round Charlington Hall upon the other. You could not find a more lonely tract of road anywhere, and it is quite rare to meet so much as a cart, or a peasant, until you reach the high road near Crooksbury Hill. Two weeks ago I was passing this place, when I chanced to look back over my shoulder, and about two hundred yards behind me I saw a man, also on a bicycle. He seemed to be a middle-aged man, with a short, dark beard. I looked back before I reached Farnham, but the man was gone, so I thought no more about it. But you can imagine how surprised I was, Mr. Holmes, when, on my return on the Monday, I saw the same man on the same stretch of road. My astonishment was increased when the incident occurred again, exactly as before, on the following Saturday and Monday. He always kept his distance and did not molest me in any way, but still it certainly was very odd. I mentioned it to Mr. Carruthers, who seemed interested in what I said, and told me that he had ordered a horse and trap, so that in future I should not pass over these lonely roads without some companion.\n\n\"The horse and trap were to have come this week, but for some reason they were not delivered, and again I had to cycle to the station. That was this morning. You can think that I looked out when I came to Charlington Heath, and there, sure enough, was the man, exactly as he had been the two weeks before. He always kept so far from me that I could not clearly see his face, but it was certainly someone whom I did not know. He was dressed in a dark suit with a cloth cap. The only thing about his face that I could clearly see was his dark beard. To-day I was not alarmed, but I was filled with curiosity, and I determined to find out who he was and what he wanted. I slowed down my machine, but he slowed down his. Then I stopped altogether, but he stopped also. Then I laid a trap for him. There is a sharp turning of the road, and I pedalled very quickly round this, and then I stopped and waited. I expected him to shoot round and pass me before he could stop. But he never appeared. Then I went back and looked round the corner. I could see a mile of road, but he was not on it. To make it the more extraordinary, there was no side road at this point down which he could have gone.\"\n\nHolmes chuckled and rubbed his hands. \"This case certainly presents some features of its own,\" said he. \"How much time elapsed between your turning the corner and your discovery that the road was clear?\"\n\n\"Two or three minutes.\"\n\n\"Then he could not have retreated down the road, and you say that there are no side roads?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\n\"Then he certainly took a footpath on one side or the other.\"\n\n\"It could not have been on the side of the heath, or I should have seen him.\"\n\n\"So, by the process of exclusion, we arrive at the fact that he made his way toward Charlington Hall, which, as I understand, is situated in its own grounds on one side of the road. Anything else?\"\n\n\"Nothing, Mr. Holmes, save that I was so perplexed that I felt I should not be happy until I had seen you and had your advice.\"\n\nHolmes sat in silence for some little time.\n\n\"Where is the gentleman to whom you are engaged?\" he asked at last.\n\n\"He is in the Midland Electrical Company, at Coventry.\"\n\n\"He would not pay you a surprise visit?\"\n\n\"Oh, Mr. Holmes! As if I should not know him!\"\n\n\"Have you had any other admirers?\"\n\n\"Several before I knew Cyril.\"\n\n\"And since?\"\n\n\"There was this dreadful man, Woodley, if you can call him an admirer.\"\n\n\"No one else?\"\n\nOur fair client seemed a little confused.\n\n\"Who was he?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"Oh, it may be a mere fancy of mine; but it had seemed to me sometimes that my employer, Mr. Carruthers, takes a great deal of interest in me. We are thrown rather together. I play his accompaniments in the evening. He has never said anything. He is a perfect gentleman. But a girl always knows.\"\n\n\"Ha!\" Holmes looked grave. \"What does he do for a living?\"\n\n\"He is a rich man.\"\n\n\"No carriages or horses?\"\n\n\"Well, at least he is fairly well-to-do. But he goes into the city two or three times a week. He is deeply interested in South African gold shares.\"\n\n\"You will let me know any fresh development, Miss Smith. I am very busy just now, but I will find time to make some inquiries into your case. In the meantime, take no step without letting me know. Good-bye, and I trust that we shall have nothing but good news from you.\"\n\n\"It is part of the settled order of Nature that such a girl should have followers,\" said Holmes, as he pulled at his meditative pipe, \"but for choice not on bicycles in lonely country roads. Some secretive lover, beyond all doubt. But there are curious and suggestive details about the case, Watson.\"\n\n\"That he should appear only at that point?\"\n\n\"Exactly. Our first effort must be to find who are the tenants of Charlington Hall. Then, again, how about the connection between Carruthers and Woodley, since they appear to be men of such a different type? How came they both to be so keen upon looking up Ralph Smith's relations? One more point. What sort of a menage is it which pays double the market price for a governess but does not keep a horse, although six miles from the station? Odd, Watson\u2014very odd!\"\n\n\"You will go down?\"\n\n\"No, my dear fellow, you will go down. This may be some trifling intrigue, and I cannot break my other important research for the sake of it. On Monday you will arrive early at Farnham; you will conceal yourself near Charlington Heath; you will observe these facts for yourself, and act as your own judgment advises. Then, having inquired as to the occupants of the Hall, you will come back to me and report. And now, Watson, not another word of the matter until we have a few solid stepping-stones on which we may hope to get across to our solution.\"\n\nWe had ascertained from the lady that she went down upon the Monday by the train which leaves Waterloo at 9:50, so I started early and caught the 9:13. At Farnham Station I had no difficulty in being directed to Charlington Heath. It was impossible to mistake the scene of the young lady's adventure, for the road runs between the open heath on one side and an old yew hedge upon the other, surrounding a park which is studded with magnificent trees. There was a main gateway of lichen-studded stone, each side pillar surmounted by mouldering heraldic emblems, but besides this central carriage drive I observed several points where there were gaps in the hedge and paths leading through them. The house was invisible from the road, but the surroundings all spoke of gloom and decay.\n\nThe heath was covered with golden patches of flowering gorse, gleaming magnificently in the light of the bright spring sunshine. Behind one of these clumps I took up my position, so as to command both the gateway of the Hall and a long stretch of the road upon either side. It had been deserted when I left it, but now I saw a cyclist riding down it from the opposite direction to that in which I had come. He was clad in a dark suit, and I saw that he had a black beard. On reaching the end of the Charlington grounds, he sprang from his machine and led it through a gap in the hedge, disappearing from my view.\n\nA quarter of an hour passed, and then a second cyclist appeared. This time it was the young lady coming from the station. I saw her look about her as she came to the Charlington hedge. An instant later the man emerged from his hiding-place, sprang upon his cycle, and followed her. In all the broad landscape those were the only moving figures, the graceful girl sitting very straight upon her machine, and the man behind her bending low over his handle-bar with a curiously furtive suggestion in every movement. She looked back at him and slowed her pace. He slowed also. She stopped. He at once stopped, too, keeping two hundred yards behind her. Her next movement was as unexpected as it was spirited. She suddenly whisked her wheels round and dashed straight at him. He was as quick as she, however, and darted off in desperate flight. Presently she came back up the road again, her head haughtily in the air, not deigning to take any further notice of her silent attendant. He had turned also, and still kept his distance until the curve of the road hid them from my sight.\n\nI remained in my hiding-place, and it was well that I did so, for presently the man reappeared, cycling slowly back. He turned in at the Hall gates, and dismounted from his machine. For some minutes I could see him standing among the trees. His hands were raised, and he seemed to be settling his necktie. Then he mounted his cycle, and rode away from me down the drive towards the Hall. I ran across the heath and peered through the trees. Far away I could catch glimpses of the old gray building with its bristling Tudor chimneys, but the drive ran through a dense shrubbery, and I saw no more of my man.\n\nHowever, it seemed to me that I had done a fairly good morning's work, and I walked back in high spirits to Farnham. The local house agent could tell me nothing about Charlington Hall, and referred me to a well known firm in Pall Mall. There I halted on my way home, and met with courtesy from the representative. No, I could not have Charlington Hall for the summer. I was just too late. It had been let about a month ago. Mr. Williamson was the name of the tenant. He was a respectable, elderly gentleman. The polite agent was afraid he could say no more, as the affairs of his clients were not matters which he could discuss.\n\nMr. Sherlock Holmes listened with attention to the long report which I was able to present to him that evening, but it did not elicit that word of curt praise which I had hoped for and should have valued. On the contrary, his austere face was even more severe than usual as he commented upon the things that I had done and the things that I had not.\n\n\"Your hiding-place, my dear Watson, was very faulty. You should have been behind the hedge, then you would have had a close view of this interesting person. As it is, you were some hundreds of yards away and can tell me even less than Miss Smith. She thinks she does not know the man; I am convinced she does. Why, otherwise, should he be so desperately anxious that she should not get so near him as to see his features? You describe him as bending over the handle-bar. Concealment again, you see. You really have done remarkably badly. He returns to the house, and you want to find out who he is. You come to a London house agent!\"\n\n\"What should I have done?\" I cried, with some heat.\n\n\"Gone to the nearest public-house. That is the centre of country gossip. They would have told you every name, from the master to the scullery-maid. Williamson? It conveys nothing to my mind. If he is an elderly man he is not this active cyclist who sprints away from that young lady's athletic pursuit. What have we gained by your expedition? The knowledge that the girl's story is true. I never doubted it. That there is a connection between the cyclist and the Hall. I never doubted that either. That the Hall is tenanted by Williamson. Who's the better for that? Well, well, my dear sir, don't look so depressed. We can do little more until next Saturday, and in the meantime I may make one or two inquiries myself.\"\n\nNext morning, we had a note from Miss Smith, recounting shortly and accurately the very incidents which I had seen, but the pith of the letter lay in the postscript:\n\nI am sure that you will respect my confidence, Mr. Holmes, when I tell you that my place here has become difficult, owing to the fact that my employer has proposed marriage to me. I am convinced that his feelings are most deep and most honourable. At the same time, my promise is of course given. He took my refusal very seriously, but also very gently. You can understand, however, that the situation is a little strained.\n\n\"Our young friend seems to be getting into deep waters,\" said Holmes, thoughtfully, as he finished the letter. \"The case certainly presents more features of interest and more possibility of development than I had originally thought. I should be none the worse for a quiet, peaceful day in the country, and I am inclined to run down this afternoon and test one or two theories which I have formed.\"\n\nHolmes's quiet day in the country had a singular termination, for he arrived at Baker Street late in the evening, with a cut lip and a discoloured lump upon his forehead, besides a general air of dissipation which would have made his own person the fitting object of a Scotland Yard investigation. He was immensely tickled by his own adventures and laughed heartily as he recounted them.\n\n\"I get so little active exercise that it is always a treat,\" said he. \"You are aware that I have some proficiency in the good old British sport of boxing. Occasionally, it is of service; today, for example, I should have come to very ignominious grief without it.\"\n\nI begged him to tell me what had occurred.\n\n\"I found that country pub which I had already recommended to your notice, and there I made my discreet inquiries. I was in the bar, and a garrulous landlord was giving me all that I wanted. Williamson is a white-bearded man, and he lives alone with a small staff of servants at the Hall. There is some rumor that he is or has been a clergyman, but one or two incidents of his short residence at the Hall struck me as peculiarly unec clesiastical. I have already made some inquiries at a clerical agency, and they tell me that there was a man of that name in orders, whose career has been a singularly dark one. The landlord further informed me that there are usually weekend visitors\u2014'a warm lot, sir'\u2014at the Hall, and especially one gentleman with a red moustache, Mr. Woodley by name, who was always there. We had got as far as this, when who should walk in but the gentleman himself, who had been drinking his beer in the tap-room and had heard the whole conversation. Who was I? What did I want? What did I mean by asking questions? He had a fine flow of language, and his adjectives were very vigorous. He ended a string of abuse by a vicious backhander, which I failed to entirely avoid. The next few minutes were delicious. It was a straight left against a slogging ruffian. I emerged as you see me. Mr. Woodley went home in a cart. So ended my country trip, and it must be confessed that, however enjoyable, my day on the Surrey border has not been much more profitable than your own.\"\n\nThe Thursday brought us another letter from our client.\n\nYou will not be surprised, Mr. Holmes [said she] to hear that I am leaving Mr. Carruthers's employment. Even the high pay cannot reconcile me to the discomforts of my situation. On Saturday I come up to town, and I do not intend to return. Mr. Carruthers has got a trap, and so the dangers of the lonely road, if there ever were any dangers, are now over.\n\nAs to the special cause of my leaving, it is not merely the strained situation with Mr. Carruthers, but it is the reappearance of that odious man, Mr. Woodley. He was always hideous, but he looks more awful than ever now, for he appears to have had an accident, and he is much disfigured. I saw him out of the window, but I am glad to say I did not meet him. He had a long talk with Mr. Carruthers, who seemed much excited afterwards. Woodley must be staying in the neighbourhood, for he did not sleep here, and yet I caught a glimpse of him again this morning, slinking about in the shrubbery. I would sooner have a savage wild animal loose about the place. I loathe and fear him more than I can say. How can Mr. Carruthers endure such a creature for a moment? However, all my troubles will be over on Saturday.\n\n\"So I trust, Watson, so I trust,\" said Holmes, gravely. \"There is some deep intrigue going on round that little woman, and it is our duty to see that no one molests her upon that last journey. I think, Watson, that we must spare time to run down together on Saturday morning and make sure that this curious and inclusive investigation has no untoward ending.\"\n\nI confess that I had not up to now taken a very serious view of the case, which had seemed to me rather grotesque and bizarre than dangerous. That a man should lie in wait for and follow a very handsome woman is no unheard-of thing, and if he has so little audacity that he not only dared not address her, but even fled from her approach, he was not a very formidable assailant. The ruffian Woodley was a very different person, but, except on one occasion, he had not molested our client, and now he visited the house of Carruthers without intruding upon her presence. The man on the bicycle was doubtless a member of those weekend parties at the Hall of which the publican had spoken, but who he was, or what he wanted, was as obscure as ever. It was the severity of Holmes's manner and the fact that he slipped a revolver into his pocket before leaving our rooms which impressed me with the feeling that tragedy might prove to lurk behind this curious train of events.\n\nA rainy night had been followed by a glorious morning, and the heath-covered countryside, with the glowing clumps of flowering gorse, seemed all the more beautiful to eyes which were weary of the duns and drabs and slate grays of London. Holmes and I walked along the broad, sandy road inhaling the fresh morning air and rejoicing in the music of the birds and the fresh breath of the spring. From a rise of the road on the shoulder of Crooksbury Hill, we could see the grim Hall bristling out from amidst the ancient oaks, which, old as they were, were still younger than the building which they surrounded. Holmes pointed down the long tract of road which wound, a reddish yellow band, between the brown of the heath and the budding green of the woods. Far away, a black dot, we could see a vehicle moving in our direction. Holmes gave an exclamation of impatience.\n\n\"I have given a margin of half an hour,\" said he. \"If that is her trap, she must be making for the earlier train. I fear, Watson, that she will be past Charlington before we can possibly meet her.\"\n\nFrom the instant that we passed the rise, we could no longer see the vehicle, but we hastened onward at such a pace that my sedentary life began to tell upon me, and I was compelled to fall behind. Holmes, however, was always in training, for he had inexhaustible stores of nervous energy upon which to draw. His springy step never slowed until suddenly, when he was a hundred yards in front of me, he halted, and I saw him throw up his hand with a gesture of grief and despair. At the same instant an empty dog-cart, the horse cantering, the reins trailing, appeared round the curve of the road and rattled swiftly towards us.\n\n\"Too late, Watson, too late!\" cried Holmes, as I ran panting to his side. \"Fool that I was not to allow for that earlier train! It's abduction, Watson\u2014abduction! Murder! Heaven knows what! Block the road! Stop the horse! That's right. Now, jump in, and let us see if I can repair the consequences of my own blunder.\"\n\nWe had sprung into the dog-cart, and Holmes, after turning the horse, gave it a sharp cut with the whip, and we flew back along the road. As we turned the curve, the whole stretch of road between the Hall and the heath was opened up. I grasped Holmes's arm.\n\n\"That's the man!\" I gasped.\n\nA solitary cyclist was coming towards us. His head was down and his shoulders rounded, as he put every ounce of energy that he possessed on to the pedals. He was flying like a racer. Suddenly he raised his bearded face, saw us close to him, and pulled up, springing from his machine. That coal-black beard was in singular contrast to the pallor of his face, and his eyes were as bright as if he had a fever. He stared at us and at the dog-cart. Then a look of amazement came over his face.\n\n\"Halloa! Stop there!\" he shouted, holding his bicycle to block our road. \"Where did you get that dog-cart? Pull up, man!\" he yelled, drawing a pistol from his side pocket. \"Pull up, I say, or, by George, I'll put a bullet into your horse.\"\n\nHolmes threw the reins into my lap and sprang down from the cart.\n\n\"You're the man we want to see. Where is Miss Violet Smith?\" he said, in his quick, clear way.\n\n\"That's what I'm asking you. You're in her dog-cart. You ought to know where she is.\"\n\n\"We met the dog-cart on the road. There was no one in it. We drove back to help the young lady.\"\n\n\"Good Lord! Good Lord! What shall I do?\" cried the stranger, in an ecstasy of despair. \"They've got her, that hell-hound Woodley and the blackguard parson. Come, man, come, if you really are her friend. Stand by me and we'll save her, if I have to leave my carcass in Charlington Wood.\"\n\nHe ran distractedly, his pistol in his hand, towards a gap in the hedge. Holmes followed him, and I, leaving the horse grazing beside the road, followed Holmes.\n\n\"This is where they came through,\" said he, pointing to the marks of several feet upon the muddy path. \"Halloa! Stop a minute! Who's this in the bush?\"\n\nIt was a young fellow about seventeen, dressed like an ostler, with leather cords and gaiters. He lay upon his back, his knees drawn up, a terrible cut upon his head. He was insensible, but alive. A glance at his wound told me that it had not penetrated the bone.\n\n\"That's Peter, the groom,\" cried the stranger. \"He drove her. The beasts have pulled him off and clubbed him. Let him lie; we can't do him any good, but we may save her from the worst fate that can befall a woman.\"\n\nWe ran frantically down the path, which wound among the trees. We had reached the shrubbery which surrounded the house when Holmes pulled up.\n\n\"They didn't go to the house. Here are their marks on the left\u2014here, beside the laurel bushes. Ah! I said so.\"\n\nAs he spoke, a woman's shrill scream\u2014a scream which vibrated with a frenzy of horror\u2014burst from the thick, green clump of bushes in front of us. It ended suddenly on its highest note with a choke and a gurgle.\n\n\"This way! This way! They are in the bowling-alley,\" cried the stranger, darting through the bushes. \"Ah, the cowardly dogs! Follow me, gentlemen! Too late! too late! by the living Jingo!\"\n\nWe had broken suddenly into a lovely glade of greensward surrounded by ancient trees. On the farther side of it, under the shadow of a mighty oak, there stood a singular group of three people. One was a woman, our client, drooping and faint, a handkerchief round her mouth. Opposite her stood a brutal, heavy-faced, red-moustached young man, his gaitered legs parted wide, one arm akimbo, the other waving a riding crop, his whole attitude suggestive of triumphant bravado. Between them an elderly, gray-bearded man, wearing a short surplice over a light tweed suit, had evidently just completed the wedding service, for he pocketed his prayer-book as we appeared, and slapped the sinister bridegroom upon the back in jovial congratulation.\n\n\"They're married?\" I gasped.\n\n\"Come on!\" cried our guide; \"come on!\" He rushed across the glade, Holmes and I at his heels. As we approached, the lady staggered against the trunk of the tree for support. Williamson, the ex-clergyman, bowed to us with mock politeness, and the bully, Woodley, advanced with a shout of brutal and exultant laughter.\n\n\"You can take your beard off, Bob,\" said he. \"I know you, right enough. Well, you and your pals have just come in time for me to be able to introduce you to Mrs. Woodley.\"\n\nOur guide's answer was a singular one. He snatched off the dark beard which had disguised him and threw it on the ground, disclosing a long, sallow, clean-shaven face below it. Then he raised his revolver and covered the young ruffian, who was advancing upon him with his dangerous riding crop swinging in his hand.\n\n\"Yes,\" said our ally, \"I am Bob Carruthers. and I'll see this woman righted, if I have to swing for it. I told you what I'd do if you molested her, and, by the Lord! I'll be as good as my word.\"\n\n\"You're too late. She's my wife.\"\n\n\"No, she's your widow.\"\n\nHis revolver cracked, and I saw the blood spurt from the front of Woodley's waistcoat. He spun round with a scream and fell upon his back, his hideous red face turning suddenly to a dreadful mottled pallor. The old man, still clad in his surplice, burst into such a string of foul oaths as I have never heard, and pulled out a revolver of his own, but, before he could raise it, he was looking down the barrel of Holmes's weapon.\n\n\"Enough of this,\" said my friend, coldly. \"Drop that pistol! Watson, pick it up! Hold it to his head! Thank you. You, Carruthers, give me that revolver. We'll have no more violence. Come, hand it over!\"\n\n\"Who are you, then?\"\n\n\"My name is Sherlock Holmes.\"\n\n\"Good Lord!\"\n\n\"You have heard of me, I see. I will represent the official police until their arrival. Here, you!\" he shouted to a frightened groom, who had appeared at the edge of the glade. \"Come here. Take this note as hard as you can ride to Farnham.\" He scribbled a few words upon a leaf from his notebook. \"Give it to the superintendent at the police-station. Until he comes, I must detain you all under my personal custody.\"\n\nThe strong, masterful personality of Holmes dominated the tragic scene, and all were equally puppets in his hands. Williamson and Carruthers found themselves carrying the wounded Woodley into the house, and I gave my arm to the frightened girl. The injured man was laid on his bed, and at Holmes's request I examined him. I carried my report to where he sat in the old tapestry-hung dining-room with his two prisoners before him.\n\n\"He will live,\" said I.\n\n\"What!\" cried Carruthers, springing out of his chair. \"I'll go upstairs and finish him first. Do you tell me that that girl, that angel, is to be tied to Roaring Jack Woodley for life?\"\n\n\"You need not concern yourself about that,\" said Holmes. \"There are two very good reasons why she should, under no circumstances, be his wife. In the first place, we are very safe in questioning Mr. Williamson's right to solemnize a marriage.\"\n\n\"I have been ordained,\" cried the old rascal.\n\n\"And also unfrocked.\"\n\n\"Once a clergyman, always a clergyman.\"\n\n\"I think not. How about the licence?\"\n\n\"We had a licence for the marriage. I have it here in my pocket.\"\n\n\"Then you got it by a trick. But, in any case, a forced marriage is no marriage, but it is a very serious felony, as you will discover before you have finished. You'll have time to think the point out during the next ten years or so, unless I am mistaken. As to you, Carruthers, you would have done better to keep your pistol in your pocket.\"\n\n\"I begin to think so, Mr. Holmes, but when I thought of all the precaution I had taken to shield this girl\u2014for I loved her, Mr. Holmes, and it is the only time that ever I knew what love was\u2014it fairly drove me mad to think that she was in the power of the greatest brute and bully in South Africa\u2014a man whose name is a holy terror from Kimberley to Johannesburg. Why, Mr. Holmes, you'll hardly believe it, but ever since that girl has been in my employment I never once let her go past this house, where I knew the rascals were lurking, without following her on my bicycle, just to see that she came to no harm. I kept my distance from her, and I wore a beard, so that she should not recognize me, for she is a good and high-spirited girl, and she wouldn't have stayed in my employment long if she had thought that I was following her about the country roads.\"\n\n\"Why didn't you tell her of her danger?\"\n\n\"Because then, again, she would have left me, and I couldn't bear to face that. Even if she couldn't love me, it was a great deal to me just to see her dainty form about the house, and to hear the sound of her voice.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said I, \"you call that love, Mr. Carruthers, but I should call it selfishness.\"\n\n\"Maybe the two things go together. Anyhow, I couldn't let her go. Besides, with this crowd about, it was well that she should have someone near to look after her. Then, when the cable came, I knew they were bound to make a move.\"\n\n\"What cable?\"\n\nCarruthers took a telegram from his pocket.\n\n\"That's it,\" said he.\n\nIt was short and concise:\n\n\u2002THE OLD MAN IS DEAD.\n\n\"Hum!\" said Holmes. \"I think I see how things worked, and I can understand how this message would, as you say, bring them to a head. But while you wait, you might tell me what you can.\"\n\nThe old reprobate with the surplice burst into a volley of bad language.\n\n\"By heaven!\" said he, \"if you squeal on us, Bob Carruthers, I'll serve you as you served Jack Woodley. You can bleat about the girl to your heart's content, for that's your own affair, but if you round on your pals to this plain-clothes copper, it will be the worst day's work that ever you did.\"\n\n\"Your reverence need not be excited,\" said Holmes, lighting a cigarette. \"The case is clear enough against you, and all I ask is a few details for my private curiosity. However, if there's any difficulty in your telling me, I'll do the talking, and then you will see how far you have a chance of holding back your secrets. In the first place, three of you came from South Africa on this game\u2014you Williamson, you Carruthers, and Woodley.\"\n\n\"Lie number one,\" said the old man; \"I never saw either of them until two months ago, and I have never been in Africa in my life, so you can put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Busybody Holmes!\"\n\n\"What he says is true,\" said Carruthers.\n\n\"Well, well, two of you came over. His reverence is our own home-made article. You had known Ralph Smith in South Africa. You had reason to believe he would not live long. You found out that his niece would inherit his fortune. How's that\u2014eh?\"\n\nCarruthers nodded and Williamson swore.\n\n\"She was next of kin, no doubt, and you were aware that the old fellow would make no will.\"\n\n\"Couldn't read or write,\" said Carruthers.\n\n\"So you came over, the two of you, and hunted up the girl. The idea was that one of you was to marry her, and the other have a share of the plunder. For some reason, Woodley was chosen as the husband. Why was that?\"\n\n\"We played cards for her on the voyage. He won.\"\n\n\"I see. You got the young lady into your service, and there Woodley was to do the courting. She recognized the drunken brute that he was, and would have nothing to do with him. Meanwhile, your arrangement was rather upset by the fact that you had yourself fallen in love with the lady. You could no longer bear the idea of this ruffian owning her?\"\n\n\"No, by George, I couldn't!\"\n\n\"There was a quarrel between you. He left you in a rage, and began to make his own plans independently of you.\"\n\n\"It strikes me, Williamson, there isn't very much that we can tell this gentleman,\" cried Carruthers, with a bitter laugh. \"Yes, we quarreled, and he knocked me down. I am level with him on that, anyhow. Then I lost sight of him. That was when he picked up with this outcast padre here. I found that they had set up housekeeping together at this place on the line that she had to pass for the station. I kept my eye on her after that, for I knew there was some devilry in the wind. I saw them from time to time, for I was anxious to know what they were after. Two days ago Woodley came up to my house with this cable, which showed that Ralph Smith was dead. He asked me if I would stand by the bargain. I said I would not. He asked me if I would marry the girl myself and give him a share. I said I would willingly do so, but that she would not have me. He said, 'Let us get her married first, and after a week or two she may see things a bit different.' I said I would have nothing to do with violence. So he went off cursing, like the foul-mouthed blackguard that he was, and swearing that he would have her yet. She was leaving me this weekend, and I had got a trap to take her to the station, but I was so uneasy in my mind that I followed her on my bicycle. She had got a start, however, and before I could catch her, the mischief was done. The first thing I knew about it was when I saw you two gentlemen driving back in her dog-cart.\"\n\nHolmes rose and tossed the end of his cigarette into the grate. \"I have been very obtuse, Watson,\" said he. \"When in your report you said that you had seen the cyclist as you thought arrange his necktie in the shrubbery, that alone should have told me all. However, we may congratulate ourselves upon a curious and, in some respects, a unique case. I perceive three of the county constabulary in the drive, and I am glad to see that the little ostler is able to keep pace with them, so it is likely that neither he nor the interesting bridegroom will be permanently damaged by their morning's adventures. I think, Watson, that in your medical capacity, you might wait upon Miss Smith and tell her that if she is sufficiently recovered, we shall be happy to escort her to her mother's home. If she is not quite convalescent, you will find that a hint that we were about to telegraph to a young electrician in the Midlands would probably complete the cure. As to you, Mr. Carruthers, I think that you have done what you could to make amends for your share in an evil plot. There is my card, sir, and if my evidence can be of help in your trial, it shall be at your disposal.\"\n\nIn the whirl of our incessant activity, it has often been difficult for me, as the reader has probably observed, to round off my narratives, and to give those final details which the curious might expect. Each case has been the prelude to another, and the crisis once over, the actors have passed for ever out of our busy lives. I find, however, a short note at the end of my manuscript dealing with this case, in which I have put it upon record that Miss Violet Smith did indeed inherit a large fortune, and that she is now the wife of Cyril Morton, the senior partner of Morton & Kennedy, the famous Westminster electricians. Williamson and Woodley were both tried for abduction and assault, the former getting seven years and the latter ten. Of the fate of Carruthers, I have no record, but I am sure that his assault was not viewed very gravely by the court, since Woodley had the reputation of being a most dangerous ruffian, and I think that a few months were sufficient to satisfy the demands of justice." + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRIORY SCHOOL", + "text": "We have had some dramatic entrances and exits upon our small stage at Baker Street, but I cannot recollect anything more sudden and startling than the first appearance of Thorneycroft Huxtable, M.A., Ph.D., etc. His card, which seemed too small to carry the weight of his academic distinctions, preceded him by a few seconds, and then he entered himself\u2014so large, so pompous, and so dignified that he was the very embodiment of self-possession and solidity. And yet his first action, when the door had closed behind him, was to stagger against the table, whence he slipped down upon the floor, and there was that majestic figure prostrate and insensible upon our bearskin hearthrug.\n\nWe had sprung to our feet, and for a few moments we stared in silent amazement at this ponderous piece of wreckage, which told of some sudden and fatal storm far out on the ocean of life. Then Holmes hurried with a cushion for his head, and I with brandy for his lips. The heavy, white face was seamed with lines of trouble, the hanging pouches under the closed eyes were leaden in colour, the loose mouth drooped dolor ously at the corners, the rolling chins were unshaven. Collar and shirt bore the grime of a long journey, and the hair bristled unkempt from the well-shaped head. It was a sorely stricken man who lay before us.\n\n\"What is it, Watson?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"Absolute exhaustion\u2014possibly mere hunger and fatigue,\" said I, with my finger on the thready pulse, where the stream of life trickled thin and small.\n\n\"Return ticket from Mackleton, in the north of England,\" said Holmes, drawing it from the watch-pocket. \"It is not twelve o'clock yet. He has certainly been an early starter.\"\n\nThe puckered eyelids had begun to quiver, and now a pair of vacant gray eyes looked up at us. An instant later the man had scrambled on to his feet, his face crimson with shame.\n\n\"Forgive this weakness, Mr. Holmes, I have been a little overwrought. Thank you, if I might have a glass of milk and a biscuit, I have no doubt that I should be better. I came personally, Mr. Holmes, in order to insure that you would return with me. I feared that no telegram would convince you of the absolute urgency of the case.\"\n\n\"When you are quite restored\u2014\"\n\n\"I am quite well again. I cannot imagine how I came to be so weak. I wish you, Mr. Holmes, to come to Mackleton with me by the next train.\"\n\nMy friend shook his head.\n\n\"My colleague, Dr. Watson, could tell you that we are very busy at present. I am retained in this case of the Ferrers Documents, and the Abergavenny murder is coming up for trial. Only a very important issue could call me from London at present.\"\n\n\"Important!\" Our visitor threw up his hands. \"Have you heard nothing of the abduction of the only son of the Duke of Holdernesse?\"\n\n\"What! the late Cabinet Minister?\"\n\n\"Exactly. We had tried to keep it out of the papers, but there was some rumor in the Globe last night. I thought it might have reached your ears.\"\n\nHolmes shot out his long, thin arm and picked out Volume \"H\" in his encyclopaedia of reference.\n\n\"'Holdernesse, 6th Duke, K.G., P.C.\u2014half the alphabet! 'Baron Beverley, Earl of Carston'\u2014dear me, what a list! 'Lord Lieutenant of Hallamshire since 1900. Married Edith, daughter of Sir Charles Appledore, 1888. Heir and only child, Lord Saltire. Owns about two hundred and fifty thousand acres. Minerals in Lancashire and Wales. Address: Canton House Terrace; Holdernesse Hall, Hallamshire; Carston Castle, Bangor, Wales. Lord of the Admiralty, 1872; Chief Secretary of State for\u2014' Well, well, this man is certainly one of the greatest subjects of the Crown!\"\n\n\"The greatest and perhaps the wealthiest. I am aware, Mr. Holmes, that you take a very high line in professional matters, and that you are prepared to work for the work's sake. I may tell you, however, that his Grace has already intimated that a check for five thousand pounds will be handed over to the person who can tell him where his son is, and another thousand to him who can name the man or men who have taken him.\"\n\n\"It is a princely offer,\" said Holmes. \"Watson, I think that we shall accompany Dr. Huxtable back to the north of England. And now, Dr. Huxtable, when you have consumed that milk, you will kindly tell me what has happened, when it happened, how it happened, and, finally, what Dr. Thorneycroft Huxtable, of the Priory School, near Mackleton, has to do with the matter, and why he comes three days after an event\u2014the state of your chin gives the date\u2014to ask for my humble services.\"\n\nOur visitor had consumed his milk and biscuits. The light had come back to his eyes and the colour to his cheeks, as he set himself with great vigour and lucidity to explain the situation.\n\n\"I must inform you, gentlemen, that the Priory is a preparatory school, of which I am the founder and principal. Huxtable's Sidelights on Horace may possibly recall my name o your memories. The Priory is, without exception, the best and most select preparatory school in England. Lord Leverstoke, the Earl of Blackwater, Sir Cathcart Soames\u2014they all have intrusted their sons to me. But I felt that my school had reached its zenith when, three weeks ago, the Duke of Holdernesse sent Mr. James Wilder, his secretary, with the intimation that young Lord Saltire, ten years old, his only son and heir, was about to be committed to my charge. Little did I think that this would be the prelude to the most crushing misfortune of my life.\n\n\"On May 1st the boy arrived, that being the beginning of the summer term. He was a charming youth, and he soon fell into our ways. I may tell you\u2014I trust that I am not indiscreet, but half-confidences are absurd in such a case\u2014that he was not entirely happy at home. It is an open secret that the Duke's married life had not been a peaceful one, and the matter had ended in a separation by mutual consent, the Duchess taking up her residence in the south of France. This had occurred very shortly before, and the boy's sympathies are known to have been strongly with his mother. He moped after her departure from Holdernesse Hall, and it was for this reason that the Duke desired to send him to my establishment. In a fortnight the boy was quite at home with us and was apparently absolutely happy.\n\n\"He was last seen on the night of May 13th\u2014that is, the night of last Monday. His room was on the second floor and was approached through another larger room, in which two boys were sleeping. These boys saw and heard nothing, so that it is certain that young Saltire did not pass out that way. His window was open, and there is a stout ivy plant leading to the ground. We could trace no footmarks below, but it is sure that this is the only possible exit.\n\n\"His absence was discovered at seven o'clock on Tuesday morning. His bed had been slept in. He had dressed himself fully, before going off, in his usual school suit of black Eton jacket and dark gray trousers. There were no signs that anyone had entered the room, and it is quite certain that anything in the nature of cries or a struggle would have been heard, since Caunter, the elder boy in the inner room, is a very light sleeper.\n\n\"When Lord Saltire's disappearance was discovered, I at once called a roll of the whole establishment\u2014boys, masters, and servants. It was then that we ascertained that Lord Saltire had not been alone in his flight. Heidegger, the German master, was missing. His room was on the second floor, at the farther end of the building, facing the same way as Lord Saltire's. His bed had also been slept in, but he had apparently gone away partly dressed, since his shirt and socks were lying on the floor. He had undoubtedly let himself down by the ivy, for we could see the marks of his feet where he had landed on the lawn. His bicycle was kept in a small shed beside this lawn, and it also was gone.\n\n\"He had been with me for two years, and came with the best references, but he was a silent, morose man, not very popular either with masters or boys. No trace could be found of the fugitives, and now, on Thursday morning, we are as ignorant as we were on Tuesday. Inquiry was, of course, made at once at Holdernesse Hall. It is only a few miles away, and we imagined that, in some sudden attack of homesickness, he had gone back to his father, but nothing had been heard of him. The Duke is greatly agitated, and, as to me, you have seen yourselves the state of nervous prostration to which the suspense and the responsibility have reduced me. Mr. Holmes, if ever you put forward your full powers, I implore you to do so now, for never in your life could you have a case which is more worthy of them.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes had listened with the utmost intentness to the statement of the unhappy schoolmaster. His drawn brows and the deep furrow between them showed that he needed no exhortation to concentrate all his attention upon a problem which, apart from the tremendous interests involved, must appeal so directly to his love of the complex and the unusual. He now drew out his notebook and jotted down one or two memoranda.\n\n\"You have been very remiss in not coming to me sooner,\" said he, severely. \"You start me on my investigation with a very serious handicap. It is inconceivable, for example, that this ivy and this lawn would have yielded nothing to an expert observer.\"\n\n\"I am not to blame, Mr. Holmes. His Grace was extremely desirous to avoid all public scandal. He was afraid of his family unhappiness being dragged before the world. He has a deep horror of anything of the kind.\"\n\n\"But there has been some official investigation?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, and it has proved most disappointing. An apparent clue was at once obtained, since a boy and a young man were reported to have been seen leaving a neighbouring station by an early train. Only last night we had news that the couple had been hunted down in Liverpool, and they prove to have no connection whatever with the matter in hand. Then it was that in my despair and disappointment, after a sleepless night, I came straight to you by the early train.\"\n\n\"I suppose the local investigation was relaxed while this false clue was being followed up?\"\n\n\"It was entirely dropped.\"\n\n\"So that three days have been wasted: The affair has been most deplorably handled.\"\n\n\"I feel it and admit it.\"\n\n\"And yet the problem should be capable of ultimate solution. I shall be very happy to look into it. Have you been able to trace any connection between the missing boy and this German master?\"\n\n\"None at all.\"\n\n\"Was he in the master's class?\"\n\n\"No, he never exchanged a word with him, so far as I know.\"\n\n\"That is certainly very singular. Had the boy a bicycle?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Was any other bicycle missing?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Is that certain?\"\n\n\"Quite.\"\n\n\"Well, now, you do not mean to seriously suggest that this German rode off upon a bicycle in the dead of the night, bearing the boy in his arms?\"\n\n\"Certainly not.\"\n\n\"Then what is the theory in your mind?\"\n\n\"The bicycle may have been a blind. It may have been hidden somewhere, and the pair gone off on foot.\"\n\n\"Quite so, but it seems rather an absurd blind, does it not? Were there other bicycles in this shed?\"\n\n\"Several.\"\n\n\"Would he not have hidden a couple, had he desired to give the idea that they had gone off upon them?\"\n\n\"I suppose he would.\"\n\n\"Of course he would. The blind theory won't do. But the incident is an admirable starting-point for an investigation. After all, a bicycle is not an easy thing to conceal or to destroy. One other question. Did anyone call to see the boy on the day before he disappeared?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Did he get any letters?\"\n\n\"Yes, one letter.\"\n\n\"From whom?\"\n\n\"From his father.\"\n\n\"Do you open the boys' letters?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"How do you know it was from the father?\"\n\n\"The coat of arms was on the envelope, and it was addressed in the Duke's peculiar stiff hand. Besides, the Duke remembers having written.\"\n\n\"When had he a letter before that?\"\n\n\"Not for several days.\"\n\n\"Had he ever one from France?\"\n\n\"No, never.\"\n\n\"You see the point of my questions, of course. Either the boy was carried off by force or he went of his own free will. In the latter case, you would expect that some prompting from outside would be needed to make so young a lad do such a thing. If he has had no visitors, that prompting must have come in letters; hence I try to find out who were his correspondents.\"\n\n\"I fear I cannot help you much. His only correspondent, so far as I know, was his own father.\"\n\n\"Who wrote to him on the very day of his disappearance. Were the relations between father and son very friendly?\"\n\n\"His Grace is never very friendly with anyone. He is completely immersed in large public questions, and is rather inaccessible to all ordinary emotions. But he was always kind to the boy in his own way.\"\n\n\"But the sympathies of the latter were with the mother?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Did he say so?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"The Duke, then?\"\n\n\"Good heaven, no!\"\n\n\"Then how could you know?\"\n\n\"I have had some confidential talks with Mr. James Wilder, his Grace's secretary. It was he who gave me the information about Lord Saltire's feelings.\"\n\n\"I see. By the way, that last letter of the Duke's\u2014was it found in the boy's room after he was gone?\"\n\n\"No, he had taken it with him. I think, Mr. Holmes, it is time that we were leaving for Euston.\"\n\n\"I will order a four-wheeler. In a quarter of an hour, we shall be at your service. If you are telegraphing home, Dr. Huxtable, it would be well to allow the people in your neighbourhood to imagine that the inquiry is still going on in Liverpool, or wherever else that red herring led your pack. In the meantime I will do a little quiet work at your own doors, and perhaps the scent is not so cold but that two old hounds like Watson and myself may get a sniff of it.\"\n\nThat evening found us in the cold, bracing atmosphere of the Peak country, in which Dr. Huxtable's famous school is situated. It was already dark when we reached it. A card was lying on the hall table, and the butler whispered something to his master, who turned to us with agitation in every heavy feature.\n\n\"The Duke is here,\" said he. \"The Duke and Mr. Wilder are in the study. Come, gentlemen, and I will introduce you.\"\n\nI was, of course, familiar with the pictures of the famous statesman, but the man himself was very different from his representation. He was a tall and stately person, scrupulously dressed, with a drawn, thin face, and a nose which was grotesquely curved and long. His complexion was of a dead pallor, which was more startling by contrast with a long, dwindling beard of vivid red, which flowed down over his white waistcoat, with his watch-chain gleaming through its fringe. Such was the stately presence who looked stonily at us from the centre of Dr. Huxtable's hearthrug. Beside him stood a very young man, whom I understood to be Wilder, the private secretary. He was small, nervous, alert, with intelligent light-blue eyes and mobile features. It was he who at once, in an incisive and positive tone, opened the conversation.\n\n\"I called this morning, Dr. Huxtable, too late to prevent you from starting for London. I learned that your object was to invite Mr. Sherlock Holmes to undertake the conduct of this case. His Grace is surprised, Dr. Huxtable, that you should have taken such a step without consulting him.\"\n\n\"When I learned that the police had failed\u2014\"\n\n\"His Grace is by no means convinced that the police have failed.\"\n\n\"But surely, Mr. Wilder\u2014\"\n\n\"You are well aware, Dr. Huxtable, that his Grace is particularly anxious to avoid all public scandal. He prefers to take as few people as possible into his confidence.\"\n\n\"The matter can be easily remedied,\" said the browbeaten doctor; \"Mr. Sherlock Holmes can return to London by the morning train.\"\n\n\"Hardly that, Doctor, hardly that,\" said Holmes, in his blandest voice. \"This northern air is invigorating and pleasant, so I propose to spend a few days upon your moors, and to occupy my mind as best I may. Whether I have the shelter of your roof or of the village inn is, of course, for you to decide.\"\n\nI could see that the unfortunate doctor was in the last stage of indecision, from which he was rescued by the deep, sonorous voice of the red-bearded Duke, which boomed out like a dinner-gong.\n\n\"I agree with Mr. Wilder, Dr. Huxtable, that you would have done wisely to consult me. But since Mr. Holmes has already been taken into your confidence, it would indeed be absurd that we should not avail ourselves of his services. Far from going to the inn, Mr. Holmes, I should be pleased if you would come and stay with me at Holdernesse Hall.\"\n\n\"I thank your Grace. For the purposes of my investigation, I think that it would be wiser for me to remain at the scene of the mystery.\"\n\n\"Just as you like, Mr. Holmes. Any information which Mr. Wilder or I can give you is, of course, at your disposal.\"\n\n\"It will probably be necessary for me to see you at the Hall,\" said Holmes. \"I would only ask you now, sir, whether you have formed any explanation in your own mind as to the mysterious disappearance of your son?\"\n\n\"No, sir, I have not.\"\n\n\"Excuse me if I allude to that which is painful to you, but I have no alternative. Do you think that the Duchess had anything to do with the matter?\"\n\nThe great minister showed perceptible hesitation.\n\n\"I do not think so,\" he said, at last.\n\n\"The other most obvious explanation is that the child has been kidnapped for the purpose of levying ransom. You have not had any demand of the sort?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"One more question, your Grace. I understand that you wrote to your son upon the day when this incident occurred.\"\n\n\"No, I wrote upon the day before.\"\n\n\"Exactly. But he received it on that day?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Was there anything in your letter which might have unbalanced him or induced him to take such a step?\"\n\n\"No, sir, certainly not.\"\n\n\"Did you post that letter yourself?\"\n\nThe nobleman's reply was interrupted by his secretary, who broke in with some heat.\n\n\"His Grace is not in the habit of posting letters himself,\" said he. \"This letter was laid with others upon the study table, and I myself put them in the post-bag.\"\n\n\"You are sure this one was among them?\"\n\n\"Yes, I observed it.\"\n\n\"How many letters did your Grace write that day?\"\n\n\"Twenty or thirty. I have a large correspondence. But surely this is somewhat irrelevant?\"\n\n\"Not entirely,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"For my own part,\" the Duke continued, \"I have advised the police to turn their attention to the south of France. I have already said that I do not believe that the Duchess would encourage so monstrous an action, but the lad had the most wrong-headed opinions, and it is possible that he may have fled to her, aided and abetted by this German. I think, Dr. Huxtable, that we will now return to the Hall.\"\n\nI could see that there were other questions which Holmes would have wished to put, but the nobleman's abrupt manner showed that the interview was at an end. It was evident that to his intensely aristocratic nature this discussion of his intimate family affairs with a stranger was most abhorrent, and that he feared lest every fresh question would throw a fiercer light into the discreetly shadowed corners of his ducal history.\n\nWhen the nobleman and his secretary had left, my friend flung himself at once with characteristic eagerness into the investigation.\n\nThe boy's chamber was carefully examined, and yielded nothing save the absolute conviction that it was only through the window that he could have escaped. The German master's room and effects gave no further clue. In his case a trailer of ivy had given way under his weight, and we saw by the light of a lantern the mark on the lawn where his heels had come down. That one dint in the short, green grass was the only material witness left of this inexplicable nocturnal flight.\n\nSherlock Holmes left the house alone, and only returned after eleven. He had obtained a large ordnance map of the neighbourhood, and this he brought into my room, where he laid it out on the bed, and, having balanced the lamp in the middle of it, he began to smoke over it, and occasionally to point out objects of interest with the reeking amber of his pipe.\n\n\"This case grows upon me, Watson,\" said he. \"There are decidedly some points of interest in connection with it. In this early stage, I want you to realize those geographical features which may have a good deal to do with our investigation.\n\n\"Look at this map. This dark square is the Priory School. I'll put a pin in it. Now, this line is the main road. You see that it runs east and west past the school, and you see also that there is no side road for a mile either way. If these two folk passed away by road, it was this road.\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"By a singular and happy chance, we are able to some extent to check what passed along this road during the night in question. At this point, where my pipe is now resting, a county constable was on duty from twelve to six. It is, as you perceive, the first cross-road on the east side. This man declares that he was not absent from his post for an instant, and he is positive that neither boy nor man could have gone that way unseen. I have spoken with this policeman to-night, and he appears to me to be a perfectly reliable person. That blocks this end. We have now to deal with the other. There is an inn here, the Red Bull, the landlady of which was ill. She had sent to Mackleton for a doctor, but he did not arrive until morning, being absent at another case. The people at the inn were alert all night, awaiting his coming, and one or other of them seems to have continually had an eye upon the road. They declare that no one passed. If their evidence is good, then we are fortunate enough to be able to block the west, and also to be able to say that the fugitives did not use the road at all.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOLMES'S MAP OF THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE SCHOOL", + "text": "\"But the bicycle?\" I objected.\n\n\"Quite so. We will come to the bicycle presently. To continue our reasoning: if these people did not go by the road, they must have traversed the country to the north of the house or to the south of the house. That is certain. Let us weigh the one against the other. On the south of the house is, as you perceive, a large district of arable land, cut up into small fields, with stone walls between them. There, I admit that a bicycle is impossible. We can dismiss the idea. We turn to the country on the north. Here there lies a grove of trees, marked as the 'Ragged Shaw,' and on the farther side stretches a great rolling moor, Lower Gill Moor, extending for ten miles and sloping gradually upward. Here, at one side of this wilderness, is Holdernesse Hall, ten miles by road, but only six across the moor. It is a peculiarly desolate plain. A few moor farmers have small holdings, where they rear sheep and cattle. Except these, the plover and the curlew are the only inhabitants until you come to the Chesterfield high road. There is a church there, you see, a few cottages, and an inn. Beyond that the hills become precipitous. Surely it is here to the north that our quest must lie.\"\n\n\"But the bicycle?\" I persisted.\n\n\"Well, well!\" said Holmes, impatiently. \"A good cyclist does not need a high road. The moor is intersected with paths, and the moon was at the full. Halloa! what is this?\"\n\nThere was an agitated knock at the door, and an instant afterwards Dr. Huxtable was in the room. In his hand he held a blue cricket-cap with a white chevron on the peak.\n\n\"At last we have a clue!\" he cried. \"Thank heaven! at last we are on the dear boy's track! It is his cap.\"\n\n\"Where was it found?\"\n\n\"In the van of the gipsies who camped on the moor. They left on Tuesday. To-day the police traced them down and examined their caravan. This was found.\"\n\n\"How do they account for it?\"\n\n\"They shuffled and lied\u2014said that they found it on the moor on Tuesday morning. They know where he is, the rascals! Thank goodness, they are all safe under lock and key. Either the fear of the law or the Duke's purse will certainly get out of them all that they know.\"\n\n\"So far, so good,\" said Holmes, when the doctor had at last left the room. \"It at least bears out the theory that it is on the side of the Lower Gill Moor that we must hope for results. The police have really done nothing locally, save the arrest of these gipsies. Look here, Watson! There is a watercourse across the moor. You see it marked here in the map. In some parts it widens into a morass. This is particularly so in the region between Holdernesse Hall and the school. It is vain to look elsewhere for tracks in this dry weather, but at that point there is certainly a chance of some record being left. I will call you early to-morrow morning, and you and I will try if we can throw some little light upon the mystery.\"\n\nThe day was just breaking when I woke to find the long, thin form of Holmes by my bedside. He was fully dressed, and had apparently already been out.\n\n\"I have done the lawn and the bicycle shed,\" said he. \"I have also had a ramble through the Ragged Shaw. Now, Watson, there is cocoa ready in the next room. I must beg you to hurry, for we have a great day before us.\"\n\nHis eyes shone, and his cheek was flushed with the exhilaration of the master workman who sees his work lie ready before him. A very different Holmes, this active, alert man, from the introspective and pallid dreamer of Baker Street. I felt, as I looked upon that supple figure, alive with nervous energy, that it was indeed a strenuous day that awaited us.\n\nAnd yet it opened in the blackest disappointment. With high hopes we struck across the peaty, russet moor, intersected with a thousand sheep paths, until we came to the broad, light-green belt which marked the morass between us and Holdernesse. Certainly, if the lad had gone homeward, he must have passed this, and he could not pass it without leaving his traces. But no sign of him or the German could be seen. With a darkening face my friend strode along the margin, eagerly observant of every muddy stain upon the mossy surface. Sheep-marks there were in profusion, and at one place, some miles down, cows had left their tracks. Nothing more.\n\n\"Check number one,\" said Holmes, looking gloomily over the rolling expanse of the moor. \"There is another morass down yonder, and a narrow neck between. Halloa! halloa! halloa! what have we here?\"\n\nWe had come on a small black ribbon of pathway. In the middle of it, clearly marked on the sodden soil, was the track of a bicycle.\n\n\"Hurrah!\" I cried. \"We have it.\"\n\nBut Holmes was shaking his head, and his face was puzzled and expectant rather than joyous.\n\n\"A bicycle, certainly, but not the bicycle,\" said he. \"I am familiar with forty-two different impressions left by tyres. This, as you perceive, is a Dunlop, with a patch upon the outer cover. Heidegger's tyres were Palmer's, leaving longitudinal stripes. Aveling, the mathematical master, was sure upon the point. Therefore, it is not Heidegger's track.\"\n\n\"The boy's, then?\"\n\n\"Possibly, if we could prove a bicycle to have been in his possession. But this we have utterly failed to do. This track, as you perceive, was made by a rider who was going from the direction of the school.\"\n\n\"Or towards it?\"\n\n\"No, no, my dear Watson. The more deeply sunk impression is of course, the hind wheel, upon which the weight rests. You perceive several places where it has passed across and obliterated the more shallow mark of the front one. It was undoubtedly heading away from the school. It may or may not be connected with our inquiry, but we will follow it backwards before we go any farther.\"\n\nWe did so, and at the end of a few hundred yards lost the tracks as we emerged from the boggy portion of the moor. Following the path backwards, we picked out another spot, where a spring trickled across it. Here, once again, was the mark of the bicycle, though nearly obliterated by the hoofs of cows. After that there was no sign, but the path ran right on into Ragged Shaw, the wood which backed on to the school. From this wood the cycle must have emerged. Holmes sat down on a boulder and rested his chin in his hands. I had smoked two cigarettes before he moved.\n\n\"Well, well,\" said he, at last. \"It is, of course, possible that a cunning man might change the tyres of his bicycle in order to leave unfamiliar tracks. A criminal who was capable of such a thought is a man whom I should be proud to do business with. We will leave this question undecided and hark back to our morass again, for we have left a good deal unexplored.\"\n\nWe continued our systematic survey of the edge of the sodden portion of the moor, and soon our perseverance was gloriously rewarded. Right across the lower part of the bog lay a miry path. Holmes gave a cry of delight as he approached it. An impression like a fine bundle of telegraph wires ran down the centre of it. It was the Palmer tyres.\n\n\"Here is Herr Heidegger, sure enough!\" cried Holmes, exultantly. \"My reasoning seems to have been pretty sound, Watson.\"\n\n\"I congratulate you.\"\n\n\"But we have a long way still to go. Kindly walk clear of the path. Now let us follow the trail. I fear that it will not lead very far.\"\n\nWe found, however, as we advanced that this portion of the moor is intersected with soft patches, and, though we frequently lost sight of the track, we always succeeded in picking it up once more.\n\n\"Do you observe,\" said Holmes. \"that the rider is now undoubtedly forcing the pace? There can be no doubt of it. Look at this impression, where you get both tyres clear. The one is as deep as the other. That can only mean that the rider is throwing his weight on to the handle-bar, as a man does when he is sprinting. By Jove! he has had a fall.\"\n\nThere was a broad, irregular smudge covering some yards of the track. Then there were a few footmarks, and the tyres reappeared once more.\n\n\"A side-slip,\" I suggested.\n\nHolmes held up a crumpled branch of flowering gorse. To my horror I perceived that the yellow blossoms were all dabbled with crimson. On the path, too, and among the heather were dark stains of clotted blood.\n\n\"Bad!\" said Holmes. \"Bad! Stand clear, Watson! Not an unnecessary footstep! What do I read here? He fell wounded\u2014he stood up\u2014he remounted\u2014he proceeded. But there is no other track. Cattle on this side path. He was surely not gored by a bull? Impossible! But I see no traces of anyone else. We must push on, Watson. Surely, with stains as well as the track to guide us, he cannot escape us now.\"\n\nOur search was not a very long one. The tracks of the tyre began to curve fantastically upon the wet and shining path. Suddenly, as I looked ahead, the gleam of metal caught my eye from amid the thick gorse-bushes. Out of them we dragged a bicycle, Palmer-tyred, one pedal bent, and the whole front of it horribly smeared and slobbered with blood. On the other side of the bushes, a shoe was projecting. We ran round, and there lay the unfortunate rider. He was a tall man, full-bearded, with spectacles, one glass of which had been knocked out. The cause of his death was a frightful blow upon the head, which had crushed in part of his skull. That he could have gone on after receiving such an injury said much for the vitality and courage of the man. He wore shoes, but no socks, and his open coat disclosed a nightshirt beneath it. It was undoubtedly the German master.\n\nHolmes turned the body over reverently, and examined it with great attention. He then sat in deep thought for a time, and I could see by his ruffled brow that this grim discovery had not, in his opinion, advanced us much in our inquiry.\n\n\"It is a little difficult to know what to do, Watson,\" said he, at last. \"My own inclinations are to push this inquiry on, for we have already lost so much time that we cannot afford to waste another hour. On the other hand, we are bound to inform the police of the discovery, and to see that this poor fellow's body is looked after.\"\n\n\"I could take a note back.\"\n\n\"But I need your company and assistance. Wait a bit! There is a fellow cutting peat up yonder. Bring him over here, and he will guide the police.\"\n\nI brought the peasant across, and Holmes dispatched the frightened man with a note to Dr. Huxtable.\n\n\"Now, Watson,\" said he, \"we have picked up two clues this morning. One is the bicycle with the Palmer tyre, and we see what that has led to. The other is the bicycle with the patched Dunlop. Before we start to investigate that, let us try to realize what we do know, so as to make the most of it, and to separate the essential from the accidental.\"\n\n\"First of all, I wish to impress upon you that the boy certainly left of his own free-will. He got down from his window and he went off, either alone or with someone. That is sure.\"\n\nI assented.\n\n\"Well, now, let us turn to this unfortunate German master. The boy was fully dressed when he fled. Therefore, he foresaw what he would do. But the German went without his socks. He certainly acted on very short notice.\"\n\n\"Undoubtedly.\"\n\n\"Why did he go? Because, from his bedroom window, he saw the flight of the boy; because he wished to overtake him and bring him back. He seized his bicycle, pursued the lad, and in pursuing him met his death.\"\n\n\"So it would seem.\"\n\n\"Now I come to the critical part of my argument. The natural action of a man in pursuing a little boy would be to run after him. He would know that he could overtake him. But the German does not do so. He turns to his bicycle. I am told that he was an excellent cyclist. He would not do this, if he did not see that the boy had some swift means of escape.\"\n\n\"The other bicycle.\"\n\n\"Let us continue our reconstruction. He meets his death five miles from the school\u2014not by a bullet, mark you, which even a lad might conceivably discharge, but by a savage blow dealt by a vigorous arm. The lad, then, had a companion in his flight. And the flight was a swift one, since it took five miles before an expert cyclist could overtake them. Yet we survey the ground round the scene of the tragedy. What do we find? A few cattletracks, nothing more. I took a wide sweep round, and there is no path within fifty yards. Another cyclist could have had nothing to do with the actual murder, nor were there any human footmarks.\"\n\n\"Holmes,\" I cried, \"this is impossible.\"\n\n\"Admirable!\" he said. \"A most illuminating remark. It is impossible as I state it, and therefore I must in some respect have stated it wrong. Yet you saw for yourself. Can you suggest any fallacy?\"\n\n\"He could not have fractured his skull in a fall?\"\n\n\"In a morass, Watson?\"\n\n\"I am at my wit's end.\"\n\n\"Tut, tut, we have solved some worse problems. At least we have plenty of material, if we can only use it. Come, then, and, having exhausted the Palmer, let us see what the Dunlop with the patched cover has to offer us.\"\n\nWe picked up the track and followed it onward for some distance, but soon the moor rose into a long, heather-tufted curve, and we left the watercourse behind us. No further help from tracks could be hoped for. At the spot where we saw the last of the Dunlop tyre it might equally have led to Holdernesse Hall, the stately towers of which rose some miles to our left, or to a low, gray village which lay in front of us and marked the position of the Chesterfield high road.\n\nAs we approached the forbidding and squalid inn, with the sign of a game-cock above the door, Holmes gave a sudden groan, and clutched me by the shoulder to save himself from falling. He had had one of those violent strains of the ankle which leave a man helpless. With difficulty he limped up to the door, where a squat, dark, elderly man was smoking a black clay pipe.\n\n\"How are you, Mr. Reuben Hayes?\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Who are you, and how do you get my name so pat?\" the countryman answered, with a suspicious flash of a pair of cunning eyes.\n\n\"Well, it's printed on the board above your head. It's easy to see a man who is master of his own house. I suppose you haven't such a thing as a carriage in your stables?\"\n\n\"No, I have not.\"\n\n\"I can hardly put my foot to the ground.\"\n\n\"Don't put it to the ground.\"\n\n\"But I can't walk.\"\n\n\"Well, then, hop.\"\n\nMr. Reuben Hayes's manner was far from gracious, but Holmes took it with admirable good-humour.\n\n\"Look here, my man,\" said he. \"This is really rather an awkward fix for me. I don't mind how I get on.\"\n\n\"Neither do I,\" said the morose landlord.\n\n\"The matter is very important. I would offer you a sovereign for the use of a bicycle.\"\n\nThe landlord pricked up his ears.\n\n\"Where do you want to go?\"\n\n\"To Holdernesse Hall.\"\n\n\"Pals of the Dook, I suppose?\" said the landlord, surveying our mud-stained garments with ironical eyes.\n\nHolmes laughed good-naturedly.\n\n\"He'll be glad to see us, anyhow.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because we bring him news of his lost son.\"\n\nThe landlord gave a very visible start.\n\n\"What, you're on his track?\"\n\n\"He has been heard of in Liverpool. They expect to get him every hour.\"\n\nAgain a swift change passed over the heavy, unshaven face. His manner was suddenly genial.\n\n\"I've less reason to wish the Dook well than most men,\" said he, \"for I was his head coachman once, and cruel bad he treated me. It was him that sacked me without a character on the word of a lying corn-chandler. But I'm glad to hear that the young lord was heard of in Liverpool, and I'll help you to take the news to the Hall.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Holmes. \"We'll have some food first. Then you can bring round the bicycle.\"\n\n\"I haven't got a bicycle.\"\n\nHolmes held up a sovereign.\n\n\"I tell you, man, that I haven't got one. I'll let you have two horses as far as the Hall.\"\n\n\"Well, well,\" said Holmes, \"we'll talk about it when we've had something to eat.\"\n\nWhen we were left alone in the stone-flagged kitchen, it was astonishing how rapidly that sprained ankle recovered. It was nearly nightfall, and we had eaten nothing since early morning, so that we spent some time over our meal. Holmes was lost in thought, and once or twice he walked over to the window and stared earnestly out. It opened on to a squalid courtyard. In the far comer was a smithy, where a grimy lad was at work. On the other side were the stables. Holmes had sat down again after one of these excursions, when he suddenly sprang out of his chair with a loud exclamation.\n\n\"By heaven, Watson, I believe that I've got it!\" he cried. \"Yes, yes, it must be so. Watson, do you remember seeing any cow-tracks to-day?\"\n\n\"Yes, several.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"Well; everywhere. They were at the morass, and again on the path, and again near where poor Heidegger met his death.\"\n\n\"Exactly. Well, now, Watson, how many cows did you see on the moor?\"\n\n\"I don't remember seeing any.\"\n\n\"Strange, Watson, that we should see tracks all along our line, but never a cow on the whole moor. Very strange, Watson, eh?\"\n\n\"Yes, it is strange.\"\n\n\"Now, Watson, make an effort, throw your mind back. Can you see those tracks upon the path?\"\n\n\"Yes, I can.\"\n\n\"Can you recall that the tracks were sometimes like that, Watson\"\u2014he arranged a number of bread-crumbs in this fashion\u2014: : : : :\u2014\"and sometimes like this\"\u2014:.:.:.:.\u2014\"and occasionally like this\"\u2014. . . \"Can you remember that?\"\n\n\"No, I cannot.\"\n\n\"But I can. I could swear to it. However, we will go back at our leisure and verify it. What a blind beetle I have been, not to draw my conclusion.\"\n\n\"And what is your conclusion?\"\n\n\"Only that it is a remarkable cow which walks, canters, and gallops. By George! Watson, it was no brain of a country publican that thought out such a blind as that. The coast seems to be clear, save for that lad in the smithy. Let us slip out and see what we can see.\"\n\nThere were two rough-haired, unkempt horses in the tumble-down stable. Holmes raised the hind leg of one of them and laughed aloud.\n\n\"Old shoes, but newly shod\u2014old shoes, but new nails. This case deserves to be a classic. Let us go across to the smithy.\"\n\nThe lad continued his work without regarding us. I saw Holmes's eye darting to right and left among the litter of iron and wood which was scattered about the floor. Suddenly, however, we heard a step behind us, and there was the landlord, his heavy eyebrows drawn over his savage eyes, his swarthy features convulsed with passion. He held a short, metal-headed stick in his hand, and he advanced in so menacing a fashion that I was right glad to feel the revolver in my pocket.\n\n\"You infernal spies!\" the man cried. \"What are you doing there?\"\n\n\"Why, Mr. Reuben Hayes,\" said Holmes, coolly, \"one might think that you were afraid of our finding something out.\"\n\nThe man mastered himself with a violent effort, and his grim mouth loosened into a false laugh, which was more menacing than his frown.\n\n\"You're welcome to all you can find out in my smithy,\" said he. \"But look here, mister, I don't care for folk poking about my place without my leave, so the sooner you pay your score and get out of this the better I shall be pleased.\"\n\n\"All right, Mr. Hayes, no harm meant,\" said Holmes. \"We have been having a look at your horses, but I think I'll walk, after all. It's not far, I believe.\"\n\n\"Not more than two miles to the Hall gates. That's the road to the left.\" He watched us with sullen eyes until we had left his premises.\n\nWe did not go very far along the road, for Holmes stopped the instant that the curve hid us from the landlord's view.\n\n\"We were warm, as the children say, at that inn,\" said he. \"I seem to grow colder every step that I take away from it. No, no, I can't possibly leave it.\"\n\n\"I am convinced,\" said I, \"that this Reuben Hayes knows all about it. A more self-evident villain I never saw.\"\n\n\"Oh! he impressed you in that way, did he? There are the horses, there is the smithy. Yes, it is an interesting place, this Fighting Cock. I think we shall have another look at it in an unobtrusive way.\"\n\nA long, sloping hillside, dotted with gray limestone boulders, stretched behind us. We had turned off the road, and were making our way up the hill, when, looking in the direction of Holdernesse Hall, I saw a cyclist coming swiftly along.\n\n\"Get down, Watson!\" cried Holmes, with a heavy hand upon my shoulder. We had hardly sunk from view when the man flew past us on the road. Amid a rolling cloud of dust, I caught a glimpse of a pale, agitated face\u2014a face with horror in every lineament, the mouth open, the eyes staring wildly in front. It was like some strange caricature of the dapper James Wilder whom we had seen the night before.\n\n\"The Duke's secretary!\" cried Holmes. \"Come, Watson, let us see what he does.\"\n\nWe scrambled from rock to rock, until in a few moments we had made our way to a point from which we could see the front door of the inn. Wilder's bicycle was leaning against the wall beside it. No one was moving about the house, nor could we catch a glimpse of any faces at the windows. Slowly the twilight crept down as the sun sank behind the high towers of Holdernesse Hall. Then, in the gloom, we saw the two side-lamps of a trap light up in the stable-yard of the inn, and shortly afterwards heard the rattle of hoofs, as it wheeled out into the road and tore off at a furious pace in the direction of Chesterfield.\n\n\"What do you make of that, Watson?\" Holmes whispered.\n\n\"It looks like a flight.\"\n\n\"A single man in a dog-cart, so far as I could see. Well, it certainly was not Mr. James Wilder, for there he is at the door.\"\n\nA red square of light had sprung out of the darkness. In the middle of it was the black figure of the secretary, his head advanced, peering out into the night. It was evident that he was expecting someone. Then at last there were steps in the road, a second figure was visible for an instant against the light, the door shut, and all was black once more. Five minutes later a lamp was lit in a room upon the first floor.\n\n\"It seems to be a curious class of custom that is done by the Fighting Cock,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"The bar is on the other side.\"\n\n\"Quite so. These are what one may call the private guests. Now, what in the world is Mr. James Wilder doing in that den at this hour of night, and who is the companion who comes to meet him there? Come, Watson, we must really take a risk and try to investigate this a little more closely.\"\n\nTogether we stole down to the road and crept across to the door of the inn. The bicycle still leaned against the wall. Holmes struck a match and held it to the back wheel, and I heard him chuckle as the light fell upon a patched Dunlop tyre. Up above us was the lighted window.\n\n\"I must have a peep through that, Watson. If you bend your back and support yourself upon the wall, I think that I can manage.\"\n\nAn instant later, his feet were on my shoulders, but he was hardly up before he was down again.\n\n\"Come, my friend,\" said he, \"our day's work has been quite long enough. I think that we have gathered all that we can. It's a long walk to the school, and the sooner we get started the better.\"\n\nHe hardly opened his lips during that weary trudge across the moor, nor would he enter the school when he reached it, but went on to Mackleton Station, whence he could send some telegrams. Late at night I heard him consoling Dr. Huxtable, prostrated by the tragedy of his master's death, and later still he entered my room as alert and vigorous as he had been when he started in the morning. \"All goes well, my friend,\" said he. \"I promise that before to-morrow evening we shall have reached the solution of the mystery.\"\n\nAt eleven o'clock next morning my friend and I were walking up the famous yew avenue of Holdernesse Hall. We were ushered through the magnificent Elizabethan doorway and into his Grace's study. There we found Mr. James Wilder, demure and courtly, but with some trace of that wild terror of the night before still lurking in his furtive eyes and in his twitching features.\n\n\"You have come to see his Grace? I am sorry, but the fact is that the Duke is far from well. He has been very much upset by the tragic news. We received a telegram from Dr. Huxtable yesterday afternoon, which told us of your discovery.\"\n\n\"I must see the Duke, Mr. Wilder.\"\n\n\"But he is in his room.\"\n\n\"Then I must go to his room.\"\n\n\"I believe he is in his bed.\"\n\n\"I will see him there.\"\n\nHolmes's cold and inexorable manner showed the secretary that it was useless to argue with him.\n\n\"Very good, Mr. Holmes, I will tell him that you are here.\"\n\nAfter an hour's delay, the great nobleman appeared. His face was more cadaverous than ever, his shoulders had rounded, and he seemed to me to be an altogether older man than he had been the morning before. He greeted us with a stately courtesy and seated himself at his desk, his red beard streaming down on the table.\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes?\" said he.\n\nBut my friend's eyes were fixed upon the secretary, who stood by his master's chair.\n\n\"I think, your Grace, that I could speak more freely in Mr. Wilder's absence.\"\n\nThe man turned a shade paler and cast a malignant glance at Holmes.\n\n\"If your Grace wishes\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, you had better go. Now, Mr. Holmes, what have you to say?\"\n\nMy friend waited until the door had closed behind the retreating secretary.\n\n\"The fact is, your Grace,\" said he, \"that my colleague, Dr. Watson, and myself had an assurance from Dr. Huxtable that a reward had been offered in this case. I should like to have this confirmed from your own lips.\"\n\n\"Certainly, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"It amounted, if I am correctly informed, to five thousand pounds to anyone who will tell you where your son is?\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"And another thousand to the man who will name the person or persons who keep him in custody?\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"Under the latter heading is included, no doubt, not only those who may have taken him away, but also those who conspire to keep him in his present position?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes,\" cried the Duke, impatiently. \"If you do your work well, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, you will have no reason to complain of niggardly treatment.\"\n\nMy friend rubbed his thin hands together with an appearance of avidity which was a surprise to me, who knew his frugal tastes.\n\n\"I fancy that I see your Grace's check-book upon the table,\" said he. \"I should be glad if you would make me out a check for six thousand pounds. It would be as well, perhaps, for you to cross it. The Capital and Counties Bank, Oxford Street branch are my agents.\"\n\nHis Grace sat very stern and upright in his chair and looked stonily at my friend.\n\n\"Is this a joke, Mr. Holmes? It is hardly a subject for pleasantry.\"\n\n\"Not at all, your Grace. I was never more earnest in my life.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, then?\"\n\n\"I mean that I have earned the reward. I know where your son is, and I know some, at least, of those who are holding him.\"\n\nThe Duke's beard had turned more aggressively red than ever against his ghastly white face.\n\n\"Where is he?\" he gasped.\n\n\"He is, or was last night, at the Fighting Cock Inn, about two miles from your park gate.\"\n\nThe Duke fell back in his chair.\n\n\"And whom do you accuse?\"\n\nSherlock Holmes's answer was an astounding one. He stepped swiftly forward and touched the Duke upon the shoulder.\n\n\"I accuse you,\" said he. \"And now, your Grace, I'll trouble you for that check.\"\n\nNever shall I forget the Duke's appearance as he sprang up and clawed with his hands, like one who is sinking into an abyss. Then, with an extraordinary effort of aristocratic self-command, he sat down and sank his face in his hands. It was some minutes before he spoke.\n\n\"How much do you know?\" he asked at last, without raising his head.\n\n\"I saw you together last night.\"\n\n\"Does anyone else beside your friend know?\"\n\n\"I have spoken to no one.\"\n\nThe Duke took a pen in his quivering fingers and opened his check-book.\n\n\"I shall be as good as my word, Mr. Holmes. I am about to write your check, however unwelcome the information which you have gained may be to me. When the offer was first made, I little thought the turn which events might take. But you and your friend are men of discretion, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"I hardly understand your Grace.\"\n\n\"I must put it plainly, Mr. Holmes. If only you two know of this incident, there is no reason why it should go any farther. I think twelve thousand pounds is the sum that I owe you, is it not?\"\n\nBut Holmes smiled and shook his head.\n\n\"I fear, your Grace, that matters can hardly be arranged so easily. There is the death of this schoolmaster to be accounted for.\"\n\n\"But James knew nothing of that. You cannot hold him responsible for that. It was the work of this brutal ruffian whom he had the misfortune to employ.\"\n\n\"I must take the view, your Grace, that when a man embarks upon a crime, he is morally guilty of any other crime which may spring from it.\"\n\n\"Morally, Mr. Holmes. No doubt you are right. But surely not in the eyes of the law. A man cannot be condemned for a murder at which he was not present, and which he loathes and abhors as much as you do. The instant that he heard of it he made a complete confession to me, so filled was he with horror and remorse. He lost not an hour in breaking entirely with the murderer. Oh, Mr. Holmes, you must save him\u2014you must save him! I tell you that you must save him!\" The Duke had dropped the last attempt at self-command, and was pacing the room with a convulsed face and with his clenched hands raving in the air. At last he mastered himself and sat down once more at his desk. \"I appreciate your conduct in coming here before you spoke to anyone else,\" said he. \"At least, we may take counsel how far we can minimize this hideous scandal.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said Holmes. \"I think, your Grace, that this can only be done by absolute frankness between us. I am disposed to help your Grace to the best of my ability, but, in order to do so, I must understand to the last detail how the matter stands. I realize that your words applied to Mr. James Wilder, and that he is not the murderer.\"\n\n\"No, the murderer has escaped.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes smiled demurely.\n\n\"Your Grace can hardly have heard of any small reputation which I possess, or you would not imagine that it is so easy to escape me. Mr. Reuben Hayes was arrested at Chesterfield, on my information, at eleven o'clock last night. I had a telegram from the head of the local police before I left the school this morning.\"\n\nThe Duke leaned back in his chair and stared with amazement at my friend.\n\n\"You seem to have powers that are hardly human,\" said he. \"So Reuben Hayes is taken? I am right glad to hear it, if it will not react upon the fate of James.\"\n\n\"Your secretary?\"\n\n\"No, sir, my son.\"\n\nIt was Holmes's turn to look astonished.\n\n\"I confess that this is entirely new to me, your Grace. I must beg you to be more explicit.\"\n\n\"I will conceal nothing from you. I agree with you that complete frankness, however painful it may be to me, is the best policy in this desperate situation to which James's folly and jealousy have reduced us. When I was a very young man, Mr. Holmes, I loved with such a love as comes only once in a lifetime. I offered the lady marriage, but she refused it on the grounds that such a match might mar my career. Had she lived, I would certainly never have married anyone else. She died, and left this one child, whom for her sake I have cherished and cared for. I could not acknowledge the paternity to the world, but I gave him the best of educa tions, and since he came to manhood I have kept him near my person. He surprised my secret, and has presumed ever since upon the claim which he has upon me, and upon his power of provoking a scandal which would be abhorrent to me. His presence had something to do with the unhappy issue of my marriage. Above all, he hated my young legitimate heir from the first with a persistent hatred. You may well ask me why, under these circumstances, I still kept James under my roof. I answer that it was because I could see his mother's face in his, and that for her dear sake there was no end to my long-suffering. All her pretty ways too\u2014there was not one of them which he could not suggest and bring back to my memory. I could not send him away. But I feared so much lest he should do Arthur\u2014that is, Lord Saltire\u2014a mischief, that I dispatched him for safety to Dr. Huxtable's school.\n\n\"James came into contact with this fellow Hayes, because the man was a tenant of mine, and James acted as agent. The fellow was a rascal from the beginning, but, in some extraordinary way, James became intimate with him. He had always a taste for low company. When James determined to kidnap Lord Saltire, it was of this man's service that he availed himself. You remember that I wrote to Arthur upon that last day. Well, James opened the letter and inserted a note asking Arthur to meet him in a little wood called the Ragged Shaw, which is near to the school. He used the Duchess's name, and in that way got the boy to come. That evening James bicycled over\u2014I am telling you what he has himself confessed to me\u2014and he told Arthur, whom he met in the wood, that his mother longed to see him, that she was awaiting him on the moor, and that if he would come back into the wood at midnight he would find a man with a horse, who would take him to her. Poor Arthur fell into the trap. He came to the appointment, and found this fellow Hayes with a led pony. Arthur mounted, and they set off together. It appears\u2014though this James only heard yesterday\u2014that they were pursued, that Hayes struck the pursuer with his stick, and that the man died of his injuries. Hayes brought Arthur to his public-house, the Fighting Cock, where he was confined in an upper room, under the care of Mrs. Hayes, who is a kindly woman, but entirely under the control of her brutal husband.\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes, that was the state of affairs when I first saw you two days ago. I had no more idea of the truth than you. You will ask me what was James's motive in doing such a deed. I answer that there was a great deal which was unreasoning and fanatical in the hatred which he bore my heir. In his view he should himself have been heir of all my estates, and he deeply resented those social laws which made it impossible. At the same time, he had a definite motive also. He was eager that I should break the entail, and he was of opinion that it lay in my power to do so. He intended to make a bargain with me\u2014to restore Arthur if I would break the entail, and so make it possible for the estate to be left to him by will. He knew well that I should never willingly invoke the aid of the police against him. I say that he would have proposed such a bargain to me; but he did not actually do so, for events moved too quickly for him, and he had not time to put his plans into practice.\n\n\"What brought all his wicked scheme to wreck was your discovery of this man Heidegger's dead body. James was seized with horror at the news. It came to us yesterday, as we sat together in this study. Dr. Huxtable had sent a telegram. James was so overwhelmed with grief and agitation that my suspicions, which had never been entirely absent, rose instantly to a certainty, and I taxed him with the deed. He made a complete voluntary confession. Then he implored me to keep his secret for three days longer, so as to give his wretched accomplice a chance of saving his guilty life. I yielded\u2014as I have always yielded\u2014to his prayers, and instantly James hurried off to the Fighting Cock to warn Hayes and give him the means of flight. I could not go there by daylight without provoking comment, but as soon as night fell I hurried off to see my dear Arthur. I found him safe and well, but horrified beyond expression by the dreadful deed he had witnessed. In deference to my promise, and much against my will, I consented to leave him there for three days, under the charge of Mrs. Hayes, since it was evident that it was impossible to inform the police where he was without telling them also who was the murderer, and I could not see how that murderer could be punished without ruin to my unfortunate James. You asked for frankness, Mr. Holmes, and I have taken you at your word, for I have now told you everything without an attempt at circumlocution or concealment. Do you in turn be as frank with me.\"\n\n\"I will,\" said Holmes. \"In the first place, your Grace, I am bound to tell you that you have placed yourself in a most serious position in the eyes of the law. You have condoned a felony, and you have aided the escape of a murderer, for I cannot doubt that any money which was taken by James Wilder to aid his accomplice in his flight came from your Grace's purse.\"\n\nThe Duke bowed his assent.\n\n\"This is, indeed, a most serious matter. Even more culpable in my opinion, your Grace, is your attitude towards your younger son. You leave him in this den for three days.\"\n\n\"Under solemn promises\u2014\"\n\n\"What are promises to such people as these? You have no guarantee that he will not be spirited away again. To humour your guilty older son, you have exposed your innocent younger son to imminent and unnecessary danger. It was a most unjustifiable action.\"\n\nThe proud lord of Holdernesse was not accustomed to be so rated in his own ducal hall. The blood flushed into his high forehead, but his conscience held him dumb.\n\n\"I will help you, but on one condition only. It is that you ring for the footman and let me give such orders as I like.\"\n\nWithout a word, the Duke pressed the electric bell. A servant entered.\n\n\"You will be glad to hear,\" said Holmes, \"that your young master is found. It is the Duke's desire that the carriage shall go at once to the Fighting Cock Inn to bring Lord Saltire home.\n\n\"Now,\" said Holmes, when the rejoicing lackey had disappeared, \"having secured the future, we can afford to be more lenient with the past. I am not in an official position, and there is no reason, so long as the ends of justice are served, why I should disclose all that I know. As to Hayes, I say nothing. The gallows awaits him, and I would do nothing to save him from it. What he will divulge I cannot tell, but I have no doubt that your Grace could make him understand that it is to his interest to be silent. From the police point of view he will have kidnapped the boy for the purpose of ransom. If they do not themselves find it out, I see no reason why I should prompt them to take a broader point of view. I would warn your Grace, however, that the continued presence of Mr. James Wilder in your household can only lead to misfortune.\"\n\n\"I understand that, Mr. Holmes, and it is already settled that he shall leave me forever, and go to seek his fortune in Australia.\"\n\n\"In that case, your Grace, since you have yourself stated that any unhappiness in your married life was caused by his presence, I would suggest that you make such amends as you can to the Duchess, and that you try to resume those relations which have been so unhappily interrupted.\"\n\n\"That also I have arranged, Mr. Holmes. I wrote to the Duchess this morning.\"\n\n\"In that case,\" said Holmes, rising, \"I think that my friend and I can congratulate ourselves upon several most happy results from our little visit to the North. There is one other small point upon which I desire some light. This fellow Hayes had shod his horses with shoes which counterfeited the tracks of cows. Was it from Mr. Wilder that he learned so extraordinary a device?\"\n\nThe Duke stood in thought for a moment, with a look of intense surprise on his face. Then he opened a door and showed us into a large room furnished as a museum. He led the way to a glass case in a corner, and pointed to the inscription.\n\n\"These shoes,\" it ran, \"were dug up in the moat of Holdernesse Hall. They are for the use of horses, but they are shaped below with a cloven foot of iron, so as to throw pursuers off the track. They are supposed to have belonged to some of the marauding Barons of Holdernesse in the Middle Ages.\"\n\nHolmes opened the case, and moistening his finger he passed it along the shoe. A thin film of recent mud was left upon his skin.\n\n\"Thank you,\" said he, as he replaced the glass. \"It is the second most interesting object that I have seen in the North.\"\n\n\"And the first?\"\n\nHolmes folded up his check and placed it carefully in his notebook. \"I am a poor man,\" said he, as he patted it affectionately, and thrust it into the depths of his inner pocket." + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF BLACK PETER", + "text": "I have never known my friend to be in better form, both mental and physical, than in the year '95. His increasing fame had brought with it an immense practice, and I should be guilty of an indiscretion if I were even to hint at the identity of some of the illustrious clients who crossed our humble threshold in Baker Street. Holmes, however, like all great artists, lived for his art's sake, and, save in the case of the Duke of Hold-emesse, I have seldom known him claim any large reward for his inestimable services. So unworldly was he\u2014or so capricious\u2014that he frequently refused his help to the powerful and wealthy where the problem made no appeal to his sympathies, while he would devote weeks of most intense application to the affairs of some humble client whose case presented those strange and dramatic qualities which appealed to his imagination and challenged his ingenuity.\n\nIn this memorable year '95, a curious and incongruous succession of cases had engaged his attention, ranging from his famous investigation of the sudden death of Cardinal Tosca\u2014an inquiry which was carried out by him at the express desire of His Holiness the Pope\u2014down to his arrest of Wilson, the notorious canary-trainer, which removed a plague-spot from the East End of London. Close on the heels of these two famous cases came the tragedy of Woodman's Lee, and the very obscure circumstances which surrounded the death of Captain Peter Carey. No record of the doings of Mr. Sherlock Holmes would be complete which did not include some account of this very unusual affair.\n\nDuring the first week of July, my friend had been absent so often and so long from our lodgings that I knew he had something on hand. The fact that several rough-looking men called during that time and inquired for Captain Basil made me understand that Holmes was working somewhere under one of the numerous disguises and names with which he concealed his own formidable identity. He had at least five small refuges in different parts of London, in which he was able to change his personality. He said nothing of his business to me, and it was not my habit to force a confidence. The first positive sign which he gave me of the direction which his investigation was taking was an extraordinary one. He had gone out before breakfast, and I had sat down to mine when he strode into the room, his hat upon his head and a huge barbed-headed spear tucked like an umbrella under his arm.\n\n\"Good gracious, Holmes!\" I cried. \"You don't mean to say that you have been walking about London with that thing?\"\n\n\"I drove to the butcher's and back.\"\n\n\"The butcher's?\"\n\n\"And I return with an excellent appetite. There can be no question, my dear Watson, of the value of exercise before breakfast. But I am prepared to bet that you will not guess the form that my exercise has taken.\"\n\n\"I will not attempt it.\"\n\nHe chuckled as he poured out the coffee.\n\n\"If you could have looked into Allardyce's back shop, you would have seen a dead pig swung from a hook in the ceiling, and a gentleman in his shirt sleeves furiously stabbing at it with this weapon. I was that energetic person, and I have satisfied myself that by no exertion of my strength can I transfix the pig with a single blow. Perhaps you would care to try?\"\n\n\"Not for worlds. But why were you doing this?\"\n\n\"Because it seemed to me to have an indirect bearing upon the mystery of Woodman's Lee. Ah, Hopkins, I got your wire last night, and I have been expecting you. Come and join us.\"\n\nOur visitor was an exceedingly alert man, thirty years of age, dressed in a quiet tweed suit, but retaining the erect bearing of one who was accustomed to official uniform. I recognized him at once as Stanley Hopkins, a young police inspector, for whose future Holmes had high hopes, while he in turn professed the admiration and respect of a pupil for the scientific methods of the famous amateur. Hopkins's brow was clouded, and he sat down with an air of deep dejection.\n\n\"No, thank you, sir. I breakfasted before I came round. I spent the night in town, for I came up yesterday to report.\"\n\n\"And what had you to report?\"\n\n\"Failure, sir, absolute failure.\"\n\n\"You have made no progress?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\n\"Dear me! I must have a look at the matter.\"\n\n\"I wish to heavens that you would, Mr. Holmes. It's my first big chance, and I am at my wit's end. For goodness' sake, come down and lend me a hand.\"\n\n\"Well, well, it just happens that I have already read all the available evidence, including the report of the inquest, with some care. By the way, what do you make of that tobacco pouch, found on the scene of the crime? Is there no clue there?\"\n\nHopkins looked surprised.\n\n\"It was the man's own pouch, sir. His initials were inside it. And it was of sealskin\u2014and he was an old sealer.\"\n\n\"But he had no pipe.\"\n\n\"No, sir, we could find no pipe. Indeed, he smoked very little, and yet he might have kept some tobacco for his friends.\"\n\n\"No doubt. I only mention it because, if I had been handling the case, I should have been inclined to make that the starting-point of my investigation. However, my friend, Dr. Watson, knows nothing of this matter, and I should be none the worse for hearing the sequence of events once more. Just give us some short sketches of the essentials.\"\n\nStanley Hopkins drew a slip of paper from his pocket.\n\n\"I have a few dates here which will give you the career of the dead man, Captain Peter Carey. He was born in '45\u2014fifty years of age. He was a most daring and successful seal and whale fisher. In 1883 he commanded the steam sealer Sea Unicorn, of Dundee. He had then had several successful voyages in succession, and in the following year, 1884, he retired. After that he travelled for some years, and finally he bought a small place called Woodman's Lee, near Forest Row, in Sussex. There he has lived for six years, and there he died just a week ago to-day.\n\n\"There were some most singular points about the man. In ordinary life, he was a strict Puritan\u2014a silent, gloomy fellow. His household consisted of his wife, his daughter, aged twenty, and two female servants. These last were continually changing, for it was never a very cheery situation, and sometimes it became past all bearing. The man was an intermittent drunkard, and when he had the fit on him he was a perfect fiend. He has been known to drive his wife and daughter out of doors in the middle of the night and flog them through the park until the whole village outside the gates was aroused by their screams.\n\n\"He was summoned once for a savage assault upon the old vicar, who had called upon him to remonstrate with him upon his conduct. In short, Mr. Holmes, you would go far before you found a more dangerous man than Peter Carey, and I have heard that he bore the same character when he commanded his ship. He was known in the trade as Black Peter, and the name was given him, not only on account of his swarthy features and the colour of his huge beard, but for the humours which were the terror of all around him. I need not say that he was loathed and avoided by every one of his neighbours, and that I have not heard one single word of sorrow about his terrible end.\n\n\"You must have read in the account of the inquest about the man's cabin, Mr. Holmes, but perhaps your friend here has not heard of it. He had built himself a wooden outhouse\u2014he always called it the 'cabin'\u2014a few hundred yards from his house, and it was here that he slept every night. It was a little, single-roomed hut, sixteen feet by ten. He kept the key in his pocket, made his own bed, cleaned it himself, and allowed no other foot to cross the threshold. There are small windows on each side, which were covered by curtains and never opened. One of these windows was turned towards the high road, and when the light burned in it at night the folk used to point it out to each other and wonder what Black Peter was doing in there. That's the window, Mr. Holmes, which gave us one of the few bits of positive evidence that came out at the inquest.\n\n\"You remember that a stonemason, named Slater, walking from Forest Row about one o'clock in the morning\u2014two days before the murder\u2014stopped as he passed the grounds and looked at the square of light still shining among the trees. He swears that the shadow of a man's head turned sideways was clearly visible on the blind, and that this shadow was certainly not that of Peter Carey, whom he knew well. It was that of a bearded man, but the beard was short and bristled forward in a way very different from that of the captain. So he says, but he had been two hours in the public-house, and it is some distance from the road to the window. Besides, this refers to the Monday, and the crime was done upon the Wednesday.\n\n\"On the Tuesday, Peter Carey was in one of his blackest moods, flushed with drink and as savage as a dangerous wild beast. He roamed about the house, and the women ran for it when they heard him coming. Late in the evening, he went down to his own hut. About two o'clock the following morning, his daughter, who slept with her window open, heard a most fearful yell from that direction, but it was no unusual thing for him to bawl and shout when he was in drink, so no notice was taken. On rising at seven, one of the maids noticed that the door of the hut was open, but so great was the terror which the man caused that it was midday before anyone would venture down to see what had become of him. Peeping into the open door, they saw a sight which sent them flying, with white faces, into the village. Within an hour, I was on the spot and had taken over the case.\n\n\"Well, I have fairly steady nerves, as you know, Mr. Holmes, but I give you my word, that I got a shake when I put my head into that little house. It was droning like a harmonium with the flies and bluebottles, and the floor and walls were like a slaughter-house. He had called it a cabin, and a cabin it was, sure enough, for you would have thought that you were in a ship. There was a bunk at one end, a sea-chest, maps and charts, a picture of the Sea Unicorn, a line of logbooks on a shelf, all exactly as one would expect to find it in a captain's room. And there, in the middle of it, was the man himself\u2014his face twisted like a lost soul in torment, and his great brindled beard stuck upward in his agony. Right through his broad breast a steel harpoon had been driven, and it had sunk deep into the wood of the wall behind him. He was pinned like a beetle on a card. Of course, he was quite dead, and had been so from the instant that he had uttered that last yell of agony.\n\n\"I know your methods, sir, and I applied them. Before I permitted anything to be moved, I examined most carefully the ground outside, and also the floor of the room. There were no footmarks.\"\n\n\"Meaning that you saw none?\"\n\n\"I assure you, sir, that there were none.\"\n\n\"My good Hopkins, I have investigated many crimes, but I have never yet seen one which was committed by a flying creature. As long as the criminal remains upon two legs so long must there be some indentation, some abrasion, some trifling displacement which can be detected by the scientific searcher. It is incredible that this blood-bespattered room contained no trace which could have aided us. I understand, however, from the inquest that there were some objects which you failed to overlook?\"\n\nThe young inspector winced at my companion's ironical comments.\n\n\"I was a fool not to call you in at the time, Mr. Holmes. However, that's past praying for* now. Yes, there were several objects in the room which called for special attention. One was the harpoon with which the deed was committed. It had been snatched down from a rack on the wall. Two others remained there, and there was a vacant place for the third. On the stock was engraved 'SS. Sea Unicorn, Dundee.' This seemed to establish that the crime had been done in a moment of fury, and that the murderer had seized the first weapon which came in his way. The fact that the crime was committed at two in the morning, and yet Peter Carey was fully dressed, suggested that he had an appointment with the murderer, which is borne out by the fact that a bottle of rum and two dirty glasses stood upon the table.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Holmes; \"I think that both inferences are permissible. Was there any other spirit but rum in the room?\"\n\n\"Yes, there was a tantalus containing brandy and whisky on the sea-chest. It is of no importance to us, however, since the decanters were full, and it had therefore not been used.\"\n\n\"For all that, its presence has some significance,\" said Holmes. \"However, let us hear some more about the objects which do seem to you to bear upon the case.\"\n\n\"There was this tobacco-pouch upon the table.\"\n\n\"What part of the table?\"\n\n\"It lay in the middle. It was of coarse sealskin\u2014the straight-haired skin, with a leather thong to bind it. Inside was 'P. C.' on the flap. There was half an ounce of strong ship's tobacco in it.\"\n\n\"Excellent! What more?\"\n\nStanley Hopkins drew from his pocket a drab-covered notebook. The outside was rough and worn, the leaves discoloured. On the first page were written the initials \"J. H. N.\" and the date \"1883.\" Holmes laid it on the table and examined it in his minute way, while Hopkins and I gazed over each shoulder. On the second page were the printed letters \"C. P. R.,\" and then came several sheets of numbers. Another heading was \"Argentine,\" another \"Costa Rica,\" and another \"San Paulo,\" each with pages of signs and figures after it.\n\n\"What do you make of these?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"They appear to be lists of Stock Exchange securities. I thought that 'J. H. N.' were the initials of a broker, and that 'C. P. R.' may have been his client.\"\n\n\"Try Canadian Pacific Railway,\" said Holmes.\n\nStanley Hopkins swore between his teeth, and struck his thigh with his clenched hand.\n\n\"What a fool I have been!\" he cried. \"Of course, it is as you say. Then 'J. H. N.' are the only initials we have to solve. I have already examined the old Stock Exchange lists, and I can find no one in 1883, either in the house or among the outside brokers, whose initials correspond with these. Yet I feel that the clue is the most important one that I hold. You will admit, Mr. Holmes, that there is a possibility that these initials are those of the second person who was present\u2014in other words, of the murderer. I would also urge that the introduction into the case of a document relating to large masses of valuable securities gives us for the first time some indication of a motive for the crime.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes's face showed that he was thoroughly taken aback by this new development.\n\n\"I must admit both your points,\" said he. \"I confess that this notebook, which did not appear at the inquest, modifies any views which I may have formed. I had come to a theory of the crime in which I can find no place for this. Have you endeavoured to trace any of the securities here mentioned?\"\n\n\"Inquiries are now being made at the offices, but I fear that the complete register of the stockholders of these South American concerns is in South America, and that some weeks must elapse before we can trace the shares.\"\n\nHolmes had been examining the cover of the notebook with his magnifying lens.\n\n\"Surely there is some discolouration here,\" said he.\n\n\"Yes, sir, it is a blood-stain. I told you that I picked the book off the floor.\"\n\n\"Was the blood-stain above or below?\"\n\n\"On the side next to the boards.\"\n\n\"Which proves, of course, that the book was dropped after the crime was committed.\"\n\n\"Exactly, Mr. Holmes. I appreciated that point, and I conjectured that it was dropped by the murderer in his hurried flight. It lay near the door.\"\n\n\"I suppose that none of these securities have been found among the property of the dead man?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"Have you any reason to suspect robbery?\"\n\n\"No, sir. Nothing seemed to have been touched.\"\n\n\"Dear me, it is certainly a very interesting case. Then there was a knife, was there not?\"\n\n\"A sheath-knife, still in its sheath. It lay at the feet of the dead man. Mrs. Carey has identified it as being her husband's property.\"\n\nHolmes was lost in thought for some time.\n\n\"Well,\" said he, at last, \"I suppose I shall have to come out and have a look at it.\"\n\nStanley Hopkins gave a cry of joy.\n\n\"Thank you, sir. That will, indeed, be a weight off my mind.\"\n\nHolmes shook his finger at the inspector.\n\n\"It would have been an easier task a week ago,\" said he. \"But even now my visit may not be entirely fruitless. Watson, if you can spare the time, I should be very glad of your company. If you will call a four-wheeler, Hopkins, we shall be ready to start for Forest Row in a quarter of an hour.\"\n\nAlighting at the small wayside station, we drove for some miles through the remains of widespread woods, which were once part of that great for est which for so long held the Saxon invaders at bay\u2014the impenetrable \"weald,\" for sixty years the bulwark of Britain. Vast sections of it have been cleared, for this is the seat of the first iron-works of the country, and the trees have been felled to smelt the ore. Now the richer fields of the North have absorbed the trade, and nothing save these ravaged groves and great scars in the earth show the work of the past. Here, in a clearing upon the green slope of a hill, stood a long, low, stone house, approached by a curving drive running through the fields. Nearer the road, and surrounded on three sides by bushes, was a small outhouse, one window and the door facing in our direction. It was the scene of the murder.\n\nStanley Hopkins led us first to the house, where he introduced us to a haggard, gray-haired woman, the widow of the murdered man, whose gaunt and deep-lined face, with the furtive look of terror in the depths of her red-rimmed eyes, told of the years of hardship and ill-usage which she had endured. With her was her daughter, a pale, fair-haired girl, whose eyes blazed defiantly at us as she told us that she was glad that her father was dead, and that she blessed the hand which had struck him down. It was a terrible household that Black Peter Carey had made for himself, and it was with a sense of relief that we found ourselves in the sunlight again and making our way along a path which had been worn across the fields by the feet of the dead man.\n\nThe outhouse was the simplest of dwellings, wooden-walled, shingle-roofed, one window beside the door and one on the farther side. Stanley Hopkins drew the key from his pocket and had stooped to the lock, when he paused with a look of attention and surprise upon his face.\n\n\"Someone has been tampering with it,\" he said.\n\nThere could be no doubt of the fact. The woodwork was cut, and the scratches showed white through the paint, as if they had been that instant done. Holmes had been examining the window.\n\n\"Someone has tried to force this also. Whoever it was has failed to make his way in. He must have been a very poor burglar.\"\n\n\"This is a most extraordinary thing,\" said the inspector. \"I could swear that these marks were not here yesterday evening.\"\n\n\"Some curious person from the village, perhaps,\" I suggested.\n\n\"Very unlikely. Few of them would dare to set foot in the grounds, far less try to force their way into the cabin. What do you think of it, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"I think that fortune is very kind to us.\"\n\n\"You mean that the person will come again?\"\n\n\"It is very probable. He came expecting to find the door open. He tried to get in with the blade of a very small penknife. He could not manage it. What would he do?\"\n\n\"Come again next night with a more useful tool.\"\n\n\"So I should say. It will be our fault if we are not there to receive him. Meanwhile, let me see the inside of the cabin.\"\n\nThe traces of the tragedy had been removed, but the furniture within the little room still stood as it had been on the night of the crime. For two hours, with most intense concentration, Holmes examined every object in turn, but his face showed that his quest was not a successful one. Once only he paused in his patient investigation.\n\n\"Have you taken anything off this shelf, Hopkins?\"\n\n\"No, I have moved nothing.\"\n\n\"Something has been taken. There is less dust in this corner of the shelf than elsewhere. It may have been a book lying on its side. It may have been a box. Well, well, I can do nothing more. Let us walk in these beautiful woods, Watson, and give a few hours to the birds and the flowers. We shall meet you here later, Hopkins, and see if we can come to closer quarters with the gentleman who has paid this visit in the night.\"\n\nIt was past eleven o'clock when we formed our little ambuscade. Hopkins was for leaving the door of the hut open, but Holmes was of the opinion that this would rouse the suspicions of the stranger. The lock was a perfectly simple one, and only a strong blade was needed to push it back. Holmes also suggested that we should wait, not inside the hut, but outside it, among the bushes which grew round the farther window. In this way we should be able to watch our man if he struck a light, and see what his object was in this stealthy nocturnal visit.\n\nIt was a long and melancholy vigil, and yet brought with it something of the thrill which the hunter feels when he lies beside the water-pool, and waits for the coming of the thirsty beast of prey. What savage creature was it which might steal upon us out of the darkness? Was it a fierce tiger of crime, which could only be taken fighting hard with flashing fang and claw, or would it prove to be some skulking jackal, dangerous only to the weak and unguarded?\n\nIn absolute silence we crouched amongst the bushes, waiting for whatever might come. At first the steps of a few belated villagers, or the sound of voices from the village, lightened our vigil, but one by one these interruptions died away, and an absolute stillness fell upon us, save for the chimes of the distant church, which told us of the progress of the night, and for the rustle and whisper of a fine rain falling amid the foliage which roofed us in.\n\nHalf-past two had chimed, and it was the darkest hour which precedes the dawn, when we all started as a low but sharp click came from the direction of the gate. Someone had entered the drive. Again there was a long silence, and I had begun to fear that it was a false alarm, when a stealthy step was heard upon the other side of the hut, and a moment later a metallic scraping and clinking. The man was trying to force the lock. This time his skill was greater or his tool was better, for there was a sudden snap and the creak of the hinges. Then a match was struck, and next instant the steady light from a candle filled the interior of the hut. Through the gauze curtain our eyes were all riveted upon the scene within.\n\nThe nocturnal visitor was a young man, frail and thin, with a black moustache, which intensified the deadly pallor of his face. He could not have been much above twenty years of age. I have never seen any human being who appeared to be in such a pitiable fright, for his teeth were visibly chattering, and he was shaking in every limb. He was dressed like a gentleman, in Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, with a cloth cap upon his head. We watched him staring round with frightened eyes. Then he laid the candle-end upon the table and disappeared from our view into one of the corners. He returned with a large book, one of the logbooks which formed a line upon the shelves. Leaning on the table, he rapidly turned over the leaves of this volume until he came to the entry which he sought. Then, with an angry gesture of his clenched hand, he closed the book, replaced it in the corner, and put out the light. He had hardly turned to leave the hut when Hopkins's hand was on the fellow's collar, and I heard his loud gasp of terror as he understood that he was taken. The candle was relit, and there was our wretched captive, shivering and cowering in the grasp of the detective. He sank down upon the sea-chest, and looked helplessly from one of us to the other.\n\n\"Now, my fine fellow,\" said Stanley Hopkins, \"who are you, and what do you want here?\"\n\nThe man pulled himself together, and faced us with an effort at self-composure.\n\n\"You are detectives, I suppose?\" said he. \"You imagine I am connected with the death of Captain Peter Carey. I assure you that I am innocent.\"\n\n\"We'll see about that,\" said Hopkins. \"First of all, what is your name?\"\n\n\"It is John Hopley Neligan.\"\n\nI saw Holmes and Hopkins exchange a quick glance.\n\n\"What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"Can I speak confidentially?\"\n\n\"No, certainly not.\"\n\n\"Why should I tell you?\"\n\n\"If you have no answer, it may go badly with you at the trial.\"\n\nThe young man winced.\n\n\"Well, I will tell you,\" he said. \"Why should I not? And yet I hate to think of this old scandal gaining a new lease of life. Did you ever hear of Dawson and Neligan?\"\n\nI could see, from Hopkins's face, that he never had, but Holmes was keenly interested.\n\n\"You mean the West Country bankers,\" said he. \"They failed for a million, ruined half the county families of Cornwall, and Neligan disappeared.\"\n\n\"Exactly. Neligan was my father.\"\n\nAt last we were getting something positive, and yet it seemed a long gap between an absconding banker and Captain Peter Carey pinned against the wall with one of his own harpoons. We all listened intently to the young man's words.\n\n\"It was my father who was really concerned. Dawson had retired. I was only ten years of age at the time, but I was old enough to feel the shame and horror of it all. It has always been said that my father stole all the securities and fled. It is not true. It was his belief that if he were given time in which to realize them, all would be well and every creditor paid in full. He started in his little yacht for Norway just before the warrant was issued for his arrest. I can remember that last night, when he bade farewell to my mother. He left us a list of the securities he was taking, and he swore that he would come back with his honour cleared, and that none who had trusted him would suffer. Well, no word was ever heard from him again. Both the yacht and he vanished utterly. We believed, my mother and I, that he and it, with the securities that he had taken with him, were at the bottom of the sea. We had a faithful friend, however, who is a business man, and it was he who discovered some time ago that some of the securities which my father had with him had reappeared on the London market. You can imagine our amazement. I spent months in trying to trace them, and at last, after many doubtings and difficulties, I discovered that the original seller had been Captain Peter Carey, the owner of this hut.\n\n\"Naturally, I made some inquiries about the man. I found that he had been in command of a whaler which was due to return from the Arctic seas at the very time when my father was crossing to Norway. The autumn of that year was a stormy one. and there was a long succession of southerly gales. My father's yacht may well have been blown to the north, and there met by Captain Peter Carey's ship. If that were so, what had become of my father? In any case, if I could prove from Peter Carey's evidence how these securities came on the market it would be a proof that my father had not sold them, and that he had no view to personal profit when he took them.\n\n\"I came down to Sussex with the intention of seeing the captain, but it was at this moment that his terrible death occurred. I read at the inquest a description of his cabin, in which it stated that the old logbooks of his vessel were preserved in it. It struck me that if I could see what occurred in the month of August, 1883, on board the Sea Unicorn, I might settle the mystery of my father's fate. I tried last night to get at these logbooks, but was unable to open the door. To-night I tried again and succeeded, but I find that the pages which deal with that month have been torn from the book. It was at that moment I found myself a prisoner in your hands.\"\n\n\"Is that all?\" asked Hopkins.\n\n\"Yes, that is all.\" His eyes shifted as he said it.\n\n\"You have nothing else to tell us?\"\n\nHe hesitated.\n\n\"No, there is nothing.\"\n\n\"You have not been here before last night?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Then how do you account for that?\" cried Hopkins, as he held up the damning notebook, with the initials of our prisoner on the first leaf and the blood-stain on the cover.\n\nThe wretched man collapsed. He sank his face in his hands, and trembled all over.\n\n\"Where did you get it?\" he groaned. \"I did not know. I thought I had lost it at the hotel.\"\n\n\"That is enough,\" said Hopkins, sternly. \"Whatever else you have to say, you must say in court. You will walk down with me now to the police-station. Well, Mr. Holmes, I am very much obliged to you and to your friend for coming down to help me. As it turns out your presence was unnecessary, and I would have brought the case to this successful issue without you, but, none the less, I am grateful. Rooms have been reserved for you at the Brambletye Hotel, so we can all walk down to the village together.\"\n\n\"Well, Watson, what do you think of it?\" asked Holmes, as we travelled back next morning.\n\n\"I can see that you are not satisfied.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, my dear Watson, I am perfectly satisfied. At the same time, Stanley Hopkins's methods do not commend themselves to me. I am disappointed in Stanley Hopkins. I had hoped for better things from him. One should always look for a possible alternative, and provide against it. It is the first rule of criminal investigation.\"\n\n\"What, then, is the alternative?\"\n\n\"The line of investigation which I have myself been pursuing. It may give us nothing. I cannot tell. But at least I shall follow it to the end.\"\n\nSeveral letters were waiting for Holmes at Baker Street. He snatched one of them up, opened it, and burst out into a triumphant chuckle of laughter.\n\n\"Excellent, Watson! The alternative develops. Have you telegraph forms? Just write a couple of messages for me: 'Sumner, Shipping Agent, Ratcliff Highway. Send three men on, to arrive ten to-morrow morning.\u2014Basil.' That's my name in those parts. The other is: 'Inspector Stanley Hopkins, 46 Lord Street, Brixton. Come breakfast to-morrow at nine-thirty. Important. Wire if unable to come.\u2014Sherlock Holmes.' There, Watson, this infernal case has haunted me for ten days. I hereby banish it completely from my presence. To-morrow, I trust that we shall hear the last of it forever.\"\n\nSharp at the hour named Inspector Stanley Hopkins appeared, and we sat down together to the excellent breakfast which Mrs. Hudson had prepared. The young detective was in high spirits at his success.\n\n\"You really think that your solution must be correct?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"I could not imagine a more complete case.\"\n\n\"It did not seem to me conclusive.\"\n\n\"You astonish me, Mr. Holmes. What more could one ask for?\"\n\n\"Does your explanation cover every point?\"\n\n\"Undoubtedly. I find that young Neligan arrived at the Brambletye Hotel on the very day of the crime. He came on the pretence of playing golf. His room was on the ground-floor, and he could get out when he liked. That very night he went down to Woodman's Lee, saw Peter Carey at the hut, quarrelled with him, and killed him with the harpoon. Then, horrified by what he had done, he fled out of the hut, dropping the notebook which he had brought with him in order to question Peter Carey about these different securities. You may have observed that some of them were marked with ticks, and the others\u2014the great majority\u2014were not. Those which are ticked have been traced on the London market, but the others, presumably, were still in the possession of Carey, and young Neligan, according to his own account, was anxious to recover them in order to do the right thing by his father's creditors. After his flight he did not dare to approach the hut again for some time, but at last he forced himself to do so in order to obtain the information which he needed. Surely that is all simple and obvious?\"\n\nHolmes smiled and shook his head.\n\n\"It seems to me to have only one drawback, Hopkins, and that is that it is intrinsically impossible. Have you tried to drive a harpoon through a body? No? Tut, tut, my dear sir, you must really pay attention to these details. My friend Watson could tell you that I spent a whole morning in that exercise. It is no easy matter, and requires a strong and practised arm. But this blow was delivered with such violence that the head of the weapon sank deep into the wall. Do you imagine that this anemic youth was capable of so frightful an assault? Is he the man who hobnobbed in rum and water with Black Peter in the dead of the night? Was it his profile that was seen on the blind two nights before? No, no, Hopkins, it is another and more formidable person for whom we must seek.\"\n\nThe detective's face had grown longer and longer during Holmes's speech. His hopes and his ambitions were all crumbling about him. But he would not abandon his position without a struggle.\n\n\"You can't deny that Neligan was present that night, Mr. Holmes. The book will prove that. I fancy that I have evidence enough to satisfy a jury, even if you are able to pick a hole in it. Besides, Mr. Holmes, I have laid my hand upon my man. As to this terrible person of yours, where is he?\"\n\n\"I rather fancy that he is on the stair,\" said Holmes, serenely. \"I think, Watson, that you would do well to put that revolver where you can reach it.\" He rose and laid a written paper upon a side-table. \"Now we are ready,\" said he.\n\nThere had been some talking in gruff voices outside, and now Mrs. Hudson opened the door to say that there were three men inquiring for Captain Basil.\n\n\"Show them in one by one,\" said Holmes.\n\nThe first who entered was a little Ribston pippin of a man, with ruddy cheeks and fluffy white side-whiskers. Holmes had drawn a letter from his pocket.\n\n\"What name?\" he asked.\n\n\"James Lancaster.\"\n\n\"I am sorry, Lancaster, but the berth is full. Here is half a sovereign for your trouble. Just step into this room and wait there for a few minutes.\"\n\nThe second man was a long, dried-up creature, with lank hair and sallow cheeks. His name was Hugh Pattins. He also received his dismissal, his half-sovereign, and the order to wait.\n\nThe third applicant was a man of remarkable appearance. A fierce bull-dog face was framed in a tangle of hair and beard, and two bold, dark eyes gleamed behind the cover of thick, tufted, overhung eyebrows. He saluted and stood sailor-fashion, turning his cap round in his hands.\n\n\"Your name?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"Patrick Cairns.\"\n\n\"Harpooner?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. Twenty-six voyages.\"\n\n\"Dundee, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"And ready to start with an exploring ship?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"What wages?\"\n\n\"Eight pounds a month.\"\n\n\"Could you start at once?\"\n\n\"As soon as I get my kit.\"\n\n\"Have you your papers?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" He took a sheaf of worn and greasy forms from his pocket. Holmes glanced over them and returned them.\n\n\"You are just the man I want,\" said he. \"Here's the agreement on the side-table. If you sign it the whole matter will be settled.\"\n\nThe seaman lurched across the room and took up the pen.\n\n\"Shall I sign here?\" he asked, stooping over the table.\n\nHolmes leaned over his shoulder and passed both hands over his neck.\n\n\"This will do,\" said he.\n\nI heard a click of steel and a bellow like an enraged bull. The next instant Holmes and the seaman were rolling on the ground together. He was a man of such gigantic strength that, even with the handcuffs which Holmes had so deftly fastened upon his wrists, he would have very quickly overpowered my friend had Hopkins and I not rushed to his rescue. Only when I pressed the cold muzzle of the revolver to his temple did he at last understand that resistance was vain. We lashed his ankles with cord, and rose breathless from the struggle.\n\n\"I must really apologize, Hopkins,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"I fear that the scrambled eggs are cold. However, you will enjoy the rest of your breakfast all the better, will you not, for the thought that you have brought your case to a triumphant conclusion.\"\n\nStanley Hopkins was speechless with amazement.\n\n\"I don't know what to say, Mr. Holmes,\" he blurted out at last, with a very red face. \"It seems to me that I have been making a fool of myself from the beginning. I understand now, what I should never have forgotten, that I am the pupil and you are the master. Even now I see what you have done, but I don't know how you did it or what it signifies.\"\n\n\"Well, well,\" said Holmes, good-humouredly. \"We all learn by experience, and your lesson this time is that you should never lose sight of the alternative. You were so absorbed in young Neligan that you could not spare a thought to Patrick Cairns, the true murderer of Peter Carey.\"\n\nThe hoarse voice of the seaman broke in on our conversation.\n\n\"See here, mister,\" said he, \"I make no complaint of being manhandled in this fashion, but I would have you call things by their right names. You say I murdered Peter Carey, I say I killed Peter Carey, and there's all the difference. Maybe you don't believe what I say. Maybe you think I am just slinging you a yarn.\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" said Holmes. \"Let us hear what you have to say.\"\n\n\"It's soon told, and, by the Lord, every word of it is truth. I knew Black Peter, and when he pulled out his knife I whipped a harpoon through him sharp, for I knew that it was him or me. That's how he died. You can call it murder. Anyhow, I'd as soon die with a rope round my neck as with Black Peter's knife in my heart.\"\n\n\"How came you there?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"I'll tell it you from the beginning. Just sit me up a little, so as I can speak easy. It was in '83 that it happened\u2014August of that year. Peter Carey was master of the Sea Unicorn, and I was spare harpooner. We were coming out of the ice-pack on our way home, with head winds and a week's southerly gale, when we picked up a little craft that had been blown north. There was one man on her\u2014a landsman. The crew had thought she would founder and had made for the Norwegian coast in the dinghy. I guess they were all drowned. Well, we took him on board, this man, and he and the skipper had some long talks in the cabin. All the baggage we took off with him was one tin box. So far as I know, the man's name was never mentioned, and on the second night he disappeared as if he had never been. It was given out that he had either thrown himself overboard or fallen overboard in the heavy weather that we were having. Only one man knew what had happened to him, and that was me, for, with my own eyes, I saw the skipper tip up his heels and put him over the rail in the middle watch of a dark night, two days before we sighted the Shetland Lights.\n\n\"Well, I kept my knowledge to myself, and waited to see what would come of it. When we got back to Scotland it was easily hushed up, and nobody asked any questions. A stranger died by accident, and it was nobody's business to inquire. Shortly after Peter Carey gave up the sea, and it was long years before I could find where he was. I guessed that he had done the deed for the sake of what was in that tin box, and that he could afford now to pay me well for keeping my mouth shut.\n\n\"I found out where he was through a sailor man that had met him in London, and down I went to squeeze him. The first night he was reasonable enough, and was ready to give me what would make me free of the sea for life. We were to fix it all two nights later. When I came, I found him three parts drunk and in a vile temper. We sat down and we drank and we yarned about old times, but the more he drank the less I liked the look on his face. I spotted that harpoon upon the wall, and I thought I might need it before I was through. Then at last he broke out at me, spitting and cursing, with murder in his eyes and a great clasp-knife in his hand. He had not time to get it from the sheath before I had the harpoon through him. Heavens! what a yell he gave! and his face gets between me and my sleep. I stood there, with his blood splashing round me, and I waited for a bit, but all was quiet, so I took heart once more. I looked round, and there was the tin box on the shelf. I had as much right to it as Peter Carey, anyhow, so I took it with me and left the hut. Like a fool I left my baccy-pouch upon the table.\n\n\"Now I'll tell you the queerest part of the whole story. I had hardly got outside the hut when I heard someone coming, and I hid among the bushes. A man came slinking along, went into the hut, gave a cry as if he had seen a ghost, and legged it as hard as he could run until he was out of sight. Who he was or what he wanted is more than I can tell. For my part I walked ten miles, got a train at Tunbridge Wells, and so reached London, and no one the wiser.\n\n\"Well, when I came to examine the box I found there was no money in it, and nothing but papers that I would not dare to sell. I had lost my hold on Black Peter and was stranded in London without a shilling. There was only my trade left. I saw these advertisements about harpooners, and high wages, so I went to the shipping agents, and they sent me here. That's all I know, and I say again that if I killed Black Peter, the law should give me thanks, for I saved them the price of a hempen rope.\"\n\n\"A very clear statement,\" said Holmes, rising and lighting his pipe. \"I think, Hopkins, that you should lose no time in conveying your prisoner to a place of safety. This room is not well adapted for a cell, and Mr. Patrick Cairns occupies too large a proportion of our carpet.\"\n\n\"Mr. Holmes,\" said Hopkins, \"I do not know how to express my gratitude. Even now I do not understand how you attained this result.\"\n\n\"Simply by having the good fortune to get the right clue from the beginning. It is very possible if I had known about this notebook it might have led away my thoughts, as it did yours. But all I heard pointed in the one direction. The amazing strength, the skill in the use of the harpoon, the rum and water, the sealskin tobacco-pouch with the coarse tobacco\u2014all these pointed to a seaman, and one who had been a whaler. I was convinced that the initials 'P. C.' upon the pouch were a coincidence, and not those of Peter Carey, since he seldom smoked, and no pipe was found in his cabin. You remember that I asked whether whisky and brandy were in the cabin. You said they were. How many landsmen are there who would drink rum when they could get these other spirits? Yes, I was certain it was a seaman.\"\n\n\"And how did you find him?\"\n\n\"My dear sir, the problem had become a very simple one. If it were a seaman, it could only be a seaman who had been with him on the Sea Unicorn. So far as I could learn he had sailed in no other ship. I spent three days in wiring to Dundee, and at the end of that time I had ascertained the names of the crew of the Sea Unicorn in 1883. When I found Patrick Cairns among the harpooners, my research was nearing its end. I argued that the man was probably in London, and that he would desire to leave the country for a time. I therefore spent some days in the East End, devised an Arctic expedition, put forth tempting terms for harpooners who would serve under Captain Basil\u2014and behold the result!\"\n\n\"Wonderful!\" cried Hopkins. \"Wonderful!\"\n\n\"You must obtain the release of young Neligan as soon as possible,\" said Holmes. \"I confess that I think you owe him some apology. The tin box must be returned to him, but, of course, the securities which Peter Carey has sold are lost forever. There's the cab, Hopkins, and you can remove your man. If you want me for the trial, my address and that of Watson will be somewhere in Norway\u2014I'll send particulars later.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF CHARLES AUGUSTUS MILVERTON", + "text": "It is years since the incidents of which I speak took place, and yet it is with diffidence that I allude to them. For a long time, even with the utmost discretion and reticence, it would have been impossible to make the facts public, but now the principal person concerned is beyond the reach of human law, and with due suppression the story may be told in such fashion as to injure no one. It records an absolutely unique experience in the career both of Mr. Sherlock Holmes and of myself. The reader will excuse me if I conceal the date or any other fact by which he might trace the actual occurrence.\n\nWe had been out for one of our evening rambles, Holmes and I, and had returned about six o'clock on a cold, frosty winter's evening. As Holmes turned up the lamp the light fell upon a card on the table. He glanced at it, and then, with an ejaculation of disgust, threw it on the floor. I picked it up and read:\n\n\u2002CHARLES AUGUSTUS MILVERTON,\n\n\u2002Appledore Towers,\n\n\u2002Hampstead.\n\n\u2002Agent.\n\n\"Who is he?\" I asked.\n\n\"The worst man in London,\" Holmes answered, as he sat down and stretched his legs before the fire. \"Is anything on the back of the card?\"\n\nI turned it over.\n\n\"Will call at 6:30\u2014C. A. M.,\" I read.\n\n\"Hum! He's about due. Do you feel a creeping, shrinking sensation, Watson, when you stand before the serpents in the Zoo, and see the slith ery, gliding, venomous creatures, with their deadly eyes and wicked, flattened faces? Well, that's how Milverton impresses me. I've had to do with fifty murderers in my career, but the worst of them never gave me the repulsion which I have for this fellow. And yet I can't get out of doing business with him\u2014indeed, he is here at my invitation.\"\n\n\"But who is he?\"\n\n\"I'll tell you, Watson. He is the king of all the blackmailers. Heaven help the man, and still more the woman, whose secret and reputation come into the power of Milverton! With a smiling face and a heart of marble, he will squeeze and squeeze until he has drained them dry. The fellow is a genius in his way, and would have made his mark in some more savoury trade. His method is as follows: He allows it to be known that he is prepared to pay very high sums for letters which compromise people of wealth and position. He receives these wares not only from treacherous valets or maids, but frequently from genteel ruffians, who have gained the confidence and affection of trusting women. He deals with no niggard hand. I happen to know that he paid seven hundred pounds to a footman for a note two lines in length, and that the ruin of a noble family was the result. Everything which is in the market goes to Milverton, and there are hundreds in this great city who turn white at his name. No one knows where his grip may fall, for he is far too rich and far too cunning to work from hand to mouth. He will hold a card back for years in order to play it at the moment when the stake is best worth winning. I have said that he is the worst man in London, and I would ask you how could one compare the ruffian, who in hot blood bludgeons his mate, with this man, who methodically and at his leisure tortures the soul and wrings the nerves in order to add to his already swollen money-bags?\"\n\nI had seldom heard my friend speak with such intensity of feeling.\n\n\"But surely,\" said I, \"the fellow must be within the grasp of the law?\"\n\n\"Technically, no doubt, but practically not. What would it profit a woman, for example, to get him a few months' imprisonment if her own ruin must immediately follow? His victims dare not hit back. If ever he blackmailed an innocent person, then indeed we should have him, but he is as cunning as the Evil One. No, no, we must find other ways to fight him.\"\n\n\"And why is he here?\"\n\n\"Because an illustrious client has placed her piteous case in my hands. It is the Lady Eva Blackwell, the most beautiful debutante of last season. She is to be married in a fortnight to the Earl of Dovercourt. This fiend has several imprudent letters\u2014imprudent, Watson, nothing worse\u2014which were written to an impecunious young squire in the country. They would suffice to break off the match. Milverton will send the letters to the Earl unless a large sum of money is paid him. I have been commissioned to meet him, and\u2014to make the best terms I can.\"\n\nAt that instant there was a clatter and a rattle in the street below. Looking down I saw a stately carriage and pair, the brilliant lamps gleaming on the glossy haunches of the noble chestnuts. A footman opened the door, and a small, stout man in a shaggy astrakhan overcoat descended. A minute later he was in the room.\n\nCharles Augustus Milverton was a man of fifty, with a large, intellectual head, a round, plump, hairless face, a perpetual frozen smile, and two keen gray eyes, which gleamed brightly from behind broad, gold-rimmed glasses. There was something of Mr. Pickwick's benevolence in his appearance, marred only by the insincerity of the fixed smile and by the hard glitter of those restless and penetrating eyes. His voice was as smooth and suave as his countenance, as he advanced with a plump little hand extended, murmuring his regret for having missed us at his first visit. Holmes disregarded the outstretched hand and looked at him with a face of granite. Milverton's smile broadened, he shrugged his shoulders, re moved his overcoat, folded it with great deliberation over the back of a chair, and then took a seat.\n\n\"This gentleman?\" said he, with a wave in my direction. \"Is it discreet? Is it right?\"\n\n\"Dr. Watson is my friend and partner.\"\n\n\"Very good, Mr. Holmes. It is only in your client's interests that I protested. The matter is so very delicate\u2014\"\n\n\"Dr. Watson has already heard of it.\"\n\n\"Then we can proceed to business. You say that you are acting for Lady Eva. Has she empowered you to accept my terms?\"\n\n\"What are your terms?\"\n\n\"Seven thousand pounds.\"\n\n\"And the alternative?\"\n\n\"My dear sir, it is painful for me to discuss it, but if the money is not paid on the 14th, there certainly will be no marriage on the 18th.\" His insufferable smile was more complacent than ever.\n\nHolmes thought for a little.\n\n\"You appear to me,\" he said, at last, \"to be taking matters too much for granted. I am, of course, familiar with the contents of these letters. My client will certainly do what I may advise. I shall counsel her to tell her future husband the whole story and to trust to his generosity.\"\n\nMilverton chuckled.\n\n\"You evidently do not know the Earl,\" said he.\n\nFrom the baffled look upon Holmes's face, I could see clearly that he did.\n\n\"What harm is there in the letters?\" he asked.\n\n\"They are sprightly\u2014very sprightly,\" Milverton answered. \"The lady was a charming correspondent. But I can assure you that the Earl of Dovercourt would fail to appreciate them. However, since you think otherwise, we will let it rest at that. It is purely a matter of business. If you think that it is in the best interests of your client that these letters should be placed in the hands of the Earl, then you would indeed be foolish to pay so large a sum of money to regain them.\" He rose and seized his astrakhan coat.\n\nHolmes was gray with anger and mortification.\n\n\"Wait a little,\" he said. \"You go too fast. We should certainly make every effort to avoid scandal in so delicate a matter.\"\n\nMilverton relapsed into his chair.\n\n\"I was sure that you would see it in that light,\" he purred.\n\n\"At the same time,\" Holmes continued, \"Lady Eva is not a wealthy woman. I assure you that two thousand pounds would be a drain upon her resources, and that the sum you name is utterly beyond her power. I beg, therefore, that you will moderate your demands, and that you will return the letters at the price I indicate, which is, I assure you, the highest that you can get.\"\n\nMilverton's smile broadened and his eyes twinkled humorously.\n\n\"I am aware that what you say is true about the lady's resources,\" said he. \"At the same time you must admit that the occasion of a lady's marriage is a very suitable time for her friends and relatives to make some little effort upon her behalf. They may hesitate as to an acceptable wedding present. Let me assure them that this little bundle of letters would give more joy than all the candelabra and butter-dishes in London.\"\n\n\"It is impossible,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Dear me, dear me, how unfortunate!\" cried Milverton, taking out a bulky pocketbook. \"I cannot help thinking that ladies are ill-advised in not making an effort. Look at this!\" He held up a little note with a coat-of-arms upon the envelope. \"That belongs to\u2014well, perhaps it is hardly fair to tell the name until to-morrow morning. But at that time it will be in the hands of the lady's husband. And all because she will not find a beggarly sum which she could get by turning her diamonds into paste. It is such a pity! Now, you remember the sudden end of the engagement between the Honourable Miss Miles and Colonel Dorking? Only two days before the wedding, there was a paragraph in the Morning Post to say that it was all off. And why? It is almost incredible, but the absurd sum of twelve hundred pounds would have settled the whole question. Is it not pitiful? And here I find you, a man of sense, boggling about terms, when your client's future and honour are at stake. You surprise me, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"What I say is true,\" Holmes answered. \"The money cannot be found. Surely it is better for you to take the substantial sum which I offer than to ruin this woman's career, which can profit you in no way?\"\n\n\"There you make a mistake, Mr. Holmes. An exposure would profit me indirectly to a considerable extent. I have eight or ten similar cases maturing. If it was circulated among them that I had made a severe example of the Lady Eva, I should find all of them much more open to reason. You see my point?\"\n\nHolmes sprang from his chair.\n\n\"Get behind him, Watson! Don't let him out! Now, sir, let us see the contents of that notebook.\"\n\nMilverton had glided as quick as a rat to the side of the room and stood with his back against the wall.\n\n\"Mr. Holmes, Mr. Holmes,\" he said, turning the front of his coat and exhibiting the butt of a large revolver, which projected from the inside pocket. \"I have been expecting you to do something original. This has been done so often, and what good has ever come from it? I assure you that I am armed to the teeth, and I am perfectly prepared to use my weapons, knowing that the law will support me. Besides, your supposition that I would bring the letters here in a notebook is entirely mistaken. I would do nothing so foolish. And now, gentlemen, I have one or two little interviews this evening, and it is a long drive to Hampstead.\" He stepped forward, took up his coat, laid his hand on his revolver, and turned to the door. I picked up a chair, but Holmes shook his head, and I laid it down again. With a bow, a smile, and a twinkle, Milverton was out of the room, and a few moments after we heard the slam of the carriage door and the rattle of the wheels as he drove away.\n\nHolmes sat motionless by the fire, his hands buried deep in his trouser pockets, his chin sunk upon his breast, his eyes fixed upon the glowing embers. For half an hour he was silent and still. Then, with the gesture of a man who has taken his decision, he sprang to his feet and passed into his bedroom. A little later a rakish young workman, with a goatee beard and a swagger, lit his clay pipe at the lamp before descending into the street. \"I'll be back some time, Watson,\" said he, and vanished into the night. I understood that he had opened his campaign against Charles Augustus Milverton, but I little dreamed the strange shape which that campaign was destined to take.\n\nFor some days Holmes came and went at all hours in this attire, but beyond a remark that his time was spent at Hampstead, and that it was not wasted, I knew nothing of what he was doing. At last, however, on a wild, tempestuous evening, when the wind screamed and rattled against the windows, he returned from his last expedition, and having removed his disguise he sat before the fire and laughed heartily in his silent inward fashion.\n\n\"You would not call me a marrying man, Watson?\"\n\n\"No, indeed!\"\n\n\"You'll be interested to hear that I'm engaged.\"\n\n\"My dear fellow! I congrat\u2014\"\n\n\"To Milverton's housemaid.\"\n\n\"Good heavens, Holmes!\"\n\n\"I wanted information, Watson.\"\n\n\"Surely you have gone too far?\"\n\n\"It was a most necessary step. I am a plumber with a rising business, Escott, by name. I have walked out with her each evening, and I have talked with her. Good heavens, those talks! However, I have got all I wanted. I know Milverton's house as I know the palm of my hand.\"\n\n\"But the girl, Holmes?\"\n\nHe shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"You can't help it, my dear Watson. You must play your cards as best you can when such a stake is on the table. However, I rejoice to say that I have a hated rival, who will certainly cut me out the instant that my back is turned. What a splendid night it is!\"\n\n\"You like this weather?\"\n\n\"It suits my purpose. Watson, I mean to burgle Milverton's house to night.\"\n\nI had a catching of the breath, and my skin went cold at the words, which were slowly uttered in a tone of concentrated resolution. As a flash of lightning in the night shows up in an instant every detail of a wild landscape, so at one glance I seemed to see every possible result of such an action\u2014the detection, the capture, the honoured career ending in irreparable failure and disgrace, my friend himself lying at the mercy of the odious Milverton.\n\n\"For heaven's sake, Holmes, think what you are doing,\" I cried.\n\n\"My dear fellow, I have given it every consideration. I am never precipitate in my actions, nor would I adopt so energetic and, indeed, so dangerous a course, if any other were possible. Let us look at the matter clearly and fairly. I suppose that you will admit that the action is morally justifiable, though technically criminal. To burgle his house is no more than to forcibly take his pocketbook\u2014an action in which you were prepared to aid me.\"\n\nI turned it over in my mind.\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"it is morally justifiable so long as our object is to take no articles save those which are used for an illegal purpose.\"\n\n\"Exactly. Since it is morally justifiable, I have only to consider the question of personal risk. Surely a gentleman should not lay much stress upon this, when a lady is in most desperate need of his help?\"\n\n\"You will be in such a false position.\"\n\n\"Well, that is part of the risk. There is no other possible way of regaining these letters. The unfortunate lady has not the money, and there are none of her people in whom she could confide. To-morrow is the last day of grace, and unless we can get the letters to-night, this villain will be as good as his word and will bring about her ruin. I must, therefore, abandon my client to her fate or I must play this last card. Between ourselves, Watson, it's a sporting duel between this fellow Milverton and me. He had, as you saw, the best of the first exchanges, but my self-respect and my reputation are concerned to fight it to a finish.\"\n\n\"Well, I don't like it, but I suppose it must be,\" said I. \"When do we start?\"\n\n\"You are not coming.\"\n\n\"Then you are not going,\" said I. \"I give you my word of honour\u2014and I never broke it in my life\u2014that I will take a cab straight to the police-station and give you away, unless you let me share this adventure with you.\"\n\n\"You can't help me.\"\n\n\"How do you know that? You can't tell what may happen. Anyway, my resolution is taken. Other people besides you have self-respect, and even reputations.\"\n\nHolmes had looked annoyed, but his brow cleared, and he clapped me on the shoulder.\n\n\"Well, well, my dear fellow, be it so. We have shared this same room for some years, and it would be amusing if we ended by sharing the same cell. You know, Watson, I don't mind confessing to you that I have always had an idea that I would have made a highly efficient criminal. This is the chance of my lifetime in that direction. See here!\" He took a neat little leather case out of a drawer, and opening it he exhibited a number of shining instruments. \"This is a first-class, up-to-date burgling kit, with nickel-plated jemmy, diamond-tipped glass-cutter, adaptable keys, and every modern improvement which the march of civilization demands. Here, too, is my dark lantern. Everything is in order. Have you a pair of silent shoes?\"\n\n\"I have rubber-soled tennis shoes.\"\n\n\"Excellent! And a mask?\"\n\n\"I can make a couple out of black silk.\"\n\n\"I can see that you have a strong, natural turn for this sort of thing. Very good, do make the masks. We shall have some cold supper before we start. It is now nine-thirty. At eleven we shall drive as far as Church Row. It is a quarter of an hour's walk from there to Appledore Towers. We shall be at work before midnight. Milverton is a heavy sleeper, and retires punctually at ten-thirty. With any luck we should be back here by two, with the Lady Eva's letters in my pocket.\"\n\nHolmes and I put on our dress-clothes, so that we might appear to be two theatre-goers homeward bound. In Oxford Street we picked up a hansom and drove to an address in Hampstead. Here we paid off our cab, and with our great coats buttoned up, for it was bitterly cold, and the wind seemed to blow through us, we walked along the edge of the heath.\n\n\"It's a business that needs delicate treatment,\" said Holmes. \"These documents are contained in a safe in the fellow's study, and the study is the ante-room of his bed-chamber. On the other hand, like all these stout, little men who do themselves well, he is a plethoric sleeper, Agatha\u2014that's my fianc\u00e9e\u2014says it is a joke in the servants' hall that it's impossible to wake the master. He has a secretary who is devoted to his interests, and never budges from the study all day. That's why we are going at night. Then he has a beast of a dog which roams the garden. I met Agatha late the last two evenings, and she locks the brute up so as to give me a clear run. This is the house, this big one in its own grounds. Through the gate\u2014now to the right among the laurels. We might put on our masks here, I think. You see, there is not a glimmer of light in any of the windows, and everything is working splendidly.\"\n\nWith our black silk face-coverings, which turned us into two of the most truculent figures in London, we stole up to the silent, gloomy house. A sort of tiled veranda extended along one side of it, lined by several windows and two doors.\n\n\"That's his bedroom,\" Holmes whispered. \"This door opens straight into the study. It would suit us best, but it is bolted as well as locked, and we should make too much noise getting in. Come round here. There's a greenhouse which opens into the drawing-room.\"\n\nThe place was locked, but Holmes removed a circle of glass and turned the key from the inside. An instant afterwards he had closed the door behind us, and we had become felons in the eyes of the law. The thick, warm air of the conservatory and the rich, choking fragrance of exotic plants took us by the throat. He seized my hand in the darkness and led me swiftly past banks of shrubs which brushed against our faces. Holmes had remarkable powers, carefully cultivated, of seeing in the dark. Still holding my hand in one of his, he opened a door, and I was vaguely conscious that we had entered a large room in which a cigar had been smoked not long before. He felt his way among the furniture, opened another door, and closed it behind us. Putting out my hand I felt several coats hanging from the wall, and I understood that I was in a passage. We passed along it, and Holmes very gently opened a door upon the right-hand side. Something rushed out at us and my heart sprang into my mouth. but I could have laughed when I realized that it was the cat. A fire was burning in this new room, and again the air was heavy with tobacco smoke. Holmes entered on tiptoe, waited for me to follow, and then very gently closed the door. We were in Milverton's study, and a portiere at the farther side showed the entrance to his bedroom.\n\nIt was a good fire, and the room was illuminated by it. Near the door I saw the gleam of an electric switch, but it was unnecessary, even if it had been safe, to turn it on. At one side of the fireplace was a heavy curtain which covered the bay window we had seen from outside. On the other side was the door which communicated with the veranda. A desk stood in the centre, with a turning-chair of shining red leather. Opposite was a large bookcase, with a marble bust of Athene on the top. In the corner, between the bookcase and the wall, there stood a tall green safe, the firelight flashing back from the polished brass knobs upon its face. Holmes stole across and looked at it. Then he crept to the door of the bedroom, and stood with slanting head listening intently. No sound came from within. Meanwhile it had struck me that it would be wise to secure our retreat through the outer door, so I examined it. To my amazement, it was neither locked nor bolted. I touched Holmes on the arm, and he turned his masked face in that direction. I saw him start, and he was evidently as surprised as I.\n\n\"I don't like it,\" he whispered, putting his lips to my very ear. \"I can't quite make it out. Anyhow, we have no time to lose.\"\n\n\"Can I do anything?\"\n\n\"Yes, stand by the door. If you hear anyone come, bolt it on the inside, and we can get away as we came. If they come the other way, we can get through the door if our job is done, or hide behind these window curtains if it is not. Do you understand?\"\n\nI nodded, and stood by the door. My first feeling of fear had passed away, and I thrilled now with a keener zest than I had ever enjoyed when we were the defenders of the law instead of its defiers. The high object of our mission, the consciousness that it was unselfish and chivalrous, the villainous character of our opponent, all added to the sporting interest of the adventure. Far from feeling guilty, I rejoiced and exulted in our dangers. With a glow of admiration I watched Holmes unrolling his case of instruments and choosing his tool with the calm, scientific accuracy of a surgeon who performs a delicate operation. I knew that the opening of safes was a particular hobby with him, and I understood the joy which it gave him to be confronted with this green and gold monster, the dragon which held in its maw the reputations of many fair ladies. Turning up the cuffs of his dress-coat\u2014he had placed his overcoat on a chair\u2014Holmes laid out two drills, a jemmy, and several skeleton keys. I stood at the centre door with my eyes glancing at each of the others, ready for any emergency, though, indeed, my plans were somewhat vague as to what I should do if we were interrupted. For half an hour, Holmes worked with concentrated energy, laying down one tool, picking up another, handling each with the strength and delicacy of the trained mechanic. Finally I heard a click, the broad green door swung open, and inside I had a glimpse of a number of paper packets, each tied, sealed, and inscribed. Holmes picked one out, but it was hard to read by the flickering fire, and he drew out his little dark lantern, for it was too dangerous, with Milverton in the next room, to switch on the electric light. Suddenly I saw him halt, listen intently, and then in an instant he had swung the door of the safe to, picked up his coat, stuffed his tools into the pockets, and darted behind the window curtain, motioning me to do the same.\n\nIt was only when I had joined him there that I heard what had alarmed his quicker senses. There was a noise somewhere within the house. A door slammed in the distance. Then a confused, dull murmur broke itself into the measured thud of heavy footsteps rapidly approaching. They were in the passage outside the room. They paused at the door. The door opened. There was a sharp snick as the electric light was turned on. The door closed once more, and the pungent reek of a strong cigar was borne to our nostrils. Then the footsteps continued backward and forward, backward and forward, within a few yards of us. Finally there was a creak from a chair, and the footsteps ceased. Then a key clicked in a lock, and I heard the rustle of papers.\n\nSo far I had not dared to look out, but now I gently parted the division of the curtains in front of me and peeped through. From the pressure of Holmes's shoulder against mine, I knew that he was sharing my observations. Right in front of us, and almost within our reach, was the broad, rounded back of Milverton. It was evident that we had entirely miscalculated his movements, that he had never been to his bedroom, but that he had been sitting up in some smoking or billiard room in the farther wing of the house, the windows of which we had not seen. His broad, grizzled head, with its shining patch of baldness, was in the immediate foreground of our vision. He was leaning far back in the red leather chair, his legs outstretched, a long, black cigar projecting at an angle from his mouth. He wore a semi-military smoking jacket, claret-coloured, with a black velvet collar. In his hand he held a long, legal document which he was reading in an indolent fashion, blowing rings of tobacco smoke from his lips as he did so. There was no promise of a speedy departure in his composed bearing and his comfortable attitude.\n\nI felt Holmes's hand steal into mine and give me a reassuring shake, as if to say that the situation was within his powers, and that he was easy in his mind. I was not sure whether he had seen what was only too obvious from my position, that the door of the safe was imperfectly closed, and that Milverton might at any moment observe it. In my own mind I had determined that if I were sure, from the rigidity of his gaze, that it had caught his eye, I would at once spring out, throw my great coat over his head, pinion him, and leave the rest to Holmes. But Milverton never looked up. He was languidly interested by the papers in his hand, and page after page was turned as he followed the argument of the lawyer. At least, I thought, when he has finished the document and the cigar he will go to his room, but before he had reached the end of either, there came a remarkable development, which turned our thoughts into quite another channel.\n\nSeveral times I had observed that Milverton looked at his watch, and once he had risen and sat down again, with a gesture of impatience. The idea, however, that he might have an appointment at so strange an hour never occurred to me until a faint sound reached my ears from the veranda outside. Milverton dropped his papers and sat rigid in his chair. The sound was repeated, and then there came a gentle tap at the door. Milverton rose and opened it.\n\n\"Well,\" said he, curtly, \"you are nearly half an hour late.\"\n\nSo this was the explanation of the unlocked door and of the nocturnal vigil of Milverton. There was the gentle rustle of a woman's dress. I had closed the slit between the curtains as Milverton's face had turned in our direction, but now I ventured very carefully to open it once more. He had resumed his seat, the cigar still projecting at an insolent angle from the corner of his mouth. In front of him, in the full glare of the electric light, there stood a tall, slim, dark woman, a veil over her face, a mantle drawn round her chin. Her breath came quick and fast, and every inch of the lithe figure was quivering with strong emotion.\n\n\"Well,\" said Milverton, \"you made me lose a good night's rest, my dear. I hope you'll prove worth it. You couldn't come any other time\u2014eh?\"\n\nThe woman shook her head.\n\n\"Well, if you couldn't you couldn't. If the Countess is a hard mistress, you have your chance to get level with her now. Bless the girl, what are you shivering about? That's right. Pull yourself together. Now, let us get down to business.\" He took a notebook from the drawer of his desk. \"You say that you have five letters which compromise the Countess d'Albert. You want to sell them. I want to buy them. So far so good. It only remains to fix a price. I should want to inspect the letters, of course. If they are really good specimens\u2014Great heavens, is it you?\"\n\nThe woman, without a word, had raised her veil and dropped the mantle from her chin. It was a dark, handsome, clear-cut face which confronted Milverton\u2014a face with a curved nose, strong, dark eyebrows shading hard, glittering eyes, and a straight, thin-lipped mouth set in a dangerous smile.\n\n\"It is I,\" she said, \"the woman whose life you have ruined.\"\n\nMilverton laughed, but fear vibrated in his voice. \"You were so very obstinate,\" said he. \"Why did you drive me to such extremities? I assure you I wouldn't hurt a fly of my own accord, but every man has his business, and what was I to do? I put the price well within your means. You would not pay.\"\n\n\"So you sent the letters to my husband, and he\u2014the noblest gentleman that ever lived, a man whose boots I was never worthy to lace\u2014he broke his gallant heart and died. You remember that last night, when I came through that door, I begged and prayed you for mercy, and you laughed in my face as you are trying to laugh now, only your coward heart cannot keep your lips from twitching. Yes, you never thought to see me here again, but it was that night which taught me how I could meet you face to face, and alone. Well, Charles Milverton, what have you to say?\"\n\n\"Don't imagine that you can bully me,\" said he, rising to his feet. \"I have only to raise my voice, and I could call my servants and have you arrested. But I will make allowance for your natural anger. Leave the room at once as you came, and I will say no more.\"\n\nThe woman stood with her hand buried in her bosom, and the same deadly smile on her thin lips.\n\n\"You will ruin no more lives as you have ruined mine. You will wring no more hearts as you wrung mine. I will free the world of a poisonous thing. Take that, you hound\u2014and that!\u2014and that!\u2014and that!\u2014and that!\"\n\nShe had drawn a little gleaming revolver, and emptied barrel after barrel into Milverton's body, the muzzle within two feet of his shirt front. He shrank away and then fell forward upon the table, coughing furiously and clawing among the papers. Then he staggered to his feet, received another shot, and rolled upon the floor. \"You've done me,\" he cried, and lay still. The woman looked at him intently, and ground her heel into his upturned face. She looked again, but there was no sound or movement. I heard a sharp rustle, the night air blew into the heated room, and the avenger was gone.\n\nNo interference upon our part could have saved the man from his fate, but, as the woman poured bullet after bullet into Milverton's shrinking body I was about to spring out, when I felt Holmes's cold, strong grasp upon my wrist. I understood the whole argument of that firm, restraining grip\u2014that it was no affair of ours, that justice had overtaken a villain, that we had our own duties and our own objects, which were not to be lost sight of. But hardly had the woman rushed from the room when Holmes, with swift, silent steps, was over at the other door. He turned the key in the lock. At the same instant we heard voices in the house and the sound of hurrying feet. The revolver shots had roused the household. With perfect coolness Holmes slipped across to the safe, filled his two arms with bundles of letters, and poured them all into the fire. Again and again he did it, until the safe was empty. Someone turned the handle and beat upon the outside of the door. Holmes looked swiftly round. The letter which had been the messenger of death for Milverton lay, all mottled with his blood, upon the table. Holmes tossed it in among the blazing papers. Then he drew the key from the outer door, passed through after me, and locked it on the outside. \"This way, Watson,\" said he, \"we can scale the garden wall in this direction.\"\n\nI could not have believed that an alarm could have spread so swiftly. Looking back, the huge house was one blaze of light. The front door was open, and figures were rushing down the drive. The whole garden was alive with people, and one fellow raised a view-halloa as we emerged from the veranda and followed hard at our heels. Holmes seemed to know the grounds perfectly, and he threaded his way swiftly among a plantation of small trees, I close at his heels, and our foremost pursuer panting behind us. It was a six-foot wall which barred our path, but he sprang to the top and over. As I did the same I felt the hand of the man behind me grab at my ankle, but I kicked myself free and scrambled over a grass-strewn coping. I fell upon my face among some bushes, but Holmes had me on my feet in an instant, and together we dashed away across the huge expanse of Hampstead Heath. We had run two miles, I suppose, before Holmes at last halted and listened intently. All was absolute silence behind us. We had shaken off our pursuers and were safe.\n\nWe had breakfasted and were smoking our morning pipe on the day after the remarkable experience which I have recorded, when Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, very solemn and impressive, was ushered into our modest sitting-room.\n\n\"Good-morning, Mr. Holmes,\" said he; \"good-morning. May I ask if you are very busy just now?\"\n\n\"Not too busy to listen to you.\"\n\n\"I thought that, perhaps, if you had nothing particular on hand, you might care to assist us in a most remarkable case, which occurred only last night at Hampstead.\"\n\n\"Dear me!\" said Holmes. \"What was that?\"\n\n\"A murder\u2014a most dramatic and remarkable murder. I know how keen you are upon these things, and I would take it as a great favour if you would step down to Appledore Towers, and give us the benefit of your advice. It is no ordinary crime. We have had our eyes upon this Mr. Milverton for some time, and, between ourselves, he was a bit of a villain. He is known to have held papers which he used for blackmailing purposes. These papers have all been burned by the murderers. No article of value was taken, as it is probable that the criminals were men of good position, whose sole object was to prevent social exposure.\"\n\n\"Criminals?\" said Holmes. \"Plural?\"\n\n\"Yes, there were two of them. They were as nearly as possible captured red-handed. We have their footmarks, we have their description, it's ten to one that we trace them. The first fellow was a bit too active, but the second was caught by the undergardener, and only got away after a struggle. He was a middle-sized, strongly built man\u2014square jaw, thick neck, moustache, a mask over his eyes.\"\n\n\"That's rather vague,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"Why, it might be a description of Watson!\"\n\n\"It's true,\" said the inspector, with amusement. \"It might be a description of Watson.\"\n\n\"Well, I'm afraid I can't help you, Lestrade,\" said Holmes. \"The fact is that I knew this fellow Milverton, that I considered him one of the most dangerous men in London, and that I think there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge. No, it's no use arguing. I have made up my mind. My sympathies are with the criminals rather than with the victim, and I will not handle this case.\"\n\nHolmes had not said one word to me about the tragedy which we had witnessed, but I observed all the morning that he was in his most thoughtful mood, and he gave me the impression, from his vacant eyes and his abstracted manner, of a man who is striving to recall something to his memory. We were in the middle of our lunch, when he suddenly sprang to his feet. \"By Jove, Watson, I've got it!\" he cried. \"Take your hat! Come with me!\" He hurried at his top speed down Baker Street and along Oxford Street, until we had almost reached Regent Circus. Here, on the left hand, there stands a shop window filled with photographs of the celebrities and beauties of the day. Holmes's eyes fixed themselves upon one of them, and following his gaze I saw the picture of a regal and stately lady in Court dress, with a high diamond tiara upon her noble head. I looked at that delicately curved nose, at the marked eyebrows, at the straight mouth, and the strong little chin beneath it. Then I caught my breath as I read the time-honoured title of the great nobleman and statesman whose wife she had been. My eyes met those of Holmes, and he put his finger to his lips as we turned away from the window." + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE SIX NAPOLEONS", + "text": "It was no very unusual thing for Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, to look in upon us of an evening, and his visits were welcome to Sherlock Holmes, for they enabled him to keep in touch with all that was going on at the police headquarters. In return for the news which Lestrade would bring, Holmes was always ready to listen with attention to the details of any case upon which the detective was engaged, and was able occasionally, without any active interference, to give some hint or suggestion drawn from his own vast knowledge and experience.\n\nOn this particular evening, Lestrade had spoken of the weather and the newspapers. Then he had fallen silent, puffing thoughtfully at his cigar. Holmes looked keenly at him.\n\n\"Anything remarkable on hand?\" he asked.\n\n\"Oh, no, Mr. Holmes\u2014nothing very particular.\"\n\n\"Then tell me about it.\"\n\nLestrade laughed.\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes, there is no use denying that there is something on my mind. And yet it is such an absurd business, that I hesitated to bother you about it. On the other hand, although it is trivial, it is undoubtedly queer, and I know that you have a taste for all that is out of the common. But, in my opinion, it comes more in Dr. Watson's line than ours.\"\n\n\"Disease?\" said I.\n\n\"Madness, anyhow. And a queer madness, too. You wouldn't think there was anyone living at this time of day who had such a hatred of Napoleon the First that he would break any image of him that he could see.\"\n\nHolmes sank back in his chair.\n\n\"That's no business of mine,\" said he.\n\n\"Exactly. That's what I said. But then, when the man commits burglary in order to break images which are not his own, that brings it away from the doctor and on to the policeman.\"\n\nHolmes sat up again.\n\n\"Burglary! This is more interesting. Let me hear the details.\"\n\nLestrade took out his official notebook and refreshed his memory from its pages.\n\n\"The first case reported was four days ago,\" said he. \"It was at the shop of Morse Hudson, who has a place for the sale of pictures and statues in the Kennington Road. The assistant had left the front shop for an instant, when he heard a crash, and hurrying in he found a plaster bust of Napoleon, which stood with several other works of art upon the counter, lying shivered into fragments. He rushed out into the road, but, although several passers-by declared that they had noticed a man run out of the shop, he could neither see anyone nor could he find any means of identifying the rascal. It seemed to be one of those senseless acts of Hooliganism which occur from time to time, and it was reported to the constable on the beat as such. The plaster cast was not worth more than a few shillings, and the whole affair appeared to be too childish for any particular investigation.\n\n\"The second case, however, was more serious, and also more singular. It occurred only last night.\n\n\"In Kennington Road, and within a few hundred yards of Morse Hudson's shop, there lives a well-known medical practitioner, named Dr. Barnicot, who has one of the largest practices upon the south side of the Thames. His residence and principal consulting-room is at Kennington Road, but he has a branch surgery and dispensary at Lower Brixton Road, two miles away. This Dr. Barnicot is an enthusiastic admirer of Napoleon, and his house is full of books, pictures, and relics of the French Emperor. Some little time ago he purchased from Morse Hudson two duplicate plaster casts of the famous head of Napoleon by the French sculptor, Devine. One of these he placed in his hall in the house at Kennington Road, and the other on the mantelpiece of the surgery at Lower Brixton. Well, when Dr. Barnicot came down this morning he was astonished to find that his house had been burgled during the night, but that nothing had been taken save the plaster head from the hall. It had been carried out and had been dashed savagely against the garden wall, under which its splintered fragments were discovered.\"\n\nHolmes rubbed his hands.\n\n\"This is certainly very novel,\" said he.\n\n\"I thought it would please you. But I have not got to the end yet. Dr. Barnicot was due at his surgery at twelve o'clock, and you can imagine his amazement when, on arriving there, he found that the window had been opened in the night, and that the broken pieces of his second bust were strewn all over the room. It had been smashed to atoms where it stood. In neither case were there any signs which could give us a clue as to the criminal or lunatic who had done the mischief. Now, Mr. Holmes, you have got the facts.\"\n\n\"They are singular, not to say grotesque,\" said Holmes. \"May I ask whether the two busts smashed in Dr. Barnicot's rooms were the exact duplicates of the one which was destroyed in Morse Hudson's shop?\"\n\n\"They were taken from the same mould.\"\n\n\"Such a fact must tell against the theory that the man who breaks them is influenced by any general hatred of Napoleon. Considering how many hundreds of statues of the great Emperor must exist in London, it is too much to suppose such a coincidence as that a promiscuous iconoclast should chance to begin upon three specimens of the same bust.\"\n\n\"Well, I thought as you do,\" said Lestrade. \"On the other hand, this Morse Hudson is the purveyor of busts in that part of London, and these three were the only ones which had been in his shop for years. So, although, as you say, there are many hundreds of statues in London, it is very probable that these three were the only ones in that district. Therefore, a local fanatic would begin with them. What do you think, Dr. Watson?\"\n\n\"There are no limits to the possibilities of monomania,\" I answered. \"There is the condition which the modern French psychologists have called the 'id\u00e9e fixe,' which may be trifling in character, and accompanied by complete sanity in every other way. A man who had read deeply about Napoleon, or who had possibly received some hereditary family injury through the great war, might conceivably form such an id\u00e9e fixe and under its influence be capable of any fantastic outrage.\"\n\n\"That won't do, my dear Watson,\" said Holmes, shaking his head, \"for no amount of id\u00e9e fixe would enable your interesting monomaniac to find out where these busts were situated.\"\n\n\"Well, how do you explain it?\"\n\n\"I don't attempt to do so. I would only observe that there is a certain method in the gentleman's eccentric proceedings. For example, in Dr. Barnicot's hall, where a sound might arouse the family, the bust was taken outside before being broken, whereas in the surgery, where there was less danger of an alarm, it was smashed where it stood. The affair seems absurdly trifling, and yet I dare call nothing trivial when I reflect that some of my most classic cases have had the least promising commencement. You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day. I can't afford, therefore, to smile at your three broken busts, Lestrade, and I shall be very much obliged to you if you will let me hear of any fresh development of so singular a chain of events.\"\n\nThe development for which my friend had asked came in a quicker and an infinitely more tragic form than he could have imagined. I was still dressing in my bedroom next morning, when there was a tap at the door and Holmes entered, a telegram in his hand. He read it aloud:\n\n\"Come instantly, 131 Pitt Street, Kensington.\n\n\"LESTRADE.\"\n\n\"What is it, then?\" I asked.\n\n\"Don't know\u2014may be anything. But I suspect it is the sequel of the story of the statues. In that case our friend the image-breaker has begun operations in another quarter of London. There's coffee on the table, Watson, and I have a cab at the door.\"\n\nIn half an hour we had reached Pitt Street, a quiet little backwater just beside one of the briskest currents of London life. No. 131 was one of a row, all flat-chested, respectable, and most unromantic dwellings. As we drove up, we found the railings in front of the house lined by a curious crowd. Holmes whistled.\n\n\"By George! it's attempted murder at the least. Nothing less will hold the London message-boy. There's a deed of violence indicated in that fel low's round shoulders and outstretched neck. What's this, Watson? The top steps swilled down and the other ones dry. Footsteps enough, anyhow! Well, well, there's Lestrade at the front window, and we shall soon know all about it.\"\n\nThe official received us with a very grave face and showed us into a sitting-room, where an exceedingly unkempt and agitated elderly man, clad in a flannel dressing-gown, was pacing up and down. He was introduced to us as the owner of the house\u2014Mr. Horace Harker, of the Central Press Syndicate.\n\n\"It's the Napoleon bust business again,\" said Lestrade. \"You seemed interested last night, Mr. Holmes, so I thought perhaps you would be glad to be present now that the affair has taken a very much graver turn.\"\n\n\"What has it turned to, then?\"\n\n\"To murder. Mr. Harker, will you tell these gentlemen exactly what has occurred?\"\n\nThe man in the dressing-gown turned upon us with a most melancholy face.\n\n\"It's an extraordinary thing,\" said he, \"that all my life I have been collecting other people's news, and now that a real piece of news has come my own way I am so confused and bothered that I can't put two words together. If I had come in here as a journalist, I should have interviewed myself and had two columns in every evening paper. As it is, I am giving away valuable copy by telling my story over and over to a string of different people, and I can make no use of it myself. However, I've heard your name, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and if you'll only explain this queer business, I shall be paid for my trouble in telling you the story.\"\n\nHolmes sat down and listened.\n\n\"It all seems to centre round that bust of Napoleon which I bought for this very room about four months ago. I picked it up cheap from Harding Brothers, two doors from the High Street Station. A great deal of my journalistic work is done at night, and I often write until the early morning. So it was to-day. I was sitting in my den, which is at the back of the top of the house, about three o'clock, when I was convinced that I heard some sounds downstairs. I listened, but they were not repeated, and I concluded that they came from outside. Then suddenly, about five minutes later, there came a most horrible yell\u2014the most dreadful sound, Mr. Holmes, that ever I heard. It will ring in my ears as long as I live. I sat frozen with horror for a minute or two. Then I seized the poker and went downstairs. When I entered this room I found the window wide open, and I at once observed that the bust was gone from the mantelpiece. Why any burglar should take such a thing passes my understanding, for it was only a plaster cast and of no real value whatever.\n\n\"You can see for yourself that anyone going out through that open window could reach the front doorstep by taking a long stride. This was clearly what the burglar had done, so I went round and opened the door. Stepping out into the dark, I nearly fell over a dead man, who was lying there. I ran back for a light, and there was the poor fellow, a great gash in his throat and the whole place swimming in blood. He lay on his back, his knees drawn up, and his mouth horribly open. I shall see him in my dreams. I had just time to blow on my police-whistle, and then I must have fainted, for I knew nothing more until I found the policeman standing over me in the hall.\"\n\n\"Well, who was the murdered man?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"There's nothing to show who he was,\" said Lestrade. \"You shall see the body at the mortuary, but we have made nothing of it up to now. He is a tall man, sunburned, very powerful, not more than thirty. He is poorly dressed, and yet does not appear to be a labourer. A horn-handled clasp knife was lying in a pool of blood beside him. Whether it was the weapon which did the deed, or whether it belonged to the dead man, I do not know. There was no name on his clothing, and nothing in his pockets save an apple, some string, a shilling map of London, and a photograph. Here it is.\"\n\nIt was evidently taken by a snapshot from a small camera. It represented an alert, sharp-featured simian man, with thick eyebrows and a very peculiar projection of the lower part of the face, like the muzzle of a baboon.\n\n\"And what became of the bust?\" asked Holmes, after a careful study of this picture.\n\n\"We had news of it just before you came. It has been found in the front garden of an empty house in Campden House Road. It was broken into fragments. I am going round now to see it. Will you come?\"\n\n\"Certainly. I must just take one look round.\" He examined the carpet and the window. \"The fellow had either very long legs or was a most active man,\" said he. \"With an area beneath, it was no mean feat to reach that window-ledge and open that window. Getting back was comparatively simple. Are you coming with us to see the remains of your bust, Mr. Harker?\"\n\nThe disconsolate journalist had seated himself at a writing-table.\n\n\"I must try and make something of it,\" said he, \"though I have no doubt that the first editions of ther evening papers are out already with full details. It's like my luck! You remember when the stand fell at Don-caster? Well, I was the only journalist in the stand, and my journal the only one that had no account of it, for I was too shaken to write it. And now I'll be too late with a murder done on my own doorstep.\"\n\nAs we left the room, we heard his pen travelling shrilly over the foolscap.\n\nThe spot where the fragments of the bust had been found was only a few hundred yards away. For the first time our eyes rested upon this pre sentment of the great emperor, which seemed to raise such frantic and destructive hatred in the mind of the unknown. It lay scattered, in splintered shards, upon the grass. Holmes picked up several of them and examined them carefully. I was convinced, from his intent face and his purposeful manner, that at last he was upon a clue.\n\n\"Well?\" asked Lestrade.\n\nHolmes shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"We have a long way to go yet,\" said he. \"And yet\u2014and yet\u2014well, we have some suggestive facts to act upon. The possession of this trifling bust was worth more, in the eyes of this strange criminal, than a human life. That is one point. Then there is the singular fact that he did not break it in the house, or immediately outside the house, if to break it was his sole object.\"\n\n\"He was rattled and bustled by meeting this other fellow. He hardly knew what he was doing.\"\n\n\"Well, that's likely enough. But I wish to call your attention very particularly to the position of this house, in the garden of which the bust was destroyed.\"\n\nLestrade looked about him.\n\n\"It was an empty house, and so he knew that he would not be disturbed in the garden.\"\n\n\"Yes, but there is another empty house farther up the street which he must have passed before he came to this one. Why did he not break it there, since it is evident that every yard that he carried it increased the risk of someone meeting him?\"\n\n\"I give it up,\" said Lestrade.\n\nHolmes pointed to the street lamp above our heads.\n\n\"He could see what he was doing here, and he could not there. That was his reason.\"\n\n\"By Jove! that's true,\" said the detective. \"Now that I come to think of it, Dr. Barnicot's bust was broken not far from his red lamp. Well, Mr. Holmes, what are we to do with that fact?\"\n\n\"To remember it\u2014to docket it. We may come on something later which will bear upon it. What steps do you propose to take now, Lestrade?\"\n\n\"The most practical way of getting at it, in my opinion, is to identify the dead man. There should be no difficulty about that. When we have found who he is and who his associates are, we should have a good start in learning what he was doing in Pitt Street last night, and who it was who met him and killed him on the doorstep of Mr. Horace Harker. Don't you think so?\"\n\n\"No doubt; and yet it is not quite the way in which I should approach the case.\"\n\n\"What would you do then?\"\n\n\"Oh, you must not let me influence you in any way. I suggest that you go on your line and I on mine. We can compare notes afterwards, and each will supplement the other.\"\n\n\"Very good,\" said Lestrade.\n\n\"If you are going back to Pitt Street, you might see Mr. Horace Harker. Tell him for me that I have quite made up my mind, and that it is certain that a dangerous homicidal lunatic, with Napoleonic delusions, was in his house last night. It will be useful for his article.\"\n\nLestrade stared.\n\n\"You don't seriously believe that?\"\n\nHolmes smiled.\n\n\"Don't I? Well, perhaps I don't. But I am sure that it will interest Mr. Horace Harker and the subscribers of the Central Press Syndicate. Now, Watson, I think that we shall find that we have a long and rather complex day's work before us. I should be glad, Lestrade, if you could make it convenient to meet us at Baker Street at six o'clock this evening. Until then I should like to keep this photograph, found in the dead man's pocket. It is possible that I may have to ask your company and assistance upon a small expedition which will have to be undertaken tonight, if my chain of reasoning should prove to be correct. Until then good-bye and good luck!\"\n\nSherlock Holmes and I walked together to the High Street, where we stopped at the shop of Harding Brothers, whence the bust had been purchased. A young assistant informed us that Mr. Harding would be absent until afternoon, and that he was himself a newcomer, who could give us no information. Holmes's face showed his disappointment and annoyance.\n\n\"Well, well, we can't expect to have it all our own way, Watson,\" he said, at last. \"We must come back in the afternoon, if Mr. Harding will not be here until then. I am, as you have no doubt surmised, endeavouring to trace these busts to their source, in order to find if there is not something peculiar which may account for their remarkable fate. Let us make for Mr. Morse Hudson, of the Kennington Road, and see if he can throw any light upon the problem.\"\n\nA drive of an hour brought us to the picture-dealer's establishment. He was a small, stout man with a red face and a peppery manner.\n\n\"Yes, sir. On my very counter, sir,\" said he. \"What we pay rates and taxes for I don't know, when any ruffian can come in and break one's goods. Yes, sir, it was I who sold Dr. Barnicot his two statues. Disgraceful, sir! A Nihilist plot\u2014that's what I make it. No one but an anarchist would go about breaking statues. Red republicans\u2014that's what I call 'em. Who did I get the statues from? I don't see what that has to do with it. Well, if you really want to know, I got them from Gelder & Co., in Church Street, Stepney. They are a well-known house in the trade, and have been this twenty years. How many had I? Three\u2014two and one are three\u2014two of Dr. Barnicot's, and one smashed in broad daylight on my own counter. Do I know that photograph? No, I don't. Yes, I do, though. Why, it's Beppo. He was a kind of Italian piece-work man, who made himself useful in the shop. He could carve a bit, and gild and frame, and do odd jobs. The fellow left me last week, and I've heard nothing of him since. No, I don't know where he came from nor where he went to. I had nothing against him while he was here. He was gone two days before the bust was smashed.\"\n\n\"Well, that's all we could reasonably expect from Morse Hudson,\" said Holmes, as we emerged from the shop. \"We have this Beppo as a common factor, both in Kennington and in Kensington, so that is worth a ten-mile drive. Now, Watson, let us make for Gelder & Co., of Stepney, the source and origin of the busts. I shall be surprised if we don't get some help down there.\"\n\nIn rapid succession we passed through the fringe of fashionable London, hotel London, theatrical London, literary London, commercial London, and, finally, maritime London, till we came to a riverside city of a hundred thousand souls, where the tenement houses swelter and reek with the outcasts of Europe. Here, in a broad thoroughfare, once the abode of wealthy city merchants, we found the sculpture works for which we searched. Outside was a considerable yard full of monumental masonry. Inside was a large room in which fifty workers were carving or moulding. The manager, a big blond German, received us civilly and gave a clear answer to all Holmes's questions. A reference to his books showed that hundreds of casts had been taken from a marble copy of Devine's head of Napoleon, but that the three which had been sent to Morse Hudson a year or so before had been half of a batch of six, the other three being sent to Harding Brothers, of Kensington. There was no reason why those six should be different from any of the other casts. He could suggest no possible cause why anyone should wish to destroy them\u2014in fact, he laughed at the idea. Their wholesale price was six shillings, but the retailer would get twelve or more. The cast was taken in two moulds from each side of the face, and then these two profiles of plaster of Paris were joined together to make the complete bust. The work was usually done by Italians, in the room we were in. When finished, the busts were put on a table in the passage to dry, and afterwards stored. That was all he could tell us.\n\nBut the production of the photograph had a remarkable effect upon the manager. His face flushed with anger, and his brows knotted over his blue Teutonic eyes.\n\n\"Ah, the rascal!\" he cried. \"Yes, indeed, I know him very well. This has always been a respectable establishment, and the only time that we have ever had the police in it was over this very fellow. It was more than a year ago now. He knifed another Italian in the street, and then he came to the works with the police on his heels, and he was taken here. Beppo was his name\u2014his second name I never knew. Serve me right for engaging a man with such a face. But he was a good workman\u2014one of the best.\"\n\n\"What did he get?\"\n\n\"The man lived and he got off with a year. I have no doubt he is out now, but he has not dared to show his nose here. We have a cousin of his here, and I daresay he could tell you where he is.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" cried Holmes, \"not a word to the cousin\u2014not a word, I beg of you. The matter is very important, and the farther I go with it, the more important it seems to grow. When you referred in your ledger to the sale of those casts I observed that the date was June 3rd of last year. Could you give me the date when Beppo was arrested?\"\n\n\"I could tell you roughly by the pay-list,\" the manager answered. \"Yes,\" he continued, after some turning over of pages, \"he was paid last on May 20th.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Holmes. \"I don't think that I need intrude upon your time and patience any more.\" With a last word of caution that he should say nothing as to our researches, we turned our faces westward once more.\n\nThe afternoon was far advanced before we were able to snatch a hasty luncheon at a restaurant. A news-bill at the entrance announced \"Kensington Outrage. Murder by a Madman,\" and the contents of the paper showed that Mr. Horace Harker had got his account into print after all. Two columns were occupied with a highly sensational and flowery rendering of the whole incident. Holmes propped it against the cruet-stand and read it while he ate. Once or twice he chuckled.\n\n\"This is all right, Watson,\" said he. \"Listen to this:\n\n\"It is satisfactory to know that there can be no difference of opinion upon this case, since Mr. Lestrade, one of the most experienced members of the official force, and Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the well-known consulting expert, have each come to the conclusion that the grotesque series of incidents, which have ended in so tragic a fashion, arise from lunacy rather than from deliberate crime. No explanation save mental aberration can cover the facts.\n\nThe Press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it. And now, if you have quite finished, we will hark back to Kensington and see what the manager of Harding Brothers has to say on the matter.\"\n\nThe founder of that great emporium proved to be a brisk, crisp little person, very dapper and quick, with a clear head and a ready tongue.\n\n\"Yes, sir, I have already read the account in the evening papers. Mr. Horace Harker is a customer of ours. We supplied him with the bust some months ago. We ordered three busts of that sort from Gelder & Co., of Stepney. They are all sold now. To whom? Oh, I daresay by consulting our sales book we could very easily tell you. Yes, we have the entries here. One to Mr. Harker you see, and one to Mr. Josiah Brown, of Laburnum Lodge, Laburnum Vale, Chiswick, and one to Mr. Sandeford, of Lower Grove Road, Reading. No, I have never seen this face which you show me in the photograph. You would hardly forget it, would you, sir, for I've seldom seen an uglier. Have we any Italians on the staff? Yes, sir, we have several among our workpeople and cleaners. I daresay they might get a peep at that sales book if they wanted to. There is no particular reason for keeping a watch upon that book. Well, well, it's a very strange business, and I hope that you will let me know if anything comes of your inquiries.\"\n\nHolmes had taken several notes during Mr. Harding's evidence, and I could see that he was thoroughly satisfied by the turn which affairs were taking. He made no remark, however, save that, unless we hurried, we should be late for our appointment with Lestrade. Sure enough, when we reached Baker Street the detective was already there, and we found him pacing up and down in a fever of impatience. His look of importance showed that his day's work had not been in vain.\n\n\"Well?\" he asked. \"What luck, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"We have had a very busy day, and not entirely a wasted one,\" my friend explained. \"We have seen both the retailers and also the wholesale manufacturers. I can trace each of the busts now from the beginning.\"\n\n\"The busts!\" cried Lestrade. \"Well, well, you have your own methods, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and it is not for me to say a word against them, but I think I have done a better day's work than you. I have identified the dead man.\"\n\n\"You don't say so?\"\n\n\"And found a cause for the crime.\"\n\n\"Splendid!\"\n\n\"We have an inspector who makes a specialty of Saffron Hill and the Italian Quarter. Well, this dead man had some Catholic emblem round his neck, and that, along with his colour, made me think he was from the South. Inspector Hill knew him the moment he caught sight of him. His name is Pietro Venucci, from Naples, and he is one of the greatest cut-throats in London. He is connected with the Mafia, which, as you know, is a secret political society, enforcing its decrees by murder. Now, you see how the affair begins to clear up. The other fellow is probably an Italian also, and a member of the Mafia. He has broken the rules in some fashion. Pietro is set upon his track. Probably the photograph we found in his pocket is the man himself, so that he may not knife the wrong person. He dogs the fellow, he sees him enter a house, he waits outside for him, and in the scuffle he receives his own death-wound. How is that, Mr. Sherlock Holmes?\"\n\nHolmes clapped his hands approvingly.\n\n\"Excellent, Lestrade, excellent!\" he cried. \"But I didn't quite follow your explanation of the destruction of the busts.\"\n\n\"The busts! You never can get those busts out of your head. After all, that is nothing; petty larceny, six months at the most. It is the murder that we are really investigating, and I tell you that I am gathering all the threads into my hands.\"\n\n\"And the next stage?\"\n\n\"Is a very simple one. I shall go down with Hill to the Italian Quarter, find the man whose photograph we have got, and arrest him on the charge of murder. Will you come with us?\"\n\n\"I think not. I fancy we can attain our end in a simpler way. I can't say for certain, because it all depends\u2014well, it all depends upon a factor which is completely outside our control. But I have great hopes\u2014in fact, the betting is exactly two to one\u2014that if you will come with us tonight I shall be able to help you to lay him by the heels.\"\n\n\"In the Italian Quarter?\"\n\n\"No, I fancy Chiswick is an address which is more likely to find him. If you will come with me to Chiswick tonight, Lestrade, I'll promise to go to the Italian Quarter with you to-morrow, and no harm will be done by the delay. And now I think that a few hours' sleep would do us all good, for I do not propose to leave before eleven o'clock, and it is unlikely that we shall be back before morning. You'll dine with us, Lestrade, and then you are welcome to the sofa until it is time for us to start. In the meantime, Watson, I should be glad if you would ring for an express messenger, for I have a letter to send and it is important that it should go at once.\"\n\nHolmes spent the evening in rummaging among the files of the old daily papers with which one of our lumber-rooms was packed. When at last he descended, it was with triumph in his eyes, but he said nothing to either of us as to the result of his researches. For my own part, I had followed step by step the methods by which he had traced the various windings of this complex case, and, though I could not yet perceive the goal which we would reach, I understood clearly that Holmes expected this grotesque criminal to make an attempt upon the two remaining busts, one of which, I remembered, was at Chiswick. No doubt the object of our journey was to catch him in the very act, and I could not but admire the cunning with which my friend had inserted a wrong clue in the evening paper, so as to give the fellow the idea that he could continue his scheme with impunity. I was not surprised when Holmes suggested that I should take my revolver with me. He had himself picked up the loaded hunting-crop, which was his favourite weapon.\n\nA four-wheeler was at the door at eleven, and in it we drove to a spot at the other side of Hammersmith Bridge. Here the cabman was directed to wait. A short walk brought us to a secluded road fringed with pleasant houses, each standing in its own grounds. In the light of a street lamp we read \"Laburnum Villa\" upon the gatepost of one of them. The occupants had evidently retired to rest, for all was dark save for a fanlight over the hall door, which shed a single blurred circle on to the garden path. The wooden fence which separated the grounds from the road threw a dense black shadow upon the inner side, and here it was that we crouched.\n\n\"I fear that you'll have a long wait,\" Holmes whispered. \"We may thank our stars that it is not raining. I don't think we can even venture to smoke to pass the time. However, it's a two to one chance that we get something to pay us for our trouble.\"\n\nIt proved, however, that our vigil was not to be so long as Holmes had led us to fear, and it ended in a very sudden and singular fashion. In an instant, without the least sound to warn us of his coming, the garden gate swung open, and a lithe, dark figure, as swift and active as an ape, rushed up the garden path. We saw it whisk past the light thrown from over the door and disappear against the black shadow of the house. There was a long pause, during which we held our breath, and then a very gentle creaking sound came to our ears. The window was being opened. The noise ceased, and again there was a long silence. The fellow was making his way into the house. We saw the sudden flash of a dark lantern inside the room. What he sought was evidently not there, for again we saw the flash through another blind, and then through another.\n\n\"Let us get to the open window. We will nab him as he climbs out,\" Lestrade whispered.\n\nBut before we could move, the man had emerged again. As he came out into the glimmering patch of light, we saw that he carried something white under his arm. He looked stealthily all round him. The silence of the deserted street reassured him. Turning his back upon us he laid down his burden, and the next instant there was the sound of a sharp tap, followed by a clatter and rattle. The man was so intent upon what he was doing that he never heard our steps as we stole across the grass plot. With the bound of a tiger Holmes was on his back, and an instant later Lestrade and I had him by either wrist, and the handcuffs had been fastened. As we turned him over I saw a hideous, sallow face, with writhing, furious features, glaring up at us, and I knew that it was indeed the man of the photograph whom we had secured.\n\nBut it was not our prisoner to whom Holmes was giving his attention. Squatted on the doorstep, he was engaged in most carefully examining that which the man had brought from the house. It was a bust of Napoleon, like the one which we had seen that morning, and it had been broken into similar fragments. Carefully Holmes held each separate shard to the light, but in no way did it differ from any other shattered piece of plaster. He had just completed his examination when the hall lights flew up, the door opened, and the owner of the house, a jovial, rotund figure in shirt and trousers, presented himself.\n\n\"Mr. Josiah Brown, I suppose?\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Yes, sir; and you, no doubt, are Mr. Sherlock Holmes? I had the note which you sent by the express messenger, and I did exactly what you told me. We locked every door on the inside and awaited developments. Well, I'm very glad to see that you have got the rascal. I hope, gentlemen, that you will come in and have some refreshment.\"\n\nHowever, Lestrade was anxious to get his man into safe quarters, so within a few minutes our cab had been summoned and we were all four upon our way to London. Not a word would our captive say, but he glared at us from the shadow of his matted hair, and once, when my hand seemed within his reach, he snapped at it like a hungry wolf. We stayed long enough at the police-station to learn that a search of his clothing revealed nothing save a few shillings and a long sheath knife, the handle of which bore copious traces of recent blood.\n\n\"That's all right,\" said Lestrade, as we parted. \"Hill knows all these gentry, and he will give a name to him. You'll find that my theory of the Mafia will work out all right. But I'm sure I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mr. Holmes, for the workmanlike way in which you laid hands upon him. I don't quite understand it all yet.\"\n\n\"I fear it is rather too late an hour for explanations,\" said Holmes. \"Besides, there are one or two details which are not finished off, and it is one of those cases which are worth working out to the very end. If you will come round once more to my rooms at six o'clock to-morrow, I think I shall be able to show you that even now you have not grasped the entire meaning of this business, which presents some features which make it absolutely original in the history of crime. If ever I permit you to chronicle any more of my little problems, Watson, I foresee that you will enliven your pages by an account of the singular adventure of the Napoleonic busts.\"\n\nWhen we met again next evening, Lestrade was furnished with much information concerning our prisoner. His name, it appeared, was Beppo, second name unknown. He was a well-known ne'er-do-well among the Italian colony. He had once been a skilful sculptor and had earned an honest living, but he had taken to evil courses and had twice already been in jail\u2014once for a petty theft, and once, as we had already heard, for stabbing a fellow-countryman. He could talk English perfectly well. His reasons for destroying the busts were still unknown, and he refused to answer any questions upon the subject, but the police had discovered that these same busts might very well have been made by his own hands, since he was engaged in this class of work at the establishment of Gelder & Co. To all this information, much of which we already knew, Holmes listened with polite attention, but I, who knew him so well, could clearly see that his thoughts were elsewhere, and I detected a mixture of mingled uneasiness and expectation beneath that mask which he was wont to assume. At last he started in his chair, and his eyes brightened. There had been a ring at the bell. A minute later we heard steps upon the stairs, and an elderly red-faced man with grizzled side-whiskers was ushered in. In his right hand he carried an old-fashioned carpet-bag, which he placed upon the table.\n\n\"Is Mr. Sherlock Holmes here?\"\n\nMy friend bowed and smiled. \"Mr. Sandeford, of Reading, I suppose?\" said he.\n\n\"Yes, sir, I fear that I am a little late, but the trains were awkward. You wrote to me about a bust that is in my possession.\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"I have your letter here. You said, 'I desire to possess a copy of Devine's Napoleon, and am prepared to pay you ten pounds for the one which is in your possession.' Is that right?\"\n\n\"Certainly.\"\n\n\"I was very much surprised at your letter, for I could not imagine how you knew that I owned such a thing.\"\n\n\"Of course you must have been surprised, but the explanation is very simple. Mr. Harding, of Harding Brothers, said that they had sold you their last copy, and he gave me your address.\"\n\n\"Oh, that was it, was it? Did he tell you what I paid for it?\"\n\n\"No, he did not.\"\n\n\"Well, I am an honest man, though not a very rich one. I only gave fifteen shillings for the bust, and I think you ought to know that before I take ten pounds from you.\"\n\n\"I am sure the scruple does you honour, Mr. Sandeford. But I have named that price, so I intend to stick to it.\"\n\n\"Well, it is very handsome of you, Mr. Holmes. I brought the bust up with me, as you asked me to do. Here it is!\" He opened his bag, and at last we saw placed upon our table a complete specimen of that bust which we had already seen more than once in fragments.\n\nHolmes took a paper from his pocket and laid a ten-pound note upon the table.\n\n\"You will kindly sign that paper, Mr. Sandeford, in the presence of these witnesses. It is simply to say that you transfer every possible right that you ever had in the bust to me. I am a methodical man, you see, and you never know what turn events might take afterwards. Thank you, Mr. Sandeford; here is your money, and I wish you a very good evening.\"\n\nWhen our visitor had disappeared, Sherlock Holmes's movements were such as to rivet our attention. He began by taking a clean white cloth from a drawer and laying it over the table. Then he placed his newly acquired bust in the centre of the cloth. Finally, he picked up his hunting-crop and struck Napoleon a sharp blow on the top of the head. The figure broke into fragments, and Holmes bent eagerly over the shattered remains. Next instant, with a loud shout of triumph he held up one splinter, in which a round, dark object was fixed like a plum in a pudding.\n\n\"Gentlemen,\" he cried, \"let me introduce you to the famous black pearl of the Borgias.\"\n\nLestrade and I sat silent for a moment, and then, with a spontaneous impulse, we both broke out clapping, as at the well-wrought crisis of a play. A flush of colour sprang to Holmes's pale cheeks, and he bowed to us like the master dramatist who receives the homage of his audience. It was at such moments that for an instant he ceased to be a reasoning machine, and betrayed his human love for admiration and applause. The same singularly proud and reserved nature which turned away with disdain from popular notoriety was capable of being moved to its depths by spontaneous wonder and praise from a friend.\n\n\"Yes, gentlemen,\" said he, \"it is the most famous pearl now existing in the world, and it has been my good fortune, by a connected chain of inductive reasoning, to trace it from the Prince of Colonna's bedroom at the Dacre Hotel, where it was lost, to the interior of this, the last of the six busts of Napoleon which were manufactured by Gelder & Co., of Stepney. You will remember, Lestrade, the sensation caused by the disappearance of this valuable jewel, and the vain efforts of the London police to recover it. I was myself consulted upon the case, but I was unable to throw any light upon it. Suspicion fell upon the maid of the Princess, who was an Italian, and it was proved that she had a brother in London, but we failed to trace any connection between them. The maid's name was Lucretia Venucci, and there is no doubt in my mind that this Pietro who was murdered two nights ago was the brother. I have been looking up the dates in the old files of the paper, and I find that the disappearance of the pearl was exactly two days before the arrest of Beppo, for some crime of violence\u2014an event which took place in the factory of Gelder & Co., at the very moment when these busts were being made. Now you clearly see the sequence of events, though you see them, of course, in the inverse order to the way in which they presented themselves to me. Beppo had the pearl in his possession. He may have stolen it from Pietro, he may have been Pietro's confederate, he may have been the go-between of Pietro and his sister. It is of no consequence to us which is the correct solution.\n\n\"The main fact is that he had the pearl, and at that moment, when it was on his person, he was pursued by the police. He made for the factory in which he worked, and he knew that he had only a few minutes in which to conceal this enormously valuable prize, which would otherwise be found on him when he was searched. Six plaster casts of Napoleon were drying in the passage. One of them was still soft. In an instant Beppo, a skilful workman, made a small hole in the wet plaster, dropped in the pearl, and with a few touches covered over the aperture once more. It was an admirable hiding-place. No one could possibly find it. But Beppo was condemned to a year's imprisonment, and in the meanwhile his six busts were scattered over London. He could not tell which contained his treasure. Only by breaking them could he see. Even shaking would tell him nothing, for as the plaster was wet it was probable that the pearl would adhere to it\u2014as, in fact, it has done. Beppo did not despair, and he conducted his search with considerable ingenuity and perseverance. Through a cousin who works with Gelder, he found out the retail firms who had bought the busts. He managed to find employment with Morse Hudson, and in that way tracked down three of them. The pearl was not there. Then, with the help of some Italian employ\u00e9, he succeeded in finding out where the other three busts had gone. The first was at Harker's. There he was dogged by his confederate, who held Beppo responsible for the loss of the pearl, and he stabbed him in the scuffle which followed.\"\n\n\"If he was his confederate, why should he carry his photograph?\" I asked.\n\n\"As a means of tracing him, if he wished to inquire about him from any third person. That was the obvious reason. Well, after the murder I calculated that Beppo would probably hurry rather than delay his movements. He would fear that the police would read his secret, and so he hastened on before they should get ahead of him. Of course, I could not say that he had not found the pearl in Harker's bust. I had not even concluded for certain that it was the pearl, but it was evident to me that he was looking for something, since he carried the bust past the other houses in order to break it in the garden which had a lamp overlooking it. Since Harker's bust was one in three, the chances were exactly as I told you\u2014two to one against the pearl being inside it. There remained two busts, and it was obvious that he would go for the London one first. I warned the inmates of the house, so as to avoid a second tragedy, and we went down, with the happiest results. By that time, of course, I knew for certain that it was the Borgia pearl that we were after. The name of the murdered man linked the one event with the other. There only remained a single bust\u2014the Reading one\u2014and the pearl must be there. I bought it in your presence from the owner\u2014and there it lies.\"\n\nWe sat in silence for a moment.\n\n\"Well,\" said Lestrade, \"I've seen you handle a good many cases, Mr. Holmes, but I don't know that I ever knew a more workmanlike one than that. We're not jealous of you at Scotland Yard. No, sir, we are very proud of you, and if you come down to-morrow, there's not a man, from the oldest inspector to the youngest constable, who wouldn't be glad to shake you by the hand.\"\n\n\"Thank you!\" said Holmes. \"Thank you!\" and as he turned away, it seemed to me that he was more nearly moved by the softer human emotions than I had ever seen him. A moment later he was the cold and practical thinker once more. \"Put the pearl in the safe, Watson,\" said he, \"and get out the papers of the Conk-Singleton forgery case. Good-bye, Lestrade. If any little problem comes your way, I shall be happy, if I can, to give you a hint or two as to its solution.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE STUDENTS", + "text": "It was in the year '95 that a combination of events, into which I need not enter, caused Mr. Sherlock Holmes and myself to spend some weeks in one of our great university towns, and it was during this time that the small but instructive adventure which I am about to relate befell us. It will be obvious that any details which would help the reader exactly to identify the college or the criminal would be injudicious and offensive. So painful a scandal may well be allowed to die out. With due discretion the incident itself may, however, be described, since it serves to illustrate some of those qualities for which my friend was remarkable. I will endeavour, in my statement, to avoid such terms as would serve to limit the events to any particular place, or give a clue as to the people concerned.\n\nWe were residing at the time in furnished lodgings close to a library where Sherlock Holmes was pursuing some laborious researches in early English charters\u2014researches which led to results so striking that they may be the subject of one of my future narratives. Here it was that one evening we received a visit from an acquaintance, Mr. Hilton Soames, tutor and lecturer at the College of St. Luke's. Mr. Soames was a tall, spare man, of a nervous and excitable temperament. I had always known him to be restless in his manner, but on this particular occasion he was in such a state of uncontrollable agitation that it was clear something very unusual had occurred.\n\n\"I trust, Mr. Holmes, that you can spare me a few hours of your valuable time. We have had a very painful incident at St. Luke's, and really, but for the happy chance of your being in town, I should have been at a loss what to do.\"\n\n\"I am very busy just now, and I desire no distractions,\" my friend answered. \"I should much prefer that you called in the aid of the police.\"\n\n\"No, no, my dear sir; such a course is utterly impossible. When once the law is evoked it cannot be stayed again, and this is just one of those cases where, for the credit of the college, it is most essential to avoid scandal. Your discretion is as well known as your powers, and you are the one man in the world who can help me. I beg you, Mr. Holmes, to do what you can.\"\n\nMy friend's temper had not improved since he had been deprived of the congenial surroundings of Baker Street. Without his scrapbooks, his chemicals, and his homely untidiness, he was an uncomfortable man. He shrugged his shoulders in ungracious acquiescence, while our visitor in hurried words and with much excitable gesticulation poured forth his story.\n\n\"I must explain to you, Mr. Holmes, that to-morrow is the first day of the examination for the Fortescue Scholarship. I am one of the examiners. My subject is Greek, and the first of the papers consists of a large passage of Greek translation which the candidate has not seen. This passage is printed on the examination paper, and it would naturally be an immense advantage if the candidate could prepare it in advance. For this reason, great care is taken to keep the paper secret.\n\n\"To-day, about three o'clock, the proofs of this paper arrived from the printers. The exercise consists of half a chapter of Thucydides. I had to read it over carefully, as the text must be absolutely correct. At four-thirty my task was not yet completed. I had, however, promised to take tea in a friend's rooms, so I left the proof upon my desk. I was absent rather more than an hour.\n\n\"You are aware, Mr. Holmes, that our college doors are double\u2014a green baize one within and a heavy oak one without. As I approached my outer door, I was amazed to see a key in it. For an instant I imagined that I had left my own there, but on feeling in my pocket I found that it was all right. The only duplicate which existed, so far as I knew, was that which belonged to my servant, Bannister\u2014a man who has looked after my room for ten years, and whose honesty is absolutely above suspicion. I found that the key was indeed his, that he had entered my room to know if I wanted tea, and that he had very carelessly left the key in the door when he came out. His visit to my room must have been within a very few minutes of my leaving it. His forgetfulness about the key would have mattered little upon any other occasion, but on this one day it has produced the most deplorable consequences.\n\n\"The moment I looked at my table, I was aware that someone had rummaged among my papers. The proof was in three long slips. I had left them all together. Now, I found that one of them was lying on the floor, one was on the side table near the window, and the third was where I had left it.\"\n\nHolmes stirred for the first time.\n\n\"The first page on the floor, the second in the window, the third where you left it,\" said he.\n\n\"Exactly, Mr. Holmes. You amaze me. How could you possibly know that?\"\n\n\"Pray continue your very interesting statement.\"\n\n\"For an instant I imagined that Bannister had taken the unpardonable liberty of examining my papers. He denied it, however, with the utmost earnestness, and I am convinced that he was speaking the truth. The alternative was that someone passing had observed the key in the door, had known that I was out, and had entered to look at the papers. A large sum of money is at stake, for the scholarship is a very valuable one, and an unscrupulous man might very well run a risk in order to gain an advantage over his fellows.\n\n\"Bannister was very much upset by the incident. He had nearly fainted when we found that the papers had undoubtedly been tampered with. I gave him a little brandy and left him collapsed in a chair, while I made a most careful examination of the room. I soon saw that the intruder had left other traces of his presence besides the rumpled papers. On the table in the window were several shreds from a pencil which had been sharpened. A broken tip of lead was lying there also. Evidently the rascal had copied the paper in a great hurry, had broken his pencil, and had been compelled to put a fresh point to it.\"\n\n\"Excellent!\" said Holmes, who was recovering his good-humour as his attention became more engrossed by the case. \"Fortune has been your friend.\"\n\n\"This was not all. I have a new writing-table with a fine surface of red leather. I am prepared to swear, and so is Bannister, that it was smooth and unstained. Now I found a clean cut in it about three inches long\u2014not a mere scratch, but a positive cut. Not only this, but on the table I found a small ball of black dough or clay, with specks of something which looks like sawdust in it. I am convinced that these marks were left by the man who rifled the papers. There were no footmarks and no other evidence as to his identity. I was at my wit's end, when suddenly the happy thought occurred to me that you were in the town, and I came straight round to put the matter into your hands. Do help me, Mr. Holmes. You see my dilemma. Either I must find the man or else the examination must be postponed until fresh papers are prepared, and since this cannot be done without explanation, there will ensue a hideous scandal, which will throw a cloud not only on the college, but on the university. Above all things, I desire to settle the matter quietly and discreetly.\"\n\n\"I shall be happy to look into it and to give you such advice as I can,\" said Holmes, rising and putting on his overcoat. \"The case is not entirely devoid of interest. Had anyone visited you in your room after the papers came to you?\"\n\n\"Yes, young Daulat Ras, an Indian student, who lives on the same stair, came in to ask me some particulars about the examination.\n\n\"For which he was entered?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And the papers were on your table?\"\n\n\"To the best of my belief, they were rolled up.\"\n\n\"But might be recognized as proofs?\"\n\n\"Possibly.\"\n\n\"No one else in your room?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Did anyone know that these proofs would be there?\"\n\n\"No one save the printer.\"\n\n\"Did this man Bannister know?\"\n\n\"No, certainly not. No one knew.\"\n\n\"Where is Bannister now?\"\n\n\"He was very ill, poor fellow. I left him collapsed in the chair. I was in such a hurry to come to you.\"\n\n\"You left your door open?\"\n\n\"I locked up the papers first.\"\n\n\"Then it amounts to this, Mr. Soames: that, unless the Indian student recognized the roll as being proofs, the man who tampered with them came upon them accidentally without knowing that they were there.\"\n\n\"So it seems to me.\"\n\nHolmes gave an enigmatic smile.\n\n\"Well,\" said he, \"let us go round. Not one of your cases, Watson\u2014mental, not physical. All right; come if you want to. Now, Mr. Soames\u2014at your disposal!\"\n\nThe sitting-room of our client opened by a long, low, latticed window on to the ancient lichen-tinted court of the old college. A Gothic arched door led to a worn stone staircase. On the ground floor was the tutor's room. Above were three students, one on each story. It was already twilight when we reached the scene of our problem. Holmes halted and looked earnestly at the window. Then he approached it, and, standing on tiptoe with his neck craned, he looked into the room.\n\n\"He must have entered through the door. There is no opening except the one pane,\" said our learned guide.\n\n\"Dear me!\" said Holmes, and he smiled in a singular way as he glanced at our companion. \"Well, if there is nothing to be learned here, we had best go inside.\"\n\nThe lecturer unlocked the outer door and ushered us into his room. We stood at the entrance while Holmes made an examination of the carpet.\n\n\"I am afraid there are no signs here,\" said he. \"One could hardly hope for any upon so dry a day. Your servant seems to have quite recovered. You left him in a chair, you say. Which chair?\"\n\n\"By the window there.\"\n\n\"I see. Near this little table. You can come in now. I have finished with the carpet. Let us take the little table first. Of course, what has happened is very clear. The man entered and took the papers, sheet by sheet, from the central table. He carried them over to the window table, because from there he could see if you came across the courtyard, and so could effect an escape.\"\n\n\"As a matter of fact, he could not,\" said Soames, \"for I entered by the side door.\"\n\n\"Ah, that's good! Well, anyhow, that was in his mind. Let me see the three strips. No finger impressions\u2014no! Well, he carried over this one first, and he copied it. How long would it take him to do that, using every possible contraction? A quarter of an hour, not less. Then he tossed it down and seized the next. He was in the midst of that when your return caused him to make a very hurried retreat\u2014very hurried, since he had not time to replace the papers which would tell you that he had been there. You were not aware of any hurrying feet on the stair as you entered the outer door?\"\n\n\"No, I can't say I was.\"\n\n\"Well, he wrote so furiously that he broke his pencil, and had, as you observe, to sharpen it again. This is of interest, Watson. The pencil was not an ordinary one. It was above the usual size, with a soft lead, the outer colour was dark blue, the maker's name was printed in silver lettering, and the piece remaining is only about an inch and a half long. Look for such a pencil, Mr. Soames, and you have got your man. When I add that he possesses a large and very blunt knife, you have an additional aid.\"\n\nMr. Soames was somewhat overwhelmed by this flood of information. \"I can follow the other points,\" said he, \"but really, in this matter of the length\u2014\"\n\nHolmes held out a small chip with the letters NN and a space of clear wood after them.\n\n\"You see?\"\n\n\"No, I fear that even now\u2014\"\n\n\"Watson, I have always done you an injustice. There are others. What could this NN be? It is at the end of a word. You are aware that Johann Faber is the most common maker's name. Is it not clear that there is just as much of the pencil left as usually follows the Johann?\" He held the small table sideways to the electric light. \"I was hoping that if the paper on which he wrote was thin, some trace of it might come through upon this polished surface. No, I see nothing. I don't think there is anything more to be learned here. Now for the central table. This small pellet is, I presume, the black, doughy mass you spoke of. Roughly pyramidal in shape and hollowed out, I perceive. As you say, there appear to be grains of sawdust in it. Dear me, this is very interesting. And the cut\u2014a positive tear, I see. It began with a thin scratch and ended in a jagged hole. I am much indebted to you for directing my attention to this case, Mr. Soames. Where does that door lead to?\"\n\n\"To my bedroom.\"\n\n\"Have you been in it since your adventure?\"\n\n\"No, I came straight away for you.\"\n\n\"I should like to have a glance round. What a charming, old-fashioned room! Perhaps you will kindly wait a minute, until I have examined the floor. No, I see nothing. What about this curtain? You hang your clothes behind it. If anyone were forced to conceal himself in this room he must do it there, since the bed is too low and the wardrobe too shallow. No one there, I suppose?\"\n\nAs Holmes drew the curtain I was aware, from some little rigidity and alertness of his attitude, that he was prepared for an emergency. As a matter of fact, the drawn curtain disclosed nothing but three or four suits of clothes hanging from a line of pegs. Holmes turned away, and stooped suddenly to the floor.\n\n\"Halloa! What's this?\" said he.\n\nIt was a small pyramid of black, putty-like stuff, exactly like the one upon the table of the study. Holmes held it out on his open palm in the glare of the electric light.\n\n\"Your visitor seems to have left traces in your bedroom as well as in your sitting-room, Mr. Soames.\"\n\n\"What could he have wanted there?\"\n\n\"I think it is clear enough. You came back by an unexpected way, and so he had no warning until you were at the very door. What could he do? He caught up everything which would betray him, and he rushed into your bedroom to conceal himself.\"\n\n\"Good gracious, Mr. Holmes, do you mean to tell me that, all the time I was talking to Bannister in this room, we had the man prisoner if we had only known it?\"\n\n\"So I read it.\"\n\n\"Surely there is another alternative, Mr. Holmes. I don't know whether you observed my bedroom window?\"\n\n\"Lattice-paned, lead framework, three separate windows, one swinging on hinge, and large enough to admit a man.\"\n\n\"Exactly. And it looks out on an angle of the courtyard so as to be partly invisible. The man might have effected his entrance there, left traces as he passed through the bedroom, and finally, finding the door open, have escaped that way.\"\n\nHolmes shook his head impatiently.\n\n\"Let us be practical,\" said he. \"I understand you to say that there are three students who use this stair, and are in the habit of passing your door?\"\n\n\"Yes, there are.\"\n\n\"And they are all in for this examination?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Have you any reason to suspect any one of them more than the others?\"\n\nSoames hesitated.\n\n\"It is a very delicate question,\" said he. \"One hardly likes to throw suspicion where there are no proofs.\"\n\n\"Let us hear the suspicions. I will look after the proofs.\"\n\n\"I will tell you, then, in a few words the character of the three men who inhabit these rooms. The lower of the three is Gilchrist, a fine scholar and athlete, plays in the Rugby team and the cricket team for the college, and got his Blue for the hurdles and the long jump. He is a fine, manly fellow. His father was the notorious Sir Jabez Gilchrist, who ruined himself on the turf. My scholar has been left very poor, but he is hard-working and industrious. He will do well.\n\n\"The second floor is inhabited by Daulat Ras, the Indian. He is a quiet, inscrutable fellow; as most of those Indians are. He is well up in his work, though his Greek is his weak subject. He is steady and methodical.\n\n\"The top floor belongs to Miles McLaren. He is a brilliant fellow when he chooses to work\u2014one of the brightest intellects of the university; but he is wayward, dissipated, and unprincipled. He was nearly expelled over a card scandal in his first year. He has been idling all this term, and he must look forward with dread to the examination.\"\n\n\"Then it is he whom you suspect?\"\n\n\"I dare not go so far as that. But, of the three, he is perhaps the least unlikely.\"\n\n\"Exactly. Now, Mr. Soames, let us have a look at your servant, Bannister.\"\n\nHe was a little, white-faced, clean-shaven, grizzly-haired fellow of fifty. He was still suffering from this sudden disturbance of the quiet routine of his life. His plump face was twitching with his nervousness, and his fingers could not keep still.\n\n\"We are investigating this unhappy business, Bannister,\" said his master.\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"I understand,\" said Holmes, \"that you left your key in the door?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Was it not very extraordinary that you should do this on the very day when there were these papers inside?\"\n\n\"It was most unfortunate, sir. But I have occasionally done the same thing at other times.\"\n\n\"When did you enter the room?\"\n\n\"It was about half-past four. That is Mr. Soames's tea time.\"\n\n\"How long did you stay?\"\n\n\"When I saw that he was absent, I withdrew at once.\"\n\n\"Did you look at these papers on the table?\"\n\n\"No, sir\u2014certainly not.\"\n\n\"How came you to leave the key in the door?\"\n\n\"I had the tea-tray in my hand. I thought I would come back for the key. Then I forgot.\"\n\n\"Has the outer door a spring lock?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"Then it was open all the time?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Anyone in the room could get out?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"When Mr. Soames returned and called for you, you were very much disturbed?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. Such a thing has never happened during the many years that I have been here. I nearly fainted, sir.\"\n\n\"So I understand. Where were you when you began to feel bad?\"\n\n\"Where was I, sir? Why, here, near the door.\"\n\n\"That is singular, because you sat down in that chair over yonder near the corner. Why did you pass these other chairs?\"\n\n\"I don't know, sir, it didn't matter to me where I sat.\"\n\n\"I really don't think he knew much about it, Mr. Holmes. He was looking very bad\u2014quite ghastly.\"\n\n\"You stayed here when your master left?\"\n\n\"Only for a minute or so. Then I locked the door and went to my room.\"\n\n\"Whom do you suspect?\"\n\n\"Oh, I would not venture to say, sir. I don't believe there is any gentleman in this university who is capable of profiting by such an action. No, sir, I'll not believe it.\"\n\n\"Thank you, that will do,\" said Holmes. \"Oh, one more word. You have not mentioned to any of the three gentlemen whom you attend that anything is amiss?\"\n\n\"No, sir\u2014not a word.\"\n\n\"You haven't seen any of them?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"Very good. Now, Mr. Soames, we will take a walk in the quadrangle, if you please.\"\n\nThree yellow squares of light shone above us in the gathering gloom.\n\n\"Your three birds are all in their nests,\" said Holmes, looking up. \"Halloa! What's that? One of them seems restless enough.\"\n\nIt was the Indian, whose dark silhouette appeared suddenly upon his blind. He was pacing swiftly up and down his room.\n\n\"I should like to have a peep at each of them,\" said Holmes. \"Is it possible?\"\n\n\"No difficulty in the world,\" Soames answered. \"This set of rooms is quite the oldest in the college, and it is not unusual for visitors to go over them. Come along, and I will personally conduct you.\"\n\n\"No names, please!\" said Holmes, as we knocked at Gilchrist's door. A tall, flaxen-haired, slim young fellow opened it, and made us welcome when he understood our errand. There were some really curious pieces of mediaeval domestic architecture within. Holmes was so charmed with one of them that he insisted on drawing it in his notebook, broke his pencil, had to borrow one from our host, and finally borrowed a knife to sharpen his own. The same curious accident happened to him in the rooms of the Indian\u2014a silent, little, hook-nosed fellow, who eyed us askance, and was obviously glad when Holmes's architectural studies had come to an end. I could not see that in either case Holmes had come upon the clue for which he was searching. Only at the third did our visit prove abortive. The outer door would not open to our knock, and nothing more substantial than a torrent of bad language came from behind it. \"I don't care who you are. You can go to blazes!\" roared the angry voice. \"To-morrow's the exam, and I won't be drawn by anyone.\"\n\n\"A rude fellow,\" said our guide, flushing with anger as we withdrew down the stair. \"Of course, he did not realize that it was I who was knocking, but none the less his conduct was very uncourteous, and, indeed, under the circumstances rather suspicious.\"\n\nHolmes's response was a curious one.\n\n\"Can you tell me his exact height?\" he asked.\n\n\"Really, Mr. Holmes, I cannot undertake to say. He is taller than the Indian, not so tall as Gilchrist. I suppose five foot six would be about it.\"\n\n\"That is very important,\" said Holmes. \"And now, Mr. Soames, I wish you good-night.\"\n\nOur guide cried aloud in his astonishment and dismay. \"Good gracious, Mr. Holmes, you are surely not going to leave me in this abrupt fashion! You don't seem to realize the position. To-morrow is the examination. I must take some definite action to-night. I cannot allow the examination to be held if one of the papers has been tampered with. The situation must be faced.\"\n\n\"You must leave it as it is. I shall drop round early to-morrow morning and chat the matter over. It is possible that I may be in a position then to indicate some course of action. Meanwhile, you change nothing\u2014nothing at all.\"\n\n\"Very good, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"You can be perfectly easy in your mind. We shall certainly find some way out of your difficulties. I will take the black clay with me, also the pencil cuttings. Good-bye.\"\n\nWhen we were out in the darkness of the quadrangle, we again looked up at the windows. The Indian still paced his room. The others were invisible.\n\n\"Well, Watson, what do you think of it?\" Holmes asked, as we came out into the main Street. \"Quite a little parlour game\u2014sort of three-card trick, is it not? There are your three men. It must be one of them. You take your choice. Which is yours?\"\n\n\"The foul-mouthed fellow at the top. He is the one with the worst record. And yet that Indian was a sly fellow also. Why should he be pacing his room all the time?\"\n\n\"There is nothing in that. Many men do it when they are trying to learn anything by heart.\"\n\n\"He looked at us in a queer way.\"\n\n\"So would you, if a flock of strangers came in on you when you were preparing for an examination next day, and every moment was of value. No, I see nothing in that. Pencils, too, and knives\u2014all was satisfactory. But that fellow does puzzle me.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Why, Bannister, the servant. What's his game in the matter?\"\n\n\"He impressed me as being a perfectly honest man.\"\n\n\"So he did me. That's the puzzling part. Why should a perfectly honest man\u2014Well, well, here's a large stationer's. We shall begin our researches here.\"\n\nThere were only four stationers of any consequences in the town, and at each Holmes produced his pencil chips, and bid high for a duplicate. All were agreed that one could be ordered, but that it was not a usual size of pencil, and that it was seldom kept in stock. My friend did not appear to be depressed by his failure, but shrugged his shoulders in half-humorous resignation.\n\n\"No good, my dear Watson. This, the best and only final clue, has run to nothing. But, indeed, I have little doubt that we can build up a sufficient case without it. By Jove! my dear fellow, it is nearly nine, and the landlady babbled of green peas at seven-thirty. What with your eternal tobacco, Watson, and your irregularity at meals, I expect that you will get notice to quit, and that I shall share your downfall\u2014not, however, before we have solved the problem of the nervous tutor, the careless servant, and the three enterprising students.\"\n\nHolmes made no further allusion to the matter that day, though he sat lost in thought for a long time after our belated dinner. At eight in the morning, he came into my room just as I finished my toilet.\n\n\"Well, Watson,\" said he, \"it is time we went down to St. Luke's. Can you do without breakfast?\"\n\n\"Certainly.\"\n\n\"Soames will be in a dreadful fidget until we are able to tell him something positive.\"\n\n\"Have you anything positive to tell him?\"\n\n\"I think so.\"\n\n\"You have formed a conclusion?\"\n\n\"Yes, my dear Watson, I have solved the mystery.\"\n\n\"But what fresh evidence could you have got?\"\n\n\"Aha! It is not for nothing that I have turned myself out of bed at the untimely hour of six. I have put in two hours' hard work and covered at least five miles, with something to show for it. Look at that!\"\n\nHe held out his hand. On the palm were three little pyramids of black, doughy clay.\n\n\"Why, Holmes, you had only two yesterday.\"\n\n\"And one more this morning. It is a fair argument that wherever No. 3 came from is also the source of Nos. 1 and 2. Eh, Watson? Well, come along and put friend Soames out of his pain.\"\n\nThe unfortunate tutor was certainly in a state of pitiable agitation when we found him in his chambers. In a few hours the examination would commence, and he was still in the dilemma between making the facts public and allowing the culprit to compete for the valuable scholarship. He could hardly stand still, so great was his mental agitation, and he ran towards Holmes with two eager hands outstretched.\n\n\"Thank heaven that you have come! I feared that you had given it up in despair. What am I to do? Shall the examination proceed?\"\n\n\"Yes, let it proceed, by all means.\"\n\n\"But this rascal?\"\n\n\"He shall not compete.\"\n\n\"You know him?\"\n\n\"I think so. If this matter is not to become public, we must give ourselves certain powers and resolve ourselves into a small private court-martial. You there, if you please, Soames! Watson, you here! I'll take the armchair in the middle. I think that we are now sufficiently imposing to strike terror into a guilty breast. Kindly ring the bell!\"\n\nBannister entered, and shrank back in evident surprise and fear at our judicial appearance.\n\n\"You will kindly close the door,\" said Holmes. \"Now, Bannister, will you please tell us the truth about yesterday's incident?\"\n\nThe man turned white to the roots of his hair.\n\n\"I have told you everything, sir.\"\n\n\"Nothing to add?\"\n\n\"Nothing at all, sir.\"\n\n\"Well, then, I must make some suggestions to you. When you sat down on that chair yesterday, did you do so in order to conceal some object which would have shown who had been in the room?\"\n\nBannister's face was ghastly.\n\n\"No, sir, certainly not.\"\n\n\"It is only a suggestion,\" said Holmes, suavely. \"I frankly admit that I am unable to prove it. But it seems probable enough, since the moment that Mr. Soames's back was turned, you released the man who was hiding in that bedroom.\"\n\nBannister licked his dry lips.\n\n\"There was no man, sir.\n\n\"Ah, that's a pity, Bannister. Up to now you may have spoken the truth, but now I know that you have lied.\"\n\nThe man's face set in sullen defiance.\n\n\"There was no man, sir.\"\n\n\"Come, come, Bannister!\"\n\n\"No, sir, there was no one.\"\n\n\"In that case, you can give us no further information. Would you please remain in the room? Stand over there near the bedroom door. Now, Soames, I am going to ask you to have the great kindness to go up to the room of young Gilchrist, and to ask him to step down into yours.\"\n\nAn instant later the tutor returned, bringing with him the student. He was a fine figure of a man, tall, lithe, and agile, with a springy step and a pleasant, open face. His troubled blue eyes glanced at each of us, and finally rested with an expression of blank dismay upon Bannister in the farther corner.\n\n\"Just close the door,\" said Holmes. \"Now, Mr. Gilchrist, we are all quite alone here, and no one need ever know one word of what passes between us. We can be perfectly frank with each other. We want to know, Mr. Gilchrist, how you, an honourable man, ever came to commit such an action as that of yesterday?\"\n\nThe unfortunate young man staggered back, and cast a look full of horror and reproach at Bannister.\n\n\"No, no, Mr. Gilchrist, sir, I never said a word\u2014never one word!\" cried the servant.\n\n\"No, but you have now,\" said Holmes. \"Now, sir, you must see that after Bannister's words your position is hopeless, and that your only chance lies in a frank confession.\"\n\nFor a moment Gilchrist, with upraised hand, tried to control his writhing features. The next he had thrown himself on his knees beside the table, and burying his face in his hands, he had burst into a storm of passionate sobbing.\n\n\"Come, come, said Holmes, kindly, \"it is human to err, and at least no one can accuse you of being a callous criminal. Perhaps it would be easier for you if I were to tell Mr. Soames what occurred, and you can check me where I am wrong. Shall I do so? Well, well, don't trouble to answer. Listen, and see that I do you no injustice.\n\n\"From the moment, Mr. Soames, that you said to me that no one, not even Bannister, could have told that the papers were in your room, the case began to take a definite shape in my mind. The printer one could, of course, dismiss. He could examine the papers in his own office. The Indian I also thought nothing of. If the proofs were in a roll, he could not possibly know what they were. On the other hand, it seemed an unthinkable coincidence that a man should dare to enter the room, and that by chance on that very day the papers were on the table. I dismissed that. The man who entered knew that the papers were there. How did he know?\n\n\"When I approached your room, I examined the window. You amused me by supposing that I was contemplating the possibility of someone having in broad daylight, under the eyes of all these opposite rooms, forced himself through it. Such an idea was absurd. I was measuring how tall a man would need to be in order to see, as he passed, what papers were on the central table. I am six feet high, and I could do it with an effort. No one less than that would have a chance. Already you see I had reason to think that, if one of your three students was a man of unusual height, he was the most worth watching of the three.\n\n\"I entered, and I took you into my confidence as to the suggestions of the side table. Of the centre table I could make nothing, until in your description of Gilchrist you mentioned that he was a long-distance jumper. Then the whole thing came to me in an instant, and I only needed certain corroborative proofs, which I speedily obtained.\n\n\"What happened was this: This young fellow had employed his afternoon at the athletic grounds, where he had been practising the jump. He returned carrying his jumping-shoes, which are provided, as you are aware, with several sharp spikes. As he passed your window he saw, by means of his great height, these proofs upon your table, and conjectured what they were. No harm would have been done had it not been that, as he passed your door, he perceived the key which had been left by the carelessness of your servant. A sudden impulse came over him to enter, and see if they were indeed the proofs. It was not a dangerous exploit, for he could always pretend that he had simply looked in to ask a question.\n\n\"Well, when he saw that they were indeed the proofs, it was then that he yielded to temptation. He put his shoes on the table. What was it you put on that chair near the window?\"\n\n\"Gloves,\" said the young man.\n\nHolmes looked triumphantly at Bannister. \"He put his gloves on the chair, and he took the proofs, sheet by sheet, to copy them. He thought the tutor must return by the main gate, and that he would see him. As we know, he came back by the side gate. Suddenly he heard him at the very door. There was no possible escape. He forgot his gloves, but he caught up his shoes and darted into the bedroom. You observe that the scratch on that table is slight at one side, but deepens in the direction of the bedroom door. That in itself is enough to show us that the shoe had been drawn in that direction, and that the culprit had taken refuge there. The earth round the spike had been left on the table, and a second sample was loosened and fell in the bedroom. I may add that I walked out to the athletic grounds this morning, saw that tenacious black clay is used in the jumping-pit, and carried away a specimen of it, together with some of the fine tan or sawdust which is strewn over it to prevent the athlete from slipping. Have I told the truth, Mr. Gilchrist?\"\n\nThe student had drawn himself erect.\n\n\"Yes, sir, it is true,\" said he.\n\n\"Good heavens! have you nothing to add?\" cried Soames.\n\n\"Yes, sir, I have, but the shock of this disgraceful exposure has bewildered me. I have a letter here, Mr. Soames, which I wrote to you early this morning in the middle of a restless night. It was before I knew that my sin had found me out. Here it is, sir. You will see that I have said, 'I have determined not to go in for the examination. I have been offered a commission in the Rhodesian Police, and I am going out to South Africa at once.'\"\n\n\"I am indeed pleased to hear that you did not intend to profit by your unfair advantage,\" said Soames. \"But why did you change your purpose?\"\n\nGilchrist pointed to Bannister.\n\n\"There is the man who set me in the right path,\" said he.\n\n\"Come now, Bannister,\" said Holmes. \"It will be clear to you, from what I have said, that only you could have let this young man out, since you were left in the room, and must have locked the door when you went out. As to his escaping by that window, it was incredible. Can you not clear up the last point in this mystery, and tell us the reasons for your action?\"\n\n\"It was simple enough, sir, if you only had known, but, with all your cleverness, it was impossible that you could know. Time was, sir, when I was butler to old Sir Jabez Gilchrist, this young gentleman's father. When he was ruined I came to the college as servant, but I never forgot my old employer because he was down in the world. I watched his son all I could for the sake of the old days. Well, sir, when I came into this room yesterday, when the alarm was given, the very first thing I saw was Mr. Gilchrist's tan gloves a-lying in that chair. I knew those gloves well, and I understood their message. If Mr. Soames saw them, the game was up. I flopped down into that chair, and nothing would budge me until Mr. Soames went for you. Then out came my poor young master, whom I had dandled on my knee, and confessed it all to me. Wasn't it natural, sir, that I should save him, and wasn't it natural also that I should try to speak to him as his dead father would have done, and make him understand that he could not profit by such a deed? Could you blame me, sir?\"\n\n\"No, indeed,\" said Holmes, heartily, springing to his feet. \"Well, Soames, I think we have cleared your little problem up, and our breakfast awaits us at home. Come, Watson! As to you, sir, I trust that a bright future awaits you in Rhodesia. For once you have fallen low. Let us see, in the future, how high you can rise.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE GOLDEN PINCE-NEZ", + "text": "When I look at the three massive manuscript volumes which contain our work for the year 1894, I confess that it is very difficult for me, out of such a wealth of material, to select the cases which are most interesting in themselves, and at the same time most conducive to a display of those peculiar powers for which my friend was famous. As I turn over the pages, I see my notes upon the repulsive story of the red leech and the terrible death of Crosby, the banker. Here also I find an account of the Addleton tragedy, and the singular contents of the ancient British barrow. The famous Smith-Mortimer succession case comes also within this period, and so does the tracking and arrest of Huret, the Boulevard assassin\u2014an exploit which won for Holmes an autograph letter of thanks from The French President and the Order of the Legion of Honour. Each of these would furnish a narrative, but on the whole I am of the opinion that none of them unites so many singular points of interest as the episode of Yoxley Old Place, which includes not only the lamentable death of young Willoughby Smith, but also those subsequent developments which threw so curious a light upon the causes of the crime.\n\nIt was a wild, tempestuous night, towards the close of November. Holmes and I sat together in silence all the evening, he engaged with a powerful lens decipering the remains of the original inscription upon a palimpsest, I deep in a recent treatise upon surgery. Outside the wind howled down Baker Street, while the rain beat fiercely against the windows. It was strange there, in the very depths of the town, with ten miles of man's handiwork on every side of us, to feel the iron grip of Nature, and to be conscious that to the huge elemental forces all London was no more than the molehills that dot the fields. I walked to the window, and looked out on the deserted street. The occasional lamps gleamed on the expanse of muddy road and shining pavement. A single cab was splashing its way from the Oxford Street end.\n\n\"Well, Watson, it's as well we have not to turn out to-night,\" said Holmes, laying aside his lens and rolling up the palimpsest. \"I've done enough for one sitting. It is trying work for the eyes. So far as I can make out, it is nothing more exciting than an Abbey's accounts dating from the second half of the fifteenth century. Halloa! halloa! halloa! What's this?\"\n\nAmid the droning of the wind there had come the stamping of a horse's hoofs, and the long grind of a wheel as it rasped against the curb. The cab which I had seen had pulled up at our door.\n\n\"What can he want?\" I ejaculated, as a man stepped out of it.\n\n\"Want? He wants us. And we, my poor Watson, want overcoats and cravats and goloshes, and every aid that man ever invented to fight the weather. Wait a bit, though! There's the cab off again! There's hope yet. He'd have kept it if he had wanted us to come. Run down, my dear fellow, and open the door, for all virtuous folk have been long in bed.\"\n\nWhen the light of the hall lamp fell upon our midnight visitor, I had no difficulty in recognizing him. It was young Stanley Hopkins, a promising detective, in whose career Holmes had several times shown a very practical interest.\n\n\"Is he in?\" he asked, eagerly.\n\n\"Come up, my dear sir,\" said Holmes's voice from above. \"I hope you have no designs upon us on such a night as this.\"\n\nThe detective mounted the stairs, and our lamp gleamed upon his shining waterproof. I helped him out of it, while Holmes knocked a blaze out of the logs in the grate.\n\n\"Now, my dear Hopkins, draw up and warm your toes,\" said he. \"Here's a cigar, and the doctor has a prescription containing hot water and a lemon, which is good medicine on a night like this. It must be something important which has brought you out in such a gale.\"\n\n\"It is indeed, Mr. Holmes. I've had a bustling afternoon, I promise you. Did you see anything of the Yoxley case in the latest editions?\"\n\n\"I've seen nothing later than the fifteenth century to-day.\"\n\n\"Well, it was only a paragraph, and all wrong at that, so you have not missed anything. I haven't let the grass grow under my feet. It's down in Kent, seven miles from Chatham and three from the railway line. I was wired for at 3:15, reached Yoxley Old Place at 5, conducted my investigation, was back at Charing Cross by the last train, and straight to you by cab.\"\n\n\"Which means, I suppose, that you are not quite clear about your case?\"\n\n\"It means that I can make neither head nor tail of it. So far as I can see, it is just as tangled a business as ever I handled, and yet at first it seemed so simple that one couldn't go wrong. There's no motive, Mr. Holmes. That's what bothers me\u2014I can't put my hand on a motive. Here's a man dead\u2014there's no denying that\u2014but, so far as I can see, no reason on earth why anyone should wish him harm.\"\n\nHolmes lit his cigar and leaned back in his chair.\n\n\"Let us hear about it,\" said he.\n\n\"I've got my facts pretty clear,\" said Stanley Hopkins. \"All I want now is to know what they all mean. The story, so far as I can make it out, is like this. Some years ago this country house, Yoxley Old Place, was taken by an elderly man, who gave the name of Professor Coram. He was an invalid, keeping his bed half the time, and the other half hobbling round the house with a stick or being pushed about the grounds by the gardener in a Bath chair.* He was well liked by the few neighbours who called upon him, and he has the reputation down there of being a very learned man. His household used to consist of an elderly housekeeper, Mrs. Marker, and of a maid, Susan Tarlton. These have both been with him since his arrival, and they seem to be women of excellent character. The professor is writing a learned book, and he found it necessary, about a year ago, to engage a secretary. The first two that he tried were not successes, but the third, Mr. Willoughby Smith, a very young man straight from the university, seems to have been just what his employer wanted. His work consisted in writing all the morning to the professor's dictation, and he usually spent the evening in hunting up references and passages which bore upon the next day's work. This Willoughby Smith has nothing against him, either as a boy at Uppingham or as a young man at Cambridge. I have seen his testimonials, and from the first he was a decent, quiet, hard-working fellow, with no weak spot in him at all. And yet this is the lad who has met his death this morning in the professor's study under circumstances which can point only to murder.\"\n\nThe wind howled and screamed at the windows. Holmes and I drew closer to the fire, while the young inspector slowly and point by point developed his singular narrative.\n\n\"If you were to search all England,\" said he, \"I don't suppose you could find a household more self-contained or freer from outside influences. Whole weeks would pass, and not one of them go past the garden gate. The professor was buried in his work and existed for nothing else. Young Smith knew nobody in the neighbourhood, and lived very much as his employer did. The two women had nothing to take them from the house. Mortimer, the gardener, who wheels the Bath chair, is an army pensioner\u2014an old Crimean man of excellent character. He does not live in the house, but in a three-roomed cottage at the other end of the garden. Those are the only people that you would find within the grounds of Yoxley Old Place. At the same time, the gate of the garden is a hundred yards from the main London to Chatham road. It opens with a latch, and there is nothing to prevent anyone from walking in.\n\n\"Now I will give you the evidence of Susan Tarlton, who is the only person who can say anything positive about the matter. It was in the forenoon, between eleven and twelve. She was engaged at the moment in hanging some curtains in the upstairs front bedroom. Professor Coram was still in bed, for when the weather is bad he seldom rises before midday. The housekeeper was busied with some work in the back of the house. Willoughby Smith had been in his bedroom, which he uses as a sitting-room, but the maid heard him at that moment pass along the passage and descend to the study immediately below her. She did not see him, but she says that she could not be mistaken in his quick, firm tread. She did not hear the study door close, but a minute or so later there was a dreadful cry in the room below. It was a wild, hoarse scream, so strange and unnatural that it might have come either from a man or a woman. At the same instant there was a heavy thud, which shook the old house, and then all was silence. The maid stood petrified for a moment, and then, recovering her courage, she ran downstairs. The study door was shut and she opened it. Inside, young Mr. Willoughby Smith was stretched upon the floor. At first she could see no injury, but as she tried to raise him she saw that blood was pouring from the underside of his neck. It was pierced by a very small but very deep wound, which had divided the carotid artery. The instrument with which the injury had been inflicted lay upon the carpet beside him. It was one of those small sealing-wax knives to be found on old-fashioned writing-tables, with an ivory handle and a stiff blade. It was part of the fittings of the professor's own desk.\n\n\"At first the maid thought that young Smith was already dead, but on pouring some water from the carafe over his forehead he opened his eyes for an instant. 'The professor,' he murmured\u2014'it was she.' The maid is prepared to swear that those were the exact words. He tried desperately to say something else, and he held his right hand up in the air. Then he fell back dead.\n\n\"In the meantime the housekeeper had also arrived upon the scene; but she was just too late to catch the young man's dying words. Leaving Susan with the body, she hurried to the professor's room. He was sitting up in bed horribly agitated, for he had heard enough to convince him that something terrible had occurred. Mrs. Marker is prepared to swear that the professor was still in his night-clothes, and indeed it was impossible for him to dress without the help of Mortimer, whose orders were to come at twelve o'clock. The professor declares that he heard the distant cry, but that he knows nothing more. He can give no explanation of the young man's last words, 'The professor\u2014it was she,' but imagines that they were the outcome of delirium. He believes that Willoughby Smith had not an enemy in the world, and can give no reason for the crime. His first action was to send Mortimer, the gardener, for the local police. A little later the chief constable sent for me. Nothing was moved before I got there, and strict orders were given that no one should walk upon the paths leading to the house. It was a splendid chance of putting your theories into practice, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. There was really nothing wanting.\"\n\n\"Except Mr. Sherlock Holmes,\" said my companion, with a somewhat bitter smile. \"Well, let us hear about it. What sort of job did you make of it?\"\n\n\"I must ask you first, Mr. Holmes, to glance at this rough plan, which will give you a general idea of the position of the professor's study and the various points of the case. It will help you in following my investigation.\"\n\nHe unfolded the rough chart, which I here reproduce, and he laid it across Holmes's knee. I rose and, standing behind Holmes, studied it over his shoulder.\n\n\"It is very rough, of course, and it only deals with the points which seem to me to be essential. All the rest you will see later for yourself. Now, first of all, presuming that the assassin entered the house, how did he or she come in? Undoubtedly by the garden path and the back door, from which there is direct access to the study. Any other way would have been exceedingly complicated. The escape must have also been made along that line, for of the two other exits from the room one was blocked by Susan as she ran downstairs and the other leads straight to the professor's bedroom. I therefore directed my attention at once to the garden path, which was saturated with recent rain, and would certainly show any footmarks.\n\n\"My examination showed me that I was dealing with a cautious and expert criminal. No footmarks were to be found on the path. There could be no question, however, that someone had passed along the grass border which lines the path, and that he had done so in order to avoid leaving a track. I could not find anything in the nature of a distinct impression, but the grass was trodden down, and someone had undoubtedly passed. It could only have been the murderer, since neither the gardener nor anyone else had been there that morning, and the rain had only begun during the night.\"\n\n\"One moment,\" said Holmes. \"Where does this path lead to?\"\n\n\"To the road.\"\n\n\"How long is it?\"\n\n\"A hundred yards or so.\"\n\n\"At the point where the path passes through the gate, you could surely pick up the tracks?\"\n\n\"Unfortunately, the path was tiled at that point.\"\n\n\"Well, on the road itself?\"\n\n\"No, it was all trodden into mire.\"\n\n\"Tut-tut! Well, then, these tracks upon the grass, were they coming or going?\"\n\n\"It was impossible to say. There was never any outline.\"\n\n\"A large foot or a small?\"\n\n\"You could not distinguish.\"\n\nHolmes gave an ejaculation of impatience.\n\n\"It has been pouring rain and blowing a hurricane ever since,\" said he. \"It will be harder to read now than that palimpsest. Well, well, it can't be helped. What did you do, Hopkins, after you had made certain that you had made certain of nothing?\"\n\n\"I think I made certain of a good deal, Mr. Holmes. I knew that someone had entered the house cautiously from without. I next examined the corridor. It is lined with cocoanut matting and had taken no impression of any kind. This brought me into the study itself. It is a scantily furnished room. The main article is a large writing-table with a fixed bureau. This bureau consists of a double column of drawers, with a central small cupboard between them. The drawers were open, the cupboard locked. The drawers, it seems, were always open, and nothing of value was kept in them. There were some papers of importance in the cupboard, but there were no signs that this had been tampered with, and the professor assures me that nothing was missing. It is certain that no robbery has been committed.\n\n\"I come now to the body of the young man. It was found near the bureau, and just to the left of it, as marked upon that chart. The stab was on the right side of the neck and from behind forward, so that it is almost impossible that it could have been self-inflicted.\"\n\n\"Unless he fell upon the knife,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Exactly. The idea crossed my mind. But we found the knife some feet away from the body, so that seems impossible. Then, of course, there are the man's own dying words. And, finally, there was this very important piece of evidence which was found clasped in the dead man's right hand.\"\n\nFrom his pocket Stanley Hopkins drew a small paper packet. He unfolded it and disclosed a golden pince-nez, with two broken ends of black silk cord dangling from the end of it. \"Willoughby Smith had excellent sight,\" he added. \"There can be no question that this was snatched from the face or the person of the assassin.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes took the glasses into his hand, and examined them with the utmost attention and interest. He held them on his nose, endeavoured to read through them, went to the window and stared up the street with them, looked at them most minutely in the full light of the lamp, and finally, with a chuckle, seated himself at the table and wrote a few lines upon a sheet of paper, which he tossed across to Stanley Hopkins.\n\n\"That's the best I can do for you,\" said he. \"It may prove to be of some use.\"\n\nThe astonished detective read the note aloud. It ran as follows:\n\n\"Wanted, a woman of good address, attired like a lady. She has a remarkably thick nose, with eyes which are set close upon either side of it. She has a puckered forehead, a peering expression, and probably rounded shoulders. There are indications that she has had recourse to an optician at least twice during the last few months. As her glasses are of remarkable strength, and as opticians are not very numerous, there should be no difficulty in tracing her.\"\n\nHolmes smiled at the astonishment of Hopkins, which must have been reflected upon my features.\n\n\"Surely my deductions are simplicity itself,\" said he. \"It would be difficult to name any articles which afford a finer field for inference than a pair of glasses, especially so remarkable a pair as these. That they belong to a woman I infer from their delicacy, and also, of course, from the last words of the dying man. As to her being a person of refinement and well dressed, they are, as you perceive, handsomely mounted in solid gold, and it is inconceivable that anyone who wore such glasses could be slatternly in other respects. You will find that the clips are too wide for your nose, showing that the lady's nose was very broad at the base. This sort of nose is usually a short and coarse one, but there is a sufficient number of exceptions to prevent me from being dogmatic or from insisting upon this point in my description. My own face is a narrow one, and yet I find that I cannot get my eyes into the centre, nor near the centre, of these glasses. Therefore, the lady's eyes are set very near to the sides of the nose. You will perceive, Watson, that the glasses are concave and of unusual strength. A lady whose vision has been so extremely contracted all her life is sure to have the physical characteristics of such vision, which are seen in the forehead, the eyelids, and the shoulders.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"I can follow each of your arguments. I confess, however, that I am unable to understand how you arrive at the double visit to the optician.\"\n\nHolmes took the glasses in his hand.\n\n\"You will perceive,\" he said, \"that the clips are lined with tiny bands of cork to soften the pressure upon the nose. One of these is discoloured and worn to some slight extent, but the other is new. Evidently one has fallen off and been replaced. I should judge that the older of them has not been there more than a few months. They exactly correspond, so I gather that the lady went back to the same establishment for the second.\"\n\n\"By George, it's marvellous!\" cried Hopkins, in an ecstasy of admiration. \"To think that I had all that evidence in my hand and never knew it! I had intended, however, to go the round of the London opticians.\"\n\n\"Of course you would. Meanwhile, have you anything more to tell us about the case?\"\n\n\"Nothing, Mr. Holmes. I think that you know as much as I do now\u2014probably more. We have had inquiries made as to any stranger seen on the country roads or at the railway station. We have heard of none. What beats me is the utter want of all object in the crime. Not a ghost of a motive can anyone suggest.\"\n\n\"Ah! there I am not in a position to help you. But I suppose you want us to come out to-morrow?\"\n\n\"If it is not asking too much, Mr. Holmes. There's a train from Charing Cross to Chatham at six in the morning, and we should be at Yoxley Old Place between eight and nine.\"\n\n\"Then we shall take it. Your case has certainly some features of great interest, and I shall be delighted to look into it. Well, it's nearly one, and we had best get a few hours' sleep. I daresay you can manage all right on the sofa in front of the fire. I'll light my spirit lamp, and give you a cup of coffee before we start.\"\n\nThe gale had blown itself out next day, but it was a bitter morning when we started upon our journey. We saw the cold winter sun rise over the dreary marshes of the Thames and the long, sullen reaches of the river, which I shall ever associate with our pursuit of the Andaman Islander in the earlier days of our career. After a long and weary journey, we alighted at a small station some miles from Chatham. While a horse was being put into a trap at the local inn, we snatched a hurried breakfast, and so we were all ready for business when we at last arrived at Yoxley Old Place. A constable met us at the garden gate.\n\n\"Well, Wilson, any news?\"\n\n\"No, sir\u2014nothing.\"\n\n\"No reports of any stranger seen?\"\n\n\"No, sir. Down at the station they are certain that no stranger either came or went yesterday.\"\n\n\"Have you had inquiries made at inns and lodgings?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir: there is no one that we cannot account for.\"\n\n\"Well, it's only a reasonable walk to Chatham. Anyone might stay there or take a train without being observed. This is the garden path of which I spoke, Mr. Holmes. I'll pledge my word there was no mark on it yesterday.\"\n\n\"On which side were the marks on the grass?\"\n\n\"This side, sir. This narrow margin of grass between the path and the flowerbed. I can't see the traces now, but they were clear to me then.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes: someone has passed along,\" said Holmes, stooping over the grass border. \"Our lady must have picked her steps carefully, must she not, since on the one side she would leave a track on the path, and on the other an even clearer one on the soft bed?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, she must have been a cool hand.\"\n\nI saw an intent look pass over Holmes's face.\n\n\"You say that she must have come back this way?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, there is no other.\"\n\n\"On this strip of grass?\"\n\n\"Certainly, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"Hum! It was a very remarkable performance\u2014very remarkable. Well, I think we have exhausted the path. Let us go farther. This garden door is usually kept open, I suppose? Then this visitor had nothing to do but to walk in. The idea of murder was not in her mind, or she would have provided herself with some sort of weapon, instead of having to pick this knife off the writing-table. She advanced along this corridor, leaving no traces upon the cocoanut matting. Then she found herself in this study. How long was she there? We have no means of judging.\"\n\n\"Not more than a few minutes, sir. I forgot to tell you that Mrs. Marker, the housekeeper, had been in there tidying not very long before\u2014about a quarter of an hour, she says.\"\n\n\"Well, that gives us a limit. Our lady enters this room, and what does she do? She goes over to the writing-table. What for? Not for anything in the drawers. If there had been anything worth her taking, it would surely have been locked up. No, it was for something in that wooden bureau. Halloa! what is that scratch upon the face of it? Just hold a match, Watson. Why did you not tell me of this, Hopkins?\"\n\nThe mark which he was examining began upon the brasswork on the righthand side of the keyhole, and extended for about four inches, where it had scratched the varnish from the surface.\n\n\"I noticed it, Mr. Holmes, but you'll always find scratches round a keyhole.\"\n\n\"This is recent, quite recent. See how the brass shines where it is cut. An old scratch would be the same colour as the surface. Look at it through my lens. There's the varnish, too, like earth on each side of a furrow. Is Mrs. Marker there?\"\n\nA sad-faced, elderly woman came into the room.\n\n\"Did you dust this bureau yesterday morning?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Did you notice this scratch?\"\n\n\"No, sir, I did not.\"\n\n\"I am sure you did not, for a duster would have swept away these shreds of varnish. Who has the key of this bureau?\"\n\n\"The professor keeps it on his watch-chain.\"\n\n\"Is it a simple key?\"\n\n\"No, sir, it is a Chubb's key.\"\n\n\"Very good. Mrs. Marker, you can go. Now we are making a little progress. Our lady enters the room, advances to the bureau, and either opens it or tries to do so. While she is thus engaged, young Willoughby Smith enters the room. In her hurry to withdraw the key, she makes this scratch upon the door. He seizes her, and she, snatching up the nearest object, which happens to be this knife, strikes at him in order to make him let go his hold. The blow is a fatal one. He falls and she escapes, either with or without the object for which she has come. Is Susan, the maid, there? Could anyone have got away through that door after the time that you heard the cry, Susan?\"\n\n\"No, sir, it is impossible. Before I got down the stair, I'd have seen anyone in the passage. Besides, the door never opened, or I would have heard it.\"\n\n\"That settles this exit. Then no doubt the lady went out the way she came. I understand that this other passage leads only to the professor's room. There is no exit that way?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"We shall go down it and make the acquaintance of the professor. Halloa, Hopkins! this is very important, very important indeed. The professor's corridor is also lined with cocoanut matting.\"\n\n\"Well, sir, what of that?\"\n\n\"Don't you see any bearing upon the case? Well, well. I don't insist upon it. No doubt I am wrong. And yet it seems to me to be suggestive. Come with me and introduce me.\"\n\nWe passed down the passage, which was of the same length as that which led to the garden. At the end was a short flight of steps ending in a door. Our guide knocked, and then ushered us into the professor's bedroom.\n\nIt was a very large chamber, lined with innumerable volumes, which had overflowed from the shelves and lay in piles in the corners, or were stacked all round at the base of the cases. The bed was in the centre of the room, and in it, propped up with pillows, was the owner of the house. I have seldom seen a more remarkable-looking person. It was a gaunt, aquiline face which was turned towards us, with piercing dark eyes, which lurked in deep hollows under overhung and tufted brows. His hair and beard were white, save that the latter was curiously stained with yellow around his mouth. A cigarette glowed amid the tangle of white hair, and the air of the room was fetid with stale tobacco smoke. As he held out his hand to Holmes, I perceived that it was also stained with yellow nicotine.\n\n\"A smoker, Mr. Holmes?\" said he, speaking in well-chosen English, with a curious little mincing accent. \"Pray take a cigarette. And you, sir? I can recommend them, for I have them especially prepared by Ionides, of Alexandria. He sends me a thousand at a time, and I grieve to say that I have to arrange for a fresh supply every fortnight. Bad, sir, very bad, but an old man has few pleasures. Tobacco and my work\u2014that is all that is left to me.\"\n\nHolmes had lit a cigarette and was shooting little darting glances all over the room.\n\n\"Tobacco and my work, but now only tobacco,\" the old man exclaimed. \"Alas! what a fatal interruption! Who could have foreseen such a terrible catastrophe? So estimable a young man! I assure you that, after a few months' training, he was an admirable assistant. What do you think of the matter, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"I have not yet made up my mind.\"\n\n\"I shall indeed be indebted to you if you can throw a light where all is so dark to us. To a poor bookworm and invalid like myself such a blow is paralyzing. I seem to have lost the faculty of thought. But you are a man of action\u2014you are a man of affairs. It is part of the everyday routine of your life. You can preserve your balance in every emergency. We are fortunate, indeed, in having you at our side.\"\n\nHolmes was pacing up and down one side of the room whilst the old professor was talking. I observed that he was smoking with extraordinary rapidity. It was evident that he shared our host's liking for the fresh Alexandrian cigarettes.\n\n\"Yes, sir, it is a crushing blow,\" said the old man. \"That is my magnum opus\u2014 the pile of papers on the side table yonder. It is my analysis of the documents found in the Coptic monasteries of Syria and Egypt, a work which will cut deep at the very foundation of revealed religion. With my enfeebled health I do not know whether I shall ever be able to complete it, now that my assistant has been taken from me. Dear me! Mr. Holmes, why, you are even a quicker smoker than I am myself.\"\n\nHolmes smiled.\n\n\"I am a connoisseur,\" said he, taking another cigarette from the box\u2014his fourth\u2014and lighting it from the stub of that which he had finished. \"I will not trouble you with any lengthy cross-examination, Professor Coram, since I gather that you were in bed at the time of the crime, and could know nothing about it. I would only ask this: What do you imagine that this poor fellow meant by his last words: 'The professor\u2014it was she'?\"\n\nThe professor shook his head.\n\n\"Susan is a country girl,\" said he, \"and you know the incredible stupidity of that class. I fancy that the poor fellow murmured some incoherent, delirious words, and that she twisted them into this meaningless message.\"\n\n\"I see. You have no explanation yourself of the tragedy?\"\n\n\"Possibly an accident, possibly\u2014I only breathe it among ourselves\u2014a suicide. Young men have their hidden troubles\u2014some affair of the heart, perhaps, which we have never known. It is a more probable supposition than murder.\"\n\n\"But the eyeglasses?\"\n\n\"Ah! I am only a student\u2014a man of dreams. I cannot explain the practical things of life. But still, we are aware, my friend, that love-gages may take strange shapes. By all means take another cigarette. It is a pleasure to see anyone appreciate them so. A fan, a glove, glasses\u2014who knows what article may be carried as a token or treasured when a man puts an end to his life? This gentleman speaks of footsteps in the grass, but, after all, it is easy to be mistaken on such a point. As to the knife, it might well be thrown far from the unfortunate man as he fell. It is possible that I speak as a child, but to me it seems that Willoughby Smith has met his fate by his own hand.\"\n\nHolmes seemed struck by the theory thus put forward, and he continued to walk up and down for some time, lost in thought and consuming cigarette after cigarette.\n\n\"Tell me, Professor Coram,\" he said, at last, \"what is in that cupboard in the bureau?\"\n\n\"Nothing that would help a thief. Family papers, letters from my poor wife, diplomas of universities which have done me honour. Here is the key. You can look for yourself.\"\n\nHolmes picked up the key, and looked at it for an instant, then he handed it back.\n\n\"No, I hardly think that it would help me,\" said he. \"I should prefer to go quietly down to your garden, and turn the whole matter over in my head. There is something to be said for the theory of suicide which you have put forward. We must apologize for having intruded upon you, Professor Coram, and I promise that we won't disturb you until after lunch. At two o'clock we will come again, and report to you anything which may have happened in the interval.\"\n\nHolmes was curiously distrait, and we walked up and down the garden path for some time in silence.\n\n\"Have you a clue?\" I asked, at last.\n\n\"It depends upon those cigarettes that I smoked,\" said he. \"It is possible that I am utterly mistaken. The cigarettes will show me.\"\n\n\"My dear Holmes,\" I exclaimed, \"how on earth\u2014\"\n\n\"Well, well, you may see for yourself. If not, there's no harm done. Of course, we always have the optician clue to fall back upon, but I take a short cut when I can get it. Ah, here is the good Mrs. Marker! Let us enjoy five minutes of instructive conversation with her.\"\n\nI may have remarked before that Holmes had, when he liked, a peculiarly ingratiating way with women, and that he very readily established terms of confidence with them. In half the time which he had named, he had captured the housekeeper's goodwill and was chatting with her as if he had known her for years.\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Holmes, it is as you say, sir. He does smoke something terrible. All day and sometimes all night, sir. I've seen that room of a morning\u2014well, sir, you'd have thought it was a London fog. Poor young Mr. Smith, he was a smoker also, but not as bad as the professor. His health\u2014well, I don't know that it's better nor worse for the smoking.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Holmes, \"but it kills the appetite.\"\n\n\"Well, I don't know about that, sir.\"\n\n\"I suppose the professor eats hardly anything?\"\n\n\"Well, he is variable. I'll say that for him.\"\n\n\"I'll wager he took no breakfast this morning, and won't face his lunch after all the cigarettes I saw him consume.\"\n\n\"Well, you're out there, sir, as it happens, for he ate a remarkable big breakfast this morning. I don't know when I've known him make a better one, and he's ordered a good dish of cutlets for his lunch. I'm surprised myself, for since I came into that room yesterday and saw young Mr. Smith lying there on the floor, I couldn't bear to look at food. Well, it takes all sorts to make a world, and the professor hasn't let it take his appetite away.\"\n\nWe loitered the morning away in the garden. Stanley Hopkins had gone down to the village to look into some rumours of a strange woman who had been seen by some children on the Chatham Road the previous morning. As to my friend, all his usual energy seemed to have deserted him. I had never known him handle a case in such a half-hearted fashion. Even the news brought back by Hopkins that he had found the children, and that they had undoubtedly seen a woman exactly corresponding with Holmes's description, and wearing either spectacles or eyeglasses, failed to rouse any sign of keen interest. He was more attentive when Susan, who waited upon us at lunch, volunteered the information that she believed Mr. Smith had been out for a walk yesterday morning, and that he had only returned half an hour before the tragedy occurred. I could not myself see the bearing of this incident, but I clearly perceived that Holmes was weaving it into the general scheme which he had formed in his brain. Suddenly he sprang from his chair and glanced at his watch. \"Two o'clock, gentlemen,\" said he. \"We must go up and have it out with our friend, the professor.\"\n\nThe old man had just finished his lunch, and certainly his empty dish bore evidence to the good appetite with which his housekeeper had credited him. He was, indeed, a weird figure as he turned his white mane and his glowing eyes towards us. The eternal cigarette smouldered in his mouth. He had been dressed and was seated in an armchair by the fire.\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes, have you solved this mystery yet?\" He shoved the large tin of cigarettes which stood on a table beside him towards my companion. Holmes stretched out his hand at the same moment, and between them they tipped the box over the edge. For a minute or two we were all on our knees retrieving stray cigarettes from impossible places. When we rose again, I observed Holmes's eyes were shining and his cheeks tinged with colour. Only at a crisis have I seen those battle-signals flying.\n\n\"Yes,\" said he, \"I have solved it.\"\n\nStanley Hopkins and I stared in amazement. Something like a sneer quivered over the gaunt features of the old professor.\n\n\"Indeed! In the garden?\"\n\n\"No, here.\"\n\n\"Here! When?\"\n\n\"This instant.\"\n\n\"You are surely joking, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. You compel me to tell you that this is too serious a matter to be treated in such a fashion.\"\n\n\"I have forged and tested every link of my chain, Professor Coram, and I am sure that it is sound. What your motives are, or what exact part you play in this strange business, I am not yet able to say. In a few minutes I shall probably hear it from your own lips. Meanwhile I will reconstruct what is past for your benefit, so that you may know the information which I still require.\n\n\"A lady yesterday entered your study. She came with the intention of possessing herself of certain documents which were in your bureau. She had a key of her own. I have had an opportunity of examining yours, and I do not find that slight discolouration which the scratch made upon the varnish would have produced. You were not an accessory, therefore, and she came, so far as I can read the evidence, without your knowledge to rob you.\"\n\nThe professor blew a cloud from his lips. \"This is most interesting and instructive,\" said he. \"Have you no more to add? Surely, having traced this lady so far, you can also say what has become of her.\"\n\n\"I will endeavour to do so. In the first place she was seized by your secretary, and stabbed him in order to escape. This catastrophe I am inclined to regard as an unhappy accident, for I am convinced that the lady had no intention of inflicting so grievous an injury. An assassin does not come unarmed. Horrified by what she had done, she rushed wildly away from the scene of the tragedy. Unfortunately for her, she had lost her glasses in the scuffle, and as she was extremely shortsighted she was really helpless without them. She ran down a corridor, which she imagined to be that by which she had come\u2014both were lined with cocoanut matting\u2014and it was only when it was too late that she understood that she had taken the wrong passage, and that her retreat was cut off behind her. What was she to do? She could not go back. She could not remain where she was. She must go on. She went on. She mounted a stair, pushed open a door, and found herself in your room.\"\n\nThe old man sat with his mouth open, staring wildly at Holmes. Amazement and fear were stamped upon his expressive features. Now, with an effort, he shrugged his shoulders and burst into insincere laughter.\n\n\"All very fine, Mr. Holmes,\" said he. \"But there is one little flaw in your splendid theory. I was myself in my room, and I never left it during the day.\"\n\n\"I am aware of that, Professor Coram.\"\n\n\"And you mean to say that I could lie upon that bed and not be aware that a woman had entered my room?\"\n\n\"I never said so. You were aware of it. You spoke with her. You recognized her. You aided her to escape.\"\n\nAgain the professor burst into high-keyed laughter. He had risen to his feet, and his eyes glowed like embers.\n\n\"You are mad!\" he cried. \"You are talking insanely. I helped her to escape? Where is she now?\"\n\n\"She is there,\" said Holmes, and he pointed to a high bookcase in the corner of the room.\n\nI saw the old man throw up his arms, a terrible convulsion passed over his grim face, and he fell back in his chair. At the same instant the bookcase at which Holmes pointed swung round upon a hinge, and a woman rushed out into the room. \"You are right!\" she cried, in a strange foreign voice. \"You are right! I am here.\"\n\nShe was brown with the dust and draped with the cobwebs which had come from the walls of her hiding-place. Her face, too, was streaked with grime, and at the best she could never have been handsome, for she had the exact physical characteristics which Holmes had divined, with, in addition, a long and obstinate chin. What with her natural blindness, and what with the change from dark to light, she stood as one dazed, blinking about her to see where and who we were. And yet, in spite of all these disadvantages, there was a certain nobility in the woman's bearing\u2014a gallantry in the defiant chin and in the upraised head, which compelled something of respect and admiration.\n\nStanley Hopkins had laid his hand upon her arm and claimed her as his prisoner, but she waved him aside gently, and yet with an over-mastering dignity which compelled obedience. The old man lay back in his chair with a twitching face, and stared at her with brooding eyes.\n\n\"Yes, sir, I am your prisoner,\" she said. \"From where I stood I could hear everything, and I know that you have learned the truth. I confess it all. It was I who killed the young man. But you are right\u2014you who say it was an accident. I did not even know that it was a knife which I held in my hand, for in my despair I snatched anything from the table and struck at him to make him let me go. It is the truth that I tell.\"\n\n\"Madam,\" said Holmes, \"I am sure that it is the truth. I fear that you are far from well.\"\n\nShe had turned a dreadful colour, the more ghastly under the dark dust-streaks upon her face. She seated herself on the side of the bed; then she resumed.\n\n\"I have only a little time here,\" she said, \"but I would have you to know the whole truth. I am this man's wife. He is not an Englishman. He is a Russian. His name I will not tell.\"\n\nFor the first time the old man stirred. \"God bless you, Anna!\" he cried. \"God bless you!\"\n\nShe cast a look of the deepest disdain in his direction. \"Why should you cling so hard to that wretched life of yours, Sergius?\" said she. \"It has done harm to many and good to none\u2014not even to yourself. However, it is not for me to cause the frail thread to be snapped before God's time. I have enough already upon my soul since I crossed the threshold of this cursed house. But I must speak or I shall be too late.\n\n\"I have said, gentlemen, that I am this man's wife. He was fifty and I a foolish girl of twenty when we married. It was in a city of Russia, a university\u2014I will not name the place.\"\n\n\"God bless you, Anna!\" murmured the old man again.\n\n\"We were reformers\u2014revolutionists\u2014Nihilists, you understand. He and I and many more. Then there came a time of trouble, a police officer was killed, many were arrested, evidence was wanted, and in order to save his own life and to earn a great reward, my husband betrayed his own wife and his companions. Yes, we were all arrested upon his confession. Some of us found our way to the gallows, and some to Siberia. I was among these last, but my term was not for life. My husband came to England with his ill-gotten gains and has lived in quiet ever since, knowing well that if the Brotherhood knew where he was not a week would pass before justice would be done.\"\n\nThe old man reached out a trembling hand and helped himself to a cigarette. \"I am in your hands, Anna,\" said he. \"You were always good to me.\"\n\n\"I have not yet told you the height of his villainy,\" said she. \"Among our comrades of the Order, there was one who was the friend of my heart. He was noble, unselfish, loving\u2014all that my husband was not. He hated violence. We were all guilty\u2014if that is guilt\u2014but he was not. He wrote forever dissuading us from such a course. These letters would have saved him. So would my diary, in which, from day to day, I had entered both my feelings towards him and the view which each of us had taken. My husband found and kept both diary and letters. He hid them, and he tried hard to swear away the young man's life. In this he failed, but Alexis was sent a convict to Siberia, where now, at this moment, he works in a salt mine. Think of that, you villain, you villain!\u2014now, now, at this very moment, Alexis, a man whose name you are not worthy to speak, works and lives like a slave, and yet I have your life in my hands, and I let you go.\"\n\n\"You were always a noble woman, Anna,\" said the old man, puffing at his cigarette.\n\nShe had risen, but she fell back again with a little cry of pain.\n\n\"I must finish,\" she said. \"When my term was over I set myself to get the diary and letters which, if sent to the Russian government, would procure my friend's release. I knew that my husband had come to England. After months of searching I discovered where he was. I knew that he still had the diary, for when I was in Siberia I had a letter from him once, reproaching me and quoting some passages from its pages. Yet I was sure that, with his revengeful nature, he would never give it to me of his own free-will. I must get it for myself. With this object I engaged an agent from a private detective firm, who entered my husband's house as a secretary\u2014it was your second secretary, Sergius, the one who left you so hurriedly. He found that papers were kept in the cupboard, and he got an impression of the key. He would not go farther. He furnished me with a plan of the house, and he told me that in the forenoon the study was always empty, as the secretary was employed up here. So at last I took my courage in both hands, and I came down to get the papers for myself. I succeeded; but at what a cost!\n\n\"I had just taken the papers and was locking the cupboard, when the young man seized me. I had seen him already that morning. He had met me on the road, and I had asked him to tell me where Professor Coram lived, not knowing that he was in his employ.\"\n\n\"Exactly! Exactly!\" said Holmes. \"The secretary came back, and told his employer of the woman he had met. Then, in his last breath, he tried to send a message that it was she\u2014the she whom he had just discussed with him.\"\n\n\"You must let me speak,\" said the woman, in an imperative voice, and her face contracted as if in pain. \"When he had fallen I rushed from the room, chose the wrong door, and found myself in my husband's room. He spoke of giving me up. I showed him that if he did so, his life was in my hands. If he gave me to the law, I could give him to the Brotherhood. It was not that I wished to live for my own sake, but it was that I desired to accomplish my purpose. He knew that I would do what I said\u2014that his own fate was involved in mine. For that reason, and for no other, he shielded me. He thrust me into that dark hiding-place\u2014a relic of old days, known only to himself. He took his meals in his own room, and so was able to give me part of his food. It was agreed that when the police left the house I should slip away by night and come back no more. But in some way you have read our plans.\" She tore from the bosom of her dress a small packet. \"These are my last words,\" said she; \"here is the packet which will save Alexis. I confide it to your honour and to your love of justice. Take it! You will deliver it at the Russian Embassy. Now, I have done my duty, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Stop her!\" cried Holmes. He had bounded across the room and had wrenched a small phial from her hand.\n\n\"Too late!\" she said, sinking back on the bed. \"Too late! I took the poison before I left my hiding-place. My head swims! I am going! I charge you, sir, to remember the packet.\"\n\n\"A simple case, and yet, in some ways, an instructive one,\" Holmes remarked, as we travelled back to town. \"it hinged from the outset upon the pince-nez. But for the fortunate chance of the dying man having seized these, I am not sure that we could ever have reached our solution. It was clear to me, from the strength of the glasses, that the wearer must have been very blind and helpless when deprived of them. When you asked me to believe that she walked along a narrow strip of grass without once making a false step, I remarked, as you may remember, that it was a noteworthy performance. In my mind I set it down as an impossible performance, save in the unlikely case that she had a second pair of glasses. I was forced, therefore, to consider seriously the hypothesis that she had remained within the house. On perceiving the similarity of the two corridors, it became clear that she might very easily have made such a mistake, and, in that case, it was evident that she must have entered the professor's room. I was keenly on the alert, therefore, for whatever would bear out this supposition, and I examined the room narrowly for anything in the shape of a hiding-place. The carpet seemed continuous and firmly nailed, so I dismissed the idea of a trap-door. There might well be a recess behind the books. As you are aware, such devices are common in old libraries. I observed that books were piled on the floor at all other points, but that one bookcase was left clear. This, then, might be the door. I could see no marks to guide me, but the carpet was of a dun colour, which lends itself very well to examination. I therefore smoked a great number of those excellent cigarettes, and I dropped the ash all over the space in front of the suspected bookcase. It was a simple trick, but exceedingly effective. I then went downstairs, and I ascertained, in your presence, Watson, without your perceiving the drift of my remarks, that Professor Coram's consumption of food had increased\u2014as one would expect when he is supplying a second person. We then ascended to the room again, when, by upsetting the cigarette-box, I obtained a very excellent view of the floor, and was able to see quite clearly, from the traces upon the cigarette ash, that the prisoner had in our absence come out from her retreat. Well, Hopkins, here we are at Charing Cross, and I congratulate you on having brought your case to a successful conclusion. You are going to headquarters, no doubt. I think, Watson, you and I will drive together to the Russian Embassy.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING THREE-QUARTER", + "text": "We were fairly accustomed to receive weird telegrams at Baker Street, but I have a particular recollection of one which reached us on a gloomy February morning, some seven or eight years ago, and gave Mr. Sherlock Holmes a puzzled quarter of an hour. It was addressed to him, and ran thus:\n\nPlease await me. Terrible misfortune. Right wing three-quarter missing, indispensable tomorrow.\n\nOVERTON.\n\n\"Strand postmark, and dispatched ten thirty-six,\" said Holmes. reading it over and over. \"Mr. Overton was evidently considerably excited when he sent it, and somewhat incoherent in consequence. Well, well, he will be here, I daresay, by the time I have looked through the Times, and then we shall know all about it. Even the most insignificant problem would be welcome in these stagnant days.\"\n\nThings had indeed been very slow with us, and I had learned to dread such periods of inaction, for I knew by experience that my companion's brain was so abnormally active that it was dangerous to leave it without material upon which to work. For years I had gradually weaned him from that drug mania which had threatened once to check his remarkable career. Now I knew that under ordinary conditions he no longer craved for this artificial stimulus, but I was well aware that the fiend was not dead but sleeping, and I have known that the sleep was a light one and the waking near when in periods of idleness I have seen the drawn look upon Holmes's ascetic face, and the brooding of his deep-set and inscrutable eyes. Therefore I blessed this Mr. Overton, whoever he might be, since he had come with his enigmatic message to break that dangerous calm which brought more peril to my friend than all the storms of his tempestuous life.\n\nAs we had expected, the telegram was soon followed by its sender, and the card of Mr. Cyril Overton, Trinity College, Cambridge, announced the arrival of an enormous young man, sixteen stone of solid bone and muscle, who spanned the doorway with his broad shoulders, and looked from one of us to the other with a comely face which was haggard with anxiety.\n\n\"Mr. Sherlock Holmes?\"\n\nMy companion bowed.\n\n\"I've been down to Scotland Yard, Mr. Holmes. I saw Inspector Stanley Hopkins. He advised me to come to you. He said the case, so far as he could see, was more in your line than in that of the regular police.\"\n\n\"Pray sit down and tell me what is the matter.\"\n\n\"It's awful, Mr. Holmes\u2014simply awful! I wonder my hair isn't gray. Godfrey Staunton\u2014you've heard of him, of course? He's simply the hinge that the whole team turns on. I'd rather spare two from the pack, and have Godfrey for my three-quarter line. Whether it's passing, or tackling, or dribbling, there's no one to touch him, and then, he's got the head, and can hold us all together. What am I to do? That's what I ask you, Mr. Holmes. There's Moorhouse, first reserve, but he is trained as a half, and he always edges right in on to the scrum instead of keeping out on the touchline. He's a fine place-kick, it's true, but then he has no judgment, and he can't sprint for nuts. Why, Morton or Johnson, the Oxford fliers, could romp round him. Stevenson is fast enough, but he couldn't drop from the twenty-five line, and a three-quarter who can't either punt or drop isn't worth a place for pace alone. No, Mr. Holmes, we are done unless you can help me to find Godfrey Staunton.\"\n\nMy friend had listened with amused surprise to this long speech, which was poured forth with extraordinary vigour and earnestness, every point being driven home by the slapping of a brawny hand upon the speaker's knee. When our visitor was silent Holmes stretched out his hand and took down letter \"S\" of his commonplace book. For once he dug in vain into that mine of varied information.\n\n\"There is Arthur H. Staunton, the rising young forger,\" said he, \"and there was Henry Staunton, whom I helped to hang, but Godfrey Staunton is a new name to me.\"\n\nIt was our visitor's turn to look surprised.\n\n\"Why, Mr. Holmes, I thought you knew things,\" said he. \"I suppose, then, if you have never heard of Godfrey Staunton, you don't know Cyril Overton either?\"\n\nHolmes shook his head good humouredly.\n\n\"Great Scott!\" cried the athlete. \"Why, I was first reserve for England against Wales, and I've skippered the 'Varsity all this year. But that's nothing! I didn't think there was a soul in England who didn't know Godfrey Staunton, the crack three-quarter, Cambridge, Blackheath, and five Internationals. Good Lord! Mr. Holmes, where have you lived?\"\n\nHolmes laughed at the young giant's na\u00efve astonishment.\n\n\"You live in a different world to me, Mr. Overton\u2014a sweeter and healthier one. My ramifications stretch out into many sections of society, but never, I am happy to say, into amateur sport, which is the best and soundest thing in England. However, your unexpected visit this morning shows me that even in that world of fresh air and fair play, there may be work for me to do. So now, my good sir, I beg you to sit down and to tell me, slowly and quietly, exactly what it is that has occurred, and how you desire that I should help you.\"\n\nYoung Overton's face assumed the bothered look of the man who is more accustomed to using his muscles than his wits, but by degrees, with many repetitions and obscurities which I may omit from his narrative, he laid his strange story before us.\n\n\"It's this way, Mr. Holmes. As I have said, I am the skipper of the Rugger team of Cambridge 'Varsity, and Godfrey Staunton is my best man. Tomorrow we play Oxford. Yesterday we all came up, and we settled at Bentley's private hotel. At ten o'clock I went round and saw that all the fellows had gone to roost, for I believe in strict training and plenty of sleep to keep a team fit. I had a word or two with Godfrey before he turned in. He seemed to me to be pale and bothered. I asked him what was the matter. He said he was all right\u2014just a touch of headache. I bade him good-night and left him. Half an hour later, the porter tells me that a rough-looking man with a beard called with a note for Godfrey. He had not gone to bed, and the note was taken to his room. Godfrey read it, and fell back in a chair as if he had been pole-axed. The porter was so scared that he was going to fetch me, but Godfrey stopped him, had a drink of water, and pulled himself together. Then he went downstairs, said a few words to the man who was waiting in the hall, and the two of them went off together. The last that the porter saw of them, they were almost running down the street in the direction of the Strand. This morning Godfrey's room was empty, his bed had never been slept in, and his things were all just as I had seen them the night before. He had gone off at a moment's notice with this stranger, and no word has come from him since. I don't believe he will ever come back. He was a sportsman, was Godfrey, down to his marrow, and he wouldn't have stopped his training and let in his skipper if it were not for some cause that was too strong for him. No: I feel as if he were gone for good, and we should never see him again.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes listened with the deepest attention to this singular narrative.\n\n\"What did you do?\" he asked.\n\n\"I wired to Cambridge to learn if anything had been heard of him there. I have had an answer. No one has seen him.\"\n\n\"Could he have got back to Cambridge?\"\n\n\"Yes, there is a late train\u2014quarter-past eleven.\"\n\n\"But, so far as you can ascertain, he did not take it?\"\n\n\"No, he has not been seen.\"\n\n\"What did you do next?\"\n\n\"I wired to Lord Mount-James.\"\n\n\"Why to Lord Mount-James?\"\n\n\"Godfrey is an orphan, and Lord Mount-James is his nearest relative\u2014his uncle, I believe.\"\n\n\"Indeed. This throws new light upon the matter. Lord Mount-James is one of the richest men in England.\"\n\n\"So I've heard Godfrey say.\"\n\n\"And your friend was closely related?\"\n\n\"Yes, he was his heir, and the old boy is nearly eighty\u2014cram full of gout, too. They say he could chalk his billiard-cue with his knuckles. He never allowed Godfrey a shilling in his life, for he is an absolute miser, but it will all come to him right enough.\"\n\n\"Have you heard from Lord Mount-James?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"What motive could your friend have in going to Lord Mount-James?\"\n\n\"Well, something was worrying him the night before, and if it was to do with money it is possible that he would make for his nearest relative, who had so much of it, though from all I have heard he would not have much chance of getting it. Godfrey was not fond of the old man. He would not go if he could help it.\"\n\n\"Well, we can soon determine that. If your friend was going to his relative, Lord Mount-James, you have then to explain the visit of this rough-looking fellow at so late an hour, and the agitation that was caused by his coming.\"\n\nCyril Overton pressed his hands to his head. \"I can make nothing of it,\" said he.\n\n\"Well, well, I have a clear day, and I shall be happy to look into the matter,\" said, Holmes. \"I should strongly recommend you to make your preparations for your match without reference to this young gentleman. It must, as you say, have been an overpowering necessity which tore him away in such a fashion, and the same necessity is likely to hold him away. Let us step round together to the hotel, and see if the porter can throw any fresh light upon the matter.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes was a past-master in the art of putting a humble witness at his ease, and very soon, in the privacy of Godfrey Staunton's abandoned room, he had extracted all that the porter had to tell. The visitor of the night before was not a gentleman, neither was he a workingman. He was simply what the porter described as a \"medium-looking chap,\" a man of fifty, beard grizzled, pale face, quietly dressed. He seemed himself to be agitated. The porter had observed his hand trembling when he had held out the note. Godfrey Staunton had crammed the note into his pocket. Staunton had not shaken hands with the man in the hall. They had exchanged a few sentences, of which the porter had only distinguished the one word \"time.\" Then they had hurried off in the manner described. It was just half-past ten by the hall clock.\n\n\"Let me see,\" said Holmes, seating himself on Staunton's bed. \"You are the day porter, are you not?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, I go off duty at eleven.\"\n\n\"The night porter saw nothing, I suppose?\"\n\n\"No, sir, one theatre party came in late. No one else.\"\n\n\"Were you on duty all day yesterday?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Did you take any messages to Mr. Staunton?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, one telegram.\"\n\n\"Ah! that's interesting. What o'clock was this?\"\n\n\"About six.\"\n\n\"Where was Mr. Staunton when he received it?\"\n\n\"Here in his room.\"\n\n\"Were you present when he opened it?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, I waited to see if there was an answer.\"\n\n\"Well, was there?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, he wrote an answer.\"\n\n\"Did you take it?\"\n\n\"No, he took it himself.\"\n\n\"But he wrote it in your presence?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. I was standing by the door, and he with his back turned to that table. When he had written it he said: 'All right, porter, I will take this myself.'\"\n\n\"What did he write it with?\"\n\n\"A pen, sir.\"\n\n\"Was the telegraphic form one of these on the table?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, it was the top one.\"\n\nHolmes rose. Taking the forms, he carried them over to the window and carefully examined that which was uppermost.\n\n\"It's a pity he did not write in pencil,\" said he, throwing them down again with a shrug of disappointment. \"As you have no doubt frequently observed, Watson, the impression usually goes through\u2014a fact which has dissolved many a happy marriage. However, I can find no trace here. I rejoice, however, to perceive that he wrote with a broad-pointed quill pen, and I can hardly doubt that we will find some impression upon this blotting-pad. Ah, yes, surely this is the very thing!\"\n\nHe tore off a strip of the blotting-paper and turned towards us the following hieroglyphic:\n\nCyril Overton was much excited. \"Hold it to the glass!\" he cried.\n\n\"That is unnecessary,\" said Holmes. \"The paper is thin, and the reverse will give the message. Here it is.\" He turned it over, and we read:\n\n\"So that is the tail end of the telegram which Godfrey Staunton dispatched within a few hours of his disappearance. There are at least six words of the message which have escaped us; but what remains\u2014'Stand by us for God's sake!'\u2014proves that this young man saw a formidable danger which approached him, and from which someone else could protect him. 'Us,' mark you! Another person was involved. Who should it be but the pale-faced, bearded man, who seemed himself in so nervous a state? What, then, is the connection between Godfrey Staunton and the bearded man? And what is the third source from which each of them sought for help against pressing danger? Our inquiry has already narrowed down to that.\"\n\n\"We have only to find to whom that telegram is addressed,\" I suggested.\n\n\"Exactly, my dear Watson. Your reflection, though profound, had already crossed my mind. But I daresay it may have come to your notice that, if you walk into a postoffice and demand to see the counterfoil of another man's message, there may be some disinclination on the part of the officials to oblige you. There is so much red tape in these matters. However, I have no doubt that with a little delicacy and finesse the end may be attained. Meanwhile, I should like in your presence, Mr. Overton, to go through these papers which have been left upon the table.\"\n\nThere were a number of letters, bills, and notebooks, which Holmes turned over and examined with quick, nervous fingers and darting, penetrating eyes. \"Nothing here,\" he said, at last. \"By the way, I suppose your friend was a healthy young fellow\u2014nothing amiss with him?\"\n\n\"Sound as a bell.\"\n\n\"Have you ever known him ill?\"\n\n\"Not a day. He has been laid up with a hack, and once he slipped his knee-cap, but that was nothing.\"\n\n\"Perhaps he was not so strong as you suppose. I should think he may have had some secret trouble. With your assent, I will put one or two of these papers in my pocket, in case they should bear upon our future inquiry.\"\n\n\"One moment\u2014one moment!\" cried a querulous voice, and we looked up to find a queer little old man, jerking and twitching in the doorway. He was dressed in rusty black, with a very broad-brimmed top-hat and a loose white necktie\u2014the whole effect being that of a very rustic parson or of an undertaker's mute. Yet, in spite of his shabby and even absurd appearance, his voice had a sharp crackle, and his manner a quick intensity which commanded attention.\n\n\"Who are you, sir, and by what right do you touch this gentleman's papers?\" he asked.\n\n\"I am a private detective, and I am endeavouring to explain his disappearance.\"\n\n\"Oh, you are, are you? And who instructed you, eh?\"\n\n\"This gentleman, Mr. Staunton's friend, was referred to me by Scotland Yard.\"\n\n\"Who are you, sir?\"\n\n\"I am Cyril Overton.\"\n\n\"Then it is you who sent me a telegram. My name is Lord Mount-James. I came round as quickly as the Bayswater bus would bring me. So you have instructed a detective?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"And are you prepared to meet the cost?\"\n\n\"I have no doubt, sir, that my friend Godfrey, when we find him, will be prepared to do that.\"\n\n\"But if he is never found, eh? Answer me that!\"\n\n\"In that case, no doubt his family\u2014\"\n\n\"Nothing of the sort, sir!\" screamed the little man. \"Don't look to me for a penny\u2014not a penny! You understand that, Mr. Detective! I am all the family that this young man has got, and I tell you that I am not responsible. If he has any expectations it is due to the fact that I have never wasted money, and I do not propose to begin to do so now. As to those papers with which you are making so free, I may tell you that in case there should be anything of any value among them, you will be held strictly to account for what you do with them.\"\n\n\"Very good, sir,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"May I ask, in the meanwhile, whether you have yourself any theory to account for this young man's disappearance?\"\n\n\"No, sir, I have not. He is big enough and old enough to look after himself, and if he is so foolish as to lose himself, I entirely refuse to accept the responsibility of hunting for him.\"\n\n\"I quite understand your position,\" said Holmes, with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. \"Perhaps you don't quite understand mine. Godfrey Staunton appears to have been a poor man. If he has been kidnapped, it could not have been for anything which he himself possesses. The fame of your wealth has gone abroad, Lord Mount-James, and it is entirely possible that a gang of thieves have secured your nephew in order to gain from him some information as to your house, your habits, and your treasure.\"\n\nThe face of our unpleasant little visitor turned as white as his neck-cloth.\n\n\"Heavens, sir, what an idea! I never thought of such villainy! What inhuman rogues there are in the world! But Godfrey is a fine lad\u2014a staunch lad. Nothing would induce him to give his old uncle away. I'll have the plate moved over to the bank this evening. In the meantime spare no pains, Mr. Detective! I beg you to leave no stone unturned to bring him safely back. As to money, well, so far as a fiver or even a tenner goes you can always look to me.\"\n\nEven in his chastened frame of mind, the noble miser could give us no information which could help us, for he knew little of the private life of his nephew. Our only clue lay in the truncated telegram, and with a copy of this in his hand Holmes set forth to find a second link for his chain. We had shaken off Lord Mount-James, and Overton had gone to consult with the other members of his team over the misfortune which had befallen them.\n\nThere was a telegraph-office at a short distance from the hotel. We halted outside it.\n\n\"It's worth trying, Watson,\" said Holmes. \"Of course, with a warrant we could demand to see the counterfoils, but we have not reached that stage yet. I don't suppose they remember faces in so busy a place. Let us venture it.\"\n\n\"I am sorry to trouble you,\" said he, in his blandest manner, to the young, woman behind the grating; \"there is some small mistake about a telegram I sent yesterday. I have had no answer, and I very much fear that I must have omitted to put my name at the end. Could you tell me if this was so?\"\n\nThe young woman turned over a sheaf of counterfoils.\n\n\"What o'clock was it?\" she asked.\n\n\"A little after six.\"\n\n\"Whom was it to?\"\n\nHolmes put his finger to his lips and glanced at me. \"The last words in it were 'for God's sake,' \" he whispered, confidentially; \"I am very anxious at getting no answer.\"\n\nThe young woman separated one of the forms.\n\n\"This is it. There is no name,\" said she, smoothing it out upon the counter.\n\n\"Then that, of course, accounts for my getting no answer,\" said Holmes. \"Dear me, how very stupid of me, to be sure! Good-morning, miss, and many thanks for having relieved my mind.\" He chuckled and rubbed his hands when we found ourselves in the street once more.\n\n\"Well?\" I asked.\n\n\"We progress, my dear Watson, we progress. I had seven different schemes for getting a glimpse of that telegram, but I could hardly hope to succeed the very first time.\"\n\n\"And what have you gained?\"\n\n\"A starting-point for our investigation.\" He hailed a cab. \"King's Cross Station,\" said he.\n\n\"We have a journey, then?\"\n\n\"Yes, I think we must run down to Cambridge together. All the indications seem to me to point in that direction.\"\n\n\"Tell me,\" I asked, as we rattled up Gray's Inn Road, \"have you any suspicion yet as to the cause of the disappearance? I don't think that among all our cases I have known one where the motives are more obscure. Surely you don't really imagine that he may be kidnapped in order to give information against his wealthy uncle?\"\n\n\"I confess, my dear Watson, that that does not appeal to me as a very probable explanation. It struck me, however, as being the one which was most likely to interest that exceedingly unpleasant old person.\"\n\n\"It certainly did that; but what are your alternatives?\"\n\n\"I could mention several. You must admit that it is curious and suggestive that this incident should occur on the eve of this important match, and should involve the only man whose presence seems essential to the success of the side. It may, of course, be a coincidence, but it is interesting. Amateur sport is free from betting, but a good deal of outside betting goes on among the public, and it is possible that it might be worth someone's while to get at a player as the ruffians of the turf get at a race-horse. There is one explanation. A second very obvious one is that this young man really is the heir of a great property, however modest his means may at present be, and it is not impossible that a plot to hold him for ransom might be concocted.\"\n\n\"These theories take no account of the telegram.\"\n\n\"Quite true, Watson. The telegram still remains the only solid thing with which we have to deal, and we must not permit our attention to wander away from it. It is to gain light upon the purpose of this telegram that we are now upon our way to Cambridge. The path of our investigation is at present obscure, but I shall be very much surprised if before evening we have not cleared it up, or made a considerable advance along it.\"\n\nIt was already dark when we reached the old university city. Holmes took a cab at the station and ordered the man to drive to the house of Dr. Leslie Armstrong. A few minutes later, we had stopped at a large mansion on the busiest thoroughfare. We were shown in, and after a long wait were at last admitted into the consulting-room, where we found the doctor seated behind his table.\n\nIt argues the degree in which I had lost touch with my profession that the name of Leslie Armstrong was unknown to me. Now I am aware that he is not only one of the heads of the medical school of the university, but a thinker of European reputation in more than one branch of science. Yet even without knowing his brilliant record one could not fail to be impressed by a mere glance at the man, the square, massive face, the brooding eyes under the thatched brows, and the granite moulding of the inflexible jaw. A man of deep character, a man with an alert mind, grim, ascetic, self-contained, formidable\u2014so I read Dr. Leslie Armstrong. He held my friend's card in his hand, and he looked up with no very pleased expression upon his dour features.\n\n\"I have heard your name, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and I am aware of your profession\u2014one of which I by no means approve.\"\n\n\"In that, Doctor, you will find yourself in agreement with every criminal in the country,\" said my friend, quietly.\n\n\"So far as your efforts are directed towards the suppression of crime, sir, they must have the support of every reasonable member of the community, though I cannot doubt that the official machinery is amply sufficient for the purpose. Where your calling is more open to criticism is when you pry into the secrets of private individuals, when you rake up family matters which are better hidden, and when you incidentally waste the time of men who are more busy than yourself. At the present moment, for example, I should be writing a treatise instead of conversing with you.\"\n\n\"No doubt, Doctor; and yet the conversation may prove more important than the treatise. Incidentally, I may tell you that we are doing the reverse of what you very justly blame, and that we are endeavouring to prevent anything like public exposure of private matters which must necessarily follow when once the case is fairly in the hands of the official police. You may look upon me simply as an irregular pioneer, who goes in front of the regular forces of the country. I have come to ask you about Mr. Godfrey Staunton.\"\n\n\"What about him?\"\n\n\"You know him, do you not?\"\n\n\"He is an intimate friend of mine.\"\n\n\"You are aware that he has disappeared?\"\n\n\"Ah, indeed!\" There was no change of expression in the rugged features of the doctor.\n\n\"He left his hotel last night\u2014he has not been heard of.\"\n\n\"No doubt he will return.\"\n\n\"Tomorrow is the 'Varsity football match.\"\n\n\"I have no sympathy with these childish games. The young man's fate interests me deeply, since I know him and like him. The football match does not come within my horizon at all.\"\n\n\"I claim your sympathy, then, in my investigation of Mr. Staunton's fate. Do you know where he is?\"\n\n\"Certainly not.\"\n\n\"You have not seen him since yesterday?\"\n\n\"No, I have not.\"\n\n\"Was Mr. Staunton a healthy man?\"\n\n\"Absolutely.\"\n\n\"Did you ever know him ill?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\nHolmes popped a sheet of paper before the doctor's eyes. \"Then perhaps you will explain this receipted bill for thirteen guineas, paid by Mr. Godfrey Staunton last month to Dr. Leslie Armstrong, of Cambridge. I picked it out from among the papers upon his desk.\"\n\nThe doctor flushed with anger.\n\n\"I do not feel that there is any reason why I should render an explanation to you, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\nHolmes replaced the bill in his notebook. \"If you prefer a public explanation, it must come sooner or later,\" said he. \"I have already told you that I can hush up that which others will be bound to publish, and you would really be wiser to take me into your complete confidence.\"\n\n\"I know nothing about it.\"\n\n\"Did you hear from Mr. Staunton in London?\"\n\n\"Certainly not.\"\n\n\"Dear me, dear me\u2014the post office again!\" Holmes sighed, wearily. \"A most urgent telegram was dispatched to you from London by Godfrey Staunton at six-fifteen yesterday evening\u2014a telegram which is undoubtedly associated with his disappearance\u2014and yet you have not had it. It is most culpable. I shall certainly go down to the office here and register a complaint.\"\n\nDr. Leslie Armstrong sprang up from behind his desk, and his dark face was crimson with fury.\n\n\"I'll trouble you to walk out of my house, sir,\" said he. \"You can tell your employer, Lord Mount-James, that I do not wish to have anything to do either with him or with his agents. No, sir\u2014not another word!\" He rang the bell furiously. \"John, show these gentlemen out!\" A pompous butler ushered us severely to the door, and we found ourselves in the street. Holmes burst out laughing.\n\n\"Dr. Leslie Armstrong is certainly a man of energy and character,\" said he. \"I have not seen a man who, if he turns his talents that way, was more calculated to fill the gap left by the illustrious Moriarty. And now, my poor Watson, here we are, stranded and friendless in this inhospitable town, which we cannot leave without abandoning our case. This little inn just opposite Armstrong's house is singularly adapted to our needs. If you would engage a front room and purchase the necessaries for the night, I may have time to make a few inquiries.\"\n\nThese few inquiries proved, however, to be a more lengthy proceeding than Holmes had imagined, for he did not return to the inn until nearly nine o'clock. He was pale and dejected, stained with dust, and exhausted with hunger and fatigue. A cold supper was ready upon the table, and when his needs were satisfied and his pipe alight he was ready to take that half comic and wholly philosophic view which was natural to him when his affairs were going awry. The sound of carriage wheels caused him to rise and glance out of the window. A brougham and pair of grays, under the glare of a gas-lamp, stood before the doctor's door.\n\n\"It's been out three hours,\" said Holmes; \"started at half-past six, and here it is back again. That gives a radius of ten or twelve miles, and he does it once, or sometimes twice, a day.\"\n\n\"No unusual thing for a doctor in practice.\"\n\n\"But Armstrong is not really a doctor in practice. He is a lecturer and a consultant, but he does not care for general practice, which distracts him from his literary work. Why, then, does he make these long journeys, which must be exceedingly irksome to him, and who is it that he visits?\"\n\n\"His coachman\u2014\"\n\n\"My dear Watson, can you doubt that it was to him that I first applied? I do not know whether it came from his own innate depravity or from the promptings of his master, but he was rude enough to set a dog at me. Neither dog nor man liked the look of my stick, however, and the matter fell through. Relations were strained after that, and further inquiries out of the question. All that I have learned I got from a friendly native in the yard of our own inn. It was he who told me of the doctor's habits and of his daily journey. At that instant, to give point to his words, the carriage came round to the door.\"\n\n\"Could you not follow it?\"\n\n\"Excellent, Watson! You are scintillating this evening. The idea did cross my mind. There is, as you may have observed, a bicycle shop next to our inn. Into this I rushed, engaged a bicycle, and was able to get started before the carriage was quite out of sight. I rapidly overtook it, and then, keeping at a discreet distance of a hundred yards or so, I followed its lights until we were clear of the town. We had got well out on the country road, when a somewhat mortifying incident occurred. The carriage stopped, the doctor alighted, walked swiftly back to where I had also halted, and told me in an excellent sardonic fashion that he feared the road was narrow, and that he hoped his carriage did not impede the passage of my bicycle. Nothing could have been more admirable than his way of putting it. I at once rode past the carriage, and, keeping to the main road, I went on for a few miles, and then halted in a convenient place to see if the carriage passed. There was no sign of it, however, and so it became evident that it had turned down one of several side roads which I had observed. I rode back, but again saw nothing of the carriage, and now, as you perceive, it has returned after me. Of course, I had at the outset no particular reason to connect these journeys with the disappearance of Godfrey Staunton, and was only inclined to investigate them on the general grounds that everything which concerns Dr. Armstrong is at present of interest to us, but, now that I find he keeps so keen a look-out upon anyone who may follow him on these excursions, the affair appears more important, and I shall not be satisfied until I have made the matter clear.\"\n\n\"We can follow him tomorrow.\"\n\n\"Can we? It is not so easy as you seem to think. You are not familiar with Cambridgeshire scenery, are you? It does not lend itself to concealment. All this country that I passed over to-night is as flat and clean as the palm of your hand, and the man we are following is no fool, as he very clearly showed to-night. I have wired to Overton to let us know any fresh London developments at this address, and in the meantime we can only concentrate our attention upon Dr. Armstrong, whose name the obliging young lady at the office allowed me to read upon the counterfoil of Staunton's urgent message. He knows where the young man is\u2014to that I'll swear, and if he knows, then it must be our own fault if we cannot manage to know also. At present it must be admitted that the odd trick is in his possession, and, as you are aware, Watson, it is not my habit to leave the game in that condition.\"\n\nAnd yet the next day brought us no nearer to the solution of the mystery. A note was handed in after breakfast, which Holmes passed across to me with a smile.\n\n\u2002SIR [it ran]:\n\n\u2002I can assure you that you are wasting your time in dogging my movements. I have, as you discovered last night, a window at the back of my brougham, and if you desire a twenty-mile ride which will lead you to the spot from which you started, you have only to follow me. Meanwhile, I can inform you that no spying upon me can in any way help Mr. Godfrey Staunton, and I am convinced that the best service you can do to that gentleman is to return at once to London and to report to your employer that you are unable to trace him. Your time in Cambridge will certainly be wasted.\n\n\u2002Yours faithfully,\n\n\u2002LESLIE ARMSTRONG.\n\n\"An outspoken, honest antagonist is the doctor,\" said Holmes. \"Well, well, he excites my curiosity, and I must really know before I leave him.\"\n\n\"His carriage is at his door now,\" said I. \"There he is stepping into it. I saw him glance up at our window as he did so. Suppose I try my luck upon the bicycle?\"\n\n\"No, no, my dear Watson! With all respect for your natural acumen, I do not think that you are quite a match for the worthy doctor. I think that possibly I can attain our end by some independent explorations of my own. I am afraid that I must leave you to your own devices, as the appearance of two inquiring strangers upon a sleepy countryside might excite more gossip than I care for. No doubt you will find some sights to amuse you in this venerable city, and I hope to bring back a more favourable report to you before evening.\"\n\nOnce more, however, my friend was destined to be disappointed. He came back at night weary and unsuccessful.\n\n\"I have had a blank day, Watson. Having got the doctor's general direction, I spent the day in visiting all the villages upon that side of Cambridge, and comparing notes with publicans and other local news agencies. I have covered some ground. Chesterton, Histon, Waterbeach, and Oakington have each been explored, and have each proved disappointing. The daily appearance of a brougham and pair could hardly have been overlooked in such Sleepy Hollows. The doctor has scored once more. Is there a telegram for me?\"\n\n\"Yes, I opened it. Here it is:\n\nAsk for Pompey from Jeremy Dixon, Trinity College.\n\nI don't understand it.\"\n\n\"Oh, it is clear enough. It is from our friend Overton, and is in answer to a question from me. I'll just send round a note to Mr. Jeremy Dixon, and then I have no doubt that our luck will turn. By the way, is there any news of the match?\"\n\n\"Yes, the local evening paper has an excellent account in its last edition. Oxford won by a goal and two tries. The last sentences of the description say:\n\n\"The defeat of the Light Blues may be entirely attributed to the unfortunate absence of the crack International, Godfrey Staunton, whose want was felt at every instant of the game. The lack of combination in the three-quarter line and their weakness both in attack and defence more than neutralized the efforts of a heavy and hard-working pack.\"\n\n\"Then our friend Overton's forebodings have been justified,\" said Holmes. \"Personally I am in agreement with Dr. Armstrong, and football does not come within my horizon. Early to bed to-night, Watson, for I foresee that tomorrow may be an eventful day.\"\n\nI was horrified by my first glimpse of Holmes next morning. for he sat by the fire holding his tiny hypodermic syringe. I associated that instrument with the single weakness of his nature, and I feared the worst when I saw it glittering in his hand. He laughed at my expression of dismay and laid it upon the table.\n\n\"No, no, my dear fellow, there is no cause for alarm. It is not upon this occasion the instrument of evil, but it will rather prove to be the key which will unlock our mystery. On this syringe I base all my hopes. I have just returned from a small scouting expedition, and everything is favourable. Eat a good breakfast, Watson, for I propose to get upon Dr. Armstrong's trail to-day, and once on it I will not stop for rest or food until I run him to his burrow.\"\n\n\"In that case,\" said I, \"we had best carry our breakfast with us, for he is making an early start. His carriage is at the door.\"\n\n\"Never mind. Let him go. He will be clever if he can drive where I cannot follow him. When you have finished, come downstairs with me, and I will introduce you to a detective who is a very eminent specialist in the work that lies before us.\"\n\nWhen we descended I followed Holmes into the stable yard, where he opened the door of a loose-box and led out a squat, lop-eared, white-and-tan dog, something between a beagle and a foxhound.\n\n\"Let me introduce you to Pompey,\" said he. \"Pompey is the pride of the local draghounds\u2014no very great flier, as his build will show, but a staunch hound on a scent. Well, Pompey, you may not be fast, but I expect you will be too fast for a couple of middle-aged London gentlemen. so I will take the liberty of fastening this leather leash to your collar. Now, boy, came along, and show what you can do.\" He led him across to the doctor's door. The dog sniffed round for an instant, and then with a shrill whine of excitement started off down the street, tugging at his leash in his efforts to go faster. In half an hour, we were clear of the town and hastening down a country road.\n\n\"What have you done, Holmes?\" I asked.\n\n\"A threadbare and venerable device, but useful upon occasion. I walked into the doctor's yard this morning, and shot my syringe full of aniseed over the hind wheel. A draghound will follow aniseed from here to John o' Groat's, and our friend, Armstrong, would have to drive through the Cam before he would shake Pompey off his trail. Oh, the cunning rascal! This is how he gave me the slip the other night.\"\n\nThe dog had suddenly turned out of the main road into a grass-grown lane. Half a mile farther this opened into another broad road, and the trail turned hard to the right in the direction of the town, which we had just quitted. The road took a sweep to the south of the town, and continued in the opposite direction to that in which we started.\n\n\"This d\u00e9tour has been entirely for our benefit, then?\" said Holmes. \"No wonder that my inquiries among those villagers led to nothing. The doctor has certainly played the game for all it is worth, and one would like to know the reason for such elaborate deception. This should be the village of Trumpington to the right of us. And, by Jove! here is the brougham coming round the corner. Quick, Watson\u2014quick, or we are done!\"\n\nHe sprang through a gate into a field, dragging the reluctant Pompey after him. We had hardly got under the shelter of the hedge when the carriage rattled past. I caught a glimpse of Dr. Armstrong within, his shoulders bowed, his head sunk on his hands, the very image of distress. I could tell by my companion's graver face that he also had seen.\n\n\"I fear there is some dark ending to our quest,\" said he. \"It cannot be long before we know it. Come, Pompey! Ah, it is the cottage in the field!\"\n\nThere could be no doubt that we had reached the end of our journey. Pompey ran about and whined eagerly outside the gate, where the marks of the brougham's wheels were still to be seen. A footpath led across to the lonely cottage. Holmes tied the dog to the hedge, and we hastened onward. My friend knocked at the little rustic door, and knocked again without response. And yet the cottage was not deserted, for a low sound came to our ears\u2014a kind of drone of misery and despair which was indescribably melancholy. Holmes paused irresolute, and then he glanced back at the road which he had just traversed. A brougham was coming down it, and there could be no mistaking those gray horses.\n\n\"By Jove, the doctor is coming back!\" cried Holmes. \"That settles it. We are bound to see what it means before he comes.\"\n\nHe opened the door, and we stepped into the hall. The droning sound swelled louder upon our ears until it became one long, deep wail of distress. It came from upstairs. Holmes darted up, and I followed him. He pushed open a half-closed door, and we both stood appalled at the sight before us.\n\nA woman, young and beautiful, was lying dead upon the bed. Her calm, pale face, with dim, wide-opened blue eyes, looked upward from amid a great tangle of golden hair. At the foot of the bed, half sitting, half kneeling, his face buried in the clothes, was a young man, whose frame was racked by his sobs. So absorbed was he by his bitter grief, that he never looked up until Holmes's hand was on his shoulder.\n\n\"Are you Mr. Godfrey Staunton?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, I am\u2014but you are too late. She is dead.\"\n\nThe man was so dazed that he could not be made to understand that we were anything but doctors who had been sent to his assistance. Holmes was endeavouring to utter a few words of consolation and to explain the alarm which had been caused to his friends by his sudden disappearance when there was a step upon the stairs, and there was the heavy, stern, questioning face of Dr. Armstrong at the door.\n\n\"So, gentlemen,\" said he, \"you have attained your end and have certainly chosen a particularly delicate moment for your intrusion. I would not brawl in the presence of death, but I can assure you that if I were a younger man your monstrous conduct would not pass with impunity.\"\n\n\"Excuse me, Dr. Armstrong, I think we are a little at cross-purposes,\" said my friend, with dignity. \"If you could step downstairs with us, we may each be able to give some light to the other upon this miserable affair.\"\n\nA minute later, the grim doctor and ourselves were in the sitting-room below.\n\n\"Well, sir?\" said he.\n\n\"I wish you to understand, in the first place, that I am not employed by Lord Mount-James, and that my sympathies in this matter are entirely against that nobleman. When a man is lost it is my duty to ascertain his fate, but having done so the matter ends so far as I am concerned, and so long as there is nothing criminal I am much more anxious to hush up private scandals than to give them publicity. If, as I imagine, there is no breach of the law in this matter, you can absolutely depend upon my discretion and my cooperation in keeping the facts out of the papers.\"\n\nDr. Armstrong took a quick step forward and wrung Holmes by the hand.\n\n\"You are a good fellow,\" said he. \"I had misjudged you. I thank heaven that my compunction at leaving poor Staunton all alone in this plight caused me to turn my carriage back and so to make your acquaintance. Knowing as much as you do, the situation is very easily explained. A year ago Godfrey Staunton lodged in London for a time and became passionately attached to his landlady's daughter, whom he married. She was as good as she was beautiful and as intelligent as she was good. No man need be ashamed of such a wife. But Godfrey was the heir to this crabbed old nobleman, and it was quite certain that the news of his marriage would have been the end of his inheritance. I knew the lad well, and I loved him for his many excellent qualities. I did all I could to help him to keep things straight. We did our very best to keep the thing from everyone, for, when once such a whisper gets about, it is not long before everyone has heard it. Thanks to this lonely cottage and his own discretion, Godfrey has up to now succeeded. Their secret was known to no one save to me and to one excellent servant, who has at present gone for assistance to Trumpington. But at last there came a terrible blow in the shape of dangerous illness to his wife. It was consumption of the most virulent kind. The poor boy was half crazed with grief, and yet he had to go to London to play this match, for he could not get out of it without explanations which would expose his secret. I tried to cheer him up by wire, and he sent me one in reply, imploring me to do all I could. This was the telegram which you appear in some inexplicable way to have seen. I did not tell him how urgent the danger was, for I knew that he could do no good here, but I sent the truth to the girl's father, and he very injudiciously communicated it to Godfrey. The result was that he came straight away in a state bordering on frenzy, and has remained in the same state, kneeling at the end of her bed, until this morning death put an end to her sufferings. That is all, Mr. Holmes. and I am sure that I can rely upon your discretion and that of your friend.\"\n\nHolmes grasped the doctor's hand.\n\n\"Come, Watson,\" said he, and we passed from that house of grief into the pale sunlight of the winter day." + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE ABBEY GRANGE", + "text": "It was on a bitterly cold night and frosty morning, towards the end of the winter of '97, that I was awakened by a tugging at my shoulder. It was Holmes. The candle in his hand shone upon his eager, stooping face, and told me at a glance that something was amiss.\n\n\"Come, Watson, come!\" he cried. \"The game is afoot. Not a word! Into your clothes and come!\"\n\nTen minutes later we were both in a cab, and rattling through the silent streets on our way to Charing Cross Station. The first faint winter's dawn was beginning to appear, and we could dimly see the occasional figure of an early workman as he passed us, blurred and indistinct in the opalescent London reek. Holmes nestled in silence into his heavy coat, and I was glad to do the same, for the air was most bitter, and neither of us had broken our fast.\n\nIt was not until we had consumed some hot tea at the station and taken our places in the Kentish train that we were sufficiently thawed, he to speak and I to listen. Holmes drew a note from his pocket, and read aloud:\n\n\u2002Abbey Grange, Marsham, Kent,\n\n\u20023:30 A.M.\n\n\u2002\"MY DEAR MR. HOLMES:\n\n\u2002I should be very glad of your immediate assistance in what promises to be a most remarkable case. It is something quite in your line. Except for releasing the lady I will see that everything is kept exactly as I have found it, but I beg you not to lose an instant, as it is difficult to leave Sir Eustace there.\n\n\u2002Yours faithfully,\n\n\u2002STANLEY HOPKINS.\"\n\n\"Hopkins has called me in seven times, and on each occasion his summons has been entirely justified,\" said Holmes. \"I fancy that every one of his cases has found its way into your collection, and I must admit, Watson, that you have some power of selection, which atones for much which I deplore in your narratives. Your fatal habit of looking at everything from the point of view of a story instead of as a scientific exercise has ruined what might have been an instructive and even classical series of demonstrations. You slur over work of the utmost finesse and delicacy, in order to dwell upon sensational details which may excite, but cannot possibly instruct, the reader.\"\n\n\"Why do you not write them yourself?\" I said, with some bitterness.\n\n\"I will, my dear Watson, I will. At present I am, as you know, fairly busy, but I propose to devote my declining years to the composition of a textbook, which shall focus the whole art of detection into one volume. Our present research appears to be a case of murder.\"\n\n\"You think this Sir Eustace is dead, then?\"\n\n\"I should say so. Hopkins's writing shows considerable agitation, and he is not an emotional man. Yes, I gather there has been violence, and that the body is left for our inspection. A mere suicide would not have caused him to send for me. As to the release of the lady, it would appear that she has been locked in her room during the tragedy. We are moving in high life, Watson, crackling paper, 'E. B.' monogram, coat-of-arms, picturesque address. I think that friend Hopkins will live up to his reputation, and that we shall have an interesting morning. The crime was committed before twelve last night.\"\n\n\"How can you possibly tell?\"\n\n\"By an inspection of the trains, and by reckoning the time. The local police had to be called in, they had to communicate with Scotland Yard, Hopkins had to go out, and he in turn had to send for me. All that makes a fair night's work. Well, here we are at Chiselhurst Station, and we shall soon set our doubts at rest.\"\n\nA drive of a couple of miles through narrow country lanes brought us to a park gate, which was opened for us by an old lodge-keeper, whose haggard face bore the reflection of some great disaster. The avenue ran through a noble park, between lines of ancient elms, and ended in a low, widespread house, pillared in front after the fashion of Palladio. The central part was evidently of a great age and shrouded in ivy, but the large windows showed that modern changes had been carried out, and one wing of the house appeared to be entirely new. The youthful figure and alert, eager face of Inspector Stanley Hopkins confronted us in the open doorway.\n\n\"I'm very glad you have come, Mr. Holmes. And you, too, Dr. Watson. But, indeed, if I had my time over again, I should not have troubled you, for since the lady has come to herself, she has given so clear an account of the affair that there is not much left for us to do. You remember that Lewisham gang of burglars?\"\n\n\"What, the three Randalls?\"\n\n\"Exactly; the father and two sons. It's their work. I have not a doubt of it. They did a job at Sydenham a fortnight ago and were seen and de scribed. Rather cool to do another so soon and so near, but it is they, beyond all doubt. It's a hanging matter this time.\"\n\n\"Sir Eustace is dead, then?\"\n\n\"Yes, his head was knocked in with his own poker.\"\n\n\"Sir Eustace Brackenstall, the driver tells me.\"\n\n\"Exactly\u2014one of the richest men in Kent\u2014Lady Brackenstall is in the morning-room. Poor lady, she has had a most dreadful experience. She seemed half dead when I saw her first. I think you had best see her and hear her account of the facts. Then we will examine the dining-room together.\"\n\nLady Brackenstall was no ordinary person. Seldom have I seen so graceful a figure, so womanly a presence, and so beautiful a face. She was a blonde, golden-haired, blue-eyed, and would no doubt have had the perfect complexion which goes with such colouring, had not her recent experience left her drawn and haggard. Her sufferings were physical as well as mental, for over one eye rose a hideous, plum-coloured swelling, which her maid, a tall, austere woman, was bathing assiduously with vinegar and water. The lady lay back exhausted upon a couch, but her quick, observant gaze, as we entered the room, and the alert expression of her beautiful features, showed that neither her wits nor her courage had been shaken by her terrible experience. She was enveloped in a loose dressing-gown of blue and silver, but a black sequin-covered dinner-dress lay upon the couch beside her.\n\n\"I have told you all that happened, Mr. Hopkins,\" she said, wearily. \"Could you not repeat it for me? Well, if you think it necessary, I will tell these gentlemen what occurred. Have they been in the dining-room yet?\"\n\n\"I thought they had better hear your ladyship's story first.\"\n\n\"I shall be glad when you can arrange matters. It is horrible to me to think of him still lying there.\" She shuddered and buried her face in her hands. As she did so, the loose gown fell back from her forearms. Holmes uttered an exclamation.\n\n\"You have other injuries, madam! What is this?\" Two vivid red spots stood out on one of the white, round limbs. She hastily covered it.\n\n\"It is nothing. It has no connection with this hideous business to-night. If you and your friend will sit down, I will tell you all I can.\n\n\"I am the wife of Sir Eustace Brackenstall. I have been married about a year. I suppose that it is no use my attempting to conceal that our marriage has not been a happy one. I fear that all our neighbours would tell you that, even if I were to attempt to deny it. Perhaps the fault may be partly mine. I was brought up in the freer, less conventional atmosphere of South Australia, and this English life, with its proprieties and its primness, is not congenial to me. But the main reason lies in the one fact, which is notorious to everyone, and that is that Sir Eustace was a confirmed drunkard. To be with such a man for an hour is unpleasant. Can you imagine what it means for a sensitive and high-spirited woman to be tied to him for day and night? It is a sacrilege, a crime, a villainy to hold that such a marriage is binding. I say that these monstrous laws of yours will bring a curse upon the land\u2014God will not let such wickedness endure.\" For an instant she sat up, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes blazing from under the terrible mark upon her brow. Then the strong, soothing hand of the austere maid drew her head down on to the cushion, and the wild anger died away into passionate sobbing. At last she continued:\n\n\"I will tell you about last night. You are aware, perhaps, that in this house all the servants sleep in the modern wing. This central block is made up of the dwelling-rooms, with the kitchen behind and our bedroom above. My maid, Theresa, sleeps above my room. There is no one else, and no sound could alarm those who are in the farther wing. This must have been well known to the robbers, or they would not have acted as they did.\n\n\"Sir Eustace retired about half-past ten. The servants had already gone to their quarters. Only my maid was up, and she had remained in her room at the top of the house until I needed her services. I sat until after eleven in this room, absorbed in a book. Then I walked round to see that all was right before I went upstairs. It was my custom to do this myself, for, as I have explained, Sir Eustace was not always to be trusted. I went into the kitchen, the butler's pantry, the gun-room, the billiard-room, the drawing-room, and finally the dining-room. As I approached the window, which is covered with thick curtains, I suddenly felt the wind blow upon my face and realized that it was open. I flung the curtain aside and found myself face to face with a broad-shouldered elderly man, who had just stepped into the room. The window is a long French one, which really forms a door leading to the lawn. I held my bedroom candle lit in my hand, and, by its light, behind the first man I saw two others, who were in the act of entering. I stepped back, but the fellow was on me in an instant. He caught me first by the wrist and then by the throat. I opened my mouth to scream, but he struck me a savage blow with his fist over the eye, and felled me to the ground. I must have been unconscious for a few minutes, for when I came to myself, I found that they had torn down the bellrope, and had secured me tightly to the oaken chair which stands at the head of the dining-table. I was so firmly bound that I could not move, and a handkerchief round my mouth prevented me from uttering a sound. It was at this instant that my unfortunate husband entered the room. He had evidently heard some suspicious sounds, and he came prepared for such a scene as he found. He was dressed in nightshirt and trousers, with his favourite blackthorn cudgel in his hand. He rushed at the burglars, but another\u2014it was an elderly man\u2014stooped, picked the poker out of the grate and struck him a horrible blow as he passed. He fell with a groan and never moved again. I fainted once more, but again it could only have been for a very few minutes during which I was insensible. When I opened my eyes I found that they had collected the silver from the sideboard, and they had drawn a bottle of wine which stood there. Each of them had a glass in his hand. I have already told you, have I not, that one was elderly, with a beard, and the others young, hairless lads. They might have been a father with his two sons. They talked together in whispers. Then they came over and made sure that I was securely bound. Finally they withdrew, closing the window after them. It was quite a quarter of an hour before I got my mouth free. When I did so, my screams brought the maid to my assistance. The other servants were soon alarmed, and we sent for the local police, who instantly communicated with London. That is really all that I can tell you, gentlemen, and I trust that it will not be necessary for me to go over so painful a story again.\"\n\n\"Any questions, Mr. Holmes?\" asked Hopkins.\n\n\"I will not impose any further tax upon Lady Brackenstall's patience and time,\" said Holmes. \"Before I go into the dining-room, I should like to hear your experience.\" He looked at the maid.\n\n\"I saw the men before ever they came into the house,\" said she. \"As I sat by my bedroom window I saw three men in the moonlight down by the lodge gate yonder, but I thought nothing of it at the time. It was more than an hour after that I heard my mistress scream, and down I ran, to find her, poor lamb, just as she says, and him on the floor, with his blood and brains over the room. It was enough to drive a woman out of her wits, tied there, and her very dress spotted with him, but she never wanted courage, did Miss Mary Fraser of Adelaide, and Lady Brackenstall of Abbey Grange hasn't learned new ways. You've questioned her long enough, you gentlemen, and now she is coming to her own room, just with her old Theresa, to get the rest that she badly needs.\"\n\nWith a motherly tenderness the gaunt woman put her arm round her mistress and led her from the room.\n\n\"She has been with her all her life,\" said Hopkins. \"Nursed her as a baby, and came with her to England when they first left Australia, eighteen months ago. Theresa Wright is her name, and the kind of maid you don't pick up nowadays. This way, Mr. Holmes, if you please!\"\n\nThe keen interest had passed out of Holmes's expressive face, and I knew that with the mystery all the charm of the case had departed. There still remained an arrest to be effected, but what were these commonplace rogues that he should soil his hands with them? An abstruse and learned specialist who finds that he has been called in for a case of measles would experience something of the annoyance which I read in my friend's eyes. Yet the scene in the dining-room of the Abbey Grange was sufficiently strange to arrest his attention and to recall his waning interest.\n\nIt was a very large and high chamber, with carved oak ceiling, oaken panelling, and a fine array of deer's heads and ancient weapons around the walls. At the further end from the door was the high French window of which we had heard. Three smaller windows on the right-hand side filled the apartment with cold winter sunshine. On the left was a large, deep fireplace, with a massive, overhanging oak mantelpiece. Beside the fireplace was a heavy oaken chair with arms and crossbars at the bottom. In and out through the open woodwork was woven a crimson cord, which was secured at each side to the crosspiece below. In releasing the lady, the cord had been slipped off her, but the knots with which it had been secured still remained. These details only struck our attention afterwards, for our thoughts were entirely absorbed by the terrible object which lay upon the tigerskin hearthrug in front of the fire.\n\nIt was the body of a tall, well-made man, about forty years of age. He lay upon his back, his face upturned, with his white teeth grinning through his short, black beard. His two clenched hands were raised above his head, and a heavy, blackthorn stick lay across them. His dark, handsome, aquiline features were convulsed into a spasm of vindictive hatred, which had set his dead face in a terribly fiendish expression. He had evidently been in his bed when the alarm had broken out, for he wore a foppish, embroidered nightshirt, and his bare feet projected from his trousers. His head was horribly injured, and the whole room bore witness to the savage ferocity of the blow which had struck him down. Beside him lay the heavy poker, bent into a curve by the concussion. Holmes examined both it and the indescribable wreck which it had wrought.\n\n\"He must be a powerful man, this elder Randall,\" he remarked.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Hopkins. \"I have some record of the fellow, and he is a rough customer.\"\n\n\"You should have no difficulty in getting him.\"\n\n\"Not the slightest. We have been on the look-out for him, and there was some idea that he had got away to America. Now that we know that the gang are here, I don't see how they can escape. We have the news at every seaport already, and a reward will be offered before evening. What beats me is how they could have done so mad a thing, knowing that the lady could describe them and that we could not fail to recognize the description.\"\n\n\"Exactly. One would have expected that they would silence Lady Brackenstall as well.\"\n\n\"They may not have realized,\" I suggested, \"that she had recovered from her faint.\"\n\n\"That is likely enough. If she seemed to be senseless, they would not take her life. What about this poor fellow, Hopkins? I seem to have heard some queer stories about him.\"\n\n\"He was a good-hearted man when he was sober, but a perfect fiend when he was drunk, or rather when he was half drunk, for he seldom really went the whole way. The devil seemed to be in him at such times, and he was capable of anything. From what I hear, in spite of all his wealth and his title, he very nearly came our way once or twice. There was a scandal about his drenching a dog with petroleum and setting it on fire\u2014her ladyship's dog, to make the matter worse\u2014and that was only hushed up with difficulty. Then he threw a decanter at that maid, Theresa Wright\u2014there was trouble about that. On the whole, and between ourselves, it will be a brighter house without him. What are you looking at now?\"\n\nHolmes was down on his knees, examining with great attention the knots upon the red cord with which the lady had been secured. Then he carefully scrutinized the broken and frayed end where it had snapped off when the burglar had dragged it down.\n\n\"When this was pulled down, the bell in the kitchen must have rung loudly,\" he remarked.\n\n\"No one could hear it. The kitchen stands right at the back of the house.\"\n\n\"How did the burglar know no one would hear it? How dared he pull at a bellrope in that reckless fashion?\"\n\n\"Exactly, Mr. Holmes, exactly. You put the very question which I have asked myself again and again. There can be no doubt that this fellow must have known the house and its habits. He must have perfectly understood that the servants would all be in bed at that comparatively early hour, and that no one could possibly hear a bell ring in the kitchen. Therefore, he must have been in close league with one of the servants. Surely that is evident. But there are eight servants, and all of good character.\"\n\n\"Other things being equal,\" said Holmes, \"one would suspect the one at whose head the master threw a decanter. And yet that would involve treachery towards the mistress to whom this woman seems devoted. Well, well, the point is a minor one, and when you have Randall you will probably find no difficulty in securing his accomplice. The lady's story certainly seems to be corroborated, if it needed corroboration, by every detail which we see before us.\" He walked to the French window and threw it open. \"There are no signs here, but the ground is iron hard, and one would not expect them. I see that these candles in the mantelpiece have been lighted.\"\n\n\"Yes, it was by their light, and that of the lady's bedroom candle, that the burglars saw their way about.\"\n\n\"And what did they take?\"\n\n\"Well, they did not take much\u2014only half a dozen articles of plate off the sideboard. Lady Brackenstall thinks that they were themselves so disturbed by the death of Sir Eustace that they did not ransack the house, as they would otherwise have done.\"\n\n\"No doubt that is true, and yet they drank some wine, I understand.\"\n\n\"To steady their nerves.\"\n\n\"Exactly. These three glasses upon the sideboard have been untouched, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Yes, and the bottle stands as they left it.\"\n\n\"Let us look at it. Halloa, halloa! What is this?\"\n\nThe three glasses were grouped together, all of them tinged with wine, and one of them containing some dregs of beeswing. The bottle stood near them, two-thirds full, and beside it lay a long, deeply stained cork. Its appearance and the dust upon the bottle showed that it was no common vintage which the murderers had enjoyed.\n\nA change had come over Holmes's manner. He had lost his listless expression, and again I saw an alert light of interest in his keen, deep-set eyes. He raised the cork and examined it minutely.\n\n\"How did they draw it?\" he asked.\n\nHopkins pointed to a half-opened drawer. In it lay some table linen and a large corkscrew.\n\n\"Did Lady Brackenstall say that screw was used?\"\n\n\"No, you remember that she was senseless at the moment when the bottle was opened.\"\n\n\"Quite so. As a matter of fact, that screw was not used. This bottle was opened by a pocket screw, probably contained in a knife, and not more than an inch and a half long. If you will examine the top of the cork, you will observe that the screw was driven in three times before the cork was extracted. It has never been transfixed. This long screw would have transfixed it and drawn it up with a single pull. When you catch this fellow, you will find that he has one of these multiplex knives in his possession.\"\n\n\"Excellent!\" said Hopkins.\n\n\"But these glasses do puzzle me, I confess. Lady Brackenstall actually saw the three men drinking, did she not?\"\n\n\"Yes; she was clear about that.\"\n\n\"Then there is an end of it. What more is to be said? And yet, you must admit, that the three glasses are very remarkable. Hopkins. What? You see nothing remarkable? Well, well, let it pass. Perhaps, when a man has special knowledge and special powers like my own, it rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a simpler one is at hand. Of course, it must be a mere chance about the glasses. Well, good-morning, Hopkins. I don't see that I can be of any use to you, and you appear to have your case very clear. You will let me know when Randall is arrested, and any further developments which may occur. I trust that I shall soon have to congratulate you upon a successful conclusion. Come, Watson, I fancy that we may employ ourselves more profitably at home.\"\n\nDuring our return journey, I could see by Holmes's face that he was much puzzled by something which he had observed. Every now and then, by an effort, he would throw off the impression, and talk as if the matter were clear, but then his doubts would settle down upon him again, and his knitted brows and abstracted eyes would show that his thoughts had gone back once more to the great dining-room of the Abbey Grange, in which this midnight tragedy had been enacted. At last, by a sudden impulse, just as our train was crawling out of a suburban station, he sprang on to the platform and pulled me out after him.\n\n\"Excuse me, my dear fellow,\" said he, as we watched the rear carriages of our train disappearing round a curve, \"I am sorry to make you the victim of what may seem a mere whim, but on my life, Watson, I simply can't leave that case in this condition. Every instinct that I possess cries out against it. It's wrong\u2014it's all wrong\u2014I'll swear that it's wrong. And yet the lady's story was complete, the maid's corroboration was sufficient, the detail was fairly exact. What have I to put up against that? Three wineglasses, that is all. But if I had not taken things for granted, if I had examined everything with care which I should have shown had we approached the case de novo and had no cut-and-dried story to warp my mind, should I not then have found something more definite to go upon? Of course I should. Sit down on this bench, Watson, until a train for Chiselhurst arrives, and allow me to lay the evidence before you, imploring you in the first instance to dismiss from your mind the idea that anything which the maid or her mistress may have said must necessarily be true. The lady's charming personality must not be permitted to warp our judgment.\n\n\"Surely there are details in her story which, if we looked at in cold blood, would excite our suspicion. These burglars made a considerable haul at Sydenham a fortnight ago. Some account of them and of their appearance was in the papers, and would naturally occur to anyone who wished to invent a story in which imaginary robbers should play a part. As a matter of fact, burglars who have done a good stroke of business are, as a rule, only too glad to enjoy the proceeds in peace and quiet without embarking on another perilous undertaking. Again, it is unusual for burglars to operate at so early an hour, it is unusual for burglars to strike a lady to prevent her screaming, since one would imagine that was the sure way to make her scream, it is unusual for them to commit murder when their numbers are sufficient to overpower one man, it is unusual for them to be content with a limited plunder when there was much more within their reach, and finally, I should say, that it was very unusual for such men to leave a bottle half empty. How do all these unusuals strike you, Watson?\"\n\n\"Their cumulative effect is certainly considerable, and yet each of them is quite possible in itself. The most unusual thing of all, as it seems to me, is that the lady should be tied to the chair.\"\n\n\"Well, I am not so clear about that, Watson, for it is evident that they must either kill her or else secure her in such a way that she could not give immediate notice of their escape. But at any rate I have shown, have I not, that there is a certain element of improbability about the lady's story? And now, on the top of this, comes the incident of the wineglasses.\"\n\n\"What about the wineglasses?\"\n\n\"Can you see them in your mind's eye?\"\n\n\"I see them clearly.\"\n\n\"We are told that three men drank from them. Does that strike you as likely?\"\n\n\"Why not? There was wine in each glass.\"\n\n\"Exactly, but there was beeswing only in one glass. You must have noticed that fact. What does that suggest to your mind?\"\n\n\"The last glass filled would be most likely to contain beeswing.\"\n\n\"Not at all. The bottle was full of it, and it is inconceivable that the first two glasses were clear and the third heavily charged with it. There are two possible explanations, and only two. One is that after the second glass was filled the bottle was violently agitated, and so the third glass received the beeswing. That does not appear probable. No, no, I am sure that I am right.\"\n\n\"What, then, do you suppose?\"\n\n\"That only two glasses were used, and that the dregs of both were poured into a third glass, so as to give the false impression that three people had been here. In that way all the beeswing would be in the last glass, would it not? Yes. I am convinced that this is so. But if I have hit upon the true explanation of this one small phenomenon, then in an instant the case rises from the commonplace to the exceedingly remarkable, for it can only mean that Lady Brackenstall and her maid have deliberately lied to us, that not one word of their story is to be believed, that they have some very strong reason for covering the real criminal, and that we must construct our case for ourselves without any help from them. That is the mission which now lies before us, and here, Watson, is the Sydenham train.\"\n\nThe household at the Abbey Grange were much surprised at our return, but Sherlock Holmes, finding that Stanley Hopkins had gone off to report to headquarters, took possession of the dining-room, locked the door upon the inside, and devoted himself for two hours to one of those minute and laborious investigations which form the solid basis on which his brilliant edifices of deduction were reared. Seated in a corner like an interested student who observes the demonstration of his professor, I followed every step of that remarkable research. The window, the curtains, the carpet, the chair, the rope\u2014each in turn was minutely examined and duly pondered. The body of the unfortunate baronet had been removed, and all else remained as we had seen it in the morning. Finally, to my astonishment, Holmes climbed up on to the massive mantelpiece. Far above his head hung the few inches of red cord which were still attached to the wire. For a long time he gazed upward at it, and then in an attempt to get nearer to it he rested his knee upon a wooden bracket on the wall. This brought his hand within a few inches of the broken end of the rope, but it was not this so much as the bracket itself which seemed to engage his attention. Finally, he sprang down with an ejaculation of satisfaction.\n\n\"It's all right, Watson,\" said he. \"We have got our case\u2014one of the most remarkable in our collection. But, dear me, how slow-witted I have been, and how nearly I have committed the blunder of my lifetime! Now, I think that, with a few missing links, my chain is almost complete.\"\n\n\"You have got your men?\"\n\n\"Man, Watson, man. Only one, but a very formidable person. Strong as a lion\u2014witness the blow that bent that poker! Six foot three in height, active as a squirrel, dexterous with his fingers, finally, remarkably quick-witted, for this whole ingenious story is of his concoction. Yes, Watson, we have come upon the handiwork of a very remarkable individual. And yet, in that bellrope, he has given us a clue which should not have left us a doubt.\"\n\n\"Where was the clue?\"\n\n\"Well, if you were to pull down a bellrope, Watson, where would you expect it to break? Surely at the spot where it is attached to the wire. Why should it break three inches from the top, as this one has done?\"\n\n\"Because it is frayed there?\"\n\n\"Exactly. This end, which we can examine, is frayed. He was cunning enough to do that with his knife. But the other end is not frayed. You could not observe that from here, but if you were on the mantelpiece you would see that it is cut clean off without any mark of fraying whatever. You can reconstruct what occurred. The man needed the rope. He would not tear it down for fear of giving the alarm by ringing the bell. What did he do? He sprang up on the mantelpiece, could not quite reach it, put his knee on the bracket\u2014you will see the impression in the dust\u2014and so got his knife to bear upon the cord. I could not reach the place by at least three inches\u2014from which I infer that he is at least three inches a bigger man than I. Look at that mark upon the seat of the oaken chair! What is it?\"\n\n\"Blood.\"\n\n\"Undoubtedly it is blood. This alone puts the lady's story out of court. If she were seated on the chair when the crime was done, how comes that mark? No, no, she was placed in the chair after the death of her husband. I'll wager that the black dress shows a corresponding mark to this. We have not yet met our Waterloo, Watson, but this is our Marengo, for it begins in defeat and ends in victory. I should like now to have a few words with the nurse, Theresa. We must be wary for a while, if we are to get the information which we want.\"\n\nShe was an interesting person, this stern Australian nurse\u2014taciturn, suspicious, ungracious, it took some time before Holmes's pleasant manner and frank acceptance of all that she said thawed her into a corresponding amiability. She did not attempt to conceal her hatred for her late employer.\n\n\"Yes, sir, it is true that he threw the decanter at me. I heard him call my mistress a name, and I told him that he would not dare to speak so if her brother had been there. Then it was that he threw it at me. He might have thrown a dozen if he had but left my bonny bird alone. He was forever ill-treating her, and she too proud to complain. She will not even tell me all that he has done to her. She never told me of those marks on her arm that you saw this morning, but I know very well that they come from a stab with a hatpin. The sly devil\u2014God forgive me that I should speak of him so, now that he is dead! But a devil he was, if ever one walked the earth. He was all honey when first we met him\u2014only eighteen months ago, and we both feel as if it were eighteen years. She had only just arrived in London. Yes, it was her first voyage\u2014she had never been from home before. He won her with his title and his money and his false London ways. If she made a mistake she has paid for it, if ever a woman did. What month did we meet him? Well, I tell you it was just after we arrived. We arrived in June, and it was July. They were married in January of last year. Yes, she is down in the morning-room again, and I have no doubt she will see you, but you must not ask too much of her, for she has gone through all that flesh and blood will stand.\"\n\nLady Brackenstall was reclining on the same couch, but looked brighter than before. The maid had entered with us, and began once more to foment the bruise upon her mistress's brow.\n\n\"I hope,\" said the lady, \"that you have not come to cross-examine me again?\"\n\n\"No,\" Holmes answered, in his gentlest voice, \"I will not cause you any unnecessary trouble, Lady Brackenstall, and my whole desire is to make things easy for you, for I am convinced that you are a much-tried woman. If you will treat me as a friend and trust me, you may find that I will justify your trust.\"\n\n\"What do you want me to do?\"\n\n\"To tell me the truth.\"\n\n\"Mr. Holmes!\"\n\n\"No, no, Lady Brackenstall\u2014it is no use. You may have heard of any little reputation which I possess. I will stake it all on the fact that your story is an absolute fabrication.\"\n\nMistress and maid were both staring at Holmes with pale faces and frightened eyes.\n\n\"You are an impudent fellow!\" cried Theresa. \"Do you mean to say that my mistress has told a lie?\"\n\nHolmes rose from his chair.\n\n\"Have you nothing to tell me?\"\n\n\"I have told you everything.\"\n\n\"Think once more, Lady Brackenstall. Would it not be better to be frank?\"\n\nFor an instant there was hesitation in her beautiful face. Then some new strong thought caused it to set like a mask.\n\n\"I have told you all I know.\"\n\nHolmes took his hat and shrugged his shoulders. \"I am sorry,\" he said, and without another word we left the room and the house. There was a pond in the park, and to this my friend led the way. It was frozen over, but a single hole was left for the convenience of a solitary swan. Holmes gazed at it, and then passed on to the lodge gate. There he scribbled a short note for Stanley Hopkins, and left it with the lodge-keeper.\n\n\"It may be a hit, or it may be a miss, but we are bound to do something for friend Hopkins, just to justify this second visit,\" said he. \"I will not quite take him into my confidence yet. I think our next scene of operations must be the shipping office of the Adelaide-Southampton line, which stands at the end of Pall Mall, if I remember right. There is a second line of steamers which connect South Australia with England, but we will draw the larger cover first.\"\n\nHolmes's card sent in to the manager ensured instant attention, and he was not long in acquiring all the information he needed. In June of '95, only one of their line had reached a home port. It was the Rock of Gibraltar, their largest and best boat. A reference to the passenger list showed that Miss Fraser, of Adelaide, with her maid had made the voyage in her. The boat was now somewhere south of the Suez Canal on her way to Australia. Her officers were the same as in '95, with one exception. The first officer, Mr. Jack Crocker, had been made a captain and was to take charge of their new ship, the Bass Rock, sailing in two days' time from Southampton. He lived at Sydenham, but he was likely to be in that morning for instructions, if we cared to wait for him.\n\nNo, Mr. Holmes had no desire to see him, but would be glad to know more about his record and character.\n\nHis record was magnificent. There was not an officer in the fleet to touch him. As to his character, he was reliable on duty, but a wild, desperate fellow off the deck of his ship\u2014hot-headed, excitable, but loyal, honest, and kind-hearted. That was the pith of the information with which Holmes left the office of the Adelaide-Southampton company. Thence he drove to Scotland Yard, but, instead of entering, he sat in his cab with his brows drawn down, lost in profound thought. Finally he drove round to the Charing Cross telegraph office, sent off a message, and then, at last, we made for Baker Street once more.\n\n\"No, I couldn't do it, Watson,\" said he, as we reentered our room. \"Once that warrant was made out, nothing on earth would save him. Once or twice in my career I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience. Let us know a little more before we act.\"\n\nBefore evening, we had a visit from Inspector Stanley Hopkins. Things were not going very well with him.\n\n\"I believe that you are a wizard, Mr. Holmes. I really do sometimes think that you have powers that are not human. Now, how on earth could you know that the stolen silver was at the bottom of that pond?\"\n\n\"I didn't know it.\"\n\n\"But you told me to examine it.\"\n\n\"You got it, then?\"\n\n\"Yes, I got it.\"\n\n\"I am very glad if I have helped you.\"\n\n\"But you haven't helped me. You have made the affair far more difficult. What sort of burglars are they who steal silver and then throw it into the nearest pond?\"\n\n\"It was certainly rather eccentric behaviour. I was merely going on the idea that if the silver had been taken by persons who did not want it\u2014who merely took it for a blind, as it were\u2014then they would naturally be anxious to get rid of it.\"\n\n\"But why should such an idea cross your mind?\"\n\n\"Well, I thought it was possible. When they came out through the French window, there was the pond with one tempting little hole in the ice, right in front of their noses. Could there be a better hiding-place?\"\n\n\"Ah, a hiding-place\u2014that is better!\" cried Stanley Hopkins. \"Yes, yes, I see it all now! It was early, there were folk upon the roads, they were afraid of being seen with the silver, so they sank it in the pond, intending to return for it when the coast was clear. Excellent, Mr. Holmes\u2014that is better than your idea of a blind.\"\n\n\"Quite so, you have got an admirable theory. I have no doubt that my own ideas were quite wild, but you must admit that they have ended in discovering the silver.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir\u2014yes. It was all your doing. But I have had a bad setback.\"\n\n\"A setback?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Holmes. The Randall gang were arrested in New York this morning.\"\n\n\"Dear me, Hopkins! That is certainly rather against your theory that they committed a murder in Kent last night.\"\n\n\"It is fatal, Mr. Holmes\u2014absolutely fatal. Still, there are other gangs of three besides the Randalls, or it may be some new gang of which the police have never heard.\"\n\n\"Quite so, it is perfectly possible. What, are you off?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Holmes, there is no rest for me until I have got to the bottom of the business. I suppose you have no hint to give me?\"\n\n\"I have given you one.\"\n\n\"Which?\"\n\n\"Well, I suggested a blind.\"\n\n\"But why, Mr. Holmes, why?\"\n\n\"Ah, that's the question, of course. But I commend the idea to your mind. You might possibly find that there was something in it. You won't stop for dinner? Well, good-bye, and let us know how you get on.\"\n\nDinner was over, and the table cleared before Holmes alluded to the matter again. He had lit his pipe and held his slippered feet to the cheerful blaze of the fire. Suddenly he looked at his watch.\n\n\"I expect developments, Watson.\"\n\n\"When?\"\n\n\"Now\u2014within a few minutes. I dare say you thought I acted rather badly to Stanley Hopkins just now?\"\n\n\"I trust your judgment.\"\n\n\"A very sensible reply, Watson. You must look at it this way: what I know is unofficial, what he knows is official. I have the right to private judgment, but he has none. He must disclose all, or he is a traitor to his service. In a doubtful case I would not put him in so painful a position, and so I reserve my information until my own mind is clear upon the matter.\"\n\n\"But when will that be?\"\n\n\"The time has come. You will now be present at the last scene of a remarkable little drama.\"\n\nThere was a sound upon the stairs, and our door was opened to admit as fine a specimen of manhood as ever passed through it. He was a very tall young man, golden-moustached, blue-eyed, with a skin which had been burned by tropical suns, and a springy step, which showed that the huge frame was as active as it was strong. He closed the door behind him, and then he stood with clenched hands and heaving breast, choking down some overmastering emotion.\n\n\"Sit down, Captain Crocker. You got my telegram?\"\n\nOur visitor sank into an armchair and looked from one to the other of us with questioning eyes.\n\n\"I got your telegram, and I came at the hour you said. I heard that you had been down to the office. There was no getting away from you. Let's hear the worst. What are you going to do with me? Arrest me? Speak out, man! You can't sit there and play with me like a cat with a mouse.\"\n\n\"Give him a cigar,\" said Holmes. \"Bite on that, Captain Crocker, and don't let your nerves run away with you. I should not sit here smoking with you if I thought that you were a common criminal, you may be sure of that. Be frank with me and we may do some good. Play tricks with me, and I'll crush you.\"\n\n\"What do you wish me to do?\"\n\n\"To give me a true account of all that happened at the Abbey Grange last night\u2014a true account, mind you, with nothing added and nothing taken off. I know so much already that if you go one inch off the straight, I'll blow this police whistle from my window and the affair goes out of my hands forever.\"\n\nThe sailor thought for a little. Then he struck his leg with his great sun burned hand.\n\n\"I'll chance it,\" he cried. \"I believe you are a man of your word, and a white man, and I'll tell you the whole story. But one thing I will say first. So far as I am concerned, I regret nothing and I fear nothing, and I would do it all again and be proud of the job. Damn the beast, if he had as many lives as a cat, he would owe them all to me! But it's the lady, Mary\u2014Mary Fraser\u2014for never will I call her by that accursed name. When I think of getting her into trouble, I who would give my life just to bring one smile to her dear face, it's that that turns my soul into water. And yet\u2014and yet\u2014what less could I do? I'll tell you my story, gentlemen, and then I'll ask you, as man to man, what less could I do?\n\n\"I must go back a bit. You seem to know everything, so I expect that you know that I met her when she was a passenger and I was first officer of the Rock of Gibraltar. From the first day I met her, she was the only woman to me. Every day of that voyage I loved her more, and many a time since have I kneeled down in the darkness of the night watch and kissed the deck of that ship because I knew her dear feet had trod it. She was never engaged to me. She treated me as fairly as ever a woman treated a man. I have no complaint to make. It was all love on my side, and all good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we parted she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man.\n\n\"Next time I came back from sea, I heard of her marriage. Well, why shouldn't she marry whom she liked? Title and money\u2014who could carry them better than she? She was born for all that is beautiful and dainty. I didn't grieve over her marriage. I was not such a selfish hound as that. I just rejoiced that good luck had come her way, and that she had not thrown herself away on a penniless sailor. That's how I loved Mary Fraser.\n\n\"Well, I never thought to see her again, but last voyage I was promoted, and the new boat was not yet launched, so I had to wait for a couple of months with my people at Sydenham. One day out in a country lane I met Theresa Wright, her old maid. She told me all about her, about him, about everything. I tell you, gentlemen, it nearly drove me mad. This drunken hound, that he should dare to raise his hand to her, whose boots he was not worthy to lick! I met Theresa again. Then I met Mary herself\u2014and met her again. Then she would meet me no more. But the other day I had a notice that I was to start on my voyage within a week, and I determined that I would see her once before I left. Theresa was always my friend, for she loved Mary and hated this villain almost as much as I did. From her I learned the ways of the house. Mary used to sit up reading in her own little room downstairs. I crept round there last night and scratched at the window. At first she would not open to me, but in her heart I know that now she loves me, and she could not leave me in the frosty night. She whispered to me to come round to the big front window, and I found it open before me, so as to let me into the dining-room. Again I heard from her own lips things that made my blood boil, and again I cursed this brute who mishandled the woman I loved. Well, gentlemen, I was standing with her just inside the window, in all innocence, as God is my judge, when he rushed like a madman into the room, called her the vilest name that a man could use to a woman, and welted her across the face with the stick he had in his hand. I had sprung for the poker, and it was a fair fight between us. See here, on my arm, where his first blow fell. Then it was my turn, and I went through him as if he had been a rotten pumpkin. Do you think I was sorry? Not I! It was his life or mine, but far more than that, it was his life or hers, for how could I leave her in the power of this madman? That was how I killed him. Was I wrong? Well, then, what would either of you gentlemen have done, if you had been in my position?\"\n\n\"She had screamed when he struck her, and that brought old Theresa down from the room above. There was a bottle of wine on the sideboard, and I opened it and poured a little between Mary's lips, for she was half dead with shock. Then I took a drop myself. Theresa was as cool as ice, and it was her plot as much as mine. We must make it appear that burglars had done the thing. Theresa kept on repeating our story to her mistress, while I swarmed up and cut the rope of the bell. Then I lashed her in her chair, and frayed out the end of the rope to make it look natural, else they would wonder how in the world a burglar could have got up there to cut it. Then I gathered up a few plates and pots of silver, to carry out the idea of the robbery, and there I left them, with orders to give the alarm when I had a quarter of an hour's start. I dropped the silver into the pond, and made off for Sydenham, feeling that for once in my life I had done a real good night's work. And that's the truth and the whole truth, Mr. Holmes, if it costs me my neck.\"\n\nHolmes smoked for some time in silence. Then he crossed the room, and shook our visitor by the hand.\n\n\"That's what I think,\" said he. \"I know that every word is true, for you have hardly said a word which I did not know. No one but an acrobat or a sailor could have got up to that bellrope from the bracket, and no one but a sailor could have made the knots with which the cord was fastened to the chair. Only once had this lady been brought into contact with sailors, and that was on her voyage, and it was someone of her own class of life, since she was trying hard to shield him, and so showing that she loved him. You see how easy it was for me to lay my hands upon you when once I had started upon the right trail.\"\n\n\"I thought the police never could have seen through our dodge.\"\n\n\"And the police haven't, nor will they, to the best of my belief. Now, look here, Captain Crocker, this is a very serious matter, though I am willing to admit that you acted under the most extreme provocation to which any man could be subjected. I am not sure that in defence of your own life your action will not be pronounced legitimate. However, that is for a British jury to decide. Meanwhile I have so much sympathy for you that, if you choose to disappear in the next twenty-four hours. I will promise you that no one will hinder you.\"\n\n\"And then it will all come out?\"\n\n\"Certainly it will come out.\"\n\nThe sailor flushed with anger.\n\n\"What sort of proposal is that to make a man? I know enough of law to understand that Mary would be held as accomplice. Do you think I would leave her alone to face the music while I slunk away? No, sir, let them do their worst upon me, but for heaven's sake, Mr. Holmes, find some way of keeping my poor Mary out of the courts.\"\n\nHolmes for a second time held out his hand to the sailor.\n\n\"I was only testing you, and you ring true every time. Well, it is a great responsibility that I take upon myself, but I have given Hopkins an excellent hint, and if he can't avail himself of it I can do no more. See here, Captain Crocker, we'll do this in due form of law. You are the prisoner. Watson, you are a British jury, and I never met a man who was more eminently fitted to represent one. I am the judge. Now, gentleman of the jury, you have heard the evidence. Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty?\"\n\n\"Not guilty, my lord,\" said I.\n\n\"Vox populi, vox Dei. You are acquitted, Captain Crocker. So long as the law does not find some other victim you are safe from me. Come back to this lady in a year, and may her future and yours justify us in the judgment which we have pronounced this night!\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND STAIN", + "text": "I had intended \"The Adventure of the Abbey Grange\" to be the last of those exploits of my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, which I should ever communicate to the public. This resolution of mine was not due to any lack of material, since I have notes of many hundreds of cases to which I have never alluded, nor was it caused by any waning interest on the part of my readers in the singular personality and unique methods of this remarkable man. The real reason lay in the reluctance which Mr. Holmes has shown to the continued publication of his experiences. So long as he was in actual professional practice the records of his successes were of some practical value to him, but since he has definitely retired from London and betaken himself to study and bee-farming on the Sussex Downs, notoriety has become hateful to him, and he has peremptorily requested that his wishes in this matter should be strictly observed. It was only upon my representing to him that I had given a promise that \"The Adventure of the Second Stain\" should be published when the times were ripe, and pointing out to him that it is only appropriate that this long series of episodes should culminate in the most important international case which he has ever been called upon to handle, that I at last succeeded in obtaining his consent that a carefully guarded account of the incident should at last be laid before the public. If in telling the story I seem to be somewhat vague in certain details, the public will readily understand that there is an excellent reason for my reticence.\n\nIt was, then, in a year, and even in a decade, that shall be nameless, that upon one Tuesday morning in autumn we found two visitors of European fame within the walls of our humble room in Baker Street. The one, austere, high-nosed, eagle-eyed, and dominant, was none other than the illustrious Lord Bellinger, twice Premier of Britain. The other, dark, clear-cut, and elegant, hardly yet of middle age, and endowed with every beauty of body and of mind, was the Right Honourable Trelawney Hope, Secretary for European Affairs, and the most rising statesman in the country. They sat side by side upon our paper-littered settee, and it was easy to see from their worn and anxious faces that it was business of the most pressing importance which had brought them. The Premier's thin, blue-veined hands were clasped tightly over the ivory head of his umbrella, and his gaunt, ascetic face looked gloomily from Holmes to me. The European Secretary pulled nervously at his moustache and fidgeted with the seals of his watch-chain.\n\n\"When I discovered my loss, Mr. Holmes, which was at eight o'clock this morning, I at once informed the Prime Minister. It was at his suggestion that we have both come to you.\"\n\n\"Have you informed the police?\"\n\n\"No, sir,\" said the Prime Minister, with the quick, decisive manner for which he was famous. \"We have not done so, nor is it possible that we should do so. To inform the police must, in the long run, mean to inform the public. This is what we particularly desire to avoid.\"\n\n\"And why, sir?\"\n\n\"Because the document in question is of such immense importance that its publication might very easily\u2014I might almost say probably\u2014lead to European complications of the utmost moment. It is not too much to say that peace or war may hang upon the issue. Unless its recovery can be attended with the utmost secrecy, then it may as well not be recovered at all, for all that is aimed at by those who have taken it is that its contents should be generally known.\"\n\n\"I understand. Now, Mr. Trelawney Hope, I should be much obliged if you would tell me exactly the circumstances under which this document disappeared.\"\n\n\"That can be done in a very few words, Mr. Holmes. The letter\u2014for it was a letter from a foreign potentate\u2014was received six days ago. It was of such importance that I have never left it in my safe, but I have taken it across each evening to my house in Whitehall Terrace, and kept it in my bedroom in a locked despatch-box. It was there last night. Of that I am certain. I actually opened the box while I was dressing for dinner and saw the document inside. This morning it was gone. The despatch-box had stood beside the glass upon my dressing-table all night. I am a light sleeper, and so is my wife. We are both prepared to swear that no one could have entered the room during the night. And yet I repeat that the paper is gone.\"\n\n\"What time did you dine?\"\n\n\"Half-past seven.\"\n\n\"How long was it before you went to bed?\"\n\n\"My wife had gone to the theatre. I waited up for her. It was half-past eleven before we went to our room.\"\n\n\"Then for four hours the despatch-box had lain unguarded?\"\n\n\"No one is ever permitted to enter that room save the house-maid in the morning, and my valet, or my wife's maid, during the rest of the day. They are both trusty servants who have been with us for some time. Besides, neither of them could possibly have known that there was anything more valuable than the ordinary departmental papers in my despatch-box.\"\n\n\"Who did know of the existence of that letter?\"\n\n\"No one in the house.\"\n\n\"Surely your wife knew?\"\n\n\"No, sir. I had said nothing to my wife until I missed the paper this morning.\"\n\nThe Premier nodded approvingly.\n\n\"I have long known, sir, how high is your sense of public duty,\" said he. \"I am convinced that in the case of a secret of this importance it would rise superior to the most intimate domestic ties.\"\n\nThe European Secretary bowed.\n\n\"You do me no more than justice, sir. Until this morning I have never breathed one word to my wife upon this matter.\"\n\n\"Could she have guessed?\"\n\n\"No, Mr. Holmes, she could not have guessed\u2014nor could anyone have guessed.\"\n\n\"Have you lost any documents before?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"Who is there in England who did know of the existence of this letter?\"\n\n\"Each member of the Cabinet was informed of it yesterday, but the pledge of secrecy which attends every Cabinet meeting was increased by the solemn warning which was given by the Prime Minister. Good heavens, to think that within a few hours I should myself have lost it!\" His handsome face was distorted with a spasm of despair, and his hands tore at his hair. For a moment we caught a glimpse of the natural man, impulsive, ardent, keenly sensitive. The next the aristocratic mask was replaced, and the gentle voice had returned. \"Besides the members of the Cabinet there are two, or possibly three, departmental officials who know of the letter. No one else in England, Mr. Holmes, I assure you.\"\n\n\"But abroad?\"\n\n\"I believe that no one abroad has seen it save the man who wrote it. I am well convinced that his Ministers\u2014that the usual official channels have not been employed.\"\n\nHolmes considered for some little time.\n\n\"Now, sir, I must ask you more particularly what this document is, and why its disappearance should have such momentous consequences?\"\n\nThe two statesmen exchanged a quick glance and the Premier's shaggy eyebrows gathered in a frown.\n\n\"Mr. Holmes, the envelope is a long, thin one of pale blue colour. There is a seal of red wax stamped with a crouching lion. It is addressed in large, bold handwriting to\u2014\"\n\n\"I fear, sir,\" said Holmes, \"that, interesting and indeed essential as these details are, my inquiries must go more to the root of things. What was the letter?\"\n\n\"That is a State secret of the utmost importance, and I fear that I cannot tell you, nor do I see that it is necessary. If by the aid of the powers which you are said to possess you can find such an envelope as I describe with its enclosure, you will have deserved well of your country, and earned any reward which it lies in our power to bestow.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes rose with a smile.\n\n\"You are two of the most busy men in the country,\" said he, \"and in my own small way I have also a good many calls upon me. I regret exceedingly that I cannot help you in this matter, and any continuation of this interview would be a waste of time.\"\n\nThe Premier sprang to his feet with that quick, fierce gleam of his deep-set eyes before which a Cabinet has cowered. \"I am not accustomed, sir,\" he began, but mastered his anger and resumed his seat. For a minute or more we all sat in silence. Then the old statesman shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"We must accept your terms, Mr. Holmes. No doubt you are right, and it is unreasonable for us to expect you to act unless we give you our entire confidence.\"\n\n\"I agree with you,\" said the younger statesman.\n\n\"Then I will tell you, relying entirely upon your honour and that of your colleague, Dr. Watson. I may appeal to your patriotism also, for I could not imagine a greater misfortune for the country than that this affair should come out.\"\n\n\"You may safely trust us.\"\n\n\"The letter, then, is from a certain foreign potentate who has been ruffled by some recent Colonial developments of this country. It has been written hurriedly and upon his own responsibility entirely. Inquiries have shown that his Ministers know nothing of the matter. At the same time it is couched in so unfortunate a manner, and certain phrases in it are of so provocative a character, that its publication would undoubtedly lead to a most dangerous state of feeling in this country. There would be such a ferment, sir, that I do not hesitate to say that within a week of the publication of that letter this country would be involved in a great war.\"\n\nHolmes wrote a name upon a slip of paper and handed it to the Premier.\n\n\"Exactly. It was he. And it is this letter\u2014this letter which may well mean the expenditure of a thousand millions and the lives of a hundred thousand men\u2014which has become lost in this unaccountable fashion.\"\n\n\"Have you informed the sender?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, a cipher telegram has been despatched.\"\n\n\"Perhaps he desires the publication of the letter.\"\n\n\"No, sir, we have strong reason to believe that he already understands that he has acted in an indiscreet and hot-headed manner. It would be a greater blow to him and to his country than to us if this letter were to come out.\"\n\n\"If this is so, whose interest is it that the letter should come out? Why should anyone desire to steal it or to publish it?\"\n\n\"There, Mr. Holmes, you take me into regions of high international politics. But if you consider the European situation you will have no difficulty in perceiving the motive. The whole of Europe is an armed camp. There is a double league which makes a fair balance of military power. Great Britain holds the scales. If Britain were driven into war with one confederacy, it would assure the supremacy of the other confederacy, whether they joined in the war or not. Do you follow?\"\n\n\"Very clearly. It is then the interest of the enemies of this potentate to secure and publish this letter, so as to make a breach between his country and ours?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"And to whom would this document be sent if it fell into the hands of an enemy?\"\n\n\"To any of the great Chancelleries of Europe. It is probably speeding on its way thither at the present instant as fast as steam can take it.\"\n\nMr. Trelawney Hope dropped his head on his chest and groaned aloud. The Premier placed his hand kindly upon his shoulder.\n\n\"It is your misfortune, my dear fellow. No one can blame you. There is no precaution which you have neglected. Now, Mr. Holmes, you are in full possession of the facts. What course do you recommend?\"\n\nHolmes shook his head mournfully.\n\n\"You think, sir, that unless this document is recovered there will be war?\"\n\n\"I think it is very probable.\"\n\n\"Then, sir, prepare for war.\"\n\n\"That is a hard saying, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"Consider the facts, sir. It is inconceivable that it was taken after eleven-thirty at night, since I understand that Mr. Hope and his wife were both in the room from that hour until the loss was found out. It was taken, then, yesterday evening between seven-thirty and eleven-thirty, probably near the earlier hour, since whoever took it evidently knew that it was there and would naturally secure it as early as possible. Now, sir, if a document of this importance were taken at that hour, where can it be now? No one has any reason to retain it. It has been passed rapidly on to those who need it. What chance have we now to overtake or even to trace it? It is beyond our reach.\"\n\nThe Prime Minister rose from the settee.\n\n\"What you say is perfectly logical, Mr. Holmes. I feel that the matter is indeed out of our hands.\"\n\n\"Let us presume, for argument's sake, that the document was taken by the maid or by the valet\u2014\"\n\n\"They are both old and tried servants.\"\n\n\"I understand you to say that your room is on the second floor, that there is no entrance from without, and that from within no one could go up unobserved. It must, then, be somebody in the house who has taken it. To whom would the thief take it? To one of several international spies and secret agents, whose names are tolerably familiar to me. There are three who may be said to be the heads of their profession. I will begin my research by going round and finding if each of them is at his post. If one is missing\u2014especially if he has disappeared since last night\u2014we will have some indication as to where the document has gone.\"\n\n\"Why should he be missing?\" asked the European Secretary. \"He would take the letter to an Embassy in London, as likely as not.\"\n\n\"I fancy not. These agents work independently, and their relations with the Embassies are often strained.\"\n\nThe Prime Minister nodded his acquiescence.\n\n\"I believe you are right, Mr. Holmes. He would take so valuable a prize to headquarters with his own hands. I think that your course of action is an excellent one. Meanwhile, Hope, we cannot neglect all our other duties on account of this one misfortune. Should there be any fresh developments during the day we shall communicate with you, and you will no doubt let us know the results of your own inquiries.\"\n\nThe two statesmen bowed and walked gravely from the room. When our illustrious visitors had departed Holmes lit his pipe in silence and sat for some time lost in the deepest thought. I had opened the morning paper and was immersed in a sensational crime which had occurred in London the night before, when my friend gave an exclamation, sprang to his feet, and laid his pipe down upon the mantelpiece.\n\n\"Yes,\" said he, \"there is no better way of approaching it. The situation is desperate, but not hopeless. Even now, if we could be sure which of them has taken it, it is just possible that it has not yet passed out of his hands. After all, it is a question of money with these fellows, and I have the British treasury behind me. If it's on the market I'll buy it\u2014if it means another penny on the income-tax. It is conceivable that the fellow might hold it back to see what bids come from this side before he tries his luck on the other. There are only those three capable of playing so bold a game\u2014there are Oberstein, La Rothiere, and Eduardo Lucas. I will see each of them.\"\n\nI glanced at my morning paper.\n\n\"Is that Eduardo Lucas of Godolphin Street?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"You will not see him.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"He was murdered in his house last night.\"\n\nMy friend has so often astonished me in the course of our adventures that it was with a sense of exultation that I realized how completely I had astonished him. He stared in amazement, and then snatched the paper from my hands. This was the paragraph which I had been engaged in reading when he rose from his chair." + }, + { + "title": "MURDER IN WESTMINSTER", + "text": "A crime of mysterious character was committed last night at 16 Godolphin Street, one of the old-fashioned and secluded rows of eighteenth-century houses which lie between the river and the Abbey, almost in the shadow of the great Tower of the Houses of Parliament. This small but select mansion has been inhabited for some years by Mr. Eduardo Lucas, well known in society circles both on account of his charming personality and because he has the well-deserved reputation of being one of the best amateur tenors in the country. Mr. Lucas is an unmarried man, thirty-four years of age, and his establishment consists of Mrs. Pringle, an elderly housekeeper, and of Mitton, his valet. The former retires early and sleeps at the top of the house. The valet was out for the evening, visiting a friend at Hammersmith. From ten o'clock onward Mr. Lucas had the house to himself. What occurred during that time has not yet transpired, but at a quarter to twelve Police-constable Barrett, passing along Godolphin Street, observed that the door of No. 16 was ajar. He knocked, but received no answer. Perceiving a light in the front room, he advanced into the passage and again knocked, but without reply. He then pushed open the door and entered. The room was in a state of wild disorder, the furniture being all swept to one side, and one chair lying on its back in the centre. Beside this chair, and still grasping one of its legs, lay the unfortunate tenant of the house. He had been stabbed to the heart and must have died instantly. The knife with which the crime had been committed was a curved Indian dagger, plucked down from a trophy of Oriental arms which adorned one of the walls. Robbery does not appear to have been the motive of the crime, for there had been no attempt to remove the valuable contents of the room. Mr. Eduardo Lucas was so well known and popular that his violent and mysterious fate will arouse painful interest and intense sympathy in a widespread circle of friends.\n\n\"Well, Watson, what do you make of this?\" asked Holmes, after a long pause.\n\n\"It is an amazing coincidence.\"\n\n\"A coincidence! Here is one of the three men whom we had named as possible actors in this drama, and he meets a violent death during the very hours when we know that that drama was being enacted. The odds are enormous against its being coincidence. No figures could express them. No, my dear Watson, the two events are connected\u2014must be connected. It is for us to find the connection.\"\n\n\"But now the official police must know all.\"\n\n\"Not at all. They know all they see at Godolphin Street. They know\u2014and shall know\u2014nothing of Whitehall Terrace. Only we know of both events, and can trace the relation between them. There is one obvious point which would, in any case, have turned my suspicions against Lucas. Godolphin Street, Westminster, is only a few minutes' walk from Whitehall Terrace. The other secret agents whom I have named live in the extreme West End. It was easier, therefore, for Lucas than for the others to establish a connection or receive a message from the European Secretary's household\u2014a small thing, and yet where events are compressed into a few hours it may prove essential. Halloa! what have we here?\"\n\nMrs. Hudson had appeared with a lady's card upon her salver. Holmes glanced at it, raised his eyebrows, and handed it over to me.\n\n\"Ask Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope if she will be kind enough to step up,\" said he.\n\nA moment later our modest apartment, already so distinguished that morning, was further honoured by the entrance of the most lovely woman in London. I had often heard of the beauty of the youngest daughter of the Duke of Belminster, but no description of it, and no contemplation of colourless photographs, had prepared me for the subtle, delicate charm and the beautiful colouring of that exquisite head. And yet as we saw it that autumn morning, it was not its beauty which would be the first thing to impress the observer. The cheek was lovely but it was paled with emotion, the eyes were bright, but it was the brightness of fever, the sensitive mouth was tight and drawn in an effort after self-command. Terror\u2014not beauty\u2014was what sprang first to the eye as our fair visitor stood framed for an instant in the open door.\n\n\"Has my husband been here, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Yes, madam, he has been here.\"\n\n\"Mr. Holmes, I implore you not to tell him that I came here.\" Holmes bowed coldly, and motioned the lady to a chair.\n\n\"Your ladyship places me in a very delicate position. I beg that you will sit down and tell me what you desire, but I fear that I cannot make any unconditional promise.\"\n\nShe swept across the room and seated herself with her back to the window. It was a queenly presence\u2014tall, graceful, and intensely womanly.\n\n\"Mr. Holmes,\" she said\u2014and her white-gloved hands clasped and unclasped as she spoke\u2014\"I will speak frankly to you in the hopes that it may induce you to speak frankly in return. There is complete confidence between my husband and me on all matters save one. That one is politics. On this his lips are sealed. He tells me nothing. Now, I am aware that there was a most deplorable occurrence in our house last night. I know that a paper has disappeared. But because the matter is political my husband refuses to take me into his complete confidence. Now it is essential\u2014essential, I say\u2014that I should thoroughly understand it. You are the only other person, save only these politicians, who knows the true facts. I beg you then, Mr. Holmes, to tell me exactly what has happened and what it will lead to. Tell me all, Mr. Holmes. Let no regard for your client's interests keep you silent, for I assure you that his interests, if he would only see it, would be best served by taking me into his complete confidence. What was this paper which was stolen?\"\n\n\"Madam, what you ask me is really impossible.\"\n\nShe groaned and sank her face in her hands.\n\n\"You must see that this is so, madam. If your husband thinks fit to keep you in the dark over this matter, is it for me, who has only learned the true facts under the pledge of professional secrecy, to tell what he has withheld? It is not fair to ask it. It is him whom you must ask.\"\n\n\"I have asked him. I come to you as a last resource. But without your telling me anything definite, Mr. Holmes, you may do a great service if you would enlighten me on one point.\"\n\n\"What is it, madam?\"\n\n\"Is my husband's political career likely to suffer through this incident?\"\n\n\"Well, madam, unless it is set right it may certainly have a very unfortunate effect.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" She drew in her breath sharply as one whose doubts are resolved.\n\n\"One more question, Mr. Holmes. From an expression which my husband dropped in the first shock of this disaster I understood that terrible public consequences might arise from the loss of this document.\"\n\n\"If he said so, I certainly cannot deny it.\"\n\n\"Of what nature are they?\"\n\n\"Nay, madam, there again you ask me more than I can possibly answer.\"\n\n\"Then I will take up no more of your time. I cannot blame you, Mr. Holmes, for having refused to speak more freely, and you on your side will not, I am sure, think the worse of me because I desire, even against his will, to share my husband's anxieties. Once more I beg that you will say nothing of my visit.\"\n\nShe looked back at us from the door, and I had a last impression of that beautiful haunted face, the startled eyes, and the drawn mouth. Then she was gone.\n\n\"Now, Watson, the fair sex is your department,\" said Holmes, with a smile, when the dwindling frou-frou of skirts had ended in the slam of the front door. \"What was the fair lady's game? What did she really want?\"\n\n\"Surely her own statement is clear and her anxiety very natural.\"\n\n\"Hum! Think of her appearance, Watson\u2014her manner, her suppressed excitement, her restlessness, her tenacity in asking questions. Remember that she comes of a caste who do not lightly show emotion.\"\n\n\"She was certainly much moved.\"\n\n\"Remember also the curious earnestness with which she assured us that it was best for her husband that she should know all. What did she mean by that? And you must have observed, Watson, how she manoeuvred to have the light at her back. She did not wish us to read her expression.\"\n\n\"Yes, she chose the one chair in the room.\"\n\n\"And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable. You remember the woman at Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose\u2014that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs. Good-morning, Watson.\"\n\n\"You are off?\"\n\n\"Yes, I will while away the morning at Godolphin Street with our friends of the regular establishment. With Eduardo Lucas lies the solution of our problem, though I must admit that I have not an inkling as to what form it may take. It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts. Do you stay on guard, my good Watson, and receive any fresh visitors. I'll join you at lunch if I am able.\"\n\nAll that day and the next and the next Holmes was in a mood which his friends would call taciturn, and others morose. He ran out and ran in, smoked incessantly, played snatches on his violin, sank into reveries, devoured sandwiches at irregular hours, and hardly answered the casual questions which I put to him. It was evident to me that things were not going well with him or his quest. He would say nothing of the case, and it was from the papers that I learned the particulars of the inquest, and the arrest with the subsequent release of John Mitton, the valet of the deceased. The coroner's jury brought in the obvious Wilful Murder, but the parties remained as unknown as ever. No motive was suggested. The room was full of articles of value, but none had been taken. The dead man's papers had not been tampered with. They were carefully examined, and showed that he was a keen student of international politics, an indefatigable gossip, a remarkable linguist, and an untiring letter writer. He had been on intimate terms with the leading politicians of several countries. But nothing sensational was discovered among the documents which filled his drawers. As to his relations with women, they appeared to have been promiscuous but superficial. He had many acquaintances among them, but few friends, and no one whom he loved. His habits were regular, his conduct inoffensive. His death was an absolute mystery and likely to remain so.\n\nAs to the arrest of John Mitton, the valet, it was a council of despair as an alternative to absolute inaction. But no case could be sustained against him. He had visited friends in Hammersmith that night. The alibi was complete. It is true that he started home at an hour which should have brought him to Westminster before the time when the crime was discovered, but his own explanation that he had walked part of the way seemed probable enough in view of the fineness of the night. He had actually arrived at twelve o'clock, and appeared to be overwhelmed by the unexpected tragedy. He had always been on good terms with his master. Several of the dead man's possessions\u2014notably a small case of razors\u2014had been found in the valet's boxes, but he explained that they had been presents from the deceased, and the housekeeper was able to corroborate the story. Mitton had been in Lucas's employment for three years. It was noticeable that Lucas did not take Mitton on the Continent with him. Sometimes he visited Paris for three months on end, but Mitton was left in charge of the Godolphin Street house. As to the housekeeper, she had heard nothing on the night of the crime. If her master had a visitor he had himself admitted him.\n\nSo for three mornings the mystery remained, so far as I could follow it in the papers. If Holmes knew more, he kept his own counsel, but, as he told me that Inspector Lestrade had taken him into his confidence in the case, I knew that he was in close touch with every development. Upon the fourth day there appeared a long telegram from Paris which seemed to solve the whole question.\n\nA discovery has just been made by the Parisian police [said the Daily Telegraph] which raises the veil which hung round the tragic fate of Mr. Eduardo Lucas, who met his death by violence last Monday night at Godolphin Street, Westminster. Our readers will remember that the deceased gentleman was found stabbed in his room, and that some suspicion attached to his valet, but that the case broke down on an alibi. Yesterday a lady, who has been known as Mme. Henri Fournaye, occupying a small villa in the Rue Austerlitz, was reported to the authorities by her servants as being insane. An examination showed she had indeed developed mania of a dangerous and permanent form. On inquiry, the police have discovered that Mme. Henri Fournaye only returned from a journey to London on Tuesday last, and there is evidence to connect her with the crime at Westminster. A comparison of photographs has proved conclusively that M. Henri Fournaye and Eduardo Lucas were really one and the same person, and that the deceased had for some reason lived a double life in London and Paris. Mme. Fournaye, who is of Creole origin, is of an extremely excitable nature, and has suffered in the past from attacks of jealousy which have amounted to frenzy It is conjectured that it was in one of these that she committed the terrible crime which has caused such a sensation in London. Her movements upon the Monday night have not yet been traced, but it is undoubted that a woman answering to her description attracted much attention at Charing Cross Station on Tuesday morning by the wildness of her appearance and the violence of her gestures. It is probable, therefore, that the crime was either committed when insane, or that its immediate effect was to drive the unhappy woman out of her mind. At present she is unable to give any coherent account of the past, and the doctors hold out no hopes of the re\u00ebstablishment of her reason. There is evidence that a woman, who might have been Mme. Fournaye, was seen for some hours upon Monday night watching the house in Godolphin Street.\n\n\"What do you think of that, Holmes?\" I had read the account aloud to him, while he finished his breakfast.\n\n\"My dear Watson,\" said he, as he rose from the table and paced up and down the room, \"you are most long-suffering, but if I have told you nothing in the last three days, it is because there is nothing to tell. Even now this report from Paris does not help us much.\"\n\n\"Surely it is final as regards the man's death.\"\n\n\"The man's death is a mere incident\u2014a trivial episode\u2014in comparison with our real task, which is to trace this document and save a European catastrophe. Only one important thing has happened in the last three days, and that is that nothing has happened. I get reports almost hourly from the government, and it is certain that nowhere in Europe is there any sign of trouble. Now, if this letter were loose\u2014no, it can't be loose\u2014but if it isn't loose, where can it be? Who has it? Why is it held back? That's the question that beats in my brain like a hammer. Was it, indeed, a coincidence that Lucas should meet his death on the night when the letter disappeared? Did the letter ever reach him? If so, why is it not among his papers? Did this mad wife of his carry it off with her? If so, is it in her house in Paris? How could I search for it without the French police having their suspicions aroused? It is a case, my dear Watson, where the law is as dangerous to us as the criminals are. Every man's hand is against us, and yet the interests at stake are colossal. Should I bring it to a successful conclusion, it will certainly represent the crowning glory of my career. Ah, here is my latest from the front!\" He glanced hurriedly at the note which had been handed in. \"Halloa! Lestrade seems to have observed something of interest. Put on your hat, Watson, and we will stroll down together to Westminster.\"\n\nIt was my first visit to the scene of the crime\u2014a high, dingy, narrow-chested house, prim, formal, and solid, like the century which gave it birth. Lestrade's bulldog features gazed out at us from the front window, and he greeted us warmly when a big constable had opened the door and let us in. The room into which we were shown was that in which the crime had been committed, but no trace of it now remained save an ugly, irregular stain upon the carpet. This carpet was a small square drugget in the centre of the room, surrounded by a broad expanse of beautiful, old-fashioned wood-flooring in square blocks, highly polished. Over the fireplace was a magnificent trophy of weapons, one of which had been used on that tragic night. In the window was a sumptuous writing-desk, and every detail of the apartment, the pictures, the rugs, and the hangings, all pointed to a taste which was luxurious to the verge of effeminacy.\n\n\"Seen the Paris news?\" asked Lestrade.\n\nHolmes nodded.\n\n\"Our French friends seem to have touched the spot this time. No doubt it's just as they say. She knocked at the door\u2014surprise visit, I guess, for he kept his life in water-tight compartments\u2014he let her in, couldn't keep her in the street. She told him how she had traced him, reproached him. One thing led to another, and then with that dagger so handy the end soon came. It wasn't all done in an instant, though, for these chairs were all swept over yonder, and he had one in his hand as if he had tried to hold her off with it. We've got it all clear as if we had seen it.\"\n\nHolmes raised his eyebrows.\n\n\"And yet you have sent for me?\"\n\n\"Ah, yes, that's another matter\u2014a mere trifle, but the sort of thing you take an interest in\u2014queer, you know, and what you might call freakish. It has nothing to do with the main fact\u2014can't have, on the face of it.\"\n\n\"What is it, then?\"\n\n\"Well, you know, after a crime of this sort we are very careful to keep things in their position. Nothing has been moved. Officer in charge here day and night. This morning, as the man was buried and the investigation over\u2014so far as this room is concerned\u2014we thought we could tidy up a bit. This carpet. You see, it is not fastened down, only just laid there. We had occasion to raise it. We found\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes? You found\u2014\"\n\nHolmes's face grew tense with anxiety.\n\n\"Well, I'm sure you would never guess in a hundred years what we did find. You see that stain on the carpet? Well, a great deal must have soaked through, must it not?\"\n\n\"Undoubtedly it must.\"\n\n\"Well, you will be surprised to hear that there is no stain on the white woodwork to correspond.\"\n\n\"No stain! But there must\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, so you would say. But the fact remains that there isn't.\"\n\nHe took the corner of the carpet in his hand and, turning it over, he showed that it was indeed as he said.\n\n\"But the under side is as stained as the upper. It must have left a mark.\"\n\nLestrade chuckled with delight at having puzzled the famous expert.\n\n\"Now, I'll show you the explanation. There is a second stain, but it does not correspond with the other. See for yourself.\" As he spoke he turned over another portion of the carpet, and there, sure enough, was a great crimson spill upon the square white facing of the old-fashioned floor. \"What do you make of that, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Why, it is simple enough. The two stains did correspond, but the carpet has been turned round. As it was square and unfastened it was easily done.\"\n\n\"The official police don't need you, Mr. Holmes, to tell them that the carpet must have been turned round. That's clear enough, for the stains lie above each other\u2014if you lay it over this way. But what I want to know is, who shifted the carpet, and why?\"\n\nI could see from Holmes's rigid face that he was vibrating with inward excitement.\n\n\"Look here, Lestrade,\" said he, \"has that constable in the passage been in charge of the place all the time?\"\n\n\"Yes, he has.\"\n\n\"Well, take my advice. Examine him carefully. Don't do it before us. We'll wait here. You take him into the back room. You'll be more likely to get a confession out of him alone. Ask him how he dared to admit people and leave them alone in this room. Don't ask him if he has done it. Take it for granted. Tell him you know someone has been here. Press him. Tell him that a full confession is his only chance of forgiveness. Do exactly what I tell you!\"\n\n\"By George, if he knows I'll have it out of him!\" cried Lestrade. He darted into the hall, and a few moments later his bullying voice sounded from the back room.\n\n\"Now, Watson, now!\" cried Holmes with frenzied eagerness. All the demoniacal force of the man masked behind that listless manner burst out in a paroxysm of energy. He tore the drugget from the floor, and in an instant was down on his hands and knees clawing at each of the squares of wood beneath it. One turned sideways as he dug his nails into the edge of it. It hinged back like the lid of a box. A small black cavity opened beneath it. Holmes plunged his eager hand into it and drew it out with a bitter snarl of anger and disappointment. It was empty.\n\n\"Quick, Watson, quick! Get it back again!\" The wooden lid was replaced, and the drugget had only just been drawn straight when Lestrade's voice was heard in the passage. He found Holmes leaning languidly against the mantelpiece, resigned and patient, endeavouring to conceal his irrepressible yawns.\n\n\"Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Holmes. I can see that you are bored to death with the whole affair. Well, he has confessed, all right. Come in here, MacPherson. Let these gentlemen hear of your most inexcusable conduct.\"\n\nThe big constable, very hot and penitent, sidled into the room.\n\n\"I meant no harm, sir, I'm sure. The young woman came to the door last evening\u2014mistook the house, she did. And then we got talking. It's lonesome, when you're on duty here all day.\"\n\n\"Well, what happened then?\"\n\n\"She wanted to see where the crime was done\u2014had read about it in the papers, she said. She was a very respectable, well-spoken young woman, sir, and I saw no harm in letting her have a peep. When she saw that mark on the carpet, down she dropped on the floor, and lay as if she were dead. I ran to the back and got some water, but I could not bring her to. Then I went round the corner to the Ivy Plant for some brandy, and by the time I had brought it back the young woman had recovered and was off\u2014ashamed of herself, I daresay, and dared not face me.\"\n\n\"How about moving that drugget?\"\n\n\"Well, sir, it was a bit rumpled, certainly, when I came back. You see, she fell on it and it lies on a polished floor with nothing to keep it in place. I straightened it out afterwards.\"\n\n\"It's a lesson to you that you can't deceive me, Constable MacPherson,\" said Lestrade, with dignity. \"No doubt you thought that your breach of duty could never be discovered, and yet a mere glance at that drugget was enough to convince me that someone had been admitted to the room. It's lucky for you, my man, that nothing is missing, or you would find yourself in Queer Street. I'm sorry to have called you down over such a petty business, Mr. Holmes, but I thought the point of the second stain not corresponding with the first would interest you.\"\n\n\"Certainly, it was most interesting. Has this woman only been here once, constable?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, only once.\"\n\n\"Who was she?\"\n\n\"Don't know the name, sir. Was answering an advertisement about typewriting and came to the wrong number\u2014very pleasant, genteel young woman, sir.\"\n\n\"Tall? Handsome?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, she was a well-grown young woman. I suppose you might say she was handsome. Perhaps some would say she was very handsome. 'Oh, officer, do let me have a peep!' says she. She had pretty, coaxing ways, as you might say, and I thought there was no harm in letting her just put her head through the door.\"\n\n\"How was she dressed?\"\n\n\"Quiet, sir\u2014a long mantle down to her feet.\"\n\n\"What time was it?\"\n\n\"It was just growing dusk at the time. They were lighting the lamps as I came back with the brandy.\"\n\n\"Very good,\" said Holmes. \"Come, Watson, I think that we have more important work elsewhere.\"\n\nAs we left the house Lestrade remained in the front room, while the repentant constable opened the door to let us out. Holmes turned on the step and held up something in his hand. The constable stared intently.\n\n\"Good Lord, sir!\" he cried, with amazement on his face. Holmes put his finger on his lips, replaced his hand in his breast pocket, and burst out laughing as we turned down the street. \"Excellent!\" said he. \"Come, friend Watson, the curtain rings up for the last act. You will be relieved to hear that there will be no war, that the Right Honourable Trelawney Hope will suffer no setback in his brilliant career, that the indiscreet Sovereign will receive no punishment for his indiscretion, that the Prime Minister will have no European complication to deal with, and that with a little tact and management upon our part nobody will be a penny the worse for what might have been a very ugly incident.\"\n\nMy mind filled with admiration for this extraordinary man.\n\n\"You have solved it!\" I cried.\n\n\"Hardly that, Watson. There are some points which are as dark as ever. But we have so much that it will be our own fault if we cannot get the rest. We will go straight to Whitehall Terrace and bring the matter to a head.\"\n\nWhen we arrived at the residence of the European Secretary it was for Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope that Sherlock Holmes inquired. We were shown into the morning-room.\n\n\"Mr. Holmes!\" said the lady, and her face was pink with her indignation. \"This is surely most unfair and ungenerous upon your part. I desired, as I have explained, to keep my visit to you a secret, lest my husband should think that I was intruding into his affairs. And yet you compromise me by coming here and so showing that there are business relations between us.\"\n\n\"Unfortunately, madam, I had no possible alternative. I have been commissioned to recover this immensely important paper. I must therefore ask you, madam, to be kind enough to place it in my hands.\"\n\nThe lady sprang to her feet, with the colour all dashed in an instant from her beautiful face. Her eyes glazed\u2014she tottered\u2014I thought that she would faint. Then with a grand effort she rallied from the shock, and a supreme astonishment and indignation chased every other expression from her features.\n\n\"You\u2014you insult me, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"Come, come, madam, it is useless. Give up the letter.\"\n\nShe darted to the bell.\n\n\"The butler shall show you out.\"\n\n\"Do not ring, Lady Hilda. If you do, then all my earnest efforts to avoid a scandal will be frustrated. Give up the letter and all will be set right. If you will work with me I can arrange everything. If you work against me I must expose you.\"\n\nShe stood grandly defiant, a queenly figure, her eyes fixed upon his as if she would read his very soul. Her hand was on the bell, but she had forborne to ring it.\n\n\"You are trying to frighten me. It is not a very manly thing, Mr. Holmes, to come here and browbeat a woman. You say that you know something. What is it that you know?\"\n\n\"Pray sit down, madam. You will hurt yourself there if you fall. I will not speak until you sit down. Thank you.\"\n\n\"I give you five minutes, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"One is enough, Lady Hilda. I know of your visit to Eduardo Lucas, of your giving him this document, of your ingenious return to the room last night, and of the manner in which you took the letter from the hiding-place under the carpet.\"\n\nShe stared at him with an ashen face and gulped twice before she could speak.\n\n\"You are mad, Mr. Holmes\u2014you are mad!\" she cried, at last.\n\nHe drew a small piece of cardboard from his pocket. It was the face of a woman cut out of a portrait.\n\n\"I have carried this because I thought it might be useful,\" said he. \"The policeman has recognized it.\"\n\nShe gave a gasp, and her head dropped back in the chair.\n\n\"Come, Lady Hilda. You have the letter. The matter may still be adjusted. I have no desire to bring trouble to you. My duty ends when I have returned the lost letter to your husband. Take my advice and be frank with me. It is your only chance.\"\n\nHer courage was admirable. Even now she would not own defeat.\n\n\"I tell you again, Mr. Holmes, that you are under some absurd illusion.\"\n\nHolmes rose from his chair.\n\n\"I am sorry for you, Lady Hilda. I have done my best for you. I can see that it is all in vain.\"\n\nHe rang the bell. The butler entered.\n\n\"Is Mr. Trelawney Hope at home?\"\n\n\"He will be home, sir, at a quarter to one.\"\n\nHolmes glanced at his watch.\n\n\"Still a quarter of an hour,\" said he. \"Very good, I shall wait.\"\n\nThe butler had hardly closed the door behind him when Lady Hilda was down on her knees at Holmes's feet, her hands outstretched, her beautiful face upturned and wet with her tears.\n\n\"Oh, spare me, Mr. Holmes! Spare me!\" she pleaded, in a frenzy of supplication. \"For heaven's sake, don't tell him! I love him so! I would not bring one shadow on his life, and this I know would break his noble heart.\"\n\nHolmes raised the lady. \"I am thankful, madam, that you have come to your senses even at this last moment! There is not an instant to lose. Where is the letter?\"\n\nShe darted across to a writing-desk, unlocked it, and drew out a long blue envelope.\n\n\"Here it is, Mr. Holmes. Would to heaven I had never seen it!\"\n\n\"How can we return it?\" Holmes muttered. \"Quick, quick, we must think of some way! Where is the despatch-box?\"\n\n\"Still in his bedroom.\"\n\n\"What a stroke of luck! Quick, madam, bring it here!\"\n\nA moment later she had appeared with a red flat box in her hand.\n\n\"How did you open it before? You have a duplicate key? Yes, of course you have. Open it!\"\n\nFrom out of her bosom Lady Hilda had drawn a small key. The box flew open. It was stuffed with papers. Holmes thrust the blue envelope deep down into the heart of them, between the leaves of some other document. The box was shut, locked, and returned to the bedroom.\n\n\"Now we are ready for him,\" said Holmes. \"We have still ten minutes. I am going far to screen you, Lady Hilda. In return you will spend the time in telling me frankly the real meaning of this extraordinary affair.\"\n\n\"Mr. Holmes, I will tell you everything,\" cried the lady. \"Oh, Mr. Holmes, I would cut off my right hand before I gave him a moment of sorrow! There is no woman in all London who loves her husband as I do, and yet if he knew how I have acted\u2014how I have been compelled to act\u2014he would never forgive me. For his own honour stands so high that he could not forget or pardon a lapse in another. Help me, Mr. Holmes! My happiness, his happiness, our very lives are at stake!\"\n\n\"Quick, madam, the time grows short!\"\n\n\"It was a letter of mine, Mr. Holmes, an indiscreet letter written before my marriage\u2014a foolish letter, a letter of an impulsive, loving girl. I meant no harm, and yet he would have thought it criminal. Had he read that letter his confidence would have been forever destroyed. It is years since I wrote it. I had thought that the whole matter was forgotten. Then at last I heard from this man, Lucas, that it had passed into his hands, and that he would lay it before my husband. I implored his mercy. He said that he would return my letter if I would bring him a certain document which he described in my husband's despatch-box. He had some spy in the office who had told him of its existence. He assured me that no harm could come to my husband. Put yourself in my position, Mr. Holmes! What was I to do?\"\n\n\"Take your husband into your confidence.\"\n\n\"I could not, Mr. Holmes, I could not! On the one side seemed certain ruin, on the other, terrible as it seemed to take my husband's paper, still in a matter of politics I could not understand the consequences, while in a matter of love and trust they were only too clear to me. I did it, Mr. Holmes! I took an impression of his key. This man, Lucas, furnished a duplicate. I opened his despatch-box, took the paper, and conveyed it to Godolphin Street.\"\n\n\"What happened there, madam?\"\n\n\"I tapped at the door as agreed. Lucas opened it. I followed him into his room, leaving the hall door ajar behind me, for I feared to be alone with the man. I remember that there was a woman outside as I entered. Our business was soon done. He had my letter on his desk, I handed him the document. He gave me the letter. At this instant there was a sound at the door. There were steps in the passage. Lucas quickly turned back the drugget, thrust the document into some hiding-place there, and covered it over.\n\n\"What happened after that is like some fearful dream. I have a vision of a dark, frantic face, of a woman's voice, which screamed in French, 'My waiting is not in vain. At last, at last I have found you with her!' There was a savage struggle. I saw him with a chair in his hand, a knife gleamed in hers. I rushed from the horrible scene, ran from the house, and only next morning in the paper did I learn the dreadful result. That night I was happy, for I had my letter, and I had not seen yet what the future would bring.\n\n\"It was the next morning that I realized that I had only exchanged one trouble for another. My husband's anguish at the loss of his paper went to my heart. I could hardly prevent myself from there and then kneeling down at his feet and telling him what I had done. But that again would mean a confession of the past. I came to you that morning in order to understand the full enormity of my offence. From the instant that I grasped it my whole mind was turned to the one thought of getting back my husband's paper. It must still be where Lucas had placed it, for it was concealed before this dreadful woman entered the room. If it had not been for her coming, I should not have known where his hiding-place was. How was I to get into the room? For two days I watched the place, but the door was never left open. Last night I made a last attempt. What I did and how I succeeded, you have already learned. I brought the paper back with me, and thought of destroying it, since I could see no way of returning it without confessing my guilt to my husband. Heavens, I hear his step upon the stair!\"\n\nThe European Secretary burst excitedly into the room.\n\n\"Any news, Mr. Holmes, any news?\" he cried.\n\n\"I have some hopes.\"\n\n\"Ah, thank heaven!\" His face became radiant. \"The Prime Minister is lunching with me. May he share your hopes? He has nerves of steel, and yet I know that he has hardly slept since this terrible event. Jacobs, will you ask the Prime Minister to come up? As to you, dear, I fear that this is a matter of politics. We will join you in a few minutes in the dining-room.\"\n\nThe Prime Minister's manner was subdued, but I could see by the gleam of his eyes and the twitchings of his bony hands that he shared the excitement of his young colleague.\n\n\"I understand that you have something to report, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Purely negative as yet,\" my friend answered. \"I have inquired at every point where it might be, and I am sure that there is no danger to be apprehended.\"\n\n\"But that is not enough, Mr. Holmes. We cannot live forever on such a volcano. We must have something definite.\"\n\n\"I am in hopes of getting it. That is why I am here. The more I think of the matter the more convinced I am that the letter has never left this house.\"\n\n\"Mr. Holmes!\"\n\n\"If it had it would certainly have been public by now.\"\n\n\"But why should anyone take it in order to keep it in his house?\"\n\n\"I am not convinced that anyone did take it.\"\n\n\"Then how could it leave the despatch-box?\"\n\n\"I am not convinced that it ever did leave the despatch-box.\"\n\n\"Mr. Holmes, this joking is very ill-timed. You have my assurance that it left the box.\"\n\n\"Have you examined the box since Tuesday morning?\"\n\n\"No. It was not necessary.\"\n\n\"You may conceivably have overlooked it.\"\n\n\"Impossible, I say.\"\n\n\"But I am not convinced of it. I have known such things to happen. I presume there are other papers there. Well, it may have got mixed with them.\"\n\n\"It was on the top.\"\n\n\"Someone may have shaken the box and displaced it.\"\n\n\"No, no, I had everything out.\"\n\n\"Surely it is easily decided, Hope,\" said the Premier. \"Let us have the despatch-box brought in.\"\n\nThe Secretary rang the bell.\n\n\"Jacobs, bring down my despatch-box. This is a farcical waste of time, but still, if nothing else will satisfy you, it shall be done. Thank you, Jacobs, put it here. I have always had the key on my watch-chain. Here are the papers, you see. Letter from Lord Merrow, report from Sir Charles Hardy, memorandum from Belgrade, note on the Russo-German grain taxes, letter from Madrid, note from Lord Flowers\u2014Good heavens! what is this? Lord Bellinger! Lord Bellinger!\"\n\nThe Premier snatched the blue envelope from his hand.\n\n\"Yes, it is it\u2014and the letter is intact. Hope, I congratulate you.\"\n\n\"Thank you! Thank you! What a weight from my heart. But this is inconceivable\u2014impossible. Mr. Holmes, you are a wizard, a sorcerer! How did you know it was there?\"\n\n\"Because I knew it was nowhere else.\"\n\n\"I cannot believe my eyes!\" He ran wildly to the door. \"Where is my wife? I must tell her that all is well. Hilda! Hilda!\" we heard his voice on the stairs.\n\nThe Premier looked at Holmes with twinkling eyes.\n\n\"Come, sir,\" said he. \"There is more in this than meets the eye. How came the letter back in the box?\"\n\nHolmes turned away smiling from the keen scrutiny of those wonderful eyes.\n\n\"We also have our diplomatic secrets,\" said he and, picking up his hat, he turned to the door." + }, + { + "title": "THE VALLEY OF FEAR", + "text": "[ THE TRAGEDY OF BIRLSTONE ]\n\n[ The Warning ]\n\n\"I am inclined to think\u2014\" said I.\n\n\"I should do so,\" Sherlock Holmes remarked impatiently.\n\nI believe that I am one of the most long-suffering of mortals; but I'll admit that I was annoyed at the sardonic interruption. \"Really, Holmes,\" said I severely, \"you are a little trying at times.\"\n\nHe was too much absorbed with his own thoughts to give any immediate answer to my remonstrance. He leaned upon his hand, with his untasted breakfast before him, and he stared at the slip of paper which he had just drawn from its envelope. Then he took the envelope itself, held it up to the light, and very carefully studied both the exterior and the flap.\n\n\"It is Porlock's writing,\" said he thoughtfully. \"I can hardly doubt that it is Porlock's writing, though I have seen it only twice before. The Greek e with the peculiar top flourish is distinctive. But if it is Porlock then it must be something of the very first importance.\"\n\nHe was speaking to himself rather than to me; but my vexation disappeared in the interest which the words awakened.\n\n\"Who then is Porlock?\" I asked.\n\n\"Porlock, Watson, is a nom-de-plume, a mere identification mark; but behind it lies a shifty and evasive personality. In a former letter he frankly informed me that the name was not his own, and defied me ever to trace him among the teeming millions of this great city. Porlock is important, not for himself, but for the great man with whom he is in touch. Picture to yourself the pilot fish with the shark, the jackal with the lion\u2014anything that is insignificant in companionship with what is formidable: not only formidable, Watson, but sinister\u2014in the highest degree sinister. That is where he comes within my purview. You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?\"\n\n\"The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks as\u2014\"\n\n\"My blushes, Watson!\" Holmes murmured in a deprecating voice.\n\n\"I was about to say, as he is unknown to the public.\"\n\n\"A touch! A distinct touch!\" cried Holmes. \"You are developing a certain unexpected vein of pawky humour, Watson, against which I must learn to guard myself. But in calling Moriarty a criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the law\u2014and there lie the glory and the wonder of it! The greatest schemer of all time, the organizer of every deviltry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a brain which might have made or marred the destiny of nations\u2014that's the man! But so aloof is he from general suspicion, so immune from criticism, so admirable in his management and self-effacement, that for those very words that you have uttered he could hale you to a court and emerge with your year's pension as a so latium for his wounded character. Is he not the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid, a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it? Is this a man to traduce? Foul-mouthed doctor and slandered professor\u2014such would be your respective roles! That's genius, Watson. But if I am spared by lesser men, our day will surely come.\"\n\n\"May I be there to see!\" I exclaimed devoutly. \"But you were speaking of this man Porlock.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes\u2014the so-called Porlock is a link in the chain some little way from its great attachment. Porlock is not quite a sound link between ourselves. He is the only flaw in that chain so far as I have been able to test it.\"\n\n\"But no chain is stronger than its weakest link.\"\n\n\"Exactly, my dear Watson! Hence the extreme importance of Porlock. Led on by some rudimentary aspirations towards right, and encouraged by the judicious stimulation of an occasional ten-pound note sent to him by devious methods, he has once or twice given me advance information which has been of value\u2014that highest value which anticipates and prevents rather than avenges crime. I cannot doubt that, if we had the cipher, we should find that this communication is of the nature that I indicate.\"\n\nAgain Holmes flattened out the paper upon his unused plate. I rose and, leaning over him, stared down at the curious inscription, which ran as follows:\n\n\"What do you make of it, Holmes?\"\n\n\"It is obviously an attempt to convey secret information.\"\n\n\"But what is the use of a cipher message without the cipher?\"\n\n\"In this instance, none at all.\"\n\n\"Why do you say 'in this instance'?\"\n\n\"Because there are many ciphers which I would read as easily as I do the apocrypha of the agony column: such crude devices amuse the intelligence without fatiguing it. But this is different. It is clearly a reference to the words in a page of some book. Until I am told which page and which book I am powerless.\"\n\n\"But why 'Douglas' and 'Birlstone'?\"\n\n\"Clearly because those are words which were not contained in the page in question.\"\n\n\"Then why has he not indicated the book?\"\n\n\"Your native shrewdness, my dear Watson, that innate cunning which is the delight of your friends, would surely prevent you from inclosing cipher and message in the same envelope. Should it miscarry, you are undone. As it is, both have to go wrong before any harm comes from it. Our second post is now overdue, and I shall be surprised if it does not bring us either a further letter of explanation, or, as is more probable, the very volume to which these figures refer.\"\n\nHolmes's calculation was fulfilled within a very few minutes by the appearance of Billy, the page, with the very letter which we were expecting.\n\n\"The same writing,\" remarked Holmes, as he opened the envelope, \"and actually signed,\" he added in an exultant voice as he unfolded the epistle. \"Come, we are getting on, Watson.\" His brow clouded, however, as he glanced over the contents.\n\n\"Dear me, this is very disappointing! I fear, Watson, that all our expectations come to nothing. I trust that the man Porlock will come to no harm.\n\n\"DEAR MR. HOLMES [he says]:\n\nI will go no further in this matter. It is too dangerous\u2014he suspects me. I can see that he suspects me. He came to me quite unexpectedly after I had actually addressed this envelope with the intention of sending you the key to the cipher. I was able to cover it up. If he had seen it, it would have gone hard with me. But I read suspicion in his eyes. Please burn the cipher message, which can now be of no use to you.\n\nFRED PORLOCK.\"\n\nHolmes sat for some little time twisting this letter between his fingers, and frowning, as he stared into the fire.\n\n\"After all,\" he said at last, \"there may be nothing in it. It may be only his guilty conscience. Knowing himself to be a traitor, he may have read the accusation in the other's eyes.\"\n\n\"The other being, I presume, Professor Moriarty.\"\n\n\"No less! When any of that party talk about 'He' you know whom they mean. There is one predominant. 'He' for all of them.\"\n\n\"But what can he do?\"\n\n\"Hum! That's a large question. When you have one of the first brains of Europe up against you, and all the powers of darkness at his back, there are infinite possibilities. Anyhow, Friend Porlock is evidently scared out of his senses\u2014kindly compare the writing in the note to that upon its envelope; which was done, he tells us, before this ill-omened visit. The one is clear and firm. The other hardly legible.\"\n\n\"Why did he write at all? Why did he not simply drop it?\"\n\n\"Because he feared I would make some inquiry after him in that case, and possibly bring trouble on him.\"\n\n\"No doubt,\" said I. \"Of course.\" I had picked up the original cipher message and was bending my brows over it. \"It's pretty maddening to think that an important secret may lie here on this slip of paper, and that it is beyond human power to penetrate it.\n\nSherlock Holmes had pushed away his untasted breakfast and lit the unsavoury pipe which was the companion of his deepest meditations. \"I wonder!\" said he, leaning back and staring at the ceiling. \"Perhaps there are points which have escaped your Machiavellian intellect. Let us consider the problem in the light of pure reason. This man's reference is to a book. That is our point of departure.\"\n\n\"A somewhat vague one.\"\n\n\"Let us see then if we can narrow it down. As I focus my mind upon it, it seems rather less impenetrable. What indications have we as to this book?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\n\"Well, well, it is surely not quite so bad as that. The cipher message begins with a large 534, does it not? We may take it as a working hypothesis that 534 is the particular page to which the cipher refers. So our book has already become a large book, which is surely something gained. What other indications have we as to the nature of this large book? The next sign is C2. What do you make of that, Watson?\"\n\n\"Chapter the second, no doubt.\"\n\n\"Hardly that, Watson. You will, I am sure, agree with me that if the page be given, the number of the chapter is immaterial. Also that if page 534 finds us only in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.\"\n\n\"Column!\" I cried.\n\n\"Brilliant, Watson. You are scintillating this morning. If it is not column, then I am very much deceived. So now, you see, we begin to visualize a large book, printed in double columns, which are each of a considerable length, since one of the words is numbered in the document as the two hundred and ninety-third. Have we reached the limits of what reason can supply?\"\n\n\"I fear that we have.\"\n\n\"Surely you do yourself an injustice. One more coruscation, my dear Watson\u2014yet another brain-wave! Had the volume been an unusual one, he would have sent it to me. Instead of that, he had intended, before his plans were nipped, to send me the clue in this envelope. He says so in his note. This would seem to indicate that the book is one which he thought I would have no difficulty in finding for myself. He had it\u2014and he imagined that I would have it, too. In short, Watson, it is a very common book.\"\n\n\"What you say certainly sounds plausible.\"\n\n\"So we have contracted our field of search to a large book, printed in double columns and in common use.\"\n\n\"The Bible!\" I cried triumphantly.\n\n\"Good, Watson, good! But not, if I may say so, quite good enough! Even if I accepted the compliment for myself, I could hardly name any volume which would be less likely to lie at the elbow of one of Moriarty's associates. Besides, the editions of Holy Writ are so numerous that he could hardly suppose that two copies would have the same pagination. This is clearly a book which is standardized. He knows for certain that his page 534 will exactly agree with my page 534.\"\n\n\"But very few books would correspond with that.\"\n\n\"Exactly. Therein lies our salvation. Our search is narrowed down to standardized books which anyone may be supposed to possess.\"\n\n\"Bradshaw!\"\n\n\"There are difficulties, Watson. The vocabulary of Bradshaw is nervous and terse, but limited. The selection of words would hardly lend itself to the sending of general messages. We will eliminate Bradshaw. The dictionary is, I fear, inadmissible for the same reason. What then is left?\"\n\n\"An almanac!\"\n\n\"Excellent, Watson! I am very much mistaken if you have not touched the spot. An almanac! Let us consider the claims of Whitaker's Almanac. It is in common use. It has the requisite number of pages. It is in double column. Though reserved in its earlier vocabulary, it becomes, if I remember right, quite garrulous towards the end.\" He picked the volume from his desk. \"Here is page 534, column two, a substantial block of print dealing, I perceive, with the trade and resources of British India. Jot down the words, Watson! Number thirteen is 'Mahratta.' Not, I fear, a very auspicious beginning. Number one hundred and twenty-seven is 'Government'; which at least makes sense, though somewhat irrelevant to ourselves and Professor Moriarty. Now let us try again. What does the Mahratta government do? Alas! the next word is 'pig's-bristles.' We are undone, my good Watson! It is finished!\"\n\nHe had spoken in jesting vein, but the twitching of his bushy eyebrows bespoke his disappointment and irritation. I sat helpless and unhappy, staring into the fire. A long silence was broken by a sudden exclamation from Holmes, who dashed at a cupboard, from which he emerged with a second yellow-covered volume in his hand.\n\n\"We pay the price, Watson, for being too up-to-date!\" he cried. \"We are before our time, and suffer the usual penalties. Being the seventh of January, we have very properly laid in the new almanac. It is more than likely that Porlock took his message from the old one. No doubt he would have told us so had his letter of explanation been written. Now let us see what page 534 has in store for us. Number thirteen is 'There,' which is much more promising. Number one hundred and twenty-seven is 'is'\u2014'There is' \"\u2014Holmes's eyes were gleaming with excitement, and his thin, nervous fingers twitched as he counted the words\u2014\" 'danger.' Ha! Ha! Capital! Put that down, Watson. 'There is danger\u2014may\u2014come\u2014very\u2014soon\u2014one.' Then we have the name 'Douglas'\u2014'rich\u2014country\u2014now\u2014at\u2014Birlstone\u2014confidence\u2014is\u2014pressing.' There, Watson! What do you think of pure reason and its fruit? If the green-grocer had such a thing as a laurel wreath, I should send Billy round for it.\"\n\nI was staring at the strange message which I had scrawled, as he deciphered it, upon a sheet of foolscap on my knee.\n\n\"What a queer, scrambling way of expressing his meaning!\" said I.\n\n\"On the contrary, he has done quite remarkably well,\" said Holmes. \"When you search a single column for words with which to express your meaning, you can hardly expect to get everything you want. You are bound to leave something to the intelligence of your correspondent. The purport is perfectly clear. Some deviltry is intended against one Douglas, whoever he may be, residing as stated, a rich country gentleman. He is sure\u2014'confidence' was as near as he could get to 'confident' that it is pressing. There is our result\u2014and a very workmanlike little bit of analysis it was!\"\n\nHolmes had the impersonal joy of the true artist in his better work, even as he mourned darkly when it fell below the high level to which he aspired. He was still chuckling over his success when Billy swung open the door and Inspector MacDonald of Scotland Yard was ushered into the room.\n\nThose were the early days at the end of the '80's, when Alec MacDonald was far from having attained the national fame which he has now achieved. He was a young but trusted member of the detective force, who had distinguished himself in several cases which had been intrusted to him. His tall, bony figure gave promise of exceptional physical strength, while his great cranium and deep-set, lustrous eyes spoke no less clearly of the keen intelligence which twinkled out from behind his bushy eyebrows. He was a silent, precise man with a dour nature and a hard Aberdonian accent.\n\nTwice already in his career had Holmes helped him to attain success, his own sole reward being the intellectual joy of the problem. For this reason the affection and respect of the Scotchman for his amateur colleague were profound, and he showed them by the frankness with which he consulted Holmes in every difficulty. Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius, and MacDonald had talent enough for his profession to enable him to perceive that there was no humiliation in seeking the assistance of one who already stood alone in Europe, both in his gifts and in his experience. Holmes was not prone to friendship, but he was tolerant of the big Scotchman, and smiled at the sight of him.\n\n\"You are an early bird, Mr. Mac,\" said he. \"I wish you luck with your worm. I fear this means that there is some mischief afoot.\"\n\n\"If you said 'hope' instead of 'fear,' it would be nearer the truth, I'm thinking, Mr. Holmes,\" the inspector answered, with a knowing grin. \"Well, maybe a wee nip would keep out the raw morning chill. No, I won't smoke, I thank you. I'll have to be pushing on my way; for the early hours of a case are the precious ones, as no man knows better than your own self. But\u2014but\u2014\"\n\nThe inspector had stopped suddenly, and was staring with a look of absolute amazement at a paper upon the table. It was the sheet upon which I had scrawled the enigmatic message.\n\n\"Douglas!\" he stammered. \"Birlstone! What's this, Mr. Holmes? Man, it's witchcraft! Where in the name of all that is wonderful did you get those names?\"\n\n\"It is a cipher that Dr. Watson and I have had occasion to solve. But why\u2014what's amiss with the names?\"\n\nThe inspector looked from one to the other of us in dazed astonishment. \"Just this,\" said he, \"that Mr. Douglas of Birlstone Manor House was horribly murdered last night!\"" + }, + { + "title": "Sherlock Holmes Discourses", + "text": "It was one of those dramatic moments for which my friend existed. It would be an overstatement to say that he was shocked or even excited by the amazing announcement. Without having a tinge of cruelty in his singular composition, he was undoubtedly callous from long overstimulation. Yet, if his emotions were dulled, his intellectual perceptions were exceedingly active. There was no trace then of the honour which I had myself felt at this curt declaration; but his face showed rather the quiet and interested composure of the chemist who sees the crystals falling into position from his oversaturated solution.\n\n\"Remarkable!\" said he. \"Remarkable!\"\n\n\"You don't seem surprised.\"\n\n\"Interested, Mr. Mac, but hardly surprised. Why should I be surprised? I receive an anonymous communication from a quarter which I know to be important, warning me that danger threatens a certain person. Within an hour I learn that this danger has actually materialized and that the person is dead. I am interested; but, as you observe, I am not surprised.\"\n\nIn a few short sentences he explained to the inspector the facts about the letter and the cipher. MacDonald sat with his chin on his hands and his great sandy eyebrows bunched into a yellow tangle.\n\n\"I was going down to Birlstone this morning,\" said he. \"I had come to ask you if you cared to come with me\u2014you and your friend here. But from what you say we might perhaps be doing better work in London.\"\n\n\"I rather think not,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Hang it all, Mr. Holmes!\" cried the inspector. \"The papers will be full of the Birlstone mystery in a day or two; but where's the mystery if there is a man in London who prophesied the crime before ever it occurred? We have only to lay our hands on that man, and the rest will follow.\"\n\n\"No doubt, Mr. Mac. But how do you propose to lay your hands on the so-called Porlock?\"\n\nMacDonald turned over the letter which Holmes had handed him. \"Posted in Camberwell\u2014that doesn't help us much. Name, you say, is assumed. Not much to go on, certainly. Didn't you say that you have sent him money?\"\n\n\"Twice.\"\n\n\"And how?\"\n\n\"In notes to Camberwell postoffice.\"\n\n\"Did you ever trouble to see who called for them?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nThe inspector looked surprised, and a little shocked. \"Why not?\"\n\n\"Because I always keep faith. I had promised when he first wrote that I would not try to trace him.\"\n\n\"You think there is someone behind him?\"\n\n\"I know there is.\"\n\n\"This professor that I've heard you mention?\"\n\n\"Exactly!\"\n\nInspector MacDonald smiled, and his eyelid quivered as he glanced towards me. \"I won't conceal from you, Mr. Holmes, that we think in the C. I. D. that you have a wee bit of a bee in your bonnet over this professor. I made some inquiries myself about the matter. He seems to be a very respectable, learned, and talented sort of man.\"\n\n\"I'm glad you've got so far as to recognize the talent.\"\n\n\"Man, you can't but recognize it! After I heard your view I made it my business to see him. I had a chat with him on eclipses. How the talk got that way I canna think; but he had out a reflector lantern and a globe, and made it all clear in a minute. He lent me a book; but I don't mind saying that it was a bit above my head, though I had a good Aberdeen upbringing. He'd have made a grand meenister with his thin face and gray hair and solemn-like way of talking. When he put his hand on my shoulder as we were parting, it was like a father's blessing before you go out into the cold, cruel world.\"\n\nHolmes chuckled and rubbed his hands. \"Great!\" he said. \"Great! Tell me, Friend MacDonald, this pleasing and touching interview was, I suppose, in the professor's study?\"\n\n\"That's so.\"\n\n\"A fine room, is it not?\"\n\n\"Very fine\u2014very handsome indeed, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"You sat in front of his writing desk?\"\n\n\"Just so.\"\n\n\"Sun in your eyes and his face in the shadow?\"\n\n\"Well, it was evening; but I mind that the lamp was turned on my face.\"\n\n\"It would be. Did you happen to observe a picture over the professor's head?\"\n\n\"I don't miss much, Mr. Holmes. Maybe I learned that from you. Yes, I saw the picture\u2014a young woman with her head on her hands, peeping at you sideways.\"\n\n\"That painting was by Jean Baptiste Greuze.\"\n\nThe inspector endeavoured to look interested.\n\n\"Jean Baptiste Greuze,\" Holmes continued, joining his finger tips and leaning well back in his chair, \"was a French artist who flourished be tween the years 1750 and 1800. I allude, of course, to his working career. Modern criticism has more than indorsed the high opinion formed of him by his contemporaries.\"\n\nThe inspector's eyes grew abstracted. \"Hadn't we better\u2014\" he said.\n\n\"We are doing so,\" Holmes interrupted. \"All that I am saying has a very direct and vital bearing upon what you have called the Birlstone Mystery. In fact, it may in a sense be called the very centre of it.\"\n\nMacDonald smiled feebly, and looked appealingly to me. \"Your thoughts move a bit too quick for me, Mr. Holmes. You leave out a link or two, and I can't get over the gap. What in the whole wide world can be the connection between this dead painting man and the affair at Birlstone?\"\n\n\"All knowledge comes useful to the detective,\" remarked Holmes. \"Even the trivial fact that in the year 1865 a picture by Greuze entitled La Jeune Fille \u00e0 l'Agneau fetched one million two hundred thousand francs\u2014more than forty thousand pounds\u2014at the Portalis sale may start a train of reflection in your mind.\"\n\nIt was clear that it did. The inspector looked honestly interested.\n\n\"I may remind you,\" Holmes continued, \"that the professor's salary can be ascertained in several trustworthy books of reference. It is seven hundred a year.\"\n\n\"Then how could he buy\u2014\"\n\n\"Quite so! How could he?\"\n\n\"Ay, that's remarkable,\" said the inspector thoughtfully. \"Talk away, Mr. Holmes. I'm just loving it. It's fine!\"\n\nHolmes smiled. He was always warmed by genuine admiration\u2014the characteristic of the real artist. \"What about Birlstone?\" he asked.\n\n\"We've time yet,\" said the inspector, glancing at his watch. \"I've a cab at the door, and it won't take us twenty minutes to Victoria. But about this picture: I thought you told me once, Mr. Holmes, that you had never met Professor Moriarty.\"\n\n\"No, I never have.\"\n\n\"Then how do you know about his rooms?\"\n\n\"Ah, that's another matter. I have been three times in his rooms, twice waiting for him under different pretexts and leaving before he came. Once\u2014well, I can hardly tell about the once to an official detective. It was on the last occasion that I took the liberty of running over his papers\u2014with the most unexpected results.\"\n\n\"You found something compromising?\"\n\n\"Absolutely nothing. That was what amazed me. However, you have now seen the point of the picture. It shows him to be a very wealthy man. How did he acquire wealth? He is unmarried. His younger brother is a station master in the west of England. His chair is worth seven hundred a year. And he owns a Greuze.\"\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"Surely the inference is plain.\"\n\n\"You mean that he has a great income and that he must earn it in an illegal fashion?\"\n\n\"Exactly. Of course I have other reasons for thinking so\u2014dozens of exiguous threads which lead vaguely up towards the centre of the web where the poisonous, motionless creature is lurking. I only mention the Greuze because it brings the matter within the range of your own observation.\"\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes, I admit that what you say is interesting: it's more than interesting\u2014it's just wonderful. But let us have it a little clearer if you can. Is it forgery, coining, burglary\u2014where does the money come from?\"\n\n\"Have you ever read of Jonathan Wild?\"\n\n\"Well, the name has a familiar sound. Someone in a novel, was he not? I don't take much stock of detectives in novels\u2014chaps that do things and never let you see how they do them. That's just inspiration: not business.\"\n\n\"Jonathan Wild wasn't a detective, and he wasn't in a novel. He was a master criminal, and he lived last century\u20141750 or thereabouts.\"\n\n\"Then he's no use to me. I'm a practical man.\"\n\n\"Mr. Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your life would be to shut yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day at the annals of crime. Everything comes in circles\u2014even Professor Moriarty. Jonathan Wild was the hidden force of the London criminals, to whom he sold his brains and his organization on a fifteen per cent commission. The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It's all been done before, and will be again. I'll tell you one or two things about Moriarty which may interest you.\"\n\n\"You'll interest me, right enough.\"\n\n\"I happen to know who is the first link in his chain\u2014a chain with this Napoleon-gone-wrong at one end, and a hundred broken fighting men, pickpockets, blackmailers, and card sharpers at the other, with every sort of crime in between. His chief of staff is Colonel Sebastian Moran, as aloof and guarded and inaccessible to the law as himself. What do you think he pays him?\"\n\n\"I'd like to hear.\"\n\n\"Six thousand a year. That's paying for brains, you see\u2014the American business principle. I learned that detail quite by chance. It's more than the Prime Minister gets. That gives you an idea of Moriarty's gains and of the scale on which he works. Another point: I made it my business to hunt down some of Moriarty's checks lately\u2014just common innocent checks that he pays his household bills with. They were drawn on six different banks. Does that make any impression on your mind?\"\n\n\"Queer, certainly! But what do you gather from it?\"\n\n\"That he wanted no gossip about his wealth. No single man should know what he had. I have no doubt that he has twenty banking accounts; the bulk of his fortune abroad in the Deutsche Bank or the Credit Lyonnais as likely as not. Sometime when you have a year or two to spare I commend to you the study of Professor Moriarty.\"\n\nInspector MacDonald had grown steadily more impressed as the conversation proceeded. He had lost himself in his interest. Now his practical Scotch intelligence brought him back with a snap to the matter in hand.\n\n\"He can keep, anyhow,\" said he. \"You've got us side-tracked with your interesting anecdotes, Mr. Holmes. What really counts is your remark that there is some connection between the professor and the crime. That you get from the warning received through the man Porlock. Can we for our present practical needs get any further than that?\"\n\n\"We may form some conception as to the motives of the crime. It is, as I gather from your original remarks, an inexplicable, or at least an unexplained, murder. Now, presuming that the source of the crime is as we suspect it to be, there might be two different motives. In the first place, I may tell you that Moriarty rules with a rod of iron over his people. His discipline is tremendous. There is only one punishment in his code. It is death. Now we might suppose that this murdered man\u2014this Douglas whose approaching fate was known by one of the arch-criminal's subordinates\u2014had in some way betrayed the chief. His punishment followed, and would be known to all\u2014if only to put the fear of death into them.\"\n\n\"Well, that is one suggestion, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"The other is that it has been engineered by Moriarty in the ordinary course of business. Was there any robbery?\"\n\n\"I have not heard.\"\n\n\"If so, it would, of course, be against the first hypothesis and in favour of the second. Moriarty may have been engaged to engineer it on a promise of part spoils, or he may have been paid so much down to manage it. Either is possible. But whichever it may be, or if it is some third combination, it is down at Birlstone that we must seek the solution. I know our man too well to suppose that he has left anything up here which may lead us to him.\"\n\n\"Then to Birlstone we must go!\" cried MacDonald, jumping from his chair. \"My word! it's later than I thought. I can give you, gentlemen, five minutes for preparation, and that is all.\"\n\n\"And ample for us both,\" said Holmes, as he sprang up and hastened to change from his dressing gown to his coat. \"While we are on our way, Mr. Mac, I will ask you to be good enough to tell me all about it.\"\n\n\"All about it\" proved to be disappointingly little, and yet there was enough to assure us that the case before us might well be worthy of the expert's closest attention. He brightened and rubbed his thin hands together as he listened to the meagre but remarkable details. A long series of sterile weeks lay behind us, and here at last there was a fitting object for those remarkable powers which, like all special gifts, become irksome to their owner when they are not in use. That razor brain blunted and rusted with inaction.\n\nSherlock Holmes's eyes glistened, his pale cheeks took a warmer hue, and his whole eager face shone with an inward light when the call for work reached him. Leaning forward in the cab, he listened intently to MacDonald's short sketch of the problem which awaited us in Sussex. The inspector was himself dependent, as he explained to us, upon a scribbled account forwarded to him by the milk train in the early hours of the morning. White Mason, the local officer, was a personal friend, and hence MacDonald had been notified much more promptly than is usual at Scotland Yard when provincials need their assistance. It is a very cold scent upon which the Metropolitan expert is generally asked to run.\n\nDEAR INSPECTOR MACDONALD [said the letter which he read to us]:\n\nOfficial requisition for your services is in separate envelope. This is for your private eye. Wire me what train in the morning you can get for Birlstone, and I will meet it\u2014or have it met if I am too occupied. This case is a snorter. Don't waste a moment in getting started. If you can bring Mr. Holmes, please do so; for he will find something after his own heart. We would think the whole thing had been fixed up for theatrical effect if there wasn't a dead man in the middle of it. My word! it is a snorter.\n\n\"Your friend seems to be no fool,\" remarked Holmes.\n\n\"No, sir, White Mason is a very live man, if I am any judge.\"\n\n\"Well, have you anything more?\"\n\n\"Only that he will give us every detail when we meet.\"\n\n\"Then how did you get at Mr. Douglas and the fact that he had been horribly murdered?\"\n\n\"That was in the inclosed official report. It didn't say 'horrible': that's not a recognized official term. It gave the name John Douglas. It mentioned that his injuries had been in the head, from the discharge of a shotgun. It also mentioned the hour of the alarm, which was close on to midnight last night. It added that the case was undoubtedly one of murder, but that no arrest had been made, and that the case was one which presented some very perplexing and extraordinary features. That's absolutely all we have at present, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"Then, with your permission, we will leave it at that, Mr. Mac. The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession. I can see only two things for certain at present\u2014a great brain in London, and a dead man in Sussex. It's the chain between that we are going to trace.\"" + }, + { + "title": "The Tragedy of Birlstone", + "text": "Now for a moment I will ask leave to remove my own insignificant personality and to describe events which occurred before we arrived upon the scene by the light of knowledge which came to us afterwards. Only in this way can I make the reader appreciate the people concerned and the strange setting in which their fate was cast.\n\nThe village of Birlstone is a small and very ancient cluster of half-timbered cottages on the northern border of the county of Sussex. For centuries it had remained unchanged; but within the last few years its picturesque appearance and situation have attracted a number of well-to-do residents, whose villas peep out from the woods around. These woods are locally supposed to be the extreme fringe of the great Weald forest, which thins away until it reaches the northern chalk downs. A number of small shops have come into being to meet the wants of the increased population; so there seems some prospect that Birlstone may soon grow from an ancient village into a modern town. It is the centre for a considerable area of country, since Tunbridge Wells, the nearest place of importance, is ten or twelve miles to the eastward, over the borders of Kent.\n\nAbout half a mile from the town, standing in an old park famous for its huge beech trees, is the ancient Manor House of Birlstone. Part of this venerable building dates back to the time of the first crusade, when Hugo de Capus built a fortalice in the centre of the estate, which had been granted to him by the Red King. This was destroyed by fire in 1543, and some of its smoke-blackened corner stones were used when, in Jacobean times, a brick country house rose upon the ruins of the feudal castle.\n\nThe Manor House, with its many gables and its small diamond-paned windows, was still much as the builder had left it in the early seventeenth century. Of the double moats which had guarded its more warlike predecessor, the outer had been allowed to dry up, and served the humble function of a kitchen garden. The inner one was still there, and lay forty feet in breadth, though now only a few feet in depth, round the whole house. A small stream fed it and continued beyond it, so that the sheet of water, though turbid, was never ditchlike or unhealthy. The ground floor windows were within a foot of the surface of the water.\n\nThe only approach to the house was over a drawbridge, the chains and windlass of which had long been rusted and broken. The latest tenants of the Manor House had, however, with characteristic energy, set this right, and the drawbridge was not only capable of being raised, but actually was raised every evening and lowered every morning. By thus renewing the custom of the old feudal days the Manor House was converted into an island during the night\u2014a fact which had a very direct bearing upon the mystery which was soon to engage the attention of all England.\n\nThe house had been untenanted for some years and was threatening to moulder into a picturesque decay when the Douglases took possession of it. This family consisted of only two individuals: John Douglas and his wife. Douglas was a remarkable man, both in character and in person. In age he may have been about fifty, with a strong-jawed, rugged face, a grizzling moustache, peculiarly keen gray eyes, and a wiry, vigorous figure which had lost nothing of the strength and activity of youth. He was cheery and genial to all, but somewhat offhand in his manners, giving the impression that he had seen life in social strata on some far lower horizon than the county society of Sussex.\n\nYet, though looked at with some curiosity and reserve by his more cultivated neighbours, he soon acquired a great popularity among the villagers, subscribing handsomely to all local objects, and attending their smoking concerts and other functions, where, having a remarkably rich tenor voice, he was always ready to oblige with an excellent song. He appeared to have plenty of money, which was said to have been gained in the California gold fields, and it was clear from his own talk and that of his wife that he had spent a part of his life in America.\n\nThe good impression which had been produced by his generosity and by his democratic manners was increased by a reputation gained for utter indifference to danger. Though a wretched rider, he turned out at every meet, and took the most amazing falls in his determination to hold his own with the best. When the vicarage caught fire he distinguished himself also by the fearlessness with which he reentered the building to save property, after the local fire brigade had given it up as impossible. Thus it came about that John Douglas of the Manor House had within five years won himself quite a reputation in Birlstone.\n\nHis wife, too, was popular with those who had made her acquaintance; though, after the English fashion, the callers upon a stranger who settled in the county without introductions were few and far between. This mattered the less to her, as she was retiring by disposition, and very much absorbed, to all appearance, in her husband and her domestic duties. It was known that she was an English lady who had met Mr. Douglas in London, he being at that time a widower. She was a beautiful woman, tall, dark, and slender, some twenty years younger than her husband; a disparity which seemed in no wise to mar the contentment of their family life.\n\nIt was remarked sometimes, however, by those who knew them best, that the confidence between the two did not appear to be complete, since the wife was either very reticent about her husband's past life, or else, as seemed more likely, was imperfectly informed about it. It had also been noted and commented upon by a few observant people that there were signs sometimes of some nerve-strain upon the part of Mrs. Douglas, and that she would display acute uneasiness if her absent husband should ever be particularly late in his return. On a quiet countryside, where all gossip is welcome, this weakness of the lady of the Manor House did not pass without remark, and it bulked larger upon people's memory when the events arose which gave it a very special significance.\n\nThere was yet another individual whose residence under that roof was, it is true, only an intermittent one, but whose presence at the time of the strange happenings which will now be narrated brought his name prominently before the public. This was Cecil James Barker, of Hales Lodge, Hampstead.\n\nCecil Barker's tall, loose-jointed figure was a familiar one in the main street of Birlstone village; for he was a frequent and welcome visitor at the Manor House. He was the more noticed as being the only friend of the past unknown life of Mr. Douglas who was ever seen in his new English surroundings. Barker was himself an undoubted Englishman; but by his remarks it was clear that he had first known Douglas in America and had there lived on intimate terms with him. He appeared to be a man of considerable wealth, and was reputed to be a bachelor.\n\nIn age he was rather younger than Douglas\u2014forty-five at the most\u2014a tall, straight, broad-chested fellow with a clean-shaved, prize-fighter face, thick, strong, black eyebrows, and a pair of masterful black eyes which might, even without the aid of his very capable hands, clear a way for him through a hostile crowd. He neither rode nor shot, but spent his days in wandering round the old village with his pipe in his mouth, or in driving with his host, or in his absence with his hostess, over the beautiful countryside. \"An easy-going, free-handed gentleman,\" said Ames, the butler. \"But, my word! I had rather not be the man that crossed him!\" He was cordial and intimate with Douglas, and he was no less friendly with his wife\u2014a friendship which more than once seemed to cause some irritation to the husband, so that even the servants were able to perceive his annoyance. Such was the third person who was one of the family when the catastrophe occurred.\n\nAs to the other denizens of the old building, it will suffice out of a large household to mention the prim, respectable, and capable Ames, and Mrs. Allen, a buxom and cheerful person, who relieved the lady of some of her household cares. The other six servants in the house bear no relation to the events of the night of January 6th.\n\nIt was at eleven forty-five that the first alarm reached the small local police station, in charge of Sergeant Wilson of the Sussex Constabulary. Cecil Barker, much excited, had rushed up to the door and pealed furiously upon the bell. A terrible tragedy had occurred at the Manor House, and John Douglas had been murdered. That was the breathless burden of his message. He had hurried back to the house, followed within a few minutes by the police sergeant, who arrived at the scene of the crime a little after twelve o'clock, after taking prompt steps to warn the county authorities that something serious was afoot.\n\nOn reaching the Manor House, the sergeant had found the drawbridge down, the windows lighted up, and the whole household in a state of wild confusion and alarm. The white-faced servants were huddling together in the hall, with the frightened butler wringing his hands in the doorway. Only Cecil Barker seemed to be master of himself and his emotions; he had opened the door which was nearest to the entrance and he had beckoned to the sergeant to follow him. At that moment there arrived Dr. Wood, a brisk and capable general practitioner from the village. The three men entered the fatal room together, while the horror-stricken butler followed at their heels, closing the door behind him to shut out the terrible scene from the maid servants.\n\nThe dead man lay on his back, sprawling with outstretched limbs in the centre of the room. He was clad only in a pink dressing gown, which covered his night clothes. There were carpet slippers on his bare feet. The doctor knelt beside him and held down the hand lamp which had stood on the table. One glance at the victim was enough to show the healer that his presence could be dispensed with. The man had been horribly injured. Lying across his chest was a curious weapon, a shotgun with the barrel sawed off a foot in front of the triggers. It was clear that this had been fired at close range and that he had received the whole charge in the face, blowing his head almost to pieces. The triggers had been wired together, so as to make the simultaneous discharge more destructive.\n\nThe country policeman was unnerved and troubled by the tremendous responsibility which had come so suddenly upon him. \"We will touch nothing until my superiors arrive,\" he said in a hushed voice, staring in horror at the dreadful head.\n\n\"Nothing has been touched up to now,\" said Cecil Barker. \"I'll answer for that. You see it all exactly as I found it.\"\n\n\"When was that?\" The sergeant had drawn out his notebook.\n\n\"It was just half-past eleven. I had not begun to undress, and I was sitting by the fire in my bedroom when I heard the report. It was not very loud\u2014it seemed to be muffled. I rushed down\u2014I don't suppose it was thirty seconds before I was in the room.\"\n\n\"Was the door open?\"\n\n\"Yes, it was open. Poor Douglas was lying as you see him. His bedroom candle was burning on the table. It was I who lit the lamp some minutes afterward.\"\n\n\"Did you see no one?\"\n\n\"No. I heard Mrs. Douglas coming down the stair behind me, and I rushed out to prevent her from seeing this dreadful sight. Mrs. Allen, the housekeeper, came and took her away. Ames had arrived, and we ran back into the room once more.\"\n\n\"But surely I have heard that the drawbridge is kept up all night.\"\n\n\"Yes, it was up until I lowered it.\"\n\n\"Then how could any murderer have got away? It is out of the question! Mr. Douglas must have shot himself.\"\n\n\"That was our first idea. But see!\" Barker drew aside the curtain, and showed that the long, diamond-paned window was open to its full extent. \"And look at this!\" He held the lamp down and illuminated a smudge of blood like the mark of a boot-sole upon the wooden sill. \"Someone has stood there in getting out.\"\n\n\"You mean that someone waded across the moat?\"\n\n\"Exactly!\"\n\n\"Then if you were in the room within half a minute of the crime, he must have been in the water at that very moment.\"\n\n\"I have not a doubt of it. I wish to heaven that I had rushed to the window! But the curtain screened it, as you can see, and so it never occurred to me. Then I heard the step of Mrs. Douglas, and I could not let her enter the room. It would have been too horrible.\"\n\n\"Horrible enough!\" said the doctor, looking at the shattered head and the terrible marks which surrounded it. \"I've never seen such injuries since the Birlstone railway smash.\"\n\n\"But, I say,\" remarked the police sergeant, whose slow, bucolic common sense was still pondering the open window. \"It's all very well your saying that a man escaped by wading this moat, but what I ask you is, how did he ever get into the house at all if the bridge was up?\"\n\n\"Ah, that's the question,\" said Barker.\n\n\"At what o'clock was it raised?\"\n\n\"It was nearly six o'clock,\" said Ames, the butler.\n\n\"I've heard,\" said the sergeant, \"that it was usually raised at sunset. That would be nearer half-past four than six at this time of year.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Douglas had visitors to tea,\" said Ames. \"I couldn't raise it until they went. Then I wound it up myself.\"\n\n\"Then it comes to this,\" said the sergeant: \"If anyone came from outside\u2014if they did\u2014they must have got in across the bridge before six and been in hiding ever since, until Mr. Douglas came into the room after eleven.\"\n\n\"That is so! Mr. Douglas went round the house every night the last thing before he turned in to see that the lights were right. That brought him in here. The man was waiting and shot him. Then he got away through the window and left his gun behind him. That's how I read it; for nothing else will fit the facts.\"\n\nThe sergeant picked up a card which lay beside the dead man on the floor. The initials V. V. and under them the number 341 were rudely scrawled in ink upon it.\n\n\"What's this?\" he asked, holding it up.\n\nBarker looked at it with curiosity. \"I never noticed it before,\" he said. \"The murderer must have left it behind him.\"\n\n\"V V.\u2014341. I can make no sense of that.\"\n\nThe sergeant kept turning it over in his big fingers. \"What's V V? Somebody's initials, maybe. What have you got there, Dr. Wood?\"\n\nIt was a good-sized hammer which had been lying on the rug in front of the fireplace\u2014a substantial, workmanlike hammer. Cecil Barker pointed to a box of brass-headed nails upon the mantelpiece.\n\n\"Mr. Douglas was altering the pictures yesterday,\" he said. \"I saw him myself, standing upon that chair and fixing the big picture above it. That accounts for the hammer.\"\n\n\"We'd best put it back on the rug where we found it,\" said the sergeant, scratching his puzzled head in his perplexity. \"It will want the best brains in the force to get to the bottom of this thing. It will be a London job before it is finished.\" He raised the hand lamp and walked slowly round the room. \"Hullo!\" he cried, excitedly, drawing the window curtain to one side. \"What o'clock were those curtains drawn?\"\n\n\"When the lamps were lit,\" said the butler. \"It would be shortly after four.\"\n\n\"Someone had been hiding here, sure enough.\" He held down the light, and the marks of muddy boots were very visible in the corner. \"I'm bound to say this bears out your theory, Mr. Barker. It looks as if the man got into the house after four when the curtains were drawn, and before six when the bridge was raised. He slipped into this room, because it was the first that he saw. There was no other place where he could hide, so he popped in behind this curtain. That all seems clear enough. It is likely that his main idea was to burgle the house; but Mr. Douglas chanced to come upon him, so he murdered him and escaped.\"\n\n\"That's how I read it,\" said Barker. \"But, I say, aren't we wasting precious time? Couldn't we start out and scour the country before the fellow gets away?\"\n\nThe sergeant considered for a moment.\n\n\"There are no trains before six in the morning; so he can't get away by rail. If he goes by road with his legs all dripping, it's odds that someone will notice him. Anyhow, I can't leave here myself until I am relieved. But I think none of you should go until we see more clearly, how we all stand.\"\n\nThe doctor had taken the lamp and was narrowly scrutinizing the body. \"What's this mark?\" he asked. \"Could this have any connection with the crime?\"\n\nThe dead man's right arm was thrust out from his dressing gown, and exposed as high as the elbow. About halfway up the forearm was a curious brown design, a triangle inside a circle, standing out in vivid relief upon the lard-coloured skin.\n\n\"It's not tattooed,\" said the doctor, peering through his glasses. I never saw anything like it. The man has been branded at some time as they brand cattle. What is the meaning of this?\"\n\n\"I don't profess to know the meaning of it,\" said Cecil Barker; \"but I have seen the mark on Douglas many times this last ten years.\"\n\n\"And so have I,\" said the butler. \"Many a time when the master has rolled up his sleeves I have noticed that very mark. I've often wondered what it could be.\"\n\n\"Then it has nothing to do with the crime, anyhow,\" said the sergeant. \"But it's a rum thing all the same. Everything about this case is rum. Well, what is it now?\"\n\nThe butler had given an exclamation of astonishment and was pointing at the dead man's outstretched hand.\n\n\"They've taken his wedding ring!\" he gasped.\n\n\"What!\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed. Master always wore his plain gold wedding ring on the little finger of his left hand. That ring with the rough nugget on it was above it, and the twisted snake ring on the third finger. There's the nugget and there's the snake, but the wedding ring is gone.\"\n\n\"He's right,\" said Barker.\n\n\"Do you tell me,\" said the sergeant, \"that the wedding ring was below the other?\"\n\n\"Always!\"\n\n\"Then the murderer or whoever it was, first took off this ring you call the nugget ring, then the wedding ring, and afterwards put the nugget ring back again.\"\n\n\"That is so!\"\n\nThe worthy country policeman shook his head. \"Seems to me the sooner we get London on to this case the better,\" said he. \"White Mason is a smart man. No local job has ever been too much for White Mason. It won't be long now before he is here to help us. But I expect we'll have to look to London before we are through. Anyhow, I'm not ashamed to say that it is a deal too thick for the likes of me.\"" + }, + { + "title": "Darkness", + "text": "At three in the morning the chief Sussex detective, obeying the urgent call from Sergeant Wilson of Birlstone, arrived from headquarters in a light dog-cart behind a breathless trotter. By the five-forty train in the morning he had sent his message to Scotland Yard, and he was at the Birlstone station at twelve o'clock to welcome us. White Mason was a quiet, comfortable-looking person in a loose tweed suit, with a clean-shaved, ruddy face, a stoutish body, and powerful bandy legs adorned with gaiters, looking like a small farmer, a retired gamekeeper, or anything upon earth except a very favourable specimen of the provincial criminal officer.\n\n\"A real downright snorter, Mr. MacDonald!\" he kept repeating. \"We'll have the pressmen down like flies when they understand it. I'm hoping we will get our work done before they get poking their noses into it and messing up all the trails. There has been nothing like this that I can remember. There are some bits that will come home to you, Mr. Holmes, or I am mistaken. And you also, Dr. Watson; for the medicos will have a word to say before we finish. Your room is at the Westville Arms. There's no other place; but I hear that it is clean and good. The man will carry your bags. This way, gentlemen, if you please.\"\n\nHe was a very bustling and genial person, this Sussex detective. In ten minutes we had all found our quarters. In ten more we were seated in the parlour of the inn and being treated to a rapid sketch of those events which have been outlined in the previous chapter. MacDonald made an occasional note; while Holmes sat absorbed, with the expression of surprised and reverent admiration with which the botanist surveys the rare and precious bloom.\n\n\"Remarkable!\" he said, when the story was unfolded, \"most remarkable! I can hardly recall any case where the features have been more peculiar.\"\n\n\"I thought you would say so, Mr. Holmes,\" said White Mason in great delight. \"We're well up with the times in Sussex. I've told you now how matters were, up to the time when I took over from Sergeant Wilson between three and four this morning. My word! I made the old mare go! But I need not have been in such a hurry, as it turned out; for there was nothing immediate that I could do. Sergeant Wilson had all the facts. I checked them and considered them and maybe added a few of my own.\"\n\n\"What were they?\" asked Holmes eagerly.\n\n\"Well, I first had the hammer examined. There was Dr. Wood there to help me. We found no signs of violence upon it. I was hoping that if Mr. Douglas defended himself with the hammer, he might have left his mark upon the murderer before he dropped it on the mat. But there was no stain.\"\n\n\"That, of course, proves nothing at all,\" remarked Inspector MacDonald. \"There has been many a hammer murder and no trace on the hammer.\"\n\n\"Quite so. It doesn't prove it wasn't used. But there might have been stains, and that would have helped us. As a matter of fact there were none. Then I examined the gun. They were buckshot cartridges, and, as Sergeant Wilson pointed out, the triggers were wired together so that, if you pulled on the hinder one, both barrels were discharged. Whoever fixed that up had made up his mind that he was going to take no chances of missing his man. The sawed gun was not more than two foot long\u2014one could carry it easily under one's coat. There was no complete maker's name; but the printed letters P-E-N were on the fluting between the barrels, and the rest of the name had been cut off by the saw.\"\n\n\"A big P with a flourish above it, E and N smaller?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"Pennsylvania Small Arms Company\u2014well-known American firm,\" said Holmes.\n\nWhite Mason gazed at my friend as the little village practitioner looks at the Harley Street specialist who by a word can solve the difficulties that perplex him.\n\n\"That is very helpful, Mr. Holmes. No doubt you are right. Wonderful! Wonderful! Do you carry the names of all the gun makers in the world in your memory?\"\n\nHolmes dismissed the subject with a wave.\n\n\"No doubt it is an American shotgun,\" White Mason continued. \"I seem to have read that a sawed-off shotgun is a weapon used in some parts of America. Apart from the name upon the barrel, the idea had occurred to me. There is some evidence, then, that this man who entered the house and killed its master was an American.\"\n\nMacDonald shook his head. \"Man, you are surely travelling overfast,\" said he. \"I have heard no evidence yet that any stranger was ever in the house at all.\"\n\n\"The open window, the blood on the sill, the queer card, the marks of boots in the corner, the gun!\"\n\n\"Nothing there that could not have been arranged. Mr. Douglas was an American, or had lived long in America. So had Mr. Barker. You don't need to import an American from outside in order to account for American doings.\"\n\n\"Ames, the butler\u2014\"\n\n\"What about him? Is he reliable?\"\n\n\"Ten years with Sir Charles Chandos\u2014as solid as a rock. He has been with Douglas ever since he took the Manor House five years ago. He has never seen a gun of this sort in the house.\"\n\n\"The gun was made to conceal. That's why the barrels were sawed. It would fit into any box. How could he swear there was no such gun in the house?\"\n\n\"Well, anyhow, he had never seen one.\"\n\nMacDonald shook his obstinate Scotch head. \"I'm not convinced yet that there was ever anyone in the house,\" said he. \"I'm asking you to conseedar\" (his accent became more Aberdonian as he lost himself in his argument) \"I'm asking you to conseedar what it involves if you suppose that this gun was ever brought into the house, and that all these strange things were done by a person from outside. Oh, man, it's just inconceivable! It's clean against common sense! I put it to you, Mr. Holmes, judging it by what we have heard.\"\n\n\"Well, state your case, Mr. Mac,\" said Holmes in his most judicial style.\n\n\"The man is not a burglar, supposing that he ever existed. The ring business and the card point to premeditated murder for some private reason. Very good. Here is a man who slips into a house with the deliberate intention of committing murder. He knows, if he knows anything, that he will have a deeficulty in making his escape, as the house is surrounded with water. What weapon would he choose? You would say the most silent in the world. Then he could hope when the deed was done to slip quickly from the window, to wade the moat, and to get away at his leisure. That's understandable. But is it understandable that he should go out of his way to bring with him the most noisy weapon he could select, knowing well that it will fetch every human being in the house to the spot as quick as they can run, and that it is all odds that he will be seen before he can get across the moat? Is that credible, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Well, you put the case strongly,\" my friend replied thoughtfully. \"It certainly needs a good deal of justification. May I ask, Mr. White Mason, whether you examined the farther side of the moat at once, to see if there were any signs of the man having climbed out from the water?\"\n\n\"There were no signs, Mr. Holmes. But it is a stone ledge, and one could hardly expect them.\"\n\n\"No tracks or marks?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\n\"Ha! Would there be any objection, Mr. White Mason, to our going down to the house at once? There may possibly be some small point which might be suggestive.\"\n\n\"I was going to propose it, Mr. Holmes; but I thought it well to put you in touch with all the facts before we go. I suppose if anything should strike you\u2014\" White Mason looked doubtfully at the amateur.\n\n\"I have worked with Mr. Holmes before,\" said Inspector MacDonald. \"He plays the game.\"\n\n\"My own idea of the game, at any rate,\" said Holmes, with a smile. \"I go into a case to help the ends of justice and the work of the police. If I have ever separated myself from the official force, it is because they have first separated themselves from me. I have no wish ever to score at their expense. At the same time, Mr. White Mason, I claim the right to work in my own way and give my results at my own time\u2014complete rather than in stages.\"\n\n\"I am sure we are honoured by your presence and to show you all we know,\" said White Mason cordially. \"Come along, Dr. Watson, and when the time comes we'll all hope for a place in your book.\"\n\nWe walked down the quaint village street with a row of pollarded elms on each side of it. Just beyond were two ancient stone pillars, weather-stained and lichen-blotched, bearing upon their summits a shapeless something which had once been the rampant lion of Capus of Birlstone. A short walk along the winding drive with such sward and oaks around it as one only sees in rural England, then a sudden turn, and the long, low Jacobean house of dingy, liver-coloured brick lay before us, with an old-fashioned garden of cut yews on each side of it. As we approached it, there was the wooden drawbridge and the beautiful broad moat as still and luminous as quicksilver in the cold, winter sunshine.\n\nThree centuries had flowed past the old Manor House, centuries of births and of homecomings, of country dances and of the meetings of fox hunters. Strange that now in its old age this dark business should have cast its shadow upon the venerable walls! And yet those strange, peaked roofs and quaint, overhung gables were a fitting covering to grim and terrible intrigue. As I looked at the deep-set windows and the long sweep of the dull-coloured, water-lapped front, I felt that no more fitting scene could be set for such a tragedy.\n\n\"That's the window,\" said White Mason, \"that one on the immediate right of the drawbridge. It's open just as it was found last night.\"\n\n\"It looks rather narrow for a man to pass.\"\n\n\"Well, it wasn't a fat man, anyhow. We don't need your deductions, Mr. Holmes, to tell us that. But you or I could squeeze through all right.\"\n\nHolmes walked to the edge of the moat and looked across. Then he examined the stone ledge and the grass border beyond it.\n\n\"I've had a good look, Mr. Holmes,\" said White Mason. \"There is nothing there, no sign that anyone has landed\u2014but why should he leave any sign?\"\n\n\"Exactly. Why should he? Is the water always turbid?\"\n\n\"Generally about this colour. The stream brings down the clay.\"\n\n\"How deep is it?\"\n\n\"About two feet at each side and three in the middle.\"\n\n\"So we can put aside all idea of the man having been drowned in crossing.\"\n\n\"No, a child could not be drowned in it.\"\n\nWe walked across the drawbridge, and were admitted by a quaint, gnarled, dried-up person, who was the butler, Ames. The poor old fellow was white and quivering from the shock. The village sergeant, a tall, for mal, melancholy man, still held his vigil in the room of Fate. The doctor had departed.\n\n\"Anything fresh, Sergeant Wilson?\" asked White Mason.\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"Then you can go home. You've had enough. We can send for you if we want you. The butler had better wait outside. Tell him to warn Mr. Cecil Barker, Mrs. Douglas, and the housekeeper that we may want a word with them presently. Now, gentlemen, perhaps you will allow me to give you the views I have formed first, and then you will be able to arrive at your own.\"\n\nHe impressed me, this country specialist. He had a solid grip of fact and a cool, clear, common-sense brain, which should take him some way in his profession. Holmes listened to him intently, with no sign of that impatience which the official exponent too often produced.\n\n\"Is it suicide, or is it murder\u2014that's our first question, gentlemen, is it not? If it were suicide, then we have to believe that this man began by taking off his wedding ring and concealing it; that he then came down here in his dressing gown, trampled mud into a corner behind the curtain in order to give the idea someone had waited for him, opened the window, put blood on the\u2014\"\n\n\"We can surely dismiss that,\" said MacDonald.\n\n\"So I think. Suicide is out of the question. Then a murder has been done. What we have to determine is, whether it was done by someone outside or inside the house.\"\n\n\"Well, let's hear the argument.\"\n\n\"There are considerable difficulties both ways, and yet one or the other it must be. We will suppose first that some person or persons inside the house did the crime. They got this man down here at a time when everything was still and yet no one was asleep. They then did the deed with the queerest and noisiest weapon in the world so as to tell everyone what had happened\u2014a weapon that was never seen in the house before. That does not seem a very likely start, does it?\"\n\n\"No, it does not.\"\n\n\"Well, then, everyone is agreed that after the alarm was given only a minute at the most had passed before the whole household\u2014not Mr. Cecil Barker alone, though he claims to have been the first, but Ames and all of them were on the spot. Do you tell me that in that time the guilty person managed to make footmarks in the corner, open the window, mark the sill with blood, take the wedding ring off the dead man's finger, and all the rest of it? It's impossible!\"\n\n\"You put it very clearly,\" said Holmes. \"I am inclined to agree with you.\"\n\n\"Well, then, we are driven back to the theory that it was done by someone from outside. We are still faced with some big difficulties; but anyhow they have ceased to be impossibilities. The man got into the house between four-thirty and six; that is to say, between dusk and the time when the bridge was raised. There had been some visitors, and the door was open; so there was nothing to prevent him. He may have been a common burglar, or he may have had some private grudge against Mr. Douglas. Since Mr. Douglas has spent most of his life in America, and this shotgun seems to be an American weapon, it would seem that the private grudge is the more likely theory. He slipped into this room because it was the first he came to, and he hid behind the curtain. There he remained until past eleven at night. At that time Mr. Douglas entered the room. It was a short interview, if there were any interview at all; for Mrs. Douglas declares that her husband had not left her more than a few minutes when she heard the shot.\"\n\n\"The candle shows that,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Exactly. The candle, which was a new one, is not burned more than half an inch. He must have placed it on the table before he was attacked; otherwise, of course, it would have fallen when he fell. This shows that he was not attacked the instant that he entered the room. When Mr. Barker arrived the candle was lit and the lamp was out.\"\n\n\"That's all clear enough.\"\n\n\"Well, now, we can reconstruct things on those lines. Mr. Douglas enters the room. He puts down the candle. A man appears from behind the curtain. He is armed with this gun. He demands the wedding ring\u2014Heaven only knows why, but so it must have been. Mr. Douglas gave it up. Then either in cold blood or in the course of a struggle\u2014Douglas may have gripped the hammer that was found upon the mat\u2014he shot Douglas in this horrible way. He dropped his gun and also it would seem this queer card\u2014V V 341, whatever that may mean\u2014and he made his escape through the window and across the moat at the very moment when Cecil Barker was discovering the crime. How's that, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Very interesting, but just a little unconvincing.\"\n\n\"Man, it would be absolute nonsense if it wasn't that anything else is even worse!\" cried MacDonald. \"Somebody killed the man, and whoever it was I could clearly prove to you that he should have done it some other way. What does he mean by allowing his retreat to be cut off like that? What does he mean by using a shotgun when silence was his one chance of escape? Come, Mr. Holmes, it's up to you to give us a lead, since you say Mr. White Mason's theory is unconvincing.\"\n\nHolmes had sat intently observant during this long discussion, missing no word that was said, with his keen eyes darting to right and to left, and his forehead wrinkled with speculation.\n\n\"I should like a few more facts before I get so far as a theory, Mr. Mac,\" said he, kneeling down beside the body. \"Dear me! these injuries are really appalling. Can we have the butler in for a moment?... Ames, I understand that you have often seen this very unusual mark\u2014a branded triangle inside a circle\u2014upon Mr. Douglas's forearm?\"\n\n\"Frequently, sir.\"\n\n\"You never heard any speculation as to what it meant?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"It must have caused great pain when it was inflicted. It is undoubtedly a burn. Now, I observe, Ames, that there is a small piece of plaster at the angle of Mr. Douglas's jaw. Did you observe that in life?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, he cut himself in shaving yesterday morning.\"\n\n\"Did you ever know him to cut himself in shaving before?\"\n\n\"Not for a very long time, sir.\"\n\n\"Suggestive!\" said Holmes. \"It may, of course, be a mere coincidence, or it may point to some nervousness which would indicate that he had reason to apprehend danger. Had you noticed anything unusual in his conduct, yesterday, Ames?\"\n\n\"It struck me that he was a little restless and excited, sir.\"\n\n\"Ha! The attack may not have been entirely unexpected. We do seem to make a little progress, do we not? Perhaps you would rather do the questioning. Mr. Mac?\"\n\n\"No, Mr. Holmes, it's in better hands than mine.\"\n\n\"Well, then, we will pass to this card\u2014V V 341. It is rough cardboard. Have you any of the sort in the house?\"\n\n\"I don't think so.\"\n\nHolmes walked across to the desk and dabbed a little ink from each bottle on to the blotting paper. \"It was not printed in this room,\" he said; \"this is black ink and the other purplish. It was done by a thick pen, and these are fine. No, it was done elsewhere, I should say. Can you make anything of the inscription, Ames?\"\n\n\"No, sir, nothing.\"\n\n\"What do you think, Mr. Mac?\"\n\n\"It gives me the impression of a secret society of some sort; the same with his badge upon the forearm.\"\n\n\"That's my idea, too,\" said White Mason.\n\n\"Well, we can adopt it as a working hypothesis and then see how far our difficulties disappear. An agent from such a society makes his way into the house, waits for Mr. Douglas, blows his head nearly off with this weapon, and escapes by wading the moat, after leaving a card beside the dead man, which will, when mentioned in the papers, tell other members of the society that vengeance has been done. That all hangs together. But why this gun, of all weapons?\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"And why the missing ring?\"\n\n\"Quite so.\"\n\n\"And why no arrest? It's past two now. I take it for granted that since dawn every constable within forty miles has been looking out for a wet stranger?\"\n\n\"That is so, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"Well, unless he has a burrow close by or a change of clothes ready, they can hardly miss him. And yet they have missed him up to now!\" Holmes had gone to the window and was examining with his lens the blood mark on the sill. \"It is clearly the tread of a shoe. It is remarkably broad; a splay-foot, one would say. Curious, because, so far as one can trace any footmark in this mud-stained corner, one would say it was a more shapely sole. However, they are certainly very indistinct. What's this under the side table?\"\n\n\"Mr. Douglas's dumb-bells,\" said Ames.\n\n\"Dumb-bell\u2014there's only one. Where's the other?\"\n\n\"I don't know, Mr. Holmes. There may have been only one. I have not noticed them for months.\"\n\n\"One dumb-bell\u2014\" Holmes said seriously; but his remarks were interrupted by a sharp knock at the door.\n\nA tall, sunburned, capable-looking, clean-shaved man looked in at us. I had no difficulty in guessing that it was the Cecil Barker of whom I had heard. His masterful eyes travelled quickly with a questioning glance from face to face.\n\n\"Sorry to interrupt your consultation,\" said he, \"but you should hear the latest news.\"\n\n\"An arrest?\"\n\n\"No such luck. But they've found his bicycle. The fellow left his bicycle behind him. Come and have a look. It is within a hundred yards of the hall door.\"\n\nWe found three or four grooms and idlers standing in the drive inspecting a bicycle which had been drawn out from a clump of evergreens in which it had been concealed. It was a well used Rudge-Whitworth, splashed as from a considerable journey. There was a saddlebag with spanner and oilcan, but no clue as to the owner.\n\n\"It would be a grand help to the police,\" said the inspector, \"if these things were numbered and registered. But we must be thankful for what we've got. If we can't find where he went to, at least we are likely to get where he came from. But what in the name of all that is wonderful made the fellow leave it behind? And how in the world has he got away without it? We don't seem to get a gleam of light in the case, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"Don't we?\" my friend answered thoughtfully. \"I wonder!\"" + }, + { + "title": "The People of the Drama", + "text": "Have you seen all you want of the study?\" asked White Mason as we reentered the house.\n\n\"For the time,\" said the inspector, and Holmes nodded.\n\n\"Then perhaps you would now like to hear the evidence of some of the people in the house. We could use the dining-room, Ames. Please come yourself first and tell us what you know.\"\n\nThe butler's account was a simple and a clear one, and he gave a convincing impression of sincerity. He had been engaged five years before, when Douglas first came to Birlstone. He understood that Mr. Douglas was a rich gentleman who had made his money in America. He had been a kind and considerate employer\u2014not quite what Ames was used to, perhaps; but one can't have everything. He never saw any signs of apprehension in Mr. Douglas: on the contrary, he was the most fearless man he had ever known. He ordered the drawbridge to be pulled up every night because it was the ancient custom of the old house, and he liked to keep the old ways up.\n\nMr. Douglas seldom went to London or left the village; but on the day before the crime he had been shopping at Tunbridge Wells. He (Ames) had observed some restlessness and excitement on the part of Mr. Douglas that day; for he had seemed impatient and irritable, which was unusual with him. He had not gone to bed that night; but was in the pantry at the back of the house, putting away the silver, when he heard the bell ring violently. He heard no shot; but it was hardly possible he would, as the pantry and kitchens were at the very back of the house and there were several closed doors and a long passage between. The housekeeper had come out of her room, attracted by the violent ringing of the bell. They had gone to the front of the house together.\n\nAs they reached the bottom of the stair he had seen Mrs. Douglas coming down it. No, she was not hurrying; it did not seem to him that she was particularly agitated. Just as she reached the bottom of the stair Mr. Barker had rushed out of the study. He had stopped Mrs. Douglas and begged her to go back.\n\n\"For God's sake, go back to your room!\" he cried. \"Poor Jack is dead! You can do nothing. For God's sake, go back!\"\n\nAfter some persuasion upon the stairs Mrs. Douglas had gone back. She did not scream. She made no outcry whatever. Mrs. Allen, the housekeeper, had taken her upstairs and stayed with her in the bedroom. Ames and Mr. Barker had then returned to the study, where they had found everything exactly as the police had seen it. The candle was not lit at that time; but the lamp was burning. They had looked out of the window; but the night was very dark and nothing could be seen or heard. They had then rushed out into the hall, where Ames had turned the windlass which lowered the drawbridge. Mr. Barker had then hurried off to get the police.\n\nSuch, in its essentials, was the evidence of the butler.\n\nThe account of Mrs. Allen, the housekeeper, was, so far as it went, a corroboration of that of her fellow servant. The housekeeper's room was rather nearer to the front of the house than the pantry in which Ames had been working. She was preparing to go to bed when the loud ringing of the bell had attracted her attention. She was a little hard of hearing. Perhaps that was why she had not heard the shot; but in any case the study was a long way off. She remembered hearing some sound which she imagined to be the slamming of a door. That was a good deal earlier\u2014half an hour at least before the ringing of the bell. When Mr. Ames ran to the front she went with him. She saw Mr. Barker, very pale and excited, come out of the study. He intercepted Mrs. Douglas, who was coming down the stairs. He entreated her to go back, and she answered him, but what she said could not be heard.\n\n\"Take her up! Stay with her!\" he had said to Mrs. Allen.\n\nShe had therefore taken her to the bedroom, and endeavoured to soothe her. She was greatly excited, trembling all over, but made no other attempt to go downstairs. She just sat in her dressing gown by her bedroom fire, with her head sunk in her hands. Mrs. Allen stayed with her most of the night. As to the other servants, they had all gone to bed, and the alarm did not reach them until just before the police arrived. They slept at the extreme back of the house, and could not possibly have heard anything.\n\nSo far the housekeeper could add nothing on cross-examination save lamentations and expressions of amazement.\n\nCecil Barker succeeded Mrs. Allen as a witness. As to the occurrences of the night before, he had very little to add to what he had already told the police. Personally, he was convinced that the murderer had escaped by the window. The bloodstain was conclusive, in his opinion, on that point. Besides, as the bridge was up. there was no other possible way of escaping. He could not explain what had become of the assassin or why he had not taken his bicycle, if it were indeed his. He could not possibly have been drowned in the moat, which was at no place more than three feet deep.\n\nIn his own mind he had a very definite theory about the murder. Douglas was a reticent man, and there were some chapters in his life of which he never spoke. He had emigrated to America when he was a very young man. He had prospered well, and Barker had first met him in California, where they had become partners in a successful mining claim at a place called Benito Canon. They had done very well; but Douglas had suddenly sold out and started for England. He was a widower at that time. Barker had afterwards realized his money and come to live in London. Thus they had renewed their friendship.\n\nDouglas had given him the impression that some danger was hanging over his head, and he had always looked upon his sudden departure from California, and also his renting a house in so quiet a place in England, as being connected with this peril. He imagined that some secret society, some implacable organization, was on Douglas's track, which would never rest until it killed him. Some remarks of his had given him this idea; though he had never told him what the society was, nor how he had come to offend it. He could only suppose that the legend upon the placard had some reference to this secret society.\n\n\"How long were you with Douglas in California?\" asked Inspector MacDonald.\n\n\"Five years altogether.\"\n\n\"He was a bachelor, you say?\"\n\n\"A widower.\"\n\n\"Have you ever heard where his first wife came from?\"\n\n\"No, I remember his saying that she was of German extraction, and I have seen her portrait. She was a very beautiful woman. She died of typhoid the year before I met him.\"\n\n\"You don't associate his past with any particular part of America?\"\n\n\"I have heard him talk of Chicago. He knew that city well and had worked there. I have heard him talk of the coal and iron districts. He had travelled a good deal in his time.\"\n\n\"Was he a politician? Had this secret society to do with politics?\"\n\n\"No, he cared nothing about politics.\"\n\n\"You have no reason to think it was criminal?\"\n\n\"On the contrary, I never met a straighter man in my life.\"\n\n\"Was there anything curious about his life in California?\"\n\n\"He liked best to stay and to work at our claim in the mountains. He would never go where other men were if he could help it. That's why I first thought that someone was after him. Then when he left so suddenly for Europe I made sure that it was so. I believe that he had a warning of some sort. Within a week of his leaving half a dozen men were inquiring for him.\"\n\n\"What sort of men?\"\n\n\"Well, they were a mighty hard-looking crowd. They came up to the claim and wanted to know where he was. I told them that he was gone to Europe and that I did not know where to find him. They meant him no good\u2014it was easy to see that.\"\n\n\"Were these men Americans\u2014Californians?\"\n\n\"Well, I don't know about Californians. They were Americans, all right. But they were not miners. I don't know what they were, and was very glad to see their backs.\"\n\n\"That was six years ago?\"\n\n\"Nearer seven.\"\n\n\"And then you were together five years in California, so that this business dates back not less than eleven years at the least?\"\n\n\"That is so.\"\n\n\"It must be a very serious feud that would be kept up with such earnestness for as long as that. It would be no light thing that would give rise to it.\"\n\n\"I think it shadowed his whole life. It was never quite out of his mind.\"\n\n\"But if a man had a danger hanging over him, and knew what it was, don't you think he would turn to the police for protection?\"\n\n\"Maybe it was some danger that he could not be protected against. There's one thing you should know. He always went about armed. His revolver was never out of his pocket. But, by bad luck, he was in his dressing gown and had left it in the bedroom last night. Once the bridge was up, I guess he thought he was safe.\"\n\n\"I should like these dates a little clearer,\" said MacDonald. \"It is quite six years since Douglas left California. You followed him next year, did you not?\"\n\n\"That is so.\"\n\n\"And he had been married five years. You must have returned about the time of his marriage.\"\n\n\"About a month before. I was his best man.\"\n\n\"Did you know Mrs. Douglas before her marriage?\"\n\n\"No, I did not. I had been away from England for ten years.\"\n\n\"But you have seen a good deal of her since.\"\n\nBarker looked sternly at the detective. \"I have seen a good deal of him since,\" he answered. \"If I have seen her, it is because you cannot visit a man without knowing his wife. If you imagine there is any connection\u2014\"\n\n\"I imagine nothing, Mr. Barker. I am bound to make every inquiry which can bear upon the case. But I mean no offense.\"\n\n\"Some inquiries are offensive,\" Barker answered angrily.\n\n\"It's only the facts that we want. It is in your interest and everyone's interest that they should be cleared up. Did Mr. Douglas entirely approve your friendship with his wife?\"\n\nBarker grew paler, and his great, strong hands were clasped convulsively together. \"You have no right to ask such questions!\" he cried. \"What has this to do with the matter you are investigating?\"\n\n\"I must repeat the question.\"\n\n\"Well, I refuse to answer.\"\n\n\"You can refuse to answer; but you must be aware that your refusal is in itself an answer, for you would not refuse if you had not something to conceal.\"\n\nBarker stood for a moment with his face set grimly and his strong black eyebrows drawn low in intense thought. Then he looked up with a smile. \"Well, I guess you gentlemen are only doing your clear duty after all, and I have no right to stand in the way of it. I'd only ask you not to worry Mrs. Douglas over this matter; for she has enough upon her just now. I may tell you that poor Douglas had just one fault in the world, and that was his jealousy. He was fond of me\u2014no man could be fonder of a friend. And he was devoted to his wife. He loved me to come here, and was forever sending for me. And yet if his wife and I talked together or there seemed any sympathy between us, a kind of wave of jealousy would pass over him, and he would be off the handle and saying the wildest things in a moment. More than once I've sworn off coming for that reason, and then he would write me such penitent, imploring letters that I just had to. But you can take it from me, gentlemen, if it was my last word, that no man ever had a more loving, faithful wife\u2014and I can say also no friend could be more loyal than I!\"\n\nIt was spoken with fervour and feeling, and yet Inspector MacDonald could not dismiss the subject.\n\n\"You are aware,\" said he, \"that the dead man's wedding ring has been taken from his finger?\"\n\n\"So it appears,\" said Barker.\n\n\"What do you mean by 'appears'? You know it as a fact.\"\n\nThe man seemed confused and undecided. \"When I said 'appears' I meant that it was conceivable that he had himself taken off the ring.\"\n\n\"The mere fact that the ring should be absent, whoever may have removed it, would suggest to anyone's mind, would it not, that the marriage and the tragedy were connected?\"\n\nBarker shrugged his broad shoulders. \"I can't profess to say what it means,\" he answered. \"But if you mean to hint that it could reflect in any way upon this lady's honour\"\u2014his eyes blazed for an instant, and then with an evident effort he got a grip upon his own emotions\u2014\"well, you are on the wrong track, that's all.\"\n\n\"I don't know that I've anything else to ask you at present,\" said MacDonald, coldly.\n\n\"There was one small point,\" remarked Sherlock Holmes. \"When you entered the room there was only a candle lighted on the table, was there not?\"\n\n\"Yes, that was so.\"\n\n\"By its light you saw that some terrible incident had occurred?\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"You at once rang for help?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And it arrived very speedily?\"\n\n\"Within a minute or so.\"\n\n\"Arid yet when they arrived they found that the candle was out and that the lamp had been lighted. That seems very remarkable.\"\n\nAgain Barker showed some signs of indecision. \"I don't see that it was remarkable, Mr. Holmes,\" he answered after a pause. \"The candle threw a very bad light. My first thought was to get a better one. The lamp was on the table; so I lit it.\"\n\n\"And blew out the candle?\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\nHolmes asked no further question, and Barker, with a deliberate look from one to the other of us, which had, as it seemed to me, something of defiance in it, turned and left the room.\n\nInspector MacDonald had sent up a note to the effect that he would wait upon Mrs. Douglas in her room; but she had replied that she would meet us in the dining room. She entered now, a tall and beautiful woman of thirty, reserved and self-possessed to a remarkable degree, very different from the tragic and distracted figure I had pictured. It is true that her face was pale and drawn, like that of one who has endured a great shock; but her manner was composed, and the finely moulded hand which she rested upon the edge of the table was as steady as my own. Her sad, appealing eyes travelled from one to the other of us with a curiously inquisitive expression. That questioning gaze transformed itself suddenly into abrupt speech.\n\n\"Have you found anything out yet?\" she asked.\n\nWas it my imagination that there was an undertone of fear rather than of hope in the question?\n\n\"We have taken every possible step, Mrs. Douglas,\" said the inspector. \"You may rest assured that nothing will be neglected.\"\n\n\"Spare no money,\" she said in a dead, even tone. \"It is my desire that every possible effort should be made.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you can tell us something which may throw some light upon the matter.\"\n\n\"I fear not; but all I know is at your service.\"\n\n\"We have heard from Mr. Cecil Barker that you did not actually see-that you were never in the room where the tragedy occurred?\"\n\n\"No, he turned me back upon the stairs. He begged me to return to my room.\"\n\n\"Quite so. You had heard the shot, and you had at once come down.\"\n\n\"I put on my dressing gown and then came down.\"\n\n\"How long was it after hearing the shot that you were stopped on the stair by Mr. Barker?\"\n\n\"It may have been a couple of minutes. It is so hard to reckon time at such a moment. He implored me not to go on. He assured me that I could do nothing. Then Mrs. Allen, the housekeeper, led me upstairs again. It was all like some dreadful dream.\"\n\n\"Can you give us any idea how long your husband had been downstairs before you heard the shot?\"\n\n\"No, I cannot say. He went from his dressing room, and I did not hear him go. He did the round of the house every night, for he was nervous of fire. It is the only thing that I have ever known him nervous of.\"\n\n\"That is just the point which I want to come to, Mrs. Douglas. You have known your husband only in England, have you not?\"\n\n\"Yes, we have been married five years.\"\n\n\"Have you heard him speak of anything which occurred in America and might bring some danger upon him?\"\n\nMrs. Douglas thought earnestly before she answered. \"Yes,\" she said at last, \"I have always felt that there was a danger hanging over him. He refused to discuss it with me. It was not from want of confidence in me\u2014there was the most complete love and confidence between us\u2014but it was out of his desire to keep all alarm away from me. He thought I should brood over it if I knew all, and so he was silent.\"\n\n\"How did you know it, then?\"\n\nMrs. Douglas's face lit with a quick smile. \"Can a husband ever carry about a secret all his life and a woman who loves him have no suspicion of it? I knew it by his refusal to talk about some episodes in his American life. I knew it by certain precautions he took. I knew it by certain words he let fall. I knew it by the way he looked at unexpected strangers. I was perfectly certain that he had some powerful enemies, that he believed they were on his track, and that he was always on his guard against them. I was so sure of it that for years I have been terrified if ever he came home later than was expected.\"\n\n\"Might I ask,\" asked Holmes, \"what the words were which attracted your attention?\"\n\n\"The Valley of Fear,\" the lady answered. \"That was an expression he has used when I questioned him. 'I have been in the Valley of Fear. I am not out of it yet.'\u2014'Are we never to get out of the Valley of Fear?' I have asked him when I have seen him more serious than usual. 'Sometimes I think that we never shall,' he has answered.\"\n\n\"Surely you asked him what he meant by the Valley of Fear?\"\n\n\"I did; but his face would become very grave and he would shake his head. 'It is bad enough that one of us should have been in its shadow,' he said. 'Please God it shall never fall upon you!' It was some real valley in which he had lived and in which something terrible had occurred to him, of that I am certain; but I can tell you no more.\"\n\n\"And he never mentioned any names?\"\n\n\"Yes, he was delirious with fever once when he had his hunting accident three years ago. Then I remember that there was a name that came continually to his lips. He spoke it with anger and a sort of horror. McGinty was the name\u2014Bodymaster McGinty. I asked him when he recovered who Bodymaster McGinty was, and whose body he was master of. 'Never of mine, thank God!' he answered with a laugh, and that was all I could get from him. But there is a connection between Bodymaster McGinty and the Valley of Fear.\"\n\n\"There is one other point,\" said Inspector MacDonald. \"You met Mr. Douglas in a boarding house in London, did you not, and became engaged to him there? Was there any romance, anything secret or mysterious, about the wedding?\"\n\n\"There was romance. There is always romance. There was nothing mysterious.\"\n\n\"He had no rival?\"\n\n\"No, I was quite free.\"\n\n\"You have heard, no doubt, that his wedding ring has been taken. Does that suggest anything to you? Suppose that some enemy of his old life had tracked him down and committed this crime, what possible reason could he have for taking his wedding ring?\"\n\nFor an instant I could have sworn that the faintest shadow of a smile flickered over the woman's lips.\n\n\"I really cannot tell,\" she answered. \"It is certainly a most extraordinary thing.\"\n\n\"Well, we will not detain you any longer, and we are sorry to have put you to this trouble at such a time,\" said the inspector. \"There are some other points, no doubt; but we can refer to you as they arise.\"\n\nShe rose, and I was again conscious of that quick, questioning glance with which she had just surveyed us. \"What impression has my evidence made upon you?\" The question might as well have been spoken. Then, with a bow, she swept from the room.\n\n\"She's a beautiful woman\u2014a very beautiful woman,\" said MacDonald thoughtfully, after the door had closed behind her. \"This man Barker has certainly been down here a good deal. He is a man who might be attractive to a woman. He admits that the dead man was jealous, and maybe he knew best himself what cause he had for jealousy. Then there's that wedding ring. You can't get past that. The man who tears a wedding ring off a dead man's\u2014What do you say to it, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\nMy friend had sat with his head upon his hands, sunk in the deepest thought. Now he rose and rang the bell. \"Ames,\" he said, when the butler entered, \"where is Mr. Cecil Barker now?\"\n\n\"I'll see, sir.\"\n\nHe came back in a moment to say that Barker was in the garden.\n\n\"Can you remember, Ames, what Mr. Barker had on his feet last night when you joined him in the study?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Holmes. He had a pair of bedroom slippers. I brought him his boots when he went for the police.\"\n\n\"Where are the slippers now?\"\n\n\"They are still under the chair in the hall.\"\n\n\"Very good, Ames. It is, of course, important for us to know which tracks may be Mr. Barker's and which from outside.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. I may say that I noticed that the slippers were stained with blood\u2014so indeed were my own.\"\n\n\"That is natural enough, considering the condition of the room. Very good, Ames. We will ring if we want you.\"\n\nA few minutes later we were in the study. Holmes had brought with him the carpet slippers from the hall. As Ames had observed, the soles of both were dark with blood.\n\n\"Strange!\" murmured Holmes, as he stood in the light of the window and examined them minutely. \"Very strange indeed!\"\n\nStooping with one of his quick feline pounces, he placed the slipper upon the blood mark on the sill. It exactly corresponded. He smiled in silence at his colleagues.\n\nThe inspector was transfigured with excitement. His native accent rattled like a stick upon railings.\n\n\"Man,\" he cried, \"there's not a doubt of it! Barker has just marked the window himself. It's a good deal broader than any bootmark. I mind that you said it was a splay-foot, and here's the explanation. But what's the game, Mr. Holmes\u2014what's the game?\"\n\n\"Ay, what's the game?\" my friend repeated thoughtfully.\n\nWhite Mason chuckled and rubbed his fat hands together in his professional satisfaction. \"I said it was a snorter!\" he cried. \"And a real snorter it is!\"" + }, + { + "title": "A Dawning Light", + "text": "The three detectives had many matters of detail into which to inquire; so I returned alone to our modest quarters at the village inn. But before doing so I took a stroll in the curious old-world garden which flanked the house. Rows of very ancient yew trees cut into strange designs girded it round. Inside was a beautiful stretch of lawn with an old sundial in the middle, the whole effect so soothing and restful that it was welcome to my somewhat jangled nerves.\n\nIn that deeply peaceful atmosphere one could forget, or remember only as some fantastic nightmare, that darkened study with the sprawling, bloodstained figure on the floor. And yet, as I strolled round it and tried to steep my soul in its gentle balm, a strange incident occurred, which brought me back to the tragedy and left a sinister impression in my mind.\n\nI have said that a decoration of yew trees circled the garden. At the end farthest from the house they thickened into a continuous hedge. On the other side of this hedge, concealed from the eyes of anyone approaching from the direction of the house, there was a stone seat. As I approached the spot I was aware of voices, some remark in the deep tones of a man, answered by a little ripple of feminine laughter.\n\nAn instant later I had come round the end of the hedge and my eyes lit upon Mrs. Douglas and the man Barker before they were aware of my presence. Her appearance gave me a shock. In the dining-room she had been demure and discreet. Now all pretense of grief had passed away from her. Her eyes shone with the joy of living, and her face still quivered with amusement at some remark of her companion. He sat forward, his hands clasped and his forearms on his knees, with an answering smile upon his bold, handsome face. In an instant\u2014but it was just one instant too late\u2014they resumed their solemn masks as my figure came into view. A hurried word or two passed between them, and then Barker rose and came towards me.\n\n\"Excuse me, sir,\" said he, \"but am I addressing Dr. Watson?\"\n\nI bowed with a coldness which showed, I dare say, very plainly the impression which had been produced upon my mind.\n\n\"We thought that it was probably you, as your friendship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes is so well known. Would you mind coming over and speaking to Mrs. Douglas for one instant?\"\n\nI followed him with a dour face. Very clearly I could see in my mind's eye that shattered figure on the floor. Here within a few hours of the tragedy were his wife and his nearest friend laughing together behind a bush in the garden which had been his. I greeted the lady with reserve. I had grieved with her grief in the dining-room. Now I met her appealing gaze with an unresponsive eye.\n\n\"I fear that you think me callous and hard-hearted,\" said she.\n\nI shrugged my shoulders. \"It is no business of mine,\" said I.\n\n\"Perhaps some day you will do me justice. If you only realized\u2014\"\n\n\"There is no need why Dr. Watson should realize,\" said Barker quickly. \"As he has himself said, it is no possible business of his.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said I, \"and so I will beg leave to resume my walk.\"\n\n\"One moment, Dr. Watson,\" cried the woman in a pleading voice. \"There is one question which you can answer with more authority than anyone else in the world, and it may make a very great difference to me. You know Mr. Holmes and his relations with the police better than anyone else can. Supposing that a matter were brought confidentially to his knowledge, is it absolutely necessary that he should pass it on to the detectives?\"\n\n\"Yes, that's it,\" said Barker eagerly. \"Is he on his own or is he entirely in with them?\"\n\n\"I really don't know that I should be justified in discussing such a point.\"\n\n\"I beg\u2014I implore that you will, Dr. Watson! I assure you that you will be helping us\u2014helping me greatly if you will guide us on that point.\"\n\nThere was such a ring of sincerity in the woman's voice that for the instant I forgot all about her levity and was moved only to do her will.\n\n\"Mr. Holmes is an independent investigator,\" I said. \"He is his own master, and would act as his own judgment directed. At the same time, he would naturally feel loyalty towards the officials who were working on the same case, and he would not conceal from them anything which would help them in bringing a criminal to justice. Beyond this I can say nothing, and I would refer you to Mr. Holmes himself if you wanted fuller information.\"\n\nSo saying I raised my hat and went upon my way, leaving them still seated behind that concealing hedge. I looked back as I rounded the far end of it, and saw that they were still talking very earnestly together, and, as they were gazing after me, it was clear that it was our interview that was the subject of their debate.\n\n\"I wish none of their confidences,\" said Holmes, when I reported to him what had occurred. He had spent the whole afternoon at the Manor House in consultation with his two colleagues, and returned about five with a ravenous appetite for a high tea which I had ordered for him. \"No confidences, Watson; for they are mighty awkward if it comes to an arrest for conspiracy and murder.\"\n\n\"You think it will come to that?\"\n\nHe was in his most cheerful and debonair humour. \"My dear Watson, when I have exterminated that fourth egg I shall be ready to put you in touch with the whole situation. I don't say that we have fathomed it\u2014far from it\u2014but when we have traced the missing dumb-bell\u2014\"\n\n\"The dumb-bell!\"\n\n\"Dear me, Watson, is it possible that you have not penetrated the fact that the case hangs upon the missing dumb-bell? Well, well, you need not be downcast; for between ourselves I don't think that either Inspector Mac or the excellent local practitioner has grasped the overwhelming importance of this incident. One dumb-bell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumb-bell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!\"\n\nHe sat with his mouth full of toast and his eyes sparkling with mischief, watching my intellectual entanglement. The mere sight of his excellent appetite was an assurance of success; for I had very clear recollections of days and nights without a thought of food, when his baffled mind had chafed before some problem while his thin, eager features became more attenuated with the asceticism of complete mental concentration. Finally he lit his pipe, and sitting in the inglenook of the old village inn he talked slowly and at random about his case, rather as one who thinks aloud than as one who makes a considered statement.\n\n\"A lie, Watson\u2014a great, big, thumping, obtrusive, uncompromising lie\u2014that's what meets us on the threshold! There is our starting point. The whole story told by Barker is a lie. But Barker's story is corroborated by Mrs. Douglas. Therefore she is lying also. They are both lying, and in a conspiracy. So now we have the clear problem. Why are they lying, and what is the truth which they are trying so hard to conceal? Let us try. Watson, you and I, if we can get behind the lie and reconstruct the truth.\n\n\"How do I know that they are lying? Because it is a clumsy fabrication which simply could not be true. Consider! According to the story given to us, the assassin had less than a minute after the murder had been committed to take that ring, which was under another ring, from the dead man's finger, to replace the other ring\u2014a thing which he would surely never have done\u2014and to put that singular card beside his victim. I say that this was obviously impossible.\n\n\"You may argue\u2014but I have too much respect for your judgment, Watson, to think that you will do so\u2014that the ring may have been taken before the man was killed. The fact that the candle had been lit only a short time shows that there had been no lengthy interview. Was Douglas, from what we hear of his fearless character, a man who would be likely to give up his wedding ring at such short notice, or could we conceive of his giving it up at all? No, no, Watson, the assassin was alone with the dead man for some time with the lamp lit. Of that I have no doubt at all.\n\n\"But the gunshot was apparently the cause of death. Therefore the shot must have been fired some time earlier than we are told. But there could be no mistake about such a matter as that. We are in the presence, therefore, of a deliberate conspiracy upon the part of the two people who heard the gunshot\u2014of the man Barker and of the woman Douglas. When on the top of this I am able to show that the blood mark on the windowsill was deliberately placed there by Barker, in order to give a false clue to the police, you will admit that the case grows dark against him.\n\n\"Now we have to ask ourselves at what hour the murder actually did occur. Up to half-past ten the servants were moving about the house; so it was certainly not before that time. At a quarter to eleven they had all gone to their rooms with the exception of Ames, who was in the pantry. I have been trying some experiments after you left us this afternoon, and I find that no noise which MacDonald can make in the study can penetrate to me in the pantry when the doors are all shut.\n\n\"It is otherwise, however, from the housekeeper's room. It is not so far down the corridor, and from it I could vaguely hear a voice when it was very loudly raised. The sound from a shotgun is to some extent muffled when the discharge is at very close range, as it undoubtedly was in this instance. It would not be very loud, and yet in the silence of the night it should have easily penetrated to Mrs. Allen's room. She is, as she has told us, somewhat deaf; but none the less she mentioned in her evidence that she did hear something like a door slamming half an hour before the alarm was given. Half an hour before the alarm was given would be a quarter to eleven. I have no doubt that what she heard was the report of the gun, and that this was the real instant of the murder.\n\n\"If this is so, we have now to determine what Barker and Mrs. Douglas, presuming that they are not the actual murderers, could have been doing from quarter to eleven, when the sound of the shot brought them down, until quarter past eleven, when they rang the bell and summoned the servants. What were they doing, and why did they not instantly give the alarm? That is the question which faces us, and when it has been answered we shall surely have gone some way to solve our problem.\"\n\n\"I am convinced myself,\" said I, \"that there is an understanding between those two people. She must be a heartless creature to sit laughing at some jest within a few hours of her husband's murder.\"\n\n\"Exactly. She does not shine as a wife even in her own account of what occurred. I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind, as you are aware, Watson, but my experience of life has taught me that there are few wives, having any regard for their husbands, who would let any man's spoken word stand between them and that husband's dead body. Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her. It was badly stage-managed; for even the rawest investigators must be struck by the absence of the usual feminine ululation. If there had been nothing else, this incident alone would have suggested a prearranged conspiracy to my mind.\"\n\n\"You think then, definitely, that Barker and Mrs. Douglas are guilty of the murder?\"\n\n\"There is an appalling directness about your questions, Watson, said Holmes, shaking his pipe at me. \"They come at me like bullets. If you put it that Mrs. Douglas and Barker know the truth about the murder, and are conspiring to conceal it, then I can give you a whole-souled answer. I am sure they do. But your more deadly proposition is not so clear. Let us for a moment consider the difficulties which stand in the way.\n\n\"We will suppose that this couple are united by the bonds of a guilty love, and that they have determined to get rid of the man who stands between them. It is a large supposition; for discreet inquiry among servants and others has failed to corroborate it in any way. On the contrary, there is a good deal of evidence that the Douglases were very attached to each other.\"\n\n\"That, I am sure, cannot be true,\" said I, thinking of the beautiful smiling face in the garden.\n\n\"Well, at least they gave that impression. However, we will suppose that they are an extraordinarily astute couple, who deceive everyone upon this point, and conspire to murder the husband. He happens to be a man over whose head some danger hangs\u2014\"\n\n\"We have only their word for that.\"\n\nHolmes looked thoughtful. \"I see, Watson. You are sketching out a theory by which everything they say from the beginning is false. According to your idea, there was never any hidden menace, or secret society, or Valley of Fear, or Boss MacSomebody, or anything else. Well, that is a good sweeping generalization. Let us see what that brings us to. They invent this theory to account for the crime. They then play up to the idea by leaving this bicycle in the park as proof of the existence of some outsider. The stain on the windowsill conveys the same idea. So does the card on the body, which might have been prepared in the house. That all fits into your hypothesis, Watson. But now we come on the nasty, angular, uncompromising bits which won't slip into their places. Why a cut-off shotgun of all weapons\u2014and an American one at that? How could they be so sure that the sound of it would not bring someone on to them? It's a mere chance as it is that Mrs. Allen did not start out to inquire for the slamming door. Why did your guilty couple do all this, Watson?\"\n\n\"I confess that I can't explain it.\"\n\n\"Then again, if a woman and her lover conspire to murder a husband, are they going to advertise their guilt by ostentatiously removing his wedding ring after his death? Does that strike you as very probable, Watson?\"\n\n\"No, it does not.\"\n\n\"And once again, if the thought of leaving a bicycle concealed outside had occurred to you, would it really have seemed worth doing when the dullest detective would naturally say this is an obvious blind, as the bicycle is the first thing which the fugitive needed in order to make his escape.\"\n\n\"I can conceive of no explanation.\"\n\n\"And yet there should be no combination of events for which the wit of man cannot conceive an explanation. Simply as a mental exercise, without any assertion that it is true, let me indicate a possible line of thought. It is, I admit, mere imagination; but how often is imagination the mother of truth?\n\n\"We will suppose that there was a guilty secret, a really shameful secret in the life of this man Douglas. This leads to his murder by someone who is, we will suppose, an avenger, someone from outside. This avenger, for some reason which I confess I am still at a loss to explain, took the dead man's wedding ring. The vendetta might conceivably date back to the man's first marriage, and the ring be taken for some such reason.\n\n\"Before this avenger got away, Barker and the wife had reached the room. The assassin convinced them that any attempt to arrest him would lead to the publication of some hideous scandal. They were converted to this idea, and preferred to let him go. For this purpose they probably lowered the bridge, which can be done quite noiselessly, and then raised it again. He made his escape, and for some reason thought that he could do so more safely on foot than on the bicycle. He therefore left his machine where it would not be discovered until he had got safely away. So far we are within the bounds of possibility, are we not?\"\n\n\"Well, it is possible, no doubt,\" said I, with some reserve.\n\n\"We have to remember, Watson, that whatever occurred is certainly something very extraordinary. Well, now, to continue our supposititious case, the couple\u2014not necessarily a guilty couple\u2014realize after the murderer is gone that they have placed themselves in a position in which it may be difficult for them to prove that they did not themselves either do the deed or connive at it. They rapidly and rather clumsily met the situation. The mark was put by Barker's bloodstained slipper upon the windowsill to suggest how the fugitive got away. They obviously were the two who must have heard the sound of the gun; so they gave the alarm exactly as they would have done, but a good half hour after the event.\"\n\n\"And how do you propose to prove all this?\"\n\n\"Well, if there were an outsider, he may be traced and taken. That would be the most effective of all proofs. But if not\u2014well, the resources of science are far from being exhausted. I think that an evening alone in that study would help me much.\"\n\n\"An evening alone!\"\n\n\"I propose to go up there presently. I have arranged it with the estimable Ames, who is by no means whole-hearted about Barker. I shall sit in that room and see if its atmosphere brings me inspiration. I'm a believer in the genius loci. You smile, Friend Watson. Well, we shall see. By the way, you have that big umbrella of yours, have you not?\"\n\n\"It is here.\"\n\n\"Well, I'll borrow that if I may.\"\n\n\"Nothing serious, my dear Watson, or I should certainly ask for yourassistance. But I'll take the umbrella. At present I am only awaiting the return of our colleagues from Tunbridge Wells, where they are at present engaged in trying for a likely owner to the bicycle.\"\n\n\"Certainly\u2014but what a wretched weapon! If there is danger\u2014\"\n\nIt was nightfall before Inspector MacDonald and White Mason came back from their expedition, and they arrived exultant, reporting a great advance in our investigation.\n\n\"Man, I'll admeet that I had my doubts if there was ever an outsider,\" said MacDonald; \"but that's all past now. We've had the bicycle identified, and we have a description of our man; so that's a long step on our journey.\"\n\n\"It sounds to me like the beginning of the end,\" said Holmes. \"I'm sure I congratulate you both with all my heart.\"\n\n\"Well, I started from the fact that Mr. Douglas had seemed disturbed since the day before, when he had been at Tunbridge Wells. It was at Tunbridge Wells then that he had become conscious of some danger. It was clear, therefore, that if a man had come over with a bicycle it was from Tunbridge Wells that he might be expected to have come. We took the bicycle over with us and showed it at the hotels. It was identified at once by the manager of the Eagle Commercial as belonging to a man named Hargrave, who had taken a room there two days before. This bicycle and a small valise were his whole belongings. He had registered his name as coming from London, but had given no address. The valise was London made, and the contents were British; but the man himself was undoubtedly an American.\"\n\n\"Well, well,\" said Holmes gleefully, \"you have indeed done some solid work while I have been sitting spinning theories with my friend! It's a lesson in being practical, Mr. Mac.\"\n\n\"Ay, it's just that, Mr. Holmes,\" said the inspector with satisfaction.\n\n\"But this may all fit in with your theories,\" I remarked.\n\n\"That may or may not be. But let us hear the end, Mr. Mac. Was there nothing to identify this man?\"\n\n\"So little that it was evident that he had carefully guarded himself against identification. There were no papers or letters, and no marking upon the clothes. A cycle map of the county lay on his bedroom table. He had left the hotel after breakfast yesterday morning on his bicycle, and no more was heard of him until our inquiries.\"\n\n\"That's what puzzles me, Mr. Holmes,\" said White Mason. \"If the fellow did not want the hue and cry raised over him, one would imagine that he would have returned and remained at the hotel as an inoffensive tourist. As it is, he must know that he will be reported to the police by the hotel manager and that his disappearance will be connected with the murder.\"\n\n\"So one would imagine. Still, he has been justified of his wisdom up to date, at any rate, since he has not been taken. But his description\u2014what of that?\"\n\nMacDonald referred to his notebook. \"Here we have it so far as they could give it. They don't seem to have taken any very particular stock of him; but still the porter, the clerk, and the chambermaid are all agreed that this about covers the points. He was a man about five foot nine in height, fifty or so years of age, his hair slightly grizzled, a grayish moustache, a curved nose, and a face which all of them described as fierce and forbidding.\"\n\n\"Well, bar the expression, that might almost be a description of Douglas himself,\" said Holmes. \"He is just over fifty, with grizzled hair and moustache, and about the same height. Did you get anything else?\"\n\n\"He was dressed in a heavy gray suit with a reefer jacket, and he wore a short yellow overcoat and a soft cap.\"\n\n\"What about the shotgun?\"\n\n\"It is less than two feet long. It could very well have fitted into his valise. He could have carried it inside his overcoat without difficulty.\"\n\n\"And how do you consider that all this bears upon the general case?\"\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes,\" said MacDonald, \"when we have got our man\u2014and you may be sure that I had his description on the wires within five minutes of hearing it\u2014we shall be better able to judge. But, even as it stands, we have surely gone a long way. We know that an American calling himself Hargrave came to Tunbridge Wells two days ago with bicycle and valise. In the latter was a sawed-off shotgun; so he came with the deliberate purpose of crime. Yesterday morning he set off for this place on his bicycle, with his gun concealed in his overcoat. No one saw him arrive, so far as we can learn; but he need not pass through the village to reach the park gates, and there are many cyclists upon the road. Presumably he at once concealed his cycle among the laurels where it was found, and possibly lurked there himself, with his eye on the house, waiting for Mr. Douglas to come out. The shotgun is a strange weapon to use inside a house; but he had intended to use it outside, and there it has very obvious advantages, as it would be impossible to miss with it, and the sound of shots is so common in an English sporting neighbourhood that no particular notice would be taken.\"\n\n\"That is all very clear,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Well, Mr. Douglas did not appear. What was he to do next? He left his bicycle and approached the house in the twilight. He found the bridge down and no one about. He took his chance, intending, no doubt, to make some excuse if he met anyone. He met no one. He slipped into the first room that he saw, and concealed himself behind the curtain. Thence he could see the drawbridge go up, and he knew that his only escape was through the moat. He waited until quarter-past eleven, when Mr. Douglas upon his usual nightly round came into the room. He shot him and escaped, as arranged. He was aware that the bicycle would be described by the hotel people and be a clue against him; so he left it there and made his way by some other means to London or to some safe hiding place which he had already arranged. How is that, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Well, Mr. Mac, it is very good and very clear so far as it goes. That is your end of the story. My end is that the crime was committed half an hour earlier than reported; that Mrs. Douglas and Barker are both in a conspiracy to conceal something; that they aided the murderer's escape\u2014or at least that they reached the room before he escaped\u2014and that they fabricated evidence of his escape through the window, whereas in all probability they had themselves let him go by lowering the bridge. That's my reading of the first half.\"\n\nThe two detectives shook their heads.\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes, if this is true, we only tumble out of one mystery into another,\" said the London inspector.\n\n\"And in some ways a worse one,\" added White Mason. \"The lady has never been in America in all her life. What possible connection could she have with an American assassin which would cause her to shelter him?\"\n\n\"I freely admit the difficulties,\" said Holmes. \"I propose to make a little investigation of my own to-night, and it is just possible that it may contribute something to the common cause.\"\n\n\"Can we help you, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"No, no! Darkness and Dr. Watson's umbrella\u2014my wants are simple. And Ames, the faithful Ames, no doubt he will stretch a point for me. All my lines of thought lead me back invariably to the one basic question\u2014why should an athletic man develop his frame upon so unnatural an instrument as a single dumb-bell?\"\n\nIt was late that night when Holmes returned from his solitary excursion. We slept in a double-bedded room, which was the best that the little country inn could do for us. I was already asleep when I was partly awakened by his entrance.\n\n\"Well, Holmes,\" I murmured, \"have you found anything out?\"\n\nHe stood beside me in silence, his candle in his hand. Then the tall, lean figure inclined towards me. \"I say, Watson,\" he whispered, \"would you be afraid to sleep in the same room with a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose mind has lost its grip?\"\n\n\"Not in the least,\" I answered in astonishment.\n\n\"Ah, that's lucky,\" he said, and not another word would he utter that night." + }, + { + "title": "The Solution", + "text": "Next morning, after breakfast, we found Inspector MacDonald and White Mason seated in close consultation in the small parlour of the local police sergeant. On the table in front of them were piled a number of letters and telegrams, which they were carefully sorting and docketing. Three had been placed on one side.\n\n\"Still on the track of the elusive bicyclist?\" Holmes asked cheerfully. \"What is the latest news of the ruffian?\"\n\nMacDonald pointed ruefully to his heap of correspondence.\n\n\"He is at present reported from Leicester, Nottingham, Southampton, Derby, East Ham, Richmond, and fourteen other places. In three of them\u2014East Ham, Leicester, and Liverpool\u2014there is a clear case against him, and he has actually been arrested. The country seems to be full of the fugitives with yellow coats.\"\n\n\"Dear me!\" said Holmes sympathetically. \"Now, Mr. Mac, and you, Mr. White Mason, I wish to give you a very earnest piece of advice. When I went into this case with you I bargained, as you will no doubt remember, that I should not present you with half-proved theories, but that I should retain and work out my own ideas until I had satisfied myself that they were correct. For this reason I am not at the present moment telling you all that is in my mind. On the other hand, I said that I would play the game fairly by you, and I do not think it is a fair game to allow you for one unnecessary moment to waste your energies upon a profitless task. Therefore I am here to advise you this morning, and my advice to you is summed up in three words\u2014abandon the case.\"\n\nMacDonald and White Mason stared in amazement at their celebrated colleague.\n\n\"You consider it hopeless!\" cried the inspector.\n\n\"I consider your case to be hopeless. I do not consider that it is hopeless to arrive at the truth.\"\n\n\"But this cyclist. He is not an invention. We have his description, his valise, his bicycle. The fellow must be somewhere. Why should we not get him?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, no doubt he is somewhere, and no doubt we shall get him; but I would not have you waste your energies in East Ham or Liverpool. I am sure that we can find some shorter cut to a result.\"\n\n\"You are holding something back. It's hardly fair of you, Mr. Holmes.\" The inspector was annoyed.\n\n\"You know my methods of work, Mr. Mac. But I will hold it back for the shortest time possible. I only wish to verify my details in one way, which can very readily be done, and then I make my bow and return to London, leaving my results entirely at your service. I owe you too much to act otherwise; for in all my experience I cannot recall any more singular and interesting study.\"\n\n\"This is clean beyond me, Mr. Holmes. We saw you when we returned from Tunbridge Wells last night, and you were in general agreement with our results. What has happened since then to give you a completely new idea of the case?\"\n\n\"Well, since you ask me, I spent, as I told you that I would, some hours last night at the Manor House.\"\n\n\"Well, what happened?\"\n\n\"Ah, I can only give you a very general answer to that for the moment. By the way, I have been reading a short but clear and interesting account of the old building, purchasable at the modest sum of one penny from the local tobacconist.\"\n\nHere Holmes drew a small tract, embellished with a rude engraving of the ancient Manor House, from his waistcoat pocket.\n\n\"It immensely adds to the zest of an investigation, my dear Mr. Mac, when one is in conscious sympathy with the historical atmosphere of one's surroundings. Don't look so impatient; for I assure you that even so bald an account as this raises some sort of picture of the past in one's mind. Permit me to give you a sample. 'Erected in the fifth year of the reign of James I, and standing upon the site of a much older building, the Manor House of Birlstone presents one of the finest surviving examples of the moated Jacobean residence\u2014'\"\n\n\"You are making fools of us, Mr. Holmes!\"\n\n\"Tut, tut, Mr. Mac!\u2014the first sign of temper I have detected in you. Well, I won't read it verbatim, since you feel so strongly upon the subject. But when I tell you that there is some account of the taking of the place by a parliamentary colonel in 1644, of the concealment of Charles for several days in the course of the Civil War, and finally of a visit there by the second George, you will admit that there are various associations of interest connected with this ancient house.\"\n\n\"I don't doubt it, Mr. Holmes; but that is no business of ours.\"\n\n\"Is it not? Is it not? Breadth of view, my dear Mr. Mac, is one of the essentials of our profession. The interplay of ideas and the oblique uses of knowledge are often of extraordinary interest. You will excuse these remarks from one who, though a mere connoisseur of crime, is still rather older and perhaps more experienced than yourself.\"\n\n\"I'm the first to admit that,\" said the detective heartily. \"You get to your point, I admit; but you have such a deuced round-the-corner way of doing it.\"\n\n\"Well, well, I'll drop past history and get down to present-day facts. I called last night, as I have already said, at the Manor House. I did not see either Barker or Mrs. Douglas. I saw no necessity to disturb them; but I was pleased to hear that the lady was not visibly pining and that she had partaken of an excellent dinner. My visit was specially made to the good Mr. Ames, with whom I exchanged some amiabilities, which culminated in his allowing me, without reference to anyone else, to sit alone for a time in the study.\"\n\n\"What! With that?\" I ejaculated.\n\n\"No, no, everything is now in order. You gave permission for that, Mr. Mac, as I am informed. The room was in its normal state, and in it I passed an instructive quarter of an hour.\"\n\n\"What were you doing?\"\n\n\"Well, not to make a mystery of so simple a matter, I was looking for the missing dumb-bell. It has always bulked rather large in my estimate of the case. I ended by finding it.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"Ah, there we come to the edge of the unexplored. Let me go a little further, a very little further, and I will promise that you shall share everything that I know.\"\n\n\"Well, we're bound to take you on your own terms,\" said the inspector; \"but when it comes to telling us to abandon the case\u2014why in the name of goodness should we abandon the case?\"\n\n\"For the simple reason, my dear Mr. Mac, that you have not got the first idea what it is that you are investigating.\"\n\n\"We are investigating the murder of Mr. John Douglas of Birlstone Manor.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, so you are. But don't trouble to trace the mysterious gentleman upon the bicycle. I assure you that it won't help you.\"\n\n\"Then what do you suggest that we do?\"\n\n\"I will tell you exactly what to do, if you will do it.\"\n\n\"Well, I'm bound to say I've always found you had reason behind all your queer ways. I'll do what you advise.\"\n\n\"And you, Mr. White Mason?\"\n\nThe country detective looked helplessly from one to the other. Holmes and his methods were new to him. \"Well, if it is good enough for the inspector, it is good enough for me,\" he said at last.\n\n\"Capital!\" said Holmes. \"Well, then, I should recommend a nice, cheery country walk for both of you. They tell me that the views from Birlstone Ridge over the Weald are very remarkable. No doubt lunch could be got at some suitable hostelry; though my ignorance of the country prevents me from recommending one. In the evening, tired but happy\u2014\"\n\n\"Man, this is getting past a joke!\" cried MacDonald, rising angrily from his chair.\n\n\"Well, well, spend the day as you like,\" said Holmes, patting him cheerfully upon the shoulder. \"Do what you like and go where you will, but meet me here before dusk without fail\u2014without fail, Mr. Mac.\"\n\n\"That sounds more like sanity.\"\n\n\"All of it was excellent advice; but I don't insist, so long as you are here when I need you. But now, before we part, I want you to write a note to Mr. Barker.\"\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"I'll dictate it, if you like. Ready?\n\n\"DEAR SIR:\n\nIt has struck me that it is our duty to drain the moat, in the hope that we may find some\u2014\"\n\n\"It's impossible,\" said the inspector. \"I've made inquiry.\"\n\n\"Tut, tut! My dear sir, please do what I ask you.\"\n\n\"Well, go on.\"\n\n\"\u2014in the hope that we may find something which may bear upon our investigation. I have made arrangements, and the workmen will be at work early to-morrow morning diverting the stream\u2014\"\n\n\"Impossible!\"\n\n\"\u2014diverting the stream; so I thought it best to explain matters beforehand.\n\nNow sign that, and send it by hand about four o'clock. At that hour we shall meet again in this room. Until then we may each do what we like; for I can assure you that this inquiry has come to a definite pause.\"\n\nEvening was drawing in when we reassembled. Holmes was very serious in his manner, myself curious, and the detectives obviously critical and annoyed.\n\n\"Well, gentlemen,\" said my friend gravely, \"I am asking you now to put everything to the test with me, and you will judge for yourselves whether the observations I have made justify the conclusions to which I have come. It is a chill evening, and I do not know how long our expedition may last; so I beg that you will wear your warmest coats. It is of the first importance that we should be in our places before it grows dark; so with your permission we shall get started at once.\"\n\nWe passed along the outer bounds of the Manor House park until we came to a place where there was a gap in the rails which fenced it. Through this we slipped, and then in the gathering gloom we followed Holmes until we had reached a shrubbery which lies nearly opposite to the main door and the drawbridge. The latter had not been raised. Holmes crouched down behind the screen of laurels, and we all three followed his example.\n\n\"Well, what are we to do now?\" asked MacDonald with some gruffness.\n\n\"Possess our souls in patience and make as little noise as possible,\" Holmes answered.\n\n\"What are we here for at all? I really think that you might treat us with more frankness\"\n\nHolmes laughed. \"Watson insists that I am the dramatist in real life,\" said he. \"Some touch of the artist wells up within me, and calls insistently for a well-staged performance. Surely our profession, Mr. Mac, would be a drab and sordid one if we did not sometimes set the scene so as to glorify our results. The blunt accusation, the brutal tap upon the shoulder\u2014what can one make of such a d\u00e9nouement? But the quick inference, the subtle trap, the clever forecast of coming events, the triumphant vindication of bold theories\u2014are these not the pride and the justification of our life's work? At the present moment you thrill with the glamour of the situation and the anticipation of the hunt. Where would be that thrill if I had been as definite as a timetable? I only ask a little patience, Mr. Mac, and all will be clear to you.\"\n\n\"Well, I hope the pride and justification and the rest of it will come before we all get our death of cold,\" said the London detective with comic resignation.\n\nWe all had good reason to join in the aspiration; for our vigil was a long and bitter one. Slowly the shadows darkened over the long, sombre face of the old house. A cold, damp reek from the moat chilled us to the bones and set our teeth chattering. There was a single lamp over the gateway and a steady globe of light in the fatal study. Everything else was dark and still.\n\n\"How long is this to last?\" asked the inspector finally. \"And what is it we are watching for?\"\n\n\"I have no more notion than you how long it is to last,\" Holmes answered with some asperity. \"If criminals would always schedule their movements like railway trains, it would certainly be more convenient for all of us. As to what it is we\u2014Well, that's what we are watching for!\"\n\nAs he spoke the bright, yellow light in the study was obscured by somebody passing to and fro before it. The laurels among which we lay were immediately opposite the window and not more than a hundred feet from it. Presently it was thrown open with a whining of hinges, and we could dimly see the dark outline of a man's head and shoulders looking out into the gloom. For some minutes he peered forth in furtive, stealthy fashion, as one who wishes to be assured that he is unobserved. Then he leaned forward, and in the intense silence we were aware of the soft lapping of agitated water. He seemed to be stirring up the moat with something which he held in his hand. Then suddenly he hauled something in as a fisherman lands a fish\u2014some large, round object which obscured the light as it was dragged through the open casement.\n\n\"Now!\" cried Holmes. \"Now!\"\n\nWe were all upon our feet, staggering after him with our stiffened limbs, while he ran swiftly across the bridge and rang violently at the bell. There was the rasping of bolts from the other side, and the amazed Ames stood in the entrance. Holmes brushed him aside without a word and, followed by all of us, rushed into the room which had been occupied by the man whom we had been watching.\n\nThe oil lamp on the table represented the glow which we had seen from outside. It was now in the hand of Cecil Barker, who held it towards us as we entered. Its light shone upon his strong, resolute, clean-shaved face and his menacing eyes.\n\n\"What the devil is the meaning of all this?\" he cried. \"What are you after, anyhow?\"\n\nHolmes took a swift glance round, and then pounced upon a sodden bundle tied together with cord which lay where it had been thrust under the writing table.\n\n\"This is what we are after, Mr. Barker\u2014this bundle, weighted with a dumb-bell, which you have just raised from the bottom of the moat.\"\n\nBarker stared at Holmes with amazement in his face. \"How in thunder came you to know anything about it?\" he asked.\n\n\"Simply that I put it there.\"\n\n\"You put it there! You!\"\n\n\"Perhaps I should have said 'replaced it there,\"' said Holmes. \"You will remember, Inspector MacDonald, that I was somewhat struck by the absence of a dumb-bell. I drew your attention to it; but with the pressure of other events you had hardly the time to give it the consideration which would have enabled you to draw deductions from it. When water is near and a weight is missing it is not a very far-fetched supposition that something has been sunk in the water. The idea was at least worth testing; so with the help of Ames, who admitted me to the room, and the crook of Dr. Watson's umbrella, I was able last night to fish up and inspect this bundle.\n\n\"It was of the first importance, however, that we should be able to prove who placed it there. This we accomplished by the very obvious device of announcing that the moat would be dried to-morrow, which had, of course, the effect that whoever had hidden the bundle would most certainly withdraw it the moment that darkness enabled him to do so. We have no less than four witnesses as to who it was who took advantage of the opportunity, and so, Mr. Barker, I think the word lies now with you.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes put the sopping bundle upon the table beside the lamp and undid the cord which bound it. From within he extracted a dumb-bell, which he tossed down to its fellow in the corner. Next he drew forth a pair of boots. \"American, as you perceive,\" he remarked, pointing to the toes. Then he laid upon the table a long, deadly, sheathed knife. Finally he unravelled a bundle of clothing, comprising a complete set of underclothes, socks, a gray tweed suit, and a short yellow overcoat.\n\n\"The clothes are commonplace,\" remarked Holmes, \"save only the overcoat, which is full of suggestive touches.\" He held it tenderly towards the light. \"Here, as you perceive, is the inner pocket prolonged into the lining in such fashion as to give ample space for the truncated fowling piece. The tailor's tab is on the neck\u2014'Neal, Outfitter, Vermissa, U. S. A.' I have spent an instructive afternoon in the rector's library, and have enlarged my knowledge by adding the fact that Vermissa is a flourishing little town at the head of one of the best known coal and iron valleys in the United States. I have some recollection, Mr. Barker, that you associated the coal districts with Mr. Douglas's first wife, and it would surely not be too far-fetched an inference that the V. V. upon the card by the dead body might stand for Vermissa Valley, or that this very valley which sends forth emissaries of murder may be that Valley of Fear of which we have heard. So much is fairly clear. And now, Mr. Barker, I seem to be standing rather in the way of your explanation.\"\n\nIt was a sight to see Cecil Barker's expressive face during this exposition of the great detective. Anger, amazement, consternation, and indecision swept over it in turn. Finally he took refuge in a somewhat acrid irony.\n\n\"You know such a lot, Mr. Holmes, perhaps you had better tell us some more,\" he sneered.\n\n\"I have no doubt that I could tell you a great deal more, Mr. Barker; but it would come with a better grace from you.\"\n\n\"Oh, you think so, do you? Well, all I can say is that if there's any secret here it is not my secret, and I am not the man to give it away.\"\n\n\"Well, if you take that line, Mr. Barker,\" said the inspector quietly, \"we must just keep you in sight until we have the warrant and can hold you.\"\n\n\"You can do what you damn please about that,\" said Barker defiantly.\n\nThe proceedings seemed to have come to a definite end so far as he was concerned; for one had only to look at that granite face to realize that no peine forte et dure would ever force him to plead against his will. The deadlock was broken, however, by a woman's voice. Mrs. Douglas had been standing listening at the half opened door, and now she entered the room.\n\n\"You have done enough for now, Cecil,\" said she. \"Whatever comes of it in the future, you have done enough.\"\n\n\"Enough and more than enough,\" remarked Sherlock Holmes gravely. \"I have every sympathy with you, madam, and I should strongly urge you to have some confidence in the common sense of our jurisdiction and to take the police voluntarily into your complete confidence. It may be that I am myself at fault for not following up the hint which you conveyed to me through my friend, Dr. Watson; but, at that time I had every reason to believe that you were directly concerned in the crime. Now I am assured that this is not so. At the same time, there is much that is unexplained, and I should strongly recommend that you ask Mr. Douglas to tell us his own story.\"\n\nMrs. Douglas gave a cry of astonishment at Holmes's words. The detectives and I must have echoed it, when we were aware of a man who seemed to have emerged from the wall, who advanced now from the gloom of the corner in which he had appeared. Mrs. Douglas turned, and in an instant her arms were round him. Barker had seized his outstretched hand.\n\n\"It's best this way, Jack,\" his wife repeated; \"I am sure that it is best.\"\n\n\"Indeed, yes, Mr. Douglas,\" said Sherlock Holmes, \"I am sure that you will find it best.\"\n\nThe man stood blinking at us with the dazed look of one who comes from the dark into the light. It was a remarkable face, bold gray eyes, a strong, short-clipped, grizzled moustache, a square, projecting chin, and a humorous mouth. He took a good look at us all, and then to my amazement he advanced to me and handed me a bundle of paper.\n\n\"I've heard of you,\" said he in a voice which was not quite English and not quite American, but was altogether mellow and pleasing. \"You are the historian of this bunch. Well, Dr. Watson, you've never had such a story as that pass through your hands before, and I'll lay my last dollar on that. Tell it your own way; but there are the facts, and you can't miss the public so long as you have those. I've been cooped up two days, and I've spent the daylight hours\u2014as much daylight as I could get in that rat trap\u2014in putting the thing into words. You're welcome to them\u2014you and your public. There's the story of the Valley of Fear.\"\n\n\"That's the past, Mr. Douglas,\" said Sherlock Holmes quietly. \"What we desire now is to hear your story of the present.\"\n\n\"You'll have it, sir,\" said Douglas. \"May I smoke as I talk? Well, thank you, Mr. Holmes. You're a smoker yourself, if I remember right, and you'll guess what it is to be sitting for two days with tobacco in your pocket and afraid that the smell will give you away.\" He leaned against the mantelpiece and sucked at the cigar which Holmes had handed him. \"I've heard of you, Mr. Holmes. I never guessed that I should meet you. But before you are through with that,\" he nodded at my papers, \"you will say I've brought you something fresh.\"\n\nInspector MacDonald had been staring at the newcomer with the greatest amazement. \"Well, this fairly beats me!\" he cried at last. \"If you are Mr. John Douglas of Birlstone Manor, then whose death have we been investigating for these two days, and where in the world have you sprung from now? You seemed to me to come out of the floor like a jack-in-a-box.\"\n\n\"Ah, Mr. Mac,\" said Holmes, shaking a reproving forefinger, \"you would not read that excellent local compilation which described the concealment of King Charles. People did not hide in those days without excellent hiding places, and the hiding place that has once been used may be again. I had persuaded myself that we should find Mr. Douglas under this roof.\"\n\n\"And how long have you been playing this trick upon us, Mr. Holmes?\" said the inspector angrily. \"How long have you allowed us to waste ourselves upon a search that you knew to be an absurd one?\"\n\n\"Not one instant, my dear Mr. Mac. Only last night did I form my views of the case. As they could not be put to the proof until this evening, I invited you and your colleague to take a holiday for the day. Pray what more could I do? When I found the suit of clothes in the moat, it at once became apparent to me that the body we had found could not have been the body of Mr. John Douglas at all, but must be that of the bicyclist from Tunbridge Wells. No other conclusion was possible. Therefore I had to determine where Mr. John Douglas himself could be, and the balance of probability was that with the connivance of his wife and his friend he was concealed in a house which had such conveniences for a fugitive, and awaiting quieter times when he could make his final escape.\"\n\n\"Well, you figured it out about right,\" said Douglas approvingly. \"I thought I'd dodge your British law; for I was not sure how I stood under it, and also I saw my chance to throw these hounds once for all off my track. Mind you, from first to last I have done nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing that I would not do again; but you'll judge that for yourselves when I tell you my story. Never mind warning me, Inspector: I'm ready to stand pat upon the truth.\n\n\"I'm not going to begin at the beginning. That's all there,\" he indicated my bundle of papers, \"and a mighty queer yarn you'll find it. It all comes down to this: That there are some men that have good cause to hate me and would give their last dollar to know that they had got me. So long as I am alive and they are alive, there is no safety in this world for me. They hunted me from Chicago to California, then they chased me out of America; but when I married and settled down in this quiet spot I thought my last years were going to be peaceable.\n\n\"I never explained to my wife how things were. Why should I pull her into it? She would never have a quiet moment again; but would always be imagining trouble. I fancy she knew something, for I may have dropped a word here or a word there; but until yesterday, after you gentlemen had seen her, she never knew the rights of the matter. She told you all she knew, and so did Barker here; for on the night when this thing happened there was mighty little time for explanations. She knows everything now, and I would have been a wiser man if I had told her sooner. But it was a hard question, dear,\" he took her hand for an instant in his own, \"and I acted for the best.\n\n\"Well, gentlemen, the day before these happenings I was over in Tunbridge Wells, and I got a glimpse of a man in the street. It was only a glimpse; but I have a quick eye for these things, and I never doubted who it was. It was the worst enemy I had among them all\u2014one who has been after me like a hungry wolf after a caribou all these years. I knew there was trouble coming, and I came home and made ready for it. I guessed I'd fight through it all right on my own, my luck was a proverb in the States about '76. I never doubted that it would be with me still.\n\n\"I was on my guard all that next day, and never went out into the park. It's as well, or he'd have had the drop on me with that buckshot gun of his before ever I could draw on him. After the bridge was up\u2014my mind was always more restful when that bridge was up in the evenings\u2014I put the thing clear out of my head. I never dreamed of his getting into the house and waiting for me. But when I made my round in my dressing gown, as was my habit, I had no sooner entered the study than I scented danger. I guess when a man has had dangers in his life\u2014and I've had more than most in my time\u2014there is a kind of sixth sense that waves the red flag. I saw the signal clear enough, and yet I couldn't tell you why. Next instant I spotted a boot under the window curtain, and then I saw why plain enough.\n\n\"I'd just the one candle that was in my hand; but there was a good light from the hall lamp through the open door. I put down the candle and jumped for a hammer that I'd left on the mantel. At the same moment he sprang at me. I saw the glint of a knife, and I lashed at him with the hammer. I got him somewhere; for the knife tinkled down on the floor. He dodged round the table as quick as an eel, and a moment later he'd got his gun from under his coat. I heard him cock it; but I had got hold of it before he could fire. I had it by the barrel, and we wrestled for it all ends up for a minute or more. It was death to the man that lost his grip.\n\n\"He never lost his grip; but he got it butt downward for a moment too long. Maybe it was I that pulled the trigger. Maybe we just jolted it off between us. Anyhow, he got both barrels in the face, and there I was, staring down at all that was left of Ted Baldwin. I'd recognized him in the township, and again when he sprang for me; but his own mother wouldn't recognize him as I saw him then. I'm used to rough work; but I fairly turned sick at the sight of him.\n\n\"I was hanging on the side of the table when Barker came hurrying down. I heard my wife coming, and I ran to the door and stopped her. It was no sight for a woman. I promised I'd come to her soon. I said a word or two to Barker\u2014he took it all in at a glance and we waited for the rest to come along. But there was no sign of them. Then we understood that they could hear nothing, and that all that had happened was known only to ourselves.\n\n\"It was at that instant that the idea came to me. I was fairly dazzled by the brilliance of it. The man's sleeve had slipped up and there was the branded mark of the lodge upon his forearm. See here!\"\n\nThe man whom we had known as Douglas turned up his own coat and cuff to show a brown triangle within a circle exactly like that which we had seen upon the dead man.\n\n\"It was the sight of that which started me on it. I seemed to see it all clear at a glance. There were his height and hair and figure, about the same as my own. No one could swear to his face, poor devil! I brought down this suit of clothes, and in a quarter of an hour Barker and I had put my dressing gown on him and he lay as you found him. We tied all his things into a bundle, and I weighted them with the only weight I could find and put them through the window. The card he had meant to lay upon my body was lying beside his own.\n\n\"My rings were put on his finger; but when it came to the wedding ring,\" he held out his muscular hand, \"you can see for yourselves that I had struck the limit. I have not moved it since the day I was married, and it would have taken a file to get it off. I don't know, anyhow, that I should have cared to part with it; but if I had wanted to I couldn't. So we just had to leave that detail to take care of itself. On the other hand, I brought a bit of plaster down and put it where I am wearing one myself at this instant. You slipped up there, Mr. Holmes, clever as you are; for if you had chanced to take off that plaster you would have found no cut underneath it.\n\n\"Well, that was the situation. If I could lie low for a while and then get away where I could be joined by my 'widow' we should have a chance at last of living in peace for the rest of our lives. These devils would give me no rest so long as I was above ground; but if they saw in the papers that Baldwin had got his man, there would be an end of all my troubles. I hadn't much time to make it all clear to Barker and to my wife; but they understood enough to be able to help me. I knew all about this hiding place, so did Ames; but it never entered his head to connect it with the matter. I retired into it, and it was up to Barker to do the rest.\n\n\"I guess you can fill in for yourselves what he did. He opened the window and made the mark on the sill to give an idea of how the murderer escaped. It was a tall order, that; but as the bridge was up there was no other way. Then, when everything was fixed, he rang the bell for all he was worth. What happened afterward you know. And so, gentlemen, you can do what you please; but I've told you the truth and the whole truth, so help me God! What I ask you now is how do I stand by the English law?\"\n\nThere was a silence which was broken by Sherlock Holmes.\n\n\"The English law is in the main a just law. You will get no worse than your deserts from that, Mr. Douglas. But I would ask you how did this man know that you lived here, or how to get into your house, or where to hide to get you?\"\n\n\"I know nothing of this.\"\n\nHolmes's face was very white and grave. \"The story is not over yet, I fear,\" said he. \"You may find worse dangers than the English law, or even than your enemies from America. I see trouble before you, Mr. Douglas. You'll take my advice and still be on your guard.\"\n\nAnd now, my long-suffering readers, I will ask you to come away with me for a time, far from the Sussex Manor House of Birlstone, and far also from the year of grace in which we made our eventful journey which ended with the strange story of the man who had been known as John Douglas. I wish you to journey back some twenty years in time, and westward some thousands of miles in space, that I may lay before you a singular and terrible narrative\u2014so singular and so terrible that you may find it hard to believe that even as I tell it, even so did it occur.\n\nDo not think that I intrude one story before another is finished. As you read on you will find that this is not so. And when I have detailed those distant events and you have solved this mystery of the past, we shall meet once more in those rooms on Baker Street, where this, like so many other wonderful happenings, will find its end." + }, + { + "title": "THE SCOWRERS", + "text": "[ The Man ]\n\nIt was the fourth of February in the year 1875. It had been a severe winter, and the snow lay deep in the gorges of the Gilmerton Mountains. The steam ploughs had, however, kept the railroad open, and the evening train which connects the long line of coal-mining and iron-working settlements was slowly groaning its way up the steep gradients which lead from Stagville on the plain to Vermissa, the central township which lies at the head of Vermissa Valley. From this point the track sweeps downward to Bartons Crossing, Helmdale, and the purely agricultural county of Merton. It was a single-track railroad; but at every siding\u2014and they were numerous\u2014long lines of trucks piled with coal and iron ore told of the hidden wealth which had brought a rude population and a bustling life to this most desolate corner of the United States of America.\n\nFor desolate it was! Little could the first pioneer who had traversed it have ever imagined that the fairest prairies and the most lush water pastures were valueless compared to this gloomy land of black crag and tangled forest. Above the dark and often scarcely penetrable woods upon their flanks, the high, bare crowns of the mountains, white snow, and jagged rock towered upon each flank, leaving a long, winding, tortuous valley in the centre. Up this the little train was slowly crawling.\n\nThe oil lamps had just been lit in the leading passenger car, a long, bare carriage in which some twenty or thirty people were seated. The greater number of these were workmen returning from their day's toil in the lower part of the valley. At least a dozen, by their grimed faces and the safety lanterns which they carried, proclaimed themselves miners. These sat smoking in a group and conversed in low voices, glancing occasionally at two men on the opposite side of the car, whose uniforms and badges showed them to be policemen.\n\nSeveral women of the labouring class and one or two travellers who might have been small local storekeepers made up the rest of the company, with the exception of one young man in a corner by himself. It is with this man that we are concerned. Take a good look at him; for he is worth it.\n\nHe is a fresh-complexioned, middle-sized young man, not far, one would guess, from his thirtieth year. He has large, shrewd, humorous gray eyes which twinkle inquiringly from time to time as he looks round through his spectacles at the people about him. It is easy to see that he is of a sociable and possibly simple disposition, anxious to be friendly to all men. Anyone could pick him at once as gregarious in his habits and communicative in his nature, with a quick wit and a ready smile. And yet the man who studied him more closely might discern a certain firmness of jaw and grim tightness about the lips which would warn him that there were depths beyond, and that this pleasant, brown-haired young Irishman might conceivably leave his mark for good or evil upon any society to which he was introduced.\n\nHaving made one or two tentative remarks to the nearest miner, and receiving only short, gruff replies, the traveller resigned himself to uncongenial silence, staring moodily out of the window at the fading landscape.\n\nIt was not a cheering prospect. Through the growing gloom there pulsed the red glow of the furnaces on the sides of the hills. Great heaps of slag and dumps of cinders loomed up on each side, with the high shafts of the collieries towering above them. Huddled groups of mean, wooden houses, the windows of which were beginning to outline themselves in light, were scattered here and there along the line, and the frequent halting places were crowded with their swarthy inhabitants.\n\nThe iron and coal valleys of the Vermissa district were no resorts for the leisured or the cultured. Everywhere there were stern signs of the crudest battle of life, the rude work to be done, and the rude, strong workers who did it.\n\nThe young traveller gazed out into this dismal country with a face of mingled repulsion and interest, which showed that the scene was new to him. At intervals he drew from his pocket a bulky letter to which he referred, and on the margins of which he scribbled some notes. Once from the back of his waist he produced something which one would hardly have expected to find in the possession of so mild-mannered a man. It was a navy revolver of the largest size. As he turned it slantwise to the light, the glint upon the rims of the copper shells within the drum showed that it was fully loaded. He quickly restored it to his secret pocket, but not before it had been observed by a working man who had seated himself upon the adjoining bench.\n\n\"Hullo, mate!\" said he. \"You seem heeled and ready.\"\n\nThe young man smiled with an air of embarrassment.\n\n\"Yes,\" said he, \"we need them sometimes in the place I come from.\"\n\n\"And where may that be?\"\n\n\"I'm last from Chicago.\"\n\n\"A stranger in these parts?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"You may find you need it here,\" said the workman.\n\n\"Ah! is that so?\" The young man seemed interested.\n\n\"Have you heard nothing of doings hereabouts?\"\n\n\"Nothing out of the way.\"\n\n\"Why, I thought the country was full of it. You'll hear quick enough. What made you come here?\"\n\n\"I heard there was always work for a willing man.\"\n\n\"Are you a member of the union?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"Then you'll get your job, I guess. Have you any friends?\"\n\n\"Not yet; but I have the means of making them.\"\n\n\"How's that, then?\"\n\n\"I am one of the Eminent Order of Freemen. There's no town without a lodge, and where there is a lodge I'll find my friends.\"\n\nThe remark had a singular effect upon his companion. He glanced round suspiciously at the others in the car. The miners were still whispering among themselves. The two police officers were dozing. He came across, seated himself close to the young traveller, and held out his hand.\n\n\"Put it there,\" he said.\n\nA hand-grip passed between the two.\n\n\"I see you speak the truth,\" said the workman. \"But it's well to make certain.\" He raised his right hand to his right eyebrow. The traveller at once raised his left hand to his left eyebrow.\n\n\"Dark nights are unpleasant,\" said the workman.\n\n\"Yes, for strangers to travel,\" the other answered.\n\n\"That's good enough. I'm Brother Scanlan, Lodge 341, Vermissa Valley. Glad to see you in these parts.\"\n\n\"Thank you. I'm Brother John McMurdo, Lodge 29, Chicago. Bodymaster J. H. Scott. But I am in luck to meet a brother so early.\"\n\n\"Well, there are plenty of us about. You won't find the order more flourishing anywhere in the States than right here in Vermissa Valley. But we could do with some lads like you. I can't understand a spry man of the union finding no work to do in Chicago.\"\n\n\"I found plenty of work to do,\" said McMurdo.\n\n\"Then why did you leave?\"\n\nMcMurdo nodded towards the policemen and smiled. \"I guess those chaps would be glad to know,\" he said.\n\nScanlan groaned sympathetically. \"In trouble?\" he asked in a whisper.\n\n\"Deep.\"\n\n\"A penitentiary job?\"\n\n\"And the rest.\"\n\n\"Not a killing!\"\n\n\"It's early days to talk of such things,\" said McMurdo with the air of a man who had been surprised into saying more than he intended. \"I've my own good reasons for leaving Chicago, and let that be enough for you. Who are you that you should take it on yourself to ask such things?\" His gray eyes gleamed with sudden and dangerous anger from behind his glasses.\n\n\"All right, mate, no offense meant. The boys will think none the worse of you, whatever you may have done. Where are you bound for now?\"\n\n\"Vermissa.\"\n\n\"That's the third halt down the line. Where are you staying?\"\n\nMcMurdo took out an envelope and held it close to the murky oil lamp. \"Here is the address\u2014Jacob Shafter, Sheridan Street. It's a boarding house that was recommended by a man I knew in Chicago.\"\n\n\"Well, I don't know it; but Vermissa is out of my beat. I live at Hobson's Patch, and that's here where we are drawing up. But, say, there's one bit of advice I'll give you before we part: If you're in trouble in Vermissa, go straight to the Union House and see Boss McGinty. He is the Bodymaster of Vermissa Lodge, and nothing can happen in these parts unless Black Jack McGinty wants it. So long, mate! Maybe we'll meet in lodge one of these evenings. But mind my words: If you are in trouble, go to Boss McGinty\"\n\nScanlan descended, and McMurdo was left once again to his thoughts. Night had now fallen, and the flames of the frequent furnaces were roaring and leaping in the darkness. Against their lurid background dark figures were bending and straining, twisting and turning, with the motion of winch or of windlass, to the rhythm of an eternal clank and roar.\n\n\"I guess hell must look something like that,\" said a voice.\n\nMcMurdo turned and saw that one of the policemen had shifted in his seat and was staring out into the fiery waste.\n\n\"For that matter,\" said the other policeman, \"I allow that hell must be something like that. If there are worse devils down yonder than some we could name, it's more than I'd expect. I guess you are new to this part, young man?\"\n\n\"Well, what if I am?\" McMurdo answered in a surly voice.\n\n\"Just this, mister, that I should advise you to be careful in choosing your friends. I don't think I'd begin with Mike Scanlan or his gang if I were you.\"\n\n\"What the hell is it to you who are my friends?\" roared McMurdo in a voice which brought every head in the carriage round to witness the altercation. \"Did I ask you for your advice, or did you think me such a sucker that I couldn't move without it? You speak when you are spoken to, and by the Lord you'd have to wait a long time if it was me!\" He thrust out his face and grinned at the patrolmen like a snarling dog.\n\nThe two policemen, heavy, good-natured men, were taken aback by the extraordinary vehemence with which their friendly advances had been rejected.\n\n\"No offense, stranger,\" said one. \"It was a warning for your own good, seeing that you are, by your own showing, new to the place.\"\n\n\"I'm new to the place; but I'm not new to you and your kind!\" cried McMurdo in cold fury. \"I guess you're the same in all places, shoving your advice in when nobody asks for it.\"\n\n\"Maybe we'll see more of you before very long,\" said one of the patrolmen with a grin. \"You're a real hand-picked one, if I am a judge.\"\n\n\"I was thinking the same,\" remarked the other. \"I guess we may meet again.\"\n\n\"I'm not afraid of you, and don't you think it!\" cried McMurdo. \"My name's Jack McMurdo\u2014see? If you want me, you'll find me at Jacob Shafter's on Sheridan Street, Vermissa; so I'm not hiding from you, am I? Day or night I dare to look the like of you in the face\u2014don't make any mistake about that!\"\n\nThere was a murmur of sympathy and admiration from the miners at the dauntless demeanour of the newcomer, while the two policemen shrugged their shoulders and renewed a conversation between themselves.\n\nA few minutes later the train ran into the ill-lit station, and there was a general clearing; for Vermissa was by far the largest town on the line. McMurdo picked up his leather gripsack and was about to start off into the darkness, when one of the miners accosted him.\n\n\"By Gar, mate! you know how to speak to the cops,\" he said in a voice, of awe. \"It was grand to hear you. Let me carry your grip and show you the road. I'm passing Shafter's on the way to my own shack.\"\n\nThere was a chorus of friendly \"Good-nights\" from the other miners as they passed from the platform. Before ever he had set foot in it, McMurdo the turbulent had become a character in Vermissa.\n\nThe country had been a place of terror; but the town was in its way even more depressing. Down that long valley there was at least a certain gloomy grandeur in the huge fires and the clouds of drifting smoke, while the strength and industry of man found fitting monuments in the hills which he had spilled by the side of his monstrous excavations. But the town showed a dead level of mean ugliness and squalor. The broad street was churned up by the traffic into a horrible rutted paste of muddy snow. The sidewalks were narrow and uneven. The numerous gas-lamps served only to show more clearly a long line of wooden houses, each with its veranda facing the street, unkempt and dirty.\n\nAs they approached the centre of the town the scene was brightened by a row of well-lit stores, and even more by a cluster of saloons and gaming houses, in which the miners spent their hard-earned but generous wages.\n\n\"That's the Union House,\" said the guide, pointing to one saloon which rose almost to the dignity of being a hotel. \"Jack McGinty is the boss there.\"\n\n\"What sort of a man is he?\" McMurdo asked.\n\n\"What! have you never heard of the boss?\"\n\n\"How could I have heard of him when you know that I am a stranger in these parts?\"\n\n\"Well, I thought his name was known clear across the country. It's been in the papers often enough.\"\n\n\"What for?\"\n\n\"Well,\" the miner lowered his voice\u2014\"over the affairs.\"\n\n\"What affairs?\"\n\n\"Good Lord, mister! you are queer, if I must say it without offense. There's only one set of affairs that you'll hear of in these parts, and that's the affairs of the Scowrers.\"\n\n\"Why, I seem to have read of the Scowrers in Chicago. A gang of murderers, are they not?\"\n\n\"Hush, on your life!\" cried the miner, standing still in alarm, and gazing in amazement at his companion. \"Man, you won't live long in these parts if you speak in the open street like that. Many a man has had the life beaten out of him for less.\"\n\n\"Well, I know nothing about them. It's only what I have read.\"\n\n\"And I'm not saying that you have not read the truth.\" The man looked nervously round him as he spoke, peering into the shadows as if he feared to see some lurking danger. \"If killing is murder, then God knows there is murder and to spare. But don't you dare to breathe the name of Jack McGinty in connection with it, stranger; for every whisper goes back to him, and he is not one that is likely to let it pass. Now, that's the house you're after, that one standing back from the street. You'll find old Jacob Shafter that runs it as honest a man as lives in this township.\"\n\n\"I thank you,\" said McMurdo, and shaking hands with his new acquaintance he plodded, gripsack in hand, up the path which led to the dwelling house, at the door of which he gave a resounding knock.\n\nIt was opened at once by someone very different from what he had expected. It was a woman, young and singularly beautiful. She was of the German type, blonde and fair-haired, with the piquant contrast of a pair of beautiful dark eyes with which she surveyed the stranger with surprise and a pleasing embarrassment which brought a wave of colour over her pale face. Framed in the bright light of the open doorway, it seemed to McMurdo that he had never seen a more beautiful picture; the more attractive for its contrast with the sordid and gloomy surroundings. A lovely violet growing upon one of those black slag-heaps of the mines would not have seemed more surprising. So entranced was he that he stood staring without a word, and it was she who broke the silence.\n\n\"I thought it was father,\" said she with a pleasing little touch of a German accent. \"Did you come to see him? He is downtown. I expect him back every minute.\"\n\nMcMurdo continued to gaze at her in open admiration until her eyes dropped in confusion before this masterful visitor.\n\n\"No, miss,\" he said at last, \"I'm in no hurry to see him. But your house was recommended to me for board. I thought it might suit me\u2014and now I know it will.\"\n\n\"You are quick to make up your mind,\" said she with a smile.\n\n\"Anyone but a blind man could do as much,\" the other answered.\n\nShe laughed at the compliment. \"Come right in, sir,\" she said. \"I'm Miss Ettie Shafter, Mr. Shafter's daughter. My mother's dead, and I run the house. You can sit down by the stove in the front room until father comes along\u2014Ah, here he is! So you can fix things with him right away.\"\n\nA heavy, elderly man came plodding up the path. In a few words McMurdo explained his business. A man of the name of Murphy had given him the address in Chicago. He in turn had had it from someone else. Old Shafter was quite ready. The stranger made no bones about terms, agreed at once to every condition, and was apparently fairly flush of money. For seven dollars a week paid in advance he was to have board and lodging.\n\nSo it was that McMurdo, the self-confessed fugitive from justice, took up his abode under the roof of the Shafters, the first step which was to lead to so long and dark a train of events, ending in a far distant land." + }, + { + "title": "The Bodymaster", + "text": "McMurdo was a man who made his mark quickly. Wherever he was the folk around soon knew it. Within a week he had become infinitely the most important person at Shafter's. There were ten or a dozen boarders there; but they were honest foremen or commonplace clerks from the stores, of a very different calibre from the young Irishman. Of an evening when they gathered together his joke was always the readiest, his conversation the brightest, and his song the best. He was a born boon companion, with a magnetism which drew good humour from all around him.\n\nAnd yet he showed again and again, as he had shown in the railway carriage, a capacity for sudden, fierce anger, which compelled the respect and even the fear of those who met him. For the law, too, and all who were connected with it, he exhibited a bitter contempt which delighted some and alarmed others of his fellow boarders.\n\nFrom the first he made it evident, by his open admiration, that the daughter of the house had won his heart from the instant that he had set eyes upon her beauty and her grace. He was no backward suitor. On the second day he told her that he loved her, and from then onward he repeated the same story with an absolute disregard of what she might say to discourage him.\n\n\"Someone else?\" he would cry. \"Well, the worse luck for someone else! Let him look out for himself! Am I to lose my life's chance and all my heart's desire for someone else? You can keep on saying no, Ettie: the day will come when you will say yes, and I'm young enough to wait.\"\n\nHe was a dangerous suitor, with his glib Irish tongue, and his pretty, coaxing ways. There was about him also that glamour of experience and of mystery which attracts a woman's interest, and finally her love. He could talk of the sweet valleys of County Monaghan from which he came, of the lovely, distant island, the low hills and green meadows of which seemed the more beautiful when imagination viewed them from this place of grime and snow.\n\nThen he was versed in the life of the cities of the North, of Detroit, and the lumber camps of Michigan, and finally of Chicago, where he had worked in a planing mill. And afterwards came the hint of romance, the feeling that strange things had happened to him in that great city, so strange and so intimate that they might not be spoken of. He spoke wistfully of a sudden leaving, a breaking of old ties, a flight into a strange world, ending in this dreary valley, and Ettie listened, her dark eyes gleaming with pity and with sympathy\u2014those two qualities which may turn so rapidly and so naturally to love.\n\nMcMurdo had obtained a temporary job as bookkeeper; for he was a well-educated man. This kept him out most of the day, and he had not found occasion yet to report himself to the head of the lodge of the Eminent Order of Freemen. He was reminded of his omission, however, by a visit one evening from Mike Scanlan, the fellow member whom he had met in the train. Scanlan, the small, sharp-faced, nervous, black-eyed man, seemed glad to see him once more. After a glass or two of whisky he broached the object of his visit.\n\n\"Say, McMurdo,\" said he, \"I remembered your address, so I made bold to call. I'm surprised that you've not reported to the Bodymaster. Why haven't you seen Boss McGinty yet?\"\n\n\"Well, I had to find a job. I have been busy.\"\n\n\"You must find time for him if you have none for anything else. Good Lord, man! you're a fool not to have been down to the Union House and registered your name the first morning after you came here! If you run against him\u2014well, you mustn't, that's all!\"\n\nMcMurdo showed mild surprise. \"I've been a member of the lodge for over two years, Scanlan, but I never heard that duties were so pressing as all that.\"\n\n\"Maybe not in Chicago.\"\n\n\"Well, it's the same society here.\"\n\n\"Is it?\"\n\nScanlan looked at him long and fixedly. There was something sinister in his eyes.\n\n\"Isn't it?\"\n\n\"You'll tell me that in a month's time. I hear you had a talk with the patrolmen after I left the train.\"\n\n\"How did you know that?\"\n\n\"Oh, it got about\u2014things do get about for good and for bad in this district.\"\n\n\"Well, yes. I told the hounds what I thought of them.\"\n\n\"By the Lord, you'll be a man after McGinty's heart!\"\n\n\"What, does he hate the police too?\"\n\nScanlan burst out laughing. \"You go and see him, my lad,\" said he as he took his leave. \"It's not the police but you that he'll hate if you don't! Now, take a friend's advice and go at once!\"\n\nIt chanced that on the same evening McMurdo had another more pressing interview which urged him in the same direction. It may have been that his attentions to Ettie had been more evident than before, or that they had gradually obtruded themselves into the slow mind of his good German host; but, whatever the cause, the boarding-house keeper beckoned the young man into his private room and started on the subject without any circumlocution.\n\n\"It seems to me, mister,\" said he, \"that you are gettin' set on my Ettie. Ain't that so, or am I wrong?\"\n\n\"Yes, that is so,\" the young man answered.\n\n\"Vell, I vant to tell you right now that it ain't no manner of use. There's someone slipped in afore you.\"\n\n\"She told me so.\"\n\n\"Vell, you can lay that she told you truth. But did she tell you who it vas?\"\n\n\"No, I asked her; but she wouldn't tell.\"\n\n\"I dare say not, the leetle baggage! Perhaps she did not vish to frighten you avay.\"\n\n\"Frighten!\" McMurdo was on fire in a moment.\n\n\"Ah, yes, my friend! You need not be ashamed to be frightened of him. It is Teddy Baldwin.\"\n\n\"And who the devil is he?\"\n\n\"He is a boss of Scowrers.\"\n\n\"Scowrers! I've heard of them before. It's Scowrers here and Scowrers there, and always in a whisper! What are you all afraid of? Who are the Scowrers?\"\n\nThe boarding-house keeper instinctively sank his voice, as everyone did who talked about that terrible society. \"The Scowrers,\" said he, \"are the Eminent Order of Freemen!\"\n\nThe young man stared. \"Why, I am a member of that order myself.\"\n\n\"You! I vould never have had you in my house if I had known it\u2014not if you vere to pay me a hundred dollar a veek.\"\n\n\"What's wrong with the order? It's for charity and good fellowship. The rules say so.\"\n\n\"Maybe in some places. Not here!\"\n\n\"What is it here?\"\n\n\"It's a murder society, that's vat it is.\"\n\nMcMurdo laughed incredulously. \"How can you prove that?\" he asked.\n\n\"Prove it! Are there not fifty murders to prove it? Vat about Milman and Van Shorst, and the Nicholson family, and old Mr. Hyam, and little Billy James, and the others? Prove it! Is there a man or a voman in this valley vat does not know it?\"\n\n\"See here!\" said McMurdo earnestly. \"I want you to take back what you've said, or else make it good. One or the other you must do before I quit this room. Put yourself in my place. Here am I, a stranger in the town. I belong to a society that I know only as an innocent one. You'll find it through the length and breadth of the States; but always as an innocent one. Now, when I am counting upon joining it here, you tell me that it is the same as a murder society called the Scowrers. I guess you owe me either an apology or else an explanation, Mr. Shafter.\"\n\n\"I can but tell you vat the whole vorld knows, mister. The bosses of the one are the bosses of the other. If you offend the one, it is the other vat vill strike you. We have proved it too often.\"\n\n\"That's just gossip\u2014I want proof!\" said McMurdo.\n\n\"If you live here long you vill get your proof. But I forget that you are yourself one of them. You vill soon be as bad as the rest. But you vill find other lodgings, mister. I cannot have you here. Is it not bad enough that one of these people come courting my Ettie, and that I dare not turn him down, but that I should have another for my boarder? Yes, indeed, you shall not sleep here after to-night!\"\n\nMcMurdo found himself under sentence of banishment both from his comfortable quarters and from the girl whom he loved. He found her alone in the sitting-room that same evening, and he poured his troubles into her ear.\n\n\"Sure, your father is after giving me notice,\" he said. \"It's little I would care if it was just my room, but indeed, Ettie, though it's only a week that I've known you, you are the very breath of life to me, and I can't live without you!\"\n\n\"Oh, hush, Mr. McMurdo, don't speak so!\" said the girl. \"I have told you, have I not, that you are too late? There is another, and if I have not promised to marry him at once, at least I can promise no one else.\"\n\n\"Suppose I had been first, Ettie, would I have had a chance?\"\n\nThe girl sank her face into her hands. \"I wish to heaven that you had been first!\" she sobbed.\n\nMcMurdo was down on his knees before her in an instant. \"For God's sake, Ettie, let it stand at that!\" he cried. \"Will you ruin your life and my own for the sake of this promise? Follow your heart, acushla! 'Tis a safer guide than any promise before you knew what it was that you were saying.\"\n\nHe had seized Ettie's white hand between his own strong brown ones.\n\n\"Say that you will be mine, and we will face it out together!\"\n\n\"Not here?\"\n\n\"Yes, here.\"\n\n\"No, no, Jack!\" His arms were round her now. \"It could not be here. Could you take me away?\"\n\nA struggle passed for a moment over McMurdo's face; but it ended by setting like granite. \"No, here,\" he said. \"I'll hold you against the world, Ettie, right here where we are!\"\n\n\"Why should we not leave together?\"\n\n\"No, Ettie, I can't leave here.\"\n\n\"But why?\"\n\n\"I'd never hold my head up again if I felt that I had been driven out. Besides, what is there to be afraid of? Are we not free folks in a free country? If you love me, and I you, who will dare to come between?\"\n\n\"You don't know, Jack. You've been here too short a time. You don't know this Baldwin. You don't know McGinty and his Scowrers.\"\n\n\"No, I don't know them, and I don't fear them, and I don't believe in them!\" said McMurdo. \"I've lived among rough men, my darling, and instead of fearing them it has always ended that they have feared me\u2014always, Ettie. It's mad on the face of it! If these men, as your father says, have done crime after crime in the valley, and if everyone knows them by name, how comes it that none are brought to justice? You answer me that, Ettie!\"\n\n\"Because no witness dares to appear against them. He would not live a month if he did. Also because they have always their own men to swear that the accused one was far from the scene of the crime. But surely, Jack, you must have read all this. I had understood that every paper in the United States was writing about it.\"\n\n\"Well, I have read something, it is true; but I had thought it was a story. Maybe these men have some reason in what they do. Maybe they are wronged and have no other way to help themselves.\"\n\n\"Oh, Jack, don't let me hear you speak so! That is how he speaks\u2014the other one!\"\n\n\"Baldwin\u2014he speaks like that, does he?\"\n\n\"And that is why I loathe him so. Oh, Jack, now I can tell you the truth. I loathe him with all my heart; but I fear him also. I fear him for myself; but above all I fear him for father. I know that some great sorrow would come upon us if I dared to say what I really felt. That is why I have put him off with half-promises. It was in real truth our only hope. But if you would fly with me, Jack, we could take father with us and live forever far from the power of these wicked men.\"\n\nAgain there was the struggle upon McMurdo's face, and again it set like granite. \"No harm shall come to you, Ettie\u2014nor to your father either. As to wicked men, I expect you may find that I am as bad as the worst of them before we're through.\"\n\n\"No, no, Jack! I would trust you anywhere.\"\n\nMcMurdo laughed bitterly. \"Good Lord! how little you know of me! Your innocent soul, my darling, could not even guess what is passing in mine. But, hullo, who's the visitor?\"\n\nThe door had opened suddenly, and a young fellow came swaggering in with the air of one who is the master. He was a handsome, dashing young man of about the same age and build as McMurdo himself. Under his broad-brimmed black felt hat, which he had not troubled to remove, a handsome face with fierce, domineering eyes and a curved hawk-bill of a nose looked savagely at the pair who sat by the stove.\n\nEttie had jumped to her feet full of confusion and alarm. \"I'm glad to see you, Mr. Baldwin,\" said she. \"You're earlier than I had thought. Come and sit down.\"\n\nBaldwin stood with his hands on his hips looking at McMurdo. \"Who is this?\" he asked curtly.\n\n\"It's a friend of mine, Mr. Baldwin, a new boarder here. Mr. McMurdo, may I introduce you to Mr. Baldwin?\"\n\nThe young men nodded in surly fashion to each other.\n\n\"Maybe Miss Ettie has told you how it is with us?\" said Baldwin.\n\n\"I didn't understand that there was any relation between you.\"\n\n\"Didn't you? Well, you can understand it now. You can take it from me that this young lady is mine, and you'll find it a very fine evening for a walk.\"\n\n\"Thank you, I am in no humour for a walk.\"\n\n\"Aren't you?\" The man's savage eyes were blazing with anger. \"Maybe you are in a humour for a fight, Mr. Boarder!\"\n\n\"That I am!\" cried McMurdo, springing to his feet. \"You never said a more welcome word.\"\n\n\"For God's sake, Jack! Oh, for God's sake!\" cried poor, distracted Ettie. \"Oh, Jack, Jack, he will hurt you!\"\n\n\"Oh, it's Jack, is it?\" said Baldwin with an oath. \"You've come to that already, have you?\"\n\n\"Oh, Ted, be reasonable\u2014be kind! For my sake, Ted, if ever you loved me, be big-hearted and forgiving!\"\n\n\"I think, Ettie, that if you were to leave us alone we could get this thing settled,\" said McMurdo quietly. \"Or maybe, Mr. Baldwin, you will take a turn down the street with me. It's a fine evening, and there's some open ground beyond the next block.\"\n\n\"I'll get even with you without needing to dirty my hands,\" said his enemy. \"You'll wish you had never set foot in this house before I am through with you!\"\n\n\"No time like the present,\" cried McMurdo.\n\n\"I'll choose my own time, mister. You can leave the time to me. See here!\" He suddenly rolled up his sleeve and showed upon his forearm a peculiar sign which appeared to have been branded there. It was a circle with a triangle within it. \"D'you know what that means?\"\n\n\"I neither know nor care!\"\n\n\"Well, you will know, I'll promise you that. You won't be much older, either. Perhaps Miss Ettie can tell you something about it. As to you, Ettie, you'll come back to me on your knees\u2014d'ye hear, girl?\u2014on your knees\u2014and then I'll tell you what your punishment may be. You've sowed\u2014and by the Lord, I'll see that you reap!\" He glanced at them both in fury. Then he turned upon his heel, and an instant later the outer door had banged behind him.\n\nFor a few moments McMurdo and the girl stood in silence. Then she threw her arms around him.\n\n\"Oh, Jack, how brave you were! But it is no use, you must fly! To night\u2014Jack\u2014to-night! It's your only hope. He will have your life. I read it in his horrible eyes. What chance have you against a dozen of them, with Boss McGinty and all the power of the lodge behind them?\"\n\nMcMurdo disengaged her hands, kissed her, and gently pushed her back into a chair. \"There, acushla, there! Don't be disturbed or fear for me. I'm a Freeman myself. I'm after telling your father about it. Maybe I am no better than the others; so don't make a saint of me. Perhaps you hate me too, now that I've told you as much?\"\n\n\"Hate you, Jack? While life lasts I could never do that! I've heard that there is no harm in being a Freeman anywhere but here; so why should I think the worse of you for that? But if you are a Freeman, Jack, why should you not go down and make a friend of Boss McGinty? Oh, hurry, Jack, hurry! Get your word in first, or the hounds will be on your trail.\"\n\n\"I was thinking the same thing,\" said McMurdo. \"I'll go right now and fix it. You can tell your father that I'll sleep here to-night and find some other quarters in the morning.\"\n\nThe bar of McGinty's saloon was crowded as usual; for it was the favourite loafing place of all the rougher elements of the town. The man was popular; for he had a rough, jovial disposition which formed a mask, covering a great deal which lay behind it. But apart from this popularity, the fear in which he was held throughout the township, and indeed down the whole thirty miles of the valley and past the mountains on each side of it, was enough in itself to fill his bar; for none could afford to neglect his good will.\n\nBesides those secret powers which it was universally believed that he exercised in so pitiless a fashion, he was a high public official, a municipal councillor, and a commissioner of roads, elected to the office through the votes of the ruffians who in turn expected to receive favours at his hands. Assessments and taxes were enormous; the public works were notoriously neglected, the accounts were slurred over by bribed auditors, and the decent citizen was terrorized into paying public blackmail, and holding his tongue lest some worse thing befall him.\n\nThus it was that, year by year, Boss McGinty's diamond pins became more obtrusive, his gold chains more weighty across a more gorgeous vest, and his saloon stretched farther and farther, until it threatened to absorb one whole side of the Market Square.\n\nMcMurdo pushed open the swinging door of the saloon and made his way amid the crowd of men within, through an atmosphere blurred with tobacco smoke and heavy with the smell of spirits. The place was brilliantly lighted, and the huge, heavily gilt minors upon every wall reflected and multiplied the garish illumination. There were several bartenders in their shirt sleeves, hard at work mixing drinks for the loungers who fringed the broad, brass-trimmed counter.\n\nAt the far end, with his body resting upon the bar and a cigar stuck at an acute angle from the corner of his mouth, stood a tall, strong, heavily built man who could be none other than the famous McGinty himself. He was a black-maned giant, bearded to the cheek-bones, and with a shock of raven hair which fell to his collar. His complexion was as swarthy as that of an Italian, and his eyes were of a strange dead black, which, combined with a slight squint, gave them a particularly sinister appearance.\n\nAll else in the man\u2014his noble proportions, his fine features, and his frank bearing\u2014fitted in with that jovial, man-to-man manner which he affected. Here, one would say, is a bluff, honest fellow, whose heart would be sound however rude his outspoken words might seem. It was only when those dead, dark eyes, deep and remorseless, were turned upon a man that he shrank within himself, feeling that he was face to face with an infinite possibility of latent evil, with a strength and courage and cunning behind it which made it a thousand times more deadly.\n\nHaving had a good look at his man, McMurdo elbowed his way forward with his usual careless audacity, and pushed himself through the little group of courtiers who were fawning upon the powerful boss, laughing uproariously at the smallest of his jokes. The young stranger's bold gray eyes looked back fearlessly through their glasses at the deadly black ones which turned sharply upon him.\n\n\"Well, young man, I can't call your face to mind.\"\n\n\"I'm new here, Mr. McGinty.\"\n\n\"You are not so new that you can't give a gentleman his proper title.\"\n\n\"He's Councillor McGinty, young man,\" said a voice from the group.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Councillor. I'm strange to the ways of the place. But I was advised to see you.\"\n\n\"Well, you see me. This is all there is. What d'you think of me?\"\n\n\"Well, it's early days. If your heart is as big as your body, and your soul as fine as your face, then I'd ask for nothing better,\" said McMurdo.\n\n\"By Gar! you've got an Irish tongue in your head anyhow,\" cried the saloon-keeper, not quite certain whether to humour this audacious visitor or to stand upon his dignity.\n\n\"So you are good enough to pass my appearance?\"\n\n\"Sure,\" said McMurdo.\n\n\"And you were told to see me?\"\n\n\"I was.\"\n\n\"And who told you?\"\n\n\"Brother Scanlan of Lodge 341, Vermissa. I drink your health, Councillor, and to our better acquaintance.\" He raised a glass with which he had been served to his lips and elevated his little finger as he drank it.\n\nMcGinty, who had been watching him narrowly, raised his thick black eyebrows. \"Oh, it's like that, is it?\" said he. \"I'll have to look a bit closer into this, Mister\u2014\"\n\n\"McMurdo.\"\n\n\"A bit closer, Mr. McMurdo; for we don't take folk on trust in these parts, nor believe all we're told neither. Come in here for a moment, behind the bar.\"\n\nThere was a small room there, lined with barrels. McGinty carefully closed the door, and then seated himself on one of them, biting thoughtfully on his cigar and surveying his companion with those disquieting eyes. For a couple of minutes he sat in complete silence. McMurdo bore the inspection cheerfully, one hand in his coat pocket, the other twisting his brown moustache. Suddenly McGinty stooped and produced a wicked-looking revolver.\n\n\"See here, my joker,\" said he, \"if I thought you were playing any game on us, it would be short work for you.\"\n\n\"This is a strange welcome,\" McMurdo answered with some dignity, \"for the Bodymaster of a lodge of Freemen to give to a stranger brother.\"\n\n\"Ay, but it's just that same that you have to prove,\" said McGinty, \"and God help you if you fail! Where were you made?\"\n\n\"Lodge 29, Chicago.\"\n\n\"When?\"\n\n\"June 24, 1872.\"\n\n\"What Bodymaster?\"\n\n\"James H. Scott.\"\n\n\"Who is your district ruler?\"\n\n\"Bartholomew Wilson.\"\n\n\"Hum! You seem glib enough in your tests. What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"Working, the same as you\u2014but a poorer job.\"\n\n\"You have your back answer quick enough.\"\n\n\"Yes, I was always quick of speech.\"\n\n\"Are you quick of action?\"\n\n\"I have had that name among those that knew me best.\"\n\n\"Well, we may try you sooner than you think. Have you heard anything of the lodge in these parts?\"\n\n\"I've heard that it takes a man to be a brother.\"\n\n\"True for you, Mr. McMurdo. Why did you leave Chicago?\"\n\n\"I'm damned if I tell you that!\"\n\nMcGinty opened his eyes. He was not used to being answered in such fashion, and it amused him. \"Why won't you tell me?\"\n\n\"Because no brother may tell another a lie.\"\n\n\"Then the truth is too bad to tell?\"\n\n\"You can put it that way if you like.\"\n\n\"See here, mister, you can't expect me, as Bodymaster, to pass into the lodge a man for whose past he can't answer.\"\n\nMcMurdo looked puzzled. Then he took a worn newspaper cutting from an inner pocket.\n\n\"You wouldn't squeal on a fellow?\" said he.\n\n\"I'll wipe my hand across your face if you say such words to me!\" cried McGinty hotly.\n\n\"You are right, Councillor,\" said McMurdo meekly. \"I should apologize. I spoke without thought. Well, I know that I am safe in your hands. Look at that clipping.\"\n\nMcGinty glanced his eyes over the account of the shooting of one Jonas Pinto, in the Lake Saloon, Market Street, Chicago, in the New Year week of 1874.\n\n\"Your work?\" he asked, as he handed back the paper.\n\nMcMurdo nodded.\n\n\"Why did you shoot him?\"\n\n\"I was helping Uncle Sam to make dollars. Maybe mine were not as good gold as his, but they looked as well and were cheaper to make. This man Pinto helped me to shove the queer\u2014\"\n\n\"To do what?\"\n\n\"Well, it means to pass the dollars out into circulation. Then he said he would split. Maybe he did split. I didn't wait to see. I just killed him and lighted out for the coal country.\"\n\n\"Why the coal country?\"\n\n\"'Cause I'd read in the papers that they weren't too particular in those parts.\"\n\nMcGinty laughed. \"You were first a coiner and then a murderer, and you came to these parts because you thought you'd be welcome.\"\n\n\"That's about the size of it,\" McMurdo answered.\n\n\"Well, I guess you'll go far. Say, can you make those dollars yet?\"\n\nMcMurdo took half a dozen from his pocket. \"Those never passed the Philadelphia mint,\" said he.\n\n\"You don't say!\" McGinty held them to the light in his enormous hand, which was hairy as a gorilla's. \"I can see no difference. Gar! you'll be a mighty useful brother, I'm thinking! We can do with a bad man or two among us, Friend McMurdo: for there are times when we have to take our own part. We'd soon be against the wall if we didn't shove back at those that were pushing us.\"\n\n\"Well, I guess I'll do my share of shoving with the rest of the boys.\"\n\n\"You seem to have a good nerve. You didn't squirm when I shoved this gun at you.\"\n\n\"It was not me that was in danger.\"\n\n\"Who then?\"\n\n\"It was you, Councillor.\" McMurdo drew a cocked pistol from the side pocket of his pea-jacket. \"I was covering you all the time. I guess my shot would have been as quick as yours.\"\n\n\"By Gar!\" McGinty flushed an angry red and then burst into a roar of laughter. \"Say, we've had no such holy terror come to hand this many a year. I reckon the lodge will learn to be proud of you.... Well, what the hell do you want? And can't I speak alone with a gentleman for five minutes but you must butt in on us?\"\n\nThe bartender stood abashed. \"I'm sorry, Councillor, but it's Ted Baldwin. He says he must see you this very minute.\"\n\nThe message was unnecessary; for the set, cruel face of the man himself was looking over the servant's shoulder. He pushed the bartender out and closed the door on him.\n\n\"So,\" said he with a furious glance at McMurdo, \"you got here first, did you? I've a word to say to you, Councillor, about this man.\"\n\n\"Then say it here and now before my face,\" cried McMurdo.\n\n\"I'll say it at my own time, in my own way.\"\n\n\"Tut! Tut!\" said McGinty, getting off his barrel. \"This will never do. We have a new brother here, Baldwin, and it's not for us to greet him in such fashion. Hold out your hand, man, and make it up!\"\n\n\"Never!\" cried Baldwin in a fury.\n\n\"I've offered to fight him if he thinks I have wronged him,\" said McMurdo. \"I'll fight him with fists, or, if that won't satisfy him, I'll fight him any other way he chooses. Now, I'll leave it to you, Councillor, to judge between us as a Bodymaster should.\"\n\n\"What is it, then?\"\n\n\"A young lady. She's free to choose for herself.\"\n\n\"Is she?\" cried Baldwin.\n\n\"As between two brothers of the lodge I should say that she was,\" said the Boss.\n\n\"Oh, that's your ruling, is it?\"\n\n\"Yes, it is, Ted Baldwin,\" said McGinty, with a wicked stare. \"Is it you that would dispute it?\"\n\n\"You would throw over one that has stood by you this five years in favour of a man that you never saw before in your life? You're not Bodymaster for life, Jack McGinty, and by God! when next it comes to a vote\u2014\"\n\nThe Councillor sprang at him like a tiger. His hand closed round the other's neck, and he hurled him back across one of the barrels. In his mad fury he would have squeezed the life out of him if McMurdo had not interfered.\n\n\"Easy, Councillor! For heaven's sake, go easy!\" he cried, as he dragged him back.\n\nMcGinty released his hold, and Baldwin, cowed and shaken, gasping for breath, and shivering in every limb, as one who has looked over the very edge of death, sat up on the barrel over which he had been hurled.\n\n\"You've been asking for it this many a day, Ted Baldwin\u2014now you've got it!\" cried McGinty, his huge chest rising and falling. \"Maybe you think if I was voted down from Bodymaster you would find yourself in my shoes. It's for the lodge to say that. But so long as I am the chief I'll have no man lift his voice against me or my rulings.\"\n\n\"I have nothing against you,\" mumbled Baldwin, feeling his throat.\n\n\"Well, then,\" cried the other, relapsing in a moment into a bluff joviality, \"we are all good friends again and there's an end of the matter.\"\n\nHe took a bottle of champagne down from the shelf and twisted out the cork.\n\n\"See now,\" he continued, as he filled three high glasses. \"Let us drink the quarrelling toast of the lodge. After that, as you know, there can be no bad blood between us. Now, then, the left hand on the apple of my throat. I say to you, Ted Baldwin, what is the offense, sir?\"\n\n\"The clouds are heavy,\" answered Baldwin.\n\n\"But they will forever brighten.\"\n\n\"And this I swear!\"\n\nThe men drank their glasses, and the same ceremony was performed between Baldwin and McMurdo.\n\n\"There!\" cried McGinty, rubbing his hands. \"That's the end of the black blood. You come under lodge discipline if it goes further, and that's a heavy hand in these parts, as Brother Baldwin knows\u2014and as you will damn soon find out, Brother McMurdo, if you ask for trouble!\"\n\n\"Faith, I'd be slow to do that,\" said McMurdo. He held out his hand to Baldwin. \"I'm quick to quarrel and quick to forgive. It's my hot Irish blood, they tell me. But it's over for me, and I bear no grudge.\"\n\nBaldwin had to take the proffered hand, for the baleful eye of the terrible Boss was upon him. But his sullen face showed how little the words of the other had moved him.\n\nMcGinty clapped them both on the shoulders. \"Tut! These girls! These girls!\" he cried. \"To think that the same petticoats should come between two of my boys! It's the devil's own luck! Well, it's the colleen inside of them that must settle the question; for it's outside the jurisdiction of a Bodymaster\u2014and the Lord be praised for that! We have enough on us, without the women as well. You'll have to be affiliated to Lodge 341, Brother McMurdo. We have our own ways and methods, different from Chicago. Saturday night is our meeting, and if you come then, we'll make you free forever of the Vermissa Valley.\"" + }, + { + "title": "Lodge 341, Vermissa", + "text": "On the day following the evening which had contained so many exciting events, McMurdo moved his lodgings from old Jacob Shafter's and took up his quarters at the Widow MacNamara's on the extreme outskirts of the town. Scanlan, his original acquaintance aboard the train, had occasion shortly afterwards to move into Vermissa, and the two lodged together. There was no other boarder, and the hostess was an easy-going old Irishwoman who left them to themselves; so that they had a freedom for speech and action welcome to men who had secrets in common.\n\nShafter had relented to the extent of letting McMurdo come to his meals there when he liked; so that his intercourse with Ettie was by no means broken. On the contrary, it drew closer and more intimate as the weeks went by.\n\nIn his bedroom at his new abode McMurdo felt it safe to take out the coining moulds, and under many a pledge of secrecy a number of brothers from the lodge were allowed to come in and see them, each carrying away in his pocket some examples of the false money, so cunningly struck that there was never the slightest difficulty or danger in passing it. Why, with such a wonderful art at his command, McMurdo should condescend to work at all was a perpetual mystery to his companions; though he made it clear to anyone who asked him that if he lived without any visible means it would very quickly bring the police upon his track.\n\nOne policeman was indeed after him already; but the incident, as luck would have it, did the adventurer a great deal more good than harm. After the first introduction there were few evenings when he did not find his way to McGinty's saloon, there to make closer acquaintance with \"the boys,\" which was the jovial title by which the dangerous gang who infested the place were known to one another. His dashing manner and fearlessness of speech made him a favourite with them all; while the rapid and scientific way in which he polished off his antagonist in an \"all in\" bar-room scrap earned the respect of that rough community. Another incident, however, raised him even higher in their estimation.\n\nJust at the crowded hour one night, the door opened and a man entered with the quiet blue uniform and peaked cap of the mine police. This was a special body raised by the railways and colliery owners to supplement the efforts of the ordinary civil police, who were perfectly helpless in the face of the organized ruffianism which terrorized the district. There was a hush as he entered, and many a curious glance was cast at him; but the relations between policemen and criminals are peculiar in some parts of the States, and McGinty himself, standing behind his counter, showed no surprise when the policeman enrolled himself among his customers.\n\n\"A straight whisky, for the night is bitter,\" said the police officer. \"I don't think we have met before, Councillor?\"\n\n\"You'll be the new captain?\" said McGinty.\n\n\"That's so. We're looking to you, Councillor, and to the other leading citizens, to help us in upholding law and order in this township. Captain Marvin is my name.\"\n\n\"We'd do better without you, Captain Marvin,\" said McGinty coldly; \"for we have our own police of the township, and no need for any imported goods. What are you but the paid tool of the capitalists, hired by them to club or shoot your poorer fellow citizen?\"\n\n\"Well, well, we won't argue about that,\" said the police officer good-humouredly. \"I expect we all do our duty same as we see it; but we can't all see it the same.\" He had drunk off his glass and had turned to go, when his eyes fell upon the face of Jack McMurdo, who was scowling at his elbow. \"Hullo! Hullo!\" he cried, looking him up and down. \"Here's an old acquaintance!\"\n\nMcMurdo shrank away from him. \"I was never a friend to you nor any other cursed copper in my life,\" said he.\n\n\"An acquaintance isn't always a friend,\" said the police captain, grinning. \"You're Jack McMurdo of Chicago, right enough, and don't you deny it!\"\n\nMcMurdo shrugged his shoulders. \"I'm not denying it,\" said he. \"D'ye think I'm ashamed of my own name?\"\n\n\"You've got good cause to be, anyhow.\"\n\n\"What the devil d'you mean by that?\" he roared with his fists clenched.\n\n\"No, no, Jack, bluster won't do with me. I was an officer in Chicago before ever I came to this darned coal bunker, and I know a Chicago crook when I see one.\"\n\nMcMurdo's face fell. \"Don't tell me that you're Marvin of the Chicago Central!\" he cried.\n\n\"Just the same old Teddy Marvin, at your service. We haven't forgotten the shooting of Jonas Pinto up there.\"\n\n\"I never shot him.\"\n\n\"Did you not? That's good impartial evidence, ain't it? Well, his death came in uncommon handy for you, or they would have had you for shoving the queer. Well, we can let that be bygones; for, between you and me\u2014and perhaps I'm going further than my duty in saying it\u2014they could get no clear case against you, and Chicago's open to you to-morrow.\"\n\n\"I'm very well where I am.\"\n\n\"Well, I've given you the pointer, and you're a sulky dog not to thank me for it.\"\n\n\"Well, I suppose you mean well, and I do thank you,\" said McMurdo in no very gracious manner.\n\n\"It's mum with me so long as I see you living on the straight,\" said the captain. \"But, by the Lord! if you get off after this, it's another story! So good-night to you\u2014and good-night, Councillor.\"\n\nHe left the bar-room; but not before he had created a local hero. McMurdo's deeds in far Chicago had been whispered before. He had put off all questions with a smile, as one who did not wish to have greatness thrust upon him. But now the thing was officially confirmed. The bar loafers crowded round him and shook him heartily by the hand. He was free of the community from that time on. He could drink hard and show little trace of it; but that evening, had his mate Scanlan not been at hand to lead him home, the f\u00eated hero would surely have spent his night under the bar.\n\nOn a Saturday night McMurdo was introduced to the lodge. He had thought to pass in without ceremony as being an initiate of Chicago; but there were particular rites in Vermissa of which they were proud, and these had to be undergone by every postulant. The assembly met in a large room reserved for such purposes at the Union House. Some sixty members assembled at Vermissa; but that by no means represented the full strength of the organization, for there were several other lodges in the valley, and others across the mountains on each side, who exchanged members when any serious business was afoot, so that a crime might be done by men who were strangers to the locality. Altogether there were not less than five hundred scattered over the coal district.\n\nIn the bare assembly room the men were gathered round a long table. At the side was a second one laden with bottles and glasses, on which some members of the company were already turning their eyes. McGinty sat at the head with a flat black velvet cap upon his shock of tangled black hair, and a coloured purple stole round his neck, so that he seemed to be a priest presiding over some diabolical ritual. To right and left of him were the higher lodge officials, the cruel, handsome face of Ted Baldwin among them. Each of these wore some scarf or medallion as emblem of his office.\n\nThey were, for the most part, men of mature age; but the rest of the company consisted of young fellows from eighteen to twenty-five, the ready and capable agents who carried out the commands of their seniors. Among the older men were many whose features showed the tigerish, lawless souls within; but looking at the rank and file it was difficult to believe that these eager and open-faced young fellows were in very truth a dangerous gang of murderers, whose minds had suffered such complete moral perversion that they took a horrible pride in their proficiency at the business, and looked with deepest respect at the man who had the reputation of making what they called \"a clean job.\"\n\nTo their contorted natures it had become a spirited and chivalrous thing to volunteer for service against some man who had never injured them, and whom in many cases they had never seen in their lives. The crime committed, they quarrelled as to who had actually struck the fatal blow, and amused one another and the company by describing the cries and contortions of the murdered man.\n\nAt first they had shown some secrecy in their arrangements; but at the time which this narrative describes their proceedings were extraordinarily open, for the repeated failures of the law had proved to them that, on the one hand, no one would dare to witness against them, and on the other they had an unlimited number of staunch witnesses upon whom they could call, and a well-filled treasure chest from which they could draw the funds to engage the best legal talent in the state. In ten long years of outrage there had been no single conviction, and the only danger that ever threatened the Scowrers lay in the victim himself\u2014who, however outnumbered and taken by surprise, might and occasionally did leave his mark upon his assailants.\n\nMcMurdo had been warned that some ordeal lay before him; but no one would tell him in what it consisted. He was led now into an outer room by two solemn brothers. Through the plank partition he could hear the murmur of many voices from the assembly within. Once or twice he caught the sound of his own name, and he knew that they were discussing his candidacy. Then there entered an inner guard with a green and gold sash across his chest.\n\n\"The Bodymaster orders that he shall be trussed, blinded, and entered,\" said he.\n\nThe three of them removed his coat, turned up the sleeve of his right arm, and finally passed a rope round above the elbows and made it fast. They next placed a thick black cap right over his head and the upper part of his face, so that he could see nothing. He was then led into the assembly hall.\n\nIt was pitch dark and very oppressive under his hood. He heard the rustle and murmur of the people round him, and then the voice of McGinty sounded dull and distant through the covering of his ears.\n\n\"John McMurdo,\" said the voice, \"are you already a member of the Ancient Order of Freemen?\"\n\nHe bowed in assent.\n\n\"Is your lodge No. 29, Chicago?\"\n\nHe bowed again.\n\n\"Dark nights are unpleasant,\" said the voice.\n\n\"Yes, for strangers to travel,\" he answered.\n\n\"The clouds are heavy.\"\n\n\"Yes, a storm is approaching.\"\n\n\"Are the brethren satisfied?\" asked the Bodymaster.\n\nThere was a general murmur of assent.\n\n\"We know, Brother, by your sign and by your countersign that you are indeed one of us,\" said McGinty. \"We would have you know, however, that in this county and in other counties of these parts we have certain rites, and also certain duties of our own which call for good men. Are you ready to be tested?\"\n\n\"I am.\"\n\n\"Are you of stout heart?\"\n\n\"I am.\"\n\n\"Take a stride forward to prove it.\"\n\nAs the words were said he felt two hard points in front of his eyes, pressing upon them so that it appeared as if he could not move forward without a danger of losing them. None the less, he nerved himself to step resolutely out, and as he did so the pressure melted away. There was a low murmur of applause.\n\n\"He is of stout heart,\" said the voice. \"Can you bear pain?\"\n\n\"As well as another,\" he answered.\n\n\"Test him!\"\n\nIt was all he could do to keep himself from screaming out, for an agonizing pain shot through his forearm. He nearly fainted at the sudden shock of it; but he bit his lip and clenched his hands to hide his agony.\n\n\"I can take more than that,\" said he.\n\nThis time there was loud applause. A finer first appearance had never been made in the lodge. Hands clapped him on the back, and the hood was plucked from his head. He stood blinking and smiling amid the congratulations of the brothers.\n\n\"One last word, Brother McMurdo,\" said McGinty. \"You have already sworn the oath of secrecy and fidelity, and you are aware that the punishment for any breach of it is instant and inevitable death?\"\n\n\"I am,\" said McMurdo.\n\n\"And you accept the rule of the Bodymaster for the time being under all circumstances?\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"Then in the name of Lodge 341, Vermissa, I welcome you to its privileges and debates. You will put the liquor on the table, Brother Scanlan, and we will drink to our worthy brother.\"\n\nMcMurdo's coat had been brought to him; but before putting it on he examined his right arm, which still smarted heavily. There on the flesh of the forearm was a circle with a triangle within it, deep and red, as the branding iron had left it. One or two of his neighbours pulled up their sleeves and showed their own lodge marks.\n\n\"We've all had it,\" said one; \"but not all as brave as you over it.\"\n\n\"Tut! It was nothing,\" said he; but it burned and ached all the same.\n\nWhen the drinks which followed the ceremony of initiation had all been disposed of, the business of the lodge proceeded. McMurdo, accustomed only to the prosaic performances of Chicago, listened with open ears and more surprise than he ventured to show to what followed.\n\n\"The first business on the agenda paper,\" said McGinty, \"is to read the following letter from Division Master Windle of Merton County Lodge 249. He says:\n\n\u2002\"DEAR SIR:\n\n\u2002There is a job to be done on Andrew Rae of Rae & Sturmash, coal owners near this place. You will remember that your lodge owes us a return, having had the service of two brethren in the matter of the patrolman last fall. You will send two good men, they will be taken charge of by Treasurer Higgins of this lodge, whose address you know. He will show them when to act and where. Yours in freedom,\n\n\u2002J. W. WINDLE, D. M. A. O. F.\n\n\"Windle has never refused us when we have had occasion to ask for the loan of a man or two, and it is not for us to refuse him.\" McGinty paused and looked round the room with his dull, malevolent eyes. \"Who will volunteer for the job?\"\n\nSeveral young fellows held up their hands. The Bodymaster looked at them with an approving smile.\n\n\"You'll do, Tiger Cormac. If you handle it as well as you did the last, you won't be wrong. And you, Wilson.\"\n\n\"I've no pistol,\" said the volunteer, a mere boy in his teens.\n\n\"It's your first, is it not? Well, you have to be blooded some time. It will be a great start for you. As to the pistol, you'll find it waiting for you, or I'm mistaken. If you report yourselves on Monday, it will be time enough. You'll get a great welcome when you return.\"\n\n\"Any reward this time?\" asked Cormac, a thick-set, dark-faced, brutal-looking young man, whose ferocity had earned him the nickname of \"Tiger.\"\n\n\"Never mind the reward. You just do it for the honour of the thing. Maybe when it is done there will be a few odd dollars at the bottom of the box.\"\n\n\"What has the man done?\" asked young Wilson.\n\n\"Sure, it's not for the likes of you to ask what the man has done. He has been judged over there. That's no business of ours. All we have to do is to carry it out for them, same as they would for us. Speaking of that, two brothers from the Merton lodge are coming over to us next week to do some business in this quarter.\"\n\n\"Who are they?\" asked someone.\n\n\"Faith, it is wiser not to ask. If you know nothing, you can testify nothing, and no trouble can come of it. But they are men who will make a clean job when they are about it.\"\n\n\"And time, too!\" cried Ted Baldwin. \"Folk are gettin' out of hand in these parts. It was only last week that three of our men were turned off by Foreman Blaker. It's been owing him a long time, and he'll get it full and proper.\"\n\n\"Get what?\" McMurdo whispered to his neighbour.\n\n\"The business end of a buckshot cartridge!\" cried the man with a loud laugh. \"What think you of our ways, Brother?\"\n\nMcMurdo's criminal soul seemed to have already absorbed the spirit of the vile association of which he was now a member. \"I like it well,\" said he. \"'Tis a proper place for a lad of mettle.\"\n\nSeveral of those who sat around heard his words and applauded them.\n\n\"What's that?\" cried the black-maned Bodymaster from the end of the table.\n\n\"'Tis our new brother, sir, who finds our ways to his taste.\"\n\nMcMurdo rose to his feet for an instant. \"I would say, Eminent Bodymaster, that if a man should be wanted I should take it as an honour to be chosen to help the lodge.\"\n\nThere was great applause at this. It was felt that a new sun was pushing its rim above the horizon. To some of the elders it seemed that the progress was a little too rapid.\n\n\"I would move,\" said the secretary, Harraway, a vulture-faced old graybeard who sat near the chairman, \"that Brother McMurdo should wait until it is the good pleasure of the lodge to employ him.\"\n\n\"Sure, that was what I meant; I'm in your hands,\" said McMurdo.\n\n\"Your time will come, Brother,\" said the chairman. \"We have marked you down as a willing man, and we believe that you will do good work in these parts. There is a small matter to-night in which you may take a hand if it so please you.\"\n\n\"I will wait for something that is worth while.\"\n\n\"You can come to-night, anyhow, and it will help you to know what we stand for in this community. I will make the announcement later. Meanwhile,\" he glanced at his agenda paper, \"I have one or two more points to bring before the meeting. First of all, I will ask the treasurer as to our bank balance. There is the pension to Jim Carnaway's widow. He was struck down doing the work of the lodge, and it is for us to see that she is not the loser.\"\n\n\"Jim was shot last month when they tried to kill Chester Wilcox of Marley Creek,\" McMurdo's neighbour informed him.\n\n\"The funds are good at the moment,\" said the treasurer, with the bankbook in front of him. \"The firms have been generous of late. Max Linder & Co. paid five hundred to be left alone. Walker Brothers sent in a hundred; but I took it on myself to return it and ask for five. If I do not hear by Wednesday, their winding gear may get out of order. We had to burn their breaker last year before they became reasonable. Then the West Section Coaling Company has paid its annual contribution. We have enough on hand to meet any obligations.\"\n\n\"What about Archie Swindon?\" asked a brother.\n\n\"He has sold out and left the district. The old devil left a note for us to say that he had rather be a free crossing sweeper in New York than a large mine owner under the power of a ring of blackmailers. By Gar! it was as well that he made a break for it before the note reached us! I guess he won't show his face in this valley again.\"\n\nAn elderly, clean-shaved man with a kindly face and a good brow rose from the end of the table which faced the chairman. \"Mr. Treasurer,\" he asked, \"may I ask who has bought the property of this man that we have driven out of the district?\"\n\n\"Yes, Brother Morris. It has been bought by the State & Merton County Railroad Company.\"\n\n\"And who bought the mines of Todman and of Lee that came into the market in the same way last year?\"\n\n\"The same company, Brother Morris.\"\n\n\"And who bought the ironworks of Manson and of Shuman, and of Van Deher and of Atwood, which have all been given up of late?\"\n\n\"They were all bought by the West Gilmerton General Mining Company.\"\n\n\"I don't see, Brother Morris,\" said the chairman, \"that it matters to us who buys them, since they can't carry them out of the district.\"\n\n\"With all respect to you, Eminent Bodymaster, I think it may matter very much to us. This process has been going on now for ten long years. We are gradually driving all the small men out of trade. What is the result? We find in their places great companies like the Railroad or the General Iron, who have their directors in New York or Philadelphia, and care nothing for our threats. We can take it out of their local bosses; but it only means that others will be sent in their stead. And we are making it dangerous for ourselves. The small men could not harm us. They had not the money nor the power. So long as we did not squeeze them too dry, they would stay on under our power. But if these big companies find that we stand between them and their profits, they will spare no pains and no expense to hunt us down and bring us to court.\"\n\nThere was a hush at these ominous words, and every face darkened as gloomy looks were exchanged. So omnipotent and unchallenged had they been that the very thought that there was possible retribution in the background had been banished from their minds. And yet the idea struck a chill to the most reckless of them.\n\n\"It is my advice,\" the speaker continued, \"that we go easier upon the small men. On the day that they have all been driven out the power of this society will have been broken.\"\n\nUnwelcome truths are not popular. There were angry cries as the speaker resumed his seat. McGinty rose with gloom upon his brow.\n\n\"Brother Morris,\" said he, \"you were always a croaker. So long as the members of this lodge stand together there is no power in the United States that can touch them. Sure, have we not tried it often enough in the law courts? I expect the big companies will find it easier to pay than to fight, same as the little companies do. And now, Brethren,\" McGinty took off his black velvet cap and his stole as he spoke, \"this lodge has finished its business for the evening, save for one small matter which may be mentioned when we are parting. The time has now come for fraternal refreshment and for harmony.\"\n\nStrange indeed is human nature. Here were these men, to whom murder was familiar, who again and again had struck down the father of the family, some man against whom they had no personal feeling, without one thought of compunction or of compassion for his weeping wife or helpless children, and yet the tender or pathetic in music could move them to tears. McMurdo had a fine tenor voice, and if he had failed to gain the good will of the lodge before, it could no longer have been withheld after he had thrilled them with \"I'm Sitting on the Stile, Mary,\" and \"On the Banks of Allan Water.\"\n\nIn his very first night the new recruit had made himself one of the most popular of the brethren, marked already for advancement and high office. There were other qualities needed, however, besides those of good fellowship, to make a worthy Freeman, and of these he was given an example before the evening was over. The whisky bottle had passed round many times, and the men were flushed and ripe for mischief when their Bodymaster rose once more to address them.\n\n\"Boys,\" said he, \"there's one man in this town that wants trimming up, and it's for you to see that he gets it. I'm speaking of James Stanger of the Herald. You've seen how he's been opening his mouth against us again?\"\n\nThere was a murmur of assent, with many a muttered oath. McGinty took a slip of paper from his waistcoat pocket.\n\n\"LAW AND ORDER!\"\n\nThat's how he heads it.\n\n\"REIGN OF TERROR IN THE COAL AND IRON DISTRICT\"\n\nTwelve years have now elapsed since the first assassinations which proved the existence of a criminal organization in our midst. From that day these outrages have never ceased, until now they have reached a pitch which makes us the opprobrium of the civilized world. Is it for such results as this that our great country welcomes to its bosom the alien who flies from the despotisms of Europe? Is it that they shall themselves become tyrants over the very men who have given them shelter, and that a state of terrorism and lawlessness should be established under the very shadow of the sacred folds of the starry Flag of Freedom which would raise horror in our minds if we read of it as existing under the most effete monarchy of the East? The men are known. The organization is patent and public. How long are we to endure it? Can we forever live\u2014\n\n\"Sure, I've read enough of the slush!\" cried the chairman, tossing the paper down upon the table. \"That's what he says of us. The question I'm asking you is what shall we say to him?\"\n\n\"Kill him!\" cried a dozen fierce voices.\n\n\"I protest against that,\" said Brother Morris, the man of the good brow and shaved face. \"I tell you, Brethren, that our hand is too heavy in this valley, and that there will come a point where in self-defense every man will unite to crush us out. James Stanger is an old man. He is respected in the township and the district. His paper stands for all that is solid in the valley. If that man is struck down, there will be a stir through this state that will only end with our destruction.\"\n\n\"And how would they bring about our destruction, Mr. Standback?\" cried McGinty. \"Is it by the police? Sure, half of them are in our pay and half of them afraid of us. Or is it by the law courts and the judge? Haven't we tried that before now, and what ever came of it?\"\n\n\"There is a Judge Lynch that might try the case,\" said Brother Morris.\n\nA general shout of anger greeted the suggestion.\n\n\"I have but to raise my finger,\" cried McGinty, \"and I could put two hundred men into this town that would clear it out from end to end.\" Then suddenly raising his voice and bending his huge black brows into a terrible frown, \"See here, Brother Morris, I have my eye on you, and have had for some time! You've no heart yourself, and you try to take the heart out of others. It will be an ill day for you, Brother Morris, when your own name comes on our agenda paper, and I'm thinking that it's just there that I ought to place it.\"\n\nMorris had turned deadly pale, and his knees seemed to give way under him as he fell back into his chair. He raised his glass in his trembling hand and drank before he could answer. \"I apologize, Eminent Bodymaster, to you and to every brother in this lodge if I have said more than I should. I am a faithful member\u2014you all know that\u2014and it is my fear lest evil come to the lodge which makes me speak in anxious words. But I have greater trust in your judgment than in my own, Eminent Bodymaster, and I promise you that I will not offend again.\"\n\nThe Bodymaster's scowl relaxed as he listened to the humble words. \"Very good, Brother Morris. It's myself that would be sorry if it were needful to give you a lesson. But so long as I am in this chair we shall be a united lodge in word and in deed. And now, boys,\" he continued, looking round at the company, \"I'll say this much, that if Stanger got his full deserts there would be more trouble than we need ask for. These editors hang together, and every journal in the state would be crying out for police and troops. But I guess you can give him a pretty severe warning. Will you fix it, Brother Baldwin?\"\n\n\"Sure!\" said the young man eagerly.\n\n\"How many will you take?\"\n\n\"Half a dozen, and two to guard the door. You'll come, Gower, and you, Mansel, and you, Scanlan, and the two Willabys.\"\n\n\"I promised the new brother he should go,\" said the chairman.\n\nTed Baldwin looked at McMurdo with eyes which showed that he had not forgotten nor forgiven. \"Well, he can come if he wants,\" he said in a surly voice. \"That's enough. The sooner we get to work the better.\"\n\nThe company broke up with shouts and yells and snatches of drunken song. The bar was still crowded with revellers, and many of the brethren remained there. The little band who had been told off for duty passed out into the street, proceeding in twos and threes along the sidewalk so as not to provoke attention. It was a bitterly cold night, with a half-moon shining brilliantly in a frosty, star-spangled sky. The men stopped and gathered in a yard which faced a high building. The words \"Vermissa Herald\" were printed in gold lettering between the brightly lit windows. From within came the clanking of the printing press.\n\n\"Here, you,\" said Baldwin to McMurdo, \"you can stand below at the door and see that the road is kept open for us. Arthur Willaby can stay with you. You others come with me. Have no fears, boys; for we have a dozen witnesses that we are in the Union Bar at this very moment.\"\n\nIt was nearly midnight, and the street was deserted save for one or two revellers upon their way home. The party crossed the road, and, pushing open the door of the newspaper office, Baldwin and his men rushed in and up the stair which faced them. McMurdo and another remained below. From the room above came a shout, a cry for help, and then the sound of trampling feet and of falling chairs. An instant later a gray-haired man rushed out on the landing.\n\nHe was seized before he could get farther, and his spectacles came tinkling down to McMurdo's feet. There was a thud and a groan. He was on his face, and half a dozen sticks were clattering together as they fell upon him. He writhed, and his long, thin limbs quivered under the blows. The others ceased at last; but Baldwin, his cruel face set in an infernal smile, was hacking at the man's head, which he vainly endeavoured to defend with his arms. His white hair was dabbled with patches of blood. Baldwin was still stooping over his victim, putting in a short, vicious blow whenever he could see a part exposed, when McMurdo dashed up the stair and pushed him back.\n\n\"You'll kill the man,\" said he. \"Drop it!\"\n\nBaldwin looked at him in amazement. \"Curse you!\" he cried. \"Who are you to interfere\u2014you that are new to the lodge? Stand back!\" He raised his stick; but McMurdo had whipped his pistol out of his hip pocket.\n\n\"Stand back yourself!\" he cried. \"I'll blow your face in if you lay a hand on me. As to the lodge, wasn't it the order of the Bodymaster that the man was not to be killed\u2014and what are you doing but killing him?\"\n\n\"It's truth he says,\" remarked one of the men.\n\n\"By Gar! you'd best hurry yourselves!\" cried the man below. \"The windows are all lighting up, and you'll have the whole town here inside of five minutes.\"\n\nThere was indeed the sound of shouting in the street, and a little group of compositors and pressmen was forming in the hall below and nerving itself to action. Leaving the limp and motionless body of the editor at the head of the stair, the criminals rushed down and made their way swiftly along the street. Having reached the Union House, some of them mixed with the crowd in McGinty's saloon, whispering across the bar to the Boss that the job had been well carried through. Others, and among them McMurdo, broke away into side streets, and so by devious paths to their own homes." + }, + { + "title": "The Valley of Fear", + "text": "When McMurdo awoke next morning he had good reason to remember his initiation into the lodge. His head ached with the effect of the drink, and his arm, where he had been branded, was hot and swollen. Having his own peculiar source of income, he was irregular in his attendance at his work; so he had a late breakfast, and remained at home for the morning writing a long letter to a friend. Afterwards he read the Daily Herald. In a special column put in at the last moment he read:\n\n\u2002OUTRAGE AT THE HERALD OFFICE\u2014EDITOR SERIOUSLY INJURED.\n\nIt was a short account of the facts with which he was himself more familiar than the writer could have been. It ended with the statement:\n\nThe matter is now in the hands of the police; but it can hardly be hoped that their exertions will be attended by any better results than in the past. Some of the men were recognized, and there is hope that a conviction may be obtained. The source of the outrage was, it need hardly be said, that infamous society which has held this community in bondage for so long a period, and against which the Herald has taken so uncompromising a stand. Mr. Stanger's many friends will rejoice to hear that, though he has been cruelly and brutally beaten, and though he has sustained severe injuries about the head, there is no immediate danger to his life.\n\nBelow it stated that a guard of police, armed with Winchester rifles, had been requisitioned for the defense of the office.\n\nMcMurdo had laid down the paper, and was lighting his pipe with a hand which was shaky from the excesses of the previous evening, when there was a knock outside, and his landlady brought to him a note which had just been handed in by a lad. It was unsigned, and ran thus:\n\nI should wish to speak to you; but would rather not do so in your house. You will find me beside the flagstaff upon Miller Hill. If you will come there now, I have something which it is important for you to hear and for me to say.\n\nMcMurdo read the note twice with the utmost surprise; for he could not imagine what it meant or who was the author of it. Had it been in a feminine hand, he might have imagined that it was the beginning of one of those adventures which had been familiar enough in his past life. But it was the writing of a man, and of a well educated one, too. Finally, after some hesitation, he determined to see the matter through.\n\nMiller Hill is an ill-kept public park in the very centre of the town. In summer it is a favourite resort of the people; but in winter it is desolate enough. From the top of it one has a view not only of the whole straggling, grimy town, but of the winding valley beneath, with its scattered mines and factories blackening the snow on each side of it, and of the wooded and white-capped ranges flanking it.\n\nMcMurdo strolled up the winding path hedged in with evergreens until he reached the deserted restaurant which forms the centre of summer gaiety. Beside it was a bare flagstaff, and underneath it a man, his hat drawn down and the collar of his overcoat turned up. When he turned his face McMurdo saw that it was Brother Morris, he who had incurred the anger of the Bodymaster the night before. The lodge sign was given and exchanged as they met.\n\n\"I wanted to have a word with you, Mr. McMurdo,\" said the older man, speaking with a hesitation which showed that he was on delicate ground. \"It was kind of you to come.\"\n\n\"Why did you not put your name to the note?\"\n\n\"One has to be cautious, mister. One never knows in times like these how a thing may come back to one. One never knows either who to trust or who not to trust.\"\n\n\"Surely one may trust brothers of the lodge.\"\n\n\"No, no, not always,\" cried Morris with vehemence. \"Whatever we say, even what we think, seems to go back to that man McGinty.\"\n\n\"Look here!\" said McMurdo sternly. \"It was only last night, as you know well, that I swore good faith to our Bodymaster. Would you be asking me to break my oath?\"\n\n\"If that is the view you take,\" said Morris sadly, \"I can only say that I am sorry I gave you the trouble to come and meet me. Things have come to a bad pass when two free citizens cannot speak their thoughts to each other.\"\n\nMcMurdo, who had been watching his companion very narrowly, relaxed somewhat in his bearing. \"Sure I spoke for myself only,\" said he. \"I am a newcomer, as you know, and I am strange to it all. It is not for me to open my mouth, Mr. Morris, and if you think well to say anything to me I am here to hear it.\"\n\n\"And to take it back to Boss McGinty!\" said Morris bitterly.\n\n\"Indeed, then, you do me injustice there,\" cried McMurdo. \"For myself I am loyal to the lodge, and so I tell you straight; but I would be a poor creature if I were to repeat to any other what you might say to me in confidence. It will go no further than me; though I warn you that you may get neither help nor sympathy.\"\n\n\"I have given up looking for either the one or the other,\" said Morris. \"I may be putting my very life in your hands by what I say; but, bad as you are\u2014and it seemed to me last night that you were shaping to be as bad as the worst\u2014still you are new to it, and your conscience cannot yet be as hardened as theirs. That was why I thought to speak with you.\"\n\n\"Well, what have you to say?\"\n\n\"If you give me away, may a curse be on you!\"\n\n\"Sure, I said I would not.\"\n\n\"I would ask you, then, when you joined the Freeman's society in Chicago and swore vows of charity and fidelity, did ever it cross your mind that you might find it would lead you to crime?\"\n\n\"If you call it crime,\" McMurdo answered.\n\n\"Call it crime!\" cried Morris, his voice vibrating with passion. \"You have seen little of it if you can call it anything else. Was it crime last night when a man old enough to be your father was beaten till the blood dripped from his white hairs? Was that crime\u2014or what else would you call it?\"\n\n\"There are some would say it was war,\" said McMurdo. \"a war of two classes with all in, so that each struck as best it could.\"\n\n\"Well, did you think of such a thing when you joined the Freeman's society at Chicago?\"\n\n\"No, I'm bound to say I did not.\"\n\n\"Nor did I when I joined it at Philadelphia. It was just a benefit club and a meeting place for one's fellows. Then I heard of this place\u2014curse the hour that the name first fell upon my ears!\u2014and I came to better myself! My God! to better myself! My wife and three children came with me. I started a drygoods store on Market Square, and I prospered well. The word had gone round that I was a Freeman, and I was forced to join the local lodge, same as you did last night. I've the badge of shame on my forearm and something worse branded on my heart. I found that I was under the orders of a black villain and caught in a meshwork of crime. What could I do? Every word I said to make things better was taken as treason, same as it was last night. I can't get away; for all I have in the world is in my store. If I leave the society, I know well that it means murder to me, and God knows what to my wife and children. Oh, man, it is awful\u2014awful!\" He put his hands to his face, and his body shook with convulsive sobs.\n\nMcMurdo shrugged his shoulders. \"You were too soft for the job,\" said he. \"You are the wrong sort for such work.\"\n\n\"I had a conscience and a religion; but they made me a criminal among them. I was chosen for a job. If I backed down, I knew well what would come to me. Maybe I'm a coward. Maybe it's the thought of my poor little woman and the children that makes me one. Anyhow I went. I guess it will haunt me forever.\n\n\"It was a lonely house, twenty miles from here, over the range yonder. I was told off for the door, same as you were last night. They could not trust me with the job. The others went in. When they came out their hands were crimson to the wrists. As we turned away a child was screaming out of the house behind us. It was a boy of five who had seen his father murdered. I nearly fainted with the horror of it, and yet I had to keep a bold and smiling face; for well I knew that if I did not it would be out of my house that they would come next with their bloody hands, and it would be my little Fred that would be screaming for his father.\n\n\"But I was a criminal then, part sharer in a murder, lost forever in this world, and lost also in the next. I am a good Catholic; but the priest would have no word with me when he heard I was a Scowrer, and I am excommunicated from my faith. That's how it stands with me. And I see you going down the same road, and I ask you what the end is to be. Are you ready to be a cold-blooded murderer also, or can we do anything to stop it?\"\n\n\"What would you do?\" asked McMurdo abruptly. \"You would not inform?\"\n\n\"God forbid!\" cried Morris. \"Sure, the very thought would cost me my life.\"\n\n\"That's well,\" said McMurdo. \"I'm thinking that you are a weak man and that you make too much of the matter.\"\n\n\"Too much! Wait till you have lived here, longer. Look down the valley! See the cloud of a hundred chimneys that overshadows it! I tell you that the cloud of murder hangs thicker and lower than that over the heads of the people. It is the Valley of Fear, the Valley of Death. The terror is in the hearts of the people from the dusk to the dawn. Wait, young man, and you will learn for yourself.\"\n\n\"Well, I'll let you know what I think when I have seen more,\" said McMurdo carelessly. \"What is very clear is that you are not the man for the place, and that the sooner you sell out\u2014if you only get a dime a dollar for what the business is worth\u2014the better it will be for you. What you have said is safe with me; but, by Gar! if I thought you were an informer\u2014\"\n\n\"No, no!\" cried Morris piteously.\n\n\"Well, let it rest at that. I'll bear what you have said in mind, and maybe some day I'll come back to it. I expect you meant kindly by speaking to me like this. Now I'll be getting home.\"\n\n\"One word before you go,\" said Morris. \"We may have been seen together. They may want to know what we have spoken about.\"\n\n\"Ah! that's well thought of.\"\n\n\"I offer you a clerkship in my store.\"\n\n\"And I refuse it. That's our business. Well, so long, Brother Morris, and may you find things go better with you in the future.\"\n\nThat same afternoon, as McMurdo sat smoking, lost in thought, beside the stove of his sitting-room, the door swung open and its framework was filled with the huge figure of Boss McGinty. He passed the sign, and then seating himself opposite to the young man he looked at him steadily for some time, a look which was as steadily returned.\n\n\"I'm not much of a visitor, Brother McMurdo,\" he said at last. \"I guess I am too busy over the folk that visit me. But I thought I'd stretch a point and drop down to see you in your own house.\"\n\n\"I'm proud to see you here, Councillor,\" McMurdo answered heartily, bringing his whisky bottle out of the cupboard. \"it's an honour that I had not expected.\"\n\n\"How's the arm?\" asked the Boss.\n\nMcMurdo made a wry face. \"Well, I'm not forgetting it,\" he said; \"but it's worth it.\"\n\n\"Yes, it's worth it,\" the other answered, \"to those that are loyal and go through with it and are a help to the lodge. What were you speaking to Brother Morris about on Miller Hill this morning?\"\n\nThe question came so suddenly that it was well that he had his answer prepared. He burst into a hearty laugh. \"Morris didn't know I could earn a living here at home. He shan't know either; for he has got too much conscience for the likes of me. But he's a good-hearted old chap. It was his idea that I was at a loose end, and that he would do me a good turn by offering me a clerkship in a drygoods store.\"\n\n\"Oh, that was it?\"\n\n\"Yes, that was it.\"\n\n\"And you refused it?\"\n\n\"Sure. Couldn't I earn ten times as much in my own bedroom with four hours' work?\"\n\n\"That's so. But I wouldn't get about too much with Morris.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"Well, I guess because I tell you not. That's enough for most folk in these parts.\"\n\n\"It may be enough for most folk; but it ain't enough for me, Councillor,\" said McMurdo boldly. \"If you are a judge of men, you'll know that.\"\n\nThe swarthy giant glared at him, and his hairy paw closed for an instant round the glass as though he would hurl it at the head of his companion. Then he laughed in his loud, boisterous, insincere fashion.\n\n\"You're a queer card, for sure,\" said he. \"Well, if you want reasons, I'll give them. Did Morris say nothing to you against the lodge?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Nor against me?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Well, that's because he daren't trust you. But in his heart he is not a loyal brother. We know that well. So we watch him and we wait for the time to admonish him. I'm thinking that the time is drawing near. There's no room for scabby sheep in our pen. But if you keep company with a disloyal man, we might think that you were disloyal, too. See?\"\n\n\"There's no chance of my keeping company with him; for I dislike the man,\" McMurdo answered. \"As to being disloyal, if it was any man but you he would not use the word to me twice.\"\n\n\"Well, that's enough,\" said McGinty, draining off his glass. \"I came down to give you a word in season, and you've had it.\"\n\n\"I'd like to know,\" said McMurdo, \"how you ever came to learn that I had spoken with Morris at all?\"\n\nMcGinty laughed. \"It's my business to know what goes on in this township,\" said he. \"I guess you'd best reckon on my hearing all that passes. Well, time's up, and I'll just say\u2014\"\n\nBut his leavetaking was cut short in a very unexpected fashion. With a sudden crash the door flew open, and three frowning, intent faces glared in at them from under the peaks of police caps. McMurdo sprang to his feet and half drew his revolver; but his arm stopped midway as he became conscious that two Winchester rifles were levelled at his head. A man in uniform advanced into the room, a six-shooter in his hand. It was Captain Marvin, once of Chicago, and now, of the Mine Constabulary. He shook his head with a half-smile at McMurdo.\n\n\"I thought you'd be getting into trouble, Mr. Crooked McMurdo of Chicago,\" said he. \"Can't keep out of it, can you? Take your hat and come along with us.\"\n\n\"I guess you'll pay for this, Captain Marvin,\" said McGinty. \"Who are you, I'd like to know, to break into a house in this fashion and molest honest, law-abiding men?\"\n\n\"You're standing out in this deal, Councillor McGinty,\" said the police captain. \"We are not out after you, but after this man McMurdo. It is for you to help, not to hinder us in our duty.\"\n\n\"He is a friend of mine, and I'll answer for his conduct,\" said the Boss.\n\n\"By all accounts, Mr. McGinty, you may have to answer for your own conduct some of these days,\" the captain answered. \"This man McMurdo was a crook before ever he came here, and he's a crook still. Cover him, Patrolman, while I disarm him.\"\n\n\"There's my pistol,\" said McMurdo coolly. \"Maybe, Captain Marvin, if you and I were alone and face to face you would not take me so easily.\"\n\n\"Where's your warrant?\" asked McGinty. \"By Gar! a man might as well live in Russia as in Vermissa while folk like you are running the police. It's capitalist outrage, and you'll hear more of it, I reckon.\"\n\n\"You do what you think is your duty the best way you can. Councillor. We'll look after ours.\"\n\n\"What am I accused of?\" asked McMurdo.\n\n\"Of being concerned in the beating of old Editor Stanger at the Herald office. It wasn't your fault that it isn't a murder charge.\"\n\n\"Well, if that's all you have against him,\" cried McGinty with a laugh, \"you can save yourself a deal of trouble by dropping it right now. This man was with me in my saloon playing poker up to midnight, and I can bring a dozen to prove it.\"\n\n\"That's your affair, and I guess you can settle it in court to-morrow. Meanwhile, come on, McMurdo, and come quietly if you don't want a gun across your head. You stand wide, Mr. McGinty; for I warn you I will stand no resistance when I am on duty!\"\n\nSo determined was the appearance of the captain that both McMurdo and his boss were forced to accept the situation. The latter managed to have a few whispered words with the prisoner before they parted.\n\n\"What about\u2014\" he jerked his thumb upward to signify the coining plant.\n\n\"All right,\" whispered McMurdo, who had devised a safe hiding place under the floor.\n\n\"I'll bid you good-bye,\" said the Boss, shaking hands. \"I'll see Reilly the lawyer and take the defense upon myself. Take my word for it that they won't be able to hold you.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't bet on that. Guard the prisoner, you two, and shoot him if he tries any games. I'll search the house before I leave.\"\n\nHe did so; but apparently found no trace of the concealed plant. When he had descended he and his men escorted McMurdo to headquarters. Darkness had fallen, and a keen blizzard was blowing so that the streets were nearly deserted; but a few loiterers followed the group, and emboldened by invisibility shouted imprecations at the prisoner.\n\n\"Lynch the cursed Scowrer!\" they cried. \"Lynch him!\" They laughed and jeered as he was pushed into the police station. After a short, formal examination from the inspector in charge he was put into the common cell. Here he found Baldwin and three other criminals of the night before, all arrested that afternoon and waiting their trial next morning.\n\nBut even within this inner fortress of the law the long arm of the Freemen was able to extend. Late at night there came a jailer with a straw bundle for their bedding, out of which he extracted two bottles of whisky, some glasses, and a pack of cards. They spent a hilarious night, without an anxious thought as to the ordeal of the morning.\n\nNor had they cause, as the result was to show. The magistrate could not possibly, on the evidence, have held them for a higher court. On the one hand the compositors and pressmen were forced to admit that the light was uncertain, that they were themselves much perturbed, and that it was difficult for them to swear to the identity of the assailants; although they believed that the accused were among them. Cross examined by the clever attorney who had been engaged by McGinty, they were even more nebulous in their evidence.\n\nThe injured man had already deposed that he was so taken by surprise by the suddenness of the attack that he could state nothing beyond the fact that the first man who struck him wore a moustache. He added that he knew them to be Scowrers, since no one else in the community could possibly have any enmity to him, and he had long been threatened on account of his outspoken editorials. On the other hand, it was clearly shown by the united and unfaltering evidence of six citizens, including that high municipal official, Councillor McGinty, that the men had been at a card party at the Union House until an hour very much later than the commission of the outrage.\n\nNeedless to say that they were discharged with something very near to an apology from the bench for the inconvenience to which they had been put, together with an implied censure of Captain Marvin and the police for their officious zeal.\n\nThe verdict was greeted with loud applause by a court in which McMurdo saw many familiar faces. Brothers of the lodge smiled and waved. But there were others who sat with compressed lips and brooding eyes as the men filed out of the dock. One of them, a little, dark-bearded, resolute fellow, put the thoughts of himself and comrades into words as the ex-prisoners passed him.\n\n\"You damned murderers!\" he said. \"We'll fix you yet!\"" + }, + { + "title": "The Darkest Hour", + "text": "If anything had been needed to give an impetus to Jack McMurdo's popularity among his fellows it would have been his arrest and acquittal. That a man on the very night of joining the lodge should have done something which brought him before the magistrate was a new record in the annals of the society. Already he had earned the reputation of a good boon companion, a cheery reveller, and withal a man of high temper, who would not take an insult even from the all-powerful Boss himself. But in addition to this he impressed his comrades with the idea that among them all there was not one whose brain was so ready to devise a bloodthirsty scheme, or whose hand would be more capable of carrying it out. \"He'll be the boy for the clean job,\" said the oldsters to one another, and waited their time until they could set him to his work.\n\nMcGinty had instruments enough already; but he recognized that this was a supremely able one. He felt like a man holding a fierce bloodhound in leash. There were curs to do the smaller work; but some day he would slip this creature upon its prey. A few members of the lodge, Ted Baldwin among them, resented the rapid rise of the stranger and hated him for it; but they kept clear of him, for he was as ready to fight as to laugh.\n\nBut if he gained favour with his fellows, there was another quarter, one which had become even more vital to him, in which he lost it. Ettie Shafter's father would have nothing more to do with him, nor would he allow him to enter the house. Ettie herself was too deeply in love to give him up altogether, and yet her own good sense warned her of what would come from a marriage with a man who was regarded as a criminal.\n\nOne morning after a sleepless night she determined to see him, possibly for the last time, and make one strong endeavour to draw him from those evil influences which were sucking him down. She went to his house, as he had often begged her to do, and made her way into the room which he used as his sitting-room. He was seated at a table, with his back turned and a letter in front of him. A sudden spirit of girlish mischief came over her\u2014she was still only nineteen. He had not heard her when she pushed open the door. Now she tiptoed forward and laid her hand lightly upon his bended shoulders.\n\nIf she had expected to startle him, she certainly succeeded; but only in turn to be startled herself. With a tiger spring he turned on her, and his right hand was feeling for her throat. At the same instant with the other hand he crumpled up the paper that lay before him. For an instant he stood glaring. Then astonishment and joy took the place of the ferocity which had convulsed his features\u2014a ferocity which had sent her shrinking back in horror as from something which had never before intruded into her gentle life.\n\n\"It's you!\" said he, mopping his brow. \"And to think that you should come to me, heart of my heart, and I should find nothing better to do than to want to strangle you! Come then, darling,\" and he held out his arms, \"let me make it up to you.\"\n\nBut she had not recovered from that sudden glimpse of guilty fear which she had read in the man's face. All her woman's instinct told her that it was not the mere fright of a man who is startled. Guilt\u2014that was it\u2014guilt and fear!\n\n\"What's come over you, Jack?\" she cried. \"Why were you so scared of me? Oh, Jack, if your conscience was at ease, you would not have looked at me like that!\"\n\n\"Sure, I was thinking of other things, and when you came tripping so lightly on those fairy feet of yours\u2014\"\n\n\"No, no, it was more than that, Jack.\" Then a sudden suspicion seized her. \"Let me see that letter you were writing.\"\n\n\"Ah, Ettie, I couldn't do that.\"\n\nHer suspicions became certainties. \"It's to another woman,\" she cried. \"I know it! Why else should you hold it from me? Was it to your wife that you were writing? How am I to know that you are not a married man\u2014you, a stranger, that nobody knows?\"\n\n\"I am not married, Ettie. See now, I swear it! You're the only one woman on earth to me. By the cross of Christ I swear it!\"\n\nHe was so white with passionate earnestness that she could not but believe him.\n\n\"Well, then,\" she cried, \"why will you not show me the letter?\"\n\n\"I'll tell you, acushla,\" said he. \"I'm under oath not to show it, and just as I wouldn't break my word to you so I would keep it to those who hold my promise. It's the business of the lodge, and even to you it's secret. And if I was scared when a hand fell on me, can't you understand it when it might have been the hand of a detective?\"\n\nShe felt that he was telling the truth. He gathered her into his arms and kissed away her fears and doubts.\n\n\"Sit here by me, then. It's a queer throne for such a queen; but it's the best your poor lover can find. He'll do better for you some of these days, I'm thinking. Now your mind is easy once again, is it not?\"\n\n\"How can it ever be at ease, Jack, when I know that you are a criminal among criminals, when I never know the day that I may hear you are in court for murder? 'McMurdo the Scowrer,' that's what one of our boarders called you yesterday. It went through my heart like a knife.\"\n\n\"Sure, hard words break no bones.\"\n\n\"But they were true.\"\n\n\"Well, dear, it's not so bad as you think. We are but poor men that are trying in our own way to get our rights.\"\n\nEttie threw her arms round her lover's neck. \"Give it up, Jack! For my sake, for God's sake, give it up! It was to ask you that I came here to-day. Oh, Jack, see\u2014I beg it of you on my bended knees! Kneeling here before you I implore you to give it up!\"\n\nHe raised her and soothed her with her head against his breast.\n\n\"Sure, my darlin', you don't know what it is you are asking. How could I give it up when it would be to break my oath and to desert my comrades? If you could see how things stand with me you could never ask it of me. Besides, if I wanted to, how could I do it? You don't suppose that the lodge would let a man go free with all its secrets?\"\n\n\"I've thought of that, Jack. I've planned it all. Father has saved some money. He is weary of this place where the fear of these people darkens our lives. He is ready to go. We would fly together to Philadelphia or New York, where we would be safe from them.\"\n\nMcMurdo laughed. \"The lodge has a long arm. Do you think it could not stretch from here to Philadelphia or New York?\"\n\n\"Well, then, to the West, or to England, or to Germany, where father came from\u2014anywhere to get away from this Valley of Fear!\"\n\nMcMurdo thought of old Brother Morris. \"Sure, it is the second time I have heard the valley so named,\" said he. \"The shadow does indeed seem to lie heavy on some of you.\"\n\n\"It darkens every moment of our lives. Do you suppose that Ted Baldwin has ever forgiven us? If it were not that he fears you, what do you suppose our chances would be? If you saw the look in those dark, hungry eyes of his when they fall on me!\"\n\n\"By Gar! I'd teach him better manners if I caught him at it! But see here, little girl. I can't leave here. I can't\u2014take that from me once and for all. But if you will leave me to find my own way, I will try to prepare a way of getting honourably out of it.\"\n\n\"There is no honour in such a matter.\"\n\n\"Well, well, it's just how you look at it. But if you'll give me six months, I'll work it so that I can leave without being ashamed to look others in the face.\"\n\nThe girl laughed with joy. \"Six months!\" she cried. \"Is it a promise?\"\n\n\"Well, it may be seven or eight. But within a year at the furthest we will leave the valley behind us.\"\n\nIt was the most that Ettie could obtain, and yet it was something. There was this distant light to illuminate the gloom of the immediate future. She returned to her father's house more light-hearted than she had ever been since Jack McMurdo had come into her life.\n\nIt might be thought that as a member, all the doings of the society would be told to him; but he was soon to discover that the organization was wider and more complex than the simple lodge. Even Boss McGinty was ignorant as to many things; for there was an official named the County Delegate, living at Hobson's Patch farther down the line, who had power over several different lodges which he wielded in a sudden and arbitrary way. Only once did McMurdo see him, a sly, little gray-haired rat of a man, with a slinking gait and a sidelong glance which was charged with malice. Evans Pott was his name, and even the great Boss of Vermissa felt towards him something of the repulsion and fear which the huge Danton may have felt for the puny but dangerous Robespierre.\n\nOne day Scanlan, who was McMurdo's fellow boarder, received a note from McGinty inclosing one from Evans Pott, which informed him that he was sending over two good men, Lawler and Andrews, who had instructions to act in the neighbourhood; though it was best for the cause that no particulars as to their objects should be given. Would the Bodymaster see to it that suitable arrangements be made for their lodgings and comfort until the time for action should arrive? McGinty added that it was impossible for anyone to remain secret at the Union House, and that, therefore, he would be obliged if McMurdo and Scanlan would put the strangers up for a few days in their boarding house.\n\nThe same evening the two men arrived, each carrying his gripsack. Lawler was an elderly man, shrewd, silent, and self-contained, clad in an old black frock coat, which with his soft felt hat and ragged, grizzled beard gave him a general resemblance to an itinerant preacher. His companion Andrews was little more than a boy, frank-faced and cheerful, with the breezy manner of one who is out for a holiday and means to enjoy every minute of it. Both men were total abstainers, and behaved in all ways as exemplary members of the society, with the one simple exception that they were assassins who had often proved themselves to be most capable instruments for this association of murder. Lawler had already carried out fourteen commissions of the kind, and Andrews three.\n\nThey were, as McMurdo found, quite ready to converse about their deeds in the past, which they recounted with the half-bashful pride of men who had done good and unselfish service for the community. They were reticent, however, as to the immediate job in hand.\n\n\"They chose us because neither I nor the boy here drink,\" Lawler explained. \"They can count on us saying no more than we should. You must not take it amiss, but it is the orders of the County Delegate that we obey.\"\n\n\"Sure, we are all in it together,\" said Scanlan, McMurdo's mate, as the four sat together at supper.\n\n\"That's true enough, and we'll talk till the cows come home of the killing of Charlie Williams or of Simon Bird, or any other job in the past. But till the work is done we say nothing.\"\n\n\"There are half a dozen about here that I have a word to say to,\" said McMurdo, with an oath. \"I suppose it isn't Jack Knox of Ironhill that you are after. I'd go some way to see him get his deserts.\"\n\n\"No, it's not him yet.\"\n\n\"Or Herman Strauss?\"\n\n\"No, nor him either.\"\n\n\"Well, if you won't tell us we can't make you; but I'd be glad to know.\"\n\nLawler smiled and shook his head. He was not to be drawn.\n\nIn spite of the reticence of their guests, Scanlan and McMurdo were quite determined to be present at what they called \"the fun.\" When, therefore, at an early hour one morning McMurdo heard them creeping down the stairs he awakened Scanlan, and the two hurried on their clothes. When they were dressed they found that the others had stolen out, leaving the door open behind them. It was not yet dawn, and by the light of the lamps they could see the two men some distance down the street. They followed them warily, treading noiselessly in the deep snow.\n\nThe boarding house was near the edge of the town, and soon they were at the crossroads which is beyond its boundary. Here three men were waiting, with whom Lawler and Andrews held a short, eager conversation. Then they all moved on together. It was clearly some notable job which needed numbers. At this point there are several trails which lead to various mines. The strangers took that which led to the Crow Hill, a huge business which was in strong hands which had been able, thanks to their energetic and fearless New England manager, Josiah H. Dunn, to keep some order and discipline during the long reign of terror.\n\nDay was breaking now, and a line of workmen were slowly making their way, singly and in groups, along the blackened path.\n\nMcMurdo and Scanlan strolled on with the others, keeping in sight of the men whom they followed. A thick mist lay over them, and from the heart of it there came the sudden scream of a steam whistle. It was the ten-minute signal before the cages descended and the day's labour began.\n\nWhen they reached the open space round the mine shaft there were a hundred miners waiting, stamping their feet and blowing on their fingers; for it was bitterly cold. The strangers stood in a little group under the shadow of the engine house. Scanlan and McMurdo climbed a heap of slag from which the whole scene lay before them. They saw the mine engineer, a great bearded Scotchman named Menzies, come out of the engine house and blow his whistle for the cages to be lowered.\n\nAt the same instant a tall, loose-framed young man with a clean-shaved, earnest face advanced eagerly towards the pit head. As he came forward his eyes fell upon the group, silent and motionless, under the engine house. The men had drawn down their hats and turned up their collars to screen their faces. For a moment the presentiment of Death laid its cold hand upon the manager's heart. At the next he had shaken it off and saw only his duty towards intrusive strangers.\n\n\"Who are you?\" he asked as he advanced. \"What are you loitering there for?\"\n\nThere was no answer; but the lad Andrews stepped forward and shot him in the stomach. The hundred waiting miners stood as motionless and helpless as if they were paralyzed. The manager clapped his two hands to the wound and doubled himself up. Then he staggered away; but another of the assassins fired, and he went down sidewise, kicking and clawing among a heap of clinkers. Menzies, the Scotchman, gave a roar of rage at the sight and rushed with an iron spanner at the murderers; but was met by two balls in the face which dropped him dead at their very feet.\n\nThere was a surge forward of some of the miners, and an inarticulate cry of pity and of anger; but a couple of the strangers emptied their six-shooters over the heads of the crowd, and they broke and scattered, some of them rushing wildly back to their homes in Vermissa.\n\nWhen a few of the bravest had rallied, and there was a return to the mine, the murderous gang had vanished in the mists of morning, without a single witness being able to swear to the identity of these men who in front of a hundred spectators had wrought this double crime.\n\nScanlan and McMurdo made their way back; Scanlan somewhat subdued, for it was the first murder job that he had seen with his own eyes, and it appeared less funny than he had been led to believe. The horrible screams of the dead manager's wife pursued them as they hurried to the town. McMurdo was absorbed and silent; but he showed no sympathy for the weakening of his companion.\n\n\"Sure, it is like a war,\" he repeated. \"What is it but a war between us and them, and we hit back where we best can.\"\n\nThere was high revel in the lodge room at the Union House that night, not only over the killing of the manager and engineer of the Crow Hill mine, which would bring this organization into line with the other blackmailed and terror-stricken companies of the district, but also over a distant triumph which had been wrought by the hands of the lodge itself.\n\nIt would appear that when the County Delegate had sent over five good men to strike a blow in Vermissa, he had demanded that in return three Vermissa men should be secretly selected and sent across to kill William Hales of Stake Royal, one of the best known and most popular mine owners in the Gilmerton district, a man who was believed not to have an enemy in the world; for he was in all ways a model employer. He had insisted, however, upon efficiency in the work, and had, therefore, paid off certain drunken and idle employees who were members of the all-powerful society. Coffin notices hung outside his door had not weakened his resolution, and so in a free, civilized country he found himself condemned to death.\n\nThe execution had now been duly carried out. Ted Baldwin, who sprawled now in the seat of honour beside the Bodymaster, had been chief of the party. His flushed face and glazed, blood-shot eyes told of sleeplessness and drink. He and his two comrades had spent the night before among the mountains. They were unkempt and weather-stained. But no heroes, returning from a forlorn hope, could have had a warmer welcome from their comrades.\n\nThe story was told and retold amid cries of delight and shouts of laughter. They had waited for their man as he drove home at nightfall, taking their station at the top of a steep hill, where his horse must be at a walk. He was so furred to keep out the cold that he could not lay his hand on his pistol. They had pulled him out and shot him again and again. He had screamed for mercy. The screams were repeated for the amusement of the lodge.\n\n\"Let's hear again how he squealed,\" they cried.\n\n[ None of them knew the man; but there is eternal drama in a killing, and they had shown the Scowrers of Gilmerton that the Vermissa men were to be relied upon. driven up ]\n\nThere had been one contretemps; for a man and his wife had driven up while they were still emptying their revolvers into the silent body. It had been suggested that they should shoot them both; but they were harmless folk who were not connected with the mines, so they were sternly bidden to drive on and keep silent, lest a worse thing befall them. And so the blood-mottled figure had been left as a warning to all such hard-hearted employers, and the three noble avengers had hurried off into the mountains where unbroken nature comes down to the very edge of the furnaces and the slag heaps. Here they were, safe and sound, their work well done, and the plaudits of their companions in their ears.\n\nIt had been a great day for the Scowrers. The shadow had fallen even darker over the valley. But as the wise general chooses the moment of victory in which to redouble his efforts, so that his foes may have no time to steady themselves after disaster, so Boss McGinty, looking out upon the scene of his operations with his brooding and malicious eyes, had devised a new attack upon those who opposed him. That very night, as the half-drunken company broke up, he touched McMurdo on the arm and led him aside into that inner room where they had their first interview.\n\n\"See here, my lad,\" said he, \"I've got a job that's worthy of you at last. You'll have the doing of it in your own hands.\"\n\n\"Proud I am to hear it,\" McMurdo answered.\n\n\"You can take two men with you\u2014Manders and Reilly. They have been warned for service. We'll never be right in this district until Chester Wilcox has been settled, and you'll have the thanks of every lodge in the coal fields if you can down him.\"\n\n\"I'll do my best, anyhow. Who is he, and where shall I find him?\"\n\nMcGinty took his eternal half-chewed, half-smoked cigar from the corner of his mouth, and proceeded to draw a rough diagram on a page torn from his notebook.\n\n\"He's the chief foreman of the Iron Dike Company. He's a hard citizen, an old colour sergeant of the war, all scars and grizzle. We've had two tries at him; but had no luck, and Jim Carnaway lost his life over it. Now it's for you to take it over. That's the house\u2014all alone at the Iron Dike crossroad, same as you see here on the map\u2014without another within earshot. It's no good by day. He's armed and shoots quick and straight, with no questions asked. But at night\u2014well, there he is with his wife, three children, and a hired help. You can't pick or choose. It's all or none. If you could get a bag of blasting powder at the front door with a slow match to it\u2014\"\n\n\"What's the man done?\"\n\n\"Didn't I tell you he shot Jim Carnaway?\"\n\n\"Why did he shoot him?\"\n\n\"What in thunder has that to do with you? Carnaway was about his house at night, and he shot him. That's enough for me and you. You've got to settle the thing right.\"\n\n\"There's these two women and the children. Do they go up too?\"\n\n\"They have to\u2014else how can we get him?\"\n\n\"It seems hard on them; for they've done nothing.\"\n\n\"What sort of fool's talk is this? Do you back out?\"\n\n\"Easy, Councillor, easy! What have I ever said or done that you should think I would be after standing back from an order of the Bodymaster of my own lodge? If it's right or if it's wrong, it's for you to decide.\"\n\n\"You'll do it, then?\"\n\n\"Of course I will do it.\"\n\n\"When?\"\n\n\"Well, you had best give me a night or two that I may see the house and make my plans. Then\u2014\"\n\n\"Very good,\" said McGinty, shaking him by the hand. \"I leave it with you. It will be a great day when you bring us the news. It's just the last stroke that will bring them all to their knees.\"\n\nMcMurdo thought long and deeply over the commission which had been so suddenly placed in his hands. The isolated house in which Chester Wilcox lived was about five miles off in an adjacent valley. That very night he started off all alone to prepare for the attempt. It was daylight before he returned from his reconnaissance. Next day he interviewed his two subordinates, Manders and Reilly, reckless youngsters who were as elated as if it were a deer-hunt.\n\nTwo nights later they met outside the town, all three armed, and one of them carrying a sack stuffed with the powder which was used in the quarries. It was two in the morning before they came to the lonely house. The night was a windy one, with broken clouds drifting swiftly across the face of a three-quarter moon. They had been warned to be on their guard against bloodhounds; so they moved forward cautiously, with their pistols cocked in their hands. But there was no sound save the howling of the wind, and no movement but the swaying branches above them.\n\nMcMurdo listened at the door of the lonely house; but all was still within. Then he leaned the powder bag against it, ripped a hole in it with his knife, and attached the fuse. When it was well alight he and his two companions took to their heels, and were some distance off, safe and snug in a sheltering ditch, before the shattering roar of the explosion, with the low, deep rumble of the collapsing building, told them that their work was done. No cleaner job had ever been carried out in the bloodstained annals of the society.\n\nBut alas that work so well organized and boldly carried out should all have gone for nothing! Warned by the fate of the various victims, and knowing that he was marked down for destruction, Chester Wilcox had moved himself and his family only the day before to some safer and less known quarters, where a guard of police should watch over them. It was an empty house which had been torn down by the gunpowder, and the grim old colour sergeant of the war was still teaching discipline to the miners of Iron Dike.\n\n\"Leave him to me, said McMurdo. \"He's my man, and I'll get him sure if I have to wait a year for him.\"\n\nA vote of thanks and confidence was passed in full lodge, and so for the time the matter ended. When a few weeks later it was reported in the papers that Wilcox had been shot at from an ambuscade, it was an open secret that McMurdo was still at work upon his unfinished job.\n\nSuch were the methods of the Society of Freemen, and such were the deeds of the Scowrers by which they spread their rule of fear over the great and rich district which was for so long a period haunted by their terrible presence. Why should these pages be stained by further crimes? Have I not said enough to show the men and their methods?\n\nThese deeds are written in history, and there are records wherein one may read the details of them. There one may learn of the shooting of Policemen Hunt and Evans because they had ventured to arrest two members of the society\u2014a double outrage planned at the Vermissa lodge and carried out in cold blood upon two helpless and disarmed men. There also one may read of the shooting of Mrs. Larbey when she was nursing her husband, who had been beaten almost to death by orders of Boss McGinty. The killing of the elder Jenkins, shortly followed by that of his brother, the mutilation of James Murdoch, the blowing up of the Stap-house family, and the murder of the Stendals all followed hard upon one another in the same terrible winter.\n\nDarkly the shadow lay upon the Valley of Fear. The spring had come with running brooks and blossoming trees. There was hope for all Nature bound so long in an iron grip; but nowhere was there any hope for the men and women who lived under the yoke of the terror. Never had the cloud above them been so dark and hopeless as in the early summer of the year 1875." + }, + { + "title": "Danger", + "text": "It was the height of the reign of terror. McMurdo, who had already been appointed Inner Deacon, with every prospect of some day succeeding McGinty as Bodymaster, was now so necessary to the councils of his comrades that nothing was done without his help and advice. The more popular he became, however, with the Freemen, the blacker were the scowls which greeted him as he passed along the streets of Vermissa. In spite of their terror the citizens were taking heart to band themselves together against their oppressors. Rumours had reached the lodge of secret gatherings in the Herald office and of distribution of firearms among the law-abiding people. But McGinty and his men were undisturbed by such reports. They were numerous, resolute, and well armed. Their opponents were scattered and powerless. It would all end, as it had done in the past, in aimless talk and possibly in impotent arrests. So said McGinty, McMurdo, and all the bolder spirits.\n\nIt was a Saturday evening in May. Saturday was always the lodge night, and McMurdo was leaving his house to attend it when Morris, the weaker brother of the order, came to see him. His brow was creased with care, and his kindly face was drawn and haggard.\n\n\"Can I speak with you freely, Mr. McMurdo?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"I can't forget that I spoke my heart to you once, and that you kept it to yourself, even though the Boss himself came to ask you about it.\"\n\n\"What else could I do if you trusted me? It wasn't that I agreed with what you said.\"\n\n\"I know that well. But you are the one that I can speak to and be safe. I've a secret here,\" he put his hand to his breast, \"and it is just burning the life out of me. I wish it had come to any one of you but me. If I tell it, it will mean murder, for sure. If I don't, it may bring the end of us all. God help me, but I am near out of my wits over it!\"\n\nMcMurdo looked at the man earnestly. He was trembling in every limb. He poured some whisky into a glass and handed it to him. \"That's the physic for the likes of you,\" said he. \"Now let me hear of it.\"\n\nMorris drank, and his white face took a tinge of colour. \"I can tell it to you all in one sentence,\" said he. \"There's a detective on our trail.\"\n\nMcMurdo stared at him in astonishment. \"Why, man, you're crazy,\" he said. \"Isn't the place full of police and detectives, and what harm did they ever do us?\"\n\n\"No, no, it's no man of the district. As you say, we know them, and it is little that they can do. But you've heard of Pinkerton's?\"\n\n\"I've read of some folk of that name.\"\n\n\"Well, you can take it from me you've no show when they are on your trail. It's not a take-it-or-miss-it government concern. It's a dead earnest business proposition that's out for results and keeps out till by hook or crook it gets them. If a Pinkerton man is deep in this business, we are all destroyed.\"\n\n\"We must kill him.\"\n\n\"Ah, it's the first thought that came to you! So it will be up at the lodge. Didn't I say to you that it would end in murder?\"\n\n\"Sure, what is murder? Isn't it common enough in these parts?\"\n\n\"It is, indeed; but it's not for me to point out the man that is to be murdered. I'd never rest easy again. And yet it's our own necks that may be at stake. In God's name what shall I do?\" He rocked to and fro in his agony of indecision.\n\nBut his words had moved McMurdo deeply. It was easy to see that he shared the other's opinion as to the danger, and the need for meeting it. He gripped Morris's shoulder and shook him in his earnestness.\n\n\"See here, man,\" he cried, and he almost screeched the words in his excitement, \"you won't gain anything by sitting keening like an old wife at a wake. Let's have the facts. Who is the fellow? Where is he? How did you hear of him? Why did you come to me?\"\n\n\"I came to you; for you are the one man that would advise me. I told you that I had a store in the East before I came here. I left good friends behind me, and one of them is in the telegraph service. Here's a letter that I had from him yesterday. It's this part from the top of the page. You can read it yourself.\"\n\nThis was what McMurdo read:\n\nHow are the Scowrers getting on in your parts? We read plenty of them in the papers. Between you and me I expect to hear news from you before long. Five big corporations and the two railroads have taken the thing up in dead earnest. They mean it, and you can bet they'll get there! They are right deep down into it. Pinkerton has taken hold under their orders, and his best man, Birdy Edwards, is operating. The thing has got to be stopped right now.\n\n\"Now read the postscript.\"\n\nOf course, what I give you is what I learned in business; so it goes no further. It's a queer cipher that you handle by the yard every day and can get no meaning from.\n\nMcMurdo sat in silence for some time, with the letter in his listless hands. The mist had lifted for a moment, and there was the abyss before him.\n\n\"Does anyone else know of this?\" he asked.\n\n\"I have told no one else.\"\n\n\"But this man\u2014your friend\u2014has he any other person that he would be likely to write to?\"\n\n\"Well, I dare say he knows one or two more.\"\n\n\"Of the lodge?\"\n\n\"It's likely enough.\"\n\n\"I was asking because it is likely that he may have given some description of this fellow Birdy Edwards\u2014then we could get on his trail.\"\n\n\"Well, it's possible. But I should not think he knew him. He is just telling me the news that came to him by way of business. How would he know this Pinkerton man?\"\n\nMcMurdo gave a violent start.\n\n\"By Gar!\" he cried, \"I've got him. What a fool I was not to know it. Lord! but we're in luck! We will fix him before he can do any harm. See here, Morris, will you leave this thing in my hands?\"\n\n\"Sure, if you will only take it off mine.\"\n\n\"I'll do that. You can stand right back and let me run it. Even your name need not be mentioned. I'll take it all on myself, as if it were to me that this letter has come. Will that content you?\"\n\n\"It's just what I would ask.\"\n\n\"Then leave it at that and keep your head shut. Now I'll get down to the lodge, and we'll soon make old man Pinkerton sorry for himself.\"\n\n\"You wouldn't kill this man?\"\n\n\"The less you know, Friend Morris, the easier your conscience will be, and the better you will sleep. Ask no questions, and let these things settle themselves. I have hold of it now.\"\n\nMorris shook his head sadly as he left. \"I feel that his blood is on my hands,\" he groaned.\n\n\"Self-protection is no murder, anyhow,\" said McMurdo, smiling grimly. \"It's him or us. I guess this man would destroy us all if we left him long in the valley. Why, Brother Morris, we'll have to elect you Bodymaster yet; for you've surely saved the lodge.\"\n\nAnd yet it was clear from his actions that he thought more seriously of this new intrusion than his words would show. It may have been his guilty conscience, it may have been the reputation of the Pinkerton organization, it may have been the knowledge that great, rich corporations had set themselves the task of clearing out the Scowrers; but, whatever his reason, his actions were those of a man who is preparing for the worst. Every paper which would incriminate him was destroyed before he left the house. After that he gave a long sigh of satisfaction; for it seemed to him that he was safe. And yet the danger must still have pressed somewhat upon him; for on his way to the lodge he stopped at old man Shafter's. The house was forbidden him; but when he tapped at the window Ettie came out to him. The dancing Irish deviltry had gone from her lover's eyes. She read his danger in his earnest face.\n\n\"Something has happened!\" she cried. \"Oh, Jack, you are in danger!\"\n\n\"Sure, it is not very bad, my sweetheart. And yet it may be wise that we make a move before it is worse.\"\n\n\"Make a move?\"\n\n\"I promised you once that I would go some day. I think the time is coming. I had news to-night, bad news, and I see trouble coming.\"\n\n\"The police?\"\n\n\"Well, a Pinkerton. But, sure, you wouldn't know what that is, acushla, nor what it may mean to the likes of me. I'm too deep in this thing, and I may have to get out of it quick. You said you would come with me if I went.\"\n\n\"Oh, Jack, it would be the saving of you!\"\n\n\"I'm an honest man in some things, Ettie. I wouldn't hurt a hair of your bonny head for all that the world can give, nor ever pull you down one inch from the golden throne above the clouds where I always see you. Would you trust me?\"\n\nShe put her hand in his without a word. \"Well, then, listen to what I say, and do as I order you; for indeed it's the only way for us. Things are going to happen in this valley. I feel it in my bones. There may be many of us that will have to look out for ourselves. I'm one, anyhow. If I go, by day or night, it's you that must come with me!\"\n\n\"I'd come after you, Jack.\"\n\n\"No, no, you shall come with me. If this valley is closed to me and I can never come back, how can I leave you behind, and me perhaps in hiding from the police with never a chance of a message? It's with me you must come. I know a good woman in the place I come from, and it's there I'd leave you till we can get married. Will you come?\"\n\n\"Yes, Jack, I will come.\"\n\n\"God bless you for your trust in me! It's a fiend out of hell that I should be if I abused it. Now, mark you, Ettie, it will be just a word to you, and when it reaches you, you will drop everything and come right down to the waiting room at the depot and stay there till I come for you.\"\n\n\"Day or night, I'll come at the word, Jack.\"\n\nSomewhat eased in mind, now that his own preparations for escape had been begun, McMurdo went on to the lodge. It had already assembled, and only by complicated signs and counter-signs could he pass through the outer guard and inner guard who close-tiled it. A buzz of pleasure and welcome greeted him as he entered. The long room was crowded, and through the haze of tobacco smoke he saw the tangled black mane of the Bodymaster, the cruel, unfriendly features of Baldwin, the vulture face of Harraway, the secretary, and a dozen more who were among the leaders of the lodge. He rejoiced that they should all be there to take counsel over his news.\n\n\"Indeed, it's glad we are to see you, Brother!\" cried the chairman. \"There's business here that wants a Solomon in judgment to set it right.\"\n\n\"It's Lander and Egan,\" explained his neighbour as he took his seat. \"They both claim the head money given by the lodge for the shooting of old man Crabbe over at Stylestown, and who's to say which fired the bullet?\"\n\nMcMurdo rose in his place and raised his hand. The expression of his face froze the attention of the audience. There was a dead hush of expectation.\n\n\"Eminent Bodymaster,\" he said, in a solemn voice, \"I claim urgency!\"\n\n\"Brother McMurdo claims urgency,\" said McGinty. \"It's a claim that by the rules of this lodge takes precedence. Now, Brother, we attend you.\"\n\nMcMurdo took the letter from his pocket.\n\n\"Eminent Bodymaster and Brethren,\" he said, \"I am the bearer of ill news this day; but it is better that it should be known and discussed, than that a blow should fall upon us without warning which would destroy us all. I have information that the most powerful and richest organizations in this state have bound themselves together for our destruction, and that at this very moment there is a Pinkerton detective, one Birdy Edwards, at work in the valley collecting the evidence which may put a rope round the necks of many of us, and send every man in this room into a felon's cell. That is the situation for the discussion of which I have made a claim of urgency.\"\n\nThere was a dead silence in the room. It was broken by the chairman.\n\n\"What is your evidence for this, Brother McMurdo?\" he asked.\n\n\"It is in this letter which has come into my hands,\" said McMurdo. He read the passage aloud. \"It is a matter of honour with me that I can give no further particulars about the letter, nor put it into your hands; but I assure you that there is nothing else in it which can affect the interests of the lodge. I put the case before you as it has reached me.\"\n\n\"Let me say, Mr. Chairman,\" said one of the older brethren, \"that I have heard of Birdy Edwards, and that he has the name of being the best man in the Pinkerton service.\"\n\n\"Does anyone know him by sight?\" asked McGinty.\n\n\"Yes,\" said McMurdo, \"I do.\"\n\nThere was a murmur of astonishment through the hall.\n\n\"I believe we hold him in the hollow of our hands,\" he continued with an exulting smile upon his face. \"If we act quickly and wisely, we can cut this thing short. If I have your confidence and your help, it is little that we have to fear.\"\n\n\"What have we to fear, anyhow? What can he know of our affairs?\"\n\n\"You might say so if all were as stanch as you, Councillor. But this man has all the millions of the capitalists at his back. Do you think there is no weaker brother among all our lodges that could not be bought? He will get at our secrets\u2014maybe has got them already. There's only one sure cure.\"\n\n\"That he never leaves the valley,\" said Baldwin.\n\nMcMurdo nodded. \"Good for you, Brother Baldwin,\" he said. \"You and I have had our differences, but you have said the true word to-night.\"\n\n\"Where is he, then? Where shall we know him?\"\n\n\"Eminent Bodymaster,\" said McMurdo, earnestly, \"I would put it to you that this is too vital a thing for us to discuss in open lodge. God forbid that I should throw a doubt on anyone here; but if so much as a word of gossip got to the ears of this man, there would be an end of any chance of our getting him. I would ask the lodge to choose a trusty committee, Mr. Chairman\u2014yourself, if I might suggest it, and Brother Baldwin here, and five more. Then I can talk freely of what I know and of what I advise should be done.\"\n\nThe proposition was at once adopted, and the committee chosen. Besides the chairman and Baldwin there were the vulture-faced secretary, Harraway, Tiger Cormac, the brutal young assassin, Carter, the treasurer, and the brothers Willaby, fearless and desperate men who would stick at nothing.\n\nThe usual revelry of the lodge was short and subdued: for there was a cloud upon the men's spirits, and many there for the first time began to see the cloud of avenging Law drifting up in that serene sky under which they had dwelt so long. The horrors they had dealt out to others had been so much a part of their settled lives that the thought of retribution had become a remote one, and so seemed the more startling now that it came so closely upon them. They broke up early and left their leaders to their council.\n\n\"Now, McMurdo!\" said McGinty when they were alone. The seven men sat frozen in their seats.\n\n\"I said just now that I knew Birdy Edwards,\" McMurdo explained. \"I need not tell you that he is not here under that name. He's a brave man, but not a crazy one. He passes under the name of Steve Wilson, and he is lodging at Hobson's Patch.\"\n\n\"How do you know this?\"\n\n\"Because I fell into talk with him. I thought little of it at the time, nor would have given it a second thought but for this letter; but now I'm sure it's the man. I met him on the cars when I went down the line on Wednesday\u2014a hard case if ever there was one. He said he was a reporter. I believed it for the moment. Wanted to know all he could about the Scowrers and what he called 'the outrages' for a New York paper. Asked me every kind of question so as to get something. You bet I was giving nothing away. 'I'd pay for it and pay well,' said he, 'if I could get some stuff that would suit my editor.' I said what I thought would please him best, and he handed me a twenty-dollar bill for my information. 'There's ten times that for you,' said he, 'if you can find me all that I want.'\"\n\n\"What did you tell him, then?\"\n\n\"Any stuff I could make up.\"\n\n\"How do you know he wasn't a newspaper man?\"\n\n\"I'll tell you. He got out at Hobson's Patch, and so did I. I chanced into the telegraph bureau, and he was leaving it.\n\n\"'See here,' said the operator after he'd gone out, 'I guess we should charge double rates for this.'\u2014'I guess you should,' said I. He had filled the form with stuff that might have been Chinese, for all we could make of it. 'He fires a sheet of this off every day,' said the clerk. 'Yes,' said I; 'it's special news for his paper, and he's scared that the others should tap it.' That was what the operator thought and what I thought at the time; but I think differently now.\"\n\n\"By Gar! I believe you are right,\" said McGinty. \"But what do you allow that we should do about it?\"\n\n\"Why not go right down now and fix him?\" someone suggested.\n\n\"Ay, the sooner the better.\"\n\n\"I'd start this next minute if I knew where we could find him,\" said McMurdo. \"He's in Hobson's Patch; but I don't know the house. I've got a plan, though, if you'll only take my advice.\"\n\n\"Well, what is it?\"\n\n\"I'll go to the Patch to-morrow morning. I'll find him through the operator. He can locate him, I guess. Well, then I'll tell him that I'm a Freeman myself. I'll offer him all the secrets of the lodge for a price. You bet he'll tumble to it. I'll tell him the papers are at my house, and that it's as much as my life would be worth to let him come while folk were about. He'll see that that's horse sense. Let him come at ten o'clock at night, and he shall see everything. That will fetch him sure.\"\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"You can plan the rest for yourselves. Widow MacNamara's is a lonely house. She's as true as steel and as deaf as a post. There's only Scanlan and me in the house. If I get his promise\u2014and I'll let you know if I do\u2014I'd have the whole seven of you come to me by nine o'clock. We'll get him in. If ever he gets out alive\u2014well, he can talk of Birdy Edwards's luck for the rest of his days!\"\n\n\"There's going to be a vacancy at Pinkerton's or I'm mistaken. Leave it at that, McMurdo. At nine to-morrow we'll be with you. You once get the door shut behind him, and you can leave the rest with us.\"" + }, + { + "title": "The Trapping of Birdy Edwards", + "text": "As McMurdo had said, the house in which he lived was a lonely one and very well suited for such a crime as they had planned. It was on the extreme fringe of the town and stood well back from the road. In any other case the conspirators would have simply called out their man, as they had many a time before, and emptied their pistols into his body; but in this instance it was very necessary to find out how much he knew, how he knew it, and what had been passed on to his employers.\n\nIt was possible that they were already too late and that the work had been done. If that was indeed so, they could at least have their revenge upon the man who had done it. But they were hopeful that nothing of great importance had yet come to the detective's knowledge, as otherwise, they argued, he would not have troubled to write down and forward such trivial information as McMurdo claimed to have given him. However, all this they would learn from his own lips. Once in their power, they would find a way to make him speak. It was not the first time that they had handled an unwilling witness.\n\nMcMurdo went to Hobson's Patch as agreed. The police seemed to take particular interest in him that morning, and Captain Marvin\u2014he who had claimed the old acquaintance with him at Chicago\u2014actually addressed him as he waited at the station. McMurdo turned away and refused to speak with him. He was back from his mission in the afternoon, and saw McGinty at the Union House.\n\n\"He is coming,\" he said.\n\n\"Good!\" said McGinty. The giant was in his shirt sleeves, with chains and seals gleaming athwart his ample waistcoat and a diamond twinkling through the fringe of his bristling beard. Drink and politics had made the Boss a very rich as well as powerful man. The more terrible, therefore, seemed that glimpse of the prison or the gallows which had risen before him the night before.\n\n\"Do you reckon he knows much?\" he asked anxiously.\n\nMcMurdo shook his head gloomily. \"He's been here some time\u2014six weeks at the least. I guess he didn't come into these parts to look at the prospect. If he has been working among us all that time with the railroad money at his back, I should expect that he has got results, and that he has passed them on.\"\n\n\"There's not a weak man in the lodge,\" cried McGinty. \"True as steel, every man of them. And yet, by the Lord! there is that skunk Morris. What about him? If any man gives us away, it would be he. I've a mind to send a couple of the boys round before evening to give him a beating up and see what they can get from him.\"\n\n\"Well, there would be no harm in that,\" McMurdo answered. \"I won't deny that I have a liking for Morris and would be sorry to see him come to harm. He has spoken to me once or twice over lodge matters, and though he may not see them the same as you or I, he never seemed the sort that squeals. But still it is not for me to stand between him and you.\"\n\n\"I'll fix the old devil!\" said McGinty with an oath. \"I've had my eye on him this year past.\"\n\n\"Well, you know best about that,\" McMurdo answered. \"But whatever you do must be to-morrow; for we must lie low until the Pinkerton affair is settled up. We can't afford to set the police buzzing, to-day of all days.\"\n\n\"True for you,\" said McGinty. \"And we'll learn from Birdy Edwards himself where he got his news if we have to cut his heart out first. Did he seem to scent a trap?\"\n\nMcMurdo laughed. \"I guess I took him on his weak point,\" he said. \"If he could get on a good trail of the Scowrers, he's ready to follow it into hell. I took his money,\" McMurdo grinned as he produced a wad of dollar notes, \"and as much more when he has seen all my papers.\"\n\n\"What papers?\"\n\n\"Well, there are no papers. But I filled him up about constitutions and books of rules and forms of membership. He expects to get right down to the end of everything before he leaves.\"\n\n\"Faith, he's right there,\" said McGinty grimly. \"Didn't he ask you why you didn't bring him the papers?\"\n\n\"As if I would carry such things, and me a suspected man, and Captain Marvin after speaking to me this very day at the depot!\"\n\n\"Ay, I heard of that,\" said McGinty. \"I guess the heavy end of this business is coming on to you. We could put him down an old shaft when we've done with him; but however we work it we can't get past the man living at Hobson's Patch and you being there to-day.\"\n\nMcMurdo shrugged his shoulders. \"If we handle it right, they can never prove the killing,\" said he. \"No one can see him come to the house after dark, and I'll lay to it that no one will see him go. Now see here, Councillor, I'll show you my plan and I'll ask you to fit the others into it. You will all come in good time. Very well. He comes at ten. He is to tap three times, and me to open the door for him. Then I'll get behind him and shut it. He's our man then.\"\n\n\"That's all easy and plain.\"\n\n\"Yes; but the next step wants considering. He's a hard proposition. He's heavily armed. I've fooled him proper, and yet he is likely to be on his guard. Suppose I show him right into a room with seven men in it where he expected to find me alone. There is going to be shooting, and somebody is going to be hurt.\"\n\n\"That's so.\"\n\n\"And the noise is going to bring every damned copper in the township on top of it.\"\n\n\"I guess you are right.\"\n\n\"This is how I should work it. You will all be in the big room\u2014same as you saw when you had a chat with me. I'll open the door for him, show him into the parlour beside the door, and leave him there while I get the papers. That will give me the chance of telling you how things are shaping. Then I will go back to him with some faked papers. As he is reading them I will jump for him and get my grip on his pistol arm. You'll hear me call and in you will rush. The quicker the better; for he is as strong a man as I, and I may have more than I can manage. But I allow that I can hold him till you come.\"\n\n\"It's a good plan,\" said McGinty. \"The lodge will owe you a debt for this. I guess when I move out of the chair I can put a name to the man that's coming after me.\"\n\n\"Sure, Councillor, I am little more than a recruit,\" said McMurdo; but his face showed what he thought of the great man's compliment.\n\nWhen he had returned home he made his own preparations for the grim evening in front of him. First he cleaned, oiled, and loaded his Smith & Wesson revolver. Then he surveyed the room in which the detective was to be trapped. It was a large apartment, with a long deal table in the centre, and the big stove at one side. At each of the other sides were windows. There were no shutters on these: only light curtains which drew across. McMurdo examined these attentively. No doubt it must have struck him that the apartment was very exposed for so secret a meeting. Yet its distance from the road made it of less consequence. Finally he discussed the matter with his fellow lodger. Scanlan, though a Scowrer, was an inoffensive little man who was too weak to stand against the opinion of his comrades, but was secretly horrified by the deeds of blood at which he had sometimes been forced to assist. McMurdo told him shortly what was intended.\n\n\"And if I were you, Mike Scanlan, I would take a night off and keep clear of it. There will be bloody work here before morning.\"\n\n\"Well, indeed then, Mac,\" Scanlan answered. \"It's not the will but the nerve that is wanting in me. When I saw Manager Dunn go down at the colliery yonder it was just more than I could stand. I'm not made for it, same as you or McGinty. If the lodge will think none the worse of me, I'll just do as you advise and leave you to yourselves for the evening.\"\n\nThe men came in good time as arranged. They were outwardly respectable citizens, well clad and cleanly; but a judge of faces would have read little hope for Birdy Edwards in those hard mouths and remorseless eyes. There was not a man in the room whose hands had not been reddened a dozen times before. They were as hardened to human murder as a butcher to sheep.\n\nForemost, of course, both in appearance and in guilt, was the formidable Boss. Harraway, the secretary, was a lean, bitter man with a long, scraggy neck and nervous, jerky limbs, a man of incorruptible fidelity where the finances of the order were concerned, and with no notion of justice or honesty to anyone beyond. The treasurer, Carter, was a middle-aged man, with an impassive, rather sulky expression, and a yellow parchment skin. He was a capable organizer, and the actual details of nearly every outrage had sprung from his plotting brain. The two Willabys were men of action, tall, lithe young fellows with determined faces, while their companion, Tiger Cormac, a heavy, dark youth, was feared even by his own comrades for the ferocity of his disposition. These were the men who assembled that night under the roof of McMurdo for the killing of the Pinkerton detective.\n\nTheir host had placed whisky upon the table, and they had hastened to prime themselves for the work before them. Baldwin and Cormac were already half-drunk, and the liquor had brought out all their ferocity. Cormac placed his hands on the stove for an instant\u2014it had been lighted, for the nights were still cold.\n\n\"That will do,\" said he, with an oath.\n\n\"Ay,\" said Baldwin, catching his meaning. \"If he is strapped to that, we will have the truth out of him.\"\n\n\"We'll have the truth out of him, never fear,\" said McMurdo. He had nerves of steel, this man; for though the whole weight of the affair was on him his manner was as cool and unconcerned as ever. The others marked it and applauded.\n\n\"You are the one to handle him,\" said the Boss approvingly. \"Not a warning will he get till your hand is on his throat. It's pity there are no shutters to your windows.\"\n\nMcMurdo went from one to the other and drew the curtains tighter. \"Sure no one can spy upon us now. It's close upon the hour.\"\n\n\"Maybe he won't come. Maybe he'll get a sniff of danger,\" said the secretary.\n\n\"He'll come, never fear,\" McMurdo answered. \"He is as eager to come as you can be to see him. Hark to that!\"\n\nThey all sat like wax figures, some with their glasses arrested halfway to their lips. Three loud knocks had sounded at the door.\n\n\"Hush!\" McMurdo raised his hand in caution. An exulting glance went round the circle, and hands were laid upon hidden weapons.\n\n\"Not a sound, for your lives!\" McMurdo whispered, as he went from the room, closing the door carefully behind him.\n\nWith strained ears the murderers waited. They counted the steps of their comrade down the passage. Then they heard him open the outer door. There were a few words as of greeting. Then they were aware of a strange step inside and of an unfamiliar voice. An instant later came the slam of the door and the turning of the key in the lock. Their prey was safe within the trap. Tiger Cormac laughed horribly, and Boss McGinty clapped his great hand across his mouth.\n\n\"Be quiet, you fool!\" he whispered. \"You'll be the undoing of us yet!\"\n\nThere was a mutter of conversation from the next room. It seemed interminable. Then the door opened, and McMurdo appeared, his finger upon his lip.\n\nHe came to the end of the table and looked round at them. A subtle change had come over him. His manner was as of one who has great work to do. His face had set into granite firmness. His eyes shone with a fierce excitement behind his spectacles. He had become a visible leader of men. They stared at him with eager interest; but he said nothing. Still with the same singular gaze he looked from man to man.\n\n\"Well!\" cried Boss McGinty at last. \"Is he here? Is Birdy Edwards here?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" McMurdo answered slowly. \"Birdy Edwards is here. I am Birdy Edwards!\"\n\nThere were ten seconds after that brief speech during which the room might have been empty, so profound was the silence. The hissing of a kettle upon the stove rose sharp and strident to the ear. Seven white faces, all turned upward to this man who dominated them, were set motionless with utter terror. Then, with a sudden shivering of glass, a bristle of glistening rifle barrels broke through each window, while the curtains were torn from their hangings.\n\nAt the sight Boss McGinty gave the roar of a wounded bear and plunged for the half-opened door. A levelled revolver met him there with the stern blue eyes of Captain Marvin of the Mine Police gleaming behind the sights. The Boss recoiled and fell back into his chair.\n\n\"You're safer there, Councillor,\" said the man whom they had known as McMurdo. \"And you, Baldwin, if you don't take your hand off your pistol, you'll cheat the hangman yet. Pull it out, or by the Lord that made me\u2014There, that will do. There are forty armed men round this house, and you can figure it out for yourself what chance you have. Take their pistols, Marvin!\"\n\nThere was no possible resistance under the menace of those rifles. The men were disarmed. Sulky, sheepish, and amazed, they still sat round the table.\n\n\"I'd like to say a word to you before we separate,\" said the man who had trapped them. \"I guess we may not meet again until you see me on the stand in the courthouse. I'll give you something to think over between now and then. You know me now for what I am. At last I can put my cards on the table. I am Birdy Edwards of Pinkerton's. I was chosen to break up your gang. I had a hard and dangerous game to play. Not a soul, not one soul, not my nearest and dearest, knew that I was playing it. Only Captain Marvin here and my employers knew that. But it's over to-night, thank God, and I am the winner!\"\n\nThe seven pale, rigid faces looked up at him. There was unappeasable hatred in their eyes. He read the relentless threat.\n\n\"Maybe you think that the game is not over yet. Well, I take my chance of that. Anyhow, some of you will take no further hand, and there are sixty more besides yourselves that will see a jail this night. I'll tell you this, that when I was put upon this job I never believed there was such a society as yours. I thought it was paper talk, and that I would prove it so. They told me it was to do with the Freemen; so I went to Chicago and was made one. Then I was surer than ever that it was just paper talk; for I found no harm in the society, but a deal of good.\n\n\"Still, I had to carry out my job, and I came to the coal valleys. When I reached this place I learned that I was wrong and that it wasn't a dime novel after all. So I stayed to look after it. I never killed a man in Chicago. I never minted a dollar in my life. Those I gave you were as good as any others; but I never spent money better. But I knew the way into your good wishes, and so I pretended to you that the law was after me. It all worked just as I thought.\n\n\"So I joined your infernal lodge, and I took my share in your councils. Maybe they will say that I was as bad as you. They can say what they like, so long as I get you. But what is the truth? The night I joined you beat up old man Stanger. I could not warn him, for there was no time; but I held your hand, Baldwin, when you would have killed him. If ever I have suggested things, so as to keep my place among you, they were things which I knew I could prevent. I could not save Dunn and Menzies, for I did not know enough; but I will see that their murderers are hanged. I gave Chester Wilcox warning, so that when I blew his house in he and his folk were in hiding. There was many a crime that I could not stop; but if you look back and think how often your man came home the other road, or was down in town when you went for him, or stayed indoors when you thought he would come out, you'll see my work.\"\n\n\"You blasted traitor!\" hissed McGinty through his closed teeth.\n\n\"Ay, John McGinty, you may call me that if it eases your smart. You and your like have been the enemy of God and man in these parts. It took a man to get between you and the poor devils of men and women that you held under your grip. There was just one way of doing it, and I did it. You call me a traitor; but I guess there's many a thousand will call me a deliverer that went down into hell to save them. I've had three months of it. I wouldn't have three such months again if they let me loose in the treasury at Washington for it. I had to stay till I had it all, every man and every secret right here in this hand. I'd have waited a little longer if it hadn't come to my knowledge that my secret was coming out. A letter had come into the town that would have set you wise to it all. Then I had to act and act quickly.\n\n\"I've nothing more to say to you, except that when my time comes I'll die the easier when I think of the work I have done in this valley. Now, Marvin, I'll keep you no more. Take them in and get it over.\"\n\nThere is little more to tell. Scanlan had been given a sealed note to be left at the address of Miss Ettie Shafter, a mission which he had accepted with a wink and a knowing smile. In the early hours of the morning a beautiful woman and a much muffled man boarded a special train which had been sent by the railroad company, and made a swift, unbroken journey out of the land of danger. It was the last time that ever either Ettie or her lover set foot in the Valley of Fear. Ten days later they were married in Chicago, with old Jacob Shafter as witness of the wedding.\n\nThe trial of the Scowrers was held far from the place where their adherents might have terrified the guardians of the law. In vain they struggled. In vain the money of the lodge\u2014money squeezed by blackmail out of the whole countryside\u2014was spent like water in the attempt to save them. That cold, clear, unimpassioned statement from one who knew every detail of their lives, their organization, and their crimes was unshaken by all the wiles of their defenders. At last after so many years they were broken and scattered. The cloud was lifted forever from the valley.\n\nMcGinty met his fate upon the scaffold, cringing and whining when the last hour came. Eight of his chief followers shared his fate. Fifty-odd had various degrees of imprisonment. The work of Birdy Edwards was complete.\n\nAnd yet, as he had guessed, the game was not over yet. There was another hand to be played, and yet another and another. Ted Baldwin, for one, had escaped the scaffold; so had the Willabys; so had several others of the fiercest spirits of the gang. For ten years they were out of the world, and then came a day when they were free once more\u2014a day which Edwards, who knew his men, was very sure would be an end of his life of peace. They had sworn an oath on all that they thought holy to have his blood as a vengeance for their comrades. And well they strove to keep vow!\n\nFrom Chicago he was chased, after two attempts so near success that it was sure that the third would get him. From Chicago he went under a changed name to California, and it was there that the light went for a time out of his life when Ettie Edwards died. Once again he was nearly killed, and once again under the name of Douglas he worked in a lonely canon, where with an English partner named Barker he amassed a fortune. At last there came a warning to him that the bloodhounds were on his track once more, and he cleared\u2014only just in time\u2014for England. And thence came the John Douglas who for a second time married a worthy mate, and lived for five years as a Sussex country gentleman, a life which ended with the strange happenings of which we have heard." + }, + { + "title": "EPILOGUE", + "text": "The Police trial had passed, in which the case of John Douglas was referred to a higher court. So had the Quarter Sessions, at which he was acquitted as having acted in self-defense.\n\n\"Get him out of England at any cost,\" wrote Holmes to the wife. \"There are forces here which may be more dangerous than those he has escaped. There is no safety for your husband in England.\"\n\nTwo months had gone by, and the case had to some extent passed from our minds. Then one morning there came an enigmatic note slipped into our letter box. \"Dear me, Mr. Holmes. Dear me!\" said this singular epistle. There was neither superscription nor signature. I laughed at the quaint message; but Holmes showed unwonted seriousness.\n\n\"Deviltry, Watson!\" he remarked, and sat long with a clouded brow.\n\nLate last night Mrs. Hudson, our landlady, brought up a message, that a gentleman wished to see Holmes, and that the matter was of the utmost importance. Close at the heels of his messenger came Cecil Barker, our friend of the moated Manor House. His face was drawn and haggard.\n\n\"I've had bad news\u2014terrible news, Mr. Holmes,\" said he.\n\n\"I feared as much,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"You have not had a cable, have you?\"\n\n\"I have had a note from someone who has.\"\n\n\"It's poor Douglas. They tell me his name is Edwards; but he will always be Jack Douglas of Benito Canon to me. I told you that they started together for South Africa in the Palmyra three weeks ago.\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"The ship reached Cape Town last night. I received this cable from Mrs. Douglas this morning:\n\nJack has been lost overboard in gale off St. Helena. No one knows how accident occurred.\n\nIVY DOUGLAS.\n\n\"Ha! It came like that, did it?\" said Holmes thoughtfully. \"Well, I've no doubt it was well stage-managed.\"\n\n\"You mean that you think there was no accident?\"\n\n\"None in the world.\"\n\n\"He was murdered?\"\n\n\"Surely!\"\n\n\"So I think also. These infernal Scowrers, this cursed vindictive nest of criminals\u2014\"\n\n\"No, no, my good sir,\" said Holmes. \"There is a master hand here. It is no case of sawed-off shotguns and clumsy six-shooters. You can tell an old master by the sweep of his brush. I can tell a Moriarty when I see one. This crime is from London, not from America.\"\n\n\"But for what motive?\"\n\n\"Because it is done by a man who cannot afford to fail, one whose whole unique position depends upon the fact that all he does must succeed. A great brain and a huge organization have been turned to the extinction of one man. It is crushing the nut with the triphammer, an absurd extravagance of energy\u2014but the nut is very effectually crushed all the same.\"\n\n\"How came this man to have anything to do with it?\"\n\n\"I can only say that the first word that ever came to us of the business was from one of his lieutenants. These Americans were well advised. Having an English job to do, they took into partnership, as any foreign criminal could do, this great consultant in crime. From that moment their man was doomed. At first he would content himself by using his machinery in order to find their victim. Then he would indicate how the matter might be treated. Finally, when he read in the reports of the failure of this agent, he would step in himself with a master touch. You heard me warn this man at Birlstone Manor House that the coming danger was greater than the past. Was I right?\"\n\nBarker beat his head with his clenched fist in his impotent anger. \"Do not tell me that we have to sit down under this? Do you say that no one can ever get level with this king devil?\"\n\n\"No, I don't say that,\" said Holmes, and his eyes seemed to be looking far into the future. \"I don't say that he can't be beat. But you must give me time\u2014you must give me time!\"\n\nWe all sat in silence for some minutes while those fateful eyes still strained to pierce the veil." + }, + { + "title": "HIS LAST BOW", + "text": "[ PREFACE ]\n\n[ His Last Bow ]\n\nThe friends of Mr. Sherlock Holmes will be glad to learn that he is still alive and well, though somewhat crippled by occasional attacks of rheumatism. He has, for many years, lived in a small farm upon the downs five miles from Eastbourne, where his time is divided between philosophy and agriculture. During this period of rest he has refused the most princely offers to take up various cases, having determined that his retirement was a permanent one. The approach of the German war caused him, however, to lay his remarkable combination of intellectual and practical activity at the disposal of the government, with historical results which are recounted in His Last Bow. Several previous experiences which have lain long in my portfolio have been added to His Last Bow so as to complete the volume.\n\nJOHN H. WATSON, M. D." + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF WISTERIA LODGE", + "text": "1. The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles\n\nI find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in the year 1892. Holmes had received a telegram while we sat at our lunch, and he had scribbled a reply. He made no remark, but the matter remained in his thoughts, for he stood in front of the fire afterwards with a thoughtful face, smoking his pipe, and casting an occasional glance at the message. Suddenly he turned upon me with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.\n\n\"I suppose, Watson, we must look upon you as a man of letters,\" said he. \"How do you define the word 'grotesque'?\"\n\n\"Strange\u2014remarkable,\" I suggested.\n\nHe shook his head at my definition.\n\n\"There is surely something more than that,\" said he; \"some underlying suggestion of the tragic and the terrible. If you cast your mind back to some of those narratives with which you have afflicted a long-suffering public, you will recognize how often the grotesque has deepened into the criminal. Think of that little affair of the red-headed men. That was grotesque enough in the outset, and yet it ended in a desperate attempt at robbery. Or, again, there was that most grotesque affair of the five orange pips, which led straight to a murderous conspiracy. The word puts me on the alert.\"\n\n\"Have you it there?\" I asked.\n\nHe read the telegram aloud.\n\n\"Have just had most incredible and grotesque experience. May I consult you?\n\n\u2002SCOTT ECCLES,\n\n\u2002Post-Office, Charing Cross.\"\n\n\"Man or woman?\" I asked.\n\n\"Oh, man, of course. No woman would ever send a reply-paid telegram. She would have come.\"\n\n\"Will you see him?\"\n\n\"My dear Watson, you know how bored I have been since we locked up Colonel Carruthers. My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built. Life is commonplace; the papers are sterile; audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world. Can you ask me, then, whether I am ready to look into any new problem, however trivial it may prove? But here, unless I am mistaken, is our client.\"\n\nA measured step was heard upon the stairs, and a moment later a stout, tall, gray-whiskered and solemnly respectable person was ushered into the room. His life history was written in his heavy features and pompous manner. From his spats to his gold-rimmed spectacles he was a Conservative, a churchman, a good citizen, orthodox and conventional to the last degree. But some amazing experience had disturbed his native composure and left its traces in his bristling hair, his flushed, angry cheeks, and his flurried, excited manner. He plunged instantly into his business.\n\n\"I have had a most singular and unpleasant experience, Mr. Holmes,\" said he. \"Never in my life have I been placed in such a situation. It is most improper\u2014most outrageous. I must insist upon some explanation.\" He swelled and puffed in his anger.\n\n\"Pray sit down, Mr. Scott Eccles,\" said Holmes in a soothing voice. \"May I ask, in the first place, why you came to me at all?\"\n\n\"Well, sir, it did not appear to be a matter which concerned the police, and yet, when you have heard the facts, you must admit that I could not leave it where it was. Private detectives are a class with whom I have absolutely no sympathy, but none the less, having heard your name\u2014\"\n\n\"Quite so. But, in the second place, why did you not come at once?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\nHolmes glanced at his watch.\n\n\"It is a quarter-past two,\" he said. \"Your telegram was dispatched about one. But no one can glance at your toilet and attire without seeing that your disturbance dates from the moment of your waking.\"\n\nOur client smoothed down his unbrushed hair and felt his unshaven chin.\n\n\"You are right, Mr. Holmes. I never gave a thought to my toilet. I was only too glad to get out of such a house. But I have been running round making inquiries before I came to you. I went to the house agents, you know, and they said that Mr. Garcia's rent was paid up all right and that everything was in order at Wisteria Lodge.\"\n\n\"Come, come, sir,\" said Holmes, laughing. \"You are like my friend, Dr. Watson, who has a bad habit of telling his stories wrong end foremost. Please arrange your thoughts and let me know, in their due sequence, exactly what those events are which have sent you out unbrushed and unkempt, with dress boots and waistcoat buttoned awry, in search of advice and assistance.\"\n\nOur client looked down with a rueful face at his own unconventional appearance.\n\n\"I'm sure it must look very bad, Mr. Holmes, and I am not aware that in my whole life such a thing has ever happened before. But I will tell you the whole queer business, and when I have done so you will admit, I am sure, that there has been enough to excuse me.\"\n\nBut his narrative was nipped in the bud. There was a bustle outside, and Mrs. Hudson opened the door to usher in two robust and official-looking individuals, one of whom was well known to us as Inspector Gregson of Scotland Yard, an energetic, gallant, and, within his limitations, a capable officer. He shook hands with Holmes and introduced his comrade as Inspector Baynes, of the Surrey Constabulary.\n\n\"We are hunting together, Mr. Holmes, and our trail lay in this direction.\" He turned his bulldog eyes upon our visitor. \"Are you Mr. John Scott Eccles, of Popham House, Lee?\"\n\n\"I am.\"\n\n\"We have been following you about all the morning.\"\n\n\"You traced him through the telegram, no doubt,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Exactly, Mr. Holmes. We picked up the scent at Charing Cross Post-Office and came on here.\"\n\n\"But why do you follow me? What do you want?\"\n\n\"We wish a statement, Mr. Scott Eccles, as to the events which led up to the death last night of Mr. Aloysius Garcia, of Wisteria Lodge, near Esher.\"\n\nOur client had sat up with staring eyes and every tinge of colour struck from his astonished face.\n\n\"Dead? Did you say he was dead?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, he is dead.\"\n\n\"But how? An accident?\"\n\n\"Murder, if ever there was one upon earth.\"\n\n\"Good God! This is awful! You don't mean\u2014you don't mean that I am suspected?\"\n\n\"A letter of yours was found in the dead man's pocket, and we know by it that you had planned to pass last night at his house.\"\n\n\"So I did.\"\n\n\"Oh, you did, did you?\"\n\nOut came the official notebook.\n\n\"Wait a bit, Gregson,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"All you desire is a plain statement, is it not?\"\n\n\"And it is my duty to warn Mr. Scott Eccles that it may be used against him.\"\n\n\"Mr. Eccles was going to tell us about it when you entered the room. I think, Watson, a brandy and soda would do him no harm. Now, sir, I suggest that you take no notice of this addition to your audience, and that you proceed with your narrative exactly as you would have done had you never been interrupted.\"\n\nOur visitor had gulped off the brandy and the colour had returned to his face. With a dubious glance at the inspector's notebook, he plunged at once into his extraordinary statement.\n\n\"I am a bachelor,\" said he, \"and being of a sociable turn I cultivate a large number of friends. Among these are the family of a retired brewer called Melville, living at Albemarle Mansion, Kensington. It was at his table that I met some weeks ago a young fellow named Garcia. He was, I understood, of Spanish descent and connected in some way with the embassy. He spoke perfect English, was pleasing in his manners, and as good-looking a man as ever I saw in my life.\n\n\"In some way we struck up quite a friendship, this young fellow and I. He seemed to take a fancy to me from the first, and within two days of our meeting he came to see me at Lee. One thing led to another, and it ended in his inviting me out to spend a few days at his house, Wisteria Lodge. between Esher and Oxshott. Yesterday evening I went to Esher to fulfil this engagement.\n\n\"He had described his household to me before I went there. He lived with a faithful servant, a countryman of his own, who looked after all his needs. This fellow could speak English and did his housekeeping for him. Then there was a wonderful cook, he said, a half-breed whom he had picked up in his travels, who could serve an excellent dinner. I remember that he remarked what a queer household it was to find in the heart of Surrey, and that I agreed with him, though it has proved a good deal queerer than I thought.\n\n\"I drove to the place\u2014about two miles on the south side of Esher. The house was a fair-sized one, standing back from the road, with a curving drive which was banked with high ever-green shrubs. It was an old, tumble-down building in a crazy state of disrepair. When the trap pulled up on the grass-grown drive in front of the blotched and weather-stained door, I had doubts as to my wisdom in visiting a man whom I knew so slightly. He opened the door himself, however, and greeted me with a great show of cordiality. I was handed over to the manservant, a melancholy, swarthy individual, who led the way, my bag in his hand, to my bedroom. The whole place was depressing. Our dinner was t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate, and though my host did his best to be entertaining, his thoughts seemed to continually wander, and he talked so vaguely and wildly that I could hardly understand him. He continually drummed his fingers on the table, gnawed his nails, and gave other signs of nervous impatience. The dinner itself was neither well served nor well cooked, and the gloomy presence of the taciturn servant did not help to enliven us. I can assure you that many times in the course of the evening I wished that I could invent some excuse which would take me back to Lee.\n\n\"One thing comes back to my memory which may have a bearing upon the business that you two gentlemen are investigating. I thought nothing of it at the time. Near the end of dinner a note was handed in by the servant. I noticed that after my host had read it he seemed even more distrait and strange than before. He gave up all pretence at conversation and sat, smoking endless cigarettes, lost in his own thoughts, but he made no remark as to the contents. About eleven I was glad to go to bed. Some time later Garcia looked in at my door\u2014the room was dark at the time\u2014and asked me if I had rung. I said that I had not. He apologized for having disturbed me so late, saying that it was nearly one o'clock. I dropped off after this and slept soundly all night.\n\n\"And now I come to the amazing part of my tale. When I woke it was broad daylight. I glanced at my watch, and the time was nearly nine. I had particularly asked to be called at eight, so I was very much astonished at this forgetfulness. I sprang up and rang for the servant. There was no response. I rang again and again, with the same result. Then I came to the conclusion that the bell was out of order. I huddled on my clothes and hurried downstairs in an exceedingly bad temper to order some hot water. You can imagine my surprise when I found that there was no one there. I shouted in the hall. There was no answer. Then I ran from room to room. All were deserted. My host had shown me which was his bedroom the night before, so I knocked at the door. No reply. I turned the handle and walked in. The room was empty, and the bed had never been slept in. He had gone with the rest. The foreign host, the foreign footman, the foreign cook, all had vanished in the night! That was the end of my visit to Wisteria Lodge.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes was rubbing his hands and chuckling as he added this bizarre incident to his collection of strange episodes.\n\n\"Your experience is, so far as I know, perfectly unique,\" said he. \"May I ask, sir, what you did then?\"\n\n\"I was furious. My first idea was that I had been the victim of some absurd practical joke. I packed my things, banged the hall door behind me, and set off for Esher, with my bag in my hand. I called at Allan Brothers', the chief land agents in the village, and found that it was from this firm that the villa had been rented. It struck me that the whole proceeding could hardly be for the purpose of making a fool of me, and that the main object must be to get out of the rent. It is late in March, so quarter-day is at hand. But this theory would not work. The agent was obliged to me for my warning, but told me that the rent had been paid in advance. Then I made my way to town and called at the Spanish embassy. The man was unknown there. After this I went to see Melville, at whose house I had first met Garcia, but I found that he really knew rather less about him than I did. Finally when I got your reply to my wire I came out to you, since I gather that you are a person who gives advice in difficult cases. But now, Mr. Inspector, I understand, from what you said when you entered the room, that you can carry the story on, and that some tragedy has occurred. I can assure you that every word I have said is the truth, and that, outside of what I have told you, I know absolutely nothing about the fate of this man. My only desire is to help the law in every possible way.\"\n\n\"I am sure of it, Mr. Scott Eccles\u2014I am sure of it,\" said Inspector Gregson in a very amiable tone. \"I am bound to say that everything which you have said agrees very closely with the facts as they have come to our notice. For example, there was that note which arrived during dinner. Did you chance to observe what became of it?\"\n\n\"Yes, I did. Garcia rolled it up and threw it into the fire.\"\n\n\"What do you say to that, Mr. Baynes?\"\n\nThe country detective was a stout, puffy, red man, whose face was only redeemed from grossness by two extraordinarily bright eyes, almost hidden behind the heavy creases of cheek and brow. With a slow smile he drew a folded and discoloured scrap of paper from his pocket.\n\n\"It was a dog-grate, Mr. Holmes, and he overpitched it. I picked this out unburned from the back of it.\"\n\nHolmes smiled his appreciation.\n\n\"You must have examined the house very carefully to find a single pellet of paper.\"\n\n\"I did, Mr. Holmes. It's my way. Shall I read it, Mr. Gregson?\"\n\nThe Londoner nodded.\n\n\"The note is written upon ordinary cream-laid paper without watermark. It is a quarter-sheet. The paper is cut off in two snips with a short-bladed scissors. It has been folded over three times and sealed with purple wax, put on hurriedly and pressed down with some flat oval object. It is addressed to Mr. Garcia, Wisteria Lodge. It says:\n\nOur own colours, green and white. Green open, white shut. Main stair, first corridor, seventh right, green baize. Godspeed. D.\n\n\"It is a woman's writing, done with a sharp-pointed pen, but the address is either done with another pen or by someone else. It is thicker and bolder, as you see.\"\n\n\"A very remarkable note,\" said Holmes, glancing it over. \"I must compliment you, Mr. Baynes, upon your attention to detail in your examination of it. A few trifling points might perhaps be added. The oval seal is undoubtedly a plain sleeve-link\u2014what else is of such a shape? The scissors were bent nail scissors. Short as the two snips are, you can distinctly see the same slight curve in each.\"\n\nThe country detective chuckled.\n\n\"I thought I had squeezed all the juice out of it, but I see there was a little over,\" he said. \"I'm bound to say that I make nothing of the note except that there was something on hand, and that a woman, as usual, was at the bottom of it.\"\n\nMr. Scott Eccles had fidgeted in his seat during this conversation.\n\n\"I am glad you found the note, since it corroborates my story,\" said he. \"But I beg to point out that I have not yet heard what has happened to Mr. Garcia, nor what has become of his household.\"\n\n\"As to Garcia,\" said Gregson, \"that is easily answered. He was found dead this morning upon Oxshott Common, nearly a mile from his home. His head had been smashed to pulp by heavy blows of a sandbag or some such instrument, which had crushed rather than wounded. It is a lonely corner, and there is no house within a quarter of a mile of the spot. He had apparently been struck down first from behind, but his assailant had gone on beating him long after he was dead. It was a most furious assault. There are no footsteps nor any clue to the criminals.\"\n\n\"Robbed?\"\n\n\"No, there was no attempt at robbery.\"\n\n\"This is very painful\u2014very painful and terrible,\" said Mr. Scott Eccles in a querulous voice, \"but it is really uncommonly hard upon me. I had nothing to do with my host going off upon a nocturnal excursion and meeting so sad an end. How do I come to be mixed up with the case?\"\n\n\"Very simply, sir,\" Inspector Baynes answered. \"The only document found in the pocket of the deceased was a letter from you saying that you would be with him on the night of his death. It was the envelope of this letter which gave us the dead man's name and address. It was after nine this morning when we reached his house and found neither you nor anyone else inside it. I wired to Mr. Gregson to run you down in London while I examined Wisteria Lodge. Then I came into town, joined Mr. Gregson, and here we are.\"\n\n\"I think now,\" said Gregson, rising, \"we had best put this matter into an official shape. You will come round with us to the station, Mr. Scott Eccles, and let us have your statement in writing.\"\n\n\"Certainly, I will come at once. But I retain your services, Mr. Holmes. I desire you to spare no expense and no pains to get at the truth.\"\n\nMy friend turned to the country inspector.\n\n\"I suppose that you have no objection to my collaborating with you, Mr. Baynes?\"\n\n\"Highly honoured, sir, I am sure.\"\n\n\"You appear to have been very prompt and business-like in all that you have done. Was there any clue, may I ask, as to the exact hour that the man met his death?\"\n\n\"He had been there since one o'clock. There was rain about that time, and his death had certainly been before the rain.\"\n\n\"But that is perfectly impossible, Mr. Baynes,\" cried our client. \"His voice is unmistakable. I could swear to it that it was he who addressed me in my bedroom at that very hour.\"\n\n\"Remarkable, but by no means impossible,\" said Holmes, smiling.\n\n\"You have a clue?\" asked Gregson.\n\n\"On the face of it the case is not a very complex one, though it certainly presents some novel and interesting features. A further knowledge of facts is necessary before I would venture to give a final and definite opinion. By the way, Mr. Baynes, did you find anything remarkable besides this note in your examination of the house?\"\n\nThe detective looked at my friend in a singular way.\n\n\"There were,\" said he, \"one or two very remarkable things. Perhaps when I have finished at the police-station you would care to come out and give me your opinion of them.\"\n\n\"I am entirely at your service,\" said Sherlock Holmes, ringing the bell. \"You will show these gentlemen out, Mrs. Hudson, and kindly send the boy with this telegram. He is to pay a five-shilling reply.\"\n\nWe sat for some time in silence after our visitors had left. Holmes smoked hard, with his brows drawn down over his keen eyes, and his head thrust forward in the eager way characteristic of the man.\n\n\"Well, Watson,\" he asked, turning suddenly upon me, \"what do you make of it?\"\n\n\"I can make nothing of this mystification of Scott Eccles.\"\n\n\"But the crime?\"\n\n\"Well, taken with the disappearance of the man's companions, I should say that they were in some way concerned in the murder and had fled from justice.\"\n\n\"That is certainly a possible point of view. On the face of it you must admit, however, that it is very strange that his two servants should have been in a conspiracy against him and should have attacked him on the one night when he had a guest. They had him alone at their mercy every other night in the week.\"\n\n\"Then why did they fly?\"\n\n\"Quite so. Why did they fly? There is a big fact. Another big fact is the remarkable experience of our client, Scott Eccles. Now, my dear Watson, is it beyond the limits of human ingenuity to furnish an explanation which would cover both these big facts? If it were one which would also admit of the mysterious note with its very curious phraseology, why, then it would be worth accepting as a temporary hypothesis. If the fresh facts which come to our knowledge all fit themselves into the scheme, then our hypothesis may gradually become a solution.\"\n\n\"But what is our hypothesis?\"\n\nHolmes leaned back in his chair with half-closed eyes.\n\n\"You must admit, my dear Watson, that the idea of a joke is impossible. There were grave events afoot, as the sequel showed, and the coaxing of Scott Eccles to Wisteria Lodge had some connection with them.\"\n\n\"But what possible connection?\"\n\n\"Let us take it link by link. There is, on the face of it, something unnatural about this strange and sudden friendship between the young Spaniard and Scott Eccles. It was the former who forced the pace. He called upon Eccles at the other end of London on the very day after he first met him, and he kept in close touch with him until he got him down to Esher. Now, what did he want with Eccles? What could Eccles supply? I see no charm in the man. He is not particularly intelligent\u2014not a man likely to be congenial to a quick-witted Latin. Why, then, was he picked out from all the other people whom Garcia met as particularly suited to his purpose? Has he any one outstanding quality? I say that he has. He is the very type of conventional British respectability, and the very man as a witness to impress another Briton. You saw yourself how neither of the inspectors dreamed of questioning his statement, extraordinary as it was.\"\n\n\"But what was he to witness?\"\n\n\"Nothing, as things turned out, but everything had they gone another way. That is how I read the matter.\"\n\n\"I see, he might have proved an alibi.\"\n\n\"Exactly, my dear Watson; he might have proved an alibi. We will suppose, for argument's sake, that the household of Wisteria Lodge are confederates in some design. The attempt, whatever it may be, is to come off, we will say, before one o'clock. By some juggling of the clocks it is quite possible that they may have got Scott Eccles to bed earlier than he thought, but in any case it is likely that when Garcia went out of his way to tell him that it was one it was really not more than twelve. If Garcia could do whatever he had to do and be back by the hour mentioned he had evidently a powerful reply to any accusation. Here was this irreproachable Englishman ready to swear in any court of law that the accused was in his house all the time. It was an insurance against the worst.\"\n\n\"Yes; yes, I see that. But how about the disappearance of the others?\"\n\n\"I have not all my facts yet, but I do not think there are any insuperable difficulties. Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories.\"\n\n\"And the message?\"\n\n\"How did it run? 'Our own colours, green and white.' Sounds like racing. 'Green open, white shut.' That is clearly a signal. 'Main stair, first corridor, seventh right, green baize.' This is an assignation. We may find a jealous husband at the bottom of it all. It was clearly a dangerous quest. She would not have said 'Godspeed' had it not been so. 'D'\u2014that should be a guide.\"\n\n\"The man was a Spaniard. I suggest that 'D' stands for Dolores, a common female name in Spain.\"\n\n\"Good, Watson, very good\u2014but quite inadmissible. A Spaniard would write to a Spaniard in Spanish. The writer of this note is certainly English. Well, we can only possess our souls in patience until this excellent inspector comes back for us. Meanwhile we can thank our lucky fate which has rescued us for a few short hours from the insufferable fatigues of idleness.\"\n\nAn answer had arrived to Holmes's telegram before our Surrey officer had returned. Holmes read it and was about to place it in his notebook when he caught a glimpse of my expectant face. He tossed it across with a laugh.\n\n\"We are moving in exalted circles,\" said he.\n\nThe telegram was a list of names and addresses:\n\nLord Harringby, The Dingle; Sir George Ffolliott, Oxshott Towers; Mr. Hynes Hynes, J.P., Purdey Place; Mr. James Baker Williams, For-ton Old Hall; Mr. Henderson, High Gable; Rev. Joshua Stone, Nether Walsling.\n\n\"This is a very obvious way of limiting our field of operations,\" said Holmes. \"No doubt Baynes, with his methodical mind, has already adopted some similar plan.\"\n\n\"I don't quite understand.\"\n\n\"Well, my dear fellow, we have already arrived at the conclusion that the message received by Garcia at dinner was an appointment or an assignation. Now, if the obvious reading of it is correct, and in order to keep this tryst one has to ascend a main stair and seek the seventh door in a corridor, it is perfectly clear that the house is a very large one. It is equally certain that this house cannot be more than a mile or two from Oxshott, since Garcia was walking in that direction and hoped, according to my reading of the facts, to be back in Wisteria Lodge in time to avail himself of an alibi, which would only be valid up to one o'clock. As the number of large houses close to Oxshott must be limited, I adopted the obvious method of sending to the agents mentioned by Scott Eccles and obtaining a list of them. Here they are in this telegram, and the other end of our tangled skein must lie among them.\"\n\nIt was nearly six o'clock before we found ourselves in the pretty Surrey village of Esher, with Inspector Baynes as our companion.\n\nHolmes and I had taken things for the night, and found comfortable quarters at the Bull. Finally we set out in the company of the detective on our visit to Wisteria Lodge. It was a cold, dark March evening, with a sharp wind and a fine rain beating upon our faces, a fit setting for the wild common over which our road passed and the tragic goal to which it led us.\n\n2. The Tiger of San Pedro\n\nA cold and melancholy walk of a couple of miles brought us to a high wooden gate, which opened into a gloomy avenue of chestnuts. The curved and shadowed drive led us to a low, dark house, pitch-black against a slate-coloured sky. From the front window upon the left of the door there peeped a glimmer of a feeble light.\n\n\"There's a constable in possession,\" said Baynes. \"I'll knock at the window.\" He stepped across the grass plot and tapped with his hand on the pane. Through the fogged glass I dimly saw a man spring up from a chair beside the fire, and heard a sharp cry from within the room. An instant later a white-faced, hard-breathing policeman had opened the door, the candle wavering in his trembling hand.\n\n\"What's the matter, Walters?\" asked Baynes sharply.\n\nThe man mopped his forehead with his handkerchief and gave a long sigh of relief.\n\n\"I am glad you have come, sir. It has been a long evening, and I don't think my nerve is as good as it was.\"\n\n\"Your nerve, Walters? I should not have thought you had a nerve in your body.\"\n\n\"Well, sir, it's this lonely, silent house and the queer thing in the kitchen. Then when you tapped at the window I thought it had come again.\"\n\n\"That what had come again?\"\n\n\"The devil, sir, for all I know. It was at the window.\"\n\n\"What was at the window, and when?\"\n\n\"It was just about two hours ago. The light was just fading. I was sitting reading in the chair. I don't know what made me look up, but there was a face looking in at me through the lower pane. Lord, sir, what a face it was! I'll see it in my dreams.\"\n\n\"Tut, tut, Walters. This is not talk for a police-constable.\"\n\n\"I know, sir, I know; but it shook me, sir, and there's no use to deny it. It wasn't black, sir, nor was it white, nor any colour that I know, but a kind of queer shade like clay with a splash of milk in it. Then there was the size of it\u2014it was twice yours, sir. And the look of it\u2014the great staring goggle eyes, and the line of white teeth like a hungry beast. I tell you, sir. I couldn't move a finger, nor get my breath, till it whisked away and was gone. Out I ran and through the shrubbery, but thank God there was no one there.\"\n\n\"If I didn't know you were a good man, Walters, I should put a black mark against you for this. If it were the devil himself a constable on duty should never thank God that he could not lay his hands upon him. I suppose the whole thing is not a vision and a touch of nerves?\"\n\n\"That, at least, is very easily settled,\" said Holmes, lighting his little pocket lantern. \"Yes,\" he reported, after a short examination of the grass bed, \"a number twelve shoe, I should say. If he was all on the same scale as his foot he must certainly have been a giant.\"\n\n\"What became of him?\"\n\n\"He seems to have broken through the shrubbery and made for the road.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the inspector with a grave and thoughtful face, \"whoever he may have been, and whatever he may have wanted, he's gone for the present, and we have more immediate things to attend to. Now, Mr. Holmes, with your permission, I will show you round the house.\"\n\nThe various bedrooms and sitting-rooms had yielded nothing to a careful search. Apparently the tenants had brought little or nothing with them, and all the furniture down to the smallest details had been taken over with the house. A good deal of clothing with the stamp of Marx and Co., High Holborn, had been left behind. Telegraphic inquiries had been already made which showed that Marx knew nothing of his customer save that he was a good payer. Odds and ends, some pipes, a few novels, two of them in Spanish, an old-fashioned pinfire revolver, and a guitar were among the personal property.\n\n\"Nothing in all this,\" said Baynes, stalking, candle in hand, from room to room. \"But now, Mr. Holmes, I invite your attention to the kitchen.\"\n\nIt was a gloomy, high-ceilinged room at the back of the house, with a straw litter in one corner, which served apparently as a bed for the cook. The table was piled with half-eaten dishes and dirty plates, the debris of last night's dinner.\n\n\"Look at this,\" said Baynes. \"What do you make of it?\"\n\nHe held up his candle before an extraordinary object which stood at the back of the dresser. It was so wrinkled and shrunken and withered that it was difficult to say what it might have been. One could but say that it was black and leathery and that it bore some resemblance to a dwarfish, human figure. At first, as I examined it, I thought that it was a mummified negro baby, and then it seemed a very twisted and ancient monkey. Finally I was left in doubt as to whether it was animal or human. A double band of white shells was strung round the centre of it.\n\n\"Very interesting\u2014very interesting, indeed!\" said Holmes, peering at this sinister relic. \"Anything more?\"\n\nIn silence Baynes led the way to the sink and held forward his candle. The limbs and body of some large, white bird, torn savagely to pieces with the feathers still on, were littered all over it. Holmes pointed to the wattles on the severed head.\n\n\"A white cock,\" said he. \"Most interesting! It is really a very curious case.\"\n\nBut Mr. Baynes had kept his most sinister exhibit to the last. From under the sink he drew a zinc pail which contained a quantity of blood. Then from the table he took a platter heaped with small pieces of charred bone.\n\n\"Something has been killed and something has been burned. We raked all these out of the fire. We had a doctor in this morning. He says that they are not human.\"\n\nHolmes smiled and rubbed his hands.\n\n\"I must congratulate you, Inspector, on handling so distinctive and instructive a case. Your powers, if I may say so without offence, seem superior to your opportunities.\"\n\nInspector Baynes's small eyes twinkled with pleasure.\n\n\"You're right, Mr. Holmes. We stagnate in the provinces. A case of this sort gives a man a chance, and I hope that I shall take it. What do you make of these bones?\"\n\n\"A lamb, I should say, or a kid.\"\n\n\"And the white cock?\"\n\n\"Curious, Mr. Baynes, very curious. I should say almost unique.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, there must have been some very strange people with some very strange ways in this house. One of them is dead. Did his companions follow him and kill him? If they did we should have them, for every port is watched. But my own views are different. Yes, sir, my own views are very different.\"\n\n\"You have a theory then?\"\n\n\"And I'll work it myself, Mr. Holmes. It's only due to my own credit to do so. Your name is made, but I have still to make mine. I should be glad to be able to say afterwards that I had solved it without your help.\"\n\nHolmes laughed good-humouredly.\n\n\"Well, well, Inspector,\" said he. \"Do you follow your path and I will follow mine. My results are always very much at your service if you care to apply to me for them. I think that I have seen all that I wish in this house, and that my time may be more profitably employed elsewhere. Au revoir and good luck!\"\n\nI could tell by numerous subtle signs, which might have been lost upon anyone but myself, that Holmes was on a hot scent. As impassive as ever to the casual observer, there were none the less a subdued eagerness and suggestion of tension in his brightened eyes and brisker manner which assured me that the game was afoot. After his habit he said nothing, and after mine I asked no questions. Sufficient for me to share the sport and lend my humble help to the capture without distracting that intent brain with needless interruption. All would come round to me in due time.\n\nI waited, therefore\u2014but to my ever-deepening disappointment I waited in vain. Day succeeded day, and my friend took no step forward. One morning he spent in town, and I learned from a casual reference that he had visited the British Museum. Save for this one excursion, he spent his days in long and often solitary walks, or in chatting with a number of village gossips whose acquaintance he had cultivated.\n\n\"I'm sure, Watson, a week in the country will be invaluable to you,\" he remarked. \"It is very pleasant to see the first green shoots upon the hedges and the catkins on the hazels once again. With a spud, a tin box, and an elementary book on botany, there are instructive days to be spent.\" He prowled about with this equipment himself, but it was a poor show of plants which he would bring back of an evening.\n\nOccasionally in our rambles we came across Inspector Baynes. His fat, red face wreathed itself in smiles and his small eyes glittered as he greeted my companion. He said little about the case, but from that little we gathered that he also was not dissatisfied at the course of events. I must admit, however, that I was somewhat surprised when, some five days after the crime, I opened my morning paper to find in large letters:" + }, + { + "title": "THE OXSHOTT MYSTERY", + "text": "[ A SOLUTION ]\n\n[ ARREST OF SUPPOSED ASSASSIN ]\n\nHolmes sprang in his chair as if he had been stung when I read the headlines.\n\n\"By Jove!\" he cried. \"You don't mean that Baynes has got him?\"\n\n\"Apparently,\" said I as I read the following report:\n\n\"Great excitement was caused in Esher and the neighbouring district when it was learned late last night that an arrest had been effected in connection with the Oxshott murder. It will be remembered that Mr. Garcia, of Wisteria Lodge, was found dead on Oxshott Common, his body showing signs of extreme violence, and that on the same night his servant and his cook fled, which appeared to show their participation in the crime. It was suggested, but never proved, that the deceased gentleman may have had valuables in the house, and that their abstraction was the motive of the crime. Every effort was made by Inspector Baynes, who has the case in hand, to ascertain the hiding place of the fugitives, and he had good reason to believe that they had not gone far but were lurking in some retreat which had been already prepared. It was certain from the first, however, that they would eventually be detected, as the cook, from the evidence of one or two tradespeople who have caught a glimpse of him through the window, was a man of most remarkable appearance\u2014being a huge and hideous mulatto, with yellowish features of a pronounced negroid type. This man has been seen since the crime, for he was detected and pursued by Constable Walters on the same evening, when he had the audacity to revisit Wisteria Lodge. Inspector Baynes, considering that such a visit must have some purpose in view and was likely, therefore, to be repeated, abandoned the house but left an ambuscade in the shrubbery. The man walked into the trap and was captured last night after a struggle in which Constable Downing was badly bitten by the savage. We understand that when the prisoner is brought before the magistrates a remand will be applied for by the police, and that great developments are hoped from his capture.\"\n\n\"Really we must see Baynes at once,\" cried Holmes, picking up his hat. \"We will just catch him before he starts.\" We hurried down the village street and found, as we had expected, that the inspector was just leaving his lodgings.\n\n\"You've seen the paper, Mr. Holmes?\" he asked, holding one out to us.\n\n\"Yes, Baynes, I've seen it. Pray don't think it a liberty if I give you a word of friendly warning.\"\n\n\"Of warning, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"I have looked into this case with some care, and I am not convinced that you are on the right lines. I don't want you to commit yourself too far unless you are sure.\"\n\n\"You're very kind, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"I assure you I speak for your good.\"\n\nIt seemed to me that something like a wink quivered for an instant over one of Mr. Baynes's tiny eyes.\n\n\"We agreed to work on our own lines, Mr. Holmes. That's what I am doing.\"\n\n\"Oh, very good,\" said Holmes. \"Don't blame me.\"\n\n\"No, sir; I believe you mean well by me. But we all have our own systems, Mr. Holmes. You have yours, and maybe I have mine.\"\n\n\"Let us say no more about it.\"\n\n\"You're welcome always to my news. This fellow is a perfect savage, as strong as a cart-horse and as fierce as the devil. He chewed Downing's thumb nearly off before they could master him. He hardly speaks a word of English, and we can get nothing out of him but grunts.\"\n\n\"And you think you have evidence that he murdered his late master?\"\n\n\"I didn't say so, Mr. Holmes; I didn't say so. We all have our little ways. You try yours and I will try mine. That's the agreement.\"\n\nHolmes shrugged his shoulders as we walked away together. \"I can't make the man out. He seems to be riding for a fall. Well, as he says, we must each try our own way and see what comes of it. But there's something in Inspector Baynes which I can't quite understand.\"\n\n\"Just sit down in that chair, Watson,\" said Sherlock Holmes when we had returned to our apartment at the Bull. \"I want to put you in touch with the situation, as I may need your help to-night. Let me show you the evolution of this case so far as I have been able to follow it. Simple as it has been in its leading features, it has none the less presented surprising difficulties in the way of an arrest. There are gaps in that direction which we have still to fill.\n\n\"We will go back to the note which was handed in to Garcia upon the evening of his death. We may put aside this idea of Baynes's that Garcia's servants were concerned in the matter. The proof of this lies in the fact that it was he who had arranged for the presence of Scott Eccles, which could only have been done for the purpose of an alibi. It was Garcia, then, who had an enterprise, and apparently a criminal enterprise, in hand that night in the course of which he met his death. I say 'criminal' because only a man with a criminal enterprise desires to establish an alibi. Who, then, is most likely to have taken his life? Surely the person against whom the criminal enterprise was directed. So far it seems to me that we are on safe ground.\n\n\"We can now see a reason for the disappearance of Garcia's household. They were all confederates in the same unknown crime. If it came off when Garcia returned, any possible suspicion would be warded off by the Englishman's evidence, and all would be well. But the attempt was a dangerous one, and if Garcia did not return by a certain hour it was probable that his own life had been sacrificed. It had been arranged, therefore, that in such a case his two subordinates were to make for some prearranged spot where they could escape investigation and be in a position afterwards to renew their attempt. That would fully explain the facts, would it not?\"\n\nThe whole inexplicable tangle seemed to straighten out before me. I wondered, as I always did, how it had not been obvious to me before.\n\n\"But why should one servant return?\"\n\n\"We can imagine that in the confusion of flight something precious, something which he could not bear to part with, had been left behind. That would explain his persistence, would it not?\"\n\n\"Well, what is the next step?\"\n\n\"The next step is the note received by Garcia at the dinner. It indicates a confederate at the other end. Now, where was the other end? I have already shown you that it could only lie in some large house, and that the number of large houses is limited. My first days in this village were devoted to a series of walks in which in the intervals of my botanical researches I made a reconnaissance of all the large houses and an examination of the family history of the occupants. One house, and only one, riveted my attention. It is the famous old Jacobean grange of High Gable, one mile on the farther side of Oxshott, and less than half a mile from the scene of the tragedy. The other mansions belonged to prosaic and respectable people who live far aloof from romance. But Mr. Henderson, of High Gable, was by all accounts a curious man to whom curious adventures might befall. I concentrated my attention, therefore, upon him and his household.\n\n\"A singular set of people, Watson\u2014the man himself the most singular of them all. I managed to see him on a plausible pretext, but I seemed to read in his dark, deep-set, brooding eyes that he was perfectly aware of my true business. He is a man of fifty, strong, active, with iron-gray hair, great bunched black eyebrows, the step of a deer, and the air of an emperor\u2014a fierce, masterful man, with a red-hot spirit behind his parchment face. He is either a foreigner or has lived long in the tropics, for he is yellow and sapless, but tough as whipcord. His friend and secretary, Mr. Lucas, is undoubtedly a foreigner, chocolate brown, wily, suave, and cat-like, with a poisonous gentleness of speech. You see, Watson, we have come already upon two sets of foreigners\u2014one at Wisteria Lodge and one at High Gable\u2014so our gaps are beginning to close.\n\n\"These two men, close and confidential friends, are the centre of the household; but there is one other person who for our immediate purpose may be even more important. Henderson has two children\u2014girls of eleven and thirteen. Their governess is a Miss Burnet, an Englishwoman of forty or thereabouts. There is also one confidential manservant. This little group forms the real family, for they travel about together, and Henderson is a great traveller, always on the move. It is only within the last few weeks that he has returned, after a year's absence, to High Gable. I may add that he is enormously rich, and whatever his whims may be he can very easily satisfy them. For the rest, his house is full of butlers, footmen, maidservants, and the usual overfed, underworked staff of a large English country-house.\n\n\"So much I learned partly from village gossip and partly from my own observation. There are no better instruments than discharged servants with a grievance, and I was lucky enough to find one. I call it luck, but it would not have come my way had I not been looking out for it. As Baynes remarks, we all have our systems. It was my system which enabled me to find John Warner, late gardener of High Gable, sacked in a moment of temper by his imperious employer. He in turn had friends among the indoor servants who unite in their fear and dislike of their master. So I had my key to the secrets of the establishment.\n\n\"Curious people, Watson! I don't pretend to understand it all yet, but very curious people anyway. It's a double-winged house, and the servants live on one side, the family on the other. There's no link between the two save for Henderson's own servant, who serves the family's meals. Everything is carried to a certain door, which forms the one connection. Governess and children hardly go out at all, except into the garden. Henderson never by any chance walks alone. His dark secretary is like his shadow. The gossip among the servants is that their master is terribly afraid of something. 'Sold his soul to the devil in exchange for money,' says Warner, 'and expects his creditor to come up and claim his own.' Where they came from, or who they are, nobody has an idea. They are very violent. Twice Henderson has lashed at folk with his dog-whip, and only his long purse and heavy compensation have kept him out of the courts.\n\n\"Well, now, Watson, let us judge the situation by this new information. We may take it that the letter came out of this strange household and was an invitation to Garcia to carry out some attempt which had already been planned. Who wrote the note? It was someone within the citadel, and it was a woman. Who then but Miss Burnet, the governess? All our reasoning seems to point that way. At any rate, we may take it as a hypothesis and see what consequences it would entail. I may add that Miss Burnet's age and character make it certain that my first idea that there might be a love interest in our story is out of the question.\n\n\"If she wrote the note she was presumably the friend and confederate of Garcia. What, then, might she be expected to do if she heard of his death? If he met it in some nefarious enterprise her lips might be sealed. Still, in her heart, she must retain bitterness and hatred against those who had killed him and would presumably help so far as she could to have revenge upon them. Could we see her, then, and try to use her? That was my first thought. But now we come to a sinister fact. Miss Burnet has not been seen by any human eye since the night of the murder. From that evening she has utterly vanished. Is she alive? Has she perhaps met her end on the same night as the friend whom she had summoned? Or is she merely a prisoner? There is the point which we still have to decide.\n\n\"You will appreciate the difficulty of the situation, Watson. There is nothing upon which we can apply for a warrant. Our whole scheme might seem fantastic if laid before a magistrate. The woman's disappearance counts for nothing, since in that extraordinary household any member of it might be invisible for a week. And yet she may at the present moment be in danger of her life. All I can do is to watch the house and leave my agent, Warner, on guard at the gates. We can't let such a situation continue. If the law can do nothing we must take the risk ourselves.\"\n\n\"What do you suggest?\"\n\n\"I know which is her room. It is accessible from the top of an outhouse. My suggestion is that you and I go to-night and see if we can strike at the very heart of the mystery.\"\n\nIt was not, I must confess, a very alluring prospect. The old house with its atmosphere of murder, the singular and formidable inhabitants, the unknown dangers of the approach, and the fact that we were putting ourselves legally in a false position all combined to damp my ardour. But there was something in the ice-cold reasoning of Holmes which made it impossible to shrink from any adventure which he might recommend. One knew that thus, and only thus, could a solution be found. I clasped his hand in silence, and the die was cast.\n\nBut it was not destined that our investigation should have so adventurous an ending. It was about five o'clock, and the shadows of the March evening were beginning to fall, when an excited rustic rushed into our room.\n\n\"They've gone, Mr. Holmes. They went by the last train. The lady broke away, and I've got her in a cab downstairs.\"\n\n\"Excellent, Warner!\" cried Holmes, springing to his feet. \"Watson, the gaps are closing rapidly.\"\n\nIn the cab was a woman, half-collapsed from nervous exhaustion. She bore upon her aquiline and emaciated face the traces of some recent tragedy. Her head hung listlessly upon her breast, but as she raised it and turned her dull eyes upon us I saw that her pupils were dark dots in the centre of the broad gray iris. She was drugged with opium.\n\n\"I watched at the gate, same as you advised, Mr. Holmes,\" said our emissary, the discharged gardener. \"When the carriage came out I followed it to the station. She was like one walking in her sleep, but when they tried to get her into the train she came to life and struggled. They pushed her into the carriage. She fought her way out again. I took her part, got her into a cab, and here we are. I shan't forget the face at the carriage window as I led her away. I'd have a short life if he had his way\u2014the black-eyed, scowling, yellow devil.\"\n\nWe carried her upstairs, laid her on the sofa, and a couple of cups of the strongest coffee soon cleared her brain from the mists of the drug. Baynes had been summoned by Holmes, and the situation rapidly explained to him.\n\n\"Why, sir, you've got me the very evidence I want,\" said the inspector warmly, shaking my friend by the hand. \"I was on the same scent as you from the first.\"\n\n\"What! You were after Henderson?\"\n\n\"Why, Mr. Holmes, when you were crawling in the shrubbery at High Gable I was up one of the trees in the plantation and saw you down below. It was just who would get his evidence first.\"\n\n\"Then why did you arrest the mulatto?\"\n\nBaynes chuckled.\n\n\"I was sure Henderson, as he calls himself, felt that he was suspected, and that he would lie low and make no move so long as he thought he was in any danger. I arrested the wrong man to make him believe that our eyes were off him. I knew he would be likely to clear off then and give us a chance of getting at Miss Burnet.\"\n\nHolmes laid his hand upon the inspector's shoulder.\n\n\"You will rise high in your profession. You have instinct and intuition,\" said he.\n\nBaynes flushed with pleasure.\n\n\"I've had a plain-clothes man waiting at the station all the week. Wherever the High Gable folk go he will keep them in sight. But he must have been hard put to it when Miss Burnet broke away. However, your man picked her up, and it all ends well. We can't arrest without her evidence, that is clear, so the sooner we get a statement the better.\"\n\n\"Every minute she gets stronger,\" said Holmes, glancing at the governess. \"But tell me, Baynes, who is this man Henderson?\"\n\n\"Henderson,\" the inspector answered, \"is Don Murillo, once called the Tiger of San Pedro.\"\n\nThe Tiger of San Pedro! The whole history of the man came back to me in a flash. He had made his name as the most lewd and bloodthirsty tyrant that had ever governed any country with a pretence to civilization. Strong, fearless, and energetic, he had sufficient virtue to enable him to impose his odious vices upon a cowering people for ten or twelve years. His name was a terror through all Central America. At the end of that time there was a universal rising against him. But he was as cunning as he was cruel, and at the first whisper of coming trouble he had secretly conveyed his treasures aboard a ship which was manned by devoted adherents. It was an empty palace which was stormed by the insurgents next day. The dictator, his two children, his secretary, and his wealth had all escaped them. From that moment he had vanished from the world, and his identity had been a frequent subject for comment in the European press.\n\n\"Yes, sir, Don Murillo, the Tiger of San Pedro,\" said Baynes. \"If you look it up you will find that the San Pedro colours are green and white, same as in the note, Mr. Holmes. Henderson he called himself, but I traced him back, Paris and Rome and Madrid to Barcelona, where his ship came in in '86. They've been looking for him all the time for their revenge, but it is only now that they have begun to find him out.\"\n\n\"They discovered him a year ago,\" said Miss Burnet, who had sat up and was now intently following the conversation. \"Once already his life has been attempted, but some evil spirit shielded him. Now, again, it is the noble, chivalrous Garcia who has fallen, while the monster goes safe. But another will come, and yet another, until some day justice will be done; that is as certain as the rise of to-morrow's sun.\" Her thin hands clenched, and her worn face blanched with the passion of her hatred.\n\n\"But how come you into this matter, Miss Burnet?\" asked Holmes. \"How can an English lady join in such a murderous affair?\"\n\n\"I join in it because there is no other way in the world by which justice can be gained. What does the law of England care for the rivers of blood shed years ago in San Pedro, or for the shipload of treasure which this man has stolen? To you they are like crimes committed in some other planet. But we know. We have learned the truth in sorrow and in suffering. To us there is no fiend in hell like Juan Murillo, and no peace in life while his victims still cry for vengeance.\"\n\n\"No doubt,\" said Holmes, \"he was as you say. I have heard that he was atrocious. But how are you affected?\"\n\n\"I will tell you it all. This villain's policy was to murder, on one pretext or another, every man who showed such promise that he might in time come to be a dangerous rival. My husband\u2014yes, my real name is Signora Victor Du rando\u2014was the San Pedro minister in London. He met me and married me there. A nobler man never lived upon earth. Unhappily, Murillo heard of his excellence, recalled him on some pretext, and had him shot. With a premonition of his fate he had refused to take me with him. His estates were confiscated, and I was left with a pittance and a broken heart.\n\n\"Then came the downfall of the tyrant. He escaped as you have just described. But the many whose lives he had ruined, whose nearest and dearest had suffered torture and death at his hands, would not let the matter rest. They banded themselves into a society which should never be dissolved until the work was done. It was my part after we had discovered in the transformed Henderson the fallen despot, to attach myself to his household and keep the others in touch with his movements. This I was able to do by securing the position of governess in his family. He little knew that the woman who faced him at every meal was the woman whose husband he had hurried at an hour's notice into eternity. I smiled on him, did my duty to his children, and bided my time. An attempt was made in Paris and failed. We zig-zagged swiftly here and there over Europe to throw off the pursuers and finally returned to this house, which he had taken upon his first arrival in England.\n\n\"But here also the ministers of justice were waiting. Knowing that he would return there, Garcia, who is the son of the former highest dignitary in San Pedro, was waiting with two trusty companions of humble station, all three fired with the same reasons for revenge. He could do little during the day, for Murillo took every precaution and never went out save with his satellite Lucas, or Lopez as he was known in the days of his greatness. At night, however, he slept alone, and the avenger might find him. On a certain evening, which had been prearranged, I sent my friend final instructions, for the man was forever on the alert and continually changed his room. I was to see that the doors were open and the signal of a green or white light in a window which faced the drive was to give notice if all was safe or if the attempt had better be postponed.\n\n\"But everything went wrong with us. In some way I had excited the suspicion of Lopez, the secretary. He crept up behind me and sprang upon me just as I had finished the note. He and his master dragged me to my room and held judgment upon me as a convicted traitress. Then and there they would have plunged their knives into me could they have seen how to escape the consequences of the deed. Finally, after much debate, they concluded that my murder was too dangerous. But they determined to get rid forever of Garcia. They had gagged me, and Murillo twisted my arm round until I gave him the address. I swear that he might have twisted it off had I understood what it would mean to Garcia. Lopez addressed the note which I had written, sealed it with his sleeve-link, and sent it by the hand of the servant, Jos\u00e9. How they murdered him I do not know, save that it was Murillo's hand who struck him down, for Lopez had remained to guard me. I believe he must have waited among the gorse bushes through which the path winds and struck him down as he passed. At first they were of a mind to let him enter the house and to kill him as a detected burglar; but they argued that if they were mixed up in an inquiry their own identity would at once be publicly disclosed and they would be open to further attacks. With the death of Garcia, the pursuit might cease, since such a death might frighten others from the task.\n\n\"All would now have been well for them had it not been for my knowledge of what they had done. I have no doubt that there were times when my life hung in the balance. I was confined to my room, terrorized by the most horrible threats, cruelly ill-used to break my spirit\u2014see this stab on my shoulder and the bruises from end to end of my arms\u2014and a gag was thrust into my mouth on the one occasion when I tried to call from the window. For five days this cruel imprisonment continued, with hardly enough food to hold body and soul together. This afternoon a good lunch was brought me, but the moment after I took it I knew that I had been drugged. In a sort of dream I remember being half-led, half-carried to the carriage; in the same state I was conveyed to the train. Only then, when the wheels were almost moving, did I suddenly realize that my liberty lay in my own hands. I sprang out, they tried to drag me back, and had it not been for the help of this good man, who led me to the cab, I should never have broken away. Now, thank God, I am beyond their power forever.\"\n\nWe had all listened intently to this remarkable statement. It was Holmes who broke the silence.\n\n\"Our difficulties are not over,\" he remarked, shaking his head. \"Our police work ends, but our legal work begins.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said I. \"A plausible lawyer could make it out as an act of self-defence. There may be a hundred crimes in the background, but it is only on this one that they can be tried.\"\n\n\"Come, come,\" said Baynes cheerily, \"I think better of the law than that. Self-defence is one thing. To entice a man in cold blood with the object of murdering him is another, whatever danger you may fear from him. No, no, we shall all be justified when we see the tenants of High Gable at the next Guildford Assizes.\"\n\nIt is a matter of history, however, that a little time was still to elapse before the Tiger of San Pedro should meet with his deserts. Wily and bold, he and his companion threw their pursuer off their track by entering a lodging-house in Edmonton Street and leaving by the back-gate into Curzon Square. From that day they were seen no more in England. Some six months afterwards the Marquess of Montalva and Signor Rulli, his secretary, were both murdered in their rooms at the Hotel Escurial at Madrid. The crime was ascribed to Nihilism, and the murderers were never arrested. Inspector Baynes visited us at Baker Street with a printed description of the dark face of the secretary, and of the masterful features, the magnetic black eyes, and the tufted brows of his master. We could not doubt that justice, if belated, had come at last.\n\n\"A chaotic case, my dear Watson,\" said Holmes over an evening pipe. \"It will not be possible for you to present it in that compact form which is dear to your heart. It covers two continents, concerns two groups of mysterious persons, and is further complicated by the highly respectable presence of our friend, Scott Eccles, whose inclusion shows me that the deceased Garcia had a scheming mind and a well-developed instinct of self-preservation. It is remarkable only for the fact that amid a perfect jungle of possibilities we, with our worthy collaborator, the inspector, have kept our close hold on the essentials and so been guided along the crooked and winding path. Is there any point which is not quite clear to you?\"\n\n\"The object of the mulatto cook's return?\"\n\n\"I think that the strange creature in the kitchen may account for it. The man was a primitive savage from the backwoods of San Pedro, and this was his fetish. When his companion and he had fled to some prearranged retreat\u2014already occupied, no doubt by a confederate\u2014the companion had persuaded him to leave so compromising an article of furniture. But the mulatto's heart was with it, and he was driven back to it next day, when, on reconnoitering through the window, he found policeman Walters in possession. He waited three days longer, and then his piety or his superstition drove him to try once more. Inspector Baynes, who, with his usual astuteness, had minimized the incident before me, had really recognized its importance and had left a trap into which the creature walked. Any other point, Watson?\"\n\n\"The torn bird, the pail of blood, the charred bones, all the mystery of that weird kitchen?\"\n\nHolmes smiled as he turned up an entry in his notebook.\n\n\"I spent a morning in the British Museum reading up on that and other points. Here is a quotation from Eckermann's Voodooism and the Negroid Religions:\n\nThe true voodoo-worshipper attempts nothing of importance without certain sacrifices which are intended to propitiate his unclean gods. In extreme cases these rites take the form of human sacrifices followed by cannibalism. The more usual victims are a white cock, which is plucked in pieces alive, or a black goat, whose throat is cut and body burned.\n\n\"So you see our savage friend was very orthodox in his ritual. It is grotesque, Watson,\" Holmes added, as he slowly fastened his notebook, \"but, as I have had occasion to remark, there is but one step from the grotesque to the horrible.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE CARDBOARD BOX", + "text": "In choosing a few typical cases which illustrate the remarkable mental qualities of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to select those which presented the minimum of sensationalism, while offering a fair field for his talents. It is, however, unfortunately impossible entirely to separate the sensational from the criminal, and a chronicler is left in the dilemma that he must either sacrifice details which are essential to his statement and so give a false impression of the problem, or he must use matter which chance, and not choice, has provided him with. With this short preface I shall turn to my notes of what proved to be a strange, though a peculiarly terrible, chain of events.\n\nIt was a blazing hot day in August. Baker Street was like an oven, and the glare of the sunlight upon the yellow brickwork of the house across the road was painful to the eye. It was hard to believe that these were the same walls which loomed so gloomily through the fogs of winter. Our blinds were half-drawn, and Holmes lay curled upon the sofa, reading and re-reading a letter which he had received by the morning post. For myself, my term of service in India had trained me to stand heat better than cold, and a thermometer at ninety was no hardship. But the morning paper was uninteresting. Parliament had risen. Everybody was out of town, and I yearned for the glades of the New Forest or the shingle of Southsea. A depleted bank account had caused me to postpone my holiday, and as to my companion, neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest attraction to him. He loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime. Appreciation of nature found no place among his many gifts, and his only change was when he turned his mind from the evil-doer of the town to track down his brother of the country.\n\nFinding that Holmes was too absorbed for conversation I had tossed aside the barren paper, and leaning back in my chair I fell into a brown study. Suddenly my companion's voice broke in upon my thoughts:\n\n\"You are right, Watson,\" said he. \"It does seem a most preposterous way of settling a dispute.\"\n\n\"Most preposterous!\" I exclaimed, and then suddenly realizing how he had echoed the inmost thought of my soul, I sat up in my chair and stared at him in blank amazement.\n\n\"What is this, Holmes?\" I cried. \"This is beyond anything which I could have imagined.\"\n\nHe laughed heartily at my perplexity.\n\n\"You remember,\" said he, \"that some little time ago when I read you the passage in one of Poe's sketches in which a close reasoner follows the unspoken thoughts of his companion, you were inclined to treat the matter as a mere tour-de-force of the author. On my remarking that I was constantly in the habit of doing the same thing you expressed incredulity.\"\n\n\"Oh, no!\"\n\n\"Perhaps not with your tongue, my dear Watson, but certainly with your eyebrows. So when I saw you throw down your paper and enter upon a train of thought, I was very happy to have the opportunity of reading it off, and eventually of breaking into it, as a proof that I had been in rapport with you.\"\n\nBut I was still far from satisfied. \"In the example which you read to me,\" said I, \"the reasoner drew his conclusions from the actions of the man whom he observed. If I remember right, he stumbled over a heap of stones, looked up at the stars, and so on. But I have been seated quietly in my chair, and what clues can I have given you?\"\n\n\"You do yourself an injustice. The features are given to man as the means by which he shall express his emotions, and yours are faithful servants.\"\n\n\"Do you mean to say that you read my train of thoughts from my features?\"\n\n\"Your features and especially your eyes. Perhaps you cannot yourself recall how your reverie commenced?\"\n\n\"No, I cannot.\"\n\n\"Then I will tell you. After throwing down your paper, which was the action which drew my attention to you, you sat for half a minute with a vacant expression. Then your eyes fixed themselves upon your newly framed picture of General Gordon, and I saw by the alteration in your face that a train of thought had been started. But it did not lead very far. Your eyes flashed across to the unframed portrait of Henry Ward Beecher which stands upon the top of your books. Then you glanced up at the wall, and of course your meaning was obvious. You were thinking that if the portrait were framed it would just cover that bare space and correspond with Gordon's picture over there.\"\n\n\"You have followed me wonderfully!\" I exclaimed.\n\n\"So far I could hardly have gone astray. But now your thoughts went back to Beecher, and you looked hard across as if you were studying the character in his features. Then your eyes ceased to pucker, but you continued to look across, and your face was thoughtful. You were recalling the incidents of Beecher's career. I was well aware that you could not do this without thinking of the mission which he undertook on behalf of the North at the time of the Civil War, for I remember your expressing your passionate indignation at the way in which he was received by the more turbulent of our people. You felt so strongly about it that I knew you could not think of Beecher without thinking of that also. When a moment later I saw your eyes wander away from the picture, I suspected that your mind had now turned to the Civil War, and when I observed that your lips set, your eyes sparkled, and your hands clenched I was positive that you were indeed thinking of the gallantry which was shown by both sides in that desperate struggle. But then, again, your face grew sadder; you shook your head. You were dwelling upon the sadness and horror and useless waste of life. Your hand stole towards your own old wound and a smile quivered on your lips, which showed me that the ridiculous side of this method of settling international questions had forced itself upon your mind. At this point I agreed with you that it was preposterous and was glad to find that all my deductions had been correct.\"\n\n\"Absolutely!\" said I. \"And now that you have explained it, I confess that I am as amazed as before.\"\n\n\"It was very superficial, my dear Watson, I assure you. I should not have intruded it upon your attention had you not shown some incredulity the other day. But I have in my hands here a little problem which may prove to be more difficult of solution than my small essay in thought reading. Have you observed in the paper a short paragraph referring to the remarkable contents of a packet sent through the post to Miss Cushing, of Cross Street, Croydon?'\n\n\"No. I saw nothing.\"\n\n\"Ah! then you must have overlooked it. Just toss it over to me. Here it is, under the financial column. Perhaps you would be good enough to read it aloud.\"\n\nI picked up the paper which he had thrown back to me and read the paragraph indicated. It was headed \"A Gruesome Packet.\"\n\n\"Miss Susan Cushing, living at Cross Street, Croydon, has been made the victim of what must be regarded as a peculiarly revolting practical joke unless some more sinister meaning should prove to be attached to the incident. At two o'clock yesterday afternoon a small packet, wrapped in brown paper, was handed in by the postman. A cardboard box was inside, which was filled with coarse salt. On emptying this, Miss Cushing was horrified to find two human ears, apparently quite freshly severed. The box had been sent by parcel post from Belfast upon the morning before. There is no indication as to the sender, and the matter is the more mysterious as Miss Cushing, who is a maiden lady of fifty, has led a most retired life, and has so few acquaintances or correspondents that it is a rare event for her to receive anything through the post. Some years ago, however, when she resided at Penge, she let apartments in her house to three young medical students, whom she was obliged to get rid of on account of their noisy and irregular habits. The police are of opinion that this outrage may have been perpetrated upon Miss Cushing by these youths, who owed her a grudge and who hoped to frighten her by sending her these relics of the dissecting-rooms. Some probability is lent to the theory by the fact that one of these students came from the north of Ireland, and, to the best of Miss Cushing's belief, from Belfast. In the meantime, the matter is being actively investigated, Mr. Lestrade, one of the very smartest of our detective officers, being in charge of the case.\"\n\n\"So much for the Daily Chronicle,\" said Holmes as I finished reading. \"Now for our friend Lestrade. I had a note from him this morning, in which he says:\n\n\"I think that this case is very much in your line. We have every hope of clearing the matter up, but we find a little difficulty in getting anything to work upon. We have, of course, wired to the Belfast post office, but a large number of parcels were handed in upon that day, and they have no means of identifying this particular one, or of remembering the sender. The box is a half-pound box of honeydew tobacco and does not help us in any way. The medical student theory still appears to me to be the most feasible, but if you should have a few hours to spare I should be very happy to see you out here. I shall be either at the house or in the police-station all day.\n\n\"What say you, Watson? Can you rise superior to the heat and run down to Croydon with me on the off chance of a case for your annals?\"\n\n\"I was longing for something to do.\"\n\n\"You shall have it then. Ring for our boots and tell them to order a cab. I'll be back in a moment when I have changed my dressing-gown and filled my cigar-case.\"\n\nA shower of rain fell while we were in the train, and the heat was far less oppressive in Croydon than in town. Holmes had sent on a wire, so that Lestrade, as wiry, as dapper, and as ferret-like as ever, was waiting for us at the station. A walk of five minutes took us to Cross Street, where Miss Cushing resided.\n\nIt was a very long street of two-story brick houses, neat and prim, with whitened stone steps and little groups of aproned women gossiping at the doors. Halfway down, Lestrade stopped and tapped at a door, which was opened by a small servant girl. Miss Cushing was sitting in the front room, into which we were ushered. She was a placid-faced woman, with large, gentle eyes, and grizzled hair curving down over her temples on each side. A worked antimacassar lay upon her lap and a basket of coloured silks stood upon a stool beside her.\n\n\"They are in the outhouse, those dreadful things,\" said she as Lestrade entered. \"I wish that you would take them away altogether.\"\n\n\"So I shall, Miss Cushing. I only kept them here until my friend, Mr. Holmes, should have seen them in your presence.\"\n\n\"Why in my presence, sir?\"\n\n\"In case he wished to ask any questions.\"\n\n\"What is the use of asking me questions when I tell you I know nothing whatever about it?\"\n\n\"Quite so, madam,\" said Holmes in his soothing way. \"I have no doubt that you have been annoyed more than enough already over this business.\"\n\n\"Indeed, I have, sir. I am a quiet woman and live a retired life. It is something new for me to see my name in the papers and to find the police in my house. I won't have those things in here, Mr. Lestrade. If you wish to see them you must go to the outhouse.\"\n\nIt was a small shed in the narrow garden which ran behind the house. Lestrade went in and brought out a yellow cardboard box, with a piece of brown paper and some string. There was a bench at the end of the path, and we all sat down while Holmes examined, one by one, the articles which Lestrade had handed to him.\n\n\"The string is exceedingly interesting,\" he remarked, holding it up to the light and sniffing at it. \"What do you make of this string, Lestrade?\"\n\n\"It has been tarred.\"\n\n\"Precisely. It is a piece of tarred twine. You have also, no doubt, remarked that Miss Cushing has cut the cord with a scissors, as can be seen by the double fray on each side. This is of importance.\"\n\n\"I cannot see the importance,\" said Lestrade.\n\n\"The importance lies in the fact that the knot is left intact, and that this knot is of a peculiar character.\"\n\n\"It is very neatly tied. I had already made a note to that effect,\" said Lestrade complacently.\n\n\"So much for the string, then,\" said Holmes, smiling, \"now for the box wrapper. Brown paper, with a distinct smell of coffee. What, did you not observe it? I think there can be no doubt of it. Address printed in rather straggling characters: 'Miss S. Cushing, Cross Street, Croydon.' Done with a broad-pointed pen, probably a J, and with very inferior ink. The word 'Croydon' has been originally spelled with an 'i,' which has been changed to 'y.' The parcel was directed, then, by a man\u2014the printing is distinctly masculine\u2014of limited education and unacquainted with the town of Croydon. So far, so good! The box is a yellow, half-pound honeydew box, with nothing distinctive save two thumb marks at the left bottom corner. It is filled with rough salt of the quality used for preserving hides and other of the coarser commercial purposes. And embedded in it are these very singular enclosures.\"\n\nHe took out the two ears as he spoke, and laying a board across his knee he examined them minutely, while Lestrade and I, bending forward on each side of him, glanced alternately at these dreadful relics and at the thoughtful, eager face of our companion. Finally he returned them to the box once more and sat for a while in deep meditation.\n\n\"You have observed, of course,\" said he at last, \"that the ears are not a pair.\n\n\"Yes, I have noticed that. But if this were the practical joke of some students from the dissecting-rooms, it would be as easy for them to send two odd ears as a pair.\"\n\n\"Precisely. But this is not a practical joke.\"\n\n\"You are sure of it?\"\n\n\"The presumption is strongly against it. Bodies in the dissecting-rooms are injected with preservative fluid. These ears bear no signs of this. They are fresh, too. They have been cut off with a blunt instrument, which would hardly happen if a student had done it. Again, carbolic or rectified spirits would be the preservatives which would suggest themselves to the medical mind, certainly not rough salt. I repeat that there is no practical joke here, but that we are investigating a serious crime.\"\n\nA vague thrill ran through me as I listened to my companion's words and saw the stern gravity which had hardened his features. This brutal preliminary seemed to shadow forth some strange and inexplicable horror in the background. Lestrade, however, shook his head like a man who is only half convinced.\n\n\"There are objections to the joke theory, no doubt,\" said he, \"but there are much stronger reasons against the other. We know that this woman has led a most quiet and respectable life at Penge and here for the last twenty years. She has hardly been away from her home for a day during that time. Why on earth, then, should any criminal send her the proofs of his guilt, especially as, unless she is a most consummate actress, she understands quite as little of the matter as we do?\"\n\n\"That is the problem which we have to solve,\" Holmes answered, \"and for my part I shall set about it by presuming that my reasoning is correct, and that a double murder has been committed. One of these ears is a woman's, small, finely formed, and pierced for an earring. The other is a man's, sun-burned discoloured, and also pierced for an earring. These two people are presumably dead, or we should have heard their story before now. To-day is Friday. The packet was posted on Thursday morning. The tragedy, then, occurred on Wednesday or Tuesday, or earlier. If the two people were murdered, who but their murderer would have sent this sign of his work to Miss Cushing? We may take it that the sender of the packet is the man whom we want. But he must have some strong reason for sending Miss Cushing this packet. What reason then? It must have been to tell her that the deed was done! or to pain her, perhaps. But in that case she knows who it is. Does she know? I doubt it. If she knew, why should she call the police in? She might have buried the ears, and no one would have been the wiser. That is what she would have done if she had wished to shield the criminal. But if she does not wish to shield him she would give his name. There is a tangle here which needs straightening out.\" He had been talking in a high, quick voice, staring blankly up over the garden fence, but now he sprang briskly to his feet and walked towards the house.\n\n\"I have a few questions to ask Miss Cushing,\" said he.\n\n\"In that case I may leave you here,\" said Lestrade, \"for I have another small business on hand. I think that I have nothing further to learn from Miss Cushing. You will find me at the police-station.\"\n\n\"We shall look in on our way to the train,\" answered Holmes. A moment later he and I were back in the front room, where the impassive lady was still quietly working away at her antimacassar. She put it down on her lap as we entered and looked at us with her frank, searching blue eyes.\n\n\"I am convinced, sir,\" she said, \"that this matter is a mistake, and that the parcel was never meant for me at all. I have said this several times to the gentleman from Scotland Yard, but he simply laughs at me. I have not an enemy in the world, as far as I know, so why should anyone play me such a trick?\"\n\n\"I am coming to be of the same opinion, Miss Cushing,\" said Holmes, taking a seat beside her. \"I think that it is more than probable\u2014\" he paused, and I was surprised, on glancing round to see that he was staring with singular intentness at the lady's profile. Surprise and satisfaction were both for an instant to be read upon his eager face, though when she glanced round to find out the cause of his silence he had become as demure as ever. I stared hard myself at her flat, grizzled hair, her trim cap, her little gilt earrings, her placid features; but I could see nothing which could account for my companion's evident excitement.\n\n\"There were one or two questions\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, I am weary of questions!\" cried Miss Cushing impatiently.\n\n\"You have two sisters, I believe.\"\n\n\"How could you know that?\"\n\n\"I observed the very instant that I entered the room that you have a portrait group of three ladies upon the mantelpiece, one of whom is undoubtedly yourself, while the others are so exceedingly like you that there could be no doubt of the relationship.\"\n\n\"Yes, you are quite right. Those are my sisters, Sarah and Mary.\"\n\n\"And here at my elbow is another portrait, taken at Liverpool, of your younger sister, in the company of a man who appears to be a steward by his uniform. I observe that she was unmarried at the time.\"\n\n\"You are very quick at observing.\"\n\n\"That is my trade.\"\n\n\"Well, you are quite right. But she was married to Mr. Browner a few days afterwards. He was on the South American line when that was taken, but he was so fond of her that he couldn't abide to leave her for so long, and he got into the Liverpool and London boats.\"\n\n\"Ah, the Conqueror, perhaps?\"\n\n\"No, the May Day, when last I heard. Jim came down here to see me once. That was before he broke the pledge; but afterwards he would always take drink when he was ashore, and a little drink would send him stark, staring mad. Ah! it was a bad day that ever he took a glass in his hand again. First he dropped me, then he quarrelled with Sarah, and now that Mary has stopped writing we don't know how things are going with them.\"\n\nIt was evident that Miss Cushing had come upon a subject on which she felt very deeply. Like most people who lead a lonely life, she was shy at first, but ended by becoming extremely communicative. She told us many details about her brother-in-law the steward, and then wandering off on the subject of her former lodgers, the medical students, she gave us a long account of their delinquencies, with their names and those of their hospitals. Holmes listened attentively to everything, throwing in a question from time to time.\n\n\"About your second sister, Sarah,\" said he. \"I wonder, since you are both maiden ladies, that you do not keep house together.\"\n\n\"Ah! you don't know Sarah's temper or you would wonder no more. I tried it when I came to Croydon, and we kept on until about two months ago, when we had to part. I don't want to say a word against my own sister, but she was always meddlesome and hard to please, was Sarah.\"\n\n\"You say that she quarrelled with your Liverpool relations.\"\n\n\"Yes, and they were the best of friends at one time. Why, she went up there to live in order to be near them. And now she has no word hard enough for Jim Browner. The last six months that she was here she would speak of nothing but his drinking and his ways. He had caught her meddling, I suspect, and given her a bit of his mind, and that was the start of it.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Miss Cushing,\" said Holmes, rising and bowing. \"Your sister Sarah lives, I think you said, at New Street, Wallington? Good-bye, and I am very sorry that you should have been troubled over a case with which, as you say, you have nothing whatever to do.\"\n\nThere was a cab passing as we came out, and Holmes hailed it.\n\n\"How far to Wallington?\" he asked.\n\n\"Only about a mile, sir.\"\n\n\"Very good. Jump in, Watson. We must strike while the iron is hot. Simple as the case is, there have been one or two very instructive details in connection with it. Just pull up at a telegraph office as you pass, cabby.\"\n\nHolmes sent off a short wire and for the rest of the drive lay back in the cab, with his hat tilted over his nose to keep the sun from his face. Our driver pulled up at a house which was not unlike the one which we had just quitted. My companion ordered him to wait, and had his hand upon the knocker, when the door opened and a grave young gentleman in black, with a very shiny hat, appeared on the step.\n\n\"Is Miss Cushing at home?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"Miss Sarah Cushing is extremely ill,\" said he. \"She has been suffering since yesterday from brain symptoms of great severity. As her medical adviser, I cannot possibly take the responsibility of allowing anyone to see her. I should recommend you to call again in ten days.\" He drew on his gloves, closed the door, and marched off down the street.\n\n\"Well, if we can't we can't,\" said Holmes, cheerfully.\n\n\"Perhaps she could not or would not have told you much.\"\n\n\"I did not wish her to tell me anything. I only wanted to look at her. However, I think that I have got all that I want. Drive us to some decent hotel, cabby, where we may have some lunch, and afterwards we shall drop down upon friend Lestrade at the police-station.\"\n\nWe had a pleasant little meal together, during which Holmes would talk about nothing but violins, narrating with great exultation how he had purchased his own Stradivarius, which was worth at least five hundred guineas, at a Jew broker's in Tottenham Court Road for fifty-five shillings. This led him to Paganini, and we sat for an hour over a bottle of claret while he told me anecdote after anecdote of that extraordinary man. The afternoon was far advanced and the hot glare had softened into a mellow glow before we found ourselves at the police-station. Lestrade was waiting for us at the door.\n\n\"A telegram for you, Mr. Holmes,\" said he.\n\n\"Ha! It is the answer!\" He tore it open, glanced his eyes over it, and crumpled it into his pocket. \"That's all right,\" said he.\n\n\"Have you found out anything?\"\n\n\"I have found out everything!\"\n\n\"What!\" Lestrade stared at him in amazement. \"You are joking.\"\n\n\"I was never more serious in my life. A shocking crime has been committed, and I think I have now laid bare every detail of it.\"\n\n\"And the criminal?\"\n\nHolmes scribbled a few words upon the back of one of his visiting cards and threw it over to Lestrade.\n\n\"That is the name,\" he said. \"You cannot effect an arrest until to morrow night at the earliest. I should prefer that you do not mention my name at all in connection with the case, as I choose to be only associated with those crimes which present some difficulty in their solution. Come on, Watson.\" We strode off together to the station, leaving Lestrade still staring with a delighted face at the card which Holmes had thrown him.\n\n\"The case,\" said Sherlock Holmes as we chatted over our cigars that night in our rooms at Baker Street. \"is one where, as in the investigations which you have chronicled under the names of 'A Study in Scarlet' and of 'The Sign of Four,' we have been compelled to reason backward from effects to causes. I have written to Lestrade asking him to supply us with the details which are now wanting, and which he will only get after he has secured his man. That he may be safely trusted to do, for although he is absolutely devoid of reason, he is as tenacious as a bulldog when he once understands what he has to do, and, indeed, it is just this tenacity which has brought him to the top at Scotland Yard.\"\n\n\"Your case is not complete, then?\" I asked.\n\n\"It is fairly complete in essentials. We know who the author of the revolting business is, although one of the victims still escapes us. Of course, you have formed your own conclusions.\"\n\n\"I presume that this Jim Browner, the steward of a Liverpool boat, is the man whom you suspect?\"\n\n\"Oh! it is more than a suspicion.\"\n\n\"And yet I cannot see anything save very vague indications.\"\n\n\"On the contrary, to my mind nothing could be more clear. Let me run over the principal steps. We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind, which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations. What did we see first? A very placid and respectable lady, who seemed quite innocent of any secret, and a portrait which showed me that she had two younger sisters. It instantly flashed across my mind that the box might have been meant for one of these. I set the idea aside as one which could be disproved or confirmed at our leisure. Then we went to the garden, as you remember, and we saw the very singular contents of the little yellow box.\n\n\"The string was of the quality which is used by sailmakers aboard ship, and at once a whiff of the sea was perceptible in our investigation. When I observed that the knot was one which is popular with sailors, that the parcel had been posted at a port, and that the male ear was pierced for an earring which is so much more common among sailors than landsmen, I was quite certain that all the actors in the tragedy were to be found among our seafaring classes.\n\n\"When I came to examine the address of the packet I observed that it was to Miss S. Cushing. Now, the oldest sister would, of course, be Miss Cushing, and although her initial was 'S' it might belong to one of the others as well. In that case we should have to commence our investigation from a fresh basis altogether. I therefore went into the house with the intention of clearing up this point. I was about to assure Miss Cushing that I was convinced that a mistake had been made when you may remember that I came suddenly to a stop. The fact was that I had just seen something which filled me with surprise and at the same time narrowed the field of our inquiry immensely.\n\n\"As a medical man, you are aware, Watson, that there is no part of the body which varies so much as the human ear. Each ear is as a rule quite distinctive and differs from all other ones. In last year's Anthropological Journal you will find two short monographs from my pen upon the subject. I had, therefore, examined the ears in the box with the eyes of an expert and had carefully noted their anatomical peculiarities. Imagine my surprise, then, when on looking at Miss Cushing I perceived that her ear corresponded exactly with the female ear which I had just inspected. The matter was entirely beyond coincidence. There was the same shortening of the pinna, the same broad curve of the upper lobe, the same convolution of the inner cartilage. In all essentials it was the same ear.\n\n\"Of course I at once saw the enormous importance of the observation. It was evident that the victim was a blood relation, and probably a very close one. I began to talk to her about her family, and you remember that she at once gave us some exceedingly valuable details.\n\n\"In the first place, her sister's name was Sarah, and her address had until recently been the same, so that it was quite obvious how the mistake had occurred and for whom the packet was meant. Then we heard of this steward, married to the third sister, and learned that he had at one time been so intimate with Miss Sarah that she had actually gone up to Liverpool to be near the Browners, but a quarrel had afterwards divided them. This quarrel had put a stop to all communications for some months, so that if Browner had occasion to address a packet to Miss Sarah, he would undoubtedly have done so to her old address.\n\n\"And now the matter had begun to straighten itself out wonderfully. We had learned of the existence of this steward, an impulsive man, of strong passions\u2014you remember that he threw up what must have been a very superior berth in order to be nearer to his wife\u2014subject, too, to occasional fits of hard drinking. We had reason to believe that his wife had been murdered, and that a man\u2014presumably a seafaring man\u2014had been murdered at the same time. Jealousy, of course, at once suggests itself as the motive for the crime. And why should these proofs of the deed be sent to Miss Sarah Cushing? Probably because during her residence in Liverpool she had some hand in bringing about the events which led to the tragedy. You will observe that this line of boats calls at Belfast. Dublin, and Waterford; so that, presuming that Browner had committed the deed and had embarked at once upon his steamer, the May Day, Belfast would be the first place at which he could post his terrible packet.\n\n\"A second solution was at this stage obviously possible, and although I thought it exceedingly unlikely, I was determined to elucidate it before going further. An unsuccessful lover might have killed Mr. and Mrs. Browner, and the male ear might have belonged to the husband. There were many grave objections to this theory, but it was conceivable. I therefore sent off a telegram to my friend Algar, of the Liverpool force, and asked him to find out if Mrs. Browner were at home, and if Browner had departed in the May Day. Then we went on to Wallington to visit Miss Sarah.\n\n\"I was curious, in the first place, to see how far the family ear had been reproduced in her. Then, of course, she might give us very important information, but I was not sanguine that she would. She must have heard of the business the day before, since all Croydon was ringing with it, and she alone could have understood for whom the packet was meant. If she had been willing to help justice she would probably have communicated with the police already. However, it was clearly our duty to see her, so we went. We found that the news of the arrival of the packet\u2014for her illness dated from that time\u2014had such an effect upon her as to bring on brain fever. It was clearer than ever that she understood its full significance, but equally clear that we should have to wait some time for any assistance from her.\n\n\"However, we were really independent of her help. Our answers were waiting for us at the police-station, where I had directed Algar to send them. Nothing could be more conclusive. Mrs. Browner's house had been closed for more than three days, and the neighbours were of opinion that she had gone south to see her relatives. It had been ascertained at the shipping offices that Browner had left aboard of the May Day, and I calculate that she is due in the Thames to-morrow night. When he arrives he will be met by the obtuse but resolute Lestrade, and I have no doubt that we shall have all our details filled in.\"\n\nSherlock Holmes was not disappointed in his expectations. Two days later he received a bulky envelope, which contained a short note from the detective, and a typewritten document, which covered several pages of foolscap.\n\n\"Lestrade has got him all right,\" said Holmes, glancing up at me. \"Perhaps it would interest you to hear what he says.\"\n\n\u2002\"MY DEAR MR. HOLMES:\n\n\u2002\"In accordance with the scheme which we had formed in order to test our theories\" [\"the 'we' is rather fine, Watson, is it not?\"] \"I went down to the Albert Dock yesterday at 6 P. M., and boarded the S. S. May Day, belonging to the Liverpool, Dublin, and London Steam Packet Company. On inquiry, I found that there was a steward on board of the name of James Browner and that he had acted during the voyage in such an extraordinary manner that the captain had been compelled to relieve him of his duties. On descending to his berth, I found him seated upon a chest with his head sunk upon his hands, rocking himself to and fro. He is a big, powerful chap, clean-shaven, and very swarthy\u2014something like Aldridge, who helped us in the bogus laundry affair. He jumped up when he heard my business, and I had my whistle to my lips to call a couple of river police, who were round the corner, but he seemed to have no heart in him, and he held out his hands quietly enough for the darbies. We brought him along to the cells, and his box as well, for we thought there might be something incriminating; but, bar a big sharp knife such as most sailors have, we got nothing for our trouble. However, we find that we shall want no more evidence, for on being brought before the inspector at the station he asked leave to make a statement, which was, of course, taken down, just as he made it, by our shorthand man. We had three copies typewritten, one of which I enclose. The affair proves, as I always thought it would, to be an extremely simple one, but I am obliged to you for assisting me in my investigation. With kind regards,\n\n\u2002\"Yours very truly,\n\n\u2002\"G. LESTRADE.\n\n\"Hum! The investigation really was a very simple one,\" remarked Holmes, \"but I don't think it struck him in that light when he first called us in. However, let us see what Jim Browner has to say for himself. This is his statement as made before Inspector Montgomery at the Shadwell Police Station, and it has the advantage of being verbatim.\"\n\n\"'Have I anything to say? Yes, I have a deal to say. I have to make a clean breast of it all. You can hang me, or you can leave me alone. I don't care a plug which you do. I tell you I've not shut an eye in sleep since I did it, and I don't believe I ever will again until I get past all waking. Sometimes it's his face, but most generally it's hers. I'm never without one or the other before me. He looks frowning and black-like, but she has a kind o' surprise upon her face. Ay, the white lamb, she might well be surprised when she read death on a face that had seldom looked anything but love upon her before.\n\n\"'But it was Sarah's fault, and may the curse of a broken man put a blight on her and set the blood rotting in her veins! It's not that I want to clear myself. I know that I went back to drink, like the beast that I was. But she would have forgiven me; she would have stuck as close to me as a rope to a block if that woman had never darkened our door. For Sarah Cushing loved me\u2014that's the root of the business\u2014she loved me until all her love turned to poisonous hate when she knew that I thought more of my wife's footmark in the mud than I did of her whole body and soul.\n\n\"'There were three sisters altogether. The old one was just a good woman, the second was a devil, and the third was an angel. Sarah was thirty-three, and Mary was twenty-nine when I married. We were just as happy as the day was long when we set up house together, and in all Liverpool there was no better woman than my Mary. And then we asked Sarah up for a week, and the week grew into a month, and one thing led to another, until she was just one of ourselves.\n\n\"'I was blue ribbon at that time, and we were putting a little money by, and all was as bright as a new dollar. My God, whoever would have thought that it could have come to this? Whoever would have dreamed it?\n\n\"'I used to be home for the week-ends very often, and sometimes if the ship were held back for cargo I would have a whole week at a time, and in this way I saw a deal of my sister-in-law, Sarah. She was a fine tall woman, black and quick and fierce, with a proud way of carrying her head, and a glint from her eye like a spark from a flint. But when little Mary was there I had never a thought of her, and that I swear as I hope for God's mercy.\n\n\"'It had seemed to me sometimes that she liked to be alone with me, or to coax me out for a walk with her, but I had never thought anything of that. But one evening my eyes were opened. I had come up from the ship and found my wife out, but Sarah at home. \"Where's Mary?\" I asked. \"Oh, she has gone to pay some accounts.\" I was impatient and paced up and down the room. \"Can't you be happy for five minutes without Mary, Jim?\" says she. \"It's a bad compliment to me that you can't be contented with my society for so short a time.\" \"That's all right, my lass,\" said I, putting out my hand towards her in a kindly way, but she had it in both hers in an instant, and they burned as if they were in a fever. I looked into her eyes and I read it all there. There was no need for her to speak, nor for me either. I frowned and drew my hand away. Then she stood by my side in silence for a bit, and then put up her hand and patted me on the shoulder. \"Steady old Jim!\" said she, and with a kind o' mocking laugh, she ran out of the room.\n\n\"'Well, from that time Sarah hated me with her whole heart and soul, and she is a woman who can hate, too. I was a fool to let her go on biding with us\u2014a besotted fool\u2014but I never said a word to Mary, for I knew it would grieve her. Things went on much as before, but after a time I began to find that there was a bit of a change in Mary herself. She had always been so trusting and so innocent, but now she became queer and suspicious, wanting to know where I had been and what I had been doing, and whom my letters were from, and what I had in my pockets, and a thousand such follies. Day by day she grew queerer and more irritable, and we had ceaseless rows about nothing. I was fairly puzzled by it all. Sarah avoided me now, but she and Mary were just inseparable. I can see now how she was plotting and scheming and poisoning my wife's mind against me, but I was such a blind beetle that I could not understand it at the time. Then I broke my blue ribbon and began to drink again, but I think I should not have done it if Mary had been the same as ever. She had some reason to be disgusted with me now, and the gap between us began to be wider and wider. And then this Alec Fairbairn chipped in, and things became a thousand times blacker.\n\n\"'It was to see Sarah that he came to my house first, but soon it was to see us, for he was a man with winning ways, and he made friends wherever he went. He was a dashing, swaggering chap, smart and curled, who had seen half the world and could talk of what he had seen. He was good company, I won't deny it, and he had wonderful polite ways with him for a sailor man, so that I think there must have been a time when he knew more of the poop than the forecastle. For a month he was in and out of my house, and never once did it cross my mind that harm might come of his soft, tricky ways. And then at last something made me suspect, and from that day my peace was gone forever.\n\n\"'It was only a little thing, too. I had come into the parlour unexpected, and as I walked in at the door I saw a light of welcome on my wife's face. But as she saw who it was it faded again, and she turned away with a look of disappointment. That was enough for me. There was no one but Alec Fairbairn whose step she could have mistaken for mine. If I could have seen him then I should have killed him, for I have always been like a madman when my temper gets loose. Mary saw the devil's light in my eyes, and she ran forward with her hands on my sleeve. \"Don't, Jim, don't!\" says she. \"Where's Sarah?\" I asked. \"In the kitchen,\" says she. \"Sarah,\" says I as I went in, \"this man Fairbairn is never to darken my door again.\" \"Why not?\" says she. \"Because I order it.\" \"Oh!\" says she, \"if my friends are not good enough for this house, then I am not good enough for it either.\" \"You can do what you like,\" says I, \"but if Fairbairn shows his face here again I'll send you one of his ears for a keepsake.\" She was frightened by my face, I think, for she never answered a word, and the same evening she left my house.\n\n\"'Well, I don't know now whether it was pure devilry on the part of this woman, or whether she thought that she could turn me against my wife by encouraging her to misbehave. Anyway, she took a house just two streets off and let lodgings to sailors. Fairbairn used to stay there, and Mary would go round to have tea with her sister and him. How often she went I don't know, but I followed her one day, and as I broke in at the door Fairbairn got away over the back garden wall, like the cowardly skunk that he was. I swore to my wife that I would kill her if I found her in his company again, and I led her back with me, sobbing and trembling, and as white as a piece of paper. There was no trace of love between us any longer. I could see that she hated me and feared me, and when the thought of it drove me to drink, then she despised me as well.\n\n\"'Well, Sarah found that she could not make a living in Liverpool, so she went back, as I understand, to live with her sister in Croydon, and things jogged on much the same as ever at home. And then came this last week and all the misery and ruin.\n\n\"'It was in this way. We had gone on the May Day for a round voyage of seven days, but a hogshead got loose and started one of our plates, so that we had to put back into port for twelve hours. I left the ship and came home, thinking what a surprise it would be for my wife, and hoping that maybe she would be glad to see me so soon. The thought was in my head as I turned into my own street, and at that moment a cab passed me, and there she was, sitting by the side of Fairbairn, the two chatting and laughing, with never a thought for me as I stood watching them from the footpath.\n\n\"'I tell you, and I give you my word for it, that from that moment I was not my own master, and it is all like a dim dream when I look back on it. I had been drinking hard of late, and the two things together fairly turned my brain. There's something throbbing in my head now, like a docker's hammer, but that morning I seemed to have all Niagara whizzing and buzzing in my ears.\n\n\"'Well, I took to my heels, and I ran after the cab. I had a heavy oak stick in my hand, and I tell you I saw red from the first; but as I ran I got cunning, too, and hung back a little to see them without being seen. They pulled up soon at the railway station. There was a good crowd round the booking-office, so I got quite close to them without being seen. They took tickets for New Brighton. So did I, but I got in three carriages behind them. When we reached it they walked along the Parade, and I was never more than a hundred yards from them. At last I saw them hire a boat and start for a row, for it was a very hot day, and they thought, no doubt, that it would be cooler on the water.\n\n\"'It was just as if they had been given into my hands. There was a bit of a haze, and you could not see more than a few hundred yards. I hired a boat for myself; and I pulled after them. I could see the blur of their craft, but they were going nearly as fast as I, and they must have been a long mile from the shore before I caught them up. The haze was like a curtain all round us, and there were we three in the middle of it. My God, shall I ever forget their faces when they saw who was in the boat that was closing in upon them? She screamed out. He swore like a madman and jabbed at me with an oar, for he must have seen death in my eyes. I got past it and got one in with my stick that crushed his head like an egg. I would have spared her, perhaps, for all my madness, but she threw her arms round him, crying out to him, and calling him \"Alec.\" I struck again, and she lay stretched beside him. I was like a wild beast then that had tasted blood. If Sarah had been there, by the Lord, she should have joined them. I pulled out my knife, and\u2014well, there! I've said enough. It gave me a kind of savage joy when I thought how Sarah would feel when she had such signs as these of what her meddling had brought about. Then I tied the bodies into the boat, stove a plank, and stood by until they had sunk. I knew very well that the owner would think that they had lost their bearings in the haze, and had drifted off out to sea. I cleaned myself up, got back to land, and joined my ship without a soul having a suspicion of what had passed. That night I made up the packet for Sarah Cushing, and next day I sent it from Belfast.\n\n\"'There you have the whole truth of it. You can hang me, or do what you like with me, but you cannot punish me as I have been punished already. I cannot shut my eyes but I see those two faces staring at me\u2014staring at me as they stared when my boat broke through the haze. I killed them quick, but they are killing me slow; and if I have another night of it I shall be either mad or dead before morning. You won't put me alone into a cell, sir? For pity's sake don't, and may you be treated in your day of agony as you treat me now.'\n\n\"What is the meaning of it, Watson?\" said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. \"What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE RED CIRCLE", + "text": "Well, Mrs. Warren, I cannot see that you have any particular cause for uneasiness, nor do I understand why I, whose time is of some value, should interfere in the matter. I really have other things to engage me.\" So spoke Sherlock Holmes and turned back to the great scrapbook in which he was arranging and indexing some of his recent material.\n\nBut the landlady had the pertinacity and also the cunning of her sex. She held her ground firmly.\n\n\"You arranged an affair for a lodger of mine last year,\" she said\u2014\"Mr. Fairdale Hobbs.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes\u2014a simple matter.\"\n\n\"But he would never cease talking of it\u2014your kindness, sir, and the way in which you brought light into the darkness. I remembered his words when I was in doubt and darkness myself. I know you could if you only would.\"\n\nHolmes was accessible upon the side of flattery, and also, to do him justice, upon the side of kindliness. The two forces made him lay down his gum-brush with a sigh of resignation and push back his chair.\n\n\"Well, well, Mrs. Warren, let us hear about it, then. You don't object to tobacco, I take it? Thank you, Watson\u2014the matches! You are uneasy, as I understand, because your new lodger remains in his rooms and you cannot see him. Why, bless you, Mrs. Warren, if I were your lodger you often would not see me for weeks on end.\"\n\n\"No doubt, sir; but this is different. It frightens me, Mr. Holmes. I can't sleep for fright. To hear his quick step moving here and moving there from early morning to late at night, and yet never to catch so much as a glimpse of him\u2014it's more than I can stand. My husband is as nervous over it as I am, but he is out at his work all day, while I get no rest from it. What is he hiding for? What has he done? Except for the girl, I am all alone in the house with him, and it's more than my nerves can stand.\"\n\nHolmes leaned forward and laid his long, thin fingers upon the woman's shoulder. He had an almost hypnotic power of soothing when he wished. The scared look faded from her eyes, and her agitated features smoothed into their usual commonplace. She sat down in the chair which he had indicated.\n\n\"If I take it up I must understand every detail,\" said he. \"Take time to consider. The smallest point may be the most essential. You say that the man came ten days ago and paid you for a fortnight's board and lodging?\"\n\n\"He asked my terms, sir. I said fifty shillings a week. There is a small sitting-room and bedroom, and all complete, at the top of the house.\"\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"He said, 'I'll pay you five pounds a week if I can have it on my own terms.' I'm a poor woman, sir, and Mr. Warren earns little, and the money meant much to me. He took out a ten-pound note, and he held it out to me then and there. 'You can have the same every fortnight for a long time to come if you keep the terms,' he said. 'If not, I'll have no more to do with you.'\"\n\n\"What were the terms?\"\n\n\"Well, sir, they were that he was to have a key of the house. That was all right. Lodgers often have them. Also, that he was to be left entirely to himself and never, upon any excuse, to be disturbed.\"\n\n\"Nothing wonderful in that, surely?\"\n\n\"Not in reason, sir. But this is out of all reason. He has been there for ten days, and neither Mr. Warren, nor I, nor the girl has once set eyes upon him. We can hear that quick step of his pacing up and down, up and down, night, morning, and noon; but except on that first night he has never once gone out of the house.\"\n\n\"Oh, he went out the first night, did he?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, and returned very late\u2014after we were all in bed. He told me after he had taken the rooms that he would do so and asked me not to bar the door. I heard him come up the stair after midnight.\"\n\n\"But his meals?\"\n\n\"It was his particular direction that we should always, when he rang, leave his meal upon a chair, outside his door. Then he rings again when he has finished, and we take it down from the same chair. If he wants anything else he prints it on a slip of paper and leaves it.\"\n\n\"Prints it?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir; prints it in pencil. Just the word, nothing more. Here's one I brought to show you\u2014SOAP. Here's another\u2014MATCH. This is one he left the first morning\u2014DAILY GAZETTE. I leave that paper with his breakfast every morning.\"\n\n\"Dear me, Watson,\" said Holmes, staring with great curiosity at the slips of foolscap which the landlady had handed to him, \"this is certainly a little unusual. Seclusion I can understand; but why print? Printing is a clumsy process. Why not write? What would it suggest, Watson?\"\n\n\"That he desired to conceal his handwriting.\"\n\n\"But why? What can it matter to him that his landlady should have a word of his writing? Still, it may be as you say. Then, again, why such laconic messages?\"\n\n\"I cannot imagine.\"\n\n\"It opens a pleasing field for intelligent speculation. The words are written with a broad-pointed, violet-tinted pencil of a not unusual pattern. You will observe that the paper is torn away at the side here after the printing was done, so that the 's' of 'SOAP' is partly gone. Suggestive, Watson, is it not?\"\n\n\"Of caution?\"\n\n\"Exactly. There was evidently some mark, some thumbprint, something which might give a clue to the person's identity. Now, Mrs. Warren, you say that the man was of middle size, dark, and bearded. What age would he be?\"\n\n\"Youngish, sir\u2014not over thirty.\"\n\n\"Well, can you give me no further indications?\"\n\n\"He spoke good English, sir, and yet I thought he was a foreigner by his accent.\"\n\n\"And he was well dressed?\"\n\n\"Very smartly dressed, sir\u2014quite the gentleman. Dark clothes\u2014nothing you would note.\"\n\n\"He gave no name?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"And has had no letters or callers?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\n\"But surely you or the girl enter his room of a morning?\"\n\n\"No, sir; he looks after himself entirely.\"\n\n\"Dear me! that is certainly remarkable. What about his luggage?\"\n\n\"He had one big brown bag with him\u2014nothing else.\"\n\n\"Well, we don't seem to have much material to help us. Do you say nothing has come out of that room\u2014absolutely nothing?\"\n\nThe landlady drew an envelope from her bag; from it she shook out two burnt matches and a cigarette-end upon the table.\n\n\"They were on his tray this morning. I brought them because I had heard that you can read great things out of small ones.\"\n\nHolmes shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"There is nothing here,\" said he. \"The matches have, of course, been used to light cigarettes. That is obvious from the shortness of the burnt end. Half the match is consumed in lighting a pipe or cigar. But, dear me! this cigarette stub is certainly remarkable. The gentleman was bearded and moustached, you say?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"I don't understand that. I should say that only a clean-shaven man could have smoked this. Why, Watson, even your modest moustache would have been singed.\"\n\n\"A holder?\" I suggested.\n\n\"No, no; the end is matted. I suppose there could not be two people in your rooms, Mrs. Warren?\"\n\n\"No, sir. He eats so little that I often wonder it can keep life in one.\"\n\n\"Well, I think we must wait for a little more material. After all, you have nothing to complain of. You have received your rent, and he is not a troublesome lodger, though he is certainly an unusual one. He pays you well, and if he chooses to lie concealed it is no direct business of yours. We have no excuse for an intrusion upon his privacy until we have some reason to think that there is a guilty reason for it. I've taken up the matter, and I won't lose sight of it. Report to me if anything fresh occurs, and rely upon my assistance if it should be needed.\n\n\"There are certainly some points of interest in this case, Watson,\" he remarked when the landlady had left us. \"It may, of course, be trivial\u2014individual eccentricity; or it may be very much deeper than appears on the surface. The first thing that strikes one is the obvious possibility that the person now in the rooms may be entirely different from the one who engaged them.\"\n\n\"Why should you think so?\"\n\n\"Well, apart from this cigarette-end, was it not suggestive that the only time the lodger went out was immediately after his taking the rooms? He came back\u2014or someone came back\u2014when all witnesses were out of the way. We have no proof that the person who came back was the person who went out. Then, again, the man who took the rooms spoke English well. This other, however, prints 'match' when it should have been 'matches.' I can imagine that the word was taken out of a dictionary, which would give the noun but not the plural. The laconic style may be to conceal the absence of knowledge of English. Yes, Watson, there are good reasons to suspect that there has been a substitution of lodgers.\"\n\n\"But for what possible end?\"\n\n\"Ah! there lies our problem. There is one rather obvious line of investigation.\" He took down the great book in which, day by day, he filed the agony columns of the various London journals. \"Dear me!\" said he, turning over the pages, \"what a chorus of groans, cries, and bleatings! What a rag-bag of singular happenings! But surely the most valuable hunting-ground that ever was given to a student of the unusual! This person is alone and cannot be approached by letter without a breach of that absolute secrecy which is desired. How is any news or any message to reach him from without? Obviously by advertisement through a newspaper. There seems no other way, and fortunately we need concern ourselves with the one paper only. Here are the Daily Gazette extracts of the last fortnight. 'Lady with a black boa at Prince's Skating Club'\u2014that we may pass. 'Surely Jimmy will not break his mother's heart'\u2014that appears to be irrelevant. 'If the lady who fainted in the Brixton bus'\u2014she does not interest me. 'Every day my heart longs\u2014' Bleat, Watson\u2014unmitigated bleat! Ah, this is a little more possible. Listen to this: 'Be patient. Will find some sure means of communication. Meanwhile, this column. G.' That is two days after Mrs. Warren's lodger arrived. It sounds plausible, does it not? The mysterious one could understand English, even if he could not print it. Let us see if we can pick up the trace again. Yes, here we are\u2014three days later. 'Am making successful arrangements. Patience and prudence. The clouds will pass. G.' Nothing for a week after that. Then comes something much more definite: 'The path is clearing. If I find chance signal message remember code agreed\u2014one A, two B, and so on. You will hear soon. G.' That was in yesterday's paper, and there is nothing in to-day's. It's all very appropriate to Mrs. Warren's lodger. If we wait a little, Watson, I don't doubt that the affair will grow more intelligible.\"\n\nSo it proved; for in the morning I found my friend standing on the hearthrug with his back to the fire and a smile of complete satisfaction upon his face.\n\n\"How's this, Watson?\" he cried, picking up the paper from the table. \" 'High red house with white stone facings. Third floor. Second window left. After dusk. G.' That is definite enough. I think after breakfast we must make a little reconnaissance of Mrs. Warren's neighbourhood. Ah, Mrs. Warren! what news do you bring us this morning?\"\n\nOur client had suddenly burst into the room with an explosive energy which told of some new and momentous development.\n\n\"It's a police matter, Mr. Holmes!\" she cried. \"I'll have no more of it! He shall pack out of there with his baggage. I would have gone straight up and told him so, only I thought it was but fair to you to take your opinion first. But I'm at the end of my patience, and when it comes to knocking my old man about\u2014\"\n\n\"Knocking Mr. Warren about?\"\n\n\"Using him roughly, anyway.\"\n\n\"But who used him roughly?\"\n\n\"Ah! that's what we want to know! It was this morning, sir. Mr. Warren is a timekeeper at Morton and Waylight's, in Tottenham Court Road. He has to be out of the house before seven. Well, this morning he had not gone ten paces down the road when two men came up behind him, threw a coat over his head, and bundled him into a cab that was beside the curb. They drove him an hour, and then opened the door and shot him out. He lay in the roadway so shaken in his wits that he never saw what became of the cab. When he picked himself up he found he was on Hampstead Heath; so he took a bus home, and there he lies now on the sofa, while I came straight round to tell you what had happened.\"\n\n\"Most interesting,\" said Holmes. \"Did he observe the appearance of these men\u2014did he hear them talk?\"\n\n\"No; he is clean dazed. He just knows that he was lifted up as if by magic and dropped as if by magic. Two at least were in it, and maybe three.\"\n\n\"And you connect this attack with your lodger?\"\n\n\"Well, we've lived there fifteen years and no such happenings ever came before. I've had enough of him. Money's not everything. I'll have him out of my house before the day is done.\"\n\n\"Wait a bit, Mrs. Warren. Do nothing rash. I begin to think that this affair may be very much more important than appeared at first sight. It is clear now that some danger is threatening your lodger. It is equally clear that his enemies, lying in wait for him near your door, mistook your husband for him in the foggy morning light. On discovering their mistake they released him. What they would have done had it not been a mistake, we can only conjecture.\n\n\"Well, what am I to do, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"I have a great fancy to see this lodger of yours, Mrs. Warren.\"\n\n\"I don't see how that is to be managed, unless you break in the door. I always hear him unlock it as I go down the stair after I leave the tray.\"\n\n\"He has to take the tray in. Surely we could conceal ourselves and see him do it.\"\n\nThe landlady thought for a moment.\n\n\"Well, sir, there's the box-room opposite. I could arrange a looking-glass, maybe, and if you were behind the door\u2014\"\n\n\"Excellent!\" said Holmes: \"When does he lunch?\"\n\n\"About one, sir.\"\n\n\"Then Dr. Watson and I will come round in time. For the present, Mrs. Warren, good-bye.\"\n\nAt half-past twelve we found ourselves upon the steps of Mrs. Warren's house\u2014a high, thin, yellow-brick edifice in Great Orme Street, a narrow thoroughfare at the northeast side of the British Museum. Standing as it does near the corner of the street, it commands a view down Howe Street, with its more pretentious houses. Holmes pointed with a chuckle to one of these, a row of residential flats, which projected so that they could not fail to catch the eye.\n\n\"See, Watson!\" said he. \" 'High red house with stone facings.' There is the signal station all right. We know the place, and we know the code; so surely our task should be simple. There's a 'to let' card in that window. It is evidently an empty flat to which the confederate has access. Well, Mrs. Warren, what now?\"\n\n\"I have it all ready for you. If you will both come up and leave your boots below on the landing, I'll put you there now.\"\n\nIt was an excellent hiding-place which she had arranged. The mirror was so placed that, seated in the dark, we could very plainly see the door opposite. We had hardly settled down in it, and Mrs. Warren left us, when a distant tinkle announced that our mysterious neighbour had rung. Presently the landlady appeared with the tray, laid it down upon a chair beside the closed door, and then, treading heavily, departed. Crouching together in the angle of the door, we kept our eyes fixed upon the mirror. Suddenly, as the landlady's footsteps died away, there was the creak of a turning key, the handle revolved, and two thin hands darted out and lifted the tray from the chair. An instant later it was hurriedly replaced, and I caught a glimpse of a dark, beautiful, horrified face glaring at the narrow opening of the box-room. Then the door crashed to, the key turned once more, and all was silence. Holmes twitched my sleeve, and together we stole down the stair.\n\n\"I will call again in the evening,\" said he to the expectant landlady. \"I think, Watson, we can discuss this business better in our own quarters.\"\n\n\"My surmise, as you saw, proved to be correct,\" said he, speaking from the depths of his easy-chair. \"There has been a substitution of lodgers. What I did not foresee is that we should find a woman, and no ordinary woman, Watson.\"\n\n\"She saw us.\"\n\n\"Well, she saw something to alarm her. That is certain. The general sequence of events is pretty clear, is it not? A couple seek refuge in London from a very terrible and instant danger. The measure of that danger is the rigour of their precautions. The man, who has some work which he must do, desires to leave the woman in absolute safety while he does it. It is not an easy problem, but he solved it in an original fashion, and so effectively that her presence was not even known to the landlady who supplies her with food. The printed messages, as is now evident, were to prevent her sex being discovered by her writing. The man cannot come near the woman, or he will guide their enemies to her. Since he cannot communicate with her direct, he has recourse to the agony column of a paper. So far all is clear.\"\n\n\"But what is at the root of it?\"\n\n\"Ah, yes, Watson\u2014severely practical, as usual! What is at the root of it all? Mrs. Warren's whimsical problem enlarges somewhat and assumes a more sinister aspect as we proceed. This much we can say: that it is no ordinary love escapade. You saw the woman's face at the sign of danger. We have heard, too, of the attack upon the landlord, which was undoubtedly meant for the lodger. These alarms, and the desperate need for secrecy, argue that the matter is one of life or death. The attack upon Mr. Warren further shows that the enemy, whoever they are, are themselves not aware of the substitution of the female lodger for the male. It is very curious and complex, Watson.\"\n\n\"Why should you go further in it? What have you to gain from it?\"\n\n\"What, indeed? It is art for art's sake, Watson. I suppose when you doctored you found yourself studying cases without thought of a fee?\"\n\n\"For my education, Holmes.\"\n\n\"Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last. This is an instructive case. There is neither money nor credit in it, and yet one would wish to tidy it up. When dusk comes we should find ourselves one stage advanced in our investigation.\"\n\nWhen we returned to Mrs. Warren's rooms, the gloom of a London winter evening had thickened into one gray curtain, a dead monotone of colour, broken only by the sharp yellow squares of the windows and the blurred haloes of the gas-lamps. As we peered from the darkened sitting-room of the lodging-house, one more dim light glimmered high up through the obscurity.\n\n\"Someone is moving in that room,\" said Holmes in a whisper, his gaunt and eager face thrust forward to the window-pane. \"Yes, I can see his shadow. There he is again! He has a candle in his hand. Now he is peering across. He wants to be sure that she is on the lookout. Now he begins to flash. Take the message also, Watson, that we may check each other. A single flash\u2014that is A, surely. Now, then. How many did you make it? Twenty. So did I. That should mean T. AT\u2014that's intelligible enough! Another T. Surely this is the beginning of a second word. Now, then\u2014TENTA. Dead stop. That can't be all, Watson? ATTENTA gives no sense. Nor is it any better as three words AT, TEN, TA, unless T. A. are a person's initials. There it goes again! What's that? ATTE\u2014why, it is the same message over again. Curious, Watson, very curious! Now he is off once more! AT-why, he is repeating it for the third time. ATTENTA three times! How often will he repeat it? No, that seems to be the finish. He has withdrawn from the window. What do you make of it, Watson?\"\n\n\"A cipher message, Holmes.\"\n\nMy companion gave a sudden chuckle of comprehension. \"And not a very obscure cipher, Watson,\" said he. \"Why, of course, it is Italian! The A means that it is addressed to a woman. 'Beware! Beware! Beware!' How's that, Watson?\"\n\n\"I believe you have hit it.\"\n\n\"Not a doubt of it. It is a very urgent message, thrice repeated to make it more so. But beware of what? Wait a bit; he is coming to the window once more.\"\n\nAgain we saw the dim silhouette of a crouching man and the whisk of the small flame across the window as the signals were renewed. They came more rapidly than before\u2014so rapid that it was hard to follow them.\n\n\"PERICOLO\u2014pericolo\u2014eh, what's that, Watson? 'Danger,' isn't it? Yes, by Jove, it's a danger signal. There he goes again! PERI. Halloa, what on earth\u2014\"\n\nThe light had suddenly gone out, the glimmering square of window had disappeared, and the third floor formed a dark band round the lofty building, with its tiers of shining casements. That last warning cry had been suddenly cut short. How, and by whom? The same thought occurred on the instant to us both. Holmes sprang up from where he crouched by the window.\n\n\"This is serious, Watson,\" he cried. \"There is some devilry going forward! Why should such a message stop in such a way? I should put Scotland Yard in touch with this business\u2014and yet, it is too pressing for us to leave.\"\n\n\"Shall I go for the police?\"\n\n\"We must define the situation a little more clearly. It may bear some more innocent interpretation. Come, Watson, let us go across ourselves and see what we can make of it.\"" + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 36", + "text": "As we walked rapidly down Howe Street I glanced back at the building which we had left. There, dimly outlined at the top window, I could see the shadow of a head, a woman's head, gazing tensely, rigidly, out into the night, waiting with breathless suspense for the renewal of that interrupted message. At the doorway of the Howe Street flats a man, muffled in a cravat and greatcoat, was leaning against the railing. He started as the hall-light fell upon our faces.\n\n\"Holmes!\" he cried.\n\n\"Why, Gregson!\" said my companion as he shook hands with the Scotland Yard detective. \"Journeys end with lovers' meetings. What brings you here?\"\n\n\"The same reasons that bring you, I expect,\" said Gregson. \"How you got on to it I can't imagine.\"\n\n\"Different threads, but leading up to the same tangle. I've been taking the signals.\"\n\n\"Signals?\"\n\n\"Yes, from that window. They broke off in the middle. We came over to see the reason. But since it is safe in your hands I see no object in continuing the business.\"\n\n\"Wait a bit!\" cried Gregson eagerly. \"I'll do you this justice, Mr. Holmes, that I was never in a case yet that I didn't feel stronger for having you on my side. There's only the one exit to these flats, so we have him safe.\"\n\n\"Who is he?\"\n\n\"Well, well, we score over you for once, Mr. Holmes. You must give us best this time.\" He struck his stick sharply upon the ground, on which a cabman, his whip in his hand, sauntered over from a four-wheeler which stood on the far side of the street. \"May I introduce you to Mr. Sherlock Holmes?\" he said to the cabman. \"This is Mr. Leverton, of Pinkerton's American Agency.\"\n\n\"The hero of the Long Island cave mystery?\" said Holmes. \"Sir, I am pleased to meet you.\"\n\nThe American, a quiet, businesslike young man, with a clean-shaven, hatchet face, flushed up at the words of commendation. \"I am on the trail of my life now, Mr. Holmes,\" said he. \"If I can get Gorgiano\u2014\"\n\n\"What! Gorgiano of the Red Circle?\"\n\n\"Oh, he has a European fame, has he? Well, we've learned all about him in America. We know he is at the bottom of fifty murders, and yet we have nothing positive we can take him on. I tracked him over from New York, and I've been close to him for a week in London, waiting some excuse to get my hand on his collar. Mr. Gregson and I ran him to ground in that big tenement house, and there's only the one door, so he can't slip us. There's three folk come out since he went in, but I'll swear he wasn't one of them.\"\n\n\"Mr. Holmes talks of signals,\" said Gregson. \"I expect, as usual, he knows a good deal that we don't.\"\n\nIn a few clear words Holmes explained the situation as it had appeared to us.\n\nThe American struck his hands together with vexation.\n\n\"He's on to us!\" he cried.\n\n\"Why do you think so?\"\n\n\"Well, it figures out that way, does it not? Here he is, sending out messages to an accomplice\u2014there are several of his gang in London. Then suddenly, just as by your own account he was telling them that there was danger, he broke short off. What could it mean except that from the window he had suddenly either caught sight of us in the street, or in some way come to understand how close the danger was, and that he must act right away if he was to avoid it? What do you suggest, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"That we go up at once and see for ourselves.\"\n\n\"But we have no warrant for his arrest.\"\n\n\"He is in unoccupied premises under suspicious circumstances,\" said Gregson. \"That is good enough for the moment. When we have him by the heels we can see if New York can't help us to keep him. I'll take the responsibility of arresting him now.\"\n\nOur official detectives may blunder in the matter of intelligence, but never in that of courage. Gregson climbed the stair to arrest this desperate murderer with the same absolutely quiet and businesslike bearing with which he would have ascended the official staircase of Scotland Yard. The Pinkerton man had tried to push past him, but Gregson had firmly elbowed him back. London dangers were the privilege of the London force.\n\nThe door of the left-hand flat upon the third landing was standing ajar. Gregson pushed it open. Within all was absolute silence and darkness. I struck a match and lit the detective's lantern. As I did so, and as the flicker steadied into a flame, we all gave a gasp of surprise. On the deal boards of the carpetless floor there was outlined a fresh track of blood. The red steps pointed towards us and led away from an inner room, the door of which was closed. Gregson flung it open and held his light full blaze in front of him, while we all peered eagerly over his shoulders.\n\nIn the middle of the floor of the empty room was huddled the figure of an enormous man, his clean-shaven, swarthy face grotesquely horrible in its contortion and his head encircled by a ghastly crimson halo of blood, lying in a broad wet circle upon the white woodwork. His knees were drawn up, his hands thrown out in agony, and from the centre of his broad, brown, upturned throat there projected the white haft of a knife driven blade-deep into his body. Giant as he was, the man must have gone down like a pole-axed ox before that terrific blow. Beside his right hand a most formidable horn-handled, two-edged dagger lay upon the floor, and near it a black kid glove.\n\n\"By George! it's Black Gorgiano himself!\" cried the American detective. \"Someone has got ahead of us this time.\"\n\n\"Here is the candle in the window, Mr. Holmes,\" said Gregson. \"Why, whatever are you doing?\"\n\nHolmes had stepped across, had lit the candle, and was passing it backward and forward across the window-panes. Then he peered into the darkness, blew the candle out, and threw it on the floor.\n\n\"I rather think that will be helpful,\" said he. He came over and stood in deep thought while the two professionals were examining the body. \"You say that three people came out from the flat while you were waiting downstairs,\" said he at last. \"Did you observe them closely?\"\n\n\"Yes, I did.\"\n\n\"Was there a fellow about thirty, black-bearded, dark, of middle size?\"\n\n\"Yes; he was the last to pass me.\"\n\n\"That is your man, I fancy. I can give you his description, and we have a very excellent outline of his footmark. That should be enough for you.\"\n\n\"Not much, Mr. Holmes, among the millions of London.\"\n\n\"Perhaps not. That is why I thought it best to summon this lady to your aid.\"\n\nWe all turned round at the words. There, framed in the doorway, was a tall and beautiful woman\u2014the mysterious lodger of Bloomsbury. Slowly she advanced, her face pale and drawn with a frightful apprehension, her eyes fixed and staring, her terrified gaze riveted upon the dark figure on the floor.\n\n\"You have killed him!\" she muttered. \"Oh, Dio mio, you have killed him!\" Then I heard a sudden sharp intake of her breath, and she sprang into the air with a cry of joy. Round and round the room she danced, her hands clapping, her dark eyes gleaming with delighted wonder, and a thousand pretty Italian exclamations pouring from her lips. It was terrible and amazing to see such a woman so convulsed with joy at such a sight. Suddenly she stopped and gazed at us all with a questioning stare.\n\n\"But you! You are police, are you not? You have killed Giuseppe Gorgiano. Is it not so?\"\n\n\"We are police, madam.\"\n\nShe looked round into the shadows of the room.\n\n\"But where, then, is Gennaro?\" she asked. \"He is my husband, Gennaro Lucca. I am Emilia Lucca, and we are both from New York. Where is Gennaro? He called me this moment from this window, and I ran with all my speed.\"\n\n\"It was I who called,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"You! How could you call?\"\n\n\"Your cipher was not difficult, madam. Your presence here was desirable. I knew that I had only to flash 'Vieni' and you would surely come.\"\n\nThe beautiful Italian looked with awe at my companion.\n\n\"I do not understand how you know these things,\" she said. \"Giuseppe Gorgiano\u2014how did he\u2014\" She paused, and then suddenly her face lit up with pride and delight. \"Now I see it! My Gennaro! My splendid, beautiful Gennaro, who has guarded me safe from all harm, he did it, with his own strong hand he killed the monster! Oh, Gennaro, how wonderful you are! What woman could ever be worthy of such a man?\"\n\n\"Well, Mrs. Lucca,\" said the prosaic Gregson, laying his hand upon the lady's sleeve with as little sentiment as if she were a Notting Hill hooligan, \"I am not very clear yet who you are or what you are; but you've said enough to make it very clear that we shall want you at the Yard.\"\n\n\"One moment, Gregson,\" said Holmes. \"I rather fancy that this lady may be as anxious to give us information as we can be to get it. You understand, madam, that your husband will be arrested and tried for the death of the man who lies before us? What you say may be used in evidence. But if you think that he has acted from motives which are not criminal, and which he would wish to have known, then you cannot serve him better than by telling us the whole story.\"\n\n\"Now that Gorgiano is dead we fear nothing,\" said the lady. \"He was a devil and a monster, and there can be no judge in the world who would punish my husband for having killed him.\"\n\n\"In that case,\" said Holmes, \"my suggestion is that we lock this door, leave things as we found them, go with this lady to her room, and form our opinion after we have heard what it is that she has to say to us.\"\n\nHalf an hour later we were seated, all four, in the small sitting-room of Signora Lucca, listening to her remarkable narrative of those sinister events, the ending of which we had chanced to witness. She spoke in rapid and fluent but very unconventional English, which, for the sake of clearness, I will make grammatical.\n\n\"I was born in Posilippo, near Naples,\" said she, \"and was the daughter of Augusto Barelli, who was the chief lawyer and once the deputy of that part. Gennaro was in my father's employment, and I came to love him, as any woman must. He had neither money nor position\u2014nothing but his beauty and strength and energy\u2014so my father forbade the match. We fled together, were married at Bari, and sold my jewels to gain the money which would take us to America. This was four years ago, and we have been in New York ever since.\n\n\"Fortune was very good to us at first. Gennaro was able to do a service to an Italian gentleman\u2014he saved him from some ruffians in the place called the Bowery, and so made a powerful friend. His name was Tito Castalotte, and he was the senior partner of the great firm of Castalotte and Zamba, who are the chief fruit importers of New York. Signor Zamba is an invalid, and our new friend Castalotte has all power within the firm, which employs more than three hundred men. He took my husband into his employment, made him head of a department, and showed his good will towards him in every way. Signor Castalotte was a bachelor, and I believe that he felt as if Gennaro was his son, and both my husband and I loved him as if he were our father. We had taken and furnished a little house in Brooklyn, and our whole future seemed assured when that black cloud appeared which was soon to overspread our sky.\n\n\"One night, when Gennaro returned from his work, he brought a fellow-countryman back with him. His name was Gorgiano, and he had come also from Posilippo. He was a huge man, as you can testify, for you have looked upon his corpse. Not only was his body that of a giant but everything about him was grotesque, gigantic, and terrifying. His voice was like thunder in our little house. There was scarce room for the whirl of his great arms as he talked. His thoughts, his emotions, his passions, all were exaggerated and monstrous. He talked, or rather roared, with such energy that others could but sit and listen, cowed with the mighty stream of words. His eyes blazed at you and held you at his mercy. He was a terrible and wonderful man. I thank God that he is dead!\n\n\"He came again and again. Yet I was aware that Gennaro was no more happy than I was in his presence. My poor husband would sit pale and listless, listening to the endless raving upon politics and upon social questions which made up our visitor's conversation. Gennaro said nothing, but I, who knew him so well, could read in his face some emotion which I had never seen there before. At first I thought that it was dislike. And then, gradually, I understood that it was more than dislike. It was fear\u2014a deep, secret, shrinking fear. That night\u2014the night that I read his terror\u2014I put my arms round him and I implored him by his love for me and by all that he held dear to hold nothing from me, and to tell me why this huge man overshadowed him so.\n\n\"He told me, and my own heart grew cold as ice as I listened. My poor Gennaro, in his wild and fiery days, when all the world seemed against him and his mind was driven half mad by the injustices of life, had joined a Neapolitan society, the Red Circle, which was allied to the old Car bonari. The oaths and secrets of this brotherhood were frightful, but once within its rule no escape was possible. When we had fled to America Gennaro thought that he had cast it all off forever. What was his horror one evening to meet in the streets the very man who had initiated him in Naples, the giant Gorgiano, a man who had earned the name of 'Death' in the south of Italy, for he was red to the elbow in murder! He had come to New York to avoid the Italian police, and he had already planted a branch of this dreadful society in his new home. All this Gennaro told me and showed me a summons which he had received that very day, a Red Circle drawn upon the head of it telling him that a lodge would be held upon a certain date, and that his presence at it was required and ordered.\n\n\"That was bad enough, but worse was to come. I had noticed for some time that when Gorgiano came to us, as he constantly did, in the evening, he spoke much to me; and even when his words were to my husband those terrible, glaring, wild-beast eyes of his were always turned upon me. One night his secret came out. I had awakened what he called 'love' within him\u2014the love of a brute\u2014a savage. Gennaro had not yet returned when he came. He pushed his way in, seized me in his mighty arms, hugged me in his bear's embrace, covered me with kisses, and implored me to come away with him. I was struggling and screaming when Gennaro entered and attacked him. He struck Gennaro senseless and fled from the house which he was never more to enter. It was a deadly enemy that we made that night.\n\n\"A few days later came the meeting. Gennaro returned from it with a face which told me that something dreadful had occurred. It was worse than we could have imagined possible. The funds of the society were raised by blackmailing rich Italians and threatening them with violence should they refuse the money. It seems that Castalotte, our dear friend and benefactor, had been approached. He had refused to yield to threats, and he had handed the notices to the police. It was resolved now that such an example should be made of him as would prevent any other victim from rebelling. At the meeting it was arranged that he and his house should be blown up with dynamite. There was a drawing of lots as to who should carry out the deed. Gennaro saw our enemy's cruel face smiling at him as he dipped his hand in the bag. No doubt it had been prearranged in some fashion, for it was the fatal disc with the Red Circle upon it, the mandate for murder, which lay upon his palm. He was to kill his best friend, or he was to expose himself and me to the vengeance of his comrades. It was part of their fiendish system to punish those whom they feared or hated by injuring not only their own persons but those whom they loved, and it was the knowledge of this which hung as a terror over my poor Gennaro's head and drove him nearly crazy with apprehension.\n\n\"All that night we sat together, our arms round each other, each strengthening each for the troubles that lay before us. The very next evening had been fixed for the attempt. By midday my husband and I were on our way to London, but not before he had given our benefactor full warning of his danger, and had also left such information for the police as would safeguard his life for the future.\n\n\"The rest, gentlemen, you know for yourselves. We were sure that our enemies would be behind us like our own shadows. Gorgiano had his private reasons for vengeance, but in any case we knew how ruthless, cunning, and untiring he could be. Both Italy and America are full of stories of his dreadful powers. If ever they were exerted it would be now. My darling made use of the few clear days which our start had given us in arranging for a refuge for me in such a fashion that no possible danger could reach me. For his own part, he wished to be free that he might communicate both with the American and with the Italian police. I do not myself know where he lived, or how. All that I learned was through the columns of a newspaper. But once as I looked through my window, I saw two Italians watching the house, and I understood that in some way Gorgiano had found out our retreat. Finally Gennaro told me, through the paper, that he would signal to me from a certain window, but when the signals came they were nothing but warnings, which were suddenly interrupted. It is very clear to me now that he knew Gorgiano to be close upon him, and that, thank God! he was ready for him when he came. And now, gentlemen, I would ask you whether we have anything to fear from the law, or whether any judge upon earth would condemn my Gennaro for what he has done?\"\n\n\"Well, Mr. Gregson,\" said the American, looking across at the official, \"I don't know what your British point of view may be, but I guess that in New York this lady's husband will receive a pretty general vote of thanks.\"\n\n\"She will have to come with me and see the chief,\" Gregson answered. \"If what she says is corroborated, I do not think she or her husband has much to fear. But what I can't make head or tail of, Mr. Holmes, is how on earth you got yourself mixed up in the matter.\"\n\n\"Education, Gregson, education. Still seeking knowledge at the old university. Well, Watson, you have one more specimen of the tragic and grotesque to add to your collection. By the way, it is not eight o'clock, and a Wagner night at Covent Garden! If we hurry, we might be in time for the second act.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE BRUCE-PARTINGTON PLANS", + "text": "In the third week of November, in the year 1895, a dense yellow fog settled down upon London. From the Monday to the Thursday I doubt whether it was ever possible from our windows in Baker Street to see the loom of the opposite houses. The first day Holmes had spent in cross-indexing his huge book of references. The second and third had been patiently occupied upon a subject which he had recently made his hobby\u2014the music of the Middle Ages. But when, for the fourth time, after pushing back our chairs from breakfast we saw the greasy, heavy brown swirl still drifting past us and condensing in oily drops upon the window-panes, my comrade's impatient and active nature could endure this drab existence no longer. He paced restlessly about our sitting-room in a fever of suppressed energy, biting his nails, tapping the furniture, and chafing against inaction.\n\n\"Nothing of interest in the paper, Watson?\" he said.\n\nI was aware that by anything of interest, Holmes meant anything of criminal interest. There was the news of a revolution, of a possible war, and of an impending change of government; but these did not come within the horizon of my companion. I could see nothing recorded in the shape of crime which was not commonplace and futile. Holmes groaned and resumed his restless meanderings.\n\n\"The London criminal is certainly a dull fellow,\" said he in the querulous voice of the sportsman whose game has failed him. \"Look out of this window, Watson. See how the figures loom up, are dimly seen, and then blend once more into the cloud-bank. The thief or the murderer could roam London on such a day as the tiger does the jungle, unseen until he pounces, and then evident only to his victim.\"\n\n\"There have,\" said I, \"been numerous petty thefts.\"\n\nHolmes snorted his contempt.\n\n\"This great and sombre stage is set for something more worthy than that,\" said he. \"It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal.\"\n\n\"It is, indeed!\" said I heartily.\n\n\"Suppose that I were Brooks or Woodhouse, or any of the fifty men who have good reason for taking my life, how long could I survive against my own pursuit? A summons, a bogus appointment, and all would be over. It is well they don't have days of fog in the Latin countries\u2014the countries of assassination. By Jove! here comes something at last to break our dead monotony.\"\n\nIt was the maid with a telegram. Holmes tore it open and burst out laughing.\n\n\"Well, well! What next?\" said he. \"Brother Mycroft is coming round.\"\n\n\"Why not?\" I asked.\n\n\"Why not? It is as if you met a tram-car coming down a country lane. Mycroft has his rails and he runs on them. His Pall Mall lodgings, the Dio genes Club, Whitehall\u2014that is his cycle. Once, and only once, he has been here. What upheaval can possibly have derailed him?\"\n\n\"Does he not explain?\"\n\nHolmes handed me his brother's telegram.\n\nMust see you over Cadogan West. Coming at once.\n\nMYCROFT.\n\n\"Cadogan West? I have heard the name.\"\n\n\"It recalls nothing to my mind. But that Mycroft should break out in this erratic fashion! A planet might as well leave its orbit. By the way, do you know what Mycroft is?\"\n\nI had some vague recollection of an explanation at the time of the Adventure of the Greek Interpreter.\n\n\"You told me that he had some small office under the British government.\"\n\nHolmes chuckled.\n\n\"I did not know you quite so well in those days. One has to be discreet when one talks of high matters of state. You are right in thinking that he is under the British government. You would also be right in a sense if you said that occasionally he is the British government.\"\n\n\"My dear Holmes!\"\n\n\"I thought I might surprise you. Mycroft draws four hundred and fifty pounds a year, remains a subordinate, has no ambitions of any kind, will receive neither honour nor title, but remains the most indispensable man in the country.\"\n\n\"But how?\"\n\n\"Well, his position is unique. He has made it for himself. There has never been anything like it before, nor will be again. He has the tidiest and most orderly brain, with the greatest capacity for storing facts, of any man living. The same great powers which I have turned to the detection of crime he has used for this particular business. The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearing-house, which makes out the balance. All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience. We will suppose that a minister needs information as to a point which involves the Navy, India, Canada and the bimetallic question; he could get his separate advices from various departments upon each, but only Mycroft can focus them all, and say offhand how each factor would affect the other. They began by using him as a short-cut, a convenience; now he has made himself an essential. In that great brain of his everything is pigeon-holed and can be handed out in an instant. Again and again his word has decided the national policy. He lives in it. He thinks of nothing else save when, as an intellectual exercise, he unbends if I call upon him and ask him to advise me on one of my little problems. But Jupiter is descending to-day. What on earth can it mean? Who is Cadogan West, and what is he to Mycroft?\"\n\n\"I have it,\" I cried, and plunged among the litter of papers upon the sofa. \"Yes, yes, here he is, sure enough! Cadogan West was the young man who was found dead on the Underground on Tuesday morning.\"\n\nHolmes sat up at attention, his pipe halfway to his lips.\n\n\"This must be serious, Watson. A death which has caused my brother to alter his habits can be no ordinary one. What in the world can he have to do with it? The case was featureless as I remember it. The young man had apparently fallen out of the train and killed himself. He had not been robbed, and there was no particular reason to suspect violence. Is that not so?\"\n\n\"There has been an inquest,\" said I, \"and a good many fresh facts have come out. Looked at more closely, I should certainly say that it was a curious case.\"\n\n\"Judging by its effect upon my brother, I should think it must be a most extraordinary one.\" He snuggled down in his armchair. \"Now, Watson, let us have the facts.\"\n\n\"The man's name was Arthur Cadogan West. He was twenty-seven years of age, unmarried, and a clerk at Woolwich Arsenal.\"\n\n\"Government employ. Behold the link with Brother Mycroft!\"\n\n\"He left Woolwich suddenly on Monday night. Was last seen by his fianc\u00e9e, Miss Violet Westbury, whom he left abruptly in the fog about 7:30 that evening. There was no quarrel between them and she can give no motive for his action. The next thing heard of him was when his dead body was discovered by a plate-layer named Mason, just outside Aldgate Station on the Underground system in London.\"\n\n\"When?\"\n\n\"The body was found at six on the Tuesday morning. It was lying wide of the metals upon the left hand of the track as one goes eastward, at a point close to the station, where the line emerges from the tunnel in which it runs. The head was badly crushed\u2014an injury which might well have been caused by a fall from the train. The body could only have come on the line in that way. Had it been carried down from any neighbouring street, it must have passed the station barriers, where a collector is always standing. This point seems absolutely certain.\"\n\n\"Very good. The case is definite enough. The man, dead or alive, either fell or was precipitated from a train. So much is clear to me. Continue.\"\n\n\"The trains which traverse the lines of rail beside which the body was found are those which run from west to east, some being purely Metropolitan, and some from Willesden and outlying junctions. It can be stated for certain that this young man, when he met his death, was travelling in this direction at some late hour of the night, but at what point he entered the train it is impossible to state.\"\n\n\"His ticket, of course, would show that.\"\n\n\"There was no ticket in his pockets.\"\n\n\"No ticket! Dear me, Watson, this is really very singular. According to my experience it is not possible to reach the platform of a Metropolitan train without exhibiting one's ticket. Presumably, then, the young man had one. Was it taken from him in order to conceal the station from which he came? It is possible. Or did he drop it in the carriage? That also is possible. But the point is of curious interest. I understand that there was no sign of robbery?\"\n\n\"Apparently not. There is a list here of his possessions. His purse contained two pounds fifteen. He had also a check-book on the Woolwich branch of the Capital and Counties Bank. Through this his identity was established. There were also two dress-circle tickets for the Woolwich Theatre, dated for that very evening. Also a small packet of technical papers.\"\n\nHolmes gave an exclamation of satisfaction.\n\n\"There we have it at last, Watson! British government\u2014Woolwich. Arsenal\u2014technical papers\u2014Brother Mycroft, the chain is complete. But here he comes, if I am not mistaken, to speak for himself.\"\n\nA moment later the tall and portly form of Mycroft Holmes was ushered into the room. Heavily built and massive, there was a suggestion of uncouth physical inertia in the figure, but above this unwieldy frame there was perched a head so masterful in its brow, so alert in its steel-gray, deep-set eyes, so firm in its lips, and so subtle in its play of expression, that after the first glance one forgot the gross body and remembered only the dominant mind.\n\nAt his heels came our old friend Lestrade, of Scotland Yard\u2014thin and austere. The gravity of both their faces foretold some weighty quest. The detective shook hands without a word. Mycroft Holmes struggled out of his overcoat and subsided into an armchair.\n\n\"A most annoying business, Sherlock,\" said he. \"I extremely dislike altering my habits, but the powers that be would take no denial. In the present state of Siam it is most awkward that I should be away from the office. But it is a real crisis. I have never seen the Prime Minister so upset. As to the Admiralty\u2014it is buzzing like an overturned bee-hive. Have you read up the case?\"\n\n\"We have just done so. What were the technical papers?\"\n\n\"Ah, there's the point! Fortunately, it has not come out. The press would be furious if it did. The papers which this wretched youth had in his pocket were the plans of the Bruce-Partington submarine.\"\n\nMycroft Holmes spoke with a solemnity which showed his sense of the importance of the subject. His brother and I sat expectant.\n\n\"Surely you have heard of it? I thought everyone had heard of it.\"\n\n\"Only as a name.\"\n\n\"Its importance can hardly be exaggerated. It has been the most jealously guarded of all government secrets. You may take it from me that naval warfare becomes impossible within the radius of a Bruce-Partington's operation. Two years ago a very large sum was smuggled through the Estimates and was expended in acquiring a monopoly of the invention. Every effort has been made to keep the secret. The plans, which are exceedingly intricate, comprising some thirty separate patents, each essential to the working of the whole, are kept in an elaborate safe in a confidential office adjoining the arsenal, with burglar-proof doors and windows. Under no conceivable circumstances were the plans to be taken from the office. If the chief constructor of the Navy desired to consult them, even he was forced to go to the Woolwich office for the purpose. And yet here we find them in the pocket of a dead junior clerk in the heart of London. From an official point of view it's simply awful.\"\n\n\"But you have recovered them?\"\n\n\"No, Sherlock, no! That's the pinch. We have not. Ten papers were taken from Woolwich. There were seven in the pocket of Cadogan West. The three most essential are gone\u2014stolen, vanished. You must drop everything, Sherlock. Never mind your usual petty puzzles of the police-court. It's a vital international problem that you have to solve. Why did Cadogan West take the papers, where are the missing ones, how did he die, how came his body where it was found, how can the evil be set right? Find an answer to all these questions, and you will have done good service for your country.\"\n\n\"Why do you not solve it yourself, Mycroft? You can see as far as I.\"\n\n\"Possibly, Sherlock. But it is a question of getting details. Give me your details, and from an armchair I will return you an excellent expert opinion. But to run here and run there, to cross-question railway guards, and lie on my face with a lens to my eye\u2014it is not my m\u00e9tier. No, you are the one man who can clear the matter up. If you have a fancy to see your name in the next honours list\u2014\"\n\nMy friend smiled and shook his head.\n\n\"I play the game for the game's own sake,\" said he. \"But the problem certainly presents some points of interest, and I shall be very pleased to look into it. Some more facts, please.\"\n\n\"I have jotted down the more essential ones upon this sheet of paper, together with a few addresses which you will find of service. The actual official guardian of the papers is the famous government expert, Sir James Walter, whose decorations and sub-titles fill two lines of a book of reference. He has grown gray in the service, is a gentleman, a favoured guest in the most exalted houses, and, above all, a man whose patriotism is beyond suspicion. He is one of two who have a key of the safe. I may add that the papers were undoubtedly in the office during working hours on Monday, and that Sir James left for London about three o'clock taking his key with him. He was at the house of Admiral Sinclair at Barclay Square during the whole of the evening when this incident occurred.\"\n\n\"Has the fact been verified?\"\n\n\"Yes; his brother, Colonel Valentine Walter, has testified to his departure from Woolwich, and Admiral Sinclair to his arrival in London; so Sir James is no longer a direct factor in the problem.\"\n\n\"Who was the other man with a key?\"\n\n\"The senior clerk and draughtsman, Mr. Sidney Johnson. He is a man of forty, married, with five children. He is a silent, morose man, but he has, on the whole, an excellent record in the public service. He is unpopular with his colleagues, but a hard worker. According to his own account, corroborated only by the word of his wife, he was at home the whole of Monday evening after office hours, and his key has never left the watch-chain upon which it hangs.\"\n\n\"Tell us about Cadogan West.\"\n\n\"He has been ten years in the service and has done good work. He has the reputation of being hot-headed and impetuous, but a straight, honest man. We have nothing against him. He was next to Sidney Johnson in the office. His duties brought him into daily, personal contact with the plans. No one else had the handling of them.\"\n\n\"Who locked the plans up that night?\"\n\n\"Mr. Sidney Johnson, the senior clerk.\"\n\n\"Well, it is surely perfectly clear who took them away. They are actually found upon the person of this junior clerk, Cadogan West. That seems final, does it not?\"\n\n\"It does, Sherlock, and yet it leaves so much unexplained. In the first place, why did he take them?\"\n\n\"I presume they were of value?\"\n\n\"He could have got several thousands for them very easily.\"\n\n\"Can you suggest any possible motive for taking the papers to London except to sell them?\"\n\n\"No, I cannot.\"\n\n\"Then we must take that as our working hypothesis. Young West took the papers. Now this could only be done by having a false key\u2014\"\n\n\"Several false keys. He had to open the building and the room.\"\n\n\"He had, then, several false keys. He took the papers to London to sell the secret, intending, no doubt, to have the plans themselves back in the safe next morning before they were missed. While in London on this treasonable mission he met his end.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"We will suppose that he was travelling back to Woolwich when he was killed and thrown out of the compartment.\"\n\n\"Aldgate, where the body was found, is considerably past the station for London Bridge, which would be his route to Woolwich.\"\n\n\"Many circumstances could be imagined under which he would pass London Bridge. There was someone in the carriage, for example, with whom he was having an absorbing interview. This interview led to a violent scene in which he lost his life. Possibly he tried to leave the carriage, fell out on the line, and so met his end. The other closed the door. There was a thick fog, and nothing could be seen.\"\n\n\"No better explanation can be given with our present knowledge; and yet consider, Sherlock, how much you leave untouched. We will suppose, for argument's sake, that young Cadogan West had determined to convey these papers to London. He would naturally have made an appointment with the foreign agent and kept his evening clear. Instead of that he took two tickets for the theatre, escorted his fianc\u00e9e halfway there, and then suddenly disappeared.\"\n\n\"A blind,\" said Lestrade, who had sat listening with some impatience to the conversation.\n\n\"A very singular one. That is objection No. 1. Objection No. 2: We will suppose that he reaches London and sees the foreign agent. He must bring back the papers before morning or the toss will be discovered. He took away ten. Only seven were in his pocket. What had become of the other three? He certainly would not leave them of his own free will. Then, again, where is the price of his treason? One would have expected to find a large sum of money in his pocket.\"\n\n\"It seems to me perfectly clear,\" said Lestrade. \"I have no doubt at all as to what occurred. He took the papers to sell them. He saw the agent. They could not agree as to price. He started home again, but the agent went with him. In the train the agent murdered him, took the more essential papers, and threw his body from the carriage. That would account for everything, would it not?\"\n\n\"Why had he no ticket?\"\n\n\"The ticket would have shown which station was nearest the agent's house. Therefore he took it from the murdered man's pocket.\"\n\n\"Good, Lestrade, very good,\" said Holmes. \"Your theory holds together. But if this is true, then the case is at an end. On the one hand, the traitor is dead. On the other, the plans of the Bruce-Partington submarine are presumably already on the Continent. What is there for us to do?\"\n\n\"To act, Sherlock\u2014to act!\" cried Mycroft, springing to his feet. \"All my instincts are against this explanation. Use your powers! Go to the scene of the crime! See the people concerned! Leave no stone unturned! In all your career you have never had so great a chance of serving your country.\"\n\n\"Well, well!\" said Holmes, shrugging his shoulders. \"Come, Watson! And you, Lestrade, could you favour us with your company for an hour or two? We will begin our investigation by a visit to Aldgate Station. Good-bye, Mycroft. I shall let you have a report before evening, but I warn you in advance that you have little to expect.\"\n\nAn hour later Holmes, Lestrade and I stood upon the Underground railroad at the point where it emerges from the tunnel immediately before Aldgate Station. A courteous red-faced old gentleman represented the railway company.\n\n\"This is where the young man's body lay,\" said he, indicating a spot about three feet from the metals. \"It could not have fallen from above, for these, as you see, are all blank walls. Therefore, it could only have come from a train, and that train, so far as we can trace it, must have passed about midnight on Monday.\"\n\n\"Have the carriages been examined for any sign of violence?\"\n\n\"There are no such signs, and no ticket has been found.\"\n\n\"No record of a door being found open?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\n\"We have had some fresh evidence this morning,\" said Lestrade. \"A passenger who passed Aldgate in an ordinary Metropolitan train about 11:40 on Monday night declares that he heard a heavy thud, as of a body striking the line, just before the train reached the station. There was dense fog, however, and nothing could be seen. He made no report of it at the time. Why, whatever is the matter with Mr. Holmes?\"\n\nMy friend was standing with an expression of strained intensity upon his face, staring at the railway metals where they curved out of the tunnel. Aldgate is a junction, and there was a network of points. On these his eager, questioning eyes were fixed, and I saw on his keen, alert face that tightening of the lips, that quiver of the nostrils, and concentration of the heavy, tufted brows which I knew so well.\n\n\"Points,\" he muttered; \"the points.\"\n\n\"What of it? What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I suppose there are no great number of points on a system such as this?\"\n\n\"No; there are very few.\"\n\n\"And a curve, too. Points, and a curve. By Jove! if it were only so.\"\n\n\"What is it, Mr. Holmes? Have you a clue?\"\n\n\"An idea\u2014an indication, no more. But the case certainly grows in interest. Unique, perfectly unique, and yet why not? I do not see any indications of bleeding on the line.\"\n\n\"There were hardly any.\"\n\n\"But I understand that there was a considerable wound.\"\n\n\"The bone was crushed, but there was no great external injury.\"\n\n\"And yet one would have expected some bleeding. Would it be possible for me to inspect the train which contained the passenger who heard the thud of a fall in the fog?\"\n\n\"I fear not, Mr. Holmes. The train has been broken up before now, and the carriages redistributed.\"\n\n\"I can assure you, Mr. Holmes,\" said Lestrade, \"that every carriage has been carefully examined. I saw to it myself.\"\n\nIt was one of my friend's most obvious weaknesses that he was impa tient with less alert intelligences than his own.\n\n\"Very likely,\" said he, turning away. \"As it happens, it was not the carriages which I desired to examine. Watson, we have done all we can here. We need not trouble you any further, Mr. Lestrade. I think our investigations must now carry us to Woolwich.\"\n\nAt London Bridge, Holmes wrote a telegram to his brother, which he handed to me before dispatching it. It ran thus:\n\nSee some light in the darkness, but it may possibly flicker out. Meanwhile, please send by messenger, to await return at Baker Street, a complete list of all foreign spies or international agents known to be in England, with full address.\n\nSHERLOCK.\n\n\"That should be helpful, Watson,\" he remarked as we took our seats in the Woolwich train. \"We certainly owe Brother Mycroft a debt for having introduced us to what promises to be a really very remarkable case.\"\n\nHis eager face still wore that expression of intense and high-strung energy, which showed me that some novel and suggestive circumstance had opened up a stimulating line of thought. See the foxhound with hanging ears and drooping tail as it lolls about the kennels, and compare it with the same hound as, with gleaming eyes and straining muscles, it runs upon a breast-high scent\u2014such was the change in Holmes since the morning. He was a different man from the limp and lounging figure in the mouse-coloured dressing-gown who had prowled so restlessly only a few hours before round the fog-girt room.\n\n\"There is material here. There is scope,\" said he. \"I am dull indeed not to have understood its possibilities.\"\n\n\"Even now they are dark to me.\"\n\n\"The end is dark to me also, but I have hold of one idea which may lead us far. The man met his death elsewhere, and his body was on the roof of a carriage.\"\n\n\"On the roof!\"\n\n\"Remarkable, is it not? But consider the facts. Is it a coincidence that it is found at the very point where the train pitches and sways as it comes round on the points? Is not that the place where an object upon the roof might be expected to fall off? The points would affect no object inside the train. Either the body fell from the roof, or a very curious coincidence has occurred. But now consider the question of the blood. Of course, there was no bleeding on the line if the body had bled elsewhere. Each fact is suggestive in itself. Together they have a cumulative force.\"\n\n\"And the ticket, too!\" I cried.\n\n\"Exactly. We could not explain the absence of a ticket. This would explain it. Everything fits together.\"\n\n\"But suppose it were so, we are still as far as ever from unravelling the mystery of his death. Indeed, it becomes not simpler but stranger.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" said Holmes thoughtfully, \"perhaps.\" He relapsed into a silent reverie, which lasted until the slow train drew up at last in Woolwich Station. There he called a cab and drew Mycroft's paper from his pocket.\n\n\"We have quite a little round of afternoon calls to make,\" said he. \"I think that Sir James Walter claims our first attention.\"\n\nThe house of the famous official was a fine villa with green lawns stretching down to the Thames. As we reached it the fog was lifting, and a thin, watery sunshine was breaking through. A butler answered our ring.\n\n\"Sir James, sir!\" said he with solemn face. \"Sir James died this morning.\"\n\n\"Good heavens!\" cried Holmes in amazement. \"How did he die?\"\n\n\"Perhaps you would care to step in, sir, and see his brother, Colonel Valentine?\"\n\n\"Yes, we had best do so.\"\n\nWe were ushered into a dim-lit drawing-room, where an instant later we were joined by a very tall, handsome, light-bearded man of fifty, the younger brother of the dead scientist. His wild eyes, stained cheeks, and unkempt hair all spoke of the sudden blow which had fallen upon the household. He was hardly articulate as he spoke of it.\n\n\"It was this horrible scandal,\" said he. \"My brother, Sir James, was a man of very sensitive honour, and he could not survive such an affair. It broke his heart. He was always so proud of the efficiency of his department, and this was a crushing blow.\"\n\n\"We had hoped that he might have given us some indications which would have helped us to clear the matter up.\"\n\n\"I assure you that it was all a mystery to him as it is to you and to all of us. He had already put all his knowledge at the disposal of the police. Naturally he had no doubt that Cadogan West was guilty. But all the rest was inconceivable.\"\n\n\"You cannot throw any new light upon the affair?\"\n\n\"I know nothing myself save what I have read or heard. I have no desire to be discourteous, but you can understand, Mr. Holmes, that we are much disturbed at present, and I must ask you to hasten this interview to an end.\"\n\n\"This is indeed an unexpected development,\" said my friend when we had regained the cab. \"I wonder if the death was natural, or whether the poor old fellow killed himself! If the latter, may it be taken as some sign of self-reproach for duty neglected? We must leave that question to the future. Now we shall turn to the Cadogan Wests.\"\n\nA small but well-kept house in the outskirts of the town sheltered the bereaved mother. The old lady was too dazed with grief to be of any use to us, but at her side was a white-faced young lady, who introduced herself as Miss Violet Westbury, the fianc\u00e9e of the dead man, and the last to see him upon that fatal night.\n\n\"I cannot explain it, Mr. Holmes,\" she said. \"I have not shut an eye since the tragedy, thinking, thinking, thinking, night and day, what the true meaning of it can be. Arthur was the most single-minded, chivalrous, patriotic man upon earth. He would have cut his right hand off before he would sell a State secret confided to his keeping. It is absurd, impossible, preposterous to anyone who knew him.\"\n\n\"But the facts, Miss Westbury?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes; I admit I cannot explain them.\"\n\n\"Was he in any want of money?\"\n\n\"No; his needs were very simple and his salary ample. He had saved a few hundreds, and we were to marry at the New Year.\"\n\n\"No signs of any mental excitement? Come, Miss Westbury, be absolutely frank with us.\"\n\nThe quick eye of my companion had noted some change in her manner. She coloured and hesitated.\n\n\"Yes,\" she said at last, \"I had a feeling that there was something on his mind.\"\n\n\"For long?\"\n\n\"Only for the last week or so. He was thoughtful and worried. Once I pressed him about it. He admitted that there was something, and that it was concerned with his official life. 'It is too serious for me to speak about, even to you,' said he. I could get nothing more.\"\n\nHolmes looked grave.\n\n\"Go on, Miss Westbury. Even if it seems to tell against him, go on. We cannot say what it may lead to.\"\n\n\"Indeed, I have nothing more to tell. Once or twice it seemed to me that he was on the point of telling me something. He spoke one evening of the importance of the secret, and I have some recollection that he said that no doubt foreign spies would pay a great deal to have it.\"\n\nMy friend's face grew graver still.\n\n\"Anything else?\"\n\n\"He said that we were slack about such matters\u2014that it would be easy for a traitor to get the plans.\"\n\n\"Was it only recently that he made such remarks?\"\n\n\"Yes, quite recently.\"\n\n\"Now tell us of that last evening.\"\n\n\"We were to go to the theatre. The fog was so thick that a cab was useless. We walked, and our way took us close to the office. Suddenly he darted away into the fog.\"\n\n\"Without a word?\"\n\n\"He gave an exclamation; that was all. I waited but he never returned. Then I walked home. Next morning, after the office opened, they came to inquire. About twelve o'clock we heard the terrible news. Oh, Mr. Holmes, if you could only, only save his honour! It was so much to him.\"\n\nHolmes shook his head sadly.\n\n\"Come, Watson,\" said he, \"our ways lie elsewhere. Our next station must be the office from which the papers were taken.\n\n\"It was black enough before against this young man, but our inquiries make it blacker,\" he remarked as the cab lumbered off. \"His coming marriage gives a motive for the crime. He naturally wanted money. The idea was in his head, since he spoke about it. He nearly made the girl an accomplice in the treason by telling her his plans. It is all very bad.\"\n\n\"But surely, Holmes, character goes for something? Then, again, why should he leave the girl in the street and dart away to commit a felony?\"\n\n\"Exactly! There are certainly objections. But it is a formidable case which they have to meet.\"\n\nMr. Sidney Johnson, the senior clerk, met us at the office and received us with that respect which my companion's card always commanded. He was a thin, gruff, bespectacled man of middle age, his cheeks haggard, and his hands twitching from the nervous strain to which he had been subjected.\n\n\"It is bad, Mr. Holmes, very bad! Have you heard of the death of the chief?\"\n\n\"We have just come from his house.\"\n\n\"The place is disorganized. The chief dead, Cadogan West dead, our papers stolen. And yet, when we closed our door on Monday evening, we were as efficient an office as any in the government service. Good God, it's dreadful to think of! That West, of all men, should have done such a thing!\"\n\n\"You are sure of his guilt, then?\"\n\n\"I can see no other way out of it. And yet I would have trusted him as I trust myself.\"\n\n\"At what hour was the office closed on Monday?\"\n\n\"At five.\"\n\n\"Did you close it?\"\n\n\"I am always the last man out.\"\n\n\"Where were the plans?\"\n\n\"In that safe. I put them there myself.\"\n\n\"Is there no watchman to the building?\"\n\n\"There is, but he has other departments to look after as well. He is an old soldier and a most trustworthy man. He saw nothing that evening. Of course the fog was very thick.\"\n\n\"Suppose that Cadogan West wished to make his way into the building after hours; he would need three keys, would he not, before he could reach the papers?\"\n\n\"Yes, he would. The key of the outer door, the key of the office, and the key of the safe.\"\n\n\"Only Sir James Walter and you had those keys?\"\n\n\"I had no keys of the doors\u2014only of the safe.\"\n\n\"Was Sir James a man who was orderly in his habits?\"\n\n\"Yes, I think he was. I know that so far as those three keys are concerned he kept them on the same ring. I have often seen them there.\"\n\n\"And that ring went with him to London?\"\n\n\"He said so.\"\n\n\"And your key never left your possession?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"Then West, if he is the culprit, must have had a duplicate. And yet none was found upon his body. One other point: if a clerk in this office desired to sell the plans, would it not be simpler to copy the plans for himself than to take the originals, as was actually done?\"\n\n\"It would take considerable technical knowledge to copy the plans in an effective way.\"\n\n\"But I suppose either Sir James, or you, or West, had that technical knowledge?\"\n\n\"No doubt we had, but I beg you won't try to drag me into the matter, Mr. Holmes. What is the use of our speculating in this way when the original plans were actually found on West?\"\n\n\"Well, it is certainly singular that he should run the risk of taking originals if he could safely have taken copies, which would have equally served his turn.\"\n\n\"Singular, no doubt\u2014and yet he did so.\"\n\n\"Every inquiry in this case reveals something inexplicable. Now there are three papers still missing. They are, as I understand, the vital ones.\"\n\n\"Yes, that is so.\"\n\n\"Do you mean to say that anyone holding these three papers, and without the seven others, could construct a Bruce-Partington submarine?\"\n\n\"I reported to that effect to the Admiralty. But to-day I have been over the drawings again, and I am not so sure of it. The double valves with the automatic self-adjusting slots are drawn in one of the papers which have been returned. Until the foreigners had invented that for themselves they could not make the boat. Of course they might soon get over the difficulty.\"\n\n\"But the three missing drawings are the most important?\"\n\n\"Undoubtedly.\"\n\n\"I think, with your permission, I will now take a stroll round the premises. I do not recall any other question which I desired to ask.\"\n\nHe examined the lock of the safe, the door of the room, and finally the iron shutters of the window. It was only when we were on the lawn outside that his interest was strongly excited. There was a laurel bush outside the window, and several of the branches bore signs of having been twisted or snapped. He examined them carefully with his lens, and then some dim and vague marks upon the earth beneath. Finally he asked the chief clerk to close the iron shutters, and he pointed out to me that they hardly met in the centre, and that it would be possible for anyone outside to see what was going on within the room.\n\n\"The indications are ruined by the three days' delay. They may mean something or nothing. Well, Watson, I do not think that Woolwich can help us further. It is a small crop which we have gathered. Let us see if we can do better in London.\"\n\nYet we added one more sheaf to our harvest before we left Woolwich Station. The clerk in the ticket office was able to say with confidence that he saw Cadogan West\u2014whom he knew well by sight\u2014upon the Monday night, and that he went to London by the 8:15 to London Bridge. He was alone and took a single third-class ticket. The clerk was struck at the time by his excited and nervous manner. So shaky was he that he could hardly pick up his change, and the clerk had helped him with it. A reference to the timetable showed that the 8:15 was the first train which it was possible for West to take after he had left the lady about 7:30.\n\n\"Let us reconstruct, Watson,\" said Holmes after half an hour of silence. \"I am not aware that in all our joint researches we have ever had a case which was more difficult to get at. Every fresh advance which we make only reveals a fresh ridge beyond. And yet we have surely made some appreciable progress.\n\n\"The effect of our inquiries at Woolwich has in the main been against young Cadogan West; but the indications at the window would lend themselves to a more favourable hypothesis. Let us suppose, for example, that he had been approached by some foreign agent. It might have been done under such pledges as would have prevented him from speaking of it, and yet would have affected his thoughts in the direction indicated by his remarks to his fianc\u00e9e. Very good. We will now suppose that as he went to the theatre with the young lady he suddenly, in the fog, caught a glimpse of this same agent going in the direction of the office. He was an impetuous man, quick in his decisions. Everything gave way to his duty. He followed the man, reached the window, saw the abstraction of the documents, and pursued the thief. In this way we get over the objection that no one would take originals when he could make copies. This outsider had to take originals. So far it holds together.\"\n\n\"What is the next step?\"\n\n\"Then we come into difficulties. One would imagine that under such circumstances the first act of young Cadogan West would be to seize the villain and raise the alarm. Why did he not do so? Could it have been an official superior who took the papers? That would explain West's conduct. Or could the chief have given West the slip in the fog, and West started at once to London to head him off from his own rooms, presuming that he knew where the rooms were? The call must have been very pressing, since he left his girl standing in the fog and made no effort to communicate with her. Our scent runs cold here, and there is a vast gap between either hypothesis and the laying of West's body, with seven papers in his pocket, on the roof of a Metropolitan train. My instinct now is to work from the other end. If Mycroft has given us the list of addresses we may be able to pick our man and follow two tracks instead of one.\"\n\nSurely enough, a note awaited us at Baker Street. A government messenger had brought it post-haste. Holmes glanced at it and threw it over to me.\n\nThere are numerous small fry, but few who would handle so big an affair. The only men worth considering are Adolph Meyer, of 13 Great George Street, Westminster; Louis La Rothi\u00e8re, of Campden Man sions, Notting Hill; and Hugo Oberstein, 13 Caulfield Gardens, Kens ington. The latter was known to be in town on Monday and is now reported as having left. Glad to hear you have seen some light. The\n\nCabinet awaits your final report with the utmost anxiety. Urgent rep resentations have arrived from the very highest quarter. The whole force of the State is at your back if you should need it.\n\nMYCROFT.\n\n\"I'm afraid,\" said Holmes smiling, \"that all the queen's horses and all the queen's men cannot avail in this matter.\" He had spread out his big map of London and leaned eagerly over it. \"Well, well,\" said he presently with an exclamation of satisfaction, \"things are turning a little in our direction at last. Why, Watson, I do honestly believe that we are going to pull it off, after all.\" He slapped me on the shoulder with a sudden burst of hilarity. \"I am going out now. It is only a reconnaissance. I will do nothing serious without my trusted comrade and biographer at my elbow. Do you stay here, and the odds are that you will see me again in an hour or two. If time hangs heavy get foolscap and a pen, and begin your narrative of how we saved the State.\"\n\nI felt some reflection of his elation in my own mind, for I knew well that he would not depart so far from his usual austerity of demeanour unless there was good cause for exultation. All the long November evening I waited, filled with impatience for his return. At last, shortly after nine o'clock, there arrived a messenger with a note:\n\n\u2002Am dining at Goldini's Restaurant, Gloucester Road, Kensington.\n\n\u2002Please come at once and join me there. Bring with you a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel, and a revolver.\n\n\u2002S. H.\n\nIt was a nice equipment for a respectable citizen to carry through the dim, fog-draped streets. I stowed them all discreetly away in my overcoat and drove straight to the address given. There sat my friend at a little round table near the door of the garish Italian restaurant.\n\n\"Have you had something to eat? Then join me in a coffee and cu ra\u00e7ao. Try one of the proprietor's cigars. They are less poisonous than one would expect. Have you the tools?\"\n\n\"They are here, in my overcoat.\"\n\n\"Excellent. Let me give you a short sketch of what I have done, with some indication of what we are about to do. Now it must be evident to you, Watson, that this young man's body was placed on the roof of the train. That was clear from the instant that I determined the fact that it was from the roof, and not from a carriage, that he had fallen.\"\n\n\"Could it not have been dropped from a bridge?\"\n\n\"I should say it was impossible. If you examine the roofs you will find that they are slightly rounded, and there is no railing round them. Therefore, we can say for certain that young Cadogan West was placed on it.\"\n\n\"How could he be placed there?\"\n\n\"That was the question which we had to answer. There is only one possible way. You are aware that the Underground runs clear of tunnels at some points in the West End. I had a vague memory that as I have trav elled by it I have occasionally seen windows just above my head. Now, suppose that a train halted under such a window, would there be any difficulty in laying a body upon the roof?\"\n\n\"It seems most improbable.\"\n\n\"We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Here all other contingencies have failed. When I found that the leading international agent, who had just left London, lived in a row of houses which abutted upon the Underground, I was so pleased that you were a little astonished at my sudden frivolity.\"\n\n\"Oh, that was it, was it?\"\n\n\"Yes, that was it. Mr. Hugo Oberstein, of 13 Caulfield Gardens, had become my objective. I began my operations at Gloucester Road Station, where a very helpful official walked with me along the track and allowed me to satisfy myself not only that the back-stair windows of Caulfield Gardens open on the line but the even more essential fact that, owing to the intersection of one of the larger railways, the Underground trains are frequently held motionless for some minutes at that very spot.\"\n\n\"Splendid, Holmes! You have got it!\"\n\n\"So far\u2014so far, Watson. We advance, but the goal is afar. Well, having seen the back of Caulfield Gardens, I visited the front and satisfied myself that the bird was indeed flown. It is a considerable house, unfurnished, so far as I could judge, in the upper rooms. Oberstein lived there with a single valet, who was probably a confederate entirely in his confidence. We must bear in mind that Oberstein has gone to the Continent to dispose of his booty, but not with any idea of flight; for he had no reason to fear a warrant, and the idea of an amateur domiciliary visit would certainly never occur to him. Yet that is precisely what we are about to make.\"\n\n\"Could we not get a warrant and legalize it?\"\n\n\"Hardly on the evidence.\"\n\n\"What can we hope to do?\"\n\n\"We cannot tell what correspondence may be there.\"\n\n\"I don't like it, Holmes.\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, you shall keep watch in the street. I'll do the criminal part. It's not a time to stick at trifles. Think of Mycroft's note, of the Admiralty, the Cabinet, the exalted person who waits for news. We are bound to go.\"\n\nMy answer was to rise from the table.\n\n\"You are right, Holmes. We are bound to go.\"\n\nHe sprang up and shook me by the hand.\n\n\"I knew you would not shrink at the last,\" said he, and for a moment I saw something in his eyes which was nearer to tenderness than I had ever seen. The next instant he was his masterful, practical self once more.\n\n\"It is nearly half a mile, but there is no hurry. Let us walk,\" said he. \"Don't drop the instruments, I beg. Your arrest as a suspicious character would be a most unfortunate complication.\"\n\nCaulfield Gardens was one of those lines of flat-faced, pillared, and porticoed houses which are so prominent a product of the middle Victorian epoch in the West End of London. Next door there appeared to be a children's party, for the merry buzz of young voices and the clatter of a piano resounded through the night. The fog still hung about and screened us with its friendly shade. Holmes had lit his lantern and flashed it upon the massive door.\n\n\"This is a serious proposition,\" said he. \"It is certainly bolted as well as locked. We would do better in the area. There is an excellent archway down yonder in case a too zealous policeman should intrude. Give me a hand, Watson, and I'll do the same for you.\"\n\nA minute later we were both in the area. Hardly had we reached the dark shadows before the step of the policeman was heard in the fog above. As its soft rhythm died away, Holmes set to work upon the lower door. I saw him stoop and strain until with a sharp crash it flew open. We sprang through into the dark passage, closing the area door behind us. Holmes led the way up the curving, uncarpeted stair. His little fan of yellow light shone upon a low window.\n\n\"Here we are, Watson\u2014this must be the one.\" He threw it open, and as he did so there was a low, harsh murmur, growing steadily into a loud roar as a train dashed past us in the darkness. Holmes swept his light along the window-sill. It was thickly coated with soot from the passing engines, but the black surface was blurred and rubbed in places.\n\n\"You can see where they rested the body. Halloa, Watson! what is this? There can be no doubt that it is a blood mark.\" He was pointing to faint discolourations along the woodwork of the window. \"Here it is on the stone of the stair also. The demonstration is complete. Let us stay here until a train stops.\"\n\nWe had not long to wait. The very next train roared from the tunnel as before, but slowed in the open, and then, with a creaking of brakes, pulled up immediately beneath us. It was not four feet from the window-ledge to the roof of the carriages. Holmes softly closed the window.\n\n\"So far we are justified,\" said he. \"What do you think of it, Watson?\"\n\n\"A masterpiece. You have never risen to a greater height.\"\n\n\"I cannot agree with you there. From the moment that I conceived the idea of the body being upon the roof, which surely was not a very abstruse one, all the rest was inevitable. If it were not for the grave interests involved the affair up to this point would be insignificant. Our difficulties are still before us. But perhaps we may find something here which may help us.\"\n\nWe had ascended the kitchen stair and entered the suite of rooms upon the first floor. One was a dining-room, severely furnished and containing nothing of interest. A second was a bedroom, which also drew blank. The remaining room appeared more promising, and my companion settled down to a systematic examination. It was littered with books and papers, and was evidently used as a study. Swiftly and methodically Holmes turned over the contents of drawer after drawer and cupboard after cupboard, but no gleam of success came to brighten his austere face. At the end of an hour he was no further than when he started.\n\n\"The cunning dog has covered his tracks,\" said he. \"He has left nothing to incriminate him. His dangerous correspondence has been destroyed or removed. This is our last chance.\"\n\nIt was a small tin cash-box which stood upon the writing-desk. Holmes pried it open with his chisel. Several rolls of paper were within, covered with figures and calculations, without any note to show to what they referred. The recurring words \"water pressure\" and \"pressure to the square inch\" suggested some possible relation to a submarine. Holmes tossed them all impatiently aside. There only remained an envelope with some small newspaper slips inside it. He shook them out on the table, and at once I saw by his eager face that his hopes had been raised.\n\n\"What's this, Watson? Eh? What's this? Record of a series of messages in the advertisements of a paper. Daily Telegraph agony column by the print and paper. Right-hand top corner of a page. No dates\u2014but messages arrange themselves. This must be the first:\n\n\"Hoped to hear sooner. Terms agreed to. Write fully to address given on card.\n\nPIERROT.\n\n\"Next comes:\n\n\"Too complex for description. Must have full report. Stuff awaits you when goods delivered.\n\nPIERROT.\n\n\"Then comes:\n\n\"Matter presses. Must withdraw offer unless contract completed. Make appointment by letter. Will confirm by advertisement.\n\nPIERROT.\n\n\"Finally:\n\n\"Monday night after nine. Two taps. Only ourselves. Do not be so suspicious. Payment in hard cash when goods delivered. PIERROT.\n\nPIERROT.\n\n\"A fairly complete record, Watson! If we could only get at the man at the other end!\" He sat lost in thought, tapping his fingers on the table. Finally he sprang to his feet.\n\n\"Well, perhaps it won't be so difficult, after all. There is nothing more to be done here, Watson. I think we might drive round to the offices of the Daily Telegraph, and so bring a good day's work to a conclusion.\"\n\nMycroft Holmes and Lestrade had come round by appointment after breakfast next day and Sherlock Holmes had recounted to them our proceedings of the day before. The professional shook his head over our confessed burglary.\n\n\"We can't do these things in the force, Mr. Holmes,\" said he. \"No wonder you get results that are beyond us. But some of these days you'll go too far, and you'll find yourself and your friend in trouble.\"\n\n\"For England, home and beauty\u2014eh, Watson? Martyrs on the altar of our country. But what do you think of it, Mycroft?\"\n\n\"Excellent, Sherlock! Admirable! But what use will you make of it?\"\n\nHolmes picked up the Daily Telegraph which lay upon the table.\n\n\"Have you seen Pierrot's advertisement to-day?\"\n\n\"What? Another one?\"\n\n\"Yes, here it is:\n\n\"Tonight. Same hour. Same place. Two taps. Most vitally important. Your own safety at stake.\n\nPIERROT.\"\n\n\"By George!\" cried Lestrade. \"If he answers that we've got him!\"\n\n\"That was my idea when I put it in. I think if you could both make it convenient to come with us about eight o'clock to Caulfield Gardens we might possibly get a little nearer to a solution.\"\n\nOne of the most remarkable characteristics of Sherlock Holmes was his power of throwing his brain out of action and switching all his thoughts on to lighter things whenever he had convinced himself that he could no longer work to advantage. I remember that during the whole of that memorable day he lost himself in a monograph which he had undertaken upon the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus. For my own part I had none of this power of detachment, and the day, in consequence, appeared to be interminable. The great national importance of the issue, the suspense in high quarters, the direct nature of the experiment which we were trying\u2014all combined to work upon my nerve. It was a relief to me when at last, after a light dinner, we set out upon our expedition. Lestrade and Mycroft met us by appointment at the outside of Gloucester Road Station. The area door of Oberstein's house had been left open the night before, and it was necessary for me, as Mycroft Holmes absolutely and indignantly declined to climb the railings, to pass in and open the hall door. By nine o'clock we were all seated in the study, waiting patiently for our man.\n\nAn hour passed and yet another. When eleven struck, the measured beat of the great church clock seemed to sound the dirge of our hopes. Lestrade and Mycroft were fidgeting in their seats and looking twice a minute at their watches. Holmes sat silent and composed, his eyelids half shut, but every sense on the alert. He raised his head with a sudden jerk.\n\n\"He is coming,\" said he.\n\nThere had been a furtive step past the door. Now it returned. We heard a shuffling sound outside, and then two sharp taps with the knocker. Holmes rose, motioning to us to remain seated. The gas in the hall was a mere point of light. He opened the outer door, and then as a dark figure slipped past him he closed and fastened it. \"This way!\" we heard him say, and a moment later our man stood before us. Holmes had followed him closely, and as the man turned with a cry of surprise and alarm he caught him by the collar and threw him back into the room. Before our prisoner had recovered his balance the door was shut and Holmes standing with his back against it. The man glared round him, staggered, and fell senseless upon the floor. With the shock, his broad-brimmed hat flew from his head, his cravat slipped down from his lips, and there were the long light beard and the soft, handsome delicate features of Colonel Valentine Walter.\n\nHolmes gave a whistle of surprise.\n\n\"You can write me down an ass this time, Watson,\" said he. \"This was not the bird that I was looking for.\"\n\n\"Who is he?\" asked Mycroft eagerly.\n\n\"The younger brother of the late Sir James Walter, the head of the Submarine Department. Yes, yes; I see the fall of the cards. He is coming to. I think that you had best leave his examination to me.\"\n\nWe had carried the prostrate body to the sofa. Now our prisoner sat up, looked round him with a horror-stricken face, and passed his hand over his forehead, like one who cannot believe his own senses.\n\n\"What is this?\" he asked. \"I came here to visit Mr. Oberstein.\"\n\n\"Everything is known, Colonel Walter,\" said Holmes. \"How an English gentleman could behave in such a manner is beyond my comprehension. But your whole correspondence and relations with Oberstein are within our knowledge. So also are the circumstances connected with the death of young Cadogan West. Let me advise you to gain at least the small credit for repentance and confession, since there are still some details which we can only learn from your lips.\"\n\nThe man groaned and sank his face in his hands. We waited, but he was silent.\n\n\"I can assure you,\" said Holmes, \"that every essential is already known. We know that you were pressed for money; that you took an impress of the keys which your brother held; and that you entered into a correspondence with Oberstein, who answered your letters through the advertisement columns of the Daily Telegraph. We are aware that you went down to the office in the fog on Monday night, but that you were seen and followed by young Cadogan West, who had probably some previous reason to suspect you. He saw your theft, but could not give the alarm, as it was just possible that you were taking the papers to your brother in London. Leaving all his private concerns, like the good citizen that he was, he followed you closely in the fog and kept at your heels until you reached this very house. There he intervened, and then it was, Colonel Walter, that to treason you added the more terrible crime of murder.\"\n\n\"I did not! I did not! Before God I swear that I did not!\" cried our wretched prisoner.\n\n\"Tell us, then, how Cadogan West met his end before you laid him upon the roof of a railway carriage.\"\n\n\"I will. I swear to you that I will. I did the rest. I confess it. It was just as you say. A Stock Exchange debt had to be paid. I needed the money badly. Oberstein offered me five thousand. It was to save myself from ruin. But as to murder, I am as innocent as you.\"\n\n\"What happened, then?\"\n\n\"He had his suspicions before, and he followed me as you describe. I never knew it until I was at the very door. It was thick fog, and one could not see three yards. I had given two taps and Oberstein had come to the door. The young man rushed up and demanded to know what we were about to do with the papers. Oberstein had a short life-preserver. He always carried it with him. As West forced his way after us into the house Oberstein struck him on the head. The blow was a fatal one. He was dead within five minutes. There he lay in the hall, and we were at our wit's end what to do. Then Oberstein had this idea about the trains which halted under his back window. But first he examined the papers which I had brought. He said that three of them were essential, and that he must keep them. 'You cannot keep them,' said I. 'There will be a dreadful row at Woolwich if they are not returned.' 'I must keep them,' said he, 'for they are so technical that it is impossible in the time to make copies.' 'Then they must all go back together tonight,' said I. He thought for a little, and then he cried out that he had it. 'Three I will keep,' said he. 'The others we will stuff into the pocket of this young man. When he is found the whole business will assuredly be put to his account.' I could see no other way out of it, so we did as he suggested. We waited half an hour at the window before a train stopped. It was so thick that nothing could be seen, and we had no difficulty in lowering West's body on to the train. That was the end of the matter so far as I was concerned.\"\n\n\"And your brother?\"\n\n\"He said nothing, but he had caught me once with his keys, and I think that he suspected. I read in his eyes that he suspected. As you know, he never held up his head again.\"\n\nThere was silence in the room. It was broken by Mycroft Holmes.\n\n\"Can you not make reparation? It would ease your conscience, and possibly your punishment.\"\n\n\"What reparation can I make?\"\n\n\"Where is Oberstein with the papers?\"\n\n\"I do not know.\"\n\n\"Did he give you no address?\"\n\n\"He said that letters to the Hotel du Louvre, Paris, would eventually reach him.\"\n\n\"Then reparation is still within your power,\" said Sherlock Holmes.\n\n\"I will do anything I can. I owe this fellow no particular good-will. He has been my ruin and my downfall.\"\n\n\"Here are paper and pen. Sit at this desk and write to my dictation. Direct the envelope to the address given. That is right. Now the letter:\n\n\"DEAR SIR:\n\nWith regard to our transaction, you will no doubt have observed by now that one essential detail is missing. I have a tracing which will make it complete. This has involved me in extra trouble, however, and I must ask you for a further advance of five hundred pounds. I will not trust it to the post, nor will I take anything but gold or notes. I would come to you abroad, but it would excite remark if I left the country at present. Therefore I shall expect to meet you in the smoking-room of the Charing Cross Hotel at noon on Saturday. Remember that only English notes, or gold, will be taken.\n\nThat will do very well. I shall be very much surprised if it does not fetch our man.\"\n\nAnd it did! It is a matter of history\u2014that secret history of a nation which is often so much more intimate and interesting than its public chronicles\u2014that Oberstein, eager to complete the coup of his lifetime, came to the lure and was safely engulfed for fifteen years in a British prison. In his trunk were found the invaluable Bruce-Partington plans, which he had put up for auction in all the naval centres of Europe.\n\nColonel Walter died in prison towards the end of the second year of his sentence. As to Holmes, he returned refreshed to his monograph upon the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus, which has since been printed for private circulation, and is said by experts to be the last word upon the subject. Some weeks afterwards I learned incidentally that my friend spent a day at Windsor, whence he returned with a remarkably fine emerald tie-pin. When I asked him if he had bought it, he answered that it was a present from a certain gracious lady in whose interests he had once been fortunate enough to carry out a small commission. He said no more; but I fancy that I could guess at that lady's august name, and I have little doubt that the emerald pin will forever recall to my friend's memory the adventure of the Bruce-Partington plans." + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE DYING DETECTIVE", + "text": "Mrs. Hudson, the landlady of Sherlock Holmes, was a long-suffering woman. Not only was her first-floor flat invaded at all hours by throngs of singular and often undesirable characters but her remarkable lodger showed an eccentricity and irregularity in his life which must have sorely tried her patience. His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London. On the other hand, his payments were princely. I have no doubt that the house might have been purchased at the price which Holmes paid for his rooms during the years that I was with him.\n\nThe landlady stood in the deepest awe of him and never dared to interfere with him, however outrageous his proceedings might seem. She was fond of him, too, for he had a remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women. He disliked and distrusted the sex, but he was always a chivalrous opponent. Knowing how genuine was her regard for him, I listened earnestly to her story when she came to my rooms in the second year of my married life and told me of the sad condition to which my poor friend was reduced.\n\n\"He's dying, Dr. Watson,\" said she. \"For three days he has been sinking, and I doubt if he will last the day. He would not let me get a doctor. This morning when I saw his bones sticking out of his face and his great bright eyes looking at me I could stand no more of it. 'With your leave or without it, Mr. Holmes, I am going for a doctor this very hour,' said I. 'Let it be Watson, then,' said he. I wouldn't waste an hour in coming to him, sir, or you may not see him alive.\"\n\nI was horrified for I had heard nothing of his illness. I need not say that I rushed for my coat and my hat. As we drove back I asked for the details.\n\n\"There is little I can tell you, sir. He has been working at a case down at Rotherhithe, in an alley near the river, and he has brought this illness back with him. He took to his bed on Wednesday afternoon and has never moved since. For these three days neither food nor drink has passed his lips.\"\n\n\"Good God! Why did you not call in a doctor?\"\n\n\"He wouldn't have it, sir. You know how masterful he is. I didn't dare to disobey him. But he's not long for this world, as you'll see for yourself the moment that you set eyes on him.\"\n\nHe was indeed a deplorable spectacle. In the dim light of a foggy No vember day the sick room was a gloomy spot, but it was that gaunt, wasted face staring at me from the bed which sent a chill to my heart. His eyes had the brightness of fever, there was a hectic flush upon either cheek, and dark crusts clung to his lips; the thin hands upon the coverlet twitched incessantly, his voice was croaking and spasmodic. He lay listlessly as I entered the room, but the sight of me brought a gleam of recognition to his eyes.\n\n\"Well, Watson, we seem to have fallen upon evil days,\" said he in a feeble voice, but with something of his old carelessness of manner.\n\n\"My dear fellow!\" I cried, approaching him.\n\n\"Stand back! Stand right back!\" said he with the sharp imperiousness which I had associated only with moments of crisis. \"If you approach me, Watson, I shall order you out of the house.\"\n\n\"But why?\"\n\n\"Because it is my desire. Is that not enough?\"\n\nYes, Mrs. Hudson was right. He was more masterful than ever. It was pitiful, however, to see his exhaustion.\n\n\"I only wished to help,\" I explained.\n\n\"Exactly! You will help best by doing what you are told.\"\n\n\"Certainly, Holmes.\"\n\nHe relaxed the austerity of his manner.\n\n\"You are not angry?\" he asked, gasping for breath.\n\nPoor devil, how could I be angry when I saw him lying in such a plight before me?\n\n\"It's for your own sake, Watson,\" he croaked.\n\n\"For my sake?\"\n\n\"I know what is the matter with me. It is a coolie disease from Sumatra\u2014a thing that the Dutch know more about than we, though they have made little of it up to date. One thing only is certain. It is infallibly deadly, and it is horribly contagious.\"\n\nHe spoke now with a feverish energy, the long hands twitching and jerking as he motioned me away.\n\n\"Contagious by touch, Watson\u2014that's it, by touch. Keep your distance and all is well.\"\n\n\"Good heavens, Holmes! Do you suppose that such a consideration weighs with me for an instant? It would not affect me in the case of a stranger. Do you imagine it would prevent me from doing my duty to so old a friend?\"\n\nAgain I advanced, but he repulsed me with a look of furious anger.\n\n\"If you will stand there I will talk. If you do not you must leave the room.\"\n\nI have so deep a respect for the extraordinary qualities of Holmes that I have always deferred to his wishes, even when I least understood them. But now all my professional instincts were aroused. Let him be my master elsewhere, I at least was his in a sick room.\n\n\"Holmes,\" said I, \"you are not yourself. A sick man is but a child, and so I will treat you. Whether you like it or not, I will examine your symptoms and treat you for them.\"\n\nHe looked at me with venomous eyes.\n\n\"If I am to have a doctor whether I will or not, let me at least have someone in whom I have confidence,\" said he.\n\n\"Then you have none in me?\"\n\n\"In your friendship, certainly. But facts are facts, Watson, and, after all, you are only a general practitioner with very limited experience and mediocre qualifications. It is painful to have to say these things, but you leave me no choice.\"\n\nI was bitterly hurt.\n\n\"Such a remark is unworthy of you, Holmes. It shows me very clearly the state of your own nerves. But if you have no confidence in me I would not intrude my services. Let me bring Sir Jasper Meek or Penrose Fisher, or any of the best men in London. But someone you must have, and that is final. If you think that I am going to stand here and see you die without either helping you myself or bringing anyone else to help you, then you have mistaken your man.\"\n\n\"You mean well, Watson,\" said the sick man with something between a sob and a groan. \"Shall I demonstrate your own ignorance? What do you know, pray, of Tapanuli fever? What do you know of the black For mosa corruption?\"\n\n\"I have never heard of either.\"\n\n\"There are many problems of disease, many strange pathological possibilities, in the East, Watson.\" He paused after each sentence to collect his failing strength. \"I have learned so much during some recent researches which have a medico-criminal aspect. It was in the course of them that I contracted this complaint. You can do nothing.\"\n\n\"Possibly not. But I happen to know that Dr. Ainstree, the greatest living authority upon tropical disease, is now in London. All remonstrance is useless, Holmes, I am going this instant to fetch him.\" I turned resolutely to the door.\n\nNever have I had such a shock! In an instant, with a tiger-spring, the dying man had intercepted me. I heard the sharp snap of a twisted key. The next moment he had staggered back to his bed, exhausted and panting after his one tremendous outflame of energy.\n\n\"You won't take the key from me by force, Watson. I've got you, my friend. Here you are, and here you will stay until I will otherwise. But I'll humour you.\" (All this in little gasps, with terrible struggles for breath between.) \"You've only my own good at heart. Of course I know that very well. You shall have your way, but give me time to get my strength. Not now, Watson, not now. It's four o'clock. At six you can go.\"\n\n\"This is insanity, Holmes.\"\n\n\"Only two hours, Watson. I promise you will go at six. Are you content to wait?\"\n\n\"I seem to have no choice.\"\n\n\"None in the world, Watson. Thank you, I need no help in arranging the clothes. You will please keep your distance. Now, Watson, there is one other condition that I would make. You will seek help, not from the man you mention, but from the one that I choose.\"\n\n\"By all means.\"\n\n\"The first three sensible words that you have uttered since you entered this room, Watson. You will find some books over there. I am somewhat exhausted; I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a non-conductor? At six, Watson, we resume our conversation.\"\n\nBut it was destined to be resumed long before that hour, and in circumstances which gave me a shock hardly second to that caused by his spring to the door. I had stood for some minutes looking at the silent figure in the bed. His face was almost covered by the clothes and he appeared to be asleep. Then, unable to settle down to reading, I walked slowly round the room, examining the pictures of celebrated criminals with which every wall was adorned. Finally, in my aimless perambulation, I came to the mantelpiece. A litter of pipes, tobacco-pouches, syringes, penknives, revolver-cartridges, and other debris was scattered over it. In the midst of these was a small black and white ivory box with a sliding lid. It was a neat little thing, and I had stretched out my hand to examine it more closely when\u2014It was a dreadful cry that he gave\u2014a yell which might have been heard down the street. My skin went cold and my hair bristled at that horrible scream. As I turned I caught a glimpse of a convulsed face and frantic eyes. I stood paralyzed, with the little box in my hand.\n\n\"Put it down! Down, this instant, Watson\u2014this instant, I say!\" His head sank back upon the pillow and he gave a deep sigh of relief as I replaced the box upon the mantelpiece. \"I hate to have my things touched, Watson. You know that I hate it. You fidget me beyond endurance. You, a doctor\u2014you are enough to drive a patient into an asylum. Sit down, man, and let me have my rest!\"\n\nThe incident left a most unpleasant impression upon my mind. The violent and causeless excitement, followed by this brutality of speech, so far removed from his usual suavity, showed me how deep was the disorganization of his mind. Of all ruins, that of a noble mind is the most deplorable. I sat in silent dejection until the stipulated time had passed. He seemed to have been watching the clock as well as I, for it was hardly six before he began to talk with the same feverish animation as before.\n\n\"Now, Watson,\" said he. \"Have you any change in your pocket?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Any silver?\"\n\n\"A good deal.\"\n\n\"How many half-crowns?\"\n\n\"I have five.\"\n\n\"Ah, too few! Too few! How very unfortunate, Watson! However, such as they are you can put them in your watchpocket. And all the rest of your money in your left trouserpocket. Thank you. It will balance you so much better like that.\"\n\nThis was raving insanity. He shuddered, and again made a sound between a cough and a sob.\n\n\"You will now light the gas, Watson, but you will be very careful that not for one instant shall it be more than half on. I implore you to be careful, Watson. Thank you, that is excellent. No, you need not draw the blind. Now you will have the kindness to place some letters and papers upon this table within my reach. Thank you. Now some of that litter from the mantelpiece. Excellent, Watson! There is a sugar-tongs there. Kindly raise that small ivory box with its assistance. Place it here among the papers. Good! You can now go and fetch Mr. Culverton Smith, of 13 Lower Burke Street.\"\n\nTo tell the truth, my desire to fetch a doctor had somewhat weakened, for poor Holmes was so obviously delirious that it seemed dangerous to leave him. However, he was as eager now to consult the person named as he had been obstinate in refusing.\n\n\"I never heard the name,\" said I.\n\n\"Possibly not, my good Watson. It may surprise you to know that the man upon earth who is best versed in this disease is not a medical man, but a planter. Mr. Culverton Smith is a well-known resident of Sumatra, now visiting London. An outbreak of the disease upon his plantation, which was distant from medical aid, caused him to study it himself, with some rather far-reaching consequences. He is a very methodical person, and I did not desire you to start before six, because I was well aware that you would not find him in his study. If you could persuade him to come here and give us the benefit of his unique experience of this disease, the investigation of which has been his dearest hobby, I cannot doubt that he could help me.\"\n\nI give Holmes's remarks as a consecutive whole and will not attempt to indicate how they were interrupted by gaspings for breath and those clutchings of his hands which indicated the pain from which he was suffering. His appearance had changed for the worse during the few hours that I had been with him. Those hectic spots were more pronounced, the eyes shone more brightly out of darker hollows, and a cold sweat glimmered upon his brow. He still retained, however, the jaunty gallantry of his speech. To the last gasp he would always be the master.\n\n\"You will tell him exactly how you have left me,\" said he. \"You will convey the very impression which is in your own mind\u2014a dying man\u2014a dying and delirious man. Indeed, I cannot think why the whole bed of the ocean is not one solid mass of oysters, so prolific the creatures seem. Ah, I am wandering! Strange how the brain controls the brain! What was I saying, Watson?\"\n\n\"My directions for Mr. Culverton Smith.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes, I remember. My life depends upon it. Plead with him, Watson. There is no good feeling between us. His nephew, Watson\u2014I had suspicions of foul play and I allowed him to see it. The boy died horribly. He has a grudge against me. You will soften him, Watson. Beg him, pray him, get him here by any means. He can save me\u2014only he!\"\n\n\"I will bring him in a cab, if I have to carry him down to it.\"\n\n\"You will do nothing of the sort. You will persuade him to come. And then you will return in front of him. Make any excuse so as not to come with him. Don't forget, Watson. You won't fail me. You never did fail me. No doubt there are natural enemies which limit the increase of the creatures. You and I, Watson, we have done our part. Shall the world, then, be overrun by oysters? No, no; horrible! You'll convey all that is in your mind.\"\n\nI left him full of the image of this magnificent intellect babbling like a foolish child. He had handed me the key, and with a happy thought I took it with me lest he should lock himself in. Mrs. Hudson was waiting, trembling and weeping, in the passage. Behind me as I passed from the flat I heard Holmes's high, thin voice in some delirious chant. Below, as I stood whistling for a cab, a man came on me through the fog.\n\n\"How is Mr. Holmes, sir?\" he asked.\n\nIt was an old acquaintance, Inspector Morton, of Scotland Yard, dressed in unofficial tweeds.\n\n\"He is very ill,\" I answered.\n\nHe looked at me in a most singular fashion. Had it not been too fiendish, I could have imagined that the gleam of the fanlight showed exultation in his face.\n\n\"I heard some rumour of it,\" said he.\n\nThe cab had driven up, and I left him.\n\nLower Burke Street proved to be a line of fine houses lying in the vague borderland between Notting Hill and Kensington. The particular one at which my cabman pulled up had an air of smug and demure respectability in its old-fashioned iron railings, its massive folding-door, and its shining brasswork. All was in keeping with a solemn butler who appeared framed in the pink radiance of a tinted electric light behind him.\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Culverton Smith is in. Dr. Watson! Very good, sir, I will take up your card.\"\n\nMy humble name and title did not appear to impress Mr. Culverton Smith. Through the half-open door I heard a high, petulant, penetrating voice.\n\n\"Who is this person? What does he want? Dear me, Staples, how often have I said that I am not to be disturbed in my hours of study?\"\n\nThere came a gentle flow of soothing explanation from the butler.\n\n\"Well, I won't see him, Staples. I can't have my work interrupted like this. I am not at home. Say so. Tell him to come in the morning if he really must see me.\"\n\nAgain the gentle murmur.\n\n\"Well, well, give him that message. He can come in the morning, or he can stay away. My work must not be hindered.\"\n\nI thought of Holmes tossing upon his bed of sickness and counting the minutes, perhaps, until I could bring help to him. It was not a time to stand upon ceremony. His life depended upon my promptness. Before the apologetic butler had delivered his message I had pushed past him and was in the room.\n\nWith a shrill cry of anger a man rose from a reclining chair beside the fire. I saw a great yellow face, coarse-grained and greasy, with heavy, double-chin, and two sullen, menacing gray eyes which glared at me from under tufted and sandy brows. A high bald head had a small velvet smoking-cap poised coquettishly upon one side of its pink curve. The skull was of enormous capacity, and yet as I looked down I saw to my amazement that the figure of the man was small and frail, twisted in the shoulders and back like one who has suffered from rickets in his childhood.\n\n\"What's this?\" he cried in a high, screaming voice. \"What is the meaning of this intrusion? Didn't I send you word that I would see you to morrow morning?\"\n\n\"I am sorry,\" said I, \"but the matter cannot be delayed. Mr. Sherlock Holmes\u2014\"\n\nThe mention of my friend's name had an extraordinary effect upon the little man. The look of anger passed in an instant from his face. His features became tense and alert.\n\n\"Have you come from Holmes?\" he asked.\n\n\"I have just left him.\"\n\n\"What about Holmes? How is he?\"\n\n\"He is desperately ill. That is why I have come.\"\n\nThe man motioned me to a chair, and turned to resume his own. As he did so I caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror over the mantelpiece. I could have sworn that it was set in a malicious and abominable smile. Yet I persuaded myself that it must have been some nervous contraction which I had surprised, for he turned to me an instant later with genuine concern upon his features.\n\n\"I am sorry to hear this,\" said he. \"I only know Mr. Holmes through some business dealings which we have had, but I have every respect for his talents and his character. He is an amateur of crime, as I am of disease. For him the villain, for me the microbe. There are my prisons,\" he continued, pointing to a row of bottles and jars which stood upon a side table. \"Among those gelatine cultivations some of the very worst offenders in the world are now doing time.\"\n\n\"It was on account of your special knowledge that Mr. Holmes desired to see you. He has a high opinion of you and thought that you were the one man in London who could help him.\"\n\nThe little man started, and the jaunty smoking-cap slid to the floor.\n\n\"Why?\" he asked. \"Why should Mr. Holmes think that I could help him in his trouble?\"\n\n\"Because of your knowledge of Eastern diseases.\"\n\n\"But why should he think that this disease which he has contracted is Eastern?\"\n\n\"Because, in some professional inquiry, he has been working among Chinese sailors down in the docks.\"\n\nMr. Culverton Smith smiled pleasantly and picked up his smoking-cap.\n\n\"Oh, that's it\u2014is it?\" said he. \"I trust the matter is not so grave as you suppose. How long has he been ill?\"\n\n\"About three days.\"\n\n\"Is he delirious?\"\n\n\"Occasionally.\"\n\n\"Tut, tut! This sounds serious. It would be inhuman not to answer his call. I very much resent any interruption to my work, Dr. Watson, but this case is certainly exceptional. I will come with you at once.\"\n\nI remembered Holmes's injunction.\n\n\"I have another appointment,\" said I.\n\n\"Very good. I will go alone. I have a note of Mr. Holmes's address. You can rely upon my being there within half an hour at most.\"\n\nIt was with a sinking heart that I reentered Holmes's bedroom. For all that I knew the worst might have happened in my absence. To my enormous relief, he had improved greatly in the interval. His appearance was as ghastly as ever, but all trace of delirium had left him and he spoke in a feeble voice, it is true, but with even more than his usual crispness and lucidity.\n\n\"Well, did you see him, Watson?\"\n\n\"Yes; he is coming.\"\n\n\"Admirable, Watson! Admirable! You are the best of messengers.\"\n\n\"He wished to return with me.\"\n\n\"That would never do, Watson. That would be obviously impossible. Did he ask what ailed me?\"\n\n\"I told him about the Chinese in the East End.\"\n\n\"Exactly! Well, Watson, you have done all that a good friend could. You can now disappear from the scene.\"\n\n\"I must wait and hear his opinion, Holmes.\"\n\n\"Of course you must. But I have reasons to suppose that this opinion would be very much more frank and valuable if he imagines that we are alone. There is just room behind the head of my bed, Watson.\"\n\n\"My dear Holmes!\"\n\n\"I fear there is no alternative, Watson. The room does not lend itself to concealment, which is as well, as it is the less likely to arouse suspicion. But just there, Watson, I fancy that it could be done.\" Suddenly he sat up with a rigid intentness upon his haggard face. \"There are the wheels, Watson. Quick, man, if you love me! And don't budge, whatever happens\u2014whatever happens, do you hear? Don't speak! Don't move! Just listen with all your ears.\" Then in an instant his sudden access of strength departed, and his masterful, purposeful talk droned away into the low, vague murmurings of a semi-delirious man.\n\nFrom the hiding-place into which I had been so swiftly hustled I heard the footfalls upon the stair, with the opening and the closing of the bedroom door. Then, to my surprise, there came a long silence, broken only by the heavy breathings and gaspings of the sick man. I could imagine that our visitor was standing by the bedside and looking down at the sufferer. At last that strange hush was broken.\n\n\"Holmes!\" he cried. \"Holmes!\" in the insistent tone of one who awak ens a sleeper. \"Can't you hear me, Holmes?\" There was a rustling, as if he had shaken the sick man roughly by the shoulder.\n\n\"Is that you, Mr. Smith?\" Holmes whispered. \"I hardly dared hope that you would come.\"\n\nThe other laughed.\n\n\"I should imagine not,\" he said. \"And yet, you see, I am here. Coals of fire, Holmes\u2014coals of fire!\"\n\n\"It is very good of you\u2014very noble of you. I appreciate your special knowledge.\"\n\nOur visitor sniggered.\n\n\"You do. You are, fortunately, the only man in London who does. Do you know what is the matter with you?\"\n\n\"The same,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Ah! You recognize the symptoms?\"\n\n\"Only too well.\"\n\n\"Well, I shouldn't be surprised, Holmes. I shouldn't be surprised if it were the same. A bad lookout for you if it is. Poor Victor was a dead man on the fourth day\u2014a strong, hearty young fellow. It was certainly, as you said, very surprising that he should have contracted an out-of-the-way Asiatic disease in the heart of London\u2014a disease, too, of which I had made such a very special study. Singular coincidence, Holmes. Very smart of you to notice it, but rather uncharitable to suggest that it was cause and effect.\"\n\n\"I knew that you did it.\"\n\n\"Oh, you did, did you? Well, you couldn't prove it, anyhow. But what do you think of yourself spreading reports about me like that, and then crawling to me for help the moment you are in trouble? What sort of a game is that\u2014eh?\"\n\nI heard the rasping, laboured breathing of the sick man. \"Give me the water!\" he gasped.\n\n\"You're precious near your end, my friend, but I don't want you to go till I have had a word with you. That's why I give you water. There, don't slop it about! That's right. Can you understand what I say?\"\n\nHolmes groaned.\n\n\"Do what you can for me. Let bygones be bygones,\" he whispered. \"I'll put the words out of my head\u2014I swear I will. Only cure me, and I'll forget it.\"\n\n\"Forget what?\"\n\n\"Well, about Victor Savage's death. You as good as admitted just now that you had done it. I'll forget it.\"\n\n\"You can forget it or remember it, just as you like. I don't see you in the witness-box. Quite another shaped box, my good Holmes, I assure you. It matters nothing to me that you should know how my nephew died. It's not him we are talking about. It's you.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes.\"\n\n\"The fellow who came for me\u2014I've forgotten his name\u2014said that you contracted it down in the East End among the sailors.\"\n\n\"I could only account for it so.\"\n\n\"You are proud of your brains, Holmes, are you not? Think yourself smart, don't you? You came across someone who was smarter this time. Now cast your mind back, Holmes. Can you think of no other way you could have got this thing?\"\n\n\"I can't think. My mind is gone. For heaven's sake help me!\"\n\n\"Yes, I will help you. I'll help you to understand just where you are and how you got there. I'd like you to know before you die.\"\n\n\"Give me something to ease my pain.\"\n\n\"Painful, is it? Yes, the coolies used to do some squealing towards the end. Takes you as cramp, I fancy.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes; it is cramp.\"\n\n\"Well, you can hear what I say, anyhow. Listen now! Can you remember any unusual incident in your life just about the time your symptoms began?\"\n\n\"No, no; nothing.\"\n\n\"Think again.\"\n\n\"I'm too ill to think.\"\n\n\"Well, then, I'll help you. Did anything come by post?\"\n\n\"By post?\"\n\n\"A box by chance?\"\n\n\"I'm fainting\u2014I'm gone!\"\n\n\"Listen, Holmes!\" There was a sound as if he was shaking the dying man, and it was all that I could do to hold myself quiet in my hiding-place. \"You must hear me. You shall hear me. Do you remember a box\u2014an ivory box? It came on Wednesday. You opened it\u2014do you remember?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, I opened it. There was a sharp spring inside it. Some joke\u2014\"\n\n\"It was no joke, as you will find to your cost. You fool, you would have it and you have got it. Who asked you to cross my path? If you had left me alone I would not have hurt you.\"\n\n\"I remember,\" Holmes gasped. \"The spring! It drew blood. This box\u2014this on the table.\"\n\n\"The very one, by George! And it may as well leave the room in my pocket. There goes your last shred of evidence. But you have the truth now, Holmes, and you can die with the knowledge that I killed you. You knew too much of the fate of Victor Savage, so I have sent you to share it. You are very near your end, Holmes. I will sit here and I will watch you die.\"\n\nHolmes's voice had sunk to an almost inaudible whisper.\n\n\"What is that?\" said Smith. \"Turn up the gas? Ah, the shadows begin to fall, do they? Yes, I will turn it up, that I may see you the better.\" He crossed the room and the light suddenly brightened. \"Is there any other little service that I can do you, my friend?\"\n\n\"A match and a cigarette.\"\n\nI nearly called out in my joy and my amazement. He was speaking in his natural voice\u2014a little weak, perhaps, but the very voice I knew. There was a long pause, and I felt that Culverton Smith was standing in silent amazement looking down at his companion.\n\n\"What's the meaning of this?\" I heard him say at last in a dry, rasping tone.\n\n\"The best way of successfully acting a part is to be it,\" said Holmes. \"I give you my word that for three days I have tasted neither food nor drink until you were good enough to pour me out that glass of water. But it is the tobacco which I find most irksome. Ah, here are some cigarettes.\" I heard the striking of a match. \"That is very much better. Halloa! halloa! Do I hear the step of a friend?\"\n\nThere were footfalls outside, the door opened, and Inspector Morton appeared.\n\n\"All is in order and this is your man,\" said Holmes.\n\nThe officer gave the usual cautions.\n\n\"I arrest you on the charge of the murder of one Victor Savage,\" he concluded.\n\n\"And you might add of the attempted murder of one Sherlock Holmes,\" remarked my friend with a chuckle. \"To save an invalid trouble, Inspector, Mr. Culverton Smith was good enough to give our signal by turning up the gas. By the way, the prisoner has a small box in the right-hand pocket of his coat which it would be as well to remove. Thank you. I would handle it gingerly if I were you. Put it down here. It may play its part in the trial.\"\n\nThere was a sudden rush and a scuffle, followed by the clash of iron and a cry of pain.\n\n\"You'll only get yourself hurt,\" said the inspector. \"Stand still, will you?\" There was the click of the closing handcuffs.\n\n\"A nice trap!\" cried the high, snarling voice. \"It will bring you into the dock, Holmes, not me. He asked me to come here to cure him. I was sorry for him and I came. Now he will pretend, no doubt, that I have said anything which he may invent which will corroborate his insane suspicions. You can lie as you like, Holmes. My word is always as good as yours.\"\n\n\"Good heavens!\" cried Holmes. \"I had totally forgotten him. My dear Watson, I owe you a thousand apologies. To think that I should have overlooked you! I need not introduce you to Mr. Culverton Smith, since I understand that you met somewhat earlier in the evening. Have you the cab below? I will follow you when I am dressed, for I may be of some use at the station.\n\n\"I never needed it more,\" said Holmes as he refreshed himself with a glass of claret and some biscuits in the intervals of his toilet. \"However, as you know, my habits are irregular, and such a feat means less to me than to most men. It was very essential that I should impress Mrs. Hudson with the reality of my condition, since she was to convey it to you, and you in turn to him. You won't be offended, Watson? You will realize that among your many talents dissimulation finds no place, and that if you had shared my secret you would never have been able to impress Smith with the urgent necessity of his presence, which was the vital point of the whole scheme. Knowing his vindictive nature, I was perfectly certain that he would come to look upon his handiwork.\"\n\n\"But your appearance, Holmes\u2014your ghastly face?\"\n\n\"Three days of absolute fast does not improve one's beauty, Watson. For the rest, there is nothing which a sponge may not cure. With vaseline upon one's forehead, belladonna in one's eyes, rouge over the cheek-bones, and crusts of beeswax round one's lips, a very satisfying effect can be produced. Malingering is a subject upon which I have sometimes thought of writing a monograph. A little occasional talk about half-crowns, oysters, or any other extraneous subject produces a pleasing effect of delirium.\"\n\n\"But why would you not let me near you, since there was in truth no infection?\"\n\n\"Can you ask, my dear Watson? Do you imagine that I have no respect for your medical talents? Could I fancy that your astute judgment would pass a dying man who, however weak, had no rise of pulse or temperature? At four yards, I could deceive you. If I failed to do so, who would bring my Smith within my grasp? No, Watson, I would not touch that box. You can just see if you look at it sideways where the sharp spring like a viper's tooth emerges as you open it. I dare say it was by some such device that poor Savage, who stood between this monster and a reversion, was done to death. My correspondence, however, is, as you know, a varied one, and I am somewhat upon my guard against any packages which reach me. It was clear to me, however, that by pretending that he had really succeeded in his design I might surprise a confession. That pretence I have carried out with the thoroughness of the true artist. Thank you, Watson, you must help me on with my coat. When we have finished at the police-station I think that something nutritious at Simpson's would not be out of place.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE DISAPPEARANCE OF LADY FRANCES CARFAX", + "text": "But why Turkish?\" asked Mr. Sherlock Holmes, gazing fixedly at my boots. I was reclining in a cane-backed chair at the moment, and my protruded feet had attracted his ever-active attention.\n\n\"English,\" I answered in some surprise. \"I got them at Latimer's, in Oxford Street.\"\n\nHolmes smiled with an expression of weary patience.\n\n\"The bath!\" he said; \"the bath! Why the relaxing and expensive Turkish rather than the invigorating home-made article?\"\n\n\"Because for the last few days I have been feeling rheumatic and old. A Turkish bath is what we call an alternative in medicine\u2014a fresh starting-point, a cleanser of the system.\n\n\"By the way, Holmes,\" I added, \"I have no doubt the connection between my boots and a Turkish bath is a perfectly self-evident one to a logical mind, and yet I should be obliged to you if you would indicate it.\"\n\n\"The train of reasoning is not very obscure, Watson,\" said Holmes with a mischievous twinkle. \"It belongs to the same elementary class of deduction which I should illustrate if I were to ask you who shared your cab in your drive this morning.\"\n\n\"I don't admit that a fresh illustration is an explanation,\" said I with some asperity.\n\n\"Bravo, Watson! A very dignified and logical remonstrance. Let me see, what were the points? Take the last one first\u2014the cab. You observe that you have some splashes on the left sleeve and shoulder of your coat. Had you sat in the centre of a hansom you would probably have had no splashes, and if you had they would certainly have been symmetrical. Therefore it is clear that you sat at the side. Therefore it is equally clear that you had a companion.\"\n\n\"That is very evident.\"\n\n\"Absurdly commonplace, is it not?\"\n\n\"But the boots and the bath?\"\n\n\"Equally childish. You are in the habit of doing up your boots in a certain way. I see them on this occasion fastened with an elaborate double bow, which is not your usual method of tying them. You have, therefore, had them off. Who has tied them? A bootmaker\u2014or the boy at the bath. It is unlikely that it is the bootmaker, since your boots are nearly new. Well, what remains? The bath. Absurd, is it not? But, for all that, the Turkish bath has served a purpose.\"\n\n\"What is that?\"\n\n\"You say that you have had it because you need a change. Let me sug gest that you take one. How would Lausanne do, my dear Watson\u2014first-class tickets and all expenses paid on a princely scale?\"\n\n\"Splendid! But why?\"\n\nHolmes leaned back in his armchair and took his notebook from his pocket.\n\n\"One of the most dangerous classes in the world,\" said he, \"is the drifting and friendless woman. She is the most harmless and often the most useful of mortals, but she is the inevitable inciter of crime in others. She is helpless. She is migratory. She has sufficient means to take her from country to country and from hotel to hotel. She is lost, as often as not, in a maze of obscure pensions and boarding-houses. She is a stray chicken in a world of foxes. When she is gobbled up she is hardly missed. I much fear that some evil has come to the Lady Frances Carfax.\"\n\nI was relieved at this sudden descent from the general to the particular. Holmes consulted his notes.\n\n\"Lady Frances,\" he continued, \"is the sole survivor of the direct family of the late Earl of Rufton. The estates went, as you may remember, in the male line. She was left with limited means, but with some very remarkable old Spanish jewellery of silver and curiously cut diamonds to which she was fondly attached\u2014too attached, for she refused to leave them with her banker and always carried them about with her. A rather pathetic figure, the Lady Frances, a beautiful woman, still in fresh middle age, and yet, by a strange chance, the last derelict of what only twenty years ago was a goodly fleet.\"\n\n\"What has happened to her, then?\"\n\n\"Ah, what has happened to the Lady Frances? Is she alive or dead? There is our problem. She is a lady of precise habits, and for four years it has been her invariable custom to write every second week to Miss Dobney, her old governess, who has long retired and lives in Camberwell. It is this Miss Dobney who has consulted me. Nearly five weeks have passed without a word. The last letter was from the Hotel National at Lausanne. Lady Frances seems to have left there and given no address. The family are anxious, and as they are exceedingly wealthy no sum will be spared if we can clear the matter up.\"\n\n\"Is Miss Dobney the only source of information? Surely she had other correspondents?\"\n\n\"There is one correspondent who is a sure draw, Watson. That is the bank. Single ladies must live, and their passbooks are compressed diaries. She banks at Silvester's. I have glanced over her account. The last check but one paid her bill at Lausanne, but it was a large one and probably left her with cash in hand. Only one check has been drawn since.\"\n\n\"To whom, and where?\"\n\n\"To Miss Marie Devine. There is nothing to show where the check was drawn. It was cashed at the Credit Lyonnais at Montpellier less than three weeks ago. The sum was fifty pounds.\"\n\n\"And who is Miss Marie Devine?\"\n\n\"That also I have been able to discover. Miss Marie Devine was the maid of Lady Frances Carfax. Why she should have paid her this check we have not yet determined. I have no doubt, however, that your researches will soon clear the matter up.\"\n\n\"My researches!\"\n\n\"Hence the health-giving expedition to Lausanne. You know that I cannot possibly leave London while old Abrahams is in such mortal terror of his life. Besides, on general principles it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes. Go, then, my dear Watson, and if my humble counsel can ever be valued at so extravagant a rate as two pence a word, it waits your disposal night and day at the end of the Continental wire.\"\n\nTwo days later found me at the Hotel National at Lausanne, where I received every courtesy at the hands of M. Moser, the well-known manager. Lady Frances, as he informed me, had stayed there for several weeks. She had been much liked by all who met her. Her age was not more than forty. She was still handsome and bore every sign of having in her youth been a very lovely woman. M. Moser knew nothing of any valuable jewellery, but it had been remarked by the servants that the heavy trunk in the lady's bedroom was always scrupulously locked. Marie Devine, the maid, was as popular as her mistress. She was actually engaged to one of the head waiters in the hotel, and there was no difficulty in getting her address. It was 11 Rue de Trajan, Montpellier. All this I jotted down and felt that Holmes himself could not have been more adroit in collecting his facts.\n\nOnly one corner still remained in the shadow. No light which I possessed could clear up the cause for the lady's sudden departure. She was very happy at Lausanne. There was every reason to believe that she intended to remain for the season in her luxurious rooms overlooking the lake. And yet she had left at a single day's notice, which involved her in the useless payment of a week's rent. Only Jules Vibart, the lover of the maid, had any suggestion to offer. He connected the sudden departure with the visit to the hotel a day or two before of a tall, dark, bearded man. \"Un sauvage\u2014un veritable sauvage!\" cried Jules Vibart. The man had rooms somewhere in the town. He had been seen talking earnestly to Madame on the promenade by the lake. Then he had called. She had refused to see him. He was English, but of his name there was no record. Madame had left the place immediately afterwards. Jules Vibart, and, what was of more importance, Jules Vibart's sweetheart, thought that this call and this departure were cause and effect. Only one thing Jules would not discuss. That was the reason why Marie had left her mistress. Of that he could or would say nothing. If I wished to know, I must go to Montpellier and ask her.\n\nSo ended the first chapter of my inquiry. The second was devoted to the place which Lady Frances Carfax had sought when she left Lausanne. Concerning this there had been some secrecy, which confirmed the idea that she had gone with the intention of throwing someone off her track. Otherwise why should not her luggage have been openly labelled for Baden? Both she and it reached the Rhenish spa by some circuitous route. This much I gathered from the manager of Cook's local office. So to Baden I went, after dispatching to Holmes an account of all my proceedings and receiving in reply a telegram of half-humorous commendation.\n\nAt Baden the track was not difficult to follow. Lady Frances had stayed at the Englischer Hof for a fortnight. While there she had made the acquaintance of a Dr. Shlessinger and his wife, a missionary from South America. Like most lonely ladies, Lady Frances found her comfort and occupation in religion. Dr. Shlessinger's remarkable personality, his wholehearted devotion, and the fact that he was recovering from a disease contracted in the exercise of his apostolic duties affected her deeply. She had helped Mrs. Shlessinger in the nursing of the convalescent saint. He spent his day, as the manager described it to me, upon a lounge-chair on the veranda, with an attendant lady upon either side of him. He was preparing a map of the Holy Land, with special reference to the kingdom of the Midianites, upon which he was writing a monograph. Finally, having improved much in health, he and his wife had returned to London, and Lady Frances had started thither in their company. This was just three weeks before, and the manager had heard nothing since. As to the maid, Marie, she had gone off some days beforehand in floods of tears, after informing the other maids that she was leaving service forever. Dr. Shlessinger had paid the bill of the whole party before his departure.\n\n\"By the way,\" said the landlord in conclusion, \"you are not the only friend of Lady Frances Carfax who is inquiring after her just now. Only a week or so ago we had a man here upon the same errand.\"\n\n\"Did he give a name?\" I asked.\n\n\"None; but he was an Englishman, though of an unusual type.\"\n\n\"A savage?\" said I, linking my facts after the fashion of my illustrious friend.\n\n\"Exactly. That describes him very well. He is a bulky, bearded, sun burned fellow, who looks as if he would be more at home in a farmers' inn than in a fashionable hotel. A hard, fierce man, I should think, and one whom I should be sorry to offend.\"\n\nAlready the mystery began to define itself, as figures grow clearer with the lifting of a fog. Here was this good and pious lady pursued from place to place by a sinister and unrelenting figure. She feared him, or she would not have fled from Lausanne. He had still followed. Sooner or later he would overtake her. Had he already overtaken her? Was that the secret of her continued silence? Could the good people who were her companions not screen her from his violence or his blackmail? What horrible purpose, what deep design, lay behind this long pursuit? There was the problem which I had to solve.\n\nTo Holmes I wrote showing how rapidly and surely I had got down to the roots of the matter. In reply I had a telegram asking for a description of Dr. Shlessinger's left ear. Holmes's ideas of humour are strange and occasionally offensive, so I took no notice of his ill-timed jest\u2014indeed, I had already reached Montpellier in my pursuit of the maid, Marie, before his message came.\n\nI had no difficulty in finding the ex-servant and in learning all that she could tell me. She was a devoted creature, who had only left her mistress because she was sure that she was in good hands, and because her own approaching marriage made a separation inevitable in any case. Her mistress had, as she confessed with distress, shown some irritability of temper towards her during their stay in Baden, and had even questioned her once as if she had suspicions of her honesty, and this had made the parting easier than it would otherwise have been. Lady Frances had given her fifty pounds as a wedding-present. Like me, Marie viewed with deep distrust the stranger who had driven her mistress from Lausanne. With her own eyes she had seen him seize the lady's wrist with great violence on the public promenade by the lake. He was a fierce and terrible man. She believed that it was out of dread of him that Lady Frances had accepted the escort of the Shlessingers to London. She had never spoken to Marie about it, but many little signs had convinced the maid that her mistress lived in a state of continual nervous apprehension. So far she had got in her narrative, when suddenly she sprang from her chair and her face was convulsed with surprise and fear. \"See!\" she cried. \"The miscreant follows still! There is the very man of whom I speak.\"\n\nThrough the open sitting-room window I saw a huge, swarthy man with a bristling black beard walking slowly down the centre of the street and staring eagerly at the numbers of the houses. It was clear that, like myself, he was on the track of the maid. Acting upon the impulse of the moment, I rushed out and accosted him.\n\n\"You are an Englishman,\" I said.\n\n\"What if I am?\" he asked with a most villainous scowl.\n\n\"May I ask what your name is?\"\n\n\"No, you may not,\" said he with decision.\n\nThe situation was awkward, but the most direct way is often the best.\n\n\"Where is the Lady Frances Carfax?\" I asked.\n\nHe stared at me in amazement.\n\n\"What have you done with her? Why have you pursued her? I insist upon an answer!\" said I.\n\nThe fellow gave a bellow of anger and sprang upon me like a tiger. I have held my own in many a struggle, but the man had a grip of iron and the fury of a fiend. His hand was on my throat and my senses were nearly gone before an unshaven French ouvrier in a blue blouse darted out from a cabaret opposite, with a cudgel in his hand, and struck my assailant a sharp crack over the forearm, which made him leave go his hold. He stood for an instant fuming with rage and uncertain whether he should not renew his attack. Then, with a snarl of anger, he left me and entered the cottage from which I had just come. I turned to thank my preserver, who stood beside me in the roadway.\n\n\"Well, Watson,\" said he, \"a very pretty hash you have made of it! I rather think you had better come back with me to London by the night express.\"\n\nAn hour afterwards, Sherlock Holmes, in his usual garb and style, was seated in my private room at the hotel. His explanation of his sudden and opportune appearance was simplicity itself, for, finding that he could get away from London, he determined to head me off at the next obvious point of my travels. In the disguise of a workingman he had sat in the cabaret waiting for my appearance.\n\n\"And a singularly consistent investigation you have made, my dear Watson,\" said he. \"I cannot at the moment recall any possible blunder which you have omitted. The total effect of your proceeding has been to give the alarm everywhere and yet to discover nothing.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you would have done no better,\" I answered bitterly.\n\n\"There is no 'perhaps' about it. I have done better. Here is the Hon. Philip Green, who is a fellow-lodger with you in this hotel, and we may find him the starting-point for a more successful investigation.\"\n\nA card had come up on a salver, and it was followed by the same bearded ruffian who had attacked me in the street. He started when he saw me.\n\n\"What is this, Mr. Holmes?\" he asked. \"I had your note and I have come. But what has this man to do with the matter?\"\n\n\"This is my old friend and associate, Dr. Watson, who is helping us in this affair.\"\n\nThe stranger held out a huge, sunburned hand, with a few words of apology.\n\n\"I hope I didn't harm you. When you accused me of hurting her I lost my grip of myself. Indeed, I'm not responsible in these days. My nerves are like live wires. But this situation is beyond me. What I want to know, in the first place, Mr. Holmes, is, how in the world you came to hear of my existence at all.\"\n\n\"I am in touch with Miss Dobney, Lady Frances's governess.\"\n\n\"Old Susan Dobney with the mob cap! I remember her well.\"\n\n\"And she remembers you. It was in the days before\u2014before you found it better to go to South Africa.\"\n\n\"Ah, I see you know my whole story. I need hide nothing from you. I swear to you, Mr. Holmes, that there never was in this world a man who loved a woman with a more wholehearted love than I had for Frances. I was a wild youngster, I know\u2014not worse than others of my class. But her mind was pure as snow. She could not bear a shadow of coarseness. So, when she came to hear of things that I had done, she would have no more to say to me. And yet she loved me\u2014that is the wonder of it!\u2014loved me well enough to remain single all her sainted days just for my sake alone. When the years had passed and I had made my money at Barberton I thought perhaps I could seek her out and soften her. I had heard that she was still unmarried. I found her at Lausanne and tried all I knew. She weakened, I think, but her will was strong, and when next I called she had left the town. I traced her to Baden, and then after a time heard that her maid was here. I'm a rough fellow, fresh from a rough life, and when Dr. Watson spoke to me as he did I lost hold of myself for a moment. But for God's sake tell me what has become of the Lady Frances.\"\n\n\"That is for us to find out,\" said Sherlock Holmes with peculiar gravity. \"What is your London address, Mr. Green?\"\n\n\"The Langham Hotel will find me.\"\n\n\"Then may I recommend that you return there and be on hand in case I should want you? I have no desire to encourage false hopes, but you may rest assured that all that can be done will be done for the safety of Lady Frances. I can say no more for the instant. I will leave you this card so that you may be able to keep in touch with us. Now, Watson, if you will pack your bag I will cable to Mrs. Hudson to make one of her best efforts for two hungry travellers at 7:30 to-morrow.\"\n\nA telegram was awaiting us when we reached our Baker Street rooms, which Holmes read with an exclamation of interest and threw across to me. \"Jagged or torn,\" was the message, and the place of origin, Baden.\n\n\"What is this?\" I asked.\n\n\"It is everything,\" Holmes answered. \"You may remember my seemingly irrelevant question as to this clerical gentleman's left ear. You did not answer it.\"\n\n\"I had left Baden and could not inquire.\"\n\n\"Exactly. For this reason I sent a duplicate to the manager of the Englischer Hof, whose answer lies here.\"\n\n\"What does it show?\"\n\n\"It shows, my dear Watson, that we are dealing with an exceptionally astute and dangerous man. The Rev. Dr. Shlessinger, missionary from South America, is none other than Holy Peters, one of the most unscrupulous rascals that Australia has ever evolved\u2014and for a young country it has turned out some very finished types. His particular specialty is the beguiling of lonely ladies by playing upon their religious feelings, and his so-called wife, an Englishwoman named Fraser, is a worthy helpmate. The nature of his tactics suggested his identity to me, and this physical peculiarity\u2014he was badly bitten in a saloon-fight at Adelaide in '89\u2014confirmed my suspicion. This poor lady is in the hands of a most in fernal couple, who will stick at nothing, Watson. That she is already dead is a very likely supposition. If not, she is undoubtedly in some sort of confinement and unable to write to Miss Dobney or her other friends. It is always possible that she never reached London, or that she has passed through it, but the former is improbable, as, with their system of registration, it is not easy for foreigners to play tricks with the Continental police; and the latter is also unlikely, as these rogues could not hope to find any other place where it would be as easy to keep a person under restraint. All my instincts tell me that she is in London, but as we have at present no possible means of telling where, we can only take the obvious steps, eat our dinner, and possess our souls in patience. Later in the evening I will stroll down and have a word with friend Lestrade at Scotland Yard.\"\n\nBut neither the official police nor Holmes's own small but very efficient organization sufficed to clear away the mystery. Amid the crowded millions of London the three persons we sought were as completely obliterated as if they had never lived. Advertisements were tried, and failed. Clues were followed, and led to nothing. Every criminal resort which Shlessinger might frequent was drawn in vain. His old associates were watched, but they kept clear of him. And then suddenly, after a week of helpless suspense, there came a flash of light. A silver-and-brilliant pendant of old Spanish design had been pawned at Bovington's, in Westminster Road. The pawner was a large, clean-shaven man of clerical appearance. His name and address were demonstrably false. The ear had escaped notice, but the description was surely that of Shlessinger.\n\nThree times had our bearded friend from the Langham called for news\u2014the third time within an hour of this fresh development. His clothes were getting looser on his great body. He seemed to be wilting away in his anxiety. \"If you will only give me something to do!\" was his constant wail. At last Holmes could oblige him.\n\n\"He has begun to pawn the jewels. We should get him now.\"\n\n\"But does this mean that any harm has befallen the Lady Frances?\"\n\nHolmes shook his head very gravely.\n\n\"Supposing that they have held her prisoner up to now, it is clear that they cannot let her loose without their own destruction. We must prepare for the worst.\"\n\n\"What can I do?\"\n\n\"These people do not know you by sight?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"It is possible that he will go to some other pawnbroker in the future. In that case, we must begin again. On the other hand, he has had a fair price and no questions asked, so if he is in need of ready-money he will probably come back to Bovington's. I will give you a note to them, and they will let you wait in the shop. If the fellow comes you will follow him home. But no indiscretion, and, above all, no violence. I put you on your honour that you will take no step without my knowledge and consent.\"\n\nFor two days the Hon. Philip Green (he was, I may mention, the son of the famous admiral of that name who commanded the Sea of Azof fleet in the Crimean War) brought us no news. On the evening of the third he rushed into our sitting-room, pale, trembling, with every muscle of his powerful frame quivering with excitement.\n\n\"We have him! We have him!\" he cried.\n\nHe was incoherent in his agitation. Holmes soothed him with a few words and thrust him into an armchair.\n\n\"Come, now, give us the order of events,\" said he.\n\n\"She came only an hour ago. It was the wife, this time, but the pendant she brought was the fellow of the other. She is a tall, pale woman, with ferret eyes.\"\n\n\"That is the lady,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"She left the office and I followed her. She walked up the Kennington Road, and I kept behind her. Presently she went into a shop. Mr. Holmes, it was an undertaker's.\"\n\nMy companion started. \"Well?\" he asked in that vibrant voice which told of the fiery soul behind the cold gray face.\n\n\"She was talking to the woman behind the counter. I entered as well. 'It is late,' I heard her say, or words to that effect. The woman was excusing herself. 'It should be there before now,' she answered. 'It took longer, being out of the ordinary.' They both stopped and looked at me, so I asked some question and then left the shop.\"\n\n\"You did excellently well. What happened next?\"\n\n\"The woman came out, but I had hid myself in a doorway. Her suspicions had been aroused, I think, for she looked round her. Then she called a cab and got in. I was lucky enough to get another and so to follow her. She got down at last at No. 36, Poultney Square, Brixton. I drove past, left my cab at the corner of the square, and watched the house.\"\n\n\"Did you see anyone?\"\n\n\"The windows were all in darkness save one on the lower floor. The blind was down, and I could not see in. I was standing there, wondering what I should do next, when a covered van drove up with two men in it. They descended, took something out of the van, and carried it up the steps to the hall door. Mr. Holmes, it was a coffin.\"\n\n\"Ah!\"\n\n\"For an instant I was on the point of rushing in. The door had been opened to admit the men and their burden. It was the woman who had opened it. But as I stood there she caught a glimpse of me, and I think that she recognized me. I saw her start, and she hastily closed the door. I remembered my promise to you, and here I am.\"\n\n\"You have done excellent work,\" said Holmes, scribbling a few words upon a half-sheet of paper. \"We can do nothing legal without a warrant, and you can serve the cause best by taking this note down to the authorities and getting one. There may be some difficulty, but I should think that the sale of the jewellery should be sufficient. Lestrade will see to all details.\"\n\n\"But they may murder her in the meanwhile. What could the coffin mean, and for whom could it be but for her?\"\n\n\"We will do all that can be done, Mr. Green. Not a moment will be lost. Leave it in our hands. Now, Watson,\" he added as our client hurried away, \"he will set the regular forces on the move. We are, as usual, the irregulars, and we must take our own line of action. The situation strikes me as so desperate that the most extreme measures are justified. Not a moment is to be lost in getting to Poultney Square.\n\n\"Let us try to reconstruct the situation,\" said he as we drove swiftly past the Houses of Parliament and over Westminster Bridge. \"These villains have coaxed this unhappy lady to London, after first alienating her from her faithful maid. If she has written any letters they have been intercepted. Through some confederate they have engaged a furnished house. Once inside it, they have made her a prisoner, and they have become possessed of the valuable jewellery which has been their object from the first. Already they have begun to sell part of it, which seems safe enough to them, since they have no reason to think that anyone is interested in the lady's fate. When she is released she will, of course, denounce them. Therefore, she must not be released. But they cannot keep her under lock and key forever. So murder is their only solution.\"\n\n\"That seems very clear.\"\n\n\"Now we will take another line of reasoning. When you follow two separate chains of thought, Watson, you will find some point of intersection which should approximate to the truth. We will start now, not from the lady but from the coffin and argue backward. That incident proves, I fear, beyond all doubt that the lady is dead. It points also to an orthodox burial with proper accompaniment of medical certificate and official sanction. Had the lady been obviously murdered, they would have buried her in a hole in the back garden. But here all is open and regular. What does that mean? Surely that they have done her to death in some way which has deceived the doctor and simulated a natural end\u2014poisoning, perhaps. And yet how strange that they should ever let a doctor approach her unless he were a confederate, which is hardly a credible proposition.\"\n\n\"Could they have forged a medical certificate?\"\n\n\"Dangerous, Watson, very dangerous. No, I hardly see them doing that. Pull up, cabby! This is evidently the undertaker's, for we have just passed the pawnbroker's. Would you go in, Watson? Your appearance inspires confidence. Ask what hour the Poultney Square funeral takes place to-morrow.\"\n\nThe woman in the shop answered me without hesitation that it was to be at eight o'clock in the morning. \"You see, Watson, no mystery; everything aboveboard! In some way the legal forms have undoubtedly been complied with, and they think that they have little to fear. Well, there's nothing for it now but a direct frontal attack. Are you armed?\"\n\n\"My stick!\"\n\n\"Well, well, we shall be strong enough. 'Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just.' We simply can't afford to wait for the police or to keep within the four corners of the law. You can drive off, cabby. Now, Watson, we'll just take our luck together, as we have occasionally done in the past.\"\n\nHe had rung loudly at the door of a great dark house in the centre of Poultney Square. It was opened immediately, and the figure of a tall woman was outlined against the dim-lit hall.\n\n\"Well, what do you want?\" she asked sharply, peering at us through the darkness.\n\n\"I want to speak to Dr. Shlessinger,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"There is no such person here,\" she answered, and tried to close the door, but Holmes had jammed it with his foot.\n\n\"Well, I want to see the man who lives here, whatever he may call himself,\" said Holmes firmly.\n\nShe hesitated. Then she threw open the door. \"Well, come in!\" said she. \"My husband is not afraid to face any man in the world.\" She closed the door behind us and showed us into a sitting-room on the right side of the hall, turning up the gas as she left us. \"Mr. Peters will be with you in an instant,\" she said.\n\nHer words were literally true, for we had hardly time to look around the dusty and moth-eaten apartment in which we found ourselves before the door opened and a big, clean-shaven bald-headed man stepped lightly into the room. He had a large red face, with pendulous cheeks, and a general air of superficial benevolence which was marred by a cruel, vicious mouth.\n\n\"There is surely some mistake here, gentlemen,\" he said in an unctuous, make-everything-easy voice. \"I fancy that you have been misdirected. Possibly if you tried farther down the street\u2014\"\n\n\"That will do; we have no time to waste,\" said my companion firmly. \"You are Henry Peters, of Adelaide, late the Rev. Dr. Shlessinger, of Baden and South America. I am as sure of that as that my own name is Sherlock Holmes.\"\n\nPeters, as I will now call him, started and stared hard at his formidable pursuer. \"I guess your name does not frighten me, Mr. Holmes,\" said he coolly. \"When a man's conscience is easy you can't rattle him. What is your business in my house?\"\n\n\"I want to know what you have done with the Lady Frances Carfax, whom you brought away with you from Baden.\"\n\n\"I'd be very glad if you could tell me where that lady may be,\" Peters answered coolly. \"I've a bill against her for nearly a hundred pounds, and nothing to show for it but a couple of trumpery pendants that the dealer would hardly look at. She attached herself to Mrs. Peters and me at Baden\u2014it is a fact that I was using another name at the time\u2014and she stuck on to us until we came to London. I paid her bill and her ticket. Once in London, she gave us the slip, and, as I say, left these out-of-date jewels to pay her bills. You find her, Mr. Holmes, and I'm your debtor.\"\n\n\"I mean to find her,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"I'm going through this house till I do find her.\"\n\n\"Where is your warrant?\"\n\nHolmes half drew a revolver from his pocket. \"This will have to serve till a better one comes.\"\n\n\"Why, you are a common burglar.\"\n\n\"So you might describe me,\" said Holmes cheerfully. \"My companion is also a dangerous ruffian. And together we are going through your house.\"\n\nOur opponent opened the door.\n\n\"Fetch a policeman, Annie!\" said he. There was a whisk of feminine skirts down the passage, and the hall door was opened and shut.\n\n\"Our time is limited, Watson,\" said Holmes. \"If you try to stop us, Peters, you will most certainly get hurt. Where is that coffin which was brought into your house?\"\n\n\"What do you want with the coffin? It is in use. There is a body in it.\"\n\n\"I must see that body.\"\n\n\"Never with my consent.\"\n\n\"Then without it.\" With a quick movement Holmes pushed the fellow to one side and passed into the hall. A door half opened stood immediately before us. We entered. It was the dining-room. On the table, under a half-lit chandelier, the coffin was lying. Holmes turned up the gas and raised the lid. Deep down in the recesses of the coffin lay an emaciated figure. The glare from the lights above beat down upon an aged and withered face. By no possible process of cruelty, starvation, or disease could this worn-out wreck be the still beautiful Lady Frances. Holmes's face showed his amazement, and also his relief.\n\n\"Thank God!\" he muttered. \"It's someone else.\"\n\n\"Ah, you've blundered badly for once, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,\" said Peters, who had followed us into the room.\n\n\"Who is this dead woman?\"\n\n\"Well, if you really must know, she is an old nurse of my wife's, Rose Spender by name, whom we found in the Brixton Workhouse Infirmary. We brought her round here, called in Dr. Horsom, of 13 Firbank Villas\u2014mind you take the address, Mr. Holmes\u2014and had her carefully tended, as Christian folk should. On the third day she died\u2014certificate says senile decay\u2014but that's only the doctor's opinion, and of course you know better. We ordered her funeral to be carried out by Stimson and Co., of the Kennington Road, who will bury her at eight o'clock to-morrow morning. Can you pick any hole in that, Mr. Holmes? You've made a silly blunder, and you may as well own up to it. I'd give something for a photograph of your gaping, staring face when you pulled aside that lid expecting to see the Lady Frances Carfax and only found a poor old woman of ninety.\"\n\nHolmes's expression was as impassive as ever under the jeers of his antagonist, but his clenched hands betrayed his acute annoyance.\n\n\"I am going through your house,\" said he.\n\n\"Are you, though!\" cried Peters as a woman's voice and heavy steps sounded in the passage. \"We'll soon see about that. This way, officers, if you please. These men have forced their way into my house, and I cannot get rid of them. Help me to put them out.\"\n\nA sergeant and a constable stood in the doorway. Holmes drew his card from his case.\n\n\"This is my name and address. This is my friend, Dr. Watson.\"\n\n\"Bless you, sir, we know you very well,\" said the sergeant, \"but you can't stay here without a warrant.\"\n\n\"Of course not. I quite understand that.\"\n\n\"Arrest him!\" cried Peters.\n\n\"We know where to lay our hands on this gentleman if he is wanted,\" said the sergeant majestically, \"but you'll have to go, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"Yes, Watson, we shall have to go.\"\n\nA minute later we were in the street once more. Holmes was as cool as ever, but I was hot with anger and humiliation. The sergeant had followed us.\n\n\"Sorry, Mr. Holmes, but that's the law.\"\n\n\"Exactly, Sergeant, you could not do otherwise.\"\n\n\"I expect there was good reason for your presence there. If there is anything I can do\u2014\"\n\n\"It's a missing lady, Sergeant, and we think she is in that house. I expect a warrant presently.\"\n\n\"Then I'll keep my eye on the parties, Mr. Holmes. If anything comes along, I will surely let you know.\"\n\nIt was only nine o'clock, and we were off full cry upon the trail at once. First we drove to Brixton Workhouse Infirmary, where we found that it was indeed the truth that a charitable couple had called some days before, that they had claimed an imbecile old woman as a former servant, and that they had obtained permission to take her away with them. No surprise was expressed at the news that she had since died.\n\nThe doctor was our next goal. He had been called in, had found the woman dying of pure senility, had actually seen her pass away, and had signed the certificate in due form. \"I assure you that everything was perfectly normal and there was no room for foul play in the matter,\" said he. Nothing in the house had struck him as suspicious save that for people of their class it was remarkable that they should have no servant. So far and no farther went the doctor.\n\nFinally we found our way to Scotland Yard. There had been difficulties of procedure in regard to the warrant. Some delay was inevitable. The magistrate's signature might not be obtained until next morning. If Holmes would call about nine he could go down with Lestrade and see it acted upon. So ended the day, save that near midnight our friend, the sergeant, called to say that he had seen flickering lights here and there in the windows of the great dark house, but that no one had left it and none had entered. We could but pray for patience and wait for the morrow.\n\nSherlock Holmes was too irritable for conversation and too restless for sleep. I left him smoking hard, with his heavy, dark brows knotted together, and his long, nervous fingers tapping upon the arms of his chair, as he turned over in his mind every possible solution of the mystery. Several times in the course of the night I heard him prowling about the house. Finally, just after I had been called in the morning, he rushed into my room. He was in his dressing-gown, but his pale, hollow-eyed face told me that his night had been a sleepless one.\n\n\"What time was the funeral? Eight, was it not?\" he asked eagerly. \"Well, it is 7:20 now. Good heavens, Watson, what has become of any brains that God has given me? Quick, man, quick! It's life or death\u2014a hundred chances on death to one on life. I'll never forgive myself, never, if we are too late!\"\n\nFive minutes had not passed before we were flying in a hansom down Baker Street. But even so it was twenty-five to eight as we passed Big Ben, and eight struck as we tore down the Brixton Road. But others were late as well as we. Ten minutes after the hour the hearse was still standing at the door of the house, and even as our foaming horse came to a halt the coffin, supported by three men, appeared on the threshold. Holmes darted forward and barred their way.\n\n\"Take it back!\" he cried, laying his hand on the breast of the foremost. \"Take it back this instant!\"\n\n\"What the devil do you mean? Once again I ask you, where is your warrant?\" shouted the furious Peters, his big red face glaring over the farther end of the coffin.\n\n\"The warrant is on its way. This coffin shall remain in the house until it comes.\"\n\nThe authority in Holmes's voice had its effect upon the bearers. Peters had suddenly vanished into the house, and they obeyed these new orders. \"Quick, Watson, quick! Here is a screw-driver!\" he shouted as the coffin was replaced upon the table. \"Here's one for you, my man! A sovereign if the lid comes off in a minute! Ask no questions\u2014work away! That's good! Another! And another! Now pull all together! It's giving! It's giving! Ah, that does it at last.\"\n\nWith a united effort we tore off the coffin-lid. As we did so there came from the inside a stupefying and overpowering smell of chloroform. A body lay within, its head all wreathed in cotton-wool, which had been soaked in the narcotic. Holmes plucked it off and disclosed the statuesque face of a handsome and spiritual woman of middle age. In an instant he had passed his arm round the figure and raised her to a sitting position.\n\n\"Is she gone, Watson? Is there a spark left? Surely we are not too late!\"\n\nFor half an hour it seemed that we were. What with actual suffocation, and what with the poisonous fumes of the chloroform, the Lady Frances seemed to have passed the last point of recall. And then, at last, with artificial respiration, with injected ether, with every device that science could suggest, some flutter of life, some quiver of the eyelids, some dimming of a mirror, spoke of the slowly returning life. A cab had driven up, and Holmes, parting the blind, looked out at it. \"Here is Lestrade with his warrant,\" said he. \"He will find that his birds have flown. And here,\" he added as a heavy step hurried along the passage, \"is someone who has a better right to nurse this lady than we have. Good morning, Mr. Green; I think that the sooner we can move the Lady Frances the better. Meanwhile, the funeral may proceed, and the poor old woman who still lies in that coffin may go to her last resting-place alone.\"\n\n\"Should you care to add the case to your annals, my dear Watson,\" said Holmes that evening, \"it can only be as an example of that temporary eclipse to which even the best-balanced mind may be exposed. Such slips are common to all mortals, and the greatest is he who can recognize and repair them. To this modified credit I may, perhaps, make some claim. My night was haunted by the thought that somewhere a clue, a strange sentence, a curious observation, had come under my notice and had been too easily dismissed. Then, suddenly, in the gray of the morning, the words came back to me. It was the remark of the undertaker's wife, as reported by Philip Green. She had said, 'It should be there before now. It took longer, being out of the ordinary.' It was the coffin of which she spoke. It had been out of the ordinary. That could only mean that it had been made to some special measurement. But why? Why? Then in an instant I remembered the deep sides, and the little wasted figure at the bottom. Why so large a coffin for so small a body? To leave room for another body. Both would be buried under the one certificate. It had all been so clear, if only my own sight had not been dimmed. At eight the Lady Frances would be buried. Our one chance was to stop the coffin before it left the house.\n\n\"It was a desperate chance that we might find her alive, but it was a chance, as the result showed. These people had never, to my knowledge, done a murder. They might shrink from actual violence at the last. They could bury her with no sign of how she met her end, and even if she were exhumed there was a chance for them. I hoped that such considerations might prevail with them. You can reconstruct the scene well enough. You saw the horrible den upstairs, where the poor lady had been kept so long. They rushed in and overpowered her with their chloroform, carried her down, poured more into the coffin to insure against her waking, and then screwed down the lid. A clever device, Watson. It is new to me in the annals of crime. If our ex-missionary friends escape the clutches of Lestrade, I shall expect to hear of some brilliant incidents in their future career.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE DEVIL'S FOOT", + "text": "In recording from time to time some of the curious experiences and interesting recollections which I associate with my long and intimate friendship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have continually been faced by difficulties caused by his own aversion to publicity. To his sombre and cynical spirit all popular applause was always abhorrent, and nothing amused him more at the end of a successful case than to hand over the actual exposure to some orthodox official, and to listen with a mocking smile to the general chorus of misplaced congratulation. It was indeed this attitude upon the part of my friend and certainly not any lack of interesting material which has caused me of late years to lay very few of my records before the public. My participation in some of his adventures was always a privilege which entailed discretion and reticence upon me.\n\nIt was, then, with considerable surprise that I received a telegram from Holmes last Tuesday\u2014he has never been known to write where a telegram would serve\u2014in the following terms:\n\nWhy not tell them of the Cornish horror\u2014strangest case I have handled.\n\nI have no idea what backward sweep of memory had brought the matter fresh to his mind, or what freak had caused him to desire that I should recount it; but I hasten, before another cancelling telegram may arrive, to hunt out the notes which give me the exact details of the case and to lay the narrative before my readers.\n\nIt was, then, in the spring of the year 1897 that Holmes's iron constitution showed some symptoms of giving way in the face of constant hard work of a most exacting kind, aggravated, perhaps, by occasional indiscretions of his own. In March of that year Dr. Moore Agar, of Harley Street, whose dramatic introduction to Holmes I may some day recount, gave positive injunctions that the famous private agent lay aside all his cases and surrender himself to complete rest if he wished to avert an absolute breakdown. The state of his health was not a matter in which he himself took the faintest interest, for his mental detachment was absolute, but he was induced at last, on the threat of being permanently disqualified from work, to give himself a complete change of scene and air. Thus it was that in the early spring of that year we found ourselves together in a small cottage near Poldhu Bay, at the further extremity of the Cornish peninsula.\n\nIt was a singular spot, and one peculiarly well suited to the grim humour of my patient. From the windows of our little whitewashed house, which stood high upon a grassy headland, we looked down upon the whole sinister semicircle of Mounts Bay, that old death trap of sailing vessels, with its fringe of black cliffs and surge-swept reefs on which innumerable seamen have met their end. With a northerly breeze it lies placid and sheltered, inviting the storm-tossed craft to tack into it for rest and protection.\n\nThen come the sudden swirl round of the wind, the blustering gale from the south-west, the dragging anchor, the lee shore, and the last battle in the creaming breakers. The wise mariner stands far out from that evil place.\n\nOn the land side our surroundings were as sombre as on the sea. It was a country of rolling moors, lonely and dun-coloured, with an occasional church tower to mark the site of some old-world village. In every direction upon these moors there were traces of some vanished race which had passed utterly away, and left as its sole record strange monuments of stone, irregular mounds which contained the burned ashes of the dead, and curious earthworks which hinted at prehistoric strife. The glamour and mystery of the place, with its sinister atmosphere of forgotten nations, appealed to the imagination of my friend, and he spent much of his time in long walks and solitary meditations upon the moor. The ancient Cornish language had also arrested his attention, and he had, I remember, conceived the idea that it was akin to the Chaldean, and had been largely derived from the Phoenician traders in tin. He had received a consignment of books upon philology and was settling down to develop this thesis when suddenly, to my sorrow and to his unfeigned delight, we found ourselves, even in that land of dreams, plunged into a problem at our very doors which was more intense, more engrossing, and infinitely more mysterious than any of those which had driven us from London. Our simple life and peaceful, healthy routine were violently interrupted, and we were precipitated into the midst of a series of events which caused the utmost excitement not only in Cornwall but throughout the whole west of England. Many of my readers may retain some recollection of what was called at the time \"The Cornish Horror,\" though a most imperfect account of the matter reached the London press. Now, after thirteen years, I will give the true details of this inconceivable affair to the public.\n\nI have said that scattered towers marked the villages which dotted this part of Cornwall. The nearest of these was the hamlet of Tredannick Wol las, where the cottages of a couple of hundred inhabitants clustered round an ancient, moss-grown church. The vicar of the parish, Mr. Roundhay, was something of an archaeologist, and as such Holmes had made his acquaintance. He was a middle-aged man, portly and affable, with a considerable fund of local lore. At his invitation we had taken tea at the vicarage and had come to know, also, Mr. Mortimer Tregennis, an independent gentleman, who increased the clergyman's scanty resources by taking rooms in his large, straggling house. The vicar, being a bachelor, was glad to come to such an arrangement, though he had little in common with his lodger, who was a thin, dark, spectacled man, with a stoop which gave the impression of actual, physical deformity. I remember that during our short visit we found the vicar garrulous, but his lodger strangely reticent, a sad-faced, introspective man, sitting with averted eyes, brooding apparently upon his own affairs.\n\nThese were the two men who entered abruptly into our little sitting-room on Tuesday, March the 16th, shortly after our breakfast hour, as we were smoking together, preparatory to our daily excursion upon the moors.\n\n\"Mr. Holmes,\" said the vicar in an agitated voice, \"the most extraordinary and tragic affair has occurred during the night. It is the most unheard-of business. We can only regard it as a special Providence that you should chance to be here at the time, for in all England you are the one man we need.\"\n\nI glared at the intrusive vicar with no very friendly eyes; but Holmes took his pipe from his lips and sat up in his chair like an old hound who hears the view-halloa. He waved his hand to the sofa, and our palpitating visitor with his agitated companion sat side by side upon it. Mr. Mortimer Tregennis was more self-contained than the clergyman, but the twitching of his thin hands and the brightness of his dark eyes showed that they shared a common emotion.\n\n\"Shall I speak or you?\" he asked of the vicar.\n\n\"Well, as you seem to have made the discovery, whatever it may be, and the vicar to have had it second-hand, perhaps you had better do the speaking,\" said Holmes.\n\nI glanced at the hastily clad clergyman, with the formally dressed lodger seated beside him, and was amused at the surprise which Holmes's simple deduction had brought to their faces.\n\n\"Perhaps I had best say a few words first,\" said the vicar, \"and then you can judge if you will listen to the details from Mr. Tregennis, or whether we should not hasten at once to the scene of this mysterious affair. I may explain, then, that our friend here spent last evening in the company of his two brothers, Owen and George, and of his sister Brenda, at their house of Tredannick Wartha, which is near the old stone cross upon the moor. He left them shortly after ten o'clock, playing cards round the dining-room table, in excellent health and spirits. This morning, being an early riser, he walked in that direction before breakfast and was overtaken by the carriage of Dr. Richards, who explained that he had just been sent for on a most urgent call to Tredannick Wartha. Mr. Mortimer Tregennis naturally went with him. When he arrived at Tredannick Wartha he found an extraordinary state of things. His two brothers and his sister were seated round the table exactly as he had left them, the cards still spread in front of them and the candles burned down to their sockets. The sister lay back stone-dead in her chair, while the two brothers sat on each side of her laughing, shouting, and singing, the senses stricken clean out of them. All three of them, the dead woman and the two demented men, retained upon their faces an expression of the utmost horror\u2014a convulsion of terror which was dreadful to look upon. There was no sign of the presence of anyone in the house, except Mrs. Porter, the old cook and housekeeper, who declared that she had slept deeply and heard no sound during the night. Nothing had been stolen or disarranged, and there is absolutely no explanation of what the horror can be which has frightened a woman to death and two strong men out of their senses. There is the situation, Mr. Holmes, in a nutshell, and if you can help us to clear it up you will have done a great work.\"\n\nI had hoped that in some way I could coax my companion back into the quiet which had been the object of our journey; but one glance at his intense face and contracted eyebrows told me how vain was now the expectation. He sat for some little time in silence, absorbed in the strange drama which had broken in upon our peace.\n\n\"I will look into this matter,\" he said at last. \"On the face of it, it would appear to be a case of a very exceptional nature. Have you been there yourself, Mr. Roundhay?\"\n\n\"No, Mr. Holmes. Mr. Tregennis brought back the account to the vicarage, and I at once hurried over with him to consult you.\"\n\n\"How far is it to the house where this singular tragedy occurred?\"\n\n\"About a mile inland.\"\n\n\"Then we shall walk over together. But before we start I must ask you a few questions, Mr. Mortimer Tregennis.\"\n\nThe other had been silent all this time, but I had observed that his more controlled excitement was even greater than the obtrusive emotion of the clergyman. He sat with a pale, drawn face, his anxious gaze fixed upon Holmes, and his thin hands clasped convulsively together. His pale lips quivered as he listened to the dreadful experience which had befallen his family, and his dark eyes seemed to reflect something of the horror of the scene.\n\n\"Ask what you like, Mr. Holmes,\" said he eagerly. \"It is a bad thing to speak of, but I will answer you the truth.\"\n\n\"Tell me about last night.\"\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes, I supped there, as the vicar has said, and my elder brother George proposed a game of whist afterwards. We sat down about nine o'clock. It was a quarter-past ten when I moved to go. I left them all round the table, as merry as could be.\"\n\n\"Who let you out?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Porter had gone to bed, so I let myself out. I shut the hall door behind me. The window of the room in which they sat was closed, but the blind was not drawn down. There was no change in door or window this morning, nor any reason to think that any stranger had been to the house. Yet there they sat, driven clean mad with terror, and Brenda lying dead of fright, with her head hanging over the arm of the chair. I'll never get the sight of that room out of my mind so long as I live.\"\n\n\"The facts, as you state them, are certainly most remarkable,\" said Holmes. \"I take it that you have no theory yourself which can in any way account for them?\"\n\n\"It's devilish, Mr. Holmes, devilish!\" cried Mortimer Tregennis. \"It is not of this world. Something has come into that room which has dashed the light of reason from their minds. What human contrivance could do that?\"\n\n\"I fear,\" said Holmes, \"that if the matter is beyond humanity it is certainly beyond me. Yet we must exhaust all natural explanations before we fall back upon such a theory as this. As to yourself, Mr. Tregennis, I take it you were divided in some way from your family, since they lived together and you had rooms apart?\"\n\n\"That is so, Mr. Holmes, though the matter is past and done with. We were a family of tin-miners at Redruth, but we sold out our venture to a company, and so retired with enough to keep us. I won't deny that there was some feeling about the division of the money and it stood between us for a time, but it was all forgiven and forgotten, and we were the best of friends together.\"\n\n\"Looking back at the evening which you spent together, does anything stand out in your memory as throwing any possible light upon the tragedy? Think carefully, Mr. Tregennis, for any clue which can help me.\"\n\n\"There is nothing at all, sir.\"\n\n\"Your people were in their usual spirits?\"\n\n\"Never better.\"\n\n\"Were they nervous people? Did they ever show any apprehension of coming danger?\"\n\n\"Nothing of the kind.\"\n\n\"You have nothing to add then, which could assist me?\"\n\nMortimer Tregennis considered earnestly for a moment.\n\n\"There is one thing occurs to me,\" said he at last. \"As we sat at the table my back was to the window, and my brother George, he being my partner at cards, was facing it. I saw him once look hard over my shoulder, so I turned round and looked also. The blind was up and the window shut, but I could just make out the bushes on the lawn, and it seemed to me for a moment that I saw something moving among them. I couldn't even say if it was man or animal, but I just thought there was something there. When I asked him what he was looking at, he told me that he had the same feeling. That is all that I can say.\"\n\n\"Did you not investigate?\"\n\n\"No; the matter passed as unimportant.\"\n\n\"You left them, then, without any premonition of evil?\"\n\n\"None at all.\"\n\n\"I am not clear how you came to hear the news so early this morning.\"\n\n\"I am an early riser and generally take a walk before breakfast. This morning I had hardly started when the doctor in his carriage overtook me. He told me that old Mrs. Porter had sent a boy down with an urgent message. I sprang in beside him and we drove on. When we got there we looked into that dreadful room. The candles and the fire must have burned out hours before, and they had been sitting there in the dark until dawn had broken. The doctor said Brenda must have been dead at least six hours. There were no signs of violence. She just lay across the arm of the chair with that look on her face. George and Owen were singing snatches of songs and gibbering like two great apes. Oh, it was awful to see! I couldn't stand it, and the doctor was as white as a sheet. Indeed, he fell into a chair in a sort of faint, and we nearly had him on our hands as well.\"\n\n\"Remarkable\u2014most remarkable!\" said Holmes, rising and taking his hat. \"I think, perhaps, we had better go down to Tredannick Wartha without further delay. I confess that I have seldom known a case which at first sight presented a more singular problem.\"\n\nOur proceedings of that first morning did little to advance the investigation. It was marked, however, at the outset by an incident which left the most sinister impression upon my mind. The approach to the spot at which the tragedy occurred is down a narrow, winding, country lane. While we made our way along it we heard the rattle of a carriage coming towards us and stood aside to let it pass. As it drove by us I caught a glimpse through the closed window of a horribly contorted, grinning face glaring out at us. Those staring eyes and gnashing teeth flashed past us like a dreadful vision.\n\n\"My brothers!\" cried Mortimer Tregennis, white to his lips. \"They are taking them to Helston.\"\n\nWe looked with horror after the black carriage, lumbering upon its way. Then we turned our steps towards this ill-omened house in which they had met their strange fate.\n\nIt was a large and bright dwelling, rather a villa than a cottage, with a considerable garden which was already, in that Cornish air, well filled with spring flowers. Towards this garden the window of the sitting-room fronted, and from it, according to Mortimer Tregennis, must have come that thing of evil which had by sheer horror in a single instant blasted their minds. Holmes walked slowly and thoughtfully among the flower-plots and along the path before we entered the porch. So absorbed was he in his thoughts, I remember, that he stumbled over the watering-pot, upset its contents, and deluged both our feet and the garden path. Inside the house we were met by the elderly Cornish housekeeper, Mrs. Porter, who, with the aid of a young girl, looked after the wants of the family. She readily answered all Holmes's questions. She had heard nothing in the night. Her employers had all been in excellent spirits lately, and she had never known them more cheerful and prosperous. She had fainted with horror upon entering the room in the morning and seeing that dreadful company round the table. She had, when she recovered, thrown open the window to let the morning air in, and had run down to the lane, whence she sent a farm-lad for the doctor. The lady was on her bed upstairs if we cared to see her. It took four strong men to get the brothers into the asylum carriage. She would not herself stay in the house another day and was starting that very afternoon to rejoin her family at St. Ives.\n\nWe ascended the stairs and viewed the body. Miss Brenda Tregennis had been a very beautiful girl, though now verging upon middle age. Her dark, clear-cut face was handsome, even in death, but there still lingered upon it something of that convulsion of horror which had been her last human emotion. From her bedroom we descended to the sitting-room, where this strange tragedy had actually occurred. The charred ashes of the overnight fire lay in the grate. On the table were the four guttered and burned-out candles, with the cards scattered over its surface. The chairs had been moved back against the walls, but all else was as it had been the night before. Holmes paced with light, swift steps about the room; he sat in the various chairs, drawing them up and reconstructing their positions. He tested how much of the garden was visible; he examined the floor, the ceiling, and the fireplace; but never once did I see that sudden brightening of his eyes and tightening of his lips which would have told me that he saw some gleam of light in this utter darkness.\n\n\"Why a fire?\" he asked once. \"Had they always a fire in this small room on a spring evening?\"\n\nMortimer Tregennis explained that the night was cold and damp. For that reason, after his arrival, the fire was lit. \"What are you going to do now, Mr. Holmes?\" he asked.\n\nMy friend smiled and laid his hand upon my arm. \"I think, Watson, that I shall resume that course of tobacco-poisoning which you have so often and so justly condemned,\" said he. \"With your permission, gentlemen, we will now return to our cottage, for I am not aware that any new factor is likely to come to our notice here. I will turn the facts over in my mind, Mr. Tregennis, and should anything occur to me I will certainly communicate with you and the vicar. In the meantime I wish you both good-morning.\"\n\nIt was not until long after we were back in Poldhu Cottage that Holmes broke his complete and absorbed silence. He sat coiled in his armchair, his haggard and ascetic face hardly visible amid the blue swirl of his tobacco smoke, his black brows drawn down, his forehead contracted, his eyes vacant and far away. Finally he laid down his pipe and sprang to his feet.\n\n\"It won't do, Watson!\" said he with a laugh. \"Let us walk along the cliffs together and search for flint arrows. We are more likely to find them than clues to this problem. To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces. The sea air, sunshine, and patience, Watson\u2014all else will come.\n\n\"Now, let us calmly define our position, Watson,\" he continued as we skirted the cliffs together. \"Let us get a firm grip of the very little which we do know, so that when fresh facts arise we may be ready to fit them into their places. I take it, in the first place, that neither of us is prepared to admit diabolical intrusions into the affairs of men. Let us begin by ruling that entirely out of our minds. Very good. There remain three persons who have been grievously stricken by some conscious or unconscious human agency. That is firm ground. Now, when did this occur? Evidently, assuming his narrative to be true, it was immediately after Mr. Mortimer Tregennis had left the room. That is a very important point. The presumption is that it was within a few minutes afterwards. The cards still lay upon the table. It was already past their usual hour for bed. Yet they had not changed their position or pushed back their chairs. I repeat, then, that the occurrence was immediately after his departure, and not later than eleven o'clock last night.\n\n\"Our next obvious step is to check, so far as we can, the movements of Mortimer Tregennis after he left the room. In this there is no difficulty, and they seem to be above suspicion. Knowing my methods as you do, you were, of course, conscious of the somewhat clumsy water-pot expedient by which I obtained a clearer impress of his foot than might otherwise have been possible. The wet, sandy path took it admirably. Last night was also wet, you will remember, and it was not difficult\u2014having obtained a sample print\u2014to pick out his track among others and to follow his movements. He appears to have walked away swiftly in the direction of the vicarage.\n\n\"If, then, Mortimer Tregennis disappeared from the scene, and yet some outside person affected the cardplayers, how can we reconstruct that person, and how was such an impression of horror conveyed? Mrs. Porter may be eliminated. She is evidently harmless. Is there any evidence that someone crept up to the garden window and in some manner produced so terrific an effect that he drove those who saw it out of their senses? The only suggestion in this direction comes from Mortimer Tregennis himself, who says that his brother spoke about some movement in the garden. That is certainly remarkable, as the night was rainy, cloudy, and dark. Anyone who had the design to alarm these people would be compelled to place his very face against the glass before he could be seen. There is a three-foot flower-border outside this window, but no indication of a footmark. It is difficult to imagine, then, how an outsider could have made so terrible an impression upon the company, nor have we found any possible motive for so strange and elaborate an attempt. You perceive our difficulties, Watson?\"\n\n\"They are only too clear,\" I answered with conviction.\n\n\"And yet, with a little more material, we may prove that they are not insurmountable,\" said Holmes. \"I fancy that among your extensive archives, Watson, you may find some which were nearly as obscure. Meanwhile, we shall put the case aside until more accurate data are available, and devote the rest of our morning to the pursuit of neolithic man.\"\n\nI may have commented upon my friend's power of mental detachment, but never have I wondered at it more than upon that spring morning in Cornwall when for two hours he discoursed upon Celts, arrowheads, and shards, as lightly as if no sinister mystery were waiting for his solution. It was not until we had returned in the afternoon to our cottage that we found a visitor awaiting us, who soon brought our minds back to the matter in hand. Neither of us needed to be told who that visitor was. The huge body, the craggy and deeply seamed face with the fierce eyes and hawk-like nose, the grizzled hair which nearly brushed our cottage ceiling, the beard\u2014golden at the fringes and white near the lips, save for the nicotine stain from his perpetual cigar\u2014all these were as well known in London as in Africa, and could only be associated with the tremendous personality of Dr. Leon Sterndale, the great lion-hunter and explorer.\n\nWe had heard of his presence in the district and had once or twice caught sight of his tall figure upon the moorland paths. He made no advances to us, however, nor would we have dreamed of doing so to him, as it was well known that it was his love of seclusion which caused him to spend the greater part of the intervals between his journeys in a small bungalow buried in the lonely wood of Beauchamp Arriance. Here, amid his books and his maps, he lived an absolutely lonely life, attending to his own simple wants and paying little apparent heed to the affairs of his neighbours. It was a surprise to me, therefore, to hear him asking Holmes in an eager voice whether he had made any advance in his reconstruction of this mysterious episode. \"The county police are utterly at fault,\" said he, \"but perhaps your wider experience has suggested some conceivable explanation. My only claim to being taken into your confidence is that during my many residences here I have come to know this family of Tregennis very well\u2014indeed, upon my Cornish mother's side I could call them cousins\u2014and their strange fate has naturally been a great shock to me. I may tell you that I had got as far as Plymouth upon my way to Africa, but the news reached me this morning, and I came straight back again to help in the inquiry.\"\n\nHolmes raised his eyebrows.\n\n\"Did you lose your boat through it?\"\n\n\"I will take the next.\"\n\n\"Dear me! that is friendship indeed.\"\n\n\"I tell you they were relatives.\"\n\n\"Quite so\u2014cousins of your mother. Was your baggage aboard the ship?\"\n\n\"Some of it, but the main part at the hotel.\"\n\n\"I see. But surely this event could not have found its way into the Plymouth morning papers.\"\n\n\"No, sir; I had a telegram.\"\n\n\"Might I ask from whom?\"\n\nA shadow passed over the gaunt face of the explorer.\n\n\"You are very inquisitive, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"It is my business.\"\n\nWith an effort Dr. Sterndale recovered his ruffled composure.\n\n\"I have no objection to telling you,\" he said. \"It was Mr. Roundhay, the vicar, who sent me the telegram which recalled me.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Holmes. \"I may say in answer to your original question that I have not cleared my mind entirely on the subject of this case, but that I have every hope of reaching some conclusion. It would be premature to say more.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you would not mind telling me if your suspicions point in any particular direction?\"\n\n\"No, I can hardly answer that.\"\n\n\"Then I have wasted my time and need not prolong my visit.\" The famous doctor strode out of our cottage in considerable ill-humour, and within five minutes Holmes had followed him. I saw him no more until the evening, when he returned with a slow step and haggard face which assured me that he had made no great progress with his investigation. He glanced at a telegram which awaited him and threw it into the grate.\n\n\"From the Plymouth hotel, Watson,\" he said. \"I learned the name of it from the vicar, and I wired to make certain that Dr. Leon Sterndale's account was true. It appears that he did indeed spend last night there, and that he has actually allowed some of his baggage to go on to Africa, while he returned to be present at this investigation. What do you make of that, Watson?\"\n\n\"He is deeply interested.\"\n\n\"Deeply interested\u2014yes. There is a thread here which we have not yet grasped and which might lead us through the tangle. Cheer up, Watson, for I am very sure that our material has not yet all come to hand. When it does we may soon leave our difficulties behind us.\"\n\nLittle did I think how soon the words of Holmes would be realized, or how strange and sinister would be that new development which opened up an entirely fresh line of investigation. I was shaving at my window in the morning when I heard the rattle of hoofs and, looking up, saw a dog-cart coming at a gallop down the road. It pulled up at our door, and our friend, the vicar, sprang from it and rushed up our garden path. Holmes was already dressed, and we hastened down to meet him.\n\nOur visitor was so excited that he could hardly articulate, but at last in gasps and bursts his tragic story came out of him.\n\n\"We are devil-ridden, Mr. Holmes! My poor parish is devil-ridden!\" he cried. \"Satan himself is loose in it! We are given over into his hands!\" He danced about in his agitation, a ludicrous object if it were not for his ashy face and startled eyes. Finally he shot out his terrible news.\n\n\"Mr. Mortimer Tregennis died during the night, and with exactly the same symptoms as the rest of his family.\"\n\nHolmes sprang to his feet, all energy in an instant.\n\n\"Can you fit us both into your dog-cart?\"\n\n\"Yes, I can.\"\n\n\"Then, Watson, we will postpone our breakfast. Mr. Roundhay, we are entirely at your disposal. Hurry\u2014hurry, before things get disarranged.\"\n\nThe lodger occupied two rooms at the vicarage, which were in an angle by themselves, the one above the other. Below was a large sitting-room; above, his bedroom. They looked out upon a croquet lawn which came up to the windows. We had arrived before the doctor or the police, so that everything was absolutely undisturbed. Let me describe exactly the scene as we saw it upon that misty March morning. It has left an impression which can never be effaced from my mind.\n\nThe atmosphere of the room was of a horrible and depressing stuffiness. The servant who had first entered had thrown up the window, or it would have been even more intolerable. This might partly be due to the fact that a lamp stood flaring and smoking on the centre table. Beside it sat the dead man, leaning back in his chair, his thin beard projecting, his spectacles pushed up on to his forehead, and his lean dark face turned towards the window and twisted into the same distortion of terror which had marked the features of his dead sister. His limbs were convulsed and his fingers contorted as though he had died in a very paroxysm of fear. He was fully clothed, though there were signs that his dressing had been done in a hurry. We had already learned that his bed had been slept in, and that the tragic end had come to him in the early morning.\n\nOne realized the red-hot energy which underlay Holmes's phlegmatic exterior when one saw the sudden change which came over him from the moment that he entered the fatal apartment. In an instant he was tense and alert, his eyes shining, his face set, his limbs quivering with eager activity. He was out on the lawn, in through the window, round the room, and up into the bedroom, for all the world like a dashing foxhound drawing a cover. In the bedroom he made a rapid cast around and ended by throwing open the window, which appeared to give him some fresh cause for excitement, for he leaned out of it with loud ejaculations of interest and delight. Then he rushed down the stair, out through the open window, threw himself upon his face on the lawn, sprang up and into the room once more, all with the energy of the hunter who is at the very heels of his quarry. The lamp, which was an ordinary standard, he examined with minute care, making certain measurements upon its bowl. He carefully scrutinized with his lens the talc shield which covered the top of the chimney and scraped off some ashes which adhered to its upper surface, putting some of them into an envelope, which he placed in his pocketbook. Finally, just as the doctor and the official police put in an appearance, he beckoned to the vicar and we all three went out upon the lawn.\n\n\"I am glad to say that my investigation has not been entirely barren,\" he remarked. \"I cannot remain to discuss the matter with the police, but I should be exceedingly obliged, Mr. Roundhay, if you would give the inspector my compliments and direct his attention to the bedroom window and to the sitting-room lamp. Each is suggestive, and together they are almost conclusive. If the police would desire further information I shall be happy to see any of them at the cottage. And now, Watson, I think that, perhaps, we shall be better employed elsewhere.\"\n\nIt may be that the police resented the intrusion of an amateur, or that they imagined themselves to be upon some hopeful line of investigation; but it is certain that we heard nothing from them for the next two days. During this time Holmes spent some of his time smoking and dreaming in the cottage; but a greater portion in country walks which he undertook alone, returning after many hours without remark as to where he had been. One experiment served to show me the line of his investigation. He had bought a lamp which was the duplicate of the one which had burned in the room of Mortimer Tregennis on the morning of the tragedy. This he filled with the same oil as that used at the vicarage, and he carefully timed the period which it would take to be exhausted. Another experiment which he made was of a more unpleasant nature, and one which I am not likely ever to forget.\n\n\"You will remember, Watson,\" he remarked one afternoon, \"that there is a single common point of resemblance in the varying reports which have reached us. This concerns the effect of the atmosphere of the room in each case upon those who had first entered it. You will recollect that Mortimer Tregennis, in describing the episode of his last visit to his brother's house, remarked that the doctor on entering the room fell into a chair? You had forgotten? Well, I can answer for it that it was so. Now, you will remember also that Mrs. Porter, the housekeeper, told us that she herself fainted upon entering the room and had afterwards opened the window. In the second case\u2014that of Mortimer Tregennis himself\u2014you cannot have forgotten the horrible stuffiness of the room when we arrived, though the servant had thrown open the window. That servant, I found upon inquiry, was so ill that she had gone to her bed. You will admit, Watson, that these facts are very suggestive. In each case there is evidence of a poisonous atmosphere. In each case, also, there is combustion going on in the room\u2014in the one case a fire, in the other a lamp. The fire was needed, but the lamp was lit\u2014as a comparison of the oil consumed will show\u2014long after it was broad daylight. Why? Surely because there is some connection between three things\u2014the burning, the stuffy atmosphere, and, finally, the madness or death of those unfortunate people. That is clear, is it not?\"\n\n\"It would appear so.\"\n\n\"At least we may accept it as a working hypothesis. We will suppose, then, that something was burned in each case which produced an atmosphere causing strange toxic effects. Very good. In the first instance\u2014that of the Tregennis family\u2014this substance was placed in the fire. Now the window was shut, but the fire would naturally carry fumes to some extent up the chimney. Hence one would expect the effects of the poison to be less than in the second case, where there was less escape for the vapour. The result seems to indicate that it was so, since in the first case only the woman, who had presumably the more sensitive organism, was killed, the others exhibiting that temporary or permanent lunacy which is evidently the first effect of the drug. In the second case the result was complete. The facts, therefore, seem to bear out the theory of a poison which worked by combustion.\n\n\"With this train of reasoning in my head I naturally looked about in Mortimer Tregennis's room to find some remains of this substance. The obvious place to look was the talc shield or smoke-guard of the lamp. There, sure enough, I perceived a number of flaky ashes, and round the edges a fringe of brownish powder, which had not yet been consumed. Half of this I took, as you saw, and I placed it in an envelope.\"\n\n\"Why half, Holmes?\"\n\n\"It is not for me, my dear Watson, to stand in the way of the official police force. I leave them all the evidence which I found. The poison still remained upon the talc had they the wit to find it. Now, Watson, we will light our lamp; we will, however, take the precaution to open our window to avoid the premature decease of two deserving members of society, and you will seat yourself near that open window in an armchair unless, like a sensible man, you determine to have nothing to do with the affair. Oh, you will see it out, will you? I thought I knew my Watson. This chair I will place opposite yours, so that we may be the same distance from the poison and face to face. The door we will leave ajar. Each is now in a position to watch the other and to bring the experiment to an end should the symptoms seem alarming. Is that all clear? Well, then, I take our powder\u2014or what remains of it\u2014from the envelope, and I lay it above the burning lamp. So! Now, Watson, let us sit down and await developments.\"\n\nThey were not long in coming. I had hardly settled in my chair before I was conscious of a thick, musky odour, subtle and nauseous. At the very first whiff of it my brain and my imagination were beyond all control. A thick, black cloud swirled before my eyes, and my mind told me that in this cloud, unseen as yet, but about to spring out upon my appalled senses, lurked all that was vaguely horrible, all that was monstrous and inconceivably wicked in the universe. Vague shapes swirled and swam amid the dark cloud-bank, each a menace and a warning of something coming, the advent of some unspeakable dweller upon the threshold, whose very shadow would blast my soul. A freezing horror took possession of me. I felt that my hair was rising, that my eyes were protruding, that my mouth was opened, and my tongue like leather. The turmoil within my brain was such that something must surely snap. I tried to scream and was vaguely aware of some hoarse croak which was my own voice, but distant and detached from myself. At the same moment, in some effort of escape, I broke through that cloud of despair and had a glimpse of Holmes's face, white, rigid, and drawn with horror\u2014the very look which I had seen upon the features of the dead. It was that vision which gave me an instant of sanity and of strength. I dashed from my chair, threw my arms round Holmes, and together we lurched through the door, and an instant afterwards had thrown ourselves down upon the grass plot and were lying side by side, conscious only of the glorious sunshine which was bursting its way through the hellish cloud of terror which had girt us in. Slowly it rose from our souls like the mists from a landscape until peace and reason had returned, and we were sitting upon the grass, wiping our clammy foreheads, and looking with apprehension at each other to mark the last traces of that terrific experience which we had undergone.\n\n\"Upon my word, Watson!\" said Holmes at last with an unsteady voice, \"I owe you both my thanks and an apology. It was an unjustifiable experiment even for one's self, and doubly so for a friend. I am really very sorry.\"\n\n\"You know,\" I answered with some emotion, for I had never seen so much of Holmes's heart before, \"that it is my greatest joy and privilege to help you.\"\n\nHe relapsed at once into the half-humorous, half-cynical vein which was his habitual attitude to those about him. \"It would be superfluous to drive us mad, my dear Watson,\" said he. \"A candid observer would certainly declare that we were so already before we embarked upon so wild an experiment. I confess that I never imagined that the effect could be so sudden and so severe.\" He dashed into the cottage, and, reappearing with the burning lamp held at full arm's length, he threw it among a bank of brambles. \"We must give the room a little time to clear. I take it, Watson, that you have no longer a shadow of a doubt as to how these tragedies were produced?\"\n\n\"None whatever.\"\n\n\"But the cause remains as obscure as before. Come into the arbour here and let us discuss it together. That villainous stuff seems still to linger round my throat. I think we must admit that all the evidence points to this man, Mortimer Tregennis, having been the criminal in the first tragedy, though he was the victim in the second one. We must remember, in the first place, that there is some story of a family quarrel, followed by a reconciliation. How bitter that quarrel may have been, or how hollow the reconciliation, we cannot tell. When I think of Mortimer Tregennis, with the foxy face and the small shrewd, beady eyes behind the spectacles, he is not a man whom I should judge to be of a particularly forgiving disposition. Well, in the next place, you will remember that this idea of someone moving in the garden, which took our attention for a moment from the real cause of the tragedy, emanated from him. He had a motive in misleading us. Finally, if he did not throw this substance into the fire at the moment of leaving the room, who did do so? The affair happened immediately after his departure. Had anyone else come in, the family would certainly have risen from the table. Besides, in peaceful Cornwall, visitors do not arrive after ten o'clock at night. We may take it, then, that all the evidence points to Mortimer Tregennis as the culprit.\"\n\n\"Then his own death was suicide!\"\n\n\"Well, Watson, it is on the face of it a not impossible supposition. The man who had the guilt upon his soul of having brought such a fate upon his own family might well be driven by remorse to inflict it upon himself. There are, however, some cogent reasons against it. Fortunately, there is one man in England who knows all about it, and I have made arrangements by which we shall hear the facts this afternoon from his own lips. Ah! he is a little before his time. Perhaps you would kindly step this way, Dr. Leon Sterndale. We have been conducting a chemical experiment indoors which has left our little room hardly fit for the reception of so distinguished a visitor.\"\n\nI had heard the click of the garden gate, and now the majestic figure of the great African explorer appeared upon the path. He turned in some surprise towards the rustic arbour in which we sat.\n\n\"You sent for me, Mr. Holmes. I had your note about an hour ago, and I have come, though I really do not know why I should obey your summons.\"\n\n\"Perhaps we can clear the point up before we separate,\" said Holmes. \"Meanwhile, I am much obliged to you for your courteous acquiescence. You will excuse this informal reception in the open air, but my friend Watson and I have nearly furnished an additional chapter to what the papers call the Cornish Horror, and we prefer a clear atmosphere for the present. Perhaps, since the matters which we have to discuss will affect you personally in a very intimate fashion, it is as well that we should talk where there can be no eavesdropping.\"\n\nThe explorer took his cigar from his lips and gazed sternly at my companion.\n\n\"I am at a loss to know, sir,\" he said, \"what you can have to speak about which affects me personally in a very intimate fashion.\"\n\n\"The killing of Mortimer Tregennis,\" said Holmes.\n\nFor a moment I wished that I were armed. Sterndale's fierce face turned to a dusky red, his eyes glared, and the knotted, passionate veins started out in his forehead, while he sprang forward with clenched hands towards my companion. Then he stopped, and with a violent effort he resumed a cold, rigid calmness, which was, perhaps, more suggestive of danger than his hot-headed outburst.\n\n\"I have lived so long among savages and beyond the law,\" said he, \"that I have got into the way of being a law to myself. You would do well, Mr. Holmes, not to forget it, for I have no desire to do you an injury.\"\n\n\"Nor have I any desire to do you an injury, Dr. Sterndale. Surely the clearest proof of it is that, knowing what I know, I have sent for you and not for the police.\"\n\nSterndale sat down with a gasp, overawed for, perhaps, the first time in his adventurous life. There was a calm assurance of power in Holmes's manner which could not be withstood. Our visitor stammered for a moment, his great hands opening and shutting in his agitation.\n\n\"What do you mean?\" he asked at last. \"If this is bluff upon your part, Mr. Holmes, you have chosen a bad man for your experiment. Let us have no more beating about the bush. What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I will tell you,\" said Holmes, \"and the reason why I tell you is that I hope frankness may beget frankness. What my next step may be will depend entirely upon the nature of your own defence.\"\n\n\"My defence?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"My defence against what?\"\n\n\"Against the charge of killing Mortimer Tregennis.\"\n\nSterndale mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. \"Upon my word, you are getting on,\" said he. \"Do all your successes depend upon this prodigious power of bluff?\"\n\n\"The bluff,\" said Holmes sternly, \"is upon your side, Dr. Leon Sterndale, and not upon mine. As a proof I will tell you some of the facts upon which my conclusions are based. Of your return from Plymouth, allowing much of your property to go on to Africa, I will say nothing save that it first informed me that you were one of the factors which had to be taken into account in reconstructing this drama\u2014\"\n\n\"I came back\u2014\"\n\n\"I have heard your reasons and regard them as unconvincing and inadequate. We will pass that. You came down here to ask me whom I suspected. I refused to answer you. You then went to the vicarage, waited outside it for some time, and finally returned to your cottage.\"\n\n\"How do you know that?\"\n\n\"I followed you.\"\n\n\"I saw no one.\"\n\n\"That is what you may expect to see when I follow you. You spent a restless night at your cottage, and you formed certain plans, which in the early morning you proceeded to put into execution. Leaving your door just as day was breaking, you filled your pocket with some reddish gravel that was lying heaped beside your gate.\"\n\nSterndale gave a violent start and looked at Holmes in amazement.\n\n\"You then walked swiftly for the mile which separated you from the vicarage. You were wearing, I may remark, the same pair of ribbed tennis shoes which are at the present moment upon your feet. At the vicarage you passed through the orchard and the side hedge, coming out under the window of the lodger Tregennis. It was now daylight, but the household was not yet stirring. You drew some of the gravel from your pocket, and you threw it up at the window above you.\"\n\nSterndale sprang to his feet.\n\n\"I believe that you are the devil himself!\" he cried.\n\nHolmes smiled at the compliment. \"It took two, or possibly three, handfuls before the lodger came to the window. You beckoned him to come down. He dressed hurriedly and descended to his sitting-room. You entered by the window. There was an interview\u2014a short one\u2014during which you walked up and down the room. Then you passed out and closed the window, standing on the lawn outside smoking a cigar and watching what occurred. Finally, after the death of Tregennis, you withdrew as you had come. Now, Dr. Sterndale, how do you justify such conduct, and what were the motives for your actions? If you prevaricate or trifle with me, I give you my assurance that the matter will pass out of my hands forever.\"\n\nOur visitor's face had turned ashen gray as he listened to the words of his accuser. Now he sat for some time in thought with his face sunk in his hands. Then with a sudden impulsive gesture he plucked a photograph from his breast-pocket and threw it on the rustic table before us.\n\n\"That is why I have done it,\" said he.\n\nIt showed the bust and face of a very beautiful woman. Holmes stooped over it.\n\n\"Brenda Tregennis,\" said he.\n\n\"Yes, Brenda Tregennis,\" repeated our visitor. \"For years I have loved her. For years she has loved me. There is the secret of that Cornish seclusion which people have marvelled at. It has brought me close to the one thing on earth that was dear to me. I could not marry her, for I have a wife who has left me for years and yet whom, by the deplorable laws of England, I could not divorce. For years Brenda waited. For years I waited. And this is what we have waited for.\" A terrible sob shook his great frame, and he clutched his throat under his brindled beard. Then with an effort he mastered himself and spoke on:\n\n\"The vicar knew. He was in our confidence. He would tell you that she was an angel upon earth. That was why he telegraphed to me and I returned. What was my baggage or Africa to me when I learned that such a fate had come upon my darling? There you have the missing clue to my action, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"Proceed,\" said my friend.\n\nDr. Sterndale drew from his pocket a paper packet and laid it upon the table. On the outside was written \"Radix pedis diaboli\" with a red poison label beneath it. He pushed it towards me. \"I understand that you are a doctor, sir. Have you ever heard of this preparation?\"\n\n\"Devil's-foot root! No, I have never heard of it.\"\n\n\"It is no reflection upon your professional knowledge,\" said he, \"for I believe that, save for one sample in a laboratory at Buda, there is no other specimen in Europe. It has not yet found its way either into the pharmacopoeia or into the literature of toxicology. The root is shaped like a foot, half human, half goatlike; hence the fanciful name given by a botanical missionary. It is used as an ordeal poison by the medicine-men in certain districts of West Africa and is kept as a secret among them. This particular specimen I obtained under very extraordinary circumstances in the Ubangi country.\" He opened the paper as he spoke and disclosed a heap of reddish-brown, snuff-like powder.\n\n\"Well, sir?\" asked Holmes sternly.\n\n\"I am about to tell you, Mr. Holmes, all that actually occurred, for you already know so much that it is clearly to my interest that you should know all. I have already explained the relationship in which I stood to the Tregennis family. For the sake of the sister I was friendly with the brothers. There was a family quarrel about money which estranged this man Mortimer, but it was supposed to be made up, and I afterwards met him as I did the others. He was a sly, subtle, scheming man, and several things arose which gave me a suspicion of him, but I had no cause for any positive quarrel.\n\n\"One day, only a couple of weeks ago, he came down to my cottage and I showed him some of my African curiosities. Among other things I exhibited this powder, and I told him of its strange properties, how it stimulates those brain centres which control the emotion of fear, and how either madness or death is the fate of the unhappy native who is subjected to the ordeal by the priest of his tribe. I told him also how powerless European science would be to detect it. How he took it I cannot say, for I never left the room, but there is no doubt that it was then, while I was opening cabinets and stooping to boxes, that he managed to abstract some of the devil's-foot root. I well remember how he plied me with questions as to the amount and the time that was needed for its effect, but I little dreamed that he could have a personal reason for asking.\n\n\"I thought no more of the matter until the vicar's telegram reached me at Plymouth. This villain had thought that I would be at sea before the news could reach me, and that I should be lost for years in Africa. But I returned at once. Of course, I could not listen to the details without feeling assured that my poison had been used. I came round to see you on the chance that some other explanation had suggested itself to you. But there could be none. I was convinced that Mortimer Tregennis was the murderer; that for the sake of money, and with the idea, perhaps, that if the other members of his family were all insane he would be the sole guardian of their joint property, he had used the devil's-foot powder upon them, driven two of them out of their senses, and killed his sister Brenda, the one human being whom I have ever loved or who has ever loved me. There was his crime; what was to be his punishment?\n\n\"Should I appeal to the law? Where were my proofs? I knew that the facts were true, but could I help to make a jury of countrymen believe so fantastic a story? I might or I might not. But I could not afford to fail. My soul cried out for revenge. I have said to you once before, Mr. Holmes, that I have spent much of my life outside the law, and that I have come at last to be a law to myself. So it was now. I determined that the fate which he had given to others should be shared by himself. Either that or I would do justice upon him with my own hand. In all England there can be no man who sets less value upon his own life than I do at the present moment.\n\n\"Now I have told you all. You have yourself supplied the rest. I did, as you say, after a restless night, set off early from my cottage. I foresaw the difficulty of arousing him, so I gathered some gravel from the pile which you have mentioned, and I used it to throw up to his window. He came down and admitted me through the window of the sitting-room. I laid his offence before him. I told him that I had come both as judge and executioner. The wretch sank into a chair, paralyzed at the sight of my revolver. I lit the lamp, put the powder above it, and stood outside the window, ready to carry out my threat to shoot him should he try to leave the room. In five minutes he died. My God! how he died! But my heart was flint, for he endured nothing which my innocent darling had not felt before him. There is my story, Mr. Holmes. Perhaps, if you loved a woman, you would have done as much yourself. At any rate, I am in your hands. You can take what steps you like. As I have already said, there is no man living who can fear death less than I do.\"\n\nHolmes sat for some little time in silence.\n\n\"What were your plans?\" he asked at last.\n\n\"I had intended to bury myself in central Africa. My work there is but half finished.\"\n\n\"Go and do the other half,\" said Holmes. \"I, at least, am not prepared to prevent you.\"\n\nDr. Sterndale raised his giant figure, bowed gravely, and walked from the arbour. Holmes lit his pipe and handed me his pouch.\n\n\"Some fumes which are not poisonous would be a welcome change,\" said he. \"I think you must agree, Watson, that it is not a case in which we are called upon to interfere. Our investigation has been independent, and our action shall be so also. You would not denounce the man?\"\n\n\"Certainly not,\" I answered.\n\n\"I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act even as our lawless lion-hunter has done. Who knows? Well, Watson, I will not offend your intelligence by explaining what is obvious. The gravel upon the window-sill was, of course, the starting-point of my research. It was unlike anything in the vicarage garden. Only when my attention had been drawn to Dr. Sterndale and his cottage did I find its counterpart. The lamp shining in broad daylight and the remains of powder upon the shield were successive links in a fairly obvious chain. And now, my dear Watson, I think we may dismiss the matter from our mind and go back with a clear conscience to the study of those Chaldean roots which are surely to be traced in the Cornish branch of the great Celtic speech.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HIS LAST BOW", + "text": "[ An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes ]\n\nIt was nine o'clock at night upon the second of August\u2014the most terrible August in the history of the world. One might have thought already that God's curse hung heavy over a degenerate world, for there was an awesome hush and a feeling of vague expectancy in the sultry and stagnant air. The sun had long set, but one blood-red gash like an open wound lay low in the distant west. Above, the stars were shining brightly, and below, the lights of the shipping glimmered in the bay. The two famous Germans stood beside the stone parapet of the garden walk, with the long, low, heavily gabled house behind them, and they looked down upon the broad sweep of the beach at the foot of the great chalk cliff on which Von Bork, like some wandering eagle, had perched himself four years before. They stood with their heads close together, talking in low, confidential tones. From below the two glowing ends of their cigars might have been the smouldering eyes of some malignant fiend looking down in the darkness.\n\nA remarkable man this Von Bork\u2014a man who could hardly be matched among all the devoted agents of the Kaiser. It was his talents which had first recommended him for the English mission, the most important mission of all, but since he had taken it over those talents had become more and more manifest to the half-dozen people in the world who were really in touch with the truth. One of these was his present companion, Baron Von Herling, the chief secretary of the legation, whose huge 100-horse-power Benz car was blocking the country lane as it waited to waft its owner back to London.\n\n\"So far as I can judge the trend of events, you will probably be back in Berlin within the week,\" the secretary was saying. \"When you get there, my dear Von Bork, I think you will be surprised at the welcome you will receive. I happen to know what is thought in the highest quarters of your work in this country.\" He was a huge man, the secretary, deep, broad, and tall, with a slow, heavy fashion of speech which had been his main asset in his political career.\n\nVon Bork laughed.\n\n\"They are not very hard to deceive,\" he remarked. \"A more docile, simple folk could not be imagined.\"\n\n\"I don't know about that,\" said the other thoughtfully. \"They have strange limits and one must learn to observe them. It is that surface simplicity of theirs which makes a trap for the stranger. One's first impression is that they are entirely soft. Then one comes suddenly upon something very hard, and you know that you have reached the limit and must adapt yourself to the fact. They have, for example, their insular conventions which simply must be observed.\"\n\n\"Meaning, 'good form' and that sort of thing?\" Von Bork sighed as one who had suffered much.\n\n\"Meaning British prejudice in all its queer manifestations. As an example I may quote one of my own worst blunders\u2014I can afford to talk of my blunders, for you know my work well enough to be aware of my successes. It was on my first arrival. I was invited to a week-end gathering at the country house of a cabinet minister. The conversation was amazingly indiscreet.\"\n\nVon Bork nodded. \"I've been there,\" said he dryly.\n\n\"Exactly. Well, I naturally sent a resume of the information to Berlin. Unfortunately our good chancellor is a little heavy-handed in these matters, and he transmitted a remark which showed that he was aware of what had been said. This, of course, took the trail straight up to me. You've no idea the harm that it did me. There was nothing soft about our British hosts on that occasion, I can assure you. I was two years living it down. Now you, with this sporting pose of yours\u2014\"\n\n\"No, no, don't call it a pose. A pose is an artificial thing. This is quite natural. I am a born sportsman. I enjoy it.\"\n\n\"Well, that makes it the more effective. You yacht against them, you hunt with them, you play polo, you match them in every game, your four-in-hand takes the prize at Olympia. I have even heard that you go the length of boxing with the young officers. What is the result? Nobody takes you seriously. You are a 'good old sport,' 'quite a decent fellow for a German,' a hard-drinking, night-club, knock-about-town, devil-may-care young fellow. And all the time this quiet country house of yours is the centre of half the mischief in England, and the sporting squire the most astute secret-service man in Europe. Genius, my dear Von Bork\u2014genius!\"\n\n\"You flatter me, Baron. But certainly I may claim that my four years in this country have not been unproductive. I've never shown you my little store. Would you mind stepping in for a moment?\"\n\nThe door of the study opened straight on to the terrace. Von Bork pushed it back, and, leading the way, he clicked the switch of the electric light. He then closed the door behind the bulky form which followed him and carefully adjusted the heavy curtain over the latticed window. Only when all these precautions had been taken and tested did he turn his sun burned aquiline face to his guest.\n\n\"Some of my papers have gone,\" said he. \"When my wife and the household left yesterday for Flushing they took the less important with them. I must, of course, claim the protection of the embassy for the others.\"\n\n\"Your name has already been filed as one of the personal suite. There will be no difficulties for you or your baggage. Of course, it is just possible that we may not have to go. England may leave France to her fate. We are sure that there is no binding treaty between them.\"\n\n\"And Belgium?\"\n\n\"Yes, and Belgium, too.\"\n\nVon Bork shook his head. \"I don't see how that could be. There is a definite treaty there. She could never recover from such a humiliation.\"\n\n\"She would at least have peace for the moment.\"\n\n\"But her honour?\"\n\n\"Tut, my dear sir, we live in a utilitarian age. Honour is a mediaeval conception. Besides England is not ready. It is an inconceivable thing, but even our special war tax of fifty million, which one would think made our purpose as clear as if we had advertised it on the front page of the Times, has not roused these people from their slumbers. Here and there one hears a question. It is my business to find an answer. Here and there also there is an irritation. It is my business to soothe it. But I can assure you that so far as the essentials go\u2014the storage of munitions, the preparation for submarine attack, the arrangements for making high explosives\u2014noth\u2014ing is prepared. How, then, can England come in, especially when we have stirred her up such a devil's brew of Irish civil war, window-breaking Fu ries, and God knows what to keep her thoughts at home.\"\n\n\"She must think of her future.\"\n\n\"Ah, that is another matter. I fancy that in the future we have our own very definite plans about England, and that your information will be very vital to us. It is to-day or to-morrow with Mr. John Bull. If he prefers to day we are perfectly ready. If it is to-morrow we shall be more ready still. I should think they would be wiser to fight with allies than without them, but that is their own affair. This week is their week of destiny. But you were speaking of your papers.\" He sat in the armchair with the light shining upon his broad bald head, while he puffed sedately at his cigar.\n\nThe large oak-panelled, book-lined room had a curtain hung in the further corner. When this was drawn it disclosed a large, brass-bound safe. Von Bork detached a small key from his watch chain, and after some considerable manipulation of the lock he swung open the heavy door.\n\n\"Look!\" said he, standing clear, with a wave of his hand.\n\nThe light shone vividly into the opened safe, and the secretary of the embassy gazed with an absorbed interest at the rows of stuffed pigeonholes with which it was furnished. Each pigeonhole had its label, and his eyes as he glanced along them read a long series of such titles as \"Fords,\" \"Harbour-defences,\" \"Aeroplanes,\" \"Ireland,\" \"Egypt,\" \"Portsmouth forts,\" \"The Channel,\" \"Rosythe,\" and a score of others. Each compartment was bristling with papers and plans.\n\n\"Colossal!\" said the secretary. Putting down his cigar he softly clapped his fat hands.\n\n\"And all in four years, Baron. Not such a bad show for the hard-drinking, hard-riding country squire. But the gem of my collection is coming and there is the setting all ready for it.\" He pointed to a space over which \"Naval Signals\" was printed.\n\n\"But you have a good dossier there already.\"\n\n\"Out of date and waste paper. The Admiralty in some way got the alarm and every code has been changed. It was a blow, Baron\u2014the worst setback in my whole campaign. But thanks to my check-book and the good Altamont all will be well to-night.\"\n\nThe Baron looked at his watch and gave a guttural exclamation of disappointment.\n\n\"Well, I really can wait no longer. You can imagine that things are moving at present in Canton Terrace and that we have all to be at our posts. I had hoped to be able to bring news of your great coup. Did Altamont name no hour?\"\n\nVon Bork pushed over a telegram.\n\nWill come without fail to-night and bring new sparking plugs.\n\nALTAMONT.\n\n\"Sparking plugs, eh?\"\n\n\"You see he poses as a motor expert and I keep a full garage. In our code everything likely to come up is named after some spare part. If he talks of a radiator it is a battleship, of an oil pump a cruiser, and so on. Sparking plugs are naval signals.\"\n\n\"From Portsmouth at midday,\" said the secretary, examining the superscription. \"By the way, what do you give him?\"\n\n\"Five hundred pounds for this particular job. Of course he has a salary as well.\"\n\n\"The greedy rogue. They are useful, these traitors, but I grudge them their blood money.\"\n\n\"I grudge Altamont nothing. He is a wonderful worker. If I pay him well, at least he delivers the goods, to use his own phrase. Besides he is not a traitor. I assure you that our most pan-Germanic Junker is a sucking dove in his feelings towards England as compared with a real bitter Irish-American.\"\n\n\"Oh, an Irish-American?\"\n\n\"If you heard him talk you would not doubt it. Sometimes I assure you I can hardly understand him. He seems to have declared war on the King's English as well as on the English king. Must you really go? He may be here any moment.\"\n\n\"No. I'm sorry, but I have already overstayed my time. We shall expect you early to-morrow, and when you get that signal book through the little door on the Duke of York's steps you can put a triumphant finis to your record in England. What! Tokay!\" He indicated a heavily sealed dust-covered bottle which stood with two high glasses upon a salver.\n\n\"May I offer you a glass before your journey?\"\n\n\"No, thanks. But it looks like revelry.\"\n\n\"Altamont has a nice taste in wines, and he took a fancy to my Tokay. He is a touchy fellow and needs humouring in small things. I have to study him, I assure you.\" They had strolled out on to the terrace again, and along it to the further end where at a touch from the Baron's chauffeur the great car shivered and chuckled. \"Those are the lights of Harwich, I suppose,\" said the secretary, pulling on his dust coat. \"How still and peaceful it all seems. There may be other lights within the week, and the English coast a less tranquil place! The heavens, too, may not be quite so peaceful if all that the good Zeppelin promises us comes true. By the way, who is that?\"\n\nOnly one window showed a light behind them; in it there stood a lamp, and beside it, seated at a table, was a dear old ruddy-faced woman in a country cap. She was bending over her knitting and stopping occasionally to stroke a large black cat upon a stool beside her.\n\n\"That is Martha, the only servant I have left.\"\n\nThe secretary chuckled.\n\n\"She might almost personify Britannia,\" said he, \"with her complete self-absorption and general air of comfortable somnolence. Well, au revoir, Von Bork!\" With a final wave of his hand he sprang into the car, and a moment later the two golden cones from the headlights shot forward through the darkness. The secretary lay back in the cushions of the luxurious limousine, with his thoughts so full of the impending European tragedy that he hardly observed that as his car swung round the village street it nearly passed over a little Ford coming in the opposite direction.\n\nVon Bork walked slowly back to the study when the last gleams of the motor lamps had faded into the distance. As he passed he observed that his old housekeeper had put out her lamp and retired. It was a new experience to him, the silence and dankness of his widespread house, for his family and household had been a large one. It was a relief to him, however, to think that they were all in safety and that, but for that one old woman who had lingered in the kitchen, he had the whole place to himself. There was a good deal of tidying up to do inside his study and he set himself to do it until his keen, handsome face was flushed with the heat of the burning papers. A leather valise stood beside his table, and into this he began to pack very neatly and systematically the precious contents of his safe. He had hardly got started with the work, however, when his quick ears caught the sound of a distant car. Instantly he gave an exclamation of satisfaction, strapped up the valise, shut the safe, locked it, and hurried out on to the terrace. He was just in time to see the lights of a small car come to a halt at the gate. A passenger sprang out of it and advanced swiftly towards him, while the chauffeur, a heavily built, elderly man with a gray moustache, settled down like one who resigns himself to a long vigil.\n\n\"Well?\" asked Von Bork eagerly, running forward to meet his visitor.\n\nFor answer the man waved a small brown-paper parcel triumphantly above his head.\n\n\"You can give me the glad hand to-night, mister,\" he cried. \"I'm bringing home the bacon at last.\"\n\n\"The signals?\"\n\n\"Same as I said in my cable. Every last one of them, semaphore, lamp code, Marconi\u2014a copy, mind you, not the original. That was too dangerous. But it's the real goods, and you can lay to that.\" He slapped the German upon the shoulder with a rough familiarity from which the other winced.\n\n\"Come in,\" he said. \"I'm all alone in the house. I was only waiting for this. Of course a copy is better than the original. If an original were missing they would change the whole thing. You think it's all safe about the copy?\"\n\nThe Irish-American had entered the study and stretched his long limbs from the armchair. He was a tall, gaunt man of sixty, with clear-cut features and a small goatee beard which gave him a general resemblance to the caricatures of Uncle Sam. A half-smoked, sodden cigar hung from the corner of his mouth, and as he sat down he struck a match and relit it. \"Making ready for a move?\" he remarked as he looked round him. \"Say, mister,\" he added, as his eyes fell upon the safe from which the curtain was now removed, \"you don't tell me you keep your papers in that?\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"Gosh, in a wide-open contraption like that! And they reckon you to be some spy. Why, a Yankee crook would be into that with a can-opener. If I'd known that any letter of mine was goin' to lie loose in a thing like that I'd have been a mug to write to you at all.\"\n\n\"It would puzzle any crook to force that safe,\" Von Bork answered. \"You won't cut that metal with any tool.\"\n\n\"But the lock?\"\n\n\"No, it's a double combination lock. You know what that is?\"\n\n\"Search me,\" said the American.\n\n\"Well, you need a word as well as a set of figures before you can get the lock to work.\" He rose and showed a double-radiating disc round the keyhole. \"This outer one is for the letters, the inner one for the figures.\"\n\n\"Well, well, that's fine.\"\n\n\"So it's not quite as simple as you thought. It was four years ago that I had it made, and what do you think I chose for the word and figures?\"\n\n\"It's beyond me.\"\n\n\"Well, I chose August for the word, and 1914 for the figures, and here we are.\"\n\nThe American's face showed his surprise and admiration.\n\n\"My, but that was smart! You had it down to a fine thing.\"\n\n\"Yes, a few of us even then could have guessed the date. Here it is, and I'm shutting down to-morrow morning.\"\n\n\"Well, I guess you'll have to fix me up also. I'm not staying in this gol darned country all on my lonesome. In a week or less, from what I see, John Bull will be on his hind legs and fair ramping. I'd rather watch him from over the water.\"\n\n\"But you're an American citizen?\"\n\n\"Well, so was Jack James an American citizen, but he's doing time in Portland all the same. It cuts no ice with a British copper to tell him you're an American citizen. 'It's British law and order over here,' says he. By the way, mister, talking of Jack James, it seems to me you don't do much to cover your men.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" Von Bork asked sharply.\n\n\"Well, you are their employer, ain't you? It's up to you to see that they don't fall down. But they do fall down, and when did you ever pick them up? There's James\u2014\"\n\n\"It was James's own fault. You know that yourself. He was too self willed for the job.\"\n\n\"James was a bonehead\u2014I give you that. Then there was Hollis.\"\n\n\"The man was mad.\"\n\n\"Well, he went a bit woozy towards the end. It's enough to make a man bughouse when he has to play a part from morning to night with a hundred guys all ready to set the coppers wise to him. But now there is Steiner\u2014\"\n\nVon Bork started violently, and his ruddy face turned a shade paler.\n\n\"What about Steiner?\"\n\n\"Well, they've got him, that's all. They raided his store last night, and he and his papers are all in Portsmouth jail. You'll go off and he, poor devil, will have to stand the racket, and lucky if he gets off with his life. That's why I want to get over the water as soon as you do.\"\n\nVon Bork was a strong, self-contained man, but it was easy to see that the news had shaken him.\n\n\"How could they have got on to Steiner?\" he muttered. \"That's the worst blow yet.\"\n\n\"Well, you nearly had a worse one, for I believe they are not far off me.\"\n\n\"You don't mean that!\"\n\n\"Sure thing. My landlady down Fratton way had some inquiries, and when I heard of it I guessed it was time for me to hustle. But what I want to know, mister, is how the coppers know these things? Steiner is the fifth man you've lost since I signed on with you, and I know the name of the sixth if I don't get a move on. How do you explain it, and ain't you ashamed to see your men go down like this?\"\n\nVon Bork flushed crimson.\n\n\"How dare you speak in such a way!\"\n\n\"If I didn't dare things, mister, I wouldn't be in your service. But I'll tell you straight what is in my mind. I've heard that with you German politicians when an agent has done his work you are not sorry to see him put away.\"\n\nVon Bork sprang to his feet.\n\n\"Do you dare to suggest that I have given away my own agents!\"\n\n\"I don't stand for that, mister, but there's a stool pigeon or a cross somewhere, and it's up to you to find out where it is. Anyhow I am taking no more chances. It's me for little Holland, and the sooner the better.\"\n\nVon Bork had mastered his anger.\n\n\"We have been allies too long to quarrel now at the very hour of victory,\" he said. \"You've done splendid work and taken risks, and I can't forget it. By all means go to Holland, and you can get a boat from Rotterdam to New York. No other line will be safe a week from now. I'll take that book and pack it with the rest.\"\n\nThe American held the small parcel in his hand, but made no motion to give it up.\n\n\"What about the dough?\" he asked.\n\n\"The what?\"\n\n\"The boodle. The reward. The \u00a3500. The gunner turned damned nasty at the last, and I had to square him with an extra hundred dollars or it would have been nitsky for you and me. 'Nothin' doin'!' says he, and he meant it, too, but the last hundred did it. It's cost me two hundred pound from first to last, so it isn't likely I'd give it up without gettin' my wad.\"\n\nVon Bork smiled with some bitterness. \"You don't seem to have a very high opinion of my honour,\" said he, \"you want the money before you give up the book.\"\n\n\"Well, mister, it is a business proposition.\"\n\n\"All right. Have your way.\" He sat down at the table and scribbled a check, which he tore from the book, but he refrained from handing it to his companion. \"After all, since we are to be on such terms, Mr. Altamont,\" said he, \"I don't see why I should trust you any more than you trust me. Do you understand?\" he added, looking back over his shoulder at the American. \"There's the check upon the table. I claim the right to examine that parcel before you pick the money up.\"\n\nThe American passed it over without a word. Von Bork undid a winding of string and two wrappers of paper. Then he sat gazing for a moment in silent amazement at a small blue book which lay before him. Across the cover was printed in golden letters Practical Handbook of Bee Culture. Only for one instant did the master spy glare at this strangely irrelevant inscription. The next he was gripped at the back of his neck by a grasp of iron, and a chloroformed sponge was held in front of his writhing face.\n\n\"Another glass, Watson!\" said Mr. Sherlock Holmes as he extended the bottle of Imperial Tokay.\n\nThe thickset chauffeur, who had seated himself by the table, pushed forward his glass with some eagerness.\n\n\"It is a good wine, Holmes.\"\n\n\"A remarkable wine, Watson. Our friend upon the sofa has assured me that it is from Franz Josef's special cellar at the Schoenbrunn Palace. Might I trouble you to open the window, for chloroform vapour does not help the palate.\"\n\nThe safe was ajar, and Holmes standing in front of it was removing dossier after dossier, swiftly examining each, and then packing it neatly in Von Bork's valise. The German lay upon the sofa sleeping stertorously with a strap round his upper arms and another round his legs.\n\n\"We need not hurry ourselves, Watson. We are safe from interruption. Would you mind touching the bell? There is no one in the house except old Martha, who has played her part to admiration. I got her the situation here when first I took the matter up. Ah, Martha, you will be glad to hear that all is well.\"\n\nThe pleasant old lady had appeared in the doorway. She curtseyed with a smile to Mr. Holmes, but glanced with some apprehension at the figure upon the sofa.\n\n\"It is all right, Martha. He has not been hurt at all.\"\n\n\"I am glad of that, Mr. Holmes. According to his lights he has been a kind master. He wanted me to go with his wife to Germany yesterday, but that would hardly have suited your plans, would it, sir?\"\n\n\"No, indeed, Martha. So long as you were here I was easy in my mind. We waited some time for your signal to-night.\"\n\n\"It was the secretary, sir.\"\n\n\"I know. His car passed ours.\"\n\n\"I thought he would never go. I knew that it would not suit your plans, sir, to find him here.\"\n\n\"No, indeed. Well, it only meant that we waited half an hour or so until I saw your lamp go out and knew that the coast was clear. You can report to me to-morrow in London, Martha, at Claridge's Hotel.\"\n\n\"Very good, sir.\"\n\n\"I suppose you have everything ready to leave.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. He posted seven letters to-day. I have the addresses as usual.\"\n\n\"Very good, Martha. I will look into them to-morrow. Good-night. These papers,\" he continued as the old lady vanished, \"are not of very great importance, for, of course, the information which they represent has been sent off long ago to the German government. These are the originals which could not safely be got out of the country.\"\n\n\"Then they are of no use.\"\n\n\"I should not go so far as to say that, Watson. They will at least show our people what is known and what is not. I may say that a good many of these papers have come through me, and I need not add are thoroughly untrustworthy. It would brighten my declining years to see a German cruiser navigating the Solent according to the mine-field plans which I have furnished. But you, Watson\"\u2014he stopped his work and took his old friend by the shoulders\u2014\"I've hardly seen you in the light yet. How have the years used you? You look the same blithe boy as ever.\"\n\n\"I feel twenty years younger, Holmes. I have seldom felt so happy as when I got your wire asking me to meet you at Harwich with the car. But you, Holmes\u2014you have changed very little\u2014save for that horrible goatee.\"\n\n\"These are the sacrifices one makes for one's country, Watson,\" said Holmes, pulling at his little tuft. \"To-morrow it will be but a dreadful memory. With my hair cut and a few other superficial changes I shall no doubt reappear at Claridge's to-morrow as I was before this American stunt\u2014I beg your pardon, Watson, my well of English seems to be permanently defiled\u2014before this American job came my way.\"\n\n\"But you have retired, Holmes. We heard of you as living the life of a hermit among your bees and your books in a small farm upon the South Downs.\"\n\n\"Exactly, Watson. Here is the fruit of my leisured ease, the magnum opus of my latter years!\" He picked up the volume from the table and read out the whole title, Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen. \"Alone I did it. Behold the fruit of pensive nights and laborious days when I watched the little working gangs as once I watched the criminal world of London.\"\n\n\"But how did you get to work again?\"\n\n\"Ah, I have often marvelled at it myself. The Foreign Minister alone I could have withstood, but when the Premier also deigned to visit my humble roof\u2014! The fact is, Watson, that this gentleman upon the sofa was a bit too good for our people. He was in a class by himself. Things were going wrong, and no one could understand why they were going wrong. Agents were suspected or even caught, but there was evidence of some strong and secret central force. It was absolutely necessary to expose it. Strong pressure was brought upon me to look into the matter. It has cost me two years, Watson, but they have not been devoid of excitement. When I say that I started my pilgrimage at Chicago, graduated in an Irish secret society at Buffalo, gave serious trouble to the constabulary at Skibbareen, and so eventually caught the eye of a subordinate agent of Von Bork, who recommended me as a likely man, you will realize that the matter was complex. Since then I have been honoured by his confidence, which has not prevented most of his plans going subtly wrong and five of his best agents being in prison. I watched them, Watson, and I picked them as they ripened. Well, sir, I hope that you are none the worse!\"\n\nThe last remark was addressed to Von Bork himself, who after much gasping and blinking had lain quietly listening to Holmes's statement. He broke out now into a furious stream of German invective, his face convulsed with passion. Holmes continued his swift investigation of documents while his prisoner cursed and swore.\n\n\"Though unmusical, German is the most expressive of all languages,\" he observed when Von Bork had stopped from pure exhaustion. \"Hullo! Hullo!\" he added as he looked hard at the corner of a tracing before putting it in the box. \"This should put another bird in the cage. I had no idea that the paymaster was such a rascal, though I have long had an eye upon him. Mister Von Bork, you have a great deal to answer for.\"\n\nThe prisoner had raised himself with some difficulty upon the sofa and was staring with a strange mixture of amazement and hatred at his captor.\n\n\"I shall get level with you, Altamont,\" he said, speaking with slow deliberation. \"If it takes me all my life I shall get level with you!\"\n\n\"The old sweet song,\" said Holmes. \"How often have I heard it in days gone by. It was a favourite ditty of the late lamented Professor Moriarty. Colonel Sebastian Moran has also been known to warble it. And yet I live and keep bees upon the South Downs.\"\n\n\"Curse you, you double traitor!\" cried the German, straining against his bonds and glaring murder from his furious eyes.\n\n\"No, no, it is not so bad as that,\" said Holmes, smiling. \"As my speech surely shows you, Mr. Altamont of Chicago had no existence in fact. I used him and he is gone.\"\n\n\"Then who are you?\"\n\n\"It is really immaterial who I am, but since the matter seems to interest you, Mr. Von Bork, I may say that this is not my first acquaintance with the members of your family. I have done a good deal of business in Germany in the past and my name is probably familiar to you.\"\n\n\"I would wish to know it,\" said the Prussian grimly.\n\n\"It was I who brought about the separation between Irene Adler and the late King of Bohemia when your cousin Heinrich was the Imperial Envoy. It was I also who saved from murder, by the Nihilist Klopman, Count Von und Zu Grafenstein, who was your mother's elder brother. It was I\u2014\"\n\nVon Bork sat up in amazement.\n\n\"There is only one man,\" he cried.\n\n\"Exactly,\" said Holmes.\n\nVon Bork groaned and sank back on the sofa. \"And most of that information came through you,\" he cried. \"What is it worth? What have I done? It is my ruin forever!\"\n\n\"It is certainly a little untrustworthy,\" said Holmes. \"It will require some checking and you have little time to check it. Your admiral may find the new guns rather larger than he expects, and the cruisers perhaps a trifle faster.\"\n\nVon Bork clutched at his own throat in despair.\n\n\"There are a good many other points of detail which will, no doubt, come to light in good time. But you have one quality which is very rare in a German, Mr. Von Bork: you are a sportsman and you will bear me no ill-will when you realize that you, who have outwitted so many other people, have at last been outwitted yourself. After all, you have done your best for your country, and I have done my best for mine, and what could be more natural? Besides,\" he added, not unkindly, as he laid his hand upon the shoulder of the prostrate man, \"it is better than to fall before some more ignoble foe. These papers are now ready, Watson. If you will help me with our prisoner, I think that we may get started for London at once.\"\n\nIt was no easy task to move Von Bork, for he was a strong and a desperate man. Finally, holding either arm, the two friends walked him very slowly down the garden walk which he had trod with such proud confidence when he received the congratulations of the famous diplomatist only a few hours before. After a short, final struggle he was hoisted, still bound hand and foot, into the spare seat of the little car. His precious valise was wedged in beside him.\n\n\"I trust that you are as comfortable as circumstances permit,\" said Holmes when the final arrangements were made. \"Should I be guilty of a liberty if I lit a cigar and placed it between your lips?\"\n\nBut all amenities were wasted upon the angry German.\n\n\"I suppose you realize, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,\" said he, \"that if your government bears you out in this treatment it becomes an act of war.\"\n\n\"What about your government and all this treatment?\" said Holmes, tapping the valise.\n\n\"You are a private individual. You have no warrant for my arrest. The whole proceeding is absolutely illegal and outrageous.\"\n\n\"Absolutely,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Kidnapping a German subject.\"\n\n\"And stealing his private papers.\"\n\n\"Well, you realize your position, you and your accomplice here. If I were to shout for help as we pass through the village\u2014\"\n\n\"My dear sir, if you did anything so foolish you would probably enlarge the two limited titles of our village inns by giving us 'The Dangling Prussian' as a signpost. The Englishman is a patient creature, but at present his temper is a little inflamed, and it would be as well not to try him too far. No, Mr. Von Bork, you will go with us in a quiet, sensible fashion to Scotland Yard, whence you can send for your friend, Baron Von Herling, and see if even now you may not fill that place which he has reserved for you in the ambassadorial suite. As to you, Watson, you are joining us with your old service, as I understand, so London won't be out of your way. Stand with me here upon the terrace, for it may be the last quiet talk that we shall ever have.\"\n\nThe two friends chatted in intimate converse for a few minutes, recalling once again the days of the past, while their prisoner vainly wriggled to undo the bonds that held him. As they turned to the car Holmes pointed back to the moonlit sea and shook a thoughtful head.\n\n\"There's an east wind coming, Watson.\"\n\n\"I think not, Holmes. It is very warm.\"\n\n\"Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared. Start her up, Watson, for it's time that we were on our way. I have a check for five hundred pounds which should be cashed early, for the drawer is quite capable of stopping it if he can.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES", + "text": "[ PREFACE ]\n\n[ The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes ]\n\nI fear that Mr. Sherlock Holmes may become like one of those popular tenors who, having outlived their time, are still tempted to make repeated farewell bows to their indulgent audiences. This must cease and he must go the way of all flesh, material or imaginary. One likes to think that there is some fantastic limbo for the children of imagination, some strange, impossible place where the beaux of Fielding may still make love to the belles of Richardson, where Scott's heroes still may strut, Dickens's delightful Cockneys still raise a laugh, and Thackeray's worldlings continue to carry on their reprehensible careers. Perhaps in some humble corner of such a Valhalla, Sherlock and his Watson may for a time find a place, while some more astute sleuth with some even less astute comrade may fill the stage which they have vacated.\n\nHis career has been a long one\u2014though it is possible to exaggerate it; decrepit gentlemen who approach me and declare that his adventures formed the reading of their boyhood do not meet the response from me which they seem to expect. One is not anxious to have one's personal dates handled so unkindly. As a matter of cold fact, Holmes made his debut in A Study in Scarlet and in The Sign of Four, two small booklets which appeared between 1887 and 1889. It was in 1891 that \"A Scandal in Bohemia, \" the first of the long series of short stories, appeared in The Strand Magazine. The public seemed appreciative and desirous of more, so that from that date, thirty-nine years ago, they have been produced in a broken series which now contains no fewer than fifty-six stories, republished in The Adventures, The Memoirs, The Return, and His Last Bow, and there remain these twelve published during the last few years which are here produced under the title of The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes. He began his adventures in the very heart of the later Victorian era, carried it through the all-too-short reign of Edward, and has managed to hold his own little niche even in these feverish days. Thus it would be true to say that those who first read of him, as young men, have lived to see their own grown-up children following the same adventures in the same magazine. It is a striking example of the patience and loyalty of the British public.\n\nI had fully determined at the conclusion of The Memoirs to bring Holmes to an end, as I felt that my literary energies should not be directed too much into one channel. That pale, clear-cut face and loose-limbed figure were taking up an undue share of my imagination. I did the deed, but fortunately no coroner had pronounced upon the remains, and so, after a long interval, it was not difficult for me to respond to the flattering demand and to explain my rash act away. I have never regretted it, for I have not in actual practice found that these lighter sketches have prevented me from exploring and finding my limitations in such varied branches of literature as history, poetry, historical novels, psychic research, and the drama. Had Holmes never existed I could not have done more, though he may perhaps have stood a little in the way of the recognition of my more serious literary work.\n\nAnd so, reader, farewell to Sherlock Holmes! I thank you for your past constancy, and can but hope that some return has been made in the shape of that distraction from the worries of life and stimulating change of thought which can only be found in the fairy kingdom of romance.\n\nARTHUR CONAN DOYLE." + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS CLIENT", + "text": "It can't hurt now,\" was Mr. Sherlock Holmes's comment when, for the tenth time in as many years, I asked his leave to reveal the following narrative. So it was that at last I obtained permission to put on record what was, in some ways, the supreme moment of my friend's career.\n\nBoth Holmes and I had a weakness for the Turkish bath. It was over a smoke in the pleasant lassitude of the drying-room that I have found him less reticent and more human than anywhere else. On the upper floor of the Northumberland Avenue establishment there is an isolated corner where two couches he side by side, and it was on these that we lay upon September 3, 1902, the day when my narrative begins. I had asked him whether anything was stirring, and for answer he had shot his long, thin, nervous arm out of the sheets which enveloped him and had drawn an envelope from the inside pocket of the coat which hung beside him.\n\n\"It may be some fussy, self-important fool; it may be a matter of life or death,\" said he as he handed me the note. \"I know no more than this message tells me.\"\n\nIt was from the Carlton Club and dated the evening before. This is what I read:\n\nSir James Damery presents his compliments to Mr. Sherlock Holmes and will call upon him at 4:30 to-morrow. Sir James begs to say that the matter upon which he desires to consult Mr. Holmes is very delicate and also very important. He trusts, therefore, that Mr. Holmes will make every effort to grant this interview, and that he will confirm it over the telephone to the Carlton Club.\n\n\"I need not say that I have confirmed it, Watson,\" said Holmes as I returned the paper. \"Do you know anything of this man Damery?\"\n\n\"Only that this name is a household word in society.\"\n\n\"Well, I can tell you a little more than that. He has rather a reputation for arranging delicate matters which are to be kept out of the papers. You may remember his negotiations with Sir George Lewis over the Ham merford Will case. He is a man of the world with a natural turn for diplomacy. I am bound, therefore, to hope that it is not a false scent and that he has some real need for our assistance.\"\n\n\"Our?\"\n\n\"Well, if you will be so good, Watson.\"\n\n\"I shall be honoured.\"\n\n\"Then you have the hour\u20144:30. Until then we can put the matter out of our heads.\"\n\nI was living in my own rooms in Queen Anne Street at the time, but I was round at Baker Street before the time named. Sharp to the half-hour, Colonel Sir James Damery was announced. It is hardly necessary to describe him, for many will remember that large, bluff, honest personality, that broad, clean-shaven face, and, above all, that pleasant, mellow voice. Frankness shone from his gray Irish eyes, and good humour played round his mobile, smiling lips. His lucent top-hat, his dark frock-coat, indeed, every detail, from the pearl pin in the black satin cravat to the lavender spats over the varnished shoes, spoke of the meticulous care in dress for which he was famous. The big, masterful aristocrat dominated the little room.\n\n\"Of course, I was prepared to find Dr. Watson,\" he remarked with a courteous bow. \"His collaboration may be very necessary, for we are dealing on this occasion, Mr. Holmes, with a man to whom violence is familiar and who will, literally, stick at nothing. I should say that there is no more dangerous man in Europe.\"\n\n\"I have had several opponents to whom that flattering term has been applied,\" said Holmes with a smile. \"Don't you smoke? Then you will excuse me if I light my pipe. If your man is more dangerous than the late Professor Moriarty, or than the living Colonel Sebastian Moran, then he is indeed worth meeting. May I ask his name?\"\n\n\"Have you ever heard of Baron Gruner?\"\n\n\"You mean the Austrian murderer?\"\n\nColonel Damery threw up his kid-gloved hands with a laugh. \"There is no getting past you, Mr. Holmes! Wonderful! So you have already sized him up as a murderer?\"\n\n\"It is my business to follow the details of Continental crime. Who could possibly have read what happened at Prague and have any doubts as to the man's guilt! It was a purely technical legal point and the suspicious death of a witness that saved him! I am as sure that he killed his wife when the so-called 'accident' happened in the Splugen Pass as if I had seen him do it. I knew, also, that he had come to England and had a presentiment that sooner or later he would find me some work to do. Well, what has Baron Gruner been up to? I presume it is not this old tragedy which has come up again?\"\n\n\"No, it is more serious than that. To revenge crime is important, but to prevent it is more so. It is a terrible thing, Mr. Holmes, to see a dreadful event, an atrocious situation, preparing itself before your eyes, to clearly understand whither it will lead and yet to be utterly unable to avert it. Can a human being be placed in a more trying position?\"\n\n\"Perhaps not.\"\n\n\"Then you will sympathize with the client in whose interests I am acting.\"\n\n\"I did not understand that you were merely an intermediary. Who is the principal?\"\n\n\"Mr. Holmes, I must beg you not to press that question. It is important that I should be able to assure him that his honoured name has been in no way dragged into the matter. His motives are, to the last degree, honourable and chivalrous, but he prefers to remain unknown. I need not say that your fees will be assured and that you will be given a perfectly free hand. Surely the actual name of your client is immaterial?\"\n\n\"I am sorry,\" said Holmes. \"I am accustomed to have mystery at one end of my cases, but to have it at both ends is too confusing. I fear, Sir James, that I must decline to act.\"\n\nOur visitor was greatly disturbed. His large, sensitive face was darkened with emotion and disappointment.\n\n\"You hardly realize the effect of your own action, Mr. Holmes,\" said he. \"You place me in a most serious dilemma, for I am perfectly certain that you would be proud to take over the case if I could give you the facts, and yet a promise forbids me from revealing them all. May I, at least, lay all that I can before you?\"\n\n\"By all means, so long as it is understood that I commit myself to nothing.\"\n\n\"That is understood. In the first place, you have no doubt heard of General de Merville?\"\n\n\"De Merville of Khyber fame? Yes, I have heard of him.\"\n\n\"He has a daughter, Violet de Merville, young, rich, beautiful, accomplished, a wonder-woman in every way. It is this daughter, this lovely, innocent girl, whom we are endeavouring to save from the clutches of a fiend.\"\n\n\"Baron Gruner has some hold over her, then?\"\n\n\"The strongest of all holds where a woman is concerned\u2014the hold of love. The fellow is, as you may have heard, extraordinarily handsome, with a most fascinating manner, a gentle voice, and that air of romance and mystery which means so much to a woman. He is said to have the whole sex at his mercy and to have made ample use of the fact.\"\n\n\"But how came such a man to meet a lady of the standing of Miss Violet de Merville?\"\n\n\"It was on a Mediterranean yachting voyage. The company, though select, paid their own passages. No doubt the promoters hardly realized the Baron's true character until it was too late. The villain attached himself to the lady, and with such effect that he has completely and absolutely won her heart. To say that she loves him hardly expresses it. She dotes upon him; she is obsessed by him. Outside of him there is nothing on earth. She will not hear one word against him. Everything has been done to cure her of her madness, but in vain. To sum up, she proposes to marry him next month. As she is of age and has a will of iron, it is hard to know how to prevent her.\"\n\n\"Does she know about the Austrian episode?\"\n\n\"The cunning devil has told her every unsavoury public scandal of his past life, but always in such a way as to make himself out to be an innocent martyr. She absolutely accepts his version and will listen to no other.\"\n\n\"Dear me! But surely you have inadvertently let out the name of your client? It is no doubt General de Merville.\"\n\nOur visitor fidgeted in his chair.\n\n\"I could deceive you by saying so, Mr. Holmes, but it would not be true. De Merville is a broken man. The strong soldier has been utterly demoralized by this incident. He has lost the nerve which never failed him on the battlefield and has become a weak, doddering old man, utterly incapable of contending with a brilliant, forceful rascal like this Austrian. My client, however, is an old friend, one who has known the General intimately for many years and taken a paternal interest in this young girl since she wore short frocks. He cannot see this tragedy consummated without some attempt to stop it. There is nothing in which Scotland Yard can act. It was his own suggestion that you should be called in, but it was, as I have said, on the express stipulation that he should not be personally involved in the matter. I have no doubt, Mr. Holmes, with your great powers you could easily trace my client back through me, but I must ask you, as a point of honour, to refrain from doing so, and not to break in upon his incognito.\"\n\nHolmes gave a whimsical smile.\n\n\"I think I may safely promise that,\" said he. \"I may add that your problem interests me, and that I shall be prepared to look into it. How shall I keep in touch with you?\"\n\n\"The Carlton Club will find me. But in case of emergency, there is a private telephone call, 'XX.31.'\"\n\nHolmes noted it down and sat, still smiling, with the open memorandum-book upon his knee.\n\n\"The Baron's present address, please?\"\n\n\"Vernon Lodge, near Kingston. It is a large house. He has been fortunate in some rather shady speculations and is a rich man, which naturally makes him a more dangerous antagonist.\"\n\n\"Is he at home at present?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Apart from what you have told me, can you give me any further information about the man?\"\n\n\"He has expensive tastes. He is a horse fancier. For a short time he played polo at Hurlingham, but then this Prague affair got noised about and he had to leave. He collects books and pictures. He is a man with a considerable artistic side to his nature. He is, I believe, a recognized authority upon Chinese pottery and has written a book upon the subject.\"\n\n\"A complex mind,\" said Holmes. \"All great criminals have that. My old friend Charlie Peace was a violin virtuoso. Wainwright was no mean artist. I could quote many more. Well, Sir James, you will inform your client that I am turning my mind upon Baron Gruner. I can say no more. I have some sources of information of my own, and I dare say we may find some means of opening the matter up.\"\n\nWhen our visitor had left us Holmes sat so long in deep thought that it seemed to me that he had forgotten my presence. At last, however, he came briskly back to earth.\n\n\"Well, Watson, any views?\" he asked.\n\n\"I should think you had better see the young lady herself.\"\n\n\"My dear Watson, if her poor old broken father cannot move her, how shall I, a stranger, prevail? And yet there is something in the suggestion if all else fails. But I think we must begin from a different angle. I rather fancy that Shinwell Johnson might be a help.\"\n\nI have not had occasion to mention Shinwell Johnson in these memoirs because I have seldom drawn my cases from the latter phases of my friend's career. During the first years of the century he became a valuable assistant. Johnson, I grieve to say, made his name first as a very dangerous villain and served two terms at Parkhurst. Finally he repented and allied himself to Holmes, acting as his agent in the huge criminal underworld of London and obtaining information which often proved to be of vital importance. Had Johnson been a \"nark\" of the police he would soon have been exposed, but as he dealt with cases which never came directly into the courts, his activities were never realized by his companions. With the glamour of his two convictions upon him, he had the entr\u00e9e of every night-club, doss house, and gambling-den in the town, and his quick observation and active brain made him an ideal agent for gaining information. It was to him that Sherlock Holmes now proposed to turn.\n\nIt was not possible for me to follow the immediate steps taken by my friend, for I had some pressing professional business of my own, but I met him by appointment that evening at Simpson's, where, sitting at a small table in the front window and looking down at the rushing stream of life in the Strand, he told me something of what had passed.\n\n\"Johnson is on the prowl,\" said he. \"He may pick up some garbage in the darker recesses of the underworld, for it is down there, amid the black roots of crime, that we must hunt for this man's secrets.\"\n\n\"But if the lady will not accept what is already known, why should any fresh discovery of yours turn her from her purpose?\"\n\n\"Who knows, Watson? Woman's heart and mind are insoluble puzzles to the male. Murder might be condoned or explained, and yet some smaller offence might rankle. Baron Gruner remarked to me\u2014\"\n\n\"He remarked to you!\"\n\n\"Oh, to be sure, I had not told you of my plans. Well, Watson, I love to come to close grips with my man. I like to meet him eye to eye and read for myself the stuff that he is made of. When I had given Johnson his in structions I took a cab out to Kingston and found the Baron in a most affable mood.\"\n\n\"Did he recognize you?\"\n\n\"There was no difficulty about that, for I simply sent in my card. He is an excellent antagonist, cool as ice, silky voiced and soothing as one of your fashionable consultants, and poisonous as a cobra. He has breeding in him\u2014a real aristocrat of crime, with a superficial suggestion of afternoon tea and all the cruelty of the grave behind it. Yes, I am glad to have had my attention called to Baron Adelbert Gruner.\"\n\n\"You say he was affable?\"\n\n\"A purring cat who thinks he sees prospective mice. Some people's affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls. His greeting was characteristic. 'I rather thought I should see you sooner or later, Mr. Holmes,' said he. 'You have been engaged, no doubt by General de Merville, to endeavour to stop my marriage with his daughter, Violet. That is so, is it not?'\n\n\"I acquiesced.\n\n\"'My dear man,' said he, 'you will only ruin your own well-deserved reputation. It is not a case in which you can possibly succeed. You will have barren work, to say nothing of incurring some danger. Let me very strongly advise you to draw off at once.'\n\n\"'It is curious,' I answered, 'but that was the very advice which I had intended to give you. I have a respect for your brains, Baron, and the little which I have seen of your personality has not lessened it. Let me put it to you as man to man. No one wants to rake up your past and make you unduly uncomfortable. It is over, and you are now in smooth waters, but if you persist in this marriage you will raise up a swarm of powerful enemies who will never leave you alone until they have made England too hot to hold you. Is the game worth it? Surely you would be wiser if you left the lady alone. It would not be pleasant for you if these facts of your past were brought to her notice.'\n\n\"The Baron has little waxed tips of hair under his nose, like the short antenn\u00e6 of an insect. These quivered with amusement as he listened, and he finally broke into a gentle chuckle.\n\n\"'Excuse my amusement, Mr. Holmes,' said he, 'but it is really funny to see you trying to play a hand with no cards in it. I don't think anyone could do it better, but it is rather pathetic, all the same. Not a colour card there. Mr. Holmes, nothing but the smallest of the small.'\n\n\"'So you think.'\n\n\"'So I know. Let me make the thing clear to you, for my own hand is so strong that I can afford to show it. I have been fortunate enough to win the entire affection of this lady. This was given to me in spite of the fact that I told her very clearly of all the unhappy incidents in my past life. I also told her that certain wicked and designing persons\u2014I hope you rec ognize yourself\u2014would come to her and tell her these things, and I warned her how to treat them. You have heard of post-hypnotic suggestion, Mr. Holmes? Well, you will see how it works, for a man of personality can use hypnotism without any vulgar passes or tomfoolery. So she is ready for you and, I have no doubt, would give you an appointment, for she is quite amenable to her father's will\u2014save only in the one little matter.'\n\n\"Well, Watson, there seemed to be no more to say, so I took my leave with as much cold dignity as I could summon, but, as I had my hand on the door-handle, he stopped me.\n\n\"'By the way, Mr. Holmes,' said he, 'did you know Le Brun, the French agent?'\n\n\"'Yes,' said I.\n\n\"'Do you know what befell him?'\n\n\"'I heard that he was beaten by some Apaches in the Montmartre district and crippled for life.'\n\n\"'Quite true, Mr. Holmes. By a curious coincidence he had been inquiring into my affairs only a week before. Don't do it, Mr. Holmes; it's not a lucky thing to do. Several have found that out. My last word to you is, go your own way and let me go mine. Good-bye!'\n\n\"So there you are, Watson. You are up to date now.\"\n\n\"The fellow seems dangerous.\"\n\n\"Mighty dangerous. I disregard the blusterer, but this is the sort of man who says rather less than he means.\"\n\n\"Must you interfere? Does it really matter if he marries the girl?\"\n\n\"Considering that he undoubtedly murdered his last wife, I should say it mattered very much. Besides, the client! Well, well, we need not discuss that. When you have finished your coffee you had best come home with me, for the blithe Shinwell will be there with his report.\"\n\nWe found him sure enough, a huge, coarse, red-faced, scorbutic man, with a pair of vivid black eyes which were the only external sign of the very cunning mind within. It seems that he had dived down into what was peculiarly his kingdom, and beside him on the settee was a brand which he had brought up in the shape of a slim, flame-like young woman with a pale, intense face, youthful, and yet so worn with sin and sorrow that one read the terrible years which had left their leprous mark upon her.\n\n\"This is Miss Kitty Winter,\" said Shinwell Johnson, waving his fat hand as an introduction. \"What she don't know\u2014well, there, she'll speak for herself. Put my hand right on her, Mr. Holmes, within an hour of your message.\"\n\n\"I'm easy to find,\" said the young woman. \"Hell, London gets me every time. Same address for Porky Shinwell. We're old mates, Porky, you and I. But, by cripes! there is another who ought to be down in a lower hell than we if there was any justice in the world! That is the man you are after, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\nHolmes smiled. \"I gather we have your good wishes, Miss Winter,\"\n\n\"If I can help to put him where he belongs, I'm yours to the rattle.\" said our visitor with fierce energy. There was an intensity of hatred in her white, set face and her blazing eyes such as woman seldom and man never can attain. \"You needn't go into my past, Mr. Holmes. That's neither here nor there. But what I am Adelbert Gruner made me. If I could pull him down!\" She clutched frantically with her hands into the air. \"Oh, if I could only pull him into the pit where he has pushed so many!\"\n\n\"You know how the matter stands?\"\n\n\"Porky Shinwell has been telling me. He's after some other poor fool and wants to marry her this time. You want to stop it. Well, you surely know enough about this devil to prevent any decent girl in her senses wanting to be in the same parish with him.\"\n\n\"She is not in her senses. She is madly in love. She has been told all about him. She cares nothing.\"\n\n\"Told about the murder?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"My Lord, she must have a nerve!\"\n\n\"She puts them all down as slanders.\"\n\n\"Couldn't you lay proofs before her silly eyes?\"\n\n\"Well, can you help us do so?\"\n\n\"Ain'tIaproof myself? If I stood before her and told her how he used me\u2014\"\n\n\"Would you do this?\"\n\n\"Would I? Would I not!\"\n\n\"Well, it might be worth trying. But he has told her most of his sins and had pardon from her, and I understand she will not reopen the question.\"\n\n\"I'll lay he didn't tell her all,\" said Miss Winter. \"I caught a glimpse of one or two murders besides the one that made such a fuss. He would speak of someone in his velvet way and then look at me with a steady eye and say: 'He died within a month.' It wasn't hot air, either. But I took little notice\u2014you see, I loved him myself at that time. Whatever he did went with me, same as with this poor fool! There was just one thing that shook me. Yes, by cripes! if it had not been for his poisonous, lying tongue that explains and soothes, I'd have left him that very night. It's a book he has\u2014a brown leather book with a lock, and his arms in gold on the outside. I think he was a bit drunk that night, or he would not have shown it to me.\"\n\n\"What was it, then?\"\n\n\"I tell you, Mr. Holmes, this man collects women, and takes a pride in his collection, as some men collect moths or butterflies. He had it all in that book. Snapshot photographs, names, details, everything about them. It was a beastly book\u2014a book no man, even if he had come from the gutter, could have put together. But it was Adelbert Gruner's book all the same. 'Souls I have ruined.' He could have put that on the outside if he had been so minded. However, that's neither here nor there, for the book would not serve you, and, if it would, you can't get it.\"\n\n\"Where is it?\"\n\n\"How can I tell you where it is now? It's more than a year since I left him. I know where he kept it then. He's a precise, tidy cat of a man in many of his ways, so maybe it is still in the pigeon-hole of the old bureau in the inner study. Do you know his house?\"\n\n\"I've been in the study,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Have you, though? You haven't been slow on the job if you only started this morning. Maybe dear Adelbert has met his match this time. The outer study is the one with the Chinese crockery in it\u2014big glass cupboard between the windows. Then behind his desk is the door that leads to the inner study\u2014a small room where he keeps papers and things.\"\n\n\"Is he not afraid of burglars?\"\n\n\"Adelbert is no coward. His worst enemy couldn't say that of him. He can look after himself. There's a burglar alarm at night. Besides, what is there for a burglar\u2014unless they got away with all this fancy crockery?\"\n\n\"No good,\" said Shinwell Johnson with the decided voice of the expert. \"No fence wants stuff of that sort that you can neither melt nor sell.\"\n\n\"Quite so,\" said Holmes. \"Well, now, Miss Winter, if you would call here to-morrow evening at five, I would consider in the meanwhile whether your suggestion of seeing this lady personally may not be arranged. I am exceedingly obliged to you for your cooperation. I need not say that my clients will consider liberally\u2014\"\n\n\"None of that, Mr. Holmes,\" cried the young woman. \"I am not out for money. Let me see this man in the mud, and I've got all I've worked for\u2014in the mud with my foot on his cursed face. That's my price. I'm with you to-morrow or any other day so long as you are on his track. Porky here can tell you always where to find me.\"\n\nI did not see Holmes again until the following evening when we dined once more at our Strand restaurant. He shrugged his shoulders when I asked him what luck he had had in his interview. Then he told the story, which I would repeat in this way. His hard, dry statement needs some little editing to soften it into the terms of real life.\n\n\"There was no difficulty at all about the appointment.\" said Holmes, \"for the girl glories in showing abject filial obedience in all secondary things in an attempt to atone for her flagrant breach of it in her engagement. The General 'phoned that all was ready, and the fiery Miss W. turned up according to schedule, so that at half-past five a cab deposited us outside 104 Berkeley Square, where the old soldier resides\u2014one of those awful gray London castles which would make a church seem frivolous. A footman showed us into a great yellow-curtained drawing-room, and there was the lady awaiting us, demure, pale, self-contained, as inflexible and remote as a snow image on a mountain.\n\n\"I don't quite know how to make her clear to you, Watson. Perhaps you may meet her before we are through, and you can use your own gift of words. She is beautiful, but with the ethereal other-world beauty of some fanatic whose thoughts are set on high. I have seen such faces in the pictures of the old masters of the Middle Ages. How a beastman could have laid his vile paws upon such a being of the beyond I cannot imagine. You may have noticed how extremes call to each other, the spiritual to the animal, the cave-man to the angel. You never saw a worse case than this.\n\n\"She knew what we had come for, of course\u2014that villain had lost no time in poisoning her mind against us. Miss Winter's advent rather amazed her, I think, but she waved us into our respective chairs like a reverend abbess receiving two rather leprous mendicants. If your head is inclined to swell, my dear Watson, take a course of Miss Violet de Merville.\n\n\"'Well, sir,' said she in a voice like the wind from an iceberg, 'your name is familiar to me. You have called, as I understand, to malign my fi-anc\u00e9, Baron Gruner. It is only by my father's request that I see you at all, and I warn you in advance that anything you can say could not possibly have the slightest effect upon my mind.'\n\n\"I was sorry for her, Watson. I thought of her for the moment as I would have thought of a daughter of my own. I am not often eloquent. I use my head, not my heart. But I really did plead with her with all the warmth of words that I could find in my nature. I pictured to her the awful position of the woman who only wakes to a man's character after she is his wife\u2014a woman who has to submit to be caressed by bloody hands and lecherous lips. I spared her nothing\u2014the shame, the fear, the agony, the hopelessness of it all. All my hot words could not bring one tinge of colour to those ivory cheeks or one gleam of emotion to those abstracted eyes. I thought of what the rascal had said about a post-hypnotic influence. One could really believe that she was living above the earth in some ecstatic dream. Yet there was nothing indefinite in her replies.\n\n\"'I have listened to you with patience, Mr. Holmes,' said she. 'The effect upon my mind is exactly as predicted. I am aware that Adelbert, that my fiance, has had a stormy life in which he has incurred bitter hatreds and most unjust aspersions. You are only the last of a series who have brought their slanders before me. Possibly you mean well, though I learn that you are a paid agent who would have been equally willing to act for the Baron as against him. But in any case I wish you to understand once for all that I love him and that he loves me, and that the opinion of all the world is no more to me than the twitter of those birds outside the window. If his noble nature has ever for an instant fallen, it may be that I have been specially sent to raise it to its true and lofty level. I am not clear'\u2014here she turned eyes upon my companion\u2014'who this young lady may be.'\n\n\"I was about to answer when the girl broke in like a whirlwind. If ever you saw flame and ice face to face, it was those two women.\n\n\"'I'll tell you who I am,' she cried, springing out of her chair, her mouth all twisted with passion\u2014'I am his last mistress. I am one of a hundred that he has tempted and used and ruined and thrown into the refuse heap, as he will you also. Your refuse heap is more likely to be a grave, and maybe that's the best. I tell you, you foolish woman, if you marry this man he'll be the death of you. It may be a broken heart or it may be a broken neck, but he'll have you one way or the other. It's not out of love for you I'm speaking. I don't care a tinker's curse whether you live or die. It's out of hate for him and to spite him and to get back on him for what he did to me. But it's all the same, and you needn't look at me like that, my fine lady, for you may be lower than I am before you are through with it.'\n\n\"'I should prefer not to discuss such matters,' said Miss de Merville coldly. 'Let me say once for all that I am aware of three passages in my fi-anc\u00e9's life in which he became entangled with designing women, and that I am assured of his hearty repentance for any evil that he may have done.'\n\n\"'Three passages!' screamed my companion. 'You fool! You unutterable fool!'\n\n\"'Mr. Holmes, I beg that you will bring this interview to an end,' said the icy voice. 'I have obeyed my father's wish in seeing you, but I am not compelled to listen to the ravings of this person.'\n\n\"With an oath Miss Winter darted forward, and if I had not caught her wrist she would have clutched this maddening woman by the hair. I dragged her towards the door and was lucky to get her back into the cab without a public scene, for she was beside herself with rage. In a cold way I felt pretty furious myself, Watson, for there was something indescribably annoying in the calm aloofness and supreme self-complaisance of the woman whom we were trying to save. So now once again you know exactly how we stand, and it is clear that I must plan some fresh opening move, for this gambit won't work. I'll keep in touch with you, Watson, for it is more than likely that you will have your part to play, though it is just possible that the next move may lie with them rather than with us.\"\n\nAnd it did. Their blow fell\u2014or his blow rather, for never could I believe that the lady was privy to it. I think I could show you the very paving-stone upon which I stood when my eyes fell upon the placard, and a pang of horror passed through my very soul. It was between the Grand Hotel and Charing Cross Station, where a one-legged news-vender displayed his evening papers. The date was just two days after the last conversation. There, black upon yellow, was the terrible news-sheet:" + }, + { + "title": "MURDEROUS ATTACK UPON", + "text": "[ SHERLOCK HOLMES ]\n\nI think I stood stunned for some moments. Then I have a confused recollection of snatching at a paper, of the remonstrance of the man, whom I had not paid, and, finally, of standing in the doorway of a chemist's shop while I turned up the fateful paragraph. This was how it ran:\n\nWe learn with regret that Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the well-known private detective, was the victim this morning of a murderous assault which has left him in a precarious position. There are no exact details to hand, but the event seems to have occurred about twelve o'clock in Regent Street, outside the Caf\u00e9 Royal. The attack was made by two men armed with sticks, and Mr. Holmes was beaten about the head and body, receiving injuries which the doctors describe as most serious. He was carried to Charing Cross Hospital and afterwards insisted upon being taken to his rooms in Baker Street. The miscreants who attacked him appear to have been respectably dressed men, who escaped from the bystanders by passing through the Caf\u00e9 Royal and out into Glasshouse Street behind it. No doubt they belonged to that criminal fraternity which has so often had occasion to bewail the activity and ingenuity of the injured man.\n\nI need not say that my eyes had hardly glanced over the paragraph before I had sprung into a hansom and was on my way to Baker Street. I found Sir Leslie Oakshott, the famous surgeon, in the hall and his brougham waiting at the curb.\n\n\"No immediate danger,\" was his report. \"Two lacerated scalp wounds and some considerable bruises. Several stitches have been necessary. Morphine has been injected and quiet is essential, but an interview of a few minutes would not be absolutely forbidden.\"\n\nWith this permission I stole into the darkened room. The sufferer was wide awake, and I heard my name in a hoarse whisper. The blind was three-quarters down, but one ray of sunlight slanted through and struck the bandaged head of the injured man. A crimson patch had soaked through the white linen compress. I sat beside him and bent my head.\n\n\"All right, Watson. Don't look so scared,\" he muttered in a very weak voice. \"It's not as bad as it seems.\"\n\n\"Thank God for that!\"\n\n\"I'm a bit of a single-stick expert, as you know. I took most of them on my guard. It was the second man that was too much for me.\"\n\n\"What can I do, Holmes? Of course, it was that damned fellow who set them on. I'll go and thrash the hide off him if you give the word.\"\n\n\"Good old Watson! No, we can do nothing there unless the police lay their hands on the men. But their get-away had been well prepared. We may be sure of that. Wait a little. I have my plans. The first thing is to exaggerate my injuries. They'll come to you for news. Put it on thick, Watson. Lucky if I live the week out\u2014concussion\u2014delirium\u2014what you like! You can't overdo it.\"\n\n\"But Sir Leslie Oakshott?\"\n\n\"Oh, he's all right. He shall see the worst side of me. I'll look after that.\"\n\n\"Anything else?\"\n\n\"Yes. Tell Shinwell Johnson to get that girl out of the way. Those beauties will be after her now. They know, of course, that she was with me in the case. If they dared to do me in it is not likely they will neglect her. That is urgent. Do it to-night.\"\n\n\"I'll go now. Anything more?\"\n\n\"Put my pipe on the table\u2014and the tobacco-slipper. Right! Come in each morning and we will plan our campaign.\"\n\nI arranged with Johnson that evening to take Miss Winter to a quiet suburb and see that she lay low until the danger was past.\n\nFor six days the public were under the impression that Holmes was at the door of death. The bulletins were very grave and there were sinister paragraphs in the papers. My continual visits assured me that it was not so bad as that. His wiry constitution and his determined will were working wonders. He was recovering fast, and I had suspicions at times that he was really finding himself faster than he pretended even to me. There was a curious secretive streak in the man which led to many dramatic effects, but left even his closest friend guessing as to what his exact plans might be. He pushed to an extreme the axiom that the only safe plotter was he who plotted alone. I was nearer him than anyone else, and yet I was always conscious of the gap between.\n\nOn the seventh day the stitches were taken out, in spite of which there was a report of erysipelas in the evening papers. The same evening papers had an announcement which I was bound, sick or well, to carry to my friend. It was simply that among the passengers on the Cunard boat Ruritania, starting from Liverpool on Friday, was the Baron Adelbert Gruner, who had some important financial business to settle in the States before his impending wedding to Miss Violet de Merville, only daughter of, etc., etc. Holmes listened to the news with a cold, concentrated look upon his pale face, which told me that it hit him hard.\n\n\"Friday!\" he cried. \"Only three clear days. I believe the rascal wants to put himself out of danger's way. But he won't, Watson! By the Lord Harry, he won't! Now, Watson, I want you to do something for me.\"\n\n\"I am here to be used, Holmes.\"\n\n\"Well, then, spend the next twenty-four hours in an intensive study of Chinese pottery.\"\n\nHe gave no explanations and I asked for none. By long experience I had learned the wisdom of obedience. But when I had left his room I walked down Baker Street, revolving in my head how on earth I was to carry out so strange an order. Finally I drove to the London Library in St. James's Square, put the matter to my friend Lomax, the sublibrarian, and departed to my rooms with a goodly volume under my arm.\n\nIt is said that the barrister who crams up a case with such care that he can examine an expert witness upon the Monday has forgotten all his forced knowledge before the Saturday. Certainly I should not like now to pose as an authority upon ceramics. And yet all that evening, and all that night with a short interval for rest, and all next morning, I was sucking in knowledge and committing names to memory. There I learned of the hall-marks of the great artist-decorators, of the mystery of cyclical dates, the marks of the Hung-wu and the beauties of the Yung-lo, the writings of Tang-ying, and the glories of the primitive period of the Sung and the Yuan. I was charged with all this information when I called upon Holmes next evening. He was out of bed now, though you would not have guessed it from the published reports, and he sat with his much-bandaged head resting upon his hand in the depth of his favourite armchair.\n\n\"Why, Holmes,\" I said, \"if one believed the papers, you are dying.\"\n\n\"That,\" said he, \"is the very impression which I intended to convey. And now, Watson, have you learned your lessons?\"\n\n\"At least I have tried to.\"\n\n\"Good. You could keep up an intelligent conversation on the subject?\"\n\n\"I believe I could.\"\n\n\"Then hand me that little box from the mantelpiece.\"\n\nHe opened the lid and took out a small object most carefully wrapped in some fine Eastern silk. This he unfolded, and disclosed a delicate little saucer of the most beautiful deep-blue colour.\n\n\"It needs careful handling, Watson. This is the real egg-shell pottery of the Ming dynasty. No finer piece ever passed through Christie's. A complete set of this would be worth a king's ransom\u2014in fact, it is doubtful if there is a complete set outside the imperial palace of Peking. The sight of this would drive a real connoisseur wild.\"\n\n\"What am I to do with it?\"\n\nHolmes handed me a card upon which was printed: \"Dr. Hill Barton, 369 Half Moon Street.\"\n\n\"That is your name for the evening, Watson. You will call upon Baron Gruner. I know something of his habits, and at half-past eight he would probably be disengaged. A note will tell him in advance that you are about to call, and you will say that you are bringing him a specimen of an absolutely unique set of Ming china. You may as well be a medical man, since that is a part which you can play without duplicity. You are a collector, this set has come your way, you have heard of the Baron's interest in the subject, and you are not averse to selling at a price.\"\n\n\"What price?\"\n\n\"Well asked, Watson. You would certainly fall down badly if you did not know the value of your own wares. This saucer was got for me by Sir James, and comes, I understand, from the collection of his client. You will not exaggerate if you say that it could hardly be matched in the world.\"\n\n\"I could perhaps suggest that the set should be valued by an expert.\"\n\n\"Excellent, Watson! You scintillate to-day. Suggest Christie or Sotheby. Your delicacy prevents your putting a price for yourself.\"\n\n\"But if he won't see me?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, he will see you. He has the collection mania in its most acute form\u2014and especially on this subject, on which he is an acknowledged au thority. Sit down, Watson. and I will dictate the letter. No answer needed. You will merely say that you are coming, and why.\"\n\nIt was an admirable document, short, courteous, and stimulating to the curiosity of the connoisseur. A district messenger was duly dispatched with it. On the same evening, with the precious saucer in my hand and the card of Dr. Hill Barton in my pocket, I set off on my own adventure.\n\nThe beautiful house and grounds indicated that Baron Gruner was, as Sir James had said, a man of considerable wealth. A long winding drive, with banks of rare shrubs on either side, opened out into a great gravelled square adorned with statues. The place had been built by a South African gold king in the days of the great boom, and the long, low house with the turrets at the corners, though an architectural nightmare, was imposing in its size and solidity. A butler, who would have adorned a bench of bishops, showed me in and handed me over to a plush-clad footman, who ushered me into the Baron's presence.\n\nHe was standing at the open front of a great case which stood between the windows and which contained part of his Chinese collection. He turned as I entered with a small brown vase in his hand.\n\n\"Pray sit down, Doctor,\" said he. \"I was looking over my own treasures and wondering whether I could really afford to add to them. This little Tang specimen, which dates from the seventh century, would probably interest you. I am sure you never saw finer workmanship or a richer glaze. Have you the Ming saucer with you of which you spoke?\"\n\nI carefully unpacked it and handed it to him. He seated himself at his desk, pulled over the lamp, for it was growing dark, and set himself to examine it. As he did so the yellow light beat upon his own features, and I was able to study them at my ease.\n\nHe was certainly a remarkably handsome man. His European reputation for beauty was fully deserved. In figure he was not more than of middle size, but was built upon graceful and active lines. His face was swarthy, almost Oriental, with large, dark, languorous eyes which might easily hold an irresistible fascination for women. His hair and moustache were raven black, the latter short, pointed, and carefully waxed. His features were regular and pleasing, save only his straight, thin-lipped mouth. If ever I saw a murderer's mouth it was there\u2014a cruel, hard gash in the face, compressed, inexorable, and terrible. He was ill-advised to train his moustache away from it, for it was Nature's danger-signal, set as a warning to his victims. His voice was engaging and his manners perfect. In age I should have put him at little over thirty, though his record afterwards showed that he was forty-two.\n\n\"Very fine\u2014very fine indeed!\" he said at last. \"And you say you have a set of six to correspond. What puzzles me is that I should not have heard of such magnificent specimens. I only know of one in England to match this, and it is certainly not likely to be in the market. Would it be indiscreet if I were to ask you, Dr. Hill Barton, how you obtained this?\"\n\n\"Does it really matter?\" I asked with as careless an air as I could muster. \"You can see that the piece is genuine, and, as to the value, I am content to take an expert's valuation.\"\n\n\"Very mysterious,\" said he with a quick, suspicious flash of his dark eyes. \"In dealing with objects of such value, one naturally wishes to know all about the transaction. That the piece is genuine is certain. I have no doubts at all about that. But suppose\u2014I am bound to take every possibility into account\u2014that it should prove afterwards that you had no right to sell?\"\n\n\"I would guarantee you against any claim of the sort.\"\n\n\"That, of course, would open up the question as to what your guarantee was worth.\"\n\n\"My bankers would answer that.\"\n\n\"Quite so. And yet the whole transaction strikes me as rather unusual.\"\n\n\"You can do business or not,\" said I with indifference. \"I have given you the first offer as I understood that you were a connoisseur, but I shall have no difficulty in other quarters.\"\n\n\"Who told you I was a connoisseur?\"\n\n\"I was aware that you had written a book upon the subject.\"\n\n\"Have you read the book?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Dear me, this becomes more and more difficult for me to understand! You are a connoisseur and collector with a very valuable piece in your collection, and yet you have never troubled to consult the one book which would have told you of the real meaning and value of what you held. How do you explain that?\"\n\n\"I am a very busy man. I am a doctor in practice.\"\n\n\"That is no answer. If a man has a hobby he follows it up, whatever his other pursuits may be. You said in your note that you were a connoisseur.\"\n\n\"So I am.\"\n\n\"Might I ask you a few questions to test you? I am obliged to tell you, Doctor\u2014if you are indeed a doctor\u2014that the incident becomes more and more suspicious. I would ask you what do you know of the Emperor Shomu and how do you associate him with the Shoso-in near Nara? Dear me, does that puzzle you? Tell me a little about the Northern Wei dynasty and its place in the history of ceramics.\"\n\nI sprang from my chair in simulated anger.\n\n\"This is intolerable, sir,\" said I. \"I came here to do you a favour, and not to be examined as if I were a schoolboy. My knowledge on these subjects may be second only to your own, but I certainly shall not answer questions which have been put in so offensive a way.\"\n\nHe looked at me steadily. The languor had gone from his eyes. They suddenly glared. There was a gleam of teeth from between those cruel lips.\n\n\"What is the game? You are here as a spy. You are an emissary of Holmes. This is a trick that you are playing upon me. The fellow is dying I hear, so he sends his tools to keep watch upon me. You've made your way in here without leave, and, by God! you may find it harder to get out than to get in.\"\n\nHe had sprung to his feet, and I stepped back, bracing myself for an attack, for the man was beside himself with rage. He may have suspected me from the first; certainly this cross-examination had shown him the truth; but it was clear that I could not hope to deceive him. He dived his hand into a side-drawer and rummaged furiously. Then something struck upon his ear, for he stood listening intently.\n\n\"Ah!\" he cried. \"Ah!\" and dashed into the room behind him.\n\nTwo steps took me to the open door, and my mind will ever carry a clear picture of the scene within. The window leading out to the garden was wide open. Beside it, looking like some terrible ghost, his head girt with bloody bandages, his face drawn and white, stood Sherlock Holmes. The next instant he was through the gap, and I heard the crash of his body among the laurel bushes outside. With a howl of rage the master of the house rushed after him to the open window.\n\nAnd then! It was done in an instant, and yet I clearly saw it. An arm\u2014a woman's arm\u2014shot out from among the leaves. At the same instant the Baron uttered a horrible cry\u2014a yell which will always ring in my memory. He clapped his two hands to his face and rushed round the room, beating his head horribly against the walls. Then he fell upon the carpet, rolling and writhing, while scream after scream resounded through the house.\n\n\"Water! For God's sake, water!\" was his cry.\n\nI seized a carafe from a side-table and rushed to his aid. At the same moment the butler and several footmen ran in from the hall. I remember that one of them fainted as I knelt by the injured man and turned that awful face to the light of the lamp. The vitriol was eating into it everywhere and dripping from the ears and the chin. One eye was already white and glazed. The other was red and inflamed. The features which I had admired a few minutes before were now like some beautiful painting over which the artist has passed a wet and foul sponge. They were blurred, discoloured, inhuman, terrible.\n\nIn a few words I explained exactly what had occurred, so far as the vitriol attack was concerned. Some had climbed through the window and others had rushed out on to the lawn, but it was dark and it had begun to rain. Between his screams the victim raged and raved against the avenger. \"It was that hell-cat, Kitty Winter!\" he cried. \"Oh, the she-devil! She shall pay for it! She shall pay! Oh, God in heaven, this pain is more than I can bear!\"\n\nI bathed his face in oil, put cotton wadding on the raw surfaces, and administered a hypodermic of morphia. All suspicion of me had passed from his mind in the presence of this shock, and he clung to my hands as if I might have the power even yet to clear those dead-fish eyes which gazed up at me. I could have wept over the ruin had I not remembered very clearly the vile life which had led up to so hideous a change. It was loathsome to feel the pawing of his burning hands, and I was relieved when his family surgeon, closely followed by a specialist, came to relieve me of my charge. An inspector of police had also arrived, and to him I handed my real card. It would have been useless as well as foolish to do otherwise, for I was nearly as well known by sight at the Yard as Holmes himself. Then I left that house of gloom and terror. Within an hour I was at Baker Street.\n\nHolmes was seated in his familiar chair, looking very pale and exhausted. Apart from his injuries, even his iron nerves had been shocked by the events of the evening, and he listened with horror to my account of the Baron's transformation.\n\n\"The wages of sin, Watson\u2014the wages of sin!\" said he. \"Sooner or later it will always come. God knows, there was sin enough,\" he added, taking up a brown volume from the table. \"Here is the book the woman talked of. If this will not break off the marriage, nothing ever could. But it will, Watson. It must. No self-respecting woman could stand it.\"\n\n\"It is his love diary?\"\n\n\"Or his lust diary. Call it what you will. The moment the woman told us of it I realized what a tremendous weapon was there if we could but lay our hands on it. I said nothing at the time to indicate my thoughts, for this woman might have given it away. But I brooded over it. Then this assault upon me gave me the chance of letting the Baron think that no precautions need be taken against me. That was all to the good. I would have waited a little longer, but his visit to America forced my hand. He would never have left so compromising a document behind him. Therefore we had to act at once. Burglary at night is impossible. He takes precautions. But there was a chance in the evening if I could only be sure that his attention was engaged. That was where you and your blue saucer came in. But I had to be sure of the position of the book, and I knew I had only a few minutes in which to act, for my time was limited by your knowledge of Chinese pottery. Therefore I gathered the girl up at the last moment. How could I guess what the little packet was that she carried so carefully under her cloak? I thought she had come altogether on my business, but it seems she had some of her own.\"\n\n\"He guessed I came from you.\"\n\n\"I feared he would. But you held him in play just long enough for me to get the book, though not long enough for an unobserved escape. Ah, Sir James, I am very glad you have come!\"\n\nOur courtly friend had appeared in answer to a previous summons. He listened with the deepest attention to Holmes's account of what had occurred.\n\n\"You have done wonders\u2014wonders!\" he cried when he had heard the narrative. \"But if these injuries are as terrible as Dr. Watson describes, then surely our purpose of thwarting the marriage is sufficiently gained without the use of this horrible book.\"\n\nHolmes shook his head.\n\n\"Women of the De Merville type do not act like that. She would love him the more as a disfigured martyr. No, no. It is his moral side, not his physical, which we have to destroy. That book will bring her back to earth\u2014and I know nothing else that could. It is in his own writing. She cannot get past it.\"\n\nSir James carried away both it and the precious saucer. As I was myself overdue, I went down with him into the street. A brougham was waiting for him. He sprang in, gave a hurried order to the cockaded coachman, and drove swiftly away. He flung his overcoat half out of the window to cover the armorial bearings upon the panel, but I had seen them in the glare of our fanlight none the less. I gasped with surprise. Then I turned back and ascended the stair to Holmes's room.\n\n\"I have found out who our client is,\" I cried, bursting with my great news. \"Why, Holmes, it is\u2014\"\n\n\"It is a loyal friend and a chivalrous gentleman,\" said Holmes, holding up a restraining hand. \"Let that now and forever be enough for us.\"\n\nI do not know how the incriminating book was used. Sir James may have managed it. Or it is more probable that so delicate a task was entrusted to the young lady's father. The effect, at any rate, was all that could be desired. Three days later appeared a paragraph in the Morning Post to say that the marriage between Baron Adelbert Gruner and Miss Violet de Merville would not take place. The same paper had the first police-court hearing of the proceedings against Miss Kitty Winter on the grave charge of vitriol-throwing. Such extenuating circumstances came out in the trial that the sentence, as will be remembered, was the lowest that was possible for such an offence. Sherlock Holmes was threatened with a prosecution for burglary, but when an object is good and a client is sufficiently illustrious, even the rigid British law becomes human and elastic. My friend has not yet stood in the dock." + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLANCHED SOLDIER", + "text": "The ideas of my friend Watson, though limited, are exceedingly pertinacious. For a long time he has worried me to write an experience of my own. Perhaps I have rather invited this persecution, since I have often had occasion to point out to him how superficial are his own accounts and to accuse him of pandering to popular taste instead of confining himself rigidly to facts and figures. \"Try it yourself, Holmes!\" he has retorted, and I am compelled to admit that, having taken my pen in my hand, I do begin to realize that the matter must be presented in such a way as may interest the reader. The following case can hardly fail to do so, as it is among the strangest happenings in my collection, though it chanced that Watson had no note of it in his collection. Speaking of my old friend and biographer, I would take this opportunity to remark that if I burden myself with a companion in my various little inquiries it is not done out of sentiment or caprice, but it is that Watson has some remarkable characteristics of his own to which in his modesty he has given small attention amid his exaggerated estimates of my own performances. A confederate who foresees your conclusions and course of action is always dangerous, but one to whom each development comes as a perpetual surprise, and to whom the future is always a closed book, is indeed an ideal helpmate.\n\nI find from my notebook that it was in January, 1903, just after the conclusion of the Boer War, that I had my visit from Mr. James M. Dodd, a big, fresh, sunburned, upstanding Briton. The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association. I was alone.\n\nIt is my habit to sit with my back to the window and to place my visitors in the opposite chair, where the light falls full upon them. Mr. James M. Dodd seemed somewhat at a loss how to begin the interview. I did not attempt to help him, for his silence gave me more time for observation. I have found it wise to impress clients with a sense of power, and so I gave him some of my conclusions.\n\n\"From South Africa, sir, I perceive.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" he answered, with some surprise.\n\n\"Imperial Yeomanry, I fancy.\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"Middlesex Corps, no doubt.\"\n\n\"That is so. Mr. Holmes, you are a wizard.\"\n\nI smiled at his bewildered expression.\n\n\"When a gentleman of virile appearance enters my room with such tan upon his face as an English sun could never give, and with his handkerchief in his sleeve instead of in his pocket, it is not difficult to place him. You wear a short beard, which shows that you were not a regular. You have the cut of a riding-man. As to Middlesex, your card has already shown me that you are a stockbroker from Throgmorton Street. What other regiment would you join?\"\n\n\"You see everything.\"\n\n\"I see no more than you, but I have trained myself to notice what I see. However, Mr. Dodd, it was not to discuss the science of observation that you called upon me this morning. What has been happening at Tuxbury Old Park?\"\n\n\"Mr. Holmes\u2014!\"\n\n\"My dear sir, there is no mystery. Your letter came with that heading, and as you fixed this appointment in very pressing terms it was clear that something sudden and important had occurred.\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed. But the letter was written in the afternoon, and a good deal has happened since then. If Colonel Emsworth had not kicked me out\u2014\"\n\n\"Kicked you out!\"\n\n\"Well, that was what it amounted to. He is a hard nail, is Colonel Emsworth. The greatest martinet in the Army in his day, and it was a day of rough language, too. I couldn't have stuck the colonel if it had not been for Godfrey's sake.\"\n\nI lit my pipe and leaned back in my chair.\n\n\"Perhaps you will explain what you are talking about.\"\n\nMy client grinned mischievously.\n\n\"I had got into the way of supposing that you knew everything without being told,\" said he. \"But I will give you the facts, and I hope to God that you will be able to tell me what they mean. I've been awake all night puzzling my brain, and the more I think the more incredible does it become.\n\n\"When I joined up in January, 1901\u2014just two years ago\u2014young Godfrey Emsworth had joined the same squadron. He was Colonel Emsworth's only son\u2014Emsworth the Crimean V C.\u2014and he had the fighting blood in him, so it is no wonder he volunteered. There was not a finer lad in the regiment. We formed a friendship\u2014the sort of friendship which can only be made when one lives the same life and shares the same joys and sorrows. He was my mate\u2014and that means a good deal in the Army. We took the rough and the smooth together for a year of hard fighting. Then he was hit with a bullet from an elephant gun in the action near Diamond Hill outside Pretoria. I got one letter from the hospital at Cape Town and one from Southampton. Since then not a word\u2014not one word, Mr. Holmes, for six months and more, and he my closest pal.\n\n\"Well, when the war was over, and we all got back, I wrote to his father and asked where Godfrey was. No answer. I waited a bit and then I wrote again. This time I had a reply, short and gruff. Godfrey had gone on a voyage round the world, and it was not likely that he would be back for a year. That was all.\n\n\"I wasn't satisfied, Mr. Holmes. The whole thing seemed to me so damned unnatural. He was a good lad, and he would not drop a pal like that. It was not like him. Then, again, I happened to know that he was heir to a lot of money, and also that his father and he did not always hit it off too well. The old man was sometimes a bully, and young Godfrey had too much spirit to stand it. No, I wasn't satisfied, and I determined that I would get to the root of the matter. It happened, however, that my own affairs needed a lot of straightening out, after two years' absence, and so it is only this week that I have been able to take up Godfrey's case again. But since I have taken it up I mean to drop everything in order to see it through.\"\n\nMr. James M. Dodd appeared to be the sort of person whom it would be better to have as a friend than as an enemy. His blue eyes were stern and his square jaw had set hard as he spoke.\n\n\"Well, what have you done?\" I asked.\n\n\"My first move was to get down to his home, Tuxbury Old Park, near Bedford, and to see for myself how the ground lay. I wrote to the mother, therefore\u2014I had had quite enough of the curmudgeon of a father\u2014and I made a clean frontal attack: Godfrey was my chum, I had a great deal of interest which I might tell her of our common experiences, I should be in the neighbourhood, would there be any objection, et cetera? In reply I had quite an amiable answer from her and an offer to put me up for the night. That was what took me down on Monday.\n\n\"Tuxbury Old Hall is inaccessible\u2014five miles from anywhere. There was no trap at the station, so I had to walk, carrying my suitcase, and it was nearly dark before I arrived. It is a great wandering house, standing in a considerable park. I should judge it was of all sorts of ages and styles, starting on a half-timbered Elizabethan foundation and ending in a Victorian portico. Inside it was all panelling and tapestry and half-effaced old pictures, a house of shadows and mystery. There was a butler, old Ralph, who seemed about the same age as the house, and there was his wife, who might have been older. She had been Godfrey's nurse, and I had heard him speak of her as second only to his mother in his affections, so I was drawn to her in spite of her queer appearance. The mother I liked also\u2014a gentle little white mouse of a woman. It was only the colonel himself whom I barred.\n\n\"We had a bit of barney right away, and I should have walked back to the station if I had not felt that it might be playing his game for me to do so. I was shown straight into his study, and there I found him, a huge, bow-backed man with a smoky skin and a straggling gray beard, seated behind his littered desk. A red-veined nose jutted out like a vulture's beak, and two fierce gray eyes glared at me from under tufted brows. I could understand now why Godfrey seldom spoke of his father.\n\n\"'Well, sir,' said he in a rasping voice, 'I should be interested to know the real reasons for this visit.'\n\n\"I answered that I had explained them in my letter to his wife.\n\n\"'Yes, yes, you said that you had known Godfrey in Africa. We have, of course, only your word for that.'\n\n\"'I have his letters to me in my pocket.'\n\n\"'Kindly let me see them.'\n\n\"He glanced at the two which I handed him, and then he tossed them back.\n\n\"'Well, what then?' he asked.\n\n\"'I was fond of your son Godfrey, sir. Many ties and memories united us. Is it not natural that I should wonder at his sudden silence and should wish to know what has become of him?'\n\n\"'I have some recollections, sir, that I had already corresponded with you and had told you what had become of him. He has gone upon a voyage round the world. His health was in a poor way after his African experiences, and both his mother and I were of opinion that complete rest and change were needed. Kindly pass that explanation on to any other friends who may be interested in the matter.'\n\n\"'Certainly,' I answered. 'But perhaps you would have the goodness to let me have the name of the steamer and of the line by which he sailed, together with the date. I have no doubt that I should be able to get a letter through to him.'\n\n\"My request seemed both to puzzle and to irritate my host. His great eyebrows came down over his eyes, and he tapped his fingers impatiently on the table. He looked up at last with the expression of one who has seen his adversary make a dangerous move at chess, and has decided how to meet it.\n\n\"'Many people, Mr. Dodd,' said he, 'would take offence at your infernal pertinacity and would think that this insistence had reached the point of damned impertinence.'\n\n\"'You must put it down, sir, to my real love for your son.'\n\n\"'Exactly. I have already made every allowance upon that score. I must ask you, however, to drop these inquiries. Every family has its own inner knowledge and its own motives, which cannot always be made clear to outsiders, however well-intentioned. My wife is anxious to hear something of Godfrey's past which you are in a position to tell her, but I would ask you to let the present and the future alone. Such inquiries serve no useful purpose, sir, and place us in a delicate and difficult position.'\n\n\"So I came to a dead end, Mr. Holmes. There was no getting past it. I could only pretend to accept the situation and register a vow inwardly that I would never rest until my friend's fate had been cleared up. It was a dull evening. We dined quietly, the three of us, in a gloomy, faded old room. The lady questioned me eagerly about her son, but the old man seemed morose and depressed. I was so bored by the whole proceeding that I made an excuse as soon as I decently could and retired to my bedroom. It was a large, bare room on the ground floor, as gloomy as the rest of the house, but after a year of sleeping upon the veldt, Mr. Holmes, one is not too particular about one's quarters. I opened the curtains and looked out into the garden, remarking that it was a fine night with a bright half-moon. Then I sat down by the roaring fire with the lamp on a table beside me, and endeavoured to distract my mind with a novel. I was interrupted, however, by Ralph, the old butler, who came in with a fresh supply of coals.\n\n\"'I thought you might run short in the night-time, sir. It is bitter weather and these rooms are cold.'\n\n\"He hesitated before leaving the room, and when I looked round he was standing facing me with a wistful look upon his wrinkled face.\n\n\"'Beg your pardon, sir, but I could not help hearing what you said of young Master Godfrey at dinner. You know, sir, that my wife nursed him, and so I may say I am his foster-father. It's natural we should take an interest. And you say he carried himself well, sir?'\n\n\"'There was no braver man in the regiment. He pulled me out once from under the rifles of the Boers, or maybe I should not be here.'\n\n\"The old butler rubbed his skinny hands.\n\n\"'Yes, sir, yes, that is Master Godfrey all over. He was always courageous. There's not a tree in the park, sir, that he has not climbed. Nothing would stop him. He was a fine boy\u2014and oh, sir, he was a fine man.'\n\n\"I sprang to my feet.\n\n\"'Look here!' I cried. 'You say he was. You speak as if he were dead. What is all this mystery? What has become of Godfrey Emsworth?'\n\n\"I gripped the old man by the shoulder, but he shrank away.\n\n\"'I don't know what you mean, sir. Ask the master about Master Godfrey. He knows. It is not for me to interfere.'\n\n\"He was leaving the room, but I held his arm.\n\n\"'Listen,' I said. 'You are going to answer one question before you leave if I have to hold you all night. Is Godfrey dead?'\n\n\"He could not face my eyes. He was like a man hypnotized. The answer was dragged from his lips. It was a terrible and unexpected one.\n\n\"'I wish to God he was!' he cried, and, tearing himself free, he dashed from the room.\n\n\"You will think, Mr. Holmes, that I returned to my chair in no very happy state of mind. The old man's words seemed to me to bear only one interpretation. Clearly my poor friend had become involved in some criminal or, at the least, disreputable transaction which touched the family honour. That stern old man had sent his son away and hidden him from the world lest some scandal should come to light. Godfrey was a reckless fellow. He was easily influenced by those around him. No doubt he had fallen into bad hands and been misled to his ruin. It was a piteous business, if it was indeed so, but even now it was my duty to hunt him out and see if I could aid him. I was anxiously pondering the matter when I looked up, and there was Godfrey Emsworth standing before me.\"\n\nMy client had paused as one in deep emotion.\n\n\"Pray continue,\" I said. \"Your problem presents some very unusual features.\"\n\n\"He was outside the window, Mr. Holmes, with his face pressed against the glass. I have told you that I looked out at the night. When I did so I left the curtains partly open. His figure was framed in this gap. The window came down to the ground and I could see the whole length of it, but it was his face which held my gaze. He was deadly pale\u2014never have I seen a man so white. I reckon ghosts may look like that; but his eyes met mine, and they were the eyes of a living man. He sprang back when he saw that I was looking at him, and he vanished into the darkness.\n\n\"There was something shocking about the man, Mr. Holmes. It wasn't merely that ghastly face glimmering as white as cheese in the darkness. It was more subtle than that\u2014something slinking, something furtive, something guilty\u2014something very unlike the frank, manly lad that I had known. It left a feeling of horror in my mind.\n\n\"But when a man has been soldiering for a year or two with brother Boer as a playmate, he keeps his nerve and acts quickly. Godfrey had hardly vanished before I was at the window. There was an awkward catch, and I was some little time before I could throw it up. Then I nipped through and ran down the garden path in the direction that I thought he might have taken.\n\n\"It was a long path and the light was not very good, but it seemed to me something was moving ahead of me. I ran on and called his name, but it was no use. When I got to the end of the path there were several others branching in different directions to various outhouses. I stood hesitating, and as I did so I heard distinctly the sound of a closing door. It was not behind me in the house, but ahead of me, somewhere in the darkness. That was enough, Mr. Holmes, to assure me that what I had seen was not a vision. Godfrey had run away from me, and he had shut a door behind him. Of that I was certain.\n\n\"There was nothing more I could do, and I spent an uneasy night turning the matter over in my mind and trying to find some theory which would cover the facts. Next day I found the colonel rather more conciliatory, and as his wife remarked that there were some places of interest in the neighbourhood, it gave me an opening to ask whether my presence for one more night would incommode them. A somewhat grudging acquiescence from the old man gave me a clear day in which to make my observations. I was already perfectly convinced that Godfrey was in hiding somewhere near, but where and why remained to be solved.\n\n\"The house was so large and so rambling that a regiment might be hid away in it and no one the wiser. If the secret lay there it was difficult for me to penetrate it. But the door which I had heard close was certainly not in the house. I must explore the garden and see what I could find. There was no difficulty in the way, for the old people were busy in their own fashion and left me to my own devices.\n\n\"There were several small outhouses, but at the end of the garden there was a detached building of some size\u2014large enough for a gardener's or a gamekeeper's residence. Could this be the place whence the sound of that shutting door had come? I approached it in a careless fashion as though I were strolling aimlessly round the grounds. As I did so, a small, brisk, bearded man in a black coat and bowler hat\u2014not at all the gardener type\u2014came out of the door. To my surprise, he locked it after him and put the key in his pocket. Then he looked at me with some surprise on his face.\n\n\"'Are you a visitor here?' he asked.\n\n\"I explained that I was and that I was a friend of Godfrey's.\n\n\"'What a pity that he should be away on his travels, for he would have so liked to see me,' I continued.\n\n\"'Quite so. Exactly,' said he with a rather guilty air. 'No doubt you will renew your visit at some more propitious time.' He passed on, but when I turned I observed that he was standing watching me, half-concealed by the laurels at the far end of the garden.\n\n\"I had a good look at the little house as I passed it, but the windows were heavily curtained, and, so far as one could see, it was empty. I might spoil my own game and even be ordered off the premises if I were too audacious, for I was still conscious that I was being watched. Therefore, I strolled back to the house and waited for night before I went on with my inquiry. When all was dark and quiet I slipped out of my window and made my way as silently as possible to the mysterious lodge.\n\n\"I have said that it was heavily curtained, but now I found that the windows were shuttered as well. Some light, however, was breaking through one of them, so I concentrated my attention upon this. I was in luck, for the curtain had not been quite closed, and there was a crack in the shutter, so that I could see the inside of the room. It was a cheery place enough, a bright lamp and a blazing fire. Opposite to me was seated the little man whom I had seen in the morning. He was smoking a pipe and reading a paper.\"\n\n\"What paper?\" I asked.\n\nMy client seemed annoyed at the interruption of his narrative.\n\n\"Can it matter?\" he asked.\n\n\"It is most essential.\"\n\n\"I really took no notice.\"\n\n\"Possibly you observed whether it was a broad-leafed paper or of that smaller type which one associates with weeklies.\"\n\n\"Now that you mention it, it was not large. It might have been the Spectator. However, I had little thought to spare upon such details, for a second man was seated with his back to the window, and I could swear that this second man was Godfrey. I could not see his face, but I knew the familiar slope of his shoulders. He was leaning upon his elbow in an attitude of great melancholy, his body turned towards the fire. I was hesitating as to what I should do when there was a sharp tap on my shoulder, and there was Colonel Emsworth beside me.\n\n\"'This way, sir!' said he in a low voice. He walked in silence to the house, and I followed him into my own bedroom. He had picked up a time-table in the hall.\n\n\"'There is a train to London at 8:30,' said he. 'The trap will be at the door at eight.'\n\n\"He was white with rage, and, indeed, I felt myself in so difficult a position that I could only stammer out a few incoherent apologies in which I tried to excuse myself by urging my anxiety for my friend.\n\n\"'The matter will not bear discussion,' said he abruptly. 'You have made a most damnable intrusion into the privacy of our family. You were here as a guest and you have become a spy. I have nothing more to say, sir, save that I have no wish ever to see you again.'\n\n\"At this I lost my temper, Mr. Holmes, and I spoke with some warmth.\n\n\"'I have seen your son, and I am convinced that for some reason of your own you are concealing him from the world. I have no idea what your motives are in cutting him off in this fashion, but I am sure that he is no longer a free agent. I warn you, Colonel Emsworth, that until I am assured as to the safety and well-being of my friend I shall never desist in my efforts to get to the bottom of the mystery, and I shall certainly not allow myself to be intimidated by anything which you may say or do.'\n\n\"The old fellow looked diabolical, and I really thought he was about to attack me. I have said that he was a gaunt, fierce old giant, and though I am no weakling I might have been hard put to it to hold my own against him. However, after a long glare of rage he turned upon his heel and walked out of the room. For my part, I took the appointed train in the morning, with the full intention of coming straight to you and asking for your advice and assistance at the appointment for which I had already written.\"\n\nSuch was the problem which my visitor laid before me. It presented, as the astute reader will have already perceived, few difficulties in its solution, for a very limited choice of alternatives must get to the root of the matter. Still, elementary as it was, there were points of interest and novelty about it which may excuse my placing it upon record. I now proceeded, using my familiar method of logical analysis, to narrow down the possible solutions.\n\n\"The servants,\" I asked; \"how many were in the house?\"\n\n\"To the best of my belief there were only the old butler and his wife. They seemed to live in the simplest fashion.\"\n\n\"There was no servant, then, in the detached house?\"\n\n\"None, unless the little man with the beard acted as such. He seemed, however, to be quite a superior person.\"\n\n\"That seems very suggestive. Had you any indication that food was conveyed from the one house to the other?\"\n\n\"Now that you mention it, I did see old Ralph carrying a basket down the garden walk and going in the direction of this house. The idea of food did not occur to me at the moment.\"\n\n\"Did you make any local inquiries?\"\n\n\"Yes, I did. I spoke to the station-master and also to the innkeeper in the village. I simply asked if they knew anything of my old comrade, Godfrey Emsworth. Both of them assured me that he had gone for a voyage round the world. He had come home and then had almost at once started off again. The story was evidently universally accepted.\"\n\n\"You said nothing of your suspicions?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"That was very wise. The matter should certainly be inquired into. I will go back with you to Tuxbury Old Park.\"\n\n\"To-day?\"\n\nIt happened that at the moment I was clearing up the case which my friend Watson has described as that of the Abbey School, in which the Duke of Greyminster was so deeply involved. I had also a commission from the Sultan of Turkey which called for immediate action, as political consequences of the gravest kind might arise from its neglect. Therefore it was not until the beginning of the next week, as my diary records, that I was able to start forth on my mission to Bedfordshire in company with Mr. James M. Dodd. As we drove to Euston we picked up a grave and taciturn gentleman of iron-gray aspect, with whom I had made the necessary arrangements.\n\n\"This is an old friend,\" said I to Dodd. \"It is possible that his presence may be entirely unnecessary, and, on the other hand, it may be essential. It is not necessary at the present stage to go further into the matter.\"\n\nThe narratives of Watson have accustomed the reader, no doubt, to the fact that I do not waste words or disclose my thoughts while a case is actually under consideration. Dodd seemed surprised, but nothing more was said, and the three of us continued our journey together. In the train I asked Dodd one more question which I wished our companion to hear.\n\n\"You say that you saw your friend's face quite clearly at the window, so clearly that you are sure of his identity?\"\n\n\"I have no doubt about it whatever. His nose was pressed against the glass. The lamplight shone full upon him.\"\n\n\"It could not have been someone resembling him?\"\n\n\"No, no, it was he.\"\n\n\"But you say he was changed?\"\n\n\"Only in colour. His face was\u2014how shall I describe it?\u2014it was of a fish-belly-whiteness. It was bleached.\"\n\n\"Was it equally pale all over?\"\n\n\"I think not. It was his brow which I saw so clearly as it was pressed against the window.\"\n\n\"Did you call to him?\"\n\n\"I was too startled and horrified for the moment. Then I pursued him, as I have told you, but without result.\"\n\nMy case was practically complete, and there was only one small incident needed to round it off. When, after a considerable drive, we arrived at the strange old rambling house which my client had described, it was Ralph, the elderly butler, who opened the door. I had requisitioned the carriage for the day and had asked my elderly friend to remain within it unless we should summon him. Ralph, a little wrinkled old fellow, was in the conventional costume of black coat and pepper-and-salt trousers, with only one curious variant. He wore brown leather gloves, which at sight of us he instantly shuffled off, laying them down on the hall-table as we passed in. I have, as my friend Watson may have remarked, an abnormally acute set of senses, and a faint but incisive scent was apparent. It seemed to centre on the hall-table. I turned, placed my hat there, knocked it off, stooped to pick it up, and contrived to bring my nose within a foot of the gloves. Yes, it was undoubtedly from them that the curious tarry odour was oozing. I passed on into the study with my case complete. Alas, that I should have to show my hand so when I tell my own story! It was by concealing such links in the chain that Watson was enabled to produce his meretricious finales.\n\nColonel Emsworth was not in his room, but he came quickly enough on receipt of Ralph's message. We heard his quick, heavy step in the passage. The door was flung open and he rushed in with bristling beard and twisted features, as terrible an old man as ever I have seen. He held our cards in his hand, and he tore them up and stamped on the fragments.\n\n\"Have I not told you, you infernal busybody, that you are warned off the premises? Never dare to show your damned face here again. If you enter again without my leave I shall be within my rights if I use violence. I'll shoot you, sir! By God, I will! As to you, sir,\" turning upon me, \"I extend the same warning to you. I am familiar with your ignoble profession, but you must take your reputed talents to some other field. There is no opening for them here.\"\n\n\"I cannot leave here,\" said my client firmly, \"until I hear from Godfrey's own lips that he is under no restraint.\"\n\nOur involuntary host rang the bell.\n\n\"Ralph,\" he said, \"telephone down to the county police and ask the inspector to send up two constables. Tell him there are burglars in the house.\"\n\n\"One moment,\" said I. \"You must be aware, Mr. Dodd, that Colonel Emsworth is within his rights and that we have no legal status within his house. On the other hand, he should recognize that your action is prompted entirely by solicitude for his son. I venture to hope that if I were allowed to have five minutes' conversation with Colonel Emsworth I could certainly alter his view of the matter.\"\n\n\"I am not so easily altered,\" said the old soldier. \"Ralph, do what I have told you. What the devil are you waiting for? Ring up the police!\"\n\n\"Nothing of the sort,\" I said, putting my back to the door. \"Any police interference would bring about the very catastrophe which you dread.\" I took out my notebook and scribbled one word upon a loose sheet. \"That,\" said I as I handed it to Colonel Emsworth, \"is what has brought us here.\"\n\nHe stared at the writing with a face from which every expression save amazement had vanished.\n\n\"How do you know?\" he gasped, sitting down heavily in his chair.\n\n\"It is my business to know things. That is my trade.\"\n\nHe sat in deep thought, his gaunt hand tugging at his straggling beard. Then he made a gesture of resignation.\n\n\"Well, if you wish to see Godfrey, you shall. It is no doing of mine, but you have forced my hand. Ralph, tell Mr. Godfrey and Mr. Kent that in five minutes we shall be with them.\"\n\nAt the end of that time we passed down the garden path and found ourselves in front of the mystery house at the end. A small bearded man stood at the door with a look of considerable astonishment upon his face.\n\n\"This is very sudden, Colonel Emsworth,\" said he. \"This will disarrange all our plans.\"\n\n\"I can't help it, Mr. Kent. Our hands have been forced. Can Mr. Godfrey see us?\"\n\n\"Yes, he is waiting inside.\" He turned and led us into a large, plainly furnished front room. A man was standing with his back to the fire, and at the sight of him my client sprang forward with outstretched hand.\n\n\"Why, Godfrey, old man, this is fine!\"\n\nBut the other waved him back.\n\n\"Don't touch me, Jimmie. Keep your distance. Yes, you may well stare! I don't quite look the smart Lance-Corporal Emsworth, of B Squadron, do I?\"\n\nHis appearance was certainly extraordinary. One could see that he had indeed been a handsome man with clear-cut features sunburned by an African sun, but mottled in patches over this darker surface were curious whitish patches which had bleached his skin.\n\n\"That's why I don't court visitors,\" said he. \"I don't mind you, Jimmie, but I could have done without your friend. I suppose there is some good reason for it, but you have me at a disadvantage.\"\n\n\"I wanted to be sure that all was well with you, Godfrey. I saw you that night when you looked into my window, and I could not let the matter rest till I had cleared things up.\"\n\n\"Old Ralph told me you were there, and I couldn't help taking a peep at you. I hoped you would not have seen me, and I had to run to my burrow when I heard the window go up.\"\n\n\"But what in heaven's name is the matter?\"\n\n\"Well, it's not a long story to tell,\" said he, lighting a cigarette. \"You remember that morning fight at Buffelsspruit, outside Pretoria, on the Eastern railway line? You heard I was hit?\"\n\n\"Yes, I heard that but I never got particulars.\"\n\n\"Three of us got separated from the others. It was very broken country, you may remember. There was Simpson\u2014the fellow we called Baldy Simpson\u2014and Anderson, and I. We were clearing brother Boer, but he lay low and got the three of us. The other two were killed. I got an elephant bullet through my shoulder. I stuck on to my horse, however, and he galloped several miles before I fainted and rolled off the saddle.\n\n\"When I came to myself it was nightfall, and I raised myself up, feeling very weak and ill. To my surprise there was a house close beside me, a fairly large house with a broad stoep and many windows. It was deadly cold. You remember the kind of numb cold which used to come at evening, a deadly, sickening sort of cold, very different from a crisp healthy frost. Well, I was chilled to the bone, and my only hope seemed to lie in reaching that house. I staggered to my feet and dragged myself along, hardly conscious of what I did. I have a dim memory of slowly ascending the steps, entering a wide-opened door, passing into a large room which contained several beds, and throwing myself down with a gasp of satisfaction upon one of them. It was unmade, but that troubled me not at all. I drew the clothes over my shivering body and in a moment I was in a deep sleep.\n\n\"It was morning when I wakened, and it seemed to me that instead of coming out into a world of sanity I had emerged into some extraordinary nightmare. The African sun flooded through the big, curtainless windows, and every detail of the great, bare, whitewashed dormitory stood out hard and clear. In front of me was standing a small, dwarf-like man with a huge, bulbous head, who was jabbering excitedly in Dutch, waving two horrible hands which looked to me like brown sponges. Behind him stood a group of people who seemed to be intensely amused by the situation, but a chill came over me as I looked at them. Not one of them was a normal human being. Every one was twisted or swollen or disfigured in some strange way. The laughter of these strange monstrosities was a dreadful thing to hear.\n\n\"It seemed that none of them could speak English, but the situation wanted clearing up, for the creature with the big head was growing furiously angry, and, uttering wild-beast cries, he had laid his deformed hands upon me and was dragging me out of bed, regardless of the fresh flow of blood from my wound. The little monster was as strong as a bull, and I don't know what he might have done to me had not an elderly man who was clearly in authority been attracted to the room by the hubbub. He said a few stern words in Dutch, and my persecutor shrank away. Then he turned upon me, gazing at me in the utmost amazement.\n\n\"'How in the world did you come here?' he asked in amazement. 'Wait a bit! I see that you are tired out and that wounded shoulder of yours wants looking after. I am a doctor, and I'll soon have you tied up. But, man alive! you are in far greater danger here than ever you were on the battlefield. You are in the Leper Hospital, and you have slept in a leper's bed.'\n\n\"Need I tell you more, Jimmie? It seems that in view of the approaching battle all these poor creatures had been evacuated the day before. Then, as the British advanced, they had been brought back by this, their medical superintendent, who assured me that, though he believed he was immune to the disease, he would none the less never have dared to do what I had done. He put me in a private room, treated me kindly, and within a week or so I was removed to the general hospital at Pretoria.\n\n\"So there you have my tragedy. I hoped against hope, but it was not until I had reached home that the terrible signs which you see upon my face told me that I had not escaped. What was I to do? I was in this lonely house. We had two servants whom we could utterly trust. There was a house where I could live. Under pledge of secrecy, Mr. Kent, who is a surgeon, was prepared to stay with me. It seemed simple enough on those lines. The alternative was a dreadful one\u2014segregation for life among strangers with never a hope of release. But absolute secrecy was necessary, or even in this quiet countryside there would have been an outcry, and I should have been dragged to my horrible doom. Even you, Jimmie\u2014even you had to be kept in the dark. Why my father has relented I cannot imagine.\"\n\nColonel Emsworth pointed to me.\n\n\"This is the gentleman who forced my hand.\" He unfolded the scrap of paper on which I had written the word \"Leprosy.\" \"It seemed to me that if he knew so much as that it was safer that he should know all.\"\n\n\"And so it was,\" said I. \"Who knows but good may come of it? I understand that only Mr. Kent has seen the patient. May I ask, sir, if you are an authority on such complaints, which are, I understand, tropical or semi-tropical in their nature?\"\n\n\"I have the ordinary knowledge of the educated medical man,\" he observed with some stiffness.\n\n\"I have no doubt, sir, that you are fully competent, but I am sure that you will agree that in such a case a second opinion is valuable. You have avoided this, I understand, for fear that pressure should be put upon you to segregate the patient.\"\n\n\"That is so,\" said Colonel Emsworth.\n\n\"I foresaw this situation,\" I explained, \"and I have brought with me a friend whose discretion may absolutely be trusted. I was able once to do him a professional service, and he is ready to advise as a friend rather than as a specialist. His name is Sir James Saunders.\"\n\nThe prospect of an interview with Lord Roberts would not have excited greater wonder and pleasure in a raw subaltern than was now reflected upon the face of Mr. Kent.\n\n\"I shall indeed be proud,\" he murmured.\n\n\"Then I will ask Sir James to step this way. He is at present in the carriage outside the door. Meanwhile, Colonel Emsworth, we may perhaps assemble in your study, where I could give the necessary explanations.\"\n\nAnd here it is that I miss my Watson. By cunning questions and ejaculations of wonder he could elevate my simple art, which is but systematized common sense, into a prodigy. When I tell my own story I have no such aid. And yet I will give my process of thought even as I gave it to my small audience, which included Godfrey's mother in the study of Colonel Emsworth.\n\n\"That process,\" said I, \"starts upon the supposition that when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. It may well be that several explanations remain, in which case one tries test after test until one or other of them has a convincing amount of support. We will now apply this principle to the case in point. As it was first presented to me, there were three possible explanations of the seclusion or incarceration of this gentleman in an outhouse of his father's mansion. There was the explanation that he was in hiding for a crime, or that he was mad and that they wished to avoid an asylum, or that he had some disease which caused his segregation. I could think of no other adequate solutions. These, then, had to be sifted and balanced against each other.\n\n\"The criminal solution would not bear inspection. No unsolved crime had been reported from that district. I was sure of that. If it were some crime not yet discovered, then clearly it would be to the interest of the family to get rid of the delinquent and send him abroad rather than keep him concealed at home. I could see no explanation for such a line of conduct.\n\n\"Insanity was more plausible. The presence of the second person in the outhouse suggested a keeper. The fact that he locked the door when he came out strengthened the supposition and gave the idea of constraint. On the other hand, this constraint could not be severe or the young man could not have got loose and come down to have a look at his friend. You will remember, Mr. Dodd, that I felt round for points, asking you, for example, about the paper which Mr. Kent was reading. Had it been the Lancet or the British Medical Journal it would have helped me. It is not illegal, however, to keep a lunatic upon private premises so long as there is a qualified person in attendance and that the authorities have been duly notified. Why, then, all this desperate desire for secrecy? Once again I could not get the theory to fit the facts.\n\n\"There remained the third possibility, into which, rare and unlikely as it was, everything seemed to fit. Leprosy is not uncommon in South Africa. By some extraordinary chance this youth might have contracted it. His people would be placed in a very dreadful position, since they would desire to save him from segregation. Great secrecy would be needed to prevent rumours from getting about and subsequent interference by the authorities. A devoted medical man, if sufficiently paid, would easily be found to take charge of the sufferer. There would be no reason why the latter should not be allowed freedom after dark. Bleaching of the skin is a common result of the disease. The case was a strong one\u2014so strong that I determined to act as if it were actually proved. When on arriving here I noticed that Ralph, who carries out the meals, had gloves which are impregnated with disinfectants, my last doubts were removed. A single word showed you, sir, that your secret was discovered, and if I wrote rather than said it, it was to prove to you that my discretion was to be trusted.\"\n\nI was finishing this little analysis of the case when the door was opened and the austere figure of the great dermatologist was ushered in. But for once his sphinx-like features had relaxed and there was a warm humanity in his eyes. He strode up to Colonel Emsworth and shook him by the hand.\n\n\"It is often my lot to bring ill-tidings and seldom good,\" said he. \"This occasion is the more welcome. It is not leprosy.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"A well-marked case of pseudo-leprosy or ichthyosis, a scale-like affection of the skin, unsightly, obstinate, but possibly curable, and certainly noninfective. Yes, Mr. Holmes, the coincidence is a remarkable one. But is it coincidence? Are there not subtle forces at work of which we know little? Are we assured that the apprehension from which this young man has no doubt suffered terribly since his exposure to its contagion may not produce a physical effect which simulates that which it fears? At any rate, I pledge my professional reputation\u2014But the lady has fainted! I think that Mr. Kent had better be with her until she recovers from this joyous shock.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE MAZARIN STONE", + "text": "It was pleasant to Dr. Watson to find himself once more in the untidy room of the first floor in Baker Street which had been the starting-point of so many remarkable adventures. He looked round him at the scientific charts upon the wall, the acid-charred bench of chemicals, the violin-case leaning in the comer, the coal-scuttle, which contained of old the pipes and tobacco. Finally, his eyes came round to the fresh and smiling face of Billy, the young but very wise and tactful page, who had helped a little to fill up the gap of loneliness and isolation which surrounded the saturnine figure of the great detective.\n\n\"It all seems very unchanged, Billy. You don't change, either. I hope the same can be said of him?\"\n\nBilly glanced with some solicitude at the closed door of the bedroom.\n\n\"I think he's in bed and asleep,\" he said.\n\nIt was seven in the evening of a lovely summer's day, but Dr. Watson was sufficiently familiar with the irregularity of his old friend's hours to feel no surprise at the idea.\n\n\"That means a case, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, he is very hard at it just now. I'm frightened for his health. He gets paler and thinner, and he eats nothing. 'When will you be pleased to dine, Mr. Holmes?' Mrs. Hudson asked. 'Seven-thirty, the day after to morrow,' said he. You know his way when he is keen on a case.\"\n\n\"Yes, Billy, I know.\"\n\n\"He's following someone. Yesterday he was out as a workman looking for a job. To-day he was an old woman. Fairly took me in, he did, and I ought to know his ways by now.\" Billy pointed with a grin to a very baggy parasol which leaned against the sofa. \"That's part of the old woman's outfit,\" he said.\n\n\"But what is it all about, Billy?\"\n\nBilly sank his voice, as one who discusses great secrets of State. \"I don't mind telling you, sir, but it should go no farther. It's this case of the Crown diamond.\"\n\n\"What\u2014the hundred-thousand-pound burglary?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. They must get it back, sir. Why, we had the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary both sitting on that very sofa. Mr. Holmes was very nice to them. He soon put them at their ease and promised he would do all he could. Then there is Lord Cantlemere\u2014\"\n\n\"Ah!\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, you know what that means. He's a stiff'un, sir, if I may say so. I can get along with the Prime Minister, and I've nothing against the Home Secretary, who seemed a civil, obliging sort of man, but I can't stand his Lordship. Neither can Mr. Holmes, sir. You see, he don't believe in Mr. Holmes and he was against employing him. He'd rather he failed.\"\n\n\"And Mr. Holmes knows it?\"\n\n\"Mr. Holmes always knows whatever there is to know.\"\n\n\"Well, we'll hope he won't fail and that Lord Cantlemere will be confounded. But I say, Billy, what is that curtain for across the window?\"\n\n\"Mr. Holmes had it put up there three days ago. We've got something funny behind it.\"\n\nBilly advanced and drew away the drapery which screened the alcove of the bow window.\n\nDr. Watson could not restrain a cry of amazement. There was a facsimile of his old friend, dressing-gown and all, the face turned three-quarters towards the window and downward, as though reading an invisible book, while the body was sunk deep in an armchair. Billy detached the head and held it in the air.\n\n\"We put it at different angles, so that it may seem more lifelike. I wouldn't dare touch it if the blind were not down. But when it's up you can see this from across the way.\"\n\n\"We used something of the sort once before.\"\n\n\"Before my time,\" said Billy. He drew the window curtains apart and looked out into the street. \"There are folk who watch us from over yonder. I can see a fellow now at the window. Have a look for yourself.\"\n\nWatson had taken a step forward when the bedroom door opened, and the long, thin form of Holmes emerged, his face pale and drawn, but his step and bearing as active as ever. With a single spring he was at the window, and had drawn the blind once more.\n\n\"That will do, Billy,\" said he. \"You were in danger of your life then, my boy, and I can't do without you just yet. Well, Watson, it is good to see you in your old quarters once again. You come at a critical moment.\"\n\n\"So I gather.\"\n\n\"You can go, Billy. That boy is a problem, Watson. How far am I justified in allowing him to be in danger?\"\n\n\"Danger of what, Holmes?\"\n\n\"Of sudden death. I'm expecting something this evening.\"\n\n\"Expecting what?\"\n\n\"To be murdered, Watson.\"\n\n\"No, no, you are joking, Holmes!\"\n\n\"Even my limited sense of humour could evolve a better joke than that. But we may be comfortable in the meantime, may we not? Is alcohol permitted? The gasogene and cigars are in the old place. Let me see you once more in the customary armchair. You have not, I hope, learned to despise my pipe and my lamentable tobacco? It has to take the place of food these days.\"\n\n\"But why not eat?\"\n\n\"Because the faculties become refined when you starve them. Why, surely, as a doctor, my dear Watson, you must admit that what your digestion gains in the way of blood supply is so much lost to the brain. I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix. Therefore, it is the brain I must consider.\"\n\n\"But this danger, Holmes?\"\n\n\"Ah, yes, in case it should come off, it would perhaps be as well that you should burden your memory with the name and address of the murderer. You can give it to Scotland Yard, with my love and a parting blessing. Sylvius is the name\u2014Count Negretto Sylvius. Write it down, man, write it down! 136 Moorside Gardens, N.W. Got it?\"\n\nWatson's honest face was twitching with anxiety. He knew only too well the immense risks taken by Holmes and was well aware that what he said was more likely to be under-statement than exaggeration. Watson was always the man of action, and he rose to the occasion.\n\n\"Count me in, Holmes. I have nothing to do for a day or two.\"\n\n\"Your morals don't improve, Watson. You have added fibbing to your other vices. You bear every sign of the busy medical man, with calls on him every hour.\"\n\n\"Not such important ones. But can't you have this fellow arrested?\"\n\n\"Yes, Watson, I could. That's what worries him so.\"\n\n\"But why don't you?\"\n\n\"Because I don't know where the diamond is.\"\n\n\"Ah! Billy told me\u2014the missing Crown jewel!\"\n\n\"Yes, the great yellow Mazarin stone. I've cast my net and I have my fish. But I have not got the stone. What is the use of taking them? We can make the world a better place by laying them by the heels. But that is not what I am out for. It's the stone I want.\"\n\n\"And is this Count Sylvius one of your fish?\"\n\n\"Yes, and he's a shark. He bites. The other is Sam Merton, the boxer. Not a bad fellow, Sam, but the Count has used him. Sam's not a shark. He is a great big silly bull-headed gudgeon. But he is flopping about in my net all the same.\"\n\n\"Where is this Count Sylvius?\"\n\n\"I've been at his very elbow all the morning. You've seen me as an old lady, Watson. I was never more convincing. He actually picked up my parasol for me once. 'By your leave, madame,' said he\u2014half-Italian, you know, and with the Southern graces of manner when in the mood, but a devil incarnate in the other mood. Life is full of whimsical happenings, Watson.\"\n\n\"It might have been tragedy.\"\n\n\"Well, perhaps it might. I followed him to old Straubenzee's workshop in the Minories. Straubenzee made the air-gun\u2014a very pretty bit of work, as I understand, and I rather fancy it is in the opposite window at the present moment. Have you seen the dummy? Of course, Billy showed it to you. Well, it may get a bullet through its beautiful head at any moment. Ah, Billy, what is it?\"\n\nThe boy had reappeared in the room with a card upon a tray. Holmes glanced at it with raised eyebrows and an amused smile.\n\n\"The man himself. I had hardly expected this. Grasp the nettle, Watson! A man of nerve. Possibly you have heard of his reputation as a shooter of big game. It would indeed be a triumphant ending to his excellent sporting record if he added me to his bag. This is a proof that he feels my toe very close behind his heel.\"\n\n\"Send for the police.\"\n\n\"I probably shall. But not just yet. Would you glance carefully out of the window, Watson, and see if anyone is hanging about in the street?\"\n\nWatson looked warily round the edge of the curtain.\n\n\"Yes, there is one rough fellow near the door.\"\n\n\"That will be Sam Merton\u2014the faithful but rather fatuous Sam. Where is this gentleman, Billy?\"\n\n\"In the waiting-room, sir.\"\n\n\"Show him up when I ring.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"If I am not in the room, show him in all the same.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\nWatson waited until the door was closed, and then he turned earnestly to his companion.\n\n\"Look here, Holmes, this is simply impossible. This is a desperate man, who sticks at nothing. He may have come to murder you.\"\n\n\"I should not be surprised.\"\n\n\"I insist upon staying with you.\"\n\n\"You would be horribly in the way.\"\n\n\"In his way?\"\n\n\"No, my dear fellow\u2014in my way.\"\n\n\"Well, I can't possibly leave you.\"\n\n\"Yes, you can, Watson. And you will, for you have never failed to play the game. I am sure you will play it to the end. This man has come for his own purpose, but he may stay for mine.\" Holmes took out his notebook and scribbled a few lines. \"Take a cab to Scotland Yard and give this to Youghal of the C. I. D. Come back with the police. The fellow's arrest will follow.\"\n\n\"I'll do that with joy.\"\n\n\"Before you return I may have just time enough to find out where the stone is.\" He touched the bell. \"I think we will go out through the bedroom. This second exit is exceedingly useful. I rather want to see my shark without his seeing me, and I have, as you will remember, my own way of doing it.\"\n\nIt was, therefore, an empty room into which Billy, a minute later, ushered Count Sylvius. The famous game-shot, sportsman, and man-about-town was a big, swarthy fellow, with a formidable dark moustache shading a cruel, thin-lipped mouth, and surmounted by a long, curved nose like the beak of an eagle. He was well dressed, but his brilliant necktie, shining pin, and glittering rings were flamboyant in their effect. As the door closed behind him he looked round him with fierce, startled eyes, like one who suspects a trap at every turn. Then he gave a violent start as he saw the impassive head and the collar of the dressing-gown which projected above the armchair in the window. At first his expression was one of pure amazement. Then the light of a horrible hope gleamed in his dark, murderous eyes. He took one more glance round to see that there were no witnesses, and then, on tiptoe, his thick stick half raised, he approached the silent figure. He was crouching for his final spring and blow when a cool, sardonic voice greeted him from the open bedroom door:\n\n\"Don't break it, Count! Don't break it!\"\n\nThe assassin staggered back, amazement in his convulsed face. For an instant he half raised his loaded cane once more, as if he would turn his violence from the effigy to the original; but there was something in that steady gray eye and mocking smile which caused his hand to sink to his side.\n\n\"It's a pretty little thing,\" said Holmes, advancing towards the image. \"Tavernier, the French modeller, made it. He is as good at waxworks as your friend Straubenzee is at air-guns.\"\n\n\"Air-guns, sir! What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Put your hat and stick on the side-table. Thank you! Pray take a seat. Would you care to put your revolver out also? Oh, very good, if you prefer to sit upon it. Your visit is really most opportune, for I wanted badly to have a few minutes' chat with you.\"\n\nThe Count scowled, with heavy, threatening eyebrows.\n\n\"I, too, wished to have some words with you, Holmes. That is why I am here. I won't deny that I intended to assault you just now.\"\n\nHolmes swung his leg on the edge of the table.\n\n\"I rather gathered that you had some idea of the sort in your head,\" said he. \"But why these personal attentions?\"\n\n\"Because you have gone out of your way to annoy me. Because you have put your creatures upon my track.\"\n\n\"My creatures! I assure you no!\"\n\n\"Nonsense! I have had them followed. Two can play at that game, Holmes.\"\n\n\"It is a small point, Count Sylvius, but perhaps you would kindly give me my prefix when you address me. You can understand that, with my routine of work, I should find myself on familiar terms with half the rogues' gallery, and you will agree that exceptions are invidious.\"\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes, then.\"\n\n\"Excellent! But I assure you you are mistaken about my alleged agents.\"\n\nCount Sylvius laughed contemptuously.\n\n\"Other people can observe as well as you. Yesterday there was an old sporting man. To-day it was an elderly woman. They held me in view all day.\"\n\n\"Really, sir, you compliment me. Old Baron Dowson said the night before he was hanged that in my case what the law had gained the stage had lost. And now you give my little impersonations your kindly praise?\"\n\n\"It was you\u2014you yourself?\"\n\nHolmes shrugged his shoulders. \"You can see in the corner the parasol which you so politely handed to me in the Minories before you began to suspect.\"\n\n\"If I had known, you might never\u2014\"\n\n\"Have seen this humble home again. I was well aware of it. We all have neglected opportunities to deplore. As it happens, you did not know, so here we are!\"\n\nThe Count's knotted brows gathered more heavily over his menacing eyes. \"What you say only makes the matter worse. It was not your agents but your play-acting, busybody self! You admit that you have dogged me. Why?\"\n\n\"Come now, Count. You used to shoot lions in Algeria.\"\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"But why?\"\n\n\"Why? The sport\u2014the excitement\u2014the danger!\"\n\n\"And, no doubt, to free the country from a pest?\"\n\n\"Exactly!\"\n\n\"My reasons in a nutshell!\"\n\nThe Count sprang to his feet, and his hand involuntarily moved back to his hip-pocket.\n\n\"Sit down, sir, sit down! There was another, more practical, reason. I want that yellow diamond!\"\n\nCount Sylvius lay back in his chair with an evil smile.\n\n\"Upon my word!\" said he.\n\n\"You knew that I was after you for that. The real reason why you are here to-night is to find out how much I know about the matter and how far my removal is absolutely essential. Well, I should say that, from your point of view, it is absolutely essential, for I know all about it, save only one thing, which you are about to tell me.\"\n\n\"Oh, indeed! And pray, what is this missing fact?\"\n\n\"Where the Crown diamond now is.\"\n\nThe Count looked sharply at his companion. \"Oh, you want to know that, do you? How the devil should I be able to tell you where it is?\"\n\n\"You can, and you will.\"\n\n\"Indeed!\"\n\n\"You can't bluff me, Count Sylvius.\" Holmes's eyes, as he gazed at him, contracted and lightened until they were like two menacing points of steel. \"You are absolute plate-glass. I see to the very back of your mind.\"\n\n\"Then, of course, you see where the diamond is!\"\n\nHolmes clapped his hands with amusement, and then pointed a derisive finger. \"Then you do know. You have admitted it!\"\n\n\"I admit nothing.\"\n\n\"Now, Count, if you will be reasonable we can do business. If not, you will get hurt.\"\n\nCount Sylvius threw up his eyes to the ceiling. \"And you talk about bluff!\" said he.\n\nHolmes looked at him thoughtfully like a master chess-player who meditates his crowning move. Then he threw open the table drawer and drew out a squat notebook.\n\n\"Do you know what I keep in this book?\"\n\n\"No, sir, I do not!\"\n\n\"You!\"\n\n\"Me!\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, you! You are all here\u2014every action of your vile and dangerous life.\"\n\n\"Damn you, Holmes!\" cried the Count with blazing eyes. \"There are limits to my patience!\"\n\n\"It's all here, Count. The real facts as to the death of old Mrs. Harold, who left you the Blymer estate, which you so rapidly gambled away.\"\n\n\"You are dreaming!\"\n\n\"And the complete life history of Miss Minnie Warrender.\"\n\n\"Tut! You will make nothing of that!\"\n\n\"Plenty more here, Count. Here is the robbery in the train de-luxe to the Riviera on February 13, 1892. Here is the forged check in the same year on the Credit Lyonnais.\"\n\n\"No; you're wrong there.\"\n\n\"Then I am right on the others! Now, Count, you are a card-player. When the other fellow has all the trumps, it saves time to throw down your hand.\"\n\n\"What has all this talk to do with the jewel of which you spoke?\"\n\n\"Gently, Count. Restrain that eager mind! Let me get to the points in my own humdrum fashion. I have all this against you; but, above all, I have a clear case against both you and your fighting bully in the case of the Crown diamond.\"\n\n\"Indeed!\"\n\n\"I have the cabman who took you to Whitehall and the cabman who brought you away. I have the commissionaire who saw you near the case. I have Ikey Sanders, who refused to cut it up for you. Ikey has peached, and the game is up.\"\n\nThe veins stood out on the Count's forehead. His dark, hairy hands were clenched in a convulsion of restrained emotion. He tried to speak, but the words would not shape themselves.\n\n\"That's the hand I play from,\" said Holmes. \"I put it all upon the table. But one card is missing. It's the king of diamonds. I don't know where the stone is.\"\n\n\"You never shall know.\"\n\n\"No? Now, be reasonable, Count. Consider the situation. You are going to be locked up for twenty years. So is Sam Merton. What good are you going to get out of your diamond? None in the world. But if you hand it over\u2014well, I'll compound a felony. We don't want you or Sam. We want the stone. Give that up, and so far as I am concerned you can go free so long as you behave yourself in the future. If you make another slip\u2014well, it will be the last. But this time my commission is to get the stone, not you.\"\n\n\"But if I refuse?\"\n\n\"Why, then\u2014alas!\u2014it must be you and not the stone.\"\n\nBilly had appeared in answer to a ring.\n\n\"I think, Count, that it would be as well to have your friend Sam at this conference. After all, his interests should be represented. Billy, you will see a large and ugly gentleman outside the front door. Ask him to come up.\"\n\n\"If he won't come, sir?\"\n\n\"No violence, Billy. Don't be rough with him. If you tell him that Count Sylvius wants him he will certainly come.\"\n\n\"What are you going to do now?\" asked the Count as Billy disappeared.\n\n\"My friend Watson was with me just now. I told him that I had a shark and a gudgeon in my net; now I am drawing the net and up they come together.\"\n\nThe Count had risen from his chair, and his hand was behind his back. Holmes held something half protruding from the pocket of his dressing-gown.\n\n\"You won't die in your bed, Holmes.\"\n\n\"I have often had the same idea. Does it matter very much? After all, Count, your own exit is more likely to be perpendicular than horizontal. But these anticipations of the future are morbid. Why not give ourselves up to the unrestrained enjoyment of the present?\"\n\nA sudden wild-beast light sprang up in the dark, menacing eyes of the master criminal. Holmes's figure seemed to grow taller as he grew tense and ready.\n\n\"It is no use your fingering your revolver, my friend,\" he said in a quiet voice. \"You know perfectly well that you dare not use it, even if I gave you time to draw it. Nasty, noisy things, revolvers, Count. Better stick to air-guns. Ah! I think I hear the fairy footstep of your estimable partner. Good day, Mr. Merton. Rather dull in the street, is it not?\"\n\nThe prize-fighter, a heavily built young man with a stupid, obstinate, slab-sided face, stood awkwardly at the door, looking about him with a puzzled expression. Holmes's debonair manner was a new experience, and though he vaguely felt that it was hostile, he did not know how to counter it. He turned to his more astute comrade for help.\n\n\"What's the game now, Count? What's this fellow want? What's up?\" His voice was deep and raucous.\n\nThe Count shrugged his shoulders, and it was Holmes who answered.\n\n\"If I may put it in a nutshell, Mr. Merton, I should say it was all up.\"\n\nThe boxer still addressed his remarks to his associate.\n\n\"Is this cove trying to be funny, or what? I'm not in the funny mood myself.\"\n\n\"No, I expect not,\" said Holmes. \"I think I can promise you that you will feel even less humorous as the evening advances. Now, look here, Count Sylvius. I'm a busy man and I can't waste time. I'm going into that bedroom. Pray make yourselves quite at home in my absence. You can explain to your friend how the matter lies without the restraint of my presence. I shall try over the Hoffman 'Barcarole' upon my violin. In five minutes I shall return for your final answer. You quite grasp the alternative, do you not? Shall we take you, or shall we have the stone?\"\n\nHolmes withdrew, picking up his violin from the corner as he passed. A few moments later the long-drawn, wailing notes of that most haunting of tunes came faintly through the closed door of the bedroom.\n\n\"What is it, then?\" asked Merton anxiously as his companion turned to him. \"Does he know about the stone?\"\n\n\"He knows a damned sight too much about it. I'm not sure that he doesn't know all about it.\"\n\n\"Good Lord!\" The boxer's sallow face turned a shade whiter.\n\n\"Ikey Sanders has split on us.\"\n\n\"He has, has he? I'll do him down a thick 'un for that if I swing for it.\"\n\n\"That won't help us much. We've got to make up our minds what to do.\"\n\n\"Half a mo',\" said the boxer, looking suspiciously at the bedroom door. \"He's a leary cove that wants watching. I suppose he's not listening?\"\n\n\"How can he be listening with that music going?\"\n\n\"That's right. Maybe somebody's behind a curtain. Too many curtains in this room.\" As he looked round he suddenly saw for the first time the effigy in the window, and stood staring and pointing, too amazed for words.\n\n\"Tut! it's only a dummy,\" said the Count.\n\n\"A fake, is it? Well, strike me! Madame Tussaud ain't in it. It's the living spit of him, gown and all. But them curtains, Count!\"\n\n\"Oh, confound the curtains! We are wasting our time, and there is none too much. He can lag us over this stone.\"\n\n\"The deuce he can!\"\n\n\"But he'll let us slip if we only tell him where the swag is.\"\n\n\"What! Give it up? Give up a hundred thousand quid?\"\n\n\"It's one or the other.\"\n\nMerton scratched his short-cropped pate.\n\n\"He's alone in there. Let's do him in. If his light were out we should have nothing to fear.\"\n\nThe Count shook his head.\n\n\"He is armed and ready. If we shot him we could hardly get away in a place like this. Besides, it's likely enough that the police know whatever evidence he has got. Hallo! What was that?\"\n\nThere was a vague sound which seemed to come from the window. Both men sprang round, but all was quiet. Save for the one strange figure seated in the chair, the room was certainly empty.\n\n\"Something in the street,\" said Merton. \"Now, look here, guv'nor, you've got the brains. Surely you can think a way out of it. If slugging is no use then it's up to you.\"\n\n\"I've fooled better men than he,\" the Count answered. \"The stone is here in my secret pocket. I take no chances leaving it about. It can be out of England to-night and cut into four pieces in Amsterdam before Sunday. He knows nothing of Van Seddar.\"\n\n\"I thought Van Seddar was going next week.\"\n\n\"He was. But now he must get off by the next boat. One or other of us must slip round with the stone to Lime Street and tell him.\"\n\n\"But the false bottom ain't ready.\"\n\n\"Well, he must take it as it is and chance it. There's not a moment to lose.\" Again, with the sense of danger which becomes an instinct with the sportsman, he paused and looked hard at the window. Yes, it was surely from the street that the faint sound had come.\n\n\"As to Holmes,\" he continued, \"we can fool him easily enough. You see, the damned fool won't arrest us if he can get the stone. Well, we'll promise him the stone. We'll put him on the wrong track about it, and before he finds that it is the wrong track it will be in Holland and we out of the country.\"\n\n\"That sounds good to me!\" cried Sam Merton with a grin.\n\n\"You go on and tell the Dutchman to get a move on him. I'll see this sucker and fill him up with a bogus confession. I'll tell him that the stone is in Liverpool. Confound that whining music; it gets on my nerves! By the time he finds it isn't in Liverpool it will be in quarters and we on the blue water. Come back here, out of a line with that keyhole. Here is the stone.\"\n\n\"I wonder you dare carry it.\"\n\n\"Where could I have it safer? If we could take it out of Whitehall someone else could surely take it out of my lodgings.\"\n\n\"Let's have a look at it.\"\n\nCount Sylvius cast a somewhat unflattering glance at his associate and disregarded the unwashed hand which was extended towards him.\n\n\"What\u2014d'ye think I'm going to snatch it off you? See here, mister, I'm getting a bit tired of your ways.\"\n\n\"Well, well, no offence, Sam. We can't afford to quarrel. Come over to the window if you want to see the beauty properly. Now hold it to the light! Here!\"\n\n\"Thank you!\"\n\nWith a single spring Holmes had leaped from the dummy's chair and had grasped the precious jewel. He held it now in one hand, while his other pointed a revolver at the Count's head. The two villains staggered back in utter amazement. Before they had recovered Holmes had pressed the electric bell.\n\n\"No violence, gentlemen\u2014no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture! It must be very clear to you that your position is an impossible one. The police are waiting below.\"\n\nThe Count's bewilderment overmastered his rage and fear.\n\n\"But how the deuce\u2014?\" he gasped.\n\n\"Your surprise is very natural. You are not aware that a second door from my bedroom leads behind that curtain. I fancied that you must have heard me when I displaced the figure, but luck was on my side. It gave me a chance of listening to your racy conversation which would have been painfully constrained had you been aware of my presence.\"\n\nThe Count gave a gesture of resignation.\n\n\"We give you best, Holmes. I believe you are the devil himself.\"\n\n\"Not far from him, at any rate,\" Holmes answered with a polite smile.\n\nSam Merton's slow intellect had only gradually appreciated the situation. Now, as the sound of heavy steps came from the stairs outside, he broke silence at last.\n\n\"A fair cop!\" said he. \"But, I say, what about that bloomin' fiddle! I hear it yet.\"\n\n\"Tut, tut!\" Holmes answered. \"You are perfectly right. Let it play! These modern gramophones are a remarkable invention.\"\n\nThere was an inrush of police, the handcuffs clicked and the criminals were led to the waiting cab. Watson lingered with Holmes, congratulating him upon this fresh leaf added to his laurels. Once more their conversation was interrupted by the imperturbable Billy with his card-tray.\n\n\"Lord Cantlemere, sir.\"\n\n\"Show him up, Billy. This is the eminent peer who represents the very highest interests,\" said Holmes. \"He is an excellent and loyal person, but rather of the old regime. Shall we make him unbend? Dare we venture upon a slight liberty? He knows, we may conjecture, nothing of what has occurred.\"\n\nThe door opened to admit a thin, austere figure with a hatchet face and drooping mid-Victorian whiskers of a glossy blackness which hardly corresponded with the rounded shoulders and feeble gait. Holmes advanced affably, and shook an unresponsive hand.\n\n\"How do you do, Lord Cantlemere? It is chilly for the time of year, but rather warm indoors. May I take your overcoat?\"\n\n\"No, I thank you; I will not take it off.\"\n\nHolmes laid his hand insistently upon the sleeve.\n\n\"Pray allow me! My friend Dr. Watson would assure you that these changes of temperature are most insidious.\"\n\nHis Lordship shook himself free with some impatience.\n\n\"I am quite comfortable, sir. I have no need to stay. I have simply looked in to know how your self-appointed task was progressing.\"\n\n\"It is difficult\u2014very difficult.\"\n\n\"I feared that you would find it so.\"\n\nThere was a distinct sneer in the old courtier's words and manner.\n\n\"Every man finds his limitations, Mr. Holmes, but at least it cures us of the weakness of self-satisfaction.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, I have been much perplexed.\"\n\n\"No doubt.\"\n\n\"Especially upon one point. Possibly you could help me upon it?\"\n\n\"You apply for my advice rather late in the day. I thought that you had your own all-sufficient methods. Still, I am ready to help you.\"\n\n\"You see, Lord Cantlemere, we can no doubt frame a case against the actual thieves.\"\n\n\"When you have caught them.\"\n\n\"Exactly. But the question is\u2014how shall we proceed against the receiver?\"\n\n\"Is this not rather premature?\"\n\n\"It is as well to have our plans ready. Now, what would you regard as final evidence against the receiver?\"\n\n\"The actual possession of the stone.\"\n\n\"You would arrest him upon that?\"\n\n\"Most undoubtedly.\"\n\nHolmes seldom laughed, but he got as near it as his old friend Watson could remember.\n\n\"In that case, my dear sir, I shall be under the painful necessity of advising your arrest.\"\n\nLord Cantlemere was very angry. Some of the ancient fires flickered up into his sallow cheeks.\n\n\"You take a great liberty, Mr. Holmes. In fifty years of official life I cannot recall such a case. I am a busy man, sir, engaged upon important affairs, and I have no time or taste for foolish jokes. I may tell you frankly, sir, that I have never been a believer in your powers, and that I have always been of the opinion that the matter was far safer in the hands of the regular police force. Your conduct confirms all my conclusions. I have the honour, sir, to wish you good-evening.\"\n\nHolmes had swiftly changed his position and was between the peer and the door.\n\n\"One moment, sir,\" said he. \"To actually go off with the Mazarin stone would be a more serious offence than to be found in temporary possession of it.\"\n\n\"Sir, this is intolerable! Let me pass.\"\n\n\"Put your hand in the right-hand pocket of your overcoat.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, sir?\"\n\n\"Come\u2014come, do what I ask.\"\n\nAn instant later the amazed peer was standing, blinking and stammering, with the great yellow stone on his shaking palm.\n\n\"What! What! How is this, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Too bad, Lord Cantlemere, too bad!\" cried Holmes. \"My old friend here will tell you that I have an impish habit of practical joking. Also that I can never resist a dramatic situation. I took the liberty\u2014the very great liberty, I admit\u2014of putting the stone into your pocket at the beginning of our interview.\"\n\nThe old peer stared from the stone to the smiling face before him.\n\n\"Sir, I am bewildered. But\u2014yes\u2014it is indeed the Mazarin stone. We are greatly your debtors, Mr. Holmes. Your sense of humour may, as you admit, be somewhat perverted, and its exhibition remarkably untimely, but at least I withdraw any reflection I have made upon your amazing professional powers. But how\u2014\"\n\n\"The case is but half finished; the details can wait. No doubt, Lord Cantlemere, your pleasure in telling of this successful result in the exalted circle to which you return will be some small atonement for my practical joke. Billy, you will show his Lordship out, and tell Mrs. Hudson that I should be glad if she would send up dinner for two as soon as possible.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE GABLES", + "text": "I don't think that any of my adventures with Mr. Sherlock Holmes opened quite so abruptly, or so dramatically, as that which I associate with The Three Gables. I had not seen Holmes for some days and had no idea of the new channel into which his activities had been directed. He was in a chatty mood that morning, however, and had just settled me into the well-worn low armchair on one side of the fire, while he had curled down with his pipe in his mouth upon the opposite chair, when our visitor arrived. If I had said that a mad bull had arrived it would give a clearer impression of what occurred.\n\nThe door had flown open and a huge negro had burst into the room. He would have been a comic figure if he had not been terrific, for he was dressed in a very loud gray check suit with a flowing salmon-coloured tie. His broad face and flattened nose were thrust forward, as his sullen dark eyes, with a smouldering gleam of malice in them, turned from one of us to the other.\n\n\"Which of you gen'l'men is Masser Holmes?\" he asked.\n\nHolmes raised his pipe with a languid smile.\n\n\"Oh! it's you, is it?\" said our visitor, coming with an unpleasant, stealthy step round the angle of the table. \"See here, Masser Holmes, you keep your hands out of other folks' business. Leave folks to manage their own affairs. Got that, Masser Holmes?\"\n\n\"Keep on talking,\" said Holmes. \"It's fine.\"\n\n\"Oh! it's fine, is it?\" growled the savage. \"It won't be so damn fine if I have to trim you up a bit. I've handled your kind before now, and they didn't look fine when I was through with them. Look at that, Masser Holmes!\"\n\nHe swung a huge knotted lump of a fist under my friend's nose. Holmes examined it closely with an air of great interest. \"Were you born so?\" he asked. \"Or did it come by degrees?\"\n\nIt may have been the icy coolness of my friend, or it may have been the slight clatter which I made as I picked up the poker. In any case, our visitor's manner became less flamboyant.\n\n\"Well, I've given you fair warnin',\" said he. \"I've a friend that's interested out Harrow way\u2014you know what I'm meaning\u2014and he don't intend to have no buttin' in by you. Got that? You ain't the law, and I ain't the law either, and if you come in I'll be on hand also. Don't you forget it.\"\n\n\"I've wanted to meet you for some time,\" said Holmes. \"I won't ask you to sit down, for I don't like the smell of you, but aren't you Steve Dixie, the bruiser?\"\n\n\"That's my name, Masser Holmes, and you'll get put through it for sure if you give me any lip.\"\n\n\"It is certainly the last thing you need,\" said Holmes, staring at our visitor's hideous mouth. \"But it was the killing of young Perkins outside the Holborn Bar\u2014What! you're not going?\"\n\nThe negro had sprung back, and his face was leaden. \"I won't listen to no such talk,\" said he. \"What have I to do with this 'ere Perkins, Masser Holmes? I was trainin' at the Bull Ring in Birmingham when this boy done gone get into trouble.\"\n\n\"Yes, you'll tell the magistrate about it, Steve,\" said Holmes. \"I've been watching you and Barney Stockdale\u2014\"\n\n\"So help me the Lord! Masser Holmes\u2014\"\n\n\"That's enough. Get out of it. I'll pick you up when I want you.\"\n\n\"Good-mornin', Masser Holmes. I hope there ain't no hard feelin's about this 'ere visit?\"\n\n\"There will be unless you tell me who sent you.\"\n\n\"Why, there ain't no secret about that, Masser Holmes. It was that same gen'l'man that you have just done gone mention.\"\n\n\"And who set him on to it?\"\n\n\"S'elp me. I don't know, Masser Holmes. He just say, 'Steve, you go see Mr. Holmes, and tell him his life ain't safe if he go down Harrow way.' That's the whole truth.\" Without waiting for any further questioning, our visitor bolted out of the room almost as precipitately as he had entered. Holmes knocked out the ashes of his pipe with a quiet chuckle.\n\n\"I am glad you were not forced to break his woolly head, Watson. I observed your manoeuvres with the poker. But he is really rather a harmless fellow, a great muscular, foolish, blustering baby, and easily cowed, as you have seen. He is one of the Spencer John gang and has taken part in some dirty work of late which I may clear up when I have time. His immediate principal, Barney, is a more astute person. They specialize in assaults, in timidation, and the like. What I want to know is, who is at the back of them on this particular occasion?\"\n\n\"But why do they want to intimidate you?\"\n\n\"It is this Harrow Weald case. It decides me to look into the matter, for if it is worth anyone's while to take so much trouble, there must be something in it.\"\n\n\"But what is it?\"\n\n\"I was going to tell you when we had this comic interlude. Here is Mrs. Maberley's note. If you care to come with me we will wire her and go out at once.\"\n\n\u2002DEAR MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES [I read]:\n\n\u2002I have had a succession of strange incidents occur to me in connection with this house, and I should much value your advice. You would find me at home any time to-morrow. The house is within a short walk of the Weald Station. I believe that my late husband, Mortimer Maberley, was one of your early clients.\n\n\u2002Yours faithfully,\n\n\u2002MARY MABERLEY.\n\nThe address was \"The Three Gables, Harrow Weald.\"\n\n\"So that's that!\" said Holmes. \"And now, if you can spare the time, Watson, we will get upon our way.\"\n\nA short railway journey, and a shorter drive, brought us to the house, a brick and timber villa, standing in its own acre of undeveloped grassland. Three small projections above the upper windows made a feeble attempt to justify its name. Behind was a grove of melancholy, half-grown pines, and the whole aspect of the place was poor and depressing. None the less, we found the house to be well furnished, and the lady who received us was a most engaging elderly person, who bore every mark of refinement and culture.\n\n\"I remember your husband well, madam,\" said Holmes, \"though it is some years since he used my services in some trifling matter.\"\n\n\"Probably you would be more familiar with the name of my son Douglas.\"\n\nHolmes looked at her with great interest.\n\n\"Dear me! Are you the mother of Douglas Maberley? I knew him slightly. But of course all London knew him. What a magnificent creature he was! Where is he now?\"\n\n\"Dead, Mr. Holmes, dead! He was attach\u00e9 at Rome, and he died there of pneumonia last month.\"\n\n\"I am sorry. One could not connect death with such a man. I have never known anyone so vitally alive. He lived intensely\u2014every fibre of him!\"\n\n\"Too intensely, Mr. Holmes. That was the ruin of him. You remember him as he was\u2014debonair and splendid. You did not see the moody, morose, brooding creature into which he developed. His heart was broken. In a single month I seemed to see my gallant boy turn into a worn-out cynical man.\"\n\n\"A love affair\u2014a woman?\"\n\n\"Or a fiend. Well, it was not to talk of my poor lad that I asked you to come, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"Dr. Watson and I are at your service.\"\n\n\"There have been some very strange happenings. I have been in this house more than a year now, and as I wished to lead a retired life I have seen little of my neighbours. Three days ago I had a call from a man who said that he was a house agent. He said that this house would exactly suit a client of his, and that if I would part with it money would be no object. It seemed to me very strange as there are several empty houses on the market which appear to be equally eligible, but naturally I was interested in what he said. I therefore named a price which was five hundred pounds more than I gave. He at once closed with the offer, but added that his client desired to buy the furniture as well and would I put a price upon it. Some of this furniture is from my old home, and it is, as you see, very good, so that I named a good round sum. To this also he at once agreed. I had always wanted to travel, and the bargain was so good a one that it really seemed that I should be my own mistress for the rest of my life.\n\n\"Yesterday the man arrived with the agreement all drawn out. Luckily I showed it to Mr. Sutro, my lawyer, who lives in Harrow. He said to me, 'This is a very strange document. Are you aware that if you sign it you could not legally take anything out of the house\u2014not even your own private possessions?' When the man came again in the evening I pointed this out, and I said that I meant only to sell the furniture.\n\n\"'No, no, everything,' said he.\n\n\"'But my clothes? My jewels?'\n\n\"'Well, well, some concession might be made for your personal effects. But nothing shall go out of the house unchecked. My client is a very liberal man, but he has his fads and his own way of doing things. It is everything or nothing with him.'\n\n\"'Then it must be nothing,' said I. And there the matter was left, but the whole thing seemed to me to be so unusual that I thought\u2014\"\n\nHere we had a very extraordinary interruption.\n\nHolmes raised his hand for silence. Then he strode across the room, flung open the door, and dragged in a great gaunt woman whom he had seized by the shoulder. She entered with ungainly struggle like some huge awkward chicken, torn, squawking, out of its coop.\n\n\"Leave me alone! What are you a-doin' of?\" she screeched.\n\n\"Why, Susan, what is this?\"\n\n\"Well, ma'am, I was comin' in to ask if the visitors was stayin' for lunch when this man jumped out at me.\"\n\n\"I have been listening to her for the last five minutes, but did not wish to interrupt your most interesting narrative. Just a little wheezy, Susan, are you not? You breathe too heavily for that kind of work.\"\n\nSusan turned a sulky but amazed face upon her captor. \"Who be you, anyhow, and what right have you a-pullin' me about like this?\"\n\n\"It was merely that I wished to ask a question in your presence. Did you, Mrs. Maberley, mention to anyone that you were going to write to me and consult me?\"\n\n\"No, Mr. Holmes, I did not.\"\n\n\"Who posted your letter?\"\n\n\"Susan did.\"\n\n\"Exactly. Now, Susan, to whom was it that you wrote or sent a message to say that your mistress was asking advice from me?\"\n\n\"It's a lie. I sent no message.\"\n\n\"Now, Susan, wheezy people may not live long, you know. It's a wicked thing to tell fibs. Whom did you tell?\"\n\n\"Susan!\" cried her mistress, \"I believe you are a bad, treacherous woman. I remember now that I saw you speaking to someone over the hedge.\"\n\n\"That was my own business,\" said the woman sullenly.\n\n\"Suppose I tell you that it was Barney Stockdale to whom you spoke?\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Well, if you know, what do you want to ask for?\"\n\n\"I was not sure, but I know now. Well now, Susan, it will be worth ten pounds to you if you will tell me who is at the back of Barney.\"\n\n\"Someone that could lay down a thousand pounds for every ten you have in the world.\"\n\n\"So, a rich man? No; you smiled\u2014a rich woman. Now we have got so far, you may as well give the name and earn the tenner.\"\n\n\"I'll see you in hell first.\"\n\n\"Oh, Susan! Language!\"\n\n\"I am clearing out of here. I've had enough of you all. I'll send for my box to-morrow.\" She flounced for the door.\n\n\"Good-bye, Susan. Paregoric is the stuff.... Now,\" he continued, turning suddenly from lively to severe when the door had closed behind the flushed and angry woman, \"this gang means business. Look how close they play the game. Your letter to me had the 10 P.M. postmark. And yet Susan passes the word to Barney. Barney has time to go to his employer and get instructions; he or she\u2014I incline to the latter from Susan's grin when she thought I had blundered\u2014forms a plan. Black Steve is called in, and I am warned off by eleven o'clock next morning. That's quick work, you know.\"\n\n\"But what do they want?\"\n\n\"Yes, that's the question. Who had the house before you?\"\n\n\"A retired sea captain called Ferguson.\"\n\n\"Anything remarkable about him?\"\n\n\"Not that ever I heard of.\"\n\n\"I was wondering whether he could have buried something. Of course, when people bury treasure nowadays they do it in the Post-Office bank. But there are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them. At first I thought of some buried valuable. But why, in that case, should they want your furniture? You don't happen to have a Raphael or a first folio Shakespeare without knowing it?\"\n\n\"No, I don't think I have anything rarer than a Crown Derby tea-set.\"\n\n\"That would hardly justify all this mystery. Besides, why should they not openly state what they want? If they covet your tea-set, they can surely offer a price for it without buying you out, lock, stock, and barrel. No, as I read it, there is something which you do not know that you have, and which you would not give up if you did know.\"\n\n\"That is how I read it,\" said I.\n\n\"Dr. Watson agrees, so that settles it.\"\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes, what can it be?\"\n\n\"Let us see whether by this purely mental analysis we can get it to a finer point. You have been in this house a year.\"\n\n\"Nearly two.\"\n\n\"All the better. During this long period no one wants anything from you. Now suddenly within three or four days you have urgent demands. What would you gather from that?\"\n\n\"It can only mean,\" said I, \"that the object, whatever it may be, has only just come into the house.\"\n\n\"Settled once again,\" said Holmes. \"Now, Mrs. Maberley, has any object just arrived?\"\n\n\"No, I have bought nothing new this year.\"\n\n\"Indeed! That is very remarkable. Well, I think we had best let matters develop a little further until we have clearer data. Is that lawyer of yours a capable man?\"\n\n\"Mr. Sutro is most capable.\"\n\n\"Have you another maid, or was the fair Susan, who has just banged your front door, alone?\"\n\n\"I have a young girl.\"\n\n\"Try and get Sutro to spend a night or two in the house. You might possibly want protection.\"\n\n\"Against whom?\"\n\n\"Who knows? The matter is certainly obscure. If I can't find what they are after, I must approach the matter from the other end and try to get at the principal. Did this house-agent man give any address?\"\n\n\"Simply his card and occupation. Haines-Johnson, Auctioneer and Valuer.\"\n\n\"I don't think we shall find him in the directory. Honest business men don't conceal their place of business. Well, you will let me know any fresh development. I have taken up your case, and you may rely upon it that I shall see it through.\"\n\nAs we passed through the hall Holmes's eyes, which missed nothing, lighted upon several trunks and cases which were piled in a corner. The labels shone out upon them.\n\n\"'Milano.' 'Lucerne.' These are from Italy.\"\n\n\"They are poor Douglas's things.\"\n\n\"You have not unpacked them? How long have you had them?\"\n\n\"They arrived last week.\"\n\n\"But you said\u2014why, surely this might be the missing link. How do we know that there is not something of value there?\"\n\n\"There could not possibly be, Mr. Holmes. Poor Douglas had only his pay and a small annuity. What could he have of value?\"\n\nHolmes was lost in thought.\n\n\"Delay no longer, Mrs. Maberley,\" he said at last. \"Have these things taken upstairs to your bedroom. Examine them as soon as possible and see what they contain. I will come to-morrow and hear your report.\"\n\nIt was quite evident that The Three Gables was under very close surveillance, for as we came round the high hedge at the end of the lane there was the negro prize-fighter standing in the shadow. We came on him quite suddenly, and a grim and menacing figure he looked in that lonely place. Holmes clapped his hand to his pocket.\n\n\"Lookin' for your gun, Masser Holmes?\"\n\n\"No, for my scent-bottle, Steve.\"\n\n\"You are funny, Masser Holmes, ain't you?\"\n\n\"It won't be funny for you, Steve, if I get after you. I gave you fair warning this morning.\"\n\n\"Well, Masser Holmes, I done gone think over what you said, and I don't want no more talk about that affair of Masser Perkins. S'pose I can help you, Masser Holmes, I will.\"\n\n\"Well, then, tell me who is behind you on this job.\"\n\n\"So help me the Lord! Masser Holmes, I told you the truth before. I don't know. My boss Barney gives me orders and that's all.\"\n\n\"Well, just bear in mind, Steve, that the lady in that house, and everything under that roof, is under my protection. Don't forget it.\"\n\n\"All right, Masser Holmes. I'll remember.\"\n\n\"I've got him thoroughly frightened for his own skin, Watson,\" Holmes remarked as we walked on. \"I think he would double-cross his employer if he knew who he was. It was lucky I had some knowledge of the Spencer John crowd, and that Steve was one of them. Now, Watson, this is a case for Langdale Pike, and I am going to see him now. When I get back I may be clearer in the matter.\"\n\nI saw no more of Holmes during the day, but I could well imagine how he spent it, for Langdale Pike was his human book of reference upon all matters of social scandal. This strange, languid creature spent his waking hours in the bow window of a St. James's Street club and was the receiving-station as well as the transmitter for all the gossip of the metropolis. He made, it was said, a four-figure income by the paragraphs which he contributed every week to the garbage papers which cater to an inquisitive public. If ever, far down in the turbid depths of London life, there was some strange swirl or eddy, it was marked with automatic exactness by this human dial upon the surface. Holmes discreetly helped Langdale to knowledge, and on occasion was helped in turn.\n\nWhen I met my friend in his room early next morning, I was conscious from his bearing that all was well, but none the less a most unpleasant surprise was awaiting us. It took the shape of the following telegram:\n\nPlease come out at once. Client's house burgled in the night. Police in possession.\n\nSUTRO.\n\nHolmes whistled. \"The drama has come to a crisis, and quicker than I had expected. There is a great driving-power at the back of this business, Watson, which does not surprise me after what I have heard. This Sutro, of course, is her lawyer. I made a mistake, I fear, in not asking you to spend the night on guard. This fellow has clearly proved a broken reed. Well, there is nothing for it but another journey to Harrow Weald.\"\n\nWe found The Three Gables a very different establishment to the orderly household of the previous day. A small group of idlers had assembled at the garden gate, while a couple of constables were examining the windows and the geranium beds. Within we met a gray old gentleman, who introduced himself as the lawyer, together with a bustling, rubicund inspector, who greeted Holmes as an old friend.\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes, no chance for you in this case, I'm afraid. Just a common, ordinary burglary, and well within the capacity of the poor old police. No experts need apply.\"\n\n\"I am sure the case is in very good hands,\" said Holmes. \"Merely a common burglary, you say?\"\n\n\"Quite so. We know pretty well who the men are and where to find them. It is that gang of Barney Stockdale, with the big nigger in it\u2014they've been seen about here.\"\n\n\"Excellent! What did they get?\"\n\n\"Well, they don't seem to have got much. Mrs. Maberley was chloroformed and the house was\u2014Ah! here is the lady herself.\"\n\nOur friend of yesterday, looking very pale and ill, had entered the room, leaning upon a little maidservant.\n\n\"You gave me good advice, Mr. Holmes,\" said she, smiling ruefully. \"Alas, I did not take it! I did not wish to trouble Mr. Sutro, and so I was unprotected.\"\n\n\"I only heard of it this morning,\" the lawyer explained.\n\n\"Mr. Holmes advised me to have some friend in the house. I neglected his advice, and I have paid for it.\"\n\n\"You look wretchedly ill,\" said Holmes. \"Perhaps you are hardly equal to telling me what occurred.\"\n\n\"It is all here,\" said the inspector, tapping a bulky notebook.\n\n\"Still, if the lady is not too exhausted\u2014\"\n\n\"There is really so little to tell. I have no doubt that wicked Susan had planned an entrance for them. They must have known the house to an inch. I was conscious for a moment of the chloroform rag which was thrust over my mouth, but I have no notion how long I may have been senseless. When I woke, one man was at the bedside and another was rising with a bundle in his hand from among my son's baggage, which was partially opened and littered over the floor. Before he could get away I sprang up and seized him.\"\n\n\"You took a big risk,\" said the inspector.\n\n\"I clung to him, but he shook me off, and the other may have struck me, for I can remember no more. Mary the maid heard the noise and began screaming out of the window. That brought the police, but the rascals had got away.\"\n\n\"What did they take?\"\n\n\"Well, I don't think there is anything of value missing. I am sure there was nothing in my son's trunks.\"\n\n\"Did the men leave no clue?\"\n\n\"There was one sheet of paper which I may have torn from the man that I grasped. It was lying all crumpled on the floor. It is in my son's handwriting.\"\n\n\"Which means that it is not of much use,\" said the inspector. \"Now if it had been in the burglar's\u2014\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said Holmes. \"What rugged common sense! None the less, I should be curious to see it.\"\n\nThe inspector drew a folded sheet of foolscap from his pocketbook.\n\n\"I never pass anything, however trifling,\" said he with some pompos ity. \"That is my advice to you, Mr. Holmes. In twenty-five years' experience I have learned my lesson. There is always the chance of finger-marks or something.\"\n\nHolmes inspected the sheet of paper.\n\n\"What do you make of it, Inspector?\"\n\n\"Seems to be the end of some queer novel, so far as I can see.\"\n\n\"It may certainly prove to be the end of a queer tale,\" said Holmes. \"You have noticed the number on the top of the page. It is two hundred and forty-five. Where are the odd two hundred and forty-four pages?\"\n\n\"Well, I suppose the burglars got those. Much good may it do them!\"\n\n\"It seems a queer thing to break into a house in order to steal such papers as that. Does it suggest anything to you, Inspector?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, it suggests that in their hurry the rascals just grabbed at what came first to hand. I wish them joy of what they got.\"\n\n\"Why should they go to my son's things?\" asked Mrs. Maberley.\n\n\"Well, they found nothing valuable downstairs, so they tried their luck upstairs. That is how I read it. What do you make of it, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"I must think it over, Inspector. Come to the window, Watson.\" Then, as we stood together, he read over the fragment of paper. It began in the middle of a sentence and ran like this:\n\n\"...face bled considerably from the cuts and blows, but it was nothing to the bleeding of his heart as he saw that lovely face, the face for which he had been prepared to sacrifice his very life, looking out at his agony and humiliation. She smiled\u2014yes, by Heaven! she smiled, like the heartless fiend she was, as he looked up at her. It was at that moment that love died and hate was born. Man must live for something. If it is not for your embrace, my lady, then it shall surely be for your undoing and my complete revenge.\"\n\n\"Queer grammar!\" said Holmes with a smile as he handed the paper back to the inspector. \"Did you notice how the 'he' suddenly changed to 'my'? The writer was so carried away by his own story that he imagined himself at the supreme moment to be the hero.\"\n\n\"It seemed mighty poor stuff,\" said the inspector as he replaced it in his book. \"What! are you off, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"I don't think there is anything more for me to do now that the case is in such capable hands. By the way, Mrs. Maberley, did you say you wished to travel?\"\n\n\"It has always been my dream, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"Where would you like to go\u2014Cairo, Madeira, the Riviera?\"\n\n\"Oh, if I had the money I would go round the world.\"\n\n\"Quite so. Round the world. Well, good-morning. I may drop you a line in the evening.\" As we passed the window I caught a glimpse of the inspector's smile and shake of the head. \"These clever fellows have always a touch of madness.\" That was what I read in the inspector's smile.\n\n\"Now, Watson, we are at the last lap of our little journey,\" said Holmes when we were back in the roar of central London once more. \"I think we had best clear the matter up at once, and it would be well that you should come with me, for it is safer to have a witness when you are dealing with such a lady as Isadora Klein.\"\n\nWe had taken a cab and were speeding to some address in Grosvenor Square. Holmes had been sunk in thought, but he roused himself suddenly.\n\n\"By the way, Watson, I suppose you see it all clearly?\"\n\n\"No, I can't say that I do. I only gather that we are going to see the lady who is behind all this mischief.\"\n\n\"Exactly! But does the name Isadora Klein convey nothing to you? She was, of course, the celebrated beauty. There was never a woman to touch her. She is pure Spanish, the real blood of the masterful Conquis tadors, and her people have been leaders in Pernambuco for generations. She married the aged German sugar king, Klein, and presently found herself the richest as well as the most lovely widow upon earth. Then there was an interval of adventure when she pleased her own tastes. She had several lovers, and Douglas Maberley, one of the most striking men in London, was one of them. It was by all accounts more than an adventure with him. He was not a society butterfly but a strong, proud man who gave and expected all. But she is the 'belle dame sans merci' of fiction. When her caprice is satisfied the matter is ended, and if the other party in the matter can't take her word for it she knows how to bring it home to him.\"\n\n\"Then that was his own story\u2014\"\n\n\"Ah! you are piecing it together now. I hear that she is about to marry the young Duke of Lomond, who might almost be her son. His Grace's ma might overlook the age, but a big scandal would be a different matter, so it is imperative\u2014Ah! here we are.\"\n\nIt was one of the finest corner-houses of the West End. A machine-like footman took up our cards and returned with word that the lady was not at home. \"Then we shall wait until she is,\" said Holmes cheerfully.\n\nThe machine broke down.\n\n\"Not at home means not at home to you,\" said the footman.\n\n\"Good,\" Holmes answered. \"That means that we shall not have to wait. Kindly give this note to your mistress.\"\n\nHe scribbled three or four words upon a sheet of his notebook, folded it, and handed it to the man.\n\n\"What did you say, Holmes?\" I asked.\n\n\"I simply wrote: 'Shall it be the police, then?' I think that should pass us in.\"\n\nIt did\u2014with amazing celerity. A minute later we were in an Arabian Nights drawing-room, vast and wonderful, in a half gloom, picked out with an occasional pink electric light. The lady had come, I felt, to that time of life when even the proudest beauty finds the half light more welcome. She rose from a settee as we entered: tall, queenly, a perfect figure, a lovely mask-like face, with two wonderful Spanish eyes which looked murder at us both.\n\n\"What is this intrusion\u2014and this insulting message?\" she asked, holding up the slip of paper.\n\n\"I need not explain, madame. I have too much respect for your intelligence to do so\u2014though I confess that intelligence has been surprisingly at fault of late.\"\n\n\"How so, sir?\"\n\n\"By supposing that your hired bullies could frighten me from my work. Surely no man would take up my profession if it were not that danger attracts him. It was you, then, who forced me to examine the case of young Maberley.\"\n\n\"I have no idea what you are talking about. What have I to do with hired bullies?\"\n\nHolmes turned away wearily.\n\n\"Yes, I have underrated your intelligence. Well, good-afternoon!\"\n\n\"Stop! Where are you going?\"\n\n\"To Scotland Yard.\"\n\nWe had not got halfway to the door before she had overtaken us and was holding his arm. She had turned in a moment from steel to velvet.\n\n\"Come and sit down, gentlemen. Let us talk this matter over. I feel that I may be frank with you, Mr. Holmes. You have the feelings of a gentleman. How quick a woman's instinct is to find it out. I will treat you as a friend.\"\n\n\"I cannot promise to reciprocate, madame. I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go. I am ready to listen, and then I will tell you how I will act.\"\n\n\"No doubt it was foolish of me to threaten a brave man like yourself.\"\n\n\"What was really foolish, madame, is that you have placed yourself in the power of a band of rascals who may blackmail or give you away.\"\n\n\"No, no! I am not so simple. Since I have promised to be frank, I may say that no one, save Barney Stockdale and Susan, his wife, have the least idea who their employer is. As to them, well, it is not the first\u2014\" She smiled and nodded with a charming coquettish intimacy.\n\n\"I see. You've tested them before.\"\n\n\"They are good hounds who run silent.\"\n\n\"Such hounds have a way sooner or later of biting the hand that feeds them. They will be arrested for this burglary. The police are already after them.\"\n\n\"They will take what comes to them. That is what they are paid for. I shall not appear in the matter.\"\n\n\"Unless I bring you into it.\"\n\n\"No, no, you would not. You are a gentleman. It is a woman's secret.\"\n\n\"In the first place, you must give back this manuscript.\"\n\nShe broke into a ripple of laughter and walked to the fireplace. There was a calcined mass which she broke up with the poker. \"Shall I give this back?\" she asked. So roguish and exquisite did she look as she stood before us with a challenging smile that I felt of all Holmes's criminals this was the one whom he would find it hardest to face. However, he was immune from sentiment.\n\n\"That seals your fate,\" he said coldly. \"You are very prompt in your actions, madame, but you have overdone it on this occasion.\"\n\nShe threw the poker down with a clatter.\n\n\"How hard you are!\" she cried. \"May I tell you the whole story?\"\n\n\"I fancy I could tell it to you.\"\n\n\"But you must look at it with my eyes, Mr. Holmes. You must realize it from the point of view of a woman who sees all her life's ambition about to be ruined at the last moment. Is such a woman to be blamed if she protects herself?\"\n\n\"The original sin was yours.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes! I admit it. He was a dear boy, Douglas, but it so chanced that he could not fit into my plans. He wanted marriage\u2014marriage, Mr. Holmes\u2014with a penniless commoner. Nothing less would serve him. Then he became pertinacious. Because I had given he seemed to think that I still must give, and to him only. It was intolerable. At last I had to make him realize it.\"\n\n\"By hiring ruffians to beat him under your own window.\"\n\n\"You do indeed seem to know everything. Well, it is true. Barney and the boys drove him away, and were, I admit, a little rough in doing so. But what did he do then? Could I have believed that a gentleman would do such an act? He wrote a book in which he described his own story. I, of course, was the wolf; he the lamb. It was all there, under different names, of course; but who in all London would have failed to recognize it? What do you say to that, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Well, he was within his rights.\"\n\n\"It was as if the air of Italy had got into his blood and brought with it the old cruel Italian spirit. He wrote to me and sent me a copy of his book that I might have the torture of anticipation. There were two copies, he said\u2014one for me, one for his publisher.\"\n\n\"How did you know the publisher's had not reached him?\"\n\n\"I knew who his publisher was. It is not his only novel, you know. I found out that he had not heard from Italy. Then came Douglas's sudden death. So long as that other manuscript was in the world there was no safety for me. Of course, it must be among his effects, and these would be returned to his mother. I set the gang at work. One of them got into the house as servant. I wanted to do the thing honestly. I really and truly did. I was ready to buy the house and everything in it. I offered any price she cared to ask. I only tried the other way when everything else had failed. Now, Mr. Holmes, granting that I was too hard on Douglas\u2014and. God knows, I am sorry for it!\u2014what else could I do with my whole future at stake?\"\n\nSherlock Holmes shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"Well, well,\" said he, \"I suppose I shall have to compound a felony as usual. How much does it cost to go round the world in first-class style?\"\n\nThe lady stared in amazement.\n\n\"Could it be done on five thousand pounds?\"\n\n\"Well, I should think so, indeed!\"\n\n\"Very good. I think you will sign me a check for that, and I will see that it comes to Mrs. Maberley. You owe her a little change of air. Meantime, lady\"\u2014he wagged a cautionary forefinger\u2014\"have a care! Have a care! You can't play with edged tools forever without cutting those dainty hands.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE SUSSEX VAMPIRE", + "text": "Holmes had read carefully a note which the last post had brought him. Then, with the dry chuckle which was his nearest approach to a laugh, he tossed it over to me.\n\n\"For a mixture of the modem and the mediaeval, of the practical and of the wildly fanciful, I think this is surely the limit,\" said he. \"What do you make of it, Watson?\"\n\nI read as follows:\n\n\u200246, OLD JEWRY,\n\n\u2002Nov. 19th.\n\n\u2002Re Vampires\n\n\u2002SIR:\n\n\u2002Our client, Mr. Robert Ferguson, of Ferguson and Muirhead, tea brokers, of Mincing Lane, has made some inquiry from us in a communication of even date concerning vampires. As our firm specializes entirely upon the assessment of machinery the matter hardly comes within our purview, and we have therefore recommended Mr. Ferguson to call upon you and lay the matter before you. We have not forgotten your successful action in the case of Matilda Briggs.\n\n\u2002We are, sir,\n\n\u2002Faithfully yours,\n\n\u2002MORRISON, MORRISON, AND DODD.\n\n\u2002per E. J. C.\n\n\"Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson,\" said Holmes in a reminiscent voice. \"It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared. But what do we know about vampires? Does it come within our purview either? Anything is better than stagnation, but really we seem to have been switched on to a Grimms' fairy tale. Make a long arm, Watson, and see what V has to say.\"\n\nI leaned back and took down the great index volume to which he referred. Holmes balanced it on his knee, and his eyes moved slowly and lovingly over the record of old cases, mixed with the accumulated information of a lifetime.\n\n\"Voyage of the Gloria Scott,\" he read. \"That was a bad business. I have some recollection that you made a record of it, Watson, though I was unable to congratulate you upon the result. Victor Lynch, the forger. Venomous lizard or gila. Remarkable case, that! Vittoria, the circus belle. Vanderbilt and the Yeggman. Vipers. Vigor, the Hammersmith wonder. Hullo! Hullo! Good old index. You can't beat it. Listen to this, Watson. Vampirism in Hungary. And again, Vampires in Transylvania.\" He turned over the pages with eagerness, but after a short intent perusal he threw down the great book with a snarl of disappointment.\n\n\"Rubbish, Watson, rubbish! What have we to do with walking corpses who can only be held in their grave by stakes driven through their hearts? It's pure lunacy.\"\n\n\"But surely,\" said I, \"the vampire was not necessarily a dead man? A living person might have the habit. I have read, for example, of the old sucking the blood of the young in order to retain their youth.\"\n\n\"You are right, Watson. It mentions the legend in one of these references. But are we to give serious attention to such things? This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply. I fear that we cannot take Mr. Robert Ferguson very seriously. Possibly this note may be from him and may throw some light upon what is worrying him.\"\n\nHe took up a second letter which had lain unnoticed upon the table while he had been absorbed with the first. This he began to read with a smile of amusement upon his face which gradually faded away into an expression of intense interest and concentration. When he had finished he sat for some little time lost in thought with the letter dangling from his fingers. Finally, with a start, he aroused himself from his reverie.\n\n\"Cheeseman's, Lamberley. Where is Lamberley, Watson?\"\n\n\"It is in Sussex, South of Horsham.\"\n\n\"Not very far, eh? And Cheeseman's?\"\n\n\"I know that country, Holmes. It is full of old houses which are named after the men who built them centuries ago. You get Odley's and Harvey's and Carriton's\u2014the folk are forgotten but their names live in their houses.\"\n\n\"Precisely,\" said Holmes coldly. It was one of the peculiarities of his proud, self-contained nature that though he docketed any fresh information very quietly and accurately in his brain, he seldom made any acknowledgment to the giver. \"I rather fancy we shall know a good deal more about Cheeseman's, Lamberley, before we are through. The letter is, as I had hoped, from Robert Ferguson. By the way, he claims acquaintance with you.\"\n\n\"With me!\"\n\n\"You had better read it.\"\n\nHe handed the letter across. It was headed with the address quoted.\n\n\u2002DEAR MR. HOLMES [it said]:\n\n\u2002I have been recommended to you by my lawyers, but indeed the matter is so extraordinarily delicate that it is most difficult to discuss. It concerns a friend for whom I am acting. This gentleman married some five years ago a Peruvian lady, the daughter of a Peruvian merchant, whom he had met in connection with the importation of nitrates. The lady was very beautiful, but the fact of her foreign birth and of her alien religion always caused a separation of interests and of feelings between husband and wife, so that after a time his love may have cooled towards her and he may have come to regard their union as a mistake. He felt there were sides of her character which he could never explore or understand. This was the more painful as she was as loving a wife as a man could have\u2014to all appearance absolutely devoted.\n\n\u2002Now for the point which I will make more plain when we meet. Indeed, this note is merely to give you a general idea of the situation and to ascertain whether you would care to interest yourself in the matter. The lady began to show some curious traits quite alien to her ordinarily sweet and gentle disposition. The gentleman had been married twice and he had one son by the first wife. This boy was now fifteen, a very charming and affectionate youth, though unhappily injured through an accident in childhood. Twice the wife was caught in the act of assaulting this poor lad in the most unprovoked way. Once she struck him with a stick and left a great weal on his arm.\n\n\u2002This was a small matter, however, compared with her conduct to her own child, a dear boy just under one year of age. On one occasion about a month ago this child had been left by its nurse for a few minutes. A loud cry from the baby, as of pain, called the nurse back. As she ran into the room she saw her employer, the lady, leaning over the baby and apparently biting his neck. There was a small wound in the neck from which a stream of blood had escaped. The nurse was so horrified that she wished to call the husband, but the lady implored her not to do so and actually gave her five pounds as a price for her silence. No explanation was ever given, and for the moment the matter was passed over.\n\n\u2002It left, however, a terrible impression upon the nurse's mind, and from that time she began to watch her mistress closely and to keep a closer guard upon the baby, whom she tenderly loved. It seemed to her that even as she watched the mother, so the mother watched her, and that every time she was compelled to leave the baby alone the mother was waiting to get at it. Day and night the nurse covered the child, and day and night the silent, watchful mother seemed to be lying in wait as a wolf waits for a lamb. It must read most incredible to you, and yet I beg you to take it seriously, for a child's life and a man's sanity may depend upon it.\n\n\u2002At last there came one dreadful day when the facts could no longer be concealed from the husband. The nurse's nerve had given way; she could stand the strain no longer, and she made a clean breast of it all to the man. To him it seemed as wild a tale as it may now seem to you. He knew his wife to be a loving wife, and, save for the assaults upon her stepson, a loving mother. Why, then, should she wound her own dear little baby? He told the nurse that she was dreaming, that her suspicions were those of a lunatic, and that such libels upon her mistress were not to be tolerated. While they were talking a sudden cry of pain was heard. Nurse and master rushed together to the nursery. Imagine his feelings, Mr. Holmes, as he saw his wife rise from a kneeling position beside the cot and saw blood upon the child's exposed neck and upon the sheet. With a cry of horror, he turned his wife's face to the light and saw blood all round her lips. It was she\u2014she beyond all question\u2014who had drunk the poor baby's blood.\n\n\u2002So the matter stands. She is now confined to her room. There has been no explanation. The husband is half demented. He knows, and I know, little of vampirism beyond the name. We had thought it was some wild tale of foreign parts. And yet here in the very heart of the English Sussex\u2014well, all this can be discussed with you in the morning. Will you see me? Will you use your great powers in aiding a distracted man? If so, kindly wire to Ferguson, Cheeseman's, Lamberley, and I will be at your rooms by ten o'clock.\n\n\u2002Yours faithfully,\n\n\u2002ROBERT FERGUSON.\n\n\u2002P. S. I believe your friend Watson played Rugby for Blackheath when I was three-quarter for Richmond. It is the only personal introduction which I can give.\n\n\"Of course I remembered him,\" said I as I laid down the letter. \"Big Bob Ferguson, the finest three-quarter Richmond ever had. He was always a good-natured chap. It's like him to be so concerned over a friend's case.\"\n\nHolmes looked at me thoughtfully and shook his head.\n\n\"I never get your limits, Watson,\" said he. \"There are unexplored possibilities about you. Take a wire down, like a good fellow. 'Will examine your case with pleasure.'\"\n\n\"Your case!\"\n\n\"We must not let him think that this agency is a home for the weak-minded. Of course it is his case. Send him that wire and let the matter rest till morning.\"\n\nPromptly at ten o'clock next morning Ferguson strode into our room. I had remembered him as a long, slab-sided man with loose limbs and a fine turn of speed which had carried him round many an opposing back. There is surely nothing in life more painful than to meet the wreck of a fine athlete whom one has known in his prime. His great frame had fallen in, his flaxen hair was scanty, and his shoulders were bowed. I fear that I roused corresponding emotions in him.\n\n\"Hullo, Watson,\" said he, and his voice was still deep and hearty. \"You don't look quite the man you did when I threw you over the ropes into the crowd at the Old Deer Park. I expect I have changed a bit also. But it's this last day or two that has aged me. I see by your telegram, Mr. Holmes, that it is no use my pretending to be anyone's deputy.\"\n\n\"It is simpler to deal direct,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Of course it is. But you can imagine how difficult it is when you are speaking of the one woman whom you are bound to protect and help. What can I do? How am I to go to the police with such a story? And yet the kiddies have got to be protected. Is it madness, Mr. Holmes? Is it something in the blood? Have you any similar case in your experience? For God's sake, give me some advice, for I am at my wit's end.\"\n\n\"Very naturally, Mr. Ferguson. Now sit here and pull yourself together and give me a few clear answers. I can assure you that I am very far from being at my wit's end, and that I am confident we shall find some solution. First of all, tell me what steps you have taken. Is your wife still near the children?\"\n\n\"We had a dreadful scene. She is a most loving woman, Mr. Holmes. If ever a woman loved a man with all her heart and soul, she loves me. She was cut to the heart that I should have discovered this horrible, this incredible, secret. She would not even speak. She gave no answer to my reproaches, save to gaze at me with a sort of wild, despairing look in her eyes. Then she rushed to her room and locked herself in. Since then she has refused to see me. She has a maid who was with her before her marriage, Dolores by name\u2014a friend rather than a servant. She takes her food to her.\"\n\n\"Then the child is in no immediate danger?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Mason, the nurse, has sworn that she will not leave it night or day. I can absolutely trust her. I am more uneasy about poor little Jack, for, as I told you in my note, he has twice been assaulted by her.\"\n\n\"But never wounded?\"\n\n\"No, she struck him savagely. It is the more terrible as he is a poor little inoffensive cripple.\" Ferguson's gaunt features softened as he spoke of his boy. \"You would think that the dear lad's condition would soften anyone's heart. A fall in childhood and a twisted spine, Mr. Holmes. But the dearest, most loving heart within.\"\n\nHolmes had picked up the letter of yesterday and was reading it over. \"What other inmates are there in your house, Mr. Ferguson?\"\n\n\"Two servants who have not been long with us. One stablehand, Michael, who sleeps in the house. My wife, myself, my boy Jack, baby, Dolores, and Mrs. Mason. That is all.\"\n\n\"I gather that you did not know your wife well at the time of your marriage?\"\n\n\"I had only known her a few weeks.\"\n\n\"How long had this maid Dolores been with her?\"\n\n\"Some years.\"\n\n\"Then your wife's character would really be better known by Dolores than by you?\"\n\n\"Yes, you may say so.\"\n\nHolmes made a note.\n\n\"I fancy,\" said he, \"that I may be of more use at Lamberley than here. It is eminently a case for personal investigation. If the lady remains in her room, our presence could not annoy or inconvenience her. Of course, we would stay at the inn.\"\n\nFerguson gave a gesture of relief.\n\n\"It is what I hoped, Mr. Holmes. There is an excellent train at two from Victoria if you could come.\"\n\n\"Of course we could come. There is a lull at present. I can give you my undivided energies. Watson, of course, comes with us. But there are one or two points upon which I wish to be very sure before I start. This unhappy lady, as I understand it, has appeared to assault both the children, her own baby and your little son?\"\n\n\"That is so.\"\n\n\"But the assaults take different forms, do they not? She has beaten your son.\"\n\n\"Once with a stick and once very savagely with her hands.\"\n\n\"Did she give no explanation why she struck him?\"\n\n\"None save that she hated him. Again and again she said so.\"\n\n\"Well, that is not unknown among stepmothers. A posthumous jealousy, we will say. Is the lady jealous by nature?\"\n\n\"Yes, she is very jealous\u2014jealous with all the strength of her fiery tropical love.\"\n\n\"But the boy\u2014he is fifteen, I understand, and probably very developed in mind, since his body has been circumscribed in action. Did he give you no explanation of these assaults?\"\n\n\"No, he declared there was no reason.\"\n\n\"Were they good friends at other times?\"\n\n\"No, there was never any love between them.\"\n\n\"Yet you say he is affectionate?\"\n\n\"Never in the world could there be so devoted a son. My life is his life. He is absorbed in what I say or do.\"\n\nOnce again Holmes made a note. For some time he sat lost in thought.\n\n\"No doubt you and the boy were great comrades before this second marriage. You were thrown very close together, were you not?\"\n\n\"Very much so.\"\n\n\"And the boy, having so affectionate a nature, was devoted, no doubt, to the memory of his mother?\"\n\n\"Most devoted.\"\n\n\"He would certainly seem to be a most interesting lad. There is one other point about these assaults. Were the strange attacks upon the baby and the assaults upon your son at the same period?\"\n\n\"In the first case it was so. It was as if some frenzy had seized her, and she had vented her rage upon both. In the second case it was only Jack who suffered. Mrs. Mason had no complaint to make about the baby.\"\n\n\"That certainly complicates matters.\"\n\n\"I don't quite follow you, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"Possibly not. One forms provisional theories and waits for time or fuller knowledge to explode them. A bad habit, Mr. Ferguson, but human nature is weak. I fear that your old friend here has given an exaggerated view of my scientific methods. However, I will only say at the present stage that your problem does not appear to me to be insoluble, and that you may expect to find us at Victoria at two o'clock.\"\n\nIt was evening of a dull, foggy November day when, having left our bags at the Chequers, Lamberley, we drove through the Sussex clay of a long winding lane and finally reached the isolated and ancient farmhouse in which Ferguson dwelt. It was a large, straggling building, very old in the centre, very new at the wings with towering Tudor chimneys and a lichen-spotted, high-pitched roof of Horsham slabs. The doorsteps were worn into curves, and the ancient tiles which lined the porch were marked with the rebus of a cheese and a man after the original builder. Within, the ceilings were corrugated with heavy oaken beams, and the uneven floors sagged into sharp curves. An odour of age and decay pervaded the whole crumbling building.\n\nThere was one very large central room into which Ferguson led us. Here, in a huge old-fashioned fireplace with an iron screen behind it dated 1670, there blazed and spluttered a splendid log fire.\n\nThe room, as I gazed round, was a most singular mixture of dates and of places. The half-panelled walls may well have belonged to the original yeoman farmer of the seventeenth century. They were ornamented, however, on the lower part by a line of well-chosen modern water-colours; while above, where yellow plaster took the place of oak, there was hung a fine collection of South American utensils and weapons, which had been brought, no doubt, by the Peruvian lady upstairs. Holmes rose, with that quick curiosity which sprang from his eager mind, and examined them with some care. He returned with his eyes full of thought.\n\n\"Hullo!\" he cried. \"Hullo!\"\n\nA spaniel had lain in a basket in the corner. It came slowly forward towards its master, walking with difficulty. Its hind legs moved irregularly and its tail was on the ground. It licked Ferguson's hand.\n\n\"What is it, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"The dog. What's the matter with it?\"\n\n\"That's what puzzled the vet. A sort of paralysis. Spinal meningitis, he thought. But it is passing. He'll be all right soon\u2014won't you, Carlo?\"\n\nA shiver of assent passed through the drooping tail. The dog's mournful eyes passed from one of us to the other. He knew that we were discussing his case.\n\n\"Did it come on suddenly?\"\n\n\"In a single night.\"\n\n\"How long ago?\"\n\n\"It may have been four months ago.\"\n\n\"Very remarkable. Very suggestive.\"\n\n\"What do you see in it, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"A confirmation of what I had already thought.\"\n\n\"For God's sake, what do you think, Mr. Holmes? It may be a mere intellectual puzzle to you, but it is life and death to me! My wife a would-be murderer\u2014my child in constant danger! Don't play with me, Mr. Holmes. It is too terribly serious.\"\n\nThe big Rugby three-quarter was trembling all over. Holmes put his hand soothingly upon his arm.\n\n\"I fear that there is pain for you, Mr. Ferguson, whatever the solution may be,\" said he. \"I would spare you all I can. I cannot say more for the instant, but before I leave this house I hope I may have something definite.\"\n\n\"Please God you may! If you will excuse me, gentlemen, I will go up to my wife's room and see if there has been any change.\"\n\nHe was away some minutes, during which Holmes resumed his examination of the curiosities upon the wall. When our host returned it was clear from his downcast face that he had made no progress. He brought with him a tall, slim, brown-faced girl.\n\n\"The tea is ready, Dolores,\" said Ferguson. \"See that your mistress has everything she can wish.\"\n\n\"She verra ill,\" cried the girl, looking with indignant eyes at her master. \"She no ask for food. She verra ill. She need doctor. I frightened stay alone with her without doctor.\"\n\nFerguson looked at me with a question in his eyes.\n\n\"I should be so glad if I could be of use.\"\n\n\"Would your mistress see Dr. Watson?\"\n\n\"I take him. I no ask leave. She needs doctor.\"\n\n\"Then I'll come with you at once.\"\n\nI followed the girl, who was quivering with strong emotion, up the staircase and down an ancient corridor. At the end was an iron-clamped and massive door. It struck me as I looked at it that if Ferguson tried to force his way to his wife he would find it no easy matter. The girl drew a key from her pocket, and the heavy oaken planks creaked upon their old hinges. I passed in and she swiftly followed, fastening the door behind her.\n\nOn the bed a woman was lying who was clearly in a high fever. She was only half conscious, but as I entered she raised a pair of frightened but beautiful eyes and glared at me in apprehension. Seeing a stranger, she appeared to be relieved and sank back with a sigh upon the pillow. I stepped up to her with a few reassuring words, and she lay still while I took her pulse and temperature. Both were high, and yet my impression was that the condition was rather that of mental and nervous excitement than of any actual seizure.\n\n\"She lie like that one day, two day. I 'fraid she die,\" said the girl.\n\nThe woman turned her flushed and handsome face towards me.\n\n\"Where is my husband?\"\n\n\"He is below and would wish to see you.\"\n\n\"I will not see him. I will not see him.\" Then she seemed to wander off into delirium. \"A fiend! A fiend! Oh, what shall I do with this devil?\"\n\n\"Can I help you in any way?\"\n\n\"No. No one can help. It is finished. All is destroyed. Do what I will, all is destroyed.\"\n\nThe woman must have some strange delusion. I could not see honest Bob Ferguson in the character of fiend or devil.\n\n\"Madame,\" I said, \"your husband loves you dearly. He is deeply grieved at this happening.\"\n\nAgain she turned on me those glorious eyes.\n\n\"He loves me. Yes. But do I not love him? Do I not love him even to sacrifice myself rather than break his dear heart? That is how I love him. And yet he could think of me\u2014he could speak of me so.\"\n\n\"He is full of grief, but he cannot understand.\"\n\n\"No, he cannot understand. But he should trust.\"\n\n\"Will you not see him?\" I suggested.\n\n\"No, no, I cannot forget those terrible words nor the look upon his face. I will not see him. Go now. You can do nothing for me. Tell him only one thing. I want my child. I have a right to my child. That is the only message I can send him.\" She turned her face to the wall and would say no more.\n\nI returned to the room downstairs, where Ferguson and Holmes still sat by the fire. Ferguson listened moodily to my account of the interview.\n\n\"How can I send her the child?\" he said. \"How do I know what strange impulse might come upon her? How can I ever forget how she rose from beside it with its blood upon her lips?\" He shuddered at the recollection. \"The child is safe with Mrs. Mason, and there he must remain.\"\n\nA smart maid, the only modern thing which we had seen in the house, had brought in some tea. As she was serving it the door opened and a youth entered the room. He was a remarkable lad, pale-faced and fair-haired, with excitable light blue eyes which blazed into a sudden flame of emotion and joy as they rested upon his father. He rushed forward and threw his arms round his neck with the abandon of a loving girl.\n\n\"Oh, daddy,\" he cried, \"I did not know that you were due yet. I should have been here to meet you. Oh, I am so glad to see you!\"\n\nFerguson gently disengaged himself from the embrace with some little show of embarrassment.\n\n\"Dear old chap,\" said he, patting the flaxen head with a very tender hand. \"I came early because my friends, Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson, have been persuaded to come down and spend an evening with us.\"\n\n\"Is that Mr. Holmes, the detective?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nThe youth looked at us with a very penetrating and, as it seemed to me, unfriendly gaze.\n\n\"What about your other child, Mr. Ferguson?\" asked Holmes. \"Might we make the acquaintance of the baby?\"\n\n\"Ask Mrs. Mason to bring baby down,\" said Ferguson. The boy went off with a curious, shambling gait which told my surgical eyes that he was suffering from a weak spine. Presently he returned, and behind him came a tall, gaunt woman bearing in her arms a very beautiful child, dark-eyed, golden-haired, a wonderful mixture of the Saxon and the Latin. Ferguson was evidently devoted to it, for he took it into his arms and fondled it most tenderly.\n\n\"Fancy anyone having the heart to hurt him,\" he muttered as he glanced down at the small, angry red pucker upon the cherub throat.\n\nIt was at this moment that I chanced to glance at Holmes and saw a most singular intentness in his expression. His face was as set as if it had been carved out of old ivory, and his eyes, which had glanced for a moment at father and child, were now fixed with eager curiosity upon something at the other side of the room. Following his gaze I could only guess that he was looking out through the window at the melancholy, dripping garden. It is true that a shutter had half closed outside and obstructed the view, but none the less it was certainly at the window that Holmes was fixing his concentrated attention. Then he smiled, and his eyes came back to the baby. On its chubby neck there was this small puckered mark. Without speaking, Holmes examined it with care. Finally he shook one of the dimpled fists which waved in front of him.\n\n\"Good-bye, little man. You have made a strange start in life. Nurse, I should wish to have a word with you in private.\"\n\nHe took her aside and spoke earnestly for a few minutes. I only heard the last words, which were: \"Your anxiety will soon, I hope, be set at rest.\" The woman, who seemed to be a sour, silent kind of creature, withdrew with the child.\n\n\"What is Mrs. Mason like?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"Not very prepossessing externally, as you can see, but a heart of gold, and devoted to the child.\"\n\n\"Do you like her, Jack?\" Holmes turned suddenly upon the boy. His expressive mobile face shadowed over, and he shook his head.\n\n\"Jacky has very strong likes and dislikes,\" said Ferguson, putting his arm round the boy. \"Luckily I am one of his likes.\"\n\nThe boy cooed and nestled his head upon his father's breast. Ferguson gently disengaged him.\n\n\"Run away, little Jacky,\" said he, and he watched his son with loving eyes until he disappeared. \"Now, Mr. Holmes,\" he continued when the boy was gone, \"I really feel that I have brought you on a fool's errand, for what can you possibly do save give me your sympathy? It must be an exceedingly delicate and complex affair from your point of view.\"\n\n\"It is certainly delicate,\" said my friend with an amused smile, \"but I have not been struck up to now with its complexity. It has been a case for intellectual deduction, but when this original intellectual deduction is confirmed point by point by quite a number of independent incidents, then the subjective becomes objective and we can say confidently that we have reached our goal. I had, in fact, reached it before we left Baker Street, and the rest has merely been observation and confirmation.\"\n\nFerguson put his big hand to his furrowed forehead.\n\n\"For heaven's sake, Holmes,\" he said hoarsely; \"if you can see the truth in this matter, do not keep me in suspense. How do I stand? What shall I do? I care nothing as to how you have found your facts so long as you have really got them.\"\n\n\"Certainly I owe you an explanation, and you shall have it. But you will permit me to handle the matter in my own way? Is the lady capable of seeing us, Watson?\"\n\n\"She is ill, but she is quite rational.\"\n\n\"Very good. It is only in her presence that we can clear the matter up. Let us go up to her.\"\n\n\"She will not see me,\" cried Ferguson.\n\n\"Oh, yes, she will,\" said Holmes. He scribbled a few lines upon a sheet of paper. \"You at least have the entr\u00e9e, Watson. Will you have the goodness to give the lady this note?\"\n\nI ascended again and handed the note to Dolores, who cautiously opened the door. A minute later I heard a cry from within, a cry in which joy and surprise seemed to be blended. Dolores looked out.\n\n\"She will see them. She will leesten,\" said she.\n\nAt my summons Ferguson and Holmes came up. As we entered the room Ferguson took a step or two towards his wife, who had raised herself in the bed, but she held out her hand to repulse him. He sank into an armchair, while Holmes seated himself beside him, after bowing to the lady, who looked at him with wide-eyed amazement.\n\n\"I think we can dispense with Dolores,\" said Holmes. \"Oh, very well, madame, if you would rather she stayed I can see no objection. Now, Mr. Ferguson, I am a busy man with many calls, and my methods have to be short and direct. The swiftest surgery is the least painful. Let me first say what will ease your mind. Your wife is a very good, a very loving, and a very ill-used woman.\"\n\nFerguson sat up with a cry of joy.\n\n\"Prove that, Mr. Holmes, and I am your debtor forever.\"\n\n\"I will do so, but in doing so I must wound you deeply in another direction.\"\n\n\"I care nothing so long as you clear my wife. Everything on earth is insignificant compared to that.\"\n\n\"Let me tell you, then, the train of reasoning which passed through my mind in Baker Street. The idea of a vampire was to me absurd. Such things do not happen in criminal practice in England. And yet your observation was precise. You had seen the lady rise from beside the child's cot with the blood upon her lips.\"\n\n\"I did.\"\n\n\"Did it not occur to you that a bleeding wound may be sucked for some other purpose than to draw the blood from it? Was there not a queen in English history2l who sucked such a wound to draw poison from it?\"\n\n\"Poison!\"\n\n\"A South American household. My instinct felt the presence of those weapons upon the wall before my eyes ever saw them. It might have been other poison, but that was what occurred to me. When I saw that little empty quiver beside the small bird-bow, it was just what I expected to see. If the child were pricked with one of those arrows dipped in curare or some other devilish drug, it would mean death if the venom were not sucked out.\n\n\"And the dog! If one were to use such a poison, would one not try it first in order to see that it had not lost its power? I did not foresee the dog, but at least I understand him and he fitted into my reconstruction.\n\n\"Now do you understand? Your wife feared such an attack. She saw it made and saved the child's life, and yet she shrank from telling you all the truth, for she knew how you loved the boy and feared lest it break your heart.\"\n\n\"Jacky!\"\n\n\"I watched him as you fondled the child just now. His face was clearly reflected in the glass of the window where the shutter formed a background. I saw such jealousy, such cruel hatred, as I have seldom seen in a human face.\"\n\n\"My Jacky!\"\n\n\"You have to face it, Mr. Ferguson. It is the more painful because it is a distorted love, a maniacal exaggerated love for you, and possibly for his dead mother, which has prompted his action. His very soul is consumed with hatred for this splendid child, whose health and beauty are a contrast to his own weakness.\"\n\n\"Good God! It is incredible!\"\n\n\"Have I spoken the truth, madame?\"\n\nThe lady was sobbing, with her face buried in the pillows. Now she turned to her husband.\n\n\"How could I tell you, Bob? I felt the blow it would be to you. It was better that I should wait and that it should come from some other lips than mine. When this gentleman, who seems to have powers of magic, wrote that he knew all, I was glad.\"\n\n\"I think a year at sea would be my prescription for Master Jacky,\" said Holmes, rising from his chair. \"Only one thing is still clouded, madame. We can quite understand your attacks upon Master Jacky. There is a limit to a mother's patience. But how did you dare to leave the child these last two days?\"\n\n\"I had told Mrs. Mason. She knew.\"\n\n\"Exactly. So I imagined.\"\n\nFerguson was standing by the bed, choking, his hands outstretched and quivering.\n\n\"This, I fancy, is the time for our exit, Watson,\" said Holmes in a whisper. \"If you will take one elbow of the too faithful Dolores, I will take the other. There, now,\" he added as he closed the door behind him, \"I think we may leave them to settle the rest among themselves.\"\n\nI have only one further note of this case. It is the letter which Holmes wrote in final answer to that with which the narrative begins. It ran thus:\n\n\u2002BAKER STREET,\n\n\u2002Nov. 21st.\n\n\u2002Re Vampires\n\n\u2002SIR:\n\n\u2002Referring to your letter of the 19th, I beg to state that I have looked into the inquiry of your client, Mr. Robert Ferguson, of Ferguson and Muirhead, tea brokers, of Mincing Lane, and that the matter has been brought to a satisfactory conclusion. With thanks for your recommendation, I am, sir,\n\n\u2002Faithfully yours,\n\n\u2002SHERLOCK HOLMES." + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE GARRIDEBS", + "text": "It may have been a comedy, or it may have been a tragedy. It cost one man his reason, it cost me a blood-letting, and it cost yet another man the penalties of the law. Yet there was certainly an element of comedy. Well, you shall judge for yourselves.\n\nI remember the date very well, for it was in the same month that Holmes refused a knighthood for services which may perhaps some day be described. I only refer to the matter in passing, for in my position of partner and confidant I am obliged to be particularly careful to avoid any indiscretion. I repeat, however, that this enables me to fix the date, which was the latter end of June, 1902, shortly after the conclusion of the South African War. Holmes had spent several days in bed, as was his habit from time to time, but he emerged that morning with a long foolscap document in his hand and a twinkle of amusement in his austere gray eyes.\n\n\"There is a chance for you to make some money, friend Watson,\" said he. \"Have you ever heard the name of Garrideb?\"\n\nI admitted that I had not.\n\n\"Well, if you can lay your hand upon a Garrideb, there's money in it.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Ah, that's a long story\u2014rather a whimsical one, too. I don't think in all our explorations of human complexities we have ever come upon anything more singular. The fellow will be here presently for cross-examination, so I won't open the matter up till he comes. But, meanwhile, that's the name we want.\"\n\nThe telephone directory lay on the table beside me, and I turned over the pages in a rather hopeless quest. But to my amazement there was this strange name in its due place. I gave a cry of triumph.\n\n\"Here you are, Holmes! Here it is!\"\n\nHolmes took the book from my hand.\n\n\"'Garrideb, N.,' \" he read, \" '136 Little Ryder Street, W.' Sorry to disappoint you, my dear Watson, but this is the man himself. That is the address upon his letter. We want another to match him.\"\n\nMrs. Hudson had come in with a card upon a tray. I took it up and glanced at it.\n\n\"Why, here it is!\" I cried in amazement. \"This is a different initial. John Garrideb, Counsellor at Law, Moorville, Kansas, U. S. A.\"\n\nHolmes smiled as he looked at the card. \"I am afraid you must make yet another effort, Watson,\" said he. \"This gentleman is also in the plot already, though I certainly did not expect to see him this morning. However, he is in a position to tell us a good deal which I want to know.\"\n\nA moment later he was in the room. Mr. John Garrideb, Counsellor at Law, was a short, powerful man with the round, fresh, clean-shaven face characteristic of so many American men of affairs. The general effect was chubby and rather childlike, so that one received the impression of quite a young man with a broad set smile upon his face. His eyes, however, were arresting. Seldom in any human head have I seen a pair which bespoke a more intense inward life, so bright were they, so alert, so responsive to every change of thought. His accent was American, but was not accompanied by any eccentricity of speech.\n\n\"Mr. Holmes?\" he asked, glancing from one to the other. \"Ah, yes! Your pictures are not unlike you, sir, if I may say so. I believe you have had a letter from my namesake, Mr. Nathan Garrideb, have you not?\"\n\n\"Pray sit down,\" said Sherlock Holmes. \"We shall, I fancy, have a good deal to discuss.\" He took up his sheets of foolscap. \"You are, of course, the Mr. John Garrideb mentioned in this document. But surely you have been in England some time?\"\n\n\"Why do you say that, Mr. Holmes?\" I seemed to read sudden suspicion in those expressive eyes.\n\n\"Your whole outfit is English.\"\n\nMr. Garrideb forced a laugh. \"I've read of your tricks, Mr. Holmes, but I never thought I would be the subject of them. Where do you read that?\"\n\n\"The shoulder cut of your coat, the toes of your boots\u2014could anyone doubt it?\"\n\n\"Well, well, I had no idea I was so obvious a Britisher. But business brought me over here some time ago, and so, as you say, my outfit is nearly all London. However, I guess your time is of value, and we did not meet to talk about the cut of my socks. What about getting down to that paper you hold in your hand?\"\n\nHolmes had in some way ruffled our visitor, whose chubby face had assumed a far less amiable expression.\n\n\"Patience! Patience, Mr. Garrideb!\" said my friend in a soothing voice. \"Dr. Watson would tell you that these little digressions of mine sometimes prove in the end to have some bearing on the matter. But why did Mr. Nathan Garrideb not come with you?\"\n\n\"Why did he ever drag you into it at all?\" asked our visitor with a sudden outflame of anger. \"What in thunder had you to do with it? Here was a bit of professional business between two gentlemen, and one of them must needs call in a detective! I saw him this morning, and he told me this fool-trick he had played me, and that's why I am here. But I feel bad about it, all the same.\"\n\n\"There was no reflection upon you, Mr. Garrideb. It was simply zeal upon his part to gain your end\u2014an end which is, I understand, equally vital for both of you. He knew that I had means of getting information, and, therefore, it was very natural that he should apply to me.\"\n\nOur visitor's angry face gradually cleared.\n\n\"Well, that puts it different,\" said he. \"When I went to see him this morning and he told me he had sent to a detective, I just asked for your address and came right away. I don't want police butting into a private matter. But if you are content just to help us find the man, there can be no harm in that.\"\n\n\"Well, that is just how it stands,\" said Holmes. \"And now, sir, since you are here, we had best have a clear account from your own lips. My friend here knows nothing of the details.\"\n\nMr. Garrideb surveyed me with not too friendly a gaze.\n\n\"Need he know?\" he asked.\n\n\"We usually work together.\"\n\n\"Well, there's no reason it should be kept a secret. I'll give you the facts as short as I can make them. If you came from Kansas I would not need to explain to you who Alexander Hamilton Garrideb was. He made his money in real estate, and afterwards in the wheat pit at Chicago, but he spent it in buying up as much land as would make one of your counties, lying along the Arkansas River, west of Fort Dodge. It's grazing-land and lumber-land and arable-land and mineralized-land, and just every sort of land that brings dollars to the man that owns it.\n\n\"He had no kith nor kin\u2014or, if he had, I never heard of it. But he took a kind of pride in the queerness of his name. That was what brought us together. I was in the law at Topeka, and one day I had a visit from the old man, and he was tickled to death to meet another man with his own name. It was his pet fad, and he was dead set to find out if there were any more Garridebs in the world. 'Find me another!' said he. I told him I was a busy man and could not spend my life hiking round the world in search of Garridebs. 'None the less,' said he, 'that is just what you will do if things pan out as I planned them.' I thought he was joking, but there was a powerful lot of meaning in the words, as I was soon to discover.\n\n\"For he died within a year of saying them, and he left a will behind him. It was the queerest will that has ever been filed in the State of Kansas. His property was divided into three parts, and I was to have one on condition that I found two Garridebs who would share the remainder. It's five million dollars for each if it is a cent, but we can't lay a finger on it until we all three stand in a row.\n\n\"It was so big a chance that I just let my legal practice slide and I set forth looking for Garridebs. There is not one in the United States. I went through it, sir, with a fine-toothed comb and never a Garrideb could I catch. Then I tried the old country. Sure enough there was the name in the London telephone directory. I went after him two days ago and explained the whole matter to him. But he is a lone man, like myself, with some women relations, but no men. It says three adult men in the will. So you see we still have a vacancy, and if you can help to fill it we will be very ready to pay your charges.\"\n\n\"Well, Watson,\" said Holmes with a smile, \"I said it was rather whimsical, did I not? I should have thought, sir, that your obvious way was to advertise in the agony columns of the papers.\"\n\n\"I have done that, Mr. Holmes. No replies.\"\n\n\"Dear me! Well, it is certainly a most curious little problem. I may take a glance at it in my leisure. By the way, it is curious that you should have come from Topeka. I used to have a correspondent\u2014he is dead now\u2014old Dr. Lysander Starr, who was mayor in 1890.\"\n\n\"Good old Dr. Starr!\" said our visitor. \"His name is still honoured. Well, Mr. Holmes, I suppose all we can do is to report to you and let you know how we progress. I reckon you will hear within a day or two.\" With this assurance our American bowed and departed.\n\nHolmes had lit his pipe, and he sat for some time with a curious smile upon his face.\n\n\"Well?\" I asked at last.\n\n\"I am wondering, Watson\u2014just wondering!\"\n\n\"At what?\"\n\nHolmes took his pipe from his lips.\n\n\"I was wondering, Watson, what on earth could be the object of this man in telling us such a rigmarole of lies. I nearly asked him so\u2014for there are times when a brutal frontal attack is the best policy\u2014but I judged it better to let him think he had fooled us. Here is a man with an English coat frayed at the elbow and trousers bagged at the knee with a year's wear, and yet by this document and by his own account he is a provincial American lately landed in London. There have been no advertisements in the agony columns. You know that I miss nothing there. They are my favourite covert for putting up a bird, and I would never have overlooked such a cock pheasant as that. I never knew a Dr. Lysander Starr, of Topeka. Touch him where you would he was false. I think the fellow is really an American, but he has worn his accent smooth with years of London. What is his game, then, and what motive lies behind this preposterous search for Garridebs? It's worth our attention, for, granting that the man is a rascal, he is certainly a complex and ingenious one. We must now find out if our other correspondent is a fraud also. Just ring him up, Watson.\"\n\nI did so, and heard a thin, quavering voice at the other end of the line.\n\n\"Yes, yes, I am Mr. Nathan Garrideb. Is Mr. Holmes there? I should very much like to have a word with Mr. Holmes.\"\n\nMy friend took the instrument and I heard the usual syncopated dialogue.\n\n\"Yes, he has been here. I understand that you don't know him.... How long?... Only two days!... Yes, yes, of course, it is a most captivating prospect. Will you be at home this evening? I suppose your namesake will not be there? Very good, we will come then, for I would rather have a chat without him.... Dr. Watson will come with me.... I understand from your note that you did not go out often.... Well, we shall be round about six. You need not mention it to the American lawyer.... Very good. Good-bye!\"\n\nIt was twilight of a lovely spring evening, and even Little Ryder Street, one of the smaller offshoots from the Edgware Road, within a stone-cast of old Tyburn Tree of evil memory, looked golden and wonderful in the slanting rays of the setting sun. The particular house to which we were directed was a large, old-fashioned, Early Georgian edifice, with a flat brick face broken only by two deep bay windows on the ground floor. It was on this ground floor that our client lived, and, indeed, the low windows proved to be the front of the huge room in which he spent his waking hours. Holmes pointed as we passed to the small brass plate which bore the curious name.\n\n\"Up some years, Watson,\" he remarked, indicating its discoloured surface. \"It's his real name, anyhow, and that is something to note.\"\n\nThe house had a common stair, and there were a number of names painted in the hall, some indicating offices and some private chambers. It was not a collection of residential flats, but rather the abode of Bohemian bachelors. Our client opened the door for us himself and apologized by saying that the woman in charge left at four o'clock. Mr. Nathan Garrideb proved to be a very tall, loose-jointed, round-backed person, gaunt and bald, some sixty-odd years of age. He had a cadaverous face, with the dull dead skin of a man to whom exercise was unknown. Large round spectacles and a small projecting goat's beard combined with his stooping attitude to give him an expression of peering curiosity. The general effect, however, was amiable, though eccentric.\n\nThe room was as curious as its occupant. It looked like a small museum. It was both broad and deep, with cupboards and cabinets all round, crowded with specimens, geological and anatomical. Cases of butterflies and moths flanked each side of the entrance. A large table in the centre was littered with all sorts of debris, while the tall brass tube of a powerful microscope bristled up among them. As I glanced round I was surprised at the universality of the man's interests. Here was a case of ancient coins. There was a cabinet of flint instruments. Behind his central table was a large cupboard of fossil bones. Above was a line of plaster skulls with such names as \"Neanderthal,\" \"Heidelberg,\" \"Cro-Magnon\" printed beneath them. It was clear that he was a student of many subjects. As he stood in front of us now, he held a piece of chamois leather in his right hand with which he was polishing a coin.\n\n\"Syracusan\u2014of the best period,\" he explained, holding it up. \"They degenerated greatly towards the end. At their best I hold them supreme, though some prefer the Alexandrian school. You will find a chair here, Mr. Holmes. Pray allow me to clear these bones. And you, sir\u2014ah, yes, Dr. Watson\u2014if you would have the goodness to put the Japanese vase to one side. You see round me my little interests in life. My doctor lectures me about never going out, but why should I go out when I have so much to hold me here? I can assure you that the adequate cataloguing of one of those cabinets would take me three good months.\"\n\nHolmes looked round him with curiosity.\n\n\"But do you tell me that you never go out?\" he said.\n\n\"Now and again I drive down to Sotheby's or Christie's. Otherwise I very seldom leave my room. I am not too strong, and my researches are very absorbing. But you can imagine, Mr. Holmes, what a terrific shock-pleasant but terrific\u2014it was for me when I heard of this unparalleled good fortune. It only needs one more Garrideb to complete the matter, and surely we can find one. I had a brother, but he is dead, and female relatives are disqualified. But there must surely be others in the world. I had heard that you handled strange cases, and that was why I sent to you. Of course, this American gentleman is quite right, and I should have taken his advice first, but I acted for the best.\"\n\n\"I think you acted very wisely indeed,\" said Holmes. \"But are you really anxious to acquire an estate in America?\"\n\n\"Certainly not, sir. Nothing would induce me to leave my collection. But this gentleman has assured me that he will buy me out as soon as we have established our claim. Five million dollars was the sum named. There are a dozen specimens in the market at the present moment which fill gaps in my collection, and which I am unable to purchase for want of a few hundred pounds. Just think what I could do with five million dollars. Why, I have the nucleus of a national collection. I shall be the Hans Sloane of my age.\"\n\nHis eyes gleamed behind his great spectacles. It was very clear that no pains would be spared by Mr. Nathan Garrideb in finding a namesake.\n\n\"I merely called to make your acquaintance, and there is no reason why I should interrupt your studies,\" said Holmes. \"I prefer to establish personal touch with those with whom I do business. There are few questions I need ask, for I have your very clear narrative in my pocket, and I filled up the blanks when this American gentleman called. I understand that up to this week you were unaware of his existence.\"\n\n\"That is so. He called last Tuesday.\"\n\n\"Did he tell you of our interview to-day?\"\n\n\"Yes, he came straight back to me. He had been very angry.\"\n\n\"Why should he be angry?\"\n\n\"He seemed to think it was some reflection on his honour. But he was quite cheerful again when he returned.\"\n\n\"Did he suggest any course of action?\"\n\n\"No, sir, he did not.\"\n\n\"Has he had, or asked for, any money from you?\"\n\n\"No, sir, never!\"\n\n\"You see no possible object he has in view?\"\n\n\"None, except what he states.\"\n\n\"Did you tell him of our telephone appointment?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, I did.\"\n\nHolmes was lost in thought. I could see that he was puzzled.\n\n\"Have you any articles of great value in your collection?\"\n\n\"No, sir. I am not a rich man. It is a good collection, but not a very valuable one.\"\n\n\"You have no fear of burglars?\"\n\n\"Not the least.\"\n\n\"How long have you been in these rooms?\"\n\n\"Nearly five years.\"\n\nHolmes's cross-examination was interrupted by an imperative knocking at the door. No sooner had our client unlatched it than the American lawyer burst excitedly into the room.\n\n\"Here you are!\" he cried, waving a paper over his head. \"I thought I should be in time to get you. Mr. Nathan Garrideb, my congratulations! You are a rich man, sir. Our business is happily finished and all is well. As to you, Mr. Holmes, we can only say we are sorry if we have given you any useless trouble.\"\n\nHe handed over the paper to our client, who stood staring at a marked advertisement. Holmes and I leaned forward and read it over his shoulder. This is how it ran:" + }, + { + "title": "HOWARD GARRIDEB", + "text": "[ CONSTRUCTOR OF AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY ]\n\n\u2002Binders, reapers, steam and hand plows, drills, harrows,\n\n\u2002farmer's carts, buckboards, and all other appliances.\n\n\u2002Estimates for Artesian Wells\n\n\u2002Apply Grosvenor Buildings, Aston\n\n\"Glorious!\" gasped our host. \"That makes our third man.\"\n\n\"I had opened up inquiries in Birmingham,\" said the American, \"and my agent there has sent me this advertisement from a local paper. We must hustle and put the thing through. I have written to this man and told him that you will see him in his office to-morrow afternoon at four o'clock.\"\n\n\"You want me to see him?\"\n\n\"What do you say, Mr. Holmes? Don't you think it would be wiser? Here am I, a wandering American with a wonderful tale. Why should he believe what I tell him? But you are a Britisher with solid references, and he is bound to take notice of what you say. I would go with you if you wished, but I have a very busy day to-morrow, and I could always follow you if you are in any trouble.\"\n\n\"Well, I have not made such a journey for years.\"\n\n\"It is nothing, Mr. Garrideb. I have figured out our connections. You leave at twelve and should be there soon after two. Then you can be back the same night. All you have to do is to see this man, explain the matter, and get an affidavit of his existence. By the Lord!\" he added hotly, \"considering I've come all the way from the centre of America, it is surely little enough if you go a hundred miles in order to put this matter through.\"\n\n\"Quite so,\" said Holmes. \"I think what this gentleman says is very true.\"\n\nMr. Nathan Garrideb shrugged his shoulders with a disconsolate air. \"Well, if you insist I shall go,\" said he. \"It is certainly hard for me to refuse you anything, considering the glory of hope that you have brought into my life.\"\n\n\"Then that is agreed,\" said Holmes, \"and no doubt you will let me have a report as soon as you can.\"\n\n\"I'll see to that,\" said the American. \"Well,\" he added, looking at his watch, \"I'll have to get on. I'll call to-morrow, Mr. Nathan, and see you off to Birmingham. Coming my way, Mr. Holmes? Well, then, good-bye, and we may have good news for you to-morrow night.\"\n\nI noticed that my friend's face cleared when the American left the room, and the look of thoughtful perplexity had vanished.\n\n\"I wish I could look over your collection, Mr. Garrideb,\" said he. \"In my profession all sorts of odd knowledge comes useful, and this room of yours is a storehouse of it.\"\n\nOur client shone with pleasure and his eyes gleamed from behind his big glasses.\n\n\"I had always heard, sir, that you were a very intelligent man,\" said he. \"I could take you round now if you have the time.\"\n\n\"Unfortunately, I have not. But these specimens are so well labelled and classified that they hardly need your personal explanation. If I should be able to look in to-morrow, I presume that there would be no objection to my glancing over them?\"\n\n\"None at all. You are most welcome. The place will, of course, be shut up, but Mrs. Saunders is in the basement up to four o'clock and would let you in with her key.\"\n\n\"Well, I happen to be clear to-morrow afternoon. If you would say a word to Mrs. Saunders it would be quite in order. By the way, who is your houseagent?\"\n\nOur client was amazed at the sudden question.\n\n\"Holloway and Steele, in the Edgware Road. But why?\"\n\n\"I am a bit of an arch\u00e6ologist myself when it comes to houses,\" said Holmes, laughing. \"I was wondering if this was Queen Anne or Georgian.\"\n\n\"Georgian, beyond doubt.\"\n\n\"Really. I should have thought a little earlier. However, it is easily ascertained. Well, good-bye, Mr. Garrideb, and may you have every success in your Birmingham journey.\"\n\nThe houseagent's was close by, but we found that it was closed for the day, so we made our way back to Baker Street. It was not till after dinner that Holmes reverted to the subject.\n\n\"Our little problem draws to a close,\" said he. \"No doubt you have outlined the solution in your own mind.\"\n\n\"I can make neither head nor tail of it.\"\n\n\"The head is surely clear enough and the tail we should see to-morrow. Did you notice nothing curious about that advertisement?\"\n\n\"I saw that the word 'plough' was misspelt.\"\n\n\"Oh, you did notice that, did you? Come, Watson, you improve all the time. Yes, it was bad English but good American. The printer had set it up as received. Then the buckboards. That is American also. And artesian wells are commoner with them than with us. It was a typical American advertisement, but purporting to be from an English firm. What do you make of that?\"\n\n\"I can only suppose that this American lawyer put it in himself. What his object was I fail to understand.\"\n\n\"Well, there are alternative explanations. Anyhow, he wanted to get this good old fossil up to Birmingham. That is very clear. I might have told him that he was clearly going on a wild-goose chase, but, on second thoughts, it seemed better to clear the stage by letting him go. To morrow, Watson\u2014well, to-morrow will speak for itself.\"\n\nHolmes was up and out early. When he returned at lunchtime I noticed that his face was very grave.\n\n\"This is a more serious matter than I had expected, Watson,\" said he. \"It is fair to tell you so, though I know it will only be an additional reason to you for running your head into danger. I should know my Watson by now. But there is danger, and you should know it.\"\n\n\"Well, it is not the first we have shared, Holmes. I hope it may not be the last. What is the particular danger this time?\"\n\n\"We are up against a very hard case. I have identified Mr. John Garrideb, Counsellor at Law. He is none other than 'Killer' Evans, of sinister and murderous reputation.\"\n\n\"I fear I am none the wiser.\"\n\n\"Ah, it is not part of your profession to carry about a portable Newgate Calendar in your memory. I have been down to see friend Lestrade at the Yard. There may be an occasional want of imaginative intuition down there, but they lead the world for thoroughness and method. I had an idea that we might get on the track of our American friend in their records. Sure enough, I found his chubby face smiling up at me from the rogues' portrait gallery. 'James Winter, alias Morecroft, alias Killer Evans,' was the inscription below.\" Holmes drew an envelope from his pocket. \"I scribbled down a few points from his dossier: Aged forty-four. Native of Chicago. Known to have shot three men in the States. Escaped from penitentiary through political influence. Came to London in 1893. Shot a man over cards in a night-club in the Waterloo Road in January, 1895. Man died, but he was shown to have been the aggressor in the row. Dead man was identified as Rodger Prescott, famous as forger and coiner in Chicago. Killer Evans released in 1901. Has been under police supervision since, but so far as known has led an honest life. Very dangerous man, usually carries arms and is prepared to use them. That is our bird, Watson\u2014a sporting bird, as you must admit.\"\n\n\"But what is his game?\"\n\n\"Well, it begins to define itself. I have been to the houseagent's. Our client, as he told us, has been there five years. It was unlet for a year before then. The previous tenant was a gentleman at large named Waldron. Waldron's appearance was well remembered at the office. He had suddenly vanished and nothing more been heard of him. He was a tall, bearded man with very dark features. Now, Prescott, the man whom Killer Evans had shot, was, according to Scotland Yard, a tall, dark man with a beard. As a working hypothesis, I think we may take it that Prescott, the American criminal, used to live in the very room which our innocent friend now devotes to his museum. So at last we get a link, you see.\"\n\n\"And the next link?\"\n\n\"Well, we must go now and look for that.\"\n\nHe took a revolver from the drawer and handed it to me.\n\n\"I have my old favourite with me. If our Wild West friend tries to live up to his nickname, we must be ready for him. I'll give you an hour for a siesta, Watson, and then I think it will be time for our Ryder Street adventure.\"\n\nIt was just four o'clock when we reached the curious apartment of Nathan Garrideb. Mrs. Saunders, the caretaker, was about to leave, but she had no hesitation in admitting us, for the door shut with a spring lock, and Holmes promised to see that all was safe before we left. Shortly afterwards the outer door closed, her bonnet passed the bow window, and we knew that we were alone in the lower floor of the house. Holmes made a rapid examination of the premises. There was one cupboard in a dark comer which stood out a little from the wall. It was behind this that we eventually crouched while Holmes in a whisper outlined his intentions.\n\n\"He wanted to get our amiable friend out of his room\u2014that is very clear, and, as the collector never went out, it took some planning to do it. The whole of this Garrideb invention was apparently for no other end. I must say, Watson, that there is a certain devilish ingenuity about it, even if the queer name of the tenant did give him an opening which he could hardly have expected. He wove his plot with remarkable cunning.\"\n\n\"But what did he want?\"\n\n\"Well, that is what we are here to find out. It has nothing whatever to do with our client, so far as I can read the situation. It is something connected with the man he murdered\u2014the man who may have been his confederate in crime. There is some guilty secret in the room. That is how I read it. At first I thought our friend might have something in his collection more valuable than he knew\u2014something worth the attention of a big criminal. But the fact that Rodger Prescott of evil memory inhabited these rooms points to some deeper reason. Well, Watson, we can but possess our souls in patience and see what the hour may bring.\"\n\nThat hour was not long in striking. We crouched closer in the shadow as we heard the outer door open and shut. Then came the sharp, metallic snap of a key, and the American was in the room. He closed the door softly behind him, took a sharp glance around him to see that all was safe, threw off his overcoat, and walked up to the central table with the brisk manner of one who knows exactly what he has to do and how to do it. He pushed the table to one side, tore up the square of carpet on which it rested, rolled it completely back, and then, drawing a jemmy from his inside pocket, he knelt down and worked vigorously upon the floor. Presently we heard the sound of sliding boards, and an instant later a square had opened in the planks. Killer Evans struck a match, lit a stump of candle, and vanished from our view.\n\nClearly our moment had come. Holmes touched my wrist as a signal, and together we stole across to the open trap-door. Gently as we moved, however, the old floor must have creaked under our feet, for the head of our American, peering anxiously round, emerged suddenly from the open space. His face turned upon us with a glare of baffled rage, which gradually softened into a rather shamefaced grin as he realized that two pistols were pointed at his head.\n\n\"Well, well!\" said he coolly as he scrambled to the surface. \"I guess you have been one too many for me, Mr. Holmes. Saw through my game, I suppose, and played me for a sucker from the first. Well, sir, I hand it to you; you have me beat and\u2014\"\n\nIn an instant he had whisked out a revolver from his breast and had fired two shots. I felt a sudden hot sear as if a red-hot iron had been pressed to my thigh. There was a crash as Holmes's pistol came down on the man's head. I had a vision of him sprawling upon the floor with blood running down his face while Holmes rummaged him for weapons. Then my friend's wiry arms were round me, and he was leading me to a chair.\n\n\"You're not hurt, Watson? For God's sake, say that you are not hurt!\"\n\nIt was worth a wound\u2014it was worth many wounds\u2014to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.\n\n\"It's nothing, Holmes. It's a mere scratch.\"\n\nHe had ripped up my trousers with his pocket-knife.\n\n\"You are right,\" he cried with an immense sigh of relief. \"It is quite superficial.\" His face set like flint as he glared at our prisoner, who was sitting up with a dazed face. \"By the Lord, it is as well for you. If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive. Now, sir, what have you to say for yourself?\"\n\nHe had nothing to say for himself. He only sat and scowled. I leaned on Holmes's arm, and together we looked down into the small cellar which had been disclosed by the secret flap. It was still illuminated by the candle which Evans had taken down with him. Our eyes fell upon a mass of rusted machinery, great rolls of paper, a litter of bottles, and, neatly arranged upon a small table, a number of neat little bundles.\n\n\"A printing press\u2014a counterfeiter's outfit,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" said our prisoner, staggering slowly to his feet and then sinking into the chair. \"The greatest counterfeiter London ever saw. That's Prescott's machine, and those bundles on the table are two thousand of Prescott's notes worth a hundred each and fit to pass anywhere. Help yourselves, gentlemen. Call it a deal and let me beat it.\"\n\nHolmes laughed.\n\n\"We don't do things like that, Mr. Evans. There is no bolt-hole for you in this country. You shot this man Prescott, did you not?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, and got five years for it, though it was he who pulled on me. Five years\u2014when I should have had a medal the size of a soup plate. No living man could tell a Prescott from a Bank of England, and if I hadn't put him out he would have flooded London with them. I was the only one in the world who knew where he made them. Can you wonder that I wanted to get to the place? And can you wonder that when I found this crazy boob of a bug-hunter with the queer name squatting right on the top of it, and never quitting his room, I had to do the best I could to shift him? Maybe I would have been wiser if I had put him away. It would have been easy enough, but I'm a soft-hearted guy that can't begin shooting unless the other man has a gun also. But say, Mr. Holmes, what have I done wrong, anyhow? I've not used this plant. I've not hurt this old stiff. Where do you get me?\"\n\n\"Only attempted murder, so far as I can see,\" said Holmes. \"But that's not our job. They take that at the next stage. What we wanted at present was just your sweet self. Please give the Yard a call, Watson. It won't be entirely unexpected.\"\n\nSo those were the facts about Killer Evans and his remarkable invention of the three Garridebs. We heard later that our poor old friend never got over the shock of his dissipated dreams. When his castle in the air fell down, it buried him beneath the ruins. He was last heard of at a nursing-home in Brixton. It was a glad day at the Yard when the Prescott outfit was discovered, for, though they knew that it existed, they had never been able, after the death of the man, to find out where it was. Evans had indeed done great service and caused several worthy C. I. D. men to sleep the sounder, for the counterfeiter stands in a class by himself as a public danger. They would willingly have subscribed to that soup-plate medal of which the criminal had spoken, but an unappreciative bench took a less favourable view, and the Killer returned to those shades from which he had just emerged." + }, + { + "title": "THE PROBLEM OF THOR BRIDGE", + "text": "Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch-box with my name, John H. Watson, M. D., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid. It is crammed with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to illustrate the curious problems which Mr. Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine. Some, and not the least interesting, were complete failures, and as such will hardly bear narrating, since no final explanation is forthcoming. A problem without a solution may interest the student, but can hardly fail to annoy the casual reader. Among these unfinished tales is that of Mr. James Phillimore, who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world. No less remarkable is that of the cutter Alicia, which sailed one spring morning into a small patch of mist from where she never again emerged, nor was anything further ever heard of herself and her crew. A third case worthy of note is that of Isadora Per sano, the well-known journalist and duellist, who was found stark staring mad with a match box in front of him which contained a remarkable worm said to be unknown to science. Apart from these unfathomed cases, there are some which involve the secrets of private families to an extent which would mean consternation in many exalted quarters if it were thought possible that they might find their way into print. I need not say that such a breach of confidence is unthinkable, and that these records will be separated and destroyed now that my friend has time to turn his energies to the matter. There remain a considerable residue of cases of greater or less interest which I might have edited before had I not feared to give the public a surfeit which might react upon the reputation of the man whom above all others I revere. In some I was myself concerned and can speak as an eye-witness, while in others I was either not present or played so small a part that they could only be told as by a third person. The following narrative is drawn from my own experience.\n\nIt was a wild morning in October, and I observed as I was dressing how the last remaining leaves were being whirled from the solitary plane tree which graces the yard behind our house. I descended to breakfast prepared to find my companion in depressed spirits, for, like all great artists, he was easily impressed by his surroundings. On the contrary, I found that he had nearly finished his meal, and that his mood was particularly bright and joyous, with that somewhat sinister cheerfulness which was characteristic of his lighter moments.\n\n\"You have a case, Holmes?\" I remarked.\n\n\"The faculty of deduction is certainly contagious, Watson,\" he answered. \"It has enabled you to probe my secret. Yes, I have a case. After a month of trivialities and stagnation the wheels move once more.\"\n\n\"Might I share it?\"\n\n\"There is little to share, but we may discuss it when you have consumed the two hard-boiled eggs with which our new cook has favoured us. Their condition may not be unconnected with the copy of the Family Herald which I observed yesterday upon the hall-table. Even so trivial a matter as cooking an egg demands an attention which is conscious of the passage of time and incompatible with the love romance in that excellent periodical.\"\n\nA quarter of an hour later the table had been cleared and we were face to face. He had drawn a letter from his pocket.\n\n\"You have heard of Neil Gibson, the Gold King?\" he said.\n\n\"You mean the American Senator?\"\n\n\"Well, he was once Senator for some Western state, but is better known as the greatest gold-mining magnate in the world.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know of him. He has surely lived in England for some time. His name is very familiar.\"\n\n\"Yes, he bought a considerable estate in Hampshire some five years ago. Possibly you have already heard of the tragic end of his wife?\"\n\n\"Of course. I remember it now. That is why the name is familiar. But I really know nothing of the details.\"\n\nHolmes waved his hand towards some papers on a chair. \"I had no idea that the case was coming my way or I should have had my extracts ready,\" said he. \"The fact is that the problem, though exceedingly sensational, appeared to present no difficulty. The interesting personality of the accused does not obscure the clearness of the evidence. That was the view taken by the coroner's jury and also in the police-court proceedings. It is now referred to the Assizes at Winchester. I fear it is a thankless business. I can discover facts, Watson, but I cannot change them. Unless some entirely new and unexpected ones come to light I do not see what my client can hope for.\"\n\n\"Your client?\"\n\n\"Ah, I forgot I had not told you. I am getting into your involved habit, Watson, of telling a story backward. You had best read this first.\"\n\nThe letter which he handed to me, written in a bold, masterful hand, ran as follows:\n\n\u2002CLARIDGE'S HOTEL,\n\n\u2002October 3rd.\n\n\u2002DEAR MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES:\n\n\u2002I can't see the best woman God ever made go to her death without doing all that is possible to save her. I can't explain things\u2014I can't even try to explain them, but I know beyond all doubt that Miss Dun bar is innocent. You know the facts\u2014who doesn't? It has been the gossip of the country. And never a voice raised for her! It's the damned injustice of it all that makes me crazy. That woman has a heart that wouldn't let her kill a fly. Well, I'll come at eleven to morrow and see if you can get some ray of light in the dark. Maybe I have a clue and don't know it. Anyhow, all I know and all I have and all I am are for your use if only you can save her. If ever in your life you showed your powers, put them now into this case.\n\n\u2002Yours faithfully,\n\n\u2002J. NEIL GIBSON.\n\n\"There you have it,\" said Sherlock Holmes, knocking out the ashes of his after-breakfast pipe and slowly refilling it. \"That is the gentleman I await. As to the story, you have hardly time to master all these papers, so I must give it to you in a nutshell if you are to take an intelligent interest in the proceedings. This man is the greatest financial power in the world, and a man, as I understand, of most violent and formidable character. He married a wife, the victim of this tragedy, of whom I know nothing save that she was past her prime, which was the more unfortunate as a very attractive governess superintended the education of two young children. These are the three people concerned, and the scene is a grand old manor house, the centre of a historical English state. Then as to the tragedy. The wife was found in the grounds nearly half a mile from the house, late at night, clad in her dinner dress, with a shawl over her shoulders and a revolver bullet through her brain. No weapon was found near her and there was no local clue as to the murder. No weapon near her. Watson\u2014mark that! The crime seems to have been committed late in the evening, and the body was found by a gamekeeper about eleven o'clock, when it was examined by the police and by a doctor before being carried up to the house. Is this too condensed, or can you follow it clearly?\"\n\n\"It is all very clear. But why suspect the governess?\"\n\n\"Well, in the first place there is some very direct evidence. A revolver with one discharged chamber and a calibre which corresponded with the bullet was found on the floor of her wardrobe.\" His eyes fixed and he repeated in broken words, \"On\u2014the\u2014floor\u2014of\u2014her\u2014wardrobe.\" Then he sank into silence, and I saw that some train of thought had been set moving which I should be foolish to interrupt. Suddenly with a start he emerged into brisk life once more. \"Yes, Watson, it was found. Pretty damning, eh? So the two juries thought. Then the dead woman had a note upon her making an appointment at that very place and signed by the governess. How's that? Finally there is the motive. Senator Gibson is an attractive person. If his wife dies, who more likely to succeed her than the young lady who had already by all accounts received pressing attentions from her employer? Love, fortune, power, all depending upon one middle-aged life. Ugly, Watson\u2014very ugly!\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed, Holmes.\"\n\n\"Nor could she prove an alibi. On the contrary, she had to admit that she was down near Thor Bridge\u2014that was the scene of the tragedy\u2014about that hour. She couldn't deny it, for some passing villager had seen her there.\"\n\n\"That really seems final.\"\n\n\"And yet, Watson\u2014and yet! This bridge\u2014a single broad span of stone with balustraded sides\u2014carries the drive over the narrowest part of a long, deep, reed-girt sheet of water. Thor Mere it is called. In the mouth of the bridge lay the dead woman. Such are the main facts. But here, if I mistake not, is our client, considerably before his time.\"\n\nBilly had opened the door, but the name which he announced was an unexpected one. Mr. Marlow Bates was a stranger to both of us. He was a thin, nervous wisp of a man with frightened eyes and a twitching, hesitating manner\u2014a man whom my own professional eye would judge to be on the brink of an absolute nervous breakdown.\n\n\"You seem agitated, Mr. Bates,\" said Holmes. \"Pray sit down. I fear I can only give you a short time, for I have an appointment at eleven.\"\n\n\"I know you have,\" our visitor gasped, shooting out short sentences like a man who is out of breath. \"Mr. Gibson is coming. Mr. Gibson is my employer. I am manager of his estate. Mr. Holmes, he is a villain\u2014an infernal villain.\"\n\n\"Strong language, Mr. Bates.\"\n\n\"I have to be emphatic, Mr. Holmes, for the time is so limited. I would not have him find me here for the world. He is almost due now. But I was so situated that I could not come earlier. His secretary, Mr. Ferguson, only told me this morning of his appointment with you.\"\n\n\"And you are his manager?\"\n\n\"I have given him notice. In a couple of weeks I shall have shaken off his accursed slavery. A hard man, Mr. Holmes, hard to all about him. Those public charities are a screen to cover his private iniquities. But his wife was his chief victim. He was brutal to her\u2014yes, sir, brutal! How she came by her death I do not know, but I am sure that he had made her life a misery to her. She was a creature of the tropics, a Brazilian by birth, as no doubt you know.\"\n\n\"No, it had escaped me.\"\n\n\"Tropical by birth and tropical by nature. A child of the sun and of passion. She had loved him as such women can love, but when her own physical charms had faded\u2014I am told that they once were great\u2014there was nothing to hold him. We all liked her and felt for her and hated him for the way that he treated her. But he is plausible and cunning. That is all I have to say to you. Don't take him at his face value. There is more behind. Now I'll go. No, no, don't detain me! He is almost due.\"\n\nWith a frightened look at the clock our strange visitor literally ran to the door and disappeared.\n\n\"Well! Well!\" said Holmes after an interval of silence. \"Mr. Gibson seems to have a nice loyal household. But the warning is a useful one, and now we can only wait till the man himself appears.\"\n\nSharp at the hour we heard a heavy step upon the stairs, and the famous millionaire was shown into the room. As I looked upon him I understood not only the fears and dislike of his manager but also the exe crations which so many business rivals have heaped upon his head. If I were a sculptor and desired to idealize the successful man of affairs, iron of nerve and leathery of conscience, I should choose Mr. Neil Gibson as my model. His tall, gaunt, craggy figure had a suggestion of hunger and rapacity. An Abraham Lincoln keyed to base uses instead of high ones would give some idea of the man. His face might have been chiselled in granite, hard-set, craggy, remorseless, with deep lines upon it, the scars of many a crisis. Cold gray eyes, looking shrewdly out from under bristling brows, surveyed us each in turn. He bowed in perfunctory fashion as Holmes mentioned my name, and then with a masterful air of possession he drew a chair up to my companion and seated himself with his bony knees almost touching him.\n\n\"Let me say right here, Mr. Holmes,\" he began, \"that money is nothing to me in this case. You can burn it if it's any use in lighting you to the truth. This woman is innocent and this woman has to be cleared, and it's up to you to do it. Name your figure!\"\n\n\"My professional charges are upon a fixed scale,\" said Holmes coldly. \"I do not vary them, save when I remit them altogether.\"\n\n\"Well, if dollars make no difference to you, think of the reputation. If you pull this off every paper in England and America will be booming you. You'll be the talk of two continents.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. Gibson, I do not think that I am in need of booming. It may surprise you to know that I prefer to work anonymously, and that it is the problem itself which attracts me. But we are wasting time. Let us get down to the facts.\"\n\n\"I think that you will find all the main ones in the press reports. I don't know that I can add anything which will help you. But if there is anything you would wish more light upon\u2014well, I am here to give it.\"\n\n\"Well, there is just one point.\"\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"What were the exact relations between you and Miss Dunbar?\"\n\nThe Gold King gave a violent start and half rose from his chair. Then his massive calm came back to him.\n\n\"I suppose you are within your rights\u2014and maybe doing your duty\u2014in asking such a question, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"We will agree to suppose so,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Then I can assure you that our relations were entirely and always those of an employer towards a young lady whom he never conversed with, or ever saw, save when she was in the company of his children.\"\n\nHolmes rose from his chair.\n\n\"I am a rather busy man, Mr. Gibson,\" said he, \"and I have no time or taste for aimless conversations. I wish you good-morning.\"\n\nOur visitor had risen also, and his great loose figure towered above Holmes. There was an angry gleam from under those bristling brows and a tinge of colour in the sallow cheeks.\n\n\"What the devil do you mean by this, Mr. Holmes? Do you dismiss my case?\"\n\n\"Well, Mr. Gibson, at least I dismiss you. I should have thought my words were plain.\"\n\n\"Plain enough, but what's at the back of it? Raising the price on me, or afraid to tackle it, or what? I've a right to a plain answer.\"\n\n\"Well, perhaps you have,\" said Holmes. \"I'll give you one. This case is quite sufficiently complicated to start with without the further difficulty of false information.\"\n\n\"Meaning that I lie.\"\n\n\"Well, I was trying to express it as delicately as I could, but if you insist upon the word I will not contradict you.\"\n\nI sprang to my feet, for the expression upon the millionaire's face was fiendish in its intensity, and he had raised his great knotted fist. Holmes smiled languidly and reached his hand out for his pipe.\n\n\"Don't be noisy, Mr. Gibson. I find that after breakfast even the smallest argument is unsettling. I suggest that a stroll in the morning air and a little quiet thought will be greatly to your advantage.\"\n\nWith an effort the Gold King mastered his fury. I could not but admire him, for by a supreme self-command he had turned in a minute from a hot flame of anger to a frigid and contemptuous indifference.\n\n\"Well, it's your choice. I guess you know how to run your own business. I can't make you touch the case against your will. You've done yourself no good this morning, Mr. Holmes, for I have broken stronger men than you. No man ever crossed me and was the better for it.\"\n\n\"So many have said so, and yet here I am,\" said Holmes, smiling. \"Well, good-morning, Mr. Gibson. You have a good deal yet to learn.\"\n\nOur visitor made a noisy exit, but Holmes smoked in imperturbable silence with dreamy eyes fixed upon the ceiling.\n\n\"Any views, Watson?\" he asked at last.\n\n\"Well, Holmes, I must confess that when I consider that this is a man who would certainly brush any obstacle from his path, and when I remember that his wife may have been an obstacle and an object of dislike, as that man Bates plainly told us, it seems to me\u2014\"\n\n\"Exactly. And to me also.\"\n\n\"But what were his relations with the governess, and how did you discover them?\"\n\n\"Bluff, Watson, bluff! When I considered the passionate, unconventional, unbusinesslike tone of his letter and contrasted it with his self-contained manner and appearance, it was pretty clear that there was some deep emotion which centred upon the accused woman rather than upon the victim. We've got to understand the exact relations of those three people if we are to reach the truth. You saw the frontal attack which I made upon him, and how imperturbably he received it. Then I bluffed him by giving him the impression that I was absolutely certain, when in reality I was only extremely suspicious.\"\n\n\"Perhaps he will come back?\"\n\n\"He is sure to come back. He must come back. He can't leave it where it is. Ha! isn't that a ring? Yes, there is his footstep. Well, Mr. Gibson, I was just saying to Dr. Watson that you were somewhat overdue.\"\n\nThe Gold King had reentered the room in a more chastened mood than he had left it. His wounded pride still showed in his resentful eyes, but his common sense had shown him that he must yield if he would attain his end.\n\n\"I've been thinking it over, Mr. Holmes, and I feel that I have been hasty in taking your remarks amiss. You are justified in getting down to the facts, whatever they may be, and I think the more of you for it. I can assure you, however, that the relations between Miss Dunbar and me don't really touch this case.\"\n\n\"That is for me to decide, is it not?\"\n\n\"Yes, I guess that is so. You're like a surgeon who wants every symptom before he can give his diagnosis.\"\n\n\"Exactly. That expresses it. And it is only a patient who has an object in deceiving his surgeon who would conceal the facts of his case.\"\n\n\"That may be so, but you will admit, Mr. Holmes, that most men would shy off a bit when they are asked point-blank what their relations with a woman may be\u2014if there is really some serious feeling in the case. I guess most men have a little private reserve of their own in some corner of their souls where they don't welcome intruders. And you burst suddenly into it. But the object excuses you, since it was to try and save her. Well, the stakes are down and the reserve open, and you can explore where you will. What is it you want?\"\n\n\"The truth.\"\n\nThe Gold King paused for a moment as one who marshals his thoughts. His grim, deep-lined face had become even sadder and more grave.\n\n\"I can give it to you in a very few words, Mr. Holmes,\" said he at last. \"There are some things that are painful as well as difficult to say, so I won't go deeper than is needful. I met my wife when I was gold-hunting in Brazil. Maria Pinto was the daughter of a government official at Man aos, and she was very beautiful. I was young and ardent in those days, but even now, as I look back with colder blood and a more critical eye, I can see that she was rare and wonderful in her beauty. It was a deep rich nature, too, passionate, whole-hearted, tropical, ill-balanced, very different from the American women whom I had known. Well, to make a long story short, I loved her and I married her. It was only when the romance had passed\u2014and it lingered for years\u2014that I realized that we had nothing\u2014absolutely nothing\u2014in common. My love faded. If hers had faded also it might have been easier. But you know the wonderful way of women! Do what I might, nothing could turn her from me. If I have been harsh to her, even brutal as some have said, it has been because I knew that if I could kill her love, or if it turned to hate, it would be easier for both of us. But nothing changed her. She adored me in those English woods as she had adored me twenty years ago on the banks of the Amazon. Do what I might, she was as devoted as ever.\n\n\"Then came Miss Grace Dunbar. She answered our advertisement and became governess to our two children. Perhaps you have seen her portrait in the papers. The whole world has proclaimed that she also is a very beautiful woman. Now, I make no pretence to be more moral than my neighbours, and I will admit to you that I could not live under the same roof with such a woman and in daily contact with her without feeling a passionate regard for her. Do you blame me, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"I do not blame you for feeling it. I should blame you if you expressed it, since this young lady was in a sense under your protection.\"\n\n\"Well, maybe so,\" said the millionaire, though for a moment the reproof had brought the old angry gleam into his eyes. \"I'm not pretending to be any better than I am. I guess all my life I've been a man that reached out his hand for what he wanted, and I never wanted anything more than the love and possession of that woman. I told her so.\"\n\n\"Oh, you did, did you?\"\n\nHolmes could look very formidable when he was moved.\n\n\"I said to her that if I could marry her I would, but that it was out of my power. I said that money was no object and that all I could do to make her happy and comfortable would be done.\"\n\n\"Very generous, I am sure,\" said Holmes with a sneer.\n\n\"See here, Mr. Holmes. I came to you on a question of evidence, not on a question of morals. I'm not asking for your criticism.\"\n\n\"It is only for the young lady's sake that I touch your case at all,\" said Holmes sternly. \"I don't know that anything she is accused of is really worse than what you have yourself admitted, that you have tried to ruin a defenceless girl who was under your roof. Some of you rich men have to be taught that all the world cannot be bribed into condoning your offences.\"\n\nTo my surprise the Gold King took the reproof with equanimity.\n\n\"That's how I feel myself about it now. I thank God that my plans did not work out as I intended. She would have none of it, and she wanted to leave the house instantly.\"\n\n\"Why did she not?\"\n\n\"Well, in the first place, others were dependent upon her, and it was no light matter for her to let them all down by sacrificing her living. When I had sworn\u2014as I did\u2014that she should never be molested again, she consented to remain. But there was another reason. She knew the influence she had over me, and that it was stronger than any other influence in the world. She wanted to use it for good.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"Well, she knew something of my affairs. They are large, Mr. Holmes\u2014large beyond the belief of an ordinary man. I can make or break\u2014and it is usually break. It wasn't individuals only. It was communities, cities, even nations. Business is a hard game, and the weak go to the wall. I played the game for all it was worth. I never squealed myself, and I never cared if the other fellow squealed. But she saw it different. I guess she was right. She believed and said that a fortune for one man that was more than he needed should not be built on ten thousand ruined men who were left without the means of life. That was how she saw it, and I guess she could see past the dollars to something that was more lasting. She found that I listened to what she said, and she believed she was serving the world by influencing my actions. So she stayed\u2014and then this came along.\"\n\n\"Can you throw any light upon that?\"\n\nThe Gold King paused for a minute or more, his head sunk in his hands, lost in deep thought.\n\n\"It's very black against her. I can't deny that. And women lead an inward life and may do things beyond the judgment of a man. At first I was so rattled and taken aback that I was ready to think she had been led away in some extraordinary fashion that was clean against her usual nature. One explanation came into my head. I give it to you, Mr. Holmes, for what it is worth. There is no doubt that my wife was bitterly jealous. There is a soul-jealousy that can be as frantic as any body-jealousy, and though my wife had no cause\u2014and I think she understood this\u2014for the latter, she was aware that this English girl exerted an influence upon my mind and my acts that she herself never had. It was an influence for good, but that did not mend the matter. She was crazy with hatred, and the heat of the Amazon was always in her blood. She might have planned to murder Miss Dunbar\u2014or we will say to threaten her with a gun and so frighten her into leaving us. Then there might have been a scuffle and the gun gone off and shot the woman who held it.\"\n\n\"That possibility had already occurred to me,\" said Holmes. \"Indeed, it is the only obvious alternative to deliberate murder.\"\n\n\"But she utterly denies it.\"\n\n\"Well, that is not final\u2014is it? One can understand that a woman placed in so awful a position might hurry home still in her bewilderment holding the revolver. She might even throw it down among her clothes, hardly knowing what she was doing, and when it was found she might try to lie her way out by a total denial, since all explanation was impossible. What is against such a supposition?\"\n\n\"Miss Dunbar herself.\"\n\n\"Well, perhaps.\"\n\nHolmes looked at his watch. \"I have no doubt we can get the necessary permits this morning and reach Winchester by the evening train. When I have seen this young lady it is very possible that I may be of more use to you in the matter, though I cannot promise that my conclusions will necessarily be such as you desire.\"\n\nThere was some delay in the official pass, and instead of reaching Winchester that day we went down to Thor Place, the Hampshire estate of Mr. Neil Gibson. He did not accompany us himself, but we had the address of Sergeant Coventry, of the local police, who had first examined into the affair. He was a tall, thin, cadaverous man, with a secretive and mysterious manner which conveyed the idea that he knew or suspected a very great deal more than he dared say. He had a trick, too, of suddenly sinking his voice to a whisper as if he had come upon something of vital importance, though the information was usually commonplace enough. Behind these tricks of manner he soon showed himself to be a decent, honest fellow who was not too proud to admit that he was out of his depth and would welcome any help.\n\n\"Anyhow, I'd rather have you than Scotland Yard, Mr. Holmes,\" said he. \"If the Yard gets called into a case, then the local loses all credit for success and may be blamed for failure. Now, you play straight, so I've heard.\"\n\n\"I need not appear in the matter at all,\" said Holmes to the evident relief of our melancholy acquaintance. \"If I can clear it up I don't ask to have my name mentioned.\"\n\n\"Well, it's very handsome of you, I am sure. And your friend, Dr. Watson, can be trusted, I know. Now, Mr. Holmes, as we walk down to the place there is one question I should like to ask you. I'd breathe it to no soul but you.\" He looked round as though he hardly dare utter the words. \"Don't you think there might be a case against Mr. Neil Gibson himself?\"\n\n\"I have been considering that.\"\n\n\"You've not seen Miss Dunbar. She is a wonderful fine woman in every way. He may well have wished his wife out of the road. And these Americans are readier with pistols than our folk are. It was his pistol, you know.\"\n\n\"Was that clearly made out?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. It was one of a pair that he had.\"\n\n\"One of a pair? Where is the other?\"\n\n\"Well, the gentleman has a lot of firearms of one sort and another. We never quite matched that particular pistol\u2014but the box was made for two.\"\n\n\"If it was one of a pair you should surely be able to match it.\"\n\n\"Well, we have them all laid out at the house if you would care to look them over.\"\n\n\"Later, perhaps. I think we will walk down together and have a look at the scene of the tragedy.\"\n\nThis conversation had taken place in the little front room of Sergeant Coventry's humble cottage which served as the local police-station. A walk of half a mile or so across a wind-swept heath, all gold and bronze with the fading ferns, brought us to a side-gate opening into the grounds of the Thor Place estate. A path led us through the pheasant preserves, and then from a clearing we saw the widespread, half-timbered house, half Tudor and half Georgian, upon the crest of the hill. Beside us there was a long, reedy pool, constricted in the centre where the main carriage drive passed over a stone bridge, but swelling into small lakes on either side. Our guide paused at the mouth of this bridge, and he pointed to the ground.\n\n\"That was where Mrs. Gibson's body lay. I marked it by that stone.\"\n\n\"I understand that you were there before it was moved?\"\n\n\"Yes, they sent for me at once.\"\n\n\"Who did?\"\n\n\"Mr. Gibson himself. The moment the alarm was given and he had rushed down with others from the house, he insisted that nothing should be moved until the police should arrive.\"\n\n\"That was sensible. I gathered from the newspaper report that the shot was fired from close quarters.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, very close.\"\n\n\"Near the right temple?\"\n\n\"Just behind it, sir.\"\n\n\"How did the body lie?\"\n\n\"On the back, sir. No trace of a struggle. No marks. No weapon. The short note from Miss Dunbar was clutched in her left hand.\"\n\n\"Clutched, you say?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, we could hardly open the fingers.\"\n\n\"That is of great importance. It excludes the idea that anyone could have placed the note there after death in order to furnish a false clue. Dear me! The note, as I remember, was quite short:\n\nI will be at Thor Bridge at nine o'clock.\n\nG. DUNBAR.\n\nWas that not so?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Did Miss Dunbar admit writing it?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"What was her explanation?\"\n\n\"Her defence was reserved for the Assizes. She would say nothing.\"\n\n\"The problem is certainly a very interesting one. The point of the letter is very obscure, is it not?\"\n\n\"Well, sir,\" said the guide, \"it seemed, if I may be so bold as to say so, the only really clear point in the whole case.\"\n\nHolmes shook his head.\n\n\"Granting that the letter is genuine and was really written, it was certainly received some time before\u2014say one hour or two. Why, then, was this lady still clasping it in her left hand? Why should she carry it so carefully? She did not need to refer to it in the interview. Does it not seem remarkable?\"\n\n\"Well, sir, as you put it, perhaps it does.\"\n\n\"I think I should like to sit quietly for a few minutes and think it out.\" He seated himself upon the stone ledge of the bridge, and I could see his quick gray eyes darting their questioning glances in every direction. Suddenly he sprang up again and ran across to the opposite parapet, whipped his lens from his pocket, and began to examine the stonework.\n\n\"This is curious,\" said he.\n\n\"Yes, sir, we saw the chip on the ledge. I expect it's been done by some passer-by.\"\n\nThe stonework was gray, but at this one point it showed white for a space not larger than a sixpence. When examined closely one could see that the surface was chipped as by a sharp blow.\n\n\"It took some violence to do that,\" said Holmes thoughtfully. With his cane he struck the ledge several times without leaving a mark. \"Yes, it was a hard knock. In a curious place, too. It was not from above but from below, for you see that it is on the lower edge of the parapet.\"\n\n\"But it is at least fifteen feet from the body.\"\n\n\"Yes, it is fifteen feet from the body. It may have nothing to do with the matter, but it is a point worth noting. I do not think that we have anything more to learn here. There were no footsteps, you say?\"\n\n\"The ground was iron hard, sir. There were no traces at all.\"\n\n\"Then we can go. We will go up to the house first and look over these weapons of which you speak. Then we shall get on to Winchester, for I should desire to see Miss Dunbar before we go farther.\"\n\nMr. Neil Gibson had not returned from town, but we saw in the house the neurotic Mr. Bates who had called upon us in the morning. He showed us with a sinister relish the formidable array of firearms of various shapes and sizes which his employer had accumulated in the course of an adventurous life.\n\n\"Mr. Gibson has his enemies, as anyone would expect who knew him and his methods,\" said he. \"He sleeps with a loaded revolver in the drawer beside his bed. He is a man of violence, sir, and there are times when all of us are afraid of him. I am sure that the poor lady who has passed was often terrified.\"\n\n\"Did you ever witness physical violence towards her?\"\n\n\"No, I cannot say that. But I have heard words which were nearly as bad\u2014words of cold, cutting contempt, even before the servants.\"\n\n\"Our millionaire does not seem to shine in private life,\" remarked Holmes as we made our way to the station. \"Well, Watson, we have come on a good many facts, some of them new ones, and yet I seem some way from my conclusion. In spite of the very evident dislike which Mr. Bates has to his employer, I gather from him that when the alarm came he was undoubtedly in his library. Dinner was over at 8:30 and all was normal up to then. It is true that the alarm was somewhat late in the evening, but the tragedy certainly occurred about the hour named in the note. There is no evidence at all that Mr. Gibson had been out of doors since his return from town at five o'clock. On the other hand, Miss Dunbar, as I understand it, admits that she had made an appointment to meet Mrs. Gibson at the bridge. Beyond this she would say nothing, as her lawyer had advised her to reserve her defence. We have several very vital questions to ask that young lady, and my mind will not be easy until we have seen her. I must confess that the case would seem to me to be very black against her if it were not for one thing.\"\n\n\"And what is that, Holmes?\"\n\n\"The finding of the pistol in her wardrobe.\"\n\n\"Dear me, Holmes!\" I cried, \"that seemed to me to be the most damning incident of all.\"\n\n\"Not so, Watson. It had struck me even at my first perfunctory reading as very strange, and now that I am in closer touch with the case it is my only firm ground for hope. We must look for consistency. Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception.\"\n\n\"I hardly follow you.\"\n\n\"Well now, Watson, suppose for a moment that we visualize you in the character of a woman who, in a cold, premeditated fashion, is about to get rid of a rival. You have planned it. A note has been written. The victim has come. You have your weapon. The crime is done. It has been workmanlike and complete. Do you tell me that after carrying out so crafty a crime you would now ruin your reputation as a criminal by forgetting to fling your weapon into those adjacent reed-beds which would forever cover it, but you must needs carry it carefully home and put it in your own wardrobe, the very first place that would be searched? Your best friends would hardly call you a schemer, Watson, and yet I could not picture you doing anything so crude as that.\"\n\n\"In the excitement of the moment\u2014\"\n\n\"No, no, Watson, I will not admit that it is possible. Where a crime is coolly premeditated, then the means of covering it are coolly premeditated also. I hope, therefore, that we are in the presence of a serious misconception.\"\n\n\"But there is so much to explain.\"\n\n\"Well, we shall set about explaining it. When once your point of view is changed, the very thing which was so damning becomes a clue to the truth. For example, there is this revolver. Miss Dunbar disclaims all knowledge of it. On our new theory she is speaking truth when she says so. Therefore, it was placed in her wardrobe. Who placed it there? Someone who wished to incriminate her. Was not that person the actual criminal? You see how we come at once upon a most fruitful line of inquiry.\"\n\nWe were compelled to spend the night at Winchester, as the formalities had not yet been completed, but next morning, in the company of Mr. Joyce Cummings, the rising barrister who was entrusted with the defence, we were allowed to see the young lady in her cell. I had expected from all that we had heard to see a beautiful woman, but I can never forget the effect which Miss Dunbar produced upon me. It was no wonder that even the masterful millionaire had found in her something more powerful than himself\u2014something which could control and guide him. One felt, too, as one looked at the strong, clear-cut, and yet sensitive face, that even should she be capable of some impetuous deed, none the less there was an innate nobility of character which would make her influence always for the good. She was a brunette, tall, with a noble figure and commanding presence, but her dark eyes had in them the appealing, helpless expression of the hunted creature who feels the nets around it, but can see no way out from the toils. Now, as she realized the presence and the help of my famous friend, there came a touch of colour in her wan cheeks and a light of hope began to glimmer in the glance which she turned upon us.\n\n\"Perhaps Mr. Neil Gibson has told you something of what occurred between us?\" she asked in a low, agitated voice.\n\n\"Yes,\" Holmes answered, \"you need not pain yourself by entering into that part of the story. After seeing you, I am prepared to accept Mr. Gibson's statement both as to the influence which you had over him and as to the innocence of your relations with him. But why was the whole situation not brought out in court?\"\n\n\"It seemed to me incredible that such a charge could be sustained. I thought that if we waited the whole thing must clear itself up without our being compelled to enter into painful details of the inner life of the family. But I understand that far from clearing it has become even more serious.\"\n\n\"My dear young lady,\" cried Holmes earnestly, \"I beg you to have no illusions upon the point. Mr. Cummings here would assure you that all the cards are at present against us, and that we must do everything that is possible if we are to win clear. It would be a cruel deception to pretend that you are not in very great danger. Give me all the help you can, then, to get at the truth.\"\n\n\"I will conceal nothing.\"\n\n\"Tell us, then, of your true relations with Mr. Gibson's wife.\"\n\n\"She hated me, Mr. Holmes. She hated me with all the fervour of her tropical nature. She was a woman who would do nothing by halves, and the measure of her love for her husband was the measure also of her hatred for me. It is probable that she misunderstood our relations. I would not wish to wrong her, but she loved so vividly in a physical sense that she could hardly understand the mental, and even spiritual, tie which held her husband to me, or imagine that it was only my desire to influence his power to good ends which kept me under his roof. I can see now that I was wrong. Nothing could justify me in remaining where I was a cause of unhappiness, and yet it is certain that the unhappiness would have remained even if I had left the house.\"\n\n\"Now, Miss Dunbar,\" said Holmes, \"I beg you to tell us exactly what occurred that evening.\"\n\n\"I can tell you the truth so far as I know it, Mr. Holmes, but I am in a position to prove nothing, and there are points\u2014the most vital points\u2014which I can neither explain nor can I imagine any explanation.\"\n\n\"If you will find the facts, perhaps others may find the explanation.\"\n\n\"With regard, then, to my presence at Thor Bridge that night, I received a note from Mrs. Gibson in the morning. It lay on the table of the schoolroom, and it may have been left there by her own hand. It implored me to see her there after dinner, said she had something important to say to me, and asked me to leave an answer on the sundial in the garden, as she desired no one to be in our confidence. I saw no reason for such secrecy, but I did as she asked, accepting the appointment. She asked me to destroy her note and I burned it in the schoolroom grate. She was very much afraid of her husband, who treated her with a harshness for which I frequently reproached him, and I could only imagine that she acted in this way because she did not wish him to know of our interview.\"\n\n\"Yet she kept your reply very carefully?\"\n\n\"Yes. I was surprised to hear that she had it in her hand when she died.\"\n\n\"Well, what happened then?\"\n\n\"I went down as I had promised. When I reached the bridge she was waiting for me. Never did I realize till that moment how this poor creature hated me. She was like a mad woman\u2014indeed, I think she was a mad woman, subtly mad with the deep power of deception which insane people may have. How else could she have met me with unconcern every day and yet had so raging a hatred of me in her heart? I will not say what she said. She poured her whole wild fury out in burning and horrible words. I did not even answer\u2014I could not. It was dreadful to see her. I put my hands to my ears and rushed away. When I left her she was standing, still shrieking out her curses at me, in the mouth of the bridge.\"\n\n\"Where she was afterwards found?\"\n\n\"Within a few yards from the spot.\"\n\n\"And yet, presuming that she met her death shortly after you left her, you heard no shot?\"\n\n\"No, I heard nothing. But, indeed, Mr. Holmes, I was so agitated and horrified by this terrible outbreak that I rushed to get back to the peace of my own room, and I was incapable of noticing anything which happened.\"\n\n\"You say that you returned to your room. Did you leave it again before next morning?\"\n\n\"Yes, when the alarm came that the poor creature had met her death I ran out with the others.\"\n\n\"Did you see Mr. Gibson?\"\n\n\"Yes, he had just returned from the bridge when I saw him. He had sent for the doctor and the police.\"\n\n\"Did he seem to you much perturbed?\"\n\n\"Mr. Gibson is a very strong, self-contained man. I do not think that he would ever show his emotions on the surface. But I, who knew him so well, could see that he was deeply concerned.\"\n\n\"Then we come to the all-important point. This pistol that was found in your room. Had you ever seen it before?\"\n\n\"Never, I swear it.\"\n\n\"When was it found?\"\n\n\"Next morning, when the police made their search.\"\n\n\"Among your clothes?\"\n\n\"Yes, on the floor of my wardrobe under my dresses.\"\n\n\"You could not guess how long it had been there?\"\n\n\"It had not been there the morning before.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"Because I tidied out the wardrobe.\"\n\n\"That is final. Then someone came into your room and placed the pistol there in order to inculpate you.\"\n\n\"It must have been so.\"\n\n\"And when?\"\n\n\"It could only have been at meal-time, or else at the hours when I would be in the schoolroom with the children.\"\n\n\"As you were when you got the note?\"\n\n\"Yes, from that time onward for the whole morning.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Miss Dunbar. Is there any other point which could help me in the investigation?\"\n\n\"I can think of none.\"\n\n\"There was some sign of violence on the stonework of the bridge\u2014a perfectly fresh chip just opposite the body. Could you suggest any possible explanation of that?\"\n\n\"Surely it must be a mere coincidence.\"\n\n\"Curious, Miss Dunbar, very curious. Why should it appear at the very time of the tragedy, and why at the very place?\"\n\n\"But what could have caused it? Only great violence could have such an effect.\"\n\nHolmes did not answer. His pale, eager face had suddenly assumed that tense, far-away expression which I had learned to associate with the supreme manifestations of his genius. So evident was the crisis in his mind that none of us dared to speak, and we sat, barrister, prisoner, and myself, watching him in a concentrated and absorbed silence. Suddenly he sprang from his chair, vibrating with nervous energy and the pressing need for action.\n\n\"Come, Watson, come!\" he cried.\n\n\"What is it, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Never mind, my dear lady. You will hear from me, Mr. Cummings. With the help of the god of justice I will give you a case which will make England ring. You will get news by to-morrow, Miss Dunbar, and meanwhile take my assurance that the clouds are lifting and that I have every hope that the light of truth is breaking through.\"\n\nIt was not a long journey from Winchester to Thor Place, but it was long to me in my impatience, while for Holmes it was evident that it seemed endless; for, in his nervous restlessness, he could not sit still, but paced the carriage or drummed with his long, sensitive fingers upon the cushions beside him. Suddenly, however, as we neared our destination he seated himself opposite to me\u2014we had a first-class carriage to ourselves\u2014and laying a hand upon each of my knees he looked into my eyes with the peculiarly mischievous gaze which was characteristic of his more imp-like moods.\n\n\"Watson,\" said he, \"I have some recollection that you go armed upon these excursions of ours.\"\n\nIt was as well for him that I did so, for he took little care for his own safety when his mind was once absorbed by a problem, so that more than once my revolver had been a good friend in need. I reminded him of the fact.\n\n\"Yes, yes, I am a little absent-minded in such matters. But have you your revolver on you?\"\n\nI produced it from my hip-pocket, a short, handy, but very serviceable little weapon. He undid the catch, shook out the cartridges, and examined it with care.\n\n\"It's heavy\u2014remarkably heavy,\" said he.\n\n\"Yes, it is a solid bit of work.\"\n\nHe mused over it for a minute.\n\n\"Do you know, Watson,\" said he, \"I believe your revolver is going to have a very intimate connection with the mystery which we are investigating.\"\n\n\"My dear Holmes, you are joking.\"\n\n\"No, Watson, I am very serious. There is a test before us. If the test comes off, all will be clear. And the test will depend upon the conduct of this little weapon. One cartridge out. Now we will replace the other five and put on the safety-catch. So! That increases the weight and makes it a better reproduction.\"\n\nI had no glimmer of what was in his mind, nor did he enlighten me, but sat lost in thought until we pulled up in the little Hampshire station. We secured a ramshackle trap, and in a quarter of an hour were at the house of our confidential friend, the sergeant.\n\n\"A clue, Mr. Holmes? What is it?\"\n\n\"It all depends upon the behaviour of Dr. Watson's revolver,\" said my friend. \"Here it is. Now, officer, can you give me ten yards of string?\"\n\nThe village shop provided a ball of stout twine.\n\n\"I think that this is all we will need,\" said Holmes. \"Now, if you please, we will get off on what I hope is the last stage of our journey.\"\n\nThe sun was setting and turning the rolling Hampshire moor into a wonderful autumnal panorama. The sergeant, with many critical and incredulous glances, which showed his deep doubts of the sanity of my companion, lurched along beside us. As we approached the scene of the crime I could see that my friend under all his habitual coolness was in truth deeply agitated.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said in answer to my remark, \"you have seen me miss my mark before, Watson. I have an instinct for such things, and yet it has sometimes played me false. It seemed a certainty when first it flashed across my mind in the cell at Winchester, but one drawback of an active mind is that one can always conceive alternative explanations which would make our scent a false one. And yet\u2014and yet\u2014Well, Watson, we can but try.\"\n\nAs he walked he had firmly tied one end of the string to the handle of the revolver. We had now reached the scene of the tragedy. With great care he marked out under the guidance of the policeman the exact spot where the body had been stretched. He then hunted among the heather and the ferns until he found a considerable stone. This he secured to the other end of his line of string, and he hung it over the parapet of the bridge so that it swung clear above the water. He then stood on the fatal spot, some distance from the edge of the bridge, with my revolver in his hand, the string being taut between the weapon and the heavy stone on the farther side.\n\n\"Now for it!\" he cried.\n\nAt the words he raised the pistol to his head, and then let go his grip. In an instant it had been whisked away by the weight of the stone, had struck with a sharp crack against the parapet, and had vanished over the side into the water. It had hardly gone before Holmes was kneeling beside the stonework, and a joyous cry showed that he had found what he expected.\n\n\"Was there ever a more exact demonstration?\" he cried. \"See, Watson, your revolver has solved the problem!\" As he spoke he pointed to a second chip of the exact size and shape of the first which had appeared on the under edge of the stone balustrade.\n\n\"We'll stay at the inn to-night,\" he continued as he rose and faced the astonished sergeant. \"You will, of course, get a grappling-hook and you will easily restore my friend's revolver. You will also find beside it the revolver, string and weight with which this vindictive woman attempted to disguise her own crime and to fasten a charge of murder upon an innocent victim. You can let Mr. Gibson know that I will see him in the morning, when steps can be taken for Miss Dunbar's vindication.\"\n\nLate that evening, as we sat together smoking our pipes in the village inn, Holmes gave me a brief review of what had passed.\n\n\"I fear, Watson,\" said he, \"that you will not improve any reputation which I may have acquired by adding the case of the Thor Bridge mystery to your annals. I have been sluggish in mind and wanting in that mixture of imagination and reality which is the basis of my art. I confess that the chip in the stonework was a sufficient clue to suggest the true solution, and that I blame myself for not having attained it sooner.\n\n\"It must be admitted that the workings of this unhappy woman's mind were deep and subtle, so that it was no very simple matter to unravel her plot. I do not think that in our adventures we have ever come across a stranger example of what perverted love can bring about. Whether Miss Dunbar was her rival in a physical or in a merely mental sense seems to have been equally unforgivable in her eyes. No doubt she blamed this innocent lady for all those harsh dealings and unkind words with which her husband tried to repel her too demonstrative affection. Her first resolution was to end her own life. Her second was to do it in such a way as to involve her victim in a fate which was worse far than any sudden death could be.\n\n\"We can follow the various steps quite clearly, and they show a remarkable subtlety of mind. A note was extracted very cleverly from Miss Dunbar which would make it appear that she had chosen the scene of the crime. In her anxiety that it should be discovered she somewhat overdid it by holding it in her hand to the last. This alone should have excited my suspicions earlier than it did.\n\n\"Then she took one of her husband's revolvers\u2014there was, as you saw, an arsenal in the house\u2014and kept it for her own use. A similar one she concealed that morning in Miss Dunbar's wardrobe after discharging one barrel, which she could easily do in the woods without attracting attention. She then went down to the bridge where she had contrived this exceedingly ingenious method for getting rid of her weapon. When Miss Dunbar appeared she used her last breath in pouring out her hatred, and then, when she was out of hearing, carried out her terrible purpose. Every link is now in its place and the chain is complete. The papers may ask why the mere was not dragged in the first instance, but it is easy to be wise after the event, and in any case the expanse of a reed-filled lake is no easy matter to drag unless you have a clear perception of what you are looking for and where. Well, Watson, we have helped a remarkable woman, and also a formidable man. Should they in the future join their forces, as seems not unlikely, the financial world may find that Mr. Neil Gibson has learned something in that schoolroom of sorrow where our earthly lessons are taught.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE CREEPING MAN", + "text": "Mr. Sherlock Holmes was always of opinion that I should publish the singular facts connected with Professor Presbury, if only to dispel once for all the ugly rumours which some twenty years ago agitated the university and were echoed in the learned societies of London. There were, however, certain obstacles in the way, and the true history of this curious case remained entombed in the tin box which contains so many records of my friend's adventures. Now we have at last obtained permission to ventilate the facts which formed one of the very last cases handled by Holmes before his retirement from practice. Even now a certain reticence and discretion have to be observed in laying the matter before the public.\n\nIt was one Sunday evening early in September of the year 1903 that I received one of Holmes's laconic messages:\n\nCome at once if convenient\u2014if inconvenient come all the same.\n\nS. H.\n\nThe relations between us in those latter days were peculiar. He was a man of habits, narrow and concentrated habits, and I had become one of them. As an institution I was like the violin, the shag tobacco, the old black pipe, the index books, and others perhaps less excusable. When it was a case of active work and a comrade was needed upon whose nerve he could place some reliance, my role was obvious. But apart from this I had uses. I was a whetstone for his mind. I stimulated him. He liked to think aloud in my presence. His remarks could hardly be said to be made to me\u2014many of them would have been as appropriately addressed to his bedstead\u2014but none the less, having formed the habit, it had become in some way helpful that I should register and interject. If I irritated him by a certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation served only to make his own flame-like intuitions and impressions flash up the more vividly and swiftly. Such was my humble role in our alliance.\n\nWhen I arrived at Baker Street I found him huddled up in his armchair with updrawn knees, his pipe in his mouth and his brow furrowed with thought. It was clear that he was in the throes of some vexatious problem. With a wave of his hand he indicated my old armchair, but otherwise for half an hour he gave no sign that he was aware of my presence. Then with a start he seemed to come from his reverie, and with his usual whimsical smile he greeted me back to what had once been my home.\n\n\"You will excuse a certain abstraction of mind, my dear Watson,\" said he. \"Some curious facts have been submitted to me within the last twenty-four hours, and they in turn have given rise to some speculations of a more general character. I have serious thoughts of writing a small monograph upon the uses of dogs in the work of the detective.\"\n\n\"But surely, Holmes, this has been explored,\" said I. \"Bloodhounds\u2014sleuth-hounds\u2014\"\n\n\"No, no, Watson, that side of the matter is, of course, obvious. But there is another which is far more subtle. You may recollect that in the case which you, in your sensational way, coupled with the Copper Beeches, I was able, by watching the mind of the child, to form a deduction as to the criminal habits of the very smug and respectable father.\"\n\n\"Yes, I remember it well.\"\n\n\"My line of thoughts, about dogs is analogous. A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones. And their passing moods may reflect the passing moods of others.\"\n\nI shook my head. \"Surely, Holmes, this is a little far-fetched,\" said I.\n\nHe had refilled his pipe and resumed his seat, taking no notice of my comment.\n\n\"The practical application of what I have said is very close to the problem which I am investigating. It is a tangled skein, you understand, and I am looking for a loose end. One possible loose end lies in the question: Why does Professor Presbury's wolfhound, Roy, endeavour to bite him?\"\n\nI sank back in my chair in some disappointment. Was it for so trivial a question as this that I had been summoned from my work? Holmes glanced across at me.\n\n\"The same old Watson!\" said he. \"You never learn that the gravest issues may depend upon the smallest things. But is it not on the face of it strange that a staid, elderly philosopher\u2014you've heard of Presbury, of course, the famous Camford physiologist?\u2014that such a man, whose friend has been his devoted wolfhound, should now have been twice attacked by his own dog? What do you make of it?\"\n\n\"The dog is ill.\"\n\n\"Well, that has to be considered. But he attacks no one else, nor does he apparently molest his master, save on very special occasions. Curious, Watson\u2014very curious. But young Mr. Bennett is before his time if that is his ring. I had hoped to have a longer chat with you before he came.\"\n\nThere was a quick step on the stairs, a sharp tap at the door, and a moment later the new client presented himself. He was a tall, handsome youth about thirty, well dressed and elegant, but with something in his bearing which suggested the shyness of the student rather than the self-possession of the man of the world. He shook hands with Holmes, and then looked with some surprise at me.\n\n\"This matter is very delicate, Mr. Holmes,\" he said. \"Consider the re lation in which I stand to Professor Presbury both privately and publicly. I really can hardly justify myself if I speak before any third person.\"\n\n\"Have no fear, Mr. Bennett. Dr. Watson is the very soul of discretion, and I can assure you that this is a matter in which I am very likely to need an assistant.\"\n\n\"As you like, Mr. Holmes. You will, I am sure, understand my having some reserves in the matter.\"\n\n\"You will appreciate it, Watson, when I tell you that this gentleman, Mr. Trevor Bennett, is professional assistant to the great scientist, lives under his roof, and is engaged to his only daughter. Certainly we must agree that the professor has every claim upon his loyalty and devotion. But it may best be shown by taking the necessary steps to clear up this strange mystery.\"\n\n\"I hope so, Mr. Holmes. That is my one object. Does Dr. Watson know the situation?\"\n\n\"I have not had time to explain it.\"\n\n\"Then perhaps I had better go over the ground again explaining some fresh developments.\"\n\n\"I will do so myself,\" said Holmes, \"in order to show that I have the events in their due order. The professor, Watson, is a man of European reputation. His life has been academic. There has never been a breath of scandal. He is a widower with one daughter, Edith. He is, I gather, a man of very virile and positive, one might almost say combative, character. So the matter stood until a very few months ago.\n\n\"Then the current of his life was broken. He is sixty-one years of age, but he became engaged to the daughter of Professor Morphy, his colleague in the chair of comparative anatomy. It was not, as I understand, the reasoned courting of an elderly man but rather the passionate frenzy of youth, for no one could have shown himself a more devoted lover. The lady, Alice Morphy, was a very perfect girl both in mind and body, so that there was every excuse for the professor's infatuation. None the less, it did not meet with full approval in his own family.\"\n\n\"We thought it rather excessive,\" said our visitor.\n\n\"Exactly. Excessive and a little violent and unnatural. Professor Presbury was rich, however, and there was no objection upon the part of the father. The daughter, however, had other views, and there were already several candidates for her hand, who, if they were less eligible from a worldly point of view, were at least more of an age. The girl seemed to like the professor in spite of his eccentricities. It was only age which stood in the way.\n\n\"About this time a little mystery suddenly clouded the normal routine of the professor's life. He did what he had never done before. He left home and gave no indication where he was going. He was away a fortnight and returned looking rather travel-worn. He made no allusion to where he had been, although he was usually the frankest of men. It chanced, however, that our client here, Mr. Bennett, received a letter from a fellow-student in Prague, who said that he was glad to have seen Professor Presbury there, although he had not been able to talk to him. Only in this way did his own household learn where he had been.\n\n\"Now comes the point. From that time onward a curious change came over the professor. He became furtive and sly. Those around him had always the feeling that he was not the man that they had known, but that he was under some shadow which had darkened his higher qualities. His intellect was not affected. His lectures were as brilliant as ever. But always there was something new, something sinister and unexpected. His daughter, who was devoted to him, tried again and again to resume the old relations and to penetrate this mask which her father seemed to have put on. You, sir, as I understand, did the same\u2014but all was in vain. And now, Mr. Bennett, tell in your own words the incident of the letters.\"\n\n\"You must understand, Dr. Watson, that the professor had no secrets from me. If I were his son or his younger brother I could not have more completely enjoyed his confidence. As his secretary I handled every paper which came to him, and I opened and subdivided his letters. Shortly after his return all this was changed. He told me that certain letters might come to him from London which would be marked by a cross under the stamp. These were to be set aside for his own eyes only. I may say that several of these did pass through my hands, that they had the E. C. mark, and were in an illiterate handwriting. If he answered them at all the answers did not pass through my hands nor into the letter-basket in which our correspondence was collected.\"\n\n\"And the box,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"Ah, yes, the box. The professor brought back a little wooden box from his travels. It was the one thing which suggested a Continental tour, for it was one of those quaint carved things which one associates with Germany. This he placed in his instrument cupboard. One day, in looking for a canula, I took up the box. To my surprise he was very angry, and reproved me in words which were quite savage for my curiosity. It was the first time such a thing had happened, and I was deeply hurt. I endeavoured to explain that it was a mere accident that I had touched the box, but all the evening I was conscious that he looked at me harshly and that the incident was rankling in his mind.\" Mr. Bennett drew a little diary book from his pocket. \"That was on July 2d,\" said he.\n\n\"You are certainly an admirable witness,\" said Holmes. \"I may need some of these dates which you have noted.\"\n\n\"I learned method among other things from my great teacher. From the time that I observed abnormality in his behaviour I felt that it was my duty to study his case. Thus I have it here that it was on that very day, July 2d, that Roy attacked the professor as he came from his study into the hall. Again, on July 11th, there was a scene of the same sort, and then I have a note of yet another upon July 20th. After that we had to banish Roy to the stables. He was a dear, affectionate animal\u2014but I fear I weary you.\"\n\nMr. Bennett spoke in a tone of reproach, for it was very clear that Holmes was not listening. His face was rigid and his eyes gazed abstract-edly at the ceiling. With an effort he recovered himself.\n\n\"Singular! Most singular!\" he murmured. \"These details were new to me, Mr. Bennett. I think we have now fairly gone over the old ground, have we not? But you spoke of some fresh developments.\"\n\nThe pleasant, open face of our visitor clouded over, shadowed by some grim remembrance. \"What I speak of occurred the night before last,\" said he. \"I was lying awake about two in the morning, when I was aware of a dull muffled sound coming from the passage. I opened my door and peeped out. I should explain that the professor sleeps at the end of the passage\u2014\"\n\n\"The date being\u2014?\" asked Holmes.\n\nOur visitor was clearly annoyed at so irrelevant an interruption.\n\n\"I have said, sir, that it was the night before last\u2014that is, September 4th.\"\n\nHolmes nodded and smiled.\n\n\"Pray continue,\" said he.\n\n\"He sleeps at the end of the passage and would have to pass my door in order to reach the staircase. It was a really terrifying experience, Mr. Holmes. I think that I am as strong-nerved as my neighbours, but I was shaken by what I saw. The passage was dark save that one window halfway along it threw a patch of light. I could see that something was coming along the passage, something dark and crouching. Then suddenly it emerged into the light, and I saw that it was he. He was crawling, Mr. Holmes\u2014crawling! He was not quite on his hands and knees. I should rather say on his hands and feet, with his face sunk between his hands. Yet he seemed to move with ease. I was so paralyzed by the sight that it was not until he had reached my door that I was able to step forward and ask if I could assist him. His answer was extraordinary. He sprang up, spat out some atrocious word at me, and hurried on past me, and down the staircase. I waited about for an hour, but he did not come back. It must have been daylight before he regained his room.\"\n\n\"Well, Watson, what make you of that?\" asked Holmes with the air of the pathologist who presents a rare specimen.\n\n\"Lumbago, possibly. I have known a severe attack make a man walk in just such a way, and nothing would be more trying to the temper.\"\n\n\"Good, Watson! You always keep us flat-footed on the ground. But we can hardly accept lumbago, since he was able to stand erect in a moment.\"\n\n\"He was never better in health,\" said Bennett. \"In fact, he is stronger than I have known him for years. But there are the facts, Mr. Holmes. It is not a case in which we can consult the police, and yet we are utterly at our wit's end as to what to do, and we feel in some strange way that we are drifting towards disaster. Edith\u2014Miss Presbury\u2014feels as I do, that we cannot wait passively any longer.\"\n\n\"It is certainly a very curious and suggestive case. What do you think, Watson?\"\n\n\"Speaking as a medical man,\" said I, \"it appears to be a case for an alienist. The old gentleman's cerebral processes were disturbed by the love affair. He made a journey abroad in the hope of breaking himself of the passion. His letters and the box may be connected with some other private transaction\u2014a loan, perhaps, or share certificates, which are in the box.\"\n\n\"And the wolfhound no doubt disapproved of the financial bargain. No, no, Watson, there is more in it than this. Now, I can only suggest\u2014\"\n\nWhat Sherlock Holmes was about to suggest will never be known, for at this moment the door opened and a young lady was shown into the room. As she appeared Mr. Bennett sprang up with a cry and ran forward with his hands out to meet those which she had herself outstretched.\n\n\"Edith, dear! Nothing the matter, I hope?\"\n\n\"I felt I must follow you. Oh, Jack, I have been so dreadfully frightened! It is awful to be there alone.\"\n\n\"Mr. Holmes, this is the young lady I spoke of. This is my fianc\u00e9e.\"\n\n\"We were gradually coming to that conclusion, were we not, Watson?\" Holmes answered with a smile. \"I take it, Miss Presbury, that there is some fresh development in the case, and that you thought we should know?\"\n\nOur new visitor, a bright, handsome girl of a conventional English type, smiled back at Holmes as she seated herself beside Mr. Bennett.\n\n\"When I found Mr. Bennett had left his hotel I thought I should probably find him here. Of course, he had told me that he would consult you. But, oh, Mr. Holmes, can you do nothing for my poor father?\"\n\n\"I have hopes, Miss Presbury, but the case is still obscure. Perhaps what you have to say may throw some fresh light upon it.\"\n\n\"It was last night, Mr. Holmes. He had been very strange all day. I am sure that there are times when he has no recollection of what he does. He lives as in a strange dream. Yesterday was such a day. It was not my father with whom I lived. His outward shell was there, but it was not really he.\"\n\n\"Tell me what happened.\"\n\n\"I was awakened in the night by the dog barking most furiously. Poor Roy, he is chained now near the stable. I may say that I always sleep with my door locked; for, as Jack\u2014as Mr. Bennett\u2014will tell you, we all have a feeling of impending danger. My room is on the second floor. It happened that the blind was up in my window, and there was bright moonlight outside. As I lay with my eyes fixed upon the square of light, listening to the frenzied barkings of the dog, I was amazed to my father's face looking in at me. Mr. Holmes, I nearly died of surprise and horror. There it was pressed against the windowpane, and one hand seemed to be raised as if to push up the window. If that window had opened, I think I should have gone mad. It was no delusion, Mr. Holmes. Don't deceive yourself by thinking so. I dare say it was twenty seconds or so that I lay paralyzed and watched the face. Then it vanished, but I could not\u2014I could not spring out of bed and look out after it. I lay cold and shivering till morning. At breakfast he was sharp and fierce in manner, and made no allusion to the adventure of the night. Neither did I, but I gave an excuse for coming to town\u2014and here I am.\"\n\nHolmes looked thoroughly surprised at Miss Presbury's narrative.\n\n\"My dear young lady, you say that your room is on second floor. Is there a long ladder in the garden?\"\n\n\"No, Mr. Holmes, that is the amazing part of it. There is no possible way of reaching the window\u2014and yet he was there.\"\n\n\"The date being September 5th,\" said Holmes. \"That certainly complicates matters.\"\n\nIt was the young lady's turn to look surprised. \"This is the second time that you have alluded to the date, Mr. Holmes,\" said Bennett. \"Is it possible that it has any bearing upon the case?\"\n\n\"It is possible\u2014very possible\u2014and yet I have not my full material at present.\"\n\n\"Possibly you are thinking of the connection between insanity and phases of the moon?\"\n\n\"No, I assure you. It was quite a different line of thought. Possibly you can leave your notebook with me, and I will check the dates. Now I think, Watson, that our line of action is perfectly clear. This young lady has informed us\u2014and I have the greatest confidence in her intuition\u2014that her father remembers little or nothing which occurs upon certain dates. We will therefore call upon him as if he had given us an appointment upon such a date. He will put it down to his own lack of memory. Thus we will open our campaign by having a good close view of him.\"\n\n\"That is excellent,\" said Mr. Bennett. \"I warn you, however, that the professor is irascible and violent at times.\"\n\nHolmes smiled. \"There are reasons why we should come at once\u2014very cogent reasons if my theories hold good. To-morrow, Mr. Bennett, will certainly see us in Camford. There is, if I remember right, an inn called the Chequers where the port used to be above mediocrity and the linen was above reproach. I think, Watson, that our lot for the next few days might lie in less pleasant places.\"\n\nMonday morning found us on our way to the famous university town\u2014an easy effort on the part of Holmes, who had no roots to pull up, but one which involved frantic planning and hurrying on my part, as my practice was by this time not inconsiderable. Holmes made no allusion to the case until after we had deposited our suitcases at the ancient hostel of which he had spoken.\n\n\"I think, Watson, that we can catch the professor just before lunch. He lectures at eleven and should have an interval at home.\"\n\n\"What possible excuse have we for calling?\"\n\nHolmes glanced at his notebook.\n\n\"There was a period of excitement upon August 26th. We will assume that he is a little hazy as to what he does at such times. If we insist that we are there by appointment I think he will hardly venture to contradict us. Have you the effrontery necessary to put it through?\"\n\n\"We can but try.\"\n\n\"Excellent, Watson! Compound of the Busy Bee and Excelsior. We can but try\u2014the motto of the firm. A friendly native will surely guide us.\"\n\nSuch a one on the back of a smart hansom swept us past a row of ancient colleges and, finally turning into a tree-lined drive, pulled up at the door of a charming house, girt round with lawns and covered with purple wisteria. Professor Presbury was certainly surrounded with every sign not only of comfort but of luxury. Even as we pulled up, a grizzled head appeared at the front window, and we were aware of a pair of keen eyes from under shaggy brows which surveyed us through large horn glasses. A moment later we were actually in his sanctum, and the mysterious scientist, whose vagaries had brought us from London, was standing before us. There was certainly no sign of eccentricity either in his manner or appearance, for he was a portly, large-featured man, grave, tall, and frock-coated, with the dignity of bearing which a lecturer needs. His eyes were his most remarkable feature, keen, observant, and clever to the verge of cunning.\n\nHe looked at our cards. \"Pray sit down gentlemen. What can I do for you?\"\n\nMr. Holmes smiled amiably.\n\n\"It was the question which I was about to put to you, Professor.\"\n\n\"To me, sir!\"\n\n\"Possibly there is some mistake. I heard through a second person that Professor Presbury of Camford had need of my services.\"\n\n\"Oh, indeed!\" It seemed to me that there was a malicious sparkle in the intense gray eyes. \"You heard that, did you? May I ask the name of your informant?\"\n\n\"I am sorry, Professor, but the matter was rather confidential. If I have made a mistake there is no harm done. I can only express my regret.\"\n\n\"Not at all. I should wish to go further into this matter. It interests me. Have you any scrap of writing, any letter or telegram, to bear out your assertion?\"\n\n\"No, I have not.\"\n\n\"I presume that you do not go so far as to assert that I summoned you?\"\n\n\"I would rather answer no questions,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"No, I dare say not,\" said the professor with asperity. \"However, that particular one can be answered very easily without your aid.\"\n\nHe walked across the room to the bell. Our London friend, Mr. Bennett, answered the call.\n\n\"Come in, Mr. Bennett. These two gentlemen have come from London under the impression that they have been summoned. You handle all my correspondence. Have you a note of anything going to a person named Holmes?\"\n\n\"No, sir,\" Bennett answered with a flush.\n\n\"That is conclusive,\" said the professor, glaring angrily at my companion. \"Now, sir\"\u2014he leaned forward with his two hands upon the table\u2014\"it seems to me that your position is a very questionable one.\"\n\nHolmes shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"I can only repeat that I am sorry that we have made a needless intrusion.\"\n\n\"Hardly enough, Mr. Holmes!\" the old man cried in a high screaming voice, with extraordinary malignancy upon his face. He got between us and the door as he spoke, and he shook his two hands at us with furious passion. \"You can hardly get out of it so easily as that.\" His face was convulsed, and he grinned and gibbered at us in his senseless rage. I am convinced that we should have had to fight our way out of the room if Mr. Bennett had not intervened.\n\n\"My dear Professor,\" he cried, \"consider your position! Consider the scandal at the university! Mr. Holmes is a well-known man. You cannot possibly treat him with such discourtesy.\"\n\nSulkily our host\u2014if I may call him so\u2014cleared the path to the door. We were glad to find ourselves outside the house and in the quiet of the tree-lined drive. Holmes seemed greatly amused by the episode.\n\n\"Our learned friend's nerves are somewhat out of order,\" said he. \"Perhaps our intrusion was a little crude, and yet we have gained that personal contact which I desired. But, dear me, Watson, he is surely at our heels. The villain still pursues us.\"\n\nThere were the sounds of running feet behind, but it was, to my relief, not the formidable professor but his assistant who appeared round the curve of the drive. He came panting up to us.\n\n\"I am so sorry, Mr. Holmes. I wished to apologize.\"\n\n\"My dear sir, there is no need. It is all in the way of professional experience.\"\n\n\"I have never seen him in a more dangerous mood. But he grows more sinister. You can understand now why his daughter and I are alarmed. And yet his mind is perfectly clear.\"\n\n\"Too clear!\" said Holmes. \"That was my miscalculation. It is evident that his memory is much more reliable than I had thought. By the way, can we, before we go, see the window of Miss Presbury's room?\"\n\nMr. Bennett pushed his way through some shrubs, and we had a view of the side of the house.\n\n\"It is there. The second on the left.\"\n\n\"Dear me, it seems hardly accessible. And yet you will observe that there is a creeper below and a water-pipe above which give some foothold.\"\n\n\"I could not climb it myself,\" said Mr. Bennett.\n\n\"Very likely. It would certainly be a dangerous exploit for any normal man.\"\n\n\"There was one other thing I wish to tell you, Mr. Holmes. I have the address of the man in London to whom the professor writes. He seems to have written this morning, and I got it from his blotting-paper. It is an ignoble position for a trusted secretary, but what else can I do?\"\n\nHolmes glanced at the paper and put it into his pocket.\n\n\"Dorak\u2014a curious name. Slavonic, I imagine. Well, it is an important link in the chain. We return to London this afternoon, Mr. Bennett. I see no good purpose to be served by our remaining. We cannot arrest the professor because he has done no crime, nor can we place him under constraint, for he cannot be proved to be mad. No action is as yet possible.\"\n\n\"Then what on earth are we to do?\"\n\n\"A little patience, Mr. Bennett. Things will soon develop. Unless I am mistaken, next Tuesday may mark a crisis. Certainly we shall be in Camford on that day. Meanwhile, the general position is undeniably unpleasant, and if Miss Presbury can prolong her visit\u2014\"\n\n\"That is easy.\"\n\n\"Then let her stay till we can assure her that all danger is past. Meanwhile, let him have his way and do not cross him. So long as he is in a good humour all is well.\"\n\n\"There he is!\" said Bennett in a startled whisper. Looking between the branches we saw the tall, erect figure emerge from the hall door and look around him. He stood leaning forward, his hands swinging straight before him, his head turning from side to side. The secretary with a last wave slipped off among the trees, and we saw him presently rejoin his employer, the two entering the house together in what seemed to be animated and even excited conversation.\n\n\"I expect the old gentleman has been putting two and two together,\" said Holmes as we walked hotelward. \"He struck me as having a particularly clear and logical brain from the little I saw of him. Explosive, no doubt, but then from his point of view he has something to explode about if detectives are put on his track and he suspects his own household of doing it. I rather fancy that friend Bennett is in for an uncomfortable time.\"\n\nHolmes stopped at a post-office and sent off a telegram on our way. The answer reached us in the evening, and he tossed it across to me.\n\n\u2002Have visited the Commercial Road and seen Dorak. Suave person,\n\n\u2002Bohemian, elderly. Keeps large general store.\n\n\u2002MERCER.\n\n\"Mercer is since your time,\" said Holmes. \"He is my general utility man who looks up routine business. It was important to know something of the man with whom our professor was so secretly corresponding. His nationality connects up with the Prague visit.\"\n\n\"Thank goodness that something connects with something,\" said I. \"At present we seem to be faced by a long series of inexplicable incidents with no bearing upon each other. For example, what possible connection can there be between an angry wolfhound and a visit to Bohemia, or either of them with a man crawling down a passage at night? As to your dates, that is the biggest mystification of all.\"\n\nHolmes smiled and rubbed his hands. We were, I may say, seated in the old sitting-room of the ancient hotel, with a bottle of the famous vintage of which Holmes had spoken on the table between us.\n\n\"Well, now, let us take the dates first,\" said he, his fingertips together and his manner as if he were addressing a class. \"This excellent young man's diary shows that there was trouble upon July 2d, and from then onward it seems to have been at nine-day intervals, with, so far as I remember, only one exception. Thus the last outbreak upon Friday was on September 3d, which also falls into the series, as did August 26th, which preceded it. The thing is beyond coincidence.\"\n\nI was forced to agree.\n\n\"Let us, then, form the provisional theory that every nine days the professor takes some strong drug which has a passing but highly poisonous effect. His naturally violent nature is intensified by it. He learned to take this drug while he was in Prague, and is now supplied with it by a Bohemian intermediary in London. This all hangs together, Watson!\"\n\n\"But the dog, the face at the window, the creeping man in the passage?\"\n\n\"Well, well, we have made a beginning. I should not expect any fresh developments until next Tuesday. In the meantime we can only keep in touch with friend Bennett and enjoy the amenities of this charming town.\"\n\nIn the morning Mr. Bennett slipped round to bring us the latest report. As Holmes had imagined, times had not been easy with him. Without exactly accusing him of being responsible for our presence, the professor had been very rough and rude in his speech, and evidently felt some strong grievance. This morning he was quite himself again, however, and had delivered his usual brilliant lecture to a crowded class. \"Apart from his queer fits,\" said Bennett, \"he has actually more energy and vitality than I can ever remember, nor was his brain ever clearer. But it's not he\u2014it's never the man whom we have known.\"\n\n\"I don't think you have anything to fear now for a week a least,\" Holmes answered. \"I am a busy man, and Dr. Watson has his patients to attend to. Let us agree that we meet here at this hour next Tuesday, and I shall be surprised if before we leave you again we are not able to explain, even if we cannot perhaps put an end to, your troubles. Meanwhile, keep us posted in what occurs.\"\n\nI saw nothing of my friend for the next few days, but on the following Monday evening I had a short note asking me to meet him next day at the train. From what he told me as we travelled up to Camford all was well, the peace of the professor's house had been unruffled, and his own conduct perfectly normal. This also was the report which was given us by Mr. Bennett himself when he called upon us that evening at our old quarters in the Chequers. \"He heard from his London correspondent to-day. There was a letter and there was a small packet, each with the cross under the stamp which warned me not to touch them. There has been nothing else.\"\n\n\"That may prove quite enough,\" said Holmes grimly. \"Now, Mr. Bennett, we shall, I think, come to some conclusion to-night. If my deductions are correct we should have an opportunity of bringing matters to a head. In order to do so it is necessary to hold the professor under observation. I would suggest, therefore, that you remain awake and on the lookout. Should you hear him pass your door, do not interrupt him, but follow him as discreetly as you can. Dr. Watson and I will not be far off. By the way, where is the key of that little box of which you spoke?\"\n\n\"Upon his watch-chain.\"\n\n\"I fancy our researches must lie in that direction. At the worst the lock should not be very formidable. Have you any other able-bodied man on the premises?\"\n\n\"There is the coachman, Macphail.\"\n\n\"Where does he sleep?\"\n\n\"Over the stables.\"\n\n\"We might possibly want him. Well, we can do no more until we see how things develop, Good-bye\u2014but I expect that we shall see you before morning.\"\n\nIt was nearly midnight before we took our station among some bushes immediately opposite the hall door of the professor. It was a fine night, but chilly, and we were glad of our warm overcoats. There was a breeze, and clouds were scudding across the sky, obscuring from time to time the half-moon. It would have been a dismal vigil were it not for the expectation and excitement which carried us along, and the assurance of my comrade that we had probably reached the end of the strange sequence of events which had engaged our attention.\n\n\"If the cycle of nine days holds good then we shall have the professor at his worst to-night,\" said Holmes. \"The fact that these strange symptoms began after his visit to Prague, that he is in secret correspondence with a Bohemian dealer in London, who presumably represents someone in Prague, and that he received a packet from him this very day, all point in one direction. What he takes and why he takes it are still beyond our ken, but that it emanates in some way from Prague is clear enough. He takes it under definite directions which regulate this ninth-day system, which was the first point which attracted my attention. But his symptoms are most remarkable. Did you observe his knuckles?\"\n\nI had to confess that I did not.\n\n\"Thick and horny in a way which is quite new in my experience. Always look at the hands first, Watson. Then cuffs, trouser-knees, and boots. Very curious knuckles which can only be explained by the mode of progression observed by\u2014\" Holmes paused and suddenly clapped his hand to his forehead. \"Oh, Watson, Watson, what a fool I have been! It seems incredible, and yet it must be true. All points in one direction. How could I miss seeing the connection of ideas? Those knuckles\u2014how could I have passed those knuckles? And the dog! And the ivy! It's surely time that I disappeared into that little farm of my dreams. Look out, Watson! Here he is! We shall have the chance of seeing for ourselves.\"\n\nThe hall door had slowly opened, and against the lamplit background we saw the tall figure of Professor Presbury. He was clad in his dressing gown. As he stood outlined in the doorway he was erect but leaning forward with dangling arms, as when we saw him last.\n\nNow he stepped forward into the drive, and an extraordinary change came over him. He sank down into a crouching position and moved along upon his hands and feet, skipping every now and then as if he were overflowing with energy and vitality. He moved along the face of the house and then round the corner. As he disappeared Bennett slipped through the hall door and softly followed him.\n\n\"Come, Watson, come!\" cried Holmes, and we stole as softly as we could through the bushes until we had gained a spot whence we could see the other side of the house, which was bathed in the light of the half-moon. The professor was clearly visible crouching at the foot of the ivy-covered wall. As we watched him he suddenly began with incredible agility to ascend it. From branch to branch he sprang, sure of foot and firm of grasp, climbing apparently in mere joy at his own powers, with no definite object in view. With his dressing-gown flapping on each side of him, he looked like some huge bat glued against the side of his own house, a great square dark patch upon the moonlit wall. Presently he tired of this amusement, and, dropping from branch to branch, he squatted down into the old attitude and moved towards the stables, creeping along in the same strange way as before. The wolfhound was out now, barking furiously, and more excited than ever when it actually caught sight of its master. It was straining on its chain and quivering with eagerness and rage. The professor squatted down very deliberately just out of reach of the hound and began to provoke it in every possible way. He took handfuls of pebbles from the drive and threw them in the dog's face, prodded him with a stick which he had picked up, flicked his hands about only a few inches from the gaping mouth, and endeavoured in every way to increase the animal's fury, which was already beyond all control. In all our adventures I do not know that I have ever seen a more strange sight than this impassive and still dignified figure crouching frog-like upon the ground and goading to a wilder exhibition of passion the maddened hound, which ramped and raged in front of him, by all manner of ingenious and calculated cruelty.\n\nAnd then in a moment it happened! It was not the chain that broke, but it was the collar that slipped, for it had been made for a thick-necked Newfoundland. We heard the rattle of falling metal, and the next instant dog and man were rolling on the ground together, the one roaring in rage, the other screaming in a strange shrill falsetto of terror. It was a very narrow thing for the professor's life. The savage creature had him fairly by the throat, its fangs had bitten deep, and he was senseless before we could reach them and drag the two apart. It might have been a dangerous task for us, but Bennett's voice and presence brought the great wolfhound instantly to reason. The uproar had brought the sleepy and astonished coachman from his room above the stables. \"I'm not surprised,\" said he, shaking his head. \"I've seen him at it before. I knew the dog would get him sooner or later.\"\n\nThe hound was secured, and together we carried the professor up to his room, where Bennett, who had a medical degree, helped me to dress his torn throat. The sharp teeth had passed dangerously near the carotid artery, and the h\u00e6morrhage was serious. In half an hour the danger was past, I had given the patient an injection of morphia, and he had sunk into deep sleep. Then, and only then, were we able to look at each other and to take stock of the situation.\n\n\"I think a first-class surgeon should see him,\" said I.\n\n\"For God's sake, no!\" cried Bennett. \"At present the scandal is confined to our own household. It is safe with us. If it gets beyond these walls it will never stop. Consider his position at the university, his European reputation, the feelings of his daughter.\"\n\n\"Quite so,\" said Holmes. \"I think it may be quite possible to keep the matter to ourselves, and also to prevent its recurrence now that we have a free hand. The key from the watch-chain, Mr. Bennett. Macphail will guard the patient and let us know if there is any change. Let us see what we can find in the professor's mysterious box.\"\n\nThere was not much, but there was enough\u2014an empty phial, another nearly full, a hypodermic syringe, several letters in a crabbed, foreign hand. The marks on the envelopes showed that they were those which had disturbed the routine of the secretary, and each was dated from the Commercial Road and signed \"A. Dorak.\" They were mere invoices to say that a fresh bottle was being sent to Professor Presbury, or receipt to acknowledge money. There was one other envelope, however, in a more educated hand and bearing the Austrian stamp with the postmark of Prague. \"Here we have our material!\" cried Holmes as he tore out the enclosure.\n\n\u2002HONOURED COLLEAGUE [it ran]:\n\n\u2002Since your esteemed visit I have thought much of your case, and though in your circumstances there are some special reasons for the treatment, I would none the less enjoin caution, as my results have shown that it is not without danger of a kind.\n\n\u2002It is possible that the serum of anthropoid would have been better. I have, as I explained to you, used black-faced langur because a specimen was accessible. Langur is, of course, a crawler and climber, while anthropoid walks erect and is in all ways nearer.\n\n\u2002I beg you to take every possible precaution that there be no premature revelation of the process. I have one other client in England, and Dorak is my agent for both.\n\n\u2002Weekly reports will oblige.\n\n\u2002Yours with high esteem,\n\n\u2002H. LOWENSTEIN.\n\nLowenstein! The name brought back to me the memory of some snippet from a newspaper which spoke of an obscure scientist who was striving in some unknown way for the secret of rejuvenescence and the elixir of life. Lowenstein of Prague! Lowenstein with the wondrous strength-giving serum, tabooed by the profession because he refused to reveal its source. In a few words I said what I remembered. Bennett had taken a manual of zoology from the shelves. \"'Langur,'\" he read, \" 'the great black-faced monkey of the Himalayan slopes, biggest and most human of climbing monkeys.' Many details are added. Well, thanks to you, Mr. Holmes, it is very clear that we have traced the evil to its source.\"\n\n\"The real source,\" said Holmes, \"lies, of course, in that untimely love affair which gave our impetuous professor the idea that he could only gain his wish by turning himself into a younger man. When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it. The highest type of man may revert to the animal if he leaves the straight road of destiny.\" He sat musing for a little with the phial in his hand, looking at the clear liquid within. \"When I have written to this man and told him that I hold him criminally responsible for the poisons which he circulates, we will have no more trouble. But it may recur. Others may find a better way. There is danger there\u2014a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?\" Suddenly the dreamer disappeared, and Holmes, the man of action, sprang from his chair. \"I think there is nothing more to be said, Mr. Bennett. The various incidents will now fit themselves easily into the general scheme. The dog, of course, was aware of the change far more quickly than you. His smell would insure that. It was the monkey, not the professor, whom Roy attacked, just as it was the monkey who teased Roy. Climbing was a joy to the creature, and it was a mere chance, I take it, that the pastime brought him to the young lady's window. There is an early train to town, Watson, but I think we shall just have time for a cup of tea at the Chequers before we catch it.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE LION'S MANE", + "text": "It is a most singular thing that a problem which was certainly as abstruse and unusual as any which I have faced in my long professional career should have come to me after my retirement, and be brought, as it were, to my very door. It occurred after my withdrawal to my little Sussex home, when I had given myself up entirely to that soothing life of Nature for which I had so often yearned during the long years spent amid the gloom of London. At this period of my life the good Watson had passed almost beyond my ken. An occasional week-end visit was the most that I ever saw of him. Thus I must act as my own chronicler. Ah! had he but been with me, how much he might have made of so wonderful a happening and of my eventual triumph against every difficulty! As it is, however, I must needs tell my tale in my own plain way, showing by my words each step upon the difficult road which lay before me as I searched for the mystery of the Lion's Mane.\n\nMy villa is situated upon the southern slope of the Downs, commanding a great view of the Channel. At this point the coast-line is entirely of chalk cliffs, which can only be descended by a single, long, tortuous path, which is steep and slippery. At the bottom of the path lie a hundred yards of pebbles and shingle, even when the tide is at full. Here and there, however, there are curves and hollows which make splendid swimming-pools filled afresh with each flow. This admirable beach extends for some miles in each direction, save only at one point where the little cove and village of Fulworth break the line.\n\nMy house is lonely. I, my old housekeeper, and my bees have the estate all to ourselves. Half a mile off, however, is Harold Stackhurst's well-known coaching establishment, The Gables, quite a large place, which contains some score of young fellows preparing for various professions, with a staff of several masters. Stackhurst himself was a well-known rowing Blue in his day, and an excellent all-round scholar. He and I were always friendly from the day I came to the coast, and he was the one man who was on such terms with me that we could drop in on each other in the evenings without an invitation.\n\nTowards the end of July 1907, there was a severe gale, the wind blowing up-channel, heaping the seas to the base of the cliffs and leaving a lagoon at the turn of the tide. On the morning of which I speak the wind had abated, and all Nature was newly washed and fresh. It was impossible to work upon so delightful a day, and I strolled out before breakfast to enjoy the exquisite air. I walked along the cliff path which led to the steep descent to the beach. As I walked I heard a shout behind me, and there was Harold Stackhurst waving his hand in cheery greeting.\n\n\"What a morning, Mr. Holmes! I thought I should see you out.\"\n\n\"Going for a swim, I see.\"\n\n\"At your old tricks again,\" he laughed, patting his bulging pocket. \"Yes. McPherson started early, and I expect I may find him there.\"\n\nFitzroy McPherson was the science master, a fine upstanding young fellow whose life had been crippled by heart trouble following rheumatic fever. He was a natural athlete, however, and excelled in every game which did not throw too great a strain upon him. Summer and winter he went for his swim, and, as I am a swimmer myself, I have often joined him.\n\nAt this moment we saw the man himself. His head showed above the edge of the cliff where the path ends. Then his whole figure appeared at the top, staggering like a drunken man. The next instant he threw up his hands and, with a terrible cry, fell upon his face. Stackhurst and I rushed forward\u2014it may have been fifty yards\u2014and turned him on his back. He was obviously dying. Those glazed sunken eyes and dreadful livid cheeks could mean nothing else. One glimmer of life came into his face for an instant, and he uttered two or three words with an eager air of warning. They were slurred and indistinct, but to my ear the last of them, which burst in a shriek from his lips, were \"the Lion's Mane.\" It was utterly irrelevant and unintelligible, and yet I could twist the sound into no other sense. Then he half raised himself from the ground, threw his arms into the air, and fell forward on his side. He was dead.\n\nMy companion was paralyzed by the sudden horror of it, but I, as may well be imagined, had every sense on the alert. And I had need, for it was speedily evident that we were in the presence of an extraordinary case. The man was dressed only in his Burberry overcoat, his trousers, and an unlaced pair of canvas shoes. As he fell over, his Burberry, which had been simply thrown round his shoulders, slipped off, exposing his trunk. We stared at it in amazement. His back was covered with dark red lines as though he had been terribly flogged by a thin wire scourge. The instrument with which this punishment had been inflicted was clearly flexible, for the long, angry weals curved round his shoulders and ribs. There was blood dripping down his chin, for he had bitten through his lower lip in the paroxysm of his agony. His drawn and distorted face told how terrible that agony had been.\n\nI was kneeling and Stackhurst standing by the body when a shadow fell across us, and we found that Ian Murdoch was by our side. Murdoch was the mathematical coach at the establishment, a tall, dark, thin man, so taciturn and aloof that none can be said to have been his friend. He seemed to live in some high, abstract region of surds and conic sections, with little to connect him with ordinary life. He was looked upon as an oddity by the students, and would have been their butt, but there was some strange outlandish blood in the man, which showed itself not only in his coal-black eyes and swarthy face but also in occasional outbreaks of temper, which could only be described as ferocious. On one occasion, being plagued by a little dog belonging to McPherson, he had caught the creature up and hurled it through the plate-glass window, an action for which Stackhurst would certainly have given him his dismissal had he not been a very valuable teacher. Such was the strange complex man who now appeared beside us. He seemed to be honestly shocked at the sight before him, though the incident of the dog may show that there was no great sympathy between the dead man and himself.\n\n\"Poor fellow! Poor fellow! What can I do? How can I help?\"\n\n\"Were you with him? Can you tell us what has happened?\"\n\n\"No, no, I was late this morning. I was not on the beach at all. I have come straight from The Gables. What can I do?\"\n\n\"You can hurry to the police-station at Fulworth. Report the matter at once.\"\n\nWithout a word he made off at top speed, and I proceeded to take the matter in hand, while Stackhurst, dazed at this tragedy, remained by the body. My first task naturally was to note who was on the beach. From the top of the path I could see the whole sweep of it, and it was absolutely deserted save that two or three dark figures could be seen far away moving towards the village of Fulworth. Having satisfied myself upon this point, I walked slowly down the path. There was clay or soft marl mixed with the chalk, and every here and there I saw the same footstep, both ascending and descending. No one else had gone down to the beach by this track that morning. At one place I observed the print of an open hand with the fingers towards the incline. This could only mean that poor McPherson had fallen as he ascended. There were rounded depressions, too, which suggested that he had come down upon his knees more than once. At the bottom of the path was the considerable lagoon left by the retreating tide. At the side of it McPherson had undressed, for there lay his towel on a rock. It was folded and dry, so that it would seem that, after all, he had never entered the water. Once or twice as I hunted round amid the hard shingle I came on little patches of sand where the print of his canvas shoe, and also of his naked foot, could be seen. The latter fact proved that he had made all ready to bathe, though the towel indicated that he had not actually done so.\n\nAnd here was the problem clearly defined\u2014as strange a one as had ever confronted me. The man had not been on the beach more than a quarter of an hour at the most. Stackhurst had followed him from The Gables, so there could be no doubt about that. He had gone to bathe and had stripped, as the naked footsteps showed. Then he had suddenly huddled on his clothes again\u2014they were all dishevelled and unfastened\u2014and he had returned without bathing, or at any rate without drying himself. And the reason for his change of purpose had been that he had been scourged in some savage, inhuman fashion, tortured until he bit his lip through in his agony, and was left with only strength enough to crawl away and to die. Who had done this barbarous deed? There were, it is true, small grottos and caves in the base of the cliffs, but the low sun shone directly into them, and there was no place for concealment. Then, again, there were those distant figures on the beach. They seemed too far away to have been connected with the crime, and the broad lagoon in which McPherson had intended to bathe lay between him and them, lapping up to the rocks. On the sea two or three fishing-boats were at no great distance. Their occupants might be examined at our leisure. There were several roads for inquiry, but none which led to any very obvious goal.\n\nWhen I at last returned to the body I found that a little group of wondering folk had gathered round it. Stackhurst was, of course, still there, and Ian Murdoch had just arrived with Anderson, the village constable, a big, ginger-moustached man of the slow, solid Sussex breed\u2014a breed which covers much good sense under a heavy, silent exterior. He listened to everything, took note of all we said, and finally drew me aside.\n\n\"I'd be glad of your advice, Mr. Holmes. This is a big thing for me to handle, and I'll hear of it from Lewes if I go wrong.\"\n\nI advised him to send for his immediate superior, and for a doctor; also to allow nothing to be moved, and as few fresh footmarks as possible to be made, until they came. In the meantime I searched the dead man's pockets. There were his handkerchief, a large knife, and a small folding card-case. From this projected a slip of paper, which I unfolded and handed to the constable. There was written on it in a scrawling, feminine hand:\n\nI will be there, you may be sure.\n\nMAUDIE.\n\nIt read like a love affair, an assignation, though when and where were a blank. The constable replaced it in the card-case and returned it with the other things to the pockets of the Burberry. Then, as nothing more suggested itself, I walked back to my house for breakfast, having first arranged that the base of the cliffs should be thoroughly searched.\n\nStackhurst was round in an hour or two to tell me that the body had been removed to The Gables, where the inquest would be held. He brought with him some serious and definite news. As I expected, nothing had been found in the small caves below the cliff, but he had examined the papers in McPherson's desk, and there were several which showed an intimate correspondence with a certain Miss Maud Bellamy, of Fulworth. We had then established the identity of the writer of the note.\n\n\"The police have the letters,\" he explained. \"I could not bring them. But there is no doubt that it was a serious love affair. I see no reason, however, to connect it with that horrible happening save, indeed, that the lady had made an appointment with him.\"\n\n\"But hardly at a bathing-pool which all of you were in the habit of using,\" I remarked.\n\n\"It is mere chance,\" said he, \"that several of the students were not with McPherson.\"\n\n\"Was it mere chance?\"\n\nStackhurst knit his brows in thought.\n\n\"Ian Murdoch held them back,\" said he. \"He would insist upon some algebraic demonstration before breakfast. Poor chap, he is dreadfully cut up about it all.\"\n\n\"And yet I gather that they were not friends.\"\n\n\"At one time they were not. But for a year or more Murdoch has been as near to McPherson as he ever could be to anyone. He is not of a very sympathetic disposition by nature.\"\n\n\"So I understand. I seem to remember your telling me once about a quarrel over the ill-usage of a dog.\"\n\n\"That blew over all right.\"\n\n\"But left some vindictive feeling, perhaps.\"\n\n\"No, no, I am sure they were real friends.\"\n\n\"Well, then, we must explore the matter of the girl. Do you know her?\"\n\n\"Everyone knows her. She is the beauty of the neighbourhood\u2014a real beauty, Holmes, who would draw attention everywhere. I knew that McPherson was attracted by her, but I had no notion that it had gone so far as these letters would seem to indicate.\"\n\n\"But who is she?\"\n\n\"She is the daughter of old Tom Bellamy who owns all the boats and bathing-cots at Fulworth. He was a fisherman to start with, but is now a man of some substance. He and his son William run the business.\"\n\n\"Shall we walk into Fulworth and see them?\"\n\n\"On what pretext?\"\n\n\"Oh, we can easily find a pretext. After all, this poor man did not ill-use himself in this outrageous way. Some human hand was on the handle of that scourge, if indeed it was a scourge which inflicted the injuries. His circle of acquaintances in this lonely place was surely limited. Let us follow it up in every direction and we can hardly fail to come upon the motive, which in turn should lead us to the criminal.\"\n\nIt would have been a pleasant walk across the thyme-scented downs had our minds not been poisoned by the tragedy we had witnessed. The village of Fulworth lies in a hollow curving in a semicircle round the bay. Behind the old-fashioned hamlet several modern houses have been built upon the rising ground. It was to one of these that Stackhurst guided me.\n\n\"That's The Haven, as Bellamy called it. The one with the corner tower and slate roof. Not bad for a man who started with nothing but\u2014By Jove, look at that!\"\n\nThe garden gate of The Haven had opened and a man had emerged. There was no mistaking that tall, angular, straggling figure. It was Ian Murdoch, the mathematician. A moment later we confronted him upon the road.\n\n\"Hullo!\" said Stackhurst. The man nodded, gave us a sideways glance from his curious dark eyes, and would have passed us, but his principal pulled him up.\n\n\"What were you doing there?\" he asked.\n\nMurdoch's face flushed with anger. \"I am your subordinate, sir, under your roof. I am not aware that I owe you any account of my private actions.\"\n\nStackhurst's nerves were near the surface after all he had endured. Otherwise, perhaps, he would have waited. Now he lost his temper completely.\n\n\"In the circumstances your answer is pure impertinence, Mr. Murdoch.\"\n\n\"Your own question might perhaps come under the same heading.\"\n\n\"This is not the first time that I have had to overlook your insubordinate ways. It will certainly be the last. You will kindly make fresh arrangements for your future as speedily as you can.\"\n\n\"I had intended to do so. I have lost to-day the only person who made The Gables habitable.\"\n\nHe strode off upon his way, while Stackhurst, with angry eyes, stood glaring after him. \"Is he not an impossible, intolerable man?\" he cried.\n\nThe one thing that impressed itself forcibly upon my mind was that Mr. Ian Murdoch was taking the first chance to open a path of escape from the scene of the crime. Suspicion, vague and nebulous, was now beginning to take outline in my mind. Perhaps the visit to the Bellamys might throw some further light upon the matter. Stackhurst pulled himself together, and we went forward to the house.\n\nMr. Bellamy proved to be a middle-aged man with a flaming red beard. He seemed to be in a very angry mood, and his face was soon as florid as his hair.\n\n\"No, sir, I do not desire any particulars. My son here\"\u2014indicating a powerful young man, with a heavy, sullen face, in the corner of the sitting-room\u2014\" is of one mind with me that Mr. McPherson's attentions to Maud were insulting. Yes, sir, the word 'marriage' was never mentioned, and yet there were letters and meetings, and a great deal more of which neither of us could approve. She has no mother, and we are her only guardians. We are determined\u2014\"\n\nBut the words were taken from his mouth by the appearance of the lady herself. There was no gainsaying that she would have graced any assembly in the world. Who could have imagined that so rare a flower would grow from such a root and in such an atmosphere? Women have seldom been an attraction to me, for my brain has always governed my heart, but I could not look upon her perfect clear-cut face, with all the soft freshness of the downlands in her delicate colouring, without realizing that no young man would cross her path unscathed. Such was the girl who had pushed open the door and stood now, wide-eyed and intense, in front of Harold Stackhurst.\n\n\"I know already that Fitzroy is dead,\" she said. \"Do not be afraid to tell me the particulars.\"\n\n\"This other gentleman of yours let us know the news,\" explained the father.\n\n\"There is no reason why my sister should be brought into the matter,\" growled the younger man.\n\nThe sister turned a sharp, fierce look upon him. \"This is my business, William. Kindly leave me to manage it in my own way. By all accounts there has been a crime committed. If I can help to show who did it, it is the least I can do for him who is gone.\"\n\nShe listened to a short account from my companion, with a composed concentration which showed me that she possessed strong character as well as great beauty. Maud Bellamy will always remain in my memory as a most complete and remarkable woman. It seems that she already knew me by sight, for she turned to me at the end.\n\n\"Bring them to justice, Mr. Holmes. You have my sympathy and my help, whoever they may be.\" It seemed to me that she glanced defiantly at her father and brother as she spoke.\n\n\"Thank you,\" said I. \"I value a woman's instinct in such matters. You use the word 'they.' You think that more than one was concerned?\"\n\n\"I knew Mr. McPherson well enough to be aware that he was a brave and a strong man. No single person could ever have inflicted such an outrage upon him.\"\n\n\"Might I have one word with you alone?\"\n\n\"I tell you, Maud, not to mix yourself up in the matter,\" cried her father angrily.\n\nShe looked at me helplessly. \"What can I do?\"\n\n\"The whole world will know the facts presently, so there can be no harm if I discuss them here,\" said I. \"I should have preferred privacy, but if your father will not allow it he must share the deliberations.\" Then I spoke of the note which had been found in the dead man's pocket. \"It is sure to be produced at the inquest. May I ask you to throw any light upon it that you can?\"\n\n\"I see no reason for mystery,\" she answered. \"We were engaged to be married, and we only kept it secret because Fitzroy's uncle, who is very old and said to be dying, might have disinherited him if he had married against his wish. There was no other reason.\"\n\n\"You could have told us,\" growled Mr. Bellamy.\n\n\"So I would, father, if you had ever shown sympathy.\"\n\n\"I object to my girl picking up with men outside her own station.\"\n\n\"It was your prejudice against him which prevented us from telling you. As to this appointment\"\u2014she fumbled in her dress and produced a crumpled note\u2014\"it was in answer to this.\"\n\nDEAREST [ran the message]:\n\nThe old place on the beach just after sunset on Tuesday. It is the only time I can get away.\n\nF. M.\n\n\"Tuesday was to-day, and I had meant to meet him to-night.\"\n\nI turned over the paper. \"This never came by post. How did you get it?\"\n\n\"I would rather not answer that question. It has really nothing to do with the matter which you are investigating. But anything which bears upon that I will most freely answer.\"\n\nShe was as good as her word, but there was nothing which was helpful in our investigation. She had no reason to think that her fiance had any hidden enemy, but she admitted that she had had several warm admirers.\n\n\"May I ask if Mr. Ian Murdoch was one of them?\"\n\nShe blushed and seemed confused.\n\n\"There was a time when I thought he was. But that was all changed when he understood the relations between Fitzroy and myself.\"\n\nAgain the shadow round this strange man seemed to me to be taking more definite shape. His record must be examined. His rooms must be privately searched. Stackhurst was a willing collaborator, for in his mind also suspicions were forming. We returned from our visit to The Haven with the hope that one free end of this tangled skein was already in our hands.\n\nA week passed. The inquest had thrown no light upon the matter and had been adjourned for further evidence. Stackhurst had made discreet inquiry about his subordinate, and there had been a superficial search of his room, but without result. Personally, I had gone over the whole ground again, both physically and mentally, but with no new conclusions. In all my chronicles the reader will find no case which brought me so completely to the limit of my powers. Even my imagination could conceive no solution to the mystery. And then there came the incident of the dog.\n\nIt was my old housekeeper who heard of it first by that strange wireless by which such people collect the news of the countryside.\n\n\"Sad story this, sir, about Mr. McPherson's dog,\" said she one evening.\n\nI do not encourage such conversations, but the words arrested my attention.\n\n\"What of Mr. McPherson's dog?\"\n\n\"Dead, sir. Died of grief for its master.\"\n\n\"Who told you this?\"\n\n\"Why, sir, everyone is talking of it. It took on terrible, and has eaten nothing for a week. Then to-day two of the young gentlemen from The Gables found it dead\u2014down on the beach, sir, at the very place where its master met his end.\"\n\n\"At the very place.\" The words stood out clear in my memory. Some dim perception that the matter was vital rose in my mind. That the dog should die was after the beautiful, faithful nature of dogs. But \"at the very place\"! Why should this lonely beach be fatal to it? Was it possible that it also had been sacrificed to some revengeful feud? Was it possible\u2014? Yes, the perception was dim, but already something was building up in my mind. In a few minutes I was on my way to The Gables, where I found Stackhurst in his study. At my request he sent for Sudbury and Blount, the two students who had found the dog.\n\n\"Yes, it lay on the very edge of the pool,\" said one of them. \"It must have followed the trail of its dead master.\"\n\nI saw the faithful little creature, an Airedale terrier, laid out upon the mat in the hall. The body was stiff and rigid, the eyes projecting, and the limbs contorted. There was agony in every line of it.\n\nFrom The Gables I walked down to the bathing-pool. The sun had sunk and the shadow of the great cliff lay black across the water, which glimmered dully like a sheet of lead. The place was deserted and there was no sign of life save for two sea-birds circling and screaming overhead. In the fading light I could dimly make out the little dog's spoor upon the sand round the very rock on which his master's towel had been laid. For a long time I stood in deep meditation while the shadows grew darker around me. My mind was filled with racing thoughts. You have known what it was to be in a nightmare in which you feel there is some all-important thing for which you search and which you know is there, though it remains forever just beyond your reach. That was how I felt that evening as I stood alone by that place of death. Then at last I turned and walked slowly homeward.\n\nI had just reached the top of the path when it came to me. Like a flash, I remembered the thing for which I had so eagerly and vainly grasped. You will know, or Watson has written in vain, that I hold a vast store of out-of-the-way knowledge without scientific system, but very available for the needs of my work. My mind is like a crowded box-room with packets of all sorts stowed away therein\u2014so many that I may well have but a vague perception of what was there. I had known that there was something which might bear upon this matter. It was still vague, but at least I knew how I could make it clear. It was monstrous, incredible, and yet it was always a possibility. I would test it to the full.\n\nThere is a great garret in my little house which is stuffed with books. It was into this that I plunged and rummaged for an hour. At the end of that time I emerged with a little chocolate and silver volume. Eagerly I turned up the chapter of which I had a dim remembrance. Yes, it was indeed a far-fetched and unlikely proposition, and yet I could not be at rest until I had made sure if it might, indeed, be so. It was late when I retired, with my mind eagerly awaiting the work of the morrow.\n\nBut that work met with an annoying interruption. I had hardly swallowed my early cup of tea and was starting for the beach when I had a call from Inspector Bardle of the Sussex Constabulary\u2014a steady, solid, bovine man with thoughtful eyes, which looked at me now with a very troubled expression.\n\n\"I know your immense experience, sir,\" said he. \"This is quite unofficial, of course, and need go no farther. But I am fairly up against it in this McPherson case. The question is, shall I make an arrest, or shall I not?\"\n\n\"Meaning Mr. Ian Murdoch?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. There is really no one else when you come to think of it. That's the advantage of this solitude. We narrow it down to a very small compass. If he did not do it, then who did?\"\n\n\"What have you against him?\"\n\nHe had gleaned along the same furrows as I had. There was Murdoch's character and the mystery which seemed to hang round the man. His furious bursts of temper, as shown in the incident of the dog. The fact that he had quarrelled with McPherson in the past, and that there was some reason to think that he might have resented his attentions to Miss Bellamy. He had all my points, but no fresh ones, save that Murdoch seemed to be making every preparation for departure.\n\n\"What would my position be if I let him slip away with all this evidence against him?\" The burly, phlegmatic man was sorely troubled in his mind.\n\n\"Consider,\" I said, \"all the essential gaps in your case. On the morning of the crime he can surely prove an alibi. He had been with his scholars till the last moment, and within a few minutes of McPherson's appearance he came upon us from behind. Then bear in mind the absolute impossibility that he could single-handed have inflicted this outrage upon a man quite as strong as himself. Finally, there is this question of the instrument with which these injuries were inflicted.\"\n\n\"What could it be but a scourge or flexible whip of some sort?\"\n\n\"Have you examined the marks?\" I asked.\n\n\"I have seen them. So has the doctor.\"\n\n\"But I have examined them very carefully with a lens. They have peculiarities.\"\n\n\"What are they, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\nI stepped to my bureau and brought out an enlarged photograph. \"This is my method in such cases,\" I explained.\n\n\"You certainly do things thoroughly, Mr. Holmes.\"\n\n\"I should hardly be what I am if I did not. Now let us consider this weal which extends round the right shoulder. Do you observe nothing remarkable?\"\n\n\"I can't say I do.\"\n\n\"Surely it is evident that it is unequal in its intensity. There is a dot of extravasated blood here, and another there. There are similar indications in this other weal down here. What can that mean?\"\n\n\"I have no idea. Have you?\"\n\n\"Perhaps I have. Perhaps I haven't. I may be able to say more soon. Anything which will define what made that mark will bring us a long way towards the criminal.\"\n\n\"It is, of course, an absurd idea,\" said the policeman, \"but if a red-hot net of wire had been laid across the back, then these better marked points would represent where the meshes crossed each other.\"\n\n\"A most ingenious comparison. Or shall we say a very stiff cat-o'-nine-tails with small hard knots upon it?\"\n\n\"By Jove, Mr. Holmes, I think you have hit it.\"\n\n\"Or there may be some very different cause, Mr. Bardle. But your case is far too weak for an arrest. Besides, we have those last words\u2014the 'Lion's Mane.'\"\n\n\"I have wondered whether Ian\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, I have considered that. If the second word had borne any resemblance to Murdoch\u2014but it did not. He gave it almost in a shriek. I am sure that it was 'Mane.'\"\n\n\"Have you no alternative, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Perhaps I have. But I do not care to discuss it until there is something more solid to discuss.\"\n\n\"And when will that be?\"\n\n\"In an hour\u2014possibly less.\"\n\nThe inspector rubbed his chin and looked at me with dubious eyes.\n\n\"I wish I could see what was in your mind, Mr. Holmes. Perhaps it's those fishing-boats.\"\n\n\"No, no, they were too far out.\"\n\n\"Well, then, is it Bellamy and that big son of his? They were not too sweet upon Mr. McPherson. Could they have done him a mischief?\"\n\n\"No, no, you won't draw me until I am ready,\" said I with a smile. \"Now, Inspector, we each have our own work to do. Perhaps if you were to meet me here at midday\u2014\"\n\nSo far we had got when there came the tremendous interruption which was the beginning of the end.\n\nMy outer door was flung open, there were blundering footsteps in the passage, and Ian Murdoch staggered into the room, pallid, dishevelled, his clothes in wild disorder, clawing with his bony hands at the furniture to hold himself erect. \"Brandy! Brandy!\" he gasped, and fell groaning upon the sofa.\n\nHe was not alone. Behind him came Stackhurst, hatless and panting, almost as distrait as his companion.\n\n\"Yes, yes, brandy!\" he cried. \"The man is at his last gasp. It was all I could do to bring him here. He fainted twice upon the way.\"\n\nHalf a tumbler of the raw spirit brought about a wondrous change. He pushed himself up on one arm and swung his coat from his shoulders. \"For God's sake, oil, opium, morphia!\" he cried. \"Anything to ease this infernal agony!\"\n\nThe inspector and I cried out at the sight. There, crisscrossed upon the man's naked shoulder, was the same strange reticulated pattern of red, inflamed lines which had been the death-mark of Fitzroy McPherson.\n\nThe pain was evidently terrible and was more than local, for the sufferer's breathing would stop for a time, his face would turn black, and then with loud gasps he would clap his hand to his heart, while his brow dropped beads of sweat. At any moment he might die. More and more brandy was poured down his throat, each fresh dose bringing him back to life. Pads of cotton-wool soaked in salad-oil seemed to take the agony from the strange wounds. At last his head fell heavily upon the cushion. Exhausted Nature had taken refuge in its last storehouse of vitality. It was half a sleep and half a faint, but at least it was ease from pain.\n\nTo question him had been impossible, but the moment we were assured of his condition Stackhurst turned upon me.\n\n\"My God!\" he cried, \"what is it, Holmes? What is it?\"\n\n\"Where did you find him?\"\n\n\"Down on the beach. Exactly where poor McPherson met his end. If this man's heart had been weak as McPherson's was, he would not be here now. More than once I thought he was gone as I brought him up. It was too far to The Gables, so I made for you.\"\n\n\"Did you see him on the beach?\"\n\n\"I was walking on the cliff when I heard his cry. He was at the edge of the water, reeling about like a drunken man. I ran down, threw some clothes about him, and brought him up. For heaven's sake, Holmes, use all the powers you have and spare no pains to lift the curse from this place, for life is becoming unendurable. Can you, with all your worldwide reputation, do nothing for us?\"\n\n\"I think I can, Stackhurst. Come with me now! And you, Inspector, come along! We will see if we cannot deliver this murderer into your hands.\"\n\nLeaving the unconscious man in the charge of my housekeeper, we all three went down to the deadly lagoon. On the shingle there was piled a little heap of towels and clothes left by the stricken man. Slowly I walked round the edge of the water, my comrades in Indian file behind me. Most of the pool was quite shallow, but under the cliff where the beach was hollowed out it was four or five feet deep. It was to this part that a swimmer would naturally go, for it formed a beautiful pellucid green pool as clear as crystal. A line of rocks lay above it at the base of the cliff, and along this I led the way, peering eagerly into the depths beneath me. I had reached the deepest and stillest pool when my eyes caught that for which they were searching, and I burst into a shout of triumph.\n\n\"Cyanea!\" I cried. \"Cyanea! Behold the Lion's Mane!\"\n\nThe strange object at which I pointed did indeed look like a tangled mass torn from the mane of a lion. It lay upon a rocky shelf some three feet under the water, a curious waving, vibrating, hairy creature with streaks of silver among its yellow tresses. It pulsated with a slow, heavy dilation and contraction.\n\n\"It has done mischief enough. Its day is over!\" I cried. \"Help me, Stackhurst! Let us end the murderer forever.\"\n\nThere was a big boulder just above the ledge, and we pushed it until it fell with a tremendous splash into the water. When the ripples had cleared we saw that it had settled upon the ledge below. One flapping edge of yellow membrane showed that our victim was beneath it. A thick oily scum oozed out from below the stone and stained the water round, rising slowly to the surface.\n\n\"Well, this gets me!\" cried the inspector. \"What was it, Mr. Holmes? I'm born and bred in these parts, but I never saw such thing. It don't belong to Sussex.\"\n\n\"Just as well for Sussex,\" I remarked. \"It may have been the southwest gale that brought it up. Come back to my house, both of you, and I will give you the terrible experience of one who has good reason to remember his own meeting with the same peril of the seas.\"\n\nWhen we reached my study we found that Murdoch was so far recovered that he could sit up. He was dazed in mind, and every now and then was shaken by a paroxysm of pain. In broken words he explained that he had no notion what had occurred to him, save that terrific pangs had suddenly shot through him, and that it had taken all his fortitude to reach the bank.\n\n\"Here is a book,\" I said, taking up the little volume, \"which first brought light into what might have been forever dark. It is Out of Doors, by the famous observer, J. G. Wood. Wood himself very nearly perished from contact with this vile creature, so he wrote with a very full knowledge. Cyanea capillata is the miscreant's full name, and he can be as dangerous to life as, and far more painful than, the bite of the cobra. Let me briefly give this extract.\n\nIf the bather should see a loose roundish mass of tawny membranes and fibres, something like very large handfuls of lion's mane and silver paper, let him beware, for this is the fearful stinger, Cyanea capillata.\n\nCould our sinister acquaintance be more clearly described?\n\n\"He goes on to tell of his own encounter with one when swimming off the coast of Kent. He found that the creature radiated almost invisible filaments to the distance of fifty feet, and that anyone within that circumference from the deadly centre was in danger of death. Even at a distance the effect upon Wood was almost fatal.\n\nThe multitudinous threads caused light scarlet lines upon the skin which on closer examination resolved into minute dots or pustules, each dot charged as it were with a red-hot needle making its way through the nerves.\n\n\"The local pain was, as he explains, the least part of the exquisite torment.\n\nPangs shot through the chest, causing me to fall as if struck by a bullet. The pulsation would cease, and then the heart would give six or seven leaps as if it would force its way through the chest.\n\n\"It nearly killed him, although he had only been exposed to it in the disturbed ocean and not in the narrow calm waters of a bathing-pool. He says that he could hardly recognize himself afterwards, so white, wrinkled and shrivelled was his face. He gulped down brandy, a whole bottleful, and it seems to have saved his life. There is the book, Inspector. I leave it with you, and you cannot doubt that it contains a full explanation of the tragedy of poor McPherson.\"\n\n\"And incidentally exonerates me,\" remarked Ian Murdoch with a wry smile. \"I do not blame you, Inspector, nor you, Mr. Holmes, for your suspicions were natural. I feel that on the very eve of my arrest I have only cleared myself by sharing the fate of my poor friend.\"\n\n\"No, Mr. Murdoch. I was already upon the track, and had I been out as early as I intended I might well have saved you from this terrific experience.\"\n\n\"But how did you know, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles. That phrase 'the Lion's Mane' haunted my mind. I knew that I had seen it somewhere in an unexpected context. You have seen that it does describe the creature. I have no doubt that it was floating on the water when McPherson saw it, and that this phrase was the only one by which he could convey to us a warning as to the creature which had been his death.\"\n\n\"Then I, at least, am cleared,\" said Murdoch, rising slowly to his feet. \"There are one or two words of explanation which I should give, for I know the direction in which your inquiries have run. It is true that I loved this lady, but from the day when she chose my friend McPherson my one desire was to help her to happiness. I was well content to stand aside and act as their go-between. Often I carried their messages, and it was because I was in their confidence and because she was so dear to me that I hastened to tell her of my friend's death, lest someone should forestall me in a more sudden and heartless manner. She would not tell you, sir, of our relations lest you should disapprove and I might suffer. But with your leave I must try to get back to The Gables, for my bed will be very welcome.\"\n\nStackhurst held out his hand. \"Our nerves have all been at concert-pitch,\" said he. \"Forgive what is past, Murdoch. We shall understand each other better in the future.\" They passed out together with their arms linked in friendly fashion. The inspector remained, staring at me in silence with his ox-like eyes.\n\n\"Well, you've done it!\" he cried at last. \"I had read of you, but I never believed it. It's wonderful!\"\n\nI was forced to shake my head. To accept such praise was to lower one's own standards.\n\n\"I was slow at the outset\u2014culpably slow. Had the body been found in the water I could hardly have missed it. It was the towel which misled me. The poor fellow had never thought to dry himself, and so I in turn was led to believe that he had never been in the water. Why, then, should the attack of any water creature suggest itself to me? That was where I went astray. Well, well, Inspector, I often ventured to chaff you gentlemen of the police force, but Cyanea capillata very nearly avenged Scotland Yard.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE VEILED LODGER", + "text": "When one considers that Mr. Sherlock Holmes was in active practice for twenty-three years, and that during seventeen of these I was allowed to cooperate with him and to keep notes of his doings, it will be clear that I have a mass of material at my command. The problem has always been not to find but to choose. There is the long row of year-books which fill a shelf, and there are the dispatch-cases filled with documents, a perfect quarry for the student not only of crime but of the social and official scandals of the late Victorian era. Concerning these latter, I may say that the writers of agonized letters, who beg that the honour of their families or the reputation of famous forebears may not be touched, have nothing to fear. The discretion and high sense of professional honour which have always distinguished my friend are still at work in the choice of these memoirs, and no confidence will be abused. I deprecate, however, in the strongest way the attempts which have been made lately to get at and to destroy these papers. The source of these outrages is known, and if they are repeated I have Mr. Holmes's authority for saying that the whole story concerning the politician, the lighthouse, and the trained cormorant will be given to the public. There is at least one reader who will understand.\n\nIt is not reasonable to suppose that every one of these cases gave Holmes the opportunity of showing those curious gifts of instinct and observation which I have endeavoured to set forth in these memoirs. Sometimes he had with much effort to pick the fruit, sometimes it fell easily into his lap. But the most terrible human tragedies were often involved in those cases which brought him the fewest personal opportunities, and it is one of these which I now desire to record. In telling it, I have made a slight change of name and place, but otherwise the facts are as stated.\n\nOne forenoon\u2014it was late in 1896\u2014I received a hurried note from Holmes asking for my attendance. When I arrived I found him seated in a smoke-laden atmosphere, with an elderly, motherly woman of the buxom landlady type in the corresponding chair in front of him.\n\n\"This is Mrs. Merrilow, of South Brixton,\" said my friend with a wave of the hand. \"Mrs. Merrilow does not object to tobacco, Watson, if you wish to indulge your filthy habits. Mrs. Merrilow has an interesting story to tell which may well lead to further developments in which your presence may be useful.\"\n\n\"Anything I can do\u2014\"\n\n\"You will understand, Mrs. Merrilow, that if I come to Mrs. Ronder I should prefer to have a witness. You will make her understand that before we arrive.\"\n\n\"Lord bless you, Mr. Holmes,\" said our visitor, \"she is that anxious to see you that you might bring the whole parish at your heels!\"\n\n\"Then we shall come early in the afternoon. Let us see that we have our facts correct before we start. If we go over them it will help Dr. Watson to understand the situation. You say that Mrs. Ronder has been your lodger for seven years and that you have only once seen her face.\"\n\n\"And I wish to God I had not!\" said Mrs. Merrilow.\n\n\"It was, I understand, terribly mutilated.\"\n\n\"Well, Mr. Holmes, you would hardly say it was a face at all. That's how it looked. Our milkman got a glimpse of her once peeping out of the upper window, and he dropped his tin and the milk all over the front garden. That is the kind of face it is. When I saw her\u2014I happened on her unawares\u2014she covered up quick, and then she said, 'Now, Mrs. Merrilow, you know at last why it is that I never raise my veil.\"'\n\n\"Do you know anything about her history?\"\n\n\"Nothing at all.\"\n\n\"Did she give references when she came?\"\n\n\"No, sir, but she gave hard cash, and plenty of it. A quarter's rent right down on the table in advance and no arguing about terms. In these times a poor woman like me can't afford to turn down a chance like that.\"\n\n\"Did she give any reason for choosing your house?\"\n\n\"Mine stands well back from the road and is more private than most. Then, again, I only take the one, and I have no family of my own. I reckon she had tried others and found that mine suited her best. It's privacy she is after, and she is ready to pay for it.\"\n\n\"You say that she never showed her face from first to last save on the one accidental occasion. Well, it is a very remarkable story, most remarkable, and I don't wonder that you want it examined.\"\n\n\"I don't, Mr. Holmes. I am quite satisfied so long as I get my rent. You could not have a quieter lodger, or one who gives less trouble.\"\n\n\"Then what has brought matters to a head?\"\n\n\"Her health, Mr. Holmes. She seems to be wasting away. And there's something terrible on her mind. 'Murder!' she cries. 'Murder!' And once I heard her: 'You cruel beast! You monster!' she cried. It was in the night, and it fair rang through the house and sent the shivers through me. So I went to her in the morning. 'Mrs. Ronder,' I says, 'if you have anything that is troubling your soul, there's the clergy,' I says, 'and there's the police. Between them you should get some help.' 'For God's sake, not the police!' says she, 'and the clergy can't change what is past. And yet,' she says, 'it would ease my mind if someone knew the truth before I died.' 'Well,' says I, 'if you won't have the regulars, there is this detective man what we read about'\u2014beggin' your pardon, Mr. Holmes. And she, she fair jumped at it. 'That's the man,' says she. 'I wonder I never thought of it before. Bring him here, Mrs. Merrilow, and if he won't come, tell him I am the wife of Ronder's wild beast show. Say that, and give him the name Abbas Parva. Here it is as she wrote it, Abbas Parva. 'That will bring him if he's the man I think he is.'\"\n\n\"And it will, too,\" remarked Holmes. \"Very good, Mrs. Merrilow. I should like to have a little chat with Dr. Watson. That will carry us till lunch-time. About three o'clock you may expect to see us at your house in Brixton.\"\n\nOur visitor had no sooner waddled out of the room\u2014no other verb can describe Mrs. Merrilow's method of progression\u2014than Sherlock Holmes threw himself with fierce energy upon the pile of commonplace books in the corner. For a few minutes there was a constant swish of the leaves, and then with a grunt of satisfaction he came upon what he sought. So excited was he that he did not rise, but sat upon the floor like some strange Buddha, with crossed legs, the huge books all round him, and one open upon his knees.\n\n\"The case worried me at the time, Watson. Here are my marginal notes to prove it. I confess that I could make nothing of it. And yet I was convinced that the coroner was wrong. Have you no recollection of the Abbas Parva tragedy?\"\n\n\"None, Holmes.\"\n\n\"And yet you were with me then. But certainly my own impression was very superficial. For there was nothing to go by, and none of the parties had engaged my services. Perhaps you would care to read the papers?\"\n\n\"Could you not give me the points?\"\n\n\"That is very easily done. It will probably come back to your memory as I talk. Ronder, of course, was a household word. He was the rival of Wombwell, and of Sanger, one of the greatest showmen of his day. There is evidence, however, that he took to drink, and that both he and his show were on the down grade at the time of the great tragedy. The caravan had halted for the night at Abbas Parva, which is a small village in Berkshire, when this horror occurred. They were on their way to Wimbledon, travelling by road, and they were simply camping and not exhibiting, as the place is so small a one that it would not have paid them to open.\n\n\"They had among their exhibits a very fine North African lion. Sahara King was its name, and it was the habit, both of Ronder and his wife, to give exhibitions inside its cage. Here, you see, is a photograph of the performance by which you will perceive that Ronder was a huge porcine person and that his wife was a very magnificent woman. It was deposed at the inquest that there had been some signs that the lion was dangerous, but, as usual, familiarity begat contempt, and no notice was taken of the fact.\n\n\"It was usual for either Ronder or his wife to feed the lion at night. Sometimes one went, sometimes both, but they never allowed anyone else to do it, for they believed that so long as they were the food-carriers he would regard them as benefactors and would never molest them. On this particular night, seven years ago, they both went, and a very terrible happening followed, the details of which have never been made clear.\n\n\"It seems that the whole camp was roused near midnight by the roars of the animal and the screams of the woman. The different grooms and employees rushed from their tents, carrying lanterns, and by their light an awful sight was revealed. Ronder lay, with the back of his head crushed in and deep claw-marks across his scalp, some ten yards from the cage, which was open. Close to the door of the cage lay Mrs. Ronder upon her back, with the creature squatting and snarling above her. It had torn her face in such a fashion that it was never thought that she could live. Several of the circus men, headed by Leonardo, the strong man, and Griggs, the clown, drove the creature off with poles, upon which it sprang back into the cage and was at once locked in. How it had got loose was a mystery. It was conjectured that the pair intended to enter the cage, but that when the door was loosed the creature bounded out upon them. There was no other point of interest in the evidence save that the woman in a delirium of agony kept screaming, 'Coward! Coward!' as she was carried back to the van in which they lived. It was six months before she was fit to give evidence, but the inquest was duly held, with the obvious verdict of death from misadventure.\"\n\n\"What alternative could be conceived?\" said I.\n\n\"You may well say so. And yet there were one or two points which worried young Edmunds, of the Berkshire Constabulary. A smart lad that! He was sent later to Allahabad. That was how I came into the matter, for he dropped in and smoked a pipe or two over it.\"\n\n\"A thin, yellow-haired man?\"\n\n\"Exactly. I was sure you would pick up the trail presently.\"\n\n\"But what worried him?\"\n\n\"Well, we were both worried. It was so deucedly difficult to reconstruct the affair. Look at it from the lion's point of view. He is liberated. What does he do? He takes half a dozen bounds forward, which brings him to Ronder. Ronder turns to fly\u2014the claw-marks were on the back of his head\u2014but the lion strikes him down. Then, instead of bounding on and escaping, he returns to the woman, who was close to the cage, and he knocks her over and chews her face up. Then, again, those cries of hers would seem to imply that her husband had in some way failed her. What could the poor devil have done to help her? You see the difficulty?\"\n\n\"Quite.\"\n\n\"And then there was another thing. It comes back to me now as I think it over. There was some evidence that just at the time the lion roared and the woman screamed, a man began shouting in terror.\"\n\n\"This man Ronder, no doubt.\"\n\n\"Well, if his skull was smashed in you would hardly expect to hear from him again. There were at least two witnesses who spoke of the cries of a man being mingled with those of a woman.\"\n\n\"I should think the whole camp was crying out by then. As to the other points, I think I could suggest a solution.\"\n\n\"I should be glad to consider it.\"\n\n\"The two were together, ten yards from the cage, when the lion got loose. The man turned and was struck down. The woman conceived the idea of getting into the cage and shutting the door. It was her only refuge. She made for it, and just as she reached it the beast bounded after her and knocked her over. She was angry with her husband for having encouraged the beast's rage by turning. If they had faced it they might have cowed it. Hence her cries of 'Coward!'\"\n\n\"Brilliant, Watson! Only one flaw in your diamond.\"\n\n\"What is the flaw, Holmes?\"\n\n\"If they were both ten paces from the cage, how came the beast to get loose?\"\n\n\"Is it possible that they had some enemy who loosed it?\"\n\n\"And why should it attack them savagely when it was in the habit of playing with them, and doing tricks with them inside the cage?\"\n\n\"Possibly the same enemy had done something to enrage it.\"\n\nHolmes looked thoughtful and remained in silence for some moments.\n\n\"Well, Watson, there is this to be said for your theory. Ronder was a man of many enemies. Edmunds told me that in his cups he was horrible. A huge bully of a man, he cursed and slashed at everyone who came in his way. I expect those cries about a monster, of which our visitor has spoken, were nocturnal reminiscences of the dear departed. However, our speculations are futile until we have all the facts. There is a cold partridge on the sideboard, Watson, and a bottle of Montrachet. Let us renew our energies before we make a fresh call upon them.\"\n\nWhen our hansom deposited us at the house of Mrs. Merrilow, we found that plump lady blocking up the open door of her humble but retired abode. It was very clear that her chief preoccupation was lest she should lose a valuable lodger, and she implored, us, before showing us up, to say and do nothing which could lead to so undesirable an end. Then, having reassured her, we followed her up the straight, badly carpeted staircase and were shown into the room of the mysterious lodger.\n\nIt was a close, musty, ill-ventilated place, as might be expected, since its inmate seldom left it. From keeping beasts in a cage, the woman seemed, by some retribution of fate, to have become herself a beast in a cage. She sat now in a broken armchair in the shadowy corner of the room. Long years of inaction had coarsened the lines of her figure, but at some period it must have been beautiful, and was still full and voluptuous. A thick dark veil covered her face, but it was cut off close at her upper lip and disclosed a perfectly shaped mouth and a delicately rounded chin. I could well conceive that she had indeed been a very remarkable woman. Her voice, too, was well modulated and pleasing.\n\n\"My name is not unfamiliar to you, Mr. Holmes,\" said she. \"I thought that it would bring you.\"\n\n\"That is so, madam, though I do not know how you are aware that I was interested in your case.\"\n\n\"I learned it when I had recovered my health and was examined by Mr. Edmunds, the county detective. I fear I lied to him. Perhaps it would have been wiser had I told the truth.\"\n\n\"It is usually wiser to tell the truth. But why did you lie to him?\"\n\n\"Because the fate of someone else depended upon it. I know that he was a very worthless being, and yet I would not have his destruction upon my conscience. We had been so close\u2014so close!\"\n\n\"But has this impediment been removed?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. The person that I allude to is dead.\"\n\n\"Then why should you not now tell the police anything you know?\"\n\n\"Because there is another person to be considered. That other person is myself. I could not stand the scandal and publicity which would come from a police examination. I have not long to live, but I wish to die undisturbed. And yet I wanted to find one man of judgment to whom I could tell my terrible story, so that when I am gone all might be understood.\"\n\n\"You compliment me, madam. At the same time, I am a responsible person. I do not promise you that when you have spoken I may not myself think it my duty to refer the case to the police.\"\n\n\"I think not, Mr. Holmes. I know your character and methods too well, for I have followed your work for some years. Reading is the only pleasure which fate has left me, and I miss little which passes in the world. But in any case, I will take my chance of the use which you may make of my tragedy. It will ease my mind to tell it.\"\n\n\"My friend and I would be glad to hear it.\"\n\nThe woman rose and took from a drawer the photograph of a man. He was clearly a professional acrobat, a man of magnificent physique, taken with his huge arms folded across his swollen chest and a smile breaking from under his heavy moustache\u2014the self-satisfied smile of the man of many conquests.\n\n\"That is Leonardo,\" she said.\n\n\"Leonardo, the strong man, who gave evidence?\"\n\n\"The same. And this\u2014this is my husband.\"\n\nIt was a dreadful face\u2014a human pig, or rather a human wild boar, for it was formidable in its bestiality. One could imagine that vile mouth champing and foaming in its rage, and one could conceive those small, vicious eyes darting pure malignancy as they looked forth upon the world. Ruffian, bully, beast\u2014it was all written on that heavy-jowled face.\n\n\"Those two pictures will help you, gentlemen, to understand the story. I was a poor circus girl brought up on the sawdust, and doing springs through the hoop before I was ten. When I became a woman this man loved me, if such lust as his can be called love, and in an evil moment I became his wife. From that day I was in hell, and he the devil who tormented me. There was no one in the show who did not know of his treatment. He deserted me for others. He tied me down and lashed me with his riding-whip when I complained. They all pitied me and they all loathed him, but what could they do? They feared him, one and all. For he was terrible at all times, and murderous when he was drunk. Again and again he was had up for assault, and for cruelty to the beasts, but he had plenty of money and the fines were nothing to him. The best men all left us, and the show began to go downhill. It was only Leonardo and I who kept it up\u2014with little Jimmy Griggs, the clown. Poor devil, he had not much to be funny about, but he did what he could to hold things together.\n\n\"Then Leonardo came more and more into my life. You see what he was like. I know now the poor spirit that was hidden in that splendid body, but compared to my husband he seemed like the angel Gabriel. He pitied me and helped me, till at last our intimacy turned to love\u2014deep, deep, passionate love, such love as I had dreamed of but never hoped to feel. My husband suspected it, but I think that he was a coward as well as a bully, and that Leonardo was the one man that he was afraid of. He took revenge in his own way by torturing me more than ever. One night my cries brought Leonardo to the door of our van. We were near tragedy that night, and soon my lover and I understood that it could not be avoided. My husband was not fit to live. We planned that he should die.\n\n\"Leonardo had a clever, scheming brain. It was he who planned it. I do not say that to blame him, for I was ready to go with him every inch of the way. But I should never have had the wit to think of such a plan. We made a club\u2014Leonardo made it\u2014and in the leaden head he fastened five long steel nails, the points outward, with just such a spread as the lion's paw. This was to give my husband his death-blow, and yet to leave the evidence that it was the lion which we would loose who had done the deed.\n\n\"It was a pitch-dark night when my husband and I went down, as was our custom, to feed the beast. We carried with us the raw meat in a zinc pail. Leonardo was waiting at the corner of the big van which we should have to pass before we reached the cage. He was too slow, and we walked past him before he could strike, but he followed us on tiptoe and I heard the crash as the club smashed my husband's skull. My heart leaped with joy at the sound. I sprang forward, and I undid the catch which held the door of the great lion's cage.\n\n\"And then the terrible thing happened. You may have heard how quick these creatures are to scent human blood, and how it excites them. Some strange instinct had told the creature in one instant that a human being had been slain. As I slipped the bars it bounded out and was on me in an instant. Leonardo could have saved me. If he had rushed forward and struck the beast with his club he might have cowed it. But the man lost his nerve. I heard him shout in his terror, and then I saw him turn and fly. At the same instant the teeth of the lion met in my face. Its hot, filthy breath had already poisoned me and I was hardly conscious of pain. With the palms of my hands I tried to push the great steaming, blood-stained jaws away from me, and I screamed for help. I was conscious that the camp was stirring, and then dimly I remembered a group of men. Leonardo, Griggs, and others, dragging me from under the creature's paws. That was my last memory, Mr. Holmes, for many a weary month. When I came to myself and saw myself in the mirror, I cursed that lion\u2014oh, how I cursed him!\u2014not because he had torn away my beauty but because he had not torn away my life. I had but one desire, Mr. Holmes, and I had enough money to gratify it. It was that I should cover myself so that my poor face should be seen by none, and that I should dwell where none whom I had ever known should find me. That was all that was left to me to do\u2014and that is what I have done. A poor wounded beast that has crawled into its hole to die\u2014that is the end of Eugenia Ronder.\"\n\nWe sat in silence for some time after the unhappy woman had told her story. Then Holmes stretched out his long arm and patted her hand with such a show of sympathy as I had seldom known him to exhibit.\n\n\"Poor girl!\" he said. \"Poor girl! The ways of fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter, then the world is a cruel jest. But what of this man Leonardo?\"\n\n\"I never saw him or heard from him again. Perhaps I have been wrong to feel so bitterly against him. He might as soon have loved one of the freaks whom we carried round the county as the thing which the lion had left. But a woman's love is not so easily set aside. He had left me under the beast's claws, he had deserted me in my need, and yet I could not bring myself to give him to the gallows. For myself, I cared nothing what became of me. What could be more dreadful than my actual life? But I stood between Leonardo and his fate.\"\n\n\"And he is dead?\"\n\n\"He was drowned last month when bathing near Margate. I saw his death in the paper.\"\n\n\"And what did he do with this five-clawed club, which is the most singular and ingenious part of all your story?\"\n\n\"I cannot tell, Mr. Holmes. There is a chalk-pit by the camp, with a deep green pool at the base of it. Perhaps in the depths of that pool\u2014\"\n\n\"Well, well, it is of little consequence now. The case is closed.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said the woman, \"the case is closed.\"\n\nWe had risen to go, but there was something in the woman's voice which arrested Holmes's attention. He turned swiftly upon her.\n\n\"Your life is not your own,\" he said. \"Keep your hands off it.\"\n\n\"What use is it to anyone?\"\n\n\"How can you tell? The example of patient suffering is in itself the most precious of all lessons to an impatient world.\"\n\nThe woman's answer was a terrible one. She raised her veil and stepped forward into the light.\n\n\"I wonder if you would bear it,\" she said.\n\nIt was horrible. No words can describe the framework of a face when the face itself is gone. Two living and beautiful brown eyes looking sadly out from that grisly ruin did but make the view more awful. Holmes held up his hand in a gesture of pity and protest, and together we left the room.\n\nTwo days later, when I called upon my friend, he pointed with some pride to a small blue bottle upon his mantelpiece. I picked it up. There was a red poison label. A pleasant almondy odour rose when I opened it.\n\n\"Prussic acid?\" said I.\n\n\"Exactly. It came by post. 'I send you my temptation. I will follow your advice.' That was the message. I think, Watson, we can guess the name of the brave woman who sent it.\"" + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF SHOSCOMBE OLD PLACE", + "text": "Sherlock Holmes had been bending for a long time over a low-power microscope. Now he straightened himself up and looked round at me in triumph.\n\n\"It is glue, Watson,\" said he. \"Unquestionably it is glue. Have a look at these scattered objects in the field!\"\n\nI stooped to the eyepiece and focussed for my vision.\n\n\"Those hairs are threads from a tweed coat. The irregular gray masses are dust. There are epithelial scales on the left. Those brown blobs in the centre are undoubtedly glue.\"\n\n\"Well,\" I said, laughing, \"I am prepared to take your word for it. Does anything depend upon it?\"\n\n\"It is a very fine demonstration,\" he answered. \"In the St. Pancras case you may remember that a cap was found beside the dead policeman. The accused man denies that it is his. But he is a picture-frame maker who habitually handles glue.\"\n\n\"Is it one of your cases?\"\n\n\"No; my friend, Merivale, of the Yard, asked me to look into the case. Since I ran down that coiner by the zinc and copper filings in the seam of his cuff they have begun to realize the importance of the microscope.\" He looked impatiently at his watch. \"I had a new client calling, but he is overdue. By the way, Watson, you know something of racing?\"\n\n\"I ought to. I pay for it with about half my wound pension.\"\n\n\"Then I'll make you my 'Handy Guide to the Turf.' What about Sir Robert Norberton? Does the name recall anything?\"\n\n\"Well, I should say so. He lives at Shoscombe Old Place, and I know it well, for my summer quarters were down there once. Norberton nearly came within your province once.\"\n\n\"How was that?\"\n\n\"It was when he horsewhipped Sam Brewer, the well-known Curzon Street money-lender, on Newmarket Heath. He nearly killed the man.\"\n\n\"Ah, he sounds interesting! Does he often indulge in that way?\"\n\n\"Well, he has the name of being a dangerous man. He is about the most daredevil rider in England\u2014second in the Grand National a few years back. He is one of those men who have overshot their true generation. He should have been a buck in the days of the Regency\u2014a boxer, an athlete, a plunger on the turf, a lover of fair ladies, and, by all account, so far down Queer Street that he may never find his way back again.\"\n\n\"Capital, Watson! A thumb-nail sketch. I seem to know the man. Now, can you give me some idea of Shoscombe Old Place?\"\n\n\"Only that it is in the centre of Shoscombe Park, and that the famous Shoscombe stud and training quarters are to be found there.\"\n\n\"And the head trainer,\" said Holmes, \"is John Mason. You need not look surprised at my knowledge, Watson, for this is a letter from him which I am unfolding. But let us have some more about Shoscombe. I seem to have struck a rich vein.\"\n\n\"There are the Shoscombe spaniels,\" said I. \"You hear of them at every dog show. The most exclusive breed in England. They are the special pride of the lady of Shoscombe Old Place.\"\n\n\"Sir Robert Norberton's wife, I presume!\"\n\n\"Sir Robert has never married. Just as well, I think, considering his prospects. He lives with his widowed sister, Lady Beatrice Falder.\"\n\n\"You mean that she lives with him?\"\n\n\"No, no. The place belonged to her late husband, Sir James. Norberton has no claim on it at all. It is only a life interest and reverts to her husband's brother. Meantime, she draws the rents every year.\"\n\n\"And brother Robert, I suppose, spends the said rents?\"\n\n\"That is about the size of it. He is a devil of a fellow and must lead her a most uneasy life. Yet I have heard that she is devoted to him. But, what is amiss at Shoscombe?\"\n\n\"Ah, that is just what I want to know. And here, I expect, is the man who can tell us.\"\n\nThe door had opened and the page had shown in a tall, clean-shaven man with the firm, austere expression which is only seen upon those who have to control horses or boys. Mr. John Mason had many of both under his sway, and he looked equal to the task. He bowed with cold self-possession and seated himself upon the chair to which Holmes had waved him.\n\n\"You had my note, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Yes, but it explained nothing.\"\n\n\"It was too delicate a thing for me to put the details on paper. And too complicated. It was only face to face I could do it.\"\n\n\"Well, we are at your disposal.\"\n\n\"First of all, Mr. Holmes, I think that my employer, Sir Robert, has gone mad.\"\n\nHolmes raised his eyebrows. \"This is Baker Street, not Harley Street,\" said he. \"But why do you say so?\"\n\n\"Well, sir, when a man does one queer thing, or two queer things, there may be a meaning to it, but when everything he does is queer, then you begin to wonder. I believe Shoscombe Prince and the Derby have turned his brain.\"\n\n\"That is a colt you are running?\"\n\n\"The best in England, Mr. Holmes. I should know, if anyone does. Now, I'll be plain with you, for I know you are gentlemen of honour and that it won't go beyond the room. Sir Robert has got to win this Derby. He's up to the neck, and it's his last chance. Everything he could raise or borrow is on the horse\u2014and at fine odds, too! You can get forties now, but it was nearer the hundred when he began to back him.\"\n\n\"But how is that if the horse is so good?\"\n\n\"The public don't know how good he is. Sir Robert has been too clever for the touts. He has the Prince's half-brother out for spins. You can't tell 'em apart. But there are two lengths in a furlong between them when it comes to a gallop. He thinks of nothing but the horse and the race. His whole life is on it. He's holding off the Jews till then. If the Prince fails him he is done.\"\n\n\"It seems a rather desperate gamble, but where does the madness come in?\"\n\n\"Well, first of all, you have only to look at him. I don't believe he sleeps at night. He is down at the stables at all hours. His eyes are wild. It has all been too much for his nerves. Then there is his conduct to Lady Beatrice!\"\n\n\"Ah! What is that?\"\n\n\"They have always been the best of friends. They had the same tastes, the two of them, and she loved the horses as much as he did. Every day at the same hour she would drive down to see them\u2014and, above all, she loved the Prince. He would prick up his ears when he heard the wheels on the gravel, and he would trot out each morning to the carriage to get his lump of sugar. But that's all over now.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Well, she seems to have lost all interest in the horses. For a week now she has driven past the stables with never so much as 'Good-morning'!\"\n\n\"You think there has been a quarrel?\"\n\n\"And a bitter, savage, spiteful quarrel at that. Why else would he give away her pet spaniel that she loved as if he were her child? He gave it a few days ago to old Barnes, what keeps the Green Dragon, three miles off, at Crendall.\"\n\n\"That certainly did seem strange.\"\n\n\"Of course, with her weak heart and dropsy one couldn't expect that she could get about with him, but he spent two hours every evening in her room. He might well do what he could, for she has been a rare good friend to him. But that's all over, too. He never goes near her. And she takes it to heart. She is brooding and sulky and drinking, Mr. Holmes\u2014drinking like a fish.\"\n\n\"Did she drink before this estrangement?\"\n\n\"Well, she took her glass, but now it is often a whole bottle of an evening. So Stephens, the butler, told me. It's all changed, Mr. Holmes, and there is something damned rotten about it. But then, again, what is master doing down at the old church crypt at night? And who is the man that meets him there?\"\n\nHolmes rubbed his hands.\n\n\"Go on, Mr. Mason. You get more and more interesting.\"\n\n\"It was the butler who saw him go. Twelve o'clock at night and raining hard. So next night I was up at the house and, sure enough, master was off again. Stephens and I went after him, but it was jumpy work, for it would have been a bad job if he had seen us. He's a terrible man with his fists if he gets started, and no respecter of persons. So we were shy of getting too near, but we marked him down all right. It was the haunted crypt that he was making for, and there was a man waiting for him there.\"\n\n\"What is this haunted crypt?\"\n\n\"Well, sir, there is an old ruined chapel in the park. It is so old that nobody could fix its date. And under it there's a crypt which has a bad name among us. It's a dark, damp, lonely place by day, but there are few in that county that would have the nerve to go near it at night. But master's not afraid. He never feared anything in his life. But what is he doing there in the night-time?\"\n\n\"Wait a bit!\" said Holmes. \"You say there is another man there. It must be one of your own stablemen, or someone from the house! Surely you have only to spot who it is and question him?\"\n\n\"It's no one I know.\"\n\n\"How can you say that?\"\n\n\"Because I have seen him, Mr. Holmes. It was on that second night. Sir Robert turned and passed us\u2014me and Stephens, quaking in the bushes like two bunny-rabbits, for there was a bit of moon that night. But we could hear the other moving about behind. We were not afraid of him. So we up when Sir Robert was gone and pretended we were just having a walk like in the moonlight, and so we came right on him as casual and innocent as you please. 'Hullo, mate! who may you be?' says I. I guess he had not heard us coming, so he looked over his shoulder with a face as if he had seen the devil coming out of hell. He let out a yell, and away he went as hard as he could lick it in the darkness. He could run!\u2014I'll give him that. In a minute he was out of sight and hearing, and who he was, or what he was, we never found.\"\n\n\"But you saw him clearly in the moonlight?\"\n\n\"Yes, I would swear to his yellow face\u2014a mean dog, I should say. What could he have in common with Sir Robert?\"\n\nHolmes sat for some time lost in thought.\n\n\"Who keeps Lady Beatrice Falder company?\" he asked at last.\n\n\"There is her maid, Carrie Evans. She has been with her this five years.\"\n\n\"And is, no doubt, devoted?\"\n\nMr. Mason shuffled uncomfortably.\n\n\"She's devoted enough,\" he answered at last. \"But I won't say to whom.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Holmes.\n\n\"I can't tell tales out of school.\"\n\n\"I quite understand, Mr. Mason. Of course, the situation is clear enough. From Dr. Watson's description of Sir Robert I can realize that no woman is safe from him. Don't you think the quarrel between brother and sister may lie there?\"\n\n\"Well, the scandal has been pretty clear for a long time.\"\n\n\"But she may not have seen it before. Let us suppose that she has suddenly found it out. She wants to get rid of the woman. Her brother will not permit it. The invalid, with her weak heart and inability to get about, has no means of enforcing her will. The hated maid is still tied to her. The lady refuses to speak, sulks, takes to drink. Sir Robert in his anger takes her pet spaniel away from her. Does not all this hang together?\"\n\n\"Well, it might do\u2014so far as it goes.\"\n\n\"Exactly! As far as it goes. How would all that bear upon the visits by night to the old crypt? We can't fit that into our plot.\"\n\n\"No, sir, and there is something more that I can't fit in. Why should Sir Robert want to dig up a dead body?\"\n\nHolmes sat up abruptly.\n\n\"We only found it out yesterday\u2014after I had written to you. Yesterday Sir Robert had gone to London, so Stephens and I went down to the crypt. It was all in order, sir, except that in one corner was a bit of a human body.\"\n\n\"You informed the police, I suppose?\"\n\nOur visitor smiled grimly.\n\n\"Well, sir, I think it would hardly interest them. It was just the head and a few bones of a mummy. It may have been a thousand years old. But it wasn't there before. That I'll swear, and so will Stephens. It had been stowed away in a corner and covered over with a board, but that corner had always been empty before.\"\n\n\"What did you do with it?\"\n\n\"Well, we just left it there.\"\n\n\"That was wise. You say Sir Robert was away yesterday. Has he returned?\"\n\n\"We expect him back to-day.\"\n\n\"When did Sir Robert give away his sister's dog?\"\n\n\"It was just a week ago to-day. The creature was howling outside the old wellhouse, and Sir Robert was in one of his tantrums that morning. He caught it up, and I thought he would have killed it. Then he gave it to Sandy Bain, the jockey, and told him to take the dog to old Barnes at the Green Dragon, for he never wished to see it again.\"\n\nHolmes sat for some time in silent thought. He had lit the oldest and foulest of his pipes.\n\n\"I am not clear yet what you want me to do in this matter, Mr. Mason,\" he said at last. \"Can't you make it more definite?\"\n\n\"Perhaps this will make it more definite, Mr. Holmes,\" said our visitor.\n\nHe took a paper from his pocket, and, unwrapping it carefully, he exposed a charred fragment of bone.\n\nHolmes examined it with interest.\n\n\"Where did you get it?\"\n\n\"There is a central heating furnace in the cellar under Lady Beatrice's room. It's been off for some time, but Sir Robert complained of cold and had it on again.\n\n\"Harvey runs it\u2014he's one of my lads. This very morning he came to me with this which he found raking out the cinders. He didn't like the look of it.\"\n\n\"Nor do I,\" said Holmes. \"What do you make of it, Watson?\"\n\nIt was burned to a black cinder, but there could be no question as to its anatomical significance.\n\n\"It's the upper condyle of a human femur,\" said I.\n\n\"Exactly!\" Holmes had become very serious. \"When does this lad tend to the furnace?\"\n\n\"He makes it up every evening and then leaves it.\"\n\n\"Then anyone could visit it during the night?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Can you enter it from outside?\"\n\n\"There is one door from outside. There is another which leads up by a stair to the passage in which Lady Beatrice's room is situated.\"\n\n\"These are deep waters, Mr. Mason; deep and rather dirty. You say that Sir Robert was not at home last night?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"Then, whoever was burning bones, it was not he.\"\n\n\"That's true, sir.\"\n\n\"What is the name of that inn you spoke of?\"\n\n\"The Green Dragon.\"\n\n\"Is there good fishing in that part of Berkshire?\" The honest trainer showed very clearly upon his face that he was convinced that yet another lunatic had come into his harassed life.\n\n\"Well, sir, I've heard there are trout in the mill-stream and pike in the Hall lake.\"\n\n\"That's good enough. Watson and I are famous fishermen\u2014are we not, Watson? You may address us in future at the Green Dragon. We should reach it to-night. I need not say that we don't want to see you, Mr. Mason, but a note will reach us, and no doubt I could find you if I want you. When we have gone a little farther into the matter I will let you have a considered opinion.\"\n\nThus it was that on a bright May evening Holmes and I found ourselves alone in a first-class carriage and bound for the little \"halt-on-demand\" station of Shoscombe. The rack above us was covered with a formidable litter of rods, reels, and baskets. On reaching our destination a short drive took us to an old-fashioned tavern, where a sporting host, Josiah Barnes, entered eagerly into our plans for the extirpation of the fish of the neighbourhood.\n\n\"What about the Hall lake and the chance of a pike?\" said Holmes.\n\nThe face of the innkeeper clouded.\n\n\"That wouldn't do, sir. You might chance to find yourself in the lake before you were through.\"\n\n\"How's that, then?\"\n\n\"It's Sir Robert, sir. He's terrible jealous of touts. If you two strangers were as near his training quarters as that he'd be after you as sure as fate. He ain't taking no chances, Sir Robert ain't.\"\n\n\"I've heard he has a horse entered for the Derby.\"\n\n\"Yes, and a good colt, too. He carries all our money for the race, and all Sir Robert's into the bargain. By the way\"\u2014he looked at us with thoughtful eyes\u2014\"I suppose you ain't on the turf yourselves?\"\n\n\"No, indeed. Just two weary Londoners who badly need some good Berkshire air.\"\n\n\"Well, you are in the right place for that. There is a deal of it lying about. But mind what I have told you about Sir Robert. He's the sort that strikes first and speaks afterwards. Keep clear of the park.\"\n\n\"Surely, Mr. Barnes! We certainly shall. By the way, that was a most beautiful spaniel that was whining in the hall.\"\n\n\"I should say it was. That was the real Shoscombe breed. There ain't a better in England.\"\n\n\"I am a dog-fancier myself,\" said Holmes. \"Now, if it is a fair question, what would a prize dog like that cost?\"\n\n\"More than I could pay, sir. It was Sir Robert himself who gave me this one. That's why I have to keep it on a lead. It would be off to the Hall in a jiffy if I gave it its head.\"\n\n\"We are getting some cards in our hand, Watson,\" said Holmes when the landlord had left us. \"It's not an easy one to play, but we may see our way in a day or two. By the way, Sir Robert is still in London, I hear. We might, perhaps, enter the sacred domain to-night without fear of bodily assault. There are one or two points on which I should like reassurance.\"\n\n\"Have you any theory, Holmes?\"\n\n\"Only this, Watson, that something happened a week or so ago which has cut deep into the life of the Shoscombe household. What is that something? We can only guess at it from its effects. They seem to be of a curiously mixed character. But that should surely help us. It is only the colourless, uneventful case which is hopeless.\n\n\"Let us consider our data. The brother no longer visits the beloved invalid sister. He gives away her favourite dog. Her dog, Watson! Does that suggest nothing to you?\"\n\n\"Nothing but the brother's spite.\"\n\n\"Well, it might be so. Or\u2014well, there is an alternative. Now to continue our review of the situation from the time that the quarrel, if there is a quarrel, began. The lady keeps her room, alters her habits, is not seen save when she drives out with her maid, refuses to stop at the stables to greet her favourite horse, and apparently takes to drink. That covers the case, does it not?\"\n\n\"Save for the business in the crypt.\"\n\n\"That is another line of thought. There are two, and I beg you will not tangle them. Line A, which concerns Lady Beatrice, has a vaguely sinister flavour, has it not?\"\n\n\"I can make nothing of it.\"\n\n\"Well, now, let us take up line B, which concerns Sir Robert. He is mad keen upon winning the Derby. He is in the hands of the Jews, and may at any moment be sold up and his racing stables seized by his creditors. He is a daring and desperate man. He derives his income from his sister. His sister's maid is his willing tool. So far we seem to be on fairly safe ground, do we not?\"\n\n\"But the crypt?\"\n\n\"Ah, yes, the crypt! Let us suppose, Watson\u2014it is merely a scandalous supposition, a hypothesis put forward for argument's sake\u2014that Sir Robert has done away with his sister.\"\n\n\"My dear Holmes, it is out of the question.\"\n\n\"Very possibly, Watson. Sir Robert is a man of an honourable stock. But you do occasionally find a carrion crow among the eagles. Let us for a moment argue upon this supposition. He could not fly the country until he had realized his fortune, and that fortune could only be realized by bringing off this coup with Shoscombe Prince. Therefore, he has still to stand his ground. To do this he would have to dispose of the body of his victim, and he would also have to find a substitute who would impersonate her. With the maid as his confidante that would not be impossible. The woman's body might be conveyed to the crypt, which is a place so seldom visited, and it might be secretly destroyed at night in the furnace, leaving behind it such evidence as we have already seen. What say you to that, Watson?\"\n\n\"Well, it is all possible if you grant the original monstrous supposition.\"\n\n\"I think that there is a small experiment which we may try to-morrow, Watson, in order to throw some light on the matter. Meanwhile, if we mean to keep up our characters, I suggest that we have our host in for a glass of his own wine and hold some high converse upon eels and dace, which seems to be the straight road to his affections. We may chance to come upon some useful local gossip in the process.\"\n\nIn the morning Holmes discovered that we had come without our spoon-bait for jack, which absolved us from fishing for the day. About eleven o'clock we started for a walk, and he obtained leave to take the black spaniel with us.\n\n\"This is the place,\" said he as we came to two high park gates with heraldic griffins towering above them. \"About midday, Mr. Barnes informs me, the old lady takes a drive, and the carriage must slow down while the gates are opened. When it comes through, and before it gathers speed, I want you, Watson, to stop the coachman with some question. Never mind me. I shall stand behind this holly-bush and see what I can see.\"\n\nIt was not a long vigil. Within a quarter of an hour we saw the big open yellow barouche coming down the long avenue, with two splendid, high-stepping gray carriage horses in the shafts. Holmes crouched behind his bush with the dog. I stood unconcernedly swinging a cane in the roadway. A keeper ran out and the gates swung open.\n\nThe carriage had slowed to a walk, and I was able to get a good look at the occupants. A highly coloured young woman with flaxen hair and impudent eyes sat on the left. At her right was an elderly person with rounded back and a huddle of shawls about her face and shoulders which proclaimed the invalid. When the horses reached the highroad I held up my hand with an authoritative gesture, and as the coachman pulled up I inquired if Sir Robert was at Shoscombe Old Place.\n\nAt the same moment Holmes stepped out and released the spaniel. With a joyous cry it dashed forward to the carriage and sprang upon the step. Then in a moment its eager greeting changed to furious rage, and it snapped at the black skirt above it.\n\n\"Drive on! Drive on!\" shrieked a harsh voice. The coachman lashed the horses, and we were left standing in the roadway.\n\n\"Well, Watson, that's done it,\" said Holmes as he fastened the lead to the neck of the excited spaniel. \"He thought it was his mistress, and he found it was a stranger. Dogs don't make mistakes.\"\n\n\"But it was the voice of a man!\" I cried.\n\n\"Exactly! We have added one card to our hand, Watson, but it needs careful playing, all the same.\"\n\nMy companion seemed to have no further plans for the day, and we did actually use our fishing tackle in the mill-stream, with the result that we had a dish of trout for our supper. It was only after that meal that Holmes showed signs of renewed activity. Once more we found ourselves upon the same road as in the morning, which led us to the park gates. A tall, dark figure was awaiting us there, who proved to be our London acquaintance, Mr. John Mason, the trainer.\n\n\"Good-evening, gentlemen,\" said he. \"I got your note, Mr. Holmes. Sir Robert has not returned yet, but I hear that he is expected to-night.\"\n\n\"How far is this crypt from the house?\" asked Holmes.\n\n\"A good quarter of a mile.\"\n\n\"Then I think we can disregard him altogether.\"\n\n\"I can't afford to do that, Mr. Holmes. The moment he arrives he will want to see me to get the last news of Shoscombe Prince.\"\n\n\"I see! In that case we must work without you, Mr. Mason. You can show us the crypt and then leave us.\"\n\nIt was pitch-dark and without a moon, but Mason led us over the grass-lands until a dark mass loomed up in front of us which proved to be the ancient chapel. We entered the broken gap which was once the porch, and our guide, stumbling among heaps of loose masonry, picked his way to the corner of the building, where a steep stair led down into the crypt. Striking a match, he illuminated the melancholy place\u2014dismal and evil-smelling, with ancient crumbling walls of rough-hewn stone, and piles of coffins, some of lead and some of stone, extending upon one side right up to the arched and groined roof which lost itself in the shadows above our heads. Holmes had lit his lantern, which shot a tiny tunnel of vivid yellow light upon the mournful scene. Its rays were reflected back from the coffin-plates, many of them adorned with the griffin and coronet of this old family which carried its honours even to the gate of Death.\n\n\"You spoke of some bones, Mr. Mason. Could you show them before you go?\"\n\n\"They are here in this corner.\" The trainer strode across and then stood in silent surprise as our light was turned upon the place. \"They are gone,\" said he.\n\n\"So I expected,\" said Holmes, chuckling. \"I fancy the ashes of them might even now be found in that oven which had already consumed a part.\"\n\n\"But why in the world would anyone want to burn the bones of a man who has been dead a thousand years?\" asked John Mason.\n\n\"That is what we are here to find out,\" said Holmes. \"It may mean a long search, and we need not detain you. I fancy that we shall get our solution before morning.\"\n\nWhen John Mason had left us, Holmes set to work making a very careful examination of the graves, ranging from a very ancient one, which appeared to be Saxon, in the centre, through a long line of Norman Hugos and Odos, until we reached the Sir William and Sir Denis Falder of the eighteenth century. It was an hour or more before Holmes came to a leaden coffin standing on end before the entrance to the vault. I heard his little cry of satisfaction and was aware from his hurried but purposeful movements that he had reached a goal. With his lens he was eagerly examining the edges of the heavy lid. Then he drew from his pocket a short jemmy, a box-opener, which he thrust into a chink, levering back the whole front, which seemed to be secured by only a couple of clamps. There was a rending, tearing sound as it gave way, but it had hardly hinged back and partly revealed the contents before we had an unforeseen interruption.\n\nSomeone was walking in the chapel above. It was the firm, rapid step of one who came with a definite purpose and knew well the ground upon which he walked. A light streamed down the stairs, and an instant later the man who bore it was framed in the Gothic archway. He was a terrible figure, huge in stature and fierce in manner. A large stable-lantern which he held in front of him shone upward upon a strong, heavily moustached face and angry eyes, which glared round him into every recess of the vault, finally fixing themselves with a deadly stare upon my companion and myself.\n\n\"Who the devil are you?\" he thundered. \"And what are you doing upon my property?\" Then, as Holmes returned no answer, he took a couple of steps forward and raised a heavy stick which he carried. \"Do you hear me?\" he cried. \"Who are you? What are you doing here?\" His cudgel quivered in the air.\n\nBut instead of shrinking Holmes advanced to meet him.\n\n\"I also have a question to ask you, Sir Robert,\" he said in his sternest tone. \"Who is this? And what is it doing here?\"\n\nHe turned and tore open the coffin-lid behind him. In the glare of the lantern I saw a body swathed in a sheet from head to foot, with dreadful, witch-like features, all nose and chin, projecting at one end, the dim, glazed eyes staring from a discoloured and crumbling face.\n\nThe baronet had staggered back with a cry and supported himself against a stone sarcophagus.\n\n\"How came you to know of this?\" he cried. And then, with some return of his truculent manner: \"What business is it of yours?\"\n\n\"My name is Sherlock Holmes,\" said my companion. \"Possibly it is familiar to you. In any case, my business is that of every other good citizen\u2014to uphold the law. It seems to me that you have much to answer for.\"\n\nSir Robert glared for a moment, but Holmes's quiet voice and cool, assured manner had their effect.\n\n\"'Fore God, Mr. Holmes, it's all right,\" said he. \"Appearances are against me, I'll admit, but I could act no otherwise.\"\n\n\"I should be happy to think so, but I fear your explanations must be before the police.\"\n\nSir Robert shrugged his broad shoulders.\n\n\"Well, if it must be, it must. Come up to the house and you can judge for yourself how the matter stands.\"\n\nA quarter of an hour later we found ourselves in what I judge, from the lines of polished barrels behind glass covers, to be the gun-room of the old house. It was comfortably furnished, and here Sir Robert left us for a few moments. When he returned he had two companions with him; the one, the florid young woman whom we had seen in the carriage; the other, a small rat-faced man with a disagreeably furtive manner. These two wore an appearance of utter bewilderment, which showed that the baronet had not yet had time to explain to them the turn events had taken.\n\n\"There,\" said Sir Robert with a wave of his hand, \"are Mr. and Mrs. Norlett. Mrs. Norlett, under her maiden name of Evans, has for some years been my sister's confidential maid. I have brought them here because I feel that my best course is to explain the true position to you, and they are the two people upon earth who can substantiate what I say.\"\n\n\"Is this necessary, Sir Robert? Have you thought what you are doing?\" cried the woman.\n\n\"As to me, I entirely disclaim all responsibility,\" said her husband.\n\nSir Robert gave him a glance of contempt. \"I will take all responsibility,\" said he. \"Now, Mr. Holmes, listen to a plain statement of the facts.\n\n\"You have clearly gone pretty deeply into my affairs or I should not have found you where I did. Therefore, you know already, in all probability, that I am running a dark horse for the Derby and that everything depends upon my success. If I win, all is easy. If I lose\u2014well, I dare not think of that!\"\n\n\"I understand the position,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"I am dependent upon my sister, Lady Beatrice, for everything. But it is well known that her interest in the estate is for her own life only. For myself, I am deeply in the hands of the Jews. I have always known that if my sister were to die my creditors would be on to my estate like a flock of vultures. Everything would be seized\u2014my stables, my horses\u2014everything. Well, Mr. Holmes; my sister did die just a week ago.\"\n\n\"And you told no one!\"\n\n\"What could I do? Absolute ruin faced me. If I could stave things off for three weeks all would be well. Her maid's husband\u2014this man here\u2014is an actor. It came into our heads\u2014it came into my head\u2014that he could for that short period personate my sister. It was but a case of appearing daily in the carriage, for no one need enter her room save the maid. It was not difficult to arrange. My sister died of the dropsy which had long afflicted her.\"\n\n\"That will be for a coroner to decide.\"\n\n\"Her doctor would certify that for months her symptoms have threatened such an end.\"\n\n\"Well, what did you do?\"\n\n\"The body could not remain there. On the first night Norlett and I carried it out to the old wellhouse, which is now never used. We were followed, however, by her pet spaniel, which yapped continually at the door, so I felt some safer place was needed. I got rid of the spaniel, and we carried the body to the crypt of the church. There was no indignity or irreverence, Mr. Holmes. I do not feel that I have wronged the dead.\"\n\n\"Your conduct seems to me inexcusable, Sir Robert.\"\n\nThe baronet shook his head impatiently. \"It is easy to preach,\" said he. \"Perhaps you would have felt differently if you had been in my position. One cannot see all one's hopes and all one's plans shattered at the last moment and make no effort to save them. It seemed to me that it would be no unworthy resting-place if we put her for the time in one of the coffins of her husband's ancestors lying in what is still consecrated ground. We opened such a coffin, removed the contents, and placed her as you have seen her. As to the old relics which we took out, we could not leave them on the floor of the Crypt. Norlett and I removed them, and he descended at night and burned them in the central furnace. There is my story, Mr. Holmes, though how you forced my hand so that I have to tell it is more than I can say.\"\n\nHolmes sat for some time lost in thought.\n\n\"There is one flaw in your narrative, Sir Robert,\" he said at last. \"Your bets on the race, and therefore your hopes for the future, would hold good even if your creditors seized your estate.\"\n\n\"The horse would be part of the estate. What do they care for my bets? As likely as not they would not run him at all. My chief creditor is, unhappily, my most bitter enemy\u2014a rascally fellow, Sam Brewer, whom I was once compelled to horsewhip on Newmarket Heath. Do you suppose that he would try to save me?\"\n\n\"Well, Sir Robert,\" said Holmes, rising, \"this matter must, of course, be referred to the police. It was my duty to bring the facts to light, and there I must leave it. As to the morality or decency of your conduct, it is not for me to express an opinion. It is nearly midnight, Watson, and I think we may make our way back to our humble abode.\"\n\nIt is generally known now that this singular episode ended upon a hap pier note than Sir Robert's actions deserved. Shoscombe Prince did win the Derby, the sporting owner did net eighty thousand pounds in bets, and the creditors did hold their hand until the race was over, when they were paid in full, and enough was left to reestablish Sir Robert in a fair position in life. Both police and coroner took a lenient view of the transaction, and beyond a mild censure for the delay in registering the lady's decease, the lucky owner got away scatheless from this strange incident in a career which has now outlived its shadows and promises to end in an honoured old age." + }, + { + "title": "THE ADVENTURE OF THE RETIRED COLOURMAN", + "text": "Sherlock Holmes was in a melancholy and philosophic mood that morning. His alert practical nature was subject to such reactions.\n\n\"Did you see him?\" he asked.\n\n\"You mean the old fellow, who has just gone out?\"\n\n\"Precisely.\"\n\n\"Yes, I met him at the door.\"\n\n\"What did you think of him?\"\n\n\"A pathetic, futile, broken creature.\"\n\n\"Exactly, Watson. Pathetic and futile. But is not all life pathetic and futile? Is not his story a microcosm of the whole? We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow. Or worse than a shadow\u2014misery.\"\n\n\"Is he one of your clients?\"\n\n\"Well, I suppose I may call him so. He has been sent on by the Yard. Just as medical men occasionally send their incurables to a quack. They argue that they can do nothing more, and that whatever happens the patient can be no worse than he is.\"\n\n\"What is the matter?\"\n\nHolmes took a rather soiled card from the table. \"Josiah Amberley. He says he was junior partner of Brickfall and Amberley, who are manufacturers of artistic materials. You will see their names upon paint-boxes. He made his little pile, retired from business at the age of sixty-one, bought a house at Lewisham, and settled down to rest after a life of ceaseless grind. One would think his future was tolerably assured.\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed.\"\n\nHolmes glanced over some notes which he had scribbled upon the back of an envelope.\n\n\"Retired in 1896, Watson. Early in 1897 he married a woman twenty years younger than himself\u2014a good-looking woman, too, if the photograph does not flatter. A competence, a wife, leisure\u2014it seemed a straight road which lay before him. And yet within two years he is, as you have seen, as broken and miserable a creature as crawls beneath the sun.\"\n\n\"But what has happened?\"\n\n\"The old story, Watson. A treacherous friend and a fickle wife. It would appear that Amberley has one hobby in life, and it is chess. Not far from him at Lewisham there lives a young doctor who is also a chess-player. I have noted his name as Dr. Ray Ernest. Ernest was frequently in the house, and an intimacy between him and Mrs. Amberley was a natural sequence, for you must admit that our unfortunate client has few out ward graces, whatever his inner virtues may be. The couple went off together last week\u2014destination untraced. What is more, the faithless spouse carried off the old man's deed-box as her personal luggage with a good part of his life's savings within. Can we find the lady? Can we save the money? A commonplace problem so far as it has developed, and yet a vital one for Josiah Amberley.\"\n\n\"What will you do about it?\"\n\n\"Well, the immediate question, my dear Watson, happens to be, What will you do?\u2014if you will be good enough to understudy me. You know that I am preoccupied with this case of the two Coptic Patriarchs, which should come to a head to-day. I really have not time to go out to Lewisham, and yet evidence taken on the spot has a special value. The old fellow was quite insistent that I should go, but I explained my difficulty. He is prepared to meet a representative.\"\n\n\"By all means,\" I answered. \"I confess I don't see that I can be of much service, but I am willing to do my best.\" And so it was that on a summer afternoon I set forth to Lewisham, little dreaming that within a week the affair in which I was engaging would be the eager debate of all England.\n\nIt was late that evening before I returned to Baker Street and gave an account of my mission. Holmes lay with his gaunt figure stretched in his deep chair, his pipe curling forth slow wreaths of acrid tobacco, while his eyelids drooped over his eyes so lazily that he might almost have been asleep were it not that at any halt or questionable passage of my narrative they half lifted, and two gray eyes, as bright and keen as rapiers, transfixed me with their searching glance.\n\n\"The Haven is the name of Mr. Josiah Amberley's house,\" I explained. \"I think it would interest you, Holmes. It is like some penurious patrician who has sunk into the company of his inferiors. You know that particular quarter, the monotonous brick streets, the weary suburban highways. Right in the middle of them, a little island of ancient culture and comfort, lies this old home, surrounded by a high sun-baked wall mottled with lichens and topped with moss, the sort of wall\u2014\"\n\n\"Cut out the poetry, Watson,\" said Holmes severely. \"I note that it was a high brick wall.\"\n\n\"Exactly. I should not have known which was The Haven had I not asked a lounger who was smoking in the street. I have a reason for mentioning him. He was a tall, dark, heavily moustached, rather military-looking man. He nodded in answer to my inquiry and gave me a curiously questioning glance, which came back to my memory a little later.\n\n\"I had hardly entered the gateway before I saw Mr. Amberley coming down the drive. I only had a glimpse of him this morning, and he certainly gave me the impression of a strange creature, but when I saw him in full light his appearance was even more abnormal.\"\n\n\"I have, of course, studied it, and yet I should be interested to have your impression,\" said Holmes.\n\n\"He seemed to me like a man who was literally bowed down by care. His back was curved as though he carried a heavy burden. Yet he was not the weakling that I had at first imagined, for his shoulders and chest have the framework of a giant, though his figure tapers away into a pair of spindled legs.\"\n\n\"Left shoe wrinkled, right one smooth.\"\n\n\"I did not observe that.\"\n\n\"No, you wouldn't. I spotted his artificial limb. But proceed.\"\n\n\"I was struck by the snaky locks of grizzled hair which curled from under his old straw hat, and his face with its fierce, eager expression and the deeply lined features.\"\n\n\"Very good, Watson. What did he say?\"\n\n\"He began pouring out the story of his grievances. We walked down the drive together, and of course I took a good look round. I have never seen a worse-kept place. The garden was all running to seed, giving me an impression of wild neglect in which the plants had been allowed to find the way of Nature rather than of art. How any decent woman could have tolerated such a state of things, I don't know. The house, too, was slatternly to the last degree, but the poor man seemed himself to be aware of it and to be trying to remedy it, for a great pot of green paint stood in the centre of the hall, and he was carrying a thick brush in his left hand. He had been working on the woodwork.\n\n\"He took me into his dingy sanctum, and we had a long chat. Of course, he was disappointed that you had not come yourself. 'I hardly expected,' he said, 'that so humble an individual as myself, especially after my heavy financial loss, could obtain the complete attention of so famous a man as Mr. Sherlock Holmes.'\n\n\"I assured him that the financial question did not arise. 'No, of course, it is art for art's sake with him,' said he, 'but even on the artistic side of crime he might have found something here to study. And human nature, Dr. Watson\u2014the black ingratitude of it all! When did I ever refuse one of her requests? Was ever a woman so pampered? And that young man\u2014he might have been my own son. He had the run of my house. And yet see how they have treated me! Oh, Dr. Watson, it is a dreadful, dreadful world!'\n\n\"That was the burden of his song for an hour or more. He had, it seems, no suspicion of an intrigue. They lived alone save for a woman who comes in by the day and leaves every evening at six. On that particular evening old Amberley, wishing to give his wife a treat, had taken two upper circle seats at the Haymarket Theatre. At the last moment she had complained of a headache and had refused to go. He had gone alone. There seemed to be no doubt about the fact, for he produced the unused ticket which he had taken for his wife.\"\n\n\"That is remarkable\u2014most remarkable,\" said Holmes, whose interest in the case seemed to be rising. \"Pray continue, Watson. I find your narrative most arresting. Did you personally examine this ticket? You did not, perchance, take the number?\"\n\n\"It so happens that I did,\" I answered with some pride. \"It chanced to be my old school number, thirty-one, and so is stuck in my head.\"\n\n\"Excellent, Watson! His seat, then, was either thirty or thirty-two.\"\n\n\"Quite so,\" I answered with some mystification. \"And on B row.\"\n\n\"That is most satisfactory. What else did he tell you?\"\n\n\"He showed me his strong-room, as he called it. It really is a strong-room\u2014like a bank\u2014with iron door and shutter\u2014burglarproof, as he claimed. However, the woman seems to have had a duplicate key, and between them they had carried off some seven thousand pounds' worth of cash and securities.\"\n\n\"Securities! How could they dispose of those?\"\n\n\"He said that he had given the police a list and that he hoped they would be unsaleable. He had got back from the theatre about midnight and found the place plundered, the door and window open, and the fugitives gone. There was no letter or message, nor has he heard a word since. He at once gave the alarm to the police.\"\n\nHolmes brooded for some minutes.\n\n\"You say he was painting. What was he painting?\"\n\n\"Well, he was painting the passage. But he had already painted the door and woodwork of this room I spoke of.\"\n\n\"Does it not strike you as a strange occupation in the circumstances?\"\n\n\"'One must do something to ease an aching heart.' That was his own explanation. It was eccentric, no doubt, but he is clearly an eccentric man. He tore up one of his wife's photographs in my presence\u2014tore it up furiously in a tempest of passion. 'I never wish to see her damned face again,' he shrieked.\"\n\n\"Anything more, Watson?\"\n\n\"Yes, one thing which struck me more than anything else. I had driven to the Blackheath Station and had caught my train there when, just as it was starting, I saw a man dart into the carriage next to my own. You know that I have a quick eye for faces, Holmes. It was undoubtedly the tall, dark man whom I had addressed in the street. I saw him once more at London Bridge, and then I lost him in the crowd. But I am convinced that he was following me.\"\n\n\"No doubt! No doubt!\" said Holmes. \"A tall, dark, heavily moustached man, you say, with gray-tinted sun-glasses?\"\n\n\"Holmes, you are a wizard. I did not say so, but he had gray-tinted sun-glasses.\"\n\n\"And a Masonic tie-pin?\"\n\n\"Holmes!\"\n\n\"Quite simple, my dear Watson. But let us get down to what is practical. I must admit to you that the case, which seemed to me to be so absurdly simple as to be hardly worth my notice, is rapidly assuming a very different aspect. It is true that though in your mission you have missed everything of importance, yet even those things which have obtruded themselves upon your notice give rise to serious thought.\"\n\n\"What have I missed?\"\n\n\"Don't be hurt, my dear fellow. You know that I am quite impersonal. No one else would have done better. Some possibly not so well. But clearly you have missed some vital points. What is the opinion of the neighbours about this man Amberley and his wife? That surely is of importance. What of Dr. Ernest? Was he the gay Lothario one would expect? With your natural advantages, Watson, every lady is your helper and accomplice. What about the girl at the post-office, or the wife of the greengrocer? I can picture you whispering soft nothings with the young lady at the Blue Anchor, and receiving hard somethings in exchange. All this you have left undone.\"\n\n\"It can still be done.\"\n\n\"It has been done. Thanks to the telephone and the help of the Yard, I can usually get my essentials without leaving this room. As a matter of fact, my information confirms the man's story. He has the local repute of being a miser as well as a harsh and exacting husband. That he had a large sum of money in that strong-room of his is certain. So also is it that young Dr. Ernest, an unmarried man, played chess with Amberley, and probably played the fool with his wife. All this seems plain sailing, one would think that there was no more to be said\u2014and yet!\u2014and yet!\"\n\n\"Where lies the difficulty?\"\n\n\"In my imagination, perhaps. Well, leave it there, Watson. Let us escape from this weary workaday world by the side door of music. Carina sings to-night at the Albert Hall, and we have time to dress, dine, and enjoy.\"\n\nIn the morning I was up betimes, but some toast crumbs and two empty eggshells told me that my companion was earlier still. I found a scribbled note upon the table.\n\n\u2002DEAR WATSON:\n\n\u2002There are one or two points of contact which I should wish to establish with Mr. Josiah Amberley. When I have done so we can dismiss the case\u2014or not. I would only ask you to be on hand about three o'clock, as I conceive it possible that I may want you.\n\n\u2002S.H.\n\nI saw nothing of Holmes all day, but at the hour named he returned, grave, preoccupied, and aloof. At such times it was wiser to leave him to himself.\n\n\"Has Amberley been here yet?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Ah! I am expecting him.\"\n\nHe was not disappointed, for presently the old fellow arrived with a very worried and puzzled expression upon his austere face.\n\n\"I've had a telegram, Mr. Holmes. I can make nothing of it.\" He handed it over, and Holmes read it aloud.\n\n\"Come at once without fail. Can give you information as to your recent loss.\n\nELMAN.\n\nThe Vicarage.\"\n\n\"Dispatched at 2:10 from Little Purlington,\" said Holmes. \"Little Purlington is in Essex, I believe, not far from Frinton. Well, of course you will start at once. This is evidently from a responsible person, the vicar of the place. Where is my Crockford? Yes, here we have him: 'J. C. Elman, M. A., Living of Moosmoor cum Little Purlington.' Look up the trains, Watson.\"\n\n\"There is one at 5:20 from Liverpool Street.\"\n\n\"Excellent. You had best go with him, Watson. He may need help or advice. Clearly we have come to a crisis in this affair.\"\n\nBut our client seemed by no means eager to start.\n\n\"It's perfectly absurd, Mr. Holmes,\" he said. \"What can this man possibly know of what has occurred? It is waste of time and money.\"\n\n\"He would not have telegraphed to you if he did not know something. Wire at once that you are coming.\"\n\n\"I don't think I shall go.\"\n\nHolmes assumed his sternest aspect.\n\n\"It would make the worst possible impression both on the police and upon myself, Mr. Amberley, if when so obvious a clue arose you should refuse to follow it up. We should feel that you were not really in earnest in this investigation.\"\n\nOur client seemed horrified at the suggestion.\n\n\"Why, of course I shall go if you look at it in that way,\" said he. \"On the face of it, it seems absurd to suppose that this parson knows anything; but if you think\u2014\"\n\n\"I do think,\" said Holmes with emphasis, and so we were launched upon our journey. Holmes took me aside before we left the room and gave me one word of counsel, which showed that he considered the matter to be of importance. \"Whatever you do, see that he really does go,\" said he. \"Should he break away or return, get to the nearest telephone exchange and send the single word 'Bolted.' I will arrange here that it shall reach me wherever I am.\"\n\nLittle Purlington is not an easy place to reach, for it is on a branch line. My remembrance of the journey is not a pleasant one, for the weather was hot, the train slow, and my companion sullen and silent, hardly talking at all save to make an occasional sardonic remark as to the futility of our proceedings. When we at last reached the little station it was a two-mile drive before we came to the Vicarage, where a big, solemn, rather pompous clergyman received us in his study. Our telegram lay before him.\n\n\"Well, gentlemen,\" he asked, \"what can I do for you?\"\n\n\"We came,\" I explained, \"in answer to your wire.\"\n\n\"My wire! I sent no wire.\"\n\n\"I mean the wire which you sent to Mr. Josiah Amberley about his wife and his money.\"\n\n\"If this is a joke, sir, it is a very questionable one,\" said the vicar angrily. \"I have never heard of the gentleman you name, and I have not sent a wire to anyone.\"\n\nOur client and I looked at each other in amazement.\n\n\"Perhaps there is some mistake,\" said I; \"are there perhaps two vicarages? Here is the wire itself, signed Elman and dated from the Vicarage.\"\n\n\"There is only one vicarage, sir, and only one vicar, and this wire is a scandalous forgery, the origin of which shall certainly be investigated by the police. Meanwhile, I can see no possible object in prolonging this interview.\"\n\nSo Mr. Amberley and I found ourselves on the roadside in what seemed to me to be the most primitive village in England. We made for the telegraph office, but it was already closed. There was a telephone, however, at the little Railway Arms, and by it I got into touch with Holmes, who shared in our amazement at the result of our journey.\n\n\"Most singular!\" said the distant voice. \"Most remarkable! I much fear, my dear Watson, that there is no return train to-night. I have unwittingly condemned you to the horrors of a country inn. However, there is always Nature, Watson\u2014Nature and Josiah Amberley\u2014you can be in close commune with both.\" I heard his dry chuckle as he turned away.\n\nIt was soon apparent to me that my companion's reputation as a miser was not undeserved. He had grumbled at the expense of the journey, had insisted upon travelling third-class, and was now clamorous in his objections to the hotel bill. Next morning, when we did at last arrive in London, it was hard to say which of us was in the worse humour.\n\n\"You had best take Baker Street as we pass,\" said I. \"Mr. Holmes may have some fresh instructions.\"\n\n\"If they are not worth more than the last ones they are not of much use,\" said Amberley with a malevolent scowl. None the less, he kept me company. I had already warned Holmes by telegram of the hour of our arrival, but we found a message waiting that he was at Lewisham and would expect us there. That was a surprise, but an even greater one was to find that he was not alone in the sitting-room of our client. A stern-looking, impassive man sat beside him, a dark man with gray-tinted glasses and a large Masonic pin projecting from his tie.\n\n\"This is my friend Mr. Barker,\" said Holmes. \"He has been interesting himself also in your business, Mr. Josiah Amberley, though we have been working independently. But we both have the same question to ask you!\"\n\nMr. Amberley sat down heavily. He sensed impending danger. I read it in his straining eyes and his twitching features.\n\n\"What is the question, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Only this: What did you do with the bodies?\"\n\nThe man sprang to his feet with a hoarse scream. He clawed into the air with his bony hands. His mouth was open, and for the instant he looked like some horrible bird of prey. In a flash we got a glimpse of the real Josiah Amberley, a misshapen demon with a soul as distorted as his body. As he fell back into his chair he clapped his hand to his lips as if to stifle a cough. Holmes sprang at his throat like a tiger and twisted his face towards the ground. A white pellet fell from between his gasping lips.\n\n\"No short cuts, Josiah Amberley. Things must be done decently and in order. What about it, Barker?\"\n\n\"I have a cab at the door,\" said our taciturn companion.\n\n\"It is only a few hundred yards to the station. We will go together. You can stay here, Watson. I shall be back within half an hour.\"\n\nThe old colourman had the strength of a lion in that great trunk of his, but he was helpless in the hands of the two experienced man-handlers. Wriggling and twisting he was dragged to the waiting cab, and I was left to my solitary vigil in the ill-omened house. In less time than he had named, however, Holmes was back, in company with a smart young police inspector.\n\n\"I've left Barker to look after the formalities,\" said Holmes. \"You had not met Barker, Watson. He is my hated rival upon the Surrey shore. When you said a tall dark man it was not difficult for me to complete the picture. He has several good cases to his credit, has he not, Inspector?\"\n\n\"He has certainly interfered several times,\" the inspector answered with reserve.\n\n\"His methods are irregular, no doubt, like my own. The irregulars are useful sometimes, you know. You, for example, with your compulsory warning about whatever he said being used against him, could never have bluffed this rascal into what is virtually a confession.\"\n\n\"Perhaps not. But we get there all the same, Mr. Holmes. Don't imagine that we had not formed our own views of this case, and that we would not have laid our hands on our man. You will excuse us for feeling sore when you jump in with methods which we cannot use, and so rob us of the credit.\"\n\n\"There shall be no such robbery, MacKinnon. I assure you that I efface myself from now onward, and as to Barker, he has done nothing save what I told him.\"\n\nThe inspector seemed considerably relieved.\n\n\"That is very handsome of you, Mr. Holmes. Praise or blame can matter little to you, but it is very different to us when the newspapers begin to ask questions.\"\n\n\"Quite so. But they are pretty sure to ask questions anyhow, so it would be as well to have answers. What will you say, for example, when the intelligent and enterprising reporter asks you what the exact points were which aroused your suspicion, and finally gave you a certain conviction as to the real facts?\"\n\nThe inspector looked puzzled.\n\n\"We don't seem to have got any real facts yet, Mr. Holmes. You say that the prisoner, in the presence of three witnesses, practically confessed by trying to commit suicide, that he had murdered his wife and her lover. What other facts have you?\"\n\n\"Have you arranged for a search?\"\n\n\"There are three constables on their way.\"\n\n\"Then you will soon get the clearest fact of all. The bodies cannot be far away. Try the cellars and the garden. It should not take long to dig up the likely places. This house is older than the water-pipes. There must be a disused well somewhere. Try your luck there.\"\n\n\"But how did you know of it, and how was it done?\"\n\n\"I'll show you first how it was done, and then I will give the explanation which is due to you, and even more to my long-suffering friend here, who has been invaluable throughout. But, first, I would give you an insight into this man's mentality. It is a very unusual one\u2014so much so that I think his destination is more likely to be Broadmoor than the scaffold. He has, to a high degree, the sort of mind which one associates with the medi\u00e6val Italian nature rather than with the modern Briton. He was a miserable miser who made his wife so wretched by his niggardly ways that she was a ready prey for any adventurer. Such a one came upon the scene in the person of this chess-playing doctor. Amberley excelled at chess\u2014one mark, Watson, of a scheming mind. Like all misers, he was a jealous man, and his jealousy became a frantic mania. Rightly or wrongly, he suspected an intrigue. He determined to have his revenge, and he planned it with diabolical cleverness. Come here!\"\n\nHolmes led us along the passage with as much certainty as if he had lived in the house and halted at the open door of the strong-room.\n\n\"Pooh! What an awful smell of paint!\" cried the inspector.\n\n\"That was our first clue,\" said Holmes. \"You can thank Dr. Watson's observation for that, though he failed to draw the inference. It set my foot upon the trail. Why should this man at such a time be filling his house with strong odours? Obviously, to cover some other smell which he wished to conceal\u2014some guilty smell which would suggest suspicions. Then came the idea of a room such as you see here with iron door and shutter\u2014a hermetically sealed room. Put those two facts together, and whither do they lead? I could only determine that by examining the house myself. I was already certain that the case was serious, for I had examined the box-office chart at the Haymarket Theatre\u2014another of Dr. Watson's bull's-eyes\u2014and ascertained that neither B thirty nor thirty-two of the upper circle had been occupied that night. Therefore, Amberley had not been to the theatre, and his alibi fell to the ground. He made a bad slip when he allowed my astute friend to notice the number of the seat taken for his wife. The question now arose how I might be able to examine the house. I sent an agent to the most impossible village I could think of, and summoned my man to it at such an hour that he could not possibly get back. To prevent any miscarriage, Dr. Watson accompanied him. The good vicar's name I took, of course, out of my Crockford. Do I make it all clear to you?\"\n\n\"It is masterly,\" said the inspector in an awed voice.\n\n\"There being no fear of interruption I proceeded to burgle the house. Burglary has always been an alternative profession had I cared to adopt it, and I have little doubt that I should have come to the front. Observe what I found. You see the gas-pipe along the skirting here. Very good. It rises in the angle of the wall, and there is a tap here in the corner. The pipe runs out into the strong-room, as you can see, and ends in that plaster rose in the centre of the ceiling, where it is concealed by the ornamentation. That end is wide open. At any moment by turning the outside tap the room could be flooded with gas. With door and shutter closed and the tap full on I would not give two minutes of conscious sensation to anyone shut up in that little chamber. By what devilish device he decoyed them there I do not know, but once inside the door they were at his mercy.\"\n\nThe inspector examined the pipe with interest. \"One of our officers mentioned the smell of gas,\" said he, \"but of course the window and door were open then, and the paint\u2014or some of it\u2014was already about. He had begun the work of painting the day before, according to his story. But what next, Mr. Holmes?\"\n\n\"Well, then came an incident which was rather unexpected to myself. I was slipping through the pantry window in the early dawn when I felt a hand inside my collar, and a voice said: 'Now, you rascal, what are you doing in there?' When I could twist my head round I looked into the tinted spectacles of my friend and rival, Mr. Barker. It was a curious foregathering and set us both smiling. It seems that he had been engaged by Dr. Ray Ernest's family to make some investigations and had come to the same conclusion as to foul play. He had watched the house for some days and had spotted Dr. Watson as one of the obviously suspicious characters who had called there. He could hardly arrest Watson, but when he saw a man actually climbing out of the pantry window there came a limit to his restraint. Of course, I told him how matters stood and we continued the case together.\"\n\n\"Why him? Why not us?\"\n\n\"Because it was in my mind to put that little test which answered so admirably. I fear you would not have gone so far.\"\n\nThe inspector smiled.\n\n\"Well, maybe not. I understand that I have your word, Mr. Holmes, that you step right out of the case now and that you turn all your results over to us.\"\n\n\"Certainly, that is always my custom.\"\n\n\"Well, in the name of the force I thank you. It seems a clear case, as you put it, and there can't be much difficulty over the bodies.\"\n\n\"I'll show you a grim little bit of evidence,\" said Holmes, \"and I am sure Amberley himself never observed it. You'll get results, Inspector, by always putting yourself in the other fellow's place, and thinking what you would do yourself. It takes some imagination, but it pays. Now, we will suppose that you were shut up in this little room, had not two minutes to live, but wanted to get even with the fiend who was probably mocking at you from the other side of the door. What would you do?\"\n\n\"Write a message.\"\n\n\"Exactly. You would like to tell people how you died. No use writing on paper. That would be seen. If you wrote on the wall someone might rest upon it. Now, look here! Just above the skirting is scribbled with a purple indelible pencil: 'We we\u2014' That's all.\"\n\n\"What do you make of that?\"\n\n\"Well, it's only a foot above the ground. The poor devil was on the floor dying when he wrote it. He lost his senses before he could finish.\"\n\n\"He was writing, 'We were murdered.'\"\n\n\"That's how I read it. If you find an indelible pencil on the body\u2014\"\n\n\"We'll look out for it, you may be sure. But those securities? Clearly there was no robbery at all. And yet he did possess those bonds. We verified that.\"\n\n\"You may be sure he has them hidden in a safe place. When the whole elopement had passed into history, he would suddenly discover them and announce that the guilty couple had relented and sent back the plunder or had dropped it on the way.\"\n\n\"You certainly seem to have met every difficulty,\" said the inspector. \"Of course, he was bound to call us in, but why he should have gone to you I can't understand.\"\n\n\"Pure swank!\" Holmes answered. \"He felt so clever and so sure of himself that he imagined no one could touch him. He could say to any suspicious neighbour, 'Look at the steps I have taken. I have consulted not only the police but even Sherlock Holmes.'\"\n\nThe inspector laughed.\n\n\"We must forgive you your 'even,' Mr. Holmes,\" said he, \"it's as workmanlike a job as I can remember.\"\n\nA couple of days later my friend tossed across to me a copy of the biweekly North Surrey Observer. Under a series of flaming headlines, which began with \"The Haven Horror\" and ended with \"Brilliant Police Investigation,\" there was a packed column of print which gave the first consecutive account of the affair. The concluding paragraph is typical of the whole. It ran thus:\n\nThe remarkable acumen by which Inspector MacKinnon deduced from the smell of paint that some other smell, that of gas, for example, might be concealed; the bold deduction that the strong-room might also be the death-chamber, and the subsequent inquiry which led to the discovery of the bodies in a disused well, cleverly concealed by a dog-kennel, should live in the history of crime as a standing example of the intelligence of our professional detectives.\n\n\"Well, well, MacKinnon is a good fellow,\" said Holmes with a tolerant smile. \"You can file it in our archives, Watson. Some day the true story may be told.\"" + }, + { + "title": "TWO PARODIES BY SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE", + "text": "[ AN INTRODUCTION TO DOYLE'S PARODIES ]\n\nFrom nearly the very beginning of his existence, Sherlock Holmes has been the subject of parodies and spoofs. Arthur Conan Doyle himself took comic aim at his best-known creation in two of the better mock adventures. He contributed the first, \"The Field Bazaar: A Short Travesty,\" in 1896 to The Student, a publication at his alma mater, the University of Edinburgh, as a good-humored gift from a famed alumnus. The story was written between the time Holmes apparently had met his end in \"The Final Problem\" in 1893 and his \"resurrection\" in \"The Empty House\" in 1903. Can you detect any clue to the author's feelings about reviving Holmes in this delightful little mind-reading caper?\n\nThe second, \"How Watson Learned the Trick,\" was published in 1924, near the end of the Holmes cycle. It seems to counter an implied belief that the methods Holmes used to solve his crimes were not so hard to fathom, once you saw the predictable pattern at work in most of the stories: \"Oh, yeah? Let's see if you can do it!\"" + }, + { + "title": "TWO PARODIES BY SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE", + "text": "[ THE FIELD BAZAAR ]\n\n\"I should certainly do it,\" said Sherlock Holmes.\n\nI started at the interruption, for my companion had been eating his breakfast with his attention entirely centred upon the paper which was propped up by the coffee pot. Now I looked across at him to find his eyes fastened upon me with the half-amused, half-questioning expression which he usually assumed when he felt that he had made an intellectual point.\n\n\"Do what?\" I asked.\n\nHe smiled as he took his slipper from the mantelpiece and drew from it enough shag tobacco to fill the old clay pipe with which he invariably rounded off his breakfast.\n\n\"A most characteristic question of yours, Watson,\" said he. \"You will not, I am sure, be offended if I say that any reputation for sharpness which I may possess has been entirely gained by the admirable foil which you have made for me. Have I not heard of debutantes who have insisted upon plainness in their chaperones? There is a certain analogy.\"\n\nOur long companionship in the Baker Street rooms had left us on those easy terms of intimacy when much may be said without offence. And yet I acknowledge that I was nettled at his remark.\n\n\"I may be very obtuse,\" said I, \"but I confess that I am unable to see how you have managed to know that I was... I was...\"\n\n\"Asked to help in the Edinburgh University Bazaar.\"\n\n\"Precisely. The letter has only just come to hand, and I have not spoken to you since.\"\n\n\"In spite of that,\" said Holmes, leaning back in his chair and putting his finger tips together, \"I would even venture to suggest that the object of the bazaar is to enlarge the University cricket field.\"\n\nI looked at him in such bewilderment that he vibrated with silent laughter.\n\n\"The fact is, my dear Watson, that you are an excellent subject,\" said he. \"You are never blas\u00e9. You respond instantly to any external stimulus. Your mental processes may be slow but they are never obscure, and I found during breakfast that you were easier reading than the leader in the Times in front of me.\"\n\n\"I should be glad to know how you arrived at your conclusions,\" said I.\n\n\"I fear that my good nature in giving explanations has seriously compromised my reputation,\" said Holmes. \"But in this case the train of reasoning is based upon such obvious facts that no credit can be claimed for it. You entered the room with a thoughtful expression, the expression of a man who is debating some point in his mind. In your hand you held a solitary letter. Now last night you retired in the best of spirits, so it was clear that it was this letter in your hand which had caused the change in you.\"\n\n\"This is obvious.\"\n\n\"It is all obvious when it is explained to you. I naturally asked myself what the letter could contain which might have this effect upon you. As you walked you held the flap side of the envelope towards me, and I saw upon it the same shield-shaped device which I have observed upon your old college cricket cap. It was clear, then, that the request came from Edinburgh University\u2014or from some club connected with the University. When you reached the table you laid down the letter beside your plate with the address uppermost, and you walked over to look at the framed photograph upon the left of the mantelpiece.\"\n\nIt amazed me to see the accuracy with which he had observed my movements. \"What next?\" I asked.\n\n\"I began by glancing at the address, and I could tell, even at the distance of six feet, that it was an unofficial communication. This I gathered from the use of the word \"Doctor\" upon the address, to which, as a Bachelor of Medicine, you have no legal claim. I knew that University officials are pedantic in their correct use of titles, and I was thus enabled to say with certainty that your letter was unofficial. When on your return to the table you turned over your letter and allowed me to perceive that the enclosure was a printed one, the idea of a bazaar first occurred to me. I had already weighed the possibility of its being a political communication, but this seemed improbable in the present stagnant conditions of politics.\n\n\"When you returned to the table your face still retained its expression and it was evident that your examination of the photograph had not changed the current of your thoughts. In that case it must itself bear upon the subject in question. I turned my attention to the photograph, therefore, and saw at once that it consisted of yourself as a member of the Edinburgh University Eleven, with the pavilion and cricket-field in the background. My small experience of cricket clubs has taught me that next to churches and cavalry ensigns they are the most debt-laden things upon earth. When upon your return to the table I saw you take out your pencil and draw lines upon the envelope, I was convinced that you were endeavouring to realize some projected improvement which was to be brought about by a bazaar. Your face still showed some indecision, so that I was able to break in upon you with my advice that you should assist in so good an object.\"\n\nI could not help smiling at the extreme simplicity of his explanation.\n\n\"Of course, it was as easy as possible,\" said I.\n\nMy remark appeared to nettle him.\n\n\"I may add,\" said he, \"that the particular help which you have been asked to give was that you should write in their album, and that you have already made up your mind that the present incident will be the subject of your article.\"\n\n\"But how\u2014!\" I cried.\n\n\"It is as easy as possible,\" said he, \"and I leave its solution to your own ingenuity. In the meantime,\" he added, raising his paper, \"you will excuse me if I return to this very interesting article upon the trees of Cremona, and the exact reasons for their pre-eminence in the manufacture of violins. It is one of those small outlying problems to which I am sometimes tempted to direct my attention.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW WATSON LEARNED THE TRICK", + "text": "Watson had been watching his companion intently ever since he had sat down to the breakfast table. Holmes happened to look up and catch his eye.\n\n\"Well, Watson, what are you thinking about?\" he asked.\n\n\"About you.\"\n\n\"Me?\"\n\n\"Yes, Holmes, I was thinking how superficial are these tricks of yours, and how wonderful it is that the public should continue to show interest in them.\"\n\n\"I quite agree,\" said Holmes. \"In fact, I have a recollection that I have myself made a similar remark.\"\n\n\"Your methods,\" said Watson severely, \"are really easily acquired.\"\n\n\"No doubt,\" Holmes answered with a smile. \"Perhaps you will yourself give an example of this method of reasoning.\"\n\n\"With pleasure,\" said Watson. \"I am able to say that you were greatly preoccupied when you got up this morning.\"\n\n\"Excellent!\" said Holmes. \"How could you possibly know that?\"\n\n\"Because you are usually a very tidy man and yet you have forgotten to shave.\"\n\n\"Dear me! How very clever!\" said Holmes, \"I had no idea, Watson, that you were so apt a pupil. Has your eagle eye detected anything more?\"\n\n\"Yes, Holmes. You have a client named Barlow, and you have not been successful in his case.\"\n\n\"Dear me, how could you know that?\"\n\n\"I saw the name outside his envelope. When you opened it you gave a groan and thrust it into your pocket with a frown on your face.\"\n\n\"Admirable! You are indeed observant. Any other points?\"\n\n\"I fear, Holmes, that you have taken to financial speculation.\"\n\n\"How could you tell that, Watson?\"\n\n\"You opened the paper, turned to the financial page, and gave a loud exclamation of interest.\"\n\n\"Well, that is very clever of you Watson. Any more?\"\n\n\"Yes, Holmes, you have put on your black coat, instead of your dressing gown, which proves that you are expecting some important visitor at once.\"\n\n\"Anything more?\"\n\n\"I have no doubt that I could find other points, Holmes, but I only give you these few, in order to show you that there are other people in the world who can be as clever as you.\"\n\n\"And some not so clever,\" said Holmes. \"I admit that they are few, but I am afraid, my dear Watson, that I must count you among them.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, Holmes?\"\n\n\"Well, my dear fellow, I fear your deductions have not been so happy as I should have wished.\"\n\n\"You mean that I was mistaken.\"\n\n\"Just a little that way, I fear. Let us take the points in their order: I did not shave because I have sent my razor to be sharpened. I put on my coat because I have, worse luck, an early meeting with my dentist. His name is Barlow, and the letter was to confirm the appointment. The cricket page is beside the financial one, and I turned to it to find if Surrey was holding its own against Kent. But go on, Watson, go on! It's a very superficial trick, and no doubt you will soon acquire it.\"\n\n\u2042\n\n[ COLLIER'S The National Weekly 29 DECEMBER 1923 ]\n\nIt was in October, 1876 that I began my medical course at the University of Edinburgh. The most notable of the characters whom I met was one Joseph Bell, surgeon at the Edinburgh Infirmary. Bell was a very remarkable man in body and mind. He was thin, wiry, dark with a high-nosed, acute face, penetrating grey eyes, angular shoulders, and a jerky way of walking. His voice was high and discordant. He was a very skilful surgeon, but his strong point was diagnosis, not only of disease, but of occupation and character. For some reason which I have never understood he singled me out from the drove of students who frequented his wards and made me his out-patient clerk, which meant that I had to array his out-patients, make simple notes of their cases, and then show them in, one by one, to the large room in which Bell sat in state surrounded by his dressers and students. Then I had ample chance of studying his methods and in noticing that he often learned more of the patient by a few quick glances than I had done by my questions. Occasionally the results were very dramatic, though there were times when he blundered. In one of his best cases he said to a civilian patient:\n\n\"Well, my man, you've served in the army?\"\n\n\"Aye, sir.\"\n\n\"Not long discharged?\"\n\n\"No sir.\"\n\n\"A Highland regiment?\"\n\n\"Aye, sir.\"\n\n\"A noncom officer?\"\n\n\"Aye, sir.\"\n\n\"Stationed at Barbados?\"\n\n\"Aye, sir.\"\n\n\"You see, gentlemen,\" he would explain, \"the man was a respectful man, but did not remove his hat. They do not in the army, but he would have learned civilian ways had he been long discharged. He has an air of authority and he is obviously Scottish. As to Barbados, his complaint is elephantiasis, which is West Indian and not British.\" To his audience of Watsons it all seemed most miraculous until it was explained, and then it became simple enough. It is no wonder that after the study of such a character I used and amplified his methods when in later life I tried to build up a scientific detective who solved cases on his own merits and not through the folly of the criminal. Bell took a keen interest in these detective tales and made suggestions, which were not, I am bound to say, very practical.\n\n[ The Twopenny Box ]\n\nI endeavoured almost from the first to compress the classes for a year into half a year, so as to have some months in which to earn a little money. It was at this time that I first learned that shillings might be earned in other ways than by filling phials. Some friend remarked to me that my letters were very vivid, and surely I could write some things to sell. I may say that the general aspiration toward literature was tremendously strong upon me, and that my mind was reaching out in what seemed an aimless way in all sorts of directions. I used to be allowed twopence for my lunch, that being the price of a mutton pie, but near the pie shop was a second-hand bookshop with a barrel full of old books and the legend, \"Your choice for 2d,\" stuck above it. Often the price of my luncheon used to be spent on some sample out of this barrel, and I have within reach of my arm, as I write these lines, copies of Gordon's Tacitus, Temple's works, Pope's Homer, Addison's Spectator and Swift's works, which all came out of the twopenny box.\n\nAnyone observing my actions and tastes would have said that so strong a spring would certainly overflow, but for my own part I never dreamed I could myself produce decent prose, and the remark of my friend, who was by no means given to flattery, took me greatly by sur prise. I sat down, however, and I wrote a little adventure story which I called \"The Mystery of the Sasassa Valley.\" To my great joy and surprise, it was accepted by Chambers's Journal, and I received three guineas. It mattered not that other attempts failed. I had done it once and I cheered myself by the thought that I could do it again.\n\nUpon emerging from Edinburgh as a bachelor of medicine in 1881, my plans were all exceedingly fluid and I was ready to join army, navy, Indian service, or anything which offered an opening. But after taking a trip in a cargo vessel along the west coast of Africa, I finally settled down to practice in Plymouth.\n\nI had at this time contributed several stories to London Society, a magazine now defunct, but then flourishing under the editorship of a Mr. Hogg. It had never entered my head yet that literature might give me a career, or anything beyond a little casual pocket money, but already it was a deciding factor in my life, for I could not have held on, and must have either starved or given in but for the few pounds which Mr. Hogg sent me.\n\nDuring the years before my marriage I had from time to time written short stories which were good enough to be marketable at very small prices\u2014five pounds on average\u2014but not good enough to reproduce. They are scattered about amid the pages of London Society, of All the Year Round, of Temple Bar, the Boys' Own Paper and other journals. There let them lie. They served their purpose in relieving me of a little of that financial burden which always pressed upon me. I can hardly have earned more than ten or fifteen pounds a year from this source, so that the idea of making a living by it never occurred to me. But though I was not putting out, I was taking in. I still have notebooks full of all sorts of knowledge which I acquired during that time. It is a great mistake to start putting out cargo when you have hardly stowed any on board.\n\n[ Enter Holmes and Watson ]\n\nI had for some time from 1884 onward been engaged upon a sensational book of adventure which I had called The Firm of Girdlestone, which represented my first attempt at a connected narrative. Save for occasional patches, it is a worthless book. I felt now that I was capable of something cleaner and crisper and more workmanlike. Gaboriau had rather attracted me by the neat dovetailing of his plots, and Poe's masterful detective, M. Dupin, had from boyhood been one of my heroes. But could I bring an addition of my own? I thought of my old teacher Joe Bell, of his eagle face, of his curious ways, of his eerie trick of spotting details. If he were a detective he would surely reduce this fascinating but unorganized business to something nearer to an exact science. I would try if I could get this effect. It was surely possible in real life, so why should I not make it plausible in fiction? It is all very well to say that a man is clever, but the reader wants to see examples of it\u2014such examples as Bell gave us every day in the wards.\n\nThe idea amused me. What should I call the fellow? I still possess the leaf of a notebook with various alternative names. One rebelled against the elementary art which gives some inkling of character in the name, and creates Mr. Sharps or Mr. Ferrets. First it was Sherringford Holmes; then it was Sherlock Holmes. He could not tell his own exploits, so he must have a commonplace comrade as a foil\u2014an educated man of action who could both join in the exploits and narrate them. A drab, quiet name for this unostentatious man. Watson would do. And so I had my purpose and wrote my Study in Scarlet.\n\nI knew that the book was as good as I could make it and I had high hopes. When Girdlestone used to come circling back with the precision of a homing pigeon I was grieved but not surprised, for I acquiesced in the decision. But when my little Holmes book began also to do the circular tour I was hurt, for I knew that it deserved a better fate. James Payn applauded, but found it both too short and too long, which was true enough. Arrowsmith received it in May 1886, and returned it unread in July. Two or three others sniffed and turned away. Finally, as Ward, Lock & Co. made a specialty of cheap and often sensational literature, I sent it to them. They said:\n\n\u2002DEAR SIR\u2014We have read your story and are pleased with it. We could not publish it this year, as the market is flooded at present with cheap fiction, but if you do not object to its being held over till next year, we will give you twenty-five pounds for the copyright.\n\n\u2002Yours faithfully,\n\n\u2002WARD, LOCK & CO.\n\n\u2002Oct. 30, 1886.\n\nIt was not a very tempting offer, and even I, poor as I was, hesitated to accept it. It was not merely the small sum offered, but it was the long delay, for this book might open a road for me. I was heartsick, however, at repeated disappointments, and I felt that perhaps it was true wisdom to make sure of publicity, however late. Therefore I accepted, and the book became Beeton's Christmas Annual of 1887.\n\nIt was in consequence of a publishers' dinner, at which I was a guest, that I wrote The Sign of the Four, in which Holmes made his second appearance. But thereafter for a time he was laid on the shelf, for, encouraged by the kind reception which \"Micah Clarke\" had received from the critics, I now determined upon an even bolder and more ambitious flight.\n\nHence came my two books. The White Company, written in 1889, and Sir Nigel, written fourteen years later. Of the two I consider the latter the better book, but I have no hesitation in saying that the two of them taken together did thoroughly achieve my purpose, that they made an accurate picture of that great age, and that, as a single piece of work, they form the most complete, satisfying, and ambitious thing that I have ever done. All things find their level, but I believe that if I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one. *The work needed much research and I have still got my notebooks full of all sorts of lore. I cultivate a simple style and avoid long words so far as possible, and it may be that this surface of ease has sometimes caused the reader to underrate the amount of real research which lies in all my historical novels. It is not a matter which troubles me, however, for I have always felt that justice is done in the end, and that the real merit of any work is never permanently lost.\n\nI remember that as I wrote the last words of The White Company I felt a wave of exultation and, with a cry of \"That's done it!\" I hurled my inky pen across the room, where it left a black smudge upon the duck's-egg wall paper. I knew in my heart that the book would live and that it would illuminate our national traditions. Now that it has passed through fifty editions I suppose I may say with all modesty that my forecast has proved to be correct. This was the last book which I wrote in my days of doctoring at Southsea, and marks an epoch in my life, so I can now hark back to some other phases of my last years at Bush Villa before I broke away into a new existence.\n\nA number of monthly magazines were coming out at that time, notable among which was the Strand then, as now, under the very able editorship of Greenhough Smith. Considering these various journals with their disconnected stories, it had struck me that a single character running through a series, if only it engaged the attention of the reader, would bind that reader to that particular magazine.\n\nLooking round for my central character, I felt that Sherlock Holmes, whom I had already handled in two little books, would easily lend himself to a succession of short stories. These I began in the long hours of waiting in my consulting room. Smith liked them from the first, and encouraged me to go ahead with them.\n\nIt was at this time that I definitely saw how foolish I was to waste my literary earnings in keeping up an oculist's room in Wimpole Street, and I determined with a wild rush of joy to cut the painter and to trust forever to my power of writing. So I settled down with a stout heart to do some literary work worthy of the name. The difficulty of the Holmes work was that every story really needed as clear-cut and original a plot as a longish book would do. One cannot without effort spin plots at such a rate. They are apt to become thin or to break. I was determined, now that I had no longer the excuse of absolute pecuniary pressure, never again to write anything which was not as good as I could possibly make it, and therefore I would not write a Holmes story without a worthy plot and without a problem which interested my own mind, for that is the first requisite before you can interest anyone else. If I have been able to sustain this character for a long time, and if the public find, as they will find, that the last story is as good as the first, it is entirely due to the fact that I never, or hardly ever, forced a story. Some have thought there was a falling off in the stories, and the criticism was neatly expressed by a Cornish boatman who said to me, \"I think, sir, when Holmes fell over that cliff, he may not have killed himself, but all the same he was never quite the same man afterwards.\"\n\nI was weary, however, of inventing plots and I set myself now to do some work which would certainly be less renumerative but would be more ambitious from a literary point of view. I had long been attracted by the epoch of Louis XIV and by those Huguenots who were the French equivalents of our Puritans. I had a good knowledge of the memoirs of that date, and many notes already prepared, so that it did not take me long to write The Refugees.\n\nYet it was still the Sherlock Holmes stories for which the public clamoured, and these from time to time I endeavoured to supply. At last, after I had done two series of them, I saw that I was in danger of having my hand forced, and of being entirely identified with what I regarded as a lower stratum of literary achievement. Therefore, as a sign of my resolution, I determined to end the life of my hero. The idea was in my mind when I went with my wife for a short holiday in Switzerland, in the course of which we walked down the Lauterbrunnen Valley. I saw there the wonderful falls of Reichenbach, a terrible place, and that, I thought, would make a worthy tomb for poor Sherlock, even if I buried my banking account along with him. So there I laid him, fully determined that he should stay there\u2014as indeed for some twenty years he did.\n\nI was amazed at the concern expressed by the public. They say that a man is never properly appreciated until he is dead, and the general protest against my summary execution of Holmes taught me how many and how numerous were his friends. \"You brute\" was the beginning of the letter of remonstrance which one lady sent me, and I expect she spoke for others beside herself. I heard of many who wept. I fear I was utterly callous myself.\n\nJames Barrie is one of my oldest literary friends, and I knew him within a year or two of the time when we both came to London. He and I had one most unfortunate venture together. The facts were that he had promised Mr D'Oyly Carte that he would provide the libretto of a light opera for the Savoy. I was brought into the matter because Barrie's health failed on account of some family bereavement. I had an urgent telegram from him. I found him worried because he had bound himself by contract, and he felt in his present state unable to go forward with it. There were to be two acts, and he had written the first one, and had the rough scenario of the second. Would I come in with him and help him to complete it as part author? I did my best and wrote the lyrics for the second act, and much of the dialogue, but it had to take the predestined shape. The result was not good, and on the first night I felt inclined, like Charles Lamb, to hiss it from my box. The opera, Jane Annie, was one of the few failures in Barrie's brilliant career. We were well abused by the critics, but Barrie took it all in the bravest spirit, and I still retain the comic verses of consolation which I received from him next morning.\n\nThere followed a parody on Holmes, written on the flyleaves of one one of his books. It ran thus:\n\n[ The Adventure of the Two Collaborators ]\n\nIn bringing to a close the adventures of my friend Sherlock Holmes I am perforce reminded that he never, save on the occasion which, as you will now hear, brought his singular career to an end, consented to act in any mystery which was concerned with persons who made a livelihood by their pen. \"I am not particular about the people I mix among for business purposes,\" he would say, \"but at literary characters I draw the line.\"\n\nWe were in our rooms in Baker Street one evening. I was (I remember) by the centre table writing out \"The Adventure of the Man Without a Cork Leg\" (which had so puzzled the Royal Society and all the other scientific bodies of Europe), and Holmes was amusing himself with a little revolver practice.\n\nIt was his custom of a summer evening to fire round my head, just shaving my face, until he had made a photograph of me on the opposite wall, and it is a slight proof of his skill that many of these portraits in pistol shots are considered admirable likenesses.\n\nI happened to look out of the window, and, perceiving two gentlemen advancing rapidly along Baker Street, asked him who they were. He immediately lit his pipe, and, twisting himself on a chair into a figure 8, replied:\n\n\"They are two collaborators in comic opera, and their play has not been a triumph.\"\n\nI sprang from my chair to the ceiling in amazement, and he then explained:\n\n\"My dear Watson, they are obviously men who follow some low calling. That much even you should be able to read in their faces. Those little pieces of blue paper which they fling angrily from them are Durrant's Press Notices. Of these they have obviously hundreds about their person (see how their pockets bulge). They would not dance on them if they were pleasant reading.\"\n\nI again sprang to the ceiling (which is much dented) and shouted: \"Amazing! But they may be mere authors.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Holmes, \"for mere authors only get one press notice a week. Only criminals, dramatists, and actors get them by the hundred.\"\n\n\"Then they may be actors.\"\n\n\"No, actors would come in a carriage.\"\n\n\"Can you tell me anything else about them?\"\n\n\"A great deal. From the mud on the boots of the tall one I perceive that he comes from South Norwood. The other is obviously a Scotch author.\"\n\n\"How can you tell that?\"\n\n\"He is carrying in his pocket a book called (I clearly see) 'Auld Licht Something.' Would anyone but the author be likely to carry about a book with such a title?\"\n\nI had to confess that this was improbable.\n\nIt was now evident that the two men (if such they can be called) were seeking our lodgings. I have said (often) that Holmes seldom gave way to emotion of any kind, but he now turned livid with passion. Presently this gave place to a strange look of triumph.\n\n\"Watson,\" he said, \"that big fellow has for years taken the credit for my most remarkable doings, but at last I have him\u2014at last!\"\n\nUp I went to the ceiling, and when I returned the strangers were in the room.\n\n\"I perceive, gentlemen,\" said Mr. Sherlock Holmes, \"that you are at present afflicted by an extraordinary novelty.\"\n\nThe handsomer of our visitors asked in amazement how he knew this, but the big one only scowled.\n\n\"You forget that you wear a ring on your fourth finger,\" replied Mr. Holmes calmly.\n\nI was about to jump to the ceiling when the big brute interposed.\n\n\"That tommyrot is all very well for the public, Holmes,\" said he, \"but you can drop it before me. And, Watson, if you go up to the ceiling again I shall make you stay there.\"\n\nHere I observed a curious phenomenon. My friend Sherlock Holmes shrank. He became small before my eyes. I looked longingly at the ceiling, but dared not.\n\n\"Let us cut out the first four pages,\" said the big man, \"and proceed to business. I want to know why\u2014\"\n\n\"Allow me,\" said Mr. Holmes, with some of his old courage. \"You want to know why the public does not go to your opera.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said the other ironically, \"as you perceive by my shirt stud.\" He added more gravely: \"And as you can only find out in one way I must insist on your witnessing an entire performance of the piece.\"\n\nIt was an anxious moment for me. I shuddered, for I knew that if Holmes went I should have to go with him. But my friend had a heart of gold. \"Never!\" he cried fiercely. \"I will do anything for you save that.\"\n\n\"Your continued existence depends on it,\" said the big man menacingly.\n\n\"I would rather melt into air,\" replied Holmes proudly, taking another chair. \"But I can tell you why the public don't go to your piece without sitting the thing out myself.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because,\" replied Holmes calmly, \"they prefer to stay away.\"\n\nA dead silence followed that extraordinary remark. For a moment the two intruders gazed with awe upon the man who had unravelled their mystery so wonderfully. Then, drawing their knives\u2014\n\nHolmes grew less and less, until nothing was left save a ring of smoke which slowly circled to the ceiling.\n\nThe last words of great men are often noteworthy. These were the last words of Sherlock Holmes: \"Fool, fool! I have kept you in luxury for years. By my help you have ridden extensively in cabs where no author was ever seen before. Henceforth you will ride in buses!\"\n\nThe brute sank into a chair aghast. The other author did not turn a hair.\n\n\u2002To A. Conan Doyle,\n\n\u2002From his friend, J. M. BARRIE.\n\n[ Dangerous Ground ]\n\n\u2042\n\n[ The Critic and the Snake ]\n\nThe impression that Holmes was a real person of flesh and blood may have been intensified by his frequent appearance upon the stage. After the withdrawal of my dramatization of \"Rodney Stone\" from a theatre upon which I held a six months' lease I determined to play a bold and energetic game and certainly I never played a bolder. When I saw the course that things were taking I shut myself up and devoted my whole mind to making a sensational Sherlock Holmes drama. I wrote it in a week and called it \"The Speckled Band,\" after the short story of that name. I do not think that I exaggerate if I say that within a fortnight of the one play shutting down I had a company working upon the rehearsals of the other. It was a considerable success.\n\nWe had a fine boa to play the title role, a snake which was the pride of my heart, so one can imagine my disgust when I saw that the critic of the Daily Telegraph ended his disparaging review by the words: \"The crisis of the play was produced by the appearance of a palpably artificial serpent.\" I was inclined to offer him a goodly sum if he would undertake to go to bed with it. We had several snakes at different times, but they were all inclined either to hang down from the hole in the wall like inanimate bell pulls, or else to turn back through the hole and get even with the stage carpenter, who pinched their tails in order to make them more lively. Finally we used artificial snakes, and everyone, including the stage carpenter, agreed that it was more satisfactory.\n\nI have had many letters addressed to Holmes with requests that I forward them. Watson has also had a number of letters in which he has been asked for the address or for the autograph of his more brilliant confr\u00e8re. A press-cutting agency wrote to Watson asking whether Holmes would not wish to subscribe. When Holmes retired, several elderly ladies were ready to keep house for him, and one sought to ingratiate herself by assuring me that she knew all about bee-keeping and could \"segregate the queen.\" I had considerable offers also for Holmes if he would examine and solve various family mysteries.\n\nI have often been asked whether I had myself the qualities which I depicted, or whether I was merely the Watson that I look. Of course I am well aware that it is one thing to grapple with a practical problem and quite another thing when you are allowed to solve it under your own conditions. At the same time a man cannot spin a character out of his own inner consciousness and make it really lifelike unless he has some possibilities of that character within him\u2014which is a dangerous admission for one who has drawn so many villains as I.\n\nI do not think that I ever realized what a living actual personality Holmes had become to the more guileless readers until I heard of the very pleasing story of the char-\u00e0-bancs of French schoolboys who, when asked what they wanted to see first in London, replied unanimously that they wanted to see Mr Holmes's lodgings in Baker Street. Many have asked me which house it is, but that is a point which, for excellent reasons, I will not decide." + }, + { + "title": "SOME PERSONALIA ABOUT SHERLOCK HOLMES", + "text": "At the request of the Editor I have spent some days in looking over an old letter-box in which from time to time I have placed letters referring directly or indirectly to the notorious Mr. Holmes. I wish now that I had been more careful in preserving the references to this gentleman and his little problems. A great many have been lost or mislaid. His biographer has been fortunate enough to find readers in many lands, and the reading has elicited the same sort of response, though in many cases that response has been in a tongue difficult to comprehend. Very often my distant correspondent could neither spell my own name nor that of my imaginary hero! Many such letters have been from Russians. Where the Russian letters have been in the vernacular I have been compelled, I am afraid, to take them as read, but when they have been in English they have been among the most curious in my collection. There was one young lady who began all her epistles with the words \"Good Lord.\" Another had a large amount of guile underlying her simplicity. Writing from Warsaw she stated that she had been bedridden for two years, and that my novels had been her only, etc., etc. So touched was I by this flattering statement that I at once prepared an autographed parcel of them to complete the fair invalid's collection. By good luck, however, I met a brother author upon the same day to whom I recounted the touching incident. With a cynical smile he drew an identical letter out of his pocket. His novels also had been for two years her only, etc., etc. I do not know how many more the lady had written to, but if, as I imagine, her correspondence had extended to several countries, she must have amassed a rather interesting library.\n\nThe young Russian's habit of addressing me as \"Good Lord\" had an even stranger parallel at home, which links it up with the subject of this article. Shortly after I received a knighthood I had a bill from a trades-man which was quite correct and businesslike in every detail save that it was made out to Sir Sherlock Holmes. I hope that I can stand a joke as well as my neighbours, but this particular piece of humour seemed rather misapplied, and I wrote sharply upon the subject. In response to my letter there arrived at my hotel a very repentant clerk, who expressed his sorrow at the incident, but kept on repeating the phrase, \"I assure you, sir, that it was bon\u00e2 fide.\" \"What do you mean by bon\u00e2 fide?\" I asked. \"Well, sir, my mates in the shop told me that you had been knighted, and that when a man was knighted he changed his name, and that you had taken that one.\" I need not say that my annoyance vanished, and that I laughed as heartily as his pals were probably doing round the corner.\n\nThere are certain problems which are continually recurring in these Sherlock Holmes letters. One of them has exercised men's minds in the most out-of-the-way places, from Labrador to Tibet; indeed, if a matter needs thought it is just the men in these outlying stations who have the time and solitude for it. I dare say I have had twenty letters upon the one point alone. It arises in \"The Adventure of the Priory School,\" where Holmes, glancing at the track of a bicycle, says, \"It is evidently going from us, not towards us.\" He did not give his reasoning, which my correspondents resent, and all assert that the deduction is impossible. As a matter of fact it is simple enough upon soft undulating ground such as the moor in question. The weight of the rider falls most upon the hind wheel, and in soft soil it makes a perceptibly deeper track. Where the machine goes up a slope this hind mark would be very much deeper; where it goes down a slope rapidly it would be hardly deeper at all. Thus the depth of the mark of the hind wheel would show which way the bike was travelling.\n\nOne of the quaintest proofs of Holmes's reality to many people is that I have frequently received autograph books by post, asking me to procure his signature. When it was announced that he was retiring from practice and intended to keep bees on the South Downs I had several letters offering to help him in his project. Two of them lie before me as I write. One says: \"Will Mr. Sherlock Holmes require a housekeeper for his country cottage at Christmas? I know someone who loves a quiet country life, and bees especially\u2014an old-fashioned, quiet woman.\" The other, which is addressed to Holmes himself, says: \"I see by some of the morning papers that you are about to retire and take up bee-keeping. If correct I shall be pleased to render you service by giving any advice you may require. I trust you will read this letter in the same spirit in which it is written, for I make this offer in return for many pleasant hours.\" Many other letters have reached me in which I have been implored to put my correspondents in touch with Mr Holmes, in order that he might elucidate some point in their private affairs.\n\nOccasionally I have been so far confused with my own character that I have been asked to take up professional work upon these lines. I had, I remember, one offer, in the case of an aristocratic murder trial in Poland some years ago, to go across and look into the matter upon my own terms. I need not say that I would not do such a thing for money, since I am diffident as to how far my own services would be of any value; but I have several times as an amateur been happy to have been of some assistance to people in distress. I can say, though I touch wood as I say it, that I have never entirely failed in any attempt which I have made to reduce Holmes's methods to practical use, save in one instance to which I allude later. For the case of Mr. Edalji I can claim little credit, for it did not take any elaborate deduction to come to the conclusion that a man who is practically blind did not make a journey at night which involved crossing a main line of railway, and would have tested a trained athlete had he been called upon to do it in the time. The man was obviously innocent, and it is a disgrace to this country that he has never received a penny of compensation for the three years which he spent in jail. A more complex case is that of Oscar Slater, who is still working out his sentence as a convict. I have examined the evidence carefully, including the supplementary evidence given at the very limited and unsatisfactory commission appointed to inquire into the matter, and I have not the faintest doubt that the man is innocent. When the judge asked him at the trial whether he had anything to say why the sentence of death for the murder of Miss Gilchrist should not be pronounced upon him, he cried aloud, \"My Lord, I did not know there was such a woman in the world.\" I am convinced that this was the literal truth. However, it is proverbially impossible to prove a negative, so there the matter must stand until the people of Scotland insist upon a real investigation into all the circumstances which surround this deplorable case.\n\nA few of the problems which have come my way have been very similar to some which I had invented for the exhibition of the reasoning of Mr. Holmes. I might perhaps quote one in which that gentleman's method of thought was copied with complete success. The case was as follows. A gentleman had disappeared. He had drawn a bank balance of forty pounds, which was known to be on him. It was feared that he had been murdered for the sake of the money. He had last been heard of stopping at a large hotel in London, having come from the country that day. In the evening he went to a music-hall performance, came out of it about ten o'clock, returned to his hotel, changed his evening clothes, which were found in his room next day, and disappeared utterly. No one saw him leave the hotel, but a man occupying a neighbouring room declared that he had heard him moving during the night. A week had elapsed at the time that I was consulted, but the police had discovered nothing. Where was the man?\n\nThese were the whole of the facts as communicated to me by his relatives in the country. Endeavouring to see the matter through the eyes of Mr. Holmes, I answered by return of post that he was evidently either in Glasgow or in Edinburgh. I proved later that he had as a fact gone to Edinburgh, though in the week that had passed he had moved to another part of Scotland.\n\nThere I should leave the matter, for, as Dr. Watson has often shown, a solution explained is a mystery spoiled. However, at this stage the reader can lay down the magazine and show how simple it all is by working out the problem for himself. He has all the data which were ever given to me. For the sake of those, however, who have no turn for such conundrums I will try to indicate the links which make the chain. The one advantage which I possessed was that I was familiar with the routine of London hotels\u2014though, I fancy, it differs little from that of hotels elsewhere.\n\nThe first thing was to look at the facts and separate what was certain from what was conjecture. It was all certain except the statement of the person who heard the missing man in the night. How could he tell such a sound from any other sound in a large hotel? That point could be disregarded if it traversed the general conclusions. The first clear deduction was that the man had meant to disappear. Why else should he draw all his money? He had got out of the hotel during the night. But there is a night-porter in all hotels, and it is impossible to get out without his knowledge when the door is once shut. The door is shut after the theatre-goers return\u2014say at twelve o'clock. Therefore the man left the hotel before twelve o'clock. He had come from the music-hall at ten, had changed his clothes, and had departed with his bag. No one had seen him do so. The inference is that he had done it at the moment when the hall was full of the returning guests, which is from eleven to eleven-thirty. After that hour, even if the door were still open, there are few people coming and going; so that he with his bag would certainly have been seen.\n\nHaving got so far upon firm ground we now ask ourselves why a man who desires to hide himself should go out at such an hour. If he intended to conceal himself in London he need never have gone to the hotel at all. Clearly, then, he was going to catch a train which would carry him away. But a man who is deposited by a train in any provincial station during the night is likely to be noticed, and he might be sure that when the alarm was raised and his description given some guard or porter would remember him. Therefore his destination would be some large town, which he would reach in daylight hours, as a terminus, where all his fellow-passengers would disembark and where he would lose himself in the crowd. When one turns up the time-table and sees that the great Scotch expresses bound for Edinburgh and Glasgow start about midnight, the goal is reached. As for his dress-suit, the fact that he abandoned it proved that he intended to adopt a line of life where there were no social amenities. This deduction also proved to be correct.\n\nI quote such a case in order to show that the general lines of reasoning advocated by Holmes have a real practical application to life. In another case where a girl had become engaged to a young foreigner who suddenly disappeared I was able by a similar process of deduction to show her very clearly both whither he had gone and how unworthy he was of her affections. On the other hand, these semi-scientific methods are occasionally laboured and slow as compared with the results of the rough-and-ready practical man. Lest I should seem to have been throwing bouquets either to myself or to Mr. Holmes, let me state that on the occasion of a burglary of the village inn, within a stone-throw of my house, the village constable, with no theories at all, had seized the culprit, while I had got no farther than that he was a left-handed man with nails in his boots.\n\nThe unusual or dramatic effects which lead to the invocation of Mr. Holmes in fiction are, of course, great aids to him in reaching a conclusion. It is the case where there is nothing to get hold of which is the deadly one. I heard of such a one in America which would certainly have presented a formidable problem. A gentleman of blameless life, starting off for a Sunday evening walk with his family, suddenly observed that he had forgotten his stick. He went back into the house, the door of which was still open, and he left his people waiting for him outside. He never reappeared, and from that day to this there has been no clue as to what befell him. This was certainly one of the strangest cases of which I have ever heard in real life.\n\nAnother very singular case came within my own observation. It was sent to me by an eminent London publisher. This gentleman had in his employment a head of department whose name we shall take as Musgrave. He was a hard-working person with no special feature in his character. Mr. Musgrave died, and several years after his death a letter was received addressed to him, care of his employers. It bore the postmark of a tourist resort in the West of Canada, and had the note \"Conf films\" upon the outside of the envelope, with the words \"Report Sy\" in one corner. The publishers naturally opened the envelope, as they had no note of the dead man's relatives. Inside were two blank sheets of paper. The letter, I may add, was registered. The publisher, being unable to make anything of this, sent it on to me, and I submitted the blank sheets to every possible chemical and heat test, with no result whatever. Beyond the fact that the writing appeared to be that of a woman, there is nothing to add to this account. The matter was, and remains, an insoluble mystery. How the correspondent could have something so secret to say to Mr. Musgrave and yet not be aware that this person had been dead for several years is very hard to understand\u2014or why blank sheets should be so carefully registered through the post. I may add that I did not trust the sheets to my own chemical tests, but had the best expert advice, without getting any result. Considered as a case it was a failure\u2014and a very tantalizing one.\n\nMr. Sherlock Holmes has always been a fair mark for practical jokers, and I have had numerous bogus cases of various degrees of ingenuity, marked cards, mysterious warnings, cipher messages, and other curious communications. Upon one occasion, as I was entering the hall to take part in an amateur billiard competition, I was handed a small packet which had been left for me. Upon opening it I found a piece of ordinary green chalk such as it used in billiards. I was amused by the incident, and I put the chalk into my waistcoat pocket and used it during the game. Afterwards I continued to use it until one day, some months later, as I rubbed the tip of my cue, the face of the chalk crumpled in, and I found it was hollow. From the recess thus exposed I drew out a small slip of paper with the words, \"From Ars\u00e8ne Lupin to Sherlock Holmes.\" Imagine the state of mind of the joker who took such trouble to accomplish such a result!\n\nOne of the mysteries submitted to Mr. Holmes was rather upon the psychic plane, and therefore beyond his powers. The facts as alleged are most remarkable, though I have no proof of their truth save that the lady wrote earnestly and gave both her name and address. The person, whom we will call Mrs. Seagrave, had been given a curious secondhand ring, snake-shaped, and of dull gold. This she took from her finger at night. One night she slept in it, and had a fearsome dream in which she seemed to be pushing off some furious creature which fastened its teeth into her arm. On awakening the pain in the arm continued, and next day the imprint of a double set of teeth appeared upon the arm, with one tooth of the lower jaw missing. The marks were in the shape of blue-black bruises which had not broken the skin. \"I do not know,\" says my correspondent, \"what made me think the ring had anything to do with the matter, but I took a dislike to the thing and did not wear it for some months, when, being on a visit, I took to wearing it again.\" To make a long story short, the same thing happened, and the lady settled the matter for ever by dropping her ring into the hottest corner of the kitchen-range. This curious story, which I believe to be genuine, may not be as supernatural as it seems. It is well known that in some subjects a strong mental impression does produce a physical effect. Thus a very vivid nightmare-dream with the impression of a bite might conceivably produce the mark of a bite. Such cases are well attested in medical annals. The second incident would, of course, arise by unconscious suggestion from the first. None the less, it is a very interesting little problem, whether psychic or material.\n\nBuried treasures are naturally among the problems which have come to Mr Holmes. One genuine case was accompanied by the diagram here reproduced. It refers to an Indiaman who was wrecked upon the South African coast in the year 1782. If I were a younger man I should be seriously inclined to go personally and look into that matter. The ship contained a remarkable treasure, including, I believe, the gold crown regalia of Delhi. It is surmised that they buried these near the coast and that this chart is a note of the spot. Each Indiaman in those days had its own semaphore code, and it is conjectured that the three marks upon the left are signals from a three-armed semaphore. Some record of their meaning might perhaps even now be found in the old papers of the India Office. The circle upon the right gives the compass bearings. The larger semicircle may be the curved edge of a reef or of a rock. The figures above are the indications how to reach the X which marks the treasure. Possibly they may give the bearings as 186 feet from the 4 upon the semicircle. The scene of the wreck is a lonely part of the country, but I shall be surprised if sooner or later someone does not seriously set to work to solve the mystery.\n\nOne last word before I close these jottings about my imaginary character. It is not given to every man to see the child of his brain endowed with life through the genius of a great sympathetic artist, but that was my good fortune when Mr. Gillette turned his mind and his great talents to putting Holmes upon the stage. I cannot end my remarks more fittingly than by my thanks to the man who changed a creature of thin air into an absolutely convincing human being." + } + ] + }, + { + "title": "The Lost World", + "author": "Arthur Conan Doyle", + "genres": [ + "adventure", + "science fiction" + ], + "tags": [ + "dinosaurs", + "Professor Challenger" + ], + "chapters": [ + { + "title": "Chapter 1", + "text": "\"There Are Heroisms All Round Us\"\n\nMr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless person upon earth,\u2014a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man, perfectly good-natured, but absolutely centered upon his own silly self. If anything could have driven me from Gladys, it would have been the thought of such a father-in-law. I am convinced that he really believed in his heart that I came round to the Chestnuts three days a week for the pleasure of his company, and very especially to hear his views upon bimetallism, a subject upon which he was by way of being an authority.\n\nFor an hour or more that evening I listened to his monotonous chirrup about bad money driving out good, the token value of silver, the depreciation of the rupee, and the true standards of exchange.\n\n\"Suppose,\" he cried with feeble violence, \"that all the debts in the world were called up simultaneously, and immediate payment insisted upon,\u2014what under our present conditions would happen then?\"\n\nI gave the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man, upon which he jumped from his chair, reproved me for my habitual levity, which made it impossible for him to discuss any reasonable subject in my presence, and bounced off out of the room to dress for a Masonic meeting.\n\nAt last I was alone with Gladys, and the moment of Fate had come! All that evening I had felt like the soldier who awaits the signal which will send him on a forlorn hope; hope of victory and fear of repulse alternating in his mind.\n\nShe sat with that proud, delicate profile of hers outlined against the red curtain. How beautiful she was! And yet how aloof! We had been friends, quite good friends; but never could I get beyond the same comradeship which I might have established with one of my fellow-reporters upon the Gazette,\u2014perfectly frank, perfectly kindly, and perfectly unsexual. My instincts are all against a woman being too frank and at her ease with me. It is no compliment to a man. Where the real sex feeling begins, timidity and distrust are its companions, heritage from old wicked days when love and violence went often hand in hand. The bent head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing figure\u2014these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the true signals of passion. Even in my short life I had learned as much as that\u2014or had inherited it in that race memory which we call instinct.\n\nGladys was full of every womanly quality. Some judged her to be cold and hard; but such a thought was treason. That delicately bronzed skin, almost oriental in its coloring, that raven hair, the large liquid eyes, the full but exquisite lips,\u2014all the stigmata of passion were there. But I was sadly conscious that up to now I had never found the secret of drawing it forth. However, come what might, I should have done with suspense and bring matters to a head to-night. She could but refuse me, and better be a repulsed lover than an accepted brother.\n\nSo far my thoughts had carried me, and I was about to break the long and uneasy silence, when two critical, dark eyes looked round at me, and the proud head was shaken in smiling reproof. \"I have a presentiment that you are going to propose, Ned. I do wish you wouldn't; for things are so much nicer as they are.\"\n\nI drew my chair a little nearer. \"Now, how did you know that I was going to propose?\" I asked in genuine wonder.\n\n\"Don't women always know? Do you suppose any woman in the world was ever taken unawares? But\u2014oh, Ned, our friendship has been so good and so pleasant! What a pity to spoil it! Don't you feel how splendid it is that a young man and a young woman should be able to talk face to face as we have talked?\"\n\n\"I don't know, Gladys. You see, I can talk face to face with\u2014with the station-master.\" I can't imagine how that official came into the matter; but in he trotted, and set us both laughing. \"That does not satisfy me in the least. I want my arms round you, and your head on my breast, and\u2014oh, Gladys, I want\u2014\"\n\nShe had sprung from her chair, as she saw signs that I proposed to demonstrate some of my wants. \"You've spoiled everything, Ned,\" she said. \"It's all so beautiful and natural until this kind of thing comes in! It is such a pity! Why can't you control yourself?\"\n\n\"I didn't invent it,\" I pleaded. \"It's nature. It's love.\"\n\n\"Well, perhaps if both love, it may be different. I have never felt it.\"\n\n\"But you must\u2014you, with your beauty, with your soul! Oh, Gladys, you were made for love! You must love!\"\n\n\"One must wait till it comes.\"\n\n\"But why can't you love me, Gladys? Is it my appearance, or what?\"\n\nShe did unbend a little. She put forward a hand\u2014such a gracious, stooping attitude it was\u2014and she pressed back my head. Then she looked into my upturned face with a very wistful smile.\n\n\"No it isn't that,\" she said at last. \"You're not a conceited boy by nature, and so I can safely tell you it is not that. It's deeper.\"\n\n\"My character?\"\n\nShe nodded severely.\n\n\"What can I do to mend it? Do sit down and talk it over. No, really, I won't if you'll only sit down!\"\n\nShe looked at me with a wondering distrust which was much more to my mind than her whole-hearted confidence. How primitive and bestial it looks when you put it down in black and white!\u2014and perhaps after all it is only a feeling peculiar to myself. Anyhow, she sat down.\n\n\"Now tell me what's amiss with me?\"\n\n\"I'm in love with somebody else,\" said she.\n\nIt was my turn to jump out of my chair.\n\n\"It's nobody in particular,\" she explained, laughing at the expression of my face: \"only an ideal. I've never met the kind of man I mean.\"\n\n\"Tell me about him. What does he look like?\"\n\n\"Oh, he might look very much like you.\"\n\n\"How dear of you to say that! Well, what is it that he does that I don't do? Just say the word,\u2014teetotal, vegetarian, aeronaut, theosophist, superman. I'll have a try at it, Gladys, if you will only give me an idea what would please you.\"\n\nShe laughed at the elasticity of my character. \"Well, in the first place, I don't think my ideal would speak like that,\" said she. \"He would be a harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapt himself to a silly girl's whim. But, above all, he must be a man who could do, who could act, who could look Death in the face and have no fear of him, a man of great deeds and strange experiences. It is never a man that I should love, but always the glories he had won; for they would be reflected upon me. Think of Richard Burton! When I read his wife's life of him I could so understand her love! And Lady Stanley! Did you ever read the wonderful last chapter of that book about her husband? These are the sort of men that a woman could worship with all her soul, and yet be the greater, not the less, on account of her love, honored by all the world as the inspirer of noble deeds.\"\n\nShe looked so beautiful in her enthusiasm that I nearly brought down the whole level of the interview. I gripped myself hard, and went on with the argument.\n\n\"We can't all be Stanleys and Burtons,\" said I; \"besides, we don't get the chance,\u2014at least, I never had the chance. If I did, I should try to take it.\"\n\n\"But chances are all around you. It is the mark of the kind of man I mean that he makes his own chances. You can't hold him back. I've never met him, and yet I seem to know him so well. There are heroisms all round us waiting to be done. It's for men to do them, and for women to reserve their love as a reward for such men. Look at that young Frenchman who went up last week in a balloon. It was blowing a gale of wind; but because he was announced to go he insisted on starting. The wind blew him fifteen hundred miles in twenty-four hours, and he fell in the middle of Russia. That was the kind of man I mean. Think of the woman he loved, and how other women must have envied her! That's what I should like to be,\u2014envied for my man.\"\n\n\"I'd have done it to please you.\"\n\n\"But you shouldn't do it merely to please me. You should do it because you can't help yourself, because it's natural to you, because the man in you is crying out for heroic expression. Now, when you described the Wigan coal explosion last month, could you not have gone down and helped those people, in spite of the choke-damp?\"\n\n\"I did.\"\n\n\"You never said so.\"\n\n\"There was nothing worth bucking about.\"\n\n\"I didn't know.\" She looked at me with rather more interest. \"That was brave of you.\"\n\n\"I had to. If you want to write good copy, you must be where the things are.\"\n\n\"What a prosaic motive! It seems to take all the romance out of it. But, still, whatever your motive, I am glad that you went down that mine.\" She gave me her hand; but with such sweetness and dignity that I could only stoop and kiss it. \"I dare say I am merely a foolish woman with a young girl's fancies. And yet it is so real with me, so entirely part of my very self, that I cannot help acting upon it. If I marry, I do want to marry a famous man!\"\n\n\"Why should you not?\" I cried. \"It is women like you who brace men up. Give me a chance, and see if I will take it! Besides, as you say, men ought to MAKE their own chances, and not wait until they are given. Look at Clive\u2014just a clerk, and he conquered India! By George! I'll do something in the world yet!\"\n\nShe laughed at my sudden Irish effervescence. \"Why not?\" she said. \"You have everything a man could have,\u2014youth, health, strength, education, energy. I was sorry you spoke. And now I am glad\u2014so glad\u2014if it wakens these thoughts in you!\"\n\n\"And if I do\u2014\"\n\nHer dear hand rested like warm velvet upon my lips. \"Not another word, Sir! You should have been at the office for evening duty half an hour ago; only I hadn't the heart to remind you. Some day, perhaps, when you have won your place in the world, we shall talk it over again.\"\n\nAnd so it was that I found myself that foggy November evening pursuing the Camberwell tram with my heart glowing within me, and with the eager determination that not another day should elapse before I should find some deed which was worthy of my lady. But who\u2014who in all this wide world could ever have imagined the incredible shape which that deed was to take, or the strange steps by which I was led to the doing of it?\n\nAnd, after all, this opening chapter will seem to the reader to have nothing to do with my narrative; and yet there would have been no narrative without it, for it is only when a man goes out into the world with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with the desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come within sight of him, that he breaks away as I did from the life he knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land where lie the great adventures and the great rewards. Behold me, then, at the office of the Daily Gazette, on the staff of which I was a most insignificant unit, with the settled determination that very night, if possible, to find the quest which should be worthy of my Gladys! Was it hardness, was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own glorification? Such thoughts may come to middle age; but never to ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 2", + "text": "\"Try Your Luck with Professor Challenger\"\n\nI always liked McArdle, the crabbed, old, round-backed, red-headed news editor, and I rather hoped that he liked me. Of course, Beaumont was the real boss; but he lived in the rarefied atmosphere of some Olympian height from which he could distinguish nothing smaller than an international crisis or a split in the Cabinet. Sometimes we saw him passing in lonely majesty to his inner sanctum, with his eyes staring vaguely and his mind hovering over the Balkans or the Persian Gulf. He was above and beyond us. But McArdle was his first lieutenant, and it was he that we knew. The old man nodded as I entered the room, and he pushed his spectacles far up on his bald forehead.\n\n\"Well, Mr. Malone, from all I hear, you seem to be doing very well,\" said he in his kindly Scotch accent.\n\nI thanked him.\n\n\"The colliery explosion was excellent. So was the Southwark fire. You have the true descreeptive touch. What did you want to see me about?\"\n\n\"To ask a favor.\"\n\nHe looked alarmed, and his eyes shunned mine. \"Tut, tut! What is it?\"\n\n\"Do you think, Sir, that you could possibly send me on some mission for the paper? I would do my best to put it through and get you some good copy.\"\n\n\"What sort of meesion had you in your mind, Mr. Malone?\"\n\n\"Well, Sir, anything that had adventure and danger in it. I really would do my very best. The more difficult it was, the better it would suit me.\"\n\n\"You seem very anxious to lose your life.\"\n\n\"To justify my life, Sir.\"\n\n\"Dear me, Mr. Malone, this is very\u2014very exalted. I'm afraid the day for this sort of thing is rather past. The expense of the 'special meesion' business hardly justifies the result, and, of course, in any case it would only be an experienced man with a name that would command public confidence who would get such an order. The big blank spaces in the map are all being filled in, and there's no room for romance anywhere. Wait a bit, though!\" he added, with a sudden smile upon his face. \"Talking of the blank spaces of the map gives me an idea. What about exposing a fraud\u2014a modern Munchausen\u2014and making him rideeculous? You could show him up as the liar that he is! Eh, man, it would be fine. How does it appeal to you?\"\n\n\"Anything\u2014anywhere\u2014I care nothing.\"\n\nMcArdle was plunged in thought for some minutes.\n\n\"I wonder whether you could get on friendly\u2014or at least on talking terms with the fellow,\" he said, at last. \"You seem to have a sort of genius for establishing relations with people\u2014seempathy, I suppose, or animal magnetism, or youthful vitality, or something. I am conscious of it myself.\"\n\n\"You are very good, sir.\"\n\n\"So why should you not try your luck with Professor Challenger, of Enmore Park?\"\n\nI dare say I looked a little startled.\n\n\"Challenger!\" I cried. \"Professor Challenger, the famous zoologist! Wasn't he the man who broke the skull of Blundell, of the Telegraph?\"\n\nThe news editor smiled grimly.\n\n\"Do you mind? Didn't you say it was adventures you were after?\"\n\n\"It is all in the way of business, sir,\" I answered.\n\n\"Exactly. I don't suppose he can always be so violent as that. I'm thinking that Blundell got him at the wrong moment, maybe, or in the wrong fashion. You may have better luck, or more tact in handling him. There's something in your line there, I am sure, and the Gazette should work it.\"\n\n\"I really know nothing about him,\" said I. \"I only remember his name in connection with the police-court proceedings, for striking Blundell.\"\n\n\"I have a few notes for your guidance, Mr. Malone. I've had my eye on the Professor for some little time.\" He took a paper from a drawer. \"Here is a summary of his record. I give it you briefly:\u2014\n\n\"'Challenger, George Edward. Born: Largs, N. B., 1863. Educ.: Largs Academy; Edinburgh University. British Museum Assistant, 1892. Assistant-Keeper of Comparative Anthropology Department, 1893. Resigned after acrimonious correspondence same year. Winner of Crayston Medal for Zoological Research. Foreign Member of'\u2014well, quite a lot of things, about two inches of small type\u2014'Societe Belge, American Academy of Sciences, La Plata, etc., etc. Ex-President Palaeontological Society. Section H, British Association'\u2014so on, so on!\u2014'Publications: \"Some Observations Upon a Series of Kalmuck Skulls\"; \"Outlines of Vertebrate Evolution\"; and numerous papers, including \"The underlying fallacy of Weissmannism,\" which caused heated discussion at the Zoological Congress of Vienna. Recreations: Walking, Alpine climbing. Address: Enmore Park, Kensington, W.'\n\n\"There, take it with you. I've nothing more for you to-night.\"\n\nI pocketed the slip of paper.\n\n\"One moment, sir,\" I said, as I realized that it was a pink bald head, and not a red face, which was fronting me. \"I am not very clear yet why I am to interview this gentleman. What has he done?\"\n\nThe face flashed back again.\n\n\"Went to South America on a solitary expedeetion two years ago. Came back last year. Had undoubtedly been to South America, but refused to say exactly where. Began to tell his adventures in a vague way, but somebody started to pick holes, and he just shut up like an oyster. Something wonderful happened\u2014or the man's a champion liar, which is the more probable supposeetion. Had some damaged photographs, said to be fakes. Got so touchy that he assaults anyone who asks questions, and heaves reporters down the stairs. In my opinion he's just a homicidal megalomaniac with a turn for science. That's your man, Mr. Malone. Now, off you run, and see what you can make of him. You're big enough to look after yourself. Anyway, you are all safe. Employers' Liability Act, you know.\"\n\nA grinning red face turned once more into a pink oval, fringed with gingery fluff; the interview was at an end.\n\nI walked across to the Savage Club, but instead of turning into it I leaned upon the railings of Adelphi Terrace and gazed thoughtfully for a long time at the brown, oily river. I can always think most sanely and clearly in the open air. I took out the list of Professor Challenger's exploits, and I read it over under the electric lamp. Then I had what I can only regard as an inspiration. As a Pressman, I felt sure from what I had been told that I could never hope to get into touch with this cantankerous Professor. But these recriminations, twice mentioned in his skeleton biography, could only mean that he was a fanatic in science. Was there not an exposed margin there upon which he might be accessible? I would try.\n\nI entered the club. It was just after eleven, and the big room was fairly full, though the rush had not yet set in. I noticed a tall, thin, angular man seated in an arm-chair by the fire. He turned as I drew my chair up to him. It was the man of all others whom I should have chosen\u2014Tarp Henry, of the staff of Nature, a thin, dry, leathery creature, who was full, to those who knew him, of kindly humanity. I plunged instantly into my subject.\n\n\"What do you know of Professor Challenger?\"\n\n\"Challenger?\" He gathered his brows in scientific disapproval. \"Challenger was the man who came with some cock-and-bull story from South America.\"\n\n\"What story?\"\n\n\"Oh, it was rank nonsense about some queer animals he had discovered. I believe he has retracted since. Anyhow, he has suppressed it all. He gave an interview to Reuter's, and there was such a howl that he saw it wouldn't do. It was a discreditable business. There were one or two folk who were inclined to take him seriously, but he soon choked them off.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"Well, by his insufferable rudeness and impossible behavior. There was poor old Wadley, of the Zoological Institute. Wadley sent a message: 'The President of the Zoological Institute presents his compliments to Professor Challenger, and would take it as a personal favor if he would do them the honor to come to their next meeting.' The answer was unprintable.\"\n\n\"You don't say?\"\n\n\"Well, a bowdlerized version of it would run: 'Professor Challenger presents his compliments to the President of the Zoological Institute, and would take it as a personal favor if he would go to the devil.'\"\n\n\"Good Lord!\"\n\n\"Yes, I expect that's what old Wadley said. I remember his wail at the meeting, which began: 'In fifty years experience of scientific intercourse\u2014' It quite broke the old man up.\"\n\n\"Anything more about Challenger?\"\n\n\"Well, I'm a bacteriologist, you know. I live in a nine-hundred-diameter microscope. I can hardly claim to take serious notice of anything that I can see with my naked eye. I'm a frontiersman from the extreme edge of the Knowable, and I feel quite out of place when I leave my study and come into touch with all you great, rough, hulking creatures. I'm too detached to talk scandal, and yet at scientific conversaziones I HAVE heard something of Challenger, for he is one of those men whom nobody can ignore. He's as clever as they make 'em\u2014a full-charged battery of force and vitality, but a quarrelsome, ill-conditioned faddist, and unscrupulous at that. He had gone the length of faking some photographs over the South American business.\"\n\n\"You say he is a faddist. What is his particular fad?\"\n\n\"He has a thousand, but the latest is something about Weissmann and Evolution. He had a fearful row about it in Vienna, I believe.\"\n\n\"Can't you tell me the point?\"\n\n\"Not at the moment, but a translation of the proceedings exists. We have it filed at the office. Would you care to come?\"\n\n\"It's just what I want. I have to interview the fellow, and I need some lead up to him. It's really awfully good of you to give me a lift. I'll go with you now, if it is not too late.\"\n\nHalf an hour later I was seated in the newspaper office with a huge tome in front of me, which had been opened at the article \"Weissmann versus Darwin,\" with the sub heading, \"Spirited Protest at Vienna. Lively Proceedings.\" My scientific education having been somewhat neglected, I was unable to follow the whole argument, but it was evident that the English Professor had handled his subject in a very aggressive fashion, and had thoroughly annoyed his Continental colleagues. \"Protests,\" \"Uproar,\" and \"General appeal to the Chairman\" were three of the first brackets which caught my eye. Most of the matter might have been written in Chinese for any definite meaning that it conveyed to my brain.\n\n\"I wish you could translate it into English for me,\" I said, pathetically, to my help-mate.\n\n\"Well, it is a translation.\"\n\n\"Then I'd better try my luck with the original.\"\n\n\"It is certainly rather deep for a layman.\"\n\n\"If I could only get a single good, meaty sentence which seemed to convey some sort of definite human idea, it would serve my turn. Ah, yes, this one will do. I seem in a vague way almost to understand it. I'll copy it out. This shall be my link with the terrible Professor.\"\n\n\"Nothing else I can do?\"\n\n\"Well, yes; I propose to write to him. If I could frame the letter here, and use your address it would give atmosphere.\"\n\n\"We'll have the fellow round here making a row and breaking the furniture.\"\n\n\"No, no; you'll see the letter\u2014nothing contentious, I assure you.\"\n\n\"Well, that's my chair and desk. You'll find paper there. I'd like to censor it before it goes.\"\n\nIt took some doing, but I flatter myself that it wasn't such a bad job when it was finished. I read it aloud to the critical bacteriologist with some pride in my handiwork.\n\n\u2002\"DEAR PROFESSOR CHALLENGER,\" it said, \"As a humble student of Nature, I have always taken the most profound interest in your speculations as to the differences between Darwin and Weissmann. I have recently had occasion to refresh my memory by re-reading\u2014\"\n\n\u2002\"You infernal liar!\" murmured Tarp Henry.\n\n\u2002\u2014\"by re-reading your masterly address at Vienna. That lucid and admirable statement seems to be the last word in the matter. There is one sentence in it, however\u2014namely: 'I protest strongly against the insufferable and entirely dogmatic assertion that each separate id is a microcosm possessed of an historical architecture elaborated slowly through the series of generations.' Have you no desire, in view of later research, to modify this statement? Do you not think that it is over-accentuated? With your permission, I would ask the favor of an interview, as I feel strongly upon the subject, and have certain suggestions which I could only elaborate in a personal conversation. With your consent, I trust to have the honor of calling at eleven o'clock the day after to-morrow (Wednesday) morning.\n\n\u2002\"I remain, Sir, with assurances of profound respect, yours very truly,\n\n\u2002EDWARD D. MALONE.\"\n\n\"How's that?\" I asked, triumphantly.\n\n\"Well if your conscience can stand it\u2014\"\n\n\"It has never failed me yet.\"\n\n\"But what do you mean to do?\"\n\n\"To get there. Once I am in his room I may see some opening. I may even go the length of open confession. If he is a sportsman he will be tickled.\"\n\n\"Tickled, indeed! He's much more likely to do the tickling. Chain mail, or an American football suit\u2014that's what you'll want. Well, good-bye. I'll have the answer for you here on Wednesday morning\u2014if he ever deigns to answer you. He is a violent, dangerous, cantankerous character, hated by everyone who comes across him, and the butt of the students, so far as they dare take a liberty with him. Perhaps it would be best for you if you never heard from the fellow at all.\"" + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 3", + "text": "\"He is a Perfectly Impossible Person\"\n\nMy friend's fear or hope was not destined to be realized. When I called on Wednesday there was a letter with the West Kensington postmark upon it, and my name scrawled across the envelope in a handwriting which looked like a barbed-wire railing. The contents were as follows:\u2014\n\n\u2002\"ENMORE PARK, W.\n\n\u2002\"SIR,\u2014I have duly received your note, in which you claim to endorse my views, although I am not aware that they are dependent upon endorsement either from you or anyone else. You have ventured to use the word 'speculation' with regard to my statement upon the subject of Darwinism, and I would call your attention to the fact that such a word in such a connection is offensive to a degree. The context convinces me, however, that you have sinned rather through ignorance and tactlessness than through malice, so I am content to pass the matter by. You quote an isolated sentence from my lecture, and appear to have some difficulty in understanding it. I should have thought that only a sub-human intelligence could have failed to grasp the point, but if it really needs amplification I shall consent to see you at the hour named, though visits and visitors of every sort are exceeding distasteful to me. As to your suggestion that I may modify my opinion, I would have you know that it is not my habit to do so after a deliberate expression of my mature views. You will kindly show the envelope of this letter to my man, Austin, when you call, as he has to take every precaution to shield me from the intrusive rascals who call themselves 'journalists.'\n\n\u2002\"Yours faithfully,\n\n\u2002\"GEORGE EDWARD CHALLENGER.\"\n\nThis was the letter that I read aloud to Tarp Henry, who had come down early to hear the result of my venture. His only remark was, \"There's some new stuff, cuticura or something, which is better than arnica.\" Some people have such extraordinary notions of humor.\n\nIt was nearly half-past ten before I had received my message, but a taxicab took me round in good time for my appointment. It was an imposing porticoed house at which we stopped, and the heavily-curtained windows gave every indication of wealth upon the part of this formidable Professor. The door was opened by an odd, swarthy, dried-up person of uncertain age, with a dark pilot jacket and brown leather gaiters. I found afterwards that he was the chauffeur, who filled the gaps left by a succession of fugitive butlers. He looked me up and down with a searching light blue eye.\n\n\"Expected?\" he asked.\n\n\"An appointment.\"\n\n\"Got your letter?\"\n\nI produced the envelope.\n\n\"Right!\" He seemed to be a person of few words. Following him down the passage I was suddenly interrupted by a small woman, who stepped out from what proved to be the dining-room door. She was a bright, vivacious, dark-eyed lady, more French than English in her type.\n\n\"One moment,\" she said. \"You can wait, Austin. Step in here, sir. May I ask if you have met my husband before?\"\n\n\"No, madam, I have not had the honor.\"\n\n\"Then I apologize to you in advance. I must tell you that he is a perfectly impossible person\u2014absolutely impossible. If you are forewarned you will be the more ready to make allowances.\"\n\n\"It is most considerate of you, madam.\"\n\n\"Get quickly out of the room if he seems inclined to be violent. Don't wait to argue with him. Several people have been injured through doing that. Afterwards there is a public scandal and it reflects upon me and all of us. I suppose it wasn't about South America you wanted to see him?\"\n\nI could not lie to a lady.\n\n\"Dear me! That is his most dangerous subject. You won't believe a word he says\u2014I'm sure I don't wonder. But don't tell him so, for it makes him very violent. Pretend to believe him, and you may get through all right. Remember he believes it himself. Of that you may be assured. A more honest man never lived. Don't wait any longer or he may suspect. If you find him dangerous\u2014really dangerous\u2014ring the bell and hold him off until I come. Even at his worst I can usually control him.\"\n\nWith these encouraging words the lady handed me over to the taciturn Austin, who had waited like a bronze statue of discretion during our short interview, and I was conducted to the end of the passage. There was a tap at a door, a bull's bellow from within, and I was face to face with the Professor.\n\nHe sat in a rotating chair behind a broad table, which was covered with books, maps, and diagrams. As I entered, his seat spun round to face me. His appearance made me gasp. I was prepared for something strange, but not for so overpowering a personality as this. It was his size which took one's breath away\u2014his size and his imposing presence. His head was enormous, the largest I have ever seen upon a human being. I am sure that his top-hat, had I ever ventured to don it, would have slipped over me entirely and rested on my shoulders. He had the face and beard which I associate with an Assyrian bull; the former florid, the latter so black as almost to have a suspicion of blue, spade-shaped and rippling down over his chest. The hair was peculiar, plastered down in front in a long, curving wisp over his massive forehead. The eyes were blue-gray under great black tufts, very clear, very critical, and very masterful. A huge spread of shoulders and a chest like a barrel were the other parts of him which appeared above the table, save for two enormous hands covered with long black hair. This and a bellowing, roaring, rumbling voice made up my first impression of the notorious Professor Challenger.\n\n\"Well?\" said he, with a most insolent stare. \"What now?\"\n\nI must keep up my deception for at least a little time longer, otherwise here was evidently an end of the interview.\n\n\"You were good enough to give me an appointment, sir,\" said I, humbly, producing his envelope.\n\nHe took my letter from his desk and laid it out before him.\n\n\"Oh, you are the young person who cannot understand plain English, are you? My general conclusions you are good enough to approve, as I understand?\"\n\n\"Entirely, sir\u2014entirely!\" I was very emphatic.\n\n\"Dear me! That strengthens my position very much, does it not? Your age and appearance make your support doubly valuable. Well, at least you are better than that herd of swine in Vienna, whose gregarious grunt is, however, not more offensive than the isolated effort of the British hog.\" He glared at me as the present representative of the beast.\n\n\"They seem to have behaved abominably,\" said I.\n\n\"I assure you that I can fight my own battles, and that I have no possible need of your sympathy. Put me alone, sir, and with my back to the wall. G. E. C. is happiest then. Well, sir, let us do what we can to curtail this visit, which can hardly be agreeable to you, and is inexpressibly irksome to me. You had, as I have been led to believe, some comments to make upon the proposition which I advanced in my thesis.\"\n\nThere was a brutal directness about his methods which made evasion difficult. I must still make play and wait for a better opening. It had seemed simple enough at a distance. Oh, my Irish wits, could they not help me now, when I needed help so sorely? He transfixed me with two sharp, steely eyes. \"Come, come!\" he rumbled.\n\n\"I am, of course, a mere student,\" said I, with a fatuous smile, \"hardly more, I might say, than an earnest inquirer. At the same time, it seemed to me that you were a little severe upon Weissmann in this matter. Has not the general evidence since that date tended to\u2014well, to strengthen his position?\"\n\n\"What evidence?\" He spoke with a menacing calm.\n\n\"Well, of course, I am aware that there is not any what you might call DEFINITE evidence. I alluded merely to the trend of modern thought and the general scientific point of view, if I might so express it.\"\n\nHe leaned forward with great earnestness.\n\n\"I suppose you are aware,\" said he, checking off points upon his fingers, \"that the cranial index is a constant factor?\"\n\n\"Naturally,\" said I.\n\n\"And that telegony is still sub judice?\"\n\n\"Undoubtedly.\"\n\n\"And that the germ plasm is different from the parthenogenetic egg?\"\n\n\"Why, surely!\" I cried, and gloried in my own audacity.\n\n\"But what does that prove?\" he asked, in a gentle, persuasive voice.\n\n\"Ah, what indeed?\" I murmured. \"What does it prove?\"\n\n\"Shall I tell you?\" he cooed.\n\n\"Pray do.\"\n\n\"It proves,\" he roared, with a sudden blast of fury, \"that you are the damnedest imposter in London\u2014a vile, crawling journalist, who has no more science than he has decency in his composition!\"\n\nHe had sprung to his feet with a mad rage in his eyes. Even at that moment of tension I found time for amazement at the discovery that he was quite a short man, his head not higher than my shoulder\u2014a stunted Hercules whose tremendous vitality had all run to depth, breadth, and brain.\n\n\"Gibberish!\" he cried, leaning forward, with his fingers on the table and his face projecting. \"That's what I have been talking to you, sir\u2014scientific gibberish! Did you think you could match cunning with me\u2014you with your walnut of a brain? You think you are omnipotent, you infernal scribblers, don't you? That your praise can make a man and your blame can break him? We must all bow to you, and try to get a favorable word, must we? This man shall have a leg up, and this man shall have a dressing down! Creeping vermin, I know you! You've got out of your station. Time was when your ears were clipped. You've lost your sense of proportion. Swollen gas-bags! I'll keep you in your proper place. Yes, sir, you haven't got over G. E. C. There's one man who is still your master. He warned you off, but if you WILL come, by the Lord you do it at your own risk. Forfeit, my good Mr. Malone, I claim forfeit! You have played a rather dangerous game, and it strikes me that you have lost it.\"\n\n\"Look here, sir,\" said I, backing to the door and opening it; \"you can be as abusive as you like. But there is a limit. You shall not assault me.\"\n\n\"Shall I not?\" He was slowly advancing in a peculiarly menacing way, but he stopped now and put his big hands into the side-pockets of a rather boyish short jacket which he wore. \"I have thrown several of you out of the house. You will be the fourth or fifth. Three pound fifteen each\u2014that is how it averaged. Expensive, but very necessary. Now, sir, why should you not follow your brethren? I rather think you must.\" He resumed his unpleasant and stealthy advance, pointing his toes as he walked, like a dancing master.\n\nI could have bolted for the hall door, but it would have been too ignominious. Besides, a little glow of righteous anger was springing up within me. I had been hopelessly in the wrong before, but this man's menaces were putting me in the right.\n\n\"I'll trouble you to keep your hands off, sir. I'll not stand it.\"\n\n\"Dear me!\" His black moustache lifted and a white fang twinkled in a sneer. \"You won't stand it, eh?\"\n\n\"Don't be such a fool, Professor!\" I cried. \"What can you hope for? I'm fifteen stone, as hard as nails, and play center three-quarter every Saturday for the London Irish. I'm not the man\u2014\"\n\nIt was at that moment that he rushed me. It was lucky that I had opened the door, or we should have gone through it. We did a Catharine-wheel together down the passage. Somehow we gathered up a chair upon our way, and bounded on with it towards the street. My mouth was full of his beard, our arms were locked, our bodies intertwined, and that infernal chair radiated its legs all round us. The watchful Austin had thrown open the hall door. We went with a back somersault down the front steps. I have seen the two Macs attempt something of the kind at the halls, but it appears to take some practise to do it without hurting oneself. The chair went to matchwood at the bottom, and we rolled apart into the gutter. He sprang to his feet, waving his fists and wheezing like an asthmatic.\n\n\"Had enough?\" he panted.\n\n\"You infernal bully!\" I cried, as I gathered myself together.\n\nThen and there we should have tried the thing out, for he was effervescing with fight, but fortunately I was rescued from an odious situation. A policeman was beside us, his notebook in his hand.\n\n\"What's all this? You ought to be ashamed\" said the policeman. It was the most rational remark which I had heard in Enmore Park. \"Well,\" he insisted, turning to me, \"what is it, then?\"\n\n\"This man attacked me,\" said I.\n\n\"Did you attack him?\" asked the policeman.\n\nThe Professor breathed hard and said nothing.\n\n\"It's not the first time, either,\" said the policeman, severely, shaking his head. \"You were in trouble last month for the same thing. You've blackened this young man's eye. Do you give him in charge, sir?\"\n\nI relented.\n\n\"No,\" said I, \"I do not.\"\n\n\"What's that?\" said the policeman.\n\n\"I was to blame myself. I intruded upon him. He gave me fair warning.\"\n\nThe policeman snapped up his notebook.\n\n\"Don't let us have any more such goings-on,\" said he. \"Now, then! Move on, there, move on!\" This to a butcher's boy, a maid, and one or two loafers who had collected. He clumped heavily down the street, driving this little flock before him. The Professor looked at me, and there was something humorous at the back of his eyes.\n\n\"Come in!\" said he. \"I've not done with you yet.\"\n\nThe speech had a sinister sound, but I followed him none the less into the house. The man-servant, Austin, like a wooden image, closed the door behind us." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 4", + "text": "\"It's Just the very Biggest Thing in the World\"\n\nHardly was it shut when Mrs. Challenger darted out from the dining-room. The small woman was in a furious temper. She barred her husband's way like an enraged chicken in front of a bulldog. It was evident that she had seen my exit, but had not observed my return.\n\n\"You brute, George!\" she screamed. \"You've hurt that nice young man.\"\n\nHe jerked backwards with his thumb.\n\n\"Here he is, safe and sound behind me.\"\n\nShe was confused, but not unduly so.\n\n\"I am so sorry, I didn't see you.\"\n\n\"I assure you, madam, that it is all right.\"\n\n\"He has marked your poor face! Oh, George, what a brute you are! Nothing but scandals from one end of the week to the other. Everyone hating and making fun of you. You've finished my patience. This ends it.\"\n\n\"Dirty linen,\" he rumbled.\n\n\"It's not a secret,\" she cried. \"Do you suppose that the whole street\u2014the whole of London, for that matter\u2014 Get away, Austin, we don't want you here. Do you suppose they don't all talk about you? Where is your dignity? You, a man who should have been Regius Professor at a great University with a thousand students all revering you. Where is your dignity, George?\"\n\n\"How about yours, my dear?\"\n\n\"You try me too much. A ruffian\u2014a common brawling ruffian\u2014that's what you have become.\"\n\n\"Be good, Jessie.\"\n\n\"A roaring, raging bully!\"\n\n\"That's done it! Stool of penance!\" said he.\n\nTo my amazement he stooped, picked her up, and placed her sitting upon a high pedestal of black marble in the angle of the hall. It was at least seven feet high, and so thin that she could hardly balance upon it. A more absurd object than she presented cocked up there with her face convulsed with anger, her feet dangling, and her body rigid for fear of an upset, I could not imagine.\n\n\"Let me down!\" she wailed.\n\n\"Say 'please.'\"\n\n\"You brute, George! Let me down this instant!\"\n\n\"Come into the study, Mr. Malone.\"\n\n\"Really, sir\u2014!\" said I, looking at the lady.\n\n\"Here's Mr. Malone pleading for you, Jessie. Say 'please,' and down you come.\"\n\n\"Oh, you brute! Please! please!\"\n\nHe took her down as if she had been a canary.\n\n\"You must behave yourself, dear. Mr. Malone is a Pressman. He will have it all in his rag to-morrow, and sell an extra dozen among our neighbors. 'Strange story of high life'\u2014you felt fairly high on that pedestal, did you not? Then a sub-title, 'Glimpse of a singular menage.' He's a foul feeder, is Mr. Malone, a carrion eater, like all of his kind\u2014porcus ex grege diaboli\u2014a swine from the devil's herd. That's it, Malone\u2014what?\"\n\n\"You are really intolerable!\" said I, hotly.\n\nHe bellowed with laughter.\n\n\"We shall have a coalition presently,\" he boomed, looking from his wife to me and puffing out his enormous chest. Then, suddenly altering his tone, \"Excuse this frivolous family badinage, Mr. Malone. I called you back for some more serious purpose than to mix you up with our little domestic pleasantries. Run away, little woman, and don't fret.\" He placed a huge hand upon each of her shoulders. \"All that you say is perfectly true. I should be a better man if I did what you advise, but I shouldn't be quite George Edward Challenger. There are plenty of better men, my dear, but only one G. E. C. So make the best of him.\" He suddenly gave her a resounding kiss, which embarrassed me even more than his violence had done. \"Now, Mr. Malone,\" he continued, with a great accession of dignity, \"this way, if YOU please.\"\n\nWe re-entered the room which we had left so tumultuously ten minutes before. The Professor closed the door carefully behind us, motioned me into an arm-chair, and pushed a cigar-box under my nose.\n\n\"Real San Juan Colorado,\" he said. \"Excitable people like you are the better for narcotics. Heavens! don't bite it! Cut\u2014and cut with reverence! Now lean back, and listen attentively to whatever I may care to say to you. If any remark should occur to you, you can reserve it for some more opportune time.\n\n\"First of all, as to your return to my house after your most justifiable expulsion\"\u2014he protruded his beard, and stared at me as one who challenges and invites contradiction\u2014\"after, as I say, your well-merited expulsion. The reason lay in your answer to that most officious policeman, in which I seemed to discern some glimmering of good feeling upon your part\u2014more, at any rate, than I am accustomed to associate with your profession. In admitting that the fault of the incident lay with you, you gave some evidence of a certain mental detachment and breadth of view which attracted my favorable notice. The sub-species of the human race to which you unfortunately belong has always been below my mental horizon. Your words brought you suddenly above it. You swam up into my serious notice. For this reason I asked you to return with me, as I was minded to make your further acquaintance. You will kindly deposit your ash in the small Japanese tray on the bamboo table which stands at your left elbow.\"\n\nAll this he boomed forth like a professor addressing his class. He had swung round his revolving chair so as to face me, and he sat all puffed out like an enormous bull-frog, his head laid back and his eyes half-covered by supercilious lids. Now he suddenly turned himself sideways, and all I could see of him was tangled hair with a red, protruding ear. He was scratching about among the litter of papers upon his desk. He faced me presently with what looked like a very tattered sketch-book in his hand.\n\n\"I am going to talk to you about South America,\" said he. \"No comments if you please. First of all, I wish you to understand that nothing I tell you now is to be repeated in any public way unless you have my express permission. That permission will, in all human probability, never be given. Is that clear?\"\n\n\"It is very hard,\" said I. \"Surely a judicious account\u2014\"\n\nHe replaced the notebook upon the table.\n\n\"That ends it,\" said he. \"I wish you a very good morning.\"\n\n\"No, no!\" I cried. \"I submit to any conditions. So far as I can see, I have no choice.\"\n\n\"None in the world,\" said he.\n\n\"Well, then, I promise.\"\n\n\"Word of honor?\"\n\n\"Word of honor.\"\n\nHe looked at me with doubt in his insolent eyes.\n\n\"After all, what do I know about your honor?\" said he.\n\n\"Upon my word, sir,\" I cried, angrily, \"you take very great liberties! I have never been so insulted in my life.\"\n\nHe seemed more interested than annoyed at my outbreak.\n\n\"Round-headed,\" he muttered. \"Brachycephalic, gray-eyed, black-haired, with suggestion of the negroid. Celtic, I presume?\"\n\n\"I am an Irishman, sir.\"\n\n\"Irish Irish?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"That, of course, explains it. Let me see; you have given me your promise that my confidence will be respected? That confidence, I may say, will be far from complete. But I am prepared to give you a few indications which will be of interest. In the first place, you are probably aware that two years ago I made a journey to South America\u2014one which will be classical in the scientific history of the world? The object of my journey was to verify some conclusions of Wallace and of Bates, which could only be done by observing their reported facts under the same conditions in which they had themselves noted them. If my expedition had no other results it would still have been noteworthy, but a curious incident occurred to me while there which opened up an entirely fresh line of inquiry.\n\n\"You are aware\u2014or probably, in this half-educated age, you are not aware\u2014that the country round some parts of the Amazon is still only partially explored, and that a great number of tributaries, some of them entirely uncharted, run into the main river. It was my business to visit this little-known back-country and to examine its fauna, which furnished me with the materials for several chapters for that great and monumental work upon zoology which will be my life's justification. I was returning, my work accomplished, when I had occasion to spend a night at a small Indian village at a point where a certain tributary\u2014the name and position of which I withhold\u2014opens into the main river. The natives were Cucama Indians, an amiable but degraded race, with mental powers hardly superior to the average Londoner. I had effected some cures among them upon my way up the river, and had impressed them considerably with my personality, so that I was not surprised to find myself eagerly awaited upon my return. I gathered from their signs that someone had urgent need of my medical services, and I followed the chief to one of his huts. When I entered I found that the sufferer to whose aid I had been summoned had that instant expired. He was, to my surprise, no Indian, but a white man; indeed, I may say a very white man, for he was flaxen-haired and had some characteristics of an albino. He was clad in rags, was very emaciated, and bore every trace of prolonged hardship. So far as I could understand the account of the natives, he was a complete stranger to them, and had come upon their village through the woods alone and in the last stage of exhaustion.\n\n\"The man's knapsack lay beside the couch, and I examined the contents. His name was written upon a tab within it\u2014Maple White, Lake Avenue, Detroit, Michigan. It is a name to which I am prepared always to lift my hat. It is not too much to say that it will rank level with my own when the final credit of this business comes to be apportioned.\n\n\"From the contents of the knapsack it was evident that this man had been an artist and poet in search of effects. There were scraps of verse. I do not profess to be a judge of such things, but they appeared to me to be singularly wanting in merit. There were also some rather commonplace pictures of river scenery, a paint-box, a box of colored chalks, some brushes, that curved bone which lies upon my inkstand, a volume of Baxter's 'Moths and Butterflies,' a cheap revolver, and a few cartridges. Of personal equipment he either had none or he had lost it in his journey. Such were the total effects of this strange American Bohemian.\n\n\"I was turning away from him when I observed that something projected from the front of his ragged jacket. It was this sketch-book, which was as dilapidated then as you see it now. Indeed, I can assure you that a first folio of Shakespeare could not be treated with greater reverence than this relic has been since it came into my possession. I hand it to you now, and I ask you to take it page by page and to examine the contents.\"\n\nHe helped himself to a cigar and leaned back with a fiercely critical pair of eyes, taking note of the effect which this document would produce.\n\nI had opened the volume with some expectation of a revelation, though of what nature I could not imagine. The first page was disappointing, however, as it contained nothing but the picture of a very fat man in a pea-jacket, with the legend, \"Jimmy Colver on the Mail-boat,\" written beneath it. There followed several pages which were filled with small sketches of Indians and their ways. Then came a picture of a cheerful and corpulent ecclesiastic in a shovel hat, sitting opposite a very thin European, and the inscription: \"Lunch with Fra Cristofero at Rosario.\" Studies of women and babies accounted for several more pages, and then there was an unbroken series of animal drawings with such explanations as \"Manatee upon Sandbank,\" \"Turtles and Their Eggs,\" \"Black Ajouti under a Miriti Palm\"\u2014the matter disclosing some sort of pig-like animal; and finally came a double page of studies of long-snouted and very unpleasant saurians. I could make nothing of it, and said so to the Professor.\n\n\"Surely these are only crocodiles?\"\n\n\"Alligators! Alligators! There is hardly such a thing as a true crocodile in South America. The distinction between them\u2014\"\n\n\"I meant that I could see nothing unusual\u2014nothing to justify what you have said.\"\n\nHe smiled serenely.\n\n\"Try the next page,\" said he.\n\nI was still unable to sympathize. It was a full-page sketch of a landscape roughly tinted in color\u2014the kind of painting which an open-air artist takes as a guide to a future more elaborate effort. There was a pale-green foreground of feathery vegetation, which sloped upwards and ended in a line of cliffs dark red in color, and curiously ribbed like some basaltic formations which I have seen. They extended in an unbroken wall right across the background. At one point was an isolated pyramidal rock, crowned by a great tree, which appeared to be separated by a cleft from the main crag. Behind it all, a blue tropical sky. A thin green line of vegetation fringed the summit of the ruddy cliff.\n\n\"Well?\" he asked.\n\n\"It is no doubt a curious formation,\" said I \"but I am not geologist enough to say that it is wonderful.\"\n\n\"Wonderful!\" he repeated. \"It is unique. It is incredible. No one on earth has ever dreamed of such a possibility. Now the next.\"\n\nI turned it over, and gave an exclamation of surprise. There was a full-page picture of the most extraordinary creature that I had ever seen. It was the wild dream of an opium smoker, a vision of delirium. The head was like that of a fowl, the body that of a bloated lizard, the trailing tail was furnished with upward-turned spikes, and the curved back was edged with a high serrated fringe, which looked like a dozen cocks' wattles placed behind each other. In front of this creature was an absurd mannikin, or dwarf, in human form, who stood staring at it.\n\n\"Well, what do you think of that?\" cried the Professor, rubbing his hands with an air of triumph.\n\n\"It is monstrous\u2014grotesque.\"\n\n\"But what made him draw such an animal?\"\n\n\"Trade gin, I should think.\"\n\n\"Oh, that's the best explanation you can give, is it?\"\n\n\"Well, sir, what is yours?\"\n\n\"The obvious one that the creature exists. That is actually sketched from the life.\"\n\nI should have laughed only that I had a vision of our doing another Catharine-wheel down the passage.\n\n\"No doubt,\" said I, \"no doubt,\" as one humors an imbecile. \"I confess, however,\" I added, \"that this tiny human figure puzzles me. If it were an Indian we could set it down as evidence of some pigmy race in America, but it appears to be a European in a sun-hat.\"\n\nThe Professor snorted like an angry buffalo. \"You really touch the limit,\" said he. \"You enlarge my view of the possible. Cerebral paresis! Mental inertia! Wonderful!\"\n\nHe was too absurd to make me angry. Indeed, it was a waste of energy, for if you were going to be angry with this man you would be angry all the time. I contented myself with smiling wearily. \"It struck me that the man was small,\" said I.\n\n\"Look here!\" he cried, leaning forward and dabbing a great hairy sausage of a finger on to the picture. \"You see that plant behind the animal; I suppose you thought it was a dandelion or a Brussels sprout\u2014what? Well, it is a vegetable ivory palm, and they run to about fifty or sixty feet. Don't you see that the man is put in for a purpose? He couldn't really have stood in front of that brute and lived to draw it. He sketched himself in to give a scale of heights. He was, we will say, over five feet high. The tree is ten times bigger, which is what one would expect.\"\n\n\"Good heavens!\" I cried. \"Then you think the beast was\u2014 Why, Charing Cross station would hardly make a kennel for such a brute!\"\n\n\"Apart from exaggeration, he is certainly a well-grown specimen,\" said the Professor, complacently.\n\n\"But,\" I cried, \"surely the whole experience of the human race is not to be set aside on account of a single sketch\"\u2014I had turned over the leaves and ascertained that there was nothing more in the book\u2014\"a single sketch by a wandering American artist who may have done it under hashish, or in the delirium of fever, or simply in order to gratify a freakish imagination. You can't, as a man of science, defend such a position as that.\"\n\nFor answer the Professor took a book down from a shelf.\n\n\"This is an excellent monograph by my gifted friend, Ray Lankester!\" said he. \"There is an illustration here which would interest you. Ah, yes, here it is! The inscription beneath it runs: 'Probable appearance in life of the Jurassic Dinosaur Stegosaurus. The hind leg alone is twice as tall as a full-grown man.' Well, what do you make of that?\"\n\nHe handed me the open book. I started as I looked at the picture. In this reconstructed animal of a dead world there was certainly a very great resemblance to the sketch of the unknown artist.\n\n\"That is certainly remarkable,\" said I.\n\n\"But you won't admit that it is final?\"\n\n\"Surely it might be a coincidence, or this American may have seen a picture of the kind and carried it in his memory. It would be likely to recur to a man in a delirium.\"\n\n\"Very good,\" said the Professor, indulgently; \"we leave it at that. I will now ask you to look at this bone.\" He handed over the one which he had already described as part of the dead man's possessions. It was about six inches long, and thicker than my thumb, with some indications of dried cartilage at one end of it.\n\n\"To what known creature does that bone belong?\" asked the Professor.\n\nI examined it with care and tried to recall some half-forgotten knowledge.\n\n\"It might be a very thick human collar-bone,\" I said.\n\nMy companion waved his hand in contemptuous deprecation.\n\n\"The human collar-bone is curved. This is straight. There is a groove upon its surface showing that a great tendon played across it, which could not be the case with a clavicle.\"\n\n\"Then I must confess that I don't know what it is.\"\n\n\"You need not be ashamed to expose your ignorance, for I don't suppose the whole South Kensington staff could give a name to it.\" He took a little bone the size of a bean out of a pill-box. \"So far as I am a judge this human bone is the analogue of the one which you hold in your hand. That will give you some idea of the size of the creature. You will observe from the cartilage that this is no fossil specimen, but recent. What do you say to that?\"\n\n\"Surely in an elephant\u2014\"\n\nHe winced as if in pain.\n\n\"Don't! Don't talk of elephants in South America. Even in these days of Board schools\u2014\"\n\n\"Well,\" I interrupted, \"any large South American animal\u2014a tapir, for example.\"\n\n\"You may take it, young man, that I am versed in the elements of my business. This is not a conceivable bone either of a tapir or of any other creature known to zoology. It belongs to a very large, a very strong, and, by all analogy, a very fierce animal which exists upon the face of the earth, but has not yet come under the notice of science. You are still unconvinced?\"\n\n\"I am at least deeply interested.\"\n\n\"Then your case is not hopeless. I feel that there is reason lurking in you somewhere, so we will patiently grope round for it. We will now leave the dead American and proceed with my narrative. You can imagine that I could hardly come away from the Amazon without probing deeper into the matter. There were indications as to the direction from which the dead traveler had come. Indian legends would alone have been my guide, for I found that rumors of a strange land were common among all the riverine tribes. You have heard, no doubt, of Curupuri?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"Curupuri is the spirit of the woods, something terrible, something malevolent, something to be avoided. None can describe its shape or nature, but it is a word of terror along the Amazon. Now all tribes agree as to the direction in which Curupuri lives. It was the same direction from which the American had come. Something terrible lay that way. It was my business to find out what it was.\"\n\n\"What did you do?\" My flippancy was all gone. This massive man compelled one's attention and respect.\n\n\"I overcame the extreme reluctance of the natives\u2014a reluctance which extends even to talk upon the subject\u2014and by judicious persuasion and gifts, aided, I will admit, by some threats of coercion, I got two of them to act as guides. After many adventures which I need not describe, and after traveling a distance which I will not mention, in a direction which I withhold, we came at last to a tract of country which has never been described, nor, indeed, visited save by my unfortunate predecessor. Would you kindly look at this?\"\n\nHe handed me a photograph\u2014half-plate size.\n\n\"The unsatisfactory appearance of it is due to the fact,\" said he, \"that on descending the river the boat was upset and the case which contained the undeveloped films was broken, with disastrous results. Nearly all of them were totally ruined\u2014an irreparable loss. This is one of the few which partially escaped. This explanation of deficiencies or abnormalities you will kindly accept. There was talk of faking. I am not in a mood to argue such a point.\"\n\nThe photograph was certainly very off-colored. An unkind critic might easily have misinterpreted that dim surface. It was a dull gray landscape, and as I gradually deciphered the details of it I realized that it represented a long and enormously high line of cliffs exactly like an immense cataract seen in the distance, with a sloping, tree-clad plain in the foreground.\n\n\"I believe it is the same place as the painted picture,\" said I.\n\n\"It is the same place,\" the Professor answered. \"I found traces of the fellow's camp. Now look at this.\"\n\nIt was a nearer view of the same scene, though the photograph was extremely defective. I could distinctly see the isolated, tree-crowned pinnacle of rock which was detached from the crag.\n\n\"I have no doubt of it at all,\" said I.\n\n\"Well, that is something gained,\" said he. \"We progress, do we not? Now, will you please look at the top of that rocky pinnacle? Do you observe something there?\"\n\n\"An enormous tree.\"\n\n\"But on the tree?\"\n\n\"A large bird,\" said I.\n\nHe handed me a lens.\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, peering through it, \"a large bird stands on the tree. It appears to have a considerable beak. I should say it was a pelican.\"\n\n\"I cannot congratulate you upon your eyesight,\" said the Professor. \"It is not a pelican, nor, indeed, is it a bird. It may interest you to know that I succeeded in shooting that particular specimen. It was the only absolute proof of my experiences which I was able to bring away with me.\"\n\n\"You have it, then?\" Here at last was tangible corroboration.\n\n\"I had it. It was unfortunately lost with so much else in the same boat accident which ruined my photographs. I clutched at it as it disappeared in the swirl of the rapids, and part of its wing was left in my hand. I was insensible when washed ashore, but the miserable remnant of my superb specimen was still intact; I now lay it before you.\"\n\nFrom a drawer he produced what seemed to me to be the upper portion of the wing of a large bat. It was at least two feet in length, a curved bone, with a membranous veil beneath it.\n\n\"A monstrous bat!\" I suggested.\n\n\"Nothing of the sort,\" said the Professor, severely. \"Living, as I do, in an educated and scientific atmosphere, I could not have conceived that the first principles of zoology were so little known. Is it possible that you do not know the elementary fact in comparative anatomy, that the wing of a bird is really the forearm, while the wing of a bat consists of three elongated fingers with membranes between? Now, in this case, the bone is certainly not the forearm, and you can see for yourself that this is a single membrane hanging upon a single bone, and therefore that it cannot belong to a bat. But if it is neither bird nor bat, what is it?\"\n\nMy small stock of knowledge was exhausted.\n\n\"I really do not know,\" said I.\n\nHe opened the standard work to which he had already referred me.\n\n\"Here,\" said he, pointing to the picture of an extraordinary flying monster, \"is an excellent reproduction of the dimorphodon, or pterodactyl, a flying reptile of the Jurassic period. On the next page is a diagram of the mechanism of its wing. Kindly compare it with the specimen in your hand.\"\n\nA wave of amazement passed over me as I looked. I was convinced. There could be no getting away from it. The cumulative proof was overwhelming. The sketch, the photographs, the narrative, and now the actual specimen\u2014the evidence was complete. I said so\u2014I said so warmly, for I felt that the Professor was an illused man. He leaned back in his chair with drooping eyelids and a tolerant smile, basking in this sudden gleam of sunshine.\n\n\"It's just the very biggest thing that I ever heard of!\" said I, though it was my journalistic rather than my scientific enthusiasm that was roused. \"It is colossal. You are a Columbus of science who has discovered a lost world. I'm awfully sorry if I seemed to doubt you. It was all so unthinkable. But I understand evidence when I see it, and this should be good enough for anyone.\"\n\nThe Professor purred with satisfaction.\n\n\"And then, sir, what did you do next?\"\n\n\"It was the wet season, Mr. Malone, and my stores were exhausted. I explored some portion of this huge cliff, but I was unable to find any way to scale it. The pyramidal rock upon which I saw and shot the pterodactyl was more accessible. Being something of a cragsman, I did manage to get half way to the top of that. From that height I had a better idea of the plateau upon the top of the crags. It appeared to be very large; neither to east nor to west could I see any end to the vista of green-capped cliffs. Below, it is a swampy, jungly region, full of snakes, insects, and fever. It is a natural protection to this singular country.\"\n\n\"Did you see any other trace of life?\"\n\n\"No, sir, I did not; but during the week that we lay encamped at the base of the cliff we heard some very strange noises from above.\"\n\n\"But the creature that the American drew? How do you account for that?\"\n\n\"We can only suppose that he must have made his way to the summit and seen it there. We know, therefore, that there is a way up. We know equally that it must be a very difficult one, otherwise the creatures would have come down and overrun the surrounding country. Surely that is clear?\"\n\n\"But how did they come to be there?\"\n\n\"I do not think that the problem is a very obscure one,\" said the Professor; \"there can only be one explanation. South America is, as you may have heard, a granite continent. At this single point in the interior there has been, in some far distant age, a great, sudden volcanic upheaval. These cliffs, I may remark, are basaltic, and therefore plutonic. An area, as large perhaps as Sussex, has been lifted up en bloc with all its living contents, and cut off by perpendicular precipices of a hardness which defies erosion from all the rest of the continent. What is the result? Why, the ordinary laws of Nature are suspended. The various checks which influence the struggle for existence in the world at large are all neutralized or altered. Creatures survive which would otherwise disappear. You will observe that both the pterodactyl and the stegosaurus are Jurassic, and therefore of a great age in the order of life. They have been artificially conserved by those strange accidental conditions.\"\n\n\"But surely your evidence is conclusive. You have only to lay it before the proper authorities.\"\n\n\"So in my simplicity, I had imagined,\" said the Professor, bitterly. \"I can only tell you that it was not so, that I was met at every turn by incredulity, born partly of stupidity and partly of jealousy. It is not my nature, sir, to cringe to any man, or to seek to prove a fact if my word has been doubted. After the first I have not condescended to show such corroborative proofs as I possess. The subject became hateful to me\u2014I would not speak of it. When men like yourself, who represent the foolish curiosity of the public, came to disturb my privacy I was unable to meet them with dignified reserve. By nature I am, I admit, somewhat fiery, and under provocation I am inclined to be violent. I fear you may have remarked it.\"\n\nI nursed my eye and was silent.\n\n\"My wife has frequently remonstrated with me upon the subject, and yet I fancy that any man of honor would feel the same. To-night, however, I propose to give an extreme example of the control of the will over the emotions. I invite you to be present at the exhibition.\" He handed me a card from his desk. \"You will perceive that Mr. Percival Waldron, a naturalist of some popular repute, is announced to lecture at eight-thirty at the Zoological Institute's Hall upon 'The Record of the Ages.' I have been specially invited to be present upon the platform, and to move a vote of thanks to the lecturer. While doing so, I shall make it my business, with infinite tact and delicacy, to throw out a few remarks which may arouse the interest of the audience and cause some of them to desire to go more deeply into the matter. Nothing contentious, you understand, but only an indication that there are greater deeps beyond. I shall hold myself strongly in leash, and see whether by this self-restraint I attain a more favorable result.\"\n\n\"And I may come?\" I asked eagerly.\n\n\"Why, surely,\" he answered, cordially. He had an enormously massive genial manner, which was almost as overpowering as his violence. His smile of benevolence was a wonderful thing, when his cheeks would suddenly bunch into two red apples, between his half-closed eyes and his great black beard. \"By all means, come. It will be a comfort to me to know that I have one ally in the hall, however inefficient and ignorant of the subject he may be. I fancy there will be a large audience, for Waldron, though an absolute charlatan, has a considerable popular following. Now, Mr. Malone, I have given you rather more of my time than I had intended. The individual must not monopolize what is meant for the world. I shall be pleased to see you at the lecture to-night. In the meantime, you will understand that no public use is to be made of any of the material that I have given you.\"\n\n\"But Mr. McArdle\u2014my news editor, you know\u2014will want to know what I have done.\"\n\n\"Tell him what you like. You can say, among other things, that if he sends anyone else to intrude upon me I shall call upon him with a riding-whip. But I leave it to you that nothing of all this appears in print. Very good. Then the Zoological Institute's Hall at eight-thirty to-night.\" I had a last impression of red cheeks, blue rippling beard, and intolerant eyes, as he waved me out of the room." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 5", + "text": "\"Question!\"\n\nWhat with the physical shocks incidental to my first interview with Professor Challenger and the mental ones which accompanied the second, I was a somewhat demoralized journalist by the time I found myself in Enmore Park once more. In my aching head the one thought was throbbing that there really was truth in this man's story, that it was of tremendous consequence, and that it would work up into inconceivable copy for the Gazette when I could obtain permission to use it. A taxicab was waiting at the end of the road, so I sprang into it and drove down to the office. McArdle was at his post as usual.\n\n\"Well,\" he cried, expectantly, \"what may it run to? I'm thinking, young man, you have been in the wars. Don't tell me that he assaulted you.\"\n\n\"We had a little difference at first.\"\n\n\"What a man it is! What did you do?\"\n\n\"Well, he became more reasonable and we had a chat. But I got nothing out of him\u2014nothing for publication.\"\n\n\"I'm not so sure about that. You got a black eye out of him, and that's for publication. We can't have this reign of terror, Mr. Malone. We must bring the man to his bearings. I'll have a leaderette on him to-morrow that will raise a blister. Just give me the material and I will engage to brand the fellow for ever. Professor Munchausen\u2014how's that for an inset headline? Sir John Mandeville redivivus\u2014Cagliostro\u2014all the imposters and bullies in history. I'll show him up for the fraud he is.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't do that, sir.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"Because he is not a fraud at all.\"\n\n\"What!\" roared McArdle. \"You don't mean to say you really believe this stuff of his about mammoths and mastodons and great sea sairpents?\"\n\n\"Well, I don't know about that. I don't think he makes any claims of that kind. But I do believe he has got something new.\"\n\n\"Then for Heaven's sake, man, write it up!\"\n\n\"I'm longing to, but all I know he gave me in confidence and on condition that I didn't.\" I condensed into a few sentences the Professor's narrative. \"That's how it stands.\"\n\nMcArdle looked deeply incredulous.\n\n\"Well, Mr. Malone,\" he said at last, \"about this scientific meeting to-night; there can be no privacy about that, anyhow. I don't suppose any paper will want to report it, for Waldron has been reported already a dozen times, and no one is aware that Challenger will speak. We may get a scoop, if we are lucky. You'll be there in any case, so you'll just give us a pretty full report. I'll keep space up to midnight.\"\n\nMy day was a busy one, and I had an early dinner at the Savage Club with Tarp Henry, to whom I gave some account of my adventures. He listened with a sceptical smile on his gaunt face, and roared with laughter on hearing that the Professor had convinced me.\n\n\"My dear chap, things don't happen like that in real life. People don't stumble upon enormous discoveries and then lose their evidence. Leave that to the novelists. The fellow is as full of tricks as the monkey-house at the Zoo. It's all bosh.\"\n\n\"But the American poet?\"\n\n\"He never existed.\"\n\n\"I saw his sketch-book.\"\n\n\"Challenger's sketch-book.\"\n\n\"You think he drew that animal?\"\n\n\"Of course he did. Who else?\"\n\n\"Well, then, the photographs?\"\n\n\"There was nothing in the photographs. By your own admission you only saw a bird.\"\n\n\"A pterodactyl.\"\n\n\"That's what HE says. He put the pterodactyl into your head.\"\n\n\"Well, then, the bones?\"\n\n\"First one out of an Irish stew. Second one vamped up for the occasion. If you are clever and know your business you can fake a bone as easily as you can a photograph.\"\n\nI began to feel uneasy. Perhaps, after all, I had been premature in my acquiescence. Then I had a sudden happy thought.\n\n\"Will you come to the meeting?\" I asked.\n\nTarp Henry looked thoughtful.\n\n\"He is not a popular person, the genial Challenger,\" said he. \"A lot of people have accounts to settle with him. I should say he is about the best-hated man in London. If the medical students turn out there will be no end of a rag. I don't want to get into a bear-garden.\"\n\n\"You might at least do him the justice to hear him state his own case.\"\n\n\"Well, perhaps it's only fair. All right. I'm your man for the evening.\"\n\nWhen we arrived at the hall we found a much greater concourse than I had expected. A line of electric broughams discharged their little cargoes of white-bearded professors, while the dark stream of humbler pedestrians, who crowded through the arched doorway, showed that the audience would be popular as well as scientific. Indeed, it became evident to us as soon as we had taken our seats that a youthful and even boyish spirit was abroad in the gallery and the back portions of the hall. Looking behind me, I could see rows of faces of the familiar medical student type. Apparently the great hospitals had each sent down their contingent. The behavior of the audience at present was good-humored, but mischievous. Scraps of popular songs were chorused with an enthusiasm which was a strange prelude to a scientific lecture, and there was already a tendency to personal chaff which promised a jovial evening to others, however embarrassing it might be to the recipients of these dubious honors.\n\nThus, when old Doctor Meldrum, with his well-known curly-brimmed opera-hat, appeared upon the platform, there was such a universal query of \"Where DID you get that tile?\" that he hurriedly removed it, and concealed it furtively under his chair. When gouty Professor Wadley limped down to his seat there were general affectionate inquiries from all parts of the hall as to the exact state of his poor toe, which caused him obvious embarrassment. The greatest demonstration of all, however, was at the entrance of my new acquaintance, Professor Challenger, when he passed down to take his place at the extreme end of the front row of the platform. Such a yell of welcome broke forth when his black beard first protruded round the corner that I began to suspect Tarp Henry was right in his surmise, and that this assemblage was there not merely for the sake of the lecture, but because it had got rumored abroad that the famous Professor would take part in the proceedings.\n\nThere was some sympathetic laughter on his entrance among the front benches of well-dressed spectators, as though the demonstration of the students in this instance was not unwelcome to them. That greeting was, indeed, a frightful outburst of sound, the uproar of the carnivora cage when the step of the bucket-bearing keeper is heard in the distance. There was an offensive tone in it, perhaps, and yet in the main it struck me as mere riotous outcry, the noisy reception of one who amused and interested them, rather than of one they disliked or despised. Challenger smiled with weary and tolerant contempt, as a kindly man would meet the yapping of a litter of puppies. He sat slowly down, blew out his chest, passed his hand caressingly down his beard, and looked with drooping eyelids and supercilious eyes at the crowded hall before him. The uproar of his advent had not yet died away when Professor Ronald Murray, the chairman, and Mr. Waldron, the lecturer, threaded their way to the front, and the proceedings began.\n\nProfessor Murray will, I am sure, excuse me if I say that he has the common fault of most Englishmen of being inaudible. Why on earth people who have something to say which is worth hearing should not take the slight trouble to learn how to make it heard is one of the strange mysteries of modern life. Their methods are as reasonable as to try to pour some precious stuff from the spring to the reservoir through a non-conducting pipe, which could by the least effort be opened. Professor Murray made several profound remarks to his white tie and to the water-carafe upon the table, with a humorous, twinkling aside to the silver candlestick upon his right. Then he sat down, and Mr. Waldron, the famous popular lecturer, rose amid a general murmur of applause. He was a stern, gaunt man, with a harsh voice, and an aggressive manner, but he had the merit of knowing how to assimilate the ideas of other men, and to pass them on in a way which was intelligible and even interesting to the lay public, with a happy knack of being funny about the most unlikely objects, so that the precession of the Equinox or the formation of a vertebrate became a highly humorous process as treated by him.\n\nIt was a bird's-eye view of creation, as interpreted by science, which, in language always clear and sometimes picturesque, he unfolded before us. He told us of the globe, a huge mass of flaming gas, flaring through the heavens. Then he pictured the solidification, the cooling, the wrinkling which formed the mountains, the steam which turned to water, the slow preparation of the stage upon which was to be played the inexplicable drama of life. On the origin of life itself he was discreetly vague. That the germs of it could hardly have survived the original roasting was, he declared, fairly certain. Therefore it had come later. Had it built itself out of the cooling, inorganic elements of the globe? Very likely. Had the germs of it arrived from outside upon a meteor? It was hardly conceivable. On the whole, the wisest man was the least dogmatic upon the point. We could not\u2014or at least we had not succeeded up to date in making organic life in our laboratories out of inorganic materials. The gulf between the dead and the living was something which our chemistry could not as yet bridge. But there was a higher and subtler chemistry of Nature, which, working with great forces over long epochs, might well produce results which were impossible for us. There the matter must be left.\n\nThis brought the lecturer to the great ladder of animal life, beginning low down in molluscs and feeble sea creatures, then up rung by rung through reptiles and fishes, till at last we came to a kangaroo-rat, a creature which brought forth its young alive, the direct ancestor of all mammals, and presumably, therefore, of everyone in the audience. (\"No, no,\" from a sceptical student in the back row.) If the young gentleman in the red tie who cried \"No, no,\" and who presumably claimed to have been hatched out of an egg, would wait upon him after the lecture, he would be glad to see such a curiosity. (Laughter.) It was strange to think that the climax of all the age-long process of Nature had been the creation of that gentleman in the red tie. But had the process stopped? Was this gentleman to be taken as the final type\u2014the be-all and end-all of development? He hoped that he would not hurt the feelings of the gentleman in the red tie if he maintained that, whatever virtues that gentleman might possess in private life, still the vast processes of the universe were not fully justified if they were to end entirely in his production. Evolution was not a spent force, but one still working, and even greater achievements were in store.\n\nHaving thus, amid a general titter, played very prettily with his interrupter, the lecturer went back to his picture of the past, the drying of the seas, the emergence of the sandbank, the sluggish, viscous life which lay upon their margins, the overcrowded lagoons, the tendency of the sea creatures to take refuge upon the mud-flats, the abundance of food awaiting them, their consequent enormous growth. \"Hence, ladies and gentlemen,\" he added, \"that frightful brood of saurians which still affright our eyes when seen in the Wealden or in the Solenhofen slates, but which were fortunately extinct long before the first appearance of mankind upon this planet.\"\n\n\"Question!\" boomed a voice from the platform.\n\nMr. Waldron was a strict disciplinarian with a gift of acid humor, as exemplified upon the gentleman with the red tie, which made it perilous to interrupt him. But this interjection appeared to him so absurd that he was at a loss how to deal with it. So looks the Shakespearean who is confronted by a rancid Baconian, or the astronomer who is assailed by a flat-earth fanatic. He paused for a moment, and then, raising his voice, repeated slowly the words: \"Which were extinct before the coming of man.\"\n\n\"Question!\" boomed the voice once more.\n\nWaldron looked with amazement along the line of professors upon the platform until his eyes fell upon the figure of Challenger, who leaned back in his chair with closed eyes and an amused expression, as if he were smiling in his sleep.\n\n\"I see!\" said Waldron, with a shrug. \"It is my friend Professor Challenger,\" and amid laughter he renewed his lecture as if this was a final explanation and no more need be said.\n\nBut the incident was far from being closed. Whatever path the lecturer took amid the wilds of the past seemed invariably to lead him to some assertion as to extinct or prehistoric life which instantly brought the same bulls' bellow from the Professor. The audience began to anticipate it and to roar with delight when it came. The packed benches of students joined in, and every time Challenger's beard opened, before any sound could come forth, there was a yell of \"Question!\" from a hundred voices, and an answering counter cry of \"Order!\" and \"Shame!\" from as many more. Waldron, though a hardened lecturer and a strong man, became rattled. He hesitated, stammered, repeated himself, got snarled in a long sentence, and finally turned furiously upon the cause of his troubles.\n\n\"This is really intolerable!\" he cried, glaring across the platform. \"I must ask you, Professor Challenger, to cease these ignorant and unmannerly interruptions.\"\n\nThere was a hush over the hall, the students rigid with delight at seeing the high gods on Olympus quarrelling among themselves. Challenger levered his bulky figure slowly out of his chair.\n\n\"I must in turn ask you, Mr. Waldron,\" he said, \"to cease to make assertions which are not in strict accordance with scientific fact.\"\n\nThe words unloosed a tempest. \"Shame! Shame!\" \"Give him a hearing!\" \"Put him out!\" \"Shove him off the platform!\" \"Fair play!\" emerged from a general roar of amusement or execration. The chairman was on his feet flapping both his hands and bleating excitedly. \"Professor Challenger\u2014personal\u2014views\u2014later,\" were the solid peaks above his clouds of inaudible mutter. The interrupter bowed, smiled, stroked his beard, and relapsed into his chair. Waldron, very flushed and warlike, continued his observations. Now and then, as he made an assertion, he shot a venomous glance at his opponent, who seemed to be slumbering deeply, with the same broad, happy smile upon his face.\n\nAt last the lecture came to an end\u2014I am inclined to think that it was a premature one, as the peroration was hurried and disconnected. The thread of the argument had been rudely broken, and the audience was restless and expectant. Waldron sat down, and, after a chirrup from the chairman, Professor Challenger rose and advanced to the edge of the platform. In the interests of my paper I took down his speech verbatim.\n\n\"Ladies and Gentlemen,\" he began, amid a sustained interruption from the back. \"I beg pardon\u2014Ladies, Gentlemen, and Children\u2014I must apologize, I had inadvertently omitted a considerable section of this audience\" (tumult, during which the Professor stood with one hand raised and his enormous head nodding sympathetically, as if he were bestowing a pontifical blessing upon the crowd), \"I have been selected to move a vote of thanks to Mr. Waldron for the very picturesque and imaginative address to which we have just listened. There are points in it with which I disagree, and it has been my duty to indicate them as they arose, but, none the less, Mr. Waldron has accomplished his object well, that object being to give a simple and interesting account of what he conceives to have been the history of our planet. Popular lectures are the easiest to listen to, but Mr. Waldron\" (here he beamed and blinked at the lecturer) \"will excuse me when I say that they are necessarily both superficial and misleading, since they have to be graded to the comprehension of an ignorant audience.\" (Ironical cheering.) \"Popular lecturers are in their nature parasitic.\" (Angry gesture of protest from Mr. Waldron.) \"They exploit for fame or cash the work which has been done by their indigent and unknown brethren. One smallest new fact obtained in the laboratory, one brick built into the temple of science, far outweighs any second-hand exposition which passes an idle hour, but can leave no useful result behind it. I put forward this obvious reflection, not out of any desire to disparage Mr. Waldron in particular, but that you may not lose your sense of proportion and mistake the acolyte for the high priest.\" (At this point Mr. Waldron whispered to the chairman, who half rose and said something severely to his water-carafe.) \"But enough of this!\" (Loud and prolonged cheers.) \"Let me pass to some subject of wider interest. What is the particular point upon which I, as an original investigator, have challenged our lecturer's accuracy? It is upon the permanence of certain types of animal life upon the earth. I do not speak upon this subject as an amateur, nor, I may add, as a popular lecturer, but I speak as one whose scientific conscience compels him to adhere closely to facts, when I say that Mr. Waldron is very wrong in supposing that because he has never himself seen a so-called prehistoric animal, therefore these creatures no longer exist. They are indeed, as he has said, our ancestors, but they are, if I may use the expression, our contemporary ancestors, who can still be found with all their hideous and formidable characteristics if one has but the energy and hardihood to seek their haunts. Creatures which were supposed to be Jurassic, monsters who would hunt down and devour our largest and fiercest mammals, still exist.\" (Cries of \"Bosh!\" \"Prove it!\" \"How do YOU know?\" \"Question!\") \"How do I know, you ask me? I know because I have visited their secret haunts. I know because I have seen some of them.\" (Applause, uproar, and a voice, \"Liar!\") \"Am I a liar?\" (General hearty and noisy assent.) \"Did I hear someone say that I was a liar? Will the person who called me a liar kindly stand up that I may know him?\" (A voice, \"Here he is, sir!\" and an inoffensive little person in spectacles, struggling violently, was held up among a group of students.) \"Did you venture to call me a liar?\" (\"No, sir, no!\" shouted the accused, and disappeared like a jack-in-the-box.) \"If any person in this hall dares to doubt my veracity, I shall be glad to have a few words with him after the lecture.\" (\"Liar!\") \"Who said that?\" (Again the inoffensive one plunging desperately, was elevated high into the air.) \"If I come down among you\u2014\" (General chorus of \"Come, love, come!\" which interrupted the proceedings for some moments, while the chairman, standing up and waving both his arms, seemed to be conducting the music. The Professor, with his face flushed, his nostrils dilated, and his beard bristling, was now in a proper Berserk mood.) \"Every great discoverer has been met with the same incredulity\u2014the sure brand of a generation of fools. When great facts are laid before you, you have not the intuition, the imagination which would help you to understand them. You can only throw mud at the men who have risked their lives to open new fields to science. You persecute the prophets! Galileo! Darwin, and I\u2014\" (Prolonged cheering and complete interruption.)\n\nAll this is from my hurried notes taken at the time, which give little notion of the absolute chaos to which the assembly had by this time been reduced. So terrific was the uproar that several ladies had already beaten a hurried retreat. Grave and reverend seniors seemed to have caught the prevailing spirit as badly as the students, and I saw white-bearded men rising and shaking their fists at the obdurate Professor. The whole great audience seethed and simmered like a boiling pot. The Professor took a step forward and raised both his hands. There was something so big and arresting and virile in the man that the clatter and shouting died gradually away before his commanding gesture and his masterful eyes. He seemed to have a definite message. They hushed to hear it.\n\n\"I will not detain you,\" he said. \"It is not worth it. Truth is truth, and the noise of a number of foolish young men\u2014and, I fear I must add, of their equally foolish seniors\u2014cannot affect the matter. I claim that I have opened a new field of science. You dispute it.\" (Cheers.) \"Then I put you to the test. Will you accredit one or more of your own number to go out as your representatives and test my statement in your name?\"\n\nMr. Summerlee, the veteran Professor of Comparative Anatomy, rose among the audience, a tall, thin, bitter man, with the withered aspect of a theologian. He wished, he said, to ask Professor Challenger whether the results to which he had alluded in his remarks had been obtained during a journey to the headwaters of the Amazon made by him two years before.\n\nProfessor Challenger answered that they had.\n\nMr. Summerlee desired to know how it was that Professor Challenger claimed to have made discoveries in those regions which had been overlooked by Wallace, Bates, and other previous explorers of established scientific repute.\n\nProfessor Challenger answered that Mr. Summerlee appeared to be confusing the Amazon with the Thames; that it was in reality a somewhat larger river; that Mr. Summerlee might be interested to know that with the Orinoco, which communicated with it, some fifty thousand miles of country were opened up, and that in so vast a space it was not impossible for one person to find what another had missed.\n\nMr. Summerlee declared, with an acid smile, that he fully appreciated the difference between the Thames and the Amazon, which lay in the fact that any assertion about the former could be tested, while about the latter it could not. He would be obliged if Professor Challenger would give the latitude and the longitude of the country in which prehistoric animals were to be found.\n\nProfessor Challenger replied that he reserved such information for good reasons of his own, but would be prepared to give it with proper precautions to a committee chosen from the audience. Would Mr. Summerlee serve on such a committee and test his story in person?\n\nMr. Summerlee: \"Yes, I will.\" (Great cheering.)\n\nProfessor Challenger: \"Then I guarantee that I will place in your hands such material as will enable you to find your way. It is only right, however, since Mr. Summerlee goes to check my statement that I should have one or more with him who may check his. I will not disguise from you that there are difficulties and dangers. Mr. Summerlee will need a younger colleague. May I ask for volunteers?\"\n\nIt is thus that the great crisis of a man's life springs out at him. Could I have imagined when I entered that hall that I was about to pledge myself to a wilder adventure than had ever come to me in my dreams? But Gladys\u2014was it not the very opportunity of which she spoke? Gladys would have told me to go. I had sprung to my feet. I was speaking, and yet I had prepared no words. Tarp Henry, my companion, was plucking at my skirts and I heard him whispering, \"Sit down, Malone! Don't make a public ass of yourself.\" At the same time I was aware that a tall, thin man, with dark gingery hair, a few seats in front of me, was also upon his feet. He glared back at me with hard angry eyes, but I refused to give way.\n\n\"I will go, Mr. Chairman,\" I kept repeating over and over again.\n\n\"Name! Name!\" cried the audience.\n\n\"My name is Edward Dunn Malone. I am the reporter of the Daily Gazette. I claim to be an absolutely unprejudiced witness.\"\n\n\"What is YOUR name, sir?\" the chairman asked of my tall rival.\n\n\"I am Lord John Roxton. I have already been up the Amazon, I know all the ground, and have special qualifications for this investigation.\"\n\n\"Lord John Roxton's reputation as a sportsman and a traveler is, of course, world-famous,\" said the chairman; \"at the same time it would certainly be as well to have a member of the Press upon such an expedition.\"\n\n\"Then I move,\" said Professor Challenger, \"that both these gentlemen be elected, as representatives of this meeting, to accompany Professor Summerlee upon his journey to investigate and to report upon the truth of my statements.\"\n\nAnd so, amid shouting and cheering, our fate was decided, and I found myself borne away in the human current which swirled towards the door, with my mind half stunned by the vast new project which had risen so suddenly before it. As I emerged from the hall I was conscious for a moment of a rush of laughing students\u2014down the pavement, and of an arm wielding a heavy umbrella, which rose and fell in the midst of them. Then, amid a mixture of groans and cheers, Professor Challenger's electric brougham slid from the curb, and I found myself walking under the silvery lights of Regent Street, full of thoughts of Gladys and of wonder as to my future.\n\nSuddenly there was a touch at my elbow. I turned, and found myself looking into the humorous, masterful eyes of the tall, thin man who had volunteered to be my companion on this strange quest.\n\n\"Mr. Malone, I understand,\" said he. \"We are to be companions\u2014what? My rooms are just over the road, in the Albany. Perhaps you would have the kindness to spare me half an hour, for there are one or two things that I badly want to say to you.\"" + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 6", + "text": "\"I was the Flail of the Lord\"\n\nLord John Roxton and I turned down Vigo Street together and through the dingy portals of the famous aristocratic rookery. At the end of a long drab passage my new acquaintance pushed open a door and turned on an electric switch. A number of lamps shining through tinted shades bathed the whole great room before us in a ruddy radiance. Standing in the doorway and glancing round me, I had a general impression of extraordinary comfort and elegance combined with an atmosphere of masculine virility. Everywhere there were mingled the luxury of the wealthy man of taste and the careless untidiness of the bachelor. Rich furs and strange iridescent mats from some Oriental bazaar were scattered upon the floor. Pictures and prints which even my unpractised eyes could recognize as being of great price and rarity hung thick upon the walls. Sketches of boxers, of ballet-girls, and of racehorses alternated with a sensuous Fragonard, a martial Girardet, and a dreamy Turner. But amid these varied ornaments there were scattered the trophies which brought back strongly to my recollection the fact that Lord John Roxton was one of the great all-round sportsmen and athletes of his day. A dark-blue oar crossed with a cherry-pink one above his mantelpiece spoke of the old Oxonian and Leander man, while the foils and boxing-gloves above and below them were the tools of a man who had won supremacy with each. Like a dado round the room was the jutting line of splendid heavy game-heads, the best of their sort from every quarter of the world, with the rare white rhinoceros of the Lado Enclave drooping its supercilious lip above them all.\n\nIn the center of the rich red carpet was a black and gold Louis Quinze table, a lovely antique, now sacrilegiously desecrated with marks of glasses and the scars of cigar-stumps. On it stood a silver tray of smokables and a burnished spirit-stand, from which and an adjacent siphon my silent host proceeded to charge two high glasses. Having indicated an arm-chair to me and placed my refreshment near it, he handed me a long, smooth Havana. Then, seating himself opposite to me, he looked at me long and fixedly with his strange, twinkling, reckless eyes\u2014eyes of a cold light blue, the color of a glacier lake.\n\nThrough the thin haze of my cigar-smoke I noted the details of a face which was already familiar to me from many photographs\u2014the strongly-curved nose, the hollow, worn cheeks, the dark, ruddy hair, thin at the top, the crisp, virile moustaches, the small, aggressive tuft upon his projecting chin. Something there was of Napoleon III., something of Don Quixote, and yet again something which was the essence of the English country gentleman, the keen, alert, open-air lover of dogs and of horses. His skin was of a rich flower-pot red from sun and wind. His eyebrows were tufted and overhanging, which gave those naturally cold eyes an almost ferocious aspect, an impression which was increased by his strong and furrowed brow. In figure he was spare, but very strongly built\u2014indeed, he had often proved that there were few men in England capable of such sustained exertions. His height was a little over six feet, but he seemed shorter on account of a peculiar rounding of the shoulders. Such was the famous Lord John Roxton as he sat opposite to me, biting hard upon his cigar and watching me steadily in a long and embarrassing silence.\n\n\"Well,\" said he, at last, \"we've gone and done it, young fellah my lad.\" (This curious phrase he pronounced as if it were all one word\u2014\"young-fellah-me-lad.\") \"Yes, we've taken a jump, you an' me. I suppose, now, when you went into that room there was no such notion in your head\u2014what?\"\n\n\"No thought of it.\"\n\n\"The same here. No thought of it. And here we are, up to our necks in the tureen. Why, I've only been back three weeks from Uganda, and taken a place in Scotland, and signed the lease and all. Pretty goin's on\u2014what? How does it hit you?\"\n\n\"Well, it is all in the main line of my business. I am a journalist on the Gazette.\"\n\n\"Of course\u2014you said so when you took it on. By the way, I've got a small job for you, if you'll help me.\"\n\n\"With pleasure.\"\n\n\"Don't mind takin' a risk, do you?\"\n\n\"What is the risk?\"\n\n\"Well, it's Ballinger\u2014he's the risk. You've heard of him?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Why, young fellah, where HAVE you lived? Sir John Ballinger is the best gentleman jock in the north country. I could hold him on the flat at my best, but over jumps he's my master. Well, it's an open secret that when he's out of trainin' he drinks hard\u2014strikin' an average, he calls it. He got delirium on Toosday, and has been ragin' like a devil ever since. His room is above this. The doctors say that it is all up with the old dear unless some food is got into him, but as he lies in bed with a revolver on his coverlet, and swears he will put six of the best through anyone that comes near him, there's been a bit of a strike among the serving-men. He's a hard nail, is Jack, and a dead shot, too, but you can't leave a Grand National winner to die like that\u2014what?\"\n\n\"What do you mean to do, then?\" I asked.\n\n\"Well, my idea was that you and I could rush him. He may be dozin', and at the worst he can only wing one of us, and the other should have him. If we can get his bolster-cover round his arms and then 'phone up a stomach-pump, we'll give the old dear the supper of his life.\"\n\nIt was a rather desperate business to come suddenly into one's day's work. I don't think that I am a particularly brave man. I have an Irish imagination which makes the unknown and the untried more terrible than they are. On the other hand, I was brought up with a horror of cowardice and with a terror of such a stigma. I dare say that I could throw myself over a precipice, like the Hun in the history books, if my courage to do it were questioned, and yet it would surely be pride and fear, rather than courage, which would be my inspiration. Therefore, although every nerve in my body shrank from the whisky-maddened figure which I pictured in the room above, I still answered, in as careless a voice as I could command, that I was ready to go. Some further remark of Lord Roxton's about the danger only made me irritable.\n\n\"Talking won't make it any better,\" said I. \"Come on.\"\n\nI rose from my chair and he from his. Then with a little confidential chuckle of laughter, he patted me two or three times on the chest, finally pushing me back into my chair.\n\n\"All right, sonny my lad\u2014you'll do,\" said he. I looked up in surprise.\n\n\"I saw after Jack Ballinger myself this mornin'. He blew a hole in the skirt of my kimono, bless his shaky old hand, but we got a jacket on him, and he's to be all right in a week. I say, young fellah, I hope you don't mind\u2014what? You see, between you an' me close-tiled, I look on this South American business as a mighty serious thing, and if I have a pal with me I want a man I can bank on. So I sized you down, and I'm bound to say that you came well out of it. You see, it's all up to you and me, for this old Summerlee man will want dry-nursin' from the first. By the way, are you by any chance the Malone who is expected to get his Rugby cap for Ireland?\"\n\n\"A reserve, perhaps.\"\n\n\"I thought I remembered your face. Why, I was there when you got that try against Richmond\u2014as fine a swervin' run as I saw the whole season. I never miss a Rugby match if I can help it, for it is the manliest game we have left. Well, I didn't ask you in here just to talk sport. We've got to fix our business. Here are the sailin's, on the first page of the Times. There's a Booth boat for Para next Wednesday week, and if the Professor and you can work it, I think we should take it\u2014what? Very good, I'll fix it with him. What about your outfit?\"\n\n\"My paper will see to that.\"\n\n\"Can you shoot?\"\n\n\"About average Territorial standard.\"\n\n\"Good Lord! as bad as that? It's the last thing you young fellahs think of learnin'. You're all bees without stings, so far as lookin' after the hive goes. You'll look silly, some o' these days, when someone comes along an' sneaks the honey. But you'll need to hold your gun straight in South America, for, unless our friend the Professor is a madman or a liar, we may see some queer things before we get back. What gun have you?\"\n\nHe crossed to an oaken cupboard, and as he threw it open I caught a glimpse of glistening rows of parallel barrels, like the pipes of an organ.\n\n\"I'll see what I can spare you out of my own battery,\" said he.\n\nOne by one he took out a succession of beautiful rifles, opening and shutting them with a snap and a clang, and then patting them as he put them back into the rack as tenderly as a mother would fondle her children.\n\n\"This is a Bland's .577 axite express,\" said he. \"I got that big fellow with it.\" He glanced up at the white rhinoceros. \"Ten more yards, and he'd would have added me to HIS collection.\n\n'On that conical bullet his one chance hangs, 'Tis the weak one's advantage fair.'\n\nHope you know your Gordon, for he's the poet of the horse and the gun and the man that handles both. Now, here's a useful tool\u2014.470, telescopic sight, double ejector, point-blank up to three-fifty. That's the rifle I used against the Peruvian slave-drivers three years ago. I was the flail of the Lord up in those parts, I may tell you, though you won't find it in any Blue-book. There are times, young fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and justice, or you never feel clean again. That's why I made a little war on my own. Declared it myself, waged it myself, ended it myself. Each of those nicks is for a slave murderer\u2014a good row of them\u2014what? That big one is for Pedro Lopez, the king of them all, that I killed in a backwater of the Putomayo River. Now, here's something that would do for you.\" He took out a beautiful brown-and-silver rifle. \"Well rubbered at the stock, sharply sighted, five cartridges to the clip. You can trust your life to that.\" He handed it to me and closed the door of his oak cabinet.\n\n\"By the way,\" he continued, coming back to his chair, \"what do you know of this Professor Challenger?\"\n\n\"I never saw him till to-day.\"\n\n\"Well, neither did I. It's funny we should both sail under sealed orders from a man we don't know. He seemed an uppish old bird. His brothers of science don't seem too fond of him, either. How came you to take an interest in the affair?\"\n\nI told him shortly my experiences of the morning, and he listened intently. Then he drew out a map of South America and laid it on the table.\n\n\"I believe every single word he said to you was the truth,\" said he, earnestly, \"and, mind you, I have something to go on when I speak like that. South America is a place I love, and I think, if you take it right through from Darien to Fuego, it's the grandest, richest, most wonderful bit of earth upon this planet. People don't know it yet, and don't realize what it may become. I've been up an' down it from end to end, and had two dry seasons in those very parts, as I told you when I spoke of the war I made on the slave-dealers. Well, when I was up there I heard some yarns of the same kind\u2014traditions of Indians and the like, but with somethin' behind them, no doubt. The more you knew of that country, young fellah, the more you would understand that anythin' was possible\u2014ANYTHIN'! There are just some narrow water-lanes along which folk travel, and outside that it is all darkness. Now, down here in the Matto Grande\"\u2014he swept his cigar over a part of the map\u2014\"or up in this corner where three countries meet, nothin' would surprise me. As that chap said to-night, there are fifty-thousand miles of waterway runnin' through a forest that is very near the size of Europe. You and I could be as far away from each other as Scotland is from Constantinople, and yet each of us be in the same great Brazilian forest. Man has just made a track here and a scrape there in the maze. Why, the river rises and falls the best part of forty feet, and half the country is a morass that you can't pass over. Why shouldn't somethin' new and wonderful lie in such a country? And why shouldn't we be the men to find it out? Besides,\" he added, his queer, gaunt face shining with delight, \"there's a sportin' risk in every mile of it. I'm like an old golf-ball\u2014I've had all the white paint knocked off me long ago. Life can whack me about now, and it can't leave a mark. But a sportin' risk, young fellah, that's the salt of existence. Then it's worth livin' again. We're all gettin' a deal too soft and dull and comfy. Give me the great waste lands and the wide spaces, with a gun in my fist and somethin' to look for that's worth findin'. I've tried war and steeplechasin' and aeroplanes, but this huntin' of beasts that look like a lobster-supper dream is a brand-new sensation.\" He chuckled with glee at the prospect.\n\nPerhaps I have dwelt too long upon this new acquaintance, but he is to be my comrade for many a day, and so I have tried to set him down as I first saw him, with his quaint personality and his queer little tricks of speech and of thought. It was only the need of getting in the account of my meeting which drew me at last from his company. I left him seated amid his pink radiance, oiling the lock of his favorite rifle, while he still chuckled to himself at the thought of the adventures which awaited us. It was very clear to me that if dangers lay before us I could not in all England have found a cooler head or a braver spirit with which to share them.\n\nThat night, wearied as I was after the wonderful happenings of the day, I sat late with McArdle, the news editor, explaining to him the whole situation, which he thought important enough to bring next morning before the notice of Sir George Beaumont, the chief. It was agreed that I should write home full accounts of my adventures in the shape of successive letters to McArdle, and that these should either be edited for the Gazette as they arrived, or held back to be published later, according to the wishes of Professor Challenger, since we could not yet know what conditions he might attach to those directions which should guide us to the unknown land. In response to a telephone inquiry, we received nothing more definite than a fulmination against the Press, ending up with the remark that if we would notify our boat he would hand us any directions which he might think it proper to give us at the moment of starting. A second question from us failed to elicit any answer at all, save a plaintive bleat from his wife to the effect that her husband was in a very violent temper already, and that she hoped we would do nothing to make it worse. A third attempt, later in the day, provoked a terrific crash, and a subsequent message from the Central Exchange that Professor Challenger's receiver had been shattered. After that we abandoned all attempt at communication.\n\nAnd now my patient readers, I can address you directly no longer. From now onwards (if, indeed, any continuation of this narrative should ever reach you) it can only be through the paper which I represent. In the hands of the editor I leave this account of the events which have led up to one of the most remarkable expeditions of all time, so that if I never return to England there shall be some record as to how the affair came about. I am writing these last lines in the saloon of the Booth liner Francisca, and they will go back by the pilot to the keeping of Mr. McArdle. Let me draw one last picture before I close the notebook\u2014a picture which is the last memory of the old country which I bear away with me. It is a wet, foggy morning in the late spring; a thin, cold rain is falling. Three shining mackintoshed figures are walking down the quay, making for the gang-plank of the great liner from which the blue-peter is flying. In front of them a porter pushes a trolley piled high with trunks, wraps, and gun-cases. Professor Summerlee, a long, melancholy figure, walks with dragging steps and drooping head, as one who is already profoundly sorry for himself. Lord John Roxton steps briskly, and his thin, eager face beams forth between his hunting-cap and his muffler. As for myself, I am glad to have got the bustling days of preparation and the pangs of leave-taking behind me, and I have no doubt that I show it in my bearing. Suddenly, just as we reach the vessel, there is a shout behind us. It is Professor Challenger, who had promised to see us off. He runs after us, a puffing, red-faced, irascible figure.\n\n\"No thank you,\" says he; \"I should much prefer not to go aboard. I have only a few words to say to you, and they can very well be said where we are. I beg you not to imagine that I am in any way indebted to you for making this journey. I would have you to understand that it is a matter of perfect indifference to me, and I refuse to entertain the most remote sense of personal obligation. Truth is truth, and nothing which you can report can affect it in any way, though it may excite the emotions and allay the curiosity of a number of very ineffectual people. My directions for your instruction and guidance are in this sealed envelope. You will open it when you reach a town upon the Amazon which is called Manaos, but not until the date and hour which is marked upon the outside. Have I made myself clear? I leave the strict observance of my conditions entirely to your honor. No, Mr. Malone, I will place no restriction upon your correspondence, since the ventilation of the facts is the object of your journey; but I demand that you shall give no particulars as to your exact destination, and that nothing be actually published until your return. Good-bye, sir. You have done something to mitigate my feelings for the loathsome profession to which you unhappily belong. Good-bye, Lord John. Science is, as I understand, a sealed book to you; but you may congratulate yourself upon the hunting-field which awaits you. You will, no doubt, have the opportunity of describing in the Field how you brought down the rocketing dimorphodon. And good-bye to you also, Professor Summerlee. If you are still capable of self-improvement, of which I am frankly unconvinced, you will surely return to London a wiser man.\"\n\nSo he turned upon his heel, and a minute later from the deck I could see his short, squat figure bobbing about in the distance as he made his way back to his train. Well, we are well down Channel now. There's the last bell for letters, and it's good-bye to the pilot. We'll be \"down, hull-down, on the old trail\" from now on. God bless all we leave behind us, and send us safely back." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 7", + "text": "\"To-morrow we Disappear into the Unknown\"\n\nI will not bore those whom this narrative may reach by an account of our luxurious voyage upon the Booth liner, nor will I tell of our week's stay at Para (save that I should wish to acknowledge the great kindness of the Pereira da Pinta Company in helping us to get together our equipment). I will also allude very briefly to our river journey, up a wide, slow-moving, clay-tinted stream, in a steamer which was little smaller than that which had carried us across the Atlantic. Eventually we found ourselves through the narrows of Obidos and reached the town of Manaos. Here we were rescued from the limited attractions of the local inn by Mr. Shortman, the representative of the British and Brazilian Trading Company. In his hospital Fazenda we spent our time until the day when we were empowered to open the letter of instructions given to us by Professor Challenger. Before I reach the surprising events of that date I would desire to give a clearer sketch of my comrades in this enterprise, and of the associates whom we had already gathered together in South America. I speak freely, and I leave the use of my material to your own discretion, Mr. McArdle, since it is through your hands that this report must pass before it reaches the world.\n\nThe scientific attainments of Professor Summerlee are too well known for me to trouble to recapitulate them. He is better equipped for a rough expedition of this sort than one would imagine at first sight. His tall, gaunt, stringy figure is insensible to fatigue, and his dry, half-sarcastic, and often wholly unsympathetic manner is uninfluenced by any change in his surroundings. Though in his sixty-sixth year, I have never heard him express any dissatisfaction at the occasional hardships which we have had to encounter. I had regarded his presence as an encumbrance to the expedition, but, as a matter of fact, I am now well convinced that his power of endurance is as great as my own. In temper he is naturally acid and sceptical. From the beginning he has never concealed his belief that Professor Challenger is an absolute fraud, that we are all embarked upon an absurd wild-goose chase and that we are likely to reap nothing but disappointment and danger in South America, and corresponding ridicule in England. Such are the views which, with much passionate distortion of his thin features and wagging of his thin, goat-like beard, he poured into our ears all the way from Southampton to Manaos. Since landing from the boat he has obtained some consolation from the beauty and variety of the insect and bird life around him, for he is absolutely whole-hearted in his devotion to science. He spends his days flitting through the woods with his shot-gun and his butterfly-net, and his evenings in mounting the many specimens he has acquired. Among his minor peculiarities are that he is careless as to his attire, unclean in his person, exceedingly absent-minded in his habits, and addicted to smoking a short briar pipe, which is seldom out of his mouth. He has been upon several scientific expeditions in his youth (he was with Robertson in Papua), and the life of the camp and the canoe is nothing fresh to him.\n\nLord John Roxton has some points in common with Professor Summerlee, and others in which they are the very antithesis to each other. He is twenty years younger, but has something of the same spare, scraggy physique. As to his appearance, I have, as I recollect, described it in that portion of my narrative which I have left behind me in London. He is exceedingly neat and prim in his ways, dresses always with great care in white drill suits and high brown mosquito-boots, and shaves at least once a day. Like most men of action, he is laconic in speech, and sinks readily into his own thoughts, but he is always quick to answer a question or join in a conversation, talking in a queer, jerky, half-humorous fashion. His knowledge of the world, and very especially of South America, is surprising, and he has a whole-hearted belief in the possibilities of our journey which is not to be dashed by the sneers of Professor Summerlee. He has a gentle voice and a quiet manner, but behind his twinkling blue eyes there lurks a capacity for furious wrath and implacable resolution, the more dangerous because they are held in leash. He spoke little of his own exploits in Brazil and Peru, but it was a revelation to me to find the excitement which was caused by his presence among the riverine natives, who looked upon him as their champion and protector. The exploits of the Red Chief, as they called him, had become legends among them, but the real facts, as far as I could learn them, were amazing enough.\n\nThese were that Lord John had found himself some years before in that no-man's-land which is formed by the half-defined frontiers between Peru, Brazil, and Columbia. In this great district the wild rubber tree flourishes, and has become, as in the Congo, a curse to the natives which can only be compared to their forced labor under the Spaniards upon the old silver mines of Darien. A handful of villainous half-breeds dominated the country, armed such Indians as would support them, and turned the rest into slaves, terrorizing them with the most inhuman tortures in order to force them to gather the india-rubber, which was then floated down the river to Para. Lord John Roxton expostulated on behalf of the wretched victims, and received nothing but threats and insults for his pains. He then formally declared war against Pedro Lopez, the leader of the slave-drivers, enrolled a band of runaway slaves in his service, armed them, and conducted a campaign, which ended by his killing with his own hands the notorious half-breed and breaking down the system which he represented.\n\nNo wonder that the ginger-headed man with the silky voice and the free and easy manners was now looked upon with deep interest upon the banks of the great South American river, though the feelings he inspired were naturally mixed, since the gratitude of the natives was equaled by the resentment of those who desired to exploit them. One useful result of his former experiences was that he could talk fluently in the Lingoa Geral, which is the peculiar talk, one-third Portuguese and two-thirds Indian, which is current all over Brazil.\n\nI have said before that Lord John Roxton was a South Americomaniac. He could not speak of that great country without ardor, and this ardor was infectious, for, ignorant as I was, he fixed my attention and stimulated my curiosity. How I wish I could reproduce the glamour of his discourses, the peculiar mixture of accurate knowledge and of racy imagination which gave them their fascination, until even the Professor's cynical and sceptical smile would gradually vanish from his thin face as he listened. He would tell the history of the mighty river so rapidly explored (for some of the first conquerors of Peru actually crossed the entire continent upon its waters), and yet so unknown in regard to all that lay behind its ever-changing banks.\n\n\"What is there?\" he would cry, pointing to the north. \"Wood and marsh and unpenetrated jungle. Who knows what it may shelter? And there to the south? A wilderness of swampy forest, where no white man has ever been. The unknown is up against us on every side. Outside the narrow lines of the rivers what does anyone know? Who will say what is possible in such a country? Why should old man Challenger not be right?\" At which direct defiance the stubborn sneer would reappear upon Professor Summerlee's face, and he would sit, shaking his sardonic head in unsympathetic silence, behind the cloud of his briar-root pipe.\n\nSo much, for the moment, for my two white companions, whose characters and limitations will be further exposed, as surely as my own, as this narrative proceeds. But already we have enrolled certain retainers who may play no small part in what is to come. The first is a gigantic negro named Zambo, who is a black Hercules, as willing as any horse, and about as intelligent. Him we enlisted at Para, on the recommendation of the steamship company, on whose vessels he had learned to speak a halting English.\n\nIt was at Para also that we engaged Gomez and Manuel, two half-breeds from up the river, just come down with a cargo of redwood. They were swarthy fellows, bearded and fierce, as active and wiry as panthers. Both of them had spent their lives in those upper waters of the Amazon which we were about to explore, and it was this recommendation which had caused Lord John to engage them. One of them, Gomez, had the further advantage that he could speak excellent English. These men were willing to act as our personal servants, to cook, to row, or to make themselves useful in any way at a payment of fifteen dollars a month. Besides these, we had engaged three Mojo Indians from Bolivia, who are the most skilful at fishing and boat work of all the river tribes. The chief of these we called Mojo, after his tribe, and the others are known as Jose and Fernando. Three white men, then, two half-breeds, one negro, and three Indians made up the personnel of the little expedition which lay waiting for its instructions at Manaos before starting upon its singular quest.\n\nAt last, after a weary week, the day had come and the hour. I ask you to picture the shaded sitting-room of the Fazenda St. Ignatio, two miles inland from the town of Manaos. Outside lay the yellow, brassy glare of the sunshine, with the shadows of the palm trees as black and definite as the trees themselves. The air was calm, full of the eternal hum of insects, a tropical chorus of many octaves, from the deep drone of the bee to the high, keen pipe of the mosquito. Beyond the veranda was a small cleared garden, bounded with cactus hedges and adorned with clumps of flowering shrubs, round which the great blue butterflies and the tiny humming-birds fluttered and darted in crescents of sparkling light. Within we were seated round the cane table, on which lay a sealed envelope. Inscribed upon it, in the jagged handwriting of Professor Challenger, were the words:\u2014\n\n\"Instructions to Lord John Roxton and party. To be opened at Manaos upon July 15th, at 12 o'clock precisely.\"\n\nLord John had placed his watch upon the table beside him.\n\n\"We have seven more minutes,\" said he. \"The old dear is very precise.\"\n\nProfessor Summerlee gave an acid smile as he picked up the envelope in his gaunt hand.\n\n\"What can it possibly matter whether we open it now or in seven minutes?\" said he. \"It is all part and parcel of the same system of quackery and nonsense, for which I regret to say that the writer is notorious.\"\n\n\"Oh, come, we must play the game accordin' to rules,\" said Lord John. \"It's old man Challenger's show and we are here by his good will, so it would be rotten bad form if we didn't follow his instructions to the letter.\"\n\n\"A pretty business it is!\" cried the Professor, bitterly. \"It struck me as preposterous in London, but I'm bound to say that it seems even more so upon closer acquaintance. I don't know what is inside this envelope, but, unless it is something pretty definite, I shall be much tempted to take the next down-river boat and catch the Bolivia at Para. After all, I have some more responsible work in the world than to run about disproving the assertions of a lunatic. Now, Roxton, surely it is time.\"\n\n\"Time it is,\" said Lord John. \"You can blow the whistle.\" He took up the envelope and cut it with his penknife. From it he drew a folded sheet of paper. This he carefully opened out and flattened on the table. It was a blank sheet. He turned it over. Again it was blank. We looked at each other in a bewildered silence, which was broken by a discordant burst of derisive laughter from Professor Summerlee.\n\n\"It is an open admission,\" he cried. \"What more do you want? The fellow is a self-confessed humbug. We have only to return home and report him as the brazen imposter that he is.\"\n\n\"Invisible ink!\" I suggested.\n\n\"I don't think!\" said Lord Roxton, holding the paper to the light. \"No, young fellah my lad, there is no use deceiving yourself. I'll go bail for it that nothing has ever been written upon this paper.\"\n\n\"May I come in?\" boomed a voice from the veranda.\n\nThe shadow of a squat figure had stolen across the patch of sunlight. That voice! That monstrous breadth of shoulder! We sprang to our feet with a gasp of astonishment as Challenger, in a round, boyish straw-hat with a colored ribbon\u2014Challenger, with his hands in his jacket-pockets and his canvas shoes daintily pointing as he walked\u2014appeared in the open space before us. He threw back his head, and there he stood in the golden glow with all his old Assyrian luxuriance of beard, all his native insolence of drooping eyelids and intolerant eyes.\n\n\"I fear,\" said he, taking out his watch, \"that I am a few minutes too late. When I gave you this envelope I must confess that I had never intended that you should open it, for it had been my fixed intention to be with you before the hour. The unfortunate delay can be apportioned between a blundering pilot and an intrusive sandbank. I fear that it has given my colleague, Professor Summerlee, occasion to blaspheme.\"\n\n\"I am bound to say, sir,\" said Lord John, with some sternness of voice, \"that your turning up is a considerable relief to us, for our mission seemed to have come to a premature end. Even now I can't for the life of me understand why you should have worked it in so extraordinary a manner.\"\n\nInstead of answering, Professor Challenger entered, shook hands with myself and Lord John, bowed with ponderous insolence to Professor Summerlee, and sank back into a basket-chair, which creaked and swayed beneath his weight.\n\n\"Is all ready for your journey?\" he asked.\n\n\"We can start to-morrow.\"\n\n\"Then so you shall. You need no chart of directions now, since you will have the inestimable advantage of my own guidance. From the first I had determined that I would myself preside over your investigation. The most elaborate charts would, as you will readily admit, be a poor substitute for my own intelligence and advice. As to the small ruse which I played upon you in the matter of the envelope, it is clear that, had I told you all my intentions, I should have been forced to resist unwelcome pressure to travel out with you.\"\n\n\"Not from me, sir!\" exclaimed Professor Summerlee, heartily. \"So long as there was another ship upon the Atlantic.\"\n\nChallenger waved him away with his great hairy hand.\n\n\"Your common sense will, I am sure, sustain my objection and realize that it was better that I should direct my own movements and appear only at the exact moment when my presence was needed. That moment has now arrived. You are in safe hands. You will not now fail to reach your destination. From henceforth I take command of this expedition, and I must ask you to complete your preparations to-night, so that we may be able to make an early start in the morning. My time is of value, and the same thing may be said, no doubt, in a lesser degree of your own. I propose, therefore, that we push on as rapidly as possible, until I have demonstrated what you have come to see.\"\n\nLord John Roxton has chartered a large steam launch, the Esmeralda, which was to carry us up the river. So far as climate goes, it was immaterial what time we chose for our expedition, as the temperature ranges from seventy-five to ninety degrees both summer and winter, with no appreciable difference in heat. In moisture, however, it is otherwise; from December to May is the period of the rains, and during this time the river slowly rises until it attains a height of nearly forty feet above its low-water mark. It floods the banks, extends in great lagoons over a monstrous waste of country, and forms a huge district, called locally the Gapo, which is for the most part too marshy for foot-travel and too shallow for boating. About June the waters begin to fall, and are at their lowest at October or November. Thus our expedition was at the time of the dry season, when the great river and its tributaries were more or less in a normal condition.\n\nThe current of the river is a slight one, the drop being not greater than eight inches in a mile. No stream could be more convenient for navigation, since the prevailing wind is south-east, and sailing boats may make a continuous progress to the Peruvian frontier, dropping down again with the current. In our own case the excellent engines of the Esmeralda could disregard the sluggish flow of the stream, and we made as rapid progress as if we were navigating a stagnant lake. For three days we steamed north-westwards up a stream which even here, a thousand miles from its mouth, was still so enormous that from its center the two banks were mere shadows upon the distant skyline. On the fourth day after leaving Manaos we turned into a tributary which at its mouth was little smaller than the main stream. It narrowed rapidly, however, and after two more days' steaming we reached an Indian village, where the Professor insisted that we should land, and that the Esmeralda should be sent back to Manaos. We should soon come upon rapids, he explained, which would make its further use impossible. He added privately that we were now approaching the door of the unknown country, and that the fewer whom we took into our confidence the better it would be. To this end also he made each of us give our word of honor that we would publish or say nothing which would give any exact clue as to the whereabouts of our travels, while the servants were all solemnly sworn to the same effect. It is for this reason that I am compelled to be vague in my narrative, and I would warn my readers that in any map or diagram which I may give the relation of places to each other may be correct, but the points of the compass are carefully confused, so that in no way can it be taken as an actual guide to the country. Professor Challenger's reasons for secrecy may be valid or not, but we had no choice but to adopt them, for he was prepared to abandon the whole expedition rather than modify the conditions upon which he would guide us.\n\nIt was August 2nd when we snapped our last link with the outer world by bidding farewell to the Esmeralda. Since then four days have passed, during which we have engaged two large canoes from the Indians, made of so light a material (skins over a bamboo framework) that we should be able to carry them round any obstacle. These we have loaded with all our effects, and have engaged two additional Indians to help us in the navigation. I understand that they are the very two\u2014Ataca and Ipetu by name\u2014who accompanied Professor Challenger upon his previous journey. They appeared to be terrified at the prospect of repeating it, but the chief has patriarchal powers in these countries, and if the bargain is good in his eyes the clansman has little choice in the matter.\n\nSo to-morrow we disappear into the unknown. This account I am transmitting down the river by canoe, and it may be our last word to those who are interested in our fate. I have, according to our arrangement, addressed it to you, my dear Mr. McArdle, and I leave it to your discretion to delete, alter, or do what you like with it. From the assurance of Professor Challenger's manner\u2014and in spite of the continued scepticism of Professor Summerlee\u2014I have no doubt that our leader will make good his statement, and that we are really on the eve of some most remarkable experiences." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 8", + "text": "\"The Outlying Pickets of the New World\"\n\nOur friends at home may well rejoice with us, for we are at our goal, and up to a point, at least, we have shown that the statement of Professor Challenger can be verified. We have not, it is true, ascended the plateau, but it lies before us, and even Professor Summerlee is in a more chastened mood. Not that he will for an instant admit that his rival could be right, but he is less persistent in his incessant objections, and has sunk for the most part into an observant silence. I must hark back, however, and continue my narrative from where I dropped it. We are sending home one of our local Indians who is injured, and I am committing this letter to his charge, with considerable doubts in my mind as to whether it will ever come to hand.\n\nWhen I wrote last we were about to leave the Indian village where we had been deposited by the Esmeralda. I have to begin my report by bad news, for the first serious personal trouble (I pass over the incessant bickerings between the Professors) occurred this evening, and might have had a tragic ending. I have spoken of our English-speaking half-breed, Gomez\u2014a fine worker and a willing fellow, but afflicted, I fancy, with the vice of curiosity, which is common enough among such men. On the last evening he seems to have hid himself near the hut in which we were discussing our plans, and, being observed by our huge negro Zambo, who is as faithful as a dog and has the hatred which all his race bear to the half-breeds, he was dragged out and carried into our presence. Gomez whipped out his knife, however, and but for the huge strength of his captor, which enabled him to disarm him with one hand, he would certainly have stabbed him. The matter has ended in reprimands, the opponents have been compelled to shake hands, and there is every hope that all will be well. As to the feuds of the two learned men, they are continuous and bitter. It must be admitted that Challenger is provocative in the last degree, but Summerlee has an acid tongue, which makes matters worse. Last night Challenger said that he never cared to walk on the Thames Embankment and look up the river, as it was always sad to see one's own eventual goal. He is convinced, of course, that he is destined for Westminster Abbey. Summerlee rejoined, however, with a sour smile, by saying that he understood that Millbank Prison had been pulled down. Challenger's conceit is too colossal to allow him to be really annoyed. He only smiled in his beard and repeated \"Really! Really!\" in the pitying tone one would use to a child. Indeed, they are children both\u2014the one wizened and cantankerous, the other formidable and overbearing, yet each with a brain which has put him in the front rank of his scientific age. Brain, character, soul\u2014only as one sees more of life does one understand how distinct is each.\n\nThe very next day we did actually make our start upon this remarkable expedition. We found that all our possessions fitted very easily into the two canoes, and we divided our personnel, six in each, taking the obvious precaution in the interests of peace of putting one Professor into each canoe. Personally, I was with Challenger, who was in a beatific humor, moving about as one in a silent ecstasy and beaming benevolence from every feature. I have had some experience of him in other moods, however, and shall be the less surprised when the thunderstorms suddenly come up amidst the sunshine. If it is impossible to be at your ease, it is equally impossible to be dull in his company, for one is always in a state of half-tremulous doubt as to what sudden turn his formidable temper may take.\n\nFor two days we made our way up a good-sized river some hundreds of yards broad, and dark in color, but transparent, so that one could usually see the bottom. The affluents of the Amazon are, half of them, of this nature, while the other half are whitish and opaque, the difference depending upon the class of country through which they have flowed. The dark indicate vegetable decay, while the others point to clayey soil. Twice we came across rapids, and in each case made a portage of half a mile or so to avoid them. The woods on either side were primeval, which are more easily penetrated than woods of the second growth, and we had no great difficulty in carrying our canoes through them. How shall I ever forget the solemn mystery of it? The height of the trees and the thickness of the boles exceeded anything which I in my town-bred life could have imagined, shooting upwards in magnificent columns until, at an enormous distance above our heads, we could dimly discern the spot where they threw out their side-branches into Gothic upward curves which coalesced to form one great matted roof of verdure, through which only an occasional golden ray of sunshine shot downwards to trace a thin dazzling line of light amidst the majestic obscurity. As we walked noiselessly amid the thick, soft carpet of decaying vegetation the hush fell upon our souls which comes upon us in the twilight of the Abbey, and even Professor Challenger's full-chested notes sank into a whisper. Alone, I should have been ignorant of the names of these giant growths, but our men of science pointed out the cedars, the great silk cotton trees, and the redwood trees, with all that profusion of various plants which has made this continent the chief supplier to the human race of those gifts of Nature which depend upon the vegetable world, while it is the most backward in those products which come from animal life. Vivid orchids and wonderful colored lichens smoldered upon the swarthy tree-trunks and where a wandering shaft of light fell full upon the golden allamanda, the scarlet star-clusters of the tacsonia, or the rich deep blue of ipomaea, the effect was as a dream of fairyland. In these great wastes of forest, life, which abhors darkness, struggles ever upwards to the light. Every plant, even the smaller ones, curls and writhes to the green surface, twining itself round its stronger and taller brethren in the effort. Climbing plants are monstrous and luxuriant, but others which have never been known to climb elsewhere learn the art as an escape from that somber shadow, so that the common nettle, the jasmine, and even the jacitara palm tree can be seen circling the stems of the cedars and striving to reach their crowns. Of animal life there was no movement amid the majestic vaulted aisles which stretched from us as we walked, but a constant movement far above our heads told of that multitudinous world of snake and monkey, bird and sloth, which lived in the sunshine, and looked down in wonder at our tiny, dark, stumbling figures in the obscure depths immeasurably below them. At dawn and at sunset the howler monkeys screamed together and the parrakeets broke into shrill chatter, but during the hot hours of the day only the full drone of insects, like the beat of a distant surf, filled the ear, while nothing moved amid the solemn vistas of stupendous trunks, fading away into the darkness which held us in. Once some bandy-legged, lurching creature, an ant-eater or a bear, scuttled clumsily amid the shadows. It was the only sign of earth life which I saw in this great Amazonian forest.\n\nAnd yet there were indications that even human life itself was not far from us in those mysterious recesses. On the third day out we were aware of a singular deep throbbing in the air, rhythmic and solemn, coming and going fitfully throughout the morning. The two boats were paddling within a few yards of each other when first we heard it, and our Indians remained motionless, as if they had been turned to bronze, listening intently with expressions of terror upon their faces.\n\n\"What is it, then?\" I asked.\n\n\"Drums,\" said Lord John, carelessly; \"war drums. I have heard them before.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, war drums,\" said Gomez, the half-breed. \"Wild Indians, bravos, not mansos; they watch us every mile of the way; kill us if they can.\"\n\n\"How can they watch us?\" I asked, gazing into the dark, motionless void.\n\nThe half-breed shrugged his broad shoulders.\n\n\"The Indians know. They have their own way. They watch us. They talk the drum talk to each other. Kill us if they can.\"\n\nBy the afternoon of that day\u2014my pocket diary shows me that it was Tuesday, August 18th\u2014at least six or seven drums were throbbing from various points. Sometimes they beat quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes in obvious question and answer, one far to the east breaking out in a high staccato rattle, and being followed after a pause by a deep roll from the north. There was something indescribably nerve-shaking and menacing in that constant mutter, which seemed to shape itself into the very syllables of the half-breed, endlessly repeated, \"We will kill you if we can. We will kill you if we can.\" No one ever moved in the silent woods. All the peace and soothing of quiet Nature lay in that dark curtain of vegetation, but away from behind there came ever the one message from our fellow-man. \"We will kill you if we can,\" said the men in the east. \"We will kill you if we can,\" said the men in the north.\n\nAll day the drums rumbled and whispered, while their menace reflected itself in the faces of our colored companions. Even the hardy, swaggering half-breed seemed cowed. I learned, however, that day once for all that both Summerlee and Challenger possessed that highest type of bravery, the bravery of the scientific mind. Theirs was the spirit which upheld Darwin among the gauchos of the Argentine or Wallace among the head-hunters of Malaya. It is decreed by a merciful Nature that the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously, so that if it be steeped in curiosity as to science it has no room for merely personal considerations. All day amid that incessant and mysterious menace our two Professors watched every bird upon the wing, and every shrub upon the bank, with many a sharp wordy contention, when the snarl of Summerlee came quick upon the deep growl of Challenger, but with no more sense of danger and no more reference to drum-beating Indians than if they were seated together in the smoking-room of the Royal Society's Club in St. James's Street. Once only did they condescend to discuss them.\n\n\"Miranha or Amajuaca cannibals,\" said Challenger, jerking his thumb towards the reverberating wood.\n\n\"No doubt, sir,\" Summerlee answered. \"Like all such tribes, I shall expect to find them of poly-synthetic speech and of Mongolian type.\"\n\n\"Polysynthetic certainly,\" said Challenger, indulgently. \"I am not aware that any other type of language exists in this continent, and I have notes of more than a hundred. The Mongolian theory I regard with deep suspicion.\"\n\n\"I should have thought that even a limited knowledge of comparative anatomy would have helped to verify it,\" said Summerlee, bitterly.\n\nChallenger thrust out his aggressive chin until he was all beard and hat-rim. \"No doubt, sir, a limited knowledge would have that effect. When one's knowledge is exhaustive, one comes to other conclusions.\" They glared at each other in mutual defiance, while all round rose the distant whisper, \"We will kill you\u2014we will kill you if we can.\"\n\nThat night we moored our canoes with heavy stones for anchors in the center of the stream, and made every preparation for a possible attack. Nothing came, however, and with the dawn we pushed upon our way, the drum-beating dying out behind us. About three o'clock in the afternoon we came to a very steep rapid, more than a mile long\u2014the very one in which Professor Challenger had suffered disaster upon his first journey. I confess that the sight of it consoled me, for it was really the first direct corroboration, slight as it was, of the truth of his story. The Indians carried first our canoes and then our stores through the brushwood, which is very thick at this point, while we four whites, our rifles on our shoulders, walked between them and any danger coming from the woods. Before evening we had successfully passed the rapids, and made our way some ten miles above them, where we anchored for the night. At this point I reckoned that we had come not less than a hundred miles up the tributary from the main stream.\n\nIt was in the early forenoon of the next day that we made the great departure. Since dawn Professor Challenger had been acutely uneasy, continually scanning each bank of the river. Suddenly he gave an exclamation of satisfaction and pointed to a single tree, which projected at a peculiar angle over the side of the stream.\n\n\"What do you make of that?\" he asked.\n\n\"It is surely an Assai palm,\" said Summerlee.\n\n\"Exactly. It was an Assai palm which I took for my landmark. The secret opening is half a mile onwards upon the other side of the river. There is no break in the trees. That is the wonder and the mystery of it. There where you see light-green rushes instead of dark-green undergrowth, there between the great cotton woods, that is my private gate into the unknown. Push through, and you will understand.\"\n\nIt was indeed a wonderful place. Having reached the spot marked by a line of light-green rushes, we poled out two canoes through them for some hundreds of yards, and eventually emerged into a placid and shallow stream, running clear and transparent over a sandy bottom. It may have been twenty yards across, and was banked in on each side by most luxuriant vegetation. No one who had not observed that for a short distance reeds had taken the place of shrubs, could possibly have guessed the existence of such a stream or dreamed of the fairyland beyond.\n\nFor a fairyland it was\u2014the most wonderful that the imagination of man could conceive. The thick vegetation met overhead, interlacing into a natural pergola, and through this tunnel of verdure in a golden twilight flowed the green, pellucid river, beautiful in itself, but marvelous from the strange tints thrown by the vivid light from above filtered and tempered in its fall. Clear as crystal, motionless as a sheet of glass, green as the edge of an iceberg, it stretched in front of us under its leafy archway, every stroke of our paddles sending a thousand ripples across its shining surface. It was a fitting avenue to a land of wonders. All sign of the Indians had passed away, but animal life was more frequent, and the tameness of the creatures showed that they knew nothing of the hunter. Fuzzy little black-velvet monkeys, with snow-white teeth and gleaming, mocking eyes, chattered at us as we passed. With a dull, heavy splash an occasional cayman plunged in from the bank. Once a dark, clumsy tapir stared at us from a gap in the bushes, and then lumbered away through the forest; once, too, the yellow, sinuous form of a great puma whisked amid the brushwood, and its green, baleful eyes glared hatred at us over its tawny shoulder. Bird life was abundant, especially the wading birds, stork, heron, and ibis gathering in little groups, blue, scarlet, and white, upon every log which jutted from the bank, while beneath us the crystal water was alive with fish of every shape and color.\n\nFor three days we made our way up this tunnel of hazy green sunshine. On the longer stretches one could hardly tell as one looked ahead where the distant green water ended and the distant green archway began. The deep peace of this strange waterway was unbroken by any sign of man.\n\n\"No Indian here. Too much afraid. Curupuri,\" said Gomez.\n\n\"Curupuri is the spirit of the woods,\" Lord John explained. \"It's a name for any kind of devil. The poor beggars think that there is something fearsome in this direction, and therefore they avoid it.\"\n\nOn the third day it became evident that our journey in the canoes could not last much longer, for the stream was rapidly growing more shallow. Twice in as many hours we stuck upon the bottom. Finally we pulled the boats up among the brushwood and spent the night on the bank of the river. In the morning Lord John and I made our way for a couple of miles through the forest, keeping parallel with the stream; but as it grew ever shallower we returned and reported, what Professor Challenger had already suspected, that we had reached the highest point to which the canoes could be brought. We drew them up, therefore, and concealed them among the bushes, blazing a tree with our axes, so that we should find them again. Then we distributed the various burdens among us\u2014guns, ammunition, food, a tent, blankets, and the rest\u2014and, shouldering our packages, we set forth upon the more laborious stage of our journey.\n\nAn unfortunate quarrel between our pepper-pots marked the outset of our new stage. Challenger had from the moment of joining us issued directions to the whole party, much to the evident discontent of Summerlee. Now, upon his assigning some duty to his fellow-Professor (it was only the carrying of an aneroid barometer), the matter suddenly came to a head.\n\n\"May I ask, sir,\" said Summerlee, with vicious calm, \"in what capacity you take it upon yourself to issue these orders?\"\n\nChallenger glared and bristled.\n\n\"I do it, Professor Summerlee, as leader of this expedition.\"\n\n\"I am compelled to tell you, sir, that I do not recognize you in that capacity.\"\n\n\"Indeed!\" Challenger bowed with unwieldy sarcasm. \"Perhaps you would define my exact position.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. You are a man whose veracity is upon trial, and this committee is here to try it. You walk, sir, with your judges.\"\n\n\"Dear me!\" said Challenger, seating himself on the side of one of the canoes. \"In that case you will, of course, go on your way, and I will follow at my leisure. If I am not the leader you cannot expect me to lead.\"\n\nThank heaven that there were two sane men\u2014Lord John Roxton and myself\u2014to prevent the petulance and folly of our learned Professors from sending us back empty-handed to London. Such arguing and pleading and explaining before we could get them mollified! Then at last Summerlee, with his sneer and his pipe, would move forwards, and Challenger would come rolling and grumbling after. By some good fortune we discovered about this time that both our savants had the very poorest opinion of Dr. Illingworth of Edinburgh. Thenceforward that was our one safety, and every strained situation was relieved by our introducing the name of the Scotch zoologist, when both our Professors would form a temporary alliance and friendship in their detestation and abuse of this common rival.\n\nAdvancing in single file along the bank of the stream, we soon found that it narrowed down to a mere brook, and finally that it lost itself in a great green morass of sponge-like mosses, into which we sank up to our knees. The place was horribly haunted by clouds of mosquitoes and every form of flying pest, so we were glad to find solid ground again and to make a circuit among the trees, which enabled us to outflank this pestilent morass, which droned like an organ in the distance, so loud was it with insect life.\n\nOn the second day after leaving our canoes we found that the whole character of the country changed. Our road was persistently upwards, and as we ascended the woods became thinner and lost their tropical luxuriance. The huge trees of the alluvial Amazonian plain gave place to the Phoenix and coco palms, growing in scattered clumps, with thick brushwood between. In the damper hollows the Mauritia palms threw out their graceful drooping fronds. We traveled entirely by compass, and once or twice there were differences of opinion between Challenger and the two Indians, when, to quote the Professor's indignant words, the whole party agreed to \"trust the fallacious instincts of undeveloped savages rather than the highest product of modern European culture.\" That we were justified in doing so was shown upon the third day, when Challenger admitted that he recognized several landmarks of his former journey, and in one spot we actually came upon four fire-blackened stones, which must have marked a camping-place.\n\nThe road still ascended, and we crossed a rock-studded slope which took two days to traverse. The vegetation had again changed, and only the vegetable ivory tree remained, with a great profusion of wonderful orchids, among which I learned to recognize the rare Nuttonia Vexillaria and the glorious pink and scarlet blossoms of Cattleya and odontoglossum. Occasional brooks with pebbly bottoms and fern-draped banks gurgled down the shallow gorges in the hill, and offered good camping-grounds every evening on the banks of some rock-studded pool, where swarms of little blue-backed fish, about the size and shape of English trout, gave us a delicious supper.\n\nOn the ninth day after leaving the canoes, having done, as I reckon, about a hundred and twenty miles, we began to emerge from the trees, which had grown smaller until they were mere shrubs. Their place was taken by an immense wilderness of bamboo, which grew so thickly that we could only penetrate it by cutting a pathway with the machetes and billhooks of the Indians. It took us a long day, traveling from seven in the morning till eight at night, with only two breaks of one hour each, to get through this obstacle. Anything more monotonous and wearying could not be imagined, for, even at the most open places, I could not see more than ten or twelve yards, while usually my vision was limited to the back of Lord John's cotton jacket in front of me, and to the yellow wall within a foot of me on either side. From above came one thin knife-edge of sunshine, and fifteen feet over our heads one saw the tops of the reeds swaying against the deep blue sky. I do not know what kind of creatures inhabit such a thicket, but several times we heard the plunging of large, heavy animals quite close to us. From their sounds Lord John judged them to be some form of wild cattle. Just as night fell we cleared the belt of bamboos, and at once formed our camp, exhausted by the interminable day.\n\nEarly next morning we were again afoot, and found that the character of the country had changed once again. Behind us was the wall of bamboo, as definite as if it marked the course of a river. In front was an open plain, sloping slightly upwards and dotted with clumps of tree-ferns, the whole curving before us until it ended in a long, whale-backed ridge. This we reached about midday, only to find a shallow valley beyond, rising once again into a gentle incline which led to a low, rounded skyline. It was here, while we crossed the first of these hills, that an incident occurred which may or may not have been important.\n\nProfessor Challenger, who with the two local Indians was in the van of the party, stopped suddenly and pointed excitedly to the right. As he did so we saw, at the distance of a mile or so, something which appeared to be a huge gray bird flap slowly up from the ground and skim smoothly off, flying very low and straight, until it was lost among the tree-ferns.\n\n\"Did you see it?\" cried Challenger, in exultation. \"Summerlee, did you see it?\"\n\nHis colleague was staring at the spot where the creature had disappeared.\n\n\"What do you claim that it was?\" he asked.\n\n\"To the best of my belief, a pterodactyl.\"\n\nSummerlee burst into derisive laughter \"A pter-fiddlestick!\" said he. \"It was a stork, if ever I saw one.\"\n\nChallenger was too furious to speak. He simply swung his pack upon his back and continued upon his march. Lord John came abreast of me, however, and his face was more grave than was his wont. He had his Zeiss glasses in his hand.\n\n\"I focused it before it got over the trees,\" said he. \"I won't undertake to say what it was, but I'll risk my reputation as a sportsman that it wasn't any bird that ever I clapped eyes on in my life.\"\n\nSo there the matter stands. Are we really just at the edge of the unknown, encountering the outlying pickets of this lost world of which our leader speaks? I give you the incident as it occurred and you will know as much as I do. It stands alone, for we saw nothing more which could be called remarkable.\n\nAnd now, my readers, if ever I have any, I have brought you up the broad river, and through the screen of rushes, and down the green tunnel, and up the long slope of palm trees, and through the bamboo brake, and across the plain of tree-ferns. At last our destination lay in full sight of us. When we had crossed the second ridge we saw before us an irregular, palm-studded plain, and then the line of high red cliffs which I have seen in the picture. There it lies, even as I write, and there can be no question that it is the same. At the nearest point it is about seven miles from our present camp, and it curves away, stretching as far as I can see. Challenger struts about like a prize peacock, and Summerlee is silent, but still sceptical. Another day should bring some of our doubts to an end. Meanwhile, as Jose, whose arm was pierced by a broken bamboo, insists upon returning, I send this letter back in his charge, and only hope that it may eventually come to hand. I will write again as the occasion serves. I have enclosed with this a rough chart of our journey, which may have the effect of making the account rather easier to understand." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 9", + "text": "\"Who could have Foreseen it?\"\n\nA dreadful thing has happened to us. Who could have foreseen it? I cannot foresee any end to our troubles. It may be that we are condemned to spend our whole lives in this strange, inaccessible place. I am still so confused that I can hardly think clearly of the facts of the present or of the chances of the future. To my astounded senses the one seems most terrible and the other as black as night.\n\nNo men have ever found themselves in a worse position; nor is there any use in disclosing to you our exact geographical situation and asking our friends for a relief party. Even if they could send one, our fate will in all human probability be decided long before it could arrive in South America.\n\nWe are, in truth, as far from any human aid as if we were in the moon. If we are to win through, it is only our own qualities which can save us. I have as companions three remarkable men, men of great brain-power and of unshaken courage. There lies our one and only hope. It is only when I look upon the untroubled faces of my comrades that I see some glimmer through the darkness. Outwardly I trust that I appear as unconcerned as they. Inwardly I am filled with apprehension.\n\nLet me give you, with as much detail as I can, the sequence of events which have led us to this catastrophe.\n\nWhen I finished my last letter I stated that we were within seven miles from an enormous line of ruddy cliffs, which encircled, beyond all doubt, the plateau of which Professor Challenger spoke. Their height, as we approached them, seemed to me in some places to be greater than he had stated\u2014running up in parts to at least a thousand feet\u2014and they were curiously striated, in a manner which is, I believe, characteristic of basaltic upheavals. Something of the sort is to be seen in Salisbury Crags at Edinburgh. The summit showed every sign of a luxuriant vegetation, with bushes near the edge, and farther back many high trees. There was no indication of any life that we could see.\n\nThat night we pitched our camp immediately under the cliff\u2014a most wild and desolate spot. The crags above us were not merely perpendicular, but curved outwards at the top, so that ascent was out of the question. Close to us was the high thin pinnacle of rock which I believe I mentioned earlier in this narrative. It is like a broad red church spire, the top of it being level with the plateau, but a great chasm gaping between. On the summit of it there grew one high tree. Both pinnacle and cliff were comparatively low\u2014some five or six hundred feet, I should think.\n\n\"It was on that,\" said Professor Challenger, pointing to this tree, \"that the pterodactyl was perched. I climbed half-way up the rock before I shot him. I am inclined to think that a good mountaineer like myself could ascend the rock to the top, though he would, of course, be no nearer to the plateau when he had done so.\"\n\nAs Challenger spoke of his pterodactyl I glanced at Professor Summerlee, and for the first time I seemed to see some signs of a dawning credulity and repentance. There was no sneer upon his thin lips, but, on the contrary, a gray, drawn look of excitement and amazement. Challenger saw it, too, and reveled in the first taste of victory.\n\n\"Of course,\" said he, with his clumsy and ponderous sarcasm, \"Professor Summerlee will understand that when I speak of a pterodactyl I mean a stork\u2014only it is the kind of stork which has no feathers, a leathery skin, membranous wings, and teeth in its jaws.\" He grinned and blinked and bowed until his colleague turned and walked away.\n\nIn the morning, after a frugal breakfast of coffee and manioc\u2014we had to be economical of our stores\u2014we held a council of war as to the best method of ascending to the plateau above us.\n\nChallenger presided with a solemnity as if he were the Lord Chief Justice on the Bench. Picture him seated upon a rock, his absurd boyish straw hat tilted on the back of his head, his supercilious eyes dominating us from under his drooping lids, his great black beard wagging as he slowly defined our present situation and our future movements.\n\nBeneath him you might have seen the three of us\u2014myself, sunburnt, young, and vigorous after our open-air tramp; Summerlee, solemn but still critical, behind his eternal pipe; Lord John, as keen as a razor-edge, with his supple, alert figure leaning upon his rifle, and his eager eyes fixed eagerly upon the speaker. Behind us were grouped the two swarthy half-breeds and the little knot of Indians, while in front and above us towered those huge, ruddy ribs of rocks which kept us from our goal.\n\n\"I need not say,\" said our leader, \"that on the occasion of my last visit I exhausted every means of climbing the cliff, and where I failed I do not think that anyone else is likely to succeed, for I am something of a mountaineer. I had none of the appliances of a rock-climber with me, but I have taken the precaution to bring them now. With their aid I am positive I could climb that detached pinnacle to the summit; but so long as the main cliff overhangs, it is vain to attempt ascending that. I was hurried upon my last visit by the approach of the rainy season and by the exhaustion of my supplies. These considerations limited my time, and I can only claim that I have surveyed about six miles of the cliff to the east of us, finding no possible way up. What, then, shall we now do?\"\n\n\"There seems to be only one reasonable course,\" said Professor Summerlee. \"If you have explored the east, we should travel along the base of the cliff to the west, and seek for a practicable point for our ascent.\"\n\n\"That's it,\" said Lord John. \"The odds are that this plateau is of no great size, and we shall travel round it until we either find an easy way up it, or come back to the point from which we started.\"\n\n\"I have already explained to our young friend here,\" said Challenger (he has a way of alluding to me as if I were a school child ten years old), \"that it is quite impossible that there should be an easy way up anywhere, for the simple reason that if there were the summit would not be isolated, and those conditions would not obtain which have effected so singular an interference with the general laws of survival. Yet I admit that there may very well be places where an expert human climber may reach the summit, and yet a cumbrous and heavy animal be unable to descend. It is certain that there is a point where an ascent is possible.\"\n\n\"How do you know that, sir?\" asked Summerlee, sharply.\n\n\"Because my predecessor, the American Maple White, actually made such an ascent. How otherwise could he have seen the monster which he sketched in his notebook?\"\n\n\"There you reason somewhat ahead of the proved facts,\" said the stubborn Summerlee. \"I admit your plateau, because I have seen it; but I have not as yet satisfied myself that it contains any form of life whatever.\"\n\n\"What you admit, sir, or what you do not admit, is really of inconceivably small importance. I am glad to perceive that the plateau itself has actually obtruded itself upon your intelligence.\" He glanced up at it, and then, to our amazement, he sprang from his rock, and, seizing Summerlee by the neck, he tilted his face into the air. \"Now sir!\" he shouted, hoarse with excitement. \"Do I help you to realize that the plateau contains some animal life?\"\n\nI have said that a thick fringe of green overhung the edge of the cliff. Out of this there had emerged a black, glistening object. As it came slowly forth and overhung the chasm, we saw that it was a very large snake with a peculiar flat, spade-like head. It wavered and quivered above us for a minute, the morning sun gleaming upon its sleek, sinuous coils. Then it slowly drew inwards and disappeared.\n\nSummerlee had been so interested that he had stood unresisting while Challenger tilted his head into the air. Now he shook his colleague off and came back to his dignity.\n\n\"I should be glad, Professor Challenger,\" said he, \"if you could see your way to make any remarks which may occur to you without seizing me by the chin. Even the appearance of a very ordinary rock python does not appear to justify such a liberty.\"\n\n\"But there is life upon the plateau all the same,\" his colleague replied in triumph. \"And now, having demonstrated this important conclusion so that it is clear to anyone, however prejudiced or obtuse, I am of opinion that we cannot do better than break up our camp and travel to westward until we find some means of ascent.\"\n\nThe ground at the foot of the cliff was rocky and broken so that the going was slow and difficult. Suddenly we came, however, upon something which cheered our hearts. It was the site of an old encampment, with several empty Chicago meat tins, a bottle labeled \"Brandy,\" a broken tin-opener, and a quantity of other travelers' debris. A crumpled, disintegrated newspaper revealed itself as the Chicago Democrat, though the date had been obliterated.\n\n\"Not mine,\" said Challenger. \"It must be Maple White's.\"\n\nLord John had been gazing curiously at a great tree-fern which overshadowed the encampment. \"I say, look at this,\" said he. \"I believe it is meant for a sign-post.\"\n\nA slip of hard wood had been nailed to the tree in such a way as to point to the westward.\n\n\"Most certainly a sign-post,\" said Challenger. \"What else? Finding himself upon a dangerous errand, our pioneer has left this sign so that any party which follows him may know the way he has taken. Perhaps we shall come upon some other indications as we proceed.\"\n\nWe did indeed, but they were of a terrible and most unexpected nature. Immediately beneath the cliff there grew a considerable patch of high bamboo, like that which we had traversed in our journey. Many of these stems were twenty feet high, with sharp, strong tops, so that even as they stood they made formidable spears. We were passing along the edge of this cover when my eye was caught by the gleam of something white within it. Thrusting in my head between the stems, I found myself gazing at a fleshless skull. The whole skeleton was there, but the skull had detached itself and lay some feet nearer to the open.\n\nWith a few blows from the machetes of our Indians we cleared the spot and were able to study the details of this old tragedy. Only a few shreds of clothes could still be distinguished, but there were the remains of boots upon the bony feet, and it was very clear that the dead man was a European. A gold watch by Hudson, of New York, and a chain which held a stylographic pen, lay among the bones. There was also a silver cigarette-case, with \"J. C., from A. E. S.,\" upon the lid. The state of the metal seemed to show that the catastrophe had occurred no great time before.\n\n\"Who can he be?\" asked Lord John. \"Poor devil! every bone in his body seems to be broken.\"\n\n\"And the bamboo grows through his smashed ribs,\" said Summerlee. \"It is a fast-growing plant, but it is surely inconceivable that this body could have been here while the canes grew to be twenty feet in length.\"\n\n\"As to the man's identity,\" said Professor Challenger, \"I have no doubt whatever upon that point. As I made my way up the river before I reached you at the fazenda I instituted very particular inquiries about Maple White. At Para they knew nothing. Fortunately, I had a definite clew, for there was a particular picture in his sketch-book which showed him taking lunch with a certain ecclesiastic at Rosario. This priest I was able to find, and though he proved a very argumentative fellow, who took it absurdly amiss that I should point out to him the corrosive effect which modern science must have upon his beliefs, he none the less gave me some positive information. Maple White passed Rosario four years ago, or two years before I saw his dead body. He was not alone at the time, but there was a friend, an American named James Colver, who remained in the boat and did not meet this ecclesiastic. I think, therefore, that there can be no doubt that we are now looking upon the remains of this James Colver.\"\n\n\"Nor,\" said Lord John, \"is there much doubt as to how he met his death. He has fallen or been chucked from the top, and so been impaled. How else could he come by his broken bones, and how could he have been stuck through by these canes with their points so high above our heads?\"\n\nA hush came over us as we stood round these shattered remains and realized the truth of Lord John Roxton's words. The beetling head of the cliff projected over the cane-brake. Undoubtedly he had fallen from above. But had he fallen? Had it been an accident? Or\u2014already ominous and terrible possibilities began to form round that unknown land.\n\nWe moved off in silence, and continued to coast round the line of cliffs, which were as even and unbroken as some of those monstrous Antarctic ice-fields which I have seen depicted as stretching from horizon to horizon and towering high above the mast-heads of the exploring vessel.\n\nIn five miles we saw no rift or break. And then suddenly we perceived something which filled us with new hope. In a hollow of the rock, protected from rain, there was drawn a rough arrow in chalk, pointing still to the westwards.\n\n\"Maple White again,\" said Professor Challenger. \"He had some presentiment that worthy footsteps would follow close behind him.\"\n\n\"He had chalk, then?\"\n\n\"A box of colored chalks was among the effects I found in his knapsack. I remember that the white one was worn to a stump.\"\n\n\"That is certainly good evidence,\" said Summerlee. \"We can only accept his guidance and follow on to the westward.\"\n\nWe had proceeded some five more miles when again we saw a white arrow upon the rocks. It was at a point where the face of the cliff was for the first time split into a narrow cleft. Inside the cleft was a second guidance mark, which pointed right up it with the tip somewhat elevated, as if the spot indicated were above the level of the ground.\n\nIt was a solemn place, for the walls were so gigantic and the slit of blue sky so narrow and so obscured by a double fringe of verdure, that only a dim and shadowy light penetrated to the bottom. We had had no food for many hours, and were very weary with the stony and irregular journey, but our nerves were too strung to allow us to halt. We ordered the camp to be pitched, however, and, leaving the Indians to arrange it, we four, with the two half-breeds, proceeded up the narrow gorge.\n\nIt was not more than forty feet across at the mouth, but it rapidly closed until it ended in an acute angle, too straight and smooth for an ascent. Certainly it was not this which our pioneer had attempted to indicate. We made our way back\u2014the whole gorge was not more than a quarter of a mile deep\u2014and then suddenly the quick eyes of Lord John fell upon what we were seeking. High up above our heads, amid the dark shadows, there was one circle of deeper gloom. Surely it could only be the opening of a cave.\n\nThe base of the cliff was heaped with loose stones at the spot, and it was not difficult to clamber up. When we reached it, all doubt was removed. Not only was it an opening into the rock, but on the side of it there was marked once again the sign of the arrow. Here was the point, and this the means by which Maple White and his ill-fated comrade had made their ascent.\n\nWe were too excited to return to the camp, but must make our first exploration at once. Lord John had an electric torch in his knapsack, and this had to serve us as light. He advanced, throwing his little clear circlet of yellow radiance before him, while in single file we followed at his heels.\n\nThe cave had evidently been water-worn, the sides being smooth and the floor covered with rounded stones. It was of such a size that a single man could just fit through by stooping. For fifty yards it ran almost straight into the rock, and then it ascended at an angle of forty-five. Presently this incline became even steeper, and we found ourselves climbing upon hands and knees among loose rubble which slid from beneath us. Suddenly an exclamation broke from Lord Roxton.\n\n\"It's blocked!\" said he.\n\nClustering behind him we saw in the yellow field of light a wall of broken basalt which extended to the ceiling.\n\n\"The roof has fallen in!\"\n\nIn vain we dragged out some of the pieces. The only effect was that the larger ones became detached and threatened to roll down the gradient and crush us. It was evident that the obstacle was far beyond any efforts which we could make to remove it. The road by which Maple White had ascended was no longer available.\n\nToo much cast down to speak, we stumbled down the dark tunnel and made our way back to the camp.\n\nOne incident occurred, however, before we left the gorge, which is of importance in view of what came afterwards.\n\nWe had gathered in a little group at the bottom of the chasm, some forty feet beneath the mouth of the cave, when a huge rock rolled suddenly downwards\u2014and shot past us with tremendous force. It was the narrowest escape for one or all of us. We could not ourselves see whence the rock had come, but our half-breed servants, who were still at the opening of the cave, said that it had flown past them, and must therefore have fallen from the summit. Looking upwards, we could see no sign of movement above us amidst the green jungle which topped the cliff. There could be little doubt, however, that the stone was aimed at us, so the incident surely pointed to humanity\u2014and malevolent humanity\u2014upon the plateau.\n\nWe withdrew hurriedly from the chasm, our minds full of this new development and its bearing upon our plans. The situation was difficult enough before, but if the obstructions of Nature were increased by the deliberate opposition of man, then our case was indeed a hopeless one. And yet, as we looked up at that beautiful fringe of verdure only a few hundreds of feet above our heads, there was not one of us who could conceive the idea of returning to London until we had explored it to its depths.\n\nOn discussing the situation, we determined that our best course was to continue to coast round the plateau in the hope of finding some other means of reaching the top. The line of cliffs, which had decreased considerably in height, had already begun to trend from west to north, and if we could take this as representing the arc of a circle, the whole circumference could not be very great. At the worst, then, we should be back in a few days at our starting-point.\n\nWe made a march that day which totaled some two-and-twenty miles, without any change in our prospects. I may mention that our aneroid shows us that in the continual incline which we have ascended since we abandoned our canoes we have risen to no less than three thousand feet above sea-level. Hence there is a considerable change both in the temperature and in the vegetation. We have shaken off some of that horrible insect life which is the bane of tropical travel. A few palms still survive, and many tree-ferns, but the Amazonian trees have been all left behind. It was pleasant to see the convolvulus, the passion-flower, and the begonia, all reminding me of home, here among these inhospitable rocks. There was a red begonia just the same color as one that is kept in a pot in the window of a certain villa in Streatham\u2014but I am drifting into private reminiscence.\n\nThat night\u2014I am still speaking of the first day of our circumnavigation of the plateau\u2014a great experience awaited us, and one which for ever set at rest any doubt which we could have had as to the wonders so near us.\n\nYou will realize as you read it, my dear Mr. McArdle, and possibly for the first time that the paper has not sent me on a wild-goose chase, and that there is inconceivably fine copy waiting for the world whenever we have the Professor's leave to make use of it. I shall not dare to publish these articles unless I can bring back my proofs to England, or I shall be hailed as the journalistic Munchausen of all time. I have no doubt that you feel the same way yourself, and that you would not care to stake the whole credit of the Gazette upon this adventure until we can meet the chorus of criticism and scepticism which such articles must of necessity elicit. So this wonderful incident, which would make such a headline for the old paper, must still wait its turn in the editorial drawer.\n\nAnd yet it was all over in a flash, and there was no sequel to it, save in our own convictions.\n\nWhat occurred was this. Lord John had shot an ajouti\u2014which is a small, pig-like animal\u2014and, half of it having been given to the Indians, we were cooking the other half upon our fire. There is a chill in the air after dark, and we had all drawn close to the blaze. The night was moonless, but there were some stars, and one could see for a little distance across the plain. Well, suddenly out of the darkness, out of the night, there swooped something with a swish like an aeroplane. The whole group of us were covered for an instant by a canopy of leathery wings, and I had a momentary vision of a long, snake-like neck, a fierce, red, greedy eye, and a great snapping beak, filled, to my amazement, with little, gleaming teeth. The next instant it was gone\u2014and so was our dinner. A huge black shadow, twenty feet across, skimmed up into the air; for an instant the monster wings blotted out the stars, and then it vanished over the brow of the cliff above us. We all sat in amazed silence round the fire, like the heroes of Virgil when the Harpies came down upon them. It was Summerlee who was the first to speak.\n\n\"Professor Challenger,\" said he, in a solemn voice, which quavered with emotion, \"I owe you an apology. Sir, I am very much in the wrong, and I beg that you will forget what is past.\"\n\nIt was handsomely said, and the two men for the first time shook hands. So much we have gained by this clear vision of our first pterodactyl. It was worth a stolen supper to bring two such men together.\n\nBut if prehistoric life existed upon the plateau it was not superabundant, for we had no further glimpse of it during the next three days. During this time we traversed a barren and forbidding country, which alternated between stony desert and desolate marshes full of many wild-fowl, upon the north and east of the cliffs. From that direction the place is really inaccessible, and, were it not for a hardish ledge which runs at the very base of the precipice, we should have had to turn back. Many times we were up to our waists in the slime and blubber of an old, semi-tropical swamp. To make matters worse, the place seemed to be a favorite breeding-place of the Jaracaca snake, the most venomous and aggressive in South America. Again and again these horrible creatures came writhing and springing towards us across the surface of this putrid bog, and it was only by keeping our shot-guns for ever ready that we could feel safe from them. One funnel-shaped depression in the morass, of a livid green in color from some lichen which festered in it, will always remain as a nightmare memory in my mind. It seems to have been a special nest of these vermins, and the slopes were alive with them, all writhing in our direction, for it is a peculiarity of the Jaracaca that he will always attack man at first sight. There were too many for us to shoot, so we fairly took to our heels and ran until we were exhausted. I shall always remember as we looked back how far behind we could see the heads and necks of our horrible pursuers rising and falling amid the reeds. Jaracaca Swamp we named it in the map which we are constructing.\n\nThe cliffs upon the farther side had lost their ruddy tint, being chocolate-brown in color; the vegetation was more scattered along the top of them, and they had sunk to three or four hundred feet in height, but in no place did we find any point where they could be ascended. If anything, they were more impossible than at the first point where we had met them. Their absolute steepness is indicated in the photograph which I took over the stony desert.\n\n\"Surely,\" said I, as we discussed the situation, \"the rain must find its way down somehow. There are bound to be water-channels in the rocks.\"\n\n\"Our young friend has glimpses of lucidity,\" said Professor Challenger, patting me upon the shoulder.\n\n\"The rain must go somewhere,\" I repeated.\n\n\"He keeps a firm grip upon actuality. The only drawback is that we have conclusively proved by ocular demonstration that there are no water channels down the rocks.\"\n\n\"Where, then, does it go?\" I persisted.\n\n\"I think it may be fairly assumed that if it does not come outwards it must run inwards.\"\n\n\"Then there is a lake in the center.\"\n\n\"So I should suppose.\"\n\n\"It is more than likely that the lake may be an old crater,\" said Summerlee. \"The whole formation is, of course, highly volcanic. But, however that may be, I should expect to find the surface of the plateau slope inwards with a considerable sheet of water in the center, which may drain off, by some subterranean channel, into the marshes of the Jaracaca Swamp.\"\n\n\"Or evaporation might preserve an equilibrium,\" remarked Challenger, and the two learned men wandered off into one of their usual scientific arguments, which were as comprehensible as Chinese to the layman.\n\nOn the sixth day we completed our first circuit of the cliffs, and found ourselves back at the first camp, beside the isolated pinnacle of rock. We were a disconsolate party, for nothing could have been more minute than our investigation, and it was absolutely certain that there was no single point where the most active human being could possibly hope to scale the cliff. The place which Maple White's chalk-marks had indicated as his own means of access was now entirely impassable.\n\nWhat were we to do now? Our stores of provisions, supplemented by our guns, were holding out well, but the day must come when they would need replenishment. In a couple of months the rains might be expected, and we should be washed out of our camp. The rock was harder than marble, and any attempt at cutting a path for so great a height was more than our time or resources would admit. No wonder that we looked gloomily at each other that night, and sought our blankets with hardly a word exchanged. I remember that as I dropped off to sleep my last recollection was that Challenger was squatting, like a monstrous bull-frog, by the fire, his huge head in his hands, sunk apparently in the deepest thought, and entirely oblivious to the good-night which I wished him.\n\nBut it was a very different Challenger who greeted us in the morning\u2014a Challenger with contentment and self-congratulation shining from his whole person. He faced us as we assembled for breakfast with a deprecating false modesty in his eyes, as who should say, \"I know that I deserve all that you can say, but I pray you to spare my blushes by not saying it.\" His beard bristled exultantly, his chest was thrown out, and his hand was thrust into the front of his jacket. So, in his fancy, may he see himself sometimes, gracing the vacant pedestal in Trafalgar Square, and adding one more to the horrors of the London streets.\n\n\"Eureka!\" he cried, his teeth shining through his beard. \"Gentlemen, you may congratulate me and we may congratulate each other. The problem is solved.\"\n\n\"You have found a way up?\"\n\n\"I venture to think so.\"\n\n\"And where?\"\n\nFor answer he pointed to the spire-like pinnacle upon our right.\n\nOur faces\u2014or mine, at least\u2014fell as we surveyed it. That it could be climbed we had our companion's assurance. But a horrible abyss lay between it and the plateau.\n\n\"We can never get across,\" I gasped.\n\n\"We can at least all reach the summit,\" said he. \"When we are up I may be able to show you that the resources of an inventive mind are not yet exhausted.\"\n\nAfter breakfast we unpacked the bundle in which our leader had brought his climbing accessories. From it he took a coil of the strongest and lightest rope, a hundred and fifty feet in length, with climbing irons, clamps, and other devices. Lord John was an experienced mountaineer, and Summerlee had done some rough climbing at various times, so that I was really the novice at rock-work of the party; but my strength and activity may have made up for my want of experience.\n\nIt was not in reality a very stiff task, though there were moments which made my hair bristle upon my head. The first half was perfectly easy, but from there upwards it became continually steeper until, for the last fifty feet, we were literally clinging with our fingers and toes to tiny ledges and crevices in the rock. I could not have accomplished it, nor could Summerlee, if Challenger had not gained the summit (it was extraordinary to see such activity in so unwieldy a creature) and there fixed the rope round the trunk of the considerable tree which grew there. With this as our support, we were soon able to scramble up the jagged wall until we found ourselves upon the small grassy platform, some twenty-five feet each way, which formed the summit.\n\nThe first impression which I received when I had recovered my breath was of the extraordinary view over the country which we had traversed. The whole Brazilian plain seemed to lie beneath us, extending away and away until it ended in dim blue mists upon the farthest skyline. In the foreground was the long slope, strewn with rocks and dotted with tree-ferns; farther off in the middle distance, looking over the saddle-back hill, I could just see the yellow and green mass of bamboos through which we had passed; and then, gradually, the vegetation increased until it formed the huge forest which extended as far as the eyes could reach, and for a good two thousand miles beyond.\n\nI was still drinking in this wonderful panorama when the heavy hand of the Professor fell upon my shoulder.\n\n\"This way, my young friend,\" said he; \"vestigia nulla retrorsum. Never look rearwards, but always to our glorious goal.\"\n\nThe level of the plateau, when I turned, was exactly that on which we stood, and the green bank of bushes, with occasional trees, was so near that it was difficult to realize how inaccessible it remained. At a rough guess the gulf was forty feet across, but, so far as I could see, it might as well have been forty miles. I placed one arm round the trunk of the tree and leaned over the abyss. Far down were the small dark figures of our servants, looking up at us. The wall was absolutely precipitous, as was that which faced me.\n\n\"This is indeed curious,\" said the creaking voice of Professor Summerlee.\n\nI turned, and found that he was examining with great interest the tree to which I clung. That smooth bark and those small, ribbed leaves seemed familiar to my eyes. \"Why,\" I cried, \"it's a beech!\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said Summerlee. \"A fellow-countryman in a far land.\"\n\n\"Not only a fellow-countryman, my good sir,\" said Challenger, \"but also, if I may be allowed to enlarge your simile, an ally of the first value. This beech tree will be our saviour.\"\n\n\"By George!\" cried Lord John, \"a bridge!\"\n\n\"Exactly, my friends, a bridge! It is not for nothing that I expended an hour last night in focusing my mind upon the situation. I have some recollection of once remarking to our young friend here that G. E. C. is at his best when his back is to the wall. Last night you will admit that all our backs were to the wall. But where will-power and intellect go together, there is always a way out. A drawbridge had to be found which could be dropped across the abyss. Behold it!\"\n\nIt was certainly a brilliant idea. The tree was a good sixty feet in height, and if it only fell the right way it would easily cross the chasm. Challenger had slung the camp axe over his shoulder when he ascended. Now he handed it to me.\n\n\"Our young friend has the thews and sinews,\" said he. \"I think he will be the most useful at this task. I must beg, however, that you will kindly refrain from thinking for yourself, and that you will do exactly what you are told.\"\n\nUnder his direction I cut such gashes in the sides of the trees as would ensure that it should fall as we desired. It had already a strong, natural tilt in the direction of the plateau, so that the matter was not difficult. Finally I set to work in earnest upon the trunk, taking turn and turn with Lord John. In a little over an hour there was a loud crack, the tree swayed forward, and then crashed over, burying its branches among the bushes on the farther side. The severed trunk rolled to the very edge of our platform, and for one terrible second we all thought it was over. It balanced itself, however, a few inches from the edge, and there was our bridge to the unknown.\n\nAll of us, without a word, shook hands with Professor Challenger, who raised his straw hat and bowed deeply to each in turn.\n\n\"I claim the honor,\" said he, \"to be the first to cross to the unknown land\u2014a fitting subject, no doubt, for some future historical painting.\"\n\nHe had approached the bridge when Lord John laid his hand upon his coat.\n\n\"My dear chap,\" said he, \"I really cannot allow it.\"\n\n\"Cannot allow it, sir!\" The head went back and the beard forward.\n\n\"When it is a matter of science, don't you know, I follow your lead because you are by way of bein' a man of science. But it's up to you to follow me when you come into my department.\"\n\n\"Your department, sir?\"\n\n\"We all have our professions, and soldierin' is mine. We are, accordin' to my ideas, invadin' a new country, which may or may not be chock-full of enemies of sorts. To barge blindly into it for want of a little common sense and patience isn't my notion of management.\"\n\nThe remonstrance was too reasonable to be disregarded. Challenger tossed his head and shrugged his heavy shoulders.\n\n\"Well, sir, what do you propose?\"\n\n\"For all I know there may be a tribe of cannibals waitin' for lunch-time among those very bushes,\" said Lord John, looking across the bridge. \"It's better to learn wisdom before you get into a cookin'-pot; so we will content ourselves with hopin' that there is no trouble waitin' for us, and at the same time we will act as if there were. Malone and I will go down again, therefore, and we will fetch up the four rifles, together with Gomez and the other. One man can then go across and the rest will cover him with guns, until he sees that it is safe for the whole crowd to come along.\"\n\nChallenger sat down upon the cut stump and groaned his impatience; but Summerlee and I were of one mind that Lord John was our leader when such practical details were in question. The climb was a more simple thing now that the rope dangled down the face of the worst part of the ascent. Within an hour we had brought up the rifles and a shot-gun. The half-breeds had ascended also, and under Lord John's orders they had carried up a bale of provisions in case our first exploration should be a long one. We had each bandoliers of cartridges.\n\n\"Now, Challenger, if you really insist upon being the first man in,\" said Lord John, when every preparation was complete.\n\n\"I am much indebted to you for your gracious permission,\" said the angry Professor; for never was a man so intolerant of every form of authority. \"Since you are good enough to allow it, I shall most certainly take it upon myself to act as pioneer upon this occasion.\"\n\nSeating himself with a leg overhanging the abyss on each side, and his hatchet slung upon his back, Challenger hopped his way across the trunk and was soon at the other side. He clambered up and waved his arms in the air.\n\n\"At last!\" he cried; \"at last!\"\n\nI gazed anxiously at him, with a vague expectation that some terrible fate would dart at him from the curtain of green behind him. But all was quiet, save that a strange, many-colored bird flew up from under his feet and vanished among the trees.\n\nSummerlee was the second. His wiry energy is wonderful in so frail a frame. He insisted upon having two rifles slung upon his back, so that both Professors were armed when he had made his transit. I came next, and tried hard not to look down into the horrible gulf over which I was passing. Summerlee held out the butt-end of his rifle, and an instant later I was able to grasp his hand. As to Lord John, he walked across\u2014actually walked without support! He must have nerves of iron.\n\nAnd there we were, the four of us, upon the dreamland, the lost world, of Maple White. To all of us it seemed the moment of our supreme triumph. Who could have guessed that it was the prelude to our supreme disaster? Let me say in a few words how the crushing blow fell upon us.\n\nWe had turned away from the edge, and had penetrated about fifty yards of close brushwood, when there came a frightful rending crash from behind us. With one impulse we rushed back the way that we had come. The bridge was gone!\n\nFar down at the base of the cliff I saw, as I looked over, a tangled mass of branches and splintered trunk. It was our beech tree. Had the edge of the platform crumbled and let it through? For a moment this explanation was in all our minds. The next, from the farther side of the rocky pinnacle before us a swarthy face, the face of Gomez the half-breed, was slowly protruded. Yes, it was Gomez, but no longer the Gomez of the demure smile and the mask-like expression. Here was a face with flashing eyes and distorted features, a face convulsed with hatred and with the mad joy of gratified revenge.\n\n\"Lord Roxton!\" he shouted. \"Lord John Roxton!\"\n\n\"Well,\" said our companion, \"here I am.\"\n\nA shriek of laughter came across the abyss.\n\n\"Yes, there you are, you English dog, and there you will remain! I have waited and waited, and now has come my chance. You found it hard to get up; you will find it harder to get down. You cursed fools, you are trapped, every one of you!\"\n\nWe were too astounded to speak. We could only stand there staring in amazement. A great broken bough upon the grass showed whence he had gained his leverage to tilt over our bridge. The face had vanished, but presently it was up again, more frantic than before.\n\n\"We nearly killed you with a stone at the cave,\" he cried; \"but this is better. It is slower and more terrible. Your bones will whiten up there, and none will know where you lie or come to cover them. As you lie dying, think of Lopez, whom you shot five years ago on the Putomayo River. I am his brother, and, come what will I will die happy now, for his memory has been avenged.\" A furious hand was shaken at us, and then all was quiet.\n\nHad the half-breed simply wrought his vengeance and then escaped, all might have been well with him. It was that foolish, irresistible Latin impulse to be dramatic which brought his own downfall. Roxton, the man who had earned himself the name of the Flail of the Lord through three countries, was not one who could be safely taunted. The half-breed was descending on the farther side of the pinnacle; but before he could reach the ground Lord John had run along the edge of the plateau and gained a point from which he could see his man. There was a single crack of his rifle, and, though we saw nothing, we heard the scream and then the distant thud of the falling body. Roxton came back to us with a face of granite.\n\n\"I have been a blind simpleton,\" said he, bitterly, \"It's my folly that has brought you all into this trouble. I should have remembered that these people have long memories for blood-feuds, and have been more upon my guard.\"\n\n\"What about the other one? It took two of them to lever that tree over the edge.\"\n\n\"I could have shot him, but I let him go. He may have had no part in it. Perhaps it would have been better if I had killed him, for he must, as you say, have lent a hand.\"\n\nNow that we had the clue to his action, each of us could cast back and remember some sinister act upon the part of the half-breed\u2014his constant desire to know our plans, his arrest outside our tent when he was overhearing them, the furtive looks of hatred which from time to time one or other of us had surprised. We were still discussing it, endeavoring to adjust our minds to these new conditions, when a singular scene in the plain below arrested our attention.\n\nA man in white clothes, who could only be the surviving half-breed, was running as one does run when Death is the pacemaker. Behind him, only a few yards in his rear, bounded the huge ebony figure of Zambo, our devoted negro. Even as we looked, he sprang upon the back of the fugitive and flung his arms round his neck. They rolled on the ground together. An instant afterwards Zambo rose, looked at the prostrate man, and then, waving his hand joyously to us, came running in our direction. The white figure lay motionless in the middle of the great plain.\n\nOur two traitors had been destroyed, but the mischief that they had done lived after them. By no possible means could we get back to the pinnacle. We had been natives of the world; now we were natives of the plateau. The two things were separate and apart. There was the plain which led to the canoes. Yonder, beyond the violet, hazy horizon, was the stream which led back to civilization. But the link between was missing. No human ingenuity could suggest a means of bridging the chasm which yawned between ourselves and our past lives. One instant had altered the whole conditions of our existence.\n\nIt was at such a moment that I learned the stuff of which my three comrades were composed. They were grave, it is true, and thoughtful, but of an invincible serenity. For the moment we could only sit among the bushes in patience and wait the coming of Zambo. Presently his honest black face topped the rocks and his Herculean figure emerged upon the top of the pinnacle.\n\n\"What I do now?\" he cried. \"You tell me and I do it.\"\n\nIt was a question which it was easier to ask than to answer. One thing only was clear. He was our one trusty link with the outside world. On no account must he leave us.\n\n\"No no!\" he cried. \"I not leave you. Whatever come, you always find me here. But no able to keep Indians. Already they say too much Curupuri live on this place, and they go home. Now you leave them me no able to keep them.\"\n\nIt was a fact that our Indians had shown in many ways of late that they were weary of their journey and anxious to return. We realized that Zambo spoke the truth, and that it would be impossible for him to keep them.\n\n\"Make them wait till to-morrow, Zambo,\" I shouted; \"then I can send letter back by them.\"\n\n\"Very good, sarr! I promise they wait till to-morrow,\" said the negro. \"But what I do for you now?\"\n\nThere was plenty for him to do, and admirably the faithful fellow did it. First of all, under our directions, he undid the rope from the tree-stump and threw one end of it across to us. It was not thicker than a clothes-line, but it was of great strength, and though we could not make a bridge of it, we might well find it invaluable if we had any climbing to do. He then fastened his end of the rope to the package of supplies which had been carried up, and we were able to drag it across. This gave us the means of life for at least a week, even if we found nothing else. Finally he descended and carried up two other packets of mixed goods\u2014a box of ammunition and a number of other things, all of which we got across by throwing our rope to him and hauling it back. It was evening when he at last climbed down, with a final assurance that he would keep the Indians till next morning.\n\nAnd so it is that I have spent nearly the whole of this our first night upon the plateau writing up our experiences by the light of a single candle-lantern.\n\nWe supped and camped at the very edge of the cliff, quenching our thirst with two bottles of Apollinaris which were in one of the cases. It is vital to us to find water, but I think even Lord John himself had had adventures enough for one day, and none of us felt inclined to make the first push into the unknown. We forbore to light a fire or to make any unnecessary sound.\n\nTo-morrow (or to-day, rather, for it is already dawn as I write) we shall make our first venture into this strange land. When I shall be able to write again\u2014or if I ever shall write again\u2014I know not. Meanwhile, I can see that the Indians are still in their place, and I am sure that the faithful Zambo will be here presently to get my letter. I only trust that it will come to hand.\n\nP.S.\u2014The more I think the more desperate does our position seem. I see no possible hope of our return. If there were a high tree near the edge of the plateau we might drop a return bridge across, but there is none within fifty yards. Our united strength could not carry a trunk which would serve our purpose. The rope, of course, is far too short that we could descend by it. No, our position is hopeless\u2014hopeless!" + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 10", + "text": "\"The most Wonderful Things have Happened\"\n\nThe most wonderful things have happened and are continually happening to us. All the paper that I possess consists of five old notebooks and a lot of scraps, and I have only the one stylographic pencil; but so long as I can move my hand I will continue to set down our experiences and impressions, for, since we are the only men of the whole human race to see such things, it is of enormous importance that I should record them whilst they are fresh in my memory and before that fate which seems to be constantly impending does actually overtake us. Whether Zambo can at last take these letters to the river, or whether I shall myself in some miraculous way carry them back with me, or, finally, whether some daring explorer, coming upon our tracks with the advantage, perhaps, of a perfected monoplane, should find this bundle of manuscript, in any case I can see that what I am writing is destined to immortality as a classic of true adventure.\n\nOn the morning after our being trapped upon the plateau by the villainous Gomez we began a new stage in our experiences. The first incident in it was not such as to give me a very favorable opinion of the place to which we had wandered. As I roused myself from a short nap after day had dawned, my eyes fell upon a most singular appearance upon my own leg. My trouser had slipped up, exposing a few inches of my skin above my sock. On this there rested a large, purplish grape. Astonished at the sight, I leaned forward to pick it off, when, to my horror, it burst between my finger and thumb, squirting blood in every direction. My cry of disgust had brought the two professors to my side.\n\n\"Most interesting,\" said Summerlee, bending over my shin. \"An enormous blood-tick, as yet, I believe, unclassified.\"\n\n\"The first-fruits of our labors,\" said Challenger in his booming, pedantic fashion. \"We cannot do less than call it Ixodes Maloni. The very small inconvenience of being bitten, my young friend, cannot, I am sure, weigh with you as against the glorious privilege of having your name inscribed in the deathless roll of zoology. Unhappily you have crushed this fine specimen at the moment of satiation.\"\n\n\"Filthy vermin!\" I cried.\n\nProfessor Challenger raised his great eyebrows in protest, and placed a soothing paw upon my shoulder.\n\n\"You should cultivate the scientific eye and the detached scientific mind,\" said he. \"To a man of philosophic temperament like myself the blood-tick, with its lancet-like proboscis and its distending stomach, is as beautiful a work of Nature as the peacock or, for that matter, the aurora borealis. It pains me to hear you speak of it in so unappreciative a fashion. No doubt, with due diligence, we can secure some other specimen.\"\n\n\"There can be no doubt of that,\" said Summerlee, grimly, \"for one has just disappeared behind your shirt-collar.\"\n\nChallenger sprang into the air bellowing like a bull, and tore frantically at his coat and shirt to get them off. Summerlee and I laughed so that we could hardly help him. At last we exposed that monstrous torso (fifty-four inches, by the tailor's tape). His body was all matted with black hair, out of which jungle we picked the wandering tick before it had bitten him. But the bushes round were full of the horrible pests, and it was clear that we must shift our camp.\n\nBut first of all it was necessary to make our arrangements with the faithful negro, who appeared presently on the pinnacle with a number of tins of cocoa and biscuits, which he tossed over to us. Of the stores which remained below he was ordered to retain as much as would keep him for two months. The Indians were to have the remainder as a reward for their services and as payment for taking our letters back to the Amazon. Some hours later we saw them in single file far out upon the plain, each with a bundle on his head, making their way back along the path we had come. Zambo occupied our little tent at the base of the pinnacle, and there he remained, our one link with the world below.\n\nAnd now we had to decide upon our immediate movements. We shifted our position from among the tick-laden bushes until we came to a small clearing thickly surrounded by trees upon all sides. There were some flat slabs of rock in the center, with an excellent well close by, and there we sat in cleanly comfort while we made our first plans for the invasion of this new country. Birds were calling among the foliage\u2014especially one with a peculiar whooping cry which was new to us\u2014but beyond these sounds there were no signs of life.\n\nOur first care was to make some sort of list of our own stores, so that we might know what we had to rely upon. What with the things we had ourselves brought up and those which Zambo had sent across on the rope, we were fairly well supplied. Most important of all, in view of the dangers which might surround us, we had our four rifles and one thousand three hundred rounds, also a shot-gun, but not more than a hundred and fifty medium pellet cartridges. In the matter of provisions we had enough to last for several weeks, with a sufficiency of tobacco and a few scientific implements, including a large telescope and a good field-glass. All these things we collected together in the clearing, and as a first precaution, we cut down with our hatchet and knives a number of thorny bushes, which we piled round in a circle some fifteen yards in diameter. This was to be our headquarters for the time\u2014our place of refuge against sudden danger and the guard-house for our stores. Fort Challenger, we called it.\n\nIt was midday before we had made ourselves secure, but the heat was not oppressive, and the general character of the plateau, both in its temperature and in its vegetation, was almost temperate. The beech, the oak, and even the birch were to be found among the tangle of trees which girt us in. One huge gingko tree, topping all the others, shot its great limbs and maidenhair foliage over the fort which we had constructed. In its shade we continued our discussion, while Lord John, who had quickly taken command in the hour of action, gave us his views.\n\n\"So long as neither man nor beast has seen or heard us, we are safe,\" said he. \"From the time they know we are here our troubles begin. There are no signs that they have found us out as yet. So our game surely is to lie low for a time and spy out the land. We want to have a good look at our neighbors before we get on visitin' terms.\"\n\n\"But we must advance,\" I ventured to remark.\n\n\"By all means, sonny my boy! We will advance. But with common sense. We must never go so far that we can't get back to our base. Above all, we must never, unless it is life or death, fire off our guns.\"\n\n\"But YOU fired yesterday,\" said Summerlee.\n\n\"Well, it couldn't be helped. However, the wind was strong and blew outwards. It is not likely that the sound could have traveled far into the plateau. By the way, what shall we call this place? I suppose it is up to us to give it a name?\"\n\nThere were several suggestions, more or less happy, but Challenger's was final.\n\n\"It can only have one name,\" said he. \"It is called after the pioneer who discovered it. It is Maple White Land.\"\n\nMaple White Land it became, and so it is named in that chart which has become my special task. So it will, I trust, appear in the atlas of the future.\n\nThe peaceful penetration of Maple White Land was the pressing subject before us. We had the evidence of our own eyes that the place was inhabited by some unknown creatures, and there was that of Maple White's sketch-book to show that more dreadful and more dangerous monsters might still appear. That there might also prove to be human occupants and that they were of a malevolent character was suggested by the skeleton impaled upon the bamboos, which could not have got there had it not been dropped from above. Our situation, stranded without possibility of escape in such a land, was clearly full of danger, and our reasons endorsed every measure of caution which Lord John's experience could suggest. Yet it was surely impossible that we should halt on the edge of this world of mystery when our very souls were tingling with impatience to push forward and to pluck the heart from it.\n\nWe therefore blocked the entrance to our zareba by filling it up with several thorny bushes, and left our camp with the stores entirely surrounded by this protecting hedge. We then slowly and cautiously set forth into the unknown, following the course of the little stream which flowed from our spring, as it should always serve us as a guide on our return.\n\nHardly had we started when we came across signs that there were indeed wonders awaiting us. After a few hundred yards of thick forest, containing many trees which were quite unknown to me, but which Summerlee, who was the botanist of the party, recognized as forms of conifera and of cycadaceous plants which have long passed away in the world below, we entered a region where the stream widened out and formed a considerable bog. High reeds of a peculiar type grew thickly before us, which were pronounced to be equisetacea, or mare's-tails, with tree-ferns scattered amongst them, all of them swaying in a brisk wind. Suddenly Lord John, who was walking first, halted with uplifted hand.\n\n\"Look at this!\" said he. \"By George, this must be the trail of the father of all birds!\"\n\nAn enormous three-toed track was imprinted in the soft mud before us. The creature, whatever it was, had crossed the swamp and had passed on into the forest. We all stopped to examine that monstrous spoor. If it were indeed a bird\u2014and what animal could leave such a mark?\u2014its foot was so much larger than an ostrich's that its height upon the same scale must be enormous. Lord John looked eagerly round him and slipped two cartridges into his elephant-gun.\n\n\"I'll stake my good name as a shikarree,\" said he, \"that the track is a fresh one. The creature has not passed ten minutes. Look how the water is still oozing into that deeper print! By Jove! See, here is the mark of a little one!\"\n\nSure enough, smaller tracks of the same general form were running parallel to the large ones.\n\n\"But what do you make of this?\" cried Professor Summerlee, triumphantly, pointing to what looked like the huge print of a five-fingered human hand appearing among the three-toed marks.\n\n\"Wealden!\" cried Challenger, in an ecstasy. \"I've seen them in the Wealden clay. It is a creature walking erect upon three-toed feet, and occasionally putting one of its five-fingered forepaws upon the ground. Not a bird, my dear Roxton\u2014not a bird.\"\n\n\"A beast?\"\n\n\"No; a reptile\u2014a dinosaur. Nothing else could have left such a track. They puzzled a worthy Sussex doctor some ninety years ago; but who in the world could have hoped\u2014hoped\u2014to have seen a sight like that?\"\n\nHis words died away into a whisper, and we all stood in motionless amazement. Following the tracks, we had left the morass and passed through a screen of brushwood and trees. Beyond was an open glade, and in this were five of the most extraordinary creatures that I have ever seen. Crouching down among the bushes, we observed them at our leisure.\n\nThere were, as I say, five of them, two being adults and three young ones. In size they were enormous. Even the babies were as big as elephants, while the two large ones were far beyond all creatures I have ever seen. They had slate-colored skin, which was scaled like a lizard's and shimmered where the sun shone upon it. All five were sitting up, balancing themselves upon their broad, powerful tails and their huge three-toed hind-feet, while with their small five-fingered front-feet they pulled down the branches upon which they browsed. I do not know that I can bring their appearance home to you better than by saying that they looked like monstrous kangaroos, twenty feet in length, and with skins like black crocodiles.\n\nI do not know how long we stayed motionless gazing at this marvelous spectacle. A strong wind blew towards us and we were well concealed, so there was no chance of discovery. From time to time the little ones played round their parents in unwieldy gambols, the great beasts bounding into the air and falling with dull thuds upon the earth. The strength of the parents seemed to be limitless, for one of them, having some difficulty in reaching a bunch of foliage which grew upon a considerable-sized tree, put his fore-legs round the trunk and tore it down as if it had been a sapling. The action seemed, as I thought, to show not only the great development of its muscles, but also the small one of its brain, for the whole weight came crashing down upon the top of it, and it uttered a series of shrill yelps to show that, big as it was, there was a limit to what it could endure. The incident made it think, apparently, that the neighborhood was dangerous, for it slowly lurched off through the wood, followed by its mate and its three enormous infants. We saw the shimmering slaty gleam of their skins between the tree-trunks, and their heads undulating high above the brushwood. Then they vanished from our sight.\n\nI looked at my comrades. Lord John was standing at gaze with his finger on the trigger of his elephant-gun, his eager hunter's soul shining from his fierce eyes. What would he not give for one such head to place between the two crossed oars above the mantelpiece in his snuggery at the Albany! And yet his reason held him in, for all our exploration of the wonders of this unknown land depended upon our presence being concealed from its inhabitants. The two professors were in silent ecstasy. In their excitement they had unconsciously seized each other by the hand, and stood like two little children in the presence of a marvel, Challenger's cheeks bunched up into a seraphic smile, and Summerlee's sardonic face softening for the moment into wonder and reverence.\n\n\"Nunc dimittis!\" he cried at last. \"What will they say in England of this?\"\n\n\"My dear Summerlee, I will tell you with great confidence exactly what they will say in England,\" said Challenger. \"They will say that you are an infernal liar and a scientific charlatan, exactly as you and others said of me.\"\n\n\"In the face of photographs?\"\n\n\"Faked, Summerlee! Clumsily faked!\"\n\n\"In the face of specimens?\"\n\n\"Ah, there we may have them! Malone and his filthy Fleet Street crew may be all yelping our praises yet. August the twenty-eighth\u2014the day we saw five live iguanodons in a glade of Maple White Land. Put it down in your diary, my young friend, and send it to your rag.\"\n\n\"And be ready to get the toe-end of the editorial boot in return,\" said Lord John. \"Things look a bit different from the latitude of London, young fellah my lad. There's many a man who never tells his adventures, for he can't hope to be believed. Who's to blame them? For this will seem a bit of a dream to ourselves in a month or two. WHAT did you say they were?\"\n\n\"Iguanodons,\" said Summerlee. \"You'll find their footmarks all over the Hastings sands, in Kent, and in Sussex. The South of England was alive with them when there was plenty of good lush green-stuff to keep them going. Conditions have changed, and the beasts died. Here it seems that the conditions have not changed, and the beasts have lived.\"\n\n\"If ever we get out of this alive, I must have a head with me,\" said Lord John. \"Lord, how some of that Somaliland-Uganda crowd would turn a beautiful pea-green if they saw it! I don't know what you chaps think, but it strikes me that we are on mighty thin ice all this time.\"\n\nI had the same feeling of mystery and danger around us. In the gloom of the trees there seemed a constant menace and as we looked up into their shadowy foliage vague terrors crept into one's heart. It is true that these monstrous creatures which we had seen were lumbering, inoffensive brutes which were unlikely to hurt anyone, but in this world of wonders what other survivals might there not be\u2014what fierce, active horrors ready to pounce upon us from their lair among the rocks or brushwood? I knew little of prehistoric life, but I had a clear remembrance of one book which I had read in which it spoke of creatures who would live upon our lions and tigers as a cat lives upon mice. What if these also were to be found in the woods of Maple White Land!\n\nIt was destined that on this very morning\u2014our first in the new country\u2014we were to find out what strange hazards lay around us. It was a loathsome adventure, and one of which I hate to think. If, as Lord John said, the glade of the iguanodons will remain with us as a dream, then surely the swamp of the pterodactyls will forever be our nightmare. Let me set down exactly what occurred.\n\nWe passed very slowly through the woods, partly because Lord Roxton acted as scout before he would let us advance, and partly because at every second step one or other of our professors would fall, with a cry of wonder, before some flower or insect which presented him with a new type. We may have traveled two or three miles in all, keeping to the right of the line of the stream, when we came upon a considerable opening in the trees. A belt of brushwood led up to a tangle of rocks\u2014the whole plateau was strewn with boulders. We were walking slowly towards these rocks, among bushes which reached over our waists, when we became aware of a strange low gabbling and whistling sound, which filled the air with a constant clamor and appeared to come from some spot immediately before us. Lord John held up his hand as a signal for us to stop, and he made his way swiftly, stooping and running, to the line of rocks. We saw him peep over them and give a gesture of amazement. Then he stood staring as if forgetting us, so utterly entranced was he by what he saw. Finally he waved us to come on, holding up his hand as a signal for caution. His whole bearing made me feel that something wonderful but dangerous lay before us.\n\nCreeping to his side, we looked over the rocks. The place into which we gazed was a pit, and may, in the early days, have been one of the smaller volcanic blow-holes of the plateau. It was bowl-shaped and at the bottom, some hundreds of yards from where we lay, were pools of green-scummed, stagnant water, fringed with bullrushes. It was a weird place in itself, but its occupants made it seem like a scene from the Seven Circles of Dante. The place was a rookery of pterodactyls. There were hundreds of them congregated within view. All the bottom area round the water-edge was alive with their young ones, and with hideous mothers brooding upon their leathery, yellowish eggs. From this crawling flapping mass of obscene reptilian life came the shocking clamor which filled the air and the mephitic, horrible, musty odor which turned us sick. But above, perched each upon its own stone, tall, gray, and withered, more like dead and dried specimens than actual living creatures, sat the horrible males, absolutely motionless save for the rolling of their red eyes or an occasional snap of their rat-trap beaks as a dragon-fly went past them. Their huge, membranous wings were closed by folding their forearms, so that they sat like gigantic old women, wrapped in hideous web-colored shawls, and with their ferocious heads protruding above them. Large and small, not less than a thousand of these filthy creatures lay in the hollow before us.\n\nOur professors would gladly have stayed there all day, so entranced were they by this opportunity of studying the life of a prehistoric age. They pointed out the fish and dead birds lying about among the rocks as proving the nature of the food of these creatures, and I heard them congratulating each other on having cleared up the point why the bones of this flying dragon are found in such great numbers in certain well-defined areas, as in the Cambridge Green-sand, since it was now seen that, like penguins, they lived in gregarious fashion.\n\nFinally, however, Challenger, bent upon proving some point which Summerlee had contested, thrust his head over the rock and nearly brought destruction upon us all. In an instant the nearest male gave a shrill, whistling cry, and flapped its twenty-foot span of leathery wings as it soared up into the air. The females and young ones huddled together beside the water, while the whole circle of sentinels rose one after the other and sailed off into the sky. It was a wonderful sight to see at least a hundred creatures of such enormous size and hideous appearance all swooping like swallows with swift, shearing wing-strokes above us; but soon we realized that it was not one on which we could afford to linger. At first the great brutes flew round in a huge ring, as if to make sure what the exact extent of the danger might be. Then, the flight grew lower and the circle narrower, until they were whizzing round and round us, the dry, rustling flap of their huge slate-colored wings filling the air with a volume of sound that made me think of Hendon aerodrome upon a race day.\n\n\"Make for the wood and keep together,\" cried Lord John, clubbing his rifle. \"The brutes mean mischief.\"\n\nThe moment we attempted to retreat the circle closed in upon us, until the tips of the wings of those nearest to us nearly touched our faces. We beat at them with the stocks of our guns, but there was nothing solid or vulnerable to strike. Then suddenly out of the whizzing, slate-colored circle a long neck shot out, and a fierce beak made a thrust at us. Another and another followed. Summerlee gave a cry and put his hand to his face, from which the blood was streaming. I felt a prod at the back of my neck, and turned dizzy with the shock. Challenger fell, and as I stooped to pick him up I was again struck from behind and dropped on the top of him. At the same instant I heard the crash of Lord John's elephant-gun, and, looking up, saw one of the creatures with a broken wing struggling upon the ground, spitting and gurgling at us with a wide-opened beak and blood-shot, goggled eyes, like some devil in a medieval picture. Its comrades had flown higher at the sudden sound, and were circling above our heads.\n\n\"Now,\" cried Lord John, \"now for our lives!\"\n\nWe staggered through the brushwood, and even as we reached the trees the harpies were on us again. Summerlee was knocked down, but we tore him up and rushed among the trunks. Once there we were safe, for those huge wings had no space for their sweep beneath the branches. As we limped homewards, sadly mauled and discomfited, we saw them for a long time flying at a great height against the deep blue sky above our heads, soaring round and round, no bigger than wood-pigeons, with their eyes no doubt still following our progress. At last, however, as we reached the thicker woods they gave up the chase, and we saw them no more.\n\n\"A most interesting and convincing experience,\" said Challenger, as we halted beside the brook and he bathed a swollen knee. \"We are exceptionally well informed, Summerlee, as to the habits of the enraged pterodactyl.\"\n\nSummerlee was wiping the blood from a cut in his forehead, while I was tying up a nasty stab in the muscle of the neck. Lord John had the shoulder of his coat torn away, but the creature's teeth had only grazed the flesh.\n\n\"It is worth noting,\" Challenger continued, \"that our young friend has received an undoubted stab, while Lord John's coat could only have been torn by a bite. In my own case, I was beaten about the head by their wings, so we have had a remarkable exhibition of their various methods of offence.\"\n\n\"It has been touch and go for our lives,\" said Lord John, gravely, \"and I could not think of a more rotten sort of death than to be outed by such filthy vermin. I was sorry to fire my rifle, but, by Jove! there was no great choice.\"\n\n\"We should not be here if you hadn't,\" said I, with conviction.\n\n\"It may do no harm,\" said he. \"Among these woods there must be many loud cracks from splitting or falling trees which would be just like the sound of a gun. But now, if you are of my opinion, we have had thrills enough for one day, and had best get back to the surgical box at the camp for some carbolic. Who knows what venom these beasts may have in their hideous jaws?\"\n\nBut surely no men ever had just such a day since the world began. Some fresh surprise was ever in store for us. When, following the course of our brook, we at last reached our glade and saw the thorny barricade of our camp, we thought that our adventures were at an end. But we had something more to think of before we could rest. The gate of Fort Challenger had been untouched, the walls were unbroken, and yet it had been visited by some strange and powerful creature in our absence. No footmark showed a trace of its nature, and only the overhanging branch of the enormous ginko tree suggested how it might have come and gone; but of its malevolent strength there was ample evidence in the condition of our stores. They were strewn at random all over the ground, and one tin of meat had been crushed into pieces so as to extract the contents. A case of cartridges had been shattered into matchwood, and one of the brass shells lay shredded into pieces beside it. Again the feeling of vague horror came upon our souls, and we gazed round with frightened eyes at the dark shadows which lay around us, in all of which some fearsome shape might be lurking. How good it was when we were hailed by the voice of Zambo, and, going to the edge of the plateau, saw him sitting grinning at us upon the top of the opposite pinnacle.\n\n\"All well, Massa Challenger, all well!\" he cried. \"Me stay here. No fear. You always find me when you want.\"\n\nHis honest black face, and the immense view before us, which carried us half-way back to the affluent of the Amazon, helped us to remember that we really were upon this earth in the twentieth century, and had not by some magic been conveyed to some raw planet in its earliest and wildest state. How difficult it was to realize that the violet line upon the far horizon was well advanced to that great river upon which huge steamers ran, and folk talked of the small affairs of life, while we, marooned among the creatures of a bygone age, could but gaze towards it and yearn for all that it meant!\n\nOne other memory remains with me of this wonderful day, and with it I will close this letter. The two professors, their tempers aggravated no doubt by their injuries, had fallen out as to whether our assailants were of the genus pterodactylus or dimorphodon, and high words had ensued. To avoid their wrangling I moved some little way apart, and was seated smoking upon the trunk of a fallen tree, when Lord John strolled over in my direction.\n\n\"I say, Malone,\" said he, \"do you remember that place where those beasts were?\"\n\n\"Very clearly.\"\n\n\"A sort of volcanic pit, was it not?\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said I.\n\n\"Did you notice the soil?\"\n\n\"Rocks.\"\n\n\"But round the water\u2014where the reeds were?\"\n\n\"It was a bluish soil. It looked like clay.\"\n\n\"Exactly. A volcanic tube full of blue clay.\"\n\n\"What of that?\" I asked.\n\n\"Oh, nothing, nothing,\" said he, and strolled back to where the voices of the contending men of science rose in a prolonged duet, the high, strident note of Summerlee rising and falling to the sonorous bass of Challenger. I should have thought no more of Lord John's remark were it not that once again that night I heard him mutter to himself: \"Blue clay\u2014clay in a volcanic tube!\" They were the last words I heard before I dropped into an exhausted sleep." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 11", + "text": "\"For once I was the Hero\"\n\nLord John Roxton was right when he thought that some specially toxic quality might lie in the bite of the horrible creatures which had attacked us. On the morning after our first adventure upon the plateau, both Summerlee and I were in great pain and fever, while Challenger's knee was so bruised that he could hardly limp. We kept to our camp all day, therefore, Lord John busying himself, with such help as we could give him, in raising the height and thickness of the thorny walls which were our only defense. I remember that during the whole long day I was haunted by the feeling that we were closely observed, though by whom or whence I could give no guess.\n\nSo strong was the impression that I told Professor Challenger of it, who put it down to the cerebral excitement caused by my fever. Again and again I glanced round swiftly, with the conviction that I was about to see something, but only to meet the dark tangle of our hedge or the solemn and cavernous gloom of the great trees which arched above our heads. And yet the feeling grew ever stronger in my own mind that something observant and something malevolent was at our very elbow. I thought of the Indian superstition of the Curupuri\u2014the dreadful, lurking spirit of the woods\u2014and I could have imagined that his terrible presence haunted those who had invaded his most remote and sacred retreat.\n\nThat night (our third in Maple White Land) we had an experience which left a fearful impression upon our minds, and made us thankful that Lord John had worked so hard in making our retreat impregnable. We were all sleeping round our dying fire when we were aroused\u2014or, rather, I should say, shot out of our slumbers\u2014by a succession of the most frightful cries and screams to which I have ever listened. I know no sound to which I could compare this amazing tumult, which seemed to come from some spot within a few hundred yards of our camp. It was as ear-splitting as any whistle of a railway-engine; but whereas the whistle is a clear, mechanical, sharp-edged sound, this was far deeper in volume and vibrant with the uttermost strain of agony and horror. We clapped our hands to our ears to shut out that nerve-shaking appeal. A cold sweat broke out over my body, and my heart turned sick at the misery of it. All the woes of tortured life, all its stupendous indictment of high heaven, its innumerable sorrows, seemed to be centered and condensed into that one dreadful, agonized cry. And then, under this high-pitched, ringing sound there was another, more intermittent, a low, deep-chested laugh, a growling, throaty gurgle of merriment which formed a grotesque accompaniment to the shriek with which it was blended. For three or four minutes on end the fearsome duet continued, while all the foliage rustled with the rising of startled birds. Then it shut off as suddenly as it began. For a long time we sat in horrified silence. Then Lord John threw a bundle of twigs upon the fire, and their red glare lit up the intent faces of my companions and flickered over the great boughs above our heads.\n\n\"What was it?\" I whispered.\n\n\"We shall know in the morning,\" said Lord John. \"It was close to us\u2014not farther than the glade.\"\n\n\"We have been privileged to overhear a prehistoric tragedy, the sort of drama which occurred among the reeds upon the border of some Jurassic lagoon, when the greater dragon pinned the lesser among the slime,\" said Challenger, with more solemnity than I had ever heard in his voice. \"It was surely well for man that he came late in the order of creation. There were powers abroad in earlier days which no courage and no mechanism of his could have met. What could his sling, his throwing-stick, or his arrow avail him against such forces as have been loose to-night? Even with a modern rifle it would be all odds on the monster.\"\n\n\"I think I should back my little friend,\" said Lord John, caressing his Express. \"But the beast would certainly have a good sporting chance.\"\n\nSummerlee raised his hand.\n\n\"Hush!\" he cried. \"Surely I hear something?\"\n\nFrom the utter silence there emerged a deep, regular pat-pat. It was the tread of some animal\u2014the rhythm of soft but heavy pads placed cautiously upon the ground. It stole slowly round the camp, and then halted near our gateway. There was a low, sibilant rise and fall\u2014the breathing of the creature. Only our feeble hedge separated us from this horror of the night. Each of us had seized his rifle, and Lord John had pulled out a small bush to make an embrasure in the hedge.\n\n\"By George!\" he whispered. \"I think I can see it!\"\n\nI stooped and peered over his shoulder through the gap. Yes, I could see it, too. In the deep shadow of the tree there was a deeper shadow yet, black, inchoate, vague\u2014a crouching form full of savage vigor and menace. It was no higher than a horse, but the dim outline suggested vast bulk and strength. That hissing pant, as regular and full-volumed as the exhaust of an engine, spoke of a monstrous organism. Once, as it moved, I thought I saw the glint of two terrible, greenish eyes. There was an uneasy rustling, as if it were crawling slowly forward.\n\n\"I believe it is going to spring!\" said I, cocking my rifle.\n\n\"Don't fire! Don't fire!\" whispered Lord John. \"The crash of a gun in this silent night would be heard for miles. Keep it as a last card.\"\n\n\"If it gets over the hedge we're done,\" said Summerlee, and his voice crackled into a nervous laugh as he spoke.\n\n\"No, it must not get over,\" cried Lord John; \"but hold your fire to the last. Perhaps I can make something of the fellow. I'll chance it, anyhow.\"\n\nIt was as brave an act as ever I saw a man do. He stooped to the fire, picked up a blazing branch, and slipped in an instant through a sallyport which he had made in our gateway. The thing moved forward with a dreadful snarl. Lord John never hesitated, but, running towards it with a quick, light step, he dashed the flaming wood into the brute's face. For one moment I had a vision of a horrible mask like a giant toad's, of a warty, leprous skin, and of a loose mouth all beslobbered with fresh blood. The next, there was a crash in the underwood and our dreadful visitor was gone.\n\n\"I thought he wouldn't face the fire,\" said Lord John, laughing, as he came back and threw his branch among the faggots.\n\n\"You should not have taken such a risk!\" we all cried.\n\n\"There was nothin' else to be done. If he had got among us we should have shot each other in tryin' to down him. On the other hand, if we had fired through the hedge and wounded him he would soon have been on the top of us\u2014to say nothin' of giving ourselves away. On the whole, I think that we are jolly well out of it. What was he, then?\"\n\nOur learned men looked at each other with some hesitation.\n\n\"Personally, I am unable to classify the creature with any certainty,\" said Summerlee, lighting his pipe from the fire.\n\n\"In refusing to commit yourself you are but showing a proper scientific reserve,\" said Challenger, with massive condescension. \"I am not myself prepared to go farther than to say in general terms that we have almost certainly been in contact to-night with some form of carnivorous dinosaur. I have already expressed my anticipation that something of the sort might exist upon this plateau.\"\n\n\"We have to bear in mind,\" remarked Summerlee, \"that there are many prehistoric forms which have never come down to us. It would be rash to suppose that we can give a name to all that we are likely to meet.\"\n\n\"Exactly. A rough classification may be the best that we can attempt. To-morrow some further evidence may help us to an identification. Meantime we can only renew our interrupted slumbers.\"\n\n\"But not without a sentinel,\" said Lord John, with decision. \"We can't afford to take chances in a country like this. Two-hour spells in the future, for each of us.\"\n\n\"Then I'll just finish my pipe in starting the first one,\" said Professor Summerlee; and from that time onwards we never trusted ourselves again without a watchman.\n\nIn the morning it was not long before we discovered the source of the hideous uproar which had aroused us in the night. The iguanodon glade was the scene of a horrible butchery. From the pools of blood and the enormous lumps of flesh scattered in every direction over the green sward we imagined at first that a number of animals had been killed, but on examining the remains more closely we discovered that all this carnage came from one of these unwieldy monsters, which had been literally torn to pieces by some creature not larger, perhaps, but far more ferocious, than itself.\n\nOur two professors sat in absorbed argument, examining piece after piece, which showed the marks of savage teeth and of enormous claws.\n\n\"Our judgment must still be in abeyance,\" said Professor Challenger, with a huge slab of whitish-colored flesh across his knee. \"The indications would be consistent with the presence of a saber-toothed tiger, such as are still found among the breccia of our caverns; but the creature actually seen was undoubtedly of a larger and more reptilian character. Personally, I should pronounce for allosaurus.\"\n\n\"Or megalosaurus,\" said Summerlee.\n\n\"Exactly. Any one of the larger carnivorous dinosaurs would meet the case. Among them are to be found all the most terrible types of animal life that have ever cursed the earth or blessed a museum.\" He laughed sonorously at his own conceit, for, though he had little sense of humor, the crudest pleasantry from his own lips moved him always to roars of appreciation.\n\n\"The less noise the better,\" said Lord Roxton, curtly. \"We don't know who or what may be near us. If this fellah comes back for his breakfast and catches us here we won't have so much to laugh at. By the way, what is this mark upon the iguanodon's hide?\"\n\nOn the dull, scaly, slate-colored skin somewhere above the shoulder, there was a singular black circle of some substance which looked like asphalt. None of us could suggest what it meant, though Summerlee was of opinion that he had seen something similar upon one of the young ones two days before. Challenger said nothing, but looked pompous and puffy, as if he could if he would, so that finally Lord John asked his opinion direct.\n\n\"If your lordship will graciously permit me to open my mouth, I shall be happy to express my sentiments,\" said he, with elaborate sarcasm. \"I am not in the habit of being taken to task in the fashion which seems to be customary with your lordship. I was not aware that it was necessary to ask your permission before smiling at a harmless pleasantry.\"\n\nIt was not until he had received his apology that our touchy friend would suffer himself to be appeased. When at last his ruffled feelings were at ease, he addressed us at some length from his seat upon a fallen tree, speaking, as his habit was, as if he were imparting most precious information to a class of a thousand.\n\n\"With regard to the marking,\" said he, \"I am inclined to agree with my friend and colleague, Professor Summerlee, that the stains are from asphalt. As this plateau is, in its very nature, highly volcanic, and as asphalt is a substance which one associates with Plutonic forces, I cannot doubt that it exists in the free liquid state, and that the creatures may have come in contact with it. A much more important problem is the question as to the existence of the carnivorous monster which has left its traces in this glade. We know roughly that this plateau is not larger than an average English county. Within this confined space a certain number of creatures, mostly types which have passed away in the world below, have lived together for innumerable years. Now, it is very clear to me that in so long a period one would have expected that the carnivorous creatures, multiplying unchecked, would have exhausted their food supply and have been compelled to either modify their flesh-eating habits or die of hunger. This we see has not been so. We can only imagine, therefore, that the balance of Nature is preserved by some check which limits the numbers of these ferocious creatures. One of the many interesting problems, therefore, which await our solution is to discover what that check may be and how it operates. I venture to trust that we may have some future opportunity for the closer study of the carnivorous dinosaurs.\"\n\n\"And I venture to trust we may not,\" I observed.\n\nThe Professor only raised his great eyebrows, as the schoolmaster meets the irrelevant observation of the naughty boy.\n\n\"Perhaps Professor Summerlee may have an observation to make,\" he said, and the two savants ascended together into some rarefied scientific atmosphere, where the possibilities of a modification of the birth-rate were weighed against the decline of the food supply as a check in the struggle for existence.\n\nThat morning we mapped out a small portion of the plateau, avoiding the swamp of the pterodactyls, and keeping to the east of our brook instead of to the west. In that direction the country was still thickly wooded, with so much undergrowth that our progress was very slow.\n\nI have dwelt up to now upon the terrors of Maple White Land; but there was another side to the subject, for all that morning we wandered among lovely flowers\u2014mostly, as I observed, white or yellow in color, these being, as our professors explained, the primitive flower-shades. In many places the ground was absolutely covered with them, and as we walked ankle-deep on that wonderful yielding carpet, the scent was almost intoxicating in its sweetness and intensity. The homely English bee buzzed everywhere around us. Many of the trees under which we passed had their branches bowed down with fruit, some of which were of familiar sorts, while other varieties were new. By observing which of them were pecked by the birds we avoided all danger of poison and added a delicious variety to our food reserve. In the jungle which we traversed were numerous hard-trodden paths made by the wild beasts, and in the more marshy places we saw a profusion of strange footmarks, including many of the iguanodon. Once in a grove we observed several of these great creatures grazing, and Lord John, with his glass, was able to report that they also were spotted with asphalt, though in a different place to the one which we had examined in the morning. What this phenomenon meant we could not imagine.\n\nWe saw many small animals, such as porcupines, a scaly ant-eater, and a wild pig, piebald in color and with long curved tusks. Once, through a break in the trees, we saw a clear shoulder of green hill some distance away, and across this a large dun-colored animal was traveling at a considerable pace. It passed so swiftly that we were unable to say what it was; but if it were a deer, as was claimed by Lord John, it must have been as large as those monstrous Irish elk which are still dug up from time to time in the bogs of my native land.\n\nEver since the mysterious visit which had been paid to our camp we always returned to it with some misgivings. However, on this occasion we found everything in order.\n\nThat evening we had a grand discussion upon our present situation and future plans, which I must describe at some length, as it led to a new departure by which we were enabled to gain a more complete knowledge of Maple White Land than might have come in many weeks of exploring. It was Summerlee who opened the debate. All day he had been querulous in manner, and now some remark of Lord John's as to what we should do on the morrow brought all his bitterness to a head.\n\n\"What we ought to be doing to-day, to-morrow, and all the time,\" said he, \"is finding some way out of the trap into which we have fallen. You are all turning your brains towards getting into this country. I say that we should be scheming how to get out of it.\"\n\n\"I am surprised, sir,\" boomed Challenger, stroking his majestic beard, \"that any man of science should commit himself to so ignoble a sentiment. You are in a land which offers such an inducement to the ambitious naturalist as none ever has since the world began, and you suggest leaving it before we have acquired more than the most superficial knowledge of it or of its contents. I expected better things of you, Professor Summerlee.\"\n\n\"You must remember,\" said Summerlee, sourly, \"that I have a large class in London who are at present at the mercy of an extremely inefficient locum tenens. This makes my situation different from yours, Professor Challenger, since, so far as I know, you have never been entrusted with any responsible educational work.\"\n\n\"Quite so,\" said Challenger. \"I have felt it to be a sacrilege to divert a brain which is capable of the highest original research to any lesser object. That is why I have sternly set my face against any proffered scholastic appointment.\"\n\n\"For example?\" asked Summerlee, with a sneer; but Lord John hastened to change the conversation.\n\n\"I must say,\" said he, \"that I think it would be a mighty poor thing to go back to London before I know a great deal more of this place than I do at present.\"\n\n\"I could never dare to walk into the back office of my paper and face old McArdle,\" said I. (You will excuse the frankness of this report, will you not, sir?) \"He'd never forgive me for leaving such unexhausted copy behind me. Besides, so far as I can see it is not worth discussing, since we can't get down, even if we wanted.\"\n\n\"Our young friend makes up for many obvious mental lacunae by some measure of primitive common sense,\" remarked Challenger. \"The interests of his deplorable profession are immaterial to us; but, as he observes, we cannot get down in any case, so it is a waste of energy to discuss it.\"\n\n\"It is a waste of energy to do anything else,\" growled Summerlee from behind his pipe. \"Let me remind you that we came here upon a perfectly definite mission, entrusted to us at the meeting of the Zoological Institute in London. That mission was to test the truth of Professor Challenger's statements. Those statements, as I am bound to admit, we are now in a position to endorse. Our ostensible work is therefore done. As to the detail which remains to be worked out upon this plateau, it is so enormous that only a large expedition, with a very special equipment, could hope to cope with it. Should we attempt to do so ourselves, the only possible result must be that we shall never return with the important contribution to science which we have already gained. Professor Challenger has devised means for getting us on to this plateau when it appeared to be inaccessible; I think that we should now call upon him to use the same ingenuity in getting us back to the world from which we came.\"\n\nI confess that as Summerlee stated his view it struck me as altogether reasonable. Even Challenger was affected by the consideration that his enemies would never stand confuted if the confirmation of his statements should never reach those who had doubted them.\n\n\"The problem of the descent is at first sight a formidable one,\" said he, \"and yet I cannot doubt that the intellect can solve it. I am prepared to agree with our colleague that a protracted stay in Maple White Land is at present inadvisable, and that the question of our return will soon have to be faced. I absolutely refuse to leave, however, until we have made at least a superficial examination of this country, and are able to take back with us something in the nature of a chart.\"\n\nProfessor Summerlee gave a snort of impatience.\n\n\"We have spent two long days in exploration,\" said he, \"and we are no wiser as to the actual geography of the place than when we started. It is clear that it is all thickly wooded, and it would take months to penetrate it and to learn the relations of one part to another. If there were some central peak it would be different, but it all slopes downwards, so far as we can see. The farther we go the less likely it is that we will get any general view.\"\n\nIt was at that moment that I had my inspiration. My eyes chanced to light upon the enormous gnarled trunk of the gingko tree which cast its huge branches over us. Surely, if its bole exceeded that of all others, its height must do the same. If the rim of the plateau was indeed the highest point, then why should this mighty tree not prove to be a watchtower which commanded the whole country? Now, ever since I ran wild as a lad in Ireland I have been a bold and skilled tree-climber. My comrades might be my masters on the rocks, but I knew that I would be supreme among those branches. Could I only get my legs on to the lowest of the giant off-shoots, then it would be strange indeed if I could not make my way to the top. My comrades were delighted at my idea.\n\n\"Our young friend,\" said Challenger, bunching up the red apples of his cheeks, \"is capable of acrobatic exertions which would be impossible to a man of a more solid, though possibly of a more commanding, appearance. I applaud his resolution.\"\n\n\"By George, young fellah, you've put your hand on it!\" said Lord John, clapping me on the back. \"How we never came to think of it before I can't imagine! There's not more than an hour of daylight left, but if you take your notebook you may be able to get some rough sketch of the place. If we put these three ammunition cases under the branch, I will soon hoist you on to it.\"\n\nHe stood on the boxes while I faced the trunk, and was gently raising me when Challenger sprang forward and gave me such a thrust with his huge hand that he fairly shot me into the tree. With both arms clasping the branch, I scrambled hard with my feet until I had worked, first my body, and then my knees, onto it. There were three excellent off-shoots, like huge rungs of a ladder, above my head, and a tangle of convenient branches beyond, so that I clambered onwards with such speed that I soon lost sight of the ground and had nothing but foliage beneath me. Now and then I encountered a check, and once I had to shin up a creeper for eight or ten feet, but I made excellent progress, and the booming of Challenger's voice seemed to be a great distance beneath me. The tree was, however, enormous, and, looking upwards, I could see no thinning of the leaves above my head. There was some thick, bush-like clump which seemed to be a parasite upon a branch up which I was swarming. I leaned my head round it in order to see what was beyond, and I nearly fell out of the tree in my surprise and horror at what I saw.\n\nA face was gazing into mine\u2014at the distance of only a foot or two. The creature that owned it had been crouching behind the parasite, and had looked round it at the same instant that I did. It was a human face\u2014or at least it was far more human than any monkey's that I have ever seen. It was long, whitish, and blotched with pimples, the nose flattened, and the lower jaw projecting, with a bristle of coarse whiskers round the chin. The eyes, which were under thick and heavy brows, were bestial and ferocious, and as it opened its mouth to snarl what sounded like a curse at me I observed that it had curved, sharp canine teeth. For an instant I read hatred and menace in the evil eyes. Then, as quick as a flash, came an expression of overpowering fear. There was a crash of broken boughs as it dived wildly down into the tangle of green. I caught a glimpse of a hairy body like that of a reddish pig, and then it was gone amid a swirl of leaves and branches.\n\n\"What's the matter?\" shouted Roxton from below. \"Anything wrong with you?\"\n\n\"Did you see it?\" I cried, with my arms round the branch and all my nerves tingling.\n\n\"We heard a row, as if your foot had slipped. What was it?\"\n\nI was so shocked at the sudden and strange appearance of this ape-man that I hesitated whether I should not climb down again and tell my experience to my companions. But I was already so far up the great tree that it seemed a humiliation to return without having carried out my mission.\n\nAfter a long pause, therefore, to recover my breath and my courage, I continued my ascent. Once I put my weight upon a rotten branch and swung for a few seconds by my hands, but in the main it was all easy climbing. Gradually the leaves thinned around me, and I was aware, from the wind upon my face, that I had topped all the trees of the forest. I was determined, however, not to look about me before I had reached the very highest point, so I scrambled on until I had got so far that the topmost branch was bending beneath my weight. There I settled into a convenient fork, and, balancing myself securely, I found myself looking down at a most wonderful panorama of this strange country in which we found ourselves.\n\nThe sun was just above the western skyline, and the evening was a particularly bright and clear one, so that the whole extent of the plateau was visible beneath me. It was, as seen from this height, of an oval contour, with a breadth of about thirty miles and a width of twenty. Its general shape was that of a shallow funnel, all the sides sloping down to a considerable lake in the center. This lake may have been ten miles in circumference, and lay very green and beautiful in the evening light, with a thick fringe of reeds at its edges, and with its surface broken by several yellow sandbanks, which gleamed golden in the mellow sunshine. A number of long dark objects, which were too large for alligators and too long for canoes, lay upon the edges of these patches of sand. With my glass I could clearly see that they were alive, but what their nature might be I could not imagine.\n\nFrom the side of the plateau on which we were, slopes of woodland, with occasional glades, stretched down for five or six miles to the central lake. I could see at my very feet the glade of the iguanodons, and farther off was a round opening in the trees which marked the swamp of the pterodactyls. On the side facing me, however, the plateau presented a very different aspect. There the basalt cliffs of the outside were reproduced upon the inside, forming an escarpment about two hundred feet high, with a woody slope beneath it. Along the base of these red cliffs, some distance above the ground, I could see a number of dark holes through the glass, which I conjectured to be the mouths of caves. At the opening of one of these something white was shimmering, but I was unable to make out what it was. I sat charting the country until the sun had set and it was so dark that I could no longer distinguish details. Then I climbed down to my companions waiting for me so eagerly at the bottom of the great tree. For once I was the hero of the expedition. Alone I had thought of it, and alone I had done it; and here was the chart which would save us a month's blind groping among unknown dangers. Each of them shook me solemnly by the hand.\n\nBut before they discussed the details of my map I had to tell them of my encounter with the ape-man among the branches.\n\n\"He has been there all the time,\" said I.\n\n\"How do you know that?\" asked Lord John.\n\n\"Because I have never been without that feeling that something malevolent was watching us. I mentioned it to you, Professor Challenger.\"\n\n\"Our young friend certainly said something of the kind. He is also the one among us who is endowed with that Celtic temperament which would make him sensitive to such impressions.\"\n\n\"The whole theory of telepathy\u2014\" began Summerlee, filling his pipe.\n\n\"Is too vast to be now discussed,\" said Challenger, with decision. \"Tell me, now,\" he added, with the air of a bishop addressing a Sunday-school, \"did you happen to observe whether the creature could cross its thumb over its palm?\"\n\n\"No, indeed.\"\n\n\"Had it a tail?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Was the foot prehensile?\"\n\n\"I do not think it could have made off so fast among the branches if it could not get a grip with its feet.\"\n\n\"In South America there are, if my memory serves me\u2014you will check the observation, Professor Summerlee\u2014some thirty-six species of monkeys, but the anthropoid ape is unknown. It is clear, however, that he exists in this country, and that he is not the hairy, gorilla-like variety, which is never seen out of Africa or the East.\" (I was inclined to interpolate, as I looked at him, that I had seen his first cousin in Kensington.) \"This is a whiskered and colorless type, the latter characteristic pointing to the fact that he spends his days in arboreal seclusion. The question which we have to face is whether he approaches more closely to the ape or the man. In the latter case, he may well approximate to what the vulgar have called the 'missing link.' The solution of this problem is our immediate duty.\"\n\n\"It is nothing of the sort,\" said Summerlee, abruptly. \"Now that, through the intelligence and activity of Mr. Malone\" (I cannot help quoting the words), \"we have got our chart, our one and only immediate duty is to get ourselves safe and sound out of this awful place.\"\n\n\"The flesh-pots of civilization,\" groaned Challenger.\n\n\"The ink-pots of civilization, sir. It is our task to put on record what we have seen, and to leave the further exploration to others. You all agreed as much before Mr. Malone got us the chart.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Challenger, \"I admit that my mind will be more at ease when I am assured that the result of our expedition has been conveyed to our friends. How we are to get down from this place I have not as yet an idea. I have never yet encountered any problem, however, which my inventive brain was unable to solve, and I promise you that to-morrow I will turn my attention to the question of our descent.\" And so the matter was allowed to rest.\n\nBut that evening, by the light of the fire and of a single candle, the first map of the lost world was elaborated. Every detail which I had roughly noted from my watchtower was drawn out in its relative place. Challenger's pencil hovered over the great blank which marked the lake.\n\n\"What shall we call it?\" he asked.\n\n\"Why should you not take the chance of perpetuating your own name?\" said Summerlee, with his usual touch of acidity.\n\n\"I trust, sir, that my name will have other and more personal claims upon posterity,\" said Challenger, severely. \"Any ignoramus can hand down his worthless memory by imposing it upon a mountain or a river. I need no such monument.\"\n\nSummerlee, with a twisted smile, was about to make some fresh assault when Lord John hastened to intervene.\n\n\"It's up to you, young fellah, to name the lake,\" said he. \"You saw it first, and, by George, if you choose to put 'Lake Malone' on it, no one has a better right.\"\n\n\"By all means. Let our young friend give it a name,\" said Challenger.\n\n\"Then,\" said I, blushing, I dare say, as I said it, \"let it be named Lake Gladys.\"\n\n\"Don't you think the Central Lake would be more descriptive?\" remarked Summerlee.\n\n\"I should prefer Lake Gladys.\"\n\nChallenger looked at me sympathetically, and shook his great head in mock disapproval. \"Boys will be boys,\" said he. \"Lake Gladys let it be.\"" + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 12", + "text": "\"It was Dreadful in the Forest\"\n\nI have said\u2014or perhaps I have not said, for my memory plays me sad tricks these days\u2014that I glowed with pride when three such men as my comrades thanked me for having saved, or at least greatly helped, the situation. As the youngster of the party, not merely in years, but in experience, character, knowledge, and all that goes to make a man, I had been overshadowed from the first. And now I was coming into my own. I warmed at the thought. Alas! for the pride which goes before a fall! That little glow of self-satisfaction, that added measure of self-confidence, were to lead me on that very night to the most dreadful experience of my life, ending with a shock which turns my heart sick when I think of it.\n\nIt came about in this way. I had been unduly excited by the adventure of the tree, and sleep seemed to be impossible. Summerlee was on guard, sitting hunched over our small fire, a quaint, angular figure, his rifle across his knees and his pointed, goat-like beard wagging with each weary nod of his head. Lord John lay silent, wrapped in the South American poncho which he wore, while Challenger snored with a roll and rattle which reverberated through the woods. The full moon was shining brightly, and the air was crisply cold. What a night for a walk! And then suddenly came the thought, \"Why not?\" Suppose I stole softly away, suppose I made my way down to the central lake, suppose I was back at breakfast with some record of the place\u2014would I not in that case be thought an even more worthy associate? Then, if Summerlee carried the day and some means of escape were found, we should return to London with first-hand knowledge of the central mystery of the plateau, to which I alone, of all men, would have penetrated. I thought of Gladys, with her \"There are heroisms all round us.\" I seemed to hear her voice as she said it. I thought also of McArdle. What a three column article for the paper! What a foundation for a career! A correspondentship in the next great war might be within my reach. I clutched at a gun\u2014my pockets were full of cartridges\u2014and, parting the thorn bushes at the gate of our zareba, quickly slipped out. My last glance showed me the unconscious Summerlee, most futile of sentinels, still nodding away like a queer mechanical toy in front of the smouldering fire.\n\nI had not gone a hundred yards before I deeply repented my rashness. I may have said somewhere in this chronicle that I am too imaginative to be a really courageous man, but that I have an overpowering fear of seeming afraid. This was the power which now carried me onwards. I simply could not slink back with nothing done. Even if my comrades should not have missed me, and should never know of my weakness, there would still remain some intolerable self-shame in my own soul. And yet I shuddered at the position in which I found myself, and would have given all I possessed at that moment to have been honorably free of the whole business.\n\nIt was dreadful in the forest. The trees grew so thickly and their foliage spread so widely that I could see nothing of the moonlight save that here and there the high branches made a tangled filigree against the starry sky. As the eyes became more used to the obscurity one learned that there were different degrees of darkness among the trees\u2014that some were dimly visible, while between and among them there were coal-black shadowed patches, like the mouths of caves, from which I shrank in horror as I passed. I thought of the despairing yell of the tortured iguanodon\u2014that dreadful cry which had echoed through the woods. I thought, too, of the glimpse I had in the light of Lord John's torch of that bloated, warty, blood-slavering muzzle. Even now I was on its hunting-ground. At any instant it might spring upon me from the shadows\u2014this nameless and horrible monster. I stopped, and, picking a cartridge from my pocket, I opened the breech of my gun. As I touched the lever my heart leaped within me. It was the shot-gun, not the rifle, which I had taken!\n\nAgain the impulse to return swept over me. Here, surely, was a most excellent reason for my failure\u2014one for which no one would think the less of me. But again the foolish pride fought against that very word. I could not\u2014must not\u2014fail. After all, my rifle would probably have been as useless as a shot-gun against such dangers as I might meet. If I were to go back to camp to change my weapon I could hardly expect to enter and to leave again without being seen. In that case there would be explanations, and my attempt would no longer be all my own. After a little hesitation, then, I screwed up my courage and continued upon my way, my useless gun under my arm.\n\nThe darkness of the forest had been alarming, but even worse was the white, still flood of moonlight in the open glade of the iguanodons. Hid among the bushes, I looked out at it. None of the great brutes were in sight. Perhaps the tragedy which had befallen one of them had driven them from their feeding-ground. In the misty, silvery night I could see no sign of any living thing. Taking courage, therefore, I slipped rapidly across it, and among the jungle on the farther side I picked up once again the brook which was my guide. It was a cheery companion, gurgling and chuckling as it ran, like the dear old trout-stream in the West Country where I have fished at night in my boyhood. So long as I followed it down I must come to the lake, and so long as I followed it back I must come to the camp. Often I had to lose sight of it on account of the tangled brushwood, but I was always within earshot of its tinkle and splash.\n\nAs one descended the slope the woods became thinner, and bushes, with occasional high trees, took the place of the forest. I could make good progress, therefore, and I could see without being seen. I passed close to the pterodactyl swamp, and as I did so, with a dry, crisp, leathery rattle of wings, one of these great creatures\u2014it was twenty feet at least from tip to tip\u2014rose up from somewhere near me and soared into the air. As it passed across the face of the moon the light shone clearly through the membranous wings, and it looked like a flying skeleton against the white, tropical radiance. I crouched low among the bushes, for I knew from past experience that with a single cry the creature could bring a hundred of its loathsome mates about my ears. It was not until it had settled again that I dared to steal onwards upon my journey.\n\nThe night had been exceedingly still, but as I advanced I became conscious of a low, rumbling sound, a continuous murmur, somewhere in front of me. This grew louder as I proceeded, until at last it was clearly quite close to me. When I stood still the sound was constant, so that it seemed to come from some stationary cause. It was like a boiling kettle or the bubbling of some great pot. Soon I came upon the source of it, for in the center of a small clearing I found a lake\u2014or a pool, rather, for it was not larger than the basin of the Trafalgar Square fountain\u2014of some black, pitch-like stuff, the surface of which rose and fell in great blisters of bursting gas. The air above it was shimmering with heat, and the ground round was so hot that I could hardly bear to lay my hand on it. It was clear that the great volcanic outburst which had raised this strange plateau so many years ago had not yet entirely spent its forces. Blackened rocks and mounds of lava I had already seen everywhere peeping out from amid the luxuriant vegetation which draped them, but this asphalt pool in the jungle was the first sign that we had of actual existing activity on the slopes of the ancient crater. I had no time to examine it further for I had need to hurry if I were to be back in camp in the morning.\n\nIt was a fearsome walk, and one which will be with me so long as memory holds. In the great moonlight clearings I slunk along among the shadows on the margin. In the jungle I crept forward, stopping with a beating heart whenever I heard, as I often did, the crash of breaking branches as some wild beast went past. Now and then great shadows loomed up for an instant and were gone\u2014great, silent shadows which seemed to prowl upon padded feet. How often I stopped with the intention of returning, and yet every time my pride conquered my fear, and sent me on again until my object should be attained.\n\nAt last (my watch showed that it was one in the morning) I saw the gleam of water amid the openings of the jungle, and ten minutes later I was among the reeds upon the borders of the central lake. I was exceedingly dry, so I lay down and took a long draught of its waters, which were fresh and cold. There was a broad pathway with many tracks upon it at the spot which I had found, so that it was clearly one of the drinking-places of the animals. Close to the water's edge there was a huge isolated block of lava. Up this I climbed, and, lying on the top, I had an excellent view in every direction.\n\nThe first thing which I saw filled me with amazement. When I described the view from the summit of the great tree, I said that on the farther cliff I could see a number of dark spots, which appeared to be the mouths of caves. Now, as I looked up at the same cliffs, I saw discs of light in every direction, ruddy, clearly-defined patches, like the port-holes of a liner in the darkness. For a moment I thought it was the lava-glow from some volcanic action; but this could not be so. Any volcanic action would surely be down in the hollow and not high among the rocks. What, then, was the alternative? It was wonderful, and yet it must surely be. These ruddy spots must be the reflection of fires within the caves\u2014fires which could only be lit by the hand of man. There were human beings, then, upon the plateau. How gloriously my expedition was justified! Here was news indeed for us to bear back with us to London!\n\nFor a long time I lay and watched these red, quivering blotches of light. I suppose they were ten miles off from me, yet even at that distance one could observe how, from time to time, they twinkled or were obscured as someone passed before them. What would I not have given to be able to crawl up to them, to peep in, and to take back some word to my comrades as to the appearance and character of the race who lived in so strange a place! It was out of the question for the moment, and yet surely we could not leave the plateau until we had some definite knowledge upon the point.\n\nLake Gladys\u2014my own lake\u2014lay like a sheet of quicksilver before me, with a reflected moon shining brightly in the center of it. It was shallow, for in many places I saw low sandbanks protruding above the water. Everywhere upon the still surface I could see signs of life, sometimes mere rings and ripples in the water, sometimes the gleam of a great silver-sided fish in the air, sometimes the arched, slate-colored back of some passing monster. Once upon a yellow sandbank I saw a creature like a huge swan, with a clumsy body and a high, flexible neck, shuffling about upon the margin. Presently it plunged in, and for some time I could see the arched neck and darting head undulating over the water. Then it dived, and I saw it no more.\n\nMy attention was soon drawn away from these distant sights and brought back to what was going on at my very feet. Two creatures like large armadillos had come down to the drinking-place, and were squatting at the edge of the water, their long, flexible tongues like red ribbons shooting in and out as they lapped. A huge deer, with branching horns, a magnificent creature which carried itself like a king, came down with its doe and two fawns and drank beside the armadillos. No such deer exist anywhere else upon earth, for the moose or elks which I have seen would hardly have reached its shoulders. Presently it gave a warning snort, and was off with its family among the reeds, while the armadillos also scuttled for shelter. A new-comer, a most monstrous animal, was coming down the path.\n\nFor a moment I wondered where I could have seen that ungainly shape, that arched back with triangular fringes along it, that strange bird-like head held close to the ground. Then it came back, to me. It was the stegosaurus\u2014the very creature which Maple White had preserved in his sketch-book, and which had been the first object which arrested the attention of Challenger! There he was\u2014perhaps the very specimen which the American artist had encountered. The ground shook beneath his tremendous weight, and his gulpings of water resounded through the still night. For five minutes he was so close to my rock that by stretching out my hand I could have touched the hideous waving hackles upon his back. Then he lumbered away and was lost among the boulders.\n\nLooking at my watch, I saw that it was half-past two o'clock, and high time, therefore, that I started upon my homeward journey. There was no difficulty about the direction in which I should return for all along I had kept the little brook upon my left, and it opened into the central lake within a stone's-throw of the boulder upon which I had been lying. I set off, therefore, in high spirits, for I felt that I had done good work and was bringing back a fine budget of news for my companions. Foremost of all, of course, were the sight of the fiery caves and the certainty that some troglodytic race inhabited them. But besides that I could speak from experience of the central lake. I could testify that it was full of strange creatures, and I had seen several land forms of primeval life which we had not before encountered. I reflected as I walked that few men in the world could have spent a stranger night or added more to human knowledge in the course of it.\n\nI was plodding up the slope, turning these thoughts over in my mind, and had reached a point which may have been half-way to home, when my mind was brought back to my own position by a strange noise behind me. It was something between a snore and a growl, low, deep, and exceedingly menacing. Some strange creature was evidently near me, but nothing could be seen, so I hastened more rapidly upon my way. I had traversed half a mile or so when suddenly the sound was repeated, still behind me, but louder and more menacing than before. My heart stood still within me as it flashed across me that the beast, whatever it was, must surely be after ME. My skin grew cold and my hair rose at the thought. That these monsters should tear each other to pieces was a part of the strange struggle for existence, but that they should turn upon modern man, that they should deliberately track and hunt down the predominant human, was a staggering and fearsome thought. I remembered again the blood-beslobbered face which we had seen in the glare of Lord John's torch, like some horrible vision from the deepest circle of Dante's hell. With my knees shaking beneath me, I stood and glared with starting eyes down the moonlit path which lay behind me. All was quiet as in a dream landscape. Silver clearings and the black patches of the bushes\u2014nothing else could I see. Then from out of the silence, imminent and threatening, there came once more that low, throaty croaking, far louder and closer than before. There could no longer be a doubt. Something was on my trail, and was closing in upon me every minute.\n\nI stood like a man paralyzed, still staring at the ground which I had traversed. Then suddenly I saw it. There was movement among the bushes at the far end of the clearing which I had just traversed. A great dark shadow disengaged itself and hopped out into the clear moonlight. I say \"hopped\" advisedly, for the beast moved like a kangaroo, springing along in an erect position upon its powerful hind legs, while its front ones were held bent in front of it. It was of enormous size and power, like an erect elephant, but its movements, in spite of its bulk, were exceedingly alert. For a moment, as I saw its shape, I hoped that it was an iguanodon, which I knew to be harmless, but, ignorant as I was, I soon saw that this was a very different creature. Instead of the gentle, deer-shaped head of the great three-toed leaf-eater, this beast had a broad, squat, toad-like face like that which had alarmed us in our camp. His ferocious cry and the horrible energy of his pursuit both assured me that this was surely one of the great flesh-eating dinosaurs, the most terrible beasts which have ever walked this earth. As the huge brute loped along it dropped forward upon its forepaws and brought its nose to the ground every twenty yards or so. It was smelling out my trail. Sometimes, for an instant, it was at fault. Then it would catch it up again and come bounding swiftly along the path I had taken.\n\nEven now when I think of that nightmare the sweat breaks out upon my brow. What could I do? My useless fowling-piece was in my hand. What help could I get from that? I looked desperately round for some rock or tree, but I was in a bushy jungle with nothing higher than a sapling within sight, while I knew that the creature behind me could tear down an ordinary tree as though it were a reed. My only possible chance lay in flight. I could not move swiftly over the rough, broken ground, but as I looked round me in despair I saw a well-marked, hard-beaten path which ran across in front of me. We had seen several of the sort, the runs of various wild beasts, during our expeditions. Along this I could perhaps hold my own, for I was a fast runner, and in excellent condition. Flinging away my useless gun, I set myself to do such a half-mile as I have never done before or since. My limbs ached, my chest heaved, I felt that my throat would burst for want of air, and yet with that horror behind me I ran and I ran and ran. At last I paused, hardly able to move. For a moment I thought that I had thrown him off. The path lay still behind me. And then suddenly, with a crashing and a rending, a thudding of giant feet and a panting of monster lungs the beast was upon me once more. He was at my very heels. I was lost.\n\nMadman that I was to linger so long before I fled! Up to then he had hunted by scent, and his movement was slow. But he had actually seen me as I started to run. From then onwards he had hunted by sight, for the path showed him where I had gone. Now, as he came round the curve, he was springing in great bounds. The moonlight shone upon his huge projecting eyes, the row of enormous teeth in his open mouth, and the gleaming fringe of claws upon his short, powerful forearms. With a scream of terror I turned and rushed wildly down the path. Behind me the thick, gasping breathing of the creature sounded louder and louder. His heavy footfall was beside me. Every instant I expected to feel his grip upon my back. And then suddenly there came a crash\u2014I was falling through space, and everything beyond was darkness and rest.\n\nAs I emerged from my unconsciousness\u2014which could not, I think, have lasted more than a few minutes\u2014I was aware of a most dreadful and penetrating smell. Putting out my hand in the darkness I came upon something which felt like a huge lump of meat, while my other hand closed upon a large bone. Up above me there was a circle of starlit sky, which showed me that I was lying at the bottom of a deep pit. Slowly I staggered to my feet and felt myself all over. I was stiff and sore from head to foot, but there was no limb which would not move, no joint which would not bend. As the circumstances of my fall came back into my confused brain, I looked up in terror, expecting to see that dreadful head silhouetted against the paling sky. There was no sign of the monster, however, nor could I hear any sound from above. I began to walk slowly round, therefore, feeling in every direction to find out what this strange place could be into which I had been so opportunely precipitated.\n\nIt was, as I have said, a pit, with sharply-sloping walls and a level bottom about twenty feet across. This bottom was littered with great gobbets of flesh, most of which was in the last state of putridity. The atmosphere was poisonous and horrible. After tripping and stumbling over these lumps of decay, I came suddenly against something hard, and I found that an upright post was firmly fixed in the center of the hollow. It was so high that I could not reach the top of it with my hand, and it appeared to be covered with grease.\n\nSuddenly I remembered that I had a tin box of wax-vestas in my pocket. Striking one of them, I was able at last to form some opinion of this place into which I had fallen. There could be no question as to its nature. It was a trap\u2014made by the hand of man. The post in the center, some nine feet long, was sharpened at the upper end, and was black with the stale blood of the creatures who had been impaled upon it. The remains scattered about were fragments of the victims, which had been cut away in order to clear the stake for the next who might blunder in. I remembered that Challenger had declared that man could not exist upon the plateau, since with his feeble weapons he could not hold his own against the monsters who roamed over it. But now it was clear enough how it could be done. In their narrow-mouthed caves the natives, whoever they might be, had refuges into which the huge saurians could not penetrate, while with their developed brains they were capable of setting such traps, covered with branches, across the paths which marked the run of the animals as would destroy them in spite of all their strength and activity. Man was always the master.\n\nThe sloping wall of the pit was not difficult for an active man to climb, but I hesitated long before I trusted myself within reach of the dreadful creature which had so nearly destroyed me. How did I know that he was not lurking in the nearest clump of bushes, waiting for my reappearance? I took heart, however, as I recalled a conversation between Challenger and Summerlee upon the habits of the great saurians. Both were agreed that the monsters were practically brainless, that there was no room for reason in their tiny cranial cavities, and that if they have disappeared from the rest of the world it was assuredly on account of their own stupidity, which made it impossible for them to adapt themselves to changing conditions.\n\nTo lie in wait for me now would mean that the creature had appreciated what had happened to me, and this in turn would argue some power connecting cause and effect. Surely it was more likely that a brainless creature, acting solely by vague predatory instinct, would give up the chase when I disappeared, and, after a pause of astonishment, would wander away in search of some other prey? I clambered to the edge of the pit and looked over. The stars were fading, the sky was whitening, and the cold wind of morning blew pleasantly upon my face. I could see or hear nothing of my enemy. Slowly I climbed out and sat for a while upon the ground, ready to spring back into my refuge if any danger should appear. Then, reassured by the absolute stillness and by the growing light, I took my courage in both hands and stole back along the path which I had come. Some distance down it I picked up my gun, and shortly afterwards struck the brook which was my guide. So, with many a frightened backward glance, I made for home.\n\nAnd suddenly there came something to remind me of my absent companions. In the clear, still morning air there sounded far away the sharp, hard note of a single rifle-shot. I paused and listened, but there was nothing more. For a moment I was shocked at the thought that some sudden danger might have befallen them. But then a simpler and more natural explanation came to my mind. It was now broad daylight. No doubt my absence had been noticed. They had imagined, that I was lost in the woods, and had fired this shot to guide me home. It is true that we had made a strict resolution against firing, but if it seemed to them that I might be in danger they would not hesitate. It was for me now to hurry on as fast as possible, and so to reassure them.\n\nI was weary and spent, so my progress was not so fast as I wished; but at last I came into regions which I knew. There was the swamp of the pterodactyls upon my left; there in front of me was the glade of the iguanodons. Now I was in the last belt of trees which separated me from Fort Challenger. I raised my voice in a cheery shout to allay their fears. No answering greeting came back to me. My heart sank at that ominous stillness. I quickened my pace into a run. The zareba rose before me, even as I had left it, but the gate was open. I rushed in. In the cold, morning light it was a fearful sight which met my eyes. Our effects were scattered in wild confusion over the ground; my comrades had disappeared, and close to the smouldering ashes of our fire the grass was stained crimson with a hideous pool of blood.\n\nI was so stunned by this sudden shock that for a time I must have nearly lost my reason. I have a vague recollection, as one remembers a bad dream, of rushing about through the woods all round the empty camp, calling wildly for my companions. No answer came back from the silent shadows. The horrible thought that I might never see them again, that I might find myself abandoned all alone in that dreadful place, with no possible way of descending into the world below, that I might live and die in that nightmare country, drove me to desperation. I could have torn my hair and beaten my head in my despair. Only now did I realize how I had learned to lean upon my companions, upon the serene self-confidence of Challenger, and upon the masterful, humorous coolness of Lord John Roxton. Without them I was like a child in the dark, helpless and powerless. I did not know which way to turn or what I should do first.\n\nAfter a period, during which I sat in bewilderment, I set myself to try and discover what sudden misfortune could have befallen my companions. The whole disordered appearance of the camp showed that there had been some sort of attack, and the rifle-shot no doubt marked the time when it had occurred. That there should have been only one shot showed that it had been all over in an instant. The rifles still lay upon the ground, and one of them\u2014Lord John's\u2014had the empty cartridge in the breech. The blankets of Challenger and of Summerlee beside the fire suggested that they had been asleep at the time. The cases of ammunition and of food were scattered about in a wild litter, together with our unfortunate cameras and plate-carriers, but none of them were missing. On the other hand, all the exposed provisions\u2014and I remembered that there were a considerable quantity of them\u2014were gone. They were animals, then, and not natives, who had made the inroad, for surely the latter would have left nothing behind.\n\nBut if animals, or some single terrible animal, then what had become of my comrades? A ferocious beast would surely have destroyed them and left their remains. It is true that there was that one hideous pool of blood, which told of violence. Such a monster as had pursued me during the night could have carried away a victim as easily as a cat would a mouse. In that case the others would have followed in pursuit. But then they would assuredly have taken their rifles with them. The more I tried to think it out with my confused and weary brain the less could I find any plausible explanation. I searched round in the forest, but could see no tracks which could help me to a conclusion. Once I lost myself, and it was only by good luck, and after an hour of wandering, that I found the camp once more.\n\nSuddenly a thought came to me and brought some little comfort to my heart. I was not absolutely alone in the world. Down at the bottom of the cliff, and within call of me, was waiting the faithful Zambo. I went to the edge of the plateau and looked over. Sure enough, he was squatting among his blankets beside his fire in his little camp. But, to my amazement, a second man was seated in front of him. For an instant my heart leaped for joy, as I thought that one of my comrades had made his way safely down. But a second glance dispelled the hope. The rising sun shone red upon the man's skin. He was an Indian. I shouted loudly and waved my handkerchief. Presently Zambo looked up, waved his hand, and turned to ascend the pinnacle. In a short time he was standing close to me and listening with deep distress to the story which I told him.\n\n\"Devil got them for sure, Massa Malone,\" said he. \"You got into the devil's country, sah, and he take you all to himself. You take advice, Massa Malone, and come down quick, else he get you as well.\"\n\n\"How can I come down, Zambo?\"\n\n\"You get creepers from trees, Massa Malone. Throw them over here. I make fast to this stump, and so you have bridge.\"\n\n\"We have thought of that. There are no creepers here which could bear us.\"\n\n\"Send for ropes, Massa Malone.\"\n\n\"Who can I send, and where?\"\n\n\"Send to Indian villages, sah. Plenty hide rope in Indian village. Indian down below; send him.\"\n\n\"Who is he?\n\n\"One of our Indians. Other ones beat him and take away his pay. He come back to us. Ready now to take letter, bring rope,\u2014anything.\"\n\nTo take a letter! Why not? Perhaps he might bring help; but in any case he would ensure that our lives were not spent for nothing, and that news of all that we had won for Science should reach our friends at home. I had two completed letters already waiting. I would spend the day in writing a third, which would bring my experiences absolutely up to date. The Indian could bear this back to the world. I ordered Zambo, therefore, to come again in the evening, and I spent my miserable and lonely day in recording my own adventures of the night before. I also drew up a note, to be given to any white merchant or captain of a steam-boat whom the Indian could find, imploring them to see that ropes were sent to us, since our lives must depend upon it. These documents I threw to Zambo in the evening, and also my purse, which contained three English sovereigns. These were to be given to the Indian, and he was promised twice as much if he returned with the ropes.\n\nSo now you will understand, my dear Mr. McArdle, how this communication reaches you, and you will also know the truth, in case you never hear again from your unfortunate correspondent. To-night I am too weary and too depressed to make my plans. To-morrow I must think out some way by which I shall keep in touch with this camp, and yet search round for any traces of my unhappy friends." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 13", + "text": "\"A Sight which I shall Never Forget\"\n\nJust as the sun was setting upon that melancholy night I saw the lonely figure of the Indian upon the vast plain beneath me, and I watched him, our one faint hope of salvation, until he disappeared in the rising mists of evening which lay, rose-tinted from the setting sun, between the far-off river and me.\n\nIt was quite dark when I at last turned back to our stricken camp, and my last vision as I went was the red gleam of Zambo's fire, the one point of light in the wide world below, as was his faithful presence in my own shadowed soul. And yet I felt happier than I had done since this crushing blow had fallen upon me, for it was good to think that the world should know what we had done, so that at the worst our names should not perish with our bodies, but should go down to posterity associated with the result of our labors.\n\nIt was an awesome thing to sleep in that ill-fated camp; and yet it was even more unnerving to do so in the jungle. One or the other it must be. Prudence, on the one hand, warned me that I should remain on guard, but exhausted Nature, on the other, declared that I should do nothing of the kind. I climbed up on to a limb of the great gingko tree, but there was no secure perch on its rounded surface, and I should certainly have fallen off and broken my neck the moment I began to doze. I got down, therefore, and pondered over what I should do. Finally, I closed the door of the zareba, lit three separate fires in a triangle, and having eaten a hearty supper dropped off into a profound sleep, from which I had a strange and most welcome awakening. In the early morning, just as day was breaking, a hand was laid upon my arm, and starting up, with all my nerves in a tingle and my hand feeling for a rifle, I gave a cry of joy as in the cold gray light I saw Lord John Roxton kneeling beside me.\n\nIt was he\u2014and yet it was not he. I had left him calm in his bearing, correct in his person, prim in his dress. Now he was pale and wild-eyed, gasping as he breathed like one who has run far and fast. His gaunt face was scratched and bloody, his clothes were hanging in rags, and his hat was gone. I stared in amazement, but he gave me no chance for questions. He was grabbing at our stores all the time he spoke.\n\n\"Quick, young fellah! Quick!\" he cried. \"Every moment counts. Get the rifles, both of them. I have the other two. Now, all the cartridges you can gather. Fill up your pockets. Now, some food. Half a dozen tins will do. That's all right! Don't wait to talk or think. Get a move on, or we are done!\"\n\nStill half-awake, and unable to imagine what it all might mean, I found myself hurrying madly after him through the wood, a rifle under each arm and a pile of various stores in my hands. He dodged in and out through the thickest of the scrub until he came to a dense clump of brushwood. Into this he rushed, regardless of thorns, and threw himself into the heart of it, pulling me down by his side.\n\n\"There!\" he panted. \"I think we are safe here. They'll make for the camp as sure as fate. It will be their first idea. But this should puzzle 'em.\"\n\n\"What is it all?\" I asked, when I had got my breath. \"Where are the professors? And who is it that is after us?\"\n\n\"The ape-men,\" he cried. \"My God, what brutes! Don't raise your voice, for they have long ears\u2014sharp eyes, too, but no power of scent, so far as I could judge, so I don't think they can sniff us out. Where have you been, young fellah? You were well out of it.\"\n\nIn a few sentences I whispered what I had done.\n\n\"Pretty bad,\" said he, when he had heard of the dinosaur and the pit. \"It isn't quite the place for a rest cure. What? But I had no idea what its possibilities were until those devils got hold of us. The man-eatin' Papuans had me once, but they are Chesterfields compared to this crowd.\"\n\n\"How did it happen?\" I asked.\n\n\"It was in the early mornin'. Our learned friends were just stirrin'. Hadn't even begun to argue yet. Suddenly it rained apes. They came down as thick as apples out of a tree. They had been assemblin' in the dark, I suppose, until that great tree over our heads was heavy with them. I shot one of them through the belly, but before we knew where we were they had us spread-eagled on our backs. I call them apes, but they carried sticks and stones in their hands and jabbered talk to each other, and ended up by tyin' our hands with creepers, so they are ahead of any beast that I have seen in my wanderin's. Ape-men\u2014that's what they are\u2014Missin' Links, and I wish they had stayed missin'. They carried off their wounded comrade\u2014he was bleedin' like a pig\u2014and then they sat around us, and if ever I saw frozen murder it was in their faces. They were big fellows, as big as a man and a deal stronger. Curious glassy gray eyes they have, under red tufts, and they just sat and gloated and gloated. Challenger is no chicken, but even he was cowed. He managed to struggle to his feet, and yelled out at them to have done with it and get it over. I think he had gone a bit off his head at the suddenness of it, for he raged and cursed at them like a lunatic. If they had been a row of his favorite Pressmen he could not have slanged them worse.\"\n\n\"Well, what did they do?\" I was enthralled by the strange story which my companion was whispering into my ear, while all the time his keen eyes were shooting in every direction and his hand grasping his cocked rifle.\n\n\"I thought it was the end of us, but instead of that it started them on a new line. They all jabbered and chattered together. Then one of them stood out beside Challenger. You'll smile, young fellah, but 'pon my word they might have been kinsmen. I couldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. This old ape-man\u2014he was their chief\u2014was a sort of red Challenger, with every one of our friend's beauty points, only just a trifle more so. He had the short body, the big shoulders, the round chest, no neck, a great ruddy frill of a beard, the tufted eyebrows, the 'What do you want, damn you!' look about the eyes, and the whole catalogue. When the ape-man stood by Challenger and put his paw on his shoulder, the thing was complete. Summerlee was a bit hysterical, and he laughed till he cried. The ape-men laughed too\u2014or at least they put up the devil of a cacklin'\u2014and they set to work to drag us off through the forest. They wouldn't touch the guns and things\u2014thought them dangerous, I expect\u2014but they carried away all our loose food. Summerlee and I got some rough handlin' on the way\u2014there's my skin and my clothes to prove it\u2014for they took us a bee-line through the brambles, and their own hides are like leather. But Challenger was all right. Four of them carried him shoulder high, and he went like a Roman emperor. What's that?\"\n\nIt was a strange clicking noise in the distance not unlike castanets.\n\n\"There they go!\" said my companion, slipping cartridges into the second double barrelled \"Express.\" \"Load them all up, young fellah my lad, for we're not going to be taken alive, and don't you think it! That's the row they make when they are excited. By George! they'll have something to excite them if they put us up. The 'Last Stand of the Grays' won't be in it. 'With their rifles grasped in their stiffened hands, mid a ring of the dead and dyin',' as some fathead sings. Can you hear them now?\"\n\n\"Very far away.\"\n\n\"That little lot will do no good, but I expect their search parties are all over the wood. Well, I was telling you my tale of woe. They got us soon to this town of theirs\u2014about a thousand huts of branches and leaves in a great grove of trees near the edge of the cliff. It's three or four miles from here. The filthy beasts fingered me all over, and I feel as if I should never be clean again. They tied us up\u2014the fellow who handled me could tie like a bosun\u2014and there we lay with our toes up, beneath a tree, while a great brute stood guard over us with a club in his hand. When I say 'we' I mean Summerlee and myself. Old Challenger was up a tree, eatin' pines and havin' the time of his life. I'm bound to say that he managed to get some fruit to us, and with his own hands he loosened our bonds. If you'd seen him sitting up in that tree hob-nobbin' with his twin brother\u2014and singin' in that rollin' bass of his, 'Ring out, wild bells,' cause music of any kind seemed to put 'em in a good humor, you'd have smiled; but we weren't in much mood for laughin', as you can guess. They were inclined, within limits, to let him do what he liked, but they drew the line pretty sharply at us. It was a mighty consolation to us all to know that you were runnin' loose and had the archives in your keepin'.\n\n\"Well, now, young fellah, I'll tell you what will surprise you. You say you saw signs of men, and fires, traps, and the like. Well, we have seen the natives themselves. Poor devils they were, down-faced little chaps, and had enough to make them so. It seems that the humans hold one side of this plateau\u2014over yonder, where you saw the caves\u2014and the ape-men hold this side, and there is bloody war between them all the time. That's the situation, so far as I could follow it. Well, yesterday the ape-men got hold of a dozen of the humans and brought them in as prisoners. You never heard such a jabberin' and shriekin' in your life. The men were little red fellows, and had been bitten and clawed so that they could hardly walk. The ape-men put two of them to death there and then\u2014fairly pulled the arm off one of them\u2014it was perfectly beastly. Plucky little chaps they are, and hardly gave a squeak. But it turned us absolutely sick. Summerlee fainted, and even Challenger had as much as he could stand. I think they have cleared, don't you?\"\n\nWe listened intently, but nothing save the calling of the birds broke the deep peace of the forest. Lord Roxton went on with his story.\n\n\"I think you have had the escape of your life, young fellah my lad. It was catchin' those Indians that put you clean out of their heads, else they would have been back to the camp for you as sure as fate and gathered you in. Of course, as you said, they have been watchin' us from the beginnin' out of that tree, and they knew perfectly well that we were one short. However, they could think only of this new haul; so it was I, and not a bunch of apes, that dropped in on you in the morning. Well, we had a horrid business afterwards. My God! what a nightmare the whole thing is! You remember the great bristle of sharp canes down below where we found the skeleton of the American? Well, that is just under ape-town, and that's the jumpin'-off place of their prisoners. I expect there's heaps of skeletons there, if we looked for 'em. They have a sort of clear parade-ground on the top, and they make a proper ceremony about it. One by one the poor devils have to jump, and the game is to see whether they are merely dashed to pieces or whether they get skewered on the canes. They took us out to see it, and the whole tribe lined up on the edge. Four of the Indians jumped, and the canes went through 'em like knittin' needles through a pat of butter. No wonder we found that poor Yankee's skeleton with the canes growin' between his ribs. It was horrible\u2014but it was doocedly interestin' too. We were all fascinated to see them take the dive, even when we thought it would be our turn next on the spring-board.\n\n\"Well, it wasn't. They kept six of the Indians up for to-day\u2014that's how I understood it\u2014but I fancy we were to be the star performers in the show. Challenger might get off, but Summerlee and I were in the bill. Their language is more than half signs, and it was not hard to follow them. So I thought it was time we made a break for it. I had been plottin' it out a bit, and had one or two things clear in my mind. It was all on me, for Summerlee was useless and Challenger not much better. The only time they got together they got slangin' because they couldn't agree upon the scientific classification of these red-headed devils that had got hold of us. One said it was the dryopithecus of Java, the other said it was pithecanthropus. Madness, I call it\u2014Loonies, both. But, as I say, I had thought out one or two points that were helpful. One was that these brutes could not run as fast as a man in the open. They have short, bandy legs, you see, and heavy bodies. Even Challenger could give a few yards in a hundred to the best of them, and you or I would be a perfect Shrubb. Another point was that they knew nothin' about guns. I don't believe they ever understood how the fellow I shot came by his hurt. If we could get at our guns there was no sayin' what we could do.\n\n\"So I broke away early this mornin', gave my guard a kick in the tummy that laid him out, and sprinted for the camp. There I got you and the guns, and here we are.\"\n\n\"But the professors!\" I cried, in consternation.\n\n\"Well, we must just go back and fetch 'em. I couldn't bring 'em with me. Challenger was up the tree, and Summerlee was not fit for the effort. The only chance was to get the guns and try a rescue. Of course they may scupper them at once in revenge. I don't think they would touch Challenger, but I wouldn't answer for Summerlee. But they would have had him in any case. Of that I am certain. So I haven't made matters any worse by boltin'. But we are honor bound to go back and have them out or see it through with them. So you can make up your soul, young fellah my lad, for it will be one way or the other before evenin'.\"\n\nI have tried to imitate here Lord Roxton's jerky talk, his short, strong sentences, the half-humorous, half-reckless tone that ran through it all. But he was a born leader. As danger thickened his jaunty manner would increase, his speech become more racy, his cold eyes glitter into ardent life, and his Don Quixote moustache bristle with joyous excitement. His love of danger, his intense appreciation of the drama of an adventure\u2014all the more intense for being held tightly in\u2014his consistent view that every peril in life is a form of sport, a fierce game betwixt you and Fate, with Death as a forfeit, made him a wonderful companion at such hours. If it were not for our fears as to the fate of our companions, it would have been a positive joy to throw myself with such a man into such an affair. We were rising from our brushwood hiding-place when suddenly I felt his grip upon my arm.\n\n\"By George!\" he whispered, \"here they come!\"\n\nFrom where we lay we could look down a brown aisle, arched with green, formed by the trunks and branches. Along this a party of the ape-men were passing. They went in single file, with bent legs and rounded backs, their hands occasionally touching the ground, their heads turning to left and right as they trotted along. Their crouching gait took away from their height, but I should put them at five feet or so, with long arms and enormous chests. Many of them carried sticks, and at the distance they looked like a line of very hairy and deformed human beings. For a moment I caught this clear glimpse of them. Then they were lost among the bushes.\n\n\"Not this time,\" said Lord John, who had caught up his rifle. \"Our best chance is to lie quiet until they have given up the search. Then we shall see whether we can't get back to their town and hit 'em where it hurts most. Give 'em an hour and we'll march.\"\n\nWe filled in the time by opening one of our food tins and making sure of our breakfast. Lord Roxton had had nothing but some fruit since the morning before and ate like a starving man. Then, at last, our pockets bulging with cartridges and a rifle in each hand, we started off upon our mission of rescue. Before leaving it we carefully marked our little hiding-place among the brushwood and its bearing to Fort Challenger, that we might find it again if we needed it. We slunk through the bushes in silence until we came to the very edge of the cliff, close to the old camp. There we halted, and Lord John gave me some idea of his plans.\n\n\"So long as we are among the thick trees these swine are our masters,\" said he. \"They can see us and we cannot see them. But in the open it is different. There we can move faster than they. So we must stick to the open all we can. The edge of the plateau has fewer large trees than further inland. So that's our line of advance. Go slowly, keep your eyes open and your rifle ready. Above all, never let them get you prisoner while there is a cartridge left\u2014that's my last word to you, young fellah.\"\n\nWhen we reached the edge of the cliff I looked over and saw our good old black Zambo sitting smoking on a rock below us. I would have given a great deal to have hailed him and told him how we were placed, but it was too dangerous, lest we should be heard. The woods seemed to be full of the ape-men; again and again we heard their curious clicking chatter. At such times we plunged into the nearest clump of bushes and lay still until the sound had passed away. Our advance, therefore, was very slow, and two hours at least must have passed before I saw by Lord John's cautious movements that we must be close to our destination. He motioned to me to lie still, and he crawled forward himself. In a minute he was back again, his face quivering with eagerness.\n\n\"Come!\" said he. \"Come quick! I hope to the Lord we are not too late already!\"\n\nI found myself shaking with nervous excitement as I scrambled forward and lay down beside him, looking out through the bushes at a clearing which stretched before us.\n\nIt was a sight which I shall never forget until my dying day\u2014so weird, so impossible, that I do not know how I am to make you realize it, or how in a few years I shall bring myself to believe in it if I live to sit once more on a lounge in the Savage Club and look out on the drab solidity of the Embankment. I know that it will seem then to be some wild nightmare, some delirium of fever. Yet I will set it down now, while it is still fresh in my memory, and one at least, the man who lay in the damp grasses by my side, will know if I have lied.\n\nA wide, open space lay before us\u2014some hundreds of yards across\u2014all green turf and low bracken growing to the very edge of the cliff. Round this clearing there was a semicircle of trees with curious huts built of foliage piled one above the other among the branches. A rookery, with every nest a little house, would best convey the idea. The openings of these huts and the branches of the trees were thronged with a dense mob of ape-people, whom from their size I took to be the females and infants of the tribe. They formed the background of the picture, and were all looking out with eager interest at the same scene which fascinated and bewildered us.\n\nIn the open, and near the edge of the cliff, there had assembled a crowd of some hundred of these shaggy, red-haired creatures, many of them of immense size, and all of them horrible to look upon. There was a certain discipline among them, for none of them attempted to break the line which had been formed. In front there stood a small group of Indians\u2014little, clean-limbed, red fellows, whose skins glowed like polished bronze in the strong sunlight. A tall, thin white man was standing beside them, his head bowed, his arms folded, his whole attitude expressive of his horror and dejection. There was no mistaking the angular form of Professor Summerlee.\n\nIn front of and around this dejected group of prisoners were several ape-men, who watched them closely and made all escape impossible. Then, right out from all the others and close to the edge of the cliff, were two figures, so strange, and under other circumstances so ludicrous, that they absorbed my attention. The one was our comrade, Professor Challenger. The remains of his coat still hung in strips from his shoulders, but his shirt had been all torn out, and his great beard merged itself in the black tangle which covered his mighty chest. He had lost his hat, and his hair, which had grown long in our wanderings, was flying in wild disorder. A single day seemed to have changed him from the highest product of modern civilization to the most desperate savage in South America. Beside him stood his master, the king of the ape-men. In all things he was, as Lord John had said, the very image of our Professor, save that his coloring was red instead of black. The same short, broad figure, the same heavy shoulders, the same forward hang of the arms, the same bristling beard merging itself in the hairy chest. Only above the eyebrows, where the sloping forehead and low, curved skull of the ape-man were in sharp contrast to the broad brow and magnificent cranium of the European, could one see any marked difference. At every other point the king was an absurd parody of the Professor.\n\nAll this, which takes me so long to describe, impressed itself upon me in a few seconds. Then we had very different things to think of, for an active drama was in progress. Two of the ape-men had seized one of the Indians out of the group and dragged him forward to the edge of the cliff. The king raised his hand as a signal. They caught the man by his leg and arm, and swung him three times backwards and forwards with tremendous violence. Then, with a frightful heave they shot the poor wretch over the precipice. With such force did they throw him that he curved high in the air before beginning to drop. As he vanished from sight, the whole assembly, except the guards, rushed forward to the edge of the precipice, and there was a long pause of absolute silence, broken by a mad yell of delight. They sprang about, tossing their long, hairy arms in the air and howling with exultation. Then they fell back from the edge, formed themselves again into line, and waited for the next victim.\n\nThis time it was Summerlee. Two of his guards caught him by the wrists and pulled him brutally to the front. His thin figure and long limbs struggled and fluttered like a chicken being dragged from a coop. Challenger had turned to the king and waved his hands frantically before him. He was begging, pleading, imploring for his comrade's life. The ape-man pushed him roughly aside and shook his head. It was the last conscious movement he was to make upon earth. Lord John's rifle cracked, and the king sank down, a tangled red sprawling thing, upon the ground.\n\n\"Shoot into the thick of them! Shoot! sonny, shoot!\" cried my companion.\n\nThere are strange red depths in the soul of the most commonplace man. I am tenderhearted by nature, and have found my eyes moist many a time over the scream of a wounded hare. Yet the blood lust was on me now. I found myself on my feet emptying one magazine, then the other, clicking open the breech to re-load, snapping it to again, while cheering and yelling with pure ferocity and joy of slaughter as I did so. With our four guns the two of us made a horrible havoc. Both the guards who held Summerlee were down, and he was staggering about like a drunken man in his amazement, unable to realize that he was a free man. The dense mob of ape-men ran about in bewilderment, marveling whence this storm of death was coming or what it might mean. They waved, gesticulated, screamed, and tripped up over those who had fallen. Then, with a sudden impulse, they all rushed in a howling crowd to the trees for shelter, leaving the ground behind them spotted with their stricken comrades. The prisoners were left for the moment standing alone in the middle of the clearing.\n\nChallenger's quick brain had grasped the situation. He seized the bewildered Summerlee by the arm, and they both ran towards us. Two of their guards bounded after them and fell to two bullets from Lord John. We ran forward into the open to meet our friends, and pressed a loaded rifle into the hands of each. But Summerlee was at the end of his strength. He could hardly totter. Already the ape-men were recovering from their panic. They were coming through the brushwood and threatening to cut us off. Challenger and I ran Summerlee along, one at each of his elbows, while Lord John covered our retreat, firing again and again as savage heads snarled at us out of the bushes. For a mile or more the chattering brutes were at our very heels. Then the pursuit slackened, for they learned our power and would no longer face that unerring rifle. When we had at last reached the camp, we looked back and found ourselves alone.\n\nSo it seemed to us; and yet we were mistaken. We had hardly closed the thornbush door of our zareba, clasped each other's hands, and thrown ourselves panting upon the ground beside our spring, when we heard a patter of feet and then a gentle, plaintive crying from outside our entrance. Lord Roxton rushed forward, rifle in hand, and threw it open. There, prostrate upon their faces, lay the little red figures of the four surviving Indians, trembling with fear of us and yet imploring our protection. With an expressive sweep of his hands one of them pointed to the woods around them, and indicated that they were full of danger. Then, darting forward, he threw his arms round Lord John's legs, and rested his face upon them.\n\n\"By George!\" cried our peer, pulling at his moustache in great perplexity, \"I say\u2014what the deuce are we to do with these people? Get up, little chappie, and take your face off my boots.\"\n\nSummerlee was sitting up and stuffing some tobacco into his old briar.\n\n\"We've got to see them safe,\" said he. \"You've pulled us all out of the jaws of death. My word! it was a good bit of work!\"\n\n\"Admirable!\" cried Challenger. \"Admirable! Not only we as individuals, but European science collectively, owe you a deep debt of gratitude for what you have done. I do not hesitate to say that the disappearance of Professor Summerlee and myself would have left an appreciable gap in modern zoological history. Our young friend here and you have done most excellently well.\"\n\nHe beamed at us with the old paternal smile, but European science would have been somewhat amazed could they have seen their chosen child, the hope of the future, with his tangled, unkempt head, his bare chest, and his tattered clothes. He had one of the meat-tins between his knees, and sat with a large piece of cold Australian mutton between his fingers. The Indian looked up at him, and then, with a little yelp, cringed to the ground and clung to Lord John's leg.\n\n\"Don't you be scared, my bonnie boy,\" said Lord John, patting the matted head in front of him. \"He can't stick your appearance, Challenger; and, by George! I don't wonder. All right, little chap, he's only a human, just the same as the rest of us.\"\n\n\"Really, sir!\" cried the Professor.\n\n\"Well, it's lucky for you, Challenger, that you ARE a little out of the ordinary. If you hadn't been so like the king\u2014\"\n\n\"Upon my word, Lord John, you allow yourself great latitude.\"\n\n\"Well, it's a fact.\"\n\n\"I beg, sir, that you will change the subject. Your remarks are irrelevant and unintelligible. The question before us is what are we to do with these Indians? The obvious thing is to escort them home, if we knew where their home was.\"\n\n\"There is no difficulty about that,\" said I. \"They live in the caves on the other side of the central lake.\"\n\n\"Our young friend here knows where they live. I gather that it is some distance.\"\n\n\"A good twenty miles,\" said I.\n\nSummerlee gave a groan.\n\n\"I, for one, could never get there. Surely I hear those brutes still howling upon our track.\"\n\nAs he spoke, from the dark recesses of the woods we heard far away the jabbering cry of the ape-men. The Indians once more set up a feeble wail of fear.\n\n\"We must move, and move quick!\" said Lord John. \"You help Summerlee, young fellah. These Indians will carry stores. Now, then, come along before they can see us.\"\n\nIn less than half-an-hour we had reached our brushwood retreat and concealed ourselves. All day we heard the excited calling of the ape-men in the direction of our old camp, but none of them came our way, and the tired fugitives, red and white, had a long, deep sleep. I was dozing myself in the evening when someone plucked my sleeve, and I found Challenger kneeling beside me.\n\n\"You keep a diary of these events, and you expect eventually to publish it, Mr. Malone,\" said he, with solemnity.\n\n\"I am only here as a Press reporter,\" I answered.\n\n\"Exactly. You may have heard some rather fatuous remarks of Lord John Roxton's which seemed to imply that there was some\u2014some resemblance\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, I heard them.\"\n\n\"I need not say that any publicity given to such an idea\u2014any levity in your narrative of what occurred\u2014would be exceedingly offensive to me.\"\n\n\"I will keep well within the truth.\"\n\n\"Lord John's observations are frequently exceedingly fanciful, and he is capable of attributing the most absurd reasons to the respect which is always shown by the most undeveloped races to dignity and character. You follow my meaning?\"\n\n\"Entirely.\"\n\n\"I leave the matter to your discretion.\" Then, after a long pause, he added: \"The king of the ape-men was really a creature of great distinction\u2014a most remarkably handsome and intelligent personality. Did it not strike you?\"\n\n\"A most remarkable creature,\" said I.\n\nAnd the Professor, much eased in his mind, settled down to his slumber once more." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 14", + "text": "\"Those Were the Real Conquests\"\n\nWe had imagined that our pursuers, the ape-men, knew nothing of our brushwood hiding-place, but we were soon to find out our mistake. There was no sound in the woods\u2014not a leaf moved upon the trees, and all was peace around us\u2014but we should have been warned by our first experience how cunningly and how patiently these creatures can watch and wait until their chance comes. Whatever fate may be mine through life, I am very sure that I shall never be nearer death than I was that morning. But I will tell you the thing in its due order.\n\nWe all awoke exhausted after the terrific emotions and scanty food of yesterday. Summerlee was still so weak that it was an effort for him to stand; but the old man was full of a sort of surly courage which would never admit defeat. A council was held, and it was agreed that we should wait quietly for an hour or two where we were, have our much-needed breakfast, and then make our way across the plateau and round the central lake to the caves where my observations had shown that the Indians lived. We relied upon the fact that we could count upon the good word of those whom we had rescued to ensure a warm welcome from their fellows. Then, with our mission accomplished and possessing a fuller knowledge of the secrets of Maple White Land, we should turn our whole thoughts to the vital problem of our escape and return. Even Challenger was ready to admit that we should then have done all for which we had come, and that our first duty from that time onwards was to carry back to civilization the amazing discoveries we had made.\n\nWe were able now to take a more leisurely view of the Indians whom we had rescued. They were small men, wiry, active, and well-built, with lank black hair tied up in a bunch behind their heads with a leathern thong, and leathern also were their loin-clothes. Their faces were hairless, well formed, and good-humored. The lobes of their ears, hanging ragged and bloody, showed that they had been pierced for some ornaments which their captors had torn out. Their speech, though unintelligible to us, was fluent among themselves, and as they pointed to each other and uttered the word \"Accala\" many times over, we gathered that this was the name of the nation. Occasionally, with faces which were convulsed with fear and hatred, they shook their clenched hands at the woods round and cried: \"Doda! Doda!\" which was surely their term for their enemies.\n\n\"What do you make of them, Challenger?\" asked Lord John. \"One thing is very clear to me, and that is that the little chap with the front of his head shaved is a chief among them.\"\n\nIt was indeed evident that this man stood apart from the others, and that they never ventured to address him without every sign of deep respect. He seemed to be the youngest of them all, and yet, so proud and high was his spirit that, upon Challenger laying his great hand upon his head, he started like a spurred horse and, with a quick flash of his dark eyes, moved further away from the Professor. Then, placing his hand upon his breast and holding himself with great dignity, he uttered the word \"Maretas\" several times. The Professor, unabashed, seized the nearest Indian by the shoulder and proceeded to lecture upon him as if he were a potted specimen in a class-room.\n\n\"The type of these people,\" said he in his sonorous fashion, \"whether judged by cranial capacity, facial angle, or any other test, cannot be regarded as a low one; on the contrary, we must place it as considerably higher in the scale than many South American tribes which I can mention. On no possible supposition can we explain the evolution of such a race in this place. For that matter, so great a gap separates these ape-men from the primitive animals which have survived upon this plateau, that it is inadmissible to think that they could have developed where we find them.\"\n\n\"Then where the dooce did they drop from?\" asked Lord John.\n\n\"A question which will, no doubt, be eagerly discussed in every scientific society in Europe and America,\" the Professor answered. \"My own reading of the situation for what it is worth\u2014\" he inflated his chest enormously and looked insolently around him at the words\u2014\"is that evolution has advanced under the peculiar conditions of this country up to the vertebrate stage, the old types surviving and living on in company with the newer ones. Thus we find such modern creatures as the tapir\u2014an animal with quite a respectable length of pedigree\u2014the great deer, and the ant-eater in the companionship of reptilian forms of jurassic type. So much is clear. And now come the ape-men and the Indian. What is the scientific mind to think of their presence? I can only account for it by an invasion from outside. It is probable that there existed an anthropoid ape in South America, who in past ages found his way to this place, and that he developed into the creatures we have seen, some of which\"\u2014here he looked hard at me\u2014\"were of an appearance and shape which, if it had been accompanied by corresponding intelligence, would, I do not hesitate to say, have reflected credit upon any living race. As to the Indians I cannot doubt that they are more recent immigrants from below. Under the stress of famine or of conquest they have made their way up here. Faced by ferocious creatures which they had never before seen, they took refuge in the caves which our young friend has described, but they have no doubt had a bitter fight to hold their own against wild beasts, and especially against the ape-men who would regard them as intruders, and wage a merciless war upon them with a cunning which the larger beasts would lack. Hence the fact that their numbers appear to be limited. Well, gentlemen, have I read you the riddle aright, or is there any point which you would query?\"\n\nProfessor Summerlee for once was too depressed to argue, though he shook his head violently as a token of general disagreement. Lord John merely scratched his scanty locks with the remark that he couldn't put up a fight as he wasn't in the same weight or class. For my own part I performed my usual role of bringing things down to a strictly prosaic and practical level by the remark that one of the Indians was missing.\n\n\"He has gone to fetch some water,\" said Lord Roxton. \"We fitted him up with an empty beef tin and he is off.\"\n\n\"To the old camp?\" I asked.\n\n\"No, to the brook. It's among the trees there. It can't be more than a couple of hundred yards. But the beggar is certainly taking his time.\"\n\n\"I'll go and look after him,\" said I. I picked up my rifle and strolled in the direction of the brook, leaving my friends to lay out the scanty breakfast. It may seem to you rash that even for so short a distance I should quit the shelter of our friendly thicket, but you will remember that we were many miles from Ape-town, that so far as we knew the creatures had not discovered our retreat, and that in any case with a rifle in my hands I had no fear of them. I had not yet learned their cunning or their strength.\n\nI could hear the murmur of our brook somewhere ahead of me, but there was a tangle of trees and brushwood between me and it. I was making my way through this at a point which was just out of sight of my companions, when, under one of the trees, I noticed something red huddled among the bushes. As I approached it, I was shocked to see that it was the dead body of the missing Indian. He lay upon his side, his limbs drawn up, and his head screwed round at a most unnatural angle, so that he seemed to be looking straight over his own shoulder. I gave a cry to warn my friends that something was amiss, and running forwards I stooped over the body. Surely my guardian angel was very near me then, for some instinct of fear, or it may have been some faint rustle of leaves, made me glance upwards. Out of the thick green foliage which hung low over my head, two long muscular arms covered with reddish hair were slowly descending. Another instant and the great stealthy hands would have been round my throat. I sprang backwards, but quick as I was, those hands were quicker still. Through my sudden spring they missed a fatal grip, but one of them caught the back of my neck and the other one my face. I threw my hands up to protect my throat, and the next moment the huge paw had slid down my face and closed over them. I was lifted lightly from the ground, and I felt an intolerable pressure forcing my head back and back until the strain upon the cervical spine was more than I could bear. My senses swam, but I still tore at the hand and forced it out from my chin. Looking up I saw a frightful face with cold inexorable light blue eyes looking down into mine. There was something hypnotic in those terrible eyes. I could struggle no longer. As the creature felt me grow limp in his grasp, two white canines gleamed for a moment at each side of the vile mouth, and the grip tightened still more upon my chin, forcing it always upwards and back. A thin, oval-tinted mist formed before my eyes and little silvery bells tinkled in my ears. Dully and far off I heard the crack of a rifle and was feebly aware of the shock as I was dropped to the earth, where I lay without sense or motion.\n\nI awoke to find myself on my back upon the grass in our lair within the thicket. Someone had brought the water from the brook, and Lord John was sprinkling my head with it, while Challenger and Summerlee were propping me up, with concern in their faces. For a moment I had a glimpse of the human spirits behind their scientific masks. It was really shock, rather than any injury, which had prostrated me, and in half-an-hour, in spite of aching head and stiff neck, I was sitting up and ready for anything.\n\n\"But you've had the escape of your life, young fellah my lad,\" said Lord Roxton. \"When I heard your cry and ran forward, and saw your head twisted half-off and your stohwassers kickin' in the air, I thought we were one short. I missed the beast in my flurry, but he dropped you all right and was off like a streak. By George! I wish I had fifty men with rifles. I'd clear out the whole infernal gang of them and leave this country a bit cleaner than we found it.\"\n\nIt was clear now that the ape-men had in some way marked us down, and that we were watched on every side. We had not so much to fear from them during the day, but they would be very likely to rush us by night; so the sooner we got away from their neighborhood the better. On three sides of us was absolute forest, and there we might find ourselves in an ambush. But on the fourth side\u2014that which sloped down in the direction of the lake\u2014there was only low scrub, with scattered trees and occasional open glades. It was, in fact, the route which I had myself taken in my solitary journey, and it led us straight for the Indian caves. This then must for every reason be our road.\n\nOne great regret we had, and that was to leave our old camp behind us, not only for the sake of the stores which remained there, but even more because we were losing touch with Zambo, our link with the outside world. However, we had a fair supply of cartridges and all our guns, so, for a time at least, we could look after ourselves, and we hoped soon to have a chance of returning and restoring our communications with our negro. He had faithfully promised to stay where he was, and we had not a doubt that he would be as good as his word.\n\nIt was in the early afternoon that we started upon our journey. The young chief walked at our head as our guide, but refused indignantly to carry any burden. Behind him came the two surviving Indians with our scanty possessions upon their backs. We four white men walked in the rear with rifles loaded and ready. As we started there broke from the thick silent woods behind us a sudden great ululation of the ape-men, which may have been a cheer of triumph at our departure or a jeer of contempt at our flight. Looking back we saw only the dense screen of trees, but that long-drawn yell told us how many of our enemies lurked among them. We saw no sign of pursuit, however, and soon we had got into more open country and beyond their power.\n\nAs I tramped along, the rearmost of the four, I could not help smiling at the appearance of my three companions in front. Was this the luxurious Lord John Roxton who had sat that evening in the Albany amidst his Persian rugs and his pictures in the pink radiance of the tinted lights? And was this the imposing Professor who had swelled behind the great desk in his massive study at Enmore Park? And, finally, could this be the austere and prim figure which had risen before the meeting at the Zoological Institute? No three tramps that one could have met in a Surrey lane could have looked more hopeless and bedraggled. We had, it is true, been only a week or so upon the top of the plateau, but all our spare clothing was in our camp below, and the one week had been a severe one upon us all, though least to me who had not to endure the handling of the ape-men. My three friends had all lost their hats, and had now bound handkerchiefs round their heads, their clothes hung in ribbons about them, and their unshaven grimy faces were hardly to be recognized. Both Summerlee and Challenger were limping heavily, while I still dragged my feet from weakness after the shock of the morning, and my neck was as stiff as a board from the murderous grip that held it. We were indeed a sorry crew, and I did not wonder to see our Indian companions glance back at us occasionally with horror and amazement on their faces.\n\nIn the late afternoon we reached the margin of the lake, and as we emerged from the bush and saw the sheet of water stretching before us our native friends set up a shrill cry of joy and pointed eagerly in front of them. It was indeed a wonderful sight which lay before us. Sweeping over the glassy surface was a great flotilla of canoes coming straight for the shore upon which we stood. They were some miles out when we first saw them, but they shot forward with great swiftness, and were soon so near that the rowers could distinguish our persons. Instantly a thunderous shout of delight burst from them, and we saw them rise from their seats, waving their paddles and spears madly in the air. Then bending to their work once more, they flew across the intervening water, beached their boats upon the sloping sand, and rushed up to us, prostrating themselves with loud cries of greeting before the young chief. Finally one of them, an elderly man, with a necklace and bracelet of great lustrous glass beads and the skin of some beautiful mottled amber-colored animal slung over his shoulders, ran forward and embraced most tenderly the youth whom we had saved. He then looked at us and asked some questions, after which he stepped up with much dignity and embraced us also each in turn. Then, at his order, the whole tribe lay down upon the ground before us in homage. Personally I felt shy and uncomfortable at this obsequious adoration, and I read the same feeling in the faces of Roxton and Summerlee, but Challenger expanded like a flower in the sun.\n\n\"They may be undeveloped types,\" said he, stroking his beard and looking round at them, \"but their deportment in the presence of their superiors might be a lesson to some of our more advanced Europeans. Strange how correct are the instincts of the natural man!\"\n\nIt was clear that the natives had come out upon the war-path, for every man carried his spear\u2014a long bamboo tipped with bone\u2014his bow and arrows, and some sort of club or stone battle-axe slung at his side. Their dark, angry glances at the woods from which we had come, and the frequent repetition of the word \"Doda,\" made it clear enough that this was a rescue party who had set forth to save or revenge the old chief's son, for such we gathered that the youth must be. A council was now held by the whole tribe squatting in a circle, whilst we sat near on a slab of basalt and watched their proceedings. Two or three warriors spoke, and finally our young friend made a spirited harangue with such eloquent features and gestures that we could understand it all as clearly as if we had known his language.\n\n\"What is the use of returning?\" he said. \"Sooner or later the thing must be done. Your comrades have been murdered. What if I have returned safe? These others have been done to death. There is no safety for any of us. We are assembled now and ready.\" Then he pointed to us. \"These strange men are our friends. They are great fighters, and they hate the ape-men even as we do. They command,\" here he pointed up to heaven, \"the thunder and the lightning. When shall we have such a chance again? Let us go forward, and either die now or live for the future in safety. How else shall we go back unashamed to our women?\"\n\nThe little red warriors hung upon the words of the speaker, and when he had finished they burst into a roar of applause, waving their rude weapons in the air. The old chief stepped forward to us, and asked us some questions, pointing at the same time to the woods. Lord John made a sign to him that he should wait for an answer and then he turned to us.\n\n\"Well, it's up to you to say what you will do,\" said he; \"for my part I have a score to settle with these monkey-folk, and if it ends by wiping them off the face of the earth I don't see that the earth need fret about it. I'm goin' with our little red pals and I mean to see them through the scrap. What do you say, young fellah?\"\n\n\"Of course I will come.\"\n\n\"And you, Challenger?\"\n\n\"I will assuredly co-operate.\"\n\n\"And you, Summerlee?\"\n\n\"We seem to be drifting very far from the object of this expedition, Lord John. I assure you that I little thought when I left my professional chair in London that it was for the purpose of heading a raid of savages upon a colony of anthropoid apes.\"\n\n\"To such base uses do we come,\" said Lord John, smiling. \"But we are up against it, so what's the decision?\"\n\n\"It seems a most questionable step,\" said Summerlee, argumentative to the last, \"but if you are all going, I hardly see how I can remain behind.\"\n\n\"Then it is settled,\" said Lord John, and turning to the chief he nodded and slapped his rifle.\n\nThe old fellow clasped our hands, each in turn, while his men cheered louder than ever. It was too late to advance that night, so the Indians settled down into a rude bivouac. On all sides their fires began to glimmer and smoke. Some of them who had disappeared into the jungle came back presently driving a young iguanodon before them. Like the others, it had a daub of asphalt upon its shoulder, and it was only when we saw one of the natives step forward with the air of an owner and give his consent to the beast's slaughter that we understood at last that these great creatures were as much private property as a herd of cattle, and that these symbols which had so perplexed us were nothing more than the marks of the owner. Helpless, torpid, and vegetarian, with great limbs but a minute brain, they could be rounded up and driven by a child. In a few minutes the huge beast had been cut up and slabs of him were hanging over a dozen camp fires, together with great scaly ganoid fish which had been speared in the lake.\n\nSummerlee had lain down and slept upon the sand, but we others roamed round the edge of the water, seeking to learn something more of this strange country. Twice we found pits of blue clay, such as we had already seen in the swamp of the pterodactyls. These were old volcanic vents, and for some reason excited the greatest interest in Lord John. What attracted Challenger, on the other hand, was a bubbling, gurgling mud geyser, where some strange gas formed great bursting bubbles upon the surface. He thrust a hollow reed into it and cried out with delight like a schoolboy then he was able, on touching it with a lighted match, to cause a sharp explosion and a blue flame at the far end of the tube. Still more pleased was he when, inverting a leathern pouch over the end of the reed, and so filling it with the gas, he was able to send it soaring up into the air.\n\n\"An inflammable gas, and one markedly lighter than the atmosphere. I should say beyond doubt that it contained a considerable proportion of free hydrogen. The resources of G. E. C. are not yet exhausted, my young friend. I may yet show you how a great mind molds all Nature to its use.\" He swelled with some secret purpose, but would say no more.\n\nThere was nothing which we could see upon the shore which seemed to me so wonderful as the great sheet of water before us. Our numbers and our noise had frightened all living creatures away, and save for a few pterodactyls, which soared round high above our heads while they waited for the carrion, all was still around the camp. But it was different out upon the rose-tinted waters of the central lake. It boiled and heaved with strange life. Great slate-colored backs and high serrated dorsal fins shot up with a fringe of silver, and then rolled down into the depths again. The sandbanks far out were spotted with uncouth crawling forms, huge turtles, strange saurians, and one great flat creature like a writhing, palpitating mat of black greasy leather, which flopped its way slowly to the lake. Here and there high serpent heads projected out of the water, cutting swiftly through it with a little collar of foam in front, and a long swirling wake behind, rising and falling in graceful, swan-like undulations as they went. It was not until one of these creatures wriggled on to a sandbank within a few hundred yards of us, and exposed a barrel-shaped body and huge flippers behind the long serpent neck, that Challenger, and Summerlee, who had joined us, broke out into their duet of wonder and admiration.\n\n\"Plesiosaurus! A fresh-water plesiosaurus!\" cried Summerlee. \"That I should have lived to see such a sight! We are blessed, my dear Challenger, above all zoologists since the world began!\"\n\nIt was not until the night had fallen, and the fires of our savage allies glowed red in the shadows, that our two men of science could be dragged away from the fascinations of that primeval lake. Even in the darkness as we lay upon the strand, we heard from time to time the snort and plunge of the huge creatures who lived therein.\n\nAt earliest dawn our camp was astir and an hour later we had started upon our memorable expedition. Often in my dreams have I thought that I might live to be a war correspondent. In what wildest one could I have conceived the nature of the campaign which it should be my lot to report! Here then is my first despatch from a field of battle:\n\nOur numbers had been reinforced during the night by a fresh batch of natives from the caves, and we may have been four or five hundred strong when we made our advance. A fringe of scouts was thrown out in front, and behind them the whole force in a solid column made their way up the long slope of the bush country until we were near the edge of the forest. Here they spread out into a long straggling line of spearmen and bowmen. Roxton and Summerlee took their position upon the right flank, while Challenger and I were on the left. It was a host of the stone age that we were accompanying to battle\u2014we with the last word of the gunsmith's art from St. James' Street and the Strand.\n\nWe had not long to wait for our enemy. A wild shrill clamor rose from the edge of the wood and suddenly a body of ape-men rushed out with clubs and stones, and made for the center of the Indian line. It was a valiant move but a foolish one, for the great bandy-legged creatures were slow of foot, while their opponents were as active as cats. It was horrible to see the fierce brutes with foaming mouths and glaring eyes, rushing and grasping, but forever missing their elusive enemies, while arrow after arrow buried itself in their hides. One great fellow ran past me roaring with pain, with a dozen darts sticking from his chest and ribs. In mercy I put a bullet through his skull, and he fell sprawling among the aloes. But this was the only shot fired, for the attack had been on the center of the line, and the Indians there had needed no help of ours in repulsing it. Of all the ape-men who had rushed out into the open, I do not think that one got back to cover.\n\nBut the matter was more deadly when we came among the trees. For an hour or more after we entered the wood, there was a desperate struggle in which for a time we hardly held our own. Springing out from among the scrub the ape-men with huge clubs broke in upon the Indians and often felled three or four of them before they could be speared. Their frightful blows shattered everything upon which they fell. One of them knocked Summerlee's rifle to matchwood and the next would have crushed his skull had an Indian not stabbed the beast to the heart. Other ape-men in the trees above us hurled down stones and logs of wood, occasionally dropping bodily on to our ranks and fighting furiously until they were felled. Once our allies broke under the pressure, and had it not been for the execution done by our rifles they would certainly have taken to their heels. But they were gallantly rallied by their old chief and came on with such a rush that the ape-men began in turn to give way. Summerlee was weaponless, but I was emptying my magazine as quick as I could fire, and on the further flank we heard the continuous cracking of our companion's rifles.\n\nThen in a moment came the panic and the collapse. Screaming and howling, the great creatures rushed away in all directions through the brushwood, while our allies yelled in their savage delight, following swiftly after their flying enemies. All the feuds of countless generations, all the hatreds and cruelties of their narrow history, all the memories of ill-usage and persecution were to be purged that day. At last man was to be supreme and the man-beast to find forever his allotted place. Fly as they would the fugitives were too slow to escape from the active savages, and from every side in the tangled woods we heard the exultant yells, the twanging of bows, and the crash and thud as ape-men were brought down from their hiding-places in the trees.\n\nI was following the others, when I found that Lord John and Challenger had come across to join us.\n\n\"It's over,\" said Lord John. \"I think we can leave the tidying up to them. Perhaps the less we see of it the better we shall sleep.\"\n\nChallenger's eyes were shining with the lust of slaughter.\n\n\"We have been privileged,\" he cried, strutting about like a gamecock, \"to be present at one of the typical decisive battles of history\u2014the battles which have determined the fate of the world. What, my friends, is the conquest of one nation by another? It is meaningless. Each produces the same result. But those fierce fights, when in the dawn of the ages the cave-dwellers held their own against the tiger folk, or the elephants first found that they had a master, those were the real conquests\u2014the victories that count. By this strange turn of fate we have seen and helped to decide even such a contest. Now upon this plateau the future must ever be for man.\"\n\nIt needed a robust faith in the end to justify such tragic means. As we advanced together through the woods we found the ape-men lying thick, transfixed with spears or arrows. Here and there a little group of shattered Indians marked where one of the anthropoids had turned to bay, and sold his life dearly. Always in front of us we heard the yelling and roaring which showed the direction of the pursuit. The ape-men had been driven back to their city, they had made a last stand there, once again they had been broken, and now we were in time to see the final fearful scene of all. Some eighty or a hundred males, the last survivors, had been driven across that same little clearing which led to the edge of the cliff, the scene of our own exploit two days before. As we arrived the Indians, a semicircle of spearmen, had closed in on them, and in a minute it was over, Thirty or forty died where they stood. The others, screaming and clawing, were thrust over the precipice, and went hurtling down, as their prisoners had of old, on to the sharp bamboos six hundred feet below. It was as Challenger had said, and the reign of man was assured forever in Maple White Land. The males were exterminated, Ape Town was destroyed, the females and young were driven away to live in bondage, and the long rivalry of untold centuries had reached its bloody end.\n\nFor us the victory brought much advantage. Once again we were able to visit our camp and get at our stores. Once more also we were able to communicate with Zambo, who had been terrified by the spectacle from afar of an avalanche of apes falling from the edge of the cliff.\n\n\"Come away, Massas, come away!\" he cried, his eyes starting from his head. \"The debbil get you sure if you stay up there.\"\n\n\"It is the voice of sanity!\" said Summerlee with conviction. \"We have had adventures enough and they are neither suitable to our character or our position. I hold you to your word, Challenger. From now onwards you devote your energies to getting us out of this horrible country and back once more to civilization.\"" + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 15", + "text": "\"Our Eyes have seen Great Wonders\"\n\nI write this from day to day, but I trust that before I come to the end of it, I may be able to say that the light shines, at last, through our clouds. We are held here with no clear means of making our escape, and bitterly we chafe against it. Yet, I can well imagine that the day may come when we may be glad that we were kept, against our will, to see something more of the wonders of this singular place, and of the creatures who inhabit it.\n\nThe victory of the Indians and the annihilation of the ape-men, marked the turning point of our fortunes. From then onwards, we were in truth masters of the plateau, for the natives looked upon us with a mixture of fear and gratitude, since by our strange powers we had aided them to destroy their hereditary foe. For their own sakes they would, perhaps, be glad to see the departure of such formidable and incalculable people, but they have not themselves suggested any way by which we may reach the plains below. There had been, so far as we could follow their signs, a tunnel by which the place could be approached, the lower exit of which we had seen from below. By this, no doubt, both ape-men and Indians had at different epochs reached the top, and Maple White with his companion had taken the same way. Only the year before, however, there had been a terrific earthquake, and the upper end of the tunnel had fallen in and completely disappeared. The Indians now could only shake their heads and shrug their shoulders when we expressed by signs our desire to descend. It may be that they cannot, but it may also be that they will not, help us to get away.\n\nAt the end of the victorious campaign the surviving ape-folk were driven across the plateau (their wailings were horrible) and established in the neighborhood of the Indian caves, where they would, from now onwards, be a servile race under the eyes of their masters. It was a rude, raw, primeval version of the Jews in Babylon or the Israelites in Egypt. At night we could hear from amid the trees the long-drawn cry, as some primitive Ezekiel mourned for fallen greatness and recalled the departed glories of Ape Town. Hewers of wood and drawers of water, such were they from now onwards.\n\nWe had returned across the plateau with our allies two days after the battle, and made our camp at the foot of their cliffs. They would have had us share their caves with them, but Lord John would by no means consent to it considering that to do so would put us in their power if they were treacherously disposed. We kept our independence, therefore, and had our weapons ready for any emergency, while preserving the most friendly relations. We also continually visited their caves, which were most remarkable places, though whether made by man or by Nature we have never been able to determine. They were all on the one stratum, hollowed out of some soft rock which lay between the volcanic basalt forming the ruddy cliffs above them, and the hard granite which formed their base.\n\nThe openings were about eighty feet above the ground, and were led up to by long stone stairs, so narrow and steep that no large animal could mount them. Inside they were warm and dry, running in straight passages of varying length into the side of the hill, with smooth gray walls decorated with many excellent pictures done with charred sticks and representing the various animals of the plateau. If every living thing were swept from the country the future explorer would find upon the walls of these caves ample evidence of the strange fauna\u2014the dinosaurs, iguanodons, and fish lizards\u2014which had lived so recently upon earth.\n\nSince we had learned that the huge iguanodons were kept as tame herds by their owners, and were simply walking meat-stores, we had conceived that man, even with his primitive weapons, had established his ascendancy upon the plateau. We were soon to discover that it was not so, and that he was still there upon tolerance.\n\nIt was on the third day after our forming our camp near the Indian caves that the tragedy occurred. Challenger and Summerlee had gone off together that day to the lake where some of the natives, under their direction, were engaged in harpooning specimens of the great lizards. Lord John and I had remained in our camp, while a number of the Indians were scattered about upon the grassy slope in front of the caves engaged in different ways. Suddenly there was a shrill cry of alarm, with the word \"Stoa\" resounding from a hundred tongues. From every side men, women, and children were rushing wildly for shelter, swarming up the staircases and into the caves in a mad stampede.\n\nLooking up, we could see them waving their arms from the rocks above and beckoning to us to join them in their refuge. We had both seized our magazine rifles and ran out to see what the danger could be. Suddenly from the near belt of trees there broke forth a group of twelve or fifteen Indians, running for their lives, and at their very heels two of those frightful monsters which had disturbed our camp and pursued me upon my solitary journey. In shape they were like horrible toads, and moved in a succession of springs, but in size they were of an incredible bulk, larger than the largest elephant. We had never before seen them save at night, and indeed they are nocturnal animals save when disturbed in their lairs, as these had been. We now stood amazed at the sight, for their blotched and warty skins were of a curious fish-like iridescence, and the sunlight struck them with an ever-varying rainbow bloom as they moved.\n\nWe had little time to watch them, however, for in an instant they had overtaken the fugitives and were making a dire slaughter among them. Their method was to fall forward with their full weight upon each in turn, leaving him crushed and mangled, to bound on after the others. The wretched Indians screamed with terror, but were helpless, run as they would, before the relentless purpose and horrible activity of these monstrous creatures. One after another they went down, and there were not half-a-dozen surviving by the time my companion and I could come to their help. But our aid was of little avail and only involved us in the same peril. At the range of a couple of hundred yards we emptied our magazines, firing bullet after bullet into the beasts, but with no more effect than if we were pelting them with pellets of paper. Their slow reptilian natures cared nothing for wounds, and the springs of their lives, with no special brain center but scattered throughout their spinal cords, could not be tapped by any modern weapons. The most that we could do was to check their progress by distracting their attention with the flash and roar of our guns, and so to give both the natives and ourselves time to reach the steps which led to safety. But where the conical explosive bullets of the twentieth century were of no avail, the poisoned arrows of the natives, dipped in the juice of strophanthus and steeped afterwards in decayed carrion, could succeed. Such arrows were of little avail to the hunter who attacked the beast, because their action in that torpid circulation was slow, and before its powers failed it could certainly overtake and slay its assailant. But now, as the two monsters hounded us to the very foot of the stairs, a drift of darts came whistling from every chink in the cliff above them. In a minute they were feathered with them, and yet with no sign of pain they clawed and slobbered with impotent rage at the steps which would lead them to their victims, mounting clumsily up for a few yards and then sliding down again to the ground. But at last the poison worked. One of them gave a deep rumbling groan and dropped his huge squat head on to the earth. The other bounded round in an eccentric circle with shrill, wailing cries, and then lying down writhed in agony for some minutes before it also stiffened and lay still. With yells of triumph the Indians came flocking down from their caves and danced a frenzied dance of victory round the dead bodies, in mad joy that two more of the most dangerous of all their enemies had been slain. That night they cut up and removed the bodies, not to eat\u2014for the poison was still active\u2014but lest they should breed a pestilence. The great reptilian hearts, however, each as large as a cushion, still lay there, beating slowly and steadily, with a gentle rise and fall, in horrible independent life. It was only upon the third day that the ganglia ran down and the dreadful things were still.\n\nSome day, when I have a better desk than a meat-tin and more helpful tools than a worn stub of pencil and a last, tattered notebook, I will write some fuller account of the Accala Indians\u2014of our life amongst them, and of the glimpses which we had of the strange conditions of wondrous Maple White Land. Memory, at least, will never fail me, for so long as the breath of life is in me, every hour and every action of that period will stand out as hard and clear as do the first strange happenings of our childhood. No new impressions could efface those which are so deeply cut. When the time comes I will describe that wondrous moonlit night upon the great lake when a young ichthyosaurus\u2014a strange creature, half seal, half fish, to look at, with bone-covered eyes on each side of his snout, and a third eye fixed upon the top of his head\u2014was entangled in an Indian net, and nearly upset our canoe before we towed it ashore; the same night that a green water-snake shot out from the rushes and carried off in its coils the steersman of Challenger's canoe. I will tell, too, of the great nocturnal white thing\u2014to this day we do not know whether it was beast or reptile\u2014which lived in a vile swamp to the east of the lake, and flitted about with a faint phosphorescent glimmer in the darkness. The Indians were so terrified at it that they would not go near the place, and, though we twice made expeditions and saw it each time, we could not make our way through the deep marsh in which it lived. I can only say that it seemed to be larger than a cow and had the strangest musky odor. I will tell also of the huge bird which chased Challenger to the shelter of the rocks one day\u2014a great running bird, far taller than an ostrich, with a vulture-like neck and cruel head which made it a walking death. As Challenger climbed to safety one dart of that savage curving beak shore off the heel of his boot as if it had been cut with a chisel. This time at least modern weapons prevailed and the great creature, twelve feet from head to foot\u2014phororachus its name, according to our panting but exultant Professor\u2014went down before Lord Roxton's rifle in a flurry of waving feathers and kicking limbs, with two remorseless yellow eyes glaring up from the midst of it. May I live to see that flattened vicious skull in its own niche amid the trophies of the Albany. Finally, I will assuredly give some account of the toxodon, the giant ten-foot guinea pig, with projecting chisel teeth, which we killed as it drank in the gray of the morning by the side of the lake.\n\nAll this I shall some day write at fuller length, and amidst these more stirring days I would tenderly sketch in these lovely summer evenings, when with the deep blue sky above us we lay in good comradeship among the long grasses by the wood and marveled at the strange fowl that swept over us and the quaint new creatures which crept from their burrows to watch us, while above us the boughs of the bushes were heavy with luscious fruit, and below us strange and lovely flowers peeped at us from among the herbage; or those long moonlit nights when we lay out upon the shimmering surface of the great lake and watched with wonder and awe the huge circles rippling out from the sudden splash of some fantastic monster; or the greenish gleam, far down in the deep water, of some strange creature upon the confines of darkness. These are the scenes which my mind and my pen will dwell upon in every detail at some future day.\n\nBut, you will ask, why these experiences and why this delay, when you and your comrades should have been occupied day and night in the devising of some means by which you could return to the outer world? My answer is, that there was not one of us who was not working for this end, but that our work had been in vain. One fact we had very speedily discovered: The Indians would do nothing to help us. In every other way they were our friends\u2014one might almost say our devoted slaves\u2014but when it was suggested that they should help us to make and carry a plank which would bridge the chasm, or when we wished to get from them thongs of leather or liana to weave ropes which might help us, we were met by a good-humored, but an invincible, refusal. They would smile, twinkle their eyes, shake their heads, and there was the end of it. Even the old chief met us with the same obstinate denial, and it was only Maretas, the youngster whom we had saved, who looked wistfully at us and told us by his gestures that he was grieved for our thwarted wishes. Ever since their crowning triumph with the ape-men they looked upon us as supermen, who bore victory in the tubes of strange weapons, and they believed that so long as we remained with them good fortune would be theirs. A little red-skinned wife and a cave of our own were freely offered to each of us if we would but forget our own people and dwell forever upon the plateau. So far all had been kindly, however far apart our desires might be; but we felt well assured that our actual plans of a descent must be kept secret, for we had reason to fear that at the last they might try to hold us by force.\n\nIn spite of the danger from dinosaurs (which is not great save at night, for, as I may have said before, they are mostly nocturnal in their habits) I have twice in the last three weeks been over to our old camp in order to see our negro who still kept watch and ward below the cliff. My eyes strained eagerly across the great plain in the hope of seeing afar off the help for which we had prayed. But the long cactus-strewn levels still stretched away, empty and bare, to the distant line of the cane-brake.\n\n\"They will soon come now, Massa Malone. Before another week pass Indian come back and bring rope and fetch you down.\" Such was the cheery cry of our excellent Zambo.\n\nI had one strange experience as I came from this second visit which had involved my being away for a night from my companions. I was returning along the well-remembered route, and had reached a spot within a mile or so of the marsh of the pterodactyls, when I saw an extraordinary object approaching me. It was a man who walked inside a framework made of bent canes so that he was enclosed on all sides in a bell-shaped cage. As I drew nearer I was more amazed still to see that it was Lord John Roxton. When he saw me he slipped from under his curious protection and came towards me laughing, and yet, as I thought, with some confusion in his manner.\n\n\"Well, young fellah,\" said he, \"who would have thought of meetin' you up here?\"\n\n\"What in the world are you doing?\" I asked.\n\n\"Visitin' my friends, the pterodactyls,\" said he.\n\n\"But why?\"\n\n\"Interestin' beasts, don't you think? But unsociable! Nasty rude ways with strangers, as you may remember. So I rigged this framework which keeps them from bein' too pressin' in their attentions.\"\n\n\"But what do you want in the swamp?\"\n\nHe looked at me with a very questioning eye, and I read hesitation in his face.\n\n\"Don't you think other people besides Professors can want to know things?\" he said at last. \"I'm studyin' the pretty dears. That's enough for you.\"\n\n\"No offense,\" said I.\n\nHis good-humor returned and he laughed.\n\n\"No offense, young fellah. I'm goin' to get a young devil chick for Challenger. That's one of my jobs. No, I don't want your company. I'm safe in this cage, and you are not. So long, and I'll be back in camp by night-fall.\"\n\nHe turned away and I left him wandering on through the wood with his extraordinary cage around him.\n\nIf Lord John's behavior at this time was strange, that of Challenger was more so. I may say that he seemed to possess an extraordinary fascination for the Indian women, and that he always carried a large spreading palm branch with which he beat them off as if they were flies, when their attentions became too pressing. To see him walking like a comic opera Sultan, with this badge of authority in his hand, his black beard bristling in front of him, his toes pointing at each step, and a train of wide-eyed Indian girls behind him, clad in their slender drapery of bark cloth, is one of the most grotesque of all the pictures which I will carry back with me. As to Summerlee, he was absorbed in the insect and bird life of the plateau, and spent his whole time (save that considerable portion which was devoted to abusing Challenger for not getting us out of our difficulties) in cleaning and mounting his specimens.\n\nChallenger had been in the habit of walking off by himself every morning and returning from time to time with looks of portentous solemnity, as one who bears the full weight of a great enterprise upon his shoulders. One day, palm branch in hand, and his crowd of adoring devotees behind him, he led us down to his hidden work-shop and took us into the secret of his plans.\n\nThe place was a small clearing in the center of a palm grove. In this was one of those boiling mud geysers which I have already described. Around its edge were scattered a number of leathern thongs cut from iguanodon hide, and a large collapsed membrane which proved to be the dried and scraped stomach of one of the great fish lizards from the lake. This huge sack had been sewn up at one end and only a small orifice left at the other. Into this opening several bamboo canes had been inserted and the other ends of these canes were in contact with conical clay funnels which collected the gas bubbling up through the mud of the geyser. Soon the flaccid organ began to slowly expand and show such a tendency to upward movements that Challenger fastened the cords which held it to the trunks of the surrounding trees. In half an hour a good-sized gas-bag had been formed, and the jerking and straining upon the thongs showed that it was capable of considerable lift. Challenger, like a glad father in the presence of his first-born, stood smiling and stroking his beard, in silent, self-satisfied content as he gazed at the creation of his brain. It was Summerlee who first broke the silence.\n\n\"You don't mean us to go up in that thing, Challenger?\" said he, in an acid voice.\n\n\"I mean, my dear Summerlee, to give you such a demonstration of its powers that after seeing it you will, I am sure, have no hesitation in trusting yourself to it.\"\n\n\"You can put it right out of your head now, at once,\" said Summerlee with decision, \"nothing on earth would induce me to commit such a folly. Lord John, I trust that you will not countenance such madness?\"\n\n\"Dooced ingenious, I call it,\" said our peer. \"I'd like to see how it works.\"\n\n\"So you shall,\" said Challenger. \"For some days I have exerted my whole brain force upon the problem of how we shall descend from these cliffs. We have satisfied ourselves that we cannot climb down and that there is no tunnel. We are also unable to construct any kind of bridge which may take us back to the pinnacle from which we came. How then shall I find a means to convey us? Some little time ago I had remarked to our young friend here that free hydrogen was evolved from the geyser. The idea of a balloon naturally followed. I was, I will admit, somewhat baffled by the difficulty of discovering an envelope to contain the gas, but the contemplation of the immense entrails of these reptiles supplied me with a solution to the problem. Behold the result!\"\n\nHe put one hand in the front of his ragged jacket and pointed proudly with the other.\n\nBy this time the gas-bag had swollen to a goodly rotundity and was jerking strongly upon its lashings.\n\n\"Midsummer madness!\" snorted Summerlee.\n\nLord John was delighted with the whole idea. \"Clever old dear, ain't he?\" he whispered to me, and then louder to Challenger. \"What about a car?\"\n\n\"The car will be my next care. I have already planned how it is to be made and attached. Meanwhile I will simply show you how capable my apparatus is of supporting the weight of each of us.\"\n\n\"All of us, surely?\"\n\n\"No, it is part of my plan that each in turn shall descend as in a parachute, and the balloon be drawn back by means which I shall have no difficulty in perfecting. If it will support the weight of one and let him gently down, it will have done all that is required of it. I will now show you its capacity in that direction.\"\n\nHe brought out a lump of basalt of a considerable size, constructed in the middle so that a cord could be easily attached to it. This cord was the one which we had brought with us on to the plateau after we had used it for climbing the pinnacle. It was over a hundred feet long, and though it was thin it was very strong. He had prepared a sort of collar of leather with many straps depending from it. This collar was placed over the dome of the balloon, and the hanging thongs were gathered together below, so that the pressure of any weight would be diffused over a considerable surface. Then the lump of basalt was fastened to the thongs, and the rope was allowed to hang from the end of it, being passed three times round the Professor's arm.\n\n\"I will now,\" said Challenger, with a smile of pleased anticipation, \"demonstrate the carrying power of my balloon.\" As he said so he cut with a knife the various lashings that held it.\n\nNever was our expedition in more imminent danger of complete annihilation. The inflated membrane shot up with frightful velocity into the air. In an instant Challenger was pulled off his feet and dragged after it. I had just time to throw my arms round his ascending waist when I was myself whipped up into the air. Lord John had me with a rat-trap grip round the legs, but I felt that he also was coming off the ground. For a moment I had a vision of four adventurers floating like a string of sausages over the land that they had explored. But, happily, there were limits to the strain which the rope would stand, though none apparently to the lifting powers of this infernal machine. There was a sharp crack, and we were in a heap upon the ground with coils of rope all over us. When we were able to stagger to our feet we saw far off in the deep blue sky one dark spot where the lump of basalt was speeding upon its way.\n\n\"Splendid!\" cried the undaunted Challenger, rubbing his injured arm. \"A most thorough and satisfactory demonstration! I could not have anticipated such a success. Within a week, gentlemen, I promise that a second balloon will be prepared, and that you can count upon taking in safety and comfort the first stage of our homeward journey.\" So far I have written each of the foregoing events as it occurred. Now I am rounding off my narrative from the old camp, where Zambo has waited so long, with all our difficulties and dangers left like a dream behind us upon the summit of those vast ruddy crags which tower above our heads. We have descended in safety, though in a most unexpected fashion, and all is well with us. In six weeks or two months we shall be in London, and it is possible that this letter may not reach you much earlier than we do ourselves. Already our hearts yearn and our spirits fly towards the great mother city which holds so much that is dear to us.\n\nIt was on the very evening of our perilous adventure with Challenger's home-made balloon that the change came in our fortunes. I have said that the one person from whom we had had some sign of sympathy in our attempts to get away was the young chief whom we had rescued. He alone had no desire to hold us against our will in a strange land. He had told us as much by his expressive language of signs. That evening, after dusk, he came down to our little camp, handed me (for some reason he had always shown his attentions to me, perhaps because I was the one who was nearest his age) a small roll of the bark of a tree, and then pointing solemnly up at the row of caves above him, he had put his finger to his lips as a sign of secrecy and had stolen back again to his people.\n\nI took the slip of bark to the firelight and we examined it together. It was about a foot square, and on the inner side there was a singular arrangement of lines, which I here reproduce:\n\nThey were neatly done in charcoal upon the white surface, and looked to me at first sight like some sort of rough musical score.\n\n\"Whatever it is, I can swear that it is of importance to us,\" said I. \"I could read that on his face as he gave it.\"\n\n\"Unless we have come upon a primitive practical joker,\" Summerlee suggested, \"which I should think would be one of the most elementary developments of man.\"\n\n\"It is clearly some sort of script,\" said Challenger.\n\n\"Looks like a guinea puzzle competition,\" remarked Lord John, craning his neck to have a look at it. Then suddenly he stretched out his hand and seized the puzzle.\n\n\"By George!\" he cried, \"I believe I've got it. The boy guessed right the very first time. See here! How many marks are on that paper? Eighteen. Well, if you come to think of it there are eighteen cave openings on the hill-side above us.\"\n\n\"He pointed up to the caves when he gave it to me,\" said I.\n\n\"Well, that settles it. This is a chart of the caves. What! Eighteen of them all in a row, some short, some deep, some branching, same as we saw them. It's a map, and here's a cross on it. What's the cross for? It is placed to mark one that is much deeper than the others.\"\n\n\"One that goes through,\" I cried.\n\n\"I believe our young friend has read the riddle,\" said Challenger. \"If the cave does not go through I do not understand why this person, who has every reason to mean us well, should have drawn our attention to it. But if it does go through and comes out at the corresponding point on the other side, we should not have more than a hundred feet to descend.\"\n\n\"A hundred feet!\" grumbled Summerlee.\n\n\"Well, our rope is still more than a hundred feet long,\" I cried. \"Surely we could get down.\"\n\n\"How about the Indians in the cave?\" Summerlee objected.\n\n\"There are no Indians in any of the caves above our heads,\" said I. \"They are all used as barns and store-houses. Why should we not go up now at once and spy out the land?\"\n\nThere is a dry bituminous wood upon the plateau\u2014a species of araucaria, according to our botanist\u2014which is always used by the Indians for torches. Each of us picked up a faggot of this, and we made our way up weed-covered steps to the particular cave which was marked in the drawing. It was, as I had said, empty, save for a great number of enormous bats, which flapped round our heads as we advanced into it. As we had no desire to draw the attention of the Indians to our proceedings, we stumbled along in the dark until we had gone round several curves and penetrated a considerable distance into the cavern. Then, at last, we lit our torches. It was a beautiful dry tunnel with smooth gray walls covered with native symbols, a curved roof which arched over our heads, and white glistening sand beneath our feet. We hurried eagerly along it until, with a deep groan of bitter disappointment, we were brought to a halt. A sheer wall of rock had appeared before us, with no chink through which a mouse could have slipped. There was no escape for us there.\n\nWe stood with bitter hearts staring at this unexpected obstacle. It was not the result of any convulsion, as in the case of the ascending tunnel. The end wall was exactly like the side ones. It was, and had always been, a cul-de-sac.\n\n\"Never mind, my friends,\" said the indomitable Challenger. \"You have still my firm promise of a balloon.\"\n\nSummerlee groaned.\n\n\"Can we be in the wrong cave?\" I suggested.\n\n\"No use, young fellah,\" said Lord John, with his finger on the chart. \"Seventeen from the right and second from the left. This is the cave sure enough.\"\n\nI looked at the mark to which his finger pointed, and I gave a sudden cry of joy.\n\n\"I believe I have it! Follow me! Follow me!\"\n\nI hurried back along the way we had come, my torch in my hand. \"Here,\" said I, pointing to some matches upon the ground, \"is where we lit up.\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"Well, it is marked as a forked cave, and in the darkness we passed the fork before the torches were lit. On the right side as we go out we should find the longer arm.\"\n\nIt was as I had said. We had not gone thirty yards before a great black opening loomed in the wall. We turned into it to find that we were in a much larger passage than before. Along it we hurried in breathless impatience for many hundreds of yards. Then, suddenly, in the black darkness of the arch in front of us we saw a gleam of dark red light. We stared in amazement. A sheet of steady flame seemed to cross the passage and to bar our way. We hastened towards it. No sound, no heat, no movement came from it, but still the great luminous curtain glowed before us, silvering all the cave and turning the sand to powdered jewels, until as we drew closer it discovered a circular edge.\n\n\"The moon, by George!\" cried Lord John. \"We are through, boys! We are through!\"\n\nIt was indeed the full moon which shone straight down the aperture which opened upon the cliffs. It was a small rift, not larger than a window, but it was enough for all our purposes. As we craned our necks through it we could see that the descent was not a very difficult one, and that the level ground was no very great way below us. It was no wonder that from below we had not observed the place, as the cliffs curved overhead and an ascent at the spot would have seemed so impossible as to discourage close inspection. We satisfied ourselves that with the help of our rope we could find our way down, and then returned, rejoicing, to our camp to make our preparations for the next evening.\n\nWhat we did we had to do quickly and secretly, since even at this last hour the Indians might hold us back. Our stores we would leave behind us, save only our guns and cartridges. But Challenger had some unwieldy stuff which he ardently desired to take with him, and one particular package, of which I may not speak, which gave us more labor than any. Slowly the day passed, but when the darkness fell we were ready for our departure. With much labor we got our things up the steps, and then, looking back, took one last long survey of that strange land, soon I fear to be vulgarized, the prey of hunter and prospector, but to each of us a dreamland of glamour and romance, a land where we had dared much, suffered much, and learned much\u2014OUR land, as we shall ever fondly call it. Along upon our left the neighboring caves each threw out its ruddy cheery firelight into the gloom. From the slope below us rose the voices of the Indians as they laughed and sang. Beyond was the long sweep of the woods, and in the center, shimmering vaguely through the gloom, was the great lake, the mother of strange monsters. Even as we looked a high whickering cry, the call of some weird animal, rang clear out of the darkness. It was the very voice of Maple White Land bidding us good-bye. We turned and plunged into the cave which led to home.\n\nTwo hours later, we, our packages, and all we owned, were at the foot of the cliff. Save for Challenger's luggage we had never a difficulty. Leaving it all where we descended, we started at once for Zambo's camp. In the early morning we approached it, but only to find, to our amazement, not one fire but a dozen upon the plain. The rescue party had arrived. There were twenty Indians from the river, with stakes, ropes, and all that could be useful for bridging the chasm. At least we shall have no difficulty now in carrying our packages, when to-morrow we begin to make our way back to the Amazon.\n\nAnd so, in humble and thankful mood, I close this account. Our eyes have seen great wonders and our souls are chastened by what we have endured. Each is in his own way a better and deeper man. It may be that when we reach Para we shall stop to refit. If we do, this letter will be a mail ahead. If not, it will reach London on the very day that I do. In either case, my dear Mr. McArdle, I hope very soon to shake you by the hand." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 16", + "text": "\"A Procession! A Procession!\"\n\nI should wish to place upon record here our gratitude to all our friends upon the Amazon for the very great kindness and hospitality which was shown to us upon our return journey. Very particularly would I thank Senhor Penalosa and other officials of the Brazilian Government for the special arrangements by which we were helped upon our way, and Senhor Pereira of Para, to whose forethought we owe the complete outfit for a decent appearance in the civilized world which we found ready for us at that town. It seemed a poor return for all the courtesy which we encountered that we should deceive our hosts and benefactors, but under the circumstances we had really no alternative, and I hereby tell them that they will only waste their time and their money if they attempt to follow upon our traces. Even the names have been altered in our accounts, and I am very sure that no one, from the most careful study of them, could come within a thousand miles of our unknown land.\n\nThe excitement which had been caused through those parts of South America which we had to traverse was imagined by us to be purely local, and I can assure our friends in England that we had no notion of the uproar which the mere rumor of our experiences had caused through Europe. It was not until the Ivernia was within five hundred miles of Southampton that the wireless messages from paper after paper and agency after agency, offering huge prices for a short return message as to our actual results, showed us how strained was the attention not only of the scientific world but of the general public. It was agreed among us, however, that no definite statement should be given to the Press until we had met the members of the Zoological Institute, since as delegates it was our clear duty to give our first report to the body from which we had received our commission of investigation. Thus, although we found Southampton full of Pressmen, we absolutely refused to give any information, which had the natural effect of focussing public attention upon the meeting which was advertised for the evening of November 7th. For this gathering, the Zoological Hall which had been the scene of the inception of our task was found to be far too small, and it was only in the Queen's Hall in Regent Street that accommodation could be found. It is now common knowledge the promoters might have ventured upon the Albert Hall and still found their space too scanty.\n\nIt was for the second evening after our arrival that the great meeting had been fixed. For the first, we had each, no doubt, our own pressing personal affairs to absorb us. Of mine I cannot yet speak. It may be that as it stands further from me I may think of it, and even speak of it, with less emotion. I have shown the reader in the beginning of this narrative where lay the springs of my action. It is but right, perhaps, that I should carry on the tale and show also the results. And yet the day may come when I would not have it otherwise. At least I have been driven forth to take part in a wondrous adventure, and I cannot but be thankful to the force that drove me.\n\nAnd now I turn to the last supreme eventful moment of our adventure. As I was racking my brain as to how I should best describe it, my eyes fell upon the issue of my own Journal for the morning of the 8th of November with the full and excellent account of my friend and fellow-reporter Macdona. What can I do better than transcribe his narrative\u2014headlines and all? I admit that the paper was exuberant in the matter, out of compliment to its own enterprise in sending a correspondent, but the other great dailies were hardly less full in their account. Thus, then, friend Mac in his report:\n\n\u2002THE NEW WORLD\n\n\u2002GREAT MEETING AT THE QUEEN'S HALL\n\n\u2002SCENES OF UPROAR\n\n\u2002EXTRAORDINARY INCIDENT\n\n\u2002WHAT WAS IT?\n\n\u2002NOCTURNAL RIOT IN REGENT STREET\n\n\u2002(Special)\n\n\"The much-discussed meeting of the Zoological Institute, convened to hear the report of the Committee of Investigation sent out last year to South America to test the assertions made by Professor Challenger as to the continued existence of prehistoric life upon that Continent, was held last night in the greater Queen's Hall, and it is safe to say that it is likely to be a red letter date in the history of Science, for the proceedings were of so remarkable and sensational a character that no one present is ever likely to forget them.\" (Oh, brother scribe Macdona, what a monstrous opening sentence!) \"The tickets were theoretically confined to members and their friends, but the latter is an elastic term, and long before eight o'clock, the hour fixed for the commencement of the proceedings, all parts of the Great Hall were tightly packed. The general public, however, which most unreasonably entertained a grievance at having been excluded, stormed the doors at a quarter to eight, after a prolonged melee in which several people were injured, including Inspector Scoble of H. Division, whose leg was unfortunately broken. After this unwarrantable invasion, which not only filled every passage, but even intruded upon the space set apart for the Press, it is estimated that nearly five thousand people awaited the arrival of the travelers. When they eventually appeared, they took their places in the front of a platform which already contained all the leading scientific men, not only of this country, but of France and of Germany. Sweden was also represented, in the person of Professor Sergius, the famous Zoologist of the University of Upsala. The entrance of the four heroes of the occasion was the signal for a remarkable demonstration of welcome, the whole audience rising and cheering for some minutes. An acute observer might, however, have detected some signs of dissent amid the applause, and gathered that the proceedings were likely to become more lively than harmonious. It may safely be prophesied, however, that no one could have foreseen the extraordinary turn which they were actually to take.\n\n\"Of the appearance of the four wanderers little need be said, since their photographs have for some time been appearing in all the papers. They bear few traces of the hardships which they are said to have undergone. Professor Challenger's beard may be more shaggy, Professor Summerlee's features more ascetic, Lord John Roxton's figure more gaunt, and all three may be burned to a darker tint than when they left our shores, but each appeared to be in most excellent health. As to our own representative, the well-known athlete and international Rugby football player, E. D. Malone, he looks trained to a hair, and as he surveyed the crowd a smile of good-humored contentment pervaded his honest but homely face.\" (All right, Mac, wait till I get you alone!)\n\n\"When quiet had been restored and the audience resumed their seats after the ovation which they had given to the travelers, the chairman, the Duke of Durham, addressed the meeting. 'He would not,' he said, 'stand for more than a moment between that vast assembly and the treat which lay before them. It was not for him to anticipate what Professor Summerlee, who was the spokesman of the committee, had to say to them, but it was common rumor that their expedition had been crowned by extraordinary success.' (Applause.) 'Apparently the age of romance was not dead, and there was common ground upon which the wildest imaginings of the novelist could meet the actual scientific investigations of the searcher for truth. He would only add, before he sat down, that he rejoiced\u2014and all of them would rejoice\u2014that these gentlemen had returned safe and sound from their difficult and dangerous task, for it cannot be denied that any disaster to such an expedition would have inflicted a well-nigh irreparable loss to the cause of Zoological science.' (Great applause, in which Professor Challenger was observed to join.)\n\n\"Professor Summerlee's rising was the signal for another extraordinary outbreak of enthusiasm, which broke out again at intervals throughout his address. That address will not be given in extenso in these columns, for the reason that a full account of the whole adventures of the expedition is being published as a supplement from the pen of our own special correspondent. Some general indications will therefore suffice. Having described the genesis of their journey, and paid a handsome tribute to his friend Professor Challenger, coupled with an apology for the incredulity with which his assertions, now fully vindicated, had been received, he gave the actual course of their journey, carefully withholding such information as would aid the public in any attempt to locate this remarkable plateau. Having described, in general terms, their course from the main river up to the time that they actually reached the base of the cliffs, he enthralled his hearers by his account of the difficulties encountered by the expedition in their repeated attempts to mount them, and finally described how they succeeded in their desperate endeavors, which cost the lives of their two devoted half-breed servants.\" (This amazing reading of the affair was the result of Summerlee's endeavors to avoid raising any questionable matter at the meeting.)\n\n\"Having conducted his audience in fancy to the summit, and marooned them there by reason of the fall of their bridge, the Professor proceeded to describe both the horrors and the attractions of that remarkable land. Of personal adventures he said little, but laid stress upon the rich harvest reaped by Science in the observations of the wonderful beast, bird, insect, and plant life of the plateau. Peculiarly rich in the coleoptera and in the lepidoptera, forty-six new species of the one and ninety-four of the other had been secured in the course of a few weeks. It was, however, in the larger animals, and especially in the larger animals supposed to have been long extinct, that the interest of the public was naturally centered. Of these he was able to give a goodly list, but had little doubt that it would be largely extended when the place had been more thoroughly investigated. He and his companions had seen at least a dozen creatures, most of them at a distance, which corresponded with nothing at present known to Science. These would in time be duly classified and examined. He instanced a snake, the cast skin of which, deep purple in color, was fifty-one feet in length, and mentioned a white creature, supposed to be mammalian, which gave forth well-marked phosphorescence in the darkness; also a large black moth, the bite of which was supposed by the Indians to be highly poisonous. Setting aside these entirely new forms of life, the plateau was very rich in known prehistoric forms, dating back in some cases to early Jurassic times. Among these he mentioned the gigantic and grotesque stegosaurus, seen once by Mr. Malone at a drinking-place by the lake, and drawn in the sketch-book of that adventurous American who had first penetrated this unknown world. He described also the iguanodon and the pterodactyl\u2014two of the first of the wonders which they had encountered. He then thrilled the assembly by some account of the terrible carnivorous dinosaurs, which had on more than one occasion pursued members of the party, and which were the most formidable of all the creatures which they had encountered. Thence he passed to the huge and ferocious bird, the phororachus, and to the great elk which still roams upon this upland. It was not, however, until he sketched the mysteries of the central lake that the full interest and enthusiasm of the audience were aroused. One had to pinch oneself to be sure that one was awake as one heard this sane and practical Professor in cold measured tones describing the monstrous three-eyed fish-lizards and the huge water-snakes which inhabit this enchanted sheet of water. Next he touched upon the Indians, and upon the extraordinary colony of anthropoid apes, which might be looked upon as an advance upon the pithecanthropus of Java, and as coming therefore nearer than any known form to that hypothetical creation, the missing link. Finally he described, amongst some merriment, the ingenious but highly dangerous aeronautic invention of Professor Challenger, and wound up a most memorable address by an account of the methods by which the committee did at last find their way back to civilization.\n\n\"It had been hoped that the proceedings would end there, and that a vote of thanks and congratulation, moved by Professor Sergius, of Upsala University, would be duly seconded and carried; but it was soon evident that the course of events was not destined to flow so smoothly. Symptoms of opposition had been evident from time to time during the evening, and now Dr. James Illingworth, of Edinburgh, rose in the center of the hall. Dr. Illingworth asked whether an amendment should not be taken before a resolution.\n\n\"THE CHAIRMAN: 'Yes, sir, if there must be an amendment.'\n\n\"DR. ILLINGWORTH: 'Your Grace, there must be an amendment.'\n\n\"THE CHAIRMAN: 'Then let us take it at once.'\n\n\"PROFESSOR SUMMERLEE (springing to his feet): 'Might I explain, your Grace, that this man is my personal enemy ever since our controversy in the Quarterly Journal of Science as to the true nature of Bathybius?'\n\n\"THE CHAIRMAN: 'I fear I cannot go into personal matters. Proceed.'\n\n\"Dr. Illingworth was imperfectly heard in part of his remarks on account of the strenuous opposition of the friends of the explorers. Some attempts were also made to pull him down. Being a man of enormous physique, however, and possessed of a very powerful voice, he dominated the tumult and succeeded in finishing his speech. It was clear, from the moment of his rising, that he had a number of friends and sympathizers in the hall, though they formed a minority in the audience. The attitude of the greater part of the public might be described as one of attentive neutrality.\n\n\"Dr. Illingworth began his remarks by expressing his high appreciation of the scientific work both of Professor Challenger and of Professor Summerlee. He much regretted that any personal bias should have been read into his remarks, which were entirely dictated by his desire for scientific truth. His position, in fact, was substantially the same as that taken up by Professor Summerlee at the last meeting. At that last meeting Professor Challenger had made certain assertions which had been queried by his colleague. Now this colleague came forward himself with the same assertions and expected them to remain unquestioned. Was this reasonable? ('Yes,' 'No,' and prolonged interruption, during which Professor Challenger was heard from the Press box to ask leave from the chairman to put Dr. Illingworth into the street.) A year ago one man said certain things. Now four men said other and more startling ones. Was this to constitute a final proof where the matters in question were of the most revolutionary and incredible character? There had been recent examples of travelers arriving from the unknown with certain tales which had been too readily accepted. Was the London Zoological Institute to place itself in this position? He admitted that the members of the committee were men of character. But human nature was very complex. Even Professors might be misled by the desire for notoriety. Like moths, we all love best to flutter in the light. Heavy-game shots liked to be in a position to cap the tales of their rivals, and journalists were not averse from sensational coups, even when imagination had to aid fact in the process. Each member of the committee had his own motive for making the most of his results. ('Shame! shame!') He had no desire to be offensive. ('You are!' and interruption.) The corroboration of these wondrous tales was really of the most slender description. What did it amount to? Some photographs. {Was it possible that in this age of ingenious manipulation photographs could be accepted as evidence?} What more? We have a story of a flight and a descent by ropes which precluded the production of larger specimens. It was ingenious, but not convincing. It was understood that Lord John Roxton claimed to have the skull of a phororachus. He could only say that he would like to see that skull.\n\n\"LORD JOHN ROXTON: 'Is this fellow calling me a liar?' (Uproar.)\n\n\"THE CHAIRMAN: 'Order! order! Dr. Illingworth, I must direct you to bring your remarks to a conclusion and to move your amendment.'\n\n\"DR. ILLINGWORTH: 'Your Grace, I have more to say, but I bow to your ruling. I move, then, that, while Professor Summerlee be thanked for his interesting address, the whole matter shall be regarded as 'non-proven,' and shall be referred back to a larger, and possibly more reliable Committee of Investigation.'\n\n\"It is difficult to describe the confusion caused by this amendment. A large section of the audience expressed their indignation at such a slur upon the travelers by noisy shouts of dissent and cries of, 'Don't put it!' 'Withdraw!' 'Turn him out!' On the other hand, the malcontents\u2014and it cannot be denied that they were fairly numerous\u2014cheered for the amendment, with cries of 'Order!' 'Chair!' and 'Fair play!' A scuffle broke out in the back benches, and blows were freely exchanged among the medical students who crowded that part of the hall. It was only the moderating influence of the presence of large numbers of ladies which prevented an absolute riot. Suddenly, however, there was a pause, a hush, and then complete silence. Professor Challenger was on his feet. His appearance and manner are peculiarly arresting, and as he raised his hand for order the whole audience settled down expectantly to give him a hearing.\n\n\"'It will be within the recollection of many present,' said Professor Challenger, 'that similar foolish and unmannerly scenes marked the last meeting at which I have been able to address them. On that occasion Professor Summerlee was the chief offender, and though he is now chastened and contrite, the matter could not be entirely forgotten. I have heard to-night similar, but even more offensive, sentiments from the person who has just sat down, and though it is a conscious effort of self-effacement to come down to that person's mental level, I will endeavor to do so, in order to allay any reasonable doubt which could possibly exist in the minds of anyone.' (Laughter and interruption.) 'I need not remind this audience that, though Professor Summerlee, as the head of the Committee of Investigation, has been put up to speak to-night, still it is I who am the real prime mover in this business, and that it is mainly to me that any successful result must be ascribed. I have safely conducted these three gentlemen to the spot mentioned, and I have, as you have heard, convinced them of the accuracy of my previous account. We had hoped that we should find upon our return that no one was so dense as to dispute our joint conclusions. Warned, however, by my previous experience, I have not come without such proofs as may convince a reasonable man. As explained by Professor Summerlee, our cameras have been tampered with by the ape-men when they ransacked our camp, and most of our negatives ruined.' (Jeers, laughter, and 'Tell us another!' from the back.) 'I have mentioned the ape-men, and I cannot forbear from saying that some of the sounds which now meet my ears bring back most vividly to my recollection my experiences with those interesting creatures.' (Laughter.) 'In spite of the destruction of so many invaluable negatives, there still remains in our collection a certain number of corroborative photographs showing the conditions of life upon the plateau. Did they accuse them of having forged these photographs?' (A voice, 'Yes,' and considerable interruption which ended in several men being put out of the hall.) 'The negatives were open to the inspection of experts. But what other evidence had they? Under the conditions of their escape it was naturally impossible to bring a large amount of baggage, but they had rescued Professor Summerlee's collections of butterflies and beetles, containing many new species. Was this not evidence?' (Several voices, 'No.') 'Who said no?'\n\n\"DR. ILLINGWORTH (rising): 'Our point is that such a collection might have been made in other places than a prehistoric plateau.' (Applause.)\n\n\"PROFESSOR CHALLENGER: 'No doubt, sir, we have to bow to your scientific authority, although I must admit that the name is unfamiliar. Passing, then, both the photographs and the entomological collection, I come to the varied and accurate information which we bring with us upon points which have never before been elucidated. For example, upon the domestic habits of the pterodactyl\u2014'(A voice: 'Bosh,' and uproar)\u2014'I say, that upon the domestic habits of the pterodactyl we can throw a flood of light. I can exhibit to you from my portfolio a picture of that creature taken from life which would convince you\u2014'\n\n\"DR. ILLINGWORTH: 'No picture could convince us of anything.'\n\n\"PROFESSOR CHALLENGER: 'You would require to see the thing itself?'\n\n\"DR. ILLINGWORTH: 'Undoubtedly.'\n\n\"PROFESSOR CHALLENGER: 'And you would accept that?'\n\n\"DR. ILLINGWORTH (laughing): 'Beyond a doubt.'\n\n\"It was at this point that the sensation of the evening arose\u2014a sensation so dramatic that it can never have been paralleled in the history of scientific gatherings. Professor Challenger raised his hand in the air as a signal, and at once our colleague, Mr. E. D. Malone, was observed to rise and to make his way to the back of the platform. An instant later he reappeared in company of a gigantic negro, the two of them bearing between them a large square packing-case. It was evidently of great weight, and was slowly carried forward and placed in front of the Professor's chair. All sound had hushed in the audience and everyone was absorbed in the spectacle before them. Professor Challenger drew off the top of the case, which formed a sliding lid. Peering down into the box he snapped his fingers several times and was heard from the Press seat to say, 'Come, then, pretty, pretty!' in a coaxing voice. An instant later, with a scratching, rattling sound, a most horrible and loathsome creature appeared from below and perched itself upon the side of the case. Even the unexpected fall of the Duke of Durham into the orchestra, which occurred at this moment, could not distract the petrified attention of the vast audience. The face of the creature was like the wildest gargoyle that the imagination of a mad medieval builder could have conceived. It was malicious, horrible, with two small red eyes as bright as points of burning coal. Its long, savage mouth, which was held half-open, was full of a double row of shark-like teeth. Its shoulders were humped, and round them were draped what appeared to be a faded gray shawl. It was the devil of our childhood in person. There was a turmoil in the audience\u2014someone screamed, two ladies in the front row fell senseless from their chairs, and there was a general movement upon the platform to follow their chairman into the orchestra. For a moment there was danger of a general panic. Professor Challenger threw up his hands to still the commotion, but the movement alarmed the creature beside him. Its strange shawl suddenly unfurled, spread, and fluttered as a pair of leathery wings. Its owner grabbed at its legs, but too late to hold it. It had sprung from the perch and was circling slowly round the Queen's Hall with a dry, leathery flapping of its ten-foot wings, while a putrid and insidious odor pervaded the room. The cries of the people in the galleries, who were alarmed at the near approach of those glowing eyes and that murderous beak, excited the creature to a frenzy. Faster and faster it flew, beating against walls and chandeliers in a blind frenzy of alarm. 'The window! For heaven's sake shut that window!' roared the Professor from the platform, dancing and wringing his hands in an agony of apprehension. Alas, his warning was too late! In a moment the creature, beating and bumping along the wall like a huge moth within a gas-shade, came upon the opening, squeezed its hideous bulk through it, and was gone. Professor Challenger fell back into his chair with his face buried in his hands, while the audience gave one long, deep sigh of relief as they realized that the incident was over.\n\n\"Then\u2014oh! how shall one describe what took place then\u2014when the full exuberance of the majority and the full reaction of the minority united to make one great wave of enthusiasm, which rolled from the back of the hall, gathering volume as it came, swept over the orchestra, submerged the platform, and carried the four heroes away upon its crest?\" (Good for you, Mac!) \"If the audience had done less than justice, surely it made ample amends. Every one was on his feet. Every one was moving, shouting, gesticulating. A dense crowd of cheering men were round the four travelers. 'Up with them! up with them!' cried a hundred voices. In a moment four figures shot up above the crowd. In vain they strove to break loose. They were held in their lofty places of honor. It would have been hard to let them down if it had been wished, so dense was the crowd around them. 'Regent Street! Regent Street!' sounded the voices. There was a swirl in the packed multitude, and a slow current, bearing the four upon their shoulders, made for the door. Out in the street the scene was extraordinary. An assemblage of not less than a hundred thousand people was waiting. The close-packed throng extended from the other side of the Langham Hotel to Oxford Circus. A roar of acclamation greeted the four adventurers as they appeared, high above the heads of the people, under the vivid electric lamps outside the hall. 'A procession! A procession!' was the cry. In a dense phalanx, blocking the streets from side to side, the crowd set forth, taking the route of Regent Street, Pall Mall, St. James's Street, and Piccadilly. The whole central traffic of London was held up, and many collisions were reported between the demonstrators upon the one side and the police and taxi-cabmen upon the other. Finally, it was not until after midnight that the four travelers were released at the entrance to Lord John Roxton's chambers in the Albany, and that the exuberant crowd, having sung 'They are Jolly Good Fellows' in chorus, concluded their program with 'God Save the King.' So ended one of the most remarkable evenings that London has seen for a considerable time.\"\n\nSo far my friend Macdona; and it may be taken as a fairly accurate, if florid, account of the proceedings. As to the main incident, it was a bewildering surprise to the audience, but not, I need hardly say, to us. The reader will remember how I met Lord John Roxton upon the very occasion when, in his protective crinoline, he had gone to bring the \"Devil's chick\" as he called it, for Professor Challenger. I have hinted also at the trouble which the Professor's baggage gave us when we left the plateau, and had I described our voyage I might have said a good deal of the worry we had to coax with putrid fish the appetite of our filthy companion. If I have not said much about it before, it was, of course, that the Professor's earnest desire was that no possible rumor of the unanswerable argument which we carried should be allowed to leak out until the moment came when his enemies were to be confuted.\n\nOne word as to the fate of the London pterodactyl. Nothing can be said to be certain upon this point. There is the evidence of two frightened women that it perched upon the roof of the Queen's Hall and remained there like a diabolical statue for some hours. The next day it came out in the evening papers that Private Miles, of the Coldstream Guards, on duty outside Marlborough House, had deserted his post without leave, and was therefore courtmartialed. Private Miles' account, that he dropped his rifle and took to his heels down the Mall because on looking up he had suddenly seen the devil between him and the moon, was not accepted by the Court, and yet it may have a direct bearing upon the point at issue. The only other evidence which I can adduce is from the log of the SS. Friesland, a Dutch-American liner, which asserts that at nine next morning, Start Point being at the time ten miles upon their starboard quarter, they were passed by something between a flying goat and a monstrous bat, which was heading at a prodigious pace south and west. If its homing instinct led it upon the right line, there can be no doubt that somewhere out in the wastes of the Atlantic the last European pterodactyl found its end.\n\nAnd Gladys\u2014oh, my Gladys!\u2014Gladys of the mystic lake, now to be renamed the Central, for never shall she have immortality through me. Did I not always see some hard fiber in her nature? Did I not, even at the time when I was proud to obey her behest, feel that it was surely a poor love which could drive a lover to his death or the danger of it? Did I not, in my truest thoughts, always recurring and always dismissed, see past the beauty of the face, and, peering into the soul, discern the twin shadows of selfishness and of fickleness glooming at the back of it? Did she love the heroic and the spectacular for its own noble sake, or was it for the glory which might, without effort or sacrifice, be reflected upon herself? Or are these thoughts the vain wisdom which comes after the event? It was the shock of my life. For a moment it had turned me to a cynic. But already, as I write, a week has passed, and we have had our momentous interview with Lord John Roxton and\u2014well, perhaps things might be worse.\n\nLet me tell it in a few words. No letter or telegram had come to me at Southampton, and I reached the little villa at Streatham about ten o'clock that night in a fever of alarm. Was she dead or alive? Where were all my nightly dreams of the open arms, the smiling face, the words of praise for her man who had risked his life to humor her whim? Already I was down from the high peaks and standing flat-footed upon earth. Yet some good reasons given might still lift me to the clouds once more. I rushed down the garden path, hammered at the door, heard the voice of Gladys within, pushed past the staring maid, and strode into the sitting-room. She was seated in a low settee under the shaded standard lamp by the piano. In three steps I was across the room and had both her hands in mine.\n\n\"Gladys!\" I cried, \"Gladys!\"\n\nShe looked up with amazement in her face. She was altered in some subtle way. The expression of her eyes, the hard upward stare, the set of the lips, was new to me. She drew back her hands.\n\n\"What do you mean?\" she said.\n\n\"Gladys!\" I cried. \"What is the matter? You are my Gladys, are you not\u2014little Gladys Hungerton?\"\n\n\"No,\" said she, \"I am Gladys Potts. Let me introduce you to my husband.\"\n\nHow absurd life is! I found myself mechanically bowing and shaking hands with a little ginger-haired man who was coiled up in the deep arm-chair which had once been sacred to my own use. We bobbed and grinned in front of each other.\n\n\"Father lets us stay here. We are getting our house ready,\" said Gladys.\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" said I.\n\n\"You didn't get my letter at Para, then?\"\n\n\"No, I got no letter.\"\n\n\"Oh, what a pity! It would have made all clear.\"\n\n\"It is quite clear,\" said I.\n\n\"I've told William all about you,\" said she. \"We have no secrets. I am so sorry about it. But it couldn't have been so very deep, could it, if you could go off to the other end of the world and leave me here alone. You're not crabby, are you?\"\n\n\"No, no, not at all. I think I'll go.\"\n\n\"Have some refreshment,\" said the little man, and he added, in a confidential way, \"It's always like this, ain't it? And must be unless you had polygamy, only the other way round; you understand.\" He laughed like an idiot, while I made for the door.\n\nI was through it, when a sudden fantastic impulse came upon me, and I went back to my successful rival, who looked nervously at the electric push.\n\n\"Will you answer a question?\" I asked.\n\n\"Well, within reason,\" said he.\n\n\"How did you do it? Have you searched for hidden treasure, or discovered a pole, or done time on a pirate, or flown the Channel, or what? Where is the glamour of romance? How did you get it?\"\n\nHe stared at me with a hopeless expression upon his vacuous, good-natured, scrubby little face.\n\n\"Don't you think all this is a little too personal?\" he said.\n\n\"Well, just one question,\" I cried. \"What are you? What is your profession?\"\n\n\"I am a solicitor's clerk,\" said he. \"Second man at Johnson and Merivale's, 41 Chancery Lane.\"\n\n\"Good-night!\" said I, and vanished, like all disconsolate and broken-hearted heroes, into the darkness, with grief and rage and laughter all simmering within me like a boiling pot.\n\nOne more little scene, and I have done. Last night we all supped at Lord John Roxton's rooms, and sitting together afterwards we smoked in good comradeship and talked our adventures over. It was strange under these altered surroundings to see the old, well-known faces and figures. There was Challenger, with his smile of condescension, his drooping eyelids, his intolerant eyes, his aggressive beard, his huge chest, swelling and puffing as he laid down the law to Summerlee. And Summerlee, too, there he was with his short briar between his thin moustache and his gray goat's-beard, his worn face protruded in eager debate as he queried all Challenger's propositions. Finally, there was our host, with his rugged, eagle face, and his cold, blue, glacier eyes with always a shimmer of devilment and of humor down in the depths of them. Such is the last picture of them that I have carried away.\n\nIt was after supper, in his own sanctum\u2014the room of the pink radiance and the innumerable trophies\u2014that Lord John Roxton had something to say to us. From a cupboard he had brought an old cigar-box, and this he laid before him on the table.\n\n\"There's one thing,\" said he, \"that maybe I should have spoken about before this, but I wanted to know a little more clearly where I was. No use to raise hopes and let them down again. But it's facts, not hopes, with us now. You may remember that day we found the pterodactyl rookery in the swamp\u2014what? Well, somethin' in the lie of the land took my notice. Perhaps it has escaped you, so I will tell you. It was a volcanic vent full of blue clay.\" The Professors nodded.\n\n\"Well, now, in the whole world I've only had to do with one place that was a volcanic vent of blue clay. That was the great De Beers Diamond Mine of Kimberley\u2014what? So you see I got diamonds into my head. I rigged up a contraption to hold off those stinking beasts, and I spent a happy day there with a spud. This is what I got.\"\n\nHe opened his cigar-box, and tilting it over he poured about twenty or thirty rough stones, varying from the size of beans to that of chestnuts, on the table.\n\n\"Perhaps you think I should have told you then. Well, so I should, only I know there are a lot of traps for the unwary, and that stones may be of any size and yet of little value where color and consistency are clean off. Therefore, I brought them back, and on the first day at home I took one round to Spink's, and asked him to have it roughly cut and valued.\"\n\nHe took a pill-box from his pocket, and spilled out of it a beautiful glittering diamond, one of the finest stones that I have ever seen.\n\n\"There's the result,\" said he. \"He prices the lot at a minimum of two hundred thousand pounds. Of course it is fair shares between us. I won't hear of anythin' else. Well, Challenger, what will you do with your fifty thousand?\"\n\n\"If you really persist in your generous view,\" said the Professor, \"I should found a private museum, which has long been one of my dreams.\"\n\n\"And you, Summerlee?\"\n\n\"I would retire from teaching, and so find time for my final classification of the chalk fossils.\"\n\n\"I'll use my own,\" said Lord John Roxton, \"in fitting a well-formed expedition and having another look at the dear old plateau. As to you, young fellah, you, of course, will spend yours in gettin' married.\"\n\n\"Not just yet,\" said I, with a rueful smile. \"I think, if you will have me, that I would rather go with you.\"\n\nLord Roxton said nothing, but a brown hand was stretched out to me across the table." + } + ] + }, + { + "title": "When the World Screamed", + "author": "Arthur Conan Doyle", + "genres": [ + "science fiction" + ], + "tags": [ + "Professor Challenger", + "Fiction", + "Short Stories" + ], + "chapters": [ + { + "title": "Chapter 1", + "text": "I had a vague recollection of having heard my friend Edward Malone, of the Gazette, speak of Professor Challenger, with whom he had been associated in some remarkable adventures. I am so busy, however, with my own profession, and my firm has been so overtaxed with orders, that I know little of what is going on in the world outside my own special interests. My general recollection was that Challenger has been depicted as a wild genius of a violent and intolerant disposition. I was greatly surprised to receive a business communication from him which was in the following terms:\n\n'14 (Bis), Enmore Gardens, Kensington. 'Sir,\u2014 'I have occasion to engage the services of an expert in Artesian borings. I will not conceal from you that my opinion of experts is not a high one, and that I have usually found that a man who, like myself, has a well-equipped brain can take a sounder and broader view than the man who professes a special knowledge (which, alas, is so often a mere profession), and is therefore limited in his outlook. None the less, I am disposed to give you a trial. Looking down the list of Artesian authorities, a certain oddity\u2014I had almost written absurdity\u2014in your name attracted my attention, and I found upon inquiry that my young friend, Mr. Edward Malone, was actually acquainted with you. I am therefore writing to say that I should be glad to have an interview with you, and that if you satisfy my requirements, and my standard is no mean one, I may be inclined to put a most important matter into your hands. I can say no more at present as the matter is of extreme secrecy, which can only be discussed by word of mouth. I beg, therefore, that you will at once cancel any engagement which you may happen to have, and that you will call upon me at the above address at 10.30 in the morning of next Friday. There is a scraper as well as a mat, and Mrs. Challenger is most particular.\n\n'I remain, Sir, as I began, 'George Edward Challenger.'\n\nI handed this letter to my chief clerk to answer, and he informed the Professor that Mr. Peerless Jones would be glad to keep the appointment as arranged. It was a perfectly civil business note, but it began with the phrase: 'Your letter (undated) has been received.'\n\nThis drew a second epistle from the Professor:\n\n'Sir,' he said and his writing looked like a barbed wire fence\u2014'I observe that you animadvert upon the trifle that my letter was undated. Might I draw your attention to the fact that, as some return for a monstrous taxation, our Government is in the habit of affixing a small circular sign or stamp upon the outside on the envelope which notifies the date of posting? Should this sign be missing or illegible your remedy lies with the proper postal authorities. Meanwhile, I would ask you to confine your observations to matters which concern the business over which I consult you, and to cease to comment upon the form which my own letters may assume.'\n\nIt was clear to me that I was dealing with a lunatic, so I thought it well before I went any further in the matter to call upon my friend Malone, whom I had known since the old days when we both played Rugger for Richmond. I found him the same jolly Irishman as ever, and much amused at my first brush with Challenger.\n\n'That's nothing, my boy,' said he. 'You'll feel as if you had been skinned alive when you have been with him five minutes. He beats the world for offensiveness.'\n\n'But why should the world put up with it?'\n\n'They don't. If you collected all the libel actions and all the rows and all the police-court assaults\u2014'\n\n'Assaults!'\n\n'Bless you, he would think nothing of throwing you downstairs if you have a disagreement. He is a primitive cave-man in a lounge suit. I can see him with a club in one hand and a jagged bit of flint in the other. Some people are born out of their proper century, but he is born out of his millennium. He belongs to the early neolithic or thereabouts.'\n\n'And he a professor!'\n\n'There is the wonder of it! It's the greatest brain in Europe, with a driving force behind it that can turn all his dreams into facts.\n\nThey do all they can to hold him back for his colleagues hate him like poison, but a lot of trawlers might as well try to hold back the Berengaria. He simply ignores them and steams on his way.'\n\n'Well,' said I, 'one thing is clear. I don't want to have anything to do with him. I'll cancel that appointment.'\n\n'Not a bit of it. You will keep it to the minute\u2014and mind that it is to the minute or you will hear of it.'\n\n'Why should I?'\n\n'Well, I'll tell you. First of all, don't take too seriously what I have said about old Challenger. Everyone who gets close to him learns to love him. There is no real harm in the old bear. Why, I remember how he carried an Indian baby with the smallpox on his back for a hundred miles from the back country down to the Madeira river. He is big every way. He won't hurt if you get right with him.'\n\n'I won't give him the chance.'\n\n'You will be a fool if you don't. Have you ever heard of the Hengist Down Mystery\u2014the shaft-sinking on the South Coast?'\n\n'Some secret coal-mining exploration, I understand.'\n\nMalone winked. 'Well, you can put it down as that if you like. You see, I am in the old man's confidence, and I can't say anything until he gives the word. But I may tell you this, for it has been in the Press. A man, Betterton, who made his money in rubber, left his whole estate to Challenger some years ago, with the provision that it should be used in the interests of science. It proved to be an enormous sum\u2014 several millions. Challenger then bought a property at Hengist Down, in Sussex. It was worthless land on the north edge of the chalk country, and he got a large tract of it, which he wired off. There was a deep gully in the middle of it. Here he began to make an excavation. He announced'\u2014here Malone winked again\u2014'that there was petroleum in England and that he meant to prove it. He built a little model village with a colony of well-paid workers who are all sworn to keep their mouths shut. The gully is wired off as well as the estate, and the place is guarded by bloodhounds. Several pressmen have nearly lost their lives, to say nothing of the seats of their trousers, from these creatures. It's a big operation, and Sir Thomas Morden's firm has it in hand, but they also are sworn to secrecy. Clearly the time has come when Artesian help is needed. Now, would you not be foolish to refuse such a job as that, with all the interest and experience and a big fat cheque at the end of it\u2014to say nothing of rubbing shoulders with the most wonderful man you have ever met or are ever likely to meet?'\n\nMalone's arguments prevailed, and Friday morning found me on my way to Enmore Gardens, I took such particular care to be in time that I found myself at the door twenty minutes too soon. I was waiting in the street when it struck me that I recognized the Rolls- Royce with the silver arrow mascot at the door. It was certainly that of Jack Devonshire, the junior partner of the great Morden firm. I had always known him as the most urbane of men, so that it was rather a shock to me when he suddenly appeared, and standing outside the door he raised both his hands, to heaven and said with great fervour: 'Damn him! Oh, damn him!'\n\n'What is up, Jack? You seem peeved this morning.'\n\n'Hullo, Peerless! Are you in on this job, too?'\n\n'There seems a chance of it.'\n\n'Well, you find it chastening to the temper.'\n\n'Rather more so than yours can stand, apparently.'\n\n'Well, I should say so. The butler's message to me was: \"The Professor desired me to say, sir, that he was rather busy at present eating an egg, and that if you would call at some more convenient time he would very likely see you.\" That was the message delivered by a servant. I may add that I had called to collect forty-two thousand pounds that he owes us.'\n\nI whistled.\n\n'You can't get your money?'\n\n'Oh, yes, he is all right about money. I'll do the old gorilla the justice to say that he is open- handed with money. But he pays when he likes and how he likes, and he cares for nobody.\n\nHowever, you go and try your luck and see how you like it.' With that he flung himself into his motor and was off.\n\nI waited with occasional glances at my watch until the zero hour should arrive. I am, if I may say so, a fairly hefty individual, and a runner-up for the Belsize Boxing Club middle-weights, but I have never faced an interview with such trepidation as this. It was not physical, for I was confident I could hold my own if this inspired lunatic should attack me, but it was a mixture of feelings in which fear of some public scandal and dread of losing a lucrative contract were mingled. However, things are always easier when imagination ceases and action begins. I snapped up my watch and made for the door.\n\nIt was opened by an old wooden-faced butler, a man who bore an expression, or an absence of expression, which gave the impression that he was so inured to shocks that nothing on earth would surprise him.\n\n'By appointment, sir?' he asked.\n\n'Certainly.'\n\nHe glanced at a list in his hand.\n\n'Your name, sir?... Quite so, Mr. Peerless Jones... Ten-thirty. Everything is in order. We have to be careful, Mr. Jones, for we are much annoyed by journalists. The Professor, as you may be aware, does not approve of the Press. This way, sir. Professor Challenger is now receiving.'\n\nThe next instant I found myself in the presence. I believe that my friend, Ted Malone, has described the man in his 'Lost World' yarn better than I can hope to do, so I'll leave it at that. All I was aware of was a huge trunk of a man behind a mahogany desk, with a great spade-shaped black beard and two large grey eyes half covered with insolent drooping eyelids. His big head sloped back, his beard bristled forward, and his whole appearance conveyed one single impression of arrogant intolerance. 'Well, what the devil do you want?' was written all over him. I laid my card on the table.\n\n'Ah yes,' he said, picking it up and handling it as if he disliked the smell of it. 'Of course. You are the expert so-called. Mr. Jones\u2014 Mr. Peerless Jones. You may thank your godfather, Mr. Jones, for it was this ludicrous prefix which first drew my attention to you.'\n\n'I am here, Professor Challenger, for a business interview and not to discuss my own name,' said I, with all the dignity I could master.\n\n'Dear me, you seem to be a very touchy person, Mr. Jones. Your nerves are in a highly irritable condition. We must walk warily in dealing with you, Mr. Jones. Pray sit down and compose yourself. I have been reading your little brochure upon the reclaiming of the Sinai Peninsula. Did you write it yourself?'\n\n'Naturally, sir. My name is on it.'\n\n'Quite so! Quite so! But it does not always follow, does it? However, I am prepared to accept your assertion. The book is not without merit of a sort. Beneath the dullness of the diction one gets glimpses of an occasional idea. There are germs of thought here and there. Are you a married man?'\n\n'No, sir. I am not.'\n\n'Then there is some chance of your keeping a secret.'\n\n'If I promised to do so, I would certainly keep my promise. 'So you say. My young friend, Malone'\u2014he spoke as if Ted were ten years of age\u2014'has a good opinion of you. He says that I may trust you. This trust is a very great one, for I am engaged just now in one of the greatest experiments\u2014I may even say the greatest experiment \u2014in the history of the world. I ask for your participation.'\n\n'I shall be honoured.'\n\n'It is indeed an honour. I will admit that I should have shared my labours with no one were it not that the gigantic nature of the undertaking calls for the highest technical skill. Now, Mr. Jones, having obtained your promise of inviolable secrecy, I come down to the essential point. It is this\u2014that the world upon which we live is itself a living organism, endowed, as I believe, with a circulation, a respiration, and a nervous system of its own.' Clearly the man was a lunatic.\n\n'Your brain, I observe,' he continued, 'fails to register. But it will gradually absorb the idea.\n\nYou will recall how a moor or heath resembles the hairy side of a giant animal. A certain analogy runs through all nature. You will then consider the secular rise and fall of land, which indicates the slow respiration of the creature. Finally, you will note the fidgetings and scratchings which appear to our Lilliputian perceptions as earthquakes and convulsions.'\n\n'What about volcanoes?' I asked.\n\n'Tut, tut! They correspond to the heat spots upon our own bodies.'\n\nMy brain whirled as I tried to find some answer to these monstrous contentions.\n\n'The temperature!' I cried. 'Is it not a fact that it rises rapidly as one descends, and that the centre of the earth is liquid heat?'\n\nHe waved my assertion aside.\n\n'You are probably aware, sir, since Council schools are now compulsory, that the earth is flattened at the poles. This means that the pole is nearer to the centre than any other point and would therefore be most affected by this heat of which you spoke. It is notorious, of course, that the conditions of the poles are tropical, is it not?'\n\n'The whole idea is utterly new to me.'\n\n'Of course it is. It is the privilege of the original thinker to put forward ideas which are new and usually unwelcome to the common clay. Now, sir, what is this?' He held up a small object which he had picked from the table.\n\n'I should say it is a sea-urchin.'\n\n'Exactly!' he cried, with an air of exaggerated surprise, as when an infant has done something clever. 'It is a sea-urchin\u2014a common echinus. Nature repeats itself in many forms regardless of the size. This echinus is a model, a prototype, of the world. You perceive that it is roughly circular, but flattened at the poles. Let us then regard the world as a huge echinus. What are your objections?'\n\nMy chief objection was that the thing was too absurd for argument, but I did not dare to say so. I fished around for some less sweeping assertion.\n\n'A living creature needs food,' I said. 'Where could the world sustain its huge bulk?'\n\n'An excellent point\u2014excellent!' said the Professor, with a huge air of patronage. 'You have a quick eye for the obvious, though you are slow in realizing the more subtle implications. How does the world get nourishment? Again we turn to our little friend the echinus. The water which surrounds it flows through the tubes of this small creature and provides its nutrition.'\n\n'Then you think that the water\u2014'\n\n'No, sir. The ether. The earth browses upon a circular path in the fields of space, and as it moves the ether is continually pouring through it and providing its vitality. Quite a flock of other little world-echini are doing the same thing, Venus, Mars, and the rest, each with its own field for grazing.'\n\nThe man was clearly mad, but there was no arguing with him. He accepted my silence as agreement and smiled at me in most beneficent fashion.\n\n'We are coming on, I perceive,' said he. 'Light is beginning to break in. A little dazzling at first, no doubt, but we will soon get used to it. Pray give me your attention while I found one or two more observations upon this little creature in my hand.\n\n'We will suppose that on this outer hard rind there were certain infinitely small insects which crawled upon the surface. Would the echinus ever be aware of their existence?'\n\n'I should say not.'\n\n'You can well imagine then, that the earth has not the least idea of the way in which it is utilized by the human race. It is quite unaware of this fungus growth of vegetation and evolution of tiny animalcules which has collected upon it during its travels round the sun as barnacles gather upon the ancient vessel. That is the present state of affairs, and that is what I propose to alter.'\n\nI stared in amazement. 'You propose to alter it?'\n\n'I propose to let the earth know that there is at least one person, George Edward Challenger, who calls for attention\u2014who, indeed, insists upon attention. It is certainly the first intimation it has ever had of the sort.'\n\n'And how, sir, will you do this?'\n\n'Ah, there we get down to business.\n\nYou have touched the spot. I will again call your attention to this interesting little creature which I hold in my hand. It is all nerves and sensibility beneath that protective crust. Is it not evident that if a parasitic animalcule desired to call its attention it would sink a hole in its shell and so stimulate its sensory apparatus?'\n\n'Certainly.'\n\n'Or, again, we will take the case of the homely flea or a mosquito which explores the surface of the human body. We may be unaware of its presence. But presently, when it sinks its proboscis through the skin, which is our crust, we are disagreeably reminded that we are not altogether alone. My plans now will no doubt begin to dawn upon you. Light breaks in the darkness.'\n\n'Good heavens! You propose to sink a shaft through the earth's crust?'\n\nHe closed his eyes with ineffable complacency.\n\n'You see before you,' he said, 'the first who will ever pierce that horny hide. I may even put it in the present tense and say who has pierced it.'\n\n'You have done it!'\n\n'With the very efficient aid of Morden and think I may say that I have done it. Several years of constant work which has been carried on night and day, and conducted by every known species of drill, borer, crusher, and explosive, has at last brought us to our goal.'\n\n'You don't mean to say you are through the crust!'\n\n'If your expressions denote bewilderment they may pass. If they denote incredulity\u2014'\n\n'No, sir, nothing of the kind.'\n\n'You will accept my statement without question. We are through the crust. It was exactly fourteen thousand four hundred and forty-two yards thick, or roughly eight miles. In the course of our sinking it may interest you to know that we have exposed a fortune in the matter of coal-beds which would probably in the long run defray the cost of the enterprise. Our chief difficulty has been the springs of water in the lower chalk and Hastings sands, but these we have overcome. The last stage has now been reached\u2014and the last stage is none other than Mr. Peerless Jones. You, sir, represent the mosquito. Your Artesian borer takes the place of the stinging proboscis. The brain has done its work. Exit the thinker. Enter the mechanical one, the peerless one, with his rod of metal. Do I make myself clear?'\n\n'You talk of eight miles!' I cried. 'Are you aware, sir, that five thousand feet is considered nearly the limit for Artesian borings? I am acquainted with one in upper Silesia which is six thousand two hundred feet deep, but it is looked upon as a wonder.'\n\n'You misunderstand me, Mr. Peerless. Either my explanation or your brain is at fault, and I will not insist upon which. I am well aware of the limits of Artesian borings, and it is not likely that I would have spent millions of pounds upon my colossal tunnel if a six-inch boring would have met my needs. All that I ask you is to have a drill ready which shall be as sharp as possible, not more than a hundred feet in length, and operated by an electric motor. An ordinary percussion drill driven home by a weight will meet every requirement.\n\n'Why by an electric motor?'\n\n'I am here, Mr. Jones, to give orders, not reasons. Before we finish it may happen\u2014it may, I say, happen\u2014that your very life may depend upon this drill being started from a distance by electricity. It can, I presume, be done?'\n\n'Certainly it can be done.'\n\n'Then prepare to do it. The matter is not yet ready for your actual presence, but your preparations may now be made. I have nothing more to say.'\n\n'But it is essential,' I expostulated, 'that you should let me know what soil the drill is to penetrate. Sand, or clay, or chalk would each need different treatment.'\n\n'Let us say jelly,' said Challenger. 'Yes, we will for the present suppose that you have to sink your drill into jelly. And now, Mr. Jones, I have matters of some importance to engage my mind, so I will wish you good morning. You can draw up a formal contract with mention of your charges for my Head of Works.'\n\nI bowed and turned, but before I reached the door my curiosity overcame me.\n\nHe was already writing furiously with a quill pen screeching over the paper, and he looked up angrily at my interruption.\n\n'Well, sir, what now? I had hoped you were gone.\n\n'I only wished to ask you, sir, what the object of so extraordinary an experiment can be?'\n\n'Away, sir, away!' he cried, angrily. 'Raise your mind above the base mercantile and utilitarian needs of commerce. Shake off your paltry standards of business. Science seeks knowledge. Let the knowledge lead us where it will, we still must seek it. To know once for all what we are, why we are, where we are, is that not in itself the greatest of all human aspirations? Away, sir, away!'\n\nHis great black head was bowed over his papers once more and blended with his beard. The quill pen screeched more shrilly than ever. So I left him, this extraordinary man, with my head in a whirl at the thought of the strange business in which I now found myself to be his partner.\n\nWhen I got back to my office I found Ted Malone waiting with a broad grin upon his face to know the result of my interview.\n\n'Well!' he cried. 'None the worse? No case of assault and battery? You must have handled him very tactfully. What do you think of the old boy?'\n\n'The most aggravating, insolent, intolerant, self-opinionated man I have ever met, but\u2014'\n\n'Exactly!' cried Malone. 'We all come to that \"but.\" Of course, he is all you say and a lot more, but one feels that so big a man is not to be measured in our scale, and that we can endure from him what we would not stand from any other living mortal. Is that not so?'\n\n'Well, I don't know him well enough yet to say, but I will admit that if he is not a mere bullying megalomaniac, and if what he says is true, then he certainly is in a class by himself. But is it true?'\n\n'Of course it is true. Challenger always delivers the goods. Now, where are you exactly in the matter? Has he told you about Hengist Down?'\n\n'Yes, in a sketchy sort of way.'\n\n'Well, you may take it from me that the whole thing is colossal colossal in conception and colossal in execution. He hates pressmen, but I am in his confidence, for he knows that I will publish no more than he authorizes. Therefore I have his plans, or some of his plans. He is such a deep old bird that one never is sure if one has really touched bottom. Anyhow, I know enough to assure you that Hengist Down is a practical proposition and nearly completed. My advice to you now is simply to await events, and meanwhile to get your gear all ready. You'll hear soon enough either from him or from me.'\n\nAs it happened, it was from Malone himself that I heard. He came round quite early to my office some weeks later, as the bearer of a message.\n\n'I've come from Challenger' said he.\n\n'You are like the pilot fish to the shark.'\n\n'I'm proud to be anything to him. He really is a wonder. He has done it all right. It's your turn now, and then he is ready to ring up the curtain.'\n\n'Well, I can't believe it until I see it, but I have everything ready and loaded on a lorry. I could start it off at any moment.'\n\n'Then do so at once. I've given you a tremendous character for energy and punctuality, so mind you don't let me down. In the meantime, come down with me by rail and I will give you an idea of what has to be done.'\n\nIt was a lovely spring morning\u2014May 22nd, to be exact\u2014when we made that fateful journey which brought me on to a stage which is destined to be historical. On the way Malone handed me a note from Challenger which I was to accept as my instructions.\n\n'Sir,' (it ran)\u2014\n\n'Upon arriving at Hengist Down you will put yourself at the disposal of Mr. Barforth, the Chief Engineer, who is in possession of my plans. My young friend, Malone, the bearer of this, is also in touch with me and may protect me from any personal contact. We have now experienced certain phenomena in the shaft at and below the fourteen thousand-foot level which fully bear out my views as to the nature of a planetary body, but some more sensational proof is needed before I can hope to make an impression upon the torpid intelligence of the modern scientific world.\n\nThat proof you are destined to afford, and they to witness. As you descend in the lifts you will observe, presuming that you have the rare quality of observation, that you pass in succession the secondary chalk beds, the coal measures, some Devonian and Cambrian indications, and finally the granite, through which the greater part of our tunnel is conducted. The bottom is now covered with tarpaulin, which I order you not to tamper with, as any clumsy handling of the sensitive inner cuticle of the earth might bring about premature results. At my instruction, two strong beams have been laid across the shaft twenty feet above the bottom, with a space between them. This space will act as a clip to hold up your Artesian tube. Fifty feet of drill will suffice, twenty of which will project below the beams, so that the point of the drill comes nearly down to the tarpaulin. As you value your life do not let it go further. Thirty feet will then project upwards in the shaft, and when you have released it we may assume that not less than forty feet of drill will bury itself in the earth's substance. As this substance is very soft I find that you will probably need no driving power, and that simply a release of the tube will suffice by its own weight to drive it into the layer which we have uncovered. These instructions would seem to be sufficient for any ordinary intelligence, but I have little doubt that you will need more, which can be referred to me through our young friend, Malone.\n\n'GEORGE EDWARD CHALLENGER.'\n\nIt can be imagined that when we arrived at the station of Storrington, near the northern foot of the South Downs, I was in a state of considerable nervous tension. A weather-worn Vauxhall thirty landaulette was awaiting us, and bumped us for six or seven miles over by-paths and lanes which, in spite of their natural seclusion, were deeply rutted and showed every sign of heavy traffic. A broken lorry lying in the grass at one point showed that others had found it rough going as well as we. Once a huge piece of machinery which seemed to be the valves and piston of a hydraulic pump projected itself, all rusted, from a clump of furze.\n\n'That's Challenger's doing,' said Malone, grinning.\n\n'Said it was one-tenth of an inch out of estimate, so he simply chucked it by the wayside.'\n\n'With a lawsuit to follow, no doubt.'\n\n'A lawsuit! My dear chap, we should have a court of our own. We have enough to keep a judge busy for a year. Government too. The old devil cares for no one. Rex v. George Challenger and George Challenger v. Rex. A nice devil's dance the two will have from one court to another. Well, here we are. All right, Jenkins, you can let us in!'\n\nA huge man with a notable cauliflower ear was peering into the car, a scowl of suspicion upon his face. He relaxed and saluted as he recognized my companion.\n\n'All right, Mr. Malone. I thought it was the American Associated Press.'\n\n'Oh, they are on the track, are they?'\n\n'They to-day, and The Times yesterday. Oh, they are buzzing round proper. Look at that!' He indicated a distant dot upon the sky-line.\n\n'See that glint ! That's the telescope of the Chicago Daily News. Yes, they are fair after us now. I've seen 'em in rows, same as the crows, along the Beacon yonder.'\n\n'Poor old Press gang!' said Malone, as we entered a gate in a formidable barbed wire fence. 'I am one of them myself, and I know how it feels.\n\nAt this moment we heard a plaintive bleat behind us of 'Malone! Ted Malone!' It came from a fat little man who had just arrived upon a motor-bike and was at present struggling in the Herculean grasp of the gatekeeper.\n\n'Here, let me go!' he sputtered. 'Keep your hands off! Malone, call off this gorilla of yours.'\n\n'Let him go, Jenkins! He's a friend of mine!' cried Malone. 'Well, old bean, what is it? What are you after in these parts? Fleet Street is your stamping ground\u2014not the wilds of Sussex.'\n\n'You know what I am after perfectly well,' said our visitor. 'I've got the assignment to write a story about Hengist Down and I can't go home without the copy.'\n\n'Sorry, Roy, but you can't get anything here.\n\nYou'll have to stay on that side of the wire. If you want more you must go and see Professor Challenger and get his leave.'\n\n'I've been,' said the journalist, ruefully. 'I went this morning.'\n\n'Well, what did he say?'\n\n'He said he would put me through the window.'\n\nMalone laughed.\n\n'And what did you say?'\n\n'I said, \"What's wrong with the door?\" and I skipped through it just to show there was nothing wrong with it. It was no time for argument. I just went. What with that bearded Assyrian bull in London, and this Thug down here, who has ruined my clean celluloid, you seem to be keeping queer company, Ted Malone.'\n\n'I can't help you, Roy; I would if I could. They say in Fleet Street that you have never been beaten, but you are up against it this time. Get back to the office, and if you just wait a few days I'll give you the news as soon as the old man allows.'\n\n'No chance of getting in?'\n\n'Not an earthly.'\n\n'Money no object?'\n\n'You should know better than to say that.'\n\n'They tell me it's a short cut to New Zealand.'\n\n'It will be a short cut to the hospital if you butt in here, Roy. Good-bye, now. We have some work to do of our own.\n\n'That's Roy Perkins, the war correspondent,' said Malone as we walked across the compound. 'We've broken his record, for he is supposed to be undefeatable. It's his fat, little innocent face that carries him through everything. We were on the same staff once. Now there'\u2014he pointed to a cluster of pleasant red-roofed bungalows\u2014'are the quarters of the men. They are a splendid lot of picked workers who are paid far above ordinary rates. They have to be bachelors and teetotallers, and under oath of secrecy. I don't think there has been any leakage up to now. That field is their football ground and the detached house is their library and recreation room. The old man is some organizer, I can assure you. This is Mr. Barforth, the head engineer-in-charge.'\n\nA long, thin, melancholy man with deep lines of anxiety upon his face had appeared before us. 'I expect you are the Artesian engineer,' said he, in a gloomy voice. 'I was told to expect you. I am glad you've come, for I don't mind telling you that the responsibility of this thing is getting on my nerves. We work away, and I never know if it's a gush of chalk water, or a seam of coal, or a squirt of petroleum, or maybe a touch of hell fire that is coming next. We've been spared the last up to now, but you may make the connection for all I know.'\n\n'Is it so hot down there?'\n\n'Well, it's hot. There's no denying it. And yet maybe it is not hotter than the barometric pressure and the confined space might account for. Of course, the ventilation is awful. We pump the air down, but two-hour shifts are the most the men can do\u2014and they are willing lads too. The Professor was down yesterday, and he was very pleased with it all. You had best join us at lunch, and then you will see it for yourself.'\n\nAfter a hurried and frugal meal we were introduced with loving assiduity upon the part of the manager to the contents of his engine-house, and to the miscellaneous scrapheap of disused implements with which the grass was littered. On one side was a huge dismantled Arrol hydraulic shovel, with which the first excavations had been rapidly made. Beside it was a great engine which worked a continuous steel rope on which the skips were fastened which drew up the debris by successive stages from the bottom of the shaft. In the power-house were several Escher Wyss turbines of great horse-power running at one hundred and forty revolutions a minute and governing hydraulic accumulators which evolved a pressure of fourteen hundred pounds per square inch, passing in three-inch pipes down the shaft and operating four rock drills with hollow cutters of the Brandt type. Abutting upon the engine-house was the electric house supplying power for a very large lighting instalment, and next to that again was an extra turbine of two hundred horse-power, which drove a ten-foot fan forcing air down a twelve-inch pipe to the bottom of the workings.\n\nAll these wonders were shown with many technical explanations by their proud operator, who was well on his way to boring me stiff, as I may in turn have done my reader. There came a welcome interruption, however, when I heard the roar of wheels and rejoiced to see my Leyland three-tonner come rolling and heaving over the grass, heaped up with tools and sections of tubing, and bearing my foreman, Peters, and a very grimy assistant in front. The two of them set to work at once to unload my stuff and to carry it in. Leaving them at their work, the manager, with Malone and myself, approached the shaft.\n\nIt was a wondrous place, on a very much larger scale than I had imagined. The spoil banks, which represented the thousands of tons removed, had been built up into a great horseshoe around it, which now made a considerable hill. In the concavity of this horseshoe, composed of chalk, clay, coal, and granite, there rose up a bristle of iron pillars and wheels from which the pumps and the lifts were operated. They connected with the brick power building which filled up the gap in the horseshoe. Beyond it lay the open mouth of the shaft, a huge yawning pit, some thirty or forty feet in diameter, lined and topped with brick and cement. As I craned my neck over the side and gazed down into the dreadful abyss, which I had been assured was eight miles deep, my brain reeled at the thought of what it represented. The sunlight struck the mouth of it diagonally, and I could only see some hundreds of yards of dirty white chalk, bricked here and there where the surface had seemed unstable. Even as I looked, however, I saw, far, far down in the darkness, a tiny speck of light, the smallest possible dot, but clear and steady against the inky background.\n\n'What is that light?' I asked.\n\nMalone bent over the parapet beside me.\n\n'That's one of the cages coming up,' said he. 'Rather wonderful, is it not? That is a mile or more from us, and that little gleam is a powerful arc lamp. It travels quickly, and will be here in a few minutes.'\n\nSure enough the pin-point of light came larger and larger, until it flooded the tube with its silvery radiance, and I had to turn away my eyes from its blinding glare. A moment later the iron cage clashed up to the landing stage, and four men crawled out of it and passed on to the entrance.\n\n'Nearly all in,' said Malone. 'It is no joke to do a two-hour shift at that depth. Well, some of your stuff is ready to hand here. I suppose the best thing we can do is to go down. Then you will be able to judge the situation for yourself.'\n\nThere was an annexe to the engine-house into which he led me. A number of baggy suits of the lightest tussore material were hanging from the wall. Following Malone's example I took off every stitch of my clothes, and put on one of these suits, together with a pair of rubber-soled slippers. Malone finished before I did and left the dressing-room. A moment later I heard a noise like ten dog-fights rolled into one, and rushing out I found my friend rolling on the ground with his arms round the workman who was helping to stack my artesian tubing. He was endeavouring to tear something from him to which the other was most desperately clinging. But Malone was too strong for him, tore the object out of his grasp, and danced upon it until it was shattered to pieces. Only then did I recognize that it was a photographic camera. My grimy-faced artisan rose ruefully from the floor.\n\n'Confound you, Ted Malone!' said he. 'That was a new ten-guinea machine.'\n\n'Can't help it, Roy. I saw you take the snap, and there was only one thing to do.'\n\n'How the devil did you get mixed up with my outfit?' I asked, with righteous indignation.\n\nThe rascal winked and grinned. 'There are always and means,' said he.\n\n'But don't blame your foreman. He thought it was just a rag. I swapped clothes with his assistant, and in I came.'\n\n'And out you go,' said Malone. 'No use arguing, Roy. If Challenger were here he would set the dogs on you. I've been in a hole myself so I won't be hard, but I am watch-dog here, and I can bite as well as bark.\n\nCome on! Out you march!'\n\nSo our enterprising visitor was marched by two grinning workmen out of the compound. So now the public will at last understand the genesis of that wonderful four-column article headed 'Mad Dream of a Scientist' with the subtitle. 'A Bee-line to Australia,' which appeared in The Adviser some days later and brought Challenger to the verge of apoplexy, and the editor of The Adviser to the most disagreeable and dangerous interview of his lifetime. The article was a highly coloured and exaggerated account of the adventure of Roy Perkins, 'our experienced war correspondent' and it contained such purple passages as 'this hirsute bully of Enmore Gardens,' 'a compound guarded by barbed wire, plug-uglies, and bloodhounds,' and finally, 'I was dragged from the edge of the Anglo-Australian tunnel by two ruffians, the more savage being a jack-of-all trades whom I had previously known by sight as a hanger-on of the journalistic profession, while the other, a sinister figure in a strange tropical garb, was posing as an Artesian engineer, though his appearance was more reminiscent of Whitechapel.' Having ticked us off in this way, the rascal had an elaborate description of rails at the pit mouth, and of a zigzag excavation by which funicular trains were to burrow into the earth.\n\nThe only practical inconvenience arising from the article was that it notably increased that line of loafers who sat upon the South Downs waiting for something to happen. The day came when it did happen and when they wished themselves elsewhere.\n\nMy foreman with his faked assistant had littered the place with all my apparatus, my bellbox, my crowsfoot, the V-drills, the rods, and the weight, but Malone insisted that we disregard all that and descend ourselves to the lowest level. To this end we entered the cage, which was of latticed steel, and in the company of the chief engineer we shot down into the bowels of the earth. There were a series of automatic lifts, each with its own operating station hollowed out in the side of the excavation. They operated with great speed, and the experience was more like a vertical railway journey than the deliberate fall which we associate with the British lift.\n\nSince the cage was latticed and brightly illuminated, we had a clear view of the strata which we passed. I was conscious of each of them as we flashed past. There were the sallow lower chalk, the coffee-coloured Hastings beds, the lighter Ashburnham beds, the dark carboniferous clays, and then, gleaming in the electric light, band after band of jet-black, sparkling coal alternating with the rings of clay. Here and there brickwork had been inserted, but as a rule the shaft was self-supported, and one could but marvel at the immense labour and mechanical skill which it represented. Beneath the coal-beds I was conscious of jumbled strata of a concrete-like appearance, and then we shot down into the primitive granite, where the quartz crystals gleamed and twinkled as if the dark walls were sown with the dust of diamonds. Down we went and ever down\u2014lower now than ever mortals had ever before penetrated. The archaic rocks varied wonderfully in colour, and I can never forget one broad belt of rose-coloured felspar, which shone with an unearthly beauty before our powerful lamps. Stage after stage, and lift after lift, the air getting ever closer and hotter until even the light tussore garments were intolerable and the sweat was pouring down into those rubber-soled slippers. At last, just as I was thinking that I could stand it no more, the last lift came to a stand and we stepped out upon a circular platform which had been cut in the rock. I noticed that Malone gave a curiously suspicious glance round at the walls as he did so. If I did not know him to be amongst the bravest of men, I should say that he was exceedingly nervous.\n\n'Funny-looking stuff,' said the chief engineer, passing his hand over the nearest section of rock. He held it to the light and showed that it was glistening with a curious slimy scum.\n\n'There have been shiverings and tremblings down here. I don't know what we are dealing with. The Professor seems pleased with it, but it's all new to me.'\n\n'I am bound to say I've seen that wall fairly shake itself,' said Malone. 'Last time I was down here we fixed those two cross-beams for your drill, and when we cut into it for the supports it winced at every stroke. The old man's theory seemed absurd in solid old London town, but down here, eight miles under the surface, I am not so sure about it.'\n\n'If you saw what was under that tarpaulin you would be even less sure,' said the engineer. 'All this lower rock cut like cheese, and when we were through it we came on a new formation like nothing on earth. \"Cover it up! Don't touch it!\" said the Professor. So we tarpaulined it according to his instructions, and there it lies.\n\n'Could we not have a look?'\n\nA frightened expression came over the engineer's lugubrious countenance.\n\n'It's no joke disobeying the Professor,' said he. 'He is so damn cunning, too, that you never know what check he has set on you. However, we'll have a peep and chance it.'\n\nHe turned down our reflector lamp so that the light gleamed upon the black tarpaulin. Then he stooped and, seizing a rope which connected up with the corner of the covering, he disclosed half-a-dozen square yards of the surface beneath it.\n\nIt was a most extraordinary and terrifying sight. The floor consisted of some greyish material, glazed and shiny, which rose and fell in slow palpitation. The throbs were not direct, but gave the impression of a gentle ripple or rhythm, which ran across the surface. This surface itself was not entirely homogeneous, but beneath it, seen as through ground glass, there were dim whitish patches or vacuoles, which varied constantly in shape and size. We stood all three gazing spell-bound at this extraordinary sight.\n\n'Does look rather like a skinned animal,' said Malone, in an awed whisper. 'The old man may not be so far out with his blessed echinus.'\n\n'Good Lord!' I cried. 'And am I to plunge a harpoon into that beast!'\n\n'That's your privilege, my son,' said Malone, 'and, sad to relate, unless I give it a miss in baulk, I shall have to be at your side when you do it.'\n\n'Well, I won't,' said the head engineer, with decision.\n\n'I was never clearer on anything than I am on that. If the old man insists, then I resign my portfolio. Good Lord, look at that!'\n\nThe grey surface gave a sudden heave upwards, welling towards us as a wave does when you look down from the bulwarks. Then it subsided and the dim beatings and throbbings continued as before. Barforth lowered the rope and replaced the tarpaulin.\n\n'Seemed almost as if it knew we were here,' said he.\n\n'Why should it swell up towards us like that? I expect the light had some sort of effect upon it.'\n\n'What am I expected to do now?' I asked. Mr. Barforth pointed to two beams which lay across the pit just under the stopping place of the lift. There was an interval of about nine inches between them.\n\n'That was the old man's idea,' said he. 'I think I could have fixed it better, but you might as well try to argue with a mad buffalo. It is easier and safer just to do whatever he says. His idea is that you should use your six-inch bore and fasten it in some way between these supports.'\n\n'Well, I don't think there would be much difficulty about that,' I answered. 'I'll take the job over as from to-day.'\n\nIt was, as one might imagine, the strangest experience of my very varied life which has included well-sinking in every continent upon earth. As Professor Challenger was so insistent that the operation should be started from a distance, and as I began to see a good deal of sense in his contention, I had to plan some method of electric control, which was easy enough as the pit was wired from top to bottom. With infinite care my foreman, Peters, and I brought down our lengths of tubing and stacked them on the rocky ledge. Then we raised the stage of the lowest lift so as to give ourselves room.\n\nAs we proposed to use the percussion system, for it would not do to trust entirely to gravity, we hung our hundred-pound weight over a pulley beneath the lift, and ran our tubes down beneath it with a V-shaped terminal. Finally, the rope which held the weight was secured to the side of the shaft in such a way that an electrical discharge would release it. It was delicate and difficult work done in a more than tropical heat, and with the ever-present feeling that a slip of a foot or the dropping of a tool upon the tarpaulin beneath us might bring about some inconceivable catastrophe. We were awed, too, by our surroundings. Again and again I have seen a strange quiver and shiver pass down the walls, and have even felt a dull throb against my hands as I touched them. Neither Peters nor I were very sorry when we signalled for the last time that we were ready for the surface, and were able to report to Mr. Barforth that Professor Challenger could make his experiment as soon as he chose.\n\nAnd it was not long that we had to wait. Only three days after my date of completion my notice arrived.\n\nIt was an ordinary invitation card such as one uses for 'at homes,' and it ran thus:\n\n\u2002PROFESSOR G. E. CHALLENGER, F.R.S. MD., D.Sc., etc.\n\n\u2002(late President Zoological Institute and holder of so many honorary degrees and appointments that they overtax the capacity of this card)\n\n\u2002requests the attendance of MR. JONES (no lady)\n\n\u2002at 11.30 a.m. of Tuesday, June 21st, to witness a remarkable triumph of mind over matter at HENGIST DOWN, SUSSEX.\n\n\u2002Special train Victoria 10.5. Passengers pay their own fares. Lunch after the experiment or not\u2014according to circumstances. Station, Storrington.\n\n\u2002'R.S.V.P. (and at once with name in block letters), 14 (Bis), Enmore Gardens, S.W.'\n\nI found that Malone had just received a similar missive over which he was chuckling.\n\n'It is mere swank sending it to us,' said he. 'We have to be there whatever happens, as the hangman said to the murderer. But I tell you this has set all London buzzing. The old man is where he likes to be, with a pin-point limelight right on his hairy old head.'\n\nAnd so at last the great day came. Personally I thought it well to go down the night before so as to be sure that everything was in order. Our borer was fixed in position, the weight was adjusted, the electric contacts could be easily switched on, and I was satisfied that my own part in this strange experiment would be carried out without a hitch. The electric controls were operated at a point some five hundred yards from the mouth of the shaft, to minimize any personal danger. When on the fateful morning, an ideal English summer day, I came to the surface with my mind assured, I climbed half-way up the slope of the Down in order to have a general view of the proceedings.\n\nAll the world seemed to be coming to Hengist Down. As far as we could see the roads were dotted with people. Motor-cars came bumping and swaying down the lanes, and discharged their passengers at the gate of the compound. This was in most cases the end of their progress. A powerful band of janitors waited at the entrance, and no promises or bribes, but only the production of the coveted buff tickets, could get them any farther. They dispersed therefore and joined the vast crowd which was already assembling on the side of the hill and covering the ridge with a dense mass of spectators. The place was like Epsom Downs on the Derby Day. Inside the compound certain areas had been wired-off, and the various privileged people were conducted to the particular pen to which they had been allotted. There was one for peers, one for members of the House of Commons, and one for the heads of learned societies and the men of fame in the scientific world, including Le Pellier of the Sorbonne and Dr. Driesinger of the Berlin Academy. A special reserved enclosure with sandbags and a corrugated iron roof was set aside for three members of the Royal Family.\n\nAt a quarter past eleven a succession of chars-a-bancs brought up specially-invited guests from the station and I went down into the compound to assist at the reception.\n\nProfessor Challenger stood by the select enclosure, resplendent in frock-coat, white waistcoat, and burnished top-hat, his expression a blend of overpowering and almost offensive benevolence, mixed with most portentous self-importance.\n\n'Clearly a typical victim of the Jehovah complex,' as one of his critics described him. He assisted in conducting and occasionally in propelling his guests into their proper places, and then, having gathered the elite of the company around him, he took his station upon the top of a convenient hillock and looked around him with the air of the chairman who expects some welcoming applause. As none was forthcoming, he plunged at once into his subject, his voice booming to the farthest extremities of the enclosure.\n\n'Gentlemen,' he roared, 'upon this occasion I have no need to include the ladies. If I have not invited them to be present with us this morning it is not, I can assure you, for want of appreciation, for I may say'\u2014with elephantine humour and mock modesty\u2014'that the relations between us upon both sides have always been excellent, and indeed intimate. The real reason is that some small element of danger is involved in our experiment, though it is not sufficient to justify the discomposure which I see upon many of your faces. It will interest the members of the Press to know that I have reserved very special seats for them upon the spoil banks which immediately overlook the scene of the operation. They have shown an interest which is sometimes indistinguishable from impertinence in my affairs, so that on this occasion at least they cannot complain that I have been remiss in studying their convenience. If nothing happens, which is always possible, I have at least done my best for them. If, on the other hand, something does happen, they will be in an excellent position to experience and record it, should they ultimately feel equal to the task.\n\n'It is, as you will readily understand, impossible for a man of science to explain to what I may describe, without undue disrespect, as the common herd, the various reasons for his conclusions or his actions. I hear some unmannerly interruptions, and I will ask the gentleman with the horn spectacles to cease waving his umbrella. (A voice: \"Your description of your guests, sir, is most offensive.\") Possibly it is my phrase, \"the common herd,\" which has ruffled the gentleman. Let us say, then, that my listeners are a most uncommon herd. We will not quibble over phrases. I was about to say, before I was interrupted by this unseemly remark, that the whole matter is very fully and lucidly discussed in my forthcoming volume upon the earth, which I may describe with all due modesty as one of the epoch-making books of the world's history. (General interruption and cries of \"Get down to the facts!\" \"What are we here for?\" \"Is this a practical joke?\") I was about to make the matter clear, and if I have any further interruption I shall be compelled to take means to preserve decency and order, the lack of which is so painfully obvious. The position is, then, that I have sunk a shaft through the crust of the earth and that I am about to try the effect of a vigorous stimulation of its sensory cortex, a delicate operation which will be carried out by my subordinates, Mr. Peerless Jones, a self-styled expert in Artesian borings, and Mr. Edward Malone, who represents myself upon this occasion. The exposed and sensitive substance will be pricked, and how it will react is a matter for conjecture. If you will now kindly take your seats these two gentlemen will descend into the pit and make the final adjustments. I will then press the electric button upon this table and the experiment will be complete.'\n\nAn audience after one of Challenger's harangues usually felt as if, like the earth, its protective epidermis had been pierced and its nerves laid bare. This assembly was no exception, and there was a dull murmur of criticism and resentment as they returned to their places.\n\nChallenger sat alone on the top of the mound, a small table beside him, his black mane and beard vibrating with excitement, a most portentous figure.\n\nNeither Malone nor I could admire the scene, however, for we hurried off upon our extraordinary errand. Twenty minutes later we were at the bottom of the shaft, and had pulled the tarpaulin from the exposed surface.\n\nIt was an amazing sight which lay before us. By some strange cosmic telepathy the old planet seemed to know that an unheard-of liberty was about to be attempted. The exposed surface was like a boiling pot. Great grey bubbles rose and burst with a crackling report. The air-spaces and vacuoles below the skin separated and coalesced in an agitated activity. The transverse ripples were stronger and faster in their rhythm than before. A dark purple fluid appeared to pulse in the tortuous anastomoses of channels which lay under the surface. The throb of life was in it all. A heavy smell made the air hardly fit for human lungs.\n\nMy gaze was fixed upon this strange spectacle when Malone at my elbow gave a sudden gasp of alarm. 'My God, Jones!' he cried. 'Look there!'\n\nI gave one glance, and the next instant I released the electric connection and I sprang into the lift. 'Come on!' I cried. 'It may be a race for life!'\n\nWhat we had seen was indeed alarming. The whole lower shaft, it would seem, had shared in the increased activity which we had observed below, and the walls were throbbing and pulsing in sympathy. This movement had reacted upon the holes in which the beams rested, and it was clear that a very little further retraction\u2014a matter of inches \u2014the beams would fall. If they did so then the sharp end of my rod would, of course, penetrate the earth quite independently of the electric release. Before that happened it was vital that Malone and I should be out of the shaft. To be eight miles down in the earth with the chance any instant of some extraordinary convulsion taking place was a terrible prospect. We fled wildly for the surface.\n\nShall either of us ever forget that nightmare journey? The lifts whizzed and buzzed and yet the minutes seemed to be hours. As we reached each stage we sprang out, jumped into the next lift, touched the release and flew onwards. Through the steel latticed roof we could see far away the little circle of light which marked the mouth of the shaft. Now it grew wider and wider, until it came full circle and our glad eyes rested upon the brickwork of the opening. Up we shot, and up \u2014and then at last in a glad moment of joy and thankfulness we sprang out of our prison and had our feet upon the green sward once more. But it was touch and go. We had not gone thirty paces from the shaft when far down in the depths my iron dart shot into the nerve ganglion of old Mother Earth and the great moment had arrived.\n\nWhat was it happened? Neither Malone nor I was in a position to say, for both of us were swept off our feet as by a cyclone and swirled along the grass, revolving round and round like two curling stones upon an ice rink. At the same time our ears were assailed by the most horrible yell that ever yet was heard. Who is there of all the hundreds who have attempted it who has ever yet described adequately that terrible cry? It was a howl in which pain, anger, menace, and the outraged majesty of Nature all blended into one hideous shriek. For a full minute it lasted, a thousand sirens in one, paralysing all the great multitude with its fierce insistence, and floating away through the still summer air until it went echoing along the whole South Coast and even reached our French neighbours across the Channel. No sound in history has ever equalled the cry of the injured Earth.\n\nDazed and deafened, Malone and I were aware of the shock and of the sound, but it is from the narrative of others that we learned the other details of that extraordinary scene.\n\nThe first emergence from the bowels of the earth consisted of the lift cages. The other machinery being against the walls escaped the blast, but the solid floors of the cages took the full force of the upward current. When several separate pellets are placed in a blow-pipe they still shoot forth in their order and separately from each other.\n\nSo the fourteen lift cages appeared one after the other in the air, each soaring after the other, and describing a glorious parabola which landed one of them in the sea near Worthing pier, and a second one in a field not far from Chichester. Spectators have averred that of all the strange sights that they had ever seen nothing could exceed that of the fourteen lift cages sailing serenely through the blue heavens.\n\nThen came the geyser. It was an enormous spout of vile treacly substance of the consistence of tar, which shot up into the air to a height which has been computed at two thousand feet. An inquisitive aeroplane, which had been hovering over the scene, was picked off as by an Archie and made a forced landing, man and machine buried in filth. This horrible stuff, which had a most penetrating and nauseous odour, may have represented the life blood of the planet, or it may be, as Professor Driesinger and the Berlin School maintain, that it is a protective secretion, analogous to that of the skunk, which Nature has provided in order to defend Mother Earth from intrusive Challengers. If that were so the prime offender, seated on his throne upon the hillock, escaped untarnished, while the unfortunate Press were so soaked and saturated, being in the direct line of fire, that none of them was capable of entering decent society for many weeks. This gush of putridity was blown southwards by the breeze, and descended upon the unhappy crowd who had waited so long and so patiently upon the crest of the Downs to see what would happen. There were no casualties. No home was left desolate, but many were made odoriferous, and still carry within their walls some souvenir of that great occasion.\n\nAnd then came the closing of the pit. As Nature slowly closes a wound from below upwards, so does the Earth with extreme rapidity mend any rent which is made in its vital substance. There was a prolonged high-pitched crash as the sides of the shaft came together, the sound, reverberating from the depths and then rising higher and higher until with a deafening bang the brick circle at the orifice flattened out and clashed together, while a tremor like a small earthquake shook down the spoil banks and piled a pyramid fifty feet high of debris and broken iron over the spot where the hole had been. Professor Challenger's experiment was not only finished, it was buried from human sight for ever. If it were not for the obelisk which has now been erected by the Royal Society it is doubtful if our descendants would ever know the exact site of that remarkable occurrence.\n\nAnd then came the grand finale. For a long period after these successive phenomena there was a hush and a tense stillness as folk reassembled their wits and tried to realize exactly what had occurred and how it had come about. And then suddenly the mighty achievement, the huge sweep of the conception, the genius and wonder of the execution, broke upon their minds. With one impulse they turned upon Challenger. From every part of the field there came the cries of admiration, and from his hillock he could look down upon the lake of upturned faces broken only by the rise and fall of the waving handkerchiefs. As I look back I see him best as I saw him then. He rose from his chair, his eyes half closed, a smile of conscious merit upon his face, his left hand upon his hip, his right buried in the breast of his frock-coat. Surely that picture will be fixed for ever, for I heard the cameras clicking round me like crickets in a field.\n\nThe June sun shone golden upon him as he turned gravely bowing to each quarter of the compass. Challenger the super scientist, Challenger the arch-pioneer, Challenger the first man of all men whom Mother Earth had been compelled to recognize.\n\nOnly a word by way of epilogue. It is of course well known that the effect of the experiment was a world-wide one. It is true that nowhere did the injured planet emit such a howl as at the actual point of penetration, but she showed that she was indeed one entity by her conduct elsewhere." + } + ] + }, + { + "title": "The Tragedy of the Korosko", + "author": "Arthur Conan Doyle", + "genres": [ + "historical fiction", + "adventure" + ], + "tags": [], + "chapters": [ + { + "title": "Chapter 1", + "text": "The public may possibly wonder why it is that they have never heard in the papers of the fate of the passengers of the Korosko. In these days of universal press agencies, responsive to the slightest stimulus, it may well seem incredible that an international incident of such importance should remain so long unchronicled. Suffice it that there were very valid reasons, both of a personal and of a political nature, for holding it back. The facts were well known to a good number of people at the time, and some version of them did actually appear in a provincial paper, but was generally discredited. They have now been thrown into narrative form, the incidents having been collated from the sworn statements of Colonel Cochrane Cochrane, of the Army and Navy Club, and from the letters of Miss Adams, of Boston, Mass.\n\nThese have been supplemented by the evidence of Captain Archer, of the Egyptian Camel Corps, as given before the secret Government inquiry at Cairo. Mr. James Stephens has refused to put his version of the matter into writing, but as these proofs have been submitted to him, and no correction or deletion has been made in them, it may be supposed that he has not succeeded in detecting any grave misstatement of fact, and that any objection which he may have to their publication depends rather upon private and personal scruples.\n\nThe Korosko, a turtle-bottomed, round-bowed stern-wheeler, with a 30-inch draught and the lines of a flat-iron, started upon the 13th of February in the year 1895, from Shellal, at the head of the first cataract, bound for Wady Halfa. I have a passenger card for the trip, which I here reproduce:\n\nS.W. \"KOROSKO,\" FEBRUARY 13TH. PASSENGERS.\n\nColonel Cochrane Cochrane London.\n\nMr. Cecil Brown London.\n\nJohn H. Headingly Boston, U.S.A.\n\nMiss Adams Boston, U.S.A.\n\nMiss S. Adams Worcester, Mass., U.S.A.\n\nMons. Fardet Paris.\n\nMr. and Mrs. Belmont Dublin.\n\nJames Stephens Manchester.\n\nRev. John Stuart Birmingham.\n\nMrs. Shlesinger, nurse and child Florence.\n\nThis was the party as it started from Shellal, with the intention of travelling up the two hundred miles of Nubian Nile which lie between the first and the second cataract.\n\nIt is a singular country, this Nubia. Varying in breadth from a few miles to as many yards (for the name is only applied to the narrow portion which is capable of cultivation), it extends in a thin, green, palm-fringed strip upon either side of the broad coffee-coloured river. Beyond it there stretches on the Libyan bank a savage and illimitable desert, extending to the whole breadth of Africa. On the other side an equally desolate wilderness is bounded only by the distant Red Sea. Between these two huge and barren expanses Nubia writhes like a green sandworm along the course of the river. Here and there it disappears altogether, and the Nile runs between black and sun-cracked hills, with the orange drift-sand lying like glaciers in their valleys. Everywhere one sees traces of vanished races and submerged civilisations. Grotesque graves dot the hills or stand up against the skyline: pyramidal graves, tumulus graves, rock graves\u2014everywhere, graves. And, occasionally, as the boat rounds a rocky point, one sees a deserted city up above\u2014houses, walls, battlements, with the sun shining through the empty window squares. Sometimes you learn that it has been Roman, sometimes Egyptian, sometimes all record of its name or origin has been absolutely lost. You ask yourself in amazement why any race should build in so uncouth a solitude, and you find it difficult to accept the theory that this has only been of value as a guard-house to the richer country down below, and that these frequent cities have been so many fortresses to hold off the wild and predatory men of the south. But whatever be their explanation, be it a fierce neighbour, or be it a climatic change, there they stand, these grim and silent cities, and up on the hills you can see the graves of their people, like the port-holes of a man-of-war. It is through this weird, dead country that the tourists smoke and gossip and flirt as they pass up to the Egyptian frontier.\n\nThe passengers of the Korosko formed a merry party, for most of them had travelled up together from Cairo to Assouan, and even Anglo-Saxon ice thaws rapidly upon the Nile. They were fortunate in being without the single disagreeable person who, in these small boats, is sufficient to mar the enjoyment of the whole party. On a vessel which is little more than a large steam launch, the bore, the cynic, or the grumbler holds the company at his mercy. But the Korosko was free from anything of the kind. Colonel Cochrane Cochrane was one of those officers whom the British Government, acting upon a large system of averages, declares at a certain age to be incapable of further service, and who demonstrate the worth of such a system by spending their declining years in exploring Morocco, or shooting lions in Somaliland. He was a dark, straight, aquiline man, with a courteously deferential manner, but a steady, questioning eye; very neat in his dress and precise in his habits, a gentleman to the tips of his trim finger-nails. In his Anglo-Saxon dislike to effusiveness he had cultivated a self-contained manner which was apt at first acquaintance to be repellent, and he seemed to those who really knew him to be at some pains to conceal the kind heart and human emotions which influenced his actions. It was respect rather than affection which he inspired among his fellow-travellers, for they felt, like all who had ever met him, that he was a man with whom acquaintance was unlikely to ripen into a friendship, though a friendship, when once attained, would be an unchanging and inseparable part of himself. He wore a grizzled military moustache, but his hair was singularly black for a man of his years. He made no allusion in his conversation to the numerous campaigns in which he had distinguished himself, and the reason usually given for his reticence was that they dated back to such early Victorian days that he had to sacrifice his military glory at the shrine of his perennial youth.\n\nMr. Cecil Brown\u2014to take the names in the chance order in which they appear upon the passenger list\u2014was a young diplomatist from a Continental Embassy, a man slightly tainted with the Oxford manner, and erring upon the side of unnatural and inhuman refinement, but full of interesting talk and cultured thought. He had a sad, handsome face, a small wax-tipped moustache, a low voice and a listless manner, which was relieved by a charming habit of suddenly lighting up into a rapid smile and gleam when anything caught his fancy. An acquired cynicism was eternally crushing and overlying his natural youthful enthusiasms, and he ignored what was obvious while expressing keen appreciation for what seemed to the average man to be either trivial or unhealthy. He chose Walter Pater for his travelling author, and sat all day, reserved but affable, under the awning, with his novel and his sketch-book upon a camp-stool beside him. His personal dignity prevented him from making advances to others, but if they chose to address him they found a courteous and amiable companion.\n\nThe Americans formed a group by themselves. John H. Headingly was a New Englander, a graduate of Harvard, who was completing his education by a tour round the world. He stood for the best type of young American\u2014quick, observant, serious, eager for knowledge and fairly free from prejudice, with a fine balance of unsectarian but earnest religious feeling which held him steady amid all the sudden gusts of youth. He had less of the appearance and more of the reality of culture than the young Oxford diplomatist, for he had keener emotions though less exact knowledge. Miss Adams and Miss Sadie Adams were aunt and niece, the former a little, energetic, hard-featured Bostonian old-maid, with a huge surplus of unused love behind her stern and swarthy features. She had never been from home before, and she was now busy upon the self-imposed task of bringing the East up to the standard of Massachusetts. She had hardly landed in Egypt before she realised that the country needed putting to rights, and since the conviction struck her she had been very fully occupied. The saddle-galled donkeys, the starved pariah dogs, the flies round the eyes of the babies, the naked children, the importunate beggars, the ragged, untidy women\u2014they were all challenges to her conscience, and she plunged in bravely at her work of reformation. As she could not speak a word of the language, however, and was unable to make any of the delinquents understand what it was that she wanted, her passage up the Nile left the immemorial East very much as she had found it, but afforded a good deal of sympathetic amusement to her fellow-travellers. No one enjoyed her efforts more than her niece, Sadie, who shared with Mrs. Belmont the distinction of being the most popular person upon the boat. She was very young\u2014fresh from Smith College\u2014and she still possessed many both of the virtues and of the faults of a child. She had the frankness, the trusting confidence, the innocent straightforwardness, the high spirits, and also the loquacity and the want of reverence. But even her faults caused amusement, and if she had preserved many of the characteristics of a clever child, she was none the less a tall and handsome woman, who looked older than her years on account of that low curve of the hair over the ears, and that fullness of bodice and skirt which Mr. Gibson has either initiated or imitated. The whisk of those skirts, and the frank, incisive voice and pleasant, catching laugh were familiar and welcome sounds on board of the Korosko. Even the rigid Colonel softened into geniality, and the Oxford-bred diplomatist forgot to be unnatural with Miss Sadie Adams as a companion.\n\nThe other passengers may be dismissed more briefly. Some were interesting, some neutral, and all amiable. Monsieur Fardet was a good-natured but argumentative Frenchman, who held the most decided views as to the deep machinations of Great Britain, and the illegality of her position in Egypt. Mr. Belmont was an iron-grey, sturdy Irishman, famous as an astonishingly good long-range rifle-shot, who had carried off nearly every prize which Wimbledon or Bisley had to offer. With him was his wife, a very charming and refined woman, full of the pleasant playfulness of her country. Mrs. Shlesinger was a middle-aged widow, quiet and soothing, with her thoughts all taken up by her six-year-old child, as a mother's thoughts are likely to be in a boat which has an open rail for a bulwark. The Reverend John Stuart was a Nonconformist minister from Birmingham\u2014either a Presbyterian or a Congregationalist\u2014a man of immense stoutness, slow and torpid in his ways, but blessed with a considerable fund of homely humour, which made him, I am told, a very favourite preacher, and an effective speaker from advanced Radical platforms.\n\nFinally, there was Mr. James Stephens, a Manchester solicitor (junior partner of Hickson, Ward, and Stephens), who was travelling to shake off the effects of an attack of influenza. Stephens was a man who, in the course of thirty years, had worked himself up from cleaning the firm's windows to managing its business. For most of that long time he had been absolutely immersed in dry, technical work, living with the one idea of satisfying old clients and attracting new ones, until his mind and soul had become as formal and precise as the laws which he expounded. A fine and sensitive nature was in danger of being as warped as a busy city man's is liable to become. His work had become an engrained habit, and, being a bachelor, he had hardly an interest in life to draw him away from it, so that his soul was being gradually bricked up like the body of a mediaeval nun. But at last there came this kindly illness, and Nature hustled James Stephens out of his groove, and sent him into the broad world far away from roaring Manchester and his shelves full of calf-skin authorities. At first he resented it deeply. Everything seemed trivial to him compared to his own petty routine. But gradually his eyes were opened, and he began dimly to see that it was his work which was trivial when compared to this wonderful, varied, inexplicable world of which he was so ignorant. Vaguely he realised that the interruption to his career might be more important than the career itself. All sorts of new interests took possession of him; and the middle-aged lawyer developed an after-glow of that youth which had been wasted among his books. His character was too formed to admit of his being anything but dry and precise in his ways, and a trifle pedantic in his mode of speech; but he read and thought and observed, scoring his \"Baedeker\" with underlinings and annotations as he had once done his \"Prideaux's Commentaries.\" He had travelled up from Cairo with the party, and had contracted a friendship with Miss Adams and her niece. The young American girl, with her chatter, her audacity, and her constant flow of high spirits, amused and interested him, and she in turn felt a mixture of respect and of pity for his knowledge and his limitations. So they became good friends, and people smiled to see his clouded face and her sunny one bending over the same guide-book.\n\nThe little Korosko puffed and spluttered her way up the river, kicking up the white water behind her, and making more noise and fuss over her five knots an hour than an Atlantic liner on a record voyage. On deck, under the thick awning, sat her little family of passengers, and every few hours she eased down and sidled up to the bank to allow them to visit one more of that innumerable succession of temples. The remains, however, grow more modern as one ascends from Cairo, and travellers who have sated themselves at Gizeh and Sakara with the contemplation of the very oldest buildings which the hands of man have constructed, become impatient of temples which are hardly older than the Christian era. Ruins which would be gazed upon with wonder and veneration in any other country are hardly noticed in Egypt. The tourists viewed with languid interest the half-Greek art of the Nubian bas-reliefs; they climbed the hill of Korosko to see the sun rise over the savage Eastern desert; they were moved to wonder by the great shrine of Abou-Simbel, where some old race has hollowed out a mountain as if it were a cheese; and, finally, upon the evening of the fourth day of their travels they arrived at Wady Halfa, the frontier garrison town, some few hours after they were due, on account of a small mishap in the engine-room. The next morning was to be devoted to an expedition to the famous rock of Abousir, from which a great view may be obtained of the second cataract. At eight-thirty, as the passengers sat on deck after dinner, Mansoor, the dragoman, half Copt, half Syrian, came forward, according to the nightly custom, to announce the programme for the morrow.\n\n\"Ladies and gentlemen,\" said he, plunging boldly into the rapid but broken stream of his English, \"to-morrow you will remember not to forget to rise when the gong strikes you for to compress the journey before twelve o'clock. Having arrived at the place where the donkeys expect us, we shall ride five miles over the desert, passing a temple of Ammon-ra, which dates itself from the eighteenth dynasty, upon the way, and so reach the celebrated pulpit rock of Abousir. The pulpit rock is supposed to have been called so, because it is a rock like a pulpit. When you have reached it you will know that you are on the very edge of civilisation, and that very little more will take you into the country of the Dervishes, which will be obvious to you at the top. Having passed the summit, you will perceive the full extremity of the second cataract, embracing wild natural beauties of the most dreadful variety. Here all very famous people carve their names\u2014and so you will carve your names also.\" Mansoor waited expectantly for a titter, and bowed to it when it arrived. \"You will then return to Wady Halfa, and there remain two hours to suspect the Camel Corps, including the grooming of the beasts, and the bazaar before returning, so I wish you a very happy good-night.\"\n\nThere was a gleam of his white teeth in the lamplight, and then his long, dark petticoats, his short English covercoat, and his red tarboosh vanished successively down the ladder. The low buzz of conversation which had been suspended by his coming broke out anew.\n\n\"I'm relying on you, Mr. Stephens, to tell me all about Abousir,\" said Miss Sadie Adams. \"I do like to know what I am looking at right there at the time, and not six hours afterwards in my state-room. I haven't got Abou-Simbel and the wall pictures straight in my mind yet, though I saw them yesterday.\"\n\n\"I never hope to keep up with it,\" said her aunt. \"When I am safe back in Commonwealth Avenue, and there's no dragoman to hustle me around, I'll have time to read about it all, and then I expect I shall begin to enthuse, and want to come right back again. But it's just too good of you, Mr. Stephens, to try and keep us informed.\"\n\n\"I thought that you might wish precise information, and so I prepared a small digest of the matter,\" said Stephens, handing a slip of paper to Miss Sadie. She looked at it in the light of the deck lamp, and broke into her low, hearty laugh.\n\n\"Re Abousir,\" she read; \"now, what do you mean by 're,' Mr. Stephens? You put 're Rameses the Second' on the last paper you gave me.\"\n\n\"It is a habit I have acquired, Miss Sadie,\" said Stephens; \"it is the custom in the legal profession when they make a memo.\"\n\n\"Make what, Mr. Stephens?\"\n\n\"A memo\u2014a memorandum, you know. We put re so-and-so to show what it is about.\"\n\n\"I suppose it's a good short way,\" said Miss Sadie, \"but it feels queer somehow when applied to scenery or to dead Egyptian kings. 'Re Cheops'\u2014doesn't that strike you as funny?\"\n\n\"No, I can't say that it does,\" said Stephens.\n\n\"I wonder if it is true that the English have less humour than the Americans, or whether it's just another kind of humour,\" said the girl. She had a quiet, abstracted way of talking as if she were thinking aloud. \"I used to imagine they had less, and yet, when you come to think of it, Dickens and Thackeray and Barrie, and so many other of the humourists we admire most are Britishers. Besides, I never in all my days heard people laugh so hard as in that London theatre. There was a man behind us, and every time he laughed Auntie looked round to see if a door had opened, he made such a draught. But you have some funny expressions, Mr. Stephens!\"\n\n\"What else strikes you as funny, Miss Sadie?\"\n\n\"Well, when you sent me the temple ticket and the little map, you began your letter, 'Enclosed, please find,' and then at the bottom, in brackets, you had '2 enclo.'\"\n\n\"That is the usual form in business.\"\n\n\"Yes, in business,\" said Sadie demurely, and there was a silence.\n\n\"There's one thing I wish,\" remarked Miss Adams, in the hard, metallic voice with which she disguised her softness of heart, \"and that is, that I could see the Legislature of this country and lay a few cold-drawn facts in front of them. I'd make a platform of my own, Mr. Stephens, and run a party on my ticket. A Bill for the compulsory use of eyewash would be one of my planks, and another would be for the abolition of those Yashmak veil things which turn a woman into a bale of cotton goods with a pair of eyes looking out of it.\"\n\n\"I never could think why they wore them,\" said Sadie; \"until one day I saw one with her veil lifted. Then I knew.\"\n\n\"They make me tired, those women,\" cried Miss Adams wrathfully. \"One might as well try to preach duty and decency and cleanliness to a line of bolsters. Why, good land, it was only yesterday at Abou-Simbel, Mr. Stephens, I was passing one of their houses\u2014if you can call a mud-pie like that a house\u2014and I saw two of the children at the door with the usual crust of flies round their eyes, and great holes in their poor little blue gowns! So I got off my donkey, and I turned up my sleeves, and I washed their faces well with my handkerchief, and sewed up the rents\u2014for in this country I would as soon think of going ashore without my needle-case as without my white umbrella, Mr. Stephens. Then as I warmed on the job I got into the room\u2014such a room!\u2014and I packed the folks out of it, and I fairly did the chores as if I had been the hired help. I've seen no more of that temple of Abou-Simbel than if I had never left Boston; but, my sakes, I saw more dust and mess than you would think they could crowd into a house the size of a Newport bathing-hut. From the time I pinned up my skirt until I came out with my face the colour of that smoke-stack, wasn't more than an hour, or maybe an hour and a half, but I had that house as clean and fresh as a new pine-wood box. I had a New York Herald with me, and I lined their shelf with paper for them. Well, Mr. Stephens, when I had done washing my hands outside, I came past the door again, and there were those two children sitting on the stoop with their eyes full of flies, and all just the same as ever, except that each had a little paper cap made out of the New York Herald upon his head. But, say, Sadie, it's going on to ten o'clock, and to-morrow an early excursion.\"\n\n\"It's just too beautiful, this purple sky and the great silver stars,\" said Sadie. \"Look at the silent desert and the black shadows of the hills. It's grand, but it's terrible too; and then when you think that we really are, as that dragoman said just now, on the very end of civilisation, and with nothing but savagery and bloodshed down there where the Southern Cross is twinkling so prettily, why, it's like standing on the beautiful edge of a live volcano.\"\n\n\"Shucks, Sadie, don't talk like that, child,\" said the older woman nervously. \"It's enough to scare any one to listen to you.\"\n\n\"Well, but don't you feel it yourself, Auntie? Look at that great desert stretching away and away until it is lost in the shadows. Hear the sad whisper of the wind across it! It's just the most solemn thing that ever I saw in my life.\"\n\n\"I'm glad we've found something that will make you solemn, my dear,\" said her Aunt. \"I've sometimes thought\u2014Sakes alive, what's that?\"\n\nFrom somewhere amongst the hill shadows upon the other side of the river there had risen a high shrill whimpering, rising and swelling, to end in a long weary wail.\n\n\"It's only a jackal, Miss Adams,\" said Stephens. \"I heard one when we went out to see the Sphinx by moonlight.\"\n\nBut the American lady had risen, and her face showed that her nerves had been ruffled.\n\n\"If I had my time over again I wouldn't have come past Assouan,\" said she. \"I can't think what possessed me to bring you all the way up here, Sadie. Your mother will think that I am clean crazy, and I'd never dare to look her in the eye if anything went wrong with us. I've seen all I want to see of this river, and all I ask now is to be back at Cairo again.\"\n\n\"Why, Auntie,\" cried the girl, \"it isn't like you to be faint-hearted.\"\n\n\"Well, I don't know how it is, Sadie, but I feel a bit unstrung, and that beast caterwauling over yonder was just more than I could put up with. There's one consolation, we are scheduled to be on our way home to-morrow, after we've seen this one rock or temple, or whatever it is. I'm full up of rocks and temples, Mr. Stephens. I shouldn't mope if I never saw another. Come, Sadie! Good-night!\"\n\n\"Good-night! Good-night, Miss Adams!\"\n\nAnd the two ladies passed down to their cabins.\n\nMonsieur Fardet was chatting, in a subdued voice, with Headingly, the young Harvard graduate, bending forward confidentially between the whiffs of his cigarette.\n\n\"Dervishes, Mister Headingly!\" said he, speaking excellent English, but separating his syllables as a Frenchman will. \"There are no Dervishes. They do not exist.\"\n\n\"Why, I thought the woods were full of them,\" said the American.\n\nMonsieur Fardet glanced across to where the red core of Colonel Cochrane's cigar was glowing through the darkness.\n\n\"You are an American, and you do not like the English,\" he whispered. \"It is perfectly comprehended upon the Continent that the Americans are opposed to the English.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Headingly, with his slow, deliberate manner, \"I won't say that we have not our tiffs, and there are some of our people\u2014mostly of Irish stock\u2014who are always mad with England; but the most of us have a kindly thought for the mother country. You see they may be aggravating folk sometimes, but after all they are our own folk, and we can't wipe that off the slate.\"\n\n\"Eh bien!\" said the Frenchman. \"At least I can say to you what I could not without offence say to these others. And I repeat that there are no Dervishes. They were an invention of Lord Cromer in the year 1885.\"\n\n\"You don't say!\" cried Headingly.\n\n\"It is well known in Paris, and has been exposed in La Patrie and other of our so well-informed papers.\"\n\n\"Hut this is colossal,\" said Headingly. \"Do you mean to tell me, Monsieur Fardet, that the siege of Khartoum and the death of Gordon and the rest of it was just one great bluff?\"\n\n\"I will not deny that there was an emeute, but it was local, you understand, and now long forgotten. Since then there has been profound peace in the Soudan.\"\n\n\"But I have heard of raids, Monsieur Fardet, and I've read of battles, too, when the Arabs tried to invade Egypt. It was only Two days ago that we passed Toski, where the dragoman said there had been a fight. Is that all bluff also?\"\n\n\"Pah, my friend, you do not know the English. You look at them as you see them with their pipes and their contented faces, and you say, 'Now, these are good, simple folk, who will never hurt any one.' But all the time they are thinking and watching and planning. 'Here is Egypt weak,' they cry. 'Allons!' and down they swoop like a gull upon a crust. 'You have no right there,' says the world. 'Come out of it!' But England has already begun to tidy everything, just like the good Miss Adams when she forces her way into the house of an Arab. 'Come out,' says the world. 'Certainly,' says England; 'just wait one little minute until I have made everything nice and proper.' So the world waits for a year or so, and then it says once again, 'Come out.' 'Just wait a little,' says England; 'there is trouble at Khartoum, and when I have set that all right I shall be very glad to come out.' So they wait until it is all over, and then again they say, 'Come out.' 'How can I come out,' says England, 'when there are still raids and battles going on? If we were to leave, Egypt would be run over.' 'But there are no raids,' says the world. 'Oh, are there not?' says England, and then within a week sure enough the papers are full of some new raid of Dervishes. We are not all blind, Mister Headingly. We understand very well how such things can be done. A few Bedouins, a little backsheesh, some blank cartridges, and, behold\u2014a raid!\"\n\n\"Well, well,\" said the American, \"I'm glad to know the rights of this business, for it has often puzzled me. But what does England get out of it?\"\n\n\"She gets the country, monsieur.\"\n\n\"I see. You mean, for example, that there is a favourable tariff for British goods?\"\n\n\"No, monsieur; it is the same for all.\"\n\n\"Well, then, she gives the contracts to Britishers?\"\n\n\"Precisely, monsieur.\"\n\n\"For example, the railroad that they are building right through the country, the one that runs alongside the river, that would be a valuable contract for the British?\"\n\nMonsieur Fardet was an honest man, if an imaginative one.\n\n\"It is a French company, monsieur, which holds the railway contract,\" said he.\n\nThe American was puzzled.\n\n\"They don't seem to get much for their trouble,\" said he. \"Still, of course, there must be some indirect pull somewhere. For example, Egypt no doubt has to pay and keep all those red-coats in Cairo.\"\n\n\"Egypt, monsieur! No, they are paid by England.\"\n\n\"Well, I suppose they know their own business best, but they seem to me to take a great deal of trouble, and to get mighty little in exchange. If they don't mind keeping order and guarding the frontier, with a constant war against the Dervishes on their hands, I don't know why any one should object. I suppose no one denies that the prosperity of the country has increased enormously since they came. The revenue returns show that. They tell me also that the poorer folks have justice, which they never had before.\"\n\n\"What are they doing here at all?\" cried the Frenchman angrily. \"Let them go back to their island. We cannot have them all over the world.\"\n\n\"Well, certainly, to us Americans, who live all in our own land, it does seem strange how you European nations are for ever slopping over into some other country which was not meant for you. It's easy for us to talk, of course, for we have still got room and to spare for all our people. When we begin pushing each other over the edge we shall have to start annexing also. But at present just here in North Africa there is Italy in Abyssinia, and England in Egypt, and France in Algiers\u2014\"\n\n\"France!\" cried Monsieur Fardet. \"Algiers belongs to France.\n\nYou laugh, monsieur. I have the honour to wish you a very good-night.\"\n\nHe rose from his seat, and walked off, rigid with outraged patriotism, to his cabin." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 2", + "text": "The young American hesitated for a little, debating in his mind whether he should not go down and post up the daily record of his impressions which he kept for his home-staying sister. But the cigars of Colonel Cochrane and of Cecil Brown were still twinkling in the far corner of the deck, and the student was acquisitive in the search of information. He did not quite know how to lead up to the matter, but the Colonel very soon did it for him.\n\n\"Come on, Headingly,\" said he, pushing a camp-stool in his direction. \"This is the place for an antidote. I see that Fardet has been pouring politics into your ear.\"\n\n\"I can always recognise the confidential stoop of his shoulders when he discusses la haute politique,\" said the dandy diplomatist. \"But what a sacrilege upon a night like this! What a nocturne in blue and silver might be suggested by that moon rising above the desert. There is a movement in one of Mendelssohn's songs which seems to embody it all\u2014 a sense of vastness, of repetition, the cry of the wind over an interminable expanse. The subtler emotions which cannot be translated into words are still to be hinted at by chords and harmonies.\"\n\n\"It seems wilder and more savage than ever to-night,\" remarked the American. \"It gives me the same feeling of pitiless force that the Atlantic does upon a cold, dark, winter day. Perhaps it is the knowledge that we are right there on the very edge of any kind of law and order. How far do you suppose that we are from any Dervishes, Colonel Cochrane?\"\n\n\"Well, on the Arabian side,\" said the Colonel, \"we have the Egyptian fortified camp of Sarras about forty miles to the south of us. Beyond that are sixty miles of very wild country before you would come to the Dervish post at Akasheh. On this other side, however, there is nothing between us and them.\"\n\n\"Abousir is on this side, is it not?\"\n\n\"Yes. That is why the excursion to the Abousir Rock has been forbidden for the last year. But things are quieter now.\"\n\n\"What is to prevent them from coming down on that side?\"\n\n\"Absolutely nothing,\" said Cecil Brown, in his listless voice.\n\n\"Nothing, except their fears. The coming of course would be perfectly simple. The difficulty would lie in the return. They might find it hard to get back if their camels were spent, and the Halfa garrison with their beasts fresh got on their track. They know it as well as we do, and it has kept them from trying.\"\n\n\"It isn't safe to reckon upon a Dervish's fears,\" remarked Brown. \"We must always bear in mind that they are not amenable to the same motives as other people. Many of them are anxious to meet death, and all of them are absolute, uncompromising believers in destiny. They exist as a reductio ad absurdum of all bigotry\u2014a proof of how surely it leads towards blank barbarism.\"\n\n\"You think these people are a real menace to Egypt?\" asked the American. \"There seems from what I have heard to be some difference of opinion about it. Monsieur Fardet, for example, does not seem to think that the danger is a very pressing one.\"\n\n\"I am not a rich man,\" Colonel Cochrane answered after a little pause, \"but I am prepared to lay all I am worth, that within three years of the British officers being withdrawn, the Dervishes would be upon the Mediterranean. Where would the civilisation of Egypt be? Where would the hundreds of millions which have been invested in this country? Where the monuments which all nations look upon as most precious memorials of the past?\"\n\n\"Come now, Colonel,\" cried Headingly, laughing, \"surely you don't mean that they would shift the pyramids?\"\n\n\"You cannot foretell what they would do. There is no iconoclast in the world like an extreme Mohammedan. Last time they overran this country they burned the Alexandrian Library. You know that all representations of the human features are against the letter of the Koran. A statue is always an irreligious object in their eyes. What do these fellows care for the sentiment of Europe? The more they could offend it, the more delighted they would be. Down would go the Sphinx, the Colossi, the Statues of Abou-Simbel\u2014as the saints went down in England before Cromwell's troopers.\"\n\n\"Well now,\" said Headingly, in his slow, thoughtful fashion, \"suppose I grant you that the Dervishes could overrun Egypt, and suppose also that you English are holding them out, what I'm never done asking is, what reason have you for spending all these millions of dollars and the lives of so many of your men? What do you get out of it, more than France gets, or Germany, or any other country, that runs no risk and never lays out a cent?\"\n\n\"There are a good many Englishmen who are asking themselves that question,\" remarked Cecil Brown. \"It's my opinion that we have been the policemen of the world long enough. We policed the seas for pirates and slavers. Now we police the land for Dervishes and brigands and every sort of danger to civilisation. There is never a mad priest or a witch doctor, or a firebrand of any sort on this planet, who does not report his appearance by sniping the nearest British officer. One tires of it at last. If a Kurd breaks loose in Asia Minor, the world wants to know why Great Britain does not keep him in order. If there is a military mutiny in Egypt, or a Jehad in the Soudan, it is still Great Britain who has to set it right. And all to an accompaniment of curses such as the policeman gets when he seizes a ruffian among his pals. We get hard knocks and no thanks, and why should we do it? Let Europe do its own dirty work.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Colonel Cochrane, crossing his legs and leaning forward with the decision of n man who has definite opinions, \"I don't at all agree with you, Brown, and I think that to advocate such a course is to take a very limited view of our national duties. I think that behind national interests and diplomacy and all that there lies a great guiding force\u2014a Providence, in fact\u2014which is for ever getting the best out of each nation and using it for the good of the whole. When a nation ceases to respond, it is time that she went into hospital for a few centuries, like Spain or Greece\u2014the virtue has gone out of her. A man or a nation is not placed upon this earth to do merely what is pleasant and what is profitable. It is often called upon to carry out what is both unpleasant and unprofitable, but if it is obviously right it is mere shirking not to undertake it.\"\n\nHeadingly nodded approvingly.\n\n\"Each has its own mission. Germany is predominant in abstract thought; France in literature, art, and grace. But we and you\u2014for the English-speakers are all in the same boat, however much the New York Sun may scream over it\u2014we and you have among our best men a higher conception of moral sense and public duty than is to be found in any other people. Now, these are the two qualities which are needed for directing a weaker race. You can't help them by abstract thought or by graceful art, but only by that moral sense which will hold the scales of Justice even, and keep itself free from every taint of corruption. That is how we rule India. We came there by a kind of natural law, like air rushing into a vacuum. All over the world, against our direct interests and our deliberate intentions, we are drawn into the same thing. And it will happen to you also. The pressure of destiny will force you to administer the Whole of America from Mexico to the Horn.\"\n\nHeadingly whistled.\n\n\"Our Jingoes would be pleased to hear you, Colonel Cochrane,\" said he.\n\n\"They'd vote you into our Senate and make you one of the Committee on Foreign Relations.\"\n\n\"The world is small, and it grows smaller every day. It's a single organic body, and one spot of gangrene is enough to vitiate the whole. There's no room upon it for dishonest, defaulting, tyrannical, irresponsible Governments. As long as they exist they will always be sources of trouble and of danger. But there are many races which appear to be so incapable of improvement that we can never hope to get a good Government out of them. What is to be done, then? The former device of Providence in such a case was extermination by some more virile stock\u2014 an Attila or a Tamerlane pruned off the weaker branch. Now, we have a more merciful substitution of rulers, or even of mere advice from a more advanced race. That is the case with the Central Asian Khanates and with the protected States of India. If the work has to be done, and if we are the best fitted for the work, then I think that it would be a cowardice and a crime to shirk it.\"\n\n\"But who is to decide whether it is a fitting case for your interference?\" objected the American. \"A predatory country could grab every other land in the world upon such a pretext.\"\n\n\"Events\u2014inexorable, inevitable events\u2014will decide it. Take this Egyptian business as an example. In 1881 there was nothing in this world further from the minds of our people than any interference with Egypt; and yet 1882 left us in possession of the country. There was never any choice in the chain of events. A massacre in the streets of Alexandria, and the mounting of guns to drive out our fleet\u2014which was there, you understand, in fulfilment of solemn treaty obligations\u2014led to the bombardment. The bombardment led to a landing to save the city from destruction. The landing caused an extension of operations\u2014and here we are, with the country upon our hands. At the time of trouble we begged and implored the French, or any one else, to come and help us to put the thing to rights, but they all deserted us when there was work to be done, although they are ready enough to scold and to impede us now. When we tried to get out of it, up came this wild Dervish movement, and we had to sit tighter than ever. We never wanted the task; but, now that it has come, we must put it through in a workmanlike manner. We've brought justice into the country, and purity of administration, and protection for the poor man. It has made more advance in the last twelve years than since the Moslem invasion in the seventh century. Except the pay of a couple of hundred men, who spend their money in the country, England has neither directly nor indirectly made a shilling out of it, and I don't believe you will find in history a more successful and more disinterested bit of work.\"\n\nHeadingly puffed thoughtfully at his cigarette.\n\n\"There is a house near ours, down on the Back Bay at Boston, which just ruins the whole prospect,\" said he. \"It has old chairs littered about the stoop, and the shingles are loose, and the garden runs wild; but I don't know that the neighbours are exactly justified in rushing in, and stamping around, and running the thing on their own lines.\"\n\n\"Not if it were on fire?\" asked the Colonel.\n\nHeadingly laughed, and rose from his camp-stool.\n\n\"Well, it doesn't come within the provisions of the Monroe Doctrine, Colonel,\" said he. \"I'm beginning to realise that modern Egypt is every bit as interesting as ancient, and that Rameses the Second wasn't the last live man in the country.\"\n\nThe two Englishmen rose and yawned.\n\n\"Yes, it's a whimsical freak of fortune which has sent men from a little island in the Atlantic to administer the land of the Pharaohs,\" remarked Cecil Brown. \"We shall pass away again, and never leave a trace among these successive races who have held the country, for it is not an Anglo-Saxon custom to write their deeds upon rocks. I dare say that the remains of a Cairo drainage system will be our most permanent record, unless they prove a thousand years hence that it was the work of the Hyksos kings. But here is the shore party come back.\"\n\nDown below they could hear the mellow Irish accents of Mrs. Belmont and the deep voice of her husband, the iron-grey rifle-shot. Mr. Stuart, the fat Birmingham clergyman, was thrashing out a question of piastres with a noisy donkey-boy, and the others were joining in with chaff and advice. Then the hubbub died away, the party from above came down the ladder, there were \"good-nights,\" the shutting of doors, and the little steamer lay silent, dark, and motionless in the shadow of the high Halfa bank. And beyond this one point of civilisation and of comfort there lay the limitless, savage, unchangeable desert, straw-coloured and dream-like in the moonlight, mottled over with the black shadows of the hills." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 3", + "text": "\"Stoppa! Backa!\" cried the native pilot to the European engineer.\n\nThe bluff bows of the stern-wheeler had squelched into the soft brown mud, and the current had swept the boat alongside the bank. The long gangway was thrown across, and the six tall soldiers of the Soudanese escort filed along it, their light-blue gold-trimmed zouave uniforms, and their jaunty yellow and red forage-caps, showing up bravely in the clear morning light. Above them, on the top of the bank, was ranged the line of donkeys, and the air was full of the clamour of the boys. In shrill strident voices each was crying out the virtues of his own beast, and abusing that of his neighbour.\n\nColonel Cochrane and Mr. Belmont stood together in the bows, each wearing the broad white puggareed hat of the tourist. Miss Adams and her niece leaned against the rail beside them.\n\n\"Sorry your wife isn't coming, Belmont,\" said the Colonel.\n\n\"I think she had a touch of the sun yesterday. Her head aches very badly.\"\n\nHis voice was strong and thick like his figure.\n\n\"I should stay to keep her company, Mr. Belmont,\" said the little American old maid; \"but I learn that Mrs. Shlesinger finds the ride too long for her, and has some letters which she must mail to-day, so Mrs.\n\nBelmont will not be lonesome.\"\n\n\"You're very good, Miss Adams. We shall be back, you know, by two o'clock.\"\n\n\"Is that certain?\"\n\n\"It must be certain, for we are taking no lunch with us, and we shall be famished by then.\"\n\n\"Yes, I expect we shall be ready for a hock and seltzer at any rate,\" said the Colonel. \"This desert dust gives a flavour to the worst wine.\"\n\n\"Now, ladies and gentlemen!\" cried Mansoor, the dragoman, moving forward with something of the priest in his flowing garments and smooth, clean-shaven face. \"We must start early that we may return before the meridial heat of the weather.\" He ran his dark eyes over the little group of his tourists with a paternal expression. \"You take your green glasses, Miss Adams, for glare very great out in the desert. Ah, Mr. Stuart, I set aside very fine donkey for you\u2014prize donkey, sir, always put aside for the gentleman of most weight. Never mind to take your monument ticket to-day. Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you please!\"\n\nLike a grotesque frieze the party moved one by one along the plank gangway and up the brown crumbling bank. Mr. Stephens led them, a thin, dry, serious figure, in an English straw hat. His red \"Baedeker\" gleamed under his arm, and in one hand he held a little paper of notes, as if it were a brief. He took Miss Sadie by one arm and her aunt by the other as they toiled up the bank, and the young girl's laughter rang frank and clear in the morning air as \"Baedeker\" came fluttering down at their feet. Mr. Belmont and Colonel Cochrane followed, the brims of their sun-hats touching as they discussed the relative advantages of the Mauser, the Lebel, and the Lee-Metford. Behind them walked Cecil Brown, listless, cynical, self-contained. The fat clergyman puffed slowly up the bank, with many gasping witticisms at his own defects. \"I'm one of those men who carry everything before them,\" said he, glancing ruefully at his rotundity, and chuckling wheezily at his own little joke. Last of all came Headingly, slight and tall, with the student stoop about his shoulders, and Fardet, the good-natured, fussy, argumentative Parisian.\n\n\"You see we have an escort to-day,\" he whispered to his companion.\n\n\"So I observed.\"\n\n\"Pah!\" cried the Frenchman, throwing out his arms in derision; \"as well have an escort from Paris to Versailles. This is all part of the play, Monsieur Headingly. It deceives no one, but it is part of the play. Pourquoi ces droles de militaires, dragoman, hein?\"\n\nIt was the dragoman's role to be all things to all men, so he looked cautiously round before he answered, to make sure that the English were mounted and out of earshot.\n\n\"C'est ridicule, monsieur!\" said he, shrugging his fat shoulders. \"Mais que voulez-vous? C'est l'ordre official Egyptien.\"\n\n\"Egyptien! Pah, Anglais, Anglais\u2014toujours Anglais!\" cried the angry Frenchman.\n\nThe frieze now was more grotesque than ever, but had changed suddenly to an equestrian one, sharply outlined against the deep-blue Egyptian sky. Those who have never ridden before have to ride in Egypt, and when the donkeys break into a canter, and the Nile Irregulars are at full charge, such a scene of flying veils, clutching hands, huddled swaying figures, and anxious faces is nowhere to be seen. Belmont, his square figure balanced upon a small white donkey, was waving his hat to his wife, who had come out upon the saloon-deck of the Korosko. Cochrane sat very erect with a stiff military seat, hands low, head high, and heels down, while beside him rode the young Oxford man, looking about him with drooping eyelids as if he thought the desert hardly respectable, and had his doubts about the Universe. Behind them the whole party was strung along the bank in varying stages of jolting and discomfort, a brown-faced, noisy donkey-boy running after each donkey. Looking back, they could see the little lead-coloured stern-wheeler, with the gleam of Mrs. Belmont's handkerchief from the deck. Beyond ran the broad, brown river, winding down in long curves to where, five miles off, the square, white block-houses upon the black, ragged hills marked the outskirts of Wady Halfa, which had been their starting-point that morning.\n\n\"Isn't it just too lovely for anything?\" cried Sadie joyously. \"I've got a donkey that runs on casters, and the saddle is just elegant. Did you ever see anything so cunning as these beads and things round his neck? You must make a memo. re donkey, Mr. Stephens. Isn't that correct legal English?\"\n\nStephens looked at the pretty, animated, boyish face looking up at him from under the coquettish straw hat, and he wished that he had the courage to tell her in her own language that she was just too sweet for anything. But he feared above all things lest he should offend her, and so put an end to their present pleasant intimacy. So his compliment dwindled into a smile.\n\n\"You look very happy,\" said he.\n\n\"Well, who could help feeling good with this dry, clear air, and the blue sky, and the crisp yellow sand, and a superb donkey to carry you? I've just got everything in the world to make me happy.\"\n\n\"Everything?\"\n\n\"Well, everything I have any use for just now.\"\n\n\"I suppose you never know what it is to be sad?\"\n\n\"Oh, when I am miserable, I am just too miserable for words. I've sat and cried for days and days at Smith's College, and the other girls were just crazy to know what I was crying about, and guessing what the reason was that I wouldn't tell them, when all the time the real true reason was that I didn't know myself. You know how it comes like a great dark shadow over you, and you don't know why or wherefore, but you've just got to settle down to it and be miserable.\"\n\n\"But you never had any real cause?\"\n\n\"No, Mr. Stephens, I've had such a good time all my life that I really don't think, when I look back, that I ever had any real cause for sorrow.\"\n\n\"Well, Miss Sadie, I hope with all my heart that you will be able to say the same when you are the same age as your aunt. Surely I hear her calling.\"\n\n\"I wish, Mr. Stephens, you would strike my donkey-boy with your whip if he hits the donkey again,\" cried Miss Adams, jogging up on a high, raw-boned beast. \"Hi, dragoman, Mansoor, you tell this boy that I won't have the animals ill used, and that he ought to be ashamed of himself. Yes, you little rascal, you ought! He's grinning at me like an advertisement for a tooth paste. Do you think, Mr. Stephens, that if I were to knit that black soldier a pair of woollen stockings he would be allowed to wear them? The poor creature has bandages round his legs.\"\n\n\"Those are his putties, Miss Adams,\" said Colonel Cochrane, looking back at her. \"We have found in India that they are the best support to the leg in marching. They are very much better than any stocking.\"\n\n\"Well, you don't say! They remind me mostly of a sick horse. But it's elegant to have the soldiers with us, though Monsieur Fardet tells me there's nothing for us to be scared about.\"\n\n\"That is only my opinion, Miss Adams,\" said the Frenchman hastily.\n\n\"It may be that Colonel Cochrane thinks otherwise.\"\n\n\"It is Monsieur Fardet's opinion against that of the officers who have the responsibility of caring for the safety of the frontier,\" said the Colonel coldly. \"At least we will all agree that they have the effect of making the scene very much more picturesque.\"\n\nThe desert upon their right lay in long curves of sand, like the dunes which might have fringed some forgotten primeval sea. Topping them they could see the black, craggy summits of the curious volcanic hills which rise upon the Libyan side. On the crest of the low sand-hills they would catch a glimpse every now and then of a tall, sky-blue soldier, walking swiftly, his rifle at the trail. For a moment the lank, warlike figure would be sharply silhouetted against the sky. Then he would dip into a hollow and disappear, while some hundred yards off another would show for an instant and vanish.\n\n\"Wherever are they raised?\" asked Sadie, watching the moving figures.\n\n\"They look to me just about the same tint as the hotel boys in the States.\"\n\n\"I thought some question might arise about them,\" said Mr. Stephens, who was never so happy as when he could anticipate some wish of the pretty American. \"I made one or two references this morning in the ship's library. Here it is\u2014re\u2014that's to say, about black soldiers. I have it on my notes that they are from the 10th Soudanese battalion of the Egyptian army. They are recruited from the Dinkas and the Shilluks\u2014two negroid tribes living to the south of the Dervish country, near the Equator.\"\n\n\"How can the recruits come through the Dervishes, then?\" asked Headingly sharply.\n\n\"I dare say there is no such very great difficulty over that,\" said Monsieur Fardet, with a wink at the American.\n\n\"The older men are the remains of the old black battalions. Some of them served with Gordon at Khartoum, and have his medal to show.\n\nThe others are many of them deserters from the Mahdi's army,\" said the Colonel.\n\n\"Well, so long as they are not wanted, they look right elegant in those blue jackets,\" Miss Adams observed. \"But if there was any trouble, I guess we would wish they were less ornamental and a bit whiter.\"\n\n\"I am not so sure of that, Miss Adams,\" said the Colonel. \"I have seen these fellows in the field, and I assure you that I have the utmost confidence in their steadiness.\"\n\n\"Well, I'll take your word without trying,\" said Miss Adams, with a decision which made every one smile.\n\nSo far their road had lain along the side of the river, which was swirling down upon their left hand deep and strong from the cataracts above. Here and there the rush of the current was broken by a black shining boulder over which the foam was spouting. Higher up they could see the white gleam of the rapids, and the banks grew into rugged cliffs, which were capped by a peculiar, outstanding semicircular rock. It did not require the dragoman's aid to tell the party that this was the famous landmark to which they were bound. A long, level stretch lay before them, and the donkeys took it at a canter. At the farther side were scattered rocks, black upon orange; and in the midst of them rose some broken shafts of pillars and a length of engraved wall, looking in its greyness and its solidity more like some work of Nature than of man. The fat, sleek dragoman had dismounted, and stood waiting in his petticoats and his covercoat for the stragglers to gather round him.\n\n\"This temple, ladies and gentlemen,\" he cried, with the air of an auctioneer who is about to sell it to the highest bidder, \"very fine example from the eighteenth dynasty. Here is the cartouche of Thotmes the Third,\" he pointed up with his donkey-whip at the rude, but deep, hieroglyphics upon the wall above him. \"He live sixteen hundred years before Christ, and this is made to remember his victorious exhibition into Mesopotamia. Here we have his history from the time that he was with his mother, until he return with captives tied to his chariot. In this you see him crowned with Lower Egypt, and with Upper Egypt offering up sacrifice in honour of his victory to the God Ammon-ra. Here he bring his captives before him, and he cut off each his right hand. In this corner you see little pile\u2014all right hands.\"\n\n\"My sakes, I shouldn't have liked to be here in those days,\" said Miss Adams.\n\n\"Why, there's nothing altered,\" remarked Cecil Brown. \"The East is still the East. I've no doubt that within a hundred miles, or perhaps a good deal less, from where you stand\u2014\"\n\n\"Shut up!\" whispered the Colonel, and the party shuffled on down the line of the wall with their faces up and their big hats thrown backwards. The sun behind them struck the old grey masonry with a brassy glare, and carried on to it the strange black shadows of the tourists, mixing them up with the grim, high-nosed, square-shouldered warriors, and the grotesque, rigid deities who lined it. The broad shadow of the Reverend John Stuart, of Birmingham, smudged out both the heathen King and the god whom he worshipped.\n\n\"What's this?\" he was asking in his wheezy voice, pointing up with a yellow Assouan cane.\n\n\"That is a hippopotamus,\" said the dragoman; and the tourists all tittered, for there was just a suspicion of Mr. Stuart himself in the carving.\n\n\"But it isn't bigger than a little pig,\" he protested. \"You see that the King is putting his spear through it with ease.\"\n\n\"They make it small to show that it was a very small thing to the King,\" said the dragoman. \"So you see that all the King's prisoners do not exceed his knee\u2014which is not because he was so much taller, but so much more powerful. You see that he is bigger than his horse, because he is a king and the other is only a horse. The same way, these small women whom you see here and there are just his trivial little wives.\"\n\n\"Well, now!\" cried Miss Adams indignantly. \"If they had sculpted that King's soul it would have needed a lens to see it. Fancy his allowing his wives to be put in like that.\"\n\n\"If he did it now, Miss Adams,\" said the Frenchman, \"he would have more fighting than ever in Mesopotamia. But time brings revenge. Perhaps the day will soon come when we have the picture of the big strong wife and the trivial little husband\u2014hein?\"\n\nCecil Brown and Headingly had dropped behind, for the glib comments of the dragoman, and the empty, light-hearted chatter of the tourists jarred upon their sense of solemnity. They stood in silence watching the grotesque procession, with its sun-hats and green veils, as it passed in the vivid sunshine down the front of the old grey wall. Above them two crested hoopoes were fluttering and calling amid the ruins of the pylon.\n\n\"Isn't it a sacrilege?\" said the Oxford man at last.\n\n\"Well, now, I'm glad you feel that about it, because it's how it always strikes me,\" Headingly answered with feeling. \"I'm not quite clear in my own mind how these things should be approached\u2014if they are to be approached at all\u2014but I am sure this is not the way. On the whole, I prefer the ruins that I have not seen to those which I have.\"\n\nThe young diplomatist looked up with his peculiarly bright smile, which faded away too soon into his languid, blase mask.\n\n\"I've got a map,\" said the American, \"and sometimes far away from anything in the very midst of the waterless, trackless desert, I see 'ruins' marked upon it\u2014or 'remains of a temple,' perhaps. For example, the temple of Jupiter Ammon, which was one of the most considerable shrines in the world, was hundreds of miles away back of anywhere. Those are the ruins, solitary, unseen, unchanging through the centuries, which appeal to one's imagination. But when I present a check at the door, and go in as if it were Barnum's show, all the subtle feeling of romance goes right out of it.\"\n\n\"Absolutely!\" said Cecil Brown, looking over the desert with his dark, intolerant eyes. \"If one could come wandering here alone\u2014stumble upon it by chance, as it were\u2014and find one's self in absolute solitude in the dim light of the temple, with these grotesque figures all round, it would be perfectly overwhelming. A man would be prostrated with wonder and awe. But when Belmont is puffing his bulldog pipe, and Stuart is wheezing, and Miss Sadie Adams is laughing\u2014\"\n\n\"And that jay of a dragoman speaking his piece,\" said Headingly; \"I want to stand and think all the time, and I never seem to get the chance. I was ripe for manslaughter when I stood before the Great Pyramid, and couldn't get a quiet moment because they would boost me on to the top. I took a kick at one man which would have sent him to the top in one jump if I had hit meat. But fancy travelling all the way from America to see the pyramid, and then finding nothing better to do than to kick an Arab in front of it!\"\n\nThe Oxford man laughed in his gentle, tired fashion. \"They are starting again,\" said he, and the two hastened forwards to take their places at the tail of the absurd procession.\n\nTheir route ran now among large, scattered boulders, and between stony, shingly hills. A narrow winding path curved in and out amongst the rocks. Behind them their view was cut off by similar hills, black and fantastic, like the slag-heaps at the shaft of a mine. A silence fell upon the little company, and even Sadie's bright face reflected the harshness of Nature. The escort had closed in, and marched beside them, their boots scrunching among the loose black rubble. Colonel Cochrane and Belmont were still riding together in the van.\n\n\"Do you know, Belmont,\" said the Colonel, in a low voice, \"you may think me a fool, but I don't like this one little bit.\"\n\nBelmont gave a short gruff laugh.\n\n\"It seemed all right in the saloon of the Korosko, but now that we are here we do seem rather up in the air,\" said he. \"Still, you know, a party comes here every week, and nothing has ever gone wrong.\"\n\n\"I don't mind taking my chances when I am on the war-path,\" the Colonel answered. \"That's all straightforward and in the way of business. But when you have women with you, and a helpless crowd like this, it becomes really dreadful. Of course, the chances are a hundred to one that we have no trouble; but if we should have\u2014well, it won't bear thinking about. The wonderful thing is their complete unconsciousness that there is any danger whatever.\"\n\n\"Well, I like the English tailor-made dresses well enough for walking, Mr. Stephens,\" said Miss Sadie from behind them. \"But for an afternoon dress, I think the French have more style than the English. Your milliners have a more severe cut, and they don't do the cunning little ribbons and bows and things in the same way.\"\n\nThe Colonel smiled at Belmont.\n\n\"She is quite serene in her mind, at any rate,\" said he. \"Of course, I wouldn't say what I think to any one but you, and I daresay it will all prove to be quite unfounded.\"\n\n\"Well, I could imagine parties of Dervishes on the prowl,\" said Belmont. \"But what I cannot imagine is that they should just happen to come to the pulpit rock on the very morning when we are due there.\"\n\n\"Considering that our movements have been freely advertised, and that every one knows a week beforehand what our programme is, and where we are to be found, it does not strike me as being such a wonderful coincidence.\"\n\n\"It is a very remote chance,\" said Belmont stoutly, but he was glad in his heart that his wife was safe and snug on board the steamer.\n\nAnd now they were clear of the rocks again, with a fine stretch of firm yellow sand extending to the very base of the conical hill which lay before them. \"Ay-ah! Ay-ah!\" cried the boys, whack came their sticks upon the flanks of the donkeys, which broke into a gallop, and away they all streamed over the plain. It was not until they had come to the end of the path which curves up the hill that the dragoman called a halt.\n\n\"Now, ladies and gentlemen, we are arrived for the so famous pulpit rock of Abousir. From the summit you will presently enjoy a panorama of remarkable fertility. But first you will observe that over the rocky side of the hill are everywhere cut the names of great men who have passed it in their travels, and some of these names are older than the time of Christ.\"\n\n\"Got Moses?\" asked Miss Adams.\n\n\"Auntie, I'm surprised at you!\" cried Sadie.\n\n\"Well, my dear, he was in Egypt, and he was a great man, and he may have passed this way.\"\n\n\"Moses's name very likely there, and the same with Herodotus,\" said the dragoman gravely. \"Both have been long worn away. But there on the brown rock you will see Belzoni. And up higher is Gordon. There is hardly a name famous in the Soudan which you will not find, if you like. And now, with your permission, we shall take good-bye of our donkeys and walk up the path, and you will see the river and the desert from the summit of the top.\"\n\nA minute or two of climbing brought them out upon the semicircular platform which crowns the rock. Below them on the far side was a perpendicular black cliff, a hundred and fifty feet high, with the swirling, foam-streaked river roaring past its base. The swish of the water and the low roar as it surged over the mid-stream boulders boomed through the hot, stagnant air. Far up and far down they could see the course of the river, a quarter of a mile in breadth, and running very deep and strong, with sleek black eddies and occasional spoutings of foam. On the other side was a frightful wilderness of black, scattered rocks, which were the debris carried down by the river at high flood. In no direction were there any signs of human beings or their dwellings.\n\n\"On the far side,\" said the dragoman, waving his donkey-whip towards the east, \"is the military line which conducts Wady Halfa to Sarras. Sarras lies to the south, under that black hill. Those two blue mountains which you see very far away are in Dongola, more than a hundred miles from Sarras. The railway there is forty miles long, and has been much annoyed by the Dervishes, who are very glad to turn the rails into spears. The telegraph wires are also much appreciated thereby. Now, if you will kindly turn round, I will explain, also, what we see upon the other side.\"\n\nIt was a view which, when once seen, must always haunt the mind. Such an expanse of savage and unrelieved desert might be part of some cold and burned-out planet rather than of this fertile and bountiful earth. Away and away it stretched to die into a soft, violet haze in the extremest distance. In the foreground the sand was of a bright golden yellow, which was quite dazzling in the sunshine. Here and there, in a scattered cordon, stood the six trusty negro soldiers leaning motionless upon their rifles, and each throwing a shadow which looked as solid as himself. But beyond this golden plain lay a low line of those black slag-heaps, with yellow sand-valleys winding between them. These in their turn were topped by higher and more fantastic hills, and these by others, peeping over each other's shoulders until they blended with that distant violet haze. None of these hills were of any height\u2014a few hundred feet at the most\u2014but their savage, saw-toothed crests, and their steep scarps of sun-baked stone, gave them a fierce character of their own.\n\n\"The Libyan Desert,\" said the dragoman, with a proud wave of his hand. \"The greatest desert in the world. Suppose you travel right west from here, and turn neither to the north nor to the south, the first houses you would come to would be in America. That make you home-sick, Miss Adams, I believe?\"\n\nBut the American old maid had her attention drawn away by the conduct of Sadie, who had caught her arm by one hand and was pointing over the desert with the other.\n\n\"Well, now, if that isn't too picturesque for anything!\" she cried, with a flush of excitement upon her pretty face. \"Do look, Mr. Stephens! That's just the one only thing we wanted to make it just perfectly grand. See the men upon the camels coming out from between those hills!\"\n\nThey all looked at the long string of red-turbaned riders who were winding out of the ravine, and there fell such a hush that the buzzing of the flies sounded quite loud upon their ears. Colonel Cochrane had lit a match, and he stood with it in one hand and the unlit cigarette in the other until the flame licked round his fingers. Belmont whistled. The dragoman stood staring with his mouth half-open, and a curious slaty tint in his full, red lips. The others looked from one to the other with an uneasy sense that there was something wrong. It was the Colonel who broke the silence.\n\n\"By George, Belmont, I believe the hundred-to-one chance has come off!\" said he." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 4", + "text": "\"What's the meaning of this, Mansoor?\" cried Belmont harshly. \"Who are these people, and why are you standing staring as if you had lost your senses?\"\n\nThe dragoman made an effort to compose himself, and licked his dry lips before he answered.\n\n\"I do not know who they are,\" said he in a quavering voice.\n\n\"Who they are?\" cried the Frenchman. \"You can see who they are. They are armed men upon camels, Ababdeh, Bishareen\u2014Bedouins, in short, such as are employed by the Government upon the frontier.\"\n\n\"Be Jove, he may be right, Cochrane,\" said Belmont, looking inquiringly at the Colonel. \"Why shouldn't it be as he says? why shouldn't these fellows be friendlies?\"\n\n\"There are no friendlies upon this side of the river,\" said the Colonel abruptly; \"I am perfectly certain about that. There is no use in mincing matters. We must prepare for the worst.\"\n\nBut in spite of his words, they stood stock-still, in a huddled group, staring out over the plain. Their nerves were numbed by the sudden shock, and to all of them it was like a scene in a dream, vague, impersonal, and un-real. The men upon the camels had streamed out from a gorge which lay a mile or so distant on the side of the path along which they had travelled. Their retreat, therefore, was entirely cut off. It appeared, from the dust and the length of the line, to be quite an army which was emerging from the hills, for seventy men upon camels cover a considerable stretch of ground. Having reached the sandy plain, they very deliberately formed to the front, and then at the harsh call of a bugle they trotted forward in line, the parti-coloured figures all swaying and the sand smoking in a rolling yellow cloud at the heels of their camels. At the same moment the six black soldiers doubled in from the front with their Martinis at the trail, and snuggled down like well-trained skirmishers behind the rocks upon the haunch of the hill. Their breech blocks all snapped together as their corporal gave them the order to load.\n\nAnd now suddenly the first stupor of the excursionists passed away, and was succeeded by a frantic and impotent energy. They all ran about upon the plateau of rock in an aimless, foolish flurry, like frightened fowls in a yard. They could not bring themselves to acknowledge that there was no possible escape for them. Again and again they rushed to the edge of the great cliff which rose from the river, but the youngest and most daring of them could never have descended it. The two women clung one on each side of the trembling Mansoor, with a feeling that he was officially responsible for their safety. When he ran up and down in his desperation, his skirts and theirs all fluttered together. Stephens, the lawyer, kept close to Sadie Adams, muttering mechanically, \"Don't be alarmed, Miss Sadie; don't be at all alarmed!\" though his own limbs were twitching with agitation. Monsieur Fardet stamped about with a guttural rolling of r's, glancing angrily at his companions as if they had in some way betrayed him; while the fat clergyman stood with his umbrella up, staring stolidly with big, frightened eyes at the camel-men. Cecil Brown curled his small, prim moustache, and looked white, but contemptuous. The Colonel, Belmont, and the young Harvard graduate were the three most cool-headed and resourceful members of the party.\n\n\"Better stick together,\" said the Colonel. \"There's no escape for us, so we may as well remain united.\"\n\n\"They've halted,\" said Belmont.\n\n\"They are reconnoitring us. They know very well that there is no escape from them, and they are taking their time. I don't see what we can do.\"\n\n\"Suppose we hide the women,\" Headingly suggested. \"They can't know how many of us are here. When they have taken us, the women can come out of their hiding-place and make their way back to the boat.\"\n\n\"Admirable!\" cried Colonel Cochrane. \"Admirable! This way, please, Miss Adams. Bring the ladies here, Mansoor. There is not an instant to be lost.\"\n\nThere was a part of the plateau which was invisible from the plain, and here in feverish haste they built a little cairn. Many flaky slabs of stone were lying about, and it did not take long to prop the largest of these against a rock, so as to make a lean-to, and then to put two side-pieces to complete it. The slabs were of the same colour as the rock, so that to a casual glance the hiding-place was not very visible. The two ladies were squeezed into this, and they crouched together, Sadie's arms thrown round her aunt. When they had walled them up, the men turned with lighter hearts to see what was going on. As they did so there rang out the sharp, peremptory crack of a rifle-shot from the escort, followed by another and another, but these isolated shots were drowned in the long, spattering roll of an irregular volley from the plain, and the air was full of the phit-phit-phit of the bullets. The tourists all huddled behind the rocks, with the exception of the Frenchman, who still stamped angrily about, striking his sun-hat with his clenched hand. Belmont and Cochrane crawled down to where the Soudanese soldiers were firing slowly and steadily, resting their rifles upon the boulders in front of them.\n\nThe Arabs had halted about five hundred yards away, and it was evident from their leisurely movements that they were perfectly aware that there was no possible escape for the travellers. They had paused to ascertain their number before closing in upon them. Most of them were firing from the backs of their camels, but a few had dismounted and were kneeling here and there\u2014little shimmering white spots against the golden background. Their shots came sometimes singly in quick, sharp throbs, and sometimes in a rolling volley, with a sound like a boy's stick drawn across iron railings. The hill buzzed like a bee-hive, and the bullets made a sharp crackling as they struck against the rocks.\n\n\"You do no good by exposing yourself,\" said Belmont, drawing Colonel Cochrane behind a large jagged boulder, which already furnished a shelter for three of the Soudanese. \"A bullet is the best we have to hope for,\" said Cochrane grimly. \"What an infernal fool I have been, Belmont, not to protest more energetically against this ridiculous expedition! I deserve whatever I get, but it is hard on these poor souls who never knew the danger.\"\n\n\"I suppose there's no help for us?\"\n\n\"Not the faintest.\"\n\n\"Don't you think this firing might bring the troops up from Halfa?\"\n\n\"They'll never hear it. It is a good six miles from here to the steamer. From that to Halfa would be another five.\"\n\n\"Well, when we don't return, the steamer will give the alarm.\"\n\n\"And where shall we be by that time?\"\n\n\"My poor Norah! My poor little Norah!\" muttered Belmont, in the depths of his grizzled moustache.\n\n\"What do you suppose that they will do with us, Cochrane?\" he asked after a pause.\n\n\"They may cut our throats, or they may take us as slaves to Khartoum. I don't know that there is much to choose. There's one of us out of his troubles anyhow.\"\n\nThe soldier next them had sat down abruptly, and leaned forward over his knees. His movement and attitude were so natural that it was hard to realise that he had been shot through the head. He neither stirred nor groaned. His comrades bent over him for a moment, and then, shrugging their shoulders, they turned their dark faces to the Arabs once more. Belmont picked up the dead man's Martini and his ammunition-pouch.\n\n\"Only three more rounds, Cochrane,\" said he, with the little brass cylinders upon the palm of his hand. \"We've let them shoot too soon, and too often. We should have waited for the rush.\"\n\n\"You're a famous shot, Belmont,\" cried the Colonel. \"I've heard of you as one of the cracks. Don't you think you could pick off their leader?\"\n\n\"Which is he?\"\n\n\"As far as I can make out, it is that one on the white camel on their right front. I mean the fellow who is peering at us from under his two hands.\"\n\nBelmont thrust in his cartridge and altered the sights. \"It's a shocking bad light for judging distance,\" said he. \"This is where the low point-blank trajectory of the Lee-Metford comes in useful. Well, we'll try him at five hundred.\" He fired, but there was no change in the white camel or the peering rider.\n\n\"Did you see any sand fly?\"\n\n\"No, I saw nothing.\"\n\n\"I fancy I took my sight a trifle too full.\"\n\n\"Try him again.\"\n\nMan and rifle and rock were equally steady, but again the camel and chief remained unharmed. The third shot must have been nearer, for he moved a few paces to the right, as if he were becoming restless. Belmont threw the empty rifle down, with an exclamation of disgust.\n\n\"It's this confounded light,\" he cried, and his cheeks flushed with annoyance. \"Think of my wasting three cartridges in that fashion! If I had him at Bisley I'd shoot the turban off him, but this vibrating glare means refraction. What's the matter with the Frenchman?\"\n\nMonsieur Fardet was stamping about the plateau with the gestures of a man who has been stung by a wasp. \"S'cre nom! S'cre nom!\" he shouted, showing his strong white teeth under his black waxed moustache. He wrung his right hand violently, and as he did so he sent a little spray of blood from his finger-tips. A bullet had chipped his wrist. Headingly ran out from the cover where be had been crouching, with the intention of dragging the demented Frenchman into a place of safety, but he had not taken three paces before he was himself hit in the loins, and fell with a dreadful crash among the stones. He staggered to his feet, and then fell again in the same place, floundering up and down like a horse which has broken its back. \"I'm done!\" he whispered, as the Colonel ran to his aid, and then he lay still, with his china-white cheek against the black stones. When, but a year before, he had wandered under the elms of Cambridge, surely the last fate upon this earth which he could have predicted for himself would be that he should be slain by the bullet of a fanatical Mohammedan in the wilds of the Libyan Desert.\n\nMeanwhile the fire of the escort had ceased, for they had shot away their last cartridge. A second man had been killed, and a third\u2014who was the corporal in charge\u2014had received a bullet in his thigh. He sat upon a stone, tying up his injury with a grave, preoccupied look upon his wrinkled black face, like an old woman piecing together a broken plate. The three others fastened their bayonets with a determined metallic rasp and snap, and the air of men who intended to sell their lives dearly.\n\n\"They're coming!\" cried Belmont, looking over the plain.\n\n\"Let them come!\" the Colonel answered, putting his hands into his trouser-pockets. Suddenly he pulled one fist out, and shook it furiously in the air. \"Oh, the cads! the confounded cads!\" he shouted, and his eyes were congested with rage.\n\nIt was the fate of the poor donkey-boys which had carried the self-contained soldier out of his usual calm. During the firing they had remained huddled, a pitiable group, among the rocks at the base of the hill. Now upon the conviction that the charge of the Dervishes must come first upon them, they had sprung upon their animals with shrill, inarticulate cries of fear, and had galloped off across the plain. A small flanking-party of eight or ten camel-men had worked round while the firing had been going on, and these dashed in among the flying donkey-boys, hacking and hewing with a cold-blooded, deliberate ferocity. One little boy, in a flapping Galabeeah, kept ahead of his pursuers for a time, but the long stride of the camels ran him down, and an Arab thrust his spear into the middle of his stooping back. The small, white-clad corpses looked like a flock of sheep trailing over the desert.\n\nBut the people upon the rock had no time to think of the cruel fate of the donkey-boys. Even the Colonel, after that first indignant outburst, had forgotten all about them. The advancing camel-men had trotted to the bottom of the hill, had dismounted, and leaving their camels kneeling, had rushed furiously onward. Fifty of them were clambering up the path and over the rocks together, their red turbans appearing and vanishing again as they scrambled over the boulders. Without a shot or a pause they surged over the three black soldiers, killing one and stamping the other two down under their hurrying feet. So they burst on to the plateau at the top, where an unexpected resistance checked them for an instant.\n\nThe travellers, nestling up against one another, had awaited, each after his own fashion, the coming of the Arabs. The Colonel, with his hands back in his trouser-pockets, tried to whistle out of his dry lips. Belmont folded his arms and leaned against a rock, with a sulky frown upon his lowering face. So strangely do our minds act that his three successive misses, and the tarnish to his reputation as a marksman, was troubling him more than his impending fate. Cecil Brown stood erect, and plucked nervously at the upturned points of his little prim moustache. Monsieur Fardet groaned over his wounded wrist. Mr. Stephens, in sombre impotence, shook his head slowly, the living embodiment of prosaic law and order. Mr. Stuart stood, his umbrella still over him, with no expression upon his heavy face, or in his staring brown eyes. Headingly lay with that china-white cheek resting motionless upon the stones. His sun-hat had fallen off, and he looked quite boyish with his ruffled yellow hair and his unlined, clean-cut face. The dragoman sat upon a stone and played nervously with his donkey-whip. So the Arabs found them when they reached the summit of the hill.\n\nAnd then, just as the foremost rushed to lay hands upon them, a most unexpected incident arrested them. From the time of the first appearance of the Dervishes the fat clergyman of Birmingham had looked like a man in a cataleptic trance. He had neither moved nor spoken. But now he suddenly woke at a bound into strenuous and heroic energy. It may have been the mania of fear, or it may have been the blood of some Berserk ancestor which stirred suddenly in his veins; but he broke into a wild shout, and, catching up a stick, he struck right and left among the Arabs with a fury which was more savage than their own. One who helped to draw up this narrative has left it upon record that, of all the pictures which have been burned into his brain, there is none so clear as that of this man, his large face shining with perspiration, and his great body dancing about with unwieldy agility, as he struck at the shrinking, snarling savages. Then a spear-head flashed from behind a rock with a quick, vicious, upward thrust, the clergyman fell upon his hands and knees, and the horde poured over him to seize their unresisting victims. Knives glimmered before their eyes, rude hands clutched at their wrists and at their throats, and then, with brutal and unreasoning violence, they were hauled and pushed down the steep winding path to where the camels were waiting below. The Frenchman waved his unwounded hand as he walked. \"Vive le Khalifa! Vive le Madhi!\" he shouted, until a blow from behind with the butt-end of a Remington beat him into silence.\n\nAnd now they were herded in at the base of the Abousir rock, this little group of modern types who had fallen into the rough clutch of the seventh century\u2014for in all save the rifles in their hands there was nothing to distinguish these men from the desert warriors who first carried the crescent flag out of Arabia. The East does not change, and the Dervish raiders were not less brave, less cruel, or less fanatical than their forebears. They stood in a circle, leaning upon their guns and spears, and looking with exultant eyes at the dishevelled group of captives. They were clad in some approach to a uniform, red turbans gathered around the neck as well as the head, so that the fierce face looked out of a scarlet frame; yellow, untanned shoes, and white tunics with square brown patches let into them. All carried rifles, and one had a small discoloured bugle slung over his shoulder. Half of them were negroes\u2014fine, muscular men, with the limbs of a jet Hercules; and the other half were Baggara Arabs\u2014small, brown, and wiry, with little, vicious eyes, and thin, cruel lips. The chief was also a Baggara, but he was a taller man than the others, with a black beard which came down over his chest, and a pair of hard, cold eyes, which gleamed like glass from under his thick, black brows. They were fixed now upon his captives, and his features were grave with thought. Mr. Stuart had been brought down, his hat gone, his face still flushed with anger, and his trousers sticking in one part to his leg. The two surviving Soudanese soldiers, their black faces and blue coats blotched with crimson, stood silently at attention upon one side of this forlorn group of castaways.\n\nThe chief stood for some minutes, stroking his black beard, while his fierce eyes glanced from one pale face to another along the miserable line of his captives. In a harsh, imperious voice he said something which brought Mansoor, the dragoman, to the front, with bent back and outstretched supplicating palms. To his employers there had always seemed to be something comic in that flapping skirt and short covercoat above it; but now, under the glare of the mid-day sun, with those faces gathered round them, it appeared rather to add a grotesque horror to the scene. The dragoman salaamed and salaamed like some ungainly automatic doll, and then, as the chief rasped out a curt word or two, he fell suddenly upon his face, rubbing his forehead into the sand, and flapping upon it with his hands.\n\n\"What's that, Cochrane?\" asked Belmont. \"Why is he making an exhibition of himself?\"\n\n\"As far as I can understand, it is all up with us,\" the Colonel answered.\n\n\"But this is absurd,\" cried the Frenchman excitedly; \"why should these people wish any harm to me? I have never injured them. On the other hand, I have always been their friend. If I could but speak to them, I would make them comprehend. Hola, dragoman, Mansoor!\"\n\nThe excited gestures of Monsieur Fardet drew the sinister eyes of the Baggara chief upon him. Again he asked a curt question, and Mansoor, kneeling in front of him, answered it.\n\n\"Tell him that I am a Frenchman, dragoman. Tell him that I am a friend of the Khalifa. Tell him that my countrymen have never had any quarrel with him, but that his enemies are also ours.\"\n\n\"The chief asks what religion you call your own,\" said Mansoor. \"The Khalifa, he says, has no necessity for any friendship from those who are infidels and unbelievers.\"\n\n\"Tell him that in France we look upon all religions as good.\"\n\n\"The chief says that none but a blaspheming dog and the son of a dog would say that all religions are one as good as the other. He says that if you are indeed the friend of the Khalifa, you will accept the Koran and become a true believer upon the spot. If you will do so he will promise on his side to send you alive to Khartoum.\"\n\n\"And if not?\"\n\n\"You will fare in the same way as the others.\"\n\n\"Then you may make my compliments to monsieur the chief, and tell him that it is not the custom for Frenchmen to change their religion under compulsion.\"\n\nThe chief said a few words, and then turned to consult with a short, sturdy Arab at his elbow.\n\n\"He says, Monsieur Fardet,\" said the dragoman, \"that if you speak again he will make a trough out of you for the dogs to feed from. Say nothing to anger him, sir, for he is now talking what is to be done with us.\"\n\n\"Who is he?\" asked the Colonel.\n\n\"It is Ali Wad Ibrahim, the same who raided last year, and killed all of the Nubian village.\"\n\n\"I've heard of him,\" said the Colonel. \"He has the name of being one of the boldest and the most fanatical of all the Khalifa's leaders. Thank God that the women are out of his clutches.\"\n\nThe two Arabs had been talking in that stern, restrained fashion which comes so strangely from a southern race. Now they both turned to the dragoman, who was still kneeling upon the sand. They plied him with questions, pointing first to one and then to another of their prisoners. Then they conferred together once more, and finally said something to Mansoor, with a contemptuous wave of the hand to indicate that he might convey it to the others.\n\n\"Thank Heaven, gentlemen, I think that we are saved for the present time,\" said Mansoor, wiping away the sand which had stuck to his perspiring forehead. \"Ali Wad Ibrahim says that though an unbeliever should have only the edge of the sword from one of the sons of the Prophet, yet it might be of more profit to the beit-el-mal at Omdurman if it had the gold which your people will pay for you. Until it comes you can work as the slaves of the Khalifa, unless he should decide to put you to death. You are to mount yourselves upon the spare camels and to ride with the party.\"\n\nThe chief had waited for the end of the explanation. \"Now he gave a brief order, and a negro stepped forward with a long, dull-coloured sword in his hand. The dragoman squealed like a rabbit who sees a ferret, and threw himself frantically down upon the sand once more.\n\n\"What is it, Cochrane?\" asked Cecil Brown\u2014for the Colonel had served in the East, and was the only one of the travellers who had a smattering of Arabic.\n\n\"As far as I can make out, he says there is no use keeping the dragoman, as no one would trouble to pay a ransom for him, and he is too fat to make a good slave.\"\n\n\"Poor devil!\" cried Brown. \"Here, Cochrane, tell them to let him go. We can't let him be butchered like this in front of us. Say that we will find the money amongst us. I will be answerable for any reasonable sum.\"\n\n\"I'll stand in as far as my means will allow,\" cried Belmont.\n\n\"We will sign a joint bond or indemnity,\" said the lawyer. \"If I had a paper and pencil I could throw it into shape in an instant, and the chief could rely upon its being perfectly correct and valid.\"\n\nBut the Colonel's Arabic was insufficient, and Mansoor himself was too maddened by fear to understand the offer which was being made for him. The negro looked a question at the chief, and then his long black arm swung upwards and his sword hissed over his shoulder. But the dragoman had screamed out something which arrested the blow, and which brought the chief and the lieutenant to his side with a new interest upon their swarthy faces. The others crowded in also, and formed a dense circle around the grovelling, pleading man.\n\nThe Colonel had not understood this sudden change, nor had the others fathomed the reason of it, but some instinct flashed it upon Stephens's horrified perceptions.\n\n\"Oh, you villain!\" he cried furiously. \"Hold your tongue, you miserable creature! Be silent! Better die\u2014a thousand times better die!\"\n\nBut it was too late, and already they could all see the base design by which the coward hoped to save his own life. He was about to betray the women. They saw the chief, with a brave man's contempt upon his stern face, make a sign of haughty assent, and then Mansoor spoke rapidly and earnestly, pointing up the hill. At a word from the Baggara, a dozen of the raiders rushed up the path and were lost to view upon the top. Then came a shrill cry, a horrible strenuous scream of surprise and terror, and an instant later the party streamed into sight again, dragging the women in their midst. Sadie, with her young, active limbs, kept up with them, as they sprang down the slope, encouraging her aunt all the while over her shoulder. The older lady, struggling amid the rushing white figures, looked with her thin limbs and open mouth like a chicken being dragged from a coop.\n\nThe chief's dark eyes glanced indifferently at Miss Adams, but gazed with a smouldering fire at the younger woman. Then he gave an abrupt order, and the prisoners were hurried in a miserable, hopeless drove to the cluster of kneeling camels. Their pockets had already been ransacked, and the contents thrown into one of the camel-food bags, the neck of which was tied up by Ali Wad Ibrahim's own hands.\n\n\"I say, Cochrane,\" whispered Belmont, looking with smouldering eyes at the wretched Mansoor, \"I've got a little hip revolver which they have not discovered. Shall I shoot that cursed dragoman for giving away the women?\"\n\nThe Colonel shook his head.\n\n\"You had better keep it,\" said he, with a sombre face. \"The women may find some other use for it before all is over.\"" + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 5", + "text": "The camels, some brown and some white, were kneeling in a long line, their champing jaws moving rhythmically from side to side, and their gracefully poised heads turning to right and left in a mincing, self-conscious fashion. Most of them were beautiful creatures, true Arabian trotters, with the slim limbs and finely turned necks which mark the breed; but among them were a few of the slower, heavier beasts, with ungroomed skins, disfigured by the black scars of old firings. These were loaded with the doora and the waterskins of the raiders, but a few minutes sufficed to redistribute their loads and to make place for the prisoners. None of these had been bound with the exception of Mr. Stuart\u2014for the Arabs, understanding that he was a clergyman, and accustomed to associate religion with violence, had looked upon his fierce outburst as quite natural, and regarded him now as the most dangerous and enterprising of their captives. His hands were therefore tied together with a plaited camel-halter, but the others, including the dragoman and the two wounded blacks, were allowed to mount without any precaution against their escape, save that which was afforded by the slowness of their beasts. Then, with a shouting of men and a roaring of camels, the creatures were jolted on to their legs, and the long, straggling procession set off with its back to the homely river, and its face to the shimmering, violet haze, which hung round the huge sweep of beautiful, terrible desert, striped tiger-fashion with black rock and with golden sand.\n\nNone of the white prisoners, with the exception of Colonel Cochrane, had ever been upon a camel before. It seemed an alarming distance to the ground when they looked down, and the curious swaying motion, with the insecurity of the saddle, made them sick and frightened. But their bodily discomfort was forgotten in the turmoil of bitter thoughts within. What a chasm gaped between their old life and their new! And yet how short was the time and space which divided them! Less than an hour ago they had stood upon the summit of that rock, and had laughed and chattered, or grumbled at the heat and flies, becoming peevish at small discomforts. Headingly had been hypercritical over the tints of Nature. They could not forget his own tint as he lay with his cheek upon the black stone. Sadie had chattered about tailor-made dresses and Parisian chiffons. Now she was clinging, half-crazy, to the pommel of a wooden saddle, with suicide rising as a red star of hope in her mind. Humanity, reason, argument\u2014all were gone, and there remained the brutal humiliation of force. And all the time, down there by the second rocky point, their steamer was waiting for them\u2014their saloon, with the white napery and the glittering glasses, the latest novel, and the London papers. The least imaginative of them could see it so clearly: the white awning, Mrs. Shlesinger with her yellow sun-hat, Mrs. Belmont lying back in the canvas chair. There it lay almost in sight of them, that little floating chip broken off from home, and every silent, ungainly step of the camels was carrying them more hopelessly away from it. That very morning how beneficent Providence had appeared, how pleasant was life!\u2014a little commonplace, perhaps, but so soothing and restful. And now!\n\nThe red headgear, patched jibbehs, and yellow boots had already shown to the Colonel that these men were no wandering party of robbers, but a troop from the regular army of the Khalifa. Now, as they struck across the desert, they showed that they possessed the rude discipline which their work demanded. A mile ahead, and far out on either flank, rode their scouts, dipping and rising among the yellow sand-hills. Ali Wad Ibrahim headed the caravan, and his short, sturdy lieutenant brought up the rear. The main party straggled over a couple of hundred yards, and in the middle was the little, dejected clump of prisoners. No attempt was made to keep them apart, and Mr. Stephens soon contrived that his camel should be between those of the two ladies.\n\n\"Don't be down-hearted, Miss Adams,\" said he. \"This is a most indefensible outrage, but there can be no question that steps will be taken in the proper quarter to set the matter right. I am convinced that we shall be subjected to nothing worse than a temporary inconvenience. If it had not been for that villain Mansoor, you need not have appeared at all.\"\n\nIt was shocking to see the change in the little Bostonian lady, for she had shrunk to an old woman in an hour. Her swarthy cheeks had fallen in, and her eyes shone wildly from sunken, darkened sockets. Her frightened glances were continually turned upon Sadie. There is surely some wrecker angel which can only gather her best treasures in moments of disaster. For here were all these worldlings going to their doom, and already frivolity and selfishness had passed away from them, and each was thinking and grieving only for the other. Sadie thought of her aunt, her aunt thought of Sadie, the men thought of the women, Belmont thought of his wife\u2014and then he thought of something else also, and he kicked his camel's shoulder with his heel, until he found himself upon the near side of Miss Adams.\n\n\"I've got something for you here,\" he whispered. \"We may be separated soon, so it is as well to make our arrangements.\"\n\n\"Separated!\" wailed Miss Adams.\n\n\"Don't speak loud, for that infernal Mansoor may give us away again.\n\nI hope it won't be so, but it might. We must be prepared for the worst.\n\nFor example, they might determine to get rid of us men and to keep you.\"\n\nMiss Adams shuddered.\n\n\"What am I to do? For God's sake tell me what I am to do, Mr. Belmont! I am an old woman. I have had my day. I could stand it if it was only myself. But Sadie\u2014I am clean crazed when I think of her. There's her mother waiting at home, and I\u2014\" She clasped her thin hands together in the agony of her thoughts.\n\n\"Put your hand out under your dust-cloak,\" said Belmont, sidling his camel up against hers. \"Don't miss your grip of it. There! Now hide it in your dress, and you'll always have a key to unlock any door.\"\n\nMiss Adams felt what it was which he had slipped into her hand, and she looked at him for a moment in bewilderment. Then she pursed up her lips and shook her stern, brown face in disapproval. But she pushed the little pistol into its hiding-place, all the same, and she rode with her thoughts in a whirl. Could this indeed be she, Eliza Adams, of Boston, whose narrow, happy life had oscillated between the comfortable house in Commonwealth Avenue and the Tremont Presbyterian Church? Here she was, hunched upon a camel, with her hand upon the butt of a pistol, and her mind weighing the justifications of murder. Oh, life, sly, sleek, treacherous life, how are we ever to trust you? Show us your worst and we can face it, but it is when you are sweetest and smoothest that we have most to fear from you.\n\n\"At the worst, Miss Sadie, it will only be a question of ransom,\" said Stephens, arguing against his own convictions. \"Besides, we are still dose to Egypt, far away from the Dervish country. There is sure to be an energetic pursuit. You must try not to lose your courage, and to hope for the best.\"\n\n\"No, I am not scared, Mr. Stephens,\" said Sadie, turning towards him a blanched face which belied her words. \"We're all in God's hands, and surely He won't be cruel to us. It is easy to talk about trusting Him when things are going well, but now is the real test. If He's up there behind that blue heaven\u2014\"\n\n\"He is,\" said a voice behind them, and they found that the Birmingham clergyman had joined the party. His tied hands clutched on to his Makloofa saddle, and his fat body swayed dangerously from side to side with every stride of the camel. His wounded leg was oozing with blood and clotted with flies, and the burning desert sun beat down upon his bare head, for he had lost both hat and umbrella in the scuffle. A rising fever flecked his large, white cheeks with a touch of colour, and brought a light into his brown ox-eyes. He had always seemed a somewhat gross and vulgar person to his fellow-travellers. Now, this bitter healing draught of sorrow had transformed him. He was purified, spiritualised, exalted. He had become so calmly strong that he made the others feel stronger as they looked upon him. He spoke of life and of death, of the present, and their hopes of the future; and the black cloud of their misery began to show a golden rift or two. Cecil Brown shrugged his shoulders, for he could not change in an hour the convictions of his life; but the others, even Fardet, the Frenchman, were touched and strengthened. They all took off their hats when he prayed. Then the Colonel made a turban out of his red silk cummerbund, and insisted that Mr. Stuart should wear it. With his homely dress and gorgeous headgear, he looked like a man who has dressed up to amuse the children.\n\nAnd now the dull, ceaseless, insufferable torment of thirst was added to the aching weariness which came from the motion of the camels. The sun glared down upon them, and then up again from the yellow sand, and the great plain shimmered and glowed until they felt as if they were riding over a cooling sheet of molten metal. Their lips were parched and dried, and their tongues like tags of leather. They lisped curiously in their speech, for it was only the vowel sounds which would come without an effort. Miss Adams's chin had dropped upon her chest, and her great hat concealed her face.\n\n\"Auntie will faint if she does not get water,\" said Sadie. \"Oh, Mr.\n\nStephens, is there nothing we could do?\"\n\nThe Dervishes riding near were all Baggara with the exception of one negro\u2014an uncouth fellow with a face pitted with small-pox. His expression seemed good-natured when compared with that of his Arab comrades, and Stephens ventured to touch his elbow and to point to his waterskin, and then to the exhausted lady. The negro shook his head brusquely, but at the same time he glanced significantly towards the Arabs, as if to say that, if it were not for them, he might act differently. Then he laid his black forefinger upon the breast of his jibbeh.\n\n\"Tippy Tilly,\" said he.\n\n\"What's that?\" asked Colonel Cochrane.\n\n\"Tippy Tilly,\" repeated the negro, sinking his voice as if he wished only the prisoners to hear him.\n\nThe Colonel shook his head.\n\n\"My Arabic won't bear much strain. I don't know what he is saying,\" said he.\n\n\"Tippy Tilly. Hicks Pasha,\" the negro repeated.\n\n\"I believe the fellow is friendly to us, but I can't quite make him out,\" said Cochrane to Belmont. \"Do you think that he means that his name is Tippy Tilly, and that he killed Hicks Pasha?\"\n\nThe negro showed his great white teeth at hearing his own words coming back to him. \"Aiwa!\" said he. \"Tippy Tilly\u2014Bimbashi Mormer\u2014Boum!\"\n\n\"By Jove, I've got it!\" cried Belmont. \"He's trying to speak English. Tippy Tilly is as near as he can get to Egyptian Artillery. He has served in the Egyptian Artillery under Bimbashi Mortimer. He was taken prisoner when Hicks Pasha was destroyed, and had to turn Dervish to save his skin. How's that?\"\n\nThe Colonel said a few words of Arabic and received a reply, but two of the Arabs closed up, and the negro quickened his pace and left them.\n\n\"You are quite right,\" said the Colonel. \"The fellow is friendly to us, and would rather fight for the Khedive than for the Khalifa. I don't know that he can do us any good, but I've been in worse holes than this, and come out right side up. After all, we are not out of reach of pursuit, and won't be for another forty-eight hours.\"\n\nBelmont calculated the matter out in his slow, deliberate fashion.\n\n\"It was about twelve that we were on the rock,\" said he. \"They would become alarmed aboard the steamer if we did not appear at two.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" the Colonel interrupted, \"that was to be our lunch hour. I remember saying that when I came back I would have\u2014O Lord, it's best not to think of it!\"\n\n\"The reis was a sleepy old crock,\" Belmont continued, \"but I have absolute confidence in the promptness and decision of my wife. She would insist upon an immediate alarm being given. Suppose they started back at two-thirty, they should be at Halfa by three, since the journey is down stream. How long did they say that it took to turn out the Camel Corps?\"\n\n\"Give them an hour.\"\n\n\"And another hour to get them across the river. They would be at the Abousir Rock and pick up the tracks by six o'clock. After that it is a clear race. We are only four hours ahead, and some of these beasts are very spent. We may be saved yet, Cochrane!\"\n\n\"Some of us may. I don't expect to see the padre alive to-morrow, nor Miss Adams either. They are not made for this sort of thing either of them. Then again we must not forget that these people have a trick of murdering their prisoners when they see that there is a chance of a rescue. See here, Belmont, in case you get back and I don't, there's a matter of a mortgage that I want you to set right for me.\" They rode on with their shoulders inclined to each other, deep in the details of business.\n\nThe friendly negro who had talked of himself as Tippy Tilly had managed to slip a piece of cloth soaked in water into the hand of Mr. Stephens, and Miss Adams had moistened her lips with it. Even the few drops had given her renewed strength, and now that the first crushing shock was over, her wiry, elastic, Yankee nature began to reassert itself.\n\n\"These people don't look as if they would harm us, Mr. Stephens,\" said she. \"I guess they have a working religion of their own, such as it is, and that what's wrong to us is wrong to them.\"\n\nStephens shook his head in silence. He had seen the death of the donkey-boys, and she had not.\n\n\"Maybe we are sent to guide them into a better path,\" said the old lady.\n\n\"Maybe we are specially singled out for a good work among them.\"\n\nIf it were not for her niece her energetic and enterprising temperament was capable Of glorying in the chance of evangelising Khartoum, and turning Omdurman into a little well-drained broad-avenued replica of a New England town.\n\n\"Do you know what I am thinking of all the time?\" said Sadie. \"You remember that temple that we saw\u2014when was it? Why, it was this morning.\"\n\nThey gave an exclamation of surprise, all three of them. Yes, it had been this morning; and it seemed away and away in some dim past experience of their lives, so vast was the change, so new and so overpowering the thoughts which had come between. They rode in silence, full of this strange expansion of time, until at last Stephens reminded Sadie that she had left her remark unfinished.\n\n\"Oh yes; it was the wall picture on that temple that I was thinking of. Do you remember the poor string of prisoners who are being dragged along to the feet of the great king\u2014how dejected they looked among the warriors who led them? Who could\u2014who could have thought that within three hours the same fate should be our own? And Mr. Headingly\u2014\" She turned her face away and began to cry.\n\n\"Don't take on, Sadie,\" said her aunt; \"remember what the minister said just now, that we are all right there in the hollow of God's hand. Where do you think we are going, Mr. Stephens?\"\n\nThe red edge of his Baedeker still projected from the lawyer's pocket, for it had not been worth their captor's while to take it. He glanced down at it.\n\n\"If they will only leave me this, I will look up a few references when we halt. I have a general idea of the country, for I drew a small map of it the other day. The river runs from south to north, so we must be travelling almost due west. I suppose they feared pursuit if they kept too near the Nile bank. There is a caravan route, I remember, which runs parallel to the river, about seventy miles inland. If we continue in this direction for a day we ought to come to it. There is a line of wells through which it passes. It comes out at Assiout, if I remember right, upon the Egyptian side. On the other side, it leads away into the Dervish country\u2014so, perhaps\u2014\"\n\nHis words were interrupted by a high, eager voice, which broke suddenly into a torrent of jostling words, words without meaning, pouring strenuously out in angry assertions and foolish repetitions. The pink had deepened to scarlet upon Mr. Stuart's cheeks, his eyes were vacant but brilliant, and he gabbled, gabbled, gabbled as he rode. Kindly mother Nature! she will not let her children be mishandled too far. \"This is too much,\" she says; \"this wounded leg, these crusted lips, this anxious, weary mind. Come away for a time, until your body becomes more habitable.\" And so she coaxes the mind away into the Nirvana of delirium, while the little cell-workers tinker and toil within to get things better for its homecoming. When you see the veil of cruelty which nature wears, try and peer through it, and you will sometimes catch a glimpse of a very homely, kindly face behind.\n\nThe Arab guards looked askance at this sudden outbreak of the clergyman, for it verged upon lunacy, and lunacy is to them a fearsome and supernatural thing. One of them rode forward and spoke with the Emir. When he returned he said something to his comrades, one of whom closed in upon each side of the minister's camel, so as to prevent him from falling. The friendly negro sidled his beast up to the Colonel, and whispered to him.\n\n\"We are going to halt presently, Belmont,\" said Cochrane.\n\n\"Thank God! They may give us some water. We can't go on like this.\"\n\n\"I told Tippy Tilly that, if he could help us, we would turn him into a Bimbashi when we got him back into Egypt. I think he's willing enough if he only had the power. By Jove, Belmont, do look back at the river.\"\n\nTheir route, which had lain through sand-strewn khors with jagged, black edges\u2014places up which one would hardly think it possible that a camel could climb\u2014opened out now on to a hard, rolling plain, covered thickly with rounded pebbles, dipping and rising to the violet hills upon the horizon. So regular were the long, brown pebble-strewn curves, that they looked like the dark rollers of some monstrous ground-swell. Here and there a little straggling sage-green tuft of camel-grass sprouted up between the stones. Brown plains and violet hills\u2014nothing else in front of them! Behind lay the black jagged rocks through which they had passed with orange slopes of sand, and then far away a thin line of green to mark the course of the river. How cool and beautiful that green looked in the stark, abominable wilderness! On one side they could see the high rock\u2014the accursed rock which had tempted them to their ruin. On the other the river curved, and the sun gleamed upon the water. Oh, that liquid gleam, and the insurgent animal cravings, the brutal primitive longings, which for the instant took the soul out of all of them! They had lost families, countries, liberty, everything, but it was only of water, water, water, that they could think. Mr. Stuart in his delirium began roaring for oranges, and it was insufferable for them to have to listen to him. Only the rough, sturdy Irishman rose superior to that bodily craving. That gleam of river must be somewhere near Halfa, and his wife might be upon the very water at which he looked. He pulled his hat over his eyes, and rode in gloomy silence, biting at his strong, iron-grey moustache.\n\nSlowly the sun sank towards the west, and their shadows began to trail along the path where their hearts would go. It was cooler, and a desert breeze had sprung up, whispering over the rolling, stone-strewed plain. The Emir at their head had called his lieutenant to his side, and the pair had peered about, their eyes shaded by their hands, looking for some landmark. Then, with a satisfied grunt, the chief's camel had seemed to break short off at its knees, and then at its hocks, going down in three curious, broken-jointed jerks until its stomach was stretched upon the ground. As each succeeding camel reached the spot it lay down also, until they were all stretched in one long line. The riders sprang off, and laid out the chopped tibbin upon cloths in front of them, for no well-bred camel will eat from the ground. In their gentle eyes, their quiet, leisurely way of eating, and their condescending, mincing manner, there was something both feminine and genteel, as though a party of prim old maids had foregathered in the heart of the Libyan Desert.\n\nThere was no interference with the prisoners, either male or female, for how could they escape in the centre of that huge plain? The Emir came towards them once, and stood combing out his blue-black beard with his fingers, and looking thoughtfully at them out of his dark, sinister eyes. Miss Adams saw with a shudder that it was always upon Sadie that his gaze was fixed. Then, seeing their distress, he gave an order, and a negro brought a waterskin, from which he gave each of them about half a tumblerful. It was hot and muddy, and tasted of leather, but oh how delightful it was to their parched palates! The Emir said a few abrupt words to the dragoman, and left.\n\n\"Ladies and gentlemen,\" Mansoor began, with something of his old consequential manner; but a glare from the Colonel's eyes struck the words from his lips, and he broke away into a long, whimpering excuse for his conduct.\n\n\"How could I do anything otherwise,\" he wailed, \"with the very knife at my throat?\"\n\n\"You will have the very rope round your throat if we all see Egypt again,\" growled Cochrane savagely. \"In the meantime\u2014\"\n\n\"That's all right, Colonel,\" said Belmont. \"But for our own sakes we ought to know what the chief has said.\"\n\n\"For my part I'll have nothing to do with the blackguard.\"\n\n\"I think that that is going too far. We are bound to hear what he has to say.\" Cochrane shrugged his shoulders. Privations had made him irritable, and he had to bite his lip to keep down a bitter answer. He walked slowly away, with his straight-legged military stride.\n\n\"What did he say, then?\" asked Belmont, looking at the dragoman with an eye which was as stern as the Colonel's.\n\n\"He seems to be in a somewhat better manner than before. He said that if he had more water you should have it, but that he is himself short in supply. He said that to-morrow we shall come to the wells of Selimah, and everybody shall have plenty\u2014and the camels too.\"\n\n\"Did he say how long we stopped here?\"\n\n\"Very little rest, he said, and then forward! Oh, Mr. Belmont\u2014\"\n\n\"Hold your tongue!\" snapped the Irishman, and began once more to count times and distances. If it all worked out as he expected, if his wife had insisted upon the indolent reis giving an instant alarm at Halfa, then the pursuers should be already upon their track. The Camel Corps or the Egyptian Horse would travel by moonlight better and faster than in the day-time. He knew that it was the custom at Halfa to keep at least a squadron of them all ready to start at any instant. He had dined at the mess, and the officers had told him how quickly they could take the field. They had shown him the water-tanks and the food beside each of the beasts, and he had admired the completeness of the arrangements, with little thought as to what it might mean to him in the future. It would be at least an hour before they would all get started again from their present halting-place. That would be a clear hour gained. Perhaps by next morning\u2014\n\nAnd then, suddenly, his thoughts were terribly interrupted. The Colonel, raving like a madman, appeared upon the crest of the nearest slope, with an Arab hanging on to each of his wrists. His face was purple with rage and excitement, and he tugged and bent and writhed in his furious efforts to get free. \"You cursed murderers!\" he shrieked, and then, seeing the others in front of him, \"Belmont,\" he cried, \"they've killed Cecil Brown.\"\n\nWhat had happened was this. In his conflict with his own ill-humour, Cochrane had strolled over this nearest crest, and had found a group of camels in the hollow beyond, with a little knot of angry, loud-voiced men beside them. Brown was the centre of the group, pale, heavy-eyed, with his upturned, spiky moustache and listless manner. They had searched his pockets before, but now they were determined to tear off all his clothes in the hope of finding something which he had secreted. A hideous negro with silver bangles in his ears, grinned and jabbered in the young diplomatist's impassive face. There seemed to the Colonel to be something heroic and almost inhuman in that white calm, and those abstracted eyes. His coat was already open, and the Negro's great black paw flew up to his neck and tore his shirt down to the waist. And at the sound of that r-r-rip, and at the abhorrent touch of those coarse fingers, this man about town, this finished product of the nineteenth century, dropped his life-traditions and became a savage facing a savage. His face flushed, his lips curled back, he chattered his teeth like an ape, and his eyes\u2014those indolent eyes which had always twinkled so placidly\u2014were gorged and frantic. He threw himself upon the negro, and struck him again and again, feebly but viciously, in his broad, black face. He hit like a girl, round arm, with an open palm. The man winced away for an instant, appalled by this sudden blaze of passion. Then with an impatient, snarling cry, he slid a knife from his long loose sleeve and struck upwards under the whirling arm. Brown sat down at the blow and began to cough\u2014to cough as a man coughs who has choked at dinner, furiously, ceaselessly, spasm after spasm. Then the angry red cheeks turned to a mottled pallor, there were liquid sounds in his throat, and, clapping his hand to his mouth, he rolled over on to his side. The negro, with a brutal grunt of contempt, slid his knife up his sleeve once more, while the Colonel, frantic with impotent anger, was seized by the bystanders, and dragged, raving with fury, back to his forlorn party. His hands were lashed with a camel-halter, and he lay at last, in bitter silence, beside the delirious Nonconformist.\n\nSo Headingly was gone, and Cecil Brown was gone, and their haggard eyes were turned from one pale face to another, to know which they should lose next of that frieze of light-hearted riders who had stood out so clearly against the blue morning sky, when viewed from the deck-chairs of the Korosko. Two gone out of ten, and a third out of his mind. The pleasure trip was drawing to its climax.\n\nFardet, the Frenchman, was sitting alone with his chin resting upon his hands, and his elbows upon his knees, staring miserably out over the desert, when Belmont saw him start suddenly and prick up his head like a dog who hears a strange step. Then, with clenched fingers, he bent his face forward and stared fixedly towards the black eastern hills through which they had passed. Belmont followed his gaze, and, yes-yes\u2014there was something moving there! He saw the twinkle of metal, and the sudden gleam and flutter of some white garment. A Dervish vedette upon the flank turned his camel twice round as a danger signal, and discharged his rifle in the air. The echo of the crack had hardly died away before they were all in their saddles, Arabs and negroes. Another instant, and the camels were on their feet and moving slowly towards the point of alarm. Several armed men surrounded the prisoners, slipping cartridges into their Remingtons as a hint to them to remain still.\n\n\"By Heaven, they are men on camels!\" cried Cochrane, his troubles all forgotten as he strained his eyes to catch sight of these newcomers. \"I do believe that it is our own people.\" In the confusion he had tugged his hands free from the halter which bound them.\n\n\"They've been smarter than I gave them credit for,\" said Belmont, his eyes shining from under his thick brows. \"They are here a long two hours before we could have reasonably expected them. Hurrah, Monsieur Fardet, ca va bien, n'est ce pas?\"\n\n\"Hurrah, hurrah! merveilleusement bien! Vivent les Anglais! Vivent les Anglais!\" yelled the excited Frenchman, as the head of a column of camelry began to wind out from among the rocks.\n\n\"See here, Belmont,\" cried the Colonel. \"These fellows will want to shoot us if they see it is all up. I know their ways, and we must be ready for it. Will you be ready to jump on the fellow with the blind eye? and I'll take the big nigger, if I can get my arms round him. Stephens, you must do what you can. You, Fardet, comprenez vous? Il est necessaire to plug these Johnnies before they can hurt us. You, dragoman, tell those two Soudanese soldiers that they must be ready\u2014but, but\".... his words died into a murmur, and he swallowed once or twice. \"These are Arabs,\" said he, and it sounded like another voice.\n\nOf all the bitter day, it was the very bitterest moment. Happy Mr. Stuart lay upon the pebbles with his back against the ribs of his camel, and chuckled consumedly at some joke which those busy little cell-workers had come across in their repairs. His fat face was wreathed and creased with merriment. But the others, how sick, how heart-sick, were they all! The women cried. The men turned away in that silence which is beyond tears. Monsieur Fardet fell upon his face, and shook with dry sobbings.\n\nThe Arabs were firing their rifles as a welcome to their friends, and the others as they trotted their camels across the open returned the salutes and waved their rifles and lances in the air. They were a smaller band than the first one\u2014not more than thirty\u2014but dressed in the same red headgear and patched jibbehs. One of them carried a small white banner with a scarlet text scrawled across it. But there was something there which drew the eyes and the thoughts of the tourists away from everything else. The same fear gripped at each of their hearts, and the same impulse kept each of them silent. They stared at a swaying white figure half seen amidst the ranks of the desert warriors.\n\n\"What's that they have in the middle of them?\" cried Stephens at last.\n\n\"Look, Miss Adams! Surely it is a woman!\"\n\nThere was something there upon a camel, but it was difficult to catch a glimpse of it. And then suddenly, as the two bodies met, the riders opened out, and they saw it plainly.\n\n\"It's a white woman!\"\n\n\"The steamer has been taken!\"\n\nBelmont gave a cry that sounded high above everything.\n\n\"Norah, darling,\" he shouted, \"keep your heart up! I'm here, and it is all well!\"" + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 6", + "text": "So the Korosko had been taken, and the chances of rescue upon which they had reckoned\u2014all those elaborate calculations of hours and distances\u2014were as unsubstantial as the mirage which shimmered upon the horizon. There would be no alarm at Halfa until it was found that the steamer did not return in the evening. Even now, when the Nile was only a thin green band upon the farthest horizon, the pursuit had probably not begun. In a hundred miles, or even less, they would be in the Dervish country. How small, then, was the chance that the Egyptian forces could overtake them. They all sank into a silent, sulky despair, with the exception of Belmont, who was held back by the guards as he strove to go to his wife's assistance.\n\nThe two bodies of camel-men had united, and the Arabs, in their grave, dignified fashion, were exchanging salutations and experiences, while the negroes grinned, chattered, and shouted, with the careless good-humour which even the Koran has not been able to alter. The leader of the newcomers was a greybeard, a worn, ascetic, high-nosed old man, abrupt and fierce in his manner, and soldierly in his bearing. The dragoman groaned when he saw him, and flapped his hands miserably with the air of a man who sees trouble accumulating upon trouble.\n\n\"It is the Emir Abderrahman,\" said he. \"I fear now that we shall never come to Khartoum alive.\"\n\nThe name meant nothing to the others, but Colonel Cochrane had heard of him as a monster of cruelty and fanaticism, a red-hot Moslem of the old fighting, preaching dispensation, who never hesitated to carry the fierce doctrines of the Koran to their final conclusions. He and the Emir Wad Ibrahim conferred gravely together, their camels side by side, and their red turbans inclined inwards, so that the black beard mingled with the white one. Then they both turned and stared long and fixedly at the poor, head-hanging huddle of prisoners. The younger man pointed and explained, while his senior listened with a sternly impassive face.\n\n\"Who's that nice-looking old gentleman in the white beard?\" asked Miss Adams, who had been the first to rally from the bitter disappointment.\n\n\"That is their leader now,\" Cochrane answered.\n\n\"You don't say that he takes command over that other one?\"\n\n\"Yes, lady,\" said the dragoman; \"he is now the head of all.\"\n\n\"Well, that's good for us. He puts me in mind of Elder Mathews who was at the Presbyterian Church in Minister Scott's time. Anyhow, I had rather be in his power than in the hands of that black-haired one with the flint eyes. Sadie, dear, you feel better now its cooler, don't you?\"\n\n\"Yes, auntie; don't you fret about me. How are you yourself?\"\n\n\"Well, I'm stronger in faith than I was. I set you a poor example, Sadie, for I was clean crazed at first at the suddenness of it all, and at thinking of what your mother, who trusted you to me, would think about it. My land, there'll be some head-lines in the Boston Herald over this! I guess somebody will have to suffer for it.\"\n\n\"Poor Mr. Stuart!\" cried Sadie, as the monotonous droning voice of the delirious man came again to their ears. \"Come, auntie, and see if we cannot do something to relieve him.\"\n\n\"I'm uneasy about Mrs. Shlesinger and the child,\" said Colonel Cochrane.\n\n\"I can see your wife, Belmont, but I can see no one else.\"\n\n\"They are bringing her over,\" cried he. \"Thank God! We shall hear all about it. They haven't hurt you, Norah, have they?\" He ran forward to grasp and kiss the hand which his wife held down to him as he helped her from the camel.\n\nThe kind grey eyes and calm sweet face of the Irishwoman brought comfort and hope to the whole party. She was a devout Roman Catholic, and it is a creed which forms an excellent prop in hours of danger. To her, to the Anglican Colonel, to the Nonconformist minister, to the Presbyterian American, even to the two Pagan black riflemen, religion in its various forms was fulfilling the same beneficent office\u2014whispering always that the worst which the world can do is a small thing, and that, however harsh the ways of Providence may seem, it is, on the whole, the wisest and best thing for us that we should go cheerfully whither the Great Hand guides us. They had not a dogma in common, these fellows in misfortune; but they held the intimate, deeplying spirit, the calm, essential fatalism which is the world-old framework of religion, with fresh crops of dogmas growing like ephemeral lichens upon its granite surface.\n\n\"You poor things!\" she said. \"I can see that you have had a much worse time than I have. No, really, John, dear, I am quite well\u2014not even very thirsty, for our party filled their waterskins at the Nile, and they let me have as much as I wanted. But I don't see Mr. Headingly and Mr. Brown. And poor Mr. Stuart\u2014what a state he has been reduced to!\"\n\n\"Headingly and Brown are out of their troubles,\" her husband answered. \"You don't know how often I have thanked God to-day, Norah, that you were not with us. And here you are, after all.\"\n\n\"Where should I be but by my husband's side? I had much, much rather be here than safe at Halfa.\"\n\n\"Has any news gone to the town?\" asked the Colonel.\n\n\"One boat escaped. Mrs. Shlesinger and her child and maid were in it. I was downstairs in my cabin when the Arabs rushed on to the vessel. Those on deck had time to escape, for the boat was alongside. I don't know whether any of them were hit. The Arabs fired at them for some time.\"\n\n\"Did they?\" cried Belmont exultantly, his responsive Irish nature catching the sunshine in an instant. \"Then, be Jove, we'll do them yet, for the garrison must have heard the firing. What d'ye think, Cochrane? They must be full cry upon our scent this four hours. Any minute we might see the white puggaree of a British officer coming over that rise.\"\n\nBut disappointment had left the Colonel cold and sceptical.\n\n\"They need not come at all unless they come strong,\" said he.\n\n\"These fellows are picked men with good leaders, and on their own ground they will take a lot of beating.\" Suddenly he paused and looked at the Arabs. \"By George!\" said he, \"that's a sight worth seeing!\"\n\nThe great red sun was down with half its disc slipped behind the violet bank upon the horizon. It was the hour of Arab prayer. An older and more learned civilisation would have turned to that magnificent thing upon the skyline and adored that. But these wild children of the desert were nobler in essentials than the polished Persian. To them the ideal was higher than the material, and it was with their backs to the sun and their faces to the central shrine of their religion that they prayed. And how they prayed, these fanatical Moslems! Rapt, absorbed, with yearning eyes and shining faces, rising, stooping, grovelling with their foreheads upon their praying carpets. Who could doubt, as he watched their strenuous, heart-whole devotion, that here was a great living power in the world, reactionary but tremendous, countless millions all thinking as one from Cape Juby to the confines of China? Let a common wave pass over them, let a great soldier or organiser arise among them to use the grand material at his hand, and who shall say that this may not be the besom with which Providence may sweep the rotten, decadent, impossible, half-hearted south of Europe, as it did a thousand years ago, until it makes room for a sounder stock?\n\nAnd now as they rose to their feet the bugle rang out, and the prisoners understood that, having travelled all day, they were fated to travel all night also. Belmont groaned, for he had reckoned upon the pursuers catching them up before they left this camp. But the others had already got into the way of accepting the inevitable. A flat Arab loaf had been given to each of them\u2014what effort of the chef of the post-boat had ever tasted like that dry brown bread?\u2014and then, luxury of luxuries, they had a second ration of a glass of water, for the fresh-filled bags of the newcomers had provided an ample supply. If the body would but follow the lead of the soul as readily as the soul does that of the body, what a heaven the earth might be! I Now, with their base material wants satisfied for the instant, their spirits began to sing within them, and they mounted their camels with some sense of the romance of their position. Mr. Stuart remained babbling upon the ground, and the Arabs made no effort to lift him into his saddle. His large, white, upturned face glimmered through the gathering darkness.\n\n\"Hi, dragoman, tell them that they are forgetting Mr. Stuart,\" cried the Colonel.\n\n\"No use, sir,\" said Mansoor. \"They say that he is too fat, and that they will not take him any farther. He will die, they say, and why should they trouble about him?\"\n\n\"Not take him!\" cried Cochrane. \"Why, the man will perish of hunger and thirst. Where's the Emir? Hi!\" he shouted, as the black-bearded Arab passed, with a tone like that in which he used to summon a dilatory donkey-boy. The chief did not deign to answer him, but said something to one of the guards, who dashed the butt of his Remington into the Colonel's ribs. The old soldier fell forward gasping, and was carried on half senseless, clutching at the pommel of his saddle. The women began to cry, and the men, with muttered curses and clenched hands, writhed in that hell of impotent passion, where brutal injustice and ill-usage have to go without check or even remonstrance. Belmont gripped at his hip-pocket for his little revolver, and then remembered that he had already given it to Miss Adams. If his hot hand had clutched it, it would have meant the death of the Emir and the massacre of the party.\n\nAnd now as they rode onwards they saw one of the most singular of the phenomena of the Egyptian desert in front of them, though the ill-treatment of their companion had left them in no humour for the appreciation of its beauty. When the sun had sunk, the horizon had remained of a slaty-violet hue. But now this began to lighten and to brighten until a curious false dawn developed, and it seemed as if a vacillating sun was coming back along the path which it had just abandoned. A rosy pink hung over the west, with beautifully delicate sea-green tints along the upper edge of it. Slowly these faded into slate again, and the night had come. It was but twenty-four hours since they had sat in their canvas chairs discussing politics by starlight on the saloon deck of the Korosko; only twelve since they had breakfasted there and had started spruce and fresh upon their last pleasure trip. What a world of fresh impressions had come upon them since then! How rudely they had been jostled out of their take-it-for-granted complacency! The same shimmering silver stars, as they had looked upon last night, the same thin crescent of moon\u2014but they, what a chasm lay between that old pampered life and this!\n\nThe long line of camels moved as noiselessly as ghosts across the desert. Before and behind were the silent, swaying white figures of the Arabs. Not a sound anywhere, not the very faintest sound, until far away behind them they heard a human voice singing in a strong, droning, unmusical fashion. It had the strangest effect, this far-away voice, in that huge inarticulate wilderness. And then there came a well-known rhythm into that distant chant, and they could almost hear the words\u2014\n\nWe nightly pitch our moving tent,\n\nA day's march nearer home.\n\nWas Mr. Stuart in his right mind again, or was it some coincidence of his delirium, that he should have chosen this for his song? With moist eyes his friends looked back through the darkness, for well they knew that home was very near to this wanderer. Gradually the voice died away into a hum, and was absorbed once more into the masterful silence of the desert.\n\n\"My dear old chap, I hope you're not hurt?\" said Belmont, laying his hand upon Cochrane's knee.\n\nThe Colonel had straightened himself, though he still gasped a little in his breathing.\n\n\"I am all right again, now. Would you kindly show me which was the man who struck me?\"\n\n\"It was the fellow in front there\u2014with his camel beside Fardet's.\"\n\n\"The young fellow with the moustache\u2014I can't see him very well in this light, but I think I could pick him out again. Thank you, Belmont!\"\n\n\"But I thought some of your ribs were gone.\"\n\n\"No, it only knocked the wind out of me.\"\n\n\"You must be made of iron. It was a frightful blow. How could you rally from it so quickly?\"\n\nThe Colonel cleared his throat and hummed and stammered.\n\n\"The fact is, my dear Belmont\u2014I'm sure you would not let it go further\u2014above all not to the ladies; but I am rather older than I used to be, and rather than lose the military carriage which has always been dear to me, I\u2014\"\n\n\"Stays, be Jove!\" cried the astonished Irishman.\n\n\"Well, some slight artificial support,\" said the Colonel stiffly, and switched the conversation off to the chances of the morrow.\n\nIt still comes back in their dreams to those who are left, that long night's march in the desert. It was like a dream itself, the silence of it as they were borne forward upon those soft, shuffling sponge feet, and the flitting, flickering figures which oscillated upon every side of them. The whole universe seemed to be hung as a monstrous time-dial in front of them. A star would glimmer like a lantern on the very level of their path. They looked again, and it was a hand's-breadth up, and another was shining beneath it. Hour after hour the broad stream flowed sedately across the deep blue background, worlds and systems drifting majestically overhead, and pouring over the dark horizon. In their vastness and their beauty there was a vague consolation to the prisoners; for their own fate, and their own individuality, seemed trivial and unimportant amid the play of such tremendous forces. Slowly the grand procession swept across the heaven, first climbing, then hanging long with little apparent motion, and then sinking grandly downwards, until away in the east the first cold grey glimmer appeared, and their own haggard faces shocked each other's sight.\n\nThe day had tortured them with its heat, and now the night had brought the even more intolerable discomfort of cold. The Arabs swathed themselves in their gowns and wrapped up their heads. The prisoners beat their hands together and shivered miserably. Miss Adams felt it most, for she was very thin, with the impaired circulation of age. Stephens slipped off his Norfolk jacket and threw it over her shoulders. He rode beside Sadie, and whistled and chatted to make here believe that her aunt was really relieving him by carrying his jacket for him, but the attempt was too boisterous not to be obvious; and yet it was so far true that he probably felt the cold less than any of the party, for the old, old fire was burning in his heart, and a curious joy was inextricably mixed with all his misfortunes, so that he would have found it hard to say if this adventure had been the greatest evil or the greatest blessing of his lifetime. Aboard the boat, Sadie's youth, her beauty, her intelligence and humour, all made him realise that she could at the best only be expected to charitably endure him. But now he felt that he was really of some use to her, that every hour she was learning to turn to him as one turns to one's natural protector; and above all, he had begun to find himself\u2014to understand that there really was a strong, reliable man behind all the tricks of custom which had built up an artificial nature, which had imposed even upon himself. A little glow of self-respect began to warm his blood. He had missed his youth when he was young, and now in his middle age it was coming up like some beautiful belated flower.\n\n\"I do believe that you are all the time enjoying it, Mr. Stephens,\" said Sadie with some bitterness.\n\n\"I would not go so far as to say that,\" he answered. \"But I am quite certain that I would not leave you here.\"\n\nIt was the nearest approach to tenderness which he had ever put into a speech, and the girl looked at him in surprise.\n\n\"I think I've been a very wicked girl all my life,\" she said after a pause. \"Because I have had a good time myself, I never thought of those who were unhappy. This has struck me serious. If ever I get back I shall be a better woman\u2014a more earnest woman\u2014in the future.\"\n\n\"And I a better man. I suppose it is just for that that trouble comes to us. Look how it has brought out the virtues of all our friends. Take poor Mr. Stuart, for example. Should we ever have known what a noble, constant man he was? And see Belmont and his wife, in front of us there, going fearlessly forward, hand in hand, thinking only of each other. And Cochrane, who always seemed on board the boat to be a rather stand-offish, narrow sort of man! Look at his courage, and his unselfish indignation when any one is ill used. Fardet, too, is as brave as a lion. I think misfortune has done us all good.\"\n\nSadie sighed.\n\n\"Yes, if it would end right here one might say so; but if it goes on and on for a few weeks or months of misery, and then ends in death, I don't know where we reap the benefit of those improvements of character which it brings. Suppose you escape, what will you do?\"\n\nThe lawyer hesitated, but his professional instincts were still strong.\n\n\"I will consider whether an action lies, and against whom. It should be with the organisers of the expedition for taking us to the Abousir Rock\u2014or else with the Egyptian Government for not protecting their frontiers. It will be a nice legal question. And what will you do, Sadie?\"\n\nIt was the first time that he had ever dropped the formal Miss, but the girl was too much in earnest to notice it.\n\n\"I will be more tender to others,\" she said. \"I will try to make some one else happy in memory of the miseries which I have endured.\"\n\n\"You have done nothing all your life but made others happy. You cannot help doing it,\" said he. The darkness made it more easy for him to break through the reserve which was habitual with him. \"You need this rough schooling far less than any of us. How could your character be changed for the better?\"\n\n\"You show how little you know me. I have been very selfish and thoughtless.\"\n\n\"At least you had no need for all these strong emotions. You were sufficiently alive without them. Now it has been different with me.\"\n\n\"Why did you need emotions, Mr. Stephens?\"\n\n\"Because anything is better than stagnation. Pain is better than stagnation. I have only just begun to live. Hitherto I have been a machine upon the earth's surface. I was a one-ideaed man, and a one-ideaed man is only one remove from a dead man. That is what I have only just begun to realise. For all these years I have never been stirred, never felt a real throb of human emotion pass through me. I had no time for it. I had observed it in others, and I had vaguely wondered whether there was some want in me which prevented my sharing the experience of my fellow-mortals. But now these last few days have taught me how keenly I can live\u2014that I can have warm hopes, and deadly fears\u2014that I can hate, and that I can\u2014well, that I can have every strong feeling which the soul can experience. I have come to life. I may be on the brink of the grave, but at least I can say now that I have lived.\"\n\n\"And why did you lead this soul-killing life in England?\"\n\n\"I was ambitious\u2014I wanted to get on. And then there were my mother and my sisters to be thought of. Thank Heaven, here is the morning coming. Your aunt and you will soon cease to feel the cold.\"\n\n\"And you without your coat!\"\n\n\"Oh, I have a very good circulation. I can manage very well in my shirt-sleeves.\"\n\nAnd now the long, cold, weary night was over, and the deep blue-black sky had lightened to a wonderful mauve-violet, with the larger stars still glinting brightly out of it. Behind them the grey line had crept higher and higher, deepening into a delicate rose-pink, with the fan-like rays of the invisible sun shooting and quivering across it. Then, suddenly, they felt its warm touch upon their backs, and there were hard black shadows upon the sand in front of them. The Dervishes loosened their cloaks and proceeded to talk cheerily among themselves. The prisoners also began to thaw, and eagerly ate the doora which was served out for their breakfasts. A short halt had been called, and a cup of water handed to each.\n\n\"Can I speak to you, Colonel Cochrane?\" asked the dragoman.\n\n\"No, you can't,\" snapped the Colonel.\n\n\"But it is very important\u2014all our safety may come from it.\"\n\nThe Colonel frowned and pulled at his moustache.\n\n\"Well, what is it?\" he asked at last.\n\n\"You must trust to me, for it is as much to me as to you to get back to Egypt. My wife and home, and children, are on one part, and a slave for life upon the other. You have no cause to doubt it.\"\n\n\"Well, go on!\"\n\n\"You know the black man who spoke with you\u2014the one who had been with Hicks?\"\n\n\"Yes, what of him?\"\n\n\"He has been speaking with me during the night. I have had a long talk with him. He said that he could not very well understand you, nor you him, and so he came to me.\"\n\n\"What did he say?\"\n\n\"He said that there were eight Egyptian soldiers among the Arabs\u2014six black and two fellaheen. He said that he wished to have your promise that they should all have very good reward if they helped you to escape.\"\n\n\"Of course they shall.\"\n\n\"They asked for one hundred Egyptian pounds each.\"\n\n\"They shall have it.\"\n\n\"I told him that I would ask you, but that I was sure that you would agree to it.\"\n\n\"What do they propose to do?\"\n\n\"They could promise nothing, but what they thought best was that they should ride their camels not very far from you, so that if any chance should come they would be ready to take advantage.\"\n\n\"Well, you can go to him and promise two hundred pounds each if they will help us. You do not think we could buy over some Arabs?\"\n\nMansoor shook his head. \"Too much danger to try,\" said he.\n\n\"Suppose you try and fail, then that will be the end to all of us.\n\nI will go tell what you have said.\" He strolled off to where the old negro gunner was grooming his camel and waiting for his reply.\n\nThe Emirs had intended to halt for a half-hour at the most, but the baggage-camels which bore the prisoners were so worn out with the long, rapid march, that it was clearly impossible that they should move for some time. They had laid their long necks upon the ground, which is the last symptom of fatigue. The two chiefs shook their heads when they inspected them, and the terrible old man looked with his hard-lined, rock features at the captives. Then he said something to Mansoor, whose face turned a shade more sallow as he listened.\n\n\"The Emir Abderrahman says that if you do not become Moslem, it is not worth while delaying the whole caravan in order to carry you upon the baggage-camels. If it were not for you, he says that we could travel twice as fast. He wishes to know therefore, once for ever, if you will accept the Koran.\" Then in the same tone, as if he were still translating, he continued: \"You had far better consent, for if you do not he will most certainly put you all to death.\"\n\nThe unhappy prisoners looked at each other in despair. The two Emirs stood gravely watching them.\n\n\"For my part,\" said Cochrane, \"I had as soon die now as be a slave in Khartoum.\"\n\n\"What do you say, Norah?\" asked Belmont.\n\n\"If we die together, John, I don't think I shall be afraid.\"\n\n\"It is absurd that I should die for that in which I have never had belief,\" said Fardet. \"And yet it is not possible for the honour of a Frenchman that he should be converted in this fashion.\" He drew himself up, with his wounded wrist stuck into the front of his jacket, \"Je suis Chretien. J'y reste,\" he cried, a gallant falsehood in each sentence.\n\n\"What do you say, Mr. Stephens?\" asked Mansoor in a beseeching voice.\n\n\"If one of you would change, it might place them in a good humour.\n\nI implore you that you do what they ask.\"\n\n\"No, I can't,\" said the lawyer quietly.\n\n\"Well then, you, Miss Sadie? You, Miss Adams? It is only just to say it once, and you will be saved.\"\n\n\"Oh, auntie, do you think we might?\" whimpered the frightened girl.\n\n\"Would it be so very wrong if we said it?\"\n\nThe old lady threw her arms round her. \"No, no, my own dear little Sadie,\" she whispered. \"You'll be strong! You would just hate yourself for ever after. Keep your grip of me, dear, and pray if you find your strength is leaving you. Don't forget that your old aunt Eliza has you all the time by the hand.\"\n\nFor an instant they were heroic, this line of dishevelled, bedraggled pleasure-seekers. They were all looking Death in the face, and the closer they looked the less they feared him. They were conscious rather of a feeling of curiosity, together with the nervous tingling with which one approaches a dentist's chair. The dragoman made a motion of his hands and shoulders, as one who has tried and failed. The Emir Abderrahman said something to a negro, who hurried away.\n\n\"What does he want a scissors for?\" asked the Colonel.\n\n\"He is going to hurt the women,\" said Mansoor, with the same gesture of impotence.\n\nA cold chill fell upon them all. They stared about them in helpless horror. Death in the abstract was one thing, but these insufferable details were another. Each had been braced to endure any evil in his own person, but their hearts were still soft for each other. The women said nothing, but the men were all buzzing together.\n\n\"There's the pistol, Miss Adams,\" said Belmont. \"Give it here!\n\nWe won't be tortured! We won't stand it!\"\n\n\"Offer them money, Mansoor! Offer them anything!\" cried Stephens. \"Look here, I'll turn Mohammedan if they'll promise to leave the women alone. After all, it isn't binding\u2014it's under compulsion. But I can't see the women hurt.\"\n\n\"No, wait a bit, Stephens!\" said the Colonel. \"We mustn't lose our heads. I think I see a way out. See here, dragoman! You tell that greybearded old devil that we know nothing about his cursed tinpot religion. Put it smooth when you translate it. Tell him that he cannot expect us to adopt it until we know what particular brand of rot it is that he wants us to believe. Tell him that if he will instruct us, we are perfectly willing to listen to his teaching, and you can add that any creed which turns out such beauties as him, and that other bounder with the black beard, must claim the attention of every one.\"\n\nWith bows and suppliant sweepings of his hands the dragoman explained that the Christians were already full of doubt, and that it needed but a little more light of knowledge to guide them on to the path of Allah. The two Emirs stroked their beards and gazed suspiciously at them. Then Abderrahman spoke in his crisp, stern fashion to the dragoman, and the two strode away together. An instant later the bugle rang out as a signal to mount.\n\n\"What he says is this,\" Mansoor explained, as he rode in the middle of the prisoners. \"We shall reach the wells by mid-day, and there will be a rest. His own Moolah, a very good and learned man, will come to give you an hour of teaching. At the end of that time you will choose one way or the other. When you have chosen, it will be decided whether you are to go to Khartoum or to be put to death. That is his last word.\"\n\n\"They won't take ransom?\"\n\n\"Wad Ibrahim would, but the Emir Abderrahman is a terrible man.\n\nI advise you to give in to him.\"\n\n\"What have you done yourself? You are a Christian, too.\"\n\nMansoor blushed as deeply as his complexion would allow.\n\n\"I was yesterday morning. Perhaps I will be to-morrow morning. I serve the Lord as long as what He ask seem reasonable; but this is very otherwise.\"\n\nHe rode onwards amongst the guards with a freedom which showed that his change of faith had put him upon a very different footing to the other prisoners.\n\nSo they were to have a reprieve of a few hours, though they rode in that dark shadow of death which was closing in upon them. What is there in life that we should cling to it so? It is not the pleasures, for those whose hours are one long pain shrink away screaming when they see merciful Death holding his soothing arms out for them. It is not the associations, for we will change all of them before we walk of our own free-wills down that broad road which every son and daughter of man must tread. Is it the fear of losing the I, that dear, intimate I, which we think we know so well, although it is eternally doing things which surprise us? Is it that which makes the deliberate suicide cling madly to the bridge-pier as the river sweeps him by? Or is it that Nature is so afraid that all her weary workmen may suddenly throw down their tools and strike, that she has invented this fashion of keeping them constant to their present work? But there it is, and all these tired, harassed, humiliated folk rejoiced in the few more hours of suffering which were left to them." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 7", + "text": "There was nothing to show them as they journeyed onwards that they were not on the very spot that they had passed at sunset upon the evening before. The region of fantastic black hills and orange sand which bordered the river had long been left behind, and everywhere now was the same brown, rolling, gravelly plain, the ground-swell with the shining rounded pebbles upon its surface, and the occasional little sprouts of sage-green camel-grass. Behind and before it extended, to where far away in front of them it sloped upwards towards a line of violet hills. The sun was not high enough yet to cause the tropical shimmer, and the wide landscape, brown with its violet edging, stood out with a hard clearness in that dry, pure air. The long caravan straggled along at the slow swing of the baggage-camels. Far out on the flanks rode the vedettes, halting at every rise, and peering backwards with their hands shading their eyes. In the distance their spears and rifles seemed to stick out of them, straight and thin, like needles in knitting.\n\n\"How far do you suppose we are from the Nile?\" asked Cochrane. He rode with his chin on his shoulder and his eyes straining wistfully to the eastern skyline.\n\n\"A good fifty miles,\" Belmont answered.\n\n\"Not so much as that,\" said the Colonel. \"We could not have been moving more than fifteen or sixteen hours, and a camel does not do more than two and a half miles an hour unless it is trotting. That would only give about forty miles, but still it is, I fear, rather far for a rescue. I don't know that we are much the better for this postponement. What have we to hope for? We may just as well take our gruel.\"\n\n\"Never say die!\" cried the cheery Irishman. \"There's plenty of time between this and mid-day. Hamilton and Hedley of the Camel Corps are good boys, and they'll be after us like a streak. They'll have no baggage-camels to hold them back, you can lay your life on that! Little did I think, when I dined with them at mess that last night, and they were telling me all their precautions against a raid, that I should depend upon them for our lives.\"\n\n\"Well, we'll play the game out, but I'm not very hopeful,\" said Cochrane. \"Of course, we must keep the best face we can before the women. I see that Tippy Tilly is as good as his word, for those five niggers and the two brown Johnnies must be the men he speaks of. They all ride together and keep well up, but I can't see how they are going to help us.\"\n\n\"I've got my pistol back,\" whispered Belmont, and his square chin and strong mouth set like granite. \"If they try any games on the women, I mean to shoot them all three with my own hand, and then we'll die with our minds easy.\"\n\n\"Good man!\" said Cochrane, and they rode on in silence. None of them spoke much. A curious, dreamy, irresponsible feeling crept over them. It was as if they had all taken some narcotic drug\u2014the merciful anodyne which Nature uses when a great crisis has fretted the nerves too far. They thought of their friends and of their past lives in the comprehensive way in which one views that which is completed. A subtle sweetness mingled with the sadness of their fate. They were filled with the quiet serenity of despair.\n\n\"It's devilish pretty,\" said the Colonel, looking about him. \"I always had an idea that I should like to die in a real, good, yellow London fog. You couldn't change for the worse.\"\n\n\"I should have liked to have died in my sleep,\" said Sadie.\n\n\"How beautiful to wake up and find yourself in the other world!\n\nThere was a piece that Hetty Smith used to say at the College: 'Say not good-night, but in some brighter world wish me good-morning.'\"\n\nThe Puritan aunt shook her head at the idea. \"It's a terrible thing to go unprepared into the presence of your Maker,\" said she.\n\n\"It's the loneliness of death that is terrible,\" said Mrs. Belmont. \"If we and those whom we loved all passed over simultaneously, we should think no more of it than of changing our house.\"\n\n\"If the worst comes to the worst, we won't be lonely,\" said her husband. \"We'll all go together, and we shall find Brown and Headingly and Stuart waiting on the other side.\"\n\nThe Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. He had no belief in survival after death, but he envied the two Catholics the quiet way in which they took things for granted. He chuckled to think of what his friends in the Cafe Cubat would say if they learned that he had laid down his life for the Christian faith. Sometimes it amused and sometimes it maddened him, and he rode onwards with alternate gusts of laughter and of fury, nursing his wounded wrist all the time like a mother with a sick baby.\n\nAcross the brown of the hard, pebbly desert there had been visible for some time a single long, thin, yellow streak, extending north and south as far as they could see. It was a band of sand not more than a few hundred yards across, and rising at the highest to eight or ten feet. But the prisoners were astonished to observe that the Arabs pointed at this with an air of the utmost concern, and they halted when they came to the edge of it like men upon the brink of an unfordable river. It was very light, dusty sand, and every wandering breath of wind sent it dancing into the air like a whirl of midges. The Emir Abderrahman tried to force his camel into it, but the creature, after a step or two, stood still and shivered with terror. The two chiefs talked for a little, and then the whole caravan trailed off with their heads for the north, and the streak of sand upon their left.\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Belmont, who found the dragoman riding at his elbow.\n\n\"Why are we going out of our course?\"\n\n\"Drift sand,\" Mansoor answered. \"Every sometimes the wind bring it all in one long place like that. To-morrow, if a wind comes, perhaps there will not be one grain left, but all will be carried up into the air again. An Arab will sometimes have to go fifty or a hundred miles to go round a drift. Suppose he tries to cross, his camel breaks its legs, and he himself is sucked in and swallowed.\"\n\n\"How long will this be?\"\n\n\"No one can say.\"\n\n\"Well, Cochrane, it's all in our favour. The longer the chase the better chance for the fresh camels!\" and for the hundredth time he looked back at the long, hard skyline behind them. There was the great, empty, dun-coloured desert, but where the glint of steel or the twinkle of white helmet for which he yearned?\n\nAnd soon they cleared the obstacle in their front. It spindled away into nothing, as a streak of dust would which has been blown across an empty room. It was curious to see that when it was so narrow that one could almost jump it, the Arabs would still go for many hundreds of yards rather than risk the crossing. Then, with good, hard country before them once more, the tired beasts were whipped up, and they ambled on with a double-jointed jogtrot, which set the prisoners nodding and bowing in grotesque and ludicrous misery. It was fun at first, and they smiled at each other, but soon the fun had become tragedy as the terrible camel-ache seized them by spine and waist, with its deep, dull throb, which rises gradually to a splitting agony.\n\n\"I can't stand it, Sadie,\" cried Miss Adams suddenly. \"I've done my best. I'm going to fall.\"\n\n\"No, no, auntie, you'll break your limbs if you do. Hold up, just a little, and maybe they'll stop.\"\n\n\"Lean back, and hold your saddle behind,\" said the Colonel. \"There, you'll find that will ease the strain.\" He took the puggaree from his hat, and tying the ends together, he slung it over her front pommel. \"Put your foot in the loop,\" said he. \"It will steady you like a stirrup.\"\n\nThe relief was instant, so Stephens did the same for Sadie. But presently one of the weary doora camels came down with a crash, its limbs starred out as if it had split asunder, and the caravan had to come down to its old sober gait.\n\n\"Is this another belt of drift sand?\" asked the Colonel presently.\n\n\"No, it's white,\" said Belmont. \"Here, Mansoor, what is that in front of us?\"\n\nBut the dragoman shook his head.\n\n\"I don't know what it is, sir. I never saw the same thing before.\"\n\nRight across the desert, from north to south, there was drawn a white line, as straight and clear as if it had been slashed with chalk across a brown table. It was very thin, but it extended without a break from horizon to horizon. Tippy Tilly said something to the dragoman.\n\n\"It's the great caravan route,\" said Mansoor.\n\n\"What makes it white, then?\"\n\n\"The bones.\"\n\nIt seemed incredible, and yet it was true, for as they drew nearer they saw that it was indeed a beaten track across the desert, hollowed out by long usage, and so covered with bones that they gave the impression of a continuous white ribbon. Long, snouty heads were scattered everywhere, and the lines of ribs were so continuous that it looked in places like the framework of a monstrous serpent. The endless road gleamed in the sun as if it were paved with ivory. For thousands of years this had been the highway over the desert, and during all that time no animal of all those countless caravans had died there without being preserved by the dry, antiseptic air. No wonder, then, that it was hardly possible to walk down it now without treading upon their skeletons.\n\n\"This must be the route I spoke of,\" said Stephens. \"I remember marking it upon the map I made for you, Miss Adams. Baedeker says that it has been disused on account of the cessation of all trade which followed the rise of the Dervishes, but that it used to be the main road by which the skins and gums of Darfur found their way down to Lower Egypt.\"\n\nThey looked at it with a listless curiosity, for there was enough to engross them at present in their own fates. The caravan struck to the south along the old desert track, and this Golgotha of a road seemed to be a fitting avenue for that which awaited them at the end of it. Weary camels and weary riders dragged on together towards their miserable goal.\n\nAnd now, as the critical moment approached which was to decide their fate, Colonel Cochrane, weighed down by his fears lest something terrible should befall the women, put his pride aside to the extent of asking the advice of the renegade dragoman. The fellow was a villain and a coward, but at least he was an Oriental, and he understood the Arab point of view. His change of religion had brought him into closer contact with the Dervishes, and he had overheard their intimate talk. Cochrane's stiff, aristocratic nature fought hard before he could bring himself to ask advice from such a man, and when he at last did so, it was in the gruffest and most unconciliatory voice.\n\n\"You know the rascals, and you have the same way of looking at things,\" said he. \"Our object is to keep things going for another twenty-four hours. After that it does not much matter what befalls us, for we shall be out of the reach of rescue. But how can we stave them off for another day?\"\n\n\"You know my advice,\" the dragoman answered; \"I have already answered it to you. If you will all become as I have, you will certainly be carried to Khartoum in safety. If you do not, you will never leave our next camping-place alive.\"\n\nThe Colonel's well-curved nose took a higher tilt, and an angry flush reddened his thin cheeks. He rode in silence for a little, for his Indian service had left him with a curried-prawn temper, which had had an extra touch of cayenne added to it by his recent experiences. It was some minutes before he could trust himself to reply.\n\n\"We'll set that aside,\" said he at last. \"Some things are possible and some are not. This is not.\"\n\n\"You need only pretend.\"\n\n\"That's enough,\" said the Colonel abruptly.\n\nMansoor shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"What is the use of asking me, if you become angry when I answer?\n\nIf you do not wish to do what I say, then try your own attempt.\n\nAt least you cannot say that I have not done all I could to save you.\"\n\n\"I'm not angry,\" the Colonel answered after a pause, in a more conciliatory voice, \"but this is climbing down rather farther than we care to go. Now, what I thought is this. You might, if you chose, give this priest, or Moolah, who is coming to us, a hint that we really are softening a bit upon the point. I don't think, considering the hole that we are in, that there can be very much objection to that. Then, when he comes, we might play up and take an interest and ask for more instruction, and in that way hold the matter over for a day or two. Don't you think that would be the best game?\"\n\n\"You will do as you like,\" said Mansoor. \"I have told you once for ever what I think. If you wish that I speak to the Moolah, I will do so. It is the fat, little man with the grey beard, upon the brown camel in front there. I may tell you that he has a name among them for converting the infidel, and he has a great pride in it, so that he would certainly prefer that you were not injured if he thought that he might bring you into Islam.\"\n\n\"Tell him that our minds are open, then,\" said the Colonel. \"I don't suppose the padre would have gone so far, but now that he is dead I think we may stretch a point. You go to him, Mansoor, and if you work it well we will agree to forget what is past. By the way, has Tippy Tilly said anything?\"\n\n\"No, sir. He has kept his men together, but he does not understand yet how he can help you.\"\n\n\"Neither do I. Well, you go to the Moolah, then, and I'll tell the others what we have agreed.\"\n\nThe prisoners all acquiesced in the Colonel's plan, with the exception of the old New England lady, who absolutely refused even to show any interest in the Mohammedan creed. \"I guess I am too old to bow the knee to Baal,\" she said. The most that she would concede was that she would not openly interfere with anything which her companions might say or do.\n\n\"And who is to argue with the priest?\" asked Fardet, as they all rode together, talking the matter over. \"It is very important that it should be done in a natural way, for if he thought that we were only trying to gain time, he would refuse to have any more to say to us.\"\n\n\"I think Cochrane should do it, as the proposal is his,\" said Belmont.\n\n\"Pardon me!\" cried the Frenchman. \"I will not say a word against our friend the Colonel, but it is not possible that a man should be fitted for everything. It will all come to nothing if he attempts it. The priest will see through the Colonel.\"\n\n\"Will he?\" said the Colonel with dignity.\n\n\"Yes, my friend, he will, for, like most of your countrymen, you are very wanting in sympathy for the ideas of other people, and it is the great fault which I find with you as a nation.\"\n\n\"Oh, drop the politics!\" cried Belmont impatiently.\n\n\"I do not talk politics. What I say is very practical. How can Colonel Cochrane pretend to this priest that he is really interested in his religion when, in effect, there is no religion in the world to him outside some little church in which he has been born and bred? I will say this for the Colonel, that I do not believe he is at all a hypocrite, and I am sure that he could not act well enough to deceive such a man as this priest.\"\n\nThe Colonel sat with a very stiff back and the blank face of a man who is not quite sure whether he is being complimented or insulted.\n\n\"You can do the talking yourself if you like,\" said he at last.\n\n\"I should he very glad to be relieved of it.\"\n\n\"I think that I am best fitted for it, since I am equally interested in all creeds. When I ask for information, it is because in verity I desire it, and not because I am playing a part.\"\n\n\"I certainly think that it would be much better if Monsieur Fardet would undertake it,\" said Mrs. Belmont with decision, and so the matter was arranged.\n\nThe sun was now high, and it shone with dazzling brightness upon the bleached bones which lay upon the road. Again the torture of thirst fell upon the little group of survivors, and again, as they rode with withered tongues and crusted lips, a vision of the saloon of the Korosko danced like a mirage before their eyes, and they saw the white napery, the wine-cards by the places, the long necks of the bottles, the siphons upon the sideboard. Sadie, who had borne up so well, became suddenly hysterical, and her shrieks of senseless laughter jarred horribly upon their nerves. Her aunt on one side of her, and Mr. Stephens on the other, did all they could to soothe her, and at last the weary, overstrung girl relapsed into something between a sleep and a faint, hanging limp over her pommel, and only kept from falling by the friends who clustered round her. The baggage-camels were as weary as their riders, and again and again they had to jerk at their nose-ropes to prevent them from lying down. From horizon to horizon stretched that one huge arch of speckless blue, and up its monstrous concavity crept the inexorable sun, like some splendid but barbarous deity, who claimed a tribute of human suffering as his immemorial right.\n\nTheir course still lay along the old trade route, but their progress was very slow, and more than once the two Emirs rode back together, and shook their heads as they looked at the weary baggage-camels on which the prisoners were perched. The greatest laggard of all was one which was ridden by a wounded Soudanese soldier. It was limping badly with a strained tendon, and it was only by constant prodding that it could be kept with the others. The Emir Wad Ibrahim raised his Remington, as the creature hobbled past, and sent a bullet through its brain. The wounded man flew forwards out of the high saddle, and fell heavily upon the hard track. His companions in misfortune, looking back, saw him stagger to his feet with a dazed face. At the same instant a Baggara slipped down from his camel with a sword in his hand.\n\n\"Don't look! don't look!\" cried Belmont to the ladies, and they all rode on with their faces to the south. They heard no sound, but the Baggara passed them a few minutes afterwards. He was cleaning his sword upon the hairy neck of his camel, and he glanced at them with a quick, malicious gleam of his teeth as he trotted by. But those who are at the lowest pitch of human misery are at least secured against the future. That vicious, threatening smile which might once have thrilled them left them now unmoved\u2014or stirred them at most to vague resentment. There were many things to interest them in this old trade route, had they been in a condition to take notice of them. Here and there along its course were the crumbling remains of ancient buildings, so old that no date could be assigned to them, but designed in some far-off civilisation to give the travellers shade from the sun or protection from the ever-lawless children of the desert. The mud bricks with which these refuges were constructed showed that the material had been carried over from the distant Nile. Once, upon the top of a little knoll, they saw the shattered plinth of a pillar of red Assouan granite, with the wide-winged symbol of the Egyptian god across it, and the cartouche of the second Rameses beneath. After three thousand years one cannot get away from the ineffaceable footprints of the warrior-king. It is surely the most wonderful survival of history that one should still be able to gaze upon him, high-nosed and masterful, as he lies with his powerful arms crossed upon his chest, majestic even in decay, in the Gizeh Museum. To the captives, the cartouche was a message of hope, as a sign that they were not outside the sphere of Egypt. \"They've left their card here once, and they may again,\" said Belmont, and they all tried to smile.\n\nAnd now they came upon one of the most satisfying sights on which the human eye can ever rest. Here and there, in the depressions at either side of the road, there had been a thin scurf of green, which meant that water was not very far from the surface. And then, quite suddenly, the track dipped down into a bowl-shaped hollow, with a most dainty group of palm-trees, and a lovely green sward at the bottom of it. The sun gleaming upon that brilliant patch of clear, restful colour, with the dark glow of the bare desert around it, made it shine like the purest emerald in a setting of burnished copper. And then it was not its beauty only, but its promise for the future: water, shade, all that weary travellers could ask for. Even Sadie was revived by the cheery sight, and the spent camels snorted and stepped out more briskly, stretching their long necks and sniffing the air as they went. After the unhomely harshness of the desert, it seemed to all of them that they had never seen anything more beautiful than this. They looked below at the green sward with the dark, star-like shadows of the palm-crowns; then they looked up at those deep green leaves against the rich blue of the sky, and they forgot their impending death in the beauty of that Nature to whose bosom they were about to return.\n\nThe wells in the centre of the grove consisted of seven large and two small saucer-like cavities filled with peat-coloured water, enough to form a plentiful supply for any caravan. Camels and men drank it greedily, though it was tainted by the all-pervading natron. The camels were picketed, the Arabs threw their sleeping-mats down in the shade, and the prisoners, after receiving a ration of dates and of doora, were told that they might do what they would during the heat of the day, and that the Moolah would come to them before sunset. The ladies were given the thicker shade of an acacia tree, and the men lay down under the palms. The great green leaves swished slowly above them; they heard the low hum of the Arab talk, and the dull champing of the camels, and then in an instant, by that most mysterious and least understood of miracles, one was in a green Irish valley, and another saw the long straight line of Commonwealth Avenue, and a third was dining at a little round table opposite to the bust of Nelson in the Army and Navy Club, and for him the swishing of the palm branches had been transformed into the long-drawn hum of Pall Mall. So the spirits went their several ways, wandering back along the strange, un-traced tracks of the memory, while the weary, grimy bodies lay senseless under the palm-trees in the Oasis of the Libyan Desert." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 8", + "text": "Colonel Cochrane was awakened from his slumber by some one pulling at his shoulder. As his eyes opened they fell upon the black, anxious face of Tippy Tilly, the old Egyptian gunner. His crooked finger was laid upon his thick, liver-coloured lips, and his dark eyes glanced from left to right with ceaseless vigilance.\n\n\"Lie quiet! Do not move!\" he whispered, in Arabic. \"I will lie here beside you, and they cannot tell me from the others. You can understand what I am saying?\"\n\n\"Yes, if you will talk slowly.\"\n\n\"Very good. I have no great trust in this black man, Mansoor. I had rather talk direct with the Miralai.\"\n\n\"What have you to say?\"\n\n\"I have waited long, until they should all be asleep, and now in another hour we shall be called to evening prayer. First of all, here is a pistol, that you may not say that you are without arms.\"\n\nIt was a clumsy, old-fashioned thing, but the Colonel saw the glint of a percussion cap upon the nipple, and knew that it was loaded. He slipped it into the inner pocket of his Norfolk jacket.\n\n\"Thank you,\" said he; \"speak slowly, so that I may understand you.\"\n\n\"There are eight of us who wish to go to Egypt. There are also four men in your party. One of us, Mehemet Ali, has fastened twelve camels together, which are the fastest of all save only those which are ridden by the Emirs. There are guards upon watch, but they are scattered in all directions. The twelve camels are close beside us here\u2014those twelve behind the acacia tree. If we can only get mounted and started, I do not think that many can overtake us, and we shall have our rifles for them. The guards are not strong enough to stop so many of us. The waterskins are all filled, and we may see the Nile again by to-morrow night.\"\n\nThe Colonel could not follow it all, but he understood enough to set a little spring of hope bubbling in his heart. The last terrible day had left its mark in his livid face and his hair, which was turning rapidly to grey. He might have been the father of the spruce well-preserved soldier who had paced with straight back and military stride up and down the saloon deck of the Korosko.\n\n\"That is excellent,\" said he. \"But what are we to do about the three ladies?\" The black soldier shrugged his shoulders. \"Mefeesh!\" said he. \"One of them is old, and in any case there are plenty more women if we get back to Egypt. These will not come to any hurt, but they will be placed in the harem of the Khalifa.\"\n\n\"What you say is nonsense,\" said the Colonel sternly. \"We shall take our women with us, or we shall not go at all.\"\n\n\"I think it is rather you who talk the thing without sense,\" the black man answered angrily. \"How can you ask my companions and me to do that which must end in failure? For years we have waited for such a chance as this, and now that it has come, you wish us to throw it away owing to this foolishness about the women.\"\n\n\"What have we promised you if we come back to Egypt?\" asked Cochrane.\n\n\"Two hundred Egyptian pounds and promotion in the army\u2014all upon the word of an Englishman.\"\n\n\"Very good. Then you shall have three hundred each if you can make some new plan by which you can take the women with you.\"\n\nTippy Tilly scratched his woolly head in his perplexity.\n\n\"We might, indeed, upon some excuse, bring three more of the faster camels round to this place. Indeed, there are three very good camels among those which are near the cooking fire. But how are we to get the women upon them?\u2014and if we had them upon them, we know very well that they would fall off when they began to gallop. I fear that you men will fall off, for it is no easy matter to remain upon a galloping camel; but as to the women, it is impossible. No, we shall leave the women, and if you will not leave the women, then we shall leave all of you and start by ourselves.\"\n\n\"Very good! Go!\" said the Colonel abruptly, and settled down as if to sleep once more. He knew that with Orientals it is the silent man who is most likely to have his way.\n\nThe negro turned and crept away for some little distance, where he was met by one of his fellaheen comrades, Mehemet Ali, who had charge of the camels. The two argued for some little time\u2014for those three hundred golden pieces were not to be lightly resigned. Then the negro crept back to Colonel Cochrane.\n\n\"Mehemet Ali has agreed,\" said he. \"He has gone to put the nose-rope upon three more of the camels. But it is foolishness, and we are all going to our death. Now come with me, and we shall awaken the women and tell them.\"\n\nThe Colonel shook his companions and whispered to them what was in the wind. Belmont and Fardet were ready for any risk. Stephens, to whom the prospect of a passive death presented little terror, was seized with a convulsion of fear when he thought of any active exertion to avoid it, and shivered in all his long, thin limbs. Then he pulled out his Baedeker and began to write his will upon the flyleaf, but his hand twitched so that he was hardly legible. By some strange gymnastic of the legal mind a death, even by violence, if accepted quietly, had a place in the order of things, while a death which overtook one galloping frantically over a desert was wholly irregular and discomposing. It was not dissolution which he feared, but the humiliation and agony of a fruitless struggle against it.\n\nColonel Cochrane and Tippy Tilly had crept together under the shadow of the great acacia tree to the spot where the women were lying. Sadie and her aunt lay with their arms round each other, the girl's head pillowed upon the old woman's bosom. Mrs. Belmont was awake, and entered into the scheme in an instant.\n\n\"But you must leave me,\" said Miss Adams earnestly. \"What does it matter at my age, anyhow?\"\n\n\"No, no, Aunt Eliza; I won't move without you! Don't you think it!\" cried the girl. \"You've got to come straight away or else we both stay right here where we are.\"\n\n\"Come, come, ma'am, there is no time for arguing, or nonsense,\" said the Colonel roughly. \"Our lives all depend upon your making an effort, and we cannot possibly leave you behind.\"\n\n\"But I will fall off.\"\n\n\"I'll tie you on with my puggaree. I wish I had the cummerbund which I lent poor Stuart. Now, Tippy, I think we might make a break for it!\"\n\nBut the black soldier had been staring with a disconsolate face out over the desert, and he turned upon his heel with an oath.\n\n\"There!\" said he sullenly. \"You see what comes of all your foolish talking! You have ruined our chances as well as your own!\"\n\nHalf-a-dozen mounted camel-men had appeared suddenly over the lip of the bowl-shaped hollow, standing out hard and clear against the evening sky where the copper basin met its great blue lid. They were travelling fast, and waved their rifles as they came. An instant later the bugle sounded an alarm, and the camp was up with a buzz like an overturned bee-hive. The Colonel ran back to his companions, and the black soldier to his camel. Stephens looked relieved, and Belmont sulky, while Monsieur Fardet raved, with his one uninjured hand in the air.\n\n\"Sacred name of a dog!\" he cried. \"Is there no end to it, then? Are we never to come out of the hands of these accursed Dervishes?\"\n\n\"Oh, they really are Dervishes, are they?\" said the Colonel in an acid voice. \"You seem to be altering your opinions. I thought they were an invention of the British Government.\"\n\nThe poor fellows' tempers were getting frayed and thin. The Colonel's sneer was like a match to a magazine, and in an instant the Frenchman was dancing in front of him with a broken torrent of angry words. His hand was clutching at Cochrane's throat before Belmont and Stephens could pull him off.\n\n\"If it were not for your grey hairs\u2014\" he said.\n\n\"Damn your impudence!\" cried the Colonel.\n\n\"If we have to die, let us die like gentlemen, and not like so many corner-boys,\" said Belmont with dignity.\n\n\"I only said I was glad to see that Monsieur Fardet has learned something from his adventures,\" the Colonel sneered.\n\n\"Shut up, Cochrane! What do you want to aggravate him for?\" cried the Irishman.\n\n\"Upon my word, Belmont, you forget yourself! I do not permit people to address me in this fashion.\"\n\n\"You should look after your own manners, then.\"\n\n\"Gentlemen, gentlemen, here are the ladies!\" cried Stephens, and the angry, over-strained men relapsed into a gloomy silence, pacing up and down, and jerking viciously at their moustaches. It is a very catching thing, ill-temper, for even Stephens began to be angry at their anger, and to scowl at them as they passed him. Here they were at a crisis in their fate, with the shadow of death above them, and yet their minds were all absorbed in some personal grievance so slight that they could hardly put it into words. Misfortune brings the human spirit to a rare height, but the pendulum still swings.\n\nBut soon their attention was drawn away to more important matters. A council of war was being held beside the wells, and the two Emirs, stern and composed, were listening to a voluble report from the leader of the patrol. The prisoners noticed that, though the fierce, old man stood like a graven image, the younger Emir passed his hand over his beard once or twice with a nervous gesture, the thin, brown fingers twitching among the long, black hair.\n\n\"I believe the Gippies are after us,\" said Belmont. \"Not very far off either, to judge by the fuss they are making.\"\n\n\"It looks like it. Something has scared them.\"\n\n\"Now he's giving orders. What can it be? Here, Mansoor, what is the matter?\"\n\nThe dragoman came running up with the light of hope shining upon his brown face.\n\n\"I think they have seen something to frighten them. I believe that the soldiers are behind us. They have given the order to fill the waterskins, and be ready for a start when the darkness comes. But I am ordered to gather you together, for the Moolah is coming to convert you all. I have already told him that you are all very much inclined to think the same with him.\"\n\nHow far Mansoor may have gone with his assurances may never be known, but the Mussulman preacher came walking towards them at this moment with a paternal and contented smile upon his face, as one who has a pleasant and easy task before him. He was a one-eyed man, with a fringe of grizzled beard and a face which was fat, but which looked as if it had once been fatter, for it was marked with many folds and creases. He had a green turban upon his head, which marked him as a Mecca pilgrim. In one hand he carried a small brown carpet, and in the other a parchment copy of the Koran. Laying his carpet upon the ground, he motioned Mansoor to his side, and then gave a circular sweep of his arm to signify that the prisoners should gather round him, and a downward wave which meant that they should be seated. So they grouped themselves round him, sitting on the short green sward under the palm-tree, these seven forlorn representatives of an alien creed, and in the midst of them sat the fat little preacher, his one eye dancing from face to face as he expounded the principles of his newer, cruder, and more earnest faith. They listened attentively and nodded their heads as Mansoor translated the exhortation, and with each sign of their acquiescence the Moolah became more amiable in his manner and more affectionate in his speech.\n\n\"For why should you die, my sweet lambs, when all that is asked of you is that you should set aside that which will carry you to everlasting Gehenna, and accept the law of Allah as written by his prophet, which will assuredly bring you unimaginable joys, as is promised in the Book of the Camel? For what says the chosen one?\"\u2014and he broke away into one of those dogmatic texts which pass in every creed as an argument. \"Besides, is it not clear that God is with us, since from the beginning, when we had but sticks against the rifles of the Turks, victory has always been with us? Have we not taken El Obeid, and taken Khartoum, and destroyed Hicks and slain Gordon, and prevailed against every one who has come against us? How, then, can it be said that the blessing of Allah does not rest upon us?\"\n\nThe Colonel had been looking about him during the long exhortation of the Moolah, and he had observed that the Dervishes were cleaning their guns, counting their cartridges, and making all the preparations of men who expected that they might soon be called upon to fight. The two Emirs were conferring together with grave faces, and the leader of the patrol pointed, as he spoke to them, in the direction of Egypt. It was evident that there was at least a chance of a rescue if they could only keep things going for a few more hours. The camels were not recovered yet from their long march, and the pursuers, if they were indeed close behind, were almost certain to overtake them.\n\n\"For God's sake, Fardet, try and keep him in play,\" said he. \"I believe we have a chance if we can only keep the ball rolling for another hour or so.\"\n\nBut a Frenchman's wounded dignity is not so easily appeased. Monsieur Fardet sat moodily with his back against the palm-tree, and his black brows drawn down. He said nothing, but he still pulled at his thick, strong moustache.\n\n\"Come on, Fardet! We depend upon you,\" said Belmont.\n\n\"Let Colonel Cochrane do it,\" the Frenchman answered snappishly.\n\n\"He takes too much upon himself this Colonel Cochrane.\"\n\n\"There! There!\" said Belmont soothingly, as if he were speaking to a fractious child. \"I am quite sure that the Colonel will express his regret at what has happened, and will acknowledge that he was in the wrong\u2014\"\n\n\"I'll do nothing of the sort,\" snapped the Colonel.\n\n\"Besides, that is merely a personal quarrel,\" Belmont continued hastily. \"It is for the good of the whole party that we wish you to speak with the Moolah, because we all feel that you are the best man for the job.\"\n\nBut the Frenchman only shrugged his shoulders and relapsed into a deeper gloom.\n\nThe Moolah looked from one to the other, and the kindly expression began to fade away from his large, baggy face. His mouth drew down at the corners, and became hard and severe.\n\n\"Have these infidels been playing with us, then?\" said he to the dragoman. \"Why is it that they talk among themselves and have nothing to say to me?\"\n\n\"He's getting impatient about it,\" said Cochrane. \"Perhaps I had better do what I can, Belmont, since this damned fellow has left us in the lurch.\"\n\nBut the ready wit of a woman saved the situation.\n\n\"I am sure, Monsieur Fardet,\" said Mrs. Belmont, \"that you, who are a Frenchman, and therefore a man of gallantry and honour, would not permit your own wounded feelings to interfere with the fulfilment of your promise and your duty towards three helpless ladies.\"\n\nFardet was on his feet in an instant, with his hand over his heart.\n\n\"You understand my nature, madame,\" he cried. \"I am incapable of abandoning a lady. I will do all that I can in this matter. Now, Mansoor, you may tell the holy man that I am ready to discuss through you the high matters of his faith with him.\"\n\nAnd he did it with an ingenuity which amazed his companions. He took the tone of a man who is strongly attracted, and yet has one single remaining shred of doubt to hold him back. Yet as that one shred was torn away by the Moolah, there was always some other stubborn little point which prevented his absolute acceptance of the faith of Islam. And his questions were all so mixed up with personal compliments to the priest and self-congratulations that they should have come under the teachings of so wise a man and so profound a theologian, that the hanging pouches under the Moolah's eyes quivered with his satisfaction, and he was led happily and hopefully onwards from explanation to explanation, while the blue overhead turned into violet, and the green leaves into black, until the great serene stars shone out once more between the crowns of the palm-trees.\n\n\"As to the learning of which you speak, my lamb,\" said the Moolah, in answer to some argument of Fardet's, \"I have myself studied at the University of El Azhar at Cairo, and I know that to which you allude. But the learning of the faithful is not as the learning of the unbeliever, and it is not fitting that we pry too deeply into the ways of Allah. Some stars have tails, oh my sweet lamb, and some have not; but what does it profit us to know which are which? For God made them all, and they are very safe in His hands. Therefore, my friend, be not puffed up by the foolish learning of the West, and understand that there is only one wisdom, which consists in following the will of Allah as His chosen prophet has laid it down for us in this book. And now, my lambs, I see that you are ready to come into Islam, and it is time, for that bugle tells that we are about to march, and it was the order of the excellent Emir Abderrahman that your choice should be taken, one way or the other, before ever we left the wells.\"\n\n\"Yet, my father, there are other points upon which I would gladly have instruction,\" said the Frenchman, \"for, indeed, it is a pleasure to hear your clear words after the cloudy accounts which we have had from other teachers.\"\n\nBut the Moolah had risen, and a gleam of suspicion twinkled in his single eye.\n\n\"This further instruction may well come afterwards,\" said he, \"since we shall travel together as far as Khartoum, and it will be a joy to me to see you grow in wisdom and in virtue as we go.\" He walked over to the fire, and stooping down, with the pompous slowness of a stout man, he returned with two half-charred sticks, which he laid cross-wise upon the ground. The Dervishes came clustering over to see the new converts admitted into the fold. They stood round in the dim light, tall and fantastic, with the high necks and supercilious heads of the camels swaying above them.\n\n\"Now,\" said the Moolah, and his voice had lost its conciliatory and persuasive tone, \"there is no more time for you. Here upon the ground I have made out of two sticks the foolish and superstitious symbol of your former creed. You will trample upon it, as a sign that you renounce it, and you will kiss the Koran, as a sign that you accept it, and what more you need in the way of instruction shall be given to you as you go.\"\n\nThey stood up, the four men and the three women, to meet the crisis of their fate. None of them, except perhaps Miss Adams and Mrs. Belmont, had any deep religious convictions. All of them were children of this world, and some of them disagreed with everything which that symbol upon the earth represented. But there was the European pride, the pride of the white race which swelled within them, and held them to the faith of their countrymen. It was a sinful, human, un-Christian motive, and yet it was about to make them public martyrs to the Christian creed. In the hush and tension of their nerves low sounds grew suddenly loud upon their ears. Those swishing palm-leaves above them were like a swift-flowing river, and far away they could hear the dull, soft thudding of a galloping camel.\n\n\"There's something coming,\" whispered Cochrane. \"Try and stave them off for five minutes longer, Fardet.\"\n\nThe Frenchman stepped out with a courteous wave of his uninjured arm, and the air of a man who is prepared to accommodate himself to anything.\n\n\"You will tell this holy man that I am quite ready to accept his teaching, and so I am sure are all my friends,\" said he to the dragoman. \"But there is one thing which I should wish him to do in order to set at rest any possible doubts which may remain in our hearts. Every true religion can be told by the miracles which those who profess it can bring about. Even I who am but a humble Christian, can, by virtue of my religion, do some of these. But you, since your religion is superior, can no doubt do far more, and so I beg you to give us a sign that we may be able to say that we know that the religion of Islam is the more powerful.\"\n\nBehind all his dignity and reserve, the Arab has a good fund of curiosity. The hush among the listening Arabs showed how the words of the Frenchman as translated by Mansoor appealed to them.\n\n\"Such things are in the hands of Allah,\" said the priest. \"It is not for us to disturb His laws. But if you have yourself such powers as you claim, let us be witnesses to them.\"\n\nThe Frenchman stepped forward, and raising his hand he took a large, shining date out of the Moolah's beard. This he swallowed and immediately produced once more from his left elbow. He had often given his little conjuring entertainment on board the boat, and his fellow-passengers had had some good-natured laughter at his expense, for he was not quite skilful enough to deceive the critical European intelligence. But now it looked as if this piece of obvious palming might be the point upon which all their fates would hang. A deep hum of surprise rose from the ring of Arabs, and deepened as the Frenchman drew another date from the nostril of a camel and tossed it into the air, from which, apparently, it never descended. That gaping sleeve was obvious enough to his companions, but the dim light was all in favour of the performer. So delighted and interested was the audience that they paid little heed to a mounted camel-man who trotted swiftly between the palm trunks. All might have been well had not Fardet, carried away by his own success, tried to repeat his trick once more, with the result that the date fell out of his palm, and the deception stood revealed. In vain he tried to pass on at once to another of his little stock. The Moolah said something, and an Arab struck Fardet across the shoulders with the thick shaft of his spear.\n\n\"We have had enough child's play,\" said the angry priest. \"Are we men or babes, that you should try to impose upon us in this manner? Here is the cross and the Koran\u2014which shall it be?\"\n\nFardet looked helplessly round at his companions.\n\n\"I can do no more; you asked for five minutes. You have had them,\" said he to Colonel Cochrane.\n\n\"And perhaps it is enough,\" the soldier answered. \"Here are the Emirs.\"\n\nThe camel-man, whose approach they had heard from afar, had made for the two Arab chiefs, and had delivered a brief report to them, stabbing with his forefinger in the direction from which he had come. There was a rapid exchange of words between the Emirs, and then they strode forward together to the group around the prisoners. Bigots and barbarians, they were none the less two most majestic men, as they advanced through the twilight of the palm grove. The fierce old greybeard raised his hand and spoke swiftly in short, abrupt sentences, and his savage followers yelped to him like hounds to a huntsman. The fire that smouldered in his arrogant eyes shone back at him from a hundred others. Here were to be read the strength and danger of the Mahdi movement; here in these convulsed faces, in that fringe of waving arms, in these frantic, red-hot souls, who asked nothing better than a bloody death, if their own hands might be bloody when they met it.\n\n\"Have the prisoners embraced the true faith?\" asked the Emir Abderrahman, looking at them with his cruel eyes.\n\nThe Moolah had his reputation to preserve, and it was not for him to confess to a failure.\n\n\"They were about to embrace it, when\u2014\n\n\"Let it rest for a little time, O Moolah.\" He gave an order, and the Arabs all sprang for their camels. The Emir Wad Ibrahim filed off at once with nearly half the party. The others were mounted and ready, with their rifles unslung.\n\n\"What's happened?\" asked Belmont.\n\n\"Things are looking up,\" cried the Colonel. \"By George, I think we are going to come through all right. The Gippy Camel Corps are hot on our trail.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"What else could have scared them?\"\n\n\"O Colonel, do you really think we shall be saved?\" sobbed Sadie. The dull routine of misery through which they had passed had deadened all their nerves until they seemed incapable of any acute sensation, but now this sudden return of hope brought agony with it like the recovery of a frost-bitten limb. Even the strong, self-contained Belmont was filled with doubts and apprehensions. He had been hopeful when there was no sign of relief, and now the approach of it set him trembling.\n\n\"Surely they wouldn't come very weak,\" he cried. \"Be Jove, if the Commandant let them come weak, he should be court-martialled.\"\n\n\"Sure we're in God's hands, anyway,\" said his wife, in her soothing, Irish voice. \"Kneel down with me, John, dear, if it's the last time, and pray that, earth or heaven, we may not be divided.\"\n\n\"Don't do that! Don't!\" cried the Colonel anxiously, for he saw that the eye of the Moolah was upon them. But it was too late, for the two Roman Catholics had dropped upon their knees and crossed themselves. A spasm of fury passed over the face of the Mussulman priest at this public testimony to the failure of his missionary efforts. He turned and said something to the Emir.\n\n\"Stand up!\" cried Mansoor. \"For your life's sake, stand up! He is asking for leave to put you to death.\"\n\n\"Let him do what he likes!\" said the obstinate Irishman; \"we will rise when our prayers are finished, and not before.\"\n\nThe Emir stood listening to the Moolah, with his baleful gaze upon the two kneeling figures. Then he gave one or two rapid orders, and four camels were brought forward. The baggage-camels which they had hitherto ridden were standing unsaddled where they had been tethered.\n\n\"Don't be a fool, Belmont!\" cried the Colonel; \"everything depends upon our humouring them. Do get up, Mrs. Belmont! You are only putting their backs up!\"\n\nThe Frenchman shrugged his shoulders as he looked at them. \"Mon Dieu!\" he cried, \"were there ever such impracticable people? Voila!\" he added, with a shriek, as the two American ladies fell upon their knees beside Mrs. Belmont. \"It is like the camels\u2014one down, all down! Was ever anything so absurd?\"\n\nBut Mr. Stephens had knelt down beside Sadie and buried his haggard face in his long, thin hands. Only the Colonel and Monsieur Fardet remained standing. Cochrane looked at the Frenchman with an interrogative eye.\n\n\"After all,\" said he, \"it is stupid to pray all your life, and not to pray now when we have nothing to hope for except through the goodness of Providence.\" He dropped upon his knees with a rigid, military back, but his grizzled, unshaven chin upon his chest. The Frenchman looked at his kneeling companions, and then his eyes travelled onwards to the angry faces of the Emir and Moolah.\n\n\"Sapristi!\" he growled. \"Do they suppose that a Frenchman is afraid of them?\" and so, with an ostentatious sign of the cross, he took his place upon his knees beside the others. Foul, bedraggled, and wretched, the seven figures knelt and waited humbly for their fate under the black shadow of the palm-tree.\n\nThe Emir turned to the Moolah with a mocking smile, and pointed at the results of his ministrations. Then he gave an order, and in an instant the four men were seized. A couple of deft turns with a camel-halter secured each of their wrists. Fardet screamed out, for the rope had bitten into his open wound. The others took it with the dignity of despair.\n\n\"You have ruined everything. I believe you have ruined me also!\" cried Mansoor, wringing his hands. \"The women are to get upon these three camels.\"\n\n\"Never!\" cried Belmont. \"We won't be separated!\" He plunged madly, but he was weak from privation, and two strong men held him by each elbow.\n\n\"Don't fret, John!\" cried his wife, as they hurried her towards the camel. \"No harm shall come to me. Don't struggle, or they'll hurt you, dear.\"\n\nThe four men writhed as they saw the women dragged away from them. All their agonies had been nothing to this. Sadie and her aunt appeared to be half senseless from fear. Only Mrs. Belmont kept a brave face. When they were seated the camels rose, and were led under the tree behind where the four men were standing.\n\n\"I've a pistol in me pocket,\" said Belmont, looking up at his wife.\n\n\"I would give me soul to be able to pass it to you.\"\n\n\"Keep it, John, and it may be useful yet. I have no fears. Ever since we prayed I have felt as if our guardian angels had their wings round us.\" She was like a guardian angel herself as she turned to the shrinking Sadie, and coaxed some little hope back into her despairing heart.\n\nThe short, thick Arab, who had been in command of Wad Ibrahim's rearguard, had Joined the Emir and the Moolah; the three consulted together, with occasional oblique glances towards the prisoners. Then the Emir spoke to Mansoor.\n\n\"The chief wishes to know which of you four is the richest man?\" said the dragoman. His fingers were twitching with nervousness and plucking incessantly at the front of his covercoat.\n\n\"Why does he wish to know?\" asked the Colonel.\n\n\"I do not know.\"\n\n\"But it is evident,\" cried Monsieur Fardet. \"He wishes to know which is the best worth keeping for his ransom.\"\n\n\"I think we should see this thing through together,\" said the Colonel. \"It's really for you to decide, Stephens, for I have no doubt that you are the richest of us.\"\n\n\"I don't know that I am,\" the lawyer answered; \"but in any case, I have no wish to be placed upon a different footing to the others.\"\n\nThe Emir spoke again in his harsh rasping voice.\n\n\"He says,\" Mansoor translated, \"that the baggage-camels are spent, and that there is only one beast left which can keep up. It is ready now for one of you, and you have to decide among yourselves which is to have it. If one is richer than the others, he will have the preference.\"\n\n\"Tell him that we are all equally rich.\"\n\n\"In that case he says that you are to choose at once which is to have the camel.\"\n\n\"And the others?\"\n\nThe dragoman shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"Well,\" said the Colonel, \"if only one of us is to escape, I think you fellows will agree with me that it ought to be Belmont, since he is the married man.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, let it be Monsieur Belmont,\" cried Fardet.\n\n\"I think so also,\" said Stephens.\n\nBut the Irishman would not hear of it.\n\n\"No, no, share and share alike,\" he cried. \"All sink or all swim, and the devil take the flincher.\"\n\nThey wrangled among themselves until they became quite heated in this struggle of unselfishness. Some one had said that the Colonel should go because he was the oldest, and the Colonel was a very angry man.\n\n\"One would think I was an octogenarian,\" he cried. \"These remarks are quite uncalled for.\"\n\n\"Well, then,\" said Belmont, \"let us all refuse to go.\"\n\n\"But this is not very wise,\" cried the Frenchman. \"See, my friends! Here are the ladies being carried off alone. Surely it would be far better that one of us should be with them to advise them.\"\n\nThey looked at one another in perplexity. What Fardet said was obviously true, but how could one of them desert his comrades? The Emir himself suggested the solution.\n\n\"The chief says,\" said Mansoor, \"that if you cannot settle who is to go, you had better leave it to Allah and draw lots.\"\n\n\"I don't think we can do better,\" said the Colonel, and his three companions nodded their assent.\n\nIt was the Moolah who approached them with four splinters of palm-bark protruding from between his fingers.\n\n\"He says that he who draws the longest has the camel,\" said Mansoor.\n\n\"We must agree to abide absolutely by this,\" said Cochrane, and again his companions nodded.\n\nThe Dervishes had formed a semicircle in front of them, with a fringe of the oscillating heads of the camels. Before them was a cooking fire, which threw its red light over the group. The Emir was standing with his back to it, and his fierce face towards the prisoners. Behind the four men was a line of guards, and behind them again the three women, who looked down from their camels upon this tragedy. With a malicious smile, the fat, one-eyed Moolah advanced with his fist closed, and the four little brown spicules protruding from between his fingers.\n\nIt was to Belmont that he held them first. The Irishman gave an involuntary groan, and his wife gasped behind him, for the splinter came away in his hand. Then it was the Frenchman's turn, and his was half an inch longer than Belmont's. Then came Colonel Cochrane, whose piece was longer than the two others put together. Stephens' was no bigger than Belmont's. The Colonel was the winner of this terrible lottery.\n\n\"You're welcome to my place, Belmont,\" said he. \"I've neither wife nor child, and hardly a friend in the world. Go with your wife, and I'll stay.\"\n\n\"No, indeed! An agreement is an agreement. It's all fair play, and the prize to the luckiest.\"\n\n\"The Emir says that you are to mount at once,\" said Mansoor, and an Arab dragged the Colonel by his wrist-rope to the waiting camel.\n\n\"He will stay with the rearguard,\" said the Emir to his lieutenant.\n\n\"You can keep the women with you also.\"\n\n\"And this dragoman dog?\"\n\n\"Put him with the others.\"\n\n\"And they?\"\n\n\"Put them all to death.\"" + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 9", + "text": "As none of the three could understand Arabic, the order of the Emir would have been unintelligible to them had it not been for the conduct of Mansoor. The unfortunate dragoman, after all his treachery and all his subservience and apostasy, found his worst fears realised when the Dervish leader gave his curt command. With a shriek of fear the poor wretch threw himself forward upon his face, and clutched at the edge of the Arab's jibbeh, clawing with his brown fingers at the edge of the cotton skirt. The Emir tugged to free himself, and then, finding that he was still held by that convulsive grip, he turned and kicked at Mansoor with the vicious impatience with which one drives off a pestering cur. The dragoman's high red tarboosh flew up into the air, and he lay groaning upon his face where the stunning blow of the Arab's horny foot had left him.\n\nAll was bustle and movement in the camp, for the old Emir had mounted his camel, and some of his party were already beginning to follow their companions. The squat lieutenant, the Moolah, and about a dozen Dervishes surrounded the prisoners. They had not mounted their camels, for they were told off to be the ministers of death. The three men understood as they looked upon their faces that the sand was running very low in the glass of their lives. Their hands were still bound, but their guards had ceased to hold them. They turned round, all three, and said good-bye to the women upon the camels.\n\n\"All up now, Norah,\" said Belmont. \"It's hard luck when there was a chance of a rescue, but we've done our best.\"\n\nFor the first time his wife had broken down. She was sobbing convulsively, with her face between her hands.\n\n\"Don't cry, little woman! We've had a good time together. Give my love to all friends at Bray! Remember me to Amy McCarthy and to the Blessingtons. You'll find there is enough and to spare, but I would take Roger's advice about the investments. Mind that!\"\n\n\"O John, I won't live without you!\" Sorrow for her sorrow broke the strong man down, and he buried his face in the hairy side of her camel. The two of them sobbed helplessly together.\n\nStephens meanwhile had pushed his way to Sadie's beast. She saw his worn earnest face looking up at her through the dim light.\n\n\"Don't be afraid for your aunt and for yourself,\" said he. \"I am sure that you will escape. Colonel Cochrane will look after you. The Egyptians cannot be far behind. I do hope you will have a good drink before you leave the wells. I wish I could give your aunt my jacket, for it will be cold to-night. I'm afraid I can't get it off. She should keep some of the bread, and eat it in the early morning.\"\n\nHe spoke quite quietly, like a man who is arranging the details of a picnic. A sudden glow of admiration for this quietly consistent man warmed her impulsive heart.\n\n\"How unselfish you are!\" she cried. \"I never saw any one like you. Talk about saints! There you stand in the very presence of death, and you think only of us.\"\n\n\"I want to say a last word to you, Sadie, if you don't mind. I should die so much happier. I have often wanted to speak to you, but I thought that perhaps you would laugh, for you never took anything very seriously, did you? That was quite natural of course with your high spirits, but still it was very serious to me. But now I am really a dead man, so it does not matter very much what I say.\"\n\n\"Oh don't, Mr. Stephens!\" cried the girl.\n\n\"I won't, if it is very painful to you. As I said, it would make me die happier, but I don't want to be selfish about it. If I thought it would darken your life afterwards, or be a sad recollection to you, I would not say another word.\"\n\n\"What did you wish to say?\"\n\n\"It was only to tell you how I loved you. I always loved you. From the first I was a different man when I was with you. But of course it was absurd, I knew that well enough. I never said anything, but I tried not to make myself ridiculous. But I just want you to know about it now that it can't matter one way or the other. You'll understand that I really do love you when I tell you that, if it were not that I knew you were frightened and unhappy, these last two days in which we have been always together would have been infinitely the happiest of my life.\"\n\nThe girl sat pale and silent, looking down with wondering eyes at his upturned face. She did not know what to do or say in the solemn presence of this love which burned so brightly under the shadow of death. To her child's heart it seemed incomprehensible\u2014and yet she understood that it was sweet and beautiful also.\n\n\"I won't say any more,\" said he; \"I can see that it only bothers you.\n\nBut I wanted you to know, and now you do know, so it is all right.\n\nThank you for listening so patiently and gently. Good-bye, little Sadie! I can't put my hand up. Will you put yours down?\"\n\nShe did so and Stephens kissed it. Then he turned and took his place once more between Belmont and Fardet. In his whole life of struggle and success he had never felt such a glow of quiet contentment as suffused him at that instant when the grip of death was closing upon him. There is no arguing about love. It is the innermost fact of life\u2014the one which obscures and changes all the others, the only one which is absolutely satisfying and complete. Pain is pleasure, and want is comfort, and death is sweetness when once that golden mist is round it. So it was that Stephens could have sung with joy as he faced his murderers. He really had not time to think about them. The important, all-engrossing, delightful thing was that she could not look upon him as a casual acquaintance any more. Through all her life she would think of him\u2014she would know.\n\nColonel Cochrane's camel was at one side, and the old soldier, whose wrists had been freed, had been looking down upon the scene, and wondering in his tenacious way whether all hope must really be abandoned. It was evident that the Arabs who were grouped round the victims were to remain behind with them, while the others who were mounted would guard the three women and himself. He could not understand why the throats of his companions had not been already cut, unless it were that with an Eastern refinement of cruelty this rearguard would wait until the Egyptians were close to them, so that the warm bodies of their victims might be an insult to the pursuers. No doubt that was the right explanation. The Colonel had heard of such a trick before.\n\nBut in that case there would not be more than twelve Arabs with the prisoners. Were there any of the friendly ones among them? If Tippy Tilly and six of his men were there, and if Belmont could get his arms free and his hand upon his revolver, they might come through yet. The Colonel craned his neck and groaned in his disappointment. He could see the faces of the guards in the firelight. They were all Baggara Arabs, men who were beyond either pity or bribery. Tippy Tilly and the others must have gone on with the advance. For the first time the stiff old soldier abandoned hope.\n\n\"Good-bye, you fellows! God bless you!\" he cried, as a negro pulled at his camel's nose-ring and made him follow the others. The women came after him, in a misery too deep for words. Their departure was a relief to the three men who were left.\n\n\"I am glad they are gone,\" said Stephens, from his heart.\n\n\"Yes, yes, it is better,\" cried Fardet. \"How long are we to wait?\"\n\n\"Not very long now,\" said Belmont grimly, as the Arabs closed in around them.\n\nThe Colonel and the three women gave one backward glance when they came to the edge of the oasis. Between the straight stems of the palms they saw the gleam of the fire, and above the group of Arabs they caught a last glimpse of the three white hats. An instant later, the camels began to trot, and when they looked back once more the palm grove was only a black clump with the vague twinkle of a light somewhere in the heart of it. As with yearning eyes they gazed at that throbbing red point in the darkness, they passed over the edge of the depression, and in an instant the huge, silent, moonlit desert was round them without a sign of the oasis which they had left. On every side the velvet, blue-black sky, with its blazing stars, sloped downwards to the vast, dun-coloured plain. The two were blurred into one at their point of junction.\n\nThe women had sat in the silence of despair, and the Colonel had been silent also\u2014for what could he say?\u2014but suddenly all four started in their saddles, and Sadie gave a sharp cry of dismay. In the hush of the night there had come from behind them the petulant crack of a rifle, then another, then several together, with a brisk rat-tat-tat, and then after an interval, one more.\n\n\"It may be the rescuers! It may be the Egyptians!\" cried Mrs. Belmont, with a sudden flicker of hope. \"Colonel Cochrane, don't you think it may be the Egyptians?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes,\" Sadie whimpered. \"It must be the Egyptians.\"\n\nThe Colonel had listened expectantly, but all was silent again. Then he took his hat off with a solemn gesture.\n\n\"There is no use deceiving ourselves, Mrs. Belmont,\" said he; \"we may as well face the truth. Our friends are gone from us, but they have met their end like brave men.\"\n\n\"But why should they fire their guns? They had... they had spears.\"\n\nShe shuddered as she said it.\n\n\"That is true,\" said the Colonel. \"I would not for the world take away any real grounds of hope which you may have; but on the other hand, there is no use in preparing bitter disappointments for ourselves. If we had been listening to an attack, we should have heard some reply. Besides, an Egyptian attack would have been an attack in force. No doubt it is, as you say, a little strange that they should have wasted their cartridges\u2014by Jove, look at that!\"\n\nHe was pointing over the eastern desert. Two figures were moving across its expanse, swiftly and stealthily, furtive dark shadows against the lighter ground. They saw them dimly, dipping and rising over the rolling desert, now lost, now reappearing in the uncertain light. They were flying away from the Arabs. And then, suddenly they halted upon the summit of a sand-hill, and the prisoners could see them outlined plainly against the sky. They were camel-men, but they sat their camels astride as a horseman sits his horse.\n\n\"Gippy Camel Corps!\" cried the Colonel.\n\n\"Two men,\" said Miss Adams, in a voice of despair.\n\n\"Only a vedette, ma'am! Throwing feelers out all over the desert.\n\nThis is one of them. Main body ten miles off, as likely as not.\n\nThere they go giving the alarm! Good old Camel Corps!\"\n\nThe self-contained, methodical soldier had suddenly turned almost inarticulate with his excitement. There was a red flash upon the top of the sand-hill, and then another, followed by the crack of the rifles. Then with a whisk the two figures were gone, as swiftly and silently as two trout in a stream.\n\nThe Arabs had halted for an instant, as if uncertain whether they should delay their journey to pursue them or not. There was nothing left to pursue now, for amid the undulations of the sand-drift the vedettes might have gone in any direction. The Emir galloped back along the line, with exhortations and orders. Then the camels began to trot, and the hopes of the prisoners were dulled by the agonies of the terrible jolt. Mile after mile, mile after mile, they sped onwards over that vast expanse, the women clinging as best they might to the pommels, the Colonel almost as spent as they, but still keenly on the look-out for any sign of the pursuers.\n\n\"I think... I think,\" cried Mrs. Belmont, \"that something is moving in front of us.\"\n\nThe Colonel raised himself upon his saddle, and screened his eyes from the moonshine.\n\n\"By Jove, you're right there, ma'am. There are men over yonder.\"\n\nThey could all see them now, a straggling line of riders far ahead of them in the desert.\n\n\"They are going in the same direction as we,\" cried Mrs. Belmont, whose eyes were very much better than the Colonel's.\n\nCochrane muttered an oath into his moustache.\n\n\"Look at the tracks there,\" said he; \"of course, it's our own vanguard who left the palm grove before us. The chief keeps us at this infernal pace in order to close up with them.\"\n\nAs they drew closer they could see plainly that it was indeed the other body of Arabs, and presently the Emir Wad Ibrahim came trotting back to take counsel with the Emir Abderrahman. They pointed in the direction in which the vedettes had appeared, and shook their heads like men who have many and grave misgivings. Then the raiders joined into one long, straggling line, and the whole body moved steadily on towards the Southern Cross, which was twinkling just over the skyline in front of them. Hour after hour the dreadful trot continued, while the fainting ladies clung on convulsively, and Cochrane, worn out but indomitable, encouraged them to hold out, and peered backwards over the desert for the first glad signs of their pursuers. The blood throbbed in his temples, and he cried that he heard the roll of drums coming out of the darkness. In his feverish delirium he saw clouds of pursuers at their very heels, and during the long night he was for ever crying glad tidings which ended in disappointment and heartache. The rise of the sun showed the desert stretching away around them with nothing moving upon its monstrous face except themselves. With dull eyes and heavy hearts they stared round at that huge and empty expanse. Their hopes thinned away like the light morning mist upon the horizon.\n\nIt was shocking to the ladies to look at their companion, and to think of the spruce, hale old soldier who had been their fellow-passenger from Cairo. As in the case of Miss Adams, old age seemed to have pounced upon him in one spring. His hair, which had grizzled hour by hour during his privations, was now of a silvery white. White stubble, too, had obscured the firm, clean line of his chin and throat. The veins of his face were injected, and his features were shot with heavy wrinkles. He rode with his back arched and his chin sunk upon his breast, for the old, time-rotted body was worn out, but in his bright, alert eyes there was always a trace of the gallant tenant who lived in the shattered house. Delirious, spent, and dying, he preserved his chivalrous, protecting air as he turned to the ladies, shot little scraps of advice and encouragement at them, and peered back continually for the help which never came.\n\nAn hour after sunrise the raiders called a halt, and food and water were served out to all. Then at a more moderate pace they pursued their southern journey, their long, straggling line trailing out over a quarter of a mile of desert. From their more careless bearing and the way in which they chatted as they rode, it was clear that they thought that they had shaken off their pursuers. Their direction now was east as well as south, and it was evidently their intention after this long detour to strike the Nile again at some point far above the Egyptian outposts. Already the character of the scenery was changing, and they were losing the long levels of the pebbly desert, and coming once more upon those fantastic, sunburned, black rocks, and that rich orange sand through which they had already passed. On every side of them rose the scaly, conical hills with their loose, slag-like debris, and jagged-edged khors, with sinuous streams of sand running like water-courses down their centre. The camels followed each other, twisting in and out among the boulders, and scrambling with their adhesive, spongy feet over places which would have been impossible for horses. Among the broken rocks those behind could sometimes only see the long, undulating, darting necks of the creatures in front, as if it were some nightmare procession of serpents. Indeed, it had much the effect of a dream upon the prisoners, for there was no sound, save the soft, dull padding and shuffling of the feet. The strange, wild frieze moved slowly and silently onwards amid a setting of black stone and yellow sand, with the one arch of vivid blue spanning the rugged edges of the ravine.\n\nMiss Adams, who had been frozen into silence during the long cold night, began to thaw now in the cheery warmth of the rising sun. She looked about her, and rubbed her thin hands together.\n\n\"Why, Sadie,\" she remarked, \"I thought I heard you in the night, dear, and now I see that you have been crying.\"\n\n\"I've been thinking, auntie.\"\n\n\"Well, we must try and think of others, dearie, and not of ourselves.\"\n\n\"It's not of myself, auntie.\"\n\n\"Never fret about me, Sadie.\"\n\n\"No, auntie, I was not thinking of you.\"\n\n\"Was it of any one in particular?\"\n\n\"Of Mr. Stephens, auntie. How gentle he was, and how brave! To think of him fixing up every little thing for us, and trying to pull his jacket over his poor roped-up hands, with those murderers waiting all round him. He's my saint and hero from now ever after.\"\n\n\"Well, he's out of his troubles anyhow,\" said Miss Adams, with that bluntness which the years bring with them.\n\n\"Then I wish I was also.\"\n\n\"I don't see how that would help him.\"\n\n\"Well, I think he might feel less lonesome,\" said Sadie, and drooped her saucy little chin upon her breast.\n\nThe four had been riding in silence for some little time, when the Colonel clapped his hand to his brow with a gesture of dismay.\n\n\"Good God!\" he cried, \"I am going off my head.\"\n\nAgain and again they had perceived it during the night, but he had seemed quite rational since daybreak. They were shocked therefore at this sudden outbreak, and tried to calm him with soothing words.\n\n\"Mad as a hatter,\" he shouted. \"Whatever do you think I saw?\"\n\n\"Don't trouble about it, whatever it was,\" said Mrs. Belmont, laying her hand soothingly upon his as the camels closed together. \"It is no wonder that you are overdone. You have thought and worked for all of us so long. We shall halt presently, and a few hours' sleep will quite restore you.\"\n\nBut the Colonel looked up again, and again he cried out in his agitation and surprise.\n\n\"I never saw anything plainer in my life,\" he groaned. \"It is on the point of rock on our right front\u2014poor old Stuart with my red cummerbund round his head just the same as we left him.\"\n\nThe ladies had followed the direction of the Colonel's frightened gaze, and in an instant they were all as amazed as he.\n\nThere was a black, bulging ridge like a bastion upon the right side of the terrible khor up which the camels were winding. At one point it rose into a small pinnacle. On this pinnacle stood a solitary, motionless figure, clad entirely in black, save for a brilliant dash of scarlet upon his head. There could not surely be two such short sturdy figures, or such large colourless faces, in the Libyan Desert. His shoulders were stooping forward, and he seemed to be staring intently down into the ravine. His pose and outline were like a caricature of the great Napoleon.\n\n\"Can it possibly be he?\"\n\n\"It must be. It is!\" cried the ladies. \"You see he is looking towards us and waving his hand.\"\n\n\"Good Heavens! They'll shoot him! Get down, you fool, or you'll be shot!\" roared the Colonel. But his dry throat would only emit a discordant croaking.\n\nSeveral of the Dervishes had seen the singular apparition upon the hill, and had unslung their Remingtons, but a long arm suddenly shot up behind the figure of the Birmingham clergyman, a brown hand seized upon his skirts, and he disappeared with a snap. Higher up the pass, just below the spot where Mr. Stuart had been standing, appeared the tall figure of the Emir Abderrahman. He had sprung upon a boulder, and was shouting and waving his arms, but the shouts were drowned in a long, rippling roar of musketry from each side of the khor. The bastion-like cliff was fringed with gun-barrels, with red tarbooshes drooping over the triggers. From the other lip also came the long spurts of flame and the angry clatter of the rifles. The raiders were caught in an ambuscade. The Emir fell, but was up again and waving. There was a splotch of blood upon his long white beard. He kept pointing and gesticulating, but his scattered followers could not understand what he wanted. Some of them came tearing down the pass, and some from behind were pushing to the front. A few dismounted and tried to climb up sword in hand to that deadly line of muzzles, but one by one they were hit, and came rolling from rock to rock to the bottom of the ravine. The shooting was not very good. One negro made his way unharmed up the whole side, only to have his brains dashed out with the butt-end of a Martini at the top. The Emir had fallen off his rock and lay in a crumpled heap, like a brown and white patchwork quilt, at the bottom of it. And then when half of them were down it became evident, even to those exalted fanatical souls, that there was no chance for them, and that they must get out of these fatal rocks and into the desert again. They galloped down the pass, and it is a frightful thing to see a camel galloping over broken ground. The beast's own terror, his ungainly bounds, the sprawl of his four legs all in the air together, his hideous cries, and the yells of his rider who is bucked high from his saddle with every spring, make a picture which is not to be forgotten. The women screamed as this mad torrent of frenzied creatures came pouring past them, but the Colonel edged his camel and theirs farther and farther in among the rocks and away from the retreating Arabs. The air was full of whistling bullets, and they could hear them smacking loudly against the stones all round them.\n\n\"Keep quiet, and they'll pass us,\" whispered the Colonel, who was all himself again now that the hour for action had arrived. \"I wish to Heaven I could see Tippy Tilly or any of his friends. Now is the time for them to help us.\" He watched the mad stream of fugitives as they flew past upon their shambling, squattering, loose-jointed beasts, but the black face of the Egyptian gunner was not among them.\n\nAnd now it really did seem as if the whole body of them, in their haste to get clear of the ravine, had not a thought to spend upon the prisoners. The rush was past, and only stragglers were running the gauntlet of the fierce fire which poured upon them from above. The last of all, a young Baggara with a black moustache and pointed beard, looked up as he passed and shook his sword in impotent passion at the Egyptian riflemen. At the same instant a bullet struck his camel, and the creature collapsed, all neck and legs, upon the ground. The young Arab sprang off its back, and, seizing its nose-ring, he beat it savagely with the flat of his sword to make it stand up. But the dim, glazing eye told its own tale, and in desert warfare the death of the beast is the death of the rider. The Baggara glared round like a lion at bay, his dark eyes flashing murderously from under his red turban. A crimson spot, and then another, sprang out upon his dark skin, but he never winced at the bullet wounds. His fierce gaze had fallen upon the prisoners, and with an exultant shout he was dashing towards them, his broad-bladed sword gleaming above his head. Miss Adams was the nearest to him, but at the sight of the rushing figure and the maniac face she threw herself off the camel upon the far side. The Arab bounded on to a rock and aimed a thrust at Mrs. Belmont, but before the point could reach her the Colonel leaned forward with his pistol and blew the man's head in. Yet with a concentrated rage, which was superior even to the agony of death, the fellow lay kicking and striking, bounding about among the loose stones like a fish upon the shingle.\n\n\"Don't be frightened, ladies,\" cried the Colonel. \"He is quite dead, I assure you. I am so sorry to have done this in your presence, but the fellow was dangerous. I had a little score of my own to settle with him, for he was the man who tried to break my ribs with his Remington. I hope you are not hurt, Miss Adams! One instant, and I will come down to you.\"\n\nBut the old Boston lady was by no means hurt, for the rocks had been so high that she had a very short distance to fall from her saddle. Sadie, Mrs. Belmont, and Colonel Cochrane had all descended by slipping on to the boulders and climbing down from them. But they found Miss Adams on her feet, and waving the remains of her green veil in triumph.\n\n\"Hurrah, Sadie! Hurrah, my own darling Sadie!\" she was shrieking.\n\n\"We are saved, my girl, we are saved after all.\"\n\n\"By George, so we are!\" cried the Colonel, and they all shouted in an ecstasy together.\n\nBut Sadie had learned to think more about others during those terrible days of schooling. Her arms were round Mrs. Belmont, and her cheek against hers.\n\n\"You dear, sweet angel,\" she cried, \"how can we have the heart to be glad when you\u2014when you\u2014\"\n\n\"But I don't believe it is so,\" cried the brave Irishwoman. \"No, I'll never believe it until I see John's body lying before me. And when I see that, I don't want to live to see anything more.\"\n\nThe last Dervish had clattered down the khor, and now above them on either cliff they could see the Egyptians\u2014tall, thin, square shouldered figures, looking, when outlined against the blue sky, wonderfully like the warriors in the ancient bas-reliefs. Their camels were in the background, and they were hurrying to join them. At the same time others began to ride down from the farther end of the ravine, their dark faces flushed and their eyes shining with the excitement of victory and pursuit. A very small Englishman, with a straw-coloured moustache and a weary manner, was riding at the head of them. He halted his camel beside the fugitives and saluted the ladies. He wore brown boots and brown belts with steel buckles, which looked trim and workmanlike against his khaki uniform.\n\n\"Had 'em that time\u2014had 'em proper!\" said he. \"Very glad to have been of any assistance, I'm sure. Hope you're none the worse for it all. What I mean, it's rather rough work for ladies.\"\n\n\"You're from Halfa, I suppose?\" asked the Colonel.\n\n\"No, we're from the other show. We're the Sarras crowd, you know. We met in the desert, and we headed 'em off, and the other Johnnies herded 'em behind. We've got 'em on toast, I tell you. Get up on that rock and you'll see things happen. It's going to be a knockout in one round this time.\"\n\n\"We left some of our people at the Wells. We are very uneasy about them,\" said the Colonel. \"I suppose you haven't heard anything of them?\"\n\nThe young officer looked serious and shook his head. \"Bad job that!\" said he. \"They're a poisonous crowd when you put 'em in a corner. What I mean, we never expected to see you alive, and we're very glad to pull any of you out of the fire. The most we hoped was that we might revenge you.\"\n\n\"Any other Englishman with you?\"\n\n\"Archer is with the flanking party. He'll have to come past, for I don't think there is any other way down. We've got one of your chaps up there\u2014a funny old bird with a red top-knot. See you later, I hope! Good day, ladies!\" He touched his helmet, tapped his camel, and trotted on after his men.\n\n\"We can't do better than stay where we are until they are all past,\" said the Colonel, for it was evident now that the men from above would have to come round. In a broken single file they went past, black men and brown, Soudanese and fellaheen, but all of the best, for the Camel Corps is the corps d'elite of the Egyptian army. Each had a brown bandolier over his chest and his rifle held across his thigh. A large man with a drooping black moustache and a pair of binoculars in his hand was riding at the side of them. \"Hulloa, Archer!\" croaked the Colonel. The officer looked at him with the vacant, unresponsive eye of a complete stranger.\n\n\"I'm Cochrane, you know! We travelled up together.\"\n\n\"Excuse me, sir, but you have the advantage of me,\" said the officer. \"I knew a Colonel Cochrane Cochrane, but you are not the man. He was three inches taller than you, with black hair and\u2014\"\n\n\"That's all right,\" cried the Colonel testily. \"You try a few days with the Dervishes, and see if your friends will recognise you!\"\n\n\"Good God, Cochrane, is it really you? I could not have believed it. Great Scott, what you must have been through! I've heard before of fellows going grey in a night, but, by Jove\u2014\"\n\n\"Quite so,\" said the Colonel, flushing.\n\n\"Allow me to hint to you, Archer, that if you could get some food and drink for these ladies, instead of discussing my personal appearance, it would be much more practical.\"\n\n\"That's all right,\" said Captain Archer. \"Your friend Stuart knows that you are here, and he is bringing some stuff round for you. Poor fare, ladies, but the best we have! You're an old soldier, Cochrane. Get up on the rocks presently, and you'll see a lovely sight. No time to stop, for we shall be in action again in five minutes. Anything I can do before I go?\"\n\n\"You haven't got such a thing as a cigar?\" asked the Colonel wistfully.\n\nArcher drew a thick satisfying partaga from his case, and handed it down, with half-a-dozen wax vestas. Then he cantered after his men, and the old soldier leaned back against the rock and drew in the fragrant smoke. It was then that his jangled nerves knew the full virtue of tobacco, the gentle anodyne which stays the failing strength and soothes the worrying brain. He watched the dim blue reek swirling up from him, and he felt the pleasant aromatic bite upon his palate, while a restful languor crept over his weary and harassed body. The three ladies sat together upon a flat rock.\n\n\"Good land, what a sight you are, Sadie!\" cried Miss Adams suddenly, and it was the first reappearance of her old self. \"What would your mother say if she saw you? Why, sakes alive, your hair is full of straw and your frock clean crazy!\"\n\n\"I guess we all want some setting to rights,\" said Sadie, in a voice which was much more subdued than that of the Sadie of old. \"Mrs. Belmont, you look just too perfectly sweet anyhow, but if you'll allow me I'll fix your dress for you.\"\n\nBut Mrs. Belmont's eyes were far away, and she shook her head sadly as she gently put the girl's hands aside.\n\n\"I do not care how I look. I cannot think of it,\" said she; \"could you, if you had left the man you love behind you, as I have mine?\"\n\n\"I'm begin\u2014beginning to think I have,\" sobbed poor Sadie, and buried her hot face in Mrs. Belmont's motherly bosom." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 10", + "text": "The Camel Corps had all passed onwards down the khor in pursuit of the retreating Dervishes, and for a few minutes the escaped prisoners had been left alone. But now there came a cheery voice calling upon them, and a red turban bobbed about among the rocks, with the large white face of the Nonconformist minister smiling from beneath it. He had a thick lance with which to support his injured leg, and this murderous crutch combined with his peaceful appearance to give him a most incongruous aspect\u2014as of a sheep which has suddenly developed claws. Behind him were two negroes with a basket and a waterskin.\n\n\"Not a word! Not a word!\" he cried, as he stumped up to them. \"I know exactly how you feel. I've been there myself. Bring the water, Ali! Only half a cup, Miss Adams; you shall have some more presently. Now your turn, Mrs. Belmont! Dear me, dear me, you poor souls, how my heart does bleed for you! There's bread and meat in the basket, but you must be very moderate at first.\" He chuckled with joy, and slapped his fat hands together as he watched them.\n\n\"But the others?\" he asked, his face turning grave again.\n\nThe Colonel shook his head. \"We left them behind at the wells. I fear that it is all over with them.\"\n\n\"Tut, tut!\" cried the clergyman, in a boisterous voice, which could not cover the despondency of his expression; \"you thought, no doubt, that it was all over with me, but here I am in spite of it. Never lose heart, Mrs. Belmont. Your husband's position could not possibly be as hopeless as mine was.\"\n\n\"When I saw you standing on that rock up yonder, I put it down to delirium,\" said the Colonel. \"If the ladies had not seen you, I should never have ventured to believe it.\"\n\n\"I am afraid that I behaved very badly. Captain Archer says that I nearly spoiled all their plans, and that I deserved to be tried by a drumhead court-martial and shot. The fact is that, when I heard the Arabs beneath me, I forgot myself in my anxiety to know if any of you were left.\"\n\n\"I wonder that you were not shot without any drumhead court-martial,\" said the Colonel. \"But how in the world did you get here?\"\n\n\"The Halfa people were close upon our track at the time when I was abandoned, and they picked me up in the desert. I must have been delirious, I suppose, for they tell me that they heard my voice, singing hymns, a long way off, and it was that, under the providence of God, which brought them to me. They had a camel ambulance, and I was quite myself again by next day. I came with the Sarras people after we met them, because they have the doctor with them. My wound is nothing, and he says that a man of my habit will be the better for the loss of blood. And now, my friends\"\u2014his big, brown eyes lost their twinkle, and became very solemn and reverent\u2014\"we have all been upon the very confines of death, and our dear companions may be so at this instant. The same Power which saved us may save them, and let us pray together that it may be so, always remembering that if, in spite of our prayers, it should not be so, then that also must be accepted as the best and wisest thing.\"\n\nSo they knelt together among the black rocks, and prayed as some of them had never prayed before. It was very well to discuss prayer and treat it lightly and philosophically upon the deck of the Korosko. It was easy to feel strong and self-confident in the comfortable deck-chair, with the slippered Arab handing round the coffee and liqueurs. But they had been swept out of that placid stream of existence, and dashed against the horrible, jagged facts of life. Battered and shaken, they must have something to cling to. A blind, inexorable destiny was too horrible a belief. A chastening power, acting intelligently and for a purpose\u2014a living, working power, tearing them out of their grooves, breaking down their small sectarian ways, forcing them into the better path\u2014that was what they had learned to realise during these days of horror. Great hands had closed suddenly upon them, and had moulded them into new shapes, and fitted them for new uses. Could such a power be deflected by any human supplication? It was that or nothing\u2014the last court of appeal, left open to injured humanity. And so they all prayed, as a lover loves, or a poet writes, from the very inside of their souls, and they rose with that singular, illogical feeling of inward peace and satisfaction which prayer only can give.\n\n\"Hush!\" said Cochrane. \"Listen!\"\n\nThe sound of a volley came crackling up the narrow khor, and then another and another. The Colonel was fidgeting about like an old horse which hears the bugle of the hunt and the yapping of the pack.\n\n\"Where can we see what is going on?\"\n\n\"Come this way! This way, if you please! There is a path up to the top. If the ladies will come after me, they will be spared the sight of anything painful.\"\n\nThe clergyman led them along the side to avoid the bodies which were littered thickly down the bottom of the khor. It was hard walking over the shingly, slaggy stones, but they made their way to the summit at last. Beneath them lay the vast expanse of the rolling desert, and in the foreground such a scene as none of them are ever likely to forget. In that perfectly dry and clear light, with the unvarying brown tint of the hard desert as a background, every detail stood out as clearly as if these were toy figures arranged upon a table within hand's-touch of them.\n\nThe Dervishes\u2014or what was left of them\u2014were riding slowly some little distance out in a confused crowd, their patchwork jibbehs and red turbans swaying with the motion of their camels. They did not present the appearance of men who were defeated, for their movements were very deliberate, but they looked about them and changed their formation as if they were uncertain what their tactics ought to be. It was no wonder that they were puzzled, for upon their spent camels their situation was as hopeless as could be conceived. The Sarras men had all emerged from the khor, and had dismounted, the beasts being held in groups of four, while the riflemen knelt in a long line with a woolly, curling fringe of smoke, sending volley after volley at the Arabs, who shot back in a desultory fashion from the backs of their camels. But it was not upon the sullen group of Dervishes, nor yet upon the long line of kneeling riflemen, that the eyes of the spectators were fixed. Far out upon the desert, three squadrons of the Halfa Camel Corps were coming up in a dense close column, which wheeled beautifully into a widespread semicircle as it approached. The Arabs were caught between two fires.\n\n\"By Jove!\" cried the Colonel. \"See that!\"\n\nThe camels of the Dervishes had all knelt down simultaneously, and the men had sprung from their backs. In front of them was a tall, stately figure, who could only be the Emir Wad Ibrahim. They saw him kneel for an instant in prayer. Then he rose, and taking something from his saddle he placed it very deliberately upon the sand and stood upon it.\n\n\"Good man!\" cried the Colonel. \"He is standing upon his sheepskin.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by that?\" asked Stuart.\n\n\"Every Arab has a sheepskin upon his saddle. When he recognises that his position is perfectly hopeless, and yet is determined to fight to the death, he takes his sheepskin off and stands upon it until he dies. See, they are all upon their sheepskins. They will neither give nor take quarter now.\"\n\nThe drama beneath them was rapidly approaching its climax. The Halfa Corps was well up, and a ring of smoke and flame surrounded the clump of kneeling Dervishes, who answered it as best they could. Many of them were already down, but the rest loaded and fired with the unflinching courage which has always made them worthy antagonists. A dozen khaki-dressed figures upon the sand showed that it was no bloodless victory for the Egyptians. But now there was a stirring bugle call from the Sarras men, and another answered it from the Halfa Corps. Their camels were down also, and the men had formed up into a single, long, curved line. One last volley, and they were charging inwards with the wild inspiriting yell which the blacks had brought with them from their central African wilds. For a minute there was a mad vortex of rushing figures, rifle butts rising and falling, spear-heads gleaming and darting among the rolling dust cloud. Then the bugle rang out once more, the Egyptians fell back and formed up with the quick precision of highly disciplined troops, and there in the centre, each upon his sheepskin, lay the gallant barbarian and his raiders. The nineteenth century had been revenged upon the seventh.\n\nThe three women had stared horror-stricken and yet fascinated at the stirring scene before them. Now Sadie and her aunt were sobbing together. The Colonel had turned to them with some cheering words when his eyes fell upon the face of Mrs. Belmont. It was as white and set as if it were carved from ivory, and her large grey eyes were fixed as if she were in a trance.\n\n\"Good Heavens, Mrs. Belmont, what is the matter?\" he cried.\n\nFor answer she pointed out over the desert. Far away, miles on the other side of the scene of the fight, a small body of men were riding towards them.\n\n\"By Jove, yes; there's some one there. Who can it be?\"\n\nThey were all straining their eyes, but the distance was so great that they could only be sure that they were camel-men and about a dozen in number.\n\n\"It's those devils who were left behind in the palm grove,\" said Cochrane. \"There's no one else it can be. One consolation, they can't get away again. They've walked right into the lion's mouth.\"\n\nBut Mrs. Belmont was still gazing with the same fixed intensity, and the same ivory face. Now, with a wild shriek of joy, she threw her two hands into the air. \"It's they!\" she screamed. \"They are saved! It's they, Colonel, it's they! Oh, Miss Adams, Miss Adams, it is they!\" She capered about on the top of the hill with wild eyes like an excited child.\n\nHer companions would not believe her, for they could see nothing, but there are moments when our mortal senses are more acute than those who have never put their whole heart and soul into them can ever realise. Mrs. Belmont had already run down the rocky path, on the way to her camel, before they could distinguish that which had long before carried its glad message to her. In the van of the approaching party, three white dots shimmered in the sun, and they could only come from the three European hats. The riders were travelling swiftly, and by the time their comrades had started to meet them they could plainly see that it was indeed Belmont, Fardet, and Stephens, with the dragoman Mansoor, and the wounded Soudanese rifleman. As they came together they saw that their escort consisted of Tippy Tilly and the other old Egyptian soldiers. Belmont rushed onwards to meet his wife, but Fardet stopped to grasp the Colonel's hand.\n\n\"Vive la France! Vivent les Anglais!\" he was yelling. \"Tout va bien, n'est ce pas, Colonel? Ah, canaille! Vivent la croix et les Chretiens!\" He was incoherent in his delight.\n\nThe Colonel, too, was as enthusiastic as his Anglo-Saxon standard would permit. He could not gesticulate, but he laughed in the nervous crackling way which was his top-note of emotion.\n\n\"My dear boy, I am deuced glad to see you all again. I gave you up for lost. Never was as pleased at anything in my life! How did you get away?\"\n\n\"It was all your doing.\"\n\n\"Mine?\"\n\n\"Yes, my friend, and I have been quarrelling with you\u2014ungrateful wretch that I am!\"\n\n\"But how did I save you?\"\n\n\"It was you who arranged with this excellent Tippy Tilly and the others that they should have so much if they brought us alive into Egypt again. They slipped away in the darkness and hid themselves in the grove. Then, when we were left, they crept up with their rifles and shot the men who were about to murder us. That cursed Moolah, I am sorry they shot him, for I believe that I could have persuaded him to be a Christian. And now, with your permission, I will hurry on and embrace Miss Adams, for Belmont has his wife, and Stephens has Miss Sadie, so I think it is very evident that the sympathy of Miss Adams is reserved for me.\"\n\nA fortnight had passed away, and the special boat which had been placed at the disposal of the rescued tourists was already far north of Assiout. Next morning they would find themselves at Baliani, where one takes the express for Cairo. It was, therefore, their last evening together. Mrs. Shlesinger and her child, who had escaped unhurt, had already been sent down from the frontier. Miss Adams had been very ill after her privations, and this was the first time that she had been allowed to come upon deck after dinner. She sat now in a lounge chair, thinner, sterner, and kindlier than ever, while Sadie stood beside her and tucked the rugs around her shoulders. Mr. Stephens was carrying over the coffee and placing it on the wicker table beside them. On the other side of the deck Belmont and his wife were seated together in silent sympathy and contentment.\n\nMonsieur Fardet was leaning against the rail, and arguing about the remissness of the British Government in not taking a more complete control of the Egyptian frontier, while the Colonel stood very erect in front of him, with the red end of a cigar-stump protruding from under his moustache.\n\nBut what was the matter with the Colonel? Who would have recognised him who had only seen the broken old man in the Libyan Desert? There might be some little grizzling about the moustache, but the hair was back once more at the fine glossy black which had been so much admired upon the voyage up. With a stony face and an unsympathetic manner he had received, upon his return to Halfa, all the commiserations about the dreadful way in which his privations had blanched him, and then diving into his cabin, he had reappeared within an hour exactly as he had been before that fatal moment when he had been cut off from the manifold resources of civilisation. And he looked in such a sternly questioning manner at every one who stared at him, that no one had the moral courage to make any remark about this modern miracle. It was observed from that time forward that, if the Colonel had only to ride a hundred yards into the desert, he always began his preparations by putting a small black bottle with a pink label into the side-pocket of his coat. But those who knew him best at times when a man may best be known, said that the old soldier had a young man's heart and a young man's spirit\u2014 so that if he wished to keep a young man's colour also it was not very unreasonable after all.\n\nIt was very soothing and restful up there on the saloon deck, with no sound but the gentle lipping of the water as it rippled against the sides of the steamer. The red after-glow was in the western sky, and it mottled the broad, smooth river with crimson. Dimly they could discern the tall figures of herons standing upon the sand-banks, and farther off the line of riverside date-palms glided past them in a majestic procession. Once more the silver stars were twinkling out, the same clear, placid, inexorable stars to which their weary eyes had been so often upturned during the long nights of their desert martyrdom.\n\n\"Where do you put up in Cairo, Miss Adams?\" asked Mrs. Belmont at last.\n\n\"Shepheard's, I think.\"\n\n\"And you, Mr. Stephens?\"\n\n\"Oh, Shepheard's, decidedly.\"\n\n\"We are staying at the Continental. I hope we shall not lose sight of you.\"\n\n\"I don't want ever to lose sight of you, Mrs. Belmont,\" cried Sadie. \"Oh, you must come to the States, and we'll give you just a lovely time.\"\n\nMrs. Belmont laughed, in her pleasant, mellow fashion.\n\n\"We have our duty to do in Ireland, and we have been too long away from it already. My husband has his business, and I have my home, and they are both going to rack and ruin. Besides,\" she added slyly, \"it is just possible that if we did come to the States we might not find you there.\"\n\n\"We must all meet again,\" said Belmont, \"if only to talk our adventures over once more. It will be easier in a year or two. We are still too near them.\"\n\n\"And yet how far away and dream-like it all seems!\" remarked his wife. \"Providence is very good in softening disagreeable remembrances in our minds. All this feels to me as if it had happened in some previous existence.\"\n\nFardet held up his wrist with a cotton bandage still round it.\n\n\"The body does not forget as quickly as the mind. This does not look very dream-like or far away, Mrs. Belmont.\"\n\n\"How hard it is that some should be spared, and some not! If only Mr. Brown and Mr. Headingly were with us, then I should not have one care in the world,\" cried Sadie. \"Why should they have been taken, and we left?\"\n\nMr. Stuart had limped on to the deck with an open book in his hand, a thick stick supporting his injured leg.\n\n\"Why is the ripe fruit picked, and the unripe left?\" said he in answer to the young girl's exclamation. \"We know nothing of the spiritual state of these poor dear young fellows, but the great Master Gardener plucks His fruit according to His own knowledge. I brought you up a passage to read to you.\"\n\nThere was a lantern upon the table, and he sat down beside it. The yellow light shone upon his heavy cheek and the red edges of his book. The strong, steady voice rose above the wash of the water.\n\n\"'Let them give thanks whom the Lord hath redeemed and delivered from the hand of the enemy, and gathered them out of the lands, from the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south. They went astray in the wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. So they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress. He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to the city where they dwelt. Oh that men would therefore praise the Lord for His goodness, and declare the wonders that He doeth for the children of men.'\n\n\"It sounds as if it were composed for us, and yet it was written two thousand years ago,\" said the clergyman, as he closed the book. \"In every age man has been forced to acknowledge the guiding hand which leads him. For my part I don't believe that inspiration stopped two thousand years ago. When Tennyson wrote with such fervour and conviction\":\u2014\n\n'Oh, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill,'\n\n\"He was repeating the message which had been given to him, just as Micah or Ezekiel, when the world was younger, repeated some cruder and more elementary message.\"\n\n\"That is all very well, Mr. Stuart,\" said the Frenchman; \"you ask me to praise God for taking me out of danger and pain, but what I want to know is why, since He has arranged all things, He ever put me into that pain and danger. I have, in my opinion, more occasion to blame than to praise. You would not thank me for pulling you out of that river if it was also I who pushed you in. The most which you can claim for your Providence is that it has healed the wound which its own hand inflicted.\"\n\n\"I don't deny the difficulty,\" said the clergyman slowly; \"no one who is not self-deceived can deny the difficulty. Look how boldly Tennyson faced it in that same poem, the grandest and deepest and most obviously inspired in our language. Remember the effect which it had upon him.\"\n\n\u2003'I falter where I firmly trod,\n\n\u2003And falling with my weight of cares\n\n\u2003Upon the great world's altar stairs\n\n\u2003Which slope through darkness up to God;\n\n\u2003I stretch lame hands of faith and grope\n\n\u2003And gather dust and chaff, and call\n\n\u2003To what I feel is Lord of all,\n\n\u2003And faintly trust the larger hope.'\n\n\"It is the central mystery of mysteries\u2014the problem of sin and suffering, the one huge difficulty which the reasoner has to solve in order to vindicate the dealings of God with man. But take our own case as an example. I, for one, am very clear what I have got out of our experience. I say it with all humility, but I have a clearer view of my duties than ever I had before. It has taught me to be less remiss in saying what I think to be true, less indolent in doing what I feel to be right.\"\n\n\"And I,\" cried Sadie. \"It has taught me more than all my life put together. I have learned so much and unlearned so much. I am a different girl.\"\n\n\"I never understood my own nature before,\" said Stephens. \"I can hardly say that I had a nature to understand. I lived for what was unimportant, and I neglected what was vital.\"\n\n\"Oh, a good shake-up does nobody any harm,\" the Colonel remarked. \"Too much of the feather-bed-and-four-meals-a-day life is not good for man or woman.\"\n\n\"It is my firm belief,\" said Mrs. Belmont gravely, \"that there was not one of us who did not rise to a greater height during those days in the desert than ever before or since. When our sins come to be weighed, much may be forgiven us for the sake of those unselfish days.\"\n\nThey all sat in thoughtful silence for a little, while the scarlet streaks turned to carmine, and the grey shadows deepened, and the wild-fowl flew past in dark straggling V's over the dull metallic surface of the great smooth-flowing Nile. A cold wind had sprung up from the eastward, and some of the party rose to leave the deck. Stephens leaned forward to Sadie.\n\n\"Do you remember what you promised when you were in the desert?\" he whispered.\n\n\"What was that?\"\n\n\"You said that if you escaped you would try in future to make some one else happy.\"\n\n\"Then I must do so.\"\n\n\"You have,\" said he, and their hands met under the shadow of the table." + } + ] + }, + { + "title": "The White Company", + "author": "Arthur Conan Doyle", + "genres": [ + "historical fiction", + "medieval" + ], + "tags": [], + "chapters": [ + { + "title": "HOW THE BLACK SHEEP CAME FORTH FROM THE FOLD.", + "text": "The great bell of Beaulieu was ringing. Far away through the forest might be heard its musical clangor and swell. Peat-cutters on Blackdown and fishers upon the Exe heard the distant throbbing rising and falling upon the sultry summer air. It was a common sound in those parts\u2014as common as the chatter of the jays and the booming of the bittern. Yet the fishers and the peasants raised their heads and looked questions at each other, for the angelus had already gone and vespers was still far off. Why should the great bell of Beaulieu toll when the shadows were neither short nor long?\n\nAll round the Abbey the monks were trooping in. Under the long green-paved avenues of gnarled oaks and of lichened beeches the white-robed brothers gathered to the sound. From the vineyard and the vine-press, from the bouvary or ox-farm, from the marl-pits and salterns, even from the distant iron-works of Sowley and the outlying grange of St. Leonard's, they had all turned their steps homewards. It had been no sudden call. A swift messenger had the night before sped round to the outlying dependencies of the Abbey, and had left the summons for every monk to be back in the cloisters by the third hour after noontide. So urgent a message had not been issued within the memory of old lay-brother Athanasius, who had cleaned the Abbey knocker since the year after the Battle of Bannockburn.\n\nA stranger who knew nothing either of the Abbey or of its immense resources might have gathered from the appearance of the brothers some conception of the varied duties which they were called upon to perform, and of the busy, widespread life which centred in the old monastery. As they swept gravely in by twos and by threes, with bended heads and muttering lips there were few who did not bear upon them some signs of their daily toil. Here were two with wrists and sleeves all spotted with the ruddy grape juice. There again was a bearded brother with a broad-headed axe and a bundle of faggots upon his shoulders, while beside him walked another with the shears under his arm and the white wool still clinging to his whiter gown. A long, straggling troop bore spades and mattocks while the two rearmost of all staggered along under a huge basket o' fresh-caught carp, for the morrow was Friday, and there were fifty platters to be filled and as many sturdy trenchermen behind them. Of all the throng there was scarce one who was not labor-stained and weary, for Abbot Berghersh was a hard man to himself and to others.\n\nMeanwhile, in the broad and lofty chamber set apart for occasions of import, the Abbot himself was pacing impatiently backwards and forwards, with his long white nervous hands clasped in front of him. His thin, thought-worn features and sunken, haggard cheeks bespoke one who had indeed beaten down that inner foe whom every man must face, but had none the less suffered sorely in the contest. In crushing his passions he had well-nigh crushed himself. Yet, frail as was his person there gleamed out ever and anon from under his drooping brows a flash of fierce energy, which recalled to men's minds that he came of a fighting stock, and that even now his twin-brother, Sir Bartholomew Berghersh, was one of the most famous of those stern warriors who had planted the Cross of St. George before the gates of Paris. With lips compressed and clouded brow, he strode up and down the oaken floor, the very genius and impersonation of asceticism, while the great bell still thundered and clanged above his head. At last the uproar died away in three last, measured throbs, and ere their echo had ceased the Abbot struck a small gong which summoned a lay-brother to his presence.\n\n\"Have the brethren come?\" he asked, in the Anglo-French dialect used in religious houses.\n\n\"They are here,\" the other answered, with his eyes cast down and his hands crossed upon his chest.\n\n\"All?\"\n\n\"Two and thirty of the seniors and fifteen of the novices, most holy father. Brother Mark of the Spicarium is sore smitten with a fever and could not come. He said that\u2014\"\n\n\"It boots not what he said. Fever or no, he should have come at my call. His spirit must be chastened, as must that of many more in this Abbey. You yourself, brother Francis, have twice raised your voice, so it hath come to my ears, when the reader in the refectory hath been dealing with the lives of God's most blessed saints. What hast thou to say?\"\n\nThe lay-brother stood meek and silent, with his arms still crossed in front of him.\n\n\"One thousand Aves and as many Credos, said standing with arms outstretched before the shrine of the Virgin, may help thee to remember that the Creator hath given us two ears and but one mouth, as a token that there is twice the work for the one as for the other. Where is the master of the novices?\"\n\n\"He is without, most holy father.\"\n\n\"Send him hither.\"\n\nThe sandalled feet clattered over the wooden floor, and the iron-bound door creaked upon its hinges. In a few moments it opened again to admit a short square monk with a heavy, composed face and an authoritative manner.\n\n\"You have sent for me, holy father?\"\n\n\"Yes, brother Jerome, I wish that this matter be disposed of with as little scandal as may be, and yet it is needful that the example should be a public one.\" The Abbot spoke in Latin now, as a language which was more fitted by its age and solemnity to convey the thoughts of two high dignitaries of the order.\n\n\"It would, perchance, be best that the novices be not admitted,\" suggested the master. \"This mention of a woman may turn their minds from their pious meditations to worldly and evil thoughts.\"\n\n\"Woman! woman!\" groaned the Abbot. \"Well has the holy Chrysostom termed them radix malorum. From Eve downwards, what good hath come from any of them? Who brings the plaint?\"\n\n\"It is brother Ambrose.\"\n\n\"A holy and devout young man.\"\n\n\"A light and a pattern to every novice.\"\n\n\"Let the matter be brought to an issue then according to our old-time monastic habit. Bid the chancellor and the sub-chancellor lead in the brothers according to age, together with brother John, the accused, and brother Ambrose, the accuser.\"\n\n\"And the novices?\"\n\n\"Let them bide in the north alley of the cloisters. Stay! Bid the sub-chancellor send out to them Thomas the lector to read unto them from the 'Gesta beati Benedicti.' It may save them from foolish and pernicious babbling.\"\n\nThe Abbot was left to himself once more, and bent his thin gray face over his illuminated breviary. So he remained while the senior monks filed slowly and sedately into the chamber seating themselves upon the long oaken benches which lined the wall on either side. At the further end, in two high chairs as large as that of the Abbot, though hardly as elaborately carved, sat the master of the novices and the chancellor, the latter a broad and portly priest, with dark mirthful eyes and a thick outgrowth of crisp black hair all round his tonsured head. Between them stood a lean, white-faced brother who appeared to be ill at ease, shifting his feet from side to side and tapping his chin nervously with the long parchment roll which he held in his hand. The Abbot, from his point of vantage, looked down on the two long lines of faces, placid and sun-browned for the most part, with the large bovine eyes and unlined features which told of their easy, unchanging existence. Then he turned his eager fiery gaze upon the pale-faced monk who faced him.\n\n\"This plaint is thine, as I learn, brother Ambrose,\" said he. \"May the holy Benedict, patron of our house, be present this day and aid us in our findings! How many counts are there?\"\n\n\"Three, most holy father,\" the brother answered in a low and quavering voice.\n\n\"Have you set them forth according to rule?\"\n\n\"They are here set down, most holy father, upon a cantle of sheepskin.\"\n\n\"Let the sheepskin be handed to the chancellor. Bring in brother John, and let him hear the plaints which have been urged against him.\"\n\nAt this order a lay-brother swung open the door, and two other lay-brothers entered leading between them a young novice of the order. He was a man of huge stature, dark-eyed and red-headed, with a peculiar half-humorous, half-defiant expression upon his bold, well-marked features. His cowl was thrown back upon his shoulders, and his gown, unfastened at the top, disclosed a round, sinewy neck, ruddy and corded like the bark of the fir. Thick, muscular arms, covered with a reddish down, protruded from the wide sleeves of his habit, while his white shirt, looped up upon one side, gave a glimpse of a huge knotty leg, scarred and torn with the scratches of brambles. With a bow to the Abbot, which had in it perhaps more pleasantry than reverence, the novice strode across to the carved prie-dieu which had been set apart for him, and stood silent and erect with his hand upon the gold bell which was used in the private orisons of the Abbot's own household. His dark eyes glanced rapidly over the assembly, and finally settled with a grim and menacing twinkle upon the face of his accuser.\n\nThe chancellor rose, and having slowly unrolled the parchment-scroll, proceeded to read it out in a thick and pompous voice, while a subdued rustle and movement among the brothers bespoke the interest with which they followed the proceedings.\n\n\"Charges brought upon the second Thursday after the Feast of the Assumption, in the year of our Lord thirteen hundred and sixty-six, against brother John, formerly known as Hordle John, or John of Hordle, but now a novice in the holy monastic order of the Cistercians. Read upon the same day at the Abbey of Beaulieu in the presence of the most reverend Abbot Berghersh and of the assembled order.\n\n\"The charges against the said brother John are the following, namely, to wit:\n\n\"First, that on the above-mentioned Feast of the Assumption, small beer having been served to the novices in the proportion of one quart to each four, the said brother John did drain the pot at one draught to the detriment of brother Paul, brother Porphyry and brother Ambrose, who could scarce eat their none-meat of salted stock-fish on account of their exceeding dryness.\"\n\nAt this solemn indictment the novice raised his hand and twitched his lip, while even the placid senior brothers glanced across at each other and coughed to cover their amusement. The Abbot alone sat gray and immutable, with a drawn face and a brooding eye.\n\n\"Item, that having been told by the master of the novices that he should restrict his food for two days to a single three-pound loaf of bran and beans, for the greater honoring and glorifying of St. Monica, mother of the holy Augustine, he was heard by brother Ambrose and others to say that he wished twenty thousand devils would fly away with the said Monica, mother of the holy Augustine, or any other saint who came between a man and his meat. Item, that upon brother Ambrose reproving him for this blasphemous wish, he did hold the said brother face downwards over the piscatorium or fish-pond for a space during which the said brother was able to repeat a pater and four aves for the better fortifying of his soul against impending death.\"\n\nThere was a buzz and murmur among the white-frocked brethren at this grave charge; but the Abbot held up his long quivering hand. \"What then?\" said he.\n\n\"Item, that between nones and vespers on the feast of James the Less the said brother John was observed upon the Brockenhurst road, near the spot which is known as Hatchett's Pond in converse with a person of the other sex, being a maiden of the name of Mary Sowley, the daughter of the King's verderer. Item, that after sundry japes and jokes the said brother John did lift up the said Mary Sowley and did take, carry, and convey her across a stream, to the infinite relish of the devil and the exceeding detriment of his own soul, which scandalous and wilful falling away was witnessed by three members of our order.\"\n\nA dead silence throughout the room, with a rolling of heads and upturning of eyes, bespoke the pious horror of the community.\n\nThe Abbot drew his gray brows low over his fiercely questioning eyes.\n\n\"Who can vouch for this thing?\" he asked.\n\n\"That can I,\" answered the accuser. \"So too can brother Porphyry, who was with me, and brother Mark of the Spicarium, who hath been so much stirred and inwardly troubled by the sight that he now lies in a fever through it.\"\n\n\"And the woman?\" asked the Abbot. \"Did she not break into lamentation and woe that a brother should so demean himself?\"\n\n\"Nay, she smiled sweetly upon him and thanked him. I can vouch it and so can brother Porphyry.\"\n\n\"Canst thou?\" cried the Abbot, in a high, tempestuous tone. \"Canst thou so? Hast forgotten that the five-and-thirtieth rule of the order is that in the presence of a woman the face should be ever averted and the eyes cast down? Hast forgot it, I say? If your eyes were upon your sandals, how came ye to see this smile of which ye prate? A week in your cells, false brethren, a week of rye-bread and lentils, with double lauds and double matins, may help ye to remembrance of the laws under which ye live.\"\n\nAt this sudden outflame of wrath the two witnesses sank their faces on to their chests, and sat as men crushed. The Abbot turned his angry eyes away from them and bent them upon the accused, who met his searching gaze with a firm and composed face.\n\n\"What hast thou to say, brother John, upon these weighty things which are urged against you?\"\n\n\"Little enough, good father, little enough,\" said the novice, speaking English with a broad West Saxon drawl. The brothers, who were English to a man, pricked up their ears at the sound of the homely and yet unfamiliar speech; but the Abbot flushed red with anger, and struck his hand upon the oaken arm of his chair.\n\n\"What talk is this?\" he cried. \"Is this a tongue to be used within the walls of an old and well-famed monastery? But grace and learning have ever gone hand in hand, and when one is lost it is needless to look for the other.\"\n\n\"I know not about that,\" said brother John. \"I know only that the words come kindly to my mouth, for it was the speech of my fathers before me. Under your favor, I shall either use it now or hold my peace.\"\n\nThe Abbot patted his foot and nodded his head, as one who passes a point but does not forget it.\n\n\"For the matter of the ale,\" continued brother John, \"I had come in hot from the fields and had scarce got the taste of the thing before mine eye lit upon the bottom of the pot. It may be, too, that I spoke somewhat shortly concerning the bran and the beans, the same being poor provender and unfitted for a man of my inches. It is true also that I did lay my hands upon this jack-fool of a brother Ambrose, though, as you can see, I did him little scathe. As regards the maid, too, it is true that I did heft her over the stream, she having on her hosen and shoon, whilst I had but my wooden sandals, which could take no hurt from the water. I should have thought shame upon my manhood, as well as my monkhood, if I had held back my hand from her.\" He glanced around as he spoke with the half-amused look which he had worn during the whole proceedings.\n\n\"There is no need to go further,\" said the Abbot. \"He has confessed to all. It only remains for me to portion out the punishment which is due to his evil conduct.\"\n\nHe rose, and the two long lines of brothers followed his example, looking sideways with scared faces at the angry prelate.\n\n\"John of Hordle,\" he thundered, \"you have shown yourself during the two months of your novitiate to be a recreant monk, and one who is unworthy to wear the white garb which is the outer symbol of the spotless spirit. That dress shall therefore be stripped from thee, and thou shalt be cast into the outer world without benefit of clerkship, and without lot or part in the graces and blessings of those who dwell under the care of the Blessed Benedict. Thou shalt come back neither to Beaulieu nor to any of the granges of Beaulieu, and thy name shall be struck off the scrolls of the order.\"\n\nThe sentence appeared a terrible one to the older monks, who had become so used to the safe and regular life of the Abbey that they would have been as helpless as children in the outer world. From their pious oasis they looked dreamily out at the desert of life, a place full of stormings and strivings\u2014comfortless, restless, and overshadowed by evil. The young novice, however, appeared to have other thoughts, for his eyes sparkled and his smile broadened. It needed but that to add fresh fuel to the fiery mood of the prelate.\n\n\"So much for thy spiritual punishment,\" he cried. \"But it is to thy grosser feelings that we must turn in such natures as thine, and as thou art no longer under the shield of holy church there is the less difficulty. Ho there! lay-brothers\u2014Francis, Naomi, Joseph\u2014seize him and bind his arms! Drag him forth, and let the foresters and the porters scourge him from the precincts!\"\n\nAs these three brothers advanced towards him to carry out the Abbot's direction, the smile faded from the novice's face, and he glanced right and left with his fierce brown eyes, like a bull at a baiting. Then, with a sudden deep-chested shout, he tore up the heavy oaken prie-dieu and poised it to strike, taking two steps backward the while, that none might take him at a vantage.\n\n\"By the black rood of Waltham!\" he roared, \"if any knave among you lays a finger-end upon the edge of my gown, I will crush his skull like a filbert!\" With his thick knotted arms, his thundering voice, and his bristle of red hair, there was something so repellent in the man that the three brothers flew back at the very glare of him; and the two rows of white monks strained away from him like poplars in a tempest. The Abbot only sprang forward with shining eyes; but the chancellor and the master hung upon either arm and wrested him back out of danger's way.\n\n\"He is possessed of a devil!\" they shouted. \"Run, brother Ambrose, brother Joachim! Call Hugh of the Mill, and Woodman Wat, and Raoul with his arbalest and bolts. Tell them that we are in fear of our lives! Run, run! for the love of the Virgin!\"\n\nBut the novice was a strategist as well as a man of action. Springing forward, he hurled his unwieldy weapon at brother Ambrose, and, as desk and monk clattered on to the floor together, he sprang through the open door and down the winding stair. Sleepy old brother Athanasius, at the porter's cell, had a fleeting vision of twinkling feet and flying skirts; but before he had time to rub his eyes the recreant had passed the lodge, and was speeding as fast as his sandals could patter along the Lyndhurst Road." + }, + { + "title": "HOW ALLEYNE EDRICSON CAME OUT INTO THE WORLD.", + "text": "Never had the peaceful atmosphere of the old Cistercian house been so rudely ruffled. Never had there been insurrection so sudden, so short, and so successful. Yet the Abbot Berghersh was a man of too firm a grain to allow one bold outbreak to imperil the settled order of his great household. In a few hot and bitter words, he compared their false brother's exit to the expulsion of our first parents from the garden, and more than hinted that unless a reformation occurred some others of the community might find themselves in the same evil and perilous case. Having thus pointed the moral and reduced his flock to a fitting state of docility, he dismissed them once more to their labors and withdrew himself to his own private chamber, there to seek spiritual aid in the discharge of the duties of his high office.\n\nThe Abbot was still on his knees, when a gentle tapping at the door of his cell broke in upon his orisons.\n\nRising in no very good humor at the interruption, he gave the word to enter; but his look of impatience softened down into a pleasant and paternal smile as his eyes fell upon his visitor.\n\nHe was a thin-faced, yellow-haired youth, rather above the middle size, comely and well shapen, with straight, lithe figure and eager, boyish features. His clear, pensive gray eyes, and quick, delicate expression, spoke of a nature which had unfolded far from the boisterous joys and sorrows of the world. Yet there was a set of the mouth and a prominence of the chin which relieved him of any trace of effeminacy. Impulsive he might be, enthusiastic, sensitive, with something sympathetic and adaptive in his disposition; but an observer of nature's tokens would have confidently pledged himself that there was native firmness and strength underlying his gentle, monk-bred ways.\n\nThe youth was not clad in monastic garb, but in lay attire, though his jerkin, cloak and hose were all of a sombre hue, as befitted one who dwelt in sacred precincts. A broad leather strap hanging from his shoulder supported a scrip or satchel such as travellers were wont to carry. In one hand he grasped a thick staff pointed and shod with metal, while in the other he held his coif or bonnet, which bore in its front a broad pewter medal stamped with the image of Our Lady of Rocamadour.\n\n\"Art ready, then, fair son?\" said the Abbot. \"This is indeed a day of comings and of goings. It is strange that in one twelve hours the Abbey should have cast off its foulest weed and should now lose what we are fain to look upon as our choicest blossom.\"\n\n\"You speak too kindly, father,\" the youth answered. \"If I had my will I should never go forth, but should end my days here in Beaulieu. It hath been my home as far back as my mind can carry me, and it is a sore thing for me to have to leave it.\"\n\n\"Life brings many a cross,\" said the Abbot gently. \"Who is without them? Your going forth is a grief to us as well as to yourself. But there is no help. I had given my foreword and sacred promise to your father, Edric the Franklin, that at the age of twenty you should be sent out into the world to see for yourself how you liked the savor of it. Seat thee upon the settle, Alleyne, for you may need rest ere long.\"\n\nThe youth sat down as directed, but reluctantly and with diffidence. The Abbot stood by the narrow window, and his long black shadow fell slantwise across the rush-strewn floor.\n\n\"Twenty years ago,\" he said, \"your father, the Franklin of Minstead, died, leaving to the Abbey three hides of rich land in the hundred of Malwood, and leaving to us also his infant son on condition that we should rear him until he came to man's estate. This he did partly because your mother was dead, and partly because your elder brother, now Socman of Minstead, had already given sign of that fierce and rude nature which would make him no fit companion for you. It was his desire and request, however, that you should not remain in the cloisters, but should at a ripe age return into the world.\"\n\n\"But, father,\" interrupted the young man \"it is surely true that I am already advanced several degrees in clerkship?\"\n\n\"Yes, fair son, but not so far as to bar you from the garb you now wear or the life which you must now lead. You have been porter?\"\n\n\"Yes, father.\"\n\n\"Exorcist?\"\n\n\"Yes, father.\"\n\n\"Reader?\"\n\n\"Yes, father.\"\n\n\"Acolyte?\"\n\n\"Yes, father.\"\n\n\"But have sworn no vow of constancy or chastity?\"\n\n\"No, father.\"\n\n\"Then you are free to follow a worldly life. But let me hear, ere you start, what gifts you take away with you from Beaulieu? Some I already know. There is the playing of the citole and the rebeck. Our choir will be dumb without you. You carve too?\"\n\nThe youth's pale face flushed with the pride of the skilled workman. \"Yes, holy father,\" he answered. \"Thanks to good brother Bartholomew, I carve in wood and in ivory, and can do something also in silver and in bronze. From brother Francis I have learned to paint on vellum, on glass, and on metal, with a knowledge of those pigments and essences which can preserve the color against damp or a biting air. Brother Luke hath given me some skill in damask work, and in the enamelling of shrines, tabernacles, diptychs and triptychs. For the rest, I know a little of the making of covers, the cutting of precious stones, and the fashioning of instruments.\"\n\n\"A goodly list, truly,\" cried the superior with a smile. \"What clerk of Cambrig or of Oxenford could say as much? But of thy reading\u2014hast not so much to show there, I fear?\"\n\n\"No, father, it hath been slight enough. Yet, thanks to our good chancellor, I am not wholly unlettered. I have read Ockham, Bradwardine, and other of the schoolmen, together with the learned Duns Scotus and the book of the holy Aquinas.\"\n\n\"But of the things of this world, what have you gathered from your reading? From this high window you may catch a glimpse over the wooden point and the smoke of Bucklershard of the mouth of the Exe, and the shining sea. Now, I pray you Alleyne, if a man were to take a ship and spread sail across yonder waters, where might he hope to arrive?\"\n\nThe youth pondered, and drew a plan amongst the rushes with the point of his staff. \"Holy father,\" said he, \"he would come upon those parts of France which are held by the King's Majesty. But if he trended to the south he might reach Spain and the Barbary States. To his north would be Flanders and the country of the Eastlanders and of the Muscovites.\"\n\n\"True. And how if, after reaching the King's possessions, he still journeyed on to the eastward?\"\n\n\"He would then come upon that part of France which is still in dispute, and he might hope to reach the famous city of Avignon, where dwells our blessed father, the prop of Christendom.\"\n\n\"And then?\"\n\n\"Then he would pass through the land of the Almains and the great Roman Empire, and so to the country of the Huns and of the Lithuanian pagans, beyond which lies the great city of Constantine and the kingdom of the unclean followers of Mahmoud.\"\n\n\"And beyond that, fair son?\"\n\n\"Beyond that is Jerusalem and the Holy Land, and the great river which hath its source in the Garden of Eden.\"\n\n\"And then?\"\n\n\"Nay, good father, I cannot tell. Methinks the end of the world is not far from there.\"\n\n\"Then we can still find something to teach thee, Alleyne,\" said the Abbot complaisantly. \"Know that many strange nations lie betwixt there and the end of the world. There is the country of the Amazons, and the country of the dwarfs, and the country of the fair but evil women who slay with beholding, like the basilisk. Beyond that again is the kingdom of Prester John and of the great Cham. These things I know for very sooth, for I had them from that pious Christian and valiant knight, Sir John de Mandeville, who stopped twice at Beaulieu on his way to and from Southampton, and discoursed to us concerning what he had seen from the reader's desk in the refectory, until there was many a good brother who got neither bit nor sup, so stricken were they by his strange tales.\"\n\n\"I would fain know, father,\" asked the young man, \"what there may be at the end of the world?\"\n\n\"There are some things,\" replied the Abbot gravely, \"into which it was never intended that we should inquire. But you have a long road before you. Whither will you first turn?\"\n\n\"To my brother's at Minstead. If he be indeed an ungodly and violent man, there is the more need that I should seek him out and see whether I cannot turn him to better ways.\"\n\nThe Abbot shook his head. \"The Socman of Minstead hath earned an evil name over the country side,\" he said. \"If you must go to him, see at least that he doth not turn you from the narrow path upon which you have learned to tread. But you are in God's keeping, and Godward should you ever look in danger and in trouble. Above all, shun the snares of women, for they are ever set for the foolish feet of the young. Kneel down, my child, and take an old man's blessing.\"\n\nAlleyne Edricson bent his head while the Abbot poured out his heartfelt supplication that Heaven would watch over this young soul, now going forth into the darkness and danger of the world. It was no mere form for either of them. To them the outside life of mankind did indeed seem to be one of violence and of sin, beset with physical and still more with spiritual danger. Heaven, too, was very near to them in those days. God's direct agency was to be seen in the thunder and the rainbow, the whirlwind and the lightning. To the believer, clouds of angels and confessors, and martyrs, armies of the sainted and the saved, were ever stooping over their struggling brethren upon earth, raising, encouraging, and supporting them. It was then with a lighter heart and a stouter courage that the young man turned from the Abbot's room, while the latter, following him to the stair-head, finally commended him to the protection of the holy Julian, patron of travellers.\n\nUnderneath, in the porch of the Abbey, the monks had gathered to give him a last God-speed. Many had brought some parting token by which he should remember them. There was brother Bartholomew with a crucifix of rare carved ivory, and brother Luke with a white-backed psalter adorned with golden bees, and brother Francis with the \"Slaying of the Innocents\" most daintily set forth upon vellum. All these were duly packed away deep in the traveller's scrip, and above them old pippin-faced brother Athanasius had placed a parcel of simnel bread and rammel cheese, with a small flask of the famous blue-sealed Abbey wine. So, amid hand-shakings and laughings and blessings, Alleyne Edricson turned his back upon Beaulieu.\n\nAt the turn of the road he stopped and gazed back. There was the widespread building which he knew so well, the Abbot's house, the long church, the cloisters with their line of arches, all bathed and mellowed in the evening sun. There too was the broad sweep of the river Exe, the old stone well, the canopied niche of the Virgin, and in the centre of all the cluster of white-robed figures who waved their hands to him. A sudden mist swam up before the young man's eyes, and he turned away upon his journey with a heavy heart and a choking throat." + }, + { + "title": "HOW HORDLE JOHN COZENED THE FULLER OF LYMINGTON.", + "text": "It is not, however, in the nature of things that a lad of twenty, with young life glowing in his veins and all the wide world before him, should spend his first hours of freedom in mourning for what he had left. Long ere Alleyne was out of sound of the Beaulieu bells he was striding sturdily along, swinging his staff and whistling as merrily as the birds in the thicket. It was an evening to raise a man's heart. The sun shining slantwise through the trees threw delicate traceries across the road, with bars of golden light between. Away in the distance before and behind, the green boughs, now turning in places to a coppery redness, shot their broad arches across the track. The still summer air was heavy with the resinous smell of the great forest. Here and there a tawny brook prattled out from among the underwood and lost itself again in the ferns and brambles upon the further side. Save the dull piping of insects and the sough of the leaves, there was silence everywhere\u2014the sweet restful silence of nature.\n\nAnd yet there was no want of life\u2014the whole wide wood was full of it. Now it was a lithe, furtive stoat which shot across the path upon some fell errand of its own; then it was a wild cat which squatted upon the outlying branch of an oak and peeped at the traveller with a yellow and dubious eye. Once it was a wild sow which scuttled out of the bracken, with two young sounders at her heels, and once a lordly red staggard walked daintily out from among the tree trunks, and looked around him with the fearless gaze of one who lived under the King's own high protection. Alleyne gave his staff a merry flourish, however, and the red deer bethought him that the King was far off, so streaked away from whence he came.\n\nThe youth had now journeyed considerably beyond the furthest domains of the Abbey. He was the more surprised therefore when, on coming round a turn in the path, he perceived a man clad in the familiar garb of the order, and seated in a clump of heather by the roadside. Alleyne had known every brother well, but this was a face which was new to him\u2014a face which was very red and puffed, working this way and that, as though the man were sore perplexed in his mind. Once he shook both hands furiously in the air, and twice he sprang from his seat and hurried down the road. When he rose, however, Alleyne observed that his robe was much too long and loose for him in every direction, trailing upon the ground and bagging about his ankles, so that even with trussed-up skirts he could make little progress. He ran once, but the long gown clogged him so that he slowed down into a shambling walk, and finally plumped into the heather once more.\n\n\"Young friend,\" said he, when Alleyne was abreast of him, \"I fear from thy garb that thou canst know little of the Abbey of Beaulieu.\"\n\n\"Then you are in error, friend,\" the clerk answered, \"for I have spent all my days within its walls.\"\n\n\"Hast so indeed?\" cried he. \"Then perhaps canst tell me the name of a great loathly lump of a brother wi' freckled face an' a hand like a spade. His eyes were black an' his hair was red an' his voice like the parish bull. I trow that there cannot be two alike in the same cloisters.\"\n\n\"That surely can be no other than brother John,\" said Alleyne. \"I trust he has done you no wrong, that you should be so hot against him.\"\n\n\"Wrong, quotha?\" cried the other, jumping out of the heather. \"Wrong! why he hath stolen every plack of clothing off my back, if that be a wrong, and hath left me here in this sorry frock of white falding, so that I have shame to go back to my wife, lest she think that I have donned her old kirtle. Harrow and alas that ever I should have met him!\"\n\n\"But how came this?\" asked the young clerk, who could scarce keep from laughter at the sight of the hot little man so swathed in the great white cloak.\n\n\"It came in this way,\" he said, sitting down once more: \"I was passing this way, hoping to reach Lymington ere nightfall when I came on this red-headed knave seated even where we are sitting now. I uncovered and louted as I passed thinking that he might be a holy man at his orisons, but he called to me and asked me if I had heard speak of the new indulgence in favor of the Cistercians. 'Not I,' I answered. 'Then the worse for thy soul!' said he; and with that he broke into a long tale how that on account of the virtues of the Abbot Berghersh it had been decreed by the Pope that whoever should wear the habit of a monk of Beaulieu for as long as he might say the seven psalms of David should be assured of the kingdom of Heaven. When I heard this I prayed him on my knees that he would give me the use of his gown, which after many contentions he at last agreed to do, on my paying him three marks towards the regilding of the image of Laurence the martyr. Having stripped his robe, I had no choice but to let him have the wearing of my good leathern jerkin and hose, for, as he said, it was chilling to the blood and unseemly to the eye to stand frockless whilst I made my orisons. He had scarce got them on, and it was a sore labor, seeing that my inches will scarce match my girth\u2014he had scarce got them on, I say, and I not yet at the end of the second psalm, when he bade me do honor to my new dress, and with that set off down the road as fast as feet would carry him. For myself, I could no more run than if I had been sown in a sack; so here I sit, and here I am like to sit, before I set eyes upon my clothes again.\"\n\n\"Nay, friend, take it not so sadly,\" said Alleyne, clapping the disconsolate one upon the shoulder. \"Canst change thy robe for a jerkin once more at the Abbey, unless perchance you have a friend near at hand.\"\n\n\"That have I,\" he answered, \"and close; but I care not to go nigh him in this plight, for his wife hath a gibing tongue, and will spread the tale until I could not show my face in any market from Fordingbridge to Southampton. But if you, fair sir, out of your kind charity would be pleased to go a matter of two bow-shots out of your way, you would do me such a service as I could scarce repay.\"\n\n\"With all my heart,\" said Alleyne readily.\n\n\"Then take this pathway on the left, I pray thee, and then the deer-track which passes on the right. You will then see under a great beech-tree the hut of a charcoal-burner. Give him my name, good sir, the name of Peter the fuller, of Lymington, and ask him for a change of raiment, that I may pursue my journey without delay. There are reasons why he would be loth to refuse me.\"\n\nAlleyne started off along the path indicated, and soon found the log-hut where the burner dwelt. He was away faggot-cutting in the forest, but his wife, a ruddy bustling dame, found the needful garments and tied them into a bundle. While she busied herself in finding and folding them, Alleyne Edricson stood by the open door looking in at her with much interest and some distrust, for he had never been so nigh to a woman before. She had round red arms, a dress of some sober woollen stuff, and a brass brooch the size of a cheese-cake stuck in the front of it.\n\n\"Peter the fuller!\" she kept repeating. \"Marry come up! if I were Peter the fuller's wife I would teach him better than to give his clothes to the first knave who asks for them. But he was always a poor, fond, silly creature, was Peter, though we are beholden to him for helping to bury our second son Wat, who was a 'prentice to him at Lymington in the year of the Black Death. But who are you, young sir?\"\n\n\"I am a clerk on my road from Beaulieu to Minstead.\"\n\n\"Aye, indeed! Hast been brought up at the Abbey then. I could read it from thy reddened cheek and downcast eye. Hast learned from the monks, I trow, to fear a woman as thou wouldst a lazar-house. Out upon them! that they should dishonor their own mothers by such teaching. A pretty world it would be with all the women out of it.\"\n\n\"Heaven forfend that such a thing should come to pass!\" said Alleyne.\n\n\"Amen and amen! But thou art a pretty lad, and the prettier for thy modest ways. It is easy to see from thy cheek that thou hast not spent thy days in the rain and the heat and the wind, as my poor Wat hath been forced to do.\"\n\n\"I have indeed seen little of life, good dame.\"\n\n\"Wilt find nothing in it to pay for the loss of thy own freshness. Here are the clothes, and Peter can leave them when next he comes this way. Holy Virgin! see the dust upon thy doublet! It were easy to see that there is no woman to tend to thee. So!\u2014that is better. Now buss me, boy.\"\n\nAlleyne stooped and kissed her, for the kiss was the common salutation of the age, and, as Erasmus long afterwards remarked, more used in England than in any other country. Yet it sent the blood to his temples again, and he wondered, as he turned away, what the Abbot Berghersh would have answered to so frank an invitation. He was still tingling from this new experience when he came out upon the high-road and saw a sight which drove all other thoughts from his mind.\n\nSome way down from where he had left him the unfortunate Peter was stamping and raving tenfold worse than before. Now, however, instead of the great white cloak, he had no clothes on at all, save a short woollen shirt and a pair of leather shoes. Far down the road a long-legged figure was running, with a bundle under one arm and the other hand to his side, like a man who laughs until he is sore.\n\n\"See him!\" yelled Peter. \"Look to him! You shall be my witness. He shall see Winchester jail for this. See where he goes with my cloak under his arm!\"\n\n\"Who then?\" cried Alleyne.\n\n\"Who but that cursed brother John. He hath not left me clothes enough to make a gallybagger. The double thief hath cozened me out of my gown.\"\n\n\"Stay though, my friend, it was his gown,\" objected Alleyne.\n\n\"It boots not. He hath them all\u2014gown, jerkin, hosen and all. Gramercy to him that he left me the shirt and the shoon. I doubt not that he will be back for them anon.\"\n\n\"But how came this?\" asked Alleyne, open-eyed with astonishment.\n\n\"Are those the clothes? For dear charity's sake give them to me. Not the Pope himself shall have these from me, though he sent the whole college of cardinals to ask it. How came it? Why, you had scarce gone ere this loathly John came running back again, and, when I oped mouth to reproach him, he asked me whether it was indeed likely that a man of prayer would leave his own godly raiment in order to take a layman's jerkin. He had, he said, but gone for a while that I might be the freer for my devotions. On this I plucked off the gown, and he with much show of haste did begin to undo his points; but when I threw his frock down he clipped it up and ran off all untrussed, leaving me in this sorry plight. He laughed so the while, like a great croaking frog, that I might have caught him had my breath not been as short as his legs were long.\"\n\nThe young man listened to this tale of wrong with all the seriousness that he could maintain; but at the sight of the pursy red-faced man and the dignity with which he bore him, the laughter came so thick upon him that he had to lean up against a tree-trunk. The fuller looked sadly and gravely at him; but finding that he still laughed, he bowed with much mock politeness and stalked onwards in his borrowed clothes. Alleyne watched him until he was small in the distance, and then, wiping the tears from his eyes, he set off briskly once more upon his journey." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE BAILIFF OF SOUTHAMPTON SLEW THE TWO MASTERLESS MEN.", + "text": "The road along which he travelled was scarce as populous as most other roads in the kingdom, and far less so than those which lie between the larger towns. Yet from time to time Alleyne met other wayfarers, and more than once was overtaken by strings of pack mules and horsemen journeying in the same direction as himself. Once a begging friar came limping along in a brown habit, imploring in a most dolorous voice to give him a single groat to buy bread wherewith to save himself from impending death. Alleyne passed him swiftly by, for he had learned from the monks to have no love for the wandering friars, and, besides, there was a great half-gnawed mutton bone sticking out of his pouch to prove him a liar. Swiftly as he went, however, he could not escape the curse of the four blessed evangelists which the mendicant howled behind him. So dreadful are his execrations that the frightened lad thrust his fingers into his ear-holes, and ran until the fellow was but a brown smirch upon the yellow road.\n\nFurther on, at the edge of the woodland, he came upon a chapman and his wife, who sat upon a fallen tree. He had put his pack down as a table, and the two of them were devouring a great pasty, and washing it down with some drink from a stone jar. The chapman broke a rough jest as he passed, and the woman called shrilly to Alleyne to come and join them, on which the man, turning suddenly from mirth to wrath, began to belabor her with his cudgel. Alleyne hastened on, lest he make more mischief, and his heart was heavy as lead within him. Look where he would, he seemed to see nothing but injustice and violence and the hardness of man to man.\n\nBut even as he brooded sadly over it and pined for the sweet peace of the Abbey, he came on an open space dotted with holly bushes, where was the strangest sight that he had yet chanced upon. Near to the pathway lay a long clump of greenery, and from behind this there stuck straight up into the air four human legs clad in parti-colored hosen, yellow and black. Strangest of all was when a brisk tune struck suddenly up and the four legs began to kick and twitter in time to the music. Walking on tiptoe round the bushes, he stood in amazement to see two men bounding about on their heads, while they played, the one a viol and the other a pipe, as merrily and as truly as though they were seated in a choir. Alleyne crossed himself as he gazed at this unnatural sight, and could scarce hold his ground with a steady face, when the two dancers, catching sight of him, came bouncing in his direction. A spear's length from him, they each threw a somersault into the air, and came down upon their feet with smirking faces and their hands over their hearts.\n\n\"A guerdon\u2014a guerdon, my knight of the staring eyes!\" cried one.\n\n\"A gift, my prince!\" shouted the other. \"Any trifle will serve\u2014a purse of gold, or even a jewelled goblet.\"\n\nAlleyne thought of what he had read of demoniac possession\u2014the jumpings, the twitchings, the wild talk. It was in his mind to repeat over the exorcism proper to such attacks; but the two burst out a-laughing at his scared face, and turning on to their heads once more, clapped their heels in derision.\n\n\"Hast never seen tumblers before?\" asked the elder, a black-browed, swarthy man, as brown and supple as a hazel twig. \"Why shrink from us, then, as though we were the spawn of the Evil One?\"\n\n\"Why shrink, my honey-bird? Why so afeard, my sweet cinnamon?\" exclaimed the other, a loose-jointed lanky youth with a dancing, roguish eye.\n\n\"Truly, sirs, it is a new sight to me,\" the clerk answered. \"When I saw your four legs above the bush I could scarce credit my own eyes. Why is it that you do this thing?\"\n\n\"A dry question to answer,\" cried the younger, coming back on to his feet. \"A most husky question, my fair bird! But how? A flask, a flask!\u2014by all that is wonderful!\" He shot out his hand as he spoke, and plucking Alleyne's bottle out of his scrip, he deftly knocked the neck off, and poured the half of it down his throat. The rest he handed to his comrade, who drank the wine, and then, to the clerk's increasing amazement, made a show of swallowing the bottle, with such skill that Alleyne seemed to see it vanish down his throat. A moment later, however, he flung it over his head, and caught it bottom downwards upon the calf of his left leg.\n\n\"We thank you for the wine, kind sir,\" said he, \"and for the ready courtesy wherewith you offered it. Touching your question, we may tell you that we are strollers and jugglers, who, having performed with much applause at Winchester fair, are now on our way to the great Michaelmas market at Ringwood. As our art is a very fine and delicate one, however, we cannot let a day go by without exercising ourselves in it, to which end we choose some quiet and sheltered spot where we may break our journey. Here you find us; and we cannot wonder that you, who are new to tumbling, should be astounded, since many great barons, earls, marshals and knight, who have wandered as far as the Holy Land, are of one mind in saying that they have never seen a more noble or gracious performance. If you will be pleased to sit upon that stump, we will now continue our exercise.\"\n\nAlleyne sat down willingly as directed with two great bundles on either side of him which contained the strollers' dresses\u2014doublets of flame-colored silk and girdles of leather, spangled with brass and tin. The jugglers were on their heads once more, bounding about with rigid necks, playing the while in perfect time and tune. It chanced that out of one of the bundles there stuck the end of what the clerk saw to be a cittern, so drawing it forth, he tuned it up and twanged a harmony to the merry lilt which the dancers played. On that they dropped their own instruments, and putting their hands to the ground they hopped about faster and faster, ever shouting to him to play more briskly, until at last for very weariness all three had to stop.\n\n\"Well played, sweet poppet!\" cried the younger. \"Hast a rare touch on the strings.\"\n\n\"How knew you the tune?\" asked the other.\n\n\"I knew it not. I did but follow the notes I heard.\"\n\nBoth opened their eyes at this, and stared at Alleyne with as much amazement as he had shown at them.\n\n\"You have a fine trick of ear then,\" said one. \"We have long wished to meet such a man. Wilt join us and jog on to Ringwood? Thy duties shall be light, and thou shalt have two-pence a day and meat for supper every night.\"\n\n\"With as much beer as you can put away,\" said the other \"and a flask of Gascon wine on Sabbaths.\"\n\n\"Nay, it may not be. I have other work to do. I have tarried with you over long,\" quoth Alleyne, and resolutely set forth upon his journey once more. They ran behind him some little way, offering him first fourpence and then sixpence a day, but he only smiled and shook his head, until at last they fell away from him. Looking back, he saw that the smaller had mounted on the younger's shoulders, and that they stood so, some ten feet high, waving their adieus to him. He waved back to them, and then hastened on, the lighter of heart for having fallen in with these strange men of pleasure.\n\nAlleyne had gone no great distance for all the many small passages that had befallen him. Yet to him, used as he was to a life of such quiet that the failure of a brewing or the altering of an anthem had seemed to be of the deepest import, the quick changing play of the lights and shadows of life was strangely startling and interesting. A gulf seemed to divide this brisk uncertain existence from the old steady round of work and of prayer which he had left behind him. The few hours that had passed since he saw the Abbey tower stretched out in his memory until they outgrew whole months of the stagnant life of the cloister. As he walked and munched the soft bread from his scrip, it seemed strange to him to feel that it was still warm from the ovens of Beaulieu.\n\nWhen he passed Penerley, where were three cottages and a barn, he reached the edge of the tree country, and found the great barren heath of Blackdown stretching in front of him, all pink with heather and bronzed with the fading ferns. On the left the woods were still thick, but the road edged away from them and wound over the open. The sun lay low in the west upon a purple cloud, whence it threw a mild, chastening light over the wild moorland and glittered on the fringe of forest turning the withered leaves into flakes of dead gold, the brighter for the black depths behind them. To the seeing eye decay is as fair as growth, and death as life. The thought stole into Alleyne's heart as he looked upon the autumnal country side and marvelled at its beauty. He had little time to dwell upon it however, for there were still six good miles between him and the nearest inn. He sat down by the roadside to partake of his bread and cheese, and then with a lighter scrip he hastened upon his way.\n\nThere appeared to be more wayfarers on the down than in the forest. First he passed two Dominicans in their long black dresses, who swept by him with downcast looks and pattering lips, without so much as a glance at him. Then there came a gray friar, or minorite, with a good paunch upon him, walking slowly and looking about him with the air of a man who was at peace with himself and with all men. He stopped Alleyne to ask him whether it was not true that there was a hostel somewhere in those parts which was especially famous for the stewing of eels. The clerk having made answer that he had heard the eels of Sowley well spoken of, the friar sucked in his lips and hurried forward. Close at his heels came three laborers walking abreast, with spade and mattock over their shoulders. They sang some rude chorus right tunefully as they walked, but their English was so coarse and rough that to the ears of a cloister-bred man it sounded like a foreign and barbarous tongue. One of them carried a young bittern which they had caught upon the moor, and they offered it to Alleyne for a silver groat. Very glad he was to get safely past them, for, with their bristling red beards and their fierce blue eyes, they were uneasy men to bargain with upon a lonely moor.\n\nYet it is not always the burliest and the wildest who are the most to be dreaded. The workers looked hungrily at him, and then jogged onwards upon their way in slow, lumbering Saxon style. A worse man to deal with was a wooden-legged cripple who came hobbling down the path, so weak and so old to all appearance that a child need not stand in fear of him. Yet when Alleyne had passed him, of a sudden, out of pure devilment, he screamed out a curse at him, and sent a jagged flint stone hurtling past his ear. So horrid was the causeless rage of the crooked creature, that the clerk came over a cold thrill, and took to his heels until he was out of shot from stone or word. It seemed to him that in this country of England there was no protection for a man save that which lay in the strength of his own arm and the speed of his own foot. In the cloisters he had heard vague talk of the law\u2014the mighty law which was higher than prelate or baron, yet no sign could he see of it. What was the benefit of a law written fair upon parchment, he wondered, if there were no officers to enforce it. As it fell out, however, he had that very evening, ere the sun had set, a chance of seeing how stern was the grip of the English law when it did happen to seize the offender.\n\nA mile or so out upon the moor the road takes a very sudden dip into a hollow, with a peat-colored stream running swiftly down the centre of it. To the right of this stood, and stands to this day, an ancient barrow, or burying mound, covered deeply in a bristle of heather and bracken. Alleyne was plodding down the slope upon one side, when he saw an old dame coming towards him upon the other, limping with weariness and leaning heavily upon a stick. When she reached the edge of the stream she stood helpless, looking to right and to left for some ford. Where the path ran down a great stone had been fixed in the centre of the brook, but it was too far from the bank for her aged and uncertain feet. Twice she thrust forward at it, and twice she drew back, until at last, giving up in despair, she sat herself down by the brink and wrung her hands wearily. There she still sat when Alleyne reached the crossing.\n\n\"Come, mother,\" quoth he, \"it is not so very perilous a passage.\"\n\n\"Alas! good youth,\" she answered, \"I have a humor in the eyes, and though I can see that there is a stone there I can by no means be sure as to where it lies.\"\n\n\"That is easily amended,\" said he cheerily, and picking her lightly up, for she was much worn with time, he passed across with her. He could not but observe, however, that as he placed her down her knees seemed to fail her, and she could scarcely prop herself up with her staff.\n\n\"You are weak, mother,\" said he. \"Hast journeyed far, I wot.\"\n\n\"From Wiltshire, friend,\" said she, in a quavering voice; \"three days have I been on the road. I go to my son, who is one of the King's regarders at Brockenhurst. He has ever said that he would care for me in mine old age.\"\n\n\"And rightly too, mother, since you cared for him in his youth. But when have you broken fast?\"\n\n\"At Lyndenhurst; but alas! my money is at an end, and I could but get a dish of bran-porridge from the nunnery. Yet I trust that I may be able to reach Brockenhurst to-night, where I may have all that heart can desire; for oh! sir, but my son is a fine man, with a kindly heart of his own, and it is as good as food to me to think that he should have a doublet of Lincoln green to his back and be the King's own paid man.\"\n\n\"It is a long road yet to Brockenhurst,\" said Alleyne; \"but here is such bread and cheese as I have left, and here, too, is a penny which may help you to supper. May God be with you!\"\n\n\"May God be with you, young man!\" she cried. \"May He make your heart as glad as you have made mine!\" She turned away, still mumbling blessings, and Alleyne saw her short figure and her long shadow stumbling slowly up the slope.\n\nHe was moving away himself, when his eyes lit upon a strange sight, and one which sent a tingling through his skin. Out of the tangled scrub on the old overgrown barrow two human faces were looking out at him; the sinking sun glimmered full upon them, showing up every line and feature. The one was an oldish man with a thin beard, a crooked nose, and a broad red smudge from a birth-mark over his temple; the other was a negro, a thing rarely met in England at that day, and rarer still in the quiet southland parts. Alleyne had read of such folk, but had never seen one before, and could scarce take his eyes from the fellow's broad pouting lip and shining teeth. Even as he gazed, however, the two came writhing out from among the heather, and came down towards him with such a guilty, slinking carriage, that the clerk felt that there was no good in them, and hastened onwards upon his way.\n\nHe had not gained the crown of the slope, when he heard a sudden scuffle behind him and a feeble voice bleating for help. Looking round, there was the old dame down upon the roadway, with her red whimple flying on the breeze, while the two rogues, black and white, stooped over her, wresting away from her the penny and such other poor trifles as were worth the taking. At the sight of her thin limbs struggling in weak resistance, such a glow of fierce anger passed over Alleyne as set his head in a whirl. Dropping his scrip, he bounded over the stream once more, and made for the two villains, with his staff whirled over his shoulder and his gray eyes blazing with fury.\n\nThe robbers, however, were not disposed to leave their victim until they had worked their wicked will upon her. The black man, with the woman's crimson scarf tied round his swarthy head, stood forward in the centre of the path, with a long dull-colored knife in his hand, while the other, waving a ragged cudgel, cursed at Alleyne and dared him to come on. His blood was fairly aflame, however, and he needed no such challenge. Dashing at the black man, he smote at him with such good will that the other let his knife tinkle into the roadway, and hopped howling to a safer distance. The second rogue, however, made of sterner stuff, rushed in upon the clerk, and clipped him round the waist with a grip like a bear, shouting the while to his comrade to come round and stab him in the back. At this the negro took heart of grace, and picking up his dagger again he came stealing with prowling step and murderous eye, while the two swayed backwards and forwards, staggering this way and that. In the very midst of the scuffle, however, whilst Alleyne braced himself to feel the cold blade between his shoulders, there came a sudden scurry of hoofs, and the black man yelled with terror and ran for his life through the heather. The man with the birth-mark, too, struggled to break away, and Alleyne heard his teeth chatter and felt his limbs grow limp to his hand. At this sign of coming aid the clerk held on the tighter, and at last was able to pin his man down and glanced behind him to see where all the noise was coming from.\n\nDown the slanting road there was riding a big, burly man, clad in a tunic of purple velvet and driving a great black horse as hard as it could gallop. He leaned well over its neck as he rode, and made a heaving with his shoulders at every bound as though he were lifting the steed instead of it carrying him. In the rapid glance Alleyne saw that he had white doeskin gloves, a curling white feather in his flat velvet cap, and a broad gold, embroidered baldric across his bosom. Behind him rode six others, two and two, clad in sober brown jerkins, with the long yellow staves of their bows thrusting out from behind their right shoulders. Down the hill they thundered, over the brook and up to the scene of the contest.\n\n\"Here is one!\" said the leader, springing down from his reeking horse, and seizing the white rogue by the edge of his jerkin. \"This is one of them. I know him by that devil's touch upon his brow. Where are your cords, Peterkin? So! Bind him hand and foot. His last hour has come. And you, young man, who may you be?\"\n\n\"I am a clerk, sir, travelling from Beaulieu.\"\n\n\"A clerk!\" cried the other. \"Art from Oxenford or from Cambridge? Hast thou a letter from the chancellor of thy college giving thee a permit to beg? Let me see thy letter.\" He had a stern, square face, with bushy side whiskers and a very questioning eye.\n\n\"I am from Beaulieu Abbey, and I have no need to beg,\" said Alleyne, who was all of a tremble now that the ruffle was over.\n\n\"The better for thee,\" the other answered. \"Dost know who I am?\"\n\n\"No, sir, I do not.\"\n\n\"I am the law!\"\u2014nodding his head solemnly. \"I am the law of England and the mouthpiece of his most gracious and royal majesty, Edward the Third.\"\n\nAlleyne louted low to the King's representative. \"Truly you came in good time, honored sir,\" said he. \"A moment later and they would have slain me.\"\n\n\"But there should be another one,\" cried the man in the purple coat. \"There should be a black man. A shipman with St. Anthony's fire, and a black man who had served him as cook\u2014those are the pair that we are in chase of.\"\n\n\"The black man fled over to that side,\" said Alleyne, pointing towards the barrow.\n\n\"He could not have gone far, sir bailiff,\" cried one of the archers, unslinging his bow. \"He is in hiding somewhere, for he knew well, black paynim as he is, that our horses' four legs could outstrip his two.\"\n\n\"Then we shall have him,\" said the other. \"It shall never be said, whilst I am bailiff of Southampton, that any waster, riever, draw-latch or murtherer came scathless away from me and my posse. Leave that rogue lying. Now stretch out in line, my merry ones, with arrow on string, and I shall show you such sport as only the King can give. You on the left, Howett, and Thomas of Redbridge upon the right. So! Beat high and low among the heather, and a pot of wine to the lucky marksman.\"\n\nAs it chanced, however, the searchers had not far to seek. The negro had burrowed down into his hiding-place upon the barrow, where he might have lain snug enough, had it not been for the red gear upon his head. As he raised himself to look over the bracken at his enemies, the staring color caught the eye of the bailiff, who broke into a long screeching whoop and spurred forward sword in hand. Seeing himself discovered, the man rushed out from his hiding-place, and bounded at the top of his speed down the line of archers, keeping a good hundred paces to the front of them. The two who were on either side of Alleyne bent their bows as calmly as though they were shooting at the popinjay at the village fair.\n\n\"Seven yards windage, Hal,\" said one, whose hair was streaked with gray.\n\n\"Five,\" replied the other, letting loose his string. Alleyne gave a gulp in his throat, for the yellow streak seemed to pass through the man; but he still ran forward.\n\n\"Seven, you jack-fool,\" growled the first speaker, and his bow twanged like a harp-string. The black man sprang high up into the air, and shot out both his arms and his legs, coming down all asprawl among the heather. \"Right under the blade bone!\" quoth the archer, sauntering forward for his arrow.\n\n\"The old hound is the best when all is said,\" quoth the bailiff of Southampton, as they made back for the roadway. \"That means a quart of the best malmsey in Southampton this very night, Matthew Atwood. Art sure that he is dead?\"\n\n\"Dead as Pontius Pilate, worshipful sir.\"\n\n\"It is well. Now, as to the other knave. There are trees and to spare over yonder, but we have scarce leisure to make for them. Draw thy sword, Thomas of Redbridge, and hew me his head from his shoulders.\"\n\n\"A boon, gracious sir, a boon!\" cried the condemned man.\n\n\"What then?\" asked the bailiff.\n\n\"I will confess to my crime. It was indeed I and the black cook, both from the ship 'La Rose de Gloire,' of Southampton, who did set upon the Flanders merchant and rob him of his spicery and his mercery, for which, as we well know, you hold a warrant against us.\"\n\n\"There is little merit in this confession,\" quoth the bailiff sternly. \"Thou hast done evil within my bailiwick, and must die.\"\n\n\"But, sir,\" urged Alleyne, who was white to the lips at these bloody doings, \"he hath not yet come to trial.\"\n\n\"Young clerk,\" said the bailiff, \"you speak of that of which you know nothing. It is true that he hath not come to trial, but the trial hath come to him. He hath fled the law and is beyond its pale. Touch not that which is no concern of thine. But what is this boon, rogue, which you would crave?\"\n\n\"I have in my shoe, most worshipful sir, a strip of wood which belonged once to the bark wherein the blessed Paul was dashed up against the island of Melita. I bought it for two rose nobles from a shipman who came from the Levant. The boon I crave is that you will place it in my hands and let me die still grasping it. In this manner, not only shall my own eternal salvation be secured, but thine also, for I shall never cease to intercede for thee.\"\n\nAt the command of the bailiff they plucked off the fellow's shoe, and there sure enough at the side of the instep, wrapped in a piece of fine sendall, lay a long, dark splinter of wood. The archers doffed caps at the sight of it, and the bailiff crossed himself devoutly as he handed it to the robber.\n\n\"If it should chance,\" he said, \"that through the surpassing merits of the blessed Paul your sin-stained soul should gain a way into paradise, I trust that you will not forget that intercession which you have promised. Bear in mind too, that it is Herward the bailiff for whom you pray, and not Herward the sheriff, who is my uncle's son. Now, Thomas, I pray you dispatch, for we have a long ride before us and sun has already set.\"\n\nAlleyne gazed upon the scene\u2014the portly velvet-clad official, the knot of hard-faced archers with their hands to the bridles of their horses, the thief with his arms trussed back and his doublet turned down upon his shoulders. By the side of the track the old dame was standing, fastening her red whimple once more round her head. Even as he looked one of the archers drew his sword with a sharp whirr of steel and stept up to the lost man. The clerk hurried away in horror; but, ere he had gone many paces, he heard a sudden, sullen thump, with a choking, whistling sound at the end of it. A minute later the bailiff and four of his men rode past him on their journey back to Southampton, the other two having been chosen as grave-diggers. As they passed Alleyne saw that one of the men was wiping his sword-blade upon the mane of his horse. A deadly sickness came over him at the sight, and sitting down by the wayside he burst out weeping, with his nerves all in a jangle. It was a terrible world thought he, and it was hard to know which were the most to be dreaded, the knaves or the men of the law." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 5", + "text": "HOW A STRANGE COMPANY GATHERED AT THE \"PIED MERLIN.\"\n\nThe night had already fallen, and the moon was shining between the rifts of ragged, drifting clouds, before Alleyne Edricson, footsore and weary from the unwonted exercise, found himself in front of the forest inn which stood upon the outskirts of Lyndhurst. The building was long and low, standing back a little from the road, with two flambeaux blazing on either side of the door as a welcome to the traveller. From one window there thrust forth a long pole with a bunch of greenery tied to the end of it\u2014a sign that liquor was to be sold within. As Alleyne walked up to it he perceived that it was rudely fashioned out of beams of wood, with twinkling lights all over where the glow from within shone through the chinks. The roof was poor and thatched; but in strange contrast to it there ran all along under the eaves a line of wooden shields, most gorgeously painted with chevron, bend, and saltire, and every heraldic device. By the door a horse stood tethered, the ruddy glow beating strongly upon his brown head and patient eyes, while his body stood back in the shadow.\n\nAlleyne stood still in the roadway for a few minutes reflecting upon what he should do. It was, he knew, only a few miles further to Minstead, where his brother dwelt. On the other hand, he had never seen this brother since childhood, and the reports which had come to his ears concerning him were seldom to his advantage. By all accounts he was a hard and a bitter man.\n\nIt might be an evil start to come to his door so late and claim the shelter of his roof. Better to sleep here at this inn, and then travel on to Minstead in the morning. If his brother would take him in, well and good.\n\nHe would bide with him for a time and do what he might to serve him. If, on the other hand, he should have hardened his heart against him, he could only go on his way and do the best he might by his skill as a craftsman and a scrivener. At the end of a year he would be free to return to the cloisters, for such had been his father's bequest. A monkish upbringing, one year in the world after the age of twenty, and then a free selection one way or the other\u2014it was a strange course which had been marked out for him. Such as it was, however, he had no choice but to follow it, and if he were to begin by making a friend of his brother he had best wait until morning before he knocked at his dwelling.\n\nThe rude plank door was ajar, but as Alleyne approached it there came from within such a gust of rough laughter and clatter of tongues that he stood irresolute upon the threshold. Summoning courage, however, and reflecting that it was a public dwelling, in which he had as much right as any other man, he pushed it open and stepped into the common room.\n\nThough it was an autumn evening and somewhat warm, a huge fire of heaped billets of wood crackled and sparkled in a broad, open grate, some of the smoke escaping up a rude chimney, but the greater part rolling out into the room, so that the air was thick with it, and a man coming from without could scarce catch his breath. On this fire a great cauldron bubbled and simmered, giving forth a rich and promising smell. Seated round it were a dozen or so folk, of all ages and conditions, who set up such a shout as Alleyne entered that he stood peering at them through the smoke, uncertain what this riotous greeting might portend.\n\n\"A rouse! A rouse!\" cried one rough looking fellow in a tattered jerkin. \"One more round of mead or ale and the score to the last comer.\"\n\n\"'Tis the law of the 'Pied Merlin,'\" shouted another. \"Ho there, Dame Eliza! Here is fresh custom come to the house, and not a drain for the company.\"\n\n\"I will take your orders, gentles; I will assuredly take your orders,\" the landlady answered, bustling in with her hands full of leathern drinking-cups. \"What is it that you drink, then? Beer for the lads of the forest, mead for the gleeman, strong waters for the tinker, and wine for the rest. It is an old custom of the house, young sir. It has been the use at the 'Pied Merlin' this many a year back that the company should drink to the health of the last comer. Is it your pleasure to humor it?\"\n\n\"Why, good dame,\" said Alleyne, \"I would not offend the customs of your house, but it is only sooth when I say that my purse is a thin one. As far as two pence will go, however, I shall be right glad to do my part.\"\n\n\"Plainly said and bravely spoken, my suckling friar,\" roared a deep voice, and a heavy hand fell upon Alleyne's shoulder. Looking up, he saw beside him his former cloister companion the renegade monk, Hordle John.\n\n\"By the thorn of Glastonbury! ill days are coming upon Beaulieu,\" said he. \"Here they have got rid in one day of the only two men within their walls\u2014for I have had mine eyes upon thee, youngster, and I know that for all thy baby-face there is the making of a man in thee. Then there is the Abbot, too. I am no friend of his, nor he of mine; but he has warm blood in his veins. He is the only man left among them. The others, what are they?\"\n\n\"They are holy men,\" Alleyne answered gravely.\n\n\"Holy men? Holy cabbages! Holy bean-pods! What do they do but live and suck in sustenance and grow fat? If that be holiness, I could show you hogs in this forest who are fit to head the calendar. Think you it was for such a life that this good arm was fixed upon my shoulder, or that head placed upon your neck? There is work in the world, man, and it is not by hiding behind stone walls that we shall do it.\"\n\n\"Why, then, did you join the brothers?\" asked Alleyne.\n\n\"A fair enough question; but it is as fairly answered. I joined them because Margery Alspaye, of Bolder, married Crooked Thomas of Ringwood, and left a certain John of Hordle in the cold, for that he was a ranting, roving blade who was not to be trusted in wedlock. That was why, being fond and hotheaded, I left the world; and that is why, having had time to take thought, I am right glad to find myself back in it once more. Ill betide the day that ever I took off my yeoman's jerkin to put on the white gown!\"\n\nWhilst he was speaking the landlady came in again, bearing a broad platter, upon which stood all the beakers and flagons charged to the brim with the brown ale or the ruby wine. Behind her came a maid with a high pile of wooden plates, and a great sheaf of spoons, one of which she handed round to each of the travellers. Two of the company, who were dressed in the weather-stained green doublet of foresters, lifted the big pot off the fire, and a third, with a huge pewter ladle, served out a portion of steaming collops to each guest. Alleyne bore his share and his ale-mug away with him to a retired trestle in the corner, where he could sup in peace and watch the strange scene, which was so different to those silent and well-ordered meals to which he was accustomed.\n\nThe room was not unlike a stable. The low ceiling, smoke-blackened and dingy, was pierced by several square trap-doors with rough-hewn ladders leading up to them. The walls of bare unpainted planks were studded here and there with great wooden pins, placed at irregular intervals and heights, from which hung over-tunics, wallets, whips, bridles, and saddles. Over the fireplace were suspended six or seven shields of wood, with coats-of-arms rudely daubed upon them, which showed by their varying degrees of smokiness and dirt that they had been placed there at different periods. There was no furniture, save a single long dresser covered with coarse crockery, and a number of wooden benches and trestles, the legs of which sank deeply into the soft clay floor, while the only light, save that of the fire, was furnished by three torches stuck in sockets on the wall, which flickered and crackled, giving forth a strong resinous odor. All this was novel and strange to the cloister-bred youth; but most interesting of all was the motley circle of guests who sat eating their collops round the blaze. They were a humble group of wayfarers, such as might have been found that night in any inn through the length and breadth of England; but to him they represented that vague world against which he had been so frequently and so earnestly warned. It did not seem to him from what he could see of it to be such a very wicked place after all.\n\nThree or four of the men round the fire were evidently underkeepers and verderers from the forest, sunburned and bearded, with the quick restless eye and lithe movements of the deer among which they lived. Close to the corner of the chimney sat a middle-aged gleeman, clad in a faded garb of Norwich cloth, the tunic of which was so outgrown that it did not fasten at the neck and at the waist. His face was swollen and coarse, and his watery protruding eyes spoke of a life which never wandered very far from the wine-pot. A gilt harp, blotched with many stains and with two of its strings missing, was tucked under one of his arms, while with the other he scooped greedily at his platter. Next to him sat two other men of about the same age, one with a trimming of fur to his coat, which gave him a dignity which was evidently dearer to him than his comfort, for he still drew it round him in spite of the hot glare of the faggots. The other, clad in a dirty russet suit with a long sweeping doublet, had a cunning, foxy face with keen, twinkling eyes and a peaky beard. Next to him sat Hordle John, and beside him three other rough unkempt fellows with tangled beards and matted hair\u2014free laborers from the adjoining farms, where small patches of freehold property had been suffered to remain scattered about in the heart of the royal demesne. The company was completed by a peasant in a rude dress of undyed sheepskin, with the old-fashioned galligaskins about his legs, and a gayly dressed young man with striped cloak jagged at the edges and parti-colored hosen, who looked about him with high disdain upon his face, and held a blue smelling-flask to his nose with one hand, while he brandished a busy spoon with the other. In the corner a very fat man was lying all asprawl upon a truss, snoring stertorously, and evidently in the last stage of drunkenness.\n\n\"That is Wat the limner,\" quoth the landlady, sitting down beside Alleyne, and pointing with the ladle to the sleeping man. \"That is he who paints the signs and the tokens. Alack and alas that ever I should have been fool enough to trust him! Now, young man, what manner of a bird would you suppose a pied merlin to be\u2014that being the proper sign of my hostel?\"\n\n\"Why,\" said Alleyne, \"a merlin is a bird of the same form as an eagle or a falcon. I can well remember that learned brother Bartholomew, who is deep in all the secrets of nature, pointed one out to me as we walked together near Vinney Ridge.\"\n\n\"A falcon or an eagle, quotha? And pied, that is of two several colors. So any man would say except this barrel of lies. He came to me, look you, saying that if I would furnish him with a gallon of ale, wherewith to strengthen himself as he worked, and also the pigments and a board, he would paint for me a noble pied merlin which I might hang along with the blazonry over my door. I, poor simple fool, gave him the ale and all that he craved, leaving him alone too, because he said that a man's mind must be left untroubled when he had great work to do. When I came back the gallon jar was empty, and he lay as you see him, with the board in front of him with this sorry device.\" She raised up a panel which was leaning against the wall, and showed a rude painting of a scraggy and angular fowl, with very long legs and a spotted body.\n\n\"Was that,\" she asked, \"like the bird which thou hast seen?\"\n\nAlleyne shook his head, smiling.\n\n\"No, nor any other bird that ever wagged a feather. It is most like a plucked pullet which has died of the spotted fever. And scarlet too! What would the gentles Sir Nicholas Boarhunte, or Sir Bernard Brocas, of Roche Court, say if they saw such a thing\u2014or, perhaps, even the King's own Majesty himself, who often has ridden past this way, and who loves his falcons as he loves his sons? It would be the downfall of my house.\"\n\n\"The matter is not past mending,\" said Alleyne. \"I pray you, good dame, to give me those three pigment-pots and the brush, and I shall try whether I cannot better this painting.\"\n\nDame Eliza looked doubtfully at him, as though fearing some other stratagem, but, as he made no demand for ale, she finally brought the paints, and watched him as he smeared on his background, talking the while about the folk round the fire.\n\n\"The four forest lads must be jogging soon,\" she said. \"They bide at Emery Down, a mile or more from here. Yeomen prickers they are, who tend to the King's hunt. The gleeman is called Floyting Will. He comes from the north country, but for many years he hath gone the round of the forest from Southampton to Christchurch. He drinks much and pays little but it would make your ribs crackle to hear him sing the 'Jest of Hendy Tobias.' Mayhap he will sing it when the ale has warmed him.\"\n\n\"Who are those next to him?\" asked Alleyne, much interested. \"He of the fur mantle has a wise and reverent face.\"\n\n\"He is a seller of pills and salves, very learned in humors, and rheums, and fluxes, and all manner of ailments. He wears, as you perceive, the vernicle of Sainted Luke, the first physician, upon his sleeve. May good St. Thomas of Kent grant that it may be long before either I or mine need his help! He is here to-night for herbergage, as are the others except the foresters. His neighbor is a tooth-drawer. That bag at his girdle is full of the teeth that he drew at Winchester fair. I warrant that there are more sound ones than sorry, for he is quick at his work and a trifle dim in the eye. The lusty man next him with the red head I have not seen before. The four on this side are all workers, three of them in the service of the bailiff of Sir Baldwin Redvers, and the other, he with the sheepskin, is, as I hear, a villein from the midlands who hath run from his master. His year and day are well-nigh up, when he will be a free man.\"\n\n\"And the other?\" asked Alleyne in a whisper. \"He is surely some very great man, for he looks as though he scorned those who were about him.\"\n\nThe landlady looked at him in a motherly way and shook her head. \"You have had no great truck with the world,\" she said, \"or you would have learned that it is the small men and not the great who hold their noses in the air. Look at those shields upon my wall and under my eaves. Each of them is the device of some noble lord or gallant knight who hath slept under my roof at one time or another. Yet milder men or easier to please I have never seen: eating my bacon and drinking my wine with a merry face, and paying my score with some courteous word or jest which was dearer to me than my profit. Those are the true gentles. But your chapman or your bearward will swear that there is a lime in the wine, and water in the ale, and fling off at the last with a curse instead of a blessing. This youth is a scholar from Cambrig, where men are wont to be blown out by a little knowledge, and lose the use of their hands in learning the laws of the Romans. But I must away to lay down the beds. So may the saints keep you and prosper you in your undertaking!\"\n\nThus left to himself, Alleyne drew his panel of wood where the light of one of the torches would strike full upon it, and worked away with all the pleasure of the trained craftsman, listening the while to the talk which went on round the fire. The peasant in the sheepskins, who had sat glum and silent all evening, had been so heated by his flagon of ale that he was talking loudly and angrily with clenched hands and flashing eyes.\n\n\"Sir Humphrey Tennant of Ashby may till his own fields for me,\" he cried. \"The castle has thrown its shadow upon the cottage over long. For three hundred years my folk have swinked and sweated, day in and day out, to keep the wine on the lord's table and the harness on the lord's back. Let him take off his plates and delve himself, if delving must be done.\"\n\n\"A proper spirit, my fair son!\" said one of the free laborers. \"I would that all men were of thy way of thinking.\"\n\n\"He would have sold me with his acres,\" the other cried, in a voice which was hoarse with passion. \"'The man, the woman and their litter'\u2014so ran the words of the dotard bailiff. Never a bullock on the farm was sold more lightly. Ha! he may wake some black night to find the flames licking about his ears\u2014for fire is a good friend to the poor man, and I have seen a smoking heap of ashes where over night there stood just such another castlewick as Ashby.\"\n\n\"This is a lad of mettle!\" shouted another of the laborers. \"He dares to give tongue to what all men think. Are we not all from Adam's loins, all with flesh and blood, and with the same mouth that must needs have food and drink? Where all this difference then between the ermine cloak and the leathern tunic, if what they cover is the same?\"\n\n\"Aye, Jenkin,\" said another, \"our foeman is under the stole and the vestment as much as under the helmet and plate of proof. We have as much to fear from the tonsure as from the hauberk. Strike at the noble and the priest shrieks, strike at priest and the noble lays his hand upon glaive. They are twin thieves who live upon our labor.\"\n\n\"It would take a clever man to live upon thy labor, Hugh,\" remarked one of the foresters, \"seeing that the half of thy time is spent in swilling mead at the 'Pied Merlin.'\"\n\n\"Better that than stealing the deer that thou art placed to guard, like some folk I know.\"\n\n\"If you dare open that swine's mouth against me,\" shouted the woodman, \"I'll crop your ears for you before the hangman has the doing of it, thou long-jawed lackbrain.\"\n\n\"Nay, gentles, gentles!\" cried Dame Eliza, in a singsong heedless voice, which showed that such bickerings were nightly things among her guests. \"No brawling or brabbling, gentles! Take heed to the good name of the house.\"\n\n\"Besides, if it comes to the cropping of ears, there are other folk who may say their say,\" quoth the third laborer. \"We are all freemen, and I trow that a yeoman's cudgel is as good as a forester's knife. By St. Anselm! it would be an evil day if we had to bend to our master's servants as well as to our masters.\"\n\n\"No man is my master save the King,\" the woodman answered. \"Who is there, save a false traitor, who would refuse to serve the English king?\"\n\n\"I know not about the English king,\" said the man Jenkin. \"What sort of English king is it who cannot lay his tongue to a word of English? You mind last year when he came down to Malwood, with his inner marshal and his outer marshal, his justiciar, his seneschal, and his four and twenty guardsmen. One noontide I was by Franklin Swinton's gate, when up he rides with a yeoman pricker at his heels. 'Ouvre,' he cried, 'ouvre,' or some such word, making signs for me to open the gate; and then 'Merci,' as though he were adrad of me. And you talk of an English king?\"\n\n\"I do not marvel at it,\" cried the Cambrig scholar, speaking in the high drawling voice which was common among his class. \"It is not a tongue for men of sweet birth and delicate upbringing. It is a foul, snorting, snarling manner of speech. For myself, I swear by the learned Polycarp that I have most ease with Hebrew, and after that perchance with Arabian.\"\n\n\"I will not hear a word said against old King Ned,\" cried Hordle John in a voice like a bull. \"What if he is fond of a bright eye and a saucy face. I know one of his subjects who could match him at that. If he cannot speak like an Englishman I trow that he can fight like an Englishman, and he was hammering at the gates of Paris while ale-house topers were grutching and grumbling at home.\"\n\nThis loud speech, coming from a man of so formidable an appearance, somewhat daunted the disloyal party, and they fell into a sullen silence, which enabled Alleyne to hear something of the talk which was going on in the further corner between the physician, the tooth-drawer and the gleeman.\n\n\"A raw rat,\" the man of drugs was saying, \"that is what it is ever my use to order for the plague\u2014a raw rat with its paunch cut open.\"\n\n\"Might it not be broiled, most learned sir?\" asked the tooth-drawer. \"A raw rat sounds a most sorry and cheerless dish.\"\n\n\"Not to be eaten,\" cried the physician, in high disdain. \"Why should any man eat such a thing?\"\n\n\"Why indeed?\" asked the gleeman, taking a long drain at his tankard.\n\n\"It is to be placed on the sore or swelling. For the rat, mark you, being a foul-living creature, hath a natural drawing or affinity for all foul things, so that the noxious humors pass from the man into the unclean beast.\"\n\n\"Would that cure the black death, master?\" asked Jenkin.\n\n\"Aye, truly would it, my fair son.\"\n\n\"Then I am right glad that there were none who knew of it. The black death is the best friend that ever the common folk had in England.\"\n\n\"How that then?\" asked Hordle John.\n\n\"Why, friend, it is easy to see that you have not worked with your hands or you would not need to ask. When half the folk in the country were dead it was then that the other half could pick and choose who they would work for, and for what wage. That is why I say that the murrain was the best friend that the borel folk ever had.\"\n\n\"True, Jenkin,\" said another workman; \"but it is not all good that is brought by it either. We well know that through it corn-land has been turned into pasture, so that flocks of sheep with perchance a single shepherd wander now where once a hundred men had work and wage.\"\n\n\"There is no great harm in that,\" remarked the tooth-drawer, \"for the sheep give many folk their living. There is not only the herd, but the shearer and brander, and then the dresser, the curer, the dyer, the fuller, the webster, the merchant, and a score of others.\"\n\n\"If it come to that.\" said one of the foresters, \"the tough meat of them will wear folks teeth out, and there is a trade for the man who can draw them.\"\n\nA general laugh followed this sally at the dentist's expense, in the midst of which the gleeman placed his battered harp upon his knee, and began to pick out a melody upon the frayed strings.\n\n\"Elbow room for Floyting Will!\" cried the woodmen. \"Twang us a merry lilt.\"\n\n\"Aye, aye, the 'Lasses of Lancaster,'\" one suggested.\n\n\"Or 'St. Simeon and the Devil.'\"\n\n\"Or the 'Jest of Hendy Tobias.'\"\n\nTo all these suggestions the jongleur made no response, but sat with his eye fixed abstractedly upon the ceiling, as one who calls words to his mind. Then, with a sudden sweep across the strings, he broke out into a song so gross and so foul that ere he had finished a verse the pure-minded lad sprang to his feet with the blood tingling in his face.\n\n\"How can you sing such things?\" he cried. \"You, too, an old man who should be an example to others.\"\n\nThe wayfarers all gazed in the utmost astonishment at the interruption.\n\n\"By the holy Dicon of Hampole! our silent clerk has found his tongue,\" said one of the woodmen. \"What is amiss with the song then? How has it offended your babyship?\"\n\n\"A milder and better mannered song hath never been heard within these walls,\" cried another. \"What sort of talk is this for a public inn?\"\n\n\"Shall it be a litany, my good clerk?\" shouted a third; \"or would a hymn be good enough to serve?\"\n\nThe jongleur had put down his harp in high dudgeon. \"Am I to be preached to by a child?\" he cried, staring across at Alleyne with an inflamed and angry countenance. \"Is a hairless infant to raise his tongue against me, when I have sung in every fair from Tweed to Trent, and have twice been named aloud by the High Court of the Minstrels at Beverley? I shall sing no more to-night.\"\n\n\"Nay, but you will so,\" said one of the laborers. \"Hi, Dame Eliza, bring a stoup of your best to Will to clear his throat. Go forward with thy song, and if our girl-faced clerk does not love it he can take to the road and go whence he came.\"\n\n\"Nay, but not too last,\" broke in Hordle John. \"There are two words in this matter. It may be that my little comrade has been over quick in reproof, he having gone early into the cloisters and seen little of the rough ways and words of the world. Yet there is truth in what he says, for, as you know well, the song was not of the cleanest. I shall stand by him, therefore, and he shall neither be put out on the road, nor shall his ears be offended indoors.\"\n\n\"Indeed, your high and mighty grace,\" sneered one of the yeomen, \"have you in sooth so ordained?\"\n\n\"By the Virgin!\" said a second, \"I think that you may both chance to find yourselves upon the road before long.\"\n\n\"And so belabored as to be scarce able to crawl along it,\" cried a third.\n\n\"Nay, I shall go! I shall go!\" said Alleyne hurriedly, as Hordle John began to slowly roll up his sleeve, and bare an arm like a leg of mutton. \"I would not have you brawl about me.\"\n\n\"Hush! lad,\" he whispered, \"I count them not a fly. They may find they have more tow on their distaff than they know how to spin. Stand thou clear and give me space.\"\n\nBoth the foresters and the laborers had risen from their bench, and Dame Eliza and the travelling doctor had flung themselves between the two parties with soft words and soothing gestures, when the door of the \"Pied Merlin\" was flung violently open, and the attention of the company was drawn from their own quarrel to the new-comer who had burst so unceremoniously upon them." + }, + { + "title": "HOW SAMKIN AYLWARD WAGERED HIS FEATHER-BED.", + "text": "He was a middle-sized man, of most massive and robust build, with an arching chest and extraordinary breadth of shoulder. His shaven face was as brown as a hazel-nut, tanned and dried by the weather, with harsh, well-marked features, which were not improved by a long white scar which stretched from the corner of his left nostril to the angle of the jaw. His eyes were bright and searching, with something of menace and of authority in their quick glitter, and his mouth was firm-set and hard, as befitted one who was wont to set his face against danger. A straight sword by his side and a painted long-bow jutting over his shoulder proclaimed his profession, while his scarred brigandine of chain-mail and his dinted steel cap showed that he was no holiday soldier, but one who was even now fresh from the wars. A white surcoat with the lion of St. George in red upon the centre covered his broad breast, while a sprig of new-plucked broom at the side of his head-gear gave a touch of gayety and grace to his grim, war-worn equipment.\n\n\"Ha!\" he cried, blinking like an owl in the sudden glare. \"Good even to you, comrades! Hola! a woman, by my soul!\" and in an instant he had clipped Dame Eliza round the waist and was kissing her violently. His eye happening to wander upon the maid, however, he instantly abandoned the mistress and danced off after the other, who scurried in confusion up one of the ladders, and dropped the heavy trap-door upon her pursuer. He then turned back and saluted the landlady once more with the utmost relish and satisfaction.\n\n\"La petite is frightened,\" said he. \"Ah, c'est l'amour, l'amour! Curse this trick of French, which will stick to my throat. I must wash it out with some good English ale. By my hilt! camarades, there is no drop of French blood in my body, and I am a true English bowman, Samkin Aylward by name; and I tell you, mes amis, that it warms my very heart-roots to set my feet on the dear old land once more. When I came off the galley at Hythe, this very day, I down on my bones, and I kissed the good brown earth, as I kiss thee now, ma belle, for it was eight long years since I had seen it. The very smell of it seemed life to me. But where are my six rascals? Hola, there! En avant!\"\n\nAt the order, six men, dressed as common drudges, marched solemnly into the room, each bearing a huge bundle upon his head. They formed in military line, while the soldier stood in front of them with stern eyes, checking off their several packages.\n\n\"Number one\u2014a French feather-bed with the two counterpanes of white sendall,\" said he.\n\n\"Here, worthy sir,\" answered the first of the bearers, laying a great package down in the corner.\n\n\"Number two\u2014seven ells of red Turkey cloth and nine ells of cloth of gold. Put it down by the other. Good dame, I prythee give each of these men a bottrine of wine or a jack of ale. Three\u2014a full piece of white Genoan velvet with twelve ells of purple silk. Thou rascal, there is dirt on the hem! Thou hast brushed it against some wall, coquin!\"\n\n\"Not I, most worthy sir,\" cried the carrier, shrinking away from the fierce eyes of the bowman.\n\n\"I say yes, dog! By the three kings! I have seen a man gasp out his last breath for less. Had you gone through the pain and unease that I have done to earn these things you would be at more care. I swear by my ten finger-bones that there is not one of them that hath not cost its weight in French blood! Four\u2014an incense-boat, a ewer of silver, a gold buckle and a cope worked in pearls. I found them, camarades, at the Church of St. Denis in the harrying of Narbonne, and I took them away with me lest they fall into the hands of the wicked. Five\u2014a cloak of fur turned up with minever, a gold goblet with stand and cover, and a box of rose-colored sugar. See that you lay them together. Six\u2014a box of monies, three pounds of Limousine gold-work, a pair of boots, silver tagged, and, lastly, a store of naping linen. So, the tally is complete! Here is a groat apiece, and you may go.\"\n\n\"Go whither, worthy sir?\" asked one of the carriers.\n\n\"Whither? To the devil if ye will. What is it to me? Now, ma belle, to supper. A pair of cold capons, a mortress of brawn, or what you will, with a flask or two of the right Gascony. I have crowns in my pouch, my sweet, and I mean to spend them. Bring in wine while the food is dressing. Buvons my brave lads; you shall each empty a stoup with me.\"\n\nHere was an offer which the company in an English inn at that or any other date are slow to refuse. The flagons were re-gathered and came back with the white foam dripping over their edges. Two of the woodmen and three of the laborers drank their portions off hurriedly and trooped off together, for their homes were distant and the hour late. The others, however, drew closer, leaving the place of honor to the right of the gleeman to the free-handed new-comer. He had thrown off his steel cap and his brigandine, and had placed them with his sword, his quiver and his painted long-bow, on the top of his varied heap of plunder in the corner. Now, with his thick and somewhat bowed legs stretched in front of the blaze, his green jerkin thrown open, and a great quart pot held in his corded fist, he looked the picture of comfort and of good-fellowship. His hard-set face had softened, and the thick crop of crisp brown curls which had been hidden by his helmet grew low upon his massive neck. He might have been forty years of age, though hard toil and harder pleasure had left their grim marks upon his features. Alleyne had ceased painting his pied merlin, and sat, brush in hand, staring with open eyes at a type of man so strange and so unlike any whom he had met. Men had been good or had been bad in his catalogue, but here was a man who was fierce one instant and gentle the next, with a curse on his lips and a smile in his eye. What was to be made of such a man as that?\n\nIt chanced that the soldier looked up and saw the questioning glance which the young clerk threw upon him. He raised his flagon and drank to him, with a merry flash of his white teeth.\n\n\"A toi, mon garcon,\" he cried. \"Hast surely never seen a man-at-arms, that thou shouldst stare so?\"\n\n\"I never have,\" said Alleyne frankly, \"though I have oft heard talk of their deeds.\"\n\n\"By my hilt!\" cried the other, \"if you were to cross the narrow sea you would find them as thick as bees at a tee-hole. Couldst not shoot a bolt down any street of Bordeaux, I warrant, but you would pink archer, squire, or knight. There are more breastplates than gaberdines to be seen, I promise you.\"\n\n\"And where got you all these pretty things?\" asked Hordle John, pointing at the heap in the corner.\n\n\"Where there is as much more waiting for any brave lad to pick it up. Where a good man can always earn a good wage, and where he need look upon no man as his paymaster, but just reach his hand out and help himself. Aye, it is a goodly and a proper life. And here I drink to mine old comrades, and the saints be with them! Arouse all together, me, enfants, under pain of my displeasure. To Sir Claude Latour and the White Company!\"\n\n\"Sir Claude Latour and the White Company!\" shouted the travellers, draining off their goblets.\n\n\"Well quaffed, mes braves! It is for me to fill your cups again, since you have drained them to my dear lads of the white jerkin. Hola! mon ange, bring wine and ale. How runs the old stave?\u2014\n\n\u2003We'll drink all together\n\n\u2003To the gray goose feather\n\n\u2003And the land where the gray goose flew.\"\n\nHe roared out the catch in a harsh, unmusical voice, and ended with a shout of laughter. \"I trust that I am a better bowman than a minstrel,\" said he.\n\n\"Methinks I have some remembrance of the lilt,\" remarked the gleeman, running his fingers over the strings, \"Hoping that it will give thee no offence, most holy sir\"\u2014with a vicious snap at Alleyne\u2014\"and with the kind permit of the company, I will even venture upon it.\"\n\nMany a time in the after days Alleyne Edricson seemed to see that scene, for all that so many which were stranger and more stirring were soon to crowd upon him. The fat, red-faced gleeman, the listening group, the archer with upraised finger beating in time to the music, and the huge sprawling figure of Hordle John, all thrown into red light and black shadow by the flickering fire in the centre\u2014memory was to come often lovingly back to it. At the time he was lost in admiration at the deft way in which the jongleur disguised the loss of his two missing strings, and the lusty, hearty fashion in which he trolled out his little ballad of the outland bowmen, which ran in some such fashion as this:\n\n\u2003What of the bow?\n\n\u2003The bow was made in England:\n\n\u2003Of true wood, of yew wood,\n\n\u2003The wood of English bows;\n\n\u2003So men who are free\n\n\u2003Love the old yew tree\n\n\u2003And the land where the yew tree grows.\n\n\u2003What of the cord?\n\n\u2003The cord was made in England:\n\n\u2003A rough cord, a tough cord,\n\n\u2003A cord that bowmen love;\n\n\u2003So we'll drain our jacks\n\n\u2003To the English flax\n\n\u2003And the land where the hemp was wove.\n\n\u2003What of the shaft?\n\n\u2003The shaft was cut in England:\n\n\u2003A long shaft, a strong shaft,\n\n\u2003Barbed and trim and true;\n\n\u2003So we'll drink all together\n\n\u2003To the gray goose feather\n\n\u2003And the land where the gray goose flew.\n\n\u2003What of the men?\n\n\u2003The men were bred in England:\n\n\u2003The bowman\u2014the yeoman\u2014\n\n\u2003The lads of dale and fell\n\n\u2003Here's to you\u2014and to you;\n\n\u2003To the hearts that are true\n\n\u2003And the land where the true hearts dwell.\n\n\"Well sung, by my hilt!\" shouted the archer in high delight. \"Many a night have I heard that song, both in the old war-time and after in the days of the White Company, when Black Simon of Norwich would lead the stave, and four hundred of the best bowmen that ever drew string would come roaring in upon the chorus. I have seen old John Hawkwood, the same who has led half the Company into Italy, stand laughing in his beard as he heard it, until his plates rattled again. But to get the full smack of it ye must yourselves be English bowmen, and be far off upon an outland soil.\"\n\nWhilst the song had been singing Dame Eliza and the maid had placed a board across two trestles, and had laid upon it the knife, the spoon, the salt, the tranchoir of bread, and finally the smoking dish which held the savory supper. The archer settled himself to it like one who had known what it was to find good food scarce; but his tongue still went as merrily as his teeth.\n\n\"It passes me,\" he cried, \"how all you lusty fellows can bide scratching your backs at home when there are such doings over the seas. Look at me\u2014what have I to do? It is but the eye to the cord, the cord to the shaft, and the shaft to the mark. There is the whole song of it. It is but what you do yourselves for pleasure upon a Sunday evening at the parish village butts.\"\n\n\"And the wage?\" asked a laborer.\n\n\"You see what the wage brings,\" he answered. \"I eat of the best, and I drink deep. I treat my friend, and I ask no friend to treat me. I clap a silk gown on my girl's back. Never a knight's lady shall be better betrimmed and betrinketed. How of all that, mon garcon? And how of the heap of trifles that you can see for yourselves in yonder corner? They are from the South French, every one, upon whom I have been making war. By my hilt! camarades, I think that I may let my plunder speak for itself.\"\n\n\"It seems indeed to be a goodly service,\" said the tooth-drawer.\n\n\"Tete bleu! yes, indeed. Then there is the chance of a ransom. Why, look you, in the affair at Brignais some four years back, when the companies slew James of Bourbon, and put his army to the sword, there was scarce a man of ours who had not count, baron, or knight. Peter Karsdale, who was but a common country lout newly brought over, with the English fleas still hopping under his doublet, laid his great hands upon the Sieur Amaury de Chatonville, who owns half Picardy, and had five thousand crowns out of him, with his horse and harness. 'Tis true that a French wench took it all off Peter as quick as the Frenchman paid it; but what then? By the twang of string! it would be a bad thing if money was not made to be spent; and how better than on woman\u2014eh, ma belle?\"\n\n\"It would indeed be a bad thing if we had not our brave archers to bring wealth and kindly customs into the country,\" quoth Dame Eliza, on whom the soldier's free and open ways had made a deep impression.\n\n\"A toi, ma cherie!\" said he, with his hand over his heart. \"Hola! there is la petite peeping from behind the door. A toi, aussi, ma petite! Mon Dieu! but the lass has a good color!\"\n\n\"There is one thing, fair sir,\" said the Cambridge student in his piping voice, \"which I would fain that you would make more clear. As I understand it, there was peace made at the town of Bretigny some six years back between our most gracious monarch and the King of the French. This being so, it seems most passing strange that you should talk so loudly of war and of companies when there is no quarrel between the French and us.\"\n\n\"Meaning that I lie,\" said the archer, laying down his knife.\n\n\"May heaven forfend!\" cried the student hastily. \"Magna est veritas sed rara, which means in the Latin tongue that archers are all honorable men. I come to you seeking knowledge, for it is my trade to learn.\"\n\n\"I fear that you are yet a 'prentice to that trade,\" quoth the soldier; \"for there is no child over the water but could answer what you ask. Know then that though there may be peace between our own provinces and the French, yet within the marches of France there is always war, for the country is much divided against itself, and is furthermore harried by bands of flayers, skinners, Brabacons, tardvenus, and the rest of them. When every man's grip is on his neighbor's throat, and every five-sous-piece of a baron is marching with tuck of drum to fight whom he will, it would be a strange thing if five hundred brave English boys could not pick up a living. Now that Sir John Hawkwood hath gone with the East Anglian lads and the Nottingham woodmen into the service of the Marquis of Montferrat to fight against the Lord of Milan, there are but ten score of us left, yet I trust that I may be able to bring some back with me to fill the ranks of the White Company. By the tooth of Peter! it would be a bad thing if I could not muster many a Hamptonshire man who would be ready to strike in under the red flag of St. George, and the more so if Sir Nigel Loring, of Christchurch, should don hauberk once more and take the lead of us.\"\n\n\"Ah, you would indeed be in luck then,\" quoth a woodman; \"for it is said that, setting aside the prince, and mayhap good old Sir John Chandos, there was not in the whole army a man of such tried courage.\"\n\n\"It is sooth, every word of it,\" the archer answered. \"I have seen him with these two eyes in a stricken field, and never did man carry himself better. Mon Dieu! yes, ye would not credit it to look at him, or to hearken to his soft voice, but from the sailing from Orwell down to the foray to Paris, and that is clear twenty years, there was not a skirmish, onfall, sally, bushment, escalado or battle, but Sir Nigel was in the heart of it. I go now to Christchurch with a letter to him from Sir Claude Latour to ask him if he will take the place of Sir John Hawkwood; and there is the more chance that he will if I bring one or two likely men at my heels. What say you, woodman: wilt leave the bucks to loose a shaft at a nobler mark?\"\n\nThe forester shook his head. \"I have wife and child at Emery Down,\" quoth he; \"I would not leave them for such a venture.\"\n\n\"You, then, young sir?\" asked the archer.\n\n\"Nay, I am a man of peace,\" said Alleyne Edricson. \"Besides, I have other work to do.\"\n\n\"Peste!\" growled the soldier, striking his flagon on the board until the dishes danced again. \"What, in the name of the devil, hath come over the folk? Why sit ye all moping by the fireside, like crows round a dead horse, when there is man's work to be done within a few short leagues of ye? Out upon you all, as a set of laggards and hang-backs! By my hilt I believe that the men of England are all in France already, and that what is left behind are in sooth the women dressed up in their paltocks and hosen.\"\n\n\"Archer,\" quoth Hordle John, \"you have lied more than once and more than twice; for which, and also because I see much in you to dislike, I am sorely tempted to lay you upon your back.\"\n\n\"By my hilt! then, I have found a man at last!\" shouted the bowman. \"And, 'fore God, you are a better man than I take you for if you can lay me on my back, mon garcon. I have won the ram more times than there are toes to my feet, and for seven long years I have found no man in the Company who could make my jerkin dusty.\"\n\n\"We have had enough bobance and boasting,\" said Hordle John, rising and throwing off his doublet. \"I will show you that there are better men left in England than ever went thieving to France.\"\n\n\"Pasques Dieu!\" cried the archer, loosening his jerkin, and eyeing his foeman over with the keen glance of one who is a judge of manhood. \"I have only once before seen such a body of a man. By your leave, my red-headed friend, I should be right sorry to exchange buffets with you; and I will allow that there is no man in the Company who would pull against you on a rope; so let that be a salve to your pride. On the other hand I should judge that you have led a life of ease for some months back, and that my muscle is harder than your own. I am ready to wager upon myself against you if you are not afeard.\"\n\n\"Afeard, thou lurden!\" growled big John. \"I never saw the face yet of the man that I was afeard of. Come out, and we shall see who is the better man.\"\n\n\"But the wager?\"\n\n\"I have nought to wager. Come out for the love and the lust of the thing.\"\n\n\"Nought to wager!\" cried the soldier. \"Why, you have that which I covet above all things. It is that big body of thine that I am after. See, now, mon garcon. I have a French feather-bed there, which I have been at pains to keep these years back. I had it at the sacking of Issodun, and the King himself hath not such a bed. If you throw me, it is thine; but, if I throw you, then you are under a vow to take bow and bill and hie with me to France, there to serve in the White Company as long as we be enrolled.\"\n\n\"A fair wager!\" cried all the travellers, moving back their benches and trestles, so as to give fair field for the wrestlers.\n\n\"Then you may bid farewell to your bed, soldier,\" said Hordle John.\n\n\"Nay; I shall keep the bed, and I shall have you to France in spite of your teeth, and you shall live to thank me for it. How shall it be, then, mon enfant? Collar and elbow, or close-lock, or catch how you can?\"\n\n\"To the devil with your tricks,\" said John, opening and shutting his great red hands. \"Stand forth, and let me clip thee.\"\n\n\"Shalt clip me as best you can then,\" quoth the archer, moving out into the open space, and keeping a most wary eye upon his opponent. He had thrown off his green jerkin, and his chest was covered only by a pink silk jupon, or undershirt, cut low in the neck and sleeveless. Hordle John was stripped from his waist upwards, and his huge body, with his great muscles swelling out like the gnarled roots of an oak, towered high above the soldier. The other, however, though near a foot shorter, was a man of great strength; and there was a gloss upon his white skin which was wanting in the heavier limbs of the renegade monk. He was quick on his feet, too, and skilled at the game; so that it was clear, from the poise of head and shine of eye, that he counted the chances to be in his favor. It would have been hard that night, through the whole length of England, to set up a finer pair in face of each other.\n\nBig John stood waiting in the centre with a sullen, menacing eye, and his red hair in a bristle, while the archer paced lightly and swiftly to the right and the left with crooked knee and hands advanced. Then with a sudden dash, so swift and fierce that the eye could scarce follow it, he flew in upon his man and locked his leg round him. It was a grip that, between men of equal strength, would mean a fall; but Hordle John tore him off from him as he might a rat, and hurled him across the room, so that his head cracked up against the wooden wall.\n\n\"Ma foi!\" cried the bowman, passing his fingers through his curls, \"you were not far from the feather-bed then, mon gar. A little more and this good hostel would have a new window.\"\n\nNothing daunted, he approached his man once more, but this time with more caution than before. With a quick feint he threw the other off his guard, and then, bounding upon him, threw his legs round his waist and his arms round his bull-neck, in the hope of bearing him to the ground with the sudden shock. With a bellow of rage, Hordle John squeezed him limp in his huge arms; and then, picking him up, cast him down upon the floor with a force which might well have splintered a bone or two, had not the archer with the most perfect coolness clung to the other's forearms to break his fall. As it was, he dropped upon his feet and kept his balance, though it sent a jar through his frame which set every joint a-creaking. He bounded back from his perilous foeman; but the other, heated by the bout, rushed madly after him, and so gave the practised wrestler the very vantage for which he had planned. As big John flung himself upon him, the archer ducked under the great red hands that clutched for him, and, catching his man round the thighs, hurled him over his shoulder\u2014helped as much by his own mad rush as by the trained strength of the heave. To Alleyne's eye, it was as if John had taken unto himself wings and flown. As he hurtled through the air, with giant limbs revolving, the lad's heart was in his mouth; for surely no man ever yet had such a fall and came scathless out of it. In truth, hardy as the man was, his neck had been assuredly broken had he not pitched head first on the very midriff of the drunken artist, who was slumbering so peacefully in the corner, all unaware of these stirring doings. The luckless limner, thus suddenly brought out from his dreams, sat up with a piercing yell, while Hordle John bounded back into the circle almost as rapidly as he had left it.\n\n\"One more fall, by all the saints!\" he cried, throwing out his arms.\n\n\"Not I,\" quoth the archer, pulling on his clothes, \"I have come well out of the business. I would sooner wrestle with the great bear of Navarre.\"\n\n\"It was a trick,\" cried John.\n\n\"Aye was it. By my ten finger-bones! it is a trick that will add a proper man to the ranks of the Company.\"\n\n\"Oh, for that,\" said the other, \"I count it not a fly; for I had promised myself a good hour ago that I should go with thee, since the life seems to be a goodly and proper one. Yet I would fain have had the feather-bed.\"\n\n\"I doubt it not, mon ami,\" quoth the archer, going back to his tankard. \"Here is to thee, lad, and may we be good comrades to each other! But, hola! what is it that ails our friend of the wrathful face?\"\n\nThe unfortunate limner had been sitting up rubbing himself ruefully and staring about with a vacant gaze, which showed that he knew neither where he was nor what had occurred to him. Suddenly, however, a flash of intelligence had come over his sodden features, and he rose and staggered for the door. \"'Ware the ale!\" he said in a hoarse whisper, shaking a warning finger at the company. \"Oh, holy Virgin, 'ware the ale!\" and slapping his hands to his injury, he flitted off into the darkness, amid a shout of laughter, in which the vanquished joined as merrily as the victor. The remaining forester and the two laborers were also ready for the road, and the rest of the company turned to the blankets which Dame Eliza and the maid had laid out for them upon the floor. Alleyne, weary with the unwonted excitements of the day, was soon in a deep slumber broken only by fleeting visions of twittering legs, cursing beggars, black robbers, and the many strange folk whom he had met at the \"Pied Merlin.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE THREE COMRADES JOURNEYED THROUGH THE WOODLANDS.", + "text": "At early dawn the country inn was all alive, for it was rare indeed that an hour of daylight would be wasted at a time when lighting was so scarce and dear. Indeed, early as it was when Dame Eliza began to stir, it seemed that others could be earlier still, for the door was ajar, and the learned student of Cambridge had taken himself off, with a mind which was too intent upon the high things of antiquity to stoop to consider the fourpence which he owed for bed and board. It was the shrill out-cry of the landlady when she found her loss, and the clucking of the hens, which had streamed in through the open door, that first broke in upon the slumbers of the tired wayfarers.\n\nOnce afoot, it was not long before the company began to disperse. A sleek mule with red trappings was brought round from some neighboring shed for the physician, and he ambled away with much dignity upon his road to Southampton. The tooth-drawer and the gleeman called for a cup of small ale apiece, and started off together for Ringwood fair, the old jongleur looking very yellow in the eye and swollen in the face after his overnight potations. The archer, however, who had drunk more than any man in the room, was as merry as a grig, and having kissed the matron and chased the maid up the ladder once more, he went out to the brook, and came back with the water dripping from his face and hair.\n\n\"Hola! my man of peace,\" he cried to Alleyne, \"whither are you bent this morning?\"\n\n\"To Minstead,\" quoth he. \"My brother Simon Edricson is socman there, and I go to bide with him for a while. I prythee, let me have my score, good dame.\"\n\n\"Score, indeed!\" cried she, standing with upraised hands in front of the panel on which Alleyne had worked the night before. \"Say, rather what it is that I owe to thee, good youth. Aye, this is indeed a pied merlin, and with a leveret under its claws, as I am a living woman. By the rood of Waltham! but thy touch is deft and dainty.\"\n\n\"And see the red eye of it!\" cried the maid.\n\n\"Aye, and the open beak.\"\n\n\"And the ruffled wing,\" added Hordle John.\n\n\"By my hilt!\" cried the archer, \"it is the very bird itself.\"\n\nThe young clerk flushed with pleasure at this chorus of praise, rude and indiscriminate indeed, and yet so much heartier and less grudging than any which he had ever heard from the critical brother Jerome, or the short-spoken Abbot. There was, it would seem, great kindness as well as great wickedness in this world, of which he had heard so little that was good. His hostess would hear nothing of his paying either for bed or for board, while the archer and Hordle John placed a hand upon either shoulder and led him off to the board, where some smoking fish, a dish of spinach, and a jug of milk were laid out for their breakfast.\n\n\"I should not be surprised to learn, mon camarade,\" said the soldier, as he heaped a slice of fish upon Alleyne's tranchoir of bread, \"that you could read written things, since you are so ready with your brushes and pigments.\"\n\n\"It would be shame to the good brothers of Beaulieu if I could not,\" he answered, \"seeing that I have been their clerk this ten years back.\"\n\nThe bowman looked at him with great respect. \"Think of that!\" said he. \"And you with not a hair to your face, and a skin like a girl. I can shoot three hundred and fifty paces with my little popper there, and four hundred and twenty with the great war-bow; yet I can make nothing of this, nor read my own name if you were to set 'Sam Aylward' up against me. In the whole Company there was only one man who could read, and he fell down a well at the taking of Ventadour, which proves what the thing is not suited to a soldier, though most needful to a clerk.\"\n\n\"I can make some show at it,\" said big John; \"though I was scarce long enough among the monks to catch the whole trick of it.\n\n\"Here, then, is something to try upon,\" quoth the archer, pulling a square of parchment from the inside of his tunic. It was tied securely with a broad band of purple silk, and firmly sealed at either end with a large red seal. John pored long and earnestly over the inscription upon the back, with his brows bent as one who bears up against great mental strain.\n\n\"Not having read much of late,\" he said, \"I am loth to say too much about what this may be. Some might say one thing and some another, just as one bowman loves the yew, and a second will not shoot save with the ash. To me, by the length and the look of it, I should judge this to be a verse from one of the Psalms.\"\n\nThe bowman shook his head. \"It is scarce likely,\" he said, \"that Sir Claude Latour should send me all the way across seas with nought more weighty than a psalm-verse. You have clean overshot the butts this time, mon camarade. Give it to the little one. I will wager my feather-bed that he makes more sense of it.\"\n\n\"Why, it is written in the French tongue,\" said Alleyne, \"and in a right clerkly hand. This is how it runs: 'A le moult puissant et moult honorable chevalier, Sir Nigel Loring de Christchurch, de son tres fidele ami Sir Claude Latour, capitaine de la Compagnie blanche, chatelain de Biscar, grand seigneur de Montchateau, vavaseur de le renomme Gaston, Comte de Foix, tenant les droits de la haute justice, de la milieu, et de la basse.' Which signifies in our speech: 'To the very powerful and very honorable knight, Sir Nigel Loring of Christchurch, from his very faithful friend Sir Claude Latour, captain of the White Company, chatelain of Biscar, grand lord of Montchateau and vassal to the renowned Gaston, Count of Foix, who holds the rights of the high justice, the middle and the low.'\"\n\n\"Look at that now!\" cried the bowman in triumph. \"That is just what he would have said.\"\n\n\"I can see now that it is even so,\" said John, examining the parchment again. \"Though I scarce understand this high, middle and low.\"\n\n\"By my hilt! you would understand it if you were Jacques Bonhomme. The low justice means that you may fleece him, and the middle that you may torture him, and the high that you may slay him. That is about the truth of it. But this is the letter which I am to take; and since the platter is clean it is time that we trussed up and were afoot. You come with me, mon gros Jean; and as to you, little one, where did you say that you journeyed?\"\n\n\"To Minstead.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes. I know this forest country well, though I was born myself in the Hundred of Easebourne, in the Rape of Chichester, hard by the village of Midhurst. Yet I have not a word to say against the Hampton men, for there are no better comrades or truer archers in the whole Company than some who learned to loose the string in these very parts. We shall travel round with you to Minstead lad, seeing that it is little out of our way.\"\n\n\"I am ready,\" said Alleyne, right pleased at the thought of such company upon the road.\n\n\"So am not I. I must store my plunder at this inn, since the hostess is an honest woman. Hola! ma cherie, I wish to leave with you my gold-work, my velvet, my silk, my feather bed, my incense-boat, my ewer, my naping linen, and all the rest of it. I take only the money in a linen bag, and the box of rose colored sugar which is a gift from my captain to the Lady Loring. Wilt guard my treasure for me?\"\n\n\"It shall be put in the safest loft, good archer. Come when you may, you shall find it ready for you.\"\n\n\"Now, there is a true friend!\" cried the bowman, taking her hand. \"There is a bonne amie! English land and English women, say I, and French wine and French plunder. I shall be back anon, mon ange. I am a lonely man, my sweeting, and I must settle some day when the wars are over and done. Mayhap you and I\u2014\u2014Ah, mechante, mechante! There is la petite peeping from behind the door. Now, John, the sun is over the trees; you must be brisker than this when the bugleman blows 'Bows and Bills.'\"\n\n\"I have been waiting this time back,\" said Hordle John gruffly.\n\n\"Then we must be off. Adieu, ma vie! The two livres shall settle the score and buy some ribbons against the next kermesse. Do not forget Sam Aylward, for his heart shall ever be thine alone\u2014and thine, ma petite! So, marchons, and may St. Julian grant us as good quarters elsewhere!\"\n\nThe sun had risen over Ashurst and Denny woods, and was shining brightly, though the eastern wind had a sharp flavor to it, and the leaves were flickering thickly from the trees. In the High Street of Lyndhurst the wayfarers had to pick their way, for the little town was crowded with the guardsmen, grooms, and yeomen prickers who were attached to the King's hunt. The King himself was staying at Castle Malwood, but several of his suite had been compelled to seek such quarters as they might find in the wooden or wattle-and-daub cottages of the village. Here and there a small escutcheon, peeping from a glassless window, marked the night's lodging of knight or baron. These coats-of-arms could be read, where a scroll would be meaningless, and the bowman, like most men of his age, was well versed in the common symbols of heraldry.\n\n\"There is the Saracen's head of Sir Bernard Brocas,\" quoth he. \"I saw him last at the ruffle at Poictiers some ten years back, when he bore himself like a man. He is the master of the King's horse, and can sing a right jovial stave, though in that he cannot come nigh to Sir John Chandos, who is first at the board or in the saddle. Three martlets on a field azure, that must be one of the Luttrells. By the crescent upon it, it should be the second son of old Sir Hugh, who had a bolt through his ankle at the intaking of Romorantin, he having rushed into the fray ere his squire had time to clasp his solleret to his greave. There too is the hackle which is the old device of the De Brays. I have served under Sir Thomas de Bray, who was as jolly as a pie, and a lusty swordsman until he got too fat for his harness.\"\n\nSo the archer gossiped as the three wayfarers threaded their way among the stamping horses, the busy grooms, and the knots of pages and squires who disputed over the merits of their masters' horses and deer-hounds. As they passed the old church, which stood upon a mound at the left-hand side of the village street the door was flung open, and a stream of worshippers wound down the sloping path, coming from the morning mass, all chattering like a cloud of jays. Alleyne bent knee and doffed hat at the sight of the open door; but ere he had finished an ave his comrades were out of sight round the curve of the path, and he had to run to overtake them.\n\n\"What!\" he said, \"not one word of prayer before God's own open house? How can ye hope for His blessing upon the day?\"\n\n\"My friend,\" said Hordle John, \"I have prayed so much during the last two months, not only during the day, but at matins, lauds, and the like, when I could scarce keep my head upon my shoulders for nodding, that I feel that I have somewhat over-prayed myself.\"\n\n\"How can a man have too much religion?\" cried Alleyne earnestly. \"It is the one thing that availeth. A man is but a beast as he lives from day to day, eating and drinking, breathing and sleeping. It is only when he raises himself, and concerns himself with the immortal spirit within him, that he becomes in very truth a man. Bethink ye how sad a thing it would be that the blood of the Redeemer should be spilled to no purpose.\"\n\n\"Bless the lad, if he doth not blush like any girl, and yet preach like the whole College of Cardinals,\" cried the archer.\n\n\"In truth I blush that any one so weak and so unworthy as I should try to teach another that which he finds it so passing hard to follow himself.\"\n\n\"Prettily said, mon garcon. Touching that same slaying of the Redeemer, it was a bad business. A good padre in France read to us from a scroll the whole truth of the matter. The soldiers came upon him in the garden. In truth, these Apostles of His may have been holy men, but they were of no great account as men-at-arms. There was one, indeed, Sir Peter, who smote out like a true man; but, unless he is belied, he did but clip a varlet's ear, which was no very knightly deed. By these ten finger-bones! had I been there with Black Simon of Norwich, and but one score picked men of the Company, we had held them in play. Could we do no more, we had at least filled the false knight, Sir Judas, so full of English arrows that he would curse the day that ever he came on such an errand.\"\n\nThe young clerk smiled at his companion's earnestness. \"Had He wished help,\" he said, \"He could have summoned legions of archangels from heaven, so what need had He of your poor bow and arrow? Besides, bethink you of His own words\u2014that those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword.\"\n\n\"And how could man die better?\" asked the archer. \"If I had my wish, it would be to fall so\u2014not, mark you, in any mere skirmish of the Company, but in a stricken field, with the great lion banner waving over us and the red oriflamme in front, amid the shouting of my fellows and the twanging of the strings. But let it be sword, lance, or bolt that strikes me down: for I should think it shame to die from an iron ball from the fire-crake or bombard or any such unsoldierly weapon, which is only fitted to scare babes with its foolish noise and smoke.\"\n\n\"I have heard much even in the quiet cloisters of these new and dreadful engines,\" quoth Alleyne. \"It is said, though I can scarce bring myself to believe it, that they will send a ball twice as far as a bowman can shoot his shaft, and with such force as to break through armor of proof.\"\n\n\"True enough, my lad. But while the armorer is thrusting in his devil's-dust, and dropping his ball, and lighting his flambeau, I can very easily loose six shafts, or eight maybe, so he hath no great vantage after all. Yet I will not deny that at the intaking of a town it is well to have good store of bombards. I am told that at Calais they made dints in the wall that a man might put his head into. But surely, comrades, some one who is grievously hurt hath passed along this road before us.\"\n\nAll along the woodland track there did indeed run a scattered straggling trail of blood-marks, sometimes in single drops, and in other places in broad, ruddy gouts, smudged over the dead leaves or crimsoning the white flint stones.\n\n\"It must be a stricken deer,\" said John.\n\n\"Nay, I am woodman enough to see that no deer hath passed this way this morning; and yet the blood is fresh. But hark to the sound!\"\n\nThey stood listening all three with sidelong heads. Through the silence of the great forest there came a swishing, whistling sound, mingled with the most dolorous groans, and the voice of a man raised in a high quavering kind of song. The comrades hurried onwards eagerly, and topping the brow of a small rising they saw upon the other side the source from which these strange noises arose.\n\nA tall man, much stooped in the shoulders, was walking slowly with bended head and clasped hands in the centre of the path. He was dressed from head to foot in a long white linen cloth, and a high white cap with a red cross printed upon it. His gown was turned back from his shoulders, and the flesh there was a sight to make a man wince, for it was all beaten to a pulp, and the blood was soaking into his gown and trickling down upon the ground. Behind him walked a smaller man with his hair touched with gray, who was clad in the same white garb. He intoned a long whining rhyme in the French tongue, and at the end of every line he raised a thick cord, all jagged with pellets of lead, and smote his companion across the shoulders until the blood spurted again. Even as the three wayfarers stared, however, there was a sudden change, for the smaller man, having finished his song, loosened his own gown and handed the scourge to the other, who took up the stave once more and lashed his companion with all the strength of his bare and sinewy arm. So, alternately beating and beaten, they made their dolorous way through the beautiful woods and under the amber arches of the fading beech-trees, where the calm strength and majesty of Nature might serve to rebuke the foolish energies and misspent strivings of mankind.\n\nSuch a spectacle was new to Hordle John or to Alleyne Edricson; but the archer treated it lightly, as a common matter enough.\n\n\"These are the Beating Friars, otherwise called the Flagellants,\" quoth he. \"I marvel that ye should have come upon none of them before, for across the water they are as common as gallybaggers. I have heard that there are no English among them, but that they are from France, Italy and Bohemia. En avant, camarades! that we may have speech with them.\"\n\nAs they came up to them, Alleyne could hear the doleful dirge which the beater was chanting, bringing down his heavy whip at the end of each line, while the groans of the sufferer formed a sort of dismal chorus. It was in old French, and ran somewhat in this way:\n\n\u2003Or avant, entre nous tous freres\n\n\u2003Battons nos charognes bien fort\n\n\u2003En remembrant la grant misere\n\n\u2003De Dieu et sa piteuse mort\n\n\u2003Qui fut pris en la gent amere\n\n\u2003Et vendus et trais a tort\n\n\u2003Et bastu sa chair, vierge et dere\n\n\u2003Au nom de ce battons plus fort.\n\nThen at the end of the verse the scourge changed hands and the chanting began anew.\n\n\"Truly, holy fathers,\" said the archer in French as they came abreast of them, \"you have beaten enough for to-day. The road is all spotted like a shambles at Martinmas. Why should ye mishandle yourselves thus?\"\n\n\"C'est pour vos peches\u2014pour vos peches,\" they droned, looking at the travellers with sad lack-lustre eyes, and then bent to their bloody work once more without heed to the prayers and persuasions which were addressed to them. Finding all remonstrance useless, the three comrades hastened on their way, leaving these strange travellers to their dreary task.\n\n\"Mort Dieu!\" cried the bowman, \"there is a bucketful or more of my blood over in France, but it was all spilled in hot fight, and I should think twice before I drew it drop by drop as these friars are doing. By my hilt! our young one here is as white as a Picardy cheese. What is amiss then, mon cher?\"\n\n\"It is nothing,\" Alleyne answered. \"My life has been too quiet, I am not used to such sights.\"\n\n\"Ma foi!\" the other cried, \"I have never yet seen a man who was so stout of speech and yet so weak of heart.\"\n\n\"Not so, friend,\" quoth big John; \"it is not weakness of heart for I know the lad well. His heart is as good as thine or mine but he hath more in his pate than ever you will carry under that tin pot of thine, and as a consequence he can see farther into things, so that they weigh upon him more.\"\n\n\"Surely to any man it is a sad sight,\" said Alleyne, \"to see these holy men, who have done no sin themselves, suffering so for the sins of others. Saints are they, if in this age any may merit so high a name.\"\n\n\"I count them not a fly,\" cried Hordle John; \"for who is the better for all their whipping and yowling? They are like other friars, I trow, when all is done. Let them leave their backs alone, and beat the pride out of their hearts.\"\n\n\"By the three kings! there is sooth in what you say,\" remarked the archer. \"Besides, methinks if I were le bon Dieu, it would bring me little joy to see a poor devil cutting the flesh off his bones; and I should think that he had but a small opinion of me, that he should hope to please me by such provost-marshal work. No, by my hilt! I should look with a more loving eye upon a jolly archer who never harmed a fallen foe and never feared a hale one.\"\n\n\"Doubtless you mean no sin,\" said Alleyne. \"If your words are wild, it is not for me to judge them. Can you not see that there are other foes in this world besides Frenchmen, and as much glory to be gained in conquering them? Would it not be a proud day for knight or squire if he could overthrow seven adversaries in the lists? Yet here are we in the lists of life, and there come the seven black champions against us Sir Pride, Sir Covetousness, Sir Lust, Sir Anger, Sir Gluttony, Sir Envy, and Sir Sloth. Let a man lay those seven low, and he shall have the prize of the day, from the hands of the fairest queen of beauty, even from the Virgin-Mother herself. It is for this that these men mortify their flesh, and to set us an example, who would pamper ourselves overmuch. I say again that they are God's own saints, and I bow my head to them.\"\n\n\"And so you shall, mon petit,\" replied the archer. \"I have not heard a man speak better since old Dom Bertrand died, who was at one time chaplain to the White Company. He was a very valiant man, but at the battle of Brignais he was spitted through the body by a Hainault man-at-arms. For this we had an excommunication read against the man, when next we saw our holy father at Avignon; but as we had not his name, and knew nothing of him, save that he rode a dapple-gray roussin, I have feared sometimes that the blight may have settled upon the wrong man.\"\n\n\"Your Company has been, then, to bow knee before our holy father, the Pope Urban, the prop and centre of Christendom?\" asked Alleyne, much interested. \"Perchance you have yourself set eyes upon his august face?\"\n\n\"Twice I saw him,\" said the archer. \"He was a lean little rat of a man, with a scab on his chin. The first time we had five thousand crowns out of him, though he made much ado about it. The second time we asked ten thousand, but it was three days before we could come to terms, and I am of opinion myself that we might have done better by plundering the palace. His chamberlain and cardinals came forth, as I remember, to ask whether we would take seven thousand crowns with his blessing and a plenary absolution, or the ten thousand with his solemn ban by bell, book and candle. We were all of one mind that it was best to have the ten thousand with the curse; but in some way they prevailed upon Sir John, so that we were blest and shriven against our will. Perchance it is as well, for the Company were in need of it about that time.\"\n\nThe pious Alleyne was deeply shocked by this reminiscence. Involuntarily he glanced up and around to see if there were any trace of those opportune levin-flashes and thunderbolts which, in the \"Acta Sanctorum,\" were wont so often to cut short the loose talk of the scoffer. The autumn sun streamed down as brightly as ever, and the peaceful red path still wound in front of them through the rustling, yellow-tinted forest, Nature seemed to be too busy with her own concerns to heed the dignity of an outraged pontiff. Yet he felt a sense of weight and reproach within his breast, as though he had sinned himself in giving ear to such words. The teachings of twenty years cried out against such license. It was not until he had thrown himself down before one of the many wayside crosses, and had prayed from his heart both for the archer and for himself, that the dark cloud rolled back again from his spirit." + }, + { + "title": "THE THREE FRIENDS.", + "text": "His companions had passed on whilst he was at his orisons; but his young blood and the fresh morning air both invited him to a scamper. His staff in one hand and his scrip in the other, with springy step and floating locks, he raced along the forest path, as active and as graceful as a young deer. He had not far to go, however; for, on turning a corner, he came on a roadside cottage with a wooden fence-work around it, where stood big John and Aylward the bowman, staring at something within. As he came up with them, he saw that two little lads, the one about nine years of age and the other somewhat older, were standing on the plot in front of the cottage, each holding out a round stick in their left hands, with their arms stiff and straight from the shoulder, as silent and still as two small statues. They were pretty, blue-eyed, yellow-haired lads, well made and sturdy, with bronzed skins, which spoke of a woodland life.\n\n\"Here are young chips from an old bow stave!\" cried the soldier in great delight. \"This is the proper way to raise children. By my hilt! I could not have trained them better had I the ordering of it myself.\"\n\n\"What is it then?\" asked Hordle John. \"They stand very stiff, and I trust that they have not been struck so.\"\n\n\"Nay, they are training their left arms, that they may have a steady grasp of the bow. So my own father trained me, and six days a week I held out his walking-staff till my arm was heavy as lead. Hola, mes enfants! how long will you hold out?\"\n\n\"Until the sun is over the great lime-tree, good master,\" the elder answered.\n\n\"What would ye be, then? Woodmen? Verderers?\"\n\n\"Nay, soldiers,\" they cried both together.\n\n\"By the beard of my father! but ye are whelps of the true breed. Why so keen, then, to be soldiers?\"\n\n\"That we may fight the Scots,\" they answered. \"Daddy will send us to fight the Scots.\"\n\n\"And why the Scots, my pretty lads? We have seen French and Spanish galleys no further away than Southampton, but I doubt that it will be some time before the Scots find their way to these parts.\"\n\n\"Our business is with the Scots,\" quoth the elder; \"for it was the Scots who cut off daddy's string fingers and his thumbs.\"\n\n\"Aye, lads, it was that,\" said a deep voice from behind Alleyne's shoulder. Looking round, the wayfarers saw a gaunt, big-boned man, with sunken cheeks and a sallow face, who had come up behind them. He held up his two hands as he spoke, and showed that the thumbs and two first fingers had been torn away from each of them.\n\n\"Ma foi, camarade!\" cried Aylward. \"Who hath served thee in so shameful a fashion?\"\n\n\"It is easy to see, friend, that you were born far from the marches of Scotland,\" quoth the stranger, with a bitter smile. \"North of Humber there is no man who would not know the handiwork of Devil Douglas, the black Lord James.\"\n\n\"And how fell you into his hands?\" asked John.\n\n\"I am a man of the north country, from the town of Beverley and the wapentake of Holderness,\" he answered. \"There was a day when, from Trent to Tweed, there was no better marksman than Robin Heathcot. Yet, as you see, he hath left me, as he hath left many another poor border archer, with no grip for bill or bow. Yet the king hath given me a living here in the southlands, and please God these two lads of mine will pay off a debt that hath been owing over long. What is the price of daddy's thumbs, boys?\"\n\n\"Twenty Scottish lives,\" they answered together.\n\n\"And for the fingers?\"\n\n\"Half a score.\"\n\n\"When they can bend my war-bow, and bring down a squirrel at a hundred paces, I send them to take service under Johnny Copeland, the Lord of the Marches and Governor of Carlisle. By my soul! I would give the rest of my fingers to see the Douglas within arrow-flight of them.\"\n\n\"May you live to see it,\" quoth the bowman. \"And hark ye, mes enfants, take an old soldier's rede and lay your bodies to the bow, drawing from hip and thigh as much as from arm. Learn also, I pray you, to shoot with a dropping shaft; for though a bowman may at times be called upon to shoot straight and fast, yet it is more often that he has to do with a town-guard behind a wall, or an arbalestier with his mantlet raised when you cannot hope to do him scathe unless your shaft fall straight upon him from the clouds. I have not drawn string for two weeks, but I may be able to show ye how such shots should be made.\" He loosened his long-bow, slung his quiver round to the front, and then glanced keenly round for a fitting mark. There was a yellow and withered stump some way off, seen under the drooping branches of a lofty oak. The archer measured the distance with his eye; and then, drawing three shafts, he shot them off with such speed that the first had not reached the mark ere the last was on the string. Each arrow passed high over the oak; and, of the three, two stuck fair into the stump; while the third, caught in some wandering puff of wind, was driven a foot or two to one side.\n\n\"Good!\" cried the north countryman. \"Hearken to him lads! He is a master bowman. Your dad says amen to every word he says.\"\n\n\"By my hilt!\" said Aylward, \"if I am to preach on bowmanship, the whole long day would scarce give me time for my sermon. We have marksmen in the Company who will notch with a shaft every crevice and joint of a man-at-arm's harness, from the clasp of his bassinet to the hinge of his greave. But, with your favor, friend, I must gather my arrows again, for while a shaft costs a penny a poor man can scarce leave them sticking in wayside stumps. We must, then, on our road again, and I hope from my heart that you may train these two young goshawks here until they are ready for a cast even at such a quarry as you speak of.\"\n\nLeaving the thumbless archer and his brood, the wayfarers struck through the scattered huts of Emery Down, and out on to the broad rolling heath covered deep in ferns and in heather, where droves of the half-wild black forest pigs were rooting about amongst the hillocks. The woods about this point fall away to the left and the right, while the road curves upwards and the wind sweeps keenly over the swelling uplands. The broad strips of bracken glowed red and yellow against the black peaty soil, and a queenly doe who grazed among them turned her white front and her great questioning eyes towards the wayfarers. Alleyne gazed in admiration at the supple beauty of the creature; but the archer's fingers played with his quiver, and his eyes glistened with the fell instinct which urges a man to slaughter.\n\n\"Tete Dieu!\" he growled, \"were this France, or even Guienne, we should have a fresh haunch for our none-meat. Law or no law, I have a mind to loose a bolt at her.\"\n\n\"I would break your stave across my knee first,\" cried John, laying his great hand upon the bow. \"What! man, I am forest-born, and I know what comes of it. In our own township of Hordle two have lost their eyes and one his skin for this very thing. On my troth, I felt no great love when I first saw you, but since then I have conceived over much regard for you to wish to see the verderer's flayer at work upon you.\"\n\n\"It is my trade to risk my skin,\" growled the archer; but none the less he thrust his quiver over his hip again and turned his face for the west.\n\nAs they advanced, the path still tended upwards, running from heath into copses of holly and yew, and so back into heath again. It was joyful to hear the merry whistle of blackbirds as they darted from one clump of greenery to the other. Now and again a peaty amber colored stream rippled across their way, with ferny overgrown banks, where the blue kingfisher flitted busily from side to side, or the gray and pensive heron, swollen with trout and dignity, stood ankle-deep among the sedges. Chattering jays and loud wood-pigeons flapped thickly overhead, while ever and anon the measured tapping of Nature's carpenter, the great green woodpecker, sounded from each wayside grove. On either side, as the path mounted, the long sweep of country broadened and expanded, sloping down on the one side through yellow forest and brown moor to the distant smoke of Lymington and the blue misty channel which lay alongside the skyline, while to the north the woods rolled away, grove topping grove, to where in the furthest distance the white spire of Salisbury stood out hard and clear against the cloudless sky. To Alleyne whose days had been spent in the lowlying coastland, the eager upland air and the wide free country-side gave a sense of life and of the joy of living which made his young blood tingle in his veins. Even the heavy John was not unmoved by the beauty of their road, while the bowman whistled lustily or sang snatches of French love songs in a voice which might have scared the most stout-hearted maiden that ever hearkened to serenade.\n\n\"I have a liking for that north countryman,\" he remarked presently. \"He hath good power of hatred. Couldst see by his cheek and eye that he is as bitter as verjuice. I warm to a man who hath some gall in his liver.\"\n\n\"Ah me!\" sighed Alleyne. \"Would it not be better if he had some love in his heart?\"\n\n\"I would not say nay to that. By my hilt! I shall never be said to be traitor to the little king. Let a man love the sex. Pasques Dieu! they are made to be loved, les petites, from whimple down to shoe-string! I am right glad, mon garcon, to see that the good monks have trained thee so wisely and so well.\"\n\n\"Nay, I meant not worldly love, but rather that his heart should soften towards those who have wronged him.\"\n\nThe archer shook his head. \"A man should love those of his own breed,\" said he. \"But it is not nature that an English-born man should love a Scot or a Frenchman. Ma foi! you have not seen a drove of Nithsdale raiders on their Galloway nags, or you would not speak of loving them. I would as soon take Beelzebub himself to my arms. I fear, mon gar., that they have taught thee but badly at Beaulieu, for surely a bishop knows more of what is right and what is ill than an abbot can do, and I myself with these very eyes saw the Bishop of Lincoln hew into a Scottish hobeler with a battle-axe, which was a passing strange way of showing him that he loved him.\"\n\nAlleyne scarce saw his way to argue in the face of so decided an opinion on the part of a high dignitary of the Church. \"You have borne arms against the Scots, then?\" he asked.\n\n\"Why, man, I first loosed string in battle when I was but a lad, younger by two years than you, at Neville's Cross, under the Lord Mowbray. Later, I served under the Warden of Berwick, that very John Copeland of whom our friend spake, the same who held the King of Scots to ransom. Ma foi! it is rough soldiering, and a good school for one who would learn to be hardy and warwise.\"\n\n\"I have heard that the Scots are good men of war,\" said Hordle John.\n\n\"For axemen and for spearmen I have not seen their match,\" the archer answered. \"They can travel, too, with bag of meal and gridiron slung to their sword-belt, so that it is ill to follow them. There are scant crops and few beeves in the borderland, where a man must reap his grain with sickle in one fist and brown bill in the other. On the other hand, they are the sorriest archers that I have ever seen, and cannot so much as aim with the arbalest, to say nought of the long-bow. Again, they are mostly poor folk, even the nobles among them, so that there are few who can buy as good a brigandine of chain-mail as that which I am wearing, and it is ill for them to stand up against our own knights, who carry the price of five Scotch farms upon their chest and shoulders. Man for man, with equal weapons, they are as worthy and valiant men as could be found in the whole of Christendom.\"\n\n\"And the French?\" asked Alleyne, to whom the archer's light gossip had all the relish that the words of the man of action have for the recluse.\n\n\"The French are also very worthy men. We have had great good fortune in France, and it hath led to much bobance and camp-fire talk, but I have ever noticed that those who know the most have the least to say about it. I have seen Frenchmen fight both in open field, in the intaking and the defending of towns or castlewicks, in escalados, camisades, night forays, bushments, sallies, outfalls, and knightly spear-runnings. Their knights and squires, lad, are every whit as good as ours, and I could pick out a score of those who ride behind Du Guesclin who would hold the lists with sharpened lances against the best men in the army of England. On the other hand, their common folk are so crushed down with gabelle, and poll-tax, and every manner of cursed tallage, that the spirit has passed right out of them. It is a fool's plan to teach a man to be a cur in peace, and think that he will be a lion in war. Fleece them like sheep and sheep they will remain. If the nobles had not conquered the poor folk it is like enough that we should not have conquered the nobles.\"\n\n\"But they must be sorry folk to bow down to the rich in such a fashion,\" said big John. \"I am but a poor commoner of England myself, and yet I know something of charters, liberties franchises, usages, privileges, customs, and the like. If these be broken, then all men know that it is time to buy arrow-heads.\"\n\n\"Aye, but the men of the law are strong in France as well as the men of war. By my hilt! I hold that a man has more to fear there from the ink-pot of the one than from the iron of the other. There is ever some cursed sheepskin in their strong boxes to prove that the rich man should be richer and the poor man poorer. It would scarce pass in England, but they are quiet folk over the water.\"\n\n\"And what other nations have you seen in your travels, good sir?\" asked Alleyne Edricson. His young mind hungered for plain facts of life, after the long course of speculation and of mysticism on which he had been trained.\n\n\"I have seen the low countryman in arms, and I have nought to say against him. Heavy and slow is he by nature, and is not to be brought into battle for the sake of a lady's eyelash or the twang of a minstrel's string, like the hotter blood of the south. But ma foi! lay hand on his wool-bales, or trifle with his velvet of Bruges, and out buzzes every stout burgher, like bees from the tee-hole, ready to lay on as though it were his one business in life. By our lady! they have shown the French at Courtrai and elsewhere that they are as deft in wielding steel as in welding it.\"\n\n\"And the men of Spain?\"\n\n\"They too are very hardy soldiers, the more so as for many hundred years they have had to fight hard against the cursed followers of the black Mahound, who have pressed upon them from the south, and still, as I understand, hold the fairer half of the country. I had a turn with them upon the sea when they came over to Winchelsea and the good queen with her ladies sat upon the cliffs looking down at us, as if it had been joust or tourney. By my hilt! it was a sight that was worth the seeing, for all that was best in England was out on the water that day. We went forth in little ships and came back in great galleys\u2014for of fifty tall ships of Spain, over two score flew the Cross of St. George ere the sun had set. But now, youngster, I have answered you freely, and I trow it is time what you answered me. Let things be plat and plain between us. I am a man who shoots straight at his mark. You saw the things I had with me at yonder hostel: name which you will, save only the box of rose-colored sugar which I take to the Lady Loring, and you shall have it if you will but come with me to France.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" said Alleyne, \"I would gladly come with ye to France or where else ye will, just to list to your talk, and because ye are the only two friends that I have in the whole wide world outside of the cloisters; but, indeed, it may not be, for my duty is towards my brother, seeing that father and mother are dead, and he my elder. Besides, when ye talk of taking me to France, ye do not conceive how useless I should be to you, seeing that neither by training nor by nature am I fitted for the wars, and there seems to be nought but strife in those parts.\"\n\n\"That comes from my fool's talk,\" cried the archer; \"for being a man of no learning myself, my tongue turns to blades and targets, even as my hand does. Know then that for every parchment in England there are twenty in France. For every statue, cut gem, shrine, carven screen, or what else might please the eye of a learned clerk, there are a good hundred to our one. At the spoiling of Carcasonne I have seen chambers stored with writing, though not one man in our Company could read them. Again, in Arles and Nimes, and other towns that I could name, there are the great arches and fortalices still standing which were built of old by giant men who came from the south. Can I not see by your brightened eye how you would love to look upon these things? Come then with me, and, by these ten finger-bones! there is not one of them which you shall not see.\"\n\n\"I should indeed love to look upon them,\" Alleyne answered; \"but I have come from Beaulieu for a purpose, and I must be true to my service, even as thou art true to thine.\"\n\n\"Bethink you again, mon ami,\" quoth Aylward, \"that you might do much good yonder, since there are three hundred men in the Company, and none who has ever a word of grace for them, and yet the Virgin knows that there was never a set of men who were in more need of it. Sickerly the one duty may balance the other. Your brother hath done without you this many a year, and, as I gather, he hath never walked as far as Beaulieu to see you during all that time, so he cannot be in any great need of you.\"\n\n\"Besides,\" said John, \"the Socman of Minstead is a by-word through the forest, from Bramshaw Hill to Holmesley Walk. He is a drunken, brawling, perilous churl, as you may find to your cost.\"\n\n\"The more reason that I should strive to mend him,\" quoth Alleyne. \"There is no need to urge me, friends, for my own wishes would draw me to France, and it would be a joy to me if I could go with you. But indeed and indeed it cannot be, so here I take my leave of you, for yonder square tower amongst the trees upon the right must surely be the church of Minstead, and I may reach it by this path through the woods.\"\n\n\"Well, God be with thee, lad!\" cried the archer, pressing Alleyne to his heart. \"I am quick to love, and quick to hate and 'fore God I am loth to part.\"\n\n\"Would it not be well,\" said John, \"that we should wait here, and see what manner of greeting you have from your brother. You may prove to be as welcome as the king's purveyor to the village dame.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay,\" he answered; \"ye must not bide for me, for where I go I stay.\"\n\n\"Yet it may be as well that you should know whither we go,\" said the archer. \"We shall now journey south through the woods until we come out upon the Christchurch road, and so onwards, hoping to-night to reach the castle of Sir William Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, of which Sir Nigel Loring is constable. There we shall bide, and it is like enough that for a month or more you may find us there, ere we are ready for our viage back to France.\"\n\nIt was hard indeed for Alleyne to break away from these two new but hearty friends, and so strong was the combat between his conscience and his inclinations that he dared not look round, lest his resolution should slip away from him. It was not until he was deep among the tree trunks that he cast a glance backwards, when he found that he could still see them through the branches on the road above him. The archer was standing with folded arms, his bow jutting from over his shoulder, and the sun gleaming brightly upon his headpiece and the links of his chain-mail. Beside him stood his giant recruit, still clad in the home-spun and ill-fitting garments of the fuller of Lymington, with arms and legs shooting out of his scanty garb. Even as Alleyne watched them they turned upon their heels and plodded off together upon their way." + }, + { + "title": "HOW STRANGE THINGS BEFELL IN MINSTEAD WOOD.", + "text": "The path which the young clerk had now to follow lay through a magnificent forest of the very heaviest timber, where the giant bowls of oak and of beech formed long aisles in every direction, shooting up their huge branches to build the majestic arches of Nature's own cathedral. Beneath lay a broad carpet of the softest and greenest moss, flecked over with fallen leaves, but yielding pleasantly to the foot of the traveller. The track which guided him was one so seldom used that in places it lost itself entirely among the grass, to reappear as a reddish rut between the distant tree trunks. It was very still here in the heart of the woodlands. The gentle rustle of the branches and the distant cooing of pigeons were the only sounds which broke in upon the silence, save that once Alleyne heard afar off a merry call upon a hunting bugle and the shrill yapping of the hounds.\n\nIt was not without some emotion that he looked upon the scene around him, for, in spite of his secluded life, he knew enough of the ancient greatness of his own family to be aware that the time had been when they had held undisputed and paramount sway over all that tract of country. His father could trace his pure Saxon lineage back to that Godfrey Malf who had held the manors of Bisterne and of Minstead at the time when the Norman first set mailed foot upon English soil. The afforestation of the district, however, and its conversion into a royal demesne had clipped off a large section of his estate, while other parts had been confiscated as a punishment for his supposed complicity in an abortive Saxon rising. The fate of the ancestor had been typical of that of his descendants. During three hundred years their domains had gradually contracted, sometimes through royal or feudal encroachment, and sometimes through such gifts to the Church as that with which Alleyne's father had opened the doors of Beaulieu Abbey to his younger son. The importance of the family had thus dwindled, but they still retained the old Saxon manor-house, with a couple of farms and a grove large enough to afford pannage to a hundred pigs\u2014\"sylva de centum porcis,\" as the old family parchments describe it. Above all, the owner of the soil could still hold his head high as the veritable Socman of Minstead\u2014that is, as holding the land in free socage, with no feudal superior, and answerable to no man lower than the king. Knowing this, Alleyne felt some little glow of worldly pride as he looked for the first time upon the land with which so many generations of his ancestors had been associated. He pushed on the quicker, twirling his staff merrily, and looking out at every turn of the path for some sign of the old Saxon residence. He was suddenly arrested, however, by the appearance of a wild-looking fellow armed with a club, who sprang out from behind a tree and barred his passage. He was a rough, powerful peasant, with cap and tunic of untanned sheepskin, leather breeches, and galligaskins round legs and feet.\n\n\"Stand!\" he shouted, raising his heavy cudgel to enforce the order. \"Who are you who walk so freely through the wood? Whither would you go, and what is your errand?\"\n\n\"Why should I answer your questions, my friend?\" said Alleyne, standing on his guard.\n\n\"Because your tongue may save your pate. But where have I looked upon your face before?\"\n\n\"No longer ago than last night at the 'Pied Merlin,'\" the clerk answered, recognizing the escaped serf who had been so outspoken as to his wrongs.\n\n\"By the Virgin! yes. You were the little clerk who sat so mum in the corner, and then cried fy on the gleeman. What hast in the scrip?\"\n\n\"Naught of any price.\"\n\n\"How can I tell that, clerk? Let me see.\"\n\n\"Not I.\"\n\n\"Fool! I could pull you limb from limb like a pullet. What would you have? Hast forgot that we are alone far from all men? How can your clerkship help you? Wouldst lose scrip and life too?\"\n\n\"I will part with neither without fight.\"\n\n\"A fight, quotha? A fight betwixt spurred cock and new hatched chicken! Thy fighting days may soon be over.\"\n\n\"Hadst asked me in the name of charity I would have given freely,\" cried Alleyne. \"As it stands, not one farthing shall you have with my free will, and when I see my brother, the Socman of Minstead, he will raise hue and cry from vill to vill, from hundred to hundred, until you are taken as a common robber and a scourge to the country.\"\n\nThe outlaw sank his club. \"The Socman's brother!\" he gasped. \"Now, by the keys of Peter! I had rather that hand withered and tongue was palsied ere I had struck or miscalled you. If you are the Socman's brother you are one of the right side, I warrant, for all your clerkly dress.\"\n\n\"His brother I am,\" said Alleyne. \"But if I were not, is that reason why you should molest me on the king's ground?\"\n\n\"I give not the pip of an apple for king or for noble,\" cried the serf passionately. \"Ill have I had from them, and ill I shall repay them. I am a good friend to my friends, and, by the Virgin! an evil foeman to my foes.\"\n\n\"And therefore the worst of foemen to thyself,\" said Alleyne. \"But I pray you, since you seem to know him, to point out to me the shortest path to my brother's house.\"\n\nThe serf was about to reply, when the clear ringing call of a bugle burst from the wood close behind them, and Alleyne caught sight for an instant of the dun side and white breast of a lordly stag glancing swiftly betwixt the distant tree trunks. A minute later came the shaggy deer-hounds, a dozen or fourteen of them, running on a hot scent, with nose to earth and tail in air. As they streamed past the silent forest around broke suddenly into loud life, with galloping of hoofs, crackling of brushwood, and the short, sharp cries of the hunters. Close behind the pack rode a fourrier and a yeoman-pricker, whooping on the laggards and encouraging the leaders, in the shrill half-French jargon which was the language of venery and woodcraft. Alleyne was still gazing after them, listening to the loud \"Hyke-a-Bayard! Hyke-a-Pomers! Hyke-a-Lebryt!\" with which they called upon their favorite hounds, when a group of horsemen crashed out through the underwood at the very spot where the serf and he were standing.\n\nThe one who led was a man between fifty and sixty years of age, war-worn and weather-beaten, with a broad, thoughtful forehead and eyes which shone brightly from under his fierce and overhung brows. His beard, streaked thickly with gray, bristled forward from his chin, and spoke of a passionate nature, while the long, finely cut face and firm mouth marked the leader of men. His figure was erect and soldierly, and he rode his horse with the careless grace of a man whose life had been spent in the saddle. In common garb, his masterful face and flashing eye would have marked him as one who was born to rule; but now, with his silken tunic powdered with golden fleurs-de-lis, his velvet mantle lined with the royal minever, and the lions of England stamped in silver upon his harness, none could fail to recognize the noble Edward, most warlike and powerful of all the long line of fighting monarchs who had ruled the Anglo-Norman race. Alleyne doffed hat and bowed head at the sight of him, but the serf folded his hands and leaned them upon his cudgel, looking with little love at the knot of nobles and knights-in-waiting who rode behind the king.\n\n\"Ha!\" cried Edward, reining up for an instant his powerful black steed. \"Le cerf est passe? Non? Ici, Brocas; tu parles Anglais.\"\n\n\"The deer, clowns?\" said a hard-visaged, swarthy-faced man, who rode at the king's elbow. \"If ye have headed it back it is as much as your ears are worth.\"\n\n\"It passed by the blighted beech there,\" said Alleyne, pointing, \"and the hounds were hard at its heels.\"\n\n\"It is well,\" cried Edward, still speaking in French: for, though he could understand English, he had never learned to express himself in so barbarous and unpolished a tongue. \"By my faith, sirs,\" he continued, half turning in his saddle to address his escort, \"unless my woodcraft is sadly at fault, it is a stag of six tines and the finest that we have roused this journey. A golden St. Hubert to the man who is the first to sound the mort.\" He shook his bridle as he spoke, and thundered away, his knights lying low upon their horses and galloping as hard as whip and spur would drive them, in the hope of winning the king's prize. Away they drove down the long green glade\u2014bay horses, black and gray, riders clad in every shade of velvet, fur, or silk, with glint of brazen horn and flash of knife and spear. One only lingered, the black-browed Baron Brocas, who, making a gambade which brought him within arm-sweep of the serf, slashed him across the face with his riding-whip. \"Doff, dog, doff,\" he hissed, \"when a monarch deigns to lower his eyes to such as you!\"\u2014then spurred through the underwood and was gone, with a gleam of steel shoes and flutter of dead leaves.\n\nThe villein took the cruel blow without wince or cry, as one to whom stripes are a birthright and an inheritance. His eyes flashed, however, and he shook his bony hand with a fierce wild gesture after the retreating figure.\n\n\"Black hound of Gascony,\" he muttered, \"evil the day that you and those like you set foot in free England! I know thy kennel of Rochecourt. The night will come when I may do to thee and thine what you and your class have wrought upon mine and me. May God smite me if I fail to smite thee, thou French robber, with thy wife and thy child and all that is under thy castle roof!\"\n\n\"Forbear!\" cried Alleyne. \"Mix not God's name with these unhallowed threats! And yet it was a coward's blow, and one to stir the blood and loose the tongue of the most peaceful. Let me find some soothing simples and lay them on the weal to draw the sting.\"\n\n\"Nay, there is but one thing that can draw the sting, and that the future may bring to me. But, clerk, if you would see your brother you must on, for there is a meeting to-day, and his merry men will await him ere the shadows turn from west to east. I pray you not to hold him back, for it would be an evil thing if all the stout lads were there and the leader amissing. I would come with you, but sooth to say I am stationed here and may not move. The path over yonder, betwixt the oak and the thorn, should bring you out into his nether field.\"\n\nAlleyne lost no time in following the directions of the wild, masterless man, whom he left among the trees where he had found him. His heart was the heavier for the encounter, not only because all bitterness and wrath were abhorrent to his gentle nature, but also because it disturbed him to hear his brother spoken of as though he were a chief of outlaws or the leader of a party against the state. Indeed, of all the things which he had seen yet in the world to surprise him there was none more strange than the hate which class appeared to bear to class. The talk of laborer, woodman and villein in the inn had all pointed to the widespread mutiny, and now his brother's name was spoken as though he were the very centre of the universal discontent. In good truth, the commons throughout the length and breadth of the land were heart-weary of this fine game of chivalry which had been played so long at their expense. So long as knight and baron were a strength and a guard to the kingdom they might be endured, but now, when all men knew that the great battles in France had been won by English yeomen and Welsh stabbers, warlike fame, the only fame to which his class had ever aspired, appeared to have deserted the plate-clad horsemen. The sports of the lists had done much in days gone by to impress the minds of the people, but the plumed and unwieldy champion was no longer an object either of fear or of reverence to men whose fathers and brothers had shot into the press at Crecy or Poitiers, and seen the proudest chivalry in the world unable to make head against the weapons of disciplined peasants. Power had changed hands. The protector had become the protected, and the whole fabric of the feudal system was tottering to a fall. Hence the fierce mutterings of the lower classes and the constant discontent, breaking out into local tumult and outrage, and culminating some years later in the great rising of Tyler. What Alleyne saw and wondered at in Hampshire would have appealed equally to the traveller in any other English county from the Channel to the marches of Scotland.\n\nHe was following the track, his misgivings increasing with every step which took him nearer to that home which he had never seen, when of a sudden the trees began to thin and the sward to spread out onto a broad, green lawn, where five cows lay in the sunshine and droves of black swine wandered unchecked. A brown forest stream swirled down the centre of this clearing, with a rude bridge flung across it, and on the other side was a second field sloping up to a long, lowlying wooden house, with thatched roof and open squares for windows. Alleyne gazed across at it with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes\u2014for this, he knew, must be the home of his fathers. A wreath of blue smoke floated up through a hole in the thatch, and was the only sign of life in the place, save a great black hound which lay sleeping chained to the door-post. In the yellow shimmer of the autumn sunshine it lay as peacefully and as still as he had oft pictured it to himself in his dreams.\n\nHe was roused, however, from his pleasant reverie by the sound of voices, and two people emerged from the forest some little way to his right and moved across the field in the direction of the bridge. The one was a man with yellow flowing beard and very long hair of the same tint drooping over his shoulders; his dress of good Norwich cloth and his assured bearing marked him as a man of position, while the sombre hue of his clothes and the absence of all ornament contrasted with the flash and glitter which had marked the king's retinue. By his side walked a woman, tall and slight and dark, with lithe, graceful figure and clear-cut, composed features. Her jet-black hair was gathered back under a light pink coif, her head poised proudly upon her neck, and her step long and springy, like that of some wild, tireless woodland creature. She held her left hand in front of her, covered with a red velvet glove, and on the wrist a little brown falcon, very fluffy and bedraggled, which she smoothed and fondled as she walked. As she came out into the sunshine, Alleyne noticed that her light gown, slashed with pink, was all stained with earth and with moss upon one side from shoulder to hem. He stood in the shadow of an oak staring at her with parted lips, for this woman seemed to him to be the most beautiful and graceful creature that mind could conceive of. Such had he imagined the angels, and such he had tried to paint them in the Beaulieu missals; but here there was something human, were it only in the battered hawk and discolored dress, which sent a tingle and thrill through his nerves such as no dream of radiant and stainless spirit had ever yet been able to conjure up. Good, quiet, uncomplaining mother Nature, long slighted and miscalled, still bides her time and draws to her bosom the most errant of her children.\n\nThe two walked swiftly across the meadow to the narrow bridge, he in front and she a pace or two behind. There they paused, and stood for a few minutes face to face talking earnestly. Alleyne had read and had heard of love and of lovers. Such were these, doubtless\u2014this golden-bearded man and the fair damsel with the cold, proud face. Why else should they wander together in the woods, or be so lost in talk by rustic streams? And yet as he watched, uncertain whether to advance from the cover or to choose some other path to the house, he soon came to doubt the truth of this first conjecture. The man stood, tall and square, blocking the entrance to the bridge, and throwing out his hands as he spoke in a wild eager fashion, while the deep tones of his stormy voice rose at times into accents of menace and of anger. She stood fearlessly in front of him, still stroking her bird; but twice she threw a swift questioning glance over her shoulder, as one who is in search of aid. So moved was the young clerk by these mute appeals, that he came forth from the trees and crossed the meadow, uncertain what to do, and yet loth to hold back from one who might need his aid. So intent were they upon each other that neither took note of his approach; until, when he was close upon them, the man threw his arm roughly round the damsel's waist and drew her towards him, she straining her lithe, supple figure away and striking fiercely at him, while the hooded hawk screamed with ruffled wings and pecked blindly in its mistress's defence. Bird and maid, however, had but little chance against their assailant who, laughing loudly, caught her wrist in one hand while he drew her towards him with the other.\n\n\"The best rose has ever the longest thorns,\" said he. \"Quiet, little one, or you may do yourself a hurt. Must pay Saxon toll on Saxon land, my proud Maude, for all your airs and graces.\"\n\n\"You boor!\" she hissed. \"You base underbred clod! Is this your care and your hospitality? I would rather wed a branded serf from my father's fields. Leave go, I say\u2014\u2014Ah! good youth, Heaven has sent you. Make him loose me! By the honor of your mother, I pray you to stand by me and to make this knave loose me.\"\n\n\"Stand by you I will, and that blithely.\" said Alleyne. \"Surely, sir, you should take shame to hold the damsel against her will.\"\n\nThe man turned a face upon him which was lion-like in its strength and in its wrath. With his tangle of golden hair, his fierce blue eyes, and his large, well-marked features, he was the most comely man whom Alleyne had ever seen, and yet there was something so sinister and so fell in his expression that child or beast might well have shrunk from him. His brows were drawn, his cheek flushed, and there was a mad sparkle in his eyes which spoke of a wild, untamable nature.\n\n\"Young fool!\" he cried, holding the woman still to his side, though every line of her shrinking figure spoke her abhorrence. \"Do you keep your spoon in your own broth. I rede you to go on your way, lest worse befall you. This little wench has come with me and with me she shall bide.\"\n\n\"Liar!\" cried the woman; and, stooping her head, she suddenly bit fiercely into the broad brown hand which held her. He whipped it back with an oath, while she tore herself free and slipped behind Alleyne, cowering up against him like the trembling leveret who sees the falcon poising for the swoop above him.\n\n\"Stand off my land!\" the man said fiercely, heedless of the blood which trickled freely from his fingers. \"What have you to do here? By your dress you should be one of those cursed clerks who overrun the land like vile rats, poking and prying into other men's concerns, too caitiff to fight and too lazy to work. By the rood! if I had my will upon ye, I should nail you upon the abbey doors, as they hang vermin before their holes. Art neither man nor woman, young shaveling. Get thee back to thy fellows ere I lay hands upon you: for your foot is on my land, and I may slay you as a common draw-latch.\"\n\n\"Is this your land, then?\" gasped Alleyne.\n\n\"Would you dispute it, dog? Would you wish by trick or quibble to juggle me out of these last acres? Know, base-born knave, that you have dared this day to stand in the path of one whose race have been the advisers of kings and the leaders of hosts, ere ever this vile crew of Norman robbers came into the land, or such half-blood hounds as you were let loose to preach that the thief should have his booty and the honest man should sin if he strove to win back his own.\"\n\n\"You are the Socman of Minstead?\"\n\n\"That am I; and the son of Edric the Socman, of the pure blood of Godfrey the thane, by the only daughter of the house of Aluric, whose forefathers held the white-horse banner at the fatal fight where our shield was broken and our sword shivered. I tell you, clerk, that my folk held this land from Bramshaw Wood to the Ringwood road; and, by the soul of my father! it will be a strange thing if I am to be bearded upon the little that is left of it. Begone, I say, and meddle not with my affair.\"\n\n\"If you leave me now,\" whispered the woman, \"then shame forever upon your manhood.\"\n\n\"Surely, sir,\" said Alleyne, speaking in as persuasive and soothing a way as he could, \"if your birth is gentle, there is the more reason that your manners should be gentle too. I am well persuaded that you did but jest with this lady, and that you will now permit her to leave your land either alone or with me as a guide, if she should need one, through the wood. As to birth, it does not become me to boast, and there is sooth in what you say as to the unworthiness of clerks, but it is none the less true that I am as well born as you.\"\n\n\"Dog!\" cried the furious Socman, \"there is no man in the south who can say as much.\"\n\n\"Yet can I,\" said Alleyne smiling; \"for indeed I also am the son of Edric the Socman, of the pure blood of Godfrey the thane, by the only daughter of Aluric of Brockenhurst. Surely, dear brother,\" he continued, holding out his hand, \"you have a warmer greeting than this for me. There are but two boughs left upon this old, old Saxon trunk.\"\n\nHis elder brother dashed his hand aside with an oath, while an expression of malignant hatred passed over his passion-drawn features. \"You are the young cub of Beaulieu, then,\" said he. \"I might have known it by the sleek face and the slavish manner too monk-ridden and craven in spirit to answer back a rough word. Thy father, shaveling, with all his faults, had a man's heart; and there were few who could look him in the eyes on the day of his anger. But you! Look there, rat, on yonder field where the cows graze, and on that other beyond, and on the orchard hard by the church. Do you know that all these were squeezed out of your dying father by greedy priests, to pay for your upbringing in the cloisters? I, the Socman, am shorn of my lands that you may snivel Latin and eat bread for which you never did hand's turn. You rob me first, and now you would come preaching and whining, in search mayhap of another field or two for your priestly friends. Knave! my dogs shall be set upon you; but, meanwhile, stand out of my path, and stop me at your peril!\" As he spoke he rushed forward, and, throwing the lad to one side, caught the woman's wrist. Alleyne, however, as active as a young deer-hound, sprang to her aid and seized her by the other arm, raising his iron-shod staff as he did so.\n\n\"You may say what you will to me,\" he said between his clenched teeth\u2014\"it may be no better than I deserve; but, brother or no, I swear by my hopes of salvation that I will break your arm if you do not leave hold of the maid.\"\n\nThere was a ring in his voice and a flash in his eyes which promised that the blow would follow quick at the heels of the word. For a moment the blood of the long line of hotheaded thanes was too strong for the soft whisperings of the doctrine of meekness and mercy. He was conscious of a fierce wild thrill through his nerves and a throb of mad gladness at his heart, as his real human self burst for an instant the bonds of custom and of teaching which had held it so long. The socman sprang back, looking to left and to right for some stick or stone which might serve him for weapon; but finding none, he turned and ran at the top of his speed for the house, blowing the while upon a shrill whistle.\n\n\"Come!\" gasped the woman. \"Fly, friend, ere he come back.\"\n\n\"Nay, let him come!\" cried Alleyne. \"I shall not budge a foot for him or his dogs.\"\n\n\"Come, come!\" she cried, tugging at his arm. \"I know the man: he will kill you. Come, for the Virgin's sake, or for my sake, for I cannot go and leave you here.\"\n\n\"Come, then,\" said he; and they ran together to the cover of the woods. As they gained the edge of the brushwood, Alleyne, looking back, saw his brother come running out of the house again, with the sun gleaming upon his hair and his beard. He held something which flashed in his right hand, and he stooped at the threshold to unloose the black hound.\n\n\"This way!\" the woman whispered, in a low eager voice. \"Through the bushes to that forked ash. Do not heed me; I can run as fast as you, I trow. Now into the stream\u2014right in, over ankles, to throw the dog off, though I think it is but a common cur, like its master.\" As she spoke, she sprang herself into the shallow stream and ran swiftly up the centre of it, with the brown water bubbling over her feet and her hand outstretched toward the clinging branches of bramble or sapling. Alleyne followed close at her heels, with his mind in a whirl at this black welcome and sudden shifting of all his plans and hopes. Yet, grave as were his thoughts, they would still turn to wonder as he looked at the twinkling feet of his guide and saw her lithe figure bend this way and that, dipping under boughs, springing over stones, with a lightness and ease which made it no small task for him to keep up with her. At last, when he was almost out of breath, she suddenly threw herself down upon a mossy bank, between two holly-bushes, and looked ruefully at her own dripping feet and bedraggled skirt.\n\n\"Holy Mary!\" said she, \"what shall I do? Mother will keep me to my chamber for a month, and make me work at the tapestry of the nine bold knights. She promised as much last week, when I fell into Wilverley bog, and yet she knows that I cannot abide needlework.\"\n\nAlleyne, still standing in the stream, glanced down at the graceful pink-and-white figure, the curve of raven-black hair, and the proud, sensitive face which looked up frankly and confidingly at his own.\n\n\"We had best on,\" he said. \"He may yet overtake us.\"\n\n\"Not so. We are well off his land now, nor can he tell in this great wood which way we have taken. But you\u2014you had him at your mercy. Why did you not kill him?\"\n\n\"Kill him! My brother!\"\n\n\"And why not?\"\u2014with a quick gleam of her white teeth. \"He would have killed you. I know him, and I read it in his eyes. Had I had your staff I would have tried\u2014aye, and done it, too.\" She shook her clenched white hand as she spoke, and her lips tightened ominously.\n\n\"I am already sad in heart for what I have done,\" said he, sitting down on the bank, and sinking his face into his hands. \"God help me!\u2014all that is worst in me seemed to come uppermost. Another instant, and I had smitten him: the son of my own mother, the man whom I have longed to take to my heart. Alas! that I should still be so weak.\"\n\n\"Weak!\" she exclaimed, raising her black eyebrows. \"I do not think that even my father himself, who is a hard judge of manhood, would call you that. But it is, as you may think, sir, a very pleasant thing for me to hear that you are grieved at what you have done, and I can but rede that we should go back together, and you should make your peace with the Socman by handing back your prisoner. It is a sad thing that so small a thing as a woman should come between two who are of one blood.\"\n\nSimple Alleyne opened his eyes at this little spurt of feminine bitterness. \"Nay, lady,\" said he, \"that were worst of all. What man would be so caitiff and thrall as to fail you at your need? I have turned my brother against me, and now, alas! I appear to have given you offence also with my clumsy tongue. But, indeed, lady, I am torn both ways, and can scarce grasp in my mind what it is that has befallen.\"\n\n\"Nor can I marvel at that,\" said she, with a little tinkling laugh. \"You came in as the knight does in the jongleur's romances, between dragon and damsel, with small time for the asking of questions. Come,\" she went on, springing to her feet, and smoothing down her rumpled frock, \"let us walk through the shaw together, and we may come upon Bertrand with the horses. If poor Troubadour had not cast a shoe, we should not have had this trouble. Nay, I must have your arm: for, though I speak lightly, now that all is happily over I am as frightened as my brave Roland. See how his chest heaves, and his dear feathers all awry\u2014the little knight who would not have his lady mishandled.\" So she prattled on to her hawk, while Alleyne walked by her side, stealing a glance from time to time at this queenly and wayward woman. In silence they wandered together over the velvet turf and on through the broad Minstead woods, where the old lichen-draped beeches threw their circles of black shadow upon the sunlit sward.\n\n\"You have no wish, then, to hear my story?\" said she, at last.\n\n\"If it pleases you to tell it me,\" he answered.\n\n\"Oh!\" she cried tossing her head, \"if it is of so little interest to you, we had best let it bide.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" said he eagerly, \"I would fain hear it.\"\n\n\"You have a right to know it, if you have lost a brother's favor through it. And yet\u2014\u2014Ah well, you are, as I understand, a clerk, so I must think of you as one step further in orders, and make you my father-confessor. Know then that this man has been a suitor for my hand, less as I think for my own sweet sake than because he hath ambition and had it on his mind that he might improve his fortunes by dipping into my father's strong box\u2014though the Virgin knows that he would have found little enough therein. My father, however, is a proud man, a gallant knight and tried soldier of the oldest blood, to whom this man's churlish birth and low descent\u2014\u2014Oh, lackaday! I had forgot that he was of the same strain as yourself.\"\n\n\"Nay, trouble not for that,\" said Alleyne, \"we are all from good mother Eve.\"\n\n\"Streams may spring from one source, and yet some be clear and some be foul,\" quoth she quickly. \"But, to be brief over the matter, my father would have none of his wooing, nor in sooth would I. On that he swore a vow against us, and as he is known to be a perilous man, with many outlaws and others at his back, my father forbade that I should hawk or hunt in any part of the wood to the north of the Christchurch road. As it chanced, however, this morning my little Roland here was loosed at a strong-winged heron, and page Bertrand and I rode on, with no thoughts but for the sport, until we found ourselves in Minstead woods. Small harm then, but that my horse Troubadour trod with a tender foot upon a sharp stick, rearing and throwing me to the ground. See to my gown, the third that I have befouled within the week. Woe worth me when Agatha the tire-woman sets eyes upon it!\"\n\n\"And what then, lady?\" asked Alleyne.\n\n\"Why, then away ran Troubadour, for belike I spurred him in falling, and Bertrand rode after him as hard as hoofs could bear him. When I rose there was the Socman himself by my side, with the news that I was on his land, but with so many courteous words besides, and such gallant bearing, that he prevailed upon me to come to his house for shelter, there to wait until the page return. By the grace of the Virgin and the help of my patron St. Magdalen, I stopped short ere I reached his door, though, as you saw, he strove to hale me up to it. And then\u2014ah-h-h-h!\"\u2014she shivered and chattered like one in an ague-fit.\n\n\"What is it?\" cried Alleyne, looking about in alarm.\n\n\"Nothing, friend, nothing! I was but thinking how I bit into his hand. Sooner would I bite living toad or poisoned snake. Oh, I shall loathe my lips forever! But you\u2014how brave you were, and how quick! How meek for yourself, and how bold for a stranger! If I were a man, I should wish to do what you have done.\"\n\n\"It was a small thing,\" he answered, with a tingle of pleasure at these sweet words of praise. \"But you\u2014what will you do?\"\n\n\"There is a great oak near here, and I think that Bertrand will bring the horses there, for it is an old hunting-tryst of ours. Then hey for home, and no more hawking to-day! A twelve-mile gallop will dry feet and skirt.\"\n\n\"But your father?\"\n\n\"Not one word shall I tell him. You do not know him; but I can tell you he is not a man to disobey as I have disobeyed him. He would avenge me, it is true, but it is not to him that I shall look for vengeance. Some day, perchance, in joust or in tourney, knight may wish to wear my colors, and then I shall tell him that if he does indeed crave my favor there is wrong unredressed, and the wronger the Socman of Minstead. So my knight shall find a venture such as bold knights love, and my debt shall be paid, and my father none the wiser, and one rogue the less in the world. Say, is not that a brave plan?\"\n\n\"Nay, lady, it is a thought which is unworthy of you. How can such as you speak of violence and of vengeance. Are none to be gentle and kind, none to be piteous and forgiving? Alas! it is a hard, cruel world, and I would that I had never left my abbey cell. To hear such words from your lips is as though I heard an angel of grace preaching the devil's own creed.\"\n\nShe started from him as a young colt who first feels the bit. \"Gramercy for your rede, young sir!\" she said, with a little curtsey. \"As I understand your words, you are grieved that you ever met me, and look upon me as a preaching devil. Why, my father is a bitter man when he is wroth, but hath never called me such a name as that. It may be his right and duty, but certes it is none of thine. So it would be best, since you think so lowly of me, that you should take this path to the left while I keep on upon this one; for it is clear that I can be no fit companion for you.\" So saying, with downcast lids and a dignity which was somewhat marred by her bedraggled skirt, she swept off down the muddy track, leaving Alleyne standing staring ruefully after her. He waited in vain for some backward glance or sign of relenting, but she walked on with a rigid neck until her dress was only a white flutter among the leaves. Then, with a sunken head and a heavy heart, he plodded wearily down the other path, wroth with himself for the rude and uncouth tongue which had given offence where so little was intended.\n\nHe had gone some way, lost in doubt and in self-reproach, his mind all tremulous with a thousand new-found thoughts and fears and wonderments, when of a sudden there was a light rustle of the leaves behind him, and, glancing round, there was this graceful, swift-footed creature, treading in his very shadow, with her proud head bowed, even as his was\u2014the picture of humility and repentance.\n\n\"I shall not vex you, nor even speak,\" she said; \"but I would fain keep with you while we are in the wood.\"\n\n\"Nay, you cannot vex me,\" he answered, all warm again at the very sight of her. \"It was my rough words which vexed you; but I have been thrown among men all my life, and indeed, with all the will, I scarce know how to temper my speech to a lady's ear.\"\n\n\"Then unsay it,\" cried she quickly; \"say that I was right to wish to have vengeance on the Socman.\"\n\n\"Nay, I cannot do that,\" he answered gravely.\n\n\"Then who is ungentle and unkind now?\" she cried in triumph. \"How stern and cold you are for one so young! Art surely no mere clerk, but bishop or cardinal at the least. Shouldst have crozier for staff and mitre for cap. Well, well, for your sake I will forgive the Socman and take vengeance on none but on my own wilful self who must needs run into danger's path. So will that please you, sir?\"\n\n\"There spoke your true self,\" said he; \"and you will find more pleasure in such forgiveness than in any vengeance.\"\n\nShe shook her head, as if by no means assured of it, and then with a sudden little cry, which had more of surprise than of joy in it, \"Here is Bertrand with the horses!\"\n\nDown the glade there came a little green-clad page with laughing eyes, and long curls floating behind him. He sat perched on a high bay horse, and held on to the bridle of a spirited black palfrey, the hides of both glistening from a long run.\n\n\"I have sought you everywhere, dear Lady Maude,\" said he in a piping voice, springing down from his horse and holding the stirrup. \"Troubadour galloped as far as Holmhill ere I could catch him. I trust that you have had no hurt or scath?\" He shot a questioning glance at Alleyne as he spoke.\n\n\"No, Bertrand,\" said she, \"thanks to this courteous stranger. And now, sir,\" she continued, springing into her saddle, \"it is not fit that I leave you without a word more. Clerk or no, you have acted this day as becomes a true knight. King Arthur and all his table could not have done more. It may be that, as some small return, my father or his kin may have power to advance your interest. He is not rich, but he is honored and hath great friends. Tell me what is your purpose, and see if he may not aid it.\"\n\n\"Alas! lady, I have now no purpose. I have but two friends in the world, and they have gone to Christchurch, where it is likely I shall join them.\"\n\n\"And where is Christchurch?\"\n\n\"At the castle which is held by the brave knight, Sir Nigel Loring, constable to the Earl of Salisbury.\"\n\nTo his surprise she burst out a-laughing, and, spurring her palfrey, dashed off down the glade, with her page riding behind her. Not one word did she say, but as she vanished amid the trees she half turned in her saddle and waved a last greeting. Long time he stood, half hoping that she might again come back to him; but the thud of the hoofs had died away, and there was no sound in all the woods but the gentle rustle and dropping of the leaves. At last he turned away and made his way back to the high-road\u2014another person from the light-hearted boy who had left it a short three hours before." + }, + { + "title": "HOW HORDLE JOHN FOUND A MAN WHOM HE MIGHT FOLLOW.", + "text": "If he might not return to Beaulieu within the year, and if his brother's dogs were to be set upon him if he showed face upon Minstead land, then indeed he was adrift upon earth. North, south, east, and west\u2014he might turn where he would, but all was equally chill and cheerless. The Abbot had rolled ten silver crowns in a lettuce-leaf and hid them away in the bottom of his scrip, but that would be a sorry support for twelve long months. In all the darkness there was but the one bright spot of the sturdy comrades whom he had left that morning; if he could find them again all would be well. The afternoon was not very advanced, for all that had befallen him. When a man is afoot at cock-crow much may be done in the day. If he walked fast he might yet overtake his friends ere they reached their destination. He pushed on therefore, now walking and now running. As he journeyed he bit into a crust which remained from his Beaulieu bread, and he washed it down by a draught from a woodland stream.\n\nIt was no easy or light thing to journey through this great forest, which was some twenty miles from east to west and a good sixteen from Bramshaw Woods in the north to Lymington in the south. Alleyne, however, had the good fortune to fall in with a woodman, axe upon shoulder, trudging along in the very direction that he wished to go. With his guidance he passed the fringe of Bolderwood Walk, famous for old ash and yew, through Mark Ash with its giant beech-trees, and on through the Knightwood groves, where the giant oak was already a great tree, but only one of many comely brothers. They plodded along together, the woodman and Alleyne, with little talk on either side, for their thoughts were as far asunder as the poles. The peasant's gossip had been of the hunt, of the bracken, of the gray-headed kites that had nested in Wood Fidley, and of the great catch of herring brought back by the boats of Pitt's Deep. The clerk's mind was on his brother, on his future\u2014above all on this strange, fierce, melting, beautiful woman who had broken so suddenly into his life, and as suddenly passed out of it again. So distrait was he and so random his answers, that the woodman took to whistling, and soon branched off upon the track to Burley, leaving Alleyne upon the main Christchurch road.\n\nDown this he pushed as fast as he might, hoping at every turn and rise to catch sight of his companions of the morning. From Vinney Ridge to Rhinefield Walk the woods grow thick and dense up to the very edges of the track, but beyond the country opens up into broad dun-colored moors, flecked with clumps of trees, and topping each other in long, low curves up to the dark lines of forest in the furthest distance. Clouds of insects danced and buzzed in the golden autumn light, and the air was full of the piping of the song-birds. Long, glinting dragonflies shot across the path, or hung tremulous with gauzy wings and gleaming bodies. Once a white-necked sea eagle soared screaming high over the traveller's head, and again a flock of brown bustards popped up from among the bracken, and blundered away in their clumsy fashion, half running, half flying, with strident cry and whirr of wings.\n\nThere were folk, too, to be met upon the road\u2014beggars and couriers, chapmen and tinkers\u2014cheery fellows for the most part, with a rough jest and homely greeting for each other and for Alleyne. Near Shotwood he came upon five seamen, on their way from Poole to Southampton\u2014rude red-faced men, who shouted at him in a jargon which he could scarce understand, and held out to him a great pot from which they had been drinking\u2014nor would they let him pass until he had dipped pannikin in and taken a mouthful, which set him coughing and choking, with the tears running down his cheeks. Further on he met a sturdy black-bearded man, mounted on a brown horse, with a rosary in his right hand and a long two-handed sword jangling against his stirrup-iron. By his black robe and the eight-pointed cross upon his sleeve, Alleyne recognized him as one of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, whose presbytery was at Baddesley. He held up two fingers as he passed, with a \"Benedic, fili mi!\" whereat Alleyne doffed hat and bent knee, looking with much reverence at one who had devoted his life to the overthrow of the infidel. Poor simple lad! he had not learned yet that what men are and what men profess to be are very wide asunder, and that the Knights of St. John, having come into large part of the riches of the ill-fated Templars, were very much too comfortable to think of exchanging their palace for a tent, or the cellars of England for the thirsty deserts of Syria. Yet ignorance may be more precious than wisdom, for Alleyne as he walked on braced himself to a higher life by the thought of this other's sacrifice, and strengthened himself by his example which he could scarce have done had he known that the Hospitaller's mind ran more upon malmsey than on Mamelukes, and on venison rather than victories.\n\nAs he pressed on the plain turned to woods once more in the region of Wilverley Walk, and a cloud swept up from the south with the sun shining through the chinks of it. A few great drops came pattering loudly down, and then in a moment the steady swish of a brisk shower, with the dripping and dropping of the leaves. Alleyne, glancing round for shelter, saw a thick and lofty holly-bush, so hollowed out beneath that no house could have been drier. Under this canopy of green two men were already squatted, who waved their hands to Alleyne that he should join them. As he approached he saw that they had five dried herrings laid out in front of them, with a great hunch of wheaten bread and a leathern flask full of milk, but instead of setting to at their food they appeared to have forgot all about it, and were disputing together with flushed faces and angry gestures. It was easy to see by their dress and manner that they were two of those wandering students who formed about this time so enormous a multitude in every country in Europe. The one was long and thin, with melancholy features, while the other was fat and sleek, with a loud voice and the air of a man who is not to be gainsaid.\n\n\"Come hither, good youth,\" he cried, \"come hither! Vultus ingenui puer. Heed not the face of my good coz here. Foenum habet in cornu, as Don Horace has it; but I warrant him harmless for all that.\"\n\n\"Stint your bull's bellowing!\" exclaimed the other. \"If it come to Horace, I have a line in my mind: Loquaces si sapiat\u2014\u2014How doth it run? The English o't being that a man of sense should ever avoid a great talker. That being so, if all were men of sense then thou wouldst be a lonesome man, coz.\"\n\n\"Alas! Dicon, I fear that your logic is as bad as your philosophy or your divinity\u2014and God wot it would be hard to say a worse word than that for it. For, hark ye: granting, propter argumentum, that I am a talker, then the true reasoning runs that since all men of sense should avoid me, and thou hast not avoided me, but art at the present moment eating herrings with me under a holly-bush, ergo you are no man of sense, which is exactly what I have been dinning into your long ears ever since I first clapped eyes on your sunken chops.\"\n\n\"Tut, tut!\" cried the other. \"Your tongue goes like the clapper of a mill-wheel. Sit down here, friend, and partake of this herring. Understand first, however, that there are certain conditions attached to it.\"\n\n\"I had hoped,\" said Alleyne, falling into the humor of the twain, \"that a tranchoir of bread and a draught of milk might be attached to it.\"\n\n\"Hark to him, hark to him!\" cried the little fat man. \"It is even thus, Dicon! Wit, lad, is a catching thing, like the itch or the sweating sickness. I exude it round me; it is an aura. I tell you, coz, that no man can come within seventeen feet of me without catching a spark. Look at your own case. A duller man never stepped, and yet within the week you have said three things which might pass, and one thing the day we left Fordingbridge which I should not have been ashamed of myself.\"\n\n\"Enough, rattle-pate, enough!\" said the other. \"The milk you shall have and the bread also, friend, together with the herring, but you must hold the scales between us.\"\n\n\"If he hold the herring he holds the scales, my sapient brother,\" cried the fat man. \"But I pray you, good youth, to tell us whether you are a learned clerk, and, if so, whether you have studied at Oxenford or at Paris.\"\n\n\"I have some small stock of learning,\" Alleyne answered, picking at his herring, \"but I have been at neither of these places. I was bred amongst the Cistercian monks at Beaulieu Abbey.\"\n\n\"Pooh, pooh!\" they cried both together. \"What sort of an upbringing is that?\"\n\n\"Non cuivis contingit adire Corinthum,\" quoth Alleyne.\n\n\"Come, brother Stephen, he hath some tincture of letters,\" said the melancholy man more hopefully. \"He may be the better judge, since he hath no call to side with either of us. Now, attention, friend, and let your ears work as well as your nether jaw. Judex damnatur\u2014you know the old saw. Here am I upholding the good fame of the learned Duns Scotus against the foolish quibblings and poor silly reasonings of Willie Ockham.\"\n\n\"While I,\" quoth the other loudly, \"do maintain the good sense and extraordinary wisdom of that most learned William against the crack-brained fantasies of the muddy Scotchman, who hath hid such little wit as he has under so vast a pile of words, that it is like one drop of Gascony in a firkin of ditch-water. Solomon his wisdom would not suffice to say what the rogue means.\"\n\n\"Certes, Stephen Hapgood, his wisdom doth not suffice,\" cried the other. \"It is as though a mole cried out against the morning star, because he could not see it. But our dispute, friend, is concerning the nature of that subtle essence which we call thought. For I hold with the learned Scotus that thought is in very truth a thing, even as vapor or fumes, or many other substances which our gross bodily eyes are blind to. For, look you, that which produces a thing must be itself a thing, and if a man's thought may produce a written book, then must thought itself be a material thing, even as the book is. Have I expressed it? Do I make it plain?\"\n\n\"Whereas I hold,\" shouted the other, \"with my revered preceptor, doctor, praeclarus et excellentissimus, that all things are but thought; for when thought is gone I prythee where are the things then? Here are trees about us, and I see them because I think I see them, but if I have swooned, or sleep, or am in wine, then, my thought having gone forth from me, lo the trees go forth also. How now, coz, have I touched thee on the raw?\"\n\nAlleyne sat between them munching his bread, while the twain disputed across his knees, leaning forward with flushed faces and darting hands, in all the heat of argument. Never had he heard such jargon of scholastic philosophy, such fine-drawn distinctions, such cross-fire of major and minor, proposition, syllogism, attack and refutation. Question clattered upon answer like a sword on a buckler. The ancients, the fathers of the Church, the moderns, the Scriptures, the Arabians, were each sent hurtling against the other, while the rain still dripped and the dark holly-leaves glistened with the moisture. At last the fat man seemed to weary of it, for he set to work quietly upon his meal, while his opponent, as proud as the rooster who is left unchallenged upon the midden, crowed away in a last long burst of quotation and deduction. Suddenly, however, his eyes dropped upon his food, and he gave a howl of dismay.\n\n\"You double thief!\" he cried, \"you have eaten my herrings, and I without bite or sup since morning.\"\n\n\"That,\" quoth the other complacently, \"was my final argument, my crowning effort, or peroratio, as the orators have it. For, coz, since all thoughts are things, you have but to think a pair of herrings, and then conjure up a pottle of milk wherewith to wash them down.\"\n\n\"A brave piece of reasoning,\" cried the other, \"and I know of but one reply to it.\" On which, leaning forward, he caught his comrade a rousing smack across his rosy cheek. \"Nay, take it not amiss,\" he said, \"since all things are but thoughts, then that also is but a thought and may be disregarded.\"\n\nThis last argument, however, by no means commended itself to the pupil of Ockham, who plucked a great stick from the ground and signified his dissent by smiting the realist over the pate with it. By good fortune, the wood was so light and rotten that it went to a thousand splinters, but Alleyne thought it best to leave the twain to settle the matter at their leisure, the more so as the sun was shining brightly once more. Looking back down the pool-strewn road, he saw the two excited philosophers waving their hands and shouting at each other, but their babble soon became a mere drone in the distance, and a turn in the road hid them from his sight.\n\nAnd now after passing Holmesley Walk and the Wooton Heath, the forest began to shred out into scattered belts of trees, with gleam of cornfield and stretch of pasture-land between. Here and there by the wayside stood little knots of wattle-and-daub huts with shock-haired laborers lounging by the doors and red-cheeked children sprawling in the roadway. Back among the groves he could see the high gable ends and thatched roofs of the franklins' houses, on whose fields these men found employment, or more often a thick dark column of smoke marked their position and hinted at the coarse plenty within. By these signs Alleyne knew that he was on the very fringe of the forest, and therefore no great way from Christchurch. The sun was lying low in the west and shooting its level rays across the long sweep of rich green country, glinting on the white-fleeced sheep and throwing long shadows from the red kine who waded knee-deep in the juicy clover. Right glad was the traveller to see the high tower of Christchurch Priory gleaming in the mellow evening light, and gladder still when, on rounding a corner, he came upon his comrades of the morning seated astraddle upon a fallen tree. They had a flat space before them, on which they alternately threw little square pieces of bone, and were so intent upon their occupation that they never raised eye as he approached them. He observed with astonishment, as he drew near, that the archer's bow was on John's back, the archer's sword by John's side, and the steel cap laid upon the tree-trunk between them.\n\n\"Mort de ma vie!\" Aylward shouted, looking down at the dice. \"Never had I such cursed luck. A murrain on the bones! I have not thrown a good main since I left Navarre. A one and a three! En avant, camarade!\"\n\n\"Four and three,\" cried Hordle John, counting on his great fingers, \"that makes seven. Ho, archer, I have thy cap! Now have at thee for thy jerkin!\"\n\n\"Mon Dieu!\" he growled, \"I am like to reach Christchurch in my shirt.\" Then suddenly glancing up, \"Hola, by the splendor of heaven, here is our cher petit! Now, by my ten finger bones! this is a rare sight to mine eyes.\" He sprang up and threw his arms round Alleyne's neck, while John, no less pleased, but more backward and Saxon in his habits, stood grinning and bobbing by the wayside, with his newly won steel cap stuck wrong side foremost upon his tangle of red hair.\n\n\"Hast come to stop?\" cried the bowman, patting Alleyne all over in his delight. \"Shall not get away from us again!\"\n\n\"I wish no better,\" said he, with a pringling in the eyes at this hearty greeting.\n\n\"Well said, lad!\" cried big John. \"We three shall to the wars together, and the devil may fly away with the Abbot of Beaulieu! But your feet and hosen are all besmudged. Hast been in the water, or I am the more mistaken.\"\n\n\"I have in good sooth,\" Alleyne answered, and then as they journeyed on their way he told them the many things that had befallen him, his meeting with the villein, his sight of the king, his coming upon his brother, with all the tale of the black welcome and of the fair damsel. They strode on either side, each with an ear slanting towards him, but ere he had come to the end of his story the bowman had spun round upon his heel, and was hastening back the way they had come, breathing loudly through his nose.\n\n\"What then?\" asked Alleyne, trotting after him and gripping at his jerkin.\n\n\"I am back for Minstead, lad.\"\n\n\"And why, in the name of sense?\"\n\n\"To thrust a handful of steel into the Socman. What! hale a demoiselle against her will, and then loose dogs at his own brother! Let me go!\"\n\n\"Nenny, nenny!\" cried Alleyne, laughing. \"There was no scath done. Come back, friend\"\u2014and so, by mingled pushing and entreaties, they got his head round for Christchurch once more. Yet he walked with his chin upon his shoulder, until, catching sight of a maiden by a wayside well, the smiles came back to his face and peace to his heart.\n\n\"But you,\" said Alleyne, \"there have been changes with you also. Why should not the workman carry his tools? Where are bow and sword and cap\u2014and why so warlike, John?\"\n\n\"It is a game which friend Aylward hath been a-teaching of me.\"\n\n\"And I found him an over-apt pupil,\" grumbled the bowman. \"He hath stripped me as though I had fallen into the hands of the tardvenus. But, by my hilt! you must render them back to me, camarade, lest you bring discredit upon my mission, and I will pay you for them at armorers' prices.\"\n\n\"Take them back, man, and never heed the pay,\" said John. \"I did but wish to learn the feel of them, since I am like to have such trinkets hung to my own girdle for some years to come.\"\n\n\"Ma foi, he was born for a free companion!\" cried Aylward, \"He hath the very trick of speech and turn of thought. I take them back then, and indeed it gives me unease not to feel my yew-stave tapping against my leg bone. But see, mes garcons, on this side of the church rises the square and darkling tower of Earl Salisbury's castle, and even from here I seem to see on yonder banner the red roebuck of the Montacutes.\"\n\n\"Red upon white,\" said Alleyne, shading his eyes; \"but whether roebuck or no is more than I could vouch. How black is the great tower, and how bright the gleam of arms upon the wall! See below the flag, how it twinkles like a star!\"\n\n\"Aye, it is the steel headpiece of the watchman,\" remarked the archer. \"But we must on, if we are to be there before the drawbridge rises at the vespers bugle; for it is likely that sir Nigel, being so renowned a soldier, may keep hard discipline within the walls, and let no man enter after sundown.\" So saying, he quickened his pace, and the three comrades were soon close to the straggling and broad-spread town which centered round the noble church and the frowning castle.\n\nIt chanced on that very evening that Sir Nigel Loring, having supped before sunset, as was his custom, and having himself seen that Pommers and Cadsand, his two warhorses, with the thirteen hacks, the five jennets, my lady's three palfreys, and the great dapple-gray roussin, had all their needs supplied, had taken his dogs for an evening breather. Sixty or seventy of them, large and small, smooth and shaggy\u2014deer-hound, boar-hound, blood-hound, wolf-hound, mastiff, alaun, talbot, lurcher, terrier, spaniel\u2014snapping, yelling and whining, with score of lolling tongues and waving tails, came surging down the narrow lane which leads from the Twynham kennels to the bank of Avon. Two russet-clad varlets, with loud halloo and cracking whips, walked thigh-deep amid the swarm, guiding, controlling, and urging. Behind came Sir Nigel himself, with Lady Loring upon his arm, the pair walking slowly and sedately, as befitted both their age and their condition, while they watched with a smile in their eyes the scrambling crowd in front of them. They paused, however, at the bridge, and, leaning their elbows upon the stonework, they stood looking down at their own faces in the glassy stream, and at the swift flash of speckled trout against the tawny gravel.\n\nSir Nigel was a slight man of poor stature, with soft lisping voice and gentle ways. So short was he that his wife, who was no very tall woman, had the better of him by the breadth of three fingers. His sight having been injured in his early wars by a basketful of lime which had been emptied over him when he led the Earl of Derby's stormers up the breach at Bergerac, he had contracted something of a stoop, with a blinking, peering expression of face. His age was six and forty, but the constant practice of arms, together with a cleanly life, had preserved his activity and endurance unimpaired, so that from a distance he seemed to have the slight limbs and swift grace of a boy. His face, however, was tanned of a dull yellow tint, with a leathery, poreless look, which spoke of rough outdoor doings, and the little pointed beard which he wore, in deference to the prevailing fashion, was streaked and shot with gray. His features were small, delicate, and regular, with clear-cut, curving nose, and eyes which jutted forward from the lids. His dress was simple and yet spruce. A Flandrish hat of beevor, bearing in the band the token of Our Lady of Embrun, was drawn low upon the left side to hide that ear which had been partly shorn from his head by a Flemish man-at-arms in a camp broil before Tournay. His cote-hardie, or tunic, and trunk-hosen were of a purple plum color, with long weepers which hung from either sleeve to below his knees. His shoes were of red leather, daintily pointed at the toes, but not yet prolonged to the extravagant lengths which the succeeding reign was to bring into fashion. A gold-embroidered belt of knighthood encircled his loins, with his arms, five roses gules on a field argent, cunningly worked upon the clasp. So stood Sir Nigel Loring upon the bridge of Avon, and talked lightly with his lady.\n\nAnd, certes, had the two visages alone been seen, and the stranger been asked which were the more likely to belong to the bold warrior whose name was loved by the roughest soldiery of Europe, he had assuredly selected the lady's. Her face was large and square and red, with fierce, thick brows, and the eyes of one who was accustomed to rule. Taller and broader than her husband, her flowing gown of sendall, and fur-lined tippet, could not conceal the gaunt and ungraceful outlines of her figure. It was the age of martial women. The deeds of black Agnes of Dunbar, of Lady Salisbury and of the Countess of Montfort, were still fresh in the public minds. With such examples before them the wives of the English captains had become as warlike as their mates, and ordered their castles in their absence with the prudence and discipline of veteran seneschals. Right easy were the Montacutes of their Castle of Twynham, and little had they to dread from roving galley or French squadron, while Lady Mary Loring had the ordering of it. Yet even in that age it was thought that, though a lady might have a soldier's heart, it was scarce as well that she should have a soldier's face. There were men who said that of all the stern passages and daring deeds by which Sir Nigel Loring had proved the true temper of his courage, not the least was his wooing and winning of so forbidding a dame.\n\n\"I tell you, my fair lord,\" she was saying, \"that it is no fit training for a demoiselle: hawks and hounds, rotes and citoles singing a French rondel, or reading the Gestes de Doon de Mayence, as I found her yesternight, pretending sleep, the artful, with the corner of the scroll thrusting forth from under her pillow. Lent her by Father Christopher of the priory, forsooth\u2014that is ever her answer. How shall all this help her when she has castle of her own to keep, with a hundred mouths all agape for beef and beer?\"\n\n\"True, my sweet bird, true,\" answered the knight, picking a comfit from his gold drageoir. \"The maid is like the young filly, which kicks heels and plunges for very lust of life. Give her time, dame, give her time.\"\n\n\"Well, I know that my father would have given me, not time, but a good hazel-stick across my shoulders. Ma foi! I know not what the world is coming to, when young maids may flout their elders. I wonder that you do not correct her, my fair lord.\"\n\n\"Nay, my heart's comfort, I never raised hand to woman yet, and it would be a passing strange thing if I began on my own flesh and blood. It was a woman's hand which cast this lime into mine eyes, and though I saw her stoop, and might well have stopped her ere she threw, I deemed it unworthy of my knighthood to hinder or balk one of her sex.\"\n\n\"The hussy!\" cried Lady Loring clenching her broad right hand. \"I would I had been at the side of her!\"\n\n\"And so would I, since you would have been the nearer me my own. But I doubt not that you are right, and that Maude's wings need clipping, which I may leave in your hands when I am gone, for, in sooth, this peaceful life is not for me, and were it not for your gracious kindness and loving care I could not abide it a week. I hear that there is talk of warlike muster at Bordeaux once more, and by St. Paul! it would be a new thing if the lions of England and the red pile of Chandos were to be seen in the field, and the roses of Loring were not waving by their side.\"\n\n\"Now woe worth me but I feared it!\" cried she, with the color all struck from her face. \"I have noted your absent mind, your kindling eye, your trying and riveting of old harness. Consider my sweet lord, that you have already won much honor, that we have seen but little of each other, that you bear upon your body the scar of over twenty wounds received in I know not how many bloody encounters. Have you not done enough for honor and the public cause?\"\n\n\"My lady, when our liege lord, the king, at three score years, and my Lord Chandos at three-score and ten, are blithe and ready to lay lance in rest for England's cause, it would ill be-seem me to prate of service done. It is sooth that I have received seven and twenty wounds. There is the more reason that I should be thankful that I am still long of breath and sound in limb. I have also seen some bickering and scuffling. Six great land battles I count, with four upon sea, and seven and fifty onfalls, skirmishes and bushments. I have held two and twenty towns, and I have been at the intaking of thirty-one. Surely then it would be bitter shame to me, and also to you, since my fame is yours, that I should now hold back if a man's work is to be done. Besides, bethink you how low is our purse, with bailiff and reeve ever croaking of empty farms and wasting lands. Were it not for this constableship which the Earl of Salisbury hath bestowed upon us we could scarce uphold the state which is fitting to our degree. Therefore, my sweeting, there is the more need that I should turn to where there is good pay to be earned and brave ransoms to be won.\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear lord,\" quoth she, with sad, weary eyes. \"I thought that at last I had you to mine own self, even though your youth had been spent afar from my side. Yet my voice, as I know well, should speed you on to glory and renown, not hold you back when fame is to be won. Yet what can I say, for all men know that your valor needs the curb and not the spur. It goes to my heart that you should ride forth now a mere knight bachelor, when there is no noble in the land who hath so good a claim to the square pennon, save only that you have not the money to uphold it.\"\n\n\"And whose fault that, my sweet bird?\" said he.\n\n\"No fault, my fair lord, but a virtue: for how many rich ransoms have you won, and yet have scattered the crowns among page and archer and varlet, until in a week you had not as much as would buy food and forage. It is a most knightly largesse, and yet withouten money how can man rise?\"\n\n\"Dirt and dross!\" cried he.\n\n\"What matter rise or fall, so that duty be done and honor gained. Banneret or bachelor, square pennon or forked, I would not give a denier for the difference, and the less since Sir John Chandos, chosen flower of English chivalry, is himself but a humble knight. But meanwhile fret not thyself, my heart's dove, for it is like that there may be no war waged, and we must await the news. But here are three strangers, and one, as I take it, a soldier fresh from service. It is likely that he may give us word of what is stirring over the water.\"\n\nLady Loring, glancing up, saw in the fading light three companions walking abreast down the road, all gray with dust, and stained with travel, yet chattering merrily between themselves. He in the midst was young and comely, with boyish open face and bright gray eyes, which glanced from right to left as though he found the world around him both new and pleasing. To his right walked a huge red-headed man, with broad smile and merry twinkle, whose clothes seemed to be bursting and splitting at every seam, as though he were some lusty chick who was breaking bravely from his shell. On the other side, with his knotted hand upon the young man's shoulder, came a stout and burly archer, brown and fierce eyed, with sword at belt and long yellow yew-stave peeping over his shoulder. Hard face, battered head piece, dinted brigandine, with faded red lion of St. George ramping on a discolored ground, all proclaimed as plainly as words that he was indeed from the land of war. He looked keenly at Sir Nigel as he approached, and then, plunging his hand under his breastplate, he stepped up to him with a rough, uncouth bow to the lady.\n\n\"Your pardon, fair sir,\" said he, \"but I know you the moment I clap eyes on you, though in sooth I have seen you oftener in steel than in velvet. I have drawn string besides you at La Roche-d'Errien, Romorantin, Maupertuis, Nogent, Auray, and other places.\"\n\n\"Then, good archer, I am right glad to welcome you to Twynham Castle, and in the steward's room you will find provant for yourself and comrades. To me also your face is known, though mine eyes play such tricks with me that I can scarce be sure of my own squire. Rest awhile, and you shall come to the hall anon and tell us what is passing in France, for I have heard that it is likely that our pennons may flutter to the south of the great Spanish mountains ere another year be passed.\"\n\n\"There was talk of it in Bordeaux,\" answered the archer, \"and I saw myself that the armorers and smiths were as busy as rats in a wheat-rick. But I bring you this letter from the valiant Gascon knight, Sir Claude Latour. And to you, Lady,\" he added after a pause, \"I bring from him this box of red sugar of Narbonne, with every courteous and knightly greeting which a gallant cavalier may make to a fair and noble dame.\"\n\nThis little speech had cost the blunt bowman much pains and planning; but he might have spared his breath, for the lady was quite as much absorbed as her lord in the letter, which they held between them, a hand on either corner, spelling it out very slowly, with drawn brows and muttering lips. As they read it, Alleyne, who stood with Hordle John a few paces back from their comrade, saw the lady catch her breath, while the knight laughed softly to himself.\n\n\"You see, dear heart,\" said he, \"that they will not leave the old dog in his kennel when the game is afoot. And what of this White Company, archer?\"\n\n\"Ah, sir, you speak of dogs,\" cried Aylward; \"but there are a pack of lusty hounds who are ready for any quarry, if they have but a good huntsman to halloo them on. Sir, we have been in the wars together, and I have seen many a brave following but never such a set of woodland boys as this. They do but want you at their head, and who will bar the way to them!\"\n\n\"Pardieu!\" said Sir Nigel, \"if they are all like their messenger, they are indeed men of whom a leader may be proud. Your name, good archer?\"\n\n\"Sam Aylward, sir, of the Hundred of Easebourne and the Rape of Chichester.\"\n\n\"And this giant behind you?\"\n\n\"He is big John, of Hordle, a forest man, who hath now taken service in the Company.\"\n\n\"A proper figure of a man at-arms,\" said the little knight. \"Why, man, you are no chicken, yet I warrant him the stronger man. See to that great stone from the coping which hath fallen upon the bridge. Four of my lazy varlets strove this day to carry it hence. I would that you two could put them to shame by budging it, though I fear that I overtask you, for it is of a grievous weight.\"\n\nHe pointed as he spoke to a huge rough-hewn block which lay by the roadside, deep sunken from its own weight in the reddish earth. The archer approached it, rolling back the sleeves of his jerkin, but with no very hopeful countenance, for indeed it was a mighty rock. John, however, put him aside with his left hand, and, stooping over the stone, he plucked it single-handed from its soft bed and swung it far into the stream. There it fell with mighty splash, one jagged end peaking out above the surface, while the waters bubbled and foamed with far-circling eddy.\n\n\"Good lack!\" cried Sir Nigel, and \"Good lack!\" cried his lady, while John stood laughing and wiping the caked dirt from his fingers.\n\n\"I have felt his arms round my ribs,\" said the bowman, \"and they crackle yet at the thought of it. This other comrade of mine is a right learned clerk, for all that he is so young, hight Alleyne, the son of Edric, brother to the Socman of Minstead.\"\n\n\"Young man,\" quoth Sir Nigel, sternly, \"if you are of the same way of thought as your brother, you may not pass under portcullis of mine.\"\n\n\"Nay, fair sir,\" cried Aylward hastily, \"I will be pledge for it that they have no thought in common; for this very day his brother hath set his dogs upon him, and driven him from his lands.\"\n\n\"And are you, too, of the White Company?\" asked Sir Nigel. \"Hast had small experience of war, if I may judge by your looks and bearing.\"\n\n\"I would fain to France with my friends here,\" Alleyne answered; \"but I am a man of peace\u2014a reader, exorcist, acolyte, and clerk.\"\n\n\"That need not hinder,\" quoth Sir Nigel.\n\n\"No, fair sir,\" cried the bowman joyously. \"Why, I myself have served two terms with Arnold de Cervolles, he whom they called the archpriest. By my hilt! I have seen him ere now, with monk's gown trussed to his knees, over his sandals in blood in the forefront of the battle. Yet, ere the last string had twanged, he would be down on his four bones among the stricken, and have them all houseled and shriven, as quick as shelling peas. Ma foi! there were those who wished that he would have less care for their souls and a little more for their bodies!\"\n\n\"It is well to have a learned clerk in every troop,\" said Sir Nigel. \"By St. Paul, there are men so caitiff that they think more of a scrivener's pen than of their lady's smile, and do their devoir in hopes that they may fill a line in a chronicle or make a tag to a jongleur's romance. I remember well that, at the siege of Retters, there was a little, sleek, fat clerk of the name of Chaucer, who was so apt at rondel, sirvente, or tonson, that no man dare give back a foot from the walls, lest he find it all set down in his rhymes and sung by every underling and varlet in the camp. But, my soul's bird, you hear me prate as though all were decided, when I have not yet taken counsel either with you or with my lady mother. Let us to the chamber, while these strangers find such fare as pantry and cellar may furnish.\"\n\n\"The night air strikes chill,\" said the lady, and turned down the road with her hand upon her lord's arm. The three comrades dropped behind and followed: Aylward much the lighter for having accomplished his mission, Alleyne full of wonderment at the humble bearing of so renowned a captain, and John loud with snorts and sneers, which spoke his disappointment and contempt.\n\n\"What ails the man?\" asked Aylward in surprise.\n\n\"I have been cozened and bejaped,\" quoth he gruffly.\n\n\"By whom, Sir Samson the strong?\"\n\n\"By thee, Sir Balaam the false prophet.\"\n\n\"By my hilt!\" cried the archer, \"I though I be not Balaam, yet I hold converse with the very creature that spake to him. What is amiss, then, and how have I played you false?\"\n\n\"Why, marry, did you not say, and Alleyne here will be my witness, that, if I would hie to the wars with you, you would place me under a leader who was second to none in all England for valor? Yet here you bring me to a shred of a man, peaky and ill-nourished, with eyes like a moulting owl, who must needs, forsooth, take counsel with his mother ere he buckle sword to girdle.\"\n\n\"Is that where the shoe galls?\" cried the bowman, and laughed aloud. \"I will ask you what you think of him three months hence, if we be all alive; for sure I am that\u2014\u2014\"\n\nAylward's words were interrupted by an extraordinary hubbub which broke out that instant some little way down the street in the direction of the Priory. There was deep-mouthed shouting of men, frightened shrieks of women, howling and barking of curs, and over all a sullen, thunderous rumble, indescribably menacing and terrible. Round the corner of the narrow street there came rushing a brace of whining dogs with tails tucked under their legs, and after them a white-faced burgher, with outstretched hands and widespread fingers, his hair all abristle and his eyes glinting back from one shoulder to the other, as though some great terror were at his very heels. \"Fly, my lady, fly!\" he screeched, and whizzed past them like bolt from bow; while close behind came lumbering a huge black bear, with red tongue lolling from his mouth, and a broken chain jangling behind him. To right and left the folk flew for arch and doorway. Hordle John caught up the Lady Loring as though she had been a feather, and sprang with her into an open porch; while Aylward, with a whirl of French oaths, plucked at his quiver and tried to unsling his bow. Alleyne, all unnerved at so strange and unwonted a sight, shrunk up against the wall with his eyes fixed upon the frenzied creature, which came bounding along with ungainly speed, looking the larger in the uncertain light, its huge jaws agape, with blood and slaver trickling to the ground. Sir Nigel alone, unconscious to all appearance of the universal panic, walked with unfaltering step up the centre of the road, a silken handkerchief in one hand and his gold comfit-box in the other. It sent the blood cold through Alleyne's veins to see that as they came together\u2014the man and the beast\u2014the creature reared up, with eyes ablaze with fear and hate, and whirled its great paws above the knight to smite him to the earth. He, however, blinking with puckered eyes, reached up his kerchief, and flicked the beast twice across the snout with it. \"Ah, saucy! saucy,\" quoth he, with gentle chiding; on which the bear, uncertain and puzzled, dropped its four legs to earth again, and, waddling back, was soon swathed in ropes by the bearward and a crowd of peasants who had been in close pursuit.\n\nA scared man was the keeper; for, having chained the brute to a stake while he drank a stoup of ale at the inn, it had been baited by stray curs, until, in wrath and madness, it had plucked loose the chain, and smitten or bitten all who came in its path. Most scared of all was he to find that the creature had come nigh to harm the Lord and Lady of the castle, who had power to place him in the stretch-neck or to have the skin scourged from his shoulders. Yet, when he came with bowed head and humble entreaty for forgiveness, he was met with a handful of small silver from Sir Nigel, whose dame, however, was less charitably disposed, being much ruffled in her dignity by the manner in which she had been hustled from her lord's side.\n\nAs they passed through the castle gate, John plucked at Aylward's sleeve, and the two fell behind.\n\n\"I must crave your pardon, comrade,\" said he, bluntly. \"I was a fool not to know that a little rooster may be the gamest. I believe that this man is indeed a leader whom we may follow.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW A YOUNG SHEPHERD HAD A PERILOUS FLOCK.", + "text": "Black was the mouth of Twynham Castle, though a pair of torches burning at the further end of the gateway cast a red glare over the outer bailey, and sent a dim, ruddy flicker through the rough-hewn arch, rising and falling with fitful brightness. Over the door the travellers could discern the escutcheon of the Montacutes, a roebuck gules on a field argent, flanked on either side by smaller shields which bore the red roses of the veteran constable. As they passed over the drawbridge, Alleyne marked the gleam of arms in the embrasures to right and left, and they had scarce set foot upon the causeway ere a hoarse blare burst from a bugle, and, with screech of hinge and clank of chain, the ponderous bridge swung up into the air, drawn by unseen hands. At the same instant the huge portcullis came rattling down from above, and shut off the last fading light of day. Sir Nigel and his lady walked on in deep talk, while a fat under-steward took charge of the three comrades, and led them to the buttery, where beef, bread, and beer were kept ever in readiness for the wayfarer. After a hearty meal and a dip in the trough to wash the dust from them, they strolled forth into the bailey, where the bowman peered about through the darkness at wall and at keep, with the carping eyes of one who has seen something of sieges, and is not likely to be satisfied. To Alleyne and to John, however, it appeared to be as great and as stout a fortress as could be built by the hands of man.\n\nErected by Sir Balwin de Redvers in the old fighting days of the twelfth century, when men thought much of war and little of comfort, Castle Twynham had been designed as a stronghold pure and simple, unlike those later and more magnificent structures where warlike strength had been combined with the magnificence of a palace. From the time of the Edwards such buildings as Conway or Caernarvon castles, to say nothing of Royal Windsor, had shown that it was possible to secure luxury in peace as well as security in times of trouble. Sir Nigel's trust, however, still frowned above the smooth-flowing waters of the Avon, very much as the stern race of early Anglo-Normans had designed it. There were the broad outer and inner bailies, not paved, but sown with grass to nourish the sheep and cattle which might be driven in on sign of danger. All round were high and turreted walls, with at the corner a bare square-faced keep, gaunt and windowless, rearing up from a lofty mound, which made it almost inaccessible to an assailant. Against the bailey-walls were rows of frail wooden houses and leaning sheds, which gave shelter to the archers and men-at-arms who formed the garrison. The doors of these humble dwellings were mostly open, and against the yellow glare from within Alleyne could see the bearded fellows cleaning their harness, while their wives would come out for a gossip, with their needlework in their hands, and their long black shadows streaming across the yard. The air was full of the clack of their voices and the merry prattling of children, in strange contrast to the flash of arms and constant warlike challenge from the walls above.\n\n\"Methinks a company of school lads could hold this place against an army,\" quoth John.\n\n\"And so say I,\" said Alleyne.\n\n\"Nay, there you are wide of the clout,\" the bowman said gravely. \"By my hilt! I have seen a stronger fortalice carried in a summer evening. I remember such a one in Picardy, with a name as long as a Gascon's pedigree. It was when I served under Sir Robert Knolles, before the days of the Company; and we came by good plunder at the sacking of it. I had myself a great silver bowl, with two goblets, and a plastron of Spanish steel. Pasques Dieu! there are some fine women over yonder! Mort de ma vie! see to that one in the doorway! I will go speak to her. But whom have we here?\"\n\n\"Is there an archer here hight Sam Aylward?\" asked a gaunt man-at-arms, clanking up to them across the courtyard.\n\n\"My name, friend,\" quoth the bowman.\n\n\"Then sure I have no need to tell thee mine,\" said the other.\n\n\"By the rood! if it is not Black Simon of Norwich!\" cried Aylward. \"A mon coeur, camarade, a mon coeur! Ah, but I am blithe to see thee!\" The two fell upon each other and hugged like bears.\n\n\"And where from, old blood and bones?\" asked the bowman.\n\n\"I am in service here. Tell me, comrade, is it sooth that we shall have another fling at these Frenchmen? It is so rumored in the guard-room, and that Sir Nigel will take the field once more.\"\n\n\"It is like enough, mon gar., as things go.\"\n\n\"Now may the Lord be praised!\" cried the other. \"This very night will I set apart a golden ouche to be offered on the shrine of my name-saint. I have pined for this, Aylward, as a young maid pines for her lover.\"\n\n\"Art so set on plunder then? Is the purse so light that there is not enough for a rouse? I have a bag at my belt, camarade, and you have but to put your fist into it for what you want. It was ever share and share between us.\"\n\n\"Nay, friend, it is not the Frenchman's gold, but the Frenchman's blood that I would have. I should not rest quiet in the grave, coz, if I had not another turn at them. For with us in France it has ever been fair and honest war\u2014a shut fist for the man, but a bended knee for the woman. But how was it at Winchelsea when their galleys came down upon it some few years back? I had an old mother there, lad, who had come down thither from the Midlands to be the nearer her son. They found her afterwards by her own hearthstone, thrust through by a Frenchman's bill. My second sister, my brother's wife, and her two children, they were but ash-heaps in the smoking ruins of their house. I will not say that we have not wrought great scath upon France, but women and children have been safe from us. And so, old friend, my heart is hot within me, and I long to hear the old battle-cry again, and, by God's truth! if Sir Nigel unfurls his pennon, here is one who will be right glad to feel the saddle-flaps under his knees.\"\n\n\"We have seen good work together, old war-dog,\" quoth Aylward; \"and, by my hilt! we may hope to see more ere we die. But we are more like to hawk at the Spanish woodcock than at the French heron, though certes it is rumored that Du Guesclin with all the best lances of France have taken service under the lions and towers of Castile. But, comrade, it is in my mind that there is some small matter of dispute still open between us.\"\n\n\"'Fore God, it is sooth!\" cried the other; \"I had forgot it. The provost-marshal and his men tore us apart when last we met.\"\n\n\"On which, friend, we vowed that we should settle the point when next we came together. Hast thy sword, I see, and the moon throws glimmer enough for such old night-birds as we. On guard, mon gar.! I have not heard clink of steel this month or more.\"\n\n\"Out from the shadow then,\" said the other, drawing his sword. \"A vow is a vow, and not lightly to be broken.\"\n\n\"A vow to the saints,\" cried Alleyne, \"is indeed not to be set aside; but this is a devil's vow, and, simple clerk as I am, I am yet the mouthpiece of the true church when I say that it were mortal sin to fight on such a quarrel. What! shall two grown men carry malice for years, and fly like snarling curs at each other's throats?\"\n\n\"No malice, my young clerk, no malice,\" quoth Black Simon, \"I have not a bitter drop in my heart for mine old comrade; but the quarrel, as he hath told you, is still open and unsettled. Fall on, Aylward!\"\n\n\"Not whilst I can stand between you,\" cried Alleyne, springing before the bowman. \"It is shame and sin to see two Christian Englishmen turn swords against each other like the frenzied bloodthirsty paynim.\"\n\n\"And, what is more,\" said Hordle John, suddenly appearing out of the buttery with the huge board upon which the pastry was rolled, \"if either raise sword I shall flatten him like a Shrovetide pancake. By the black rood! I shall drive him into the earth, like a nail into a door, rather than see you do scath to each other.\"\n\n\"'Fore God, this is a strange way of preaching peace,\" cried Black Simon. \"You may find the scath yourself, my lusty friend, if you raise your great cudgel to me. I had as lief have the castle drawbridge drop upon my pate.\"\n\n\"Tell me, Aylward,\" said Alleyne earnestly, with his hands outstretched to keep the pair asunder, \"what is the cause of quarrel, that we may see whether honorable settlement may not be arrived at?\"\n\nThe bowman looked down at his feet and then up at the moons \"Parbleu!\" he cried, \"the cause of quarrel? Why, mon petit, it was years ago in Limousin, and how can I bear in mind what was the cause of it? Simon there hath it at the end of his tongue.\"\n\n\"Not I, in troth,\" replied the other; \"I have had other things to think of. There was some sort of bickering over dice, or wine, or was it a woman, coz?\"\n\n\"Pasques Dieu! but you have nicked it,\" cried Aylward. \"It was indeed about a woman; and the quarrel must go forward, for I am still of the same mind as before.\"\n\n\"What of the woman, then?\" asked Simon. \"May the murrain strike me if I can call to mind aught about her.\"\n\n\"It was La Blanche Rose, maid at the sign of the 'Trois Corbeaux' at Limoges. Bless her pretty heart! Why, mon gar., I loved her.\"\n\n\"So did a many,\" quoth Simon. \"I call her to mind now. On the very day that we fought over the little hussy, she went off with Evan ap Price, a long-legged Welsh dagsman. They have a hostel of their own now, somewhere on the banks of the Garonne, where the landlord drinks so much of the liquor that there is little left for the customers.\"\n\n\"So ends our quarrel, then,\" said Aylward, sheathing his sword. \"A Welsh dagsman, i' faith! C'etait mauvais gout, camarade, and the more so when she had a jolly archer and a lusty man-at-arms to choose from.\"\n\n\"True, old lad. And it is as well that we can compose our differences honorably, for Sir Nigel had been out at the first clash of steel; and he hath sworn that if there be quarrelling in the garrison he would smite the right hand from the broilers. You know him of old, and that he is like to be as good as his word.\"\n\n\"Mort-Dieu! yes. But there are ale, mead, and wine in the buttery, and the steward a merry rogue, who will not haggle over a quart or two. Buvons, mon gar., for it is not every day that two old friends come together.\"\n\nThe old soldiers and Hordle John strode off together in all good fellowship. Alleyne had turned to follow them, when he felt a touch upon his shoulder, and found a young page by his side.\n\n\"The Lord Loring commands,\" said the boy, \"that you will follow me to the great chamber, and await him there.\"\n\n\"But my comrades?\"\n\n\"His commands were for you alone.\"\n\nAlleyne followed the messenger to the east end of the courtyard, where a broad flight of steps led up to the doorway of the main hall, the outer wall of which is washed by the waters of the Avon. As designed at first, no dwelling had been allotted to the lord of the castle and his family but the dark and dismal basement story of the keep. A more civilized or more effeminate generation, however, had refused to be pent up in such a cellar, and the hall with its neighboring chambers had been added for their accommodation. Up the broad steps Alleyne went, still following his boyish guide, until at the folding oak doors the latter paused, and ushered him into the main hall of the castle.\n\nOn entering the room the clerk looked round; but, seeing no one, he continued to stand, his cap in his hand, examining with the greatest interest a chamber which was so different to any to which he was accustomed. The days had gone by when a nobleman's hall was but a barn-like, rush-strewn enclosure, the common lounge and eating-room of every inmate of the castle. The Crusaders had brought back with them experiences of domestic luxuries, of Damascus carpets and rugs of Aleppo, which made them impatient of the hideous bareness and want of privacy which they found in their ancestral strongholds. Still stronger, however, had been the influence of the great French war; for, however well matched the nations might be in martial exercises, there could be no question but that our neighbors were infinitely superior to us in the arts of peace. A stream of returning knights, of wounded soldiers, and of unransomed French noblemen, had been for a quarter of a century continually pouring into England, every one of whom exerted an influence in the direction of greater domestic refinement, while shiploads of French furniture from Calais, Rouen, and other plundered towns, had supplied our own artisans with models on which to shape their work. Hence, in most English castles, and in Castle Twynham among the rest, chambers were to be found which would seem to be not wanting either in beauty or in comfort.\n\nIn the great stone fireplace a log fire was spurting and crackling, throwing out a ruddy glare which, with the four bracket-lamps which stood at each corner of the room, gave a bright and lightsome air to the whole apartment. Above was a wreath-work of blazonry, extending up to the carved and corniced oaken roof; while on either side stood the high canopied chairs placed for the master of the house and for his most honored guest. The walls were hung all round with most elaborate and brightly colored tapestry, representing the achievements of Sir Bevis of Hampton, and behind this convenient screen were stored the tables dormant and benches which would be needed for banquet or high festivity. The floor was of polished tiles, with a square of red and black diapered Flemish carpet in the centre; and many settees, cushions, folding chairs, and carved bancals littered all over it. At the further end was a long black buffet or dresser, thickly covered with gold cups, silver salvers, and other such valuables. All this Alleyne examined with curious eyes; but most interesting of all to him was a small ebony table at his very side, on which, by the side of a chess-board and the scattered chessmen, there lay an open manuscript written in a right clerkly hand, and set forth with brave flourishes and devices along the margins. In vain Alleyne bethought him of where he was, and of those laws of good breeding and decorum which should restrain him: those colored capitals and black even lines drew his hand down to them, as the loadstone draws the needle, until, almost before he knew it, he was standing with the romance of Garin de Montglane before his eyes, so absorbed in its contents as to be completely oblivious both of where he was and why he had come there.\n\nHe was brought back to himself, however, by a sudden little ripple of quick feminine laughter. Aghast, he dropped the manuscript among the chessmen and stared in bewilderment round the room. It was as empty and as still as ever. Again he stretched his hand out to the romance, and again came that roguish burst of merriment. He looked up at the ceiling, back at the closed door, and round at the stiff folds of motionless tapestry. Of a sudden, however, he caught a quick shimmer from the corner of a high-backed bancal in front of him, and, shifting a pace or two to the side, saw a white slender hand, which held a mirror of polished silver in such a way that the concealed observer could see without being seen. He stood irresolute, uncertain whether to advance or to take no notice; but, even as he hesitated, the mirror was whipped in, and a tall and stately young lady swept out from behind the oaken screen, with a dancing light of mischief in her eyes. Alleyne started with astonishment as he recognized the very maiden who had suffered from his brother's violence in the forest. She no longer wore her gay riding-dress, however, but was attired in a long sweeping robe of black velvet of Bruges, with delicate tracery of white lace at neck and at wrist, scarce to be seen against her ivory skin. Beautiful as she had seemed to him before, the lithe charm of her figure and the proud, free grace of her bearing were enhanced now by the rich simplicity of her attire.\n\n\"Ah, you start,\" said she, with the same sidelong look of mischief, \"and I cannot marvel at it. Didst not look to see the distressed damosel again. Oh that I were a minstrel, that I might put it into rhyme, with the whole romance\u2014the luckless maid, the wicked socman, and the virtuous clerk! So might our fame have gone down together for all time, and you be numbered with Sir Percival or Sir Galahad, or all the other rescuers of oppressed ladies.\"\n\n\"What I did,\" said Alleyne, \"was too small a thing for thanks; and yet, if I may say it without offence, it was too grave and near a matter for mirth and raillery. I had counted on my brother's love, but God has willed that it should be otherwise. It is a joy to me to see you again, lady, and to know that you have reached home in safety, if this be indeed your home.\"\n\n\"Yes, in sooth, Castle Twynham is my home, and Sir Nigel Loring my father, I should have told you so this morning, but you said that you were coming thither, so I bethought me that I might hold it back as a surprise to you. Oh dear, but it was brave to see you!\" she cried, bursting out a-laughing once more, and standing with her hand pressed to her side, and her half-closed eyes twinkling with amusement. \"You drew back and came forward with your eyes upon my book there, like the mouse who sniffs the cheese and yet dreads the trap.\"\n\n\"I take shame,\" said Alleyne, \"that I should have touched it.\"\n\n\"Nay, it warmed my very heart to see it. So glad was I, that I laughed for very pleasure. My fine preacher can himself be tempted then, thought I; he is not made of another clay to the rest of us.\"\n\n\"God help me! I am the weakest of the weak,\" groaned Alleyne. \"I pray that I may have more strength.\"\n\n\"And to what end?\" she asked sharply. \"If you are, as I understand, to shut yourself forever in your cell within the four walls of an abbey, then of what use would it be were your prayer to be answered?\"\n\n\"The use of my own salvation.\"\n\nShe turned from him with a pretty shrug and wave. \"Is that all?\" she said. \"Then you are no better than Father Christopher and the rest of them. Your own, your own, ever your own! My father is the king's man, and when he rides into the press of fight he is not thinking ever of the saving of his own poor body; he recks little enough if he leave it on the field. Why then should you, who are soldiers of the Spirit, be ever moping or hiding in cell or in cave, with minds full of your own concerns, while the world, which you should be mending, is going on its way, and neither sees nor hears you? Were ye all as thoughtless of your own souls as the soldier is of his body, ye would be of more avail to the souls of others.\"\n\n\"There is sooth in what you say, lady,\" Alleyne answered; \"and yet I scarce can see what you would have the clergy and the church to do.\"\n\n\"I would have them live as others and do men's work in the world, preaching by their lives rather than their words. I would have them come forth from their lonely places, mix with the borel folks, feel the pains and the pleasures, the cares and the rewards, the temptings and the stirrings of the common people. Let them toil and swinken, and labor, and plough the land, and take wives to themselves\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"Alas! alas!\" cried Alleyne aghast, \"you have surely sucked this poison from the man Wicliffe, of whom I have heard such evil things.\"\n\n\"Nay, I know him not. I have learned it by looking from my own chamber window and marking these poor monks of the priory, their weary life, their profitless round. I have asked myself if the best which can be done with virtue is to shut it within high walls as though it were some savage creature. If the good will lock themselves up, and if the wicked will still wander free, then alas for the world!\"\n\nAlleyne looked at her in astonishment, for her cheek was flushed, her eyes gleaming, and her whole pose full of eloquence and conviction. Yet in an instant she had changed again to her old expression of merriment leavened with mischief.\n\n\"Wilt do what I ask?\" said she.\n\n\"What is it, lady?\"\n\n\"Oh, most ungallant clerk! A true knight would never have asked, but would have vowed upon the instant. 'Tis but to bear me out in what I say to my father.\"\n\n\"In what?\"\n\n\"In saying, if he ask, that it was south of the Christchurch road that I met you. I shall be shut up with the tire-women else, and have a week of spindle and bodkin, when I would fain be galloping Troubadour up Wilverley Walk, or loosing little Roland at the Vinney Ridge herons.\"\n\n\"I shall not answer him if he ask.\"\n\n\"Not answer! But he will have an answer. Nay, but you must not fail me, or it will go ill with me.\"\n\n\"But, lady,\" cried poor Alleyne in great distress, \"how can I say that it was to the south of the road when I know well that it was four miles to the north.\"\n\n\"You will not say it?\"\n\n\"Surely you will not, too, when you know that it is not so?\"\n\n\"Oh, I weary of your preaching!\" she cried, and swept away with a toss of her beautiful head, leaving Alleyne as cast down and ashamed as though he had himself proposed some infamous thing. She was back again in an instant, however, in another of her varying moods.\n\n\"Look at that, my friend!\" said she. \"If you had been shut up in abbey or in cell this day you could not have taught a wayward maiden to abide by the truth. Is it not so? What avail is the shepherd if he leaves his sheep.\"\n\n\"A sorry shepherd!\" said Alleyne humbly. \"But here is your noble father.\"\n\n\"And you shall see how worthy a pupil I am. Father, I am much beholden to this young clerk, who was of service to me and helped me this very morning in Minstead Woods, four miles to the north of the Christchurch road, where I had no call to be, you having ordered it otherwise.\" All this she reeled off in a loud voice, and then glanced with sidelong, questioning eyes at Alleyne for his approval.\n\nSir Nigel, who had entered the room with a silvery-haired old lady upon his arm, stared aghast at this sudden outburst of candor.\n\n\"Maude, Maude!\" said he, shaking his head, \"it is more hard for me to gain obedience from you than from the ten score drunken archers who followed me to Guienne. Yet, hush! little one, for your fair lady-mother will be here anon, and there is no need that she should know it. We will keep you from the provost-marshal this journey. Away to your chamber, sweeting, and keep a blithe face, for she who confesses is shriven. And now, fair mother,\" he continued, when his daughter had gone, \"sit you here by the fire, for your blood runs colder than it did. Alleyne Edricson, I would have a word with you, for I would fain that you should take service under me. And here in good time comes my lady, without whose counsel it is not my wont to decide aught of import; but, indeed, it was her own thought that you should come.\"\n\n\"For I have formed a good opinion of you, and can see that you are one who may be trusted,\" said the Lady Loring. \"And in good sooth my dear lord hath need of such a one by his side, for he recks so little of himself that there should be one there to look to his needs and meet his wants. You have seen the cloisters; it were well that you should see the world too, ere you make choice for life between them.\"\n\n\"It was for that very reason that my father willed that I should come forth into the world at my twentieth year,\" said Alleyne.\n\n\"Then your father was a man of good counsel,\" said she, \"and you cannot carry out his will better than by going on this path, where all that is noble and gallant in England will be your companions.\"\n\n\"You can ride?\" asked Sir Nigel, looking at the youth with puckered eyes.\n\n\"Yes, I have ridden much at the abbey.\"\n\n\"Yet there is a difference betwixt a friar's hack and a warrior's destrier. You can sing and play?\"\n\n\"On citole, flute and rebeck.\"\n\n\"Good! You can read blazonry?\"\n\n\"Indifferent well.\"\n\n\"Then read this,\" quoth Sir Nigel, pointing upwards to one of the many quarterings which adorned the wall over the fireplace.\n\n\"Argent,\" Alleyne answered, \"a fess azure charged with three lozenges dividing three mullets sable. Over all, on an escutcheon of the first, a jambe gules.\"\n\n\"A jambe gules erased,\" said Sir Nigel, shaking his head solemnly. \"Yet it is not amiss for a monk-bred man. I trust that you are lowly and serviceable?\"\n\n\"I have served all my life, my lord.\"\n\n\"Canst carve too?\"\n\n\"I have carved two days a week for the brethren.\"\n\n\"A model truly! Wilt make a squire of squires. But tell me, I pray, canst curl hair?\"\n\n\"No, my lord, but I could learn.\"\n\n\"It is of import,\" said he, \"for I love to keep my hair well ordered, seeing that the weight of my helmet for thirty years hath in some degree frayed it upon the top.\" He pulled off his velvet cap of maintenance as he spoke, and displayed a pate which was as bald as an egg, and shone bravely in the firelight. \"You see,\" said he, whisking round, and showing one little strip where a line of scattered hairs, like the last survivors in some fatal field, still barely held their own against the fate which had fallen upon their comrades; \"these locks need some little oiling and curling, for I doubt not that if you look slantwise at my head, when the light is good, you will yourself perceive that there are places where the hair is sparse.\"\n\n\"It is for you also to bear the purse,\" said the lady; \"for my sweet lord is of so free and gracious a temper that he would give it gayly to the first who asked alms of him. All these things, with some knowledge of venerie, and of the management of horse, hawk and hound, with the grace and hardihood and courtesy which are proper to your age, will make you a fit squire for Sir Nigel Loring.\"\n\n\"Alas! lady,\" Alleyne answered, \"I know well the great honor that you have done me in deeming me worthy to wait upon so renowned a knight, yet I am so conscious of my own weakness that I scarce dare incur duties which I might be so ill-fitted to fulfil.\"\n\n\"Modesty and a humble mind,\" said she, \"are the very first and rarest gifts in page or squire. Your words prove that you have these, and all the rest is but the work of use and time. But there is no call for haste. Rest upon it for the night, and let your orisons ask for guidance in the matter. We knew your father well, and would fain help his son, though we have small cause to love your brother the Socman, who is forever stirring up strife in the county.\"\n\n\"We can scare hope,\" said Nigel, \"to have all ready for our start before the feast of St. Luke, for there is much to be done in the time. You will have leisure, therefore, if it please you to take service under me, in which to learn your devoir. Bertrand, my daughter's page, is hot to go; but in sooth he is over young for such rough work as may be before us.\"\n\n\"And I have one favor to crave from you,\" added the lady of the castle, as Alleyne turned to leave their presence. \"You have, as I understand, much learning which you have acquired at Beaulieu.\"\n\n\"Little enough, lady, compared with those who were my teachers.\"\n\n\"Yet enough for my purpose, I doubt not. For I would have you give an hour or two a day whilst you are with us in discoursing with my daughter, the Lady Maude; for she is somewhat backward, I fear, and hath no love for letters, save for these poor fond romances, which do but fill her empty head with dreams of enchanted maidens and of errant cavaliers. Father Christopher comes over after nones from the priory, but he is stricken with years and slow of speech, so that she gets small profit from his teaching. I would have you do what you can with her, and with Agatha my young tire-woman, and with Dorothy Pierpont.\"\n\nAnd so Alleyne found himself not only chosen as squire to a knight but also as squire to three damosels, which was even further from the part which he had thought to play in the world. Yet he could but agree to do what he might, and so went forth from the castle hall with his face flushed and his head in a whirl at the thought of the strange and perilous paths which his feet were destined to tread." + }, + { + "title": "HOW ALLEYNE LEARNED MORE THAN HE COULD TEACH.", + "text": "And now there came a time of stir and bustle, of furbishing of arms and clang of hammer from all the southland counties. Fast spread the tidings from thorpe to thorpe and from castle to castle, that the old game was afoot once more, and the lions and lilies to be in the field with the early spring. Great news this for that fierce old country, whose trade for a generation had been war, her exports archers and her imports prisoners. For six years her sons had chafed under an unwonted peace. Now they flew to their arms as to their birthright. The old soldiers of Crecy, of Nogent, and of Poictiers were glad to think that they might hear the war-trumpet once more, and gladder still were the hot youth who had chafed for years under the martial tales of their sires. To pierce the great mountains of the south, to fight the tamers of the fiery Moors, to follow the greatest captain of the age, to find sunny cornfields and vineyards, when the marches of Picardy and Normandy were as rare and bleak as the Jedburgh forests\u2014here was a golden prospect for a race of warriors. From sea to sea there was stringing of bows in the cottage and clang of steel in the castle.\n\nNor did it take long for every stronghold to pour forth its cavalry, and every hamlet its footmen. Through the late autumn and the early winter every road and country lane resounded with nakir and trumpet, with the neigh of the warhorse and the clatter of marching men. From the Wrekin in the Welsh marches to the Cotswolds in the west or Butser in the south, there was no hill-top from which the peasant might not have seen the bright shimmer of arms, the toss and flutter of plume and of pensil. From bye-path, from woodland clearing, or from winding moor-side track these little rivulets of steel united in the larger roads to form a broader stream, growing ever fuller and larger as it approached the nearest or most commodious seaport. And there all day, and day after day, there was bustle and crowding and labor, while the great ships loaded up, and one after the other spread their white pinions and darted off to the open sea, amid the clash of cymbals and rolling of drums and lusty shouts of those who went and of those who waited. From Orwell to the Dart there was no port which did not send forth its little fleet, gay with streamer and bunting, as for a joyous festival. Thus in the season of the waning days the might of England put forth on to the waters.\n\nIn the ancient and populous county of Hampshire there was no lack of leaders or of soldiers for a service which promised either honor or profit. In the north the Saracen's head of the Brocas and the scarlet fish of the De Roches were waving over a strong body of archers from Holt, Woolmer, and Harewood forests. De Borhunte was up in the east, and Sir John de Montague in the west. Sir Luke de Ponynges, Sir Thomas West, Sir Maurice de Bruin, Sir Arthur Lipscombe, Sir Walter Ramsey, and stout Sir Oliver Buttesthorn were all marching south with levies from Andover, Arlesford, Odiham and Winchester, while from Sussex came Sir John Clinton, Sir Thomas Cheyne, and Sir John Fallislee, with a troop of picked men-at-arms, making for their port at Southampton. Greatest of all the musters, however, was that of Twynham Castle, for the name and the fame of Sir Nigel Loring drew towards him the keenest and boldest spirits, all eager to serve under so valiant a leader. Archers from the New Forest and the Forest of Bere, billmen from the pleasant country which is watered by the Stour, the Avon, and the Itchen, young cavaliers from the ancient Hampshire houses, all were pushing for Christchurch to take service under the banner of the five scarlet roses.\n\nAnd now, could Sir Nigel have shown the bachelles of land which the laws of rank required, he might well have cut his forked pennon into a square banner, and taken such a following into the field as would have supported the dignity of a banneret. But poverty was heavy upon him, his land was scant, his coffers empty, and the very castle which covered him the holding of another. Sore was his heart when he saw rare bowmen and war-hardened spearmen turned away from his gates, for the lack of the money which might equip and pay them. Yet the letter which Aylward had brought him gave him powers which he was not slow to use. In it Sir Claude Latour, the Gascon lieutenant of the White Company, assured him that there remained in his keeping enough to fit out a hundred archers and twenty men-at-arms, which, joined to the three hundred veteran companions already in France, would make a force which any leader might be proud to command. Carefully and sagaciously the veteran knight chose out his men from the swarm of volunteers. Many an anxious consultation he held with Black Simon, Sam Aylward, and other of his more experienced followers, as to who should come and who should stay. By All Saints' day, however ere the last leaves had fluttered to earth in the Wilverley and Holmesley glades, he had filled up his full numbers, and mustered under his banner as stout a following of Hampshire foresters as ever twanged their war-bows. Twenty men-at-arms, too, well mounted and equipped, formed the cavalry of the party, while young Peter Terlake of Fareham, and Walter Ford of Botley, the martial sons of martial sires, came at their own cost to wait upon Sir Nigel and to share with Alleyne Edricson the duties of his squireship.\n\nYet, even after the enrolment, there was much to be done ere the party could proceed upon its way. For armor, swords, and lances, there was no need to take much forethought, for they were to be had both better and cheaper in Bordeaux than in England. With the long-bow, however, it was different. Yew staves indeed might be got in Spain, but it was well to take enough and to spare with them. Then three spare cords should be carried for each bow, with a great store of arrow-heads, besides the brigandines of chain mail, the wadded steel caps, and the brassarts or arm-guards, which were the proper equipment of the archer. Above all, the women for miles round were hard at work cutting the white surcoats which were the badge of the Company, and adorning them with the red lion of St. George upon the centre of the breast. When all was completed and the muster called in the castle yard the oldest soldier of the French wars was fain to confess that he had never looked upon a better equipped or more warlike body of men, from the old knight with his silk jupon, sitting his great black warhorse in the front of them, to Hordle John, the giant recruit, who leaned carelessly upon a huge black bowstave in the rear. Of the six score, fully half had seen service before, while a fair sprinkling were men who had followed the wars all their lives, and had a hand in those battles which had made the whole world ring with the fame and the wonder of the island infantry.\n\nSix long weeks were taken in these preparations, and it was close on Martinmas ere all was ready for a start. Nigh two months had Alleyne Edricson been in Castle Twynham\u2014months which were fated to turn the whole current of his life, to divert it from that dark and lonely bourne towards which it tended, and to guide it into freer and more sunlit channels. Already he had learned to bless his father for that wise provision which had made him seek to know the world ere he had ventured to renounce it.\n\nFor it was a different place from that which he had pictured\u2014very different from that which he had heard described when the master of the novices held forth to his charges upon the ravening wolves who lurked for them beyond the peaceful folds of Beaulieu. There was cruelty in it, doubtless, and lust and sin and sorrow; but were there not virtues to atone, robust positive virtues which did not shrink from temptation, which held their own in all the rough blasts of the work-a-day world? How colorless by contrast appeared the sinlessness which came from inability to sin, the conquest which was attained by flying from the enemy! Monk-bred as he was, Alleyne had native shrewdness and a mind which was young enough to form new conclusions and to outgrow old ones. He could not fail to see that the men with whom he was thrown in contact, rough-tongued, fierce and quarrelsome as they were, were yet of deeper nature and of more service in the world than the ox-eyed brethren who rose and ate and slept from year's end to year's end in their own narrow, stagnant circle of existence. Abbot Berghersh was a good man, but how was he better than this kindly knight, who lived as simple a life, held as lofty and inflexible an ideal of duty, and did with all his fearless heart whatever came to his hand to do? In turning from the service of the one to that of the other, Alleyne could not feel that he was lowering his aims in life. True that his gentle and thoughtful nature recoiled from the grim work of war, yet in those days of martial orders and militant brotherhoods there was no gulf fixed betwixt the priest and the soldier. The man of God and the man of the sword might without scandal be united in the same individual. Why then should he, a mere clerk, have scruples when so fair a chance lay in his way of carrying out the spirit as well as the letter of his father's provision. Much struggle it cost him, anxious spirit-questionings and midnight prayings, with many a doubt and a misgiving; but the issue was that ere he had been three days in Castle Twynham he had taken service under Sir Nigel, and had accepted horse and harness, the same to be paid for out of his share of the profits of the expedition. Henceforth for seven hours a day he strove in the tilt-yard to qualify himself to be a worthy squire to so worthy a knight. Young, supple and active, with all the pent energies from years of pure and healthy living, it was not long before he could manage his horse and his weapon well enough to earn an approving nod from critical men-at-arms, or to hold his own against Terlake and Ford, his fellow-servitors.\n\nBut were there no other considerations which swayed him from the cloisters towards the world? So complex is the human spirit that it can itself scarce discern the deep springs which impel it to action. Yet to Alleyne had been opened now a side of life of which he had been as innocent as a child, but one which was of such deep import that it could not fail to influence him in choosing his path. A woman, in monkish precepts, had been the embodiment and concentration of what was dangerous and evil\u2014a focus whence spread all that was to be dreaded and avoided. So defiling was their presence that a true Cistercian might not raise his eyes to their face or touch their finger-tips under ban of church and fear of deadly sin. Yet here, day after day for an hour after nones, and for an hour before vespers, he found himself in close communion with three maidens, all young, all fair, and all therefore doubly dangerous from the monkish standpoint. Yet he found that in their presence he was conscious of a quick sympathy, a pleasant ease, a ready response to all that was most gentle and best in himself, which filled his soul with a vague and new-found joy.\n\nAnd yet the Lady Maude Loring was no easy pupil to handle. An older and more world-wise man might have been puzzled by her varying moods, her sudden prejudices, her quick resentment at all constraint and authority. Did a subject interest her, was there space in it for either romance or imagination, she would fly through it with her subtle, active mind, leaving her two fellow-students and even her teacher toiling behind her. On the other hand, were there dull patience needed with steady toil and strain of memory, no single fact could by any driving be fixed in her mind. Alleyne might talk to her of the stories of old gods and heroes, of gallant deeds and lofty aims, or he might hold forth upon moon and stars, and let his fancy wander over the hidden secrets of the universe, and he would have a rapt listener with flushed cheeks and eloquent eyes, who could repeat after him the very words which had fallen from his lips. But when it came to almagest and astrolabe, the counting of figures and reckoning of epicycles, away would go her thoughts to horse and hound, and a vacant eye and listless face would warn the teacher that he had lost his hold upon his scholar. Then he had but to bring out the old romance book from the priory, with befingered cover of sheepskin and gold letters upon a purple ground, to entice her wayward mind back to the paths of learning.\n\nAt times, too, when the wild fit was upon her, she would break into pertness and rebel openly against Alleyne's gentle firmness. Yet he would jog quietly on with his teachings, taking no heed to her mutiny, until suddenly she would be conquered by his patience, and break into self-revilings a hundred times stronger than her fault demanded. It chanced however that, on one of these mornings when the evil mood was upon her, Agatha the young tire-woman, thinking to please her mistress, began also to toss her head and make tart rejoinder to the teacher's questions. In an instant the Lady Maude had turned upon her two blazing eyes and a face which was blanched with anger.\n\n\"You would dare!\" said she. \"You would dare!\" The frightened tire-woman tried to excuse herself. \"But my fair lady,\" she stammered, \"what have I done? I have said no more than I heard.\"\n\n\"You would dare!\" repeated the lady in a choking voice. \"You, a graceless baggage, a foolish lackbrain, with no thought above the hemming of shifts. And he so kindly and hendy and long-suffering! You would\u2014ha, you may well flee the room!\"\n\nShe had spoken with a rising voice, and a clasping and opening of her long white fingers, so that it was no marvel that ere the speech was over the skirts of Agatha were whisking round the door and the click of her sobs to be heard dying swiftly away down the corridor.\n\nAlleyne stared open-eyed at this tigress who had sprung so suddenly to his rescue. \"There is no need for such anger,\" he said mildly. \"The maid's words have done me no scath. It is you yourself who have erred.\"\n\n\"I know it,\" she cried, \"I am a most wicked woman. But it is bad enough that one should misuse you. Ma foi! I will see that there is not a second one.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, no one has misused me,\" he answered. \"But the fault lies in your hot and bitter words. You have called her a baggage and a lackbrain, and I know not what.\"\n\n\"And you are he who taught me to speak the truth,\" she cried. \"Now I have spoken it, and yet I cannot please you. Lackbrain she is, and lackbrain I shall call her.\"\n\nSuch was a sample of the sudden janglings which marred the peace of that little class. As the weeks passed, however, they became fewer and less violent, as Alleyne's firm and constant nature gained sway and influence over the Lady Maude. And yet, sooth to say, there were times when he had to ask himself whether it was not the Lady Maude who was gaining sway and influence over him. If she were changing, so was he. In drawing her up from the world, he was day by day being himself dragged down towards it. In vain he strove and reasoned with himself as to the madness of letting his mind rest upon Sir Nigel's daughter. What was he\u2014a younger son, a penniless clerk, a squire unable to pay for his own harness\u2014that he should dare to raise his eyes to the fairest maid in Hampshire? So spake reason; but, in spite of all, her voice was ever in his ears and her image in his heart. Stronger than reason, stronger than cloister teachings, stronger than all that might hold him back, was that old, old tyrant who will brook no rival in the kingdom of youth.\n\nAnd yet it was a surprise and a shock to himself to find how deeply she had entered into his life; how completely those vague ambitions and yearnings which had filled his spiritual nature centred themselves now upon this thing of earth. He had scarce dared to face the change which had come upon him, when a few sudden chance words showed it all up hard and clear, like a lightning flash in the darkness.\n\nHe had ridden over to Poole, one November day, with his fellow-squire, Peter Terlake, in quest of certain yew-staves from Wat Swathling, the Dorsetshire armorer. The day for their departure had almost come, and the two youths spurred it over the lonely downs at the top of their speed on their homeward course, for evening had fallen and there was much to be done. Peter was a hard, wiry, brown faced, country-bred lad who looked on the coming war as the schoolboy looks on his holidays. This day, however, he had been sombre and mute, with scarce a word a mile to bestow upon his comrade.\n\n\"Tell me Alleyne Edricson,\" he broke out, suddenly, as they clattered along the winding track which leads over the Bournemouth hills, \"has it not seemed to you that of late the Lady Maude is paler and more silent than is her wont?\"\n\n\"It may be so,\" the other answered shortly.\n\n\"And would rather sit distrait by her oriel than ride gayly to the chase as of old. Methinks, Alleyne, it is this learning which you have taught her that has taken all the life and sap from her. It is more than she can master, like a heavy spear to a light rider.\"\n\n\"Her lady-mother has so ordered it,\" said Alleyne.\n\n\"By our Lady! and withouten disrespect,\" quoth Terlake, \"it is in my mind that her lady-mother is more fitted to lead a company to a storming than to have the upbringing of this tender and milk-white maid. Hark ye, lad Alleyne, to what I never told man or woman yet. I love the fair Lady Maude, and would give the last drop of my heart's blood to serve her.\" He spoke with a gasping voice, and his face flushed crimson in the moonlight.\n\nAlleyne said nothing, but his heart seemed to turn to a lump of ice in his bosom.\n\n\"My father has broad acres,\" the other continued, \"from Fareham Creek to the slope of the Portsdown Hill. There is filling of granges, hewing of wood, malting of grain, and herding of sheep as much as heart could wish, and I the only son. Sure am I that Sir Nigel would be blithe at such a match.\"\n\n\"But how of the lady?\" asked Alleyne, with dry lips.\n\n\"Ah, lad, there lies my trouble. It is a toss of the head and a droop of the eyes if I say one word of what is in my mind. 'Twere as easy to woo the snow-dame that we shaped last winter in our castle yard. I did but ask her yesternight for her green veil, that I might bear it as a token or lambrequin upon my helm; but she flashed out at me that she kept it for a better man, and then all in a breath asked pardon for that she had spoke so rudely. Yet she would not take back the words either, nor would she grant the veil. Has it seemed to thee, Alleyne, that she loves any one?\"\n\n\"Nay, I cannot say,\" said Alleyne, with a wild throb of sudden hope in his heart.\n\n\"I have thought so, and yet I cannot name the man. Indeed, save myself, and Walter Ford, and you, who are half a clerk, and Father Christopher of the Priory, and Bertrand the page, who is there whom she sees?\"\n\n\"I cannot tell,\" quoth Alleyne shortly; and the two squires rode on again, each intent upon his own thoughts.\n\nNext day at morning lesson the teacher observed that his pupil was indeed looking pale and jaded, with listless eyes and a weary manner. He was heavy-hearted to note the grievous change in her.\n\n\"Your mistress, I fear, is ill, Agatha,\" he said to the tire-woman, when the Lady Maude had sought her chamber.\n\nThe maid looked aslant at him with laughing eyes. \"It is not an illness that kills,\" quoth she.\n\n\"Pray God not!\" he cried. \"But tell me, Agatha, what it is that ails her?\"\n\n\"Methinks that I could lay my hand upon another who is smitten with the same trouble,\" said she, with the same sidelong look. \"Canst not give a name to it, and thou so skilled in leech-craft?\"\n\n\"Nay, save that she seems aweary.\"\n\n\"Well, bethink you that it is but three days ere you will all be gone, and Castle Twynham be as dull as the Priory. Is there not enough there to cloud a lady's brow?\"\n\n\"In sooth, yes,\" he answered; \"I had forgot that she is about to lose her father.\"\n\n\"Her father!\" cried the tire-woman, with a little trill of laughter. \"Oh simple, simple!\" And she was off down the passage like arrow from bow, while Alleyne stood gazing after her, betwixt hope and doubt, scarce daring to put faith in the meaning which seemed to underlie her words." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE WHITE COMPANY SET FORTH TO THE WARS.", + "text": "St. Luke's day had come and had gone, and it was in the season of Martinmas, when the oxen are driven in to the slaughter, that the White Company was ready for its journey. Loud shrieked the brazen bugles from keep and from gateway, and merry was the rattle of the war-drum, as the men gathered in the outer bailey, with torches to light them, for the morn had not yet broken. Alleyne, from the window of the armory, looked down upon the strange scene\u2014the circles of yellow flickering light, the lines of stern and bearded faces, the quick shimmer of arms, and the lean heads of the horses. In front stood the bow-men, ten deep, with a fringe of under-officers, who paced hither and thither marshalling the ranks with curt precept or short rebuke. Behind were the little clump of steel-clad horsemen, their lances raised, with long pensils drooping down the oaken shafts. So silent and still were they, that they might have been metal-sheathed statues, were it not for the occasional quick, impatient stamp of their chargers, or the rattle of chamfron against neck-plates as they tossed and strained. A spear's length in front of them sat the spare and long-limbed figure of Black Simon, the Norwich fighting man, his fierce, deep-lined face framed in steel, and the silk guidon marked with the five scarlet roses slanting over his right shoulder. All round, in the edge of the circle of the light, stood the castle servants, the soldiers who were to form the garrison, and little knots of women, who sobbed in their aprons and called shrilly to their name-saints to watch over the Wat, or Will, or Peterkin who had turned his hand to the work of war.\n\nThe young squire was leaning forward, gazing at the stirring and martial scene, when he heard a short, quick gasp at his shoulder, and there was the Lady Maude, with her hand to her heart, leaning up against the wall, slender and fair, like a half-plucked lily. Her face was turned away from him, but he could see, by the sharp intake of her breath, that she was weeping bitterly.\n\n\"Alas! alas!\" he cried, all unnerved at the sight, \"why is it that you are so sad, lady?\"\n\n\"It is the sight of these brave men,\" she answered; \"and to think how many of them go and how few are like to find their way back. I have seen it before, when I was a little maid, in the year of the Prince's great battle. I remember then how they mustered in the bailey, even as they do now, and my lady-mother holding me in her arms at this very window that I might see the show.\"\n\n\"Please God, you will see them all back ere another year be out,\" said he.\n\nShe shook her head, looking round at him with flushed cheeks and eyes that sparkled in the lamp-light. \"Oh, but I hate myself for being a woman!\" she cried, with a stamp of her little foot. \"What can I do that is good? Here I must bide, and talk and sew and spin, and spin and sew and talk. Ever the same dull round, with nothing at the end of it. And now you are going too, who could carry my thoughts out of these gray walls, and raise my mind above tapestry and distaffs. What can I do? I am of no more use or value than that broken bowstave.\"\n\n\"You are of such value to me,\" he cried, in a whirl of hot, passionate words, \"that all else has become nought. You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought. Oh, Maude, I cannot live without you, I cannot leave you without a word of love. All is changed to me since I have known you. I am poor and lowly and all unworthy of you; but if great love may weigh down such defects, then mine may do it. Give me but one word of hope to take to the wars with me\u2014but one. Ah, you shrink, you shudder! My wild words have frightened you.\"\n\nTwice she opened her lips, and twice no sound came from them. At last she spoke in a hard and measured voice, as one who dare not trust herself to speak too freely.\n\n\"This is over sudden,\" she said; \"it is not so long since the world was nothing to you. You have changed once; perchance you may change again.\"\n\n\"Cruel!\" he cried, \"who hath changed me?\"\n\n\"And then your brother,\" she continued with a little laugh, disregarding his question. \"Methinks this hath become a family custom amongst the Edricsons. Nay, I am sorry; I did not mean a jibe. But, indeed, Alleyne, this hath come suddenly upon me, and I scarce know what to say.\"\n\n\"Say some word of hope, however distant\u2014some kind word that I may cherish in my heart.\"\n\n\"Nay, Alleyne, it were a cruel kindness, and you have been too good and true a friend to me that I should use you despitefully. There cannot be a closer link between us. It is madness to think of it. Were there no other reasons, it is enough that my father and your brother would both cry out against it.\"\n\n\"My brother, what has he to do with it? And your father\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"Come, Alleyne, was it not you who would have me act fairly to all men, and, certes, to my father amongst them?\"\n\n\"You say truly,\" he cried, \"you say truly. But you do not reject me, Maude? You give me some ray of hope? I do not ask pledge or promise. Say only that I am not hateful to you\u2014that on some happier day I may hear kinder words from you.\"\n\nHer eyes softened upon him, and a kind answer was on her lips, when a hoarse shout, with the clatter of arms and stamping of steeds, rose up from the bailey below. At the sound her face set her eyes sparkled, and she stood with flushed cheek and head thrown back\u2014a woman's body, with a soul of fire.\n\n\"My father hath gone down,\" she cried. \"Your place is by his side. Nay, look not at me, Alleyne. It is no time for dallying. Win my father's love, and all may follow. It is when the brave soldier hath done his devoir that he hopes for his reward, Farewell, and may God be with you!\" She held out her white, slim hand to him, but as he bent his lips over it she whisked away and was gone, leaving in his outstretched hand the very green veil for which poor Peter Terlake had craved in vain. Again the hoarse cheering burst out from below, and he heard the clang of the rising portcullis. Pressing the veil to his lips, he thrust it into the bosom of his tunic, and rushed as fast as feet could bear him to arm himself and join the muster.\n\nThe raw morning had broken ere the hot spiced ale had been served round and the last farewell spoken. A cold wind blew up from the sea and ragged clouds drifted swiftly across the sky.\n\nThe Christchurch townsfolk stood huddled about the Bridge of Avon, the women pulling tight their shawls and the men swathing themselves in their gaberdines, while down the winding path from the castle came the van of the little army, their feet clanging on the hard, frozen road. First came Black Simon with his banner, bestriding a lean and powerful dapple-gray charger, as hard and wiry and warwise as himself. After him, riding three abreast, were nine men-at-arms, all picked soldiers, who had followed the French wars before, and knew the marches of Picardy as they knew the downs of their native Hampshire. They were armed to the teeth with lance, sword, and mace, with square shields notched at the upper right-hand corner to serve as a spear-rest. For defence each man wore a coat of interlaced leathern thongs, strengthened at the shoulder, elbow, and upper arm with slips of steel. Greaves and knee-pieces were also of leather backed by steel, and their gauntlets and shoes were of iron plates, craftily jointed. So, with jingle of arms and clatter of hoofs, they rode across the Bridge of Avon, while the burghers shouted lustily for the flag of the five roses and its gallant guard.\n\nClose at the heels of the horses came two-score archers bearded and burly, their round targets on their backs and their long yellow bows, the most deadly weapon that the wit of man had yet devised, thrusting forth from behind their shoulders. From each man's girdle hung sword or axe, according to his humor, and over the right hip there jutted out the leathern quiver with its bristle of goose, pigeon, and peacock feathers. Behind the bowmen strode two trumpeters blowing upon nakirs, and two drummers in parti-colored clothes. After them came twenty-seven sumpter horses carrying tent-poles, cloth, spare arms, spurs, wedges, cooking kettles, horse-shoes, bags of nails and the hundred other things which experience had shown to be needful in a harried and hostile country. A white mule with red trappings, led by a varlet, carried Sir Nigel's own napery and table comforts. Then came two-score more archers, ten more men-at-arms, and finally a rear guard of twenty bowmen, with big John towering in the front rank and the veteran Aylward marching by the side, his battered harness and faded surcoat in strange contrast with the snow-white jupons and shining brigandines of his companions. A quick cross-fire of greetings and questions and rough West Saxon jests flew from rank to rank, or were bandied about betwixt the marching archers and the gazing crowd.\n\n\"Hola, Gaffer Higginson!\" cried Aylward, as he spied the portly figure of the village innkeeper. \"No more of thy nut-brown, mon gar. We leave it behind us.\"\n\n\"By St. Paul, no!\" cried the other. \"You take it with you. Devil a drop have you left in the great kilderkin. It was time for you to go.\"\n\n\"If your cask is leer, I warrant your purse is full, gaffer,\" shouted Hordle John. \"See that you lay in good store of the best for our home-coming.\"\n\n\"See that you keep your throat whole for the drinking of it archer,\" cried a voice, and the crowd laughed at the rough pleasantry.\n\n\"If you will warrant the beer, I will warrant the throat,\" said John composedly.\n\n\"Close up the ranks!\" cried Aylward. \"En avant, mes enfants! Ah, by my finger bones, there is my sweet Mary from the Priory Mill! Ma foi, but she is beautiful! Adieu, Mary ma cherie! Mon coeur est toujours a toi. Brace your belt, Watkins, man, and swing your shoulders as a free companion should. By my hilt! your jerkins will be as dirty as mine ere you clap eyes on Hengistbury Head again.\"\n\nThe Company had marched to the turn of the road ere Sir Nigel Loring rode out from the gateway, mounted on Pommers, his great black warhorse, whose ponderous footfall on the wooden drawbridge echoed loudly from the gloomy arch which spanned it. Sir Nigel was still in his velvet dress of peace, with flat velvet cap of maintenance, and curling ostrich feather clasped in a golden brooch. To his three squires riding behind him it looked as though he bore the bird's egg as well as its feather, for the back of his bald pate shone like a globe of ivory. He bore no arms save the long and heavy sword which hung at his saddle-bow; but Terlake carried in front of him the high wivern-crested bassinet, Ford the heavy ash spear with swallow-tail pennon, while Alleyne was entrusted with the emblazoned shield. The Lady Loring rode her palfrey at her lord's bridle-arm, for she would see him as far as the edge of the forest, and ever and anon she turned her hard-lined face up wistfully to him and ran a questioning eye over his apparel and appointments.\n\n\"I trust that there is nothing forgot,\" she said, beckoning to Alleyne to ride on her further side. \"I trust him to you, Edricson. Hosen, shirts, cyclas, and under-jupons are in the brown basket on the left side of the mule. His wine he takes hot when the nights are cold, malvoisie or vernage, with as much spice as would cover the thumbnail. See that he hath a change if he come back hot from the tilting. There is goose-grease in a box, if the old scars ache at the turn of the weather. Let his blankets be dry and\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"Nay, my heart's life,\" the little knight interrupted, \"trouble not now about such matters. Why so pale and wan, Edricson? Is it not enow to make a man's heart dance to see this noble Company, such valiant men-at-arms, such lusty archers? By St. Paul! I would be ill to please if I were not blithe to see the red roses flying at the head of so noble a following!\"\n\n\"The purse I have already given you, Edricson,\" continue the lady. \"There are in it twenty-three marks, one noble, three shillings and fourpence, which is a great treasure for one man to carry. And I pray you to bear in mind, Edricson, that he hath two pair of shoes, those of red leather for common use, and the others with golden toe-chains, which he may wear should he chance to drink wine with the Prince or with Chandos.\"\n\n\"My sweet bird,\" said Sir Nigel, \"I am right loth to part from you, but we are now at the fringe of the forest, and it is not right that I should take the chatelaine too far from her trust.\"\n\n\"But oh, my dear lord,\" she cried with a trembling lip, \"let me bide with you for one furlong further\u2014or one and a half perhaps. You may spare me this out of the weary miles that you will journey along.\"\n\n\"Come, then, my heart's comfort,\" he answered. \"But I must crave a gage from thee. It is my custom, dearling, and hath been since I have first known thee, to proclaim by herald in such camps, townships, or fortalices as I may chance to visit, that my lady-love, being beyond compare the fairest and sweetest in Christendom, I should deem it great honor and kindly condescension if any cavalier would run three courses against me with sharpened lances, should he chance to have a lady whose claim he was willing to advance. I pray you then my fair dove, that you will vouchsafe to me one of those doeskin gloves, that I may wear it as the badge of her whose servant I shall ever be.\"\n\n\"Alack and alas for the fairest and sweetest!\" she cried. \"Fair and sweet I would fain be for your dear sake, my lord, but old I am and ugly, and the knights would laugh should you lay lance in rest in such a cause.\"\n\n\"Edricson,\" quoth Sir Nigel, \"you have young eyes, and mine are somewhat bedimmed. Should you chance to see a knight laugh, or smile, or even, look you, arch his brows, or purse his mouth, or in any way show surprise that I should uphold the Lady Mary, you will take particular note of his name, his coat-armor, and his lodging. Your glove, my life's desire!\"\n\nThe Lady Mary Loring slipped her hand from her yellow leather gauntlet, and he, lifting it with dainty reverence, bound it to the front of his velvet cap.\n\n\"It is with mine other guardian angels,\" quoth he, pointing at the saints' medals which hung beside it. \"And now, my dearest, you have come far enow. May the Virgin guard and prosper thee! One kiss!\" He bent down from his saddle, and then, striking spurs into his horse's sides, he galloped at top speed after his men, with his three squires at his heels. Half a mile further, where the road topped a hill, they looked back, and the Lady Mary on her white palfrey was still where they had left her. A moment later they were on the downward slope, and she had vanished from their view." + }, + { + "title": "HOW SIR NIGEL SOUGHT FOR A WAYSIDE VENTURE.", + "text": "For a time Sir Nigel was very moody and downcast, with bent brows and eyes upon the pommel of his saddle. Edricson and Terlake rode behind him in little better case, while Ford, a careless and light-hearted youth, grinned at the melancholy of his companions, and flourished his lord's heavy spear, making a point to right and a point to left, as though he were a paladin contending against a host of assailants. Sir Nigel happened, however, to turn himself in his saddle-Ford instantly became as stiff and as rigid as though he had been struck with a palsy. The four rode alone, for the archers had passed a curve in the road, though Alleyne could still hear the heavy clump, clump of their marching, or catch a glimpse of the sparkle of steel through the tangle of leafless branches.\n\n\"Ride by my side, friends, I entreat of you,\" said the knight, reining in his steed that they might come abreast of him. \"For, since it hath pleased you to follow me to the wars, it were well that you should know how you may best serve me. I doubt not, Terlake, that you will show yourself a worthy son of a valiant father; and you, Ford, of yours; and you, Edricson, that you are mindful of the old-time house from which all men know that you are sprung. And first I would have you bear very steadfastly in mind that our setting forth is by no means for the purpose of gaining spoil or exacting ransom, though it may well happen that such may come to us also. We go to France, and from thence I trust to Spain, in humble search of a field in which we may win advancement and perchance some small share of glory. For this purpose I would have you know that it is not my wont to let any occasion pass where it is in any way possible that honor may be gained. I would have you bear this in mind, and give great heed to it that you may bring me word of all cartels, challenges, wrongs, tyrannies, infamies, and wronging of damsels. Nor is any occasion too small to take note of, for I have known such trifles as the dropping of a gauntlet, or the flicking of a breadcrumb, when well and properly followed up, lead to a most noble spear-running. But, Edricson, do I not see a cavalier who rides down yonder road amongst the nether shaw? It would be well, perchance, that you should give him greeting from me. And, should he be of gentle blood it may be that he would care to exchange thrusts with me.\"\n\n\"Why, my lord,\" quoth Ford, standing in his stirrups and shading his eyes, \"it is old Hob Davidson, the fat miller of Milton!\"\n\n\"Ah, so it is, indeed,\" said Sir Nigel, puckering his cheeks; \"but wayside ventures are not to be scorned, for I have seen no finer passages than are to be had from such chance meetings, when cavaliers are willing to advance themselves. I can well remember that two leagues from the town of Rheims I met a very valiant and courteous cavalier of France, with whom I had gentle and most honorable contention for upwards of an hour. It hath ever grieved me that I had not his name, for he smote upon me with a mace and went upon his way ere I was in condition to have much speech with him; but his arms were an allurion in chief above a fess azure. I was also on such an occasion thrust through the shoulder by Lyon de Montcourt, whom I met on the high road betwixt Libourne and Bordeaux. I met him but the once, but I have never seen a man for whom I bear a greater love and esteem. And so also with the squire Le Bourg Capillet, who would have been a very valiant captain had he lived.\"\n\n\"He is dead then?\" asked Alleyne Edricson.\n\n\"Alas! it was my ill fate to slay him in a bickering which broke out in a field near the township of Tarbes. I cannot call to mind how the thing came about, for it was in the year of the Prince's ride through Languedoc, when there was much fine skirmishing to be had at barriers. By St. Paul! I do not think that any honorable cavalier could ask for better chance of advancement than might be had by spurring forth before the army and riding to the gateways of Narbonne, or Bergerac or Mont Giscar, where some courteous gentleman would ever be at wait to do what he might to meet your wish or ease you of your vow. Such a one at Ventadour ran three courses with me betwixt daybreak and sunrise, to the great exaltation of his lady.\"\n\n\"And did you slay him also, my lord?\" asked Ford with reverence.\n\n\"I could never learn, for he was carried within the barrier, and as I had chanced to break the bone of my leg it was a great unease for me to ride or even to stand. Yet, by the goodness of heaven and the pious intercession of the valiant St. George, I was able to sit my charger in the ruffle of Poictiers, which was no very long time afterwards. But what have we here? A very fair and courtly maiden, or I mistake.\"\n\nIt was indeed a tall and buxom country lass, with a basket of spinach-leaves upon her head, and a great slab of bacon tucked under one arm. She bobbed a frightened curtsey as Sir Nigel swept his velvet hat from his head and reined up his great charger.\n\n\"God be with thee, fair maiden!\" said he.\n\n\"God guard thee, my lord!\" she answered, speaking in the broadest West Saxon speech, and balancing herself first on one foot and then on the other in her bashfulness.\n\n\"Fear not, my fair damsel,\" said Sir Nigel, \"but tell me if perchance a poor and most unworthy knight can in any wise be of service to you. Should it chance that you have been used despitefully, it may be that I may obtain justice for you.\"\n\n\"Lawk no, kind sir,\" she answered, clutching her bacon the tighter, as though some design upon it might be hid under this knightly offer. \"I be the milking wench o' fairmer Arnold, and he be as kind a maister as heart could wish.\"\n\n\"It is well,\" said he, and with a shake of the bridle rode on down the woodland path. \"I would have you bear in mind,\" he continued to his squires, \"that gentle courtesy is not, as is the base use of so many false knights, to be shown only to maidens of high degree, for there is no woman so humble that a true knight may not listen to her tale of wrong. But here comes a cavalier who is indeed in haste. Perchance it would be well that we should ask him whither he rides, for it may be that he is one who desires to advance himself in chivalry.\"\n\nThe bleak, hard, wind-swept road dipped down in front of them into a little valley, and then, writhing up the heathy slope upon the other side, lost itself among the gaunt pine-trees. Far away between the black lines of trunks the quick glitter of steel marked where the Company pursued its way. To the north stretched the tree country, but to the south, between two swelling downs, a glimpse might be caught of the cold gray shimmer of the sea, with the white fleck of a galley sail upon the distant skyline. Just in front of the travellers a horseman was urging his steed up the slope, driving it on with whip and spur as one who rides for a set purpose. As he clattered up, Alleyne could see that the roan horse was gray with dust and flecked with foam, as though it had left many a mile behind it. The rider was a stern-faced man, hard of mouth and dry of eye, with a heavy sword clanking at his side, and a stiff white bundle swathed in linen balanced across the pommel of his saddle.\n\n\"The king's messenger,\" he bawled as he came up to them. \"The messenger of the king. Clear the causeway for the king's own man.\"\n\n\"Not so loudly, friend,\" quoth the little knight, reining his horse half round to bar the path. \"I have myself been the king's man for thirty years or more, but I have not been wont to halloo about it on a peaceful highway.\"\n\n\"I ride in his service,\" cried the other, \"and I carry that which belongs to him. You bar my path at your peril.\"\n\n\"Yet I have known the king's enemies claim to ride in his same,\" said Sir Nigel. \"The foul fiend may lurk beneath a garment of light. We must have some sign or warrant of your mission.\"\n\n\"Then must I hew a passage,\" cried the stranger, with his shoulder braced round and his hand upon his hilt. \"I am not to be stopped on the king's service by every gadabout.\"\n\n\"Should you be a gentleman of quarterings and coat-armor,\" lisped Sir Nigel, \"I shall be very blithe to go further into the matter with you. If not, I have three very worthy squires, any one of whom would take the thing upon himself, and debate it with you in a very honorable way.\"\n\nThe man scowled from one to the other, and his hand stole away from his sword.\n\n\"You ask me for a sign,\" he said. \"Here is a sign for you, since you must have one.\" As he spoke he whirled the covering from the object in front of him and showed to their horror that it was a newly-severed human leg. \"By God's tooth!\" he continued, with a brutal laugh, \"you ask me if I am a man of quarterings, and it is even so, for I am officer to the verderer's court at Lyndhurst. This thievish leg is to hang at Milton, and the other is already at Brockenhurst, as a sign to all men of what comes of being over-fond of venison pasty.\"\n\n\"Faugh!\" cried Sir Nigel. \"Pass on the other side of the road, fellow, and let us have the wind of you. We shall trot our horses, my friends, across this pleasant valley, for, by Our Lady! a breath of God's fresh air is right welcome after such a sight.\"\n\n\"We hoped to snare a falcon,\" said he presently, \"but we netted a carrion-crow. Ma foi! but there are men whose hearts are tougher than a boar's hide. For me, I have played the old game of war since ever I had hair on my chin, and I have seen ten thousand brave men in one day with their faces to the sky, but I swear by Him who made me that I cannot abide the work of the butcher.\"\n\n\"And yet, my fair lord,\" said Edricson, \"there has, from what I hear, been much of such devil's work in France.\"\n\n\"Too much, too much,\" he answered. \"But I have ever observed that the foremost in the field are they who would scorn to mishandle a prisoner. By St. Paul! it is not they who carry the breach who are wont to sack the town, but the laggard knaves who come crowding in when a way has been cleared for them. But what is this among the trees?\"\n\n\"It is a shrine of Our Lady,\" said Terlake, \"and a blind beggar who lives by the alms of those who worship there.\"\n\n\"A shrine!\" cried the knight. \"Then let us put up an orison.\" Pulling off his cap, and clasping his hands, he chanted in a shrill voice: \"Benedictus dominus Deus meus, qui docet manus meas ad proelium, et digitos meos ad bellum.\" A strange figure he seemed to his three squires, perched on his huge horse, with his eyes upturned and the wintry sun shimmering upon his bald head. \"It is a noble prayer,\" he remarked, putting on his hat again, \"and it was taught to me by the noble Chandos himself. But how fares it with you, father? Methinks that I should have ruth upon you, seeing that I am myself like one who looks through a horn window while his neighbors have the clear crystal. Yet, by St. Paul! there is a long stride between the man who hath a horn casement and him who is walled in on every hand.\"\n\n\"Alas! fair sir,\" cried the blind old man, \"I have not seen the blessed blue of heaven this two-score years, since a levin flash burned the sight out of my head.\"\n\n\"You have been blind to much that is goodly and fair,\" quoth Sir Nigel, \"but you have also been spared much that is sorry and foul. This very hour our eyes have been shocked with that which would have left you unmoved. But, by St. Paul! we must on, or our Company will think that they have lost their captain somewhat early in the venture. Throw the man my purse, Edricson, and let us go.\"\n\nAlleyne, lingering behind, bethought him of the Lady Loring's counsel, and reduced the noble gift which the knight had so freely bestowed to a single penny, which the beggar with many mumbled blessings thrust away into his wallet. Then, spurring his steed, the young squire rode at the top of his speed after his companions, and overtook them just at the spot where the trees fringe off into the moor and the straggling hamlet of Hordle lies scattered on either side of the winding and deeply-rutted track. The Company was already well-nigh through the village; but, as the knight and his squires closed up upon them, they heard the clamor of a strident voice, followed by a roar of deep-chested laughter from the ranks of the archers. Another minute brought them up with the rear-guard, where every man marched with his beard on his shoulder and a face which was agrin with merriment. By the side of the column walked a huge red-headed bowman, with his hands thrown out in argument and expostulation, while close at his heels followed a little wrinkled woman who poured forth a shrill volley of abuse, varied by an occasional thwack from her stick, given with all the force of her body, though she might have been beating one of the forest trees for all the effect that she seemed likely to produce.\n\n\"I trust, Aylward,\" said Sir Nigel gravely, as he rode up, \"that this doth not mean that any violence hath been offered to women. If such a thing happened, I tell you that the man shall hang, though he were the best archer that ever wore brassart.\"\n\n\"Nay, my fair lord,\" Aylward answered with a grin, \"it is violence which is offered to a man. He comes from Hordle, and this is his mother who hath come forth to welcome him.\"\n\n\"You rammucky lurden,\" she was howling, with a blow between each catch of her breath, \"you shammocking, yaping, over-long good-for-nought. I will teach thee! I will baste thee! Aye, by my faith!\"\n\n\"Whist, mother,\" said John, looking back at her from the tail of his eye, \"I go to France as an archer to give blows and to take them.\"\n\n\"To France, quotha?\" cried the old dame. \"Bide here with me, and I shall warrant you more blows than you are like to get in France. If blows be what you seek, you need not go further than Hordle.\"\n\n\"By my hilt! the good dame speaks truth,\" said Aylward. \"It seems to be the very home of them.\"\n\n\"What have you to say, you clean-shaved galley-beggar?\" cried the fiery dame, turning upon the archer. \"Can I not speak with my own son but you must let your tongue clack? A soldier, quotha, and never a hair on his face. I have seen a better soldier with pap for food and swaddling clothes for harness.\"\n\n\"Stand to it, Aylward,\" cried the archers, amid a fresh burst of laughter.\n\n\"Do not thwart her, comrade,\" said big John. \"She hath a proper spirit for her years and cannot abide to be thwarted. It is kindly and homely to me to hear her voice and to feel that she is behind me. But I must leave you now, mother, for the way is over-rough for your feet; but I will bring you back a silken gown, if there be one in France or Spain, and I will bring Jinny a silver penny; so good-bye to you, and God have you in His keeping!\" Whipping up the little woman, he lifted her lightly to his lips, and then, taking his place in the ranks again, marched on with the laughing Company.\n\n\"That was ever his way,\" she cried, appealing to Sir Nigel, who reined up his horse and listened with the greatest courtesy. \"He would jog on his own road for all that I could do to change him. First he must be a monk forsooth, and all because a wench was wise enough to turn her back on him. Then he joins a rascally crew and must needs trapse off to the wars, and me with no one to bait the fire if I be out, or tend the cow if I be home. Yet I have been a good mother to him. Three hazel switches a day have I broke across his shoulders, and he takes no more notice than you have seen him to-day.\"\n\n\"Doubt not that he will come back to you both safe and prosperous, my fair dame,\" quoth Sir Nigel. \"Meanwhile it grieves me that as I have already given my purse to a beggar up the road I\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"Nay, my lord,\" said Alleyne, \"I still have some moneys remaining.\"\n\n\"Then I pray you to give them to this very worthy woman.\" He cantered on as he spoke, while Alleyne, having dispensed two more pence, left the old dame standing by the furthest cottage of Hordle, with her shrill voice raised in blessings instead of revilings.\n\nThere were two cross-roads before they reached the Lymington Ford, and at each of then Sir Nigel pulled up his horse, and waited with many a curvet and gambade, craning his neck this way and that to see if fortune would send him a venture. Crossroads had, as he explained, been rare places for knightly spear-runnings, and in his youth it was no uncommon thing for a cavalier to abide for weeks at such a point, holding gentle debate with all comers, to his own advancement and the great honor of his lady. The times were changed, however, and the forest tracks wound away from them deserted and silent, with no trample of warhorse or clang of armor which might herald the approach of an adversary\u2014so that Sir Nigel rode on his way disconsolate. At the Lymington River they splashed through the ford, and lay in the meadows on the further side to eat the bread and salt meat which they carried upon the sumpter horses. Then, ere the sun was on the slope of the heavens, they had deftly trussed up again, and were swinging merrily upon their way, two hundred feet moving like two.\n\nThere is a third cross-road where the track from Boldre runs down to the old fishing village of Pitt's Deep. Down this, as they came abreast of it, there walked two men, the one a pace or two behind the other. The cavaliers could not but pull up their horses to look at them, for a stranger pair were never seen journeying together. The first was a misshapen, squalid man with cruel, cunning eyes and a shock of tangled red hair, bearing in his hands a small unpainted cross, which he held high so that all men might see it. He seemed to be in the last extremity of fright, with a face the color of clay and his limbs all ashake as one who hath an ague. Behind him, with his toe ever rasping upon the other's heels, there walked a very stern, black-bearded man with a hard eye and a set mouth. He bore over his shoulder a great knotted stick with three jagged nails stuck in the head of it, and from time to time he whirled it up in the air with a quivering arm, as though he could scarce hold back from dashing his companion's brains out. So in silence they walked under the spread of the branches on the grass-grown path from Boldre.\n\n\"By St. Paul!\" quoth the knight, \"but this is a passing strange sight, and perchance some very perilous and honorable venture may arise from it. I pray you, Edricson, to ride up to them and to ask them the cause of it.\"\n\nThere was no need, however, for him to move, for the twain came swiftly towards them until they were within a spear's length, when the man with the cross sat himself down sullenly upon a tussock of grass by the wayside, while the other stood beside him with his great cudgel still hanging over his head. So intent was he that he raised his eyes neither to knight nor squires, but kept them ever fixed with a savage glare upon his comrade.\n\n\"I pray you, friend,\" said Sir Nigel, \"to tell us truthfully who you are, and why you follow this man with such bitter enmity?\n\n\"So long as I am within the pale of the king's law,\" the stranger answered, \"I cannot see why I should render account to every passing wayfarer.\"\n\n\"You are no very shrewd reasoner, fellow,\" quoth the knight; \"for if it be within the law for you to threaten him with your club, then it is also lawful for me to threaten you with my sword.\"\n\nThe man with the cross was down in an instant on his knees upon the ground, with hands clasped above him and his face shining with hope. \"For dear Christ's sake, my fair lord,\" he cried in a crackling voice, \"I have at my belt a bag with a hundred rose nobles, and I will give it to you freely if you will but pass your sword through this man's body.\"\n\n\"How, you foul knave?\" exclaimed Sir Nigel hotly. \"Do you think that a cavalier's arm is to be bought like a packman's ware. By St. Paul! I have little doubt that this fellow hath some very good cause to hold you in hatred.\"\n\n\"Indeed, my fair sir, you speak sooth,\" quoth he with the club, while the other seated himself once more by the wayside. \"For this man is Peter Peterson, a very noted rieve, draw-latch, and murtherer, who has wrought much evil for many years in the parts about Winchester. It was but the other day, upon the feasts of the blessed Simon and Jude, that he slew my younger brother William in Bere Forest\u2014for which, by the black thorn of Glastonbury! I shall have his heart's blood, though I walk behind him to the further end of earth.\"\n\n\"But if this be indeed so,\" asked Sir Nigel, \"why is it that you have come with him so far through the forest?\"\n\n\"Because I am an honest Englishman, and will take no more than the law allows. For when the deed was done this foul and base wretch fled to sanctuary at St. Cross, and I, as you may think, after him with all the posse. The prior, however, hath so ordered that while he holds this cross no man may lay hand upon him without the ban of church, which heaven forfend from me or mine. Yet, if for an instant he lay the cross aside, or if he fail to journey to Pitt's Deep, where it is ordered that he shall take ship to outland parts, or if he take not the first ship, or if until the ship be ready he walk not every day into the sea as far as his loins, then he becomes outlaw, and I shall forthwith dash out his brains.\"\n\nAt this the man on the ground snarled up at him like a rat, while the other clenched his teeth, and shook his club, and looked down at him with murder in his eyes. Knight and squire gazed from rogue to avenger, but as it was a matter which none could mend they tarried no longer, but rode upon their way. Alleyne, looking back, saw that the murderer had drawn bread and cheese from his scrip, and was silently munching it, with the protecting cross still hugged to his breast, while the other, black and grim, stood in the sunlit road and threw his dark shadow athwart him." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE YELLOW COG SAILED FORTH FROM LEPE.", + "text": "That night the Company slept at St. Leonard's, in the great monastic barns and spicarium\u2014ground well known both to Alleyne and to John, for they were almost within sight of the Abbey of Beaulieu. A strange thrill it gave to the young squire to see the well-remembered white dress once more, and to hear the measured tolling of the deep vespers bell. At early dawn they passed across the broad, sluggish, reed-girt stream\u2014men, horses, and baggage in the flat ferry barges\u2014and so journeyed on through the fresh morning air past Exbury to Lepe. Topping the heathy down, they came of a sudden full in sight of the old seaport\u2014a cluster of houses, a trail of blue smoke, and a bristle of masts. To right and left the long blue curve of the Solent lapped in a fringe of foam upon the yellow beach. Some way out from the town a line of pessoners, creyers, and other small craft were rolling lazily on the gentle swell. Further out still lay a great merchant-ship, high ended, deep waisted, painted of a canary yellow, and towering above the fishing-boats like a swan among ducklings.\n\n\"By St. Paul!\" said the knight, \"our good merchant of Southampton hath not played us false, for methinks I can see our ship down yonder. He said that she would be of great size and of a yellow shade.\"\n\n\"By my hilt, yes!\" muttered Aylward; \"she is yellow as a kite's claw, and would carry as many men as there are pips in a pomegranate.\"\n\n\"It is as well,\" remarked Terlake; \"for methinks, my fair lord, that we are not the only ones who are waiting a passage to Gascony. Mine eye catches at times a flash and sparkle among yonder houses which assuredly never came from shipman's jacket or the gaberdine of a burgher.\"\n\n\"I can also see it,\" said Alleyne, shading his eyes with his hand. \"And I can see men-at-arms in yonder boats which ply betwixt the vessel and the shore. But methinks that we are very welcome here, for already they come forth to meet us.\"\n\nA tumultuous crowd of fishermen, citizens, and women had indeed swarmed out from the northern gate, and approached them up the side of the moor, waving their hands and dancing with joy, as though a great fear had been rolled back from their minds. At their head rode a very large and solemn man with a long chin and a drooping lip. He wore a fur tippet round his neck and a heavy gold chain over it, with a medallion which dangled in front of him.\n\n\"Welcome, most puissant and noble lord,\" he cried, doffing his bonnet to Black Simon. \"I have heard of your lordship's valiant deeds, and in sooth they might be expected from your lordship's face and bearing. Is there any small matter in which I may oblige you?\"\n\n\"Since you ask me,\" said the man-at-arms, \"I would take it kindly if you could spare a link or two of the chain which hangs round your neck.\"\n\n\"What, the corporation chain!\" cried the other in horror. \"The ancient chain of the township of Lepe! This is but a sorry jest, Sir Nigel.\"\n\n\"What the plague did you ask me for then?\" said Simon. \"But if it is Sir Nigel Loring with whom you would speak, that is he upon the black horse.\"\n\nThe Mayor of Lepe gazed with amazement on the mild face and slender frame of the famous warrior.\n\n\"Your pardon, my gracious lord,\" he cried. \"You see in me the mayor and chief magistrate of the ancient and powerful town of Lepe. I bid you very heartily welcome, and the more so as you are come at a moment when we are sore put to it for means of defence.'\n\n\"Ha!\" cried Sir Nigel, pricking up his ears.\n\n\"Yes, my lord, for the town being very ancient and the walls as old as the town, it follows that they are very ancient too. But there is a certain villainous and bloodthirsty Norman pirate hight Tete-noire, who, with a Genoan called Tito Caracci, commonly known as Spade-beard, hath been a mighty scourge upon these coasts. Indeed, my lord, they are very cruel and black-hearted men, graceless and ruthless, and if they should come to the ancient and powerful town of Lepe then\u2014\"\n\n\"Then good-bye to the ancient and powerful town of Lepe,\" quoth Ford, whose lightness of tongue could at times rise above his awe of Sir Nigel.\n\nThe knight, however, was too much intent upon the matter in hand to give heed to the flippancy of his squire. \"Have you then cause,\" he asked, \"to think that these men are about to venture an attempt upon you?\"\n\n\"They have come in two great galleys,\" answered the mayor, \"with two bank of oars on either side, and great store of engines of war and of men-at-arms. At Weymouth and at Portland they have murdered and ravished. Yesterday morning they were at Cowes, and we saw the smoke from the burning crofts. To-day they lie at their ease near Freshwater, and we fear much lest they come upon us and do us a mischief.\"\n\n\"We cannot tarry,\" said Sir Nigel, riding towards the town, with the mayor upon his left side; \"the Prince awaits us at Bordeaux, and we may not be behind the general muster. Yet I will promise you that on our way we shall find time to pass Freshwater and to prevail upon these rovers to leave you in peace.\"\n\n\"We are much beholden to you!\" cried the mayor \"But I cannot see, my lord, how, without a war-ship, you may venture against these men. With your archers, however, you might well hold the town and do them great scath if they attempt to land.\"\n\n\"There is a very proper cog out yonder,\" said Sir Nigel, \"it would be a very strange thing if any ship were not a war-ship when it had such men as these upon her decks. Certes, we shall do as I say, and that no later than this very day.\"\n\n\"My lord,\" said a rough-haired, dark-faced man, who walked by the knight's other stirrup, with his head sloped to catch all that he was saying. \"By your leave, I have no doubt that you are skilled in land fighting and the marshalling of lances, but, by my soul! you will find it another thing upon the sea. I am the master-shipman of this yellow cog, and my name is Goodwin Hawtayne. I have sailed since I was as high as this staff, and I have fought against these Normans and against the Genoese, as well as the Scotch, the Bretons, the Spanish, and the Moors. I tell you, sir, that my ship is over light and over frail for such work, and it will but end in our having our throats cut, or being sold as slaves to the Barbary heathen.\"\n\n\"I also have experienced one or two gentle and honorable ventures upon the sea,\" quoth Sir Nigel, \"and I am right blithe to have so fair a task before us. I think, good master-shipman, that you and I may win great honor in this matter, and I can see very readily that you are a brave and stout man.\"\n\n\"I like it not,\" said the other sturdily. \"In God's name, I like it not. And yet Goodwin Hawtayne is not the man to stand back when his fellows are for pressing forward. By my soul! be it sink or swim, I shall turn her beak into Freshwater Bay, and if good Master Witherton, of Southampton, like not my handling of his ship then he may find another master-shipman.\"\n\nThey were close by the old north gate of the little town, and Alleyne, half turning in his saddle, looked back at the motley crowd who followed. The bowmen and men-at-arms had broken their ranks and were intermingled with the fishermen and citizens, whose laughing faces and hearty gestures bespoke the weight of care from which this welcome arrival had relieved them. Here and there among the moving throng of dark jerkins and of white surcoats were scattered dashes of scarlet and blue, the whimples or shawls of the women. Aylward, with a fishing lass on either arm, was vowing constancy alternately to her on the right and her on the left, while big John towered in the rear with a little chubby maiden enthroned upon his great shoulder, her soft white arm curled round his shining headpiece. So the throng moved on, until at the very gate it was brought to a stand by a wondrously fat man, who came darting forth from the town with rage in every feature of his rubicund face.\n\n\"How now, Sir Mayor?\" he roared, in a voice like a bull. \"How now, Sir Mayor? How of the clams and the scallops?\"\n\n\"By Our Lady! my sweet Sir Oliver,\" cried the mayor. \"I have had so much to think of, with these wicked villains so close upon us, that it had quite gone out of my head.\"\n\n\"Words, words!\" shouted the other furiously. \"Am I to be put off with words? I say to you again, how of the clams and scallops?\"\n\n\"My fair sir, you flatter me,\" cried the mayor. \"I am a peaceful trader, and I am not wont to be so shouted at upon so small a matter.\"\n\n\"Small!\" shrieked the other. \"Small! Clams and scallops! Ask me to your table to partake of the dainty of the town, and when I come a barren welcome and a bare board! Where is my spear-bearer?\"\n\n\"Nay, Sir Oliver, Sir Oliver!\" cried Sir Nigel, laughing.\n\n\"Let your anger be appeased, since instead of this dish you come upon an old friend and comrade.\"\n\n\"By St. Martin of Tours!\" shouted the fat knight, his wrath all changed in an instant to joy, \"if it is not my dear little game rooster of the Garonne. Ah, my sweet coz, I am right glad to see you. What days we have seen together!\"\n\n\"Aye, by my faith,\" cried Sir Nigel, with sparkling eyes, \"we have seen some valiant men, and we have shown our pennons in some noble skirmishes. By St. Paul! we have had great joys in France.\"\n\n\"And sorrows also,\" quoth the other. \"I have some sad memories of the land. Can you recall that which befell us at Libourne?\"\n\n\"Nay, I cannot call to mind that we ever so much as drew sword at the place.\"\n\n\"Man, man,\" cried Sir Oliver, \"your mind still runs on nought but blades and bassinets. Hast no space in thy frame for the softer joys. Ah, even now I can scarce speak of it unmoved. So noble a pie, such tender pigeons, and sugar in the gravy instead of salt! You were by my side that day, as were Sir Claude Latour and the Lord of Pommers.\"\n\n\"I remember it,\" said Sir Nigel, laughing, \"and how you harried the cook down the street, and spoke of setting fire to the inn. By St. Paul! most worthy mayor, my old friend is a perilous man, and I rede you that you compose your difference with him on such terms as you may.\"\n\n\"The clams and scallops shall be ready within the hour,\" the mayor answered. \"I had asked Sir Oliver Buttesthorn to do my humble board the honor to partake at it of the dainty upon which we take some little pride, but in sooth this alarm of pirates hath cast such a shadow on my wits that I am like one distrait. But I trust, Sir Nigel, that you will also partake of none-meat with me?\"\n\n\"I have overmuch to do,\" Sir Nigel answered, \"for we must be aboard, horse and man, as early as we may. How many do you muster, Sir Oliver?\"\n\n\"Three and forty. The forty are drunk, and the three are but indifferent sober. I have them all safe upon the ship.\"\n\n\"They had best find their wits again, for I shall have work for every man of them ere the sun set. It is my intention, if it seems good to you, to try a venture against these Norman and Genoese rovers.\"\n\n\"They carry caviare and certain very noble spices from the Levant aboard of ships from Genoa,\" quoth Sir Oliver. \"We may come to great profit through the business. I pray you, master-shipman, that when you go on board you pour a helmetful of sea-water over any of my rogues whom you may see there.\"\n\nLeaving the lusty knight and the Mayor of Lepe, Sir Nigel led the Company straight down to the water's edge, where long lines of flat lighters swiftly bore them to their vessel. Horse after horse was slung by main force up from the barges, and after kicking and plunging in empty air was dropped into the deep waist of the yellow cog, where rows of stalls stood ready for their safe keeping. Englishmen in those days were skilled and prompt in such matters, for it was so not long before that Edward had embarked as many as fifty thousand men in the port of Orwell, with their horses and their baggage, all in the space of four-and-twenty hours. So urgent was Sir Nigel on the shore, and so prompt was Goodwin Hawtayne on the cog, that Sir Oliver Buttesthorn had scarce swallowed his last scallop ere the peal of the trumpet and clang of nakir announced that all was ready and the anchor drawn. In the last boat which left the shore the two commanders sat together in the sheets, a strange contrast to one another, while under the feet of the rowers was a litter of huge stones which Sir Nigel had ordered to be carried to the cog. These once aboard, the ship set her broad mainsail, purple in color, and with a golden St. Christopher bearing Christ upon his shoulder in the centre of it. The breeze blew, the sail bellied, over heeled the portly vessel, and away she plunged through the smooth blue rollers, amid the clang of the minstrels on her poop and the shouting of the black crowd who fringed the yellow beach. To the left lay the green Island of Wight, with its long, low, curving hills peeping over each other's shoulders to the skyline; to the right the wooded Hampshire coast as far as eye could reach; above a steel-blue heaven, with a wintry sun shimmering down upon them, and enough of frost to set the breath a-smoking.\n\n\"By St. Paul!\" said Sir Nigel gayly, as he stood upon the poop and looked on either side of him, \"it is a land which is very well worth fighting for, and it were pity to go to France for what may be had at home. Did you not spy a crooked man upon the beach?\"\n\n\"Nay, I spied nothing,\" grumbled Sir Oliver, \"for I was hurried down with a clam stuck in my gizzard and an untasted goblet of Cyprus on the board behind me.\"\n\n\"I saw him, my fair lord,\" said Terlake, \"an old man with one shoulder higher than the other.\"\n\n\"'Tis a sign of good fortune,\" quoth Sir Nigel. \"Our path was also crossed by a woman and by a priest, so all should be well with us. What say you, Edricson?\"\n\n\"I cannot tell, my fair lord. The Romans of old were a very wise people, yet, certes, they placed their faith in such matters. So, too, did the Greeks, and divers other ancient peoples who were famed for their learning. Yet of the moderns there are many who scoff at all omens.\"\n\n\"There can be no manner of doubt about it,\" said Sir Oliver Buttesthorn, \"I can well remember that in Navarre one day it thundered on the left out of a cloudless sky. We knew that ill would come of it, nor had we long to wait. Only thirteen days after, a haunch of prime venison was carried from my very tent door by the wolves, and on the same day two flasks of old vernage turned sour and muddy.\"\n\n\"You may bring my harness from below,\" said Sir Nigel to his squires, \"and also, I pray you, bring up Sir Oliver's and we shall don it here. Ye may then see to your own gear; for this day you will, I hope, make a very honorable entrance into the field of chivalry, and prove yourselves to be very worthy and valiant squires. And now, Sir Oliver, as to our dispositions: would it please you that I should order them or will you?\"\n\n\"You, my cockerel, you. By Our Lady! I am no chicken, but I cannot claim to know as much of war as the squire of Sir Walter Manny. Settle the matter to your own liking.\"\n\n\"You shall fly your pennon upon the fore part, then, and I upon the poop. For foreguard I shall give you your own forty men, with two-score archers. Two-score men, with my own men-at-arms and squires, will serve as a poop-guard. Ten archers, with thirty shipmen, under the master, may hold the waist while ten lie aloft with stones and arbalests. How like you that?\"\n\n\"Good, by my faith, good! But here comes my harness, and I must to work, for I cannot slip into it as I was wont when first I set my face to the wars.\"\n\nMeanwhile there had been bustle and preparation in all parts of the great vessel. The archers stood in groups about the decks, new-stringing their bows, and testing that they were firm at the nocks. Among them moved Aylward and other of the older soldiers, with a few whispered words of precept here and of warning there.\n\n\"Stand to it, my hearts of gold,\" said the old bowman as he passed from knot to knot. \"By my hilt! we are in luck this journey. Bear in mind the old saying of the Company.\"\n\n\"What is that, Aylward?\" cried several, leaning on their bows and laughing at him.\n\n\"'Tis the master-bowyer's rede: 'Every bow well bent. Every shaft well sent. Every stave well nocked. Every string well locked.' There, with that jingle in his head, a bracer on his left hand, a shooting glove on his right, and a farthing's-worth of wax in his girdle, what more doth a bowman need?\"\n\n\"It would not be amiss,\" said Hordle John, \"if under his girdle he had tour farthings'-worth of wine.\"\n\n\"Work first, wine afterwards, mon camarade. But it is time that we took our order, for methinks that between the Needle rocks and the Alum cliffs yonder I can catch a glimpse of the topmasts of the galleys. Hewett, Cook, Johnson, Cunningham, your men are of the poop-guard. Thornbury, Walters, Hackett, Baddlesmere, you are with Sir Oliver on the forecastle. Simon, you bide with your lord's banner; but ten men must go forward.\"\n\nQuietly and promptly the men took their places, lying flat upon their faces on the deck, for such was Sir Nigel's order. Near the prow was planted Sir Oliver's spear, with his arms\u2014a boar's head gules upon a field of gold. Close by the stern stood Black Simon with the pennon of the house of Loring. In the waist gathered the Southampton mariners, hairy and burly men, with their jerkins thrown off, their waists braced tight, swords, mallets, and pole-axes in their hands. Their leader, Goodwin Hawtayne, stood upon the poop and talked with Sir Nigel, casting his eye up sometimes at the swelling sail, and then glancing back at the two seamen who held the tiller.\n\n\"Pass the word,\" said Sir Nigel, \"that no man shall stand to arms or draw his bow-string until my trumpeter shall sound. It would be well that we should seem to be a merchant-ship from Southampton and appear to flee from them.\"\n\n\"We shall see them anon,\" said the master-shipman. \"Ha, said I not so? There they lie, the water-snakes, in Freshwater Bay; and mark the reek of smoke from yonder point, where they have been at their devil's work. See how their shallops pull from the land! They have seen us and called their men aboard. Now they draw upon the anchor. See them like ants upon the forecastle! They stoop and heave like handy ship men. But, my fair lord, these are no niefs. I doubt but we have taken in hand more than we can do. Each of these ships is a galeasse, and of the largest and swiftest make.\"\n\n\"I would I had your eyes,\" said Sir Nigel, blinking at the pirate galleys. \"They seem very gallant ships, and I trust that we shall have much pleasance from our meeting with them. It would be well to pass the word that we should neither give nor take quarter this day. Have you perchance a priest or friar aboard this ship, Master Hawtayne?\"\n\n\"No, my fair lord.\"\n\n\"Well, well, it is no great matter for my Company, for they were all houseled and shriven ere we left Twynham Castle; and Father Christopher of the Priory gave me his word that they were as fit to march to heaven as to Gascony. But my mind misdoubts me as to these Winchester men who have come with Sir Oliver, for they appear to be a very ungodly crew. Pass the word that the men kneel, and that the under-officers repeat to them the pater, the ave, and the credo.\"\n\nWith a clank of arms, the rough archers and seamen took to their knees, with bent heads and crossed hands, listening to the hoarse mutter from the file-leaders. It was strange to mark the hush; so that the lapping of the water, the straining of the sail, and the creaking of the timbers grew louder of a sudden upon the ear. Many of the bowmen had drawn amulets and relics from their bosoms, while he who possessed some more than usually sanctified treasure passed it down the line of his comrades, that all might kiss and reap the virtue.\n\nThe yellow cog had now shot out from the narrow waters of the Solent, and was plunging and rolling on the long heave of the open channel. The wind blew freshly from the east, with a very keen edge to it; and the great sail bellied roundly out, laying the vessel over until the water hissed beneath her lee bulwarks. Broad and ungainly, she floundered from wave to wave, dipping her round bows deeply into the blue rollers, and sending the white flakes of foam in a spatter over her decks. On her larboard quarter lay the two dark galleys, which had already hoisted sail, and were shooting out from Freshwater Bay in swift pursuit, their double line of oars giving them a vantage which could not fail to bring them up with any vessel which trusted to sails alone. High and bluff the English cog; long, black and swift the pirate galleys, like two fierce lean wolves which have seen a lordly and unsuspecting stag walk past their forest lair.\n\n\"Shall we turn, my fair lord, or shall we carry on?\" asked the master-shipman, looking behind him with anxious eyes.\n\n\"Nay, we must carry on and play the part of the helpless merchant.\"\n\n\"But your pennons? They will see that we have two knights with us.\"\n\n\"Yet it would not be to a knight's honor or good name to lower his pennon. Let them be, and they will think that we are a wine-ship for Gascony, or that we bear the wool-bales of some mercer of the Staple. Ma foi, but they are very swift! They swoop upon us like two goshawks on a heron. Is there not some symbol or device upon their sails?\"\n\n\"That on the right,\" said Edricson, \"appears to have the head of an Ethiop upon it.\"\n\n\"'Tis the badge of Tete-noire, the Norman,\" cried a seaman-mariner. \"I have seen it before, when he harried us at Winchelsea. He is a wondrous large and strong man, with no ruth for man, woman, or beast. They say that he hath the strength of six; and, certes, he hath the crimes of six upon his soul. See, now, to the poor souls who swing at either end of his yard-arm!\"\n\nAt each end of the yard there did indeed hang the dark figure of a man, jolting and lurching with hideous jerkings of its limbs at every plunge and swoop of the galley.\n\n\"By St. Paul!\" said Sir Nigel, \"and by the help of St. George and Our Lady, it will be a very strange thing if our black-headed friend does not himself swing thence ere he be many hours older. But what is that upon the other galley?\"\n\n\"It is the red cross of Genoa. This Spade-beard is a very noted captain, and it is his boast that there are no seamen and no archers in the world who can compare with those who serve the Doge Boccanegra.\"\n\n\"That we shall prove,\" said Goodwin Hawtayne; \"but it would be well, ere they close with us, to raise up the mantlets and pavises as a screen against their bolts.\" He shouted a hoarse order, and his seamen worked swiftly and silently, heightening the bulwarks and strengthening them. The three ship's anchors were at Sir Nigel's command carried into the waist, and tied to the mast, with twenty feet of cable between, each under the care of four seamen. Eight others were stationed with leather water-bags to quench any fire-arrows which might come aboard, while others were sent up the mast, to lie along the yard and drop stones or shoot arrows as the occasion served.\n\n\"Let them be supplied with all that is heavy and weighty in the ship,\" said Sir Nigel.\n\n\"Then we must send them up Sir Oliver Buttesthorn,\" quoth Ford.\n\nThe knight looked at him with a face which struck the smile from his lips. \"No squire of mine,\" he said, \"shall ever make jest of a belted knight. And yet,\" he added, his eyes softening, \"I know that it is but a boy's mirth, with no sting in it. Yet I should ill do my part towards your father if I did not teach you to curb your tongue-play.\"\n\n\"They will lay us aboard on either quarter, my lord,\" cried the master. \"See how they stretch out from each other! The Norman hath a mangonel or a trabuch upon the forecastle. See, they bend to the levers! They are about to loose it.\"\n\n\"Aylward,\" cried the knight, \"pick your three trustiest archers, and see if you cannot do something to hinder their aim. Methinks they are within long arrow flight.\"\n\n\"Seventeen score paces,\" said the archer, running his eye backwards and forwards. \"By my ten finger-bones! it would be a strange thing if we could not notch a mark at that distance. Here, Watkin of Sowley, Arnold, Long Williams, let us show the rogues that they have English bowmen to deal with.\"\n\nThe three archers named stood at the further end of the poop, balancing themselves with feet widely spread and bows drawn, until the heads of the cloth-yard arrows were level with the centre of the stave. \"You are the surer, Watkin,\" said Aylward, standing by them with shaft upon string. \"Do you take the rogue with the red coif. You two bring down the man with the headpiece, and I will hold myself ready if you miss. Ma foi! they are about to loose her. Shoot, mes garcons, or you will be too late.\"\n\nThe throng of pirates had cleared away from the great wooden catapult, leaving two of their number to discharge it. One in a scarlet cap bent over it, steadying the jagged rock which was balanced on the spoon-shaped end of the long wooden lever. The other held the loop of the rope which would release the catch and send the unwieldy missile hurtling through the air. So for an instant they stood, showing hard and clear against the white sail behind them. The next, redcap had fallen across the stone with an arrow between his ribs; and the other, struck in the leg and in the throat, was writhing and spluttering upon the ground. As he toppled backwards he had loosed the spring, and the huge beam of wood, swinging round with tremendous force, cast the corpse of his comrade so close to the English ship that its mangled and distorted limbs grazed their very stern. As to the stone, it glanced off obliquely and fell midway between the vessels. A roar of cheering and of laughter broke from the rough archers and seamen at the sight, answered by a yell of rage from their pursuers.\n\n\"Lie low, mes enfants,\" cried Aylward, motioning with his left hand. \"They will learn wisdom. They are bringing forward shield and mantlet. We shall have some pebbles about our ears ere long.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE YELLOW COG FOUGHT THE TWO ROVER GALLEYS.", + "text": "The three vessels had been sweeping swiftly westwards, the cog still well to the front, although the galleys were slowly drawing in upon either quarter. To the left was a hard skyline unbroken by a sail. The island already lay like a cloud behind them, while right in front was St. Alban's Head, with Portland looming mistily in the farthest distance. Alleyne stood by the tiller, looking backwards, the fresh wind full in his teeth, the crisp winter air tingling on his face and blowing his yellow curls from under his bassinet. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes shining, for the blood of a hundred fighting Saxon ancestors was beginning to stir in his veins.\n\n\"What was that?\" he asked, as a hissing, sharp-drawn voice seemed to whisper in his ear. The steersman smiled, and pointed with his foot to where a short heavy crossbow quarrel stuck quivering in the boards. At the same instant the man stumbled forward upon his knees, and lay lifeless upon the deck, a blood-stained feather jutting out from his back. As Alleyne stooped to raise him, the air seemed to be alive with the sharp zip-zip of the bolts, and he could hear them pattering on the deck like apples at a tree-shaking.\n\n\"Raise two more mantlets by the poop-lanthorn,\" said Sir Nigel quietly.\n\n\"And another man to the tiller,\" cried the master-shipman.\n\n\"Keep them in play, Aylward, with ten of your men,\" the knight continued. \"And let ten of Sir Oliver's bowmen do as much for the Genoese. I have no mind as yet to show them how much they have to fear from us.\"\n\nTen picked shots under Aylward stood in line across the broad deck, and it was a lesson to the young squires who had seen nothing of war to note how orderly and how cool were these old soldiers, how quick the command, and how prompt the carrying out, ten moving like one. Their comrades crouched beneath the bulwarks, with many a rough jest and many a scrap of criticism or advice. \"Higher, Wat, higher!\" \"Put thy body into it, Will!\" \"Forget not the wind, Hal!\" So ran the muttered chorus, while high above it rose the sharp twanging of the strings, the hiss of the shafts, and the short \"Draw your arrow! Nick your arrow! Shoot wholly together!\" from the master-bowman.\n\nAnd now both mangonels were at work from the galleys, but so covered and protected that, save at the moment of discharge, no glimpse could be caught of them. A huge brown rock from the Genoese sang over their heads, and plunged sullenly into the slope of a wave. Another from the Norman whizzed into the waist, broke the back of a horse, and crashed its way through the side of the vessel. Two others, flying together, tore a great gap in the St. Christopher upon the sail, and brushed three of Sir Oliver's men-at-arms from the forecastle. The master-shipman looked at the knight with a troubled face.\n\n\"They keep their distance from us,\" said he. \"Our archery is over-good, and they will not close. What defence can we make against the stones?\"\n\n\"I think I may trick them,\" the knight answered cheerfully, and passed his order to the archers. Instantly five of them threw up their hands and fell prostrate upon the deck. One had already been slain by a bolt, so that there were but four upon their feet.\n\n\"That should give them heart,\" said Sir Nigel, eyeing the galleys, which crept along on either side, with a slow, measured swing of their great oars, the water swirling and foaming under their sharp stems.\n\n\"They still hold aloof,\" cried Hawtayne.\n\n\"Then down with two more,\" shouted their leader. \"That will do. Ma foi! but they come to our lure like chicks to the fowler. To your arms, men! The pennon behind me, and the squires round the pennon. Stand fast with the anchors in the waist, and be ready for a cast. Now blow out the trumpets, and may God's benison be with the honest men!\"\n\nAs he spoke a roar of voices and a roll of drums came from either galley, and the water was lashed into spray by the hurried beat of a hundred oars. Down they swooped, one on the right, one on the left, the sides and shrouds black with men and bristling with weapons. In heavy clusters they hung upon the forecastle all ready for a spring-faces white, faces brown, faces yellow, and faces black, fair Norsemen, swarthy Italians, fierce rovers from the Levant, and fiery Moors from the Barbary States, of all hues and countries, and marked solely by the common stamp of a wild-beast ferocity. Rasping up on either side, with oars trailing to save them from snapping, they poured in a living torrent with horrid yell and shrill whoop upon the defenceless merchantman.\n\nBut wilder yet was the cry, and shriller still the scream, when there rose up from the shadow of those silent bulwarks the long lines of the English bowmen, and the arrows whizzed in a deadly sleet among the unprepared masses upon the pirate decks. From the higher sides of the cog the bowmen could shoot straight down, at a range which was so short as to enable a cloth-yard shaft to pierce through mail-coats or to transfix a shield, though it were an inch thick of toughened wood. One moment Alleyne saw the galley's poop crowded with rushing figures, waving arms, exultant faces; the next it was a blood-smeared shambles, with bodies piled three deep upon each other, the living cowering behind the dead to shelter themselves from that sudden storm-blast of death. On either side the seamen whom Sir Nigel had chosen for the purpose had cast their anchors over the side of the galleys, so that the three vessels, locked in an iron grip, lurched heavily forward upon the swell.\n\nAnd now set in a fell and fierce fight, one of a thousand of which no chronicler has spoken and no poet sung. Through all the centuries and over all those southern waters nameless men have fought in nameless places, their sole monuments a protected coast and an unravaged country-side.\n\nFore and aft the archers had cleared the galleys' decks, but from either side the rovers had poured down into the waist, where the seamen and bowmen were pushed back and so mingled with their foes that it was impossible for their comrades above to draw string to help them. It was a wild chaos where axe and sword rose and fell, while Englishman, Norman, and Italian staggered and reeled on a deck which was cumbered with bodies and slippery with blood. The clang of blows, the cries of the stricken, the short, deep shout of the islanders, and the fierce whoops of the rovers, rose together in a deafening tumult, while the breath of the panting men went up in the wintry air like the smoke from a furnace. The giant Tete-noire, towering above his fellows and clad from head to foot in plate of proof, led on his boarders, waving a huge mace in the air, with which he struck to the deck every man who approached him. On the other side, Spade-beard, a dwarf in height, but of great breadth of shoulder and length of arm, had cut a road almost to the mast, with three-score Genoese men-at-arms close at his heels. Between these two formidable assailants the seamen were being slowly wedged more closely together, until they stood back to back under the mast with the rovers raging upon every side of them.\n\nBut help was close at hand. Sir Oliver Buttesthorn with his men-at-arms had swarmed down from the forecastle, while Sir Nigel, with his three squires, Black Simon, Aylward, Hordle John, and a score more, threw themselves from the poop and hurled themselves into the thickest of the fight. Alleyne, as in duty bound, kept his eyes fixed ever on his lord and pressed forward close at his heels. Often had he heard of Sir Nigel's prowess and skill with all knightly weapons, but all the tales that had reached his ears fell far short of the real quickness and coolness of the man. It was as if the devil was in him, for he sprang here and sprang there, now thrusting and now cutting, catching blows on his shield, turning them with his blade, stooping under the swing of an axe, springing over the sweep of a sword, so swift and so erratic that the man who braced himself for a blow at him might find him six paces off ere he could bring it down. Three pirates had fallen before him, and he had wounded Spade-beard in the neck, when the Norman giant sprang at him from the side with a slashing blow from his deadly mace. Sir Nigel stooped to avoid it, and at the same instant turned a thrust from the Genoese swordsman, but, his foot slipping in a pool of blood, he fell heavily to the ground. Alleyne sprang in front of the Norman, but his sword was shattered and he himself beaten to the ground by a second blow from the ponderous weapon. Ere the pirate chief could repeat it, however, John's iron grip fell upon his wrist, and he found that for once he was in the hands of a stronger man than himself.\n\nFiercely he strove to disengage his weapon, but Hordle John bent his arm slowly back until, with a sharp crack, like a breaking stave, it turned limp in his grasp, and the mace dropped from the nerveless fingers. In vain he tried to pluck it up with the other hand. Back and back still his foeman bent him, until, with a roar of pain and of fury, the giant clanged his full length upon the boards, while the glimmer of a knife before the bars of his helmet warned him that short would be his shrift if he moved.\n\nCowed and disheartened by the loss of their leader, the Normans had given back and were now streaming over the bulwarks on to their own galley, dropping a dozen at a time on to her deck. But the anchor still held them in its crooked claw, and Sir Oliver with fifty men was hard upon their heels. Now, too, the archers had room to draw their bows once more, and great stones from the yard of the cog came thundering and crashing among the flying rovers. Here and there they rushed with wild screams and curses, diving under the sail, crouching behind booms, huddling into corners like rabbits when the ferrets are upon them, as helpless and as hopeless. They were stern days, and if the honest soldier, too poor for a ransom, had no prospect of mercy upon the battle-field, what ruth was there for sea robbers, the enemies of humankind, taken in the very deed, with proofs of their crimes still swinging upon their yard-arm.\n\nBut the fight had taken a new and a strange turn upon the other side. Spade-beard and his men had given slowly back, hard pressed by Sir Nigel, Aylward, Black Simon, and the poop-guard. Foot by foot the Italian had retreated, his armor running blood at every joint, his shield split, his crest shorn, his voice fallen away to a mere gasping and croaking. Yet he faced his foemen with dauntless courage, dashing in, springing back, sure-footed, steady-handed, with a point which seemed to menace three at once. Beaten back on to the deck of his own vessel, and closely followed by a dozen Englishmen, he disengaged himself from them, ran swiftly down the deck, sprang back into the cog once more, cut the rope which held the anchor, and was back in an instant among his crossbowmen. At the same time the Genoese sailors thrust with their oars against the side of the cog, and a rapidly widening rift appeared between the two vessels.\n\n\"By St. George!\" cried Ford, \"we are cut off from Sir Nigel.\"\n\n\"He is lost,\" gasped Terlake. \"Come, let us spring for it.\" The two youths jumped with all their strength to reach the departing galley. Ford's feet reached the edge of the bulwarks, and his hand clutching a rope he swung himself on board. Terlake fell short, crashed in among the oars, and bounded off into the sea. Alleyne, staggering to the side, was about to hurl himself after him, but Hordle John dragged him back by the girdle.\n\n\"You can scarce stand, lad, far less jump,\" said he. \"See how the blood rips from your bassinet.\"\n\n\"My place is by the flag,\" cried Alleyne, vainly struggling to break from the other's hold.\n\n\"Bide here, man. You would need wings ere you could reach Sir Nigel's side.\"\n\nThe vessels were indeed so far apart now that the Genoese could use the full sweep of their oars, and draw away rapidly from the cog.\n\n\"My God, but it is a noble fight!\" shouted big John, clapping his hands. \"They have cleared the poop, and they spring into the waist. Well struck, my lord! Well struck, Aylward! See to Black Simon, how he storms among the shipmen! But this Spade-beard is a gallant warrior. He rallies his men upon the forecastle. He hath slain an archer. Ha! my lord is upon him. Look to it, Alleyne! See to the whirl and glitter of it!\"\n\n\"By heaven, Sir Nigel is down!\" cried the squire.\n\n\"Up!\" roared John. \"It was but a feint. He bears him back. He drives him to the side. Ah, by Our Lady, his sword is through him! They cry for mercy. Down goes the red cross, and up springs Simon with the scarlet roses!\"\n\nThe death of the Genoese leader did indeed bring the resistance to an end. Amid a thunder of cheering from cog and from galleys the forked pennon fluttered upon the forecastle, and the galley, sweeping round, came slowly back, as the slaves who rowed it learned the wishes of their new masters.\n\nThe two knights had come aboard the cog, and the grapplings having been thrown off, the three vessels now moved abreast through all the storm and rush of the fight Alleyne had been aware of the voice of Goodwin Hawtayne, the master-shipman, with his constant \"Hale the bowline! Veer the sheet!\" and strange it was to him to see how swiftly the blood-stained sailors turned from the strife to the ropes and back. Now the cog's head was turned Francewards, and the shipman walked the deck, a peaceful master-mariner once more.\n\n\"There is sad scath done to the cog, Sir Nigel,\" said he. \"Here is a hole in the side two ells across, the sail split through the centre, and the wood as bare as a friar's poll. In good sooth, I know not what I shall say to Master Witherton when I see the Itchen once more.\"\n\n\"By St. Paul! it would be a very sorry thing if we suffered you to be the worse of this day's work,\" said Sir Nigel. \"You shall take these galleys back with you, and Master Witherton may sell them. Then from the moneys he shall take as much as may make good the damage, and the rest he shall keep until our home-coming, when every man shall have his share. An image of silver fifteen inches high I have vowed to the Virgin, to be placed in her chapel within the Priory, for that she was pleased to allow me to come upon this Spade-beard, who seemed to me from what I have seen of him to be a very sprightly and valiant gentleman. But how fares it with you, Edricson?\"\n\n\"It is nothing, my fair lord,\" said Alleyne, who had now loosened his bassinet, which was cracked across by the Norman's blow. Even as he spoke, however, his head swirled round, and he fell to the deck with the blood gushing from his nose and mouth.\n\n\"He will come to anon,\" said the knight, stooping over him and passing his fingers through his hair. \"I have lost one very valiant and gentle squire this day. I can ill afford to lose another. How many men have fallen?\"\n\n\"I have pricked off the tally,\" said Aylward, who had come aboard with his lord. \"There are seven of the Winchester men, eleven seamen, your squire, young Master Terlake, and nine archers.\"\n\n\"And of the others?\"\n\n\"They are all dead\u2014save only the Norman knight who stands behind you. What would you that we should do with him?\"\n\n\"He must hang on his own yard,\" said Sir Nigel. \"It was my vow and must be done.\"\n\nThe pirate leader had stood by the bulwarks, a cord round his arms, and two stout archers on either side. At Sir Nigel's words he started violently, and his swarthy features blanched to a livid gray.\n\n\"How, Sir Knight?\" he cried in broken English. \"Que dites vous? To hang, le mort du chien! To hang!\"\n\n\"It is my vow,\" said Sir Nigel shortly. \"From what I hear, you thought little enough of hanging others.\"\n\n\"Peasants, base roturiers,\" cried the other. \"It is their fitting death. Mais Le Seigneur d'Andelys, avec le sang des rois dans ses veins! C'est incroyable!\"\n\nSir Nigel turned upon his heel, while two seamen cast a noose over the pirate's neck. At the touch of the cord he snapped the bonds which bound him, dashed one of the archers to the deck, and seizing the other round the waist sprang with him into the sea.\n\n\"By my hilt, he is gone!\" cried Aylward, rushing to the side. \"They have sunk together like a stone.\"\n\n\"I am right glad of it,\" answered Sir Nigel; \"for though it was against my vow to loose him, I deem that he has carried himself like a very gentle and debonnaire cavalier.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE YELLOW COG CROSSED THE BAR OF GIRONDE.", + "text": "For two days the yellow cog ran swiftly before a northeasterly wind, and on the dawn of the third the high land of Ushant lay like a mist upon the shimmering skyline. There came a plump of rain towards mid-day and the breeze died down, but it freshened again before nightfall, and Goodwin Hawtayne veered his sheet and held head for the south. Next morning they had passed Belle Isle, and ran through the midst of a fleet of transports returning from Guienne. Sir Nigel Loring and Sir Oliver Buttesthorn at once hung their shields over the side, and displayed their pennons as was the custom, noting with the keenest interest the answering symbols which told the names of the cavaliers who had been constrained by ill health or wounds to leave the prince at so critical a time.\n\nThat evening a great dun-colored cloud banked up in the west, and an anxious man was Goodwin Hawtayne, for a third part of his crew had been slain, and half the remainder were aboard the galleys, so that, with an injured ship, he was little fit to meet such a storm as sweeps over those waters. All night it blew in short fitful puffs, heeling the great cog over until the water curled over her lee bulwarks. As the wind still freshened the yard was lowered half way down the mast in the morning. Alleyne, wretchedly ill and weak, with his head still ringing from the blow which he had received, crawled up upon deck. Water-swept and aslant, it was preferable to the noisome, rat-haunted dungeons which served as cabins. There, clinging to the stout halliards of the sheet, he gazed with amazement at the long lines of black waves, each with its curling ridge of foam, racing in endless succession from out the inexhaustible west. A huge sombre cloud, flecked with livid blotches, stretched over the whole seaward skyline, with long ragged streamers whirled out in front of it. Far behind them the two galleys labored heavily, now sinking between the rollers until their yards were level with the waves, and again shooting up with a reeling, scooping motion until every spar and rope stood out hard against the sky. On the left the lowlying land stretched in a dim haze, rising here and there into a darker blur which marked the higher capes and headlands. The land of France! Alleyne's eyes shone as he gazed upon it. The land of France!\u2014the very words sounded as the call of a bugle in the ears of the youth of England. The land where their fathers had bled, the home of chivalry and of knightly deeds, the country of gallant men, of courtly women, of princely buildings, of the wise, the polished and the sainted. There it lay, so still and gray beneath the drifting wrack\u2014the home of things noble and of things shameful\u2014the theatre where a new name might be made or an old one marred. From his bosom to his lips came the crumpled veil, and he breathed a vow that if valor and goodwill could raise him to his lady's side, then death alone should hold him back from her. His thoughts were still in the woods of Minstead and the old armory of Twynham Castle, when the hoarse voice of the master-shipman brought them back once more to the Bay of Biscay.\n\n\"By my troth, young sir,\" he said, \"you are as long in the face as the devil at a christening, and I cannot marvel at it, for I have sailed these waters since I was as high as this whinyard, and yet I never saw more sure promise of an evil night.\"\n\n\"Nay, I had other things upon my mind,\" the squire answered.\n\n\"And so has every man,\" cried Hawtayne in an injured voice. \"Let the shipman see to it. It is the master-shipman's affair. Put it all upon good Master Hawtayne! Never had I so much care since first I blew trumpet and showed cartel at the west gate of Southampton.\"\n\n\"What is amiss then?\" asked Alleyne, for the man's words were as gusty as the weather.\n\n\"Amiss, quotha? Here am I with but half my mariners, and a hole in the ship where that twenty-devil stone struck us big enough to fit the fat widow of Northam through. It is well enough on this tack, but I would have you tell me what I am to do on the other. We are like to have salt water upon us until we be found pickled like the herrings in an Easterling's barrels.\"\n\n\"What says Sir Nigel to it?\"\n\n\"He is below pricking out the coat-armor of his mother's uncle. 'Pester me not with such small matters!' was all that I could get from him. Then there is Sir Oliver. 'Fry them in oil with a dressing of Gascony,' quoth he, and then swore at me because I had not been the cook. 'Walawa,' thought I, 'mad master, sober man'\u2014so away forward to the archers. Harrow and alas! but they were worse than the others.\"\n\n\"Would they not help you then?\"\n\n\"Nay, they sat tway and tway at a board, him that they call Aylward and the great red-headed man who snapped the Norman's arm-bone, and the black man from Norwich, and a score of others, rattling their dice in an archer's gauntlet for want of a box. 'The ship can scarce last much longer, my masters,' quoth I. 'That is your business, old swine's-head,' cried the black galliard. 'Le diable t'emporte,' says Aylward. 'A five, a four and the main,' shouted the big man, with a voice like the flap of a sail. Hark to them now, young sir, and say if I speak not sooth.\"\n\nAs he spoke, there sounded high above the shriek of the gale and the straining of the timbers a gust of oaths with a roar of deep-chested mirth from the gamblers in the forecastle.\n\n\"Can I be of avail?\" asked Alleyne. \"Say the word and the thing is done, if two hands may do it.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, your head I can see is still totty, and i' faith little head would you have, had your bassinet not stood your friend. All that may be done is already carried out, for we have stuffed the gape with sails and corded it without and within. Yet when we bale our bowline and veer the sheet our lives will hang upon the breach remaining blocked. See how yonder headland looms upon us through the mist! We must tack within three arrow flights, or we may find a rock through our timbers. Now, St. Christopher be praised! here is Sir Nigel, with whom I may confer.\"\n\n\"I prythee that you will pardon me,\" said the knight, clutching his way along the bulwark. \"I would not show lack of courtesy toward a worthy man, but I was deep in a matter of some weight, concerning which, Alleyne, I should be glad of your rede. It touches the question of dimidiation or impalement in the coat of mine uncle, Sir John Leighton of Shropshire, who took unto wife the widow of Sir Henry Oglander of Nunwell. The case has been much debated by pursuivants and kings-of-arms. But how is it with you, master shipman?\"\n\n\"Ill enough, my fair lord. The cog must go about anon, and I know not how we may keep the water out of her.\"\n\n\"Go call Sir Oliver!\" said Sir Nigel, and presently the portly knight made his way all astraddle down the slippery deck.\n\n\"By my soul, master-shipman, this passes all patience!\" he cried wrathfully. \"If this ship of yours must needs dance and skip like a clown at a kermesse, then I pray you that you will put me into one of these galeasses. I had but sat down to a flask of malvoisie and a mortress of brawn, as is my use about this hour, when there comes a cherking, and I find my wine over my legs and the flask in my lap, and then as I stoop to clip it there comes another cursed cherk, and there is a mortress of brawn stuck fast to the nape of my neck. At this moment I have two pages coursing after it from side to side, like hounds behind a leveret. Never did living pig gambol more lightly. But you have sent for me, Sir Nigel?\"\n\n\"I would fain have your rede, Sir Oliver, for Master Hawtayne hath fears that when we veer there may come danger from the hole in our side.\"\n\n\"Then do not veer,\" quoth Sir Oliver hastily. \"And now, fair sir, I must hasten back to see how my rogues have fared with the brawn.\"\n\n\"Nay, but this will scarce suffice,\" cried the shipman. \"If we do not veer we will be upon the rocks within the hour.\"\n\n\"Then veer,\" said Sir Oliver. \"There is my rede; and now, Sir Nigel, I must crave\u2014\u2014\"\n\nAt this instant, however, a startled shout rang out from two seamen upon the forecastle. \"Rocks!\" they yelled, stabbing into the air with their forefingers. \"Rocks beneath our very bows!\" Through the belly of a great black wave, not one hundred paces to the front of them, there thrust forth a huge jagged mass of brown stone, which spouted spray as though it were some crouching monster, while a dull menacing boom and roar filled the air.\n\n\"Yare! yare!\" screamed Goodwin Hawtayne, flinging himself upon the long pole which served as a tiller. \"Cut the halliard! Haul her over! Lay her two courses to the wind!\"\n\nOver swung the great boom, and the cog trembled and quivered within five spear-lengths of the breakers.\n\n\"She can scarce draw clear,\" cried Hawtayne, with his eyes from the sail to the seething line of foam. \"May the holy Julian stand by us and the thrice-sainted Christopher!\"\n\n\"If there be such peril, Sir Oliver,\" quoth Sir Nigel, \"it would be very knightly and fitting that we should show our pennons. I pray you. Edricson, that you will command my guidon-bearer to put forward my banner.\"\n\n\"And sound the trumpets!\" cried Sir Oliver. \"In manus tuas, Domine! I am in the keeping of James of Compostella, to whose shrine I shall make pilgrimage, and in whose honor I vow that I will eat a carp each year upon his feast-day. Mon Dieu, but the waves roar! How is it with us now, master-shipman?\"\n\n\"We draw! We draw!\" cried Hawtayne, with his eyes still fixed upon the foam which hissed under the very bulge of the side. \"Ah, Holy Mother, be with us now!\"\n\nAs he spoke the cog rasped along the edge of the reef, and a long white curling sheet of wood was planed off from her side from waist to poop by a jutting horn of the rock. At the same instant she lay suddenly over, the sail drew full, and she plunged seawards amid the shoutings of the seamen and the archers.\n\n\"The Virgin be praised!\" cried the shipman, wiping his brow. \"For this shall bell swing and candle burn when I see Southampton Water once more. Cheerily, my hearts! Pull yarely on the bowline!\"\n\n\"By my soul! I would rather have a dry death,\" quoth Sir Oliver. \"Though, Mort Dieu! I have eaten so many fish that it were but justice that the fish should eat me. Now I must back to the cabin, for I have matters there which crave my attention.\"\n\n\"Nay, Sir Oliver, you had best bide with us, and still show your ensign,\" Sir Nigel answered; \"for, if I understand the matter aright, we have but turned from one danger to the other.\"\n\n\"Good Master Hawtayne,\" cried the boatswain, rushing aft, \"the water comes in upon us apace. The waves have driven in the sail wherewith we strove to stop the hole.\" As he spoke the seamen came swarming on to the poop and the forecastle to avoid the torrent which poured through the huge leak into the waist. High above the roar of the wind and the clash of the sea rose the shrill half-human cries of the horses, as they found the water rising rapidly around them.\n\n\"Stop it from without!\" cried Hawtayne, seizing the end of the wet sail with which the gap had been plugged. \"Speedily, my hearts, or we are gone!\" Swiftly they rove ropes to the corners, and then, rushing forward to the bows, they lowered them under the keel, and drew them tight in such a way that the sail should cover the outer face of the gap. The force of the rush of water was checked by this obstacle, but it still squirted plentifully from every side of it. At the sides the horses were above the belly, and in the centre a man from the poop could scarce touch the deck with a seven-foot spear. The cog lay lower in the water and the waves splashed freely over the weather bulwark.\n\n\"I fear that we can scarce bide upon this tack,\" cried Hawtayne; \"and yet the other will drive us on the rocks.\"\n\n\"Might we not haul down sail and wait for better times?\" suggested Sir Nigel.\n\n\"Nay, we should drift upon the rocks. Thirty years have I been on the sea, and never yet in greater straits. Yet we are in the hands of the Saints.\"\n\n\"Of whom,\" cried Sir Oliver, \"I look more particularly to St. James of Compostella, who hath already befriended us this day, and on whose feast I hereby vow that I shall eat a second carp, if he will but interpose a second time.\"\n\nThe wrack had thickened to seaward, and the coast was but a blurred line. Two vague shadows in the offing showed where the galeasses rolled and tossed upon the great Atlantic rollers, Hawtayne looked wistfully in their direction.\n\n\"If they would but lie closer we might find safety, even should the cog founder. You will bear me out with good Master Witherton of Southampton that I have done all that a shipman might. It would be well that you should doff camail and greaves, Sir Nigel, for, by the black rood! it is like enough that we shall have to swim for it.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" said the little knight, \"it would be scarce fitting that a cavalier should throw off his harness for the fear of every puff of wind and puddle of water. I would rather that my Company should gather round me here on the poop, where we might abide together whatever God may be pleased to send. But, certes, Master Hawtayne, for all that my sight is none of the best, it is not the first time that I have seen that headland upon the left.\"\n\nThe seaman shaded his eyes with his hand, and gazed earnestly through the haze and spray. Suddenly he threw up his arms and shouted aloud in his joy.\n\n\"'Tis the point of La Tremblade!\" he cried. \"I had not thought that we were as far as Oleron. The Gironde lies before us, and once over the bar, and under shelter of the Tour de Cordouan, all will be well with us. Veer again, my hearts, and bring her to try with the main course!\"\n\nThe sail swung round once more, and the cog, battered and torn and well-nigh water-logged, staggered in for this haven of refuge. A bluff cape to the north and a long spit to the south marked the mouth of the noble river, with a lowlying island of silted sand in the centre, all shrouded and curtained by the spume of the breakers. A line of broken water traced the dangerous bar, which in clear day and balmy weather has cracked the back of many a tall ship.\n\n\"There is a channel,\" said Hawtayne, \"which was shown to me by the Prince's own pilot. Mark yonder tree upon the bank, and see the tower which rises behind it. If these two be held in a line, even as we hold them now, it may be done, though our ship draws two good ells more than when she put forth.\"\n\n\"God speed you, Master Hawtayne!\" cried Sir Oliver. \"Twice have we come scathless out of peril, and now for the third time I commend me to the blessed James of Compostella, to whom I vow\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, old friend,\" whispered Sir Nigel. \"You are like to bring a judgment upon us with these vows, which no living man could accomplish. Have I not already heard you vow to eat two carp in one day, and now you would venture upon a third?\"\n\n\"I pray you that you will order the Company to lie down,\" cried Hawtayne, who had taken the tiller and was gazing ahead with a fixed eye. \"In three minutes we shall either be lost or in safety.\"\n\nArchers and seamen lay flat upon the deck, waiting in stolid silence for whatever fate might come. Hawtayne bent his weight upon the tiller, and crouched to see under the bellying sail. Sir Oliver and Sir Nigel stood erect with hands crossed in front of the poop. Down swooped the great cog into the narrow channel which was the portal to safety. On either bow roared the shallow bar. Right ahead one small lane of black swirling water marked the pilot's course. But true was the eye and firm the hand which guided. A dull scraping came from beneath, the vessel quivered and shook, at the waist, at the quarter, and behind sounded that grim roaring of the waters, and with a plunge the yellow cog was over the bar and speeding swiftly up the broad and tranquil estuary of the Gironde." + }, + { + "title": "HOW SIR NIGEL LORING PUT A PATCH UPON HIS EYE.", + "text": "It was on the morning of Friday, the eight-and-twentieth day of November, two days before the feast of St. Andrew, that the cog and her two prisoners, after a weary tacking up the Gironde and the Garonne, dropped anchor at last in front of the noble city of Bordeaux. With wonder and admiration, Alleyne, leaning over the bulwarks, gazed at the forest of masts, the swarm of boats darting hither and thither on the bosom of the broad curving stream, and the gray crescent-shaped city which stretched with many a tower and minaret along the western shore. Never had he in his quiet life seen so great a town, nor was there in the whole of England, save London alone, one which might match it in size or in wealth. Here came the merchandise of all the fair countries which are watered by the Garonne and the Dordogne\u2014the cloths of the south, the skins of Guienne, the wines of the Medoc\u2014to be borne away to Hull, Exeter, Dartmouth, Bristol or Chester, in exchange for the wools and woolfels of England. Here too dwelt those famous smelters and welders who had made the Bordeaux steel the most trusty upon earth, and could give a temper to lance or to sword which might mean dear life to its owner. Alleyne could see the smoke of their forges reeking up in the clear morning air. The storm had died down now to a gentle breeze, which wafted to his ears the long-drawn stirring bugle-calls which sounded from the ancient ramparts.\n\n\"Hola, mon petit!\" said Aylward, coming up to where he stood. \"Thou art a squire now, and like enough to win the golden spurs, while I am still the master-bowman, and master-bowman I shall bide. I dare scarce wag my tongue so freely with you as when we tramped together past Wilverley Chase, else I might be your guide now, for indeed I know every house in Bordeaux as a friar knows the beads on his rosary.\"\n\n\"Nay, Aylward,\" said Alleyne, laying his hand upon the sleeve of his companion's frayed jerkin, \"you cannot think me so thrall as to throw aside an old friend because I have had some small share of good fortune. I take it unkind that you should have thought such evil of me.\"\n\n\"Nay, mon gar. 'Twas but a flight shot to see if the wind blew steady, though I were a rogue to doubt it.\"\n\n\"Why, had I not met you, Aylward, at the Lynhurst inn, who can say where I had now been! Certes, I had not gone to Twynham Castle, nor become squire to Sir Nigel, nor met\u2014\u2014\" He paused abruptly and flushed to his hair, but the bowman was too busy with his own thoughts to notice his young companion's embarrassment.\n\n\"It was a good hostel, that of the 'Pied Merlin,'\" he remarked. \"By my ten finger bones! when I hang bow on nail and change my brigandine for a tunic, I might do worse than take over the dame and her business.\"\n\n\"I thought,\" said Alleyne, \"that you were betrothed to some one at Christchurch.\"\n\n\"To three,\" Aylward answered moodily, \"to three. I fear I may not go back to Christchurch. I might chance to see hotter service in Hampshire than I have ever done in Gascony. But mark you now yonder lofty turret in the centre, which stands back from the river and hath a broad banner upon the summit. See the rising sun flashes full upon it and sparkles on the golden lions. 'Tis the royal banner of England, crossed by the prince's label. There he dwells in the Abbey of St. Andrew, where he hath kept his court these years back. Beside it is the minster of the same saint, who hath the town under his very special care.\"\n\n\"And how of yon gray turret on the left?\"\n\n\"'Tis the fane of St. Michael, as that upon the right is of St. Remi. There, too, above the poop of yonder nief, you see the towers of Saint Croix and of Pey Berland. Mark also the mighty ramparts which are pierced by the three water-gates, and sixteen others to the landward side.\"\n\n\"And how is it, good Aylward, that there comes so much music from the town? I seem to hear a hundred trumpets, all calling in chorus.\"\n\n\"It would be strange else, seeing that all the great lords of England and of Gascony are within the walls, and each would have his trumpeter blow as loud as his neighbor, lest it might be thought that his dignity had been abated. Ma foi! they make as much louster as a Scotch army, where every man fills himself with girdle-cakes, and sits up all night to blow upon the toodle-pipe. See all along the banks how the pages water the horses, and there beyond the town how they gallop them over the plain! For every horse you see a belted knight hath herbergage in the town, for, as I learn, the men-at-arms and archers have already gone forward to Dax.\"\n\n\"I trust, Aylward,\" said Sir Nigel, coming upon deck, \"that the men are ready for the land. Go tell them that the boats will be for them within the hour.\"\n\nThe archer raised his hand in salute, and hastened forward. In the meantime Sir Oliver had followed his brother knight, and the two paced the poop together, Sir Nigel in his plum-colored velvet suit with flat cap of the same, adorned in front with the Lady Loring's glove and girt round with a curling ostrich feather. The lusty knight, on the other hand, was clad in the very latest mode, with cote-hardie, doublet, pourpoint, court-pie, and paltock of olive-green, picked out with pink and jagged at the edges. A red chaperon or cap, with long hanging cornette, sat daintily on the back of his black-curled head, while his gold-hued shoes were twisted up a la poulaine, as though the toes were shooting forth a tendril which might hope in time to entwine itself around his massive leg.\n\n\"Once more, Sir Oliver,\" said Sir Nigel, looking shorewards with sparkling eyes, \"do we find ourselves at the gate of honor, the door which hath so often led us to all that is knightly and worthy. There flies the prince's banner, and it would be well that we haste ashore and pay our obeisance to him. The boats already swarm from the bank.\"\n\n\"There is a goodly hostel near the west gate, which is famed for the stewing of spiced pullets,\" remarked Sir Oliver. \"We might take the edge of our hunger off ere we seek the prince, for though his tables are gay with damask and silver he is no trencherman himself, and hath no sympathy for those who are his betters.\"\n\n\"His betters!\"\n\n\"His betters before the tranchoir, lad. Sniff not treason where none is meant. I have seen him smile in his quiet way because I had looked for the fourth time towards the carving squire. And indeed to watch him dallying with a little gobbet of bread, or sipping his cup of thrice-watered wine, is enough to make a man feel shame at his own hunger. Yet war and glory, my good friend, though well enough in their way, will not serve to tighten such a belt as clasps my waist.\"\n\n\"How read you that coat which hangs over yonder galley, Alleyne?\" asked Sir Nigel.\n\n\"Argent, a bend vert between cotises dancette gules.\"\n\n\"It is a northern coat. I have seen it in the train of the Percies. From the shields, there is not one of these vessels which hath not knight or baron aboard. I would mine eyes were better. How read you this upon the left?\"\n\n\"Argent and azure, a barry wavy of six.\"\n\n\"Ha, it is the sign of the Wiltshire Stourtons! And there beyond I see the red and silver of the Worsleys of Apuldercombe, who like myself are of Hampshire lineage. Close behind us is the moline cross of the gallant William Molyneux, and beside it the bloody chevrons of the Norfork Woodhouses, with the amulets of the Musgraves of Westmoreland. By St. Paul! it would be a very strange thing if so noble a company were to gather without some notable deed of arms arising from it. And here is our boat, Sir Oliver, so it seems best to me that we should go to the abbey with our squires, leaving Master Hawtayne to have his own way in the unloading.\"\n\nThe horses both of knights and squires were speedily lowered into a broad lighter, and reached the shore almost as soon as their masters. Sir Nigel bent his knee devoutly as he put foot on land, and taking a small black patch from his bosom he bound it tightly over his left eye.\n\n\"May the blessed George and the memory of my sweet lady-love raise high my heart!\" quoth he. \"And as a token I vow that I will not take this patch from my eye until I have seen something of this country of Spain, and done such a small deed as it lies in me to do. And this I swear upon the cross of my sword and upon the glove of my lady.\"\n\n\"In truth, you take me back twenty years, Nigel,\" quoth Sir Oliver, as they mounted and rode slowly through the water-gate. \"After Cadsand, I deem that the French thought that we were an army of the blind, for there was scarce a man who had not closed an eye for the greater love and honor of his lady. Yet it goes hard with you that you should darken one side, when with both open you can scarce tell a horse from a mule. In truth, friend, I think that you step over the line of reason in this matter.\"\n\n\"Sir Oliver Buttesthorn,\" said the little knight shortly, \"I would have you to understand that, blind as I am, I can yet see the path of honor very clearly, and that that is the road upon which I do not crave another man's guidance.\"\n\n\"By my soul,\" said Sir Oliver, \"you are as tart as verjuice this morning! If you are bent upon a quarrel with me I must leave you to your humor and drop into the 'Tete d'Or' here, for I marked a varlet pass the door who bare a smoking dish, which had, methought, a most excellent smell.\"\n\n\"Nenny, nenny,\" cried his comrade, laying his hand upon his knee; \"we have known each other over long to fall out, Oliver, like two raw pages at their first epreuves. You must come with me first to the prince, and then back to the hostel; though sure I am that it would grieve his heart that any gentle cavalier should turn from his board to a common tavern. But is not that my Lord Delewar who waves to us? Ha! my fair lord, God and Our Lady be with you! And there is Sir Robert Cheney. Good-morrow, Robert! I am right glad to see you.\"\n\nThe two knights walked their horses abreast, while Alleyne and Ford, with John Norbury, who was squire to Sir Oliver, kept some paces behind them, a spear's-length in front of Black Simon and of the Winchester guidon-bearer. Norbury, a lean, silent man, had been to those parts before, and sat his horse with a rigid neck; but the two young squires gazed eagerly to right or left, and plucked each other's sleeves to call attention to the many strange things on every side of them.\n\n\"See to the brave stalls!\" cried Alleyne. \"See to the noble armor set forth, and the costly taffeta\u2014and oh, Ford, see to where the scrivener sits with the pigments and the ink-horns, and the rolls of sheepskin as white as the Beaulieu napery! Saw man ever the like before?\"\n\n\"Nay, man, there are finer stalls in Cheapside,\" answered Ford, whose father had taken him to London on occasion of one of the Smithfield joustings. \"I have seen a silversmith's booth there which would serve to buy either side of this street. But mark these houses, Alleyne, how they thrust forth upon the top. And see to the coats-of-arms at every window, and banner or pensil on the roof.\"\n\n\"And the churches!\" cried Alleyne. \"The Priory at Christ church was a noble pile, but it was cold and bare, methinks, by one of these, with their frettings, and their carvings, and their traceries, as though some great ivy-plant of stone had curled and wantoned over the walls.\"\n\n\"And hark to the speech of the folk!\" said Ford. \"Was ever such a hissing and clacking? I wonder that they have not wit to learn English now that they have come under the English crown. By Richard of Hampole! there are fair faces amongst them. See the wench with the brown whimple! Out on you, Alleyne, that you would rather gaze upon dead stone than on living flesh!\"\n\nIt was little wonder that the richness and ornament, not only of church and of stall, but of every private house as well, should have impressed itself upon the young squires. The town was now at the height of its fortunes. Besides its trade and its armorers, other causes had combined to pour wealth into it. War, which had wrought evil upon so many fair cities around, had brought nought but good to this one. As her French sisters decayed she increased, for here, from north, and from east, and from south, came the plunder to be sold and the ransom money to be spent. Through all her sixteen landward gates there had set for many years a double tide of empty-handed soldiers hurrying Francewards, and of enriched and laden bands who brought their spoils home. The prince's court, too, with its swarm of noble barons and wealthy knights, many of whom, in imitation of their master, had brought their ladies and their children from England, all helped to swell the coffers of the burghers. Now, with this fresh influx of noblemen and cavaliers, food and lodging were scarce to be had, and the prince was hurrying forward his forces to Dax in Gascony to relieve the overcrowding of his capital.\n\nIn front of the minster and abbey of St. Andrew's was a large square crowded with priests, soldiers, women, friars, and burghers, who made it their common centre for sight-seeing and gossip. Amid the knot of noisy and gesticulating townsfolk, many small parties of mounted knights and squires threaded their way towards the prince's quarters, where the huge iron-clamped doors were thrown back to show that he held audience within. Two-score archers stood about the gateway, and beat back from time to time with their bowstaves the inquisitive and chattering crowd who swarmed round the portal. Two knights in full armor, with lances raised and closed visors, sat their horses on either side, while in the centre, with two pages to tend upon him, there stood a noble-faced man in flowing purple gown, who pricked off upon a sheet of parchment the style and title of each applicant, marshalling them in their due order, and giving to each the place and facility which his rank demanded. His long white beard and searching eyes imparted to him an air of masterful dignity, which was increased by his tabardlike vesture and the heraldic barret cap with triple plume which bespoke his office.\n\n\"It is Sir William de Pakington, the prince's own herald and scrivener,\" whispered Sir Nigel, as they pulled up amid the line of knights who waited admission. \"Ill fares it with the man who would venture to deceive him. He hath by rote the name of every knight of France or of England; and all the tree of his family, with his kinships, coat-armor, marriages, augmentations, abatements, and I know not what beside. We may leave our horses here with the varlets, and push forward with our squires.\"\n\nFollowing Sir Nigel's counsel, they pressed on upon foot until they were close to the prince's secretary, who was in high debate with a young and foppish knight, who was bent upon making his way past him.\n\n\"Mackworth!\" said the king-at-arms. \"It is in my mind, young sir, that you have not been presented before.\"\n\n\"Nay, it is but a day since I set foot in Bordeaux, but I feared lest the prince should think it strange that I had not waited upon him.\"\n\n\"The prince hath other things to think upon,\" quoth Sir William de Pakington; \"but if you be a Mackworth you must be a Mackworth of Normanton, and indeed I see now that your coat is sable and ermine.\"\n\n\"I am a Mackworth of Normanton,\" the other answered, with some uneasiness of manner.\n\n\"Then you must be Sir Stephen Mackworth, for I learn that when old Sir Guy died he came in for the arms and the name, the war-cry and the profit.\"\n\n\"Sir Stephen is my elder brother, and I am Arthur, the second son,\" said the youth.\n\n\"In sooth and in sooth!\" cried the king-at-arms with scornful eyes. \"And pray, sir second son, where is the cadency mark which should mark your rank. Dare you to wear your brother's coat without the crescent which should stamp you as his cadet. Away to your lodgings, and come not nigh the prince until the armorer hath placed the true charge upon your shield.\" As the youth withdrew in confusion, Sir William's keen eye singled out the five red roses from amid the overlapping shields and cloud of pennons which faced him.\n\n\"Ha!\" he cried, \"there are charges here which are above counterfeit. The roses of Loring and the boar's head of Buttesthorn may stand back in peace, but by my faith! they are not to be held back in war. Welcome, Sir Oliver, Sir Nigel! Chandos will be glad to his very heart-roots when he sees you. This way, my fair sirs. Your squires are doubtless worthy the fame of their masters. Down this passage, Sir Oliver! Edricson! Ha! one of the old strain of Hampshire Edricsons, I doubt not. And Ford, they are of a south Saxon stock, and of good repute. There are Norburys in Cheshire and in Wiltshire, and also, as I have heard, upon the borders. So, my fair sirs, and I shall see that you are shortly admitted.\"\n\nHe had finished his professional commentary by flinging open a folding door, and ushering the party into a broad hall, which was filled with a great number of people who were waiting, like themselves, for an audience. The room was very spacious, lighted on one side by three arched and mullioned windows, while opposite was a huge fireplace in which a pile of faggots was blazing merrily. Many of the company had crowded round the flames, for the weather was bitterly cold; but the two knights seated themselves upon a bancal, with their squires standing behind them. Looking down the room, Alleyne marked that both floor and ceiling were of the richest oak, the latter spanned by twelve arching beams, which were adorned at either end by the lilies and the lions of the royal arms. On the further side was a small door, on each side of which stood men-at-arms. From time to time an elderly man in black with rounded shoulders and a long white wand in his hand came softly forth from this inner room, and beckoned to one or other of the company, who doffed cap and followed him.\n\nThe two knights were deep in talk, when Alleyne became aware of a remarkable individual who was walking round the room in their direction. As he passed each knot of cavaliers every head turned to look after him, and it was evident, from the bows and respectful salutations on all sides, that the interest which he excited was not due merely to his strange personal appearance. He was tall and straight as a lance, though of a great age, for his hair, which curled from under his velvet cap of maintenance, was as white as the new-fallen snow. Yet, from the swing of his stride and the spring of his step, it was clear that he had not yet lost the fire and activity of his youth. His fierce hawk-like face was clean shaven like that of a priest, save for a long thin wisp of white moustache which drooped down half way to his shoulder. That he had been handsome might be easily judged from his high aquiline nose and clear-cut chin; but his features had been so distorted by the seams and scars of old wounds, and by the loss of one eye which had been torn from the socket, that there was little left to remind one of the dashing young knight who had been fifty years ago the fairest as well as the boldest of the English chivalry. Yet what knight was there in that hall of St. Andrew's who would not have gladly laid down youth, beauty, and all that he possessed to win the fame of this man? For who could be named with Chandos, the stainless knight, the wise councillor, the valiant warrior, the hero of Crecy, of Winchelsea, of Poictiers, of Auray, and of as many other battles as there were years to his life?\n\n\"Ha, my little heart of gold!\" he cried, darting forward suddenly and throwing his arms round Sir Nigel. \"I heard that you were here and have been seeking you.\"\n\n\"My fair and dear lord,\" said the knight, returning the warrior's embrace, \"I have indeed come back to you, for where else shall I go that I may learn to be a gentle and a hardy knight?\"\n\n\"By my troth!\" said Chandos with a smile, \"it is very fitting that we should be companions, Nigel, for since you have tied up one of your eyes, and I have had the mischance to lose one of mine, we have but a pair between us. Ah, Sir Oliver! you were on the blind side of me and I saw you not. A wise woman hath made prophecy that this blind side will one day be the death of me. We shall go in to the prince anon; but in truth he hath much upon his hands, for what with Pedro, and the King of Majorca, and the King of Navarre, who is no two days of the same mind, and the Gascon barons who are all chaffering for terms like so many hucksters, he hath an uneasy part to play. But how left you the Lady Loring?\"\n\n\"She was well, my fair lord, and sent her service and greetings to you.\"\n\n\"I am ever her knight and slave. And your journey, I trust that it was pleasant?\"\n\n\"As heart could wish. We had sight of two rover galleys, and even came to have some slight bickering with them.\"\n\n\"Ever in luck's way, Nigel!\" quoth Sir John. \"We must hear the tale anon. But I deem it best that ye should leave your squires and come with me, for, howsoe'er pressed the prince may be, I am very sure that he would be loth to keep two old comrades-in-arms upon the further side of the door. Follow close behind me, and I will forestall old Sir William, though I can scarce promise to roll forth your style and rank as is his wont.\" So saying, he led the way to the inner chamber, the two companions treading close at his heels, and nodding to right and left as they caught sight of familiar faces among the crowd." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 19", + "text": "HOW THERE WAS STIR AT THE ABBEY OF ST. ANDREW'S.\n\nThe prince's reception-room, although of no great size, was fitted up with all the state and luxury which the fame and power of its owner demanded. A high dais at the further end was roofed in by a broad canopy of scarlet velvet spangled with silver fleurs-de-lis, and supported at either corner by silver rods. This was approached by four steps carpeted with the same material, while all round were scattered rich cushions, oriental mats and costly rugs of fur. The choicest tapestries which the looms of Arras could furnish draped the walls, whereon the battles of Judas Maccabaeus were set forth, with the Jewish warriors in plate of proof, with crest and lance and banderole, as the naive artists of the day were wont to depict them. A few rich settles and bancals, choicely carved and decorated with glazed leather hangings of the sort termed or basane, completed the furniture of the apartment, save that at one side of the dais there stood a lofty perch, upon which a cast of three solemn Prussian gerfalcons sat, hooded and jesseled, as silent and motionless as the royal fowler who stood beside them.\n\nIn the centre of the dais were two very high chairs with dorserets, which arched forwards over the heads of the occupants, the whole covered with light-blue silk thickly powdered with golden stars. On that to the right sat a very tall and well formed man with red hair, a livid face, and a cold blue eye, which had in it something peculiarly sinister and menacing. He lounged back in a careless position, and yawned repeatedly as though heartily weary of the proceedings, stooping from time to time to fondle a shaggy Spanish greyhound which lay stretched at his feet. On the other throne there was perched bolt upright, with prim demeanor, as though he felt himself to be upon his good behavior, a little, round, pippin faced person, who smiled and bobbed to every one whose eye he chanced to meet. Between and a little in front of them on a humble charette or stool, sat a slim, dark young man, whose quiet attire and modest manner would scarce proclaim him to be the most noted prince in Europe. A jupon of dark blue cloth, tagged with buckles and pendants of gold, seemed but a sombre and plain attire amidst the wealth of silk and ermine and gilt tissue of fustian with which he was surrounded. He sat with his two hands clasped round his knee, his head slightly bent, and an expression of impatience and of trouble upon his clear, well-chiselled features. Behind the thrones there stood two men in purple gowns, with ascetic, clean-shaven faces, and half a dozen other high dignitaries and office-holders of Aquitaine. Below on either side of the steps were forty or fifty barons, knights, and courtiers, ranged in a triple row to the right and the left, with a clear passage in the centre.\n\n\"There sits the prince,\" whispered Sir John Chandos, as they entered. \"He on the right is Pedro, whom we are about to put upon the Spanish throne. The other is Don James, whom we purpose with the aid of God to help to his throne in Majorca. Now follow me, and take it not to heart if he be a little short in his speech, for indeed his mind is full of many very weighty concerns.\"\n\nThe prince, however, had already observed their entrance, and, springing to his feet, he had advanced with a winning smile and the light of welcome in his eyes.\n\n\"We do not need your good offices as herald here, Sir John,\" said he in a low but clear voice; \"these valiant knights are very well known to me. Welcome to Aquitaine, Sir Nigel Loring and Sir Oliver Buttesthorn. Nay, keep your knee for my sweet father at Windsor. I would have your hands, my friends. We are like to give you some work to do ere you see the downs of Hampshire once more. Know you aught of Spain, Sir Oliver?\"\n\n\"Nought, my sire, save that I have heard men say that there is a dish named an olla which is prepared there, though I have never been clear in my mind as to whether it was but a ragout such as is to be found in the south, or whether there is some seasoning such as fennel or garlic which is peculiar to Spain.\"\n\n\"Your doubts, Sir Oliver, shall soon be resolved,\" answered the prince, laughing heartily, as did many of the barons who surrounded them. \"His majesty here will doubtless order that you have this dish hotly seasoned when we are all safely in Castile.\"\n\n\"I will have a hotly seasoned dish for some folk I know of,\" answered Don Pedro with a cold smile.\n\n\"But my friend Sir Oliver can fight right hardily without either bite or sup,\" remarked the prince. \"Did I not see him at Poictiers, when for two days we had not more than a crust of bread and a cup of foul water, yet carrying himself most valiantly. With my own eyes I saw him in the rout sweep the head from a knight of Picardy with one blow of his sword.\"\n\n\"The rogue got between me and the nearest French victual wain,\" muttered Sir Oliver, amid a fresh titter from those who were near enough to catch his words.\n\n\"How many have you in your train?\" asked the prince, assuming a graver mien.\n\n\"I have forty men-at-arms, sire,\" said Sir Oliver.\n\n\"And I have one hundred archers and a score of lancers, but there are two hundred men who wait for me on this side of the water upon the borders of Navarre.\"\n\n\"And who are they, Sir Nigel?\"\n\n\"They are a free company, sire, and they are called the White Company.\"\n\nTo the astonishment of the knight, his words provoked a burst of merriment from the barons round, in which the two kings and the prince were fain to join. Sir Nigel blinked mildly from one to the other, until at last perceiving a stout black-bearded knight at his elbow, whose laugh rang somewhat louder than the others, he touched him lightly upon the sleeve.\n\n\"Perchance, my fair sir,\" he whispered, \"there is some small vow of which I may relieve you. Might we not have some honorable debate upon the matter. Your gentle courtesy may perhaps grant me an exchange of thrusts.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, Sir Nigel,\" cried the prince, \"fasten not the offence upon Sir Robert Briquet, for we are one and all bogged in the same mire. Truth to say, our ears have just been vexed by the doings of the same company, and I have even now made vow to hang the man who held the rank of captain over it. I little thought to find him among the bravest of my own chosen chieftains. But the vow is now nought, for, as you have never seen your company, it would be a fool's act to blame you for their doings.\"\n\n\"My liege,\" said Sir Nigel, \"it is a very small matter that I should be hanged, albeit the manner of death is somewhat more ignoble than I had hoped for. On the other hand, it would be a very grievous thing that you, the Prince of England and the flower of knighthood, should make a vow, whether in ignorance or no, and fail to bring it to fulfilment.\"\n\n\"Vex not your mind on that,\" the prince answered, smiling. \"We have had a citizen from Montauban here this very day, who told us such a tale of sack and murder and pillage that it moved our blood; but our wrath was turned upon the man who was in authority over them.\"\n\n\"My dear and honored master,\" cried Nigel, in great anxiety, \"I fear me much that in your gentleness of heart you are straining this vow which you have taken. If there be so much as a shadow of a doubt as to the form of it, it were a thousand times best\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"Peace! peace!\" cried the prince impatiently. \"I am very well able to look to my own vows and their performance. We hope to see you both in the banquet-hall anon. Meanwhile you will attend upon us with our train.\" He bowed, and Chandos, plucking Sir Oliver by the sleeve, led them both away to the back of the press of courtiers.\n\n\"Why, little coz,\" he whispered, \"you are very eager to have your neck in a noose. By my soul! had you asked as much from our new ally Don Pedro, he had not baulked you. Between friends, there is overmuch of the hangman in him, and too little of the prince. But indeed this White Company is a rough band, and may take some handling ere you find yourself safe in your captaincy.\"\n\n\"I doubt not, with the help of St. Paul, that I shall bring them to some order,\" Sir Nigel answered. \"But there are many faces here which are new to me, though others have been before me since first I waited upon my dear master, Sir Walter. I pray you to tell me, Sir John, who are these priests upon the dais?\"\n\n\"The one is the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Nigel, and the other the Bishop of Agen.\"\n\n\"And the dark knight with gray-streaked beard? By my troth, he seems to be a man of much wisdom and valor.\"\n\n\"He is Sir William Felton, who, with my unworthy self, is the chief counsellor of the prince, he being high steward and I the seneschal of Aquitaine.\"\n\n\"And the knights upon the right, beside Don Pedro?\"\n\n\"They are cavaliers of Spain who have followed him in his exile. The one at his elbow is Fernando de Castro, who is as brave and true a man as heart could wish. In front to the right are the Gascon lords. You may well tell them by their clouded brows, for there hath been some ill-will of late betwixt the prince and them. The tall and burly man is the Captal de Buch, whom I doubt not that you know, for a braver knight never laid lance in rest. That heavy-faced cavalier who plucks his skirts and whispers in his ear is Lord Oliver de Clisson, known also as the butcher. He it is who stirs up strife, and forever blows the dying embers into flame. The man with the mole upon his cheek is the Lord Pommers, and his two brothers stand behind him, with the Lord Lesparre, Lord de Rosem, Lord de Mucident, Sir Perducas d'Albret, the Souldich de la Trane, and others. Further back are knights from Quercy, Limousin, Saintonge, Poitou, and Aquitaine, with the valiant Sir Guiscard d'Angle. That is he in the rose-colored doublet with the ermine.\"\n\n\"And the knights upon this side?\"\n\n\"They are all Englishmen, some of the household and others who like yourself, are captains of companies. There is Lord Neville, Sir Stephen Cossington, and Sir Matthew Gourney, with Sir Walter Huet, Sir Thomas Banaster, and Sir Thomas Felton, who is the brother of the high steward. Mark well the man with the high nose and flaxen beard who hath placed his hand upon the shoulder of the dark hard-faced cavalier in the rust-stained jupon.\"\n\n\"Aye, by St. Paul!\" observed Sir Nigel, \"they both bear the print of their armor upon their cotes-hardies. Methinks they are men who breathe freer in a camp than a court.\"\n\n\"There are many of us who do that, Nigel,\" said Chandos, \"and the head of the court is, I dare warrant, among them. But of these two men the one is Sir Hugh Calverley, and the other is Sir Robert Knolles.\"\n\nSir Nigel and Sir Oliver craned their necks to have the clearer view of these famous warriors, the one a chosen leader of free companies, the other a man who by his fierce valor and energy had raised himself from the lowest ranks until he was second only to Chandos himself in the esteem of the army.\n\n\"He hath no light hand in war, hath Sir Robert,\" said Chandos. \"If he passes through a country you may tell it for some years to come. I have heard that in the north it is still the use to call a house which hath but the two gable ends left, without walls or roof, a Knolles' mitre.\"\n\n\"I have often heard of him,\" said Nigel, \"and I have hoped to be so far honored as to run a course with him. But hark, Sir John, what is amiss with the prince?\"\n\nWhilst Chandos had been conversing with the two knights a continuous stream of suitors had been ushered in, adventurers seeking to sell their swords and merchants clamoring over some grievance, a ship detained for the carriage of troops, or a tun of sweet wine which had the bottom knocked out by a troop of thirsty archers. A few words from the prince disposed of each case, and, if the applicant liked not the judgment, a quick glance from the prince's dark eyes sent him to the door with the grievance all gone out of him. The younger ruler had sat listlessly upon his stool with the two puppet monarchs enthroned behind him, but of a sudden a dark shadow passed over his face, and he sprang to his feet in one of those gusts of passion which were the single blot upon his noble and generous character.\n\n\"How now, Don Martin de la Carra?\" he cried. \"How now, sirrah? What message do you bring to us from our brother of Navarre?\"\n\nThe new-comer to whom this abrupt query had been addressed was a tall and exceedingly handsome cavalier who had just been ushered into the apartment. His swarthy cheek and raven black hair spoke of the fiery south, and he wore his long black cloak swathed across his chest and over his shoulders in a graceful sweeping fashion, which was neither English nor French. With stately steps and many profound bows, he advanced to the foot of the dais before replying to the prince's question.\n\n\"My powerful and illustrious master,\" he began, \"Charles, King of Navarre, Earl of Evreux, Count of Champagne, who also writeth himself Overlord of Bearn, hereby sends his love and greetings to his dear cousin Edward, the Prince of Wales, Governor of Aquitaine, Grand Commander of\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"Tush! tush! Don Martin!\" interrupted the prince, who had been beating the ground with his foot impatiently during this stately preamble. \"We already know our cousin's titles and style, and, certes, we know our own. To the point, man, and at once. Are the passes open to us, or does your master go back from his word pledged to me at Libourne no later than last Michaelmas?\"\n\n\"It would ill become my gracious master, sire, to go back from promise given. He does but ask some delay and certain conditions and hostages\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"Conditions! Hostages! Is he speaking to the Prince of England, or is it to the bourgeois provost of some half-captured town! Conditions, quotha? He may find much to mend in his own condition ere long. The passes are, then, closed to us?\"\n\n\"Nay, sire\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"They are open, then?\"\n\n\"Nay, sire, if you would but\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"Enough, enough, Don Martin,\" cried the prince. \"It is a sorry sight to see so true a knight pleading in so false a cause. We know the doings of our cousin Charles. We know that while with the right hand he takes our fifty thousand crowns for the holding of the passes open, he hath his left outstretched to Henry of Trastamare, or to the King of France, all ready to take as many more for the keeping them closed. I know our good Charles, and, by my blessed name-saint the Confessor, he shall learn that I know him. He sets his kingdom up to the best bidder, like some scullion farrier selling a glandered horse. He is\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"My lord,\" cried Don Martin, \"I cannot stand there to hear such words of my master. Did they come from other lips, I should know better how to answer them.\"\n\nDon Pedro frowned and curled his lip, but the prince smiled and nodded his approbation.\n\n\"Your bearing and your words, Don Martin, are such I should have looked for in you,\" he remarked. \"You will tell the king, your master, that he hath been paid his price and that if he holds to his promise he hath my word for it that no scath shall come to his people, nor to their houses or gear. If, however, we have not his leave, I shall come close at the heels of this message without his leave, and bearing a key with me which shall open all that he may close.\" He stooped and whispered to Sir Robert Knolles and Sir Huge Calverley, who smiled as men well pleased, and hastened from the room.\n\n\"Our cousin Charles has had experience of our friendship,\" the prince continued, \"and now, by the Saints! he shall feel a touch of our displeasure. I send now a message to our cousin Charles which his whole kingdom may read. Let him take heed lest worse befall him. Where is my Lord Chandos? Ha, Sir John, I commend this worthy knight to your care. You will see that he hath refection, and such a purse of gold as may defray his charges, for indeed it is great honor to any court to have within it so noble and gentle a cavalier. How say you, sire?\" he asked, turning to the Spanish refugee, while the herald of Navarre was conducted from the chamber by the old warrior.\n\n\"It is not our custom in Spain to reward pertness in a messenger,\" Don Pedro answered, patting the head of his greyhound. \"Yet we have all heard the lengths to which your royal generosity runs.\"\n\n\"In sooth, yes,\" cried the King of Majorca.\n\n\"Who should know it better than we?\" said Don Pedro bitterly, \"since we have had to fly to you in our trouble as to the natural protector of all who are weak.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, as brothers to a brother,\" cried the prince, with sparkling eyes. \"We doubt not, with the help of God, to see you very soon restored to those thrones from which you have been so traitorously thrust.\"\n\n\"When that happy day comes,\" said Pedro, \"then Spain shall be to you as Aquitaine, and, be your project what it may, you may ever count on every troop and every ship over which flies the banner of Castile.\"\n\n\"And,\" added the other, \"upon every aid which the wealth and power of Majorca can bestow.\"\n\n\"Touching the hundred thousand crowns in which I stand your debtor,\" continued Pedro carelessly, \"it can no doubt\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"Not a word, sire, not a word!\" cried the prince. \"It is not now when you are in grief that I would vex your mind with such base and sordid matters. I have said once and forever that I am yours with every bow-string of my army and every florin in my coffers.\"\n\n\"Ah! here is indeed a mirror of chivalry,\" said Don Pedro. \"I think, Sir Fernando, since the prince's bounty is stretched so far, that we may make further use of his gracious goodness to the extent of fifty thousand crowns. Good Sir William Felton, here, will doubtless settle the matter with you.\"\n\nThe stout old English counsellor looked somewhat blank at this prompt acceptance of his master's bounty.\n\n\"If it please you, sire,\" he said, \"the public funds are at their lowest, seeing that I have paid twelve thousand men of the companies, and the new taxes\u2014the hearth-tax and the wine-tax\u2014not yet come in. If you could wait until the promised help from England comes\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, my sweet cousin,\" cried Don Pedro. \"Had we known that your own coffers were so low, or that this sorry sum could have weighed one way or the other, we had been loth indeed\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"Enough, sire, enough!\" said the prince, flushing with vexation. \"If the public funds be, indeed, so backward, Sir William, there is still, I trust, my own private credit, which hath never been drawn upon for my own uses, but is now ready in the cause of a friend in adversity. Go, raise this money upon our own jewels, if nought else may serve, and see that it be paid over to Don Fernando.\"\n\n\"In security I offer\u2014\u2014\" cried Don Pedro.\n\n\"Tush! tush!\" said the prince. \"I am not a Lombard, sire. Your kingly pledge is my security, without bond or seal. But I have tidings for you, my lords and lieges, that our brother of Lancaster is on his way for our capital with four hundred lances and as many archers to aid us in our venture. When he hath come, and when our fair consort is recovered in her health, which I trust by the grace of God may be ere many weeks be past, we shall then join the army at Dax, and set our banners to the breeze once more.\"\n\nA buzz of joy at the prospect of immediate action rose up from the group of warriors. The prince smiled at the martial ardor which shone upon every face around him.\n\n\"It will hearten you to know,\" he continued, \"that I have sure advices that this Henry is a very valiant leader, and that he has it in his power to make such a stand against us as promises to give us much honor and pleasure. Of his own people he hath brought together, as I learn, some fifty thousand, with twelve thousand of the French free companies, who are, as you know very valiant and expert men-at-arms. It is certain also, that the brave and worthy Bertrand de Guesclin hath ridden into France to the Duke of Anjou, and purposes to take back with him great levies from Picardy and Brittany. We hold Bertrand in high esteem, for he has oft before been at great pains to furnish us with an honorable encounter. What think you of it, my worthy Captal? He took you at Cocherel, and, by my soul I you will have the chance now to pay that score.\"\n\nThe Gascon warrior winced a little at the allusion, nor were his countrymen around him better pleased, for on the only occasion when they had encountered the arms of France without English aid they had met with a heavy defeat.\n\n\"There are some who say, sire,\" said the burly De Clisson, \"that the score is already overpaid, for that without Gascon help Bertrand had not been taken at Auray, nor had King John been overborne at Poictiers.\"\n\n\"By heaven! but this is too much,\" cried an English nobleman. \"Methinks that Gascony is too small a cock to crow so lustily.\"\n\n\"The smaller cock, my Lord Audley, may have the longer spur,\" remarked the Captal de Buch.\n\n\"May have its comb clipped if it make overmuch noise,\" broke in an Englishman.\n\n\"By our Lady of Rocamadour!\" cried the Lord of Mucident, \"this is more than I can abide. Sir John Charnell, you shall answer to me for those words!\"\n\n\"Freely, my lord, and when you will,\" returned the Englishman carelessly.\n\n\"My Lord de Clisson,\" cried Lord Audley, \"you look some, what fixedly in my direction. By God's soul! I should be right glad to go further into the matter with you.\"\n\n\"And you, my Lord of Pommers,\" said Sir Nigel, pushing his way to the front, \"it is in my mind that we might break a lance in gentle and honorable debate over the question.\"\n\nFor a moment a dozen challenges flashed backwards and forwards at this sudden bursting of the cloud which had lowered so long between the knights of the two nations. Furious and gesticulating the Gascons, white and cold and sneering the English, while the prince with a half smile glanced from one party to the other, like a man who loved to dwell upon a fiery scene, and yet dreaded least the mischief go so far that he might find it beyond his control.\n\n\"Friends, friends!\" he cried at last, \"this quarrel must go no further. The man shall answer to me, be he Gascon or English, who carries it beyond this room. I have overmuch need for your swords that you should turn them upon each other. Sir John Charnell, Lord Audley, you do not doubt the courage of our friends of Gascony?\"\n\n\"Not I, sire,\" Lord Audley answered. \"I have seen them fight too often not to know that they are very hardy and valiant gentlemen.\"\n\n\"And so say I,\" quoth the other Englishman; \"but, certes, there is no fear of our forgetting it while they have a tongue in their heads.\"\n\n\"Nay, Sir John,\" said the prince reprovingly, \"all peoples have their own use and customs. There are some who might call us cold and dull and silent. But you hear, my lords of Gascony, that these gentlemen had no thought to throw a slur upon your honor or your valor, so let all anger fade from your mind. Clisson, Captal, De Pommers, I have your word?\"\n\n\"We are your subjects, sire,\" said the Gascon barons, though with no very good grace. \"Your words are our law.\"\n\n\"Then shall we bury all cause of unkindness in a flagon of Malvoisie,\" said the prince, cheerily. \"Ho, there! the doors of the banquet-hall! I have been over long from my sweet spouse but I shall be back with you anon. Let the sewers serve and the minstrels play, while we drain a cup to the brave days that are before us in the south!\" He turned away, accompanied by the two monarchs, while the rest of the company, with many a compressed lip and menacing eye, filed slowly through the side-door to the great chamber in which the royal tables were set forth." + }, + { + "title": "HOW ALLEYNE WON HIS PLACE IN AN HONORABLE GUILD.", + "text": "Whilst the prince's council was sitting, Alleyne and Ford had remained in the outer hall, where they were soon surrounded by a noisy group of young Englishmen of their own rank, all eager to hear the latest news from England.\n\n\"How is it with the old man at Windsor?\" asked one.\n\n\"And how with the good Queen Philippa?\"\n\n\"And how with Dame Alice Perrers?\" cried a third.\n\n\"The devil take your tongue, Wat!\" shouted a tall young man, seizing the last speaker by the collar and giving him an admonitory shake. \"The prince would take your head off for those words.\"\n\n\"By God's coif! Wat would miss it but little,\" said another. \"It is as empty as a beggar's wallet.\"\n\n\"As empty as an English squire, coz,\" cried the first speaker. \"What a devil has become of the maitre-des-tables and his sewers? They have not put forth the trestles yet.\"\n\n\"Mon Dieu! if a man could eat himself into knighthood, Humphrey, you had been a banneret at the least,\" observed another, amid a burst of laughter.\n\n\"And if you could drink yourself in, old leather-head, you had been first baron of the realm,\" cried the aggrieved Humphrey. \"But how of England, my lads of Loring?\"\n\n\"I take it,\" said Ford, \"that it is much as it was when you were there last, save that perchance there is a little less noise there.\"\n\n\"And why less noise, young Solomon?\"\n\n\"Ah, that is for your wit to discover.\"\n\n\"Pardieu! here is a paladin come over, with the Hampshire mud still sticking to his shoes. He means that the noise is less for our being out of the country.\"\n\n\"They are very quick in these parts,\" said Ford, turning to Alleyne.\n\n\"How are we to take this, sir?\" asked the ruffling squire.\n\n\"You may take it as it comes,\" said Ford carelessly.\n\n\"Here is pertness!\" cried the other.\n\n\"Sir, I honor your truthfulness,\" said Ford.\n\n\"Stint it, Humphrey,\" said the tall squire, with a burst of laughter. \"You will have little credit from this gentleman, I perceive. Tongues are sharp in Hampshire, sir.\"\n\n\"And swords?\"\n\n\"Hum! we may prove that. In two days' time is the vepres du tournoi, when we may see if your lance is as quick as your wit.\"\n\n\"All very well, Roger Harcomb,\" cried a burly, bull-necked young man, whose square shoulders and massive limbs told of exceptional personal strength. \"You pass too lightly over the matter. We are not to be so easily overcrowed. The Lord Loring hath given his proofs; but we know nothing of his squires, save that one of them hath a railing tongue. And how of you, young sir?\" bringing his heavy hand down on Alleyne's shoulder.\n\n\"And what of me, young sir?\"\n\n\"Ma foi! this is my lady's page come over. Your cheek will be browner and your hand harder ere you see your mother again.\"\n\n\"If my hand is not hard, it is ready.\"\n\n\"Ready? Ready for what? For the hem of my lady's train?\"\n\n\"Ready to chastise insolence, sir,\" cried Alleyne with hashing eyes.\n\n\"Sweet little coz!\" answered the burly squire. \"Such a dainty color! Such a mellow voice! Eyes of a bashful maid, and hair like a three years' babe! Voila!\" He passed his thick fingers roughly through the youth's crisp golden curls.\n\n\"You seek to force a quarrel, sir,\" said the young man, white with anger.\n\n\"And what then?\"\n\n\"Why, you do it like a country boor, and not like a gentle squire. Hast been ill bred and as ill taught. I serve a master who could show you how such things should be done.\"\n\n\"And how would he do it, O pink of squires?\"\n\n\"He would neither be loud nor would he be unmannerly, but rather more gentle than is his wont. He would say, 'Sir, I should take it as an honor to do some small deed of arms against you, not for mine own glory or advancement, but rather for the fame of my lady and for the upholding of chivalry.' Then he would draw his glove, thus, and throw it on the ground; or, if he had cause to think that he had to deal with a churl, he might throw it in his face\u2014as I do now!\"\n\nA buzz of excitement went up from the knot of squires as Alleyne, his gentle nature turned by this causeless attack into fiery resolution, dashed his glove with all his strength into the sneering face of his antagonist. From all parts of the hall squires and pages came running, until a dense, swaying crowd surrounded the disputants.\n\n\"Your life for this!\" said the bully, with a face which was distorted with rage.\n\n\"If you can take it,\" returned Alleyne.\n\n\"Good lad!\" whispered Ford. \"Stick to it close as wax.\"\n\n\"I shall see justice,\" cried Norbury, Sir Oliver's silent attendant.\n\n\"You brought it upon yourself, John Tranter,\" said the tall squire, who had been addressed as Roger Harcomb. \"You must ever plague the new-comers. But it were shame if this went further. The lad hath shown a proper spirit.\"\n\n\"But a blow! a blow!\" cried several of the older squires. \"There must be a finish to this.\"\n\n\"Nay; Tranter first laid hand upon his head,\" said Harcomb. \"How say you, Tranter? The matter may rest where it stands?\"\n\n\"My name is known in these parts,\" said Tranter, proudly, \"I can let pass what might leave a stain upon another. Let him pick up his glove and say that he has done amiss.\"\n\n\"I would see him in the claws of the devil first,\" whispered Ford.\n\n\"You hear, young sir?\" said the peacemaker. \"Our friend will overlook the matter if you do but say that you have acted in heat and haste.\"\n\n\"I cannot say that,\" answered Alleyne.\n\n\"It is our custom, young sir, when new squires come amongst us from England, to test them in some such way. Bethink you that if a man have a destrier or a new lance he will ever try it in time of peace, lest in days of need it may fail him. How much more then is it proper to test those who are our comrades in arms.\"\n\n\"I would draw out if it may honorably be done,\" murmured Norbury in Alleyne's ear. \"The man is a noted swordsman and far above your strength.\"\n\nEdricson came, however, of that sturdy Saxon blood which is very slowly heated, but once up not easily to be cooled. The hint of danger which Norbury threw out was the one thing needed to harden his resolution.\n\n\"I came here at the back of my master,\" he said, \"and I looked on every man here as an Englishman and a friend. This gentleman hath shown me a rough welcome, and if I have answered him in the same spirit he has but himself to thank. I will pick the glove up; but, certes, I shall abide what I have done unless he first crave my pardon for what he hath said and done.\"\n\nTranter shrugged his shoulders. \"You have done what you could to save him, Harcomb,\" said he. \"We had best settle at once.\"\n\n\"So say I,\" cried Alleyne.\n\n\"The council will not break up until the banquet,\" remarked a gray-haired squire. \"You have a clear two hours.\"\n\n\"And the place?\"\n\n\"The tilting-yard is empty at this hour.\"\n\n\"Nay; it must not be within the grounds of the court, or it may go hard with all concerned if it come to the ears of the prince.\"\n\n\"But there is a quiet spot near the river,\" said one youth. \"We have but to pass through the abbey grounds, along the armory wall, past the church of St. Remi, and so down the Rue des Apotres.\"\n\n\"En avant, then!\" cried Tranter shortly, and the whole assembly flocked out into the open air, save only those whom the special orders of their masters held to their posts. These unfortunates crowded to the small casements, and craned their necks after the throng as far as they could catch a glimpse of them.\n\nClose to the banks of the Garonne there lay a little tract of green sward, with the high wall of a prior's garden upon one side and an orchard with a thick bristle of leafless apple-trees upon the other. The river ran deep and swift up to the steep bank; but there were few boats upon it, and the ships were moored far out in the centre of the stream. Here the two combatants drew their swords and threw off their doublets, for neither had any defensive armor. The duello with its stately etiquette had not yet come into vogue, but rough and sudden encounters were as common as they must ever be when hotheaded youth goes abroad with a weapon strapped to its waist. In such combats, as well as in the more formal sports of the tilting-yard, Tranter had won a name for strength and dexterity which had caused Norbury to utter his well-meant warning. On the other hand, Alleyne had used his weapons in constant exercise and practice for every day for many months, and being by nature quick of eye and prompt of hand, he might pass now as no mean swordsman. A strangely opposed pair they appeared as they approached each other: Tranter dark and stout and stiff, with hairy chest and corded arms, Alleyne a model of comeliness and grace, with his golden hair and his skin as fair as a woman's. An unequal fight it seemed to most; but there were a few, and they the most experienced, who saw something in the youth's steady gray eye and wary step which left the issue open to doubt.\n\n\"Hold, sirs, hold!\" cried Norbury, ere a blow had been struck. \"This gentleman hath a two-handed sword, a good foot longer than that of our friend.\"\n\n\"Take mine, Alleyne,\" said Ford.\n\n\"Nay, friends,\" he answered, \"I understand the weight and balance of mine own. To work, sir, for our lord may need us at the abbey!\"\n\nTranter's great sword was indeed a mighty vantage in his favor. He stood with his feet close together, his knees bent outwards, ready for a dash inwards or a spring out. The weapon he held straight up in front of him with blade erect, so that he might either bring it down with a swinging blow, or by a turn of the heavy blade he might guard his own head and body. A further protection lay in the broad and powerful guard which crossed the hilt, and which was furnished with a deep and narrow notch, in which an expert swordsman might catch his foeman's blade, and by a quick turn of his wrist might snap it across. Alleyne, on the other hand, must trust for his defence to his quick eye and active foot\u2014for his sword, though keen as a whetstone could make it, was of a light and graceful build with a narrow, sloping pommel and a tapering steel.\n\nTranter well knew his advantage and lost no time in putting it to use. As his opponent walked towards him he suddenly bounded forward and sent in a whistling cut which would have severed the other in twain had he not sprung lightly back from it. So close was it that the point ripped a gash in the jutting edge of his linen cyclas. Quick as a panther, Alleyne sprang in with a thrust, but Tranter, who was as active as he was strong, had already recovered himself and turned it aside with a movement of his heavy blade. Again he whizzed in a blow which made the spectators hold their breath, and again Alleyne very quickly and swiftly slipped from under it, and sent back two lightning thrusts which the other could scarce parry. So close were they to each other that Alleyne had no time to spring back from the next cut, which beat down his sword and grazed his forehead, sending the blood streaming into his eyes and down his cheeks. He sprang out beyond sword sweep, and the pair stood breathing heavily, while the crowd of young squires buzzed their applause.\n\n\"Bravely struck on both sides!\" cried Roger Harcomb. \"You have both won honor from this meeting, and it would be sin and shame to let it go further.\"\n\n\"You have done enough, Edricson,\" said Norbury.\n\n\"You have carried yourself well,\" cried several of the older squires.\n\n\"For my part, I have no wish to slay this young man,\" said Tranter, wiping his heated brow.\n\n\"Does this gentleman crave my pardon for having used me despitefully?\" asked Alleyne.\n\n\"Nay, not I.\"\n\n\"Then stand on your guard, sir!\" With a clatter and dash the two blades met once more, Alleyne pressing in so as to keep within the full sweep of the heavy blade, while Tranter as continually sprang back to have space for one of his fatal cuts. A three-parts-parried blow drew blood from Alleyne's left shoulder, but at the same moment he wounded Tranter slightly upon the thigh. Next instant, however, his blade had slipped into the fatal notch, there was a sharp cracking sound with a tinkling upon the ground, and he found a splintered piece of steel fifteen inches long was all that remained to him of his weapon.\n\n\"Your life is in my hands!\" cried Tranter, with a bitter smile.\n\n\"Nay, nay, he makes submission!\" broke in several squires.\n\n\"Another sword!\" cried Ford.\n\n\"Nay, sir,\" said Harcomb, \"that is not the custom.\"\n\n\"Throw down your hilt, Edricson,\" cried Norbury.\n\n\"Never!\" said Alleyne. \"Do you crave my pardon, sir?\"\n\n\"You are mad to ask it.\"\n\n\"Then on guard again!\" cried the young squire, and sprang in with a fire and a fury which more than made up for the shortness of his weapon. It had not escaped him that his opponent was breathing in short, hoarse gasps, like a man who is dizzy with fatigue. Now was the time for the purer living and the more agile limb to show their value. Back and back gave Tranter, ever seeking time for a last cut. On and on came Alleyne, his jagged point now at his foeman's face, now at his throat, now at his chest, still stabbing and thrusting to pass the line of steel which covered him. Yet his experienced foeman knew well that such efforts could not be long sustained. Let him relax for one instant, and his death-blow had come. Relax he must! Flesh and blood could not stand the strain. Already the thrusts were less fierce, the foot less ready, although there was no abatement of the spirit in the steady gray eyes. Tranter, cunning and wary from years of fighting, knew that his chance had come. He brushed aside the frail weapon which was opposed to him, whirled up his great blade, sprang back to get the fairer sweep\u2014and vanished into the waters of the Garonne.\n\nSo intent had the squires, both combatants and spectators, been on the matter in hand, that all thought of the steep bank and swift still stream had gone from their minds. It was not until Tranter, giving back before the other's fiery rush, was upon the very brink, that a general cry warned him of his danger. That last spring, which he hoped would have brought the fight to a bloody end, carried him clear of the edge, and he found himself in an instant eight feet deep in the ice-cold stream. Once and twice his gasping face and clutching fingers broke up through the still green water, sweeping outwards in the swirl of the current. In vain were sword-sheaths, apple-branches and belts linked together thrown out to him by his companions. Alleyne had dropped his shattered sword and was standing, trembling in every limb, with his rage all changed in an instant to pity. For the third time the drowning man came to the surface, his hands full of green slimy water-plants, his eyes turned in despair to the shore. Their glance fell upon Alleyne, and he could not withstand the mute appeal which he read in them. In an instant he, too, was in the Garonne, striking out with powerful strokes for his late foeman.\n\nYet the current was swift and strong, and, good swimmer as he was, it was no easy task which Alleyne had set himself. To clutch at Tranter and to seize him by the hair was the work of a few seconds, but to hold his head above water and to make their way out of the current was another matter. For a hundred strokes he did not seem to gain an inch. Then at last, amid a shout of joy and praise from the bank, they slowly drew clear into more stagnant water, at the instant that a rope, made of a dozen sword-belts linked together by the buckles, was thrown by Ford into their very hands. Three pulls from eager arms, and the two combatants, dripping and pale, were dragged up the bank, and lay panting upon the grass.\n\nJohn Tranter was the first to come to himself, for although he had been longer in the water, he had done nothing during that fierce battle with the current. He staggered to his feet and looked down upon his rescuer, who had raised himself upon his elbow, and was smiling faintly at the buzz of congratulation and of praise which broke from the squires around him.\n\n\"I am much beholden to you, sir,\" said Tranter, though in no very friendly voice. \"Certes, I should have been in the river now but for you, for I was born in Warwickshire, which is but a dry county, and there are few who swim in those parts.\"\n\n\"I ask no thanks,\" Alleyne answered shortly. \"Give me your hand to rise, Ford.\"\n\n\"The river has been my enemy,\" said Tranter, \"but it hath been a good friend to you, for it has saved your life this day.\"\n\n\"That is as it may be,\" returned Alleyne.\n\n\"But all is now well over,\" quoth Harcomb, \"and no scath come of it, which is more than I had at one time hoped for. Our young friend here hath very fairly and honestly earned his right to be craftsman of the Honorable Guild of the Squires of Bordeaux. Here is your doublet, Tranter.\"\n\n\"Alas for my poor sword which lies at the bottom of the Garonne!\" said the squire.\n\n\"Here is your pourpoint, Edricson,\" cried Norbury. \"Throw it over your shoulders, that you may have at least one dry garment.\"\n\n\"And now away back to the abbey!\" said several.\n\n\"One moment, sirs,\" cried Alleyne, who was leaning on Ford's shoulder, with the broken sword, which he had picked up, still clutched in his right hand. \"My ears may be somewhat dulled by the water, and perchance what has been said has escaped me, but I have not yet heard this gentleman crave pardon for the insults which he put upon me in the hall.\"\n\n\"What! do you still pursue the quarrel?\" asked Tranter.\n\n\"And why not, sir? I am slow to take up such things, but once afoot I shall follow it while I have life or breath.\"\n\n\"Ma foi! you have not too much of either, for you are as white as marble,\" said Harcomb bluntly. \"Take my rede, sir, and let it drop, for you have come very well out from it.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" said Alleyne, \"this quarrel is none of my making; but, now that I am here, I swear to you that I shall never leave this spot until I have that which I have come for: so ask my pardon, sir, or choose another glaive and to it again.\"\n\nThe young squire was deadly white from his exertions, both on the land and in the water. Soaking and stained, with a smear of blood on his white shoulder and another on his brow, there was still in his whole pose and set of face the trace of an inflexible resolution. His opponent's duller and more material mind quailed before the fire and intensity of a higher spiritual nature.\n\n\"I had not thought that you had taken it so amiss,\" said he awkwardly. \"It was but such a jest as we play upon each other, and, if you must have it so, I am sorry for it.\"\n\n\"Then I am sorry too,\" quoth Alleyne warmly, \"and here is my hand upon it.\"\n\n\"And the none-meat horn has blown three times,\" quoth Harcomb, as they all streamed in chattering groups from the ground. \"I know not what the prince's maitre-de-cuisine will say or think. By my troth! master Ford, your friend here is in need of a cup of wine, for he hath drunk deeply of Garonne water. I had not thought from his fair face that he had stood to this matter so shrewdly.\"\n\n\"Faith,\" said Ford, \"this air of Bordeaux hath turned our turtle-dove into a game-cock. A milder or more courteous youth never came out of Hampshire.\"\n\n\"His master also, as I understand, is a very mild and courteous gentleman,\" remarked Harcomb; \"yet I do not think that they are either of them men with whom it is very safe to trifle.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW AGOSTINO PISANO RISKED HIS HEAD.", + "text": "Even the squires' table at the Abbey of St. Andrew's at Bordeaux was on a very sumptuous scale while the prince held his court there. Here first, after the meagre fare of Beaulieu and the stinted board of the Lady Loring, Alleyne learned the lengths to which luxury and refinement might be pushed. Roasted peacocks, with the feathers all carefully replaced, so that the bird lay upon the dish even as it had strutted in life, boars' heads with the tusks gilded and the mouth lined with silver foil, jellies in the shape of the Twelve Apostles, and a great pasty which formed an exact model of the king's new castle at Windsor\u2014these were a few of the strange dishes which faced him. An archer had brought him a change of clothes from the cog, and he had already, with the elasticity of youth, shaken off the troubles and fatigues of the morning. A page from the inner banqueting-hall had come with word that their master intended to drink wine at the lodgings of the Lord Chandos that night, and that he desired his squires to sleep at the hotel of the \"Half Moon\" on the Rue des Apotres. Thither then they both set out in the twilight after the long course of juggling tricks and glee-singing with which the principal meal was concluded.\n\nA thin rain was falling as the two youths, with their cloaks over their heads, made their way on foot through the streets of the old town, leaving their horses in the royal stables. An occasional oil lamp at the corner of a street, or in the portico of some wealthy burgher, threw a faint glimmer over the shining cobblestones, and the varied motley crowd who, in spite of the weather, ebbed and flowed along every highway. In those scattered circles of dim radiance might be seen the whole busy panorama of life in a wealthy and martial city. Here passed the round-faced burgher, swollen with prosperity, his sweeping dark-clothed gaberdine, flat velvet cap, broad leather belt and dangling pouch all speaking of comfort and of wealth. Behind him his serving wench, her blue whimple over her head, and one hand thrust forth to bear the lanthorn which threw a golden bar of light along her master's path. Behind them a group of swaggering, half-drunken Yorkshire dalesmen, speaking a dialect which their own southland countrymen could scarce comprehend, their jerkins marked with the pelican, which showed that they had come over in the train of the north-country Stapletons. The burgher glanced back at their fierce faces and quickened his step, while the girl pulled her whimple closer round her, for there was a meaning in their wild eyes, as they stared at the purse and the maiden, which men of all tongues could understand. Then came archers of the guard, shrill-voiced women of the camp, English pages with their fair skins and blue wondering eyes, dark-robed friars, lounging men-at-arms, swarthy loud-tongued Gascon serving-men, seamen from the river, rude peasants of the Medoc, and becloaked and befeathered squires of the court, all jostling and pushing in an ever-changing, many-colored stream, while English, French, Welsh, Basque, and the varied dialects of Gascony and Guienne filled the air with their babel. From time to time the throng would be burst asunder and a lady's horse-litter would trot past tow torch-bearing archers walking in front of Gascon baron or English knight, as he sought his lodgings after the palace revels. Clatter of hoofs, clinking of weapons, shouts from the drunken brawlers, and high laughter of women, they all rose up, like the mist from a marsh, out of the crowded streets of the dim-lit city.\n\nOne couple out of the moving throng especially engaged the attention of the two young squires, the more so as they were going in their own direction and immediately in front of them. They consisted of a man and a girl, the former very tall with rounded shoulders, a limp of one foot, and a large flat object covered with dark cloth under his arm. His companion was young and straight, with a quick, elastic step and graceful bearing, though so swathed in a black mantle that little could be seen of her face save a flash of dark eyes and a curve of raven hair. The tall man leaned heavily upon her to take the weight off his tender foot, while he held his burden betwixt himself and the wall, cuddling it jealously to his side, and thrusting forward his young companion to act as a buttress whenever the pressure of the crowd threatened to bear him away. The evident anxiety of the man, the appearance of his attendant, and the joint care with which they defended their concealed possession, excited the interest of the two young Englishmen who walked within hand-touch of them.\n\n\"Courage, child!\" they heard the tall man exclaim in strange hybrid French. \"If we can win another sixty paces we are safe.\"\n\n\"Hold it safe, father,\" the other answered, in the same soft, mincing dialect. \"We have no cause for fear.\"\n\n\"Verily, they are heathens and barbarians,\" cried the man; \"mad, howling, drunken barbarians! Forty more paces, Tita mia, and I swear to the holy Eloi, patron of all learned craftsmen, that I will never set foot over my door again until the whole swarm are safely hived in their camp of Dax, or wherever else they curse with their presence. Twenty more paces, my treasure: Ah, my God! how they push and brawl! Get in their way, Tita mia! Put your little elbow bravely out! Set your shoulders squarely against them, girl! Why should you give way to these mad islanders? Ah, cospetto! we are ruined and destroyed!\"\n\nThe crowd had thickened in front, so that the lame man and the girl had come to a stand. Several half-drunken English archers, attracted, as the squires had been, by their singular appearance, were facing towards them, and peering at them through the dim light.\n\n\"By the three kings!\" cried one, \"here is an old dotard shrew to have so goodly a crutch! Use the leg that God hath given you, man, and do not bear so heavily upon the wench.\"\n\n\"Twenty devils fly away with him!\" shouted another. \"What, how, man! are brave archers to go maidless while an old man uses one as a walking-staff?\"\n\n\"Come with me, my honey-bird!\" cried a third, plucking at the girl's mantle.\n\n\"Nay, with me, my heart's desire!\" said the first. \"By St. George! our life is short, and we should be merry while we may. May I never see Chester Bridge again, if she is not a right winsome lass!\"\n\n\"What hath the old toad under his arm?\" cried one of the others. \"He hugs it to him as the devil hugged the pardoner.\"\n\n\"Let us see, old bag of bones; let us see what it is that you have under your arm!\" They crowded in upon him, while he, ignorant of their language, could but clutch the girl with one hand and the parcel with the other, looking wildly about in search of help.\n\n\"Nay, lads, nay!\" cried Ford, pushing back the nearest archer. \"This is but scurvy conduct. Keep your hands off, or it will be the worse for you.\"\n\n\"Keep your tongue still, or it will be the worse for you,\" shouted the most drunken of the archers. \"Who are you to spoil sport?\"\n\n\"A raw squire, new landed,\" said another. \"By St. Thomas of Kent! we are at the beck of our master, but we are not to be ordered by every babe whose mother hath sent him as far as Aquitaine.\"\n\n\"Oh, gentlemen,\" cried the girl in broken French, \"for dear Christ's sake stand by us, and do not let these terrible men do us an injury.\"\n\n\"Have no fears, lady,\" Alleyne answered. \"We shall see that all is well with you. Take your hand from the girl's wrist, you north-country rogue!\"\n\n\"Hold to her, Wat!\" said a great black-bearded man-at-arms, whose steel breastplate glimmered in the dusk. \"Keep your hands from your bodkins, you two, for that was my trade before you were born, and, by God's soul! I will drive a handful of steel through you if you move a finger.\"\n\n\"Thank God!\" said Alleyne suddenly, as he spied in the lamp-light a shock of blazing red hair which fringed a steel cap high above the heads of the crowd. \"Here is John, and Aylward, too! Help us, comrades, for there is wrong being done to this maid and to the old man.\"\n\n\"Hola, mon petit,\" said the old bowman, pushing his way through the crowd, with the huge forester at his heels. \"What is all this, then? By the twang of string! I think that you will have some work upon your hands if you are to right all the wrongs that you may see upon this side of the water. It is not to be thought that a troop of bowmen, with the wine buzzing in their ears, will be as soft-spoken as so many young clerks in an orchard. When you have been a year with the Company you will think less of such matters. But what is amiss here? The provost-marshal with his archers is coming this way, and some of you may find yourselves in the stretch-neck, if you take not heed.\"\n\n\"Why, it is old Sam Aylward of the White Company!\" shouted the man-at-arms. \"Why, Samkin, what hath come upon thee? I can call to mind the day when you were as roaring a blade as ever called himself a free companion. By my soul! from Limoges to Navarre, who was there who would kiss a wench or cut a throat as readily as bowman Aylward of Hawkwood's company?\"\n\n\"Like enough, Peter,\" said Aylward, \"and, by my hilt! I may not have changed so much. But it was ever a fair loose and a clear mark with me. The wench must be willing, or the man must be standing up against me, else, by these ten finger bones I either were safe enough for me.\"\n\nA glance at Aylward's resolute face, and at the huge shoulders of Hordle John, had convinced the archers that there was little to be got by violence. The girl and the old man began to shuffle on in the crowd without their tormentors venturing to stop them. Ford and Alleyne followed slowly behind them, but Aylward caught the latter by the shoulder.\n\n\"By my hilt! camarade,\" said he, \"I hear that you have done great things at the Abbey to-day, but I pray you to have a care, for it was I who brought you into the Company, and it would be a black day for me if aught were to befall you.\"\n\n\"Nay, Aylward, I will have a care.\"\n\n\"Thrust not forward into danger too much, mon petit. In a little time your wrist will be stronger and your cut more shrewd. There will be some of us at the 'Rose de Guienne' to-night, which is two doors from the hotel of the 'Half Moon,' so if you would drain a cup with a few simple archers you will be right welcome.\"\n\nAlleyne promised to be there if his duties would allow, and then, slipping through the crowd, he rejoined Ford, who was standing in talk with the two strangers, who had now reached their own doorstep.\n\n\"Brave young signor,\" cried the tall man, throwing his arms round Alleyne, \"how can we thank you enough for taking our parts against those horrible drunken barbarians. What should we have done without you? My Tita would have been dragged away, and my head would have been shivered into a thousand fragments.\"\n\n\"Nay, I scarce think that they would have mishandled you so,\" said Alleyne in surprise.\n\n\"Ho, ho!\" cried he with a high crowing laugh, \"it is not the head upon my shoulders that I think of. Cospetto! no. It is the head under my arm which you have preserved.\"\n\n\"Perhaps the signori would deign to come under our roof, father,\" said the maiden. \"If we bide here, who knows that some fresh tumult may not break out.\"\n\n\"Well said, Tita! Well said, my girl! I pray you, sirs, to honor my unworthy roof so far. A light, Giacomo! There are five steps up. Now two more. So! Here we are at last in safety. Corpo di Bacco! I would not have given ten maravedi for my head when those children of the devil were pushing us against the wall. Tita mia, you have been a brave girl, and it was better that you should be pulled and pushed than that my head should be broken.\"\n\n\"Yes indeed, father,\" said she earnestly.\n\n\"But those English! Ach! Take a Goth, a Hun, and a Vandal, mix them together and add a Barbary rover; then take this creature and make him drunk\u2014and you have an Englishman. My God I were ever such people upon earth! What place is free from them? I hear that they swarm in Italy even as they swarm here. Everywhere you will find them, except in heaven.\"\n\n\"Dear father,\" cried Tita, still supporting the angry old man, as he limped up the curved oaken stair. \"You must not forget that these good signori who have preserved us are also English.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes. My pardon, sirs! Come into my rooms here. There are some who might find some pleasure in these paintings, but I learn the art of war is the only art which is held in honor in your island.\"\n\nThe low-roofed, oak-panelled room into which he conducted them was brilliantly lit by four scented oil lamps. Against the walls, upon the table, on the floor, and in every part of the chamber were great sheets of glass painted in the most brilliant colors. Ford and Edricson gazed around them in amazement, for never had they seen such magnificent works of art.\n\n\"You like them then,\" the lame artist cried, in answer to the look of pleasure and of surprise in their faces. \"There are then some of you who have a taste for such trifling.\"\n\n\"I could not have believed it,\" exclaimed Alleyne. \"What color! What outlines! See to this martyrdom of the holy Stephen, Ford. Could you not yourself pick up one of these stones which lie to the hand of the wicked murtherers?\"\n\n\"And see this stag, Alleyne, with the cross betwixt its horns. By my faith! I have never seen a better one at the Forest of Bere.\"\n\n\"And the green of this grass\u2014how bright and clear! Why all the painting that I have seen is but child's play beside this. This worthy gentleman must be one of those great painters of whom I have oft heard brother Bartholomew speak in the old days at Beaulieu.\"\n\nThe dark mobile face of the artist shone with pleasure at the unaffected delight of the two young Englishmen. His daughter had thrown off her mantle and disclosed a face of the finest and most delicate Italian beauty, which soon drew Ford's eyes from the pictures in front of him. Alleyne, however, continued with little cries of admiration and of wonderment to turn from the walls to the table and yet again to the walls.\n\n\"What think you of this, young sir?\" asked the painter, tearing off the cloth which concealed the flat object which he had borne beneath his arm. It was a leaf-shaped sheet of glass bearing upon it a face with a halo round it, so delicately outlined, and of so perfect a tint, that it might have been indeed a human face which gazed with sad and thoughtful eyes upon the young squire. He clapped his hands, with that thrill of joy which true art will ever give to a true artist.\n\n\"It is great!\" he cried. \"It is wonderful! But I marvel, sir, that you should have risked a work of such beauty and value by bearing it at night through so unruly a crowd.\"\n\n\"I have indeed been rash,\" said the artist. \"Some wine, Tita, from the Florence flask! Had it not been for you, I tremble to think of what might have come of it. See to the skin tint: it is not to be replaced, for paint as you will, it is not once in a hundred times that it is not either burned too brown in the furnace or else the color will not hold, and you get but a sickly white. There you can see the very veins and the throb of thee blood. Yes, diavolo! if it had broken, my heart would have broken too. It is for the choir window in the church of St. Remi, and we had gone, my little helper and I, to see if it was indeed of the size for the stonework. Night had fallen ere we finished, and what could we do save carry it home as best we might? But you, young sir, you speak as if you too knew something of the art.\"\n\n\"So little that I scarce dare speak of it in your presence,\" Alleyne answered. \"I have been cloister-bred, and it was no very great matter to handle the brush better than my brother novices.\"\n\n\"There are pigments, brush, and paper,\" said the old artist. \"I do not give you glass, for that is another matter, and takes much skill in the mixing of colors. Now I pray you to show me a touch of your art. I thank you, Tita! The Venetian glasses, cara mia, and fill them to the brim. A seat, signor!\"\n\nWhile Ford, in his English-French, was conversing with Tita in her Italian French, the old man was carefully examining his precious head to see that no scratch had been left upon its surface. When he glanced up again, Alleyne had, with a few bold strokes of the brush, tinted in a woman's face and neck upon the white sheet in front of him.\n\n\"Diavolo!\" exclaimed the old artist, standing with his head on one side, \"you have power; yes, cospetto! you have power, it is the face of an angel!\"\n\n\"It is the face of the Lady Maude Loring!\" cried Ford, even more astonished.\n\n\"Why, on my faith, it is not unlike her!\" said Alleyne, in some confusion.\n\n\"Ah! a portrait! So much the better. Young man, I am Agostino Pisano, the son of Andrea Pisano, and I say again that you have power. Further, I say, that, if you will stay with me, I will teach you all the secrets of the glass-stainers' mystery: the pigments and their thickening, which will fuse into the glass and which will not, the furnace and the glazing\u2014every trick and method you shall know.\"\n\n\"I would be right glad to study under such a master,\" said Alleyne; \"but I am sworn to follow my lord whilst this war lasts.\"\n\n\"War! war!\" cried the old Italian. \"Ever this talk of war. And the men that you hold to be great\u2014what are they? Have I not heard their names? Soldiers, butchers, destroyers! Ah, per Bacco! we have men in Italy who are in very truth great. You pull down, you despoil; but they build up, they restore. Ah, if you could but see my own dear Pisa, the Duomo, the cloisters of Campo Santo, the high Campanile, with the mellow throb of her bells upon the warm Italian air! Those are the works of great men. And I have seen them with my own eyes, these very eyes which look upon you. I have seen Andrea Orcagna, Taddeo Gaddi, Giottino, Stefano, Simone Memmi\u2014men whose very colors I am not worthy to mix. And I have seen the aged Giotto, and he in turn was pupil to Cimabue, before whom there was no art in Italy, for the Greeks were brought to paint the chapel of the Gondi at Florence. Ah, signori, there are the real great men whose names will be held in honor when your soldiers are shown to have been the enemies of humankind.\"\n\n\"Faith, sir,\" said Ford, \"there is something to say for the soldiers also, for, unless they be defended, how are all these gentlemen whom you have mentioned to preserve the pictures which they have painted?\"\n\n\"And all these!\" said Alleyne. \"Have you indeed done them all?\u2014and where are they to go?\"\n\n\"Yes, signor, they are all from my hand. Some are, as you see, upon one sheet, and some are in many pieces which may fasten together. There are some who do but paint upon the glass, and then, by placing another sheet of glass upon the top and fastening it, they keep the air from their painting. Yet I hold that the true art of my craft lies as much in the furnace as in the brush. See this rose window, which is from the model of the Church of the Holy Trinity at Vendome, and this other of the 'Finding of the Grail,' which is for the apse of the Abbey church. Time was when none but my countrymen could do these things; but there is Clement of Chartres and others in France who are very worthy workmen. But, ah! there is that ever shrieking brazen tongue which will not let us forget for one short hour that it is the arm of the savage, and not the hand of the master, which rules over the world.\"\n\nA stern, clear bugle call had sounded close at hand to summon some following together for the night.\n\n\"It is a sign to us as well,\" said Ford. \"I would fain stay here forever amid all these beautiful things\u2014\" staring hard at the blushing Tita as he spoke\u2014\"but we must be back at our lord's hostel ere he reach it.\" Amid renewed thanks and with promises to come again, the two squires bade their leave of the old Italian glass-stainer and his daughter. The streets were clearer now, and the rain had stopped, so they made their way quickly from the Rue du Roi, in which their new friends dwelt, to the Rue des Apotres, where the hostel of the \"Half Moon\" was situated." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 22", + "text": "HOW THE BOWMEN HELD WASSAIL AT THE \"ROSE DE GUIENNE.\"\n\n\"Mon Dieu! Alleyne, saw you ever so lovely a face?\" cried Ford as they hurried along together. \"So pure, so peaceful, and so beautiful!\"\n\n\"In sooth, yes. And the hue of the skin the most perfect that ever I saw. Marked you also how the hair curled round the brow? It was wonder fine.\"\n\n\"Those eyes, too!\" cried Ford. \"How clear and how tender\u2014simple, and yet so full of thought!\"\n\n\"If there was a weakness it was in the chin,\" said Alleyne.\n\n\"Nay. I saw none.\"\n\n\"It was well curved, it is true.\"\n\n\"Most daintily so.\"\n\n\"And yet\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"What then, Alleyne? Wouldst find flaw in the sun?\"\n\n\"Well, bethink you, Ford, would not more power and expression have been put into the face by a long and noble beard?\"\n\n\"Holy Virgin!\" cried Ford, \"the man is mad. A beard on the face of little Tita!\"\n\n\"Tita! Who spoke of Tita?\"\n\n\"Who spoke of aught else?\"\n\n\"It was the picture of St. Remi, man, of which I have been discoursing.\"\n\n\"You are indeed,\" cried Ford, laughing, \"a Goth, Hun, and Vandal, with all the other hard names which the old man called us. How could you think so much of a smear of pigments, when there was such a picture painted by the good God himself in the very room with you? But who is this?\"\n\n\"If it please you, sirs,\" said an archer, running across to them, \"Aylward and others would be right glad to see you. They are within here. He bade me say to you that the Lord Loring will not need your service to-night, as he sleeps with the Lord Chandos.\"\n\n\"By my faith!\" said Ford, \"we do not need a guide to lead us to their presence.\" As he spoke there came a roar of singing from the tavern upon the right, with shouts of laughter and stamping of feet. Passing under a low door, and down a stone-flagged passage, they found themselves in a long narrow hall lit up by a pair of blazing torches, one at either end. Trusses of straw had been thrown down along the walls, and reclining on them were some twenty or thirty archers, all of the Company, their steel caps and jacks thrown off, their tunics open and their great limbs sprawling upon the clay floor. At every man's elbow stood his leathern blackjack of beer, while at the further end a hogshead with its end knocked in promised an abundant supply for the future. Behind the hogshead, on a half circle of kegs, boxes, and rude settles, sat Aylward, John, Black Simon and three or four other leading men of the archers, together with Goodwin Hawtayne, the master-shipman, who had left his yellow cog in the river to have a last rouse with his friends of the Company. Ford and Alleyne took their seats between Aylward and Black Simon, without their entrance checking in any degree the hubbub which was going on.\n\n\"Ale, mes camarades?\" cried the bowman, \"or shall it be wine? Nay, but ye must have the one or the other. Here, Jacques, thou limb of the devil, bring a bottrine of the oldest vernage, and see that you do not shake it. Hast heard the news?\"\n\n\"Nay,\" cried both the squires.\n\n\"That we are to have a brave tourney.\"\n\n\"A tourney?\"\n\n\"Aye, lads. For the Captal du Buch hath sworn that he will find five knights from this side of the water who will ride over any five Englishmen who ever threw leg over saddle; and Chandos hath taken up the challenge, and the prince hath promised a golden vase for the man who carries himself best, and all the court is in a buzz over it.\"\n\n\"Why should the knights have all the sport?\" growled Hordle John. \"Could they not set up five archers for the honor of Aquitaine and of Gascony?\"\n\n\"Or five men-at-arms,\" said Black Simon.\n\n\"But who are the English knights?\" asked Hawtayne.\n\n\"There are three hundred and forty-one in the town,\" said Aylward, \"and I hear that three hundred and forty cartels and defiances have already been sent in, the only one missing being Sir John Ravensholme, who is in his bed with the sweating sickness, and cannot set foot to ground.\"\n\n\"I have heard of it from one of the archers of the guard,\" cried a bowman from among the straw; \"I hear that the prince wished to break a lance, but that Chandos would not hear of it, for the game is likely to be a rough one.\"\n\n\"Then there is Chandos.\"\n\n\"Nay, the prince would not permit it. He is to be marshal of the lists, with Sir William Felton and the Duc d'Armagnac. The English will be the Lord Audley, Sir Thomas Percy, Sir Thomas Wake, Sir William Beauchamp, and our own very good lord and leader.\"\n\n\"Hurrah for him, and God be with him!\" cried several. \"It is honor to draw string in his service.\"\n\n\"So you may well say,\" said Aylward. \"By my ten finger-bones! if you march behind the pennon of the five roses you are like to see all that a good bowman would wish to see. Ha! yes, mes garcons, you laugh, but, by my hilt! you may not laugh when you find yourselves where he will take you, for you can never tell what strange vow he may not have sworn to. I see that he has a patch over his eye, even as he had at Poictiers. There will come bloodshed of that patch, or I am the more mistaken.\"\n\n\"How chanced it at Poictiers, good Master Aylward?\" asked one of the young archers, leaning upon his elbows, with his eyes fixed respectfully upon the old bowman's rugged face.\n\n\"Aye, Aylward, tell us of it,\" cried Hordle John.\n\n\"Here is to old Samkin Aylward!\" shouted several at the further end of the room, waving their blackjacks in the air.\n\n\"Ask him!\" said Aylward modestly, nodding towards Black Simon. \"He saw more than I did. And yet, by the holy nails! there was not very much that I did not see either.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes,\" said Simon, shaking his head, \"it was a great day. I never hope to see such another. There were some fine archers who drew their last shaft that day. We shall never see better men, Aylward.\"\n\n\"By my hilt! no. There was little Robby Withstaff, and Andrew Salblaster, and Wat Alspaye, who broke the neck of the German. Mon Dieu! what men they were! Take them how you would, at long butts or short, hoyles, rounds, or rovers, better bowmen never twirled a shaft over their thumbnails.\"\n\n\"But the fight, Aylward, the fight!\" cried several impatiently.\n\n\"Let me fill my jack first, boys, for it is a thirsty tale. It was at the first fall of the leaf that the prince set forth, and he passed through Auvergne, and Berry, and Anjou, and Touraine. In Auvergne the maids are kind, but the wines are sour. In Berry it is the women that are sour, but the wines are rich. Anjou, however, is a very good land for bowmen, for wine and women are all that heart could wish. In Touraine I got nothing save a broken pate, but at Vierzon I had a great good fortune, for I had a golden pyx from the minster, for which I afterwards got nine Genoan janes from the goldsmith in the Rue Mont Olive. From thence we went to Bourges, were I had a tunic of flame-colored silk and a very fine pair of shoes with tassels of silk and drops of silver.\"\n\n\"From a stall, Aylward?\" asked one of the young archers.\n\n\"Nay, from a man's feet, lad. I had reason to think that he might not need them again, seeing that a thirty-inch shaft had feathered in his back.\"\n\n\"And what then, Aylward?\"\n\n\"On we went, coz, some six thousand of us, until we came to Issodun, and there again a very great thing befell.\"\n\n\"A battle, Aylward?\"\n\n\"Nay, nay; a greater thing than that. There is little to be gained out of a battle, unless one have the fortune to win a ransom. At Issodun I and three Welshmen came upon a house which all others had passed, and we had the profit of it to ourselves. For myself, I had a fine feather-bed\u2014a thing which you will not see in a long day's journey in England. You have seen it, Alleyne, and you, John. You will bear me out that it is a noble bed. We put it on a sutler's mule, and bore it after the army. It was on my mind that I would lay it by until I came to start house of mine own, and I have it now in a very safe place near Lyndhurst.\"\n\n\"And what then, master-bowman?\" asked Hawtayne. \"By St. Christopher! it is indeed a fair and goodly life which you have chosen, for you gather up the spoil as a Warsash man gathers lobsters, without grace or favor from any man.\"\n\n\"You are right, master-shipman,\" said another of the older archers. \"It is an old bowyer's rede that the second feather of a fenny goose is better than the pinion of a tame one. Draw on old lad, for I have come between you and the clout.\"\n\n\"On we went then,\" said Aylward, after a long pull at his blackjack. \"There were some six thousand of us, with the prince and his knights, and the feather-bed upon a sutler's mule in the centre. We made great havoc in Touraine, until we came into Romorantin, where I chanced upon a gold chain and two bracelets of jasper, which were stolen from me the same day by a black-eyed wench from the Ardennes. Mon Dieu! there are some folk who have no fear of Domesday in them, and no sign of grace in their souls, for ever clutching and clawing at another man's chattels.\"\n\n\"But the battle, Aylward, the battle!\" cried several, amid a burst of laughter.\n\n\"I come to it, my young war-pups. Well, then, the King of France had followed us with fifty thousand men, and he made great haste to catch us, but when he had us he scarce knew what to do with us, for we were so drawn up among hedges and vineyards that they could not come nigh us, save by one lane. On both sides were archers, men-at-arms and knights behind, and in the centre the baggage, with my feather-bed upon a sutler's mule. Three hundred chosen knights came straight for it, and, indeed, they were very brave men, but such a drift of arrows met them that few came back. Then came the Germans, and they also fought very bravely, so that one or two broke through the archers and came as far as the feather-bed, but all to no purpose. Then out rides our own little hothead with the patch over his eye, and my Lord Audley with his four Cheshire squires, and a few others of like kidney, and after them went the prince and Chandos, and then the whole throng of us, with axe and sword, for we had shot away our arrows. Ma foi! it was a foolish thing, for we came forth from the hedges, and there was naught to guard the baggage had they ridden round behind us. But all went well with us, and the king was taken, and little Robby Withstaff and I fell in with a wain with twelve firkins of wine for the king's own table, and, by my hilt! if you ask me what happened after that, I cannot answer you, nor can little Robby Withstaff either.\"\n\n\"And next day?\"\n\n\"By my faith! we did not tarry long, but we hied back to Bordeaux, where we came in safety with the King of France and also the feather-bed. I sold my spoil, mes garcons, for as many gold-pieces as I could hold in my hufken, and for seven days I lit twelve wax candles upon the altar of St. Andrew; for if you forget the blessed when things are well with you, they are very likely to forget you when you have need of them. I have a score of one hundred and nineteen pounds of wax against the holy Andrew, and, as he was a very just man, I doubt not that I shall have full weigh and measure when I have most need of it.\"\n\n\"Tell me, master Aylward,\" cried a young fresh-faced archer at the further end of the room, \"what was this great battle about?\"\n\n\"Why, you jack-fool, what would it be about save who should wear the crown of France?\"\n\n\"I thought that mayhap it might be as to who should have this feather-bed of thine.\"\n\n\"If I come down to you, Silas, I may lay my belt across your shoulders,\" Aylward answered, amid a general shout of laughter. \"But it is time young chickens went to roost when they dare cackle against their elders. It is late, Simon.\"\n\n\"Nay, let us have another song.\"\n\n\"Here is Arnold of Sowley will troll as good a stave as any man in the Company.\"\n\n\"Nay, we have one here who is second to none,\" said Hawtayne, laying his hand upon big John's shoulder. \"I have heard him on the cog with a voice like the wave upon the shore. I pray you, friend, to give us 'The Bells of Milton,' or, if you will, 'The Franklin's Maid.'\"\n\nHordle John drew the back of his hand across his mouth, fixed his eyes upon the corner of the ceiling, and bellowed forth, in a voice which made the torches flicker, the southland ballad for which he had been asked:\u2014\n\n\u2003The franklin he hath gone to roam,\n\n\u2003The franklin's maid she bides at home,\n\n\u2003But she is cold and coy and staid,\n\n\u2003And who may win the franklin's maid?\n\n\u2003There came a knight of high renown\n\n\u2003In bassinet and ciclatoun;\n\n\u2003On bended knee full long he prayed,\n\n\u2003He might not win the franklin's maid.\n\n\u2003There came a squire so debonair\n\n\u2003His dress was rich, his words were fair,\n\n\u2003He sweetly sang, he deftly played:\n\n\u2003He could not win the franklin's maid.\n\n\u2003There came a mercer wonder-fine\n\n\u2003With velvet cap and gaberdine;\n\n\u2003For all his ships, for all his trade\n\n\u2003He could not buy the franklin's maid.\n\n\u2003There came an archer bold and true,\n\n\u2003With bracer guard and stave of yew;\n\n\u2003His purse was light, his jerkin frayed;\n\n\u2003Haro, alas! the franklin's maid!\n\n\u2003Oh, some have laughed and some have cried\n\n\u2003And some have scoured the country-side!\n\n\u2003But off they ride through wood and glade,\n\n\u2003The bowman and the franklin's maid.\n\nA roar of delight from his audience, with stamping of feet and beating of blackjacks against the ground, showed how thoroughly the song was to their taste, while John modestly retired into a quart pot, which he drained in four giant gulps. \"I sang that ditty in Hordle ale-house ere I ever thought to be an archer myself,\" quoth he.\n\n\"Fill up your stoups!\" cried Black Simon, thrusting his own goblet into the open hogshead in front of him. \"Here is a last cup to the White Company, and every brave boy who walks behind the roses of Loring!\"\n\n\"To the wood, the flax, and the gander's wing!\" said an old gray-headed archer on the right.\n\n\"To a gentle loose, and the King of Spain for a mark at fourteen score!\" cried another.\n\n\"To a bloody war!\" shouted a fourth. \"Many to go and few to come!\"\n\n\"With the most gold to the best steel!\" added a fifth.\n\n\"And a last cup to the maids of our heart!\" cried Aylward. \"A steady hand and a true eye, boys; so let two quarts be a bowman's portion.\" With shout and jest and snatch of song they streamed from the room, and all was peaceful once more in the \"Rose de Guienne.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW ENGLAND HELD THE LISTS AT BORDEAUX.", + "text": "So used were the good burghers of Bordeaux to martial display and knightly sport, that an ordinary joust or tournament was an everyday matter with them. The fame and brilliancy of the prince's court had drawn the knights-errant and pursuivants-of-arms from every part of Europe. In the long lists by the Garonne on the landward side of the northern gate there had been many a strange combat, when the Teutonic knight, fresh from the conquest of the Prussian heathen, ran a course against the knight of Calatrava, hardened by continual struggle against the Moors, or cavaliers from Portugal broke a lance with Scandinavian warriors from the further shore of the great Northern Ocean. Here fluttered many an outland pennon, bearing symbol and blazonry from the banks of the Danube, the wilds of Lithuania and the mountain strongholds of Hungary; for chivalry was of no clime and of no race, nor was any land so wild that the fame and name of the prince had not sounded through it from border to border.\n\nGreat, however, was the excitement through town and district when it was learned that on the third Wednesday in Advent there would be held a passage-at-arms in which five knights of England would hold the lists against all comers. The great concourse of noblemen and famous soldiers, the national character of the contest, and the fact that this was a last trial of arms before what promised to be an arduous and bloody war, all united to make the event one of the most notable and brilliant that Bordeaux had ever seen. On the eve of the contest the peasants flocked in from the whole district of the Medoc, and the fields beyond the walls were whitened with the tents of those who could find no warmer lodging. From the distant camp of Dax, too, and from Blaye, Bourge, Libourne, St. Emilion, Castillon, St. Macaire, Cardillac, Ryons, and all the cluster of flourishing towns which look upon Bordeaux as their mother, there thronged an unceasing stream of horsemen and of footmen, all converging upon the great city. By the morning of the day on which the courses were to be run, not less than eighty people had assembled round the lists and along the low grassy ridge which looks down upon the scene of the encounter.\n\nIt was, as may well be imagined, no easy matter among so many noted cavaliers to choose out five on either side who should have precedence over their fellows. A score of secondary combats had nearly arisen from the rivalries and bad blood created by the selection, and it was only the influence of the prince and the efforts of the older barons which kept the peace among so many eager and fiery soldiers. Not till the day before the courses were the shields finally hung out for the inspection of the ladies and the heralds, so that all men might know the names of the champions and have the opportunity to prefer any charge against them, should there be stain upon them which should disqualify them from taking part in so noble and honorable a ceremony.\n\nSir Hugh Calverley and Sir Robert Knolles had not yet returned from their raid into the marches of the Navarre, so that the English party were deprived of two of their most famous lances. Yet there remained so many good names that Chandos and Felton, to whom the selection had been referred, had many an earnest consultation, in which every feat of arms and failure or success of each candidate was weighed and balanced against the rival claims of his companions. Lord Audley of Cheshire, the hero of Poictiers, and Loring of Hampshire, who was held to be the second lance in the army, were easily fixed upon. Then, of the younger men, Sir Thomas Percy of Northumberland, Sir Thomas Wake of Yorkshire, and Sir William Beauchamp of Gloucestershire, were finally selected to uphold the honor of England. On the other side were the veteran Captal de Buch and the brawny Olivier de Clisson, with the free companion Sir Perducas d'Albret, the valiant Lord of Mucident, and Sigismond von Altenstadt, of the Teutonic Order. The older soldiers among the English shook their heads as they looked upon the escutcheons of these famous warriors, for they were all men who had spent their lives upon the saddle, and bravery and strength can avail little against experience and wisdom of war.\n\n\"By my faith! Sir John,\" said the prince as he rode through the winding streets on his way to the list, \"I should have been glad to have splintered a lance to-day. You have seen me hold a spear since I had strength to lift one, and should know best whether I do not merit a place among this honorable company.\"\n\n\"There is no better seat and no truer lance, sire,\" said Chandos; \"but, if I may say so without fear of offence, it were not fitting that you should join in this debate.\"\n\n\"And why, Sir John?\"\n\n\"Because, sire, it is not for you to take part with Gascons against English, or with English against Gascons, seeing that you are lord of both. We are not too well loved by the Gascons now, and it is but the golden link of your princely coronet which holds us together. If that be snapped I know not what would follow.\"\n\n\"Snapped, Sir John!\" cried the prince, with an angry sparkle in his dark eyes. \"What manner of talk is this? You speak as though the allegiance of our people were a thing which might be thrown off or on like a falcon's jessel.\"\n\n\"With a sorry hack one uses whip and spur, sire,\" said Chandos; \"but with a horse of blood and spirit a good cavalier is gentle and soothing, coaxing rather than forcing. These folk are strange people, and you must hold their love, even as you have it now, for you will get from their kindness what all the pennons in your army could not wring from them.\"\n\n\"You are over-grave to-day, John,\" the prince answered. \"We may keep such questions for our council-chamber. But how now, my brothers of Spain, and of Majorca, what think you of this challenge?\"\n\n\"I look to see some handsome joisting,\" said Don Pedro, who rode with the King of Majorca upon the right of the prince, while Chandos was on the left. \"By St. James of Compostella! but these burghers would bear some taxing. See to the broadcloth and velvet that the rogues bear upon their backs! By my troth! if they were my subjects they would be glad enough to wear falding and leather ere I had done with them. But mayhap it is best to let the wool grow long ere you clip it.\"\n\n\"It is our pride,\" the prince answered coldly, \"that we rule over freemen and not slaves.\"\n\n\"Every man to his own humor,\" said Pedro carelessly. \"Carajo! there is a sweet face at yonder window! Don Fernando, I pray you to mark the house, and to have the maid brought to us at the abbey.\"\n\n\"Nay, brother, nay!\" cried the prince impatiently. \"I have had occasion to tell you more than once that things are not ordered in this way in Aquitaine.\"\n\n\"A thousand pardons, dear friend,\" the Spaniard answered quickly, for a flush of anger had sprung to the dark cheek of the English prince. \"You make my exile so like a home that I forget at times that I am not in very truth back in Castile. Every land hath indeed its ways and manners; but I promise you, Edward, that when you are my guest in Toledo or Madrid you shall not yearn in vain for any commoner's daughter on whom you may deign to cast your eye.\"\n\n\"Your talk, sire,\" said the prince still more coldly, \"is not such as I love to hear from your lips. I have no taste for such amours as you speak of, and I have sworn that my name shall be coupled with that of no woman save my ever dear wife.\"\n\n\"Ever the mirror of true chivalry!\" exclaimed Pedro, while James of Majorca, frightened at the stern countenance of their all-powerful protector, plucked hard at the mantle of his brother exile.\n\n\"Have a care, cousin,\" he whispered; \"for the sake of the Virgin have a care, for you have angered him.\"\n\n\"Pshaw! fear not,\" the other answered in the same low tone. \"If I miss one stoop I will strike him on the next. Mark me else. Fair cousin,\" he continued, turning to the prince, \"these be rare men-at-arms and lusty bowmen. It would be hard indeed to match them.\"\n\n\"They have Journeyed far, sire, but they have never yet found their match.\"\n\n\"Nor ever will, I doubt not. I feel myself to be back upon my throne when I look at them. But tell me, dear coz, what shall we do next, when we have driven this bastard Henry from the kingdom which he hath filched?\"\n\n\"We shall then compel the King of Aragon to place our good friend and brother James of Majorca upon the throne.\"\n\n\"Noble and generous prince!\" cried the little monarch.\n\n\"That done,\" said King Pedro, glancing out of the corners of his eyes at the young conqueror, \"we shall unite the forces of England, of Aquitaine, of Spain and of Majorca. It would be shame to us if we did not do some great deed with such forces ready to our hand.\"\n\n\"You say truly, brother,\" cried the prince, his eyes kindling at the thought. \"Methinks that we could not do anything more pleasing to Our Lady than to drive the heathen Moors out of the country.\"\n\n\"I am with you, Edward, as true as hilt to blade. But, by St. James! we shall not let these Moors make mock at us from over the sea. We must take ship and thrust them from Africa.\"\n\n\"By heaven, yes!\" cried the prince. \"And it is the dream of my heart that our English pennons shall wave upon the Mount of Olives, and the lions and lilies float over the holy city.\"\n\n\"And why not, dear coz? Your bowmen have cleared a path to Paris, and why not to Jerusalem? Once there, your arms might rest.\"\n\n\"Nay, there is more to be done,\" cried the prince, carried away by the ambitious dream. \"There is still the city of Constantine to be taken, and war to be waged against the Soldan of Damascus. And beyond him again there is tribute to be levied from the Cham of Tartary and from the kingdom of Cathay. Ha! John, what say you? Can we not go as far eastward as Richard of the Lion Heart?\"\n\n\"Old John will bide at home, sire,\" said the rugged soldier. \"By my soul! as long as I am seneschal of Aquitaine I will find enough to do in guarding the marches which you have entrusted to me. It would be a blithe day for the King of France when he heard that the seas lay between him and us.\"\n\n\"By my soul! John,\" said the prince, \"I have never known you turn laggard before.\"\n\n\"The babbling hound, sire, is not always the first at the mort,\" the old knight answered.\n\n\"Nay, my true-heart! I have tried you too often not to know. But, by my soul! I have not seen so dense a throng since the day that we brought King John down Cheapside.\"\n\nIt was indeed an enormous crowd which covered the whole vast plain from the line of vineyards to the river bank. From the northern gate the prince and his companions looked down at a dark sea of heads, brightened here and there by the colored hoods of the women, or by the sparkling headpieces of archers and men-at-arms. In the centre of this vast assemblage the lists seemed but a narrow strip of green marked out with banners and streamers, while a gleam of white with a flutter of pennons at either end showed where the marquees were pitched which served as the dressing-rooms of the combatants. A path had been staked off from the city gate to the stands which had been erected for the court and the nobility. Down this, amid the shouts of the enormous multitude, the prince cantered with his two attendant kings, his high officers of state, and his long train of lords and ladies, courtiers, counsellors, and soldiers, with toss of plume and flash of jewel, sheen of silk and glint of gold\u2014as rich and gallant a show as heart could wish. The head of the cavalcade had reached the lists ere the rear had come clear of the city gate, for the fairest and the bravest had assembled from all the broad lands which are watered by the Dordogne and the Garonne. Here rode dark-browed cavaliers from the sunny south, fiery soldiers from Gascony, graceful courtiers of Limousin or Saintonge, and gallant young Englishmen from beyond the seas. Here too were the beautiful brunettes of the Gironde, with eyes which out-flashed their jewels, while beside them rode their blonde sisters of England, clear cut and aquiline, swathed in swans'-down and in ermine, for the air was biting though the sun was bright. Slowly the long and glittering train wound into the lists, until every horse had been tethered by the varlets in waiting, and every lord and lady seated in the long stands which stretched, rich in tapestry and velvet and blazoned arms, on either side of the centre of the arena.\n\nThe holders of the lists occupied the end which was nearest to the city gate. There, in front of their respective pavilions, flew the martlets of Audley, the roses of Loring, the scarlet bars of Wake, the lion of the Percies and the silver wings of the Beauchamps, each supported by a squire clad in hanging green stuff to represent so many Tritons, and bearing a huge conch-shell in their left hands. Behind the tents the great warhorses, armed at all points, champed and reared, while their masters sat at the doors of their pavilions, with their helmets upon their knees, chatting as to the order of the day's doings. The English archers and men-at-arms had mustered at that end of the lists, but the vast majority of the spectators were in favor of the attacking party, for the English had declined in popularity ever since the bitter dispute as to the disposal of the royal captive after the battle of Poictiers. Hence the applause was by no means general when the herald-at-arms proclaimed, after a flourish of trumpets, the names and styles of the knights who were prepared, for the honor of their country and for the love of their ladies, to hold the field against all who might do them the favor to run a course with them. On the other hand, a deafening burst of cheering greeted the rival herald, who, advancing from the other end of the lists, rolled forth the well-known titles of the five famous warriors who had accepted the defiance.\n\n\"Faith, John,\" said the prince, \"it sounds as though you were right. Ha! my grace D'Armagnac, it seems that our friends on this side will not grieve if our English champions lose the day.\"\n\n\"It may be so, sire,\" the Gascon nobleman answered. \"I have little doubt that in Smithfield or at Windsor an English crowd would favor their own countrymen.\"\n\n\"By my faith! that's easily seen,\" said the prince, laughing, \"for a few score English archers at yonder end are bellowing as though they would out-shout the mighty multitude. I fear that they will have little to shout over this tourney, for my gold vase has small prospect of crossing the water. What are the conditions, John?\"\n\n\"They are to tilt singly not less than three courses, sire, and the victory to rest with that party which shall have won the greater number of courses, each pair continuing till one or other have the vantage. He who carries himself best of the victors hath the prize, and he who is judged best of the other party hath a jewelled clasp. Shall I order that the nakirs sound, sire?\"\n\nThe prince nodded, and the trumpets rang out, while the champions rode forth one after the other, each meeting his opponent in the centre of the lists. Sir William Beauchamp went down before the practiced lance of the Captal de Buch. Sir Thomas Percy won the vantage over the Lord of Mucident, and the Lord Audley struck Sir Perducas d'Albret from the saddle. The burly De Clisson, however, restored the hopes of the attackers by beating to the ground Sir Thomas Wake of Yorkshire. So far, there was little to choose betwixt challengers and challenged.\n\n\"By Saint James of Santiago!\" cried Don Pedro, with a tinge of color upon his pale cheeks, \"win who will, this has been a most notable contest.\"\n\n\"Who comes next for England, John?\" asked the prince in a voice which quivered with excitement.\n\n\"Sir Nigel Loring of Hampshire, sire.\"\n\n\"Ha! he is a man of good courage, and skilled in the use of all weapons.\"\n\n\"He is indeed, sire. But his eyes, like my own, are the worse for wars. Yet he can tilt or play his part at hand-strokes as merrily as ever. It was he, sire, who won the golden crown which Queen Philippa, your royal mother, gave to be jousted for by all the knights of England after the harrying of Calais. I have heard that at Twynham Castle there is a buffet which groans beneath the weight of his prizes.\"\n\n\"I pray that my vase may join them,\" said the prince. \"But here is the cavalier of Germany, and by my soul! he looks like a man of great valor and hardiness. Let them run their full three courses, for the issue is over-great to hang upon one.\"\n\nAs the prince spoke, amid a loud flourish of trumpets and the shouting of the Gascon party, the last of the assailants rode gallantly into the lists. He was a man of great size, clad in black armor without blazonry or ornament of any kind, for all worldly display was forbidden by the rules of the military brotherhood to which he belonged. No plume or nobloy fluttered from his plain tilting salade, and even his lance was devoid of the customary banderole. A white mantle fluttered behind him, upon the left side of which was marked the broad black cross picked out with silver which was the well-known badge of the Teutonic Order. Mounted upon a horse as large, as black, and as forbidding as himself, he cantered slowly forward, with none of those prancings and gambades with which a cavalier was accustomed to show his command over his charger. Gravely and sternly he inclined his head to the prince, and took his place at the further end of the arena.\n\nHe had scarce done so before Sir Nigel rode out from the holders' enclosure, and galloping at full speed down the lists, drew his charger up before the prince's stand with a jerk which threw it back upon its haunches. With white armor, blazoned shield, and plume of ostrich-feathers from his helmet, he carried himself in so jaunty and joyous a fashion, with tossing pennon and curveting charger, that a shout of applause ran the full circle of the arena. With the air of a man who hastes to a joyous festival, he waved his lance in salute, and reining the pawing horse round without permitting its fore-feet to touch the ground, he hastened back to his station.\n\nA great hush fell over the huge multitude as the two last champions faced each other. A double issue seemed to rest upon their contest, for their personal fame was at stake as well as their party's honor. Both were famous warriors, but as their exploits had been performed in widely sundered countries, they had never before been able to cross lances. A course between such men would have been enough in itself to cause the keenest interest, apart from its being the crisis which would decide who should be the victors of the day. For a moment they waited\u2014the German sombre and collected, Sir Nigel quivering in every fibre with eagerness and fiery resolution. Then, amid a long-drawn breath from the spectators, the glove fell from the marshal's hand, and the two steel-clad horsemen met like a thunderclap in front of the royal stand. The German, though he reeled for an instant before the thrust of the Englishman, struck his opponent so fairly upon the vizor that the laces burst, the plumed helmet flew to pieces, and Sir Nigel galloped on down the lists with his bald head shimmering in the sunshine. A thousand waving scarves and tossing caps announced that the first bout had fallen to the popular party.\n\nThe Hampshire knight was not a man to be disheartened by a reverse. He spurred back to the pavilion, and was out in a few instants with another helmet. The second course was so equal that the keenest judges could not discern any vantage. Each struck fire from the other's shield, and each endured the jarring shock as though welded to the horse beneath him. In the final bout, however, Sir Nigel struck his opponent with so true an aim that the point of the lance caught between the bars of his vizor and tore the front of his helmet out, while the German, aiming somewhat low, and half stunned by the shock, had the misfortune to strike his adversary upon the thigh, a breach of the rules of the tilting-yard, by which he not only sacrificed his chances of success, but would also have forfeited his horse and his armor, had the English knight chosen to claim them. A roar of applause from the English soldiers, with an ominous silence from the vast crowd who pressed round the barriers, announced that the balance of victory lay with the holders. Already the ten champions had assembled in front of the prince to receive his award, when a harsh bugle call from the further end of the lists drew all eyes to a new and unexpected arrival." + }, + { + "title": "HOW A CHAMPION CAME FORTH FROM THE EAST.", + "text": "The Bordeaux lists were, as has already been explained, situated upon the plain near the river upon those great occasions when the tilting-ground in front of the Abbey of St. Andrew's was deemed to be too small to contain the crowd. On the eastern side of this plain the country-side sloped upwards, thick with vines in summer, but now ridged with the brown bare enclosures. Over the gently rising plain curved the white road which leads inland, usually flecked with travellers, but now with scarce a living form upon it, so completely had the lists drained all the district of its inhabitants. Strange it was to see such a vast concourse of people, and then to look upon that broad, white, empty highway which wound away, bleak and deserted, until it narrowed itself to a bare streak against the distant uplands.\n\nShortly after the contest had begun, any one looking from the lists along this road might have remarked, far away in the extreme distance, two brilliant and sparkling points which glittered and twinkled in the bright shimmer of the winter sun. Within an hour these had become clearer and nearer, until they might be seen to come from the reflection from the headpieces of two horsemen who were riding at the top of their speed in the direction of Bordeaux. Another half-hour had brought them so close that every point of their bearing and equipment could be discerned. The first was a knight in full armor, mounted upon a brown horse with a white blaze upon breast and forehead. He was a short man of great breadth of shoulder, with vizor closed, and no blazonry upon his simple white surcoat or plain black shield. The other, who was evidently his squire and attendant, was unarmed save for the helmet upon his head, but bore in his right hand a very long and heavy oaken spear which belonged to his master. In his left hand the squire held not only the reins of his own horse but those of a great black warhorse, fully harnessed, which trotted along at his side. Thus the three horses and their two riders rode swiftly to the lists, and it was the blare of the trumpet sounded by the squire as his lord rode into the arena which had broken in upon the prize-giving and drawn away the attention and interest of the spectators.\n\n\"Ha, John!\" cried the prince, craning his neck, \"who is this cavalier, and what is it that he desires?\"\n\n\"On my word, sire,\" replied Chandos, with the utmost surprise upon his face, \"it is my opinion that he is a Frenchman.\"\n\n\"A Frenchman!\" repeated Don Pedro. \"And how can you tell that, my Lord Chandos, when he has neither coat-armor, crest, or blazonry?\"\n\n\"By his armor, sire, which is rounder at elbow and at shoulder than any of Bordeaux or of England. Italian he might be were his bassinet more sloped, but I will swear that those plates were welded betwixt this and Rhine. Here comes his squire, however, and we shall hear what strange fortune hath brought him over the marches.\"\n\nAs he spoke the attendant cantered up the grassy enclosure, and pulling up his steed in front of the royal stand, blew a second fanfare upon his bugle. He was a raw-boned, swarthy-cheeked man, with black bristling beard and a swaggering bearing.\n\nHaving sounded his call, he thrust the bugle into his belt, and, pushing his way betwixt the groups of English and of Gascon knights, he reined up within a spear's length of the royal party.\n\n\"I come,\" he shouted in a hoarse, thick voice, with a strong Breton accent, \"as squire and herald from my master, who is a very valiant pursuivant-of-arms, and a liegeman to the great and powerful monarch, Charles, king of the French. My master has heard that there is jousting here, and prospect of honorable advancement, so he has come to ask that some English cavalier will vouchsafe for the love of his lady to run a course with sharpened lances with him, or to meet him with sword, mace, battle-axe, or dagger. He bade me say, however, that he would fight only with a true Englishman, and not with any mongrel who is neither English nor French, but speaks with the tongue of the one, and fights under the banner of the other.\"\n\n\"Sir!\" cried De Clisson, with a voice of thunder, while his countrymen clapped their hands to their swords. The squire, however, took no notice of their angry faces, but continued with his master's message.\n\n\"He is now ready, sire,\" he said, \"albeit his destrier has travelled many miles this day, and fast, for we were in fear lest we come too late for the jousting.\"\n\n\"Ye have indeed come too late,\" said the prince, \"seeing that the prize is about to be awarded; yet I doubt not that one of these gentlemen will run a course for the sake of honor with this cavalier of France.\"\n\n\"And as to the prize, sire,\" quoth Sir Nigel, \"I am sure that I speak for all when I say this French knight hath our leave to bear it away with him if he can fairly win it.\"\n\n\"Bear word of this to your master,\" said the prince, \"and ask him which of these five Englishmen he would desire to meet. But stay; your master bears no coat-armor, and we have not yet heard his name.\"\n\n\"My master, sire, is under vow to the Virgin neither to reveal his name nor to open his vizor until he is back upon French ground once more.\"\n\n\"Yet what assurance have we,\" said the prince, \"that this is not some varlet masquerading in his master's harness, or some caitiff knight, the very touch of whose lance might bring infamy upon an honorable gentleman?\"\n\n\"It is not so, sire,\" cried the squire earnestly. \"There is no man upon earth who would demean himself by breaking a lance with my master.\"\n\n\"You speak out boldly, squire,\" the prince answered; \"but unless I have some further assurance of your master's noble birth and gentle name I cannot match the choicest lances of my court against him.\"\n\n\"You refuse, sire?\"\n\n\"I do refuse.\"\n\n\"Then, sire, I was bidden to ask you from my master whether you would consent if Sir John Chandos, upon hearing my master's name, should assure you that he was indeed a man with whom you might yourself cross swords without indignity.\"\n\n\"I ask no better,\" said the prince.\n\n\"Then I must ask, Lord Chandos, that you will step forth. I have your pledge that the name shall remain ever a secret, and that you will neither say nor write one word which might betray it. The name is\u2014\u2014\" He stooped down from his horse and whispered something into the old knight's ear which made him start with surprise, and stare with much curiosity at the distant Knight, who was sitting his charger at the further end of the arena.\n\n\"Is this indeed sooth?\" he exclaimed.\n\n\"It is, my lord, and I swear it by St. Ives of Brittany.\"\n\n\"I might have known it,\" said Chandos, twisting his moustache, and still looking thoughtfully at the cavalier.\n\n\"What then, Sir John?\" asked the prince.\n\n\"Sire, this is a knight whom it is indeed great honor to meet, and I would that your grace would grant me leave to send my squire for my harness, for I would dearly love to run a course with him.\n\n\"Nay, nay, Sir John, you have gained as much honor as one man can bear, and it were hard if you could not rest now. But I pray you, squire, to tell your master that he is very welcome to our court, and that wines and spices will be served him, if he would refresh himself before jousting.\"\n\n\"My master will not drink,\" said the squire.\n\n\"Let him then name the gentleman with whom he would break a spear.\"\n\n\"He would contend with these five knights, each to choose such weapons as suit him best.\"\n\n\"I perceive,\" said the prince, \"that your master is a man of great heart and high of enterprise. But the sun already is low in the west, and there will scarce be light for these courses. I pray you, gentlemen, to take your places, that we may see whether this stranger's deeds are as bold as his words.\"\n\nThe unknown knight had sat like a statue of steel, looking neither to the right nor to the left during these preliminaries. He had changed from the horse upon which he had ridden, and bestrode the black charger which his squire had led beside him. His immense breadth, his stern composed appearance, and the mode in which he handled his shield and his lance, were enough in themselves to convince the thousands of critical spectators that he was a dangerous opponent. Aylward, who stood in the front row of the archers with Simon, big John, and others of the Company, had been criticising the proceedings from the commencement with the ease and freedom of a man who had spent his life under arms and had learned in a hard school to know at a glance the points of a horse and his rider. He stared now at the stranger with a wrinkled brow and the air of a man who is striving to stir his memory.\n\n\"By my hilt! I have seen the thick body of him before to-day. Yet I cannot call to mind where it could have been. At Nogent belike, or was it at Auray? Mark me, lads, this man will prove to be one of the best lances of France, and there are no better in the world.\"\n\n\"It is but child's play, this poking game,\" said John. \"I would fain try my hand at it, for, by the black rood! I think that it might be amended.\"\n\n\"What then would you do, John?\" asked several.\n\n\"There are many things which might be done,\" said the forester thoughtfully. \"Methinks that I would begin by breaking my spear.\"\n\n\"So they all strive to do.\"\n\n\"Nay, but not upon another man's shield. I would break it over my own knee.\"\n\n\"And what the better for that, old beef and bones?\" asked Black Simon.\n\n\"So I would turn what is but a lady's bodkin of a weapon into a very handsome club.\"\n\n\"And then, John?\"\n\n\"Then I would take the other's spear into my arm or my leg, or where it pleased him best to put it, and I would dash out his brains with my club.\"\n\n\"By my ten finger-bones! old John,\" said Aylward, \"I would give my feather-bed to see you at a spear-running. This is a most courtly and gentle sport which you have devised.\"\n\n\"So it seems to me,\" said John seriously. \"Or, again, one might seize the other round the middle, pluck him off his horse and bear him to the pavilion, there to hold him to ransom.\"\n\n\"Good!\" cried Simon, amid a roar of laughter from all the archers round. \"By Thomas of Kent I we shall make a camp-marshal of thee, and thou shalt draw up rules for our jousting. But, John, who is it that you would uphold in this knightly and pleasing fashion?\"\n\n\"What mean you?\"\n\n\"Why, John, so strong and strange a tilter must fight for the brightness of his lady's eyes or the curve of her eyelash, even as Sir Nigel does for the Lady Loring.\"\n\n\"I know not about that,\" said the big archer, scratching his head in perplexity. \"Since Mary hath played me false, I can scarce fight for her.\"\n\n\"Yet any woman will serve.\"\n\n\"There is my mother then,\" said John. \"She was at much pains at my upbringing, and, by my soul! I will uphold the curve of her eyelashes, for it tickleth my very heart-root to think of her. But who is here?\"\n\n\"It is Sir William Beauchamp. He is a valiant man, but I fear that he is scarce firm enough upon the saddle to bear the thrust of such a tilter as this stranger promises to be.\"\n\nAylward's words were speedily justified, for even as he spoke the two knights met in the centre of the lists. Beauchamp struck his opponent a shrewd blow upon the helmet, but was met with so frightful a thrust that he whirled out of his saddle and rolled over and over upon the ground. Sir Thomas Percy met with little better success, for his shield was split, his vambrace torn and he himself wounded slightly in the side. Lord Audley and the unknown knight struck each other fairly upon the helmet; but, while the stranger sat as firm and rigid as ever upon his charger, the Englishman was bent back to his horse's cropper by the weight of the blow, and had galloped half-way down the lists ere he could recover himself. Sir Thomas Wake was beaten to the ground with a battle-axe\u2014that being the weapon which he had selected\u2014and had to be carried to his pavilion. These rapid successes, gained one after the other over four celebrated warriors, worked the crowd up to a pitch of wonder and admiration. Thunders of applause from the English soldiers, as well as from the citizens and peasants, showed how far the love of brave and knightly deeds could rise above the rivalries of race.\n\n\"By my soul! John,\" cried the prince, with his cheek flushed and his eyes shining, \"this is a man of good courage and great hardiness. I could not have thought that there was any single arm upon earth which could have overthrown these four champions.\"\n\n\"He is indeed, as I have said, sire, a knight from whom much honor is to be gained. But the lower edge of the sun is wet, and it will be beneath the sea ere long.\"\n\n\"Here is Sir Nigel Loring, on foot and with his sword,\" said the prince. \"I have heard that he is a fine swordsman.\"\n\n\"The finest in your army, sire,\" Chandos answered. \"Yet I doubt not that he will need all his skill this day.\"\n\nAs he spoke, the two combatants advanced from either end in full armor with their two-handed swords sloping over their shoulders. The stranger walked heavily and with a measured stride, while the English knight advanced as briskly as though there was no iron shell to weigh down the freedom of his limbs. At four paces distance they stopped, eyed each other for a moment, and then in an instant fell to work with a clatter and clang as though two sturdy smiths were busy upon their anvils. Up and down went the long, shining blades, round and round they circled in curves of glimmering light, crossing, meeting, disengaging, with flash of sparks at every parry. Here and there bounded Sir Nigel, his head erect, his jaunty plume fluttering in the air, while his dark opponent sent in crashing blow upon blow, following fiercely up with cut and with thrust, but never once getting past the practised blade of the skilled swordsman. The crowd roared with delight as Sir Nigel would stoop his head to avoid a blow, or by some slight movement of his body allow some terrible thrust to glance harmlessly past him. Suddenly, however, his time came. The Frenchman, whirling up his sword, showed for an instant a chink betwixt his shoulder piece and the rerebrace which guarded his upper arm. In dashed Sir Nigel, and out again so swiftly that the eye could not follow the quick play of his blade, but a trickle of blood from the stranger's shoulder, and a rapidly widening red smudge upon his white surcoat, showed where the thrust had taken effect. The wound was, however, but a slight one, and the Frenchman was about to renew his onset, when, at a sign from the prince, Chandos threw down his baton, and the marshals of the lists struck up the weapons and brought the contest to an end.\n\n\"It were time to check it,\" said the prince, smiling, \"for Sir Nigel is too good a man for me to lose, and, by the five holy wounds! if one of those cuts came home I should have fears for our champion. What think you, Pedro?\"\n\n\"I think, Edward, that the little man was very well able to take care of himself. For my part, I should wish to see so well matched a pair fight on while a drop of blood remained in their veins.\"\n\n\"We must have speech with him. Such a man must not go from my court without rest or sup. Bring him hither, Chandos, and, certes, if the Lord Loring hath resigned his claim upon this goblet, it is right and proper that this cavalier should carry it to France with him as a sign of the prowess that he has shown this day.\"\n\nAs he spoke, the knight-errant, who had remounted his warhorse, galloped forward to the royal stand, with a silken kerchief bound round his wounded arm. The setting sun cast a ruddy glare upon his burnished arms, and sent his long black shadow streaming behind him up the level clearing. Pulling up his steed, he slightly inclined his head, and sat in the stern and composed fashion with which he had borne himself throughout, heedless of the applauding shouts and the flutter of kerchiefs from the long lines of brave men and of fair women who were looking down upon him.\n\n\"Sir knight,\" said the prince, \"we have all marvelled this day at this great skill and valor with which God has been pleased to endow you. I would fain that you should tarry at our court, for a time at least, until your hurt is healed and your horses rested..\"\n\n\"My hurt is nothing, sire, nor are my horses weary,\" returned the stranger in a deep, stern voice.\n\n\"Will you not at least hie back to Bordeaux with us, that you may drain a cup of muscadine and sup at our table?\"\n\n\"I will neither drink your wine nor sit at your table,\" returned the other. \"I bear no love for you or for your race, and there is nought that I wish at your hands until the day when I see the last sail which bears you back to your island vanishing away against the western sky.\"\n\n\"These are bitter words, sir knight,\" said Prince Edward, with an angry frown.\n\n\"And they come from a bitter heart,\" answered the unknown knight. \"How long is it since there has been peace in my hapless country? Where are the steadings, and orchards, and vineyards, which made France fair? Where are the cities which made her great? From Providence to Burgundy we are beset by every prowling hireling in Christendom, who rend and tear the country which you have left too weak to guard her own marches. Is it not a by-word that a man may ride all day in that unhappy land without seeing thatch upon roof or hearing the crow of cock? Does not one fair kingdom content you, that you should strive so for this other one which has no love for you? Pardieu! a true Frenchman's words may well be bitter, for bitter is his lot and bitter his thoughts as he rides through his thrice unhappy country.\"\n\n\"Sir knight,\" said the prince, \"you speak like a brave man, and our cousin of France is happy in having a cavalier who is so fit to uphold his cause either with tongue or with sword. But if you think such evil of us, how comes it that you have trusted yourselves to us without warranty or safe-conduct?\"\n\n\"Because I knew that you would be here, sire. Had the man who sits upon your right been ruler of this land, I had indeed thought twice before I looked to him for aught that was knightly or generous.\" With a soldierly salute, he wheeled round his horse, and, galloping down the lists, disappeared amid the dense crowd of footmen and of horsemen who were streaming away from the scene of the tournament.\n\n\"The insolent villain!\" cried Pedro, glaring furiously after him. \"I have seen a man's tongue torn from his jaws for less. Would it not be well even now, Edward, to send horsemen to hale him back? Bethink you that it may be one of the royal house of France, or at least some knight whose loss would be a heavy blow to his master. Sir William Felton, you are well mounted, gallop after the caitiff, I pray you.\"\n\n\"Do so, Sir William,\" said the prince, \"and give him this purse of a hundred nobles as a sign of the respect which I bear for him; for, by St. George! he has served his master this day even as I would wish liegeman of mine to serve me.\" So saying, the prince turned his back upon the King of Spain, and springing upon his horse, rode slowly homewards to the Abbey of Saint Andrew's." + }, + { + "title": "HOW SIR NIGEL WROTE TO TWYNHAM CASTLE.", + "text": "On the morning after the jousting, when Alleyne Edricson went, as was his custom, into his master's chamber to wait upon him in his dressing and to curl his hair, he found him already up and very busily at work. He sat at a table by the window, a deer-hound on one side of him and a lurcher on the other, his feet tucked away under the trestle on which he sat, and his tongue in his cheek, with the air of a man who is much perplexed. A sheet of vellum lay upon the board in front of him, and he held a pen in his hand, with which he had been scribbling in a rude schoolboy hand. So many were the blots, however, and so numerous the scratches and erasures, that he had at last given it up in despair, and sat with his single uncovered eye cocked upwards at the ceiling, as one who waits upon inspiration.\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" he cried, as Alleyne entered, \"you are the man who will stand by me in this matter. I have been in sore need of you, Alleyne.\"\n\n\"God be with you, my fair lord!\" the squire answered. \"I trust that you have taken no hurt from all that you have gone through yesterday.\"\n\n\"Nay; I feel the fresher for it, Alleyne. It has eased my joints, which were somewhat stiff from these years of peace. I trust, Alleyne, that thou didst very carefully note and mark the bearing and carriage of this knight of France; for it is time, now when you are young, that you should see all that is best, and mould your own actions in accordance. This was a man from whom much honor might be gained, and I have seldom met any one for whom I have conceived so much love and esteem. Could I but learn his name, I should send you to him with my cartel, that we might have further occasion to watch his goodly feats of arms.\"\n\n\"It is said, my fair lord, that none know his name save only the Lord Chandos, and that he is under vow not to speak it. So ran the gossip at the squires' table.\"\n\n\"Be he who he might, he was a very hardy gentleman. But I have a task here, Alleyne, which is harder to me than aught that was set before me yesterday.\"\n\n\"Can I help you, my lord?\"\n\n\"That indeed you can. I have been writing my greetings to my sweet wife; for I hear that a messenger goes from the prince to Southampton within the week, and he would gladly take a packet for me. I pray you, Alleyne, to cast your eyes upon what I have written, and see it they are such words as my lady will understand. My fingers, as you can see, are more used to iron and leather than to the drawing of strokes and turning of letters. What then? Is there aught amiss, that you should stare so?\"\n\n\"It is this first word, my lord. In what tongue were you pleased to write?\"\n\n\"In English; for my lady talks it more than she doth French.\n\n\"Yet this is no English word, my sweet lord. Here are four t's and never a letter betwixt them.\"\n\n\"By St. Paul! it seemed strange to my eye when I wrote it,\" said Sir Nigel. \"They bristle up together like a clump of lances. We must break their ranks and set them farther apart. The word is 'that.' Now I will read it to you, Alleyne, and you shall write it out fair; for we leave Bordeaux this day, and it would be great joy to me to think that the Lady Loring had word from me.\"\n\nAlleyne sat down as ordered, with a pen in his hand and a fresh sheet of parchment before him, while Sir Nigel slowly spelled out his letter, running his forefinger on from word to word.\n\n\"That my heart is with thee, my dear sweeting, is what thine own heart will assure thee of. All is well with us here, save that Pepin hath the mange on his back, and Pommers hath scarce yet got clear of his stiffness from being four days on ship-board, and the more so because the sea was very high, and we were like to founder on account of a hole in her side, which was made by a stone cast at us by certain sea-rovers, who may the saints have in their keeping, for they have gone from amongst us, as has young Terlake, and two-score mariners and archers, who would be the more welcome here as there is like to be a very fine war, with much honor and all hopes of advancement, for which I go to gather my Company together, who are now at Montaubon, where they pillage and destroy; yet I hope that, by God's help, I may be able to show that I am their master, even as, my sweet lady, I am thy servant.\"\n\n\"How of that, Alleyne?\" continued Sir Nigel, blinking at his squire, with an expression of some pride upon his face. \"Have I not told her all that hath befallen us?\"\n\n\"You have said much, my fair lord; and yet, if I may say so, it is somewhat crowded together, so that my Lady Loring can, mayhap, scarce follow it. Were it in shorter periods\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"Nay, it boots me not how you marshal them, as long as they are all there at the muster. Let my lady have the words, and she will place them in such order as pleases her best. But I would have you add what it would please her to know.\"\n\n\"That will I,\" said Alleyne, blithely, and bent to the task.\n\n\"My fair lady and mistress,\" he wrote, \"God hath had us in His keeping, and my lord is well and in good cheer. He hath won much honor at the jousting before the prince, when he alone was able to make it good against a very valiant man from France. Touching the moneys, there is enough and to spare until we reach Montaubon. Herewith, my fair lady, I send my humble regards, entreating you that you will give the same to your daughter, the Lady Maude. May the holy saints have you both in their keeping is ever the prayer of thy servant, ALLEYNE EDRICSON.\"\n\n\"That is very fairly set forth,\" said Sir Nigel, nodding his bald head as each sentence was read to him. \"And for thyself, Alleyne, if there be any dear friend to whom you would fain give greeting, I can send it for thee within this packet.\"\n\n\"There is none,\" said Alleyne, sadly.\n\n\"Have you no kinsfolk, then?\"\n\n\"None, save my brother.\"\n\n\"Ha! I had forgotten that there was ill blood betwixt you. But are there none in all England who love thee?\"\n\n\"None that I dare say so.\"\n\n\"And none whom you love?\"\n\n\"Nay, I will not say that,\" said Alleyne.\n\nSir Nigel shook his head and laughed softly to himself, \"I see how it is with you,\" he said. \"Have I not noted your frequent sighs and vacant eye? Is she fair?\"\n\n\"She is indeed,\" cried Alleyne from his heart, all tingling at this sudden turn of the talk.\n\n\"And good?\"\n\n\"As an angel.\"\n\n\"And yet she loves you not?\"\n\n\"Nay, I cannot say that she loves another.\"\n\n\"Then you have hopes?\"\n\n\"I could not live else.\"\n\n\"Then must you strive to be worthy of her love. Be brave and pure, fearless to the strong and humble to the weak; and so, whether this love prosper or no, you will have fitted yourself to be honored by a maiden's love, which is, in sooth, the highest guerdon which a true knight can hope for.\"\n\n\"Indeed, my lord, I do so strive,\" said Alleyne; \"but she is so sweet, so dainty, and of so noble a spirit, that I fear me that I shall never be worthy of her.\"\n\n\"By thinking so you become worthy. Is she then of noble birth?\"\n\n\"She is, my lord,\" faltered Alleyne.\n\n\"Of a knightly house?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Have a care, Alleyne, have a care!\" said Sir Nigel, kindly. \"The higher the steed the greater the fall. Hawk not at that which may be beyond thy flight.\"\n\n\"My lord, I know little of the ways and usages of the world,\" cried Alleyne, \"but I would fain ask your rede upon the matter. You have known my father and my kin: is not my family one of good standing and repute?\"\n\n\"Beyond all question.\"\n\n\"And yet you warn me that I must not place my love too high.\"\n\n\"Were Minstead yours, Alleyne, then, by St. Paul! I cannot think that any family in the land would not be proud to take you among them, seeing that you come of so old a strain. But while the Socman lives\u2014\u2014Ha, by my soul! if this is not Sir Oliver's step I am the more mistaken.\"\n\nAs he spoke, a heavy footfall was heard without, and the portly knight flung open the door and strode into the room.\n\n\"Why, my little coz,\" said he, \"I have come across to tell you that I live above the barber's in the Rue de la Tour, and that there is a venison pasty in the oven and two flasks of the right vintage on the table. By St. James! a blind man might find the place, for one has but to get in the wind from it, and follow the savory smell. Put on your cloak, then, and come, for Sir Walter Hewett and Sir Robert Briquet, with one or two others, are awaiting us.\"\n\n\"Nay, Oliver, I cannot be with you, for I must to Montaubon this day.\"\n\n\"To Montaubon? But I have heard that your Company is to come with my forty Winchester rascals to Dax.\"\n\n\"If you will take charge of them, Oliver. For I will go to Montaubon with none save my two squires and two archers. Then, when I have found the rest of my Company I shall lead them to Dax. We set forth this morning.\"\n\n\"Then I must back to my pasty,\" said Sir Oliver. \"You will find us at Dax, I doubt not, unless the prince throw me into prison, for he is very wroth against me.\"\n\n\"And why, Oliver?\"\n\n\"Pardieu! because I have sent my cartel, gauntlet, and defiance to Sir John Chandos and to Sir William Felton.\"\n\n\"To Chandos? In God's name, Oliver, why have you done this?\"\n\n\"Because he and the other have used me despitefully.\"\n\n\"And how?\"\n\n\"Because they have passed me over in choosing those who should joust for England. Yourself and Audley I could pass, coz, for you are mature men; but who are Wake, and Percy, and Beauchamp? By my soul! I was prodding for my food into a camp-kettle when they were howling for their pap. Is a man of my weight and substance to be thrown aside for the first three half-grown lads who have learned the trick of the tilt-yard? But hark ye, coz, I think of sending my cartel also to the prince.\"\n\n\"Oliver! Oliver! You are mad!\"\n\n\"Not I, i' faith! I care not a denier whether he be prince or no. By Saint James! I see that your squire's eyes are starting from his head like a trussed crab. Well, friend, we are all three men of Hampshire, and not lightly to be jeered at.\"\n\n\"Has he jeered at you than?\"\n\n\"Pardieu! yes, 'Old Sir Oliver's heart is still stout,' said one of his court. 'Else had it been out of keeping with the rest of him,' quoth the prince. 'And his arm is strong,' said another. 'So is the backbone of his horse,' quoth the prince. This very day I will send him my cartel and defiance.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, my dear Oliver,\" said Sir Nigel, laying his hand upon his angry friend's arm. \"There is naught in this, for it was but saying that you were a strong and robust man, who had need of a good destrier. And as to Chandos and Felton, bethink you that if when you yourself were young the older lances had ever been preferred, how would you then have had the chance to earn the good name and fame which you now bear? You do not ride as light as you did, Oliver, and I ride lighter by the weight of my hair, but it would be an ill thing if in the evening of our lives we showed that our hearts were less true and loyal than of old. If such a knight as Sir Oliver Buttesthorn may turn against his own prince for the sake of a light word, then where are we to look for steadfast faith and constancy?\"\n\n\"Ah! my dear little coz, it is easy to sit in the sunshine and preach to the man in the shadow. Yet you could ever win me over to your side with that soft voice of yours. Let us think no more of it then. But, holy Mother! I had forgot the pasty, and it will be as scorched as Judas Iscariot! Come, Nigel, lest the foul fiend get the better of me again.\"\n\n\"For one hour, then; for we march at mid-day. Tell Aylward, Alleyne, that he is to come with me to Montaubon, and to choose one archer for his comrade. The rest will to Dax when the prince starts, which will be before the feast of the Epiphany. Have Pommers ready at mid-day with my sycamore lance, and place my harness on the sumpter mule.\"\n\nWith these brief directions, the two old soldiers strode off together, while Alleyne hastened to get all in order for their journey." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE THREE COMRADES GAINED A MIGHTY TREASURE.", + "text": "It was a bright, crisp winter's day when the little party set off from Bordeaux on their journey to Montaubon, where the missing half of their Company had last been heard of. Sir Nigel and Ford had ridden on in advance, the knight upon his hackney, while his great warhorse trotted beside his squire. Two hours later Alleyne Edricson followed; for he had the tavern reckoning to settle, and many other duties which fell to him as squire of the body. With him came Aylward and Hordle John, armed as of old, but mounted for their journey upon a pair of clumsy Landes horses, heavy-headed and shambling, but of great endurance, and capable of jogging along all day, even when between the knees of the huge archer, who turned the scale at two hundred and seventy pounds. They took with them the sumpter mules, which carried in panniers the wardrobe and table furniture of Sir Nigel; for the knight, though neither fop nor epicure, was very dainty in small matters, and loved, however bare the board or hard the life, that his napery should still be white and his spoon of silver.\n\nThere had been frost during the night, and the white hard road rang loud under their horses' irons as they spurred through the east gate of the town, along the same broad highway which the unknown French champion had traversed on the day of the jousts. The three rode abreast, Alleyne Edricson with his eyes cast down and his mind distrait, for his thoughts were busy with the conversation which he had had with Sir Nigel in the morning. Had he done well to say so much, or had he not done better to have said more? What would the knight have said had he confessed to his love for the Lady Maude? Would he cast him off in disgrace, or might he chide him as having abused the shelter of his roof? It had been ready upon his tongue to tell him all when Sir Oliver had broken in upon them. Perchance Sir Nigel, with his love of all the dying usages of chivalry, might have contrived some strange ordeal or feat of arms by which his love should be put to the test. Alleyne smiled as he wondered what fantastic and wondrous deed would be exacted from him. Whatever it was, he was ready for it, whether it were to hold the lists in the court of the King of Tartary, to carry a cartel to the Sultan of Baghdad, or to serve a term against the wild heathen of Prussia. Sir Nigel had said that his birth was high enough for any lady, if his fortune could but be amended. Often had Alleyne curled his lip at the beggarly craving for land or for gold which blinded man to the higher and more lasting issues of life. Now it seemed as though it were only by this same land and gold that he might hope to reach his heart's desire. But then, again, the Socman of Minstead was no friend to the Constable of Twynham Castle. It might happen that, should he amass riches by some happy fortune of war, this feud might hold the two families aloof. Even if Maude loved him, he knew her too well to think that she would wed him without the blessing of her father. Dark and murky was it all, but hope mounts high in youth, and it ever fluttered over all the turmoil of his thoughts like a white plume amid the shock of horsemen.\n\nIf Alleyne Edricson had enough to ponder over as he rode through the bare plains of Guienne, his two companions were more busy with the present and less thoughtful of the future. Aylward rode for half a mile with his chin upon his shoulder, looking back at a white kerchief which fluttered out of the gable window of a high house which peeped over the corner of the battlements. When at last a dip of the road hid it from his view, he cocked his steel cap, shrugged his broad shoulders, and rode on with laughter in his eyes, and his weather-beaten face all ashine with pleasant memories. John also rode in silence, but his eyes wandered slowly from one side of the road to the other, and he stared and pondered and nodded his head like a traveller who makes his notes and saves them up for the re-telling.\n\n\"By the rood!\" he broke out suddenly, slapping his thigh with his great red hand, \"I knew that there was something amissing, but I could not bring to my mind what it was.\"\n\n\"What was it then?\" asked Alleyne, coming with a start out of his reverie.\n\n\"Why, it is the hedgerows,\" roared John, with a shout of laughter. \"The country is all scraped as clear as a friar's poll. But indeed I cannot think much of the folk in these parts. Why do they not get to work and dig up these long rows of black and crooked stumps which I see on every hand? A franklin of Hampshire would think shame to have such litter upon his soil.\"\n\n\"Thou foolish old John!\" quoth Aylward. \"You should know better, since I have heard that the monks of Beaulieu could squeeze a good cup of wine from their own grapes. Know then that if these rows were dug up the wealth of the country would be gone, and mayhap there would be dry throats and gaping mouths in England, for in three months' time these black roots will blossom and snoot and burgeon, and from them will come many a good shipload of Medoc and Gascony which will cross the narrow seas. But see the church in the hollow, and the folk who cluster in the churchyard! By my hilt! it is a burial, and there is a passing bell!\" He pulled off his steel cap as he spoke and crossed himself, with a muttered prayer for the repose of the dead.\n\n\"There too,\" remarked Alleyne, as they rode on again, \"that which seems to the eye to be dead is still full of the sap of life, even as the vines were. Thus God hath written Himself and His laws very broadly on all that is around us, if our poor dull eyes and duller souls could but read what He hath set before us.\"\n\n\"Ha! mon petit,\" cried the bowman, \"you take me back to the days when you were new fledged, as sweet a little chick as ever pecked his way out of a monkish egg. I had feared that in gaining our debonair young man-at-arms we had lost our soft-spoken clerk. In truth, I have noted much change in you since we came from Twynham Castle.\"\n\n\"Surely it would be strange else, seeing that I have lived in a world so new to me. Yet I trust that there are many things in which I have not changed. If I have turned to serve an earthly master, and to carry arms for an earthly king, it would be an ill thing if I were to lose all thought of the great high King and Master of all, whose humble and unworthy servant I was ere ever I left Beaulieu. You, John, are also from the cloisters, but I trow that you do not feel that you have deserted the old service in taking on the new.\"\n\n\"I am a slow-witted man,\" said John, \"and, in sooth, when I try to think about such matters it casts a gloom upon me. Yet I do not look upon myself as a worse man in an archer's jerkin than I was in a white cowl, if that be what you mean.\"\n\n\"You have but changed from one white company to the other,\" quoth Aylward. \"But, by these ten finger-bones! it is a passing strange thing to me to think that it was but in the last fall of the leaf that we walked from Lyndhurst together, he so gentle and maidenly, and you, John, like a great red-limbed overgrown moon-calf; and now here you are as sprack a squire and as lusty an archer as ever passed down the highway from Bordeaux, while I am still the same old Samkin Aylward, with never a change, save that I have a few more sins on my soul and a few less crowns in my pouch. But I have never yet heard, John, what the reason was why you should come out of Beaulieu.\"\n\n\"There were seven reasons,\" said John thoughtfully. \"The first of them was that they threw me out.\"\n\n\"Ma foi! camarade, to the devil with the other six! That is enough for me and for thee also. I can see that they are very wise and discreet folk at Beaulieu. Ah! mon ange, what have you in the pipkin?\"\n\n\"It is milk, worthy sir,\" answered the peasant-maid, who stood by the door of a cottage with a jug in her hand. \"Would it please you, gentles, that I should bring you out three horns of it?\"\n\n\"Nay, ma petite, but here is a twosous piece for thy kindly tongue and for the sight of thy pretty face. Ma foi! but she has a bonne mine. I have a mind to bide and speak with her.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, Aylward,\" cried Alleyne. \"Sir Nigel will await us, and he in haste.\"\n\n\"True, true, camarade! Adieu, ma cherie! mon coeur est toujours a toi. Her mother is a well-grown woman also. See where she digs by the wayside. Ma foi! the riper fruit is ever the sweeter. Bon jour, ma belle dame! God have you in his keeping! Said Sir Nigel where he would await us?\"\n\n\"At Marmande or Aiguillon. He said that we could not pass him, seeing that there is but the one road.\"\n\n\"Aye, and it is a road that I know as I know the Midhurst parish butts,\" quoth the bowman. \"Thirty times have I journeyed it, forward and backward, and, by the twang of string! I am wont to come back this way more laden than I went. I have carried all that I had into France in a wallet, and it hath taken four sumpter-mules to carry it back again. God's benison on the man who first turned his hand to the making of war! But there, down in the dingle, is the church of Cardillac, and you may see the inn where three poplars grow beyond the village. Let us on, for a stoup of wine would hearten us upon our way.\"\n\nThe highway had lain through the swelling vineyard country, which stretched away to the north and east in gentle curves, with many a peeping spire and feudal tower, and cluster of village houses, all clear cut and hard in the bright wintry air. To their right stretched the blue Garonne, running swiftly seawards, with boats and barges dotted over its broad bosom. On the other side lay a strip of vineyard, and beyond it the desolate and sandy region of the Landes, all tangled with faded gorse and heath and broom, stretching away in unbroken gloom to the blue hills which lay low upon the furthest skyline. Behind them might still be seen the broad estuary of the Gironde, with the high towers of Saint Andre and Saint Remi shooting up from the plain. In front, amid radiating lines of poplars, lay the riverside townlet of Cardillac\u2014gray walls, white houses, and a feather of blue smoke.\n\n\"This is the 'Mouton d'Or,'\" said Aylward, as they pulled up their horses at a whitewashed straggling hostel. \"What ho there!\" he continued, beating upon the door with the hilt of his sword. \"Tapster, ostler, varlet, hark hither, and a wannion on your lazy limbs! Ha! Michel, as red in the nose as ever! Three jacks of the wine of the country, Michel\u2014for the air bites shrewdly. I pray you, Alleyne, to take note of this door, for I have a tale concerning it.\"\n\n\"Tell me, friend,\" said Alleyne to the portly red-faced innkeeper, \"has a knight and a squire passed this way within the hour?\"\n\n\"Nay, sir, it would be two hours back. Was he a small man, weak in the eyes, with a want of hair, and speaks very quiet when he is most to be feared?\"\n\n\"The same,\" the squire answered. \"But I marvel how you should know how he speaks when he is in wrath, for he is very gentle-minded with those who are beneath him.\"\n\n\"Praise to the saints! it was not I who angered him,\" said the fat Michel.\n\n\"Who, then?\"\n\n\"It was young Sieur de Crespigny of Saintonge, who chanced to be here, and made game of the Englishman, seeing that he was but a small man and hath a face which is full of peace. But indeed this good knight was a very quiet and patient man, for he saw that the Sieur de Crespigny was still young and spoke from an empty head, so he sat his horse and quaffed his wine, even as you are doing now, all heedless of the clacking tongue.\"\n\n\"And what then, Michel?\"\n\n\"Well, messieurs, it chanced that the Sieur de Crespigny, having said this and that, for the laughter of the varlets, cried out at last about the glove that the knight wore in his coif, asking if it was the custom in England for a man to wear a great archer's glove in his cap. Pardieu! I have never seen a man get off his horse as quick as did that stranger Englishman. Ere the words were past the other's lips he was beside him, his face nigh touching, and his breath hot upon his cheeks. 'I think, young sir,' quoth he softly, looking into the other's eyes, 'that now that I am nearer you will very clearly see that the glove is not an archer's glove.' 'Perchance not,' said the Sieur de Crespigny with a twitching lip. 'Nor is it large, but very small,' quoth the Englishman. 'Less large than I had thought,' said the other, looking down, for the knight's gaze was heavy upon his eyelids. 'And in every way such a glove as might be worn by the fairest and sweetest lady in England,' quoth the Englishman. 'It may be so,' said the Sieur de Crespigny, turning his face from him. 'I am myself weak in the eyes, and have often taken one thing for another,' quoth the knight, as he sprang back into his saddle and rode off, leaving the Sieur de Crespigny biting his nails before the door. Ha! by the five wounds, many men of war have drunk my wine, but never one was more to my fancy than this little Englishman.\"\n\n\"By my hilt! he is our master, Michel,\" quoth Aylward, \"and such men as we do not serve under a laggart. But here are four deniers, Michel, and God be with you! En avant, camarades! for we have a long road before us.\"\n\nAt a brisk trot the three friends left Cardillac and its wine-house behind them, riding without a halt past St. Macaire, and on by ferry over the river Dorpt. At the further side the road winds through La Reolle, Bazaille, and Marmande, with the sunlit river still gleaming upon the right, and the bare poplars bristling up upon either side. John and Alleyne rode silent on either side, but every inn, farm-steading, or castle brought back to Aylward some remembrance of love, foray, or plunder, with which to beguile the way.\n\n\"There is the smoke from Bazas, on the further side of Garonne,\" quoth he. \"There were three sisters yonder, the daughters of a farrier, and, by these ten finger-bones! a man might ride for a long June day and never set eyes upon such maidens. There was Marie, tall and grave, and Blanche petite and gay, and the dark Agnes, with eyes that went through you like a waxed arrow. I lingered there as long as four days, and was betrothed to them all; for it seemed shame to set one above her sisters, and might make ill blood in the family. Yet, for all my care, things were not merry in the house, and I thought it well to come away. There, too, is the mill of Le Souris. Old Pierre Le Caron, who owned it, was a right good comrade, and had ever a seat and a crust for a weary archer. He was a man who wrought hard at all that he turned his hand to; but he heated himself in grinding bones to mix with his flour, and so through over-diligence he brought a fever upon himself and died.\"\n\n\"Tell me, Aylward,\" said Alleyne, \"what was amiss with the door of yonder inn that you should ask me to observe it.\"\n\n\"Pardieu! yes, I had well-nigh forgot. What saw you on yonder door?\"\n\n\"I saw a square hole, through which doubtless the host may peep when he is not too sure of those who knock.\"\n\n\"And saw you naught else?\"\n\n\"I marked that beneath this hole there was a deep cut in the door, as though a great nail had been driven in.\"\n\n\"And naught else?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Had you looked more closely you might have seen that there was a stain upon the wood. The first time that I ever heard my comrade Black Simon laugh was in front of that door. I heard him once again when he slew a French squire with his teeth, he being unarmed and the Frenchman having a dagger.\"\n\n\"And why did Simon laugh in front of the inn-door!\" asked John.\n\n\"Simon is a hard and perilous man when he hath the bitter drop in him; and, by my hilt! he was born for war, for there is little sweetness or rest in him. This inn, the 'Mouton d'Or,' was kept in the old days by one Francois Gourval, who had a hard fist and a harder heart. It was said that many and many an archer coming from the wars had been served with wine with simples in it, until he slept, and had then been stripped of all by this Gourval. Then on the morrow, if he made complaint, this wicked Gourval would throw him out upon the road or beat him, for he was a very lusty man, and had many stout varlets in his service. This chanced to come to Simon's ears when we were at Bordeaux together, and he would have it that we should ride to Cardillac with a good hempen cord, and give this Gourval such a scourging as he merited. Forth we rode then, but when we came to the Mouton d'Or,' Gourval had had word of our coming and its purpose, so that the door was barred, nor was there any way into the house. 'Let us in, good Master Gourval!' cried Simon, and 'Let us in, good Master Gourval!' cried I, but no word could we get through the hole in the door, save that he would draw an arrow upon us unless we went on our way. 'Well, Master Gourval,' quoth Simon at last, 'this is but a sorry welcome, seeing that we have ridden so far just to shake you by the hand.' 'Canst shake me by the hand without coming in,' said Gourval. 'And how that?' asked Simon. 'By passing in your hand through the hole,' said he. 'Nay, my hand is wounded,' quoth Simon, 'and of such a size that I cannot pass it in.' 'That need not hinder,' said Gourval, who was hot to be rid of us, 'pass in your left hand.' 'But I have something for thee, Gourval,' said Simon. 'What then?' he asked. 'There was an English archer who slept here last week of the name of Hugh of Nutbourne.' 'We have had many rogues here,' said Gourval. 'His conscience hath been heavy within him because he owes you a debt of fourteen deniers, having drunk wine for which he hath never paid. For the easing of his soul, he asked me to pay the money to you as I passed.' Now this Gourval was very greedy for money, so he thrust forth his hand for the fourteen deniers, but Simon had his dagger ready and he pinned his hand to the door. 'I have paid the Englishman's debt, Gourval!' quoth he, and so rode away, laughing so that he could scarce sit his horse, leaving mine host still nailed to his door. Such is the story of the hole which you have marked, and of the smudge upon the wood. I have heard that from that time English archers have been better treated in the auberge of Cardillac. But what have we here by the wayside?\"\n\n\"It appears to be a very holy man,\" said Alleyne.\n\n\"And, by the rood! he hath some strange wares,\" cried John. \"What are these bits of stone, and of wood, and rusted nails, which are set out in front of him?\"\n\nThe man whom they had remarked sat with his back against a cherry-tree, and his legs shooting out in front of him, like one who is greatly at his ease. Across his thighs was a wooden board, and scattered over it all manner of slips of wood and knobs of brick and stone, each laid separate from the other, as a huckster places his wares. He was dressed in a long gray gown, and wore a broad hat of the same color, much weather-stained, with three scallop-shells dangling from the brim. As they approached, the travellers observed that he was advanced in years, and that his eyes were upturned and yellow.\n\n\"Dear knights and gentlemen,\" he cried in a high crackling voice, \"worthy Christian cavaliers, will ye ride past and leave an aged pilgrim to die of hunger? The sight hast been burned from mine eyes by the sands of the Holy Land, and I have had neither crust of bread nor cup of wine these two days past.\"\n\n\"By my hilt! father,\" said Aylward, looking keenly at him, \"it is a marvel to me that thy girdle should have so goodly a span and clip thee so closely, if you have in sooth had so little to place within it.\"\n\n\"Kind stranger,\" answered the pilgrim, \"you have unwittingly spoken words which are very grievous to me to listen to. Yet I should be loth to blame you, for I doubt not that what you said was not meant to sadden me, nor to bring my sore affliction back to my mind. It ill becomes me to prate too much of what I have endured for the faith, and yet, since you have observed it, I must tell you that this thickness and roundness of the waist is caused by a dropsy brought on by over-haste in journeying from the house of Pilate to the Mount of Olives.\"\n\n\"There, Aylward,\" said Alleyne, with a reddened cheek, \"let that curb your blunt tongue. How could you bring a fresh pang to this holy man, who hath endured so much and hath journeyed as far as Christ's own blessed tomb?\"\n\n\"May the foul fiend strike me dumb!\" cried the bowman in hot repentance; but both the palmer and Alleyne threw up their hands to stop him.\n\n\"I forgive thee from my heart, dear brother,\" piped the blind man. \"But, oh, these wild words of thine are worse to mine ears than aught which you could say of me.\"\n\n\"Not another word shall I speak,\" said Aylward; \"but here is a franc for thee and I crave thy blessing.\"\n\n\"And here is another,\" said Alleyne.\n\n\"And another,\" cried Hordle John.\n\nBut the blind palmer would have none of their alms. \"Foolish, foolish pride!\" he cried, beating upon his chest with his large brown hand. \"Foolish, foolish pride! How long then will it be ere I can scourge it forth? Am I then never to conquer it? Oh, strong, strong are the ties of flesh, and hard it is to subdue the spirit! I come, friends, of a noble house, and I cannot bring myself to touch this money, even though it be to save me from the grave.\"\n\n\"Alas! father,\" said Alleyne, \"how then can we be of help to thee?\"\n\n\"I had sat down here to die,\" quoth the palmer; \"but for many years I have carried in my wallet these precious things which you see set forth now before me. It were sin, thought I, that my secret should perish with me. I shall therefore sell these things to the first worthy passers-by, and from them I shall have money enough to take me to the shrine of Our Lady at Rocamadour, where I hope to lay these old bones.\"\n\n\"What are these treasures, then, father?\" asked Hordle John. \"I can but see an old rusty nail, with bits of stone and slips of wood.\"\n\n\"My friend,\" answered the palmer, \"not all the money that is in this country could pay a just price for these wares of mine. This nail,\" he continued, pulling off his hat and turning up his sightless orbs, \"is one of those wherewith man's salvation was secured. I had it, together with this piece of the true rood, from the five-and-twentieth descendant of Joseph of Arimathea, who still lives in Jerusalem alive and well, though latterly much afflicted by boils. Aye, you may well cross yourselves, and I beg that you will not breathe upon it or touch it with your fingers.\"\n\n\"And the wood and stone, holy father?\" asked Alleyne, with bated breath, as he stared awe-struck at his precious relics.\n\n\"This cantle of wood is from the true cross, this other from Noah his ark, and the third is from the door-post of the temple of the wise King Solomon. This stone was thrown at the sainted Stephen, and the other two are from the Tower of Babel. Here, too, is part of Aaron's rod, and a lock of hair from Elisha the prophet.\"\n\n\"But, father,\" quoth Alleyne, \"the holy Elisha was bald, which brought down upon him the revilements of the wicked children.\"\n\n\"It is very true that he had not much hair,\" said the palmer quickly, \"and it is this which makes this relic so exceeding precious. Take now your choice of these, my worthy gentlemen, and pay such a price as your consciences will suffer you to offer; for I am not a chapman nor a huckster, and I would never part with them, did I not know that I am very near to my reward.\"\n\n\"Aylward,\" said Alleyne excitedly, \"This is such a chance as few folk have twice in one life. The nail I must have, and I will give it to the abbey of Beaulieu, so that all the folk in England may go thither to wonder and to pray.\"\n\n\"And I will have the stone from the temple,\" cried Hordle John. \"What would not my old mother give to have it hung over her bed?\"\n\n\"And I will have Aaron's rod,\" quoth Aylward. \"I have but five florins in the world, and here are four of them.\"\n\n\"Here are three more,\" said John.\n\n\"And here are five more,\" added Alleyne. \"Holy father, I hand you twelve florins, which is all that we can give, though we well know how poor a pay it is for the wondrous things which you sell us.\"\n\n\"Down, pride, down!\" cried the pilgrim, still beating upon his chest. \"Can I not bend myself then to take this sorry sum which is offered me for that which has cost me the labors of a life. Give me the dross! Here are the precious relics, and, oh, I pray you that you will handle them softly and with reverence, else had I rather left my unworthy bones here by the wayside.\"\n\nWith doffed caps and eager hands, the comrades took their new and precious possessions, and pressed onwards upon their journey, leaving the aged palmer still seated under the cherry-tree. They rode in silence, each with his treasure in his hand, glancing at it from time to time, and scarce able to believe that chance had made them sole owners of relics of such holiness and worth that every abbey and church in Christendom would have bid eagerly for their possession. So they journeyed, full of this good fortune, until opposite the town of Le Mas, where John's horse cast a shoe, and they were glad to find a wayside smith who might set the matter to rights. To him Aylward narrated the good hap which had befallen them; but the smith, when his eyes lit upon the relics, leaned up against his anvil and laughed, with his hand to his side, until the tears hopped down his sooty cheeks.\n\n\"Why, masters,\" quoth he, \"this man is a coquillart, or seller of false relics, and was here in the smithy not two hours ago. This nail that he hath sold you was taken from my nail-box, and as to the wood and the stones, you will see a heap of both outside from which he hath filled his scrip.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay,\" cried Alleyne, \"this was a holy man who had journeyed to Jerusalem, and acquired a dropsy by running from the house of Pilate to the Mount of Olives.\"\n\n\"I know not about that,\" said the smith; \"but I know that a man with a gray palmer's hat and gown was here no very long time ago, and that he sat on yonder stump and ate a cold pullet and drank a flask of wine. Then he begged from me one of my nails, and filling his scrip with stones, he went upon his way. Look at these nails, and see if they are not the same as that which he has sold you.\"\n\n\"Now may God save us!\" cried Alleyne, all aghast. \"Is there no end then to the wickedness of humankind? He so humble, so aged, so loth to take our money\u2014and yet a villain and a cheat. Whom can we trust or believe in?\"\n\n\"I will after him,\" said Aylward, flinging himself into the saddle. \"Come, Alleyne, we may catch him ere John's horse be shod.\"\n\nAway they galloped together, and ere long they saw the old gray palmer walking slowly along in front of them. He turned, however, at the sound of their hoofs, and it was clear that his blindness was a cheat like all the rest of him, for he ran swiftly through a field and so into a wood, where none could follow him. They hurled their relics after him, and so rode back to the blacksmith's the poorer both in pocket and in faith." + }, + { + "title": "HOW ROGER CLUB-FOOT WAS PASSED INTO PARADISE.", + "text": "It was evening before the three comrades came into Aiguillon, There they found Sir Nigel Loring and Ford safely lodged at the sign of the \"Baton Rouge,\" where they supped on good fare and slept between lavender-scented sheets. It chanced, however, that a knight of Poitou, Sir Gaston d'Estelle, was staying there on his way back from Lithuania, where he had served a term with the Teutonic knights under the land-master of the presbytery of Marienberg. He and Sir Nigel sat late in high converse as to bushments, outfalls, and the intaking of cities, with many tales of warlike men and valiant deeds. Then their talk turned to minstrelsy, and the stranger knight drew forth a cittern, upon which he played the minne-lieder of the north, singing the while in a high cracked voice of Hildebrand and Brunhild and Siegfried, and all the strength and beauty of the land of Almain. To this Sir Nigel answered with the romances of Sir Eglamour, and of Sir Isumbras, and so through the long winter night they sat by the crackling wood-fire answering each other's songs until the crowing cocks joined in their concert. Yet, with scarce an hour of rest, Sir Nigel was as blithe and bright as ever as they set forth after breakfast upon their way.\n\n\"This Sir Gaston is a very worthy man,\" said he to his squires as they rode from the \"Baton Rouge.\" \"He hath a very strong desire to advance himself, and would have entered upon some small knightly debate with me, had he not chanced to have his arm-bone broken by the kick of a horse. I have conceived a great love for him, and I have promised him that when his bone is mended I will exchange thrusts with him. But we must keep to this road upon the left.\"\n\n\"Nay, my fair lord,\" quoth Aylward. \"The road to Montaubon is over the river, and so through Quercy and the Agenois.\"\n\n\"True, my good Aylward; but I have learned from this worthy knight, who hath come over the French marches, that there is a company of Englishmen who are burning and plundering in the country round Villefranche. I have little doubt, from what he says, that they are those whom we seek.\"\n\n\"By my hilt! it is like enough,\" said Aylward. \"By all accounts they had been so long at Montaubon, that there would be little there worth the taking. Then as they have already been in the south, they would come north to the country of the Aveyron.\"\n\n\"We shall follow the Lot until we come to Cahors, and then cross the marches into Villefranche,\" said Sir Nigel. \"By St. Paul! as we are but a small band, it is very likely that we may have some very honorable and pleasing adventure, for I hear that there is little peace upon the French border.\"\n\nAll morning they rode down a broad and winding road, barred with the shadows of poplars. Sir Nigel rode in front with his squires, while the two archers followed behind with the sumpter mule between them. They had left Aiguillon and the Garonne far to the south, and rode now by the tranquil Lot, which curves blue and placid through a gently rolling country. Alleyne could not but mark that, whereas in Guienne there had been many townlets and few castles, there were now many castles and few houses. On either hand gray walls and square grim keeps peeped out at every few miles from amid the forests while the few villages which they passed were all ringed round with rude walls, which spoke of the constant fear and sudden foray of a wild frontier land. Twice during the morning there came bands of horsemen swooping down upon them from the black gateways of wayside strongholds, with short, stern questions as to whence they came and what their errand. Bands of armed men clanked along the highway, and the few lines of laden mules which carried the merchandise of the trader were guarded by armed varlets, or by archers hired for the service.\n\n\"The peace of Bretigny hath not made much change in these parts,\" quoth Sir Nigel, \"for the country is overrun with free companions and masterless men. Yonder towers, between the wood and the hill, mark the town of Cahors, and beyond it is the land of France. But here is a man by the wayside, and as he hath two horses and a squire I make little doubt that he is a knight. I pray you, Alleyne, to give him greeting from me, and to ask him for his titles and coat-armor. It may be that I can relieve him of some vow, or perchance he hath a lady whom he would wish to advance.\"\n\n\"Nay, my fair lord,\" said Alleyne, \"these are not horses and a squire, but mules and a varlet. The man is a mercer, for he hath a great bundle beside him.\"\n\n\"Now, God's blessing on your honest English voice!\" cried the stranger, pricking up his ears at the sound of Alleyne's words. \"Never have I heard music that was so sweet to mine ear. Come, Watkin lad, throw the bales over Laura's back! My heart was nigh broke, for it seemed that I had left all that was English behind me, and that I would never set eyes upon Norwich market square again.\" He was a tall, lusty, middle-aged man with a ruddy face, a brown forked beard shot with gray, and a broad Flanders hat set at the back of his head. His servant, as tall as himself, but gaunt and raw-boned, had swung the bales on the back of one mule, while the merchant mounted upon the other and rode to join the party. It was easy to see, as he approached, from the quality of his dress and the richness of his trappings, that he was a man of some wealth and position.\n\n\"Sir knight,\" said he, \"my name is David Micheldene, and I am a burgher and alderman of the good town of Norwich, where I live five doors from the church of Our Lady, as all men know on the banks of Yare. I have here my bales of cloth which I carry to Cahors\u2014woe worth the day that ever I started on such an errand! I crave your gracious protection upon the way for me, my servant, and my mercery; for I have already had many perilous passages, and have now learned that Roger Clubfoot, the robber-knight of Quercy, is out upon the road in front of me. I hereby agree to give you one rose-noble if you bring me safe to the inn of the 'Angel' in Cahors, the same to be repaid to me or my heirs if any harm come to me or my goods.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" answered Sir Nigel, \"I should be a sorry knight if I ask pay for standing by a countryman in a strange land. You may ride with me and welcome, Master Micheldene, and your varlet may follow with my archers.\"\n\n\"God's benison upon thy bounty!\" cried the stranger. \"Should you come to Norwich you may have cause to remember that you have been of service to Alderman Micheldene. It is not very far to Cahors, for surely I see the cathedral towers against the skyline; but I have heard much of this Roger Clubfoot, and the more I hear the less do I wish to look upon his face. Oh, but I am sick and weary of it all, and I would give half that I am worth to see my good dame sitting in peace beside me, and to hear the bells of Norwich town.\"\n\n\"Your words are strange to me,\" quoth Sir Nigel, \"for you have the appearance of a stout man, and I see that you wear a sword by your side.\"\n\n\"Yet it is not my trade,\" answered the merchant. \"I doubt not that if I set you down in my shop at Norwich you might scarce tell fustian from falding, and know little difference between the velvet of Genoa and the three-piled cloth of Bruges. There you might well turn to me for help. But here on a lone roadside, with thick woods and robber-knights, I turn to you, for it is the business to which you have been reared.\"\n\n\"There is sooth in what you say, Master Micheldene,\" said Sir Nigel, \"and I trust that we may come upon this Roger Clubfoot, for I have heard that he is a very stout and skilful soldier, and a man from whom much honor is to be gained.\"\n\n\"He is a bloody robber,\" said the trader, curtly, \"and I wish I saw him kicking at the end of a halter.\"\n\n\"It is such men as he,\" Sir Nigel remarked, \"who give the true knight honorable deeds to do, whereby he may advance himself.\"\n\n\"It is such men as he,\" retorted Micheldene, \"who are like rats in a wheat-rick or moths in a woolfels, a harm and a hindrance to all peaceful and honest men.\"\n\n\"Yet, if the dangers of the road weigh so heavily upon you, master alderman, it is a great marvel to me that you should venture so far from home.\"\n\n\"And sometimes, sir knight, it is a marvel to myself. But I am a man who may grutch and grumble, but when I have set my face to do a thing I will not turn my back upon it until it be done. There is one, Francois Villet, at Cahors, who will send me wine-casks for my cloth-bales, so to Cahors I will go, though all the robber-knights of Christendom were to line the roads like yonder poplars.\"\n\n\"Stoutly spoken, master alderman! But how have you fared hitherto?\"\n\n\"As a lamb fares in a land of wolves. Five times we have had to beg and pray ere we could pass. Twice I have paid toll to the wardens of the road. Three times we have had to draw, and once at La Reolle we stood seer our wool-bales, Watkin and I, and we laid about us for as long as a man might chant a litany, slaying one rogue and wounding two others. By God's coif! we are men of peace, but we are free English burghers, not to be mishandled either in our country or abroad. Neither lord, baron, knight, or commoner shall have as much as a strike of flax of mine whilst I have strength to wag this sword.\"\n\n\"And a passing strange sword it is,\" quoth Sir Nigel. \"What make you, Alleyne, of these black lines which are drawn across the sheath?\"\n\n\"I cannot tell what they are, my fair lord.\"\n\n\"Nor can I,\" said Ford.\n\nThe merchant chuckled to himself. \"It was a thought of mine own,\" said he; \"for the sword was made by Thomas Wilson, the armorer, who is betrothed to my second daughter Margery. Know then that the sheath is one cloth-yard, in length, marked off according to feet and inches to serve me as a measuring wand. It is also of the exact weight of two pounds, so that I may use it in the balance.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" quoth Sir Nigel, \"it is very clear to me that the sword is like thyself, good alderman, apt either for war or for peace. But I doubt not that even in England you have had much to suffer from the hands of robbers and outlaws.\"\n\n\"It was only last Lammastide, sir knight, that I was left for dead near Reading as I journeyed to Winchester fair. Yet I had the rogues up at the court of pie-powder, and they will harm no more peaceful traders.\"\n\n\"You travel much then!\"\n\n\"To Winchester, Linn mart, Bristol fair, Stourbridge, and Bartholomew's in London Town. The rest of the year you may ever find me five doors from the church of Our Lady, where I would from my heart that I was at this moment, for there is no air like Norwich air, and no water like the Yare, nor can all the wines of France compare with the beer of old Sam Yelverton who keeps the 'Dun Cow.' But, out and alack, here is an evil fruit which hangs upon this chestnut-tree!\"\n\nAs he spoke they had ridden round a curve of the road and come upon a great tree which shot one strong brown branch across their path. From the centre of this branch there hung a man, with his head at a horrid slant to his body and his toes just touching the ground. He was naked save for a linen under shirt and pair of woollen drawers. Beside him on a green bank there sat a small man with a solemn face, and a great bundle of papers of all colors thrusting forth from the scrip which lay beside him. He was very richly dressed, with furred robes, a scarlet hood, and wide hanging sleeves lined with flame-colored silk. A great gold chain hung round his neck, and rings glittered from every finger of his hands. On his lap he had a little pile of gold and of silver, which he was dropping, coin by coin, into a plump pouch which hung from his girdle.\n\n\"May the saints be with you, good travellers!\" he shouted, as the party rode up. \"May the four Evangelists watch over you! May the twelve Apostles bear you up! May the blessed army of martyrs direct your feet and lead you to eternal bliss!\"\n\n\"Gramercy for these good wishes!\" said Sir Nigel. \"But I perceive, master alderman, that this man who hangs here is, by mark of foot, the very robber-knight of whom we have spoken. But there is a cartel pinned upon his breast, and I pray you, Alleyne, to read it to me.\"\n\nThe dead robber swung slowly to and fro in the wintry wind, a fixed smile upon his swarthy face, and his bulging eyes still glaring down the highway of which he had so long been the terror; on a sheet of parchment upon his breast was printed in rude characters;" + }, + { + "title": "ROGER PIED-BOT.", + "text": "\u2003Par l'ordre du Senechal de\n\n\u2003Castelnau, et de l'Echevin de\n\n\u2003Cahors, servantes fideles du\n\n\u2003tres vaillant et tres puissant\n\n\u2003Edouard, Prince de Galles et d'Aquitaine.\n\n\u2003Ne touchez pas,\n\n\u2003Ne coutez pas,\n\n\u2003Ne depechez pas\n\n\"He took a sorry time in dying,\" said the man who sat beside him. \"He could stretch one toe to the ground and bear him self up, so that I thought he would never have done. Now at last, however, he is safely in paradise, and so I may jog on upon my earthly way.\" He mounted, as he spoke, a white mule which had been grazing by the wayside, all gay with fustian of gold and silver bells, and rode onward with Sir Nigel's party.\n\n\"How know you then that he is in paradise?\" asked Sir Nigel. \"All things are possible to God, but, certes, without a miracle, I should scarce expect to find the soul of Roger Clubfoot amongst the just.\"\n\n\"I know that he is there because I have just passed him in there,\" answered the stranger, rubbing his bejewelled hands together in placid satisfaction. \"It is my holy mission to be a sompnour or pardoner. I am the unworthy servant and delegate of him who holds the keys. A contrite heart and ten nobles to holy mother Church may stave off perdition; but he hath a pardon of the first degree, with a twenty-five livre benison, so that I doubt if he will so much as feel a twinge of purgatory. I came up even as the seneschal's archers were tying him up, and I gave him my foreword that I would bide with him until he had passed. There were two leaden crowns among the silver, but I would not for that stand in the way of his salvation.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" said Sir Nigel, \"if you have indeed this power to open and to shut the gates of hope, then indeed you stand high above mankind. But if you do but claim to have it, and yet have it not, then it seems to me, master clerk, that you may yourself find the gate barred when you shall ask admittance.\"\n\n\"Small of faith! Small of faith!\" cried the sompnour. \"Ah, Sir Didymus yet walks upon earth! And yet no words of doubt can bring anger to mine heart, or a bitter word to my lip, for am I not a poor unworthy worker in the cause of gentleness and peace? Of all these pardons which I bear every one is stamped and signed by our holy father, the prop and centre of Christendom.\"\n\n\"Which of them?\" asked Sir Nigel.\n\n\"Ha, ha!\" cried the pardoner, shaking a jewelled forefinger. \"Thou wouldst be deep in the secrets of mother Church? Know then that I have both in my scrip. Those who hold with Urban shall have Urban's pardon, while I have Clement's for the Clementist\u2014or he who is in doubt may have both, so that come what may he shall be secure. I pray you that you will buy one, for war is bloody work, and the end is sudden with little time for thought or shrift. Or you, sir, for you seem to me to be a man who would do ill to trust to your own merits.\" This to the alderman of Norwich, who had listened to him with a frowning brow and a sneering lip.\n\n\"When I sell my cloth,\" quoth he, \"he who buys may weigh and feel and handle. These goods which you sell are not to be seen, nor is there any proof that you hold them. Certes, if mortal man might control God's mercy, it would be one of a lofty and God-like life, and not one who is decked out with rings and chains and silks, like a pleasure-wench at a kermesse.\n\n\"Thou wicked and shameless man!\" cried the clerk. \"Dost thou dare to raise thy voice against the unworthy servant of mother Church?\"\n\n\"Unworthy enough!\" quoth David Micheldene. \"I would have you to know, clerk, that I am a free English burgher, and that I dare say my mind to our father the Pope himself, let alone such a lacquey's lacquey as you!\"\n\n\"Base-born and foul-mouthed knave!\" cried the sompnour. \"You prate of holy things, to which your hog's mind can never rise. Keep silence, lest I call a curse upon you!\"\n\n\"Silence yourself!\" roared the other. \"Foul bird! we found thee by the gallows like a carrion-crow. A fine life thou hast of it with thy silks and thy baubles, cozening the last few shillings from the pouches of dying men. A fig for thy curse! Bide here, if you will take my rede, for we will make England too hot for such as you, when Master Wicliff has the ordering of it. Thou vile thief! it is you, and such as you, who bring an evil name upon the many churchmen who lead a pure and a holy life. Thou outside the door of heaven! Art more like to be inside the door of hell.\"\n\nAt this crowning insult the sompnour, with a face ashen with rage, raised up a quivering hand and began pouring Latin imprecations upon the angry alderman. The latter, however, was not a man to be quelled by words, for he caught up his ell-measure sword-sheath and belabored the cursing clerk with it. The latter, unable to escape from the shower of blows, set spurs to his mule and rode for his life, with his enemy thundering behind him. At sight of his master's sudden departure, the varlet Watkin set off after him, with the pack-mule beside him, so that the four clattered away down the road together, until they swept round a curve and their babble was but a drone in the distance. Sir Nigel and Alleyne gazed in astonishment at one another, while Ford burst out a-laughing.\n\n\"Pardieu!\" said the knight, \"this David Micheldene must be one of those Lollards about whom Father Christopher of the priory had so much to say. Yet he seemed to be no bad man from what I have seen of him.\"\n\n\"I have heard that Wicliff hath many followers in Norwich,\" answered Alleyne.\n\n\"By St. Paul! I have no great love for them,\" quoth Sir Nigel. \"I am a man who am slow to change; and, if you take away from me the faith that I have been taught, it would be long ere I could learn one to set in its place. It is but a chip here and a chip there, yet it may bring the tree down in time. Yet, on the other hand, I cannot but think it shame that a man should turn God's mercy on and off, as a cellarman doth wine with a spigot.\"\n\n\"Nor is it,\" said Alleyne, \"part of the teachings of that mother Church of which he had so much to say. There was sooth in what the alderman said of it.\"\n\n\"Then, by St. Paul! they may settle it betwixt them,\" quoth Sir Nigel. \"For me, I serve God, the king and my lady; and so long as I can keep the path of honor I am well content. My creed shall ever be that of Chandos:\n\n\"Fais ce que dois\u2014adviegne que peut,\n\nC'est commande au chevalier.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE COMRADES CAME OVER THE MARCHES OF FRANCE.", + "text": "After passing Cahors, the party branched away from the main road, and leaving the river to the north of them, followed a smaller track which wound over a vast and desolate plain. This path led them amid marshes and woods, until it brought them out into a glade with a broad stream swirling swiftly down the centre of it. Through this the horses splashed their way, and on the farther shore Sir Nigel announced to them that they were now within the borders of the land of France. For some miles they still followed the same lonely track, which led them through a dense wood, and then widening out, curved down to an open rolling country, such as they had traversed between Aiguillon and Cahors.\n\nIf it were grim and desolate upon the English border, however, what can describe the hideous barrenness of this ten times harried tract of France? The whole face of the country was scarred and disfigured, mottled over with the black blotches of burned farm-steadings, and the gray, gaunt gable-ends of what had been chateaux. Broken fences, crumbling walls, vineyards littered with stones, the shattered arches of bridges\u2014look where you might, the signs of ruin and rapine met the eye. Here and there only, on the farthest skyline, the gnarled turrets of a castle, or the graceful pinnacles of church or of monastery showed where the forces of the sword or of the spirit had preserved some small islet of security in this universal flood of misery. Moodily and in silence the little party rode along the narrow and irregular track, their hearts weighed down by this far-stretching land of despair. It was indeed a stricken and a blighted country, and a man might have ridden from Auvergne in the north to the marches of Foix, nor ever seen a smiling village or a thriving homestead.\n\nFrom time to time as they advanced they saw strange lean figures scraping and scratching amid the weeds and thistles, who, on sight of the band of horsemen, threw up their arms and dived in among the brushwood, as shy and as swift as wild animals. More than once, however, they came on families by the wayside, who were too weak from hunger and disease to fly, so that they could but sit like hares on a tussock, with panting chests and terror in their eyes. So gaunt were these poor folk, so worn and spent\u2014with bent and knotted frames, and sullen, hopeless, mutinous faces\u2014that it made the young Englishman heart-sick to look upon them. Indeed, it seemed as though all hope and light had gone so far from them that it was not to be brought back; for when Sir Nigel threw down a handful of silver among them there came no softening of their lined faces, but they clutched greedily at the coins, peering questioningly at him, and champing with their animal jaws. Here and there amid the brushwood the travellers saw the rude bundle of sticks which served them as a home\u2014more like a fowl's nest than the dwelling-place of man. Yet why should they build and strive, when the first adventurer who passed would set torch to their thatch, and when their own feudal lord would wring from them with blows and curses the last fruits of their toil? They sat at the lowest depth of human misery, and hugged a bitter comfort to their souls as they realized that they could go no lower. Yet they had still the human gift of speech, and would take council among themselves in their brushwood hovels, glaring with bleared eyes and pointing with thin fingers at the great widespread chateaux which ate like a cancer into the life of the country-side. When such men, who are beyond hope and fear, begin in their dim minds to see the source their woes, it may be an evil time for those who have wronged them. The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair. High and strong the chateaux, lowly and weak the brushwood hut; but God help the seigneur and his lady when the men of the brushwood set their hands to the work of revenge!\n\nThrough such country did the party ride for eight or it might be nine miles, until the sun began to slope down in the west and their shadows to stream down the road in front of them. Wary and careful they must be, with watchful eyes to the right and the left, for this was no man's land, and their only passports were those which hung from their belts. Frenchmen and Englishmen, Gascon and Provencal, Brabanter, Tardvenu, Scorcher, Flayer, and Free Companion, wandered and struggled over the whole of this accursed district. So bare and cheerless was the outlook, and so few and poor the dwellings, that Sir Nigel began to have fears as to whether he might find food and quarters for his little troop. It was a relief to him, therefore, when their narrow track opened out upon a larger road, and they saw some little way down it a square white house with a great bunch of holly hung out at the end of a stick from one of the upper windows.\n\n\"By St. Paul!\" said he, \"I am right glad; for I had feared that we might have neither provant nor herbergage. Ride on, Alleyne, and tell this innkeeper that an English knight with his party will lodge with him this night.\"\n\nAlleyne set spurs to his horse and reached the inn door a long bow-shot before his companions. Neither varlet nor ostler could be seen, so he pushed open the door and called loudly for the landlord. Three times he shouted, but, receiving no reply, he opened an inner door and advanced into the chief guest-room of the hostel.\n\nA very cheerful wood-fire was sputtering and cracking in an open grate at the further end of the apartment. At one side of this fire, in a high-backed oak chair, sat a lady, her face turned towards the door. The firelight played over her features, and Alleyne thought that he had never seen such queenly power, such dignity and strength, upon a woman's face. She might have been five-and-thirty years of age, with aquiline nose, firm yet sensitive mouth, dark curving brows, and deep-set eyes which shone and sparkled with a shifting brilliancy. Beautiful as she was, it was not her beauty which impressed itself upon the beholder; it was her strength, her power, the sense of wisdom which hung over the broad white brow, the decision which lay in the square jaw and delicately moulded chin. A chaplet of pearls sparkled amid her black hair, with a gauze of silver network flowing back from it over her shoulders; a black mantle was swathed round her, and she leaned back in her chair as one who is fresh from a journey.\n\nIn the opposite corner there sat a very burly and broad-shouldered man, clad in a black jerkin trimmed with sable, with a black velvet cap with curling white feather cocked upon the side of his head. A flask of red wine stood at his elbow, and he seemed to be very much at his ease, for his feet were stuck up on a stool, and between his thighs he held a dish full of nuts. These he cracked between his strong white teeth and chewed in a leisurely way, casting the shells into the blaze. As Alleyne gazed in at him he turned his face half round and cocked an eye at him over his shoulder. It seemed to the young Englishman that he had never seen so hideous a face, for the eyes were of the lightest green, the nose was broken and driven inwards, while the whole countenance was seared and puckered with wounds. The voice, too, when he spoke, was as deep and as fierce as the growl of a beast of prey.\n\n\"Young man,\" said he, \"I know not who you may be, and I am not much inclined to bestir myself, but if it were not that I am bent upon taking my ease, I swear, by the sword of Joshua! that I would lay my dog-whip across your shoulders for daring to fill the air with these discordant bellowings.\"\n\nTaken aback at this ungentle speech, and scarce knowing how to answer it fitly in the presence of the lady, Alleyne stood with his hand upon the handle of the door, while Sir Nigel and his companions dismounted. At the sound of these fresh voices, and of the tongue in which they spoke, the stranger crashed his dish of nuts down upon the floor, and began himself to call for the landlord until the whole house re-echoed with his roarings. With an ashen face the white-aproned host came running at his call, his hands shaking and his very hair bristling with apprehension. \"For the sake of God, sirs,\" he whispered as he passed, \"speak him fair and do not rouse him! For the love of the Virgin, be mild with him!\"\n\n\"Who is this, then?\" asked Sir Nigel.\n\nAlleyne was about to explain, when a fresh roar from the stranger interrupted him.\n\n\"Thou villain innkeeper,\" he shouted, \"did I not ask you when I brought my lady here whether your inn was clean?\"\n\n\"You did, sire.\"\n\n\"Did I not very particularly ask you whether there were any vermin in it?\"\n\n\"You did, sire.\"\n\n\"And you answered me?\"\n\n\"That there were not, sire.\"\n\n\"And yet ere I have been here an hour I find Englishmen crawling about within it. Where are we to be free from this pestilent race? Can a Frenchman upon French land not sit down in a French auberge without having his ears pained by the clack of their hideous talk? Send them packing, innkeeper, or it may be the worse for them and for you.\"\n\n\"I will, sire, I will!\" cried the frightened host, and bustled from the room, while the soft, soothing voice of the woman was heard remonstrating with her furious companion.\n\n\"Indeed, gentlemen, you had best go,\" said mine host. \"It is but six miles to Villefranche, where there are very good quarters at the sign of the 'Lion Rouge.'\"\n\n\"Nay,\" answered Sir Nigel, \"I cannot go until I have seen more of this person, for he appears to be a man from whom much is to be hoped. What is his name and title?\"\n\n\"It is not for my lips to name it unless by his desire. But I beg and pray you, gentlemen, that you will go from my house, for I know not what may come of it if his rage should gain the mastery of him.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" lisped Sir Nigel, \"this is certainly a man whom it is worth journeying far to know. Go tell him that a humble knight of England would make his further honorable acquaintance, not from any presumption, pride, or ill-will, but for the advancement of chivalry and the glory of our ladies. Give him greeting from Sir Nigel Loring, and say that the glove which I bear in my cap belongs to the most peerless and lovely of her sex, whom I am now ready to uphold against any lady whose claim he might be desirous of advancing.\"\n\nThe landlord was hesitating whether to carry this message or no, when the door of the inner room was flung open, and the stranger bounded out like a panther from its den, his hair bristling and his deformed face convulsed with anger.\n\n\"Still here!\" he snarled. \"Dogs of England, must ye be lashed hence? Tiphaine, my sword!\" He turned to seize his weapon, but as he did so his gaze fell upon the blazonry of sir Nigel's shield, and he stood staring, while the fire in his strange green eyes softened into a sly and humorous twinkle.\n\n\"Mort Dieu!\" cried he, \"it is my little swordsman of Bordeaux. I should remember that coat-armor, seeing that it is but three days since I looked upon it in the lists by Garonne. Ah! Sir Nigel, Sir Nigel! you owe me a return for this,\" and he touched his right arm, which was girt round just under the shoulder with a silken kerchief.\n\nBut the surprise of the stranger at the sight of Sir Nigel was as nothing compared with the astonishment and the delight which shone upon the face of the knight of Hampshire as he looked upon the strange face of the Frenchman. Twice he opened his mouth and twice he peered again, as though to assure himself that his eyes had not played him a trick.\n\n\"Bertrand!\" he gasped at last. \"Bertrand du Guesclin!\"\n\n\"By Saint Ives!\" shouted the French soldier, with a hoarse roar of laughter, \"it is well that I should ride with my vizor down, for he that has once seen my face does not need to be told my name. It is indeed I, Sir Nigel, and here is my hand! I give you my word that there are but three Englishmen in this world whom I would touch save with the sharp edge of the sword: the prince is one, Chandos the second, and you the third; for I have heard much that is good of you.\"\n\n\"I am growing aged, and am somewhat spent in the wars,\" quoth Sir Nigel; \"but I can lay by my sword now with an easy mind, for I can say that I have crossed swords with him who hath the bravest heart and the strongest arm of all this great kingdom of France. I have longed for it, I have dreamed of it, and now I can scarce bring my mind to understand that this great honor hath indeed been mine.\"\n\n\"By the Virgin of Rennes! you have given me cause to be very certain of it,\" said Du Guesclin, with a gleam of his broad white teeth.\n\n\"And perhaps, most honored sir, it would please you to continue the debate. Perhaps you would condescend to go farther into the matter. God He knows that I am unworthy of such honor, yet I can show my four-and-sixty quarterings, and I have been present at some bickerings and scufflings during these twenty years.\"\n\n\"Your fame is very well known to me, and I shall ask my lady to enter your name upon my tablets,\" said Sir Bertrand. \"There are many who wish to advance themselves, and who bide their turn, for I refuse no man who comes on such an errand. At present it may not be, for mine arm is stiff from this small touch, and I would fain do you full honor when we cross swords again. Come in with me, and let your squires come also, that my sweet spouse, the Lady Tiphaine, may say that she hath seen so famed and gentle a knight.\"\n\nInto the chamber they went in all peace and concord, where the Lady Tiphaine sat like queen on throne for each in turn to be presented to her. Sooth to say, the stout heart of Sir Nigel, which cared little for the wrath of her lion-like spouse, was somewhat shaken by the calm, cold face of this stately dame, for twenty years of camp-life had left him more at ease in the lists than in a lady's boudoir. He bethought him, too, as he looked at her set lips and deep-set questioning eyes, that he had heard strange tales of this same Lady Tiphaine du Guesclin. Was it not she who was said to lay hands upon the sick and raise them from their couches when the leeches had spent their last nostrums? Had she not forecast the future, and were there not times when in the loneliness of her chamber she was heard to hold converse with some being upon whom mortal eye never rested\u2014some dark familiar who passed where doors were barred and windows high? Sir Nigel sunk his eye and marked a cross on the side of his leg as he greeted this dangerous dame, and yet ere five minutes had passed he was hers, and not he only but his two young squires as well. The mind had gone out of them, and they could but look at this woman and listen to the words which fell from her lips\u2014words which thrilled through their nerves and stirred their souls like the battle-call of a bugle.\n\nOften in peaceful after-days was Alleyne to think of that scene of the wayside inn of Auvergne. The shadows of evening had fallen, and the corners of the long, low, wood-panelled room were draped in darkness. The sputtering wood fire threw out a circle of red flickering light which played over the little group of wayfarers, and showed up every line and shadow upon their faces. Sir Nigel sat with elbows upon knees, and chin upon hands, his patch still covering one eye, but his other shining like a star, while the ruddy light gleamed upon his smooth white head. Ford was seated at his left, his lips parted, his eyes staring, and a fleck of deep color on either cheek, his limbs all rigid as one who fears to move. On the other side the famous French captain leaned back in his chair, a litter of nut-shells upon his lap, his huge head half buried in a cushion, while his eyes wandered with an amused gleam from his dame to the staring, enraptured Englishmen. Then, last of all, that pale clear-cut face, that sweet clear voice, with its high thrilling talk of the deathlessness of glory, of the worthlessness of life, of the pain of ignoble joys, and of the joy which lies in all pains which lead to a noble end. Still, as the shadows deepened, she spoke of valor and virtue, of loyalty, honor, and fame, and still they sat drinking in her words while the fire burned down and the red ash turned to gray.\n\n\"By the sainted Ives!\" cried Du Guesclin at last, \"it is time that we spoke of what we are to do this night, for I cannot think that in this wayside auberge there are fit quarters for an honorable company.\"\n\nSir Nigel gave a long sigh as he came back from the dreams of chivalry and hardihood into which this strange woman's words had wafted him. \"I care not where I sleep,\" said he; \"but these are indeed somewhat rude lodgings for this fair lady.\"\n\n\"What contents my lord contents me,\" quoth she. \"I perceive, Sir Nigel, that you are under vow,\" she added, glancing at his covered eye.\n\n\"It is my purpose to attempt some small deed,\" he answered.\n\n\"And the glove\u2014is it your lady's?\"\n\n\"It is indeed my sweet wife's.\"\n\n\"Who is doubtless proud of you.\"\n\n\"Say rather I of her,\" quoth he quickly. \"God He knows that I am not worthy to be her humble servant. It is easy, lady, for a man to ride forth in the light of day, and do his devoir when all men have eyes for him. But in a woman's heart there is a strength and truth which asks no praise, and can but be known to him whose treasure it is.\"\n\nThe Lady Tiphaine smiled across at her husband. \"You have often told me, Bertrand, that there were very gentle knights amongst the English,\" quoth she.\n\n\"Aye, aye,\" said he moodily. \"But to horse, Sir Nigel, you and yours and we shall seek the chateau of Sir Tristram de Rochefort, which is two miles on this side of Villefranche. He is Seneschal of Auvergne, and mine old war companion.\"\n\n\"Certes, he would have a welcome for you,\" quoth Sir Nigel; \"but indeed he might look askance at one who comes without permit over the marches.\"\n\n\"By the Virgin! when he learns that you have come to draw away these rascals he will be very blithe to look upon your face. Innkeeper, here are ten gold pieces. What is over and above your reckoning you may take off from your charges to the next needy knight who comes this way. Come then, for it grows late and the horses are stamping in the roadway.\"\n\nThe Lady Tiphaine and her spouse sprang upon their steeds without setting feet to stirrup, and away they jingled down the white moonlit highway, with Sir Nigel at the lady's bridle-arm, and Ford a spear's length behind them. Alleyne had lingered for an instant in the passage, and as he did so there came a wild outcry from a chamber upon the left, and out there ran Aylward and John, laughing together like two schoolboys who are bent upon a prank. At sight of Alleyne they slunk past him with somewhat of a shame-faced air, and springing upon their horses galloped after their party. The hubbub within the chamber did not cease, however, but rather increased, with yells of: \"A moi, mes amis! A moi, camarades! A moi, l'honorable champion de l'Eveque de Montaubon! A la recousse de l'eglise sainte!\" So shrill was the outcry that both the innkeeper and Alleyne, with every varlet within hearing, rushed wildly to the scene of the uproar.\n\nIt was indeed a singular scene which met their eyes. The room was a long and lofty one, stone floored and bare, with a fire at the further end upon which a great pot was boiling. A deal table ran down the centre, with a wooden wine-pitcher upon it and two horn cups. Some way from it was a smaller table with a single beaker and a broken wine-bottle. From the heavy wooden rafters which formed the roof there hung rows of hooks which held up sides of bacon, joints of smoked beef, and strings of onions for winter use. In the very centre of all these, upon the largest hook of all, there hung a fat little red-faced man with enormous whiskers, kicking madly in the air and clawing at rafters, hams, and all else that was within hand-grasp. The huge steel hook had been passed through the collar of his leather jerkin, and there he hung like a fish on a line, writhing, twisting, and screaming, but utterly unable to free himself from his extraordinary position. It was not until Alleyne and the landlord had mounted on the table that they were able to lift him down, when he sank gasping with rage into a seat, and rolled his eyes round in every direction.\n\n\"Has he gone?\" quoth he.\n\n\"Gone? Who?\"\n\n\"He, the man with the red head, the giant man.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Alleyne, \"he hath gone.\"\n\n\"And comes not back?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"The better for him!\" cried the little man, with a long sigh of relief. \"Mon Dieu! What! am I not the champion of the Bishop of Montaubon? Ah, could I have descended, could I have come down, ere he fled! Then you would have seen. You would have beheld a spectacle then. There would have been one rascal the less upon earth. Ma, foi, yes!\"\n\n\"Good master Pelligny,\" said the landlord, \"these gentlemen have not gone very fast, and I have a horse in the stable at your disposal, for I would rather have such bloody doings as you threaten outside the four walls of mine auberge.\"\n\n\"I hurt my leg and cannot ride,\" quoth the bishop's champion. \"I strained a sinew on the day that I slew the three men at Castelnau.\"\n\n\"God save you, master Pelligny!\" cried the landlord. \"It must be an awesome thing to have so much blood upon one's soul. And yet I do not wish to see so valiant a man mishandled, and so I will, for friendship's sake, ride after this Englishman and bring him back to you.\"\n\n\"You shall not stir,\" cried the champion, seizing the innkeeper in a convulsive grasp. \"I have a love for you, Gaston, and I would not bring your house into ill repute, nor do such scath to these walls and chattels as must befall if two such men as this Englishman and I fall to work here.\"\n\n\"Nay, think not of me!\" cried the innkeeper. \"What are my walls when set against the honor of Francois Poursuivant d'Amour Pelligny, champion of the Bishop of Montaubon. My horse, Andre!\"\n\n\"By the saints, no! Gaston, I will not have it! You have said truly that it is an awesome thing to have such rough work upon one's soul. I am but a rude soldier, yet I have a mind. Mon Dieu! I reflect, I weigh, I balance. Shall I not meet this man again? Shall I not bear him in mind? Shall I not know him by his great paws and his red head? Ma foi, yes!\"\n\n\"And may I ask, sir,\" said Alleyne, \"why it is that you call yourself champion of the Bishop of Montaubon?\"\n\n\"You may ask aught which it is becoming to me to answer. The bishop hath need of a champion, because, if any cause be set to test of combat, it would scarce become his office to go down into the lists with leather and shield and cudgel to exchange blows with any varlet. He looks around him then for some tried fighting man, some honest smiter who can give a blow or take one. It is not for me to say how far he hath succeeded, but it is sooth that he who thinks that he hath but to do with the Bishop of Montaubon, finds himself face to face with Francois Poursuivant d'Amour Pelligny.\"\n\nAt this moment there was a clatter of hoofs upon the road, and a varlet by the door cried out that one of the Englishmen was coming back. The champion looked wildly about for some corner of safety, and was clambering up towards the window, when Ford's voice sounded from without, calling upon Alleyne to hasten, or he might scarce find his way. Bidding adieu to landlord and to champion, therefore, he set off at a gallop, and soon overtook the two archers.\n\n\"A pretty thing this, John,\" said he. \"Thou wilt have holy Church upon you if you hang her champions upon iron hooks in an inn kitchen.\"\n\n\"It was done without thinking,\" he answered apologetically, while Aylward burst into a shout of laughter.\n\n\"By my hilt! mon petit,\" said he, \"you would have laughed also could you have seen it. For this man was so swollen with pride that he would neither drink with us, nor sit at the same table with us, nor as much as answer a question, but must needs talk to the varlet all the time that it was well there was peace, and that he had slain more Englishmen than there were tags to his doublet. Our good old John could scarce lay his tongue to French enough to answer him, so he must needs reach out his great hand to him and place him very gently where you saw him. But we must on, for I can scarce hear their hoofs upon the road.\"\n\n\"I think that I can see them yet,\" said Ford, peering down the moonlit road.\n\n\"Pardieu! yes. Now they ride forth from the shadow. And yonder dark clump is the Castle of Villefranche. En avant camarades! or Sir Nigel may reach the gates before us. But hark, mes amis, what sound is that?\"\n\nAs he spoke the hoarse blast of a horn was heard from some woods upon the right. An answering call rung forth upon their left, and hard upon it two others from behind them.\n\n\"They are the horns of swine-herds,\" quoth Aylward. \"Though why they blow them so late I cannot tell.\"\n\n\"Let us on, then,\" said Ford, and the whole party, setting their spurs to their horses, soon found themselves at the Castle of Villefranche, where the drawbridge had already been lowered and the portcullis raised in response to the summons of Du Guesclin." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE BLESSED HOUR OF SIGHT CAME TO THE LADY TIPHAINE.", + "text": "Sir Tristram de Rochefort, Seneschal of Auvergne and Lord of Villefranche, was a fierce and renowned soldier who had grown gray in the English wars. As lord of the marches and guardian of an exposed country-side, there was little rest for him even in times of so-called peace, and his whole life was spent in raids and outfalls upon the Brabanters, late-comers, flayers, free companions, and roving archers who wandered over his province. At times he would come back in triumph, and a dozen corpses swinging from the summit of his keep would warn evil-doers that there was still a law in the land. At others his ventures were not so happy, and he and his troop would spur it over the drawbridge with clatter of hoofs hard at their heels and whistle of arrows about their ears. Hard he was of hand and harder of heart, hated by his foes, and yet not loved by those whom he protected, for twice he had been taken prisoner, and twice his ransom had been wrung by dint of blows and tortures out of the starving peasants and ruined farmers. Wolves or watch-dogs, it was hard to say from which the sheep had most to fear.\n\nThe Castle of Villefranche was harsh and stern as its master. A broad moat, a high outer wall turreted at the corners, with a great black keep towering above all\u2014so it lay before them in the moonlight. By the light of two flambeaux, protruded through the narrow slit-shaped openings at either side of the ponderous gate, they caught a glimpse of the glitter of fierce eyes and of the gleam of the weapons of the guard. The sight of the two-headed eagle of Du Guesclin, however, was a passport into any fortalice in France, and ere they had passed the gate the old border knight came running forwards with hands out-thrown to greet his famous countryman. Nor was he less glad to see Sir Nigel, when the Englishman's errand was explained to him, for these archers had been a sore thorn in his side and had routed two expeditions which he had sent against them. A happy day it would be for the Seneschal of Auvergne when they should learn that the last yew bow was over the marches.\n\nThe material for a feast was ever at hand in days when, if there was grim want in the cottage, there was at least rude plenty in the castle. Within an hour the guests were seated around a board which creaked under the great pasties and joints of meat, varied by those more dainty dishes in which the French excelled, the spiced ortolan and the truffled beccaficoes. The Lady Rochefort, a bright and laughter-loving dame, sat upon the left of her warlike spouse, with Lady Tiphaine upon the right. Beneath sat Du Guesclin and Sir Nigel, with Sir Amory Monticourt, of the order of the Hospitallers, and Sir Otto Harnit, a wandering knight from the kingdom of Bohemia. These with Alleyne and Ford, four French squires, and the castle chaplain, made the company who sat together that night and made good cheer in the Castle of Villefranche. The great fire crackled in the grate, the hooded hawks slept upon their perches, the rough deer-hounds with expectant eyes crouched upon the tiled floor; close at the elbows of the guests stood the dapper little lilac-coated pages; the laugh and jest circled round and all was harmony and comfort. Little they recked of the brushwood men who crouched in their rags along the fringe of the forest and looked with wild and haggard eyes at the rich, warm glow which shot a golden bar of light from the high arched windows of the castle.\n\nSupper over, the tables dormant were cleared away as by magic and trestles and bancals arranged around the blazing fire, for there was a bitter nip in the air. The Lady Tiphaine had sunk back in her cushioned chair, and her long dark lashes drooped low over her sparkling eyes. Alleyne, glancing at her, noted that her breath came quick and short, and that her cheeks had blanched to a lily white. Du Guesclin eyed her keenly from time to time, and passed his broad brown fingers through his crisp, curly black hair with the air of a man who is perplexed in his mind.\n\n\"These folk here,\" said the knight of Bohemia, \"they do not seem too well fed.\"\n\n\"Ah, canaille!\" cried the Lord of Villefranche. \"You would scarce credit it, and yet it is sooth that when I was taken at Poictiers it was all that my wife and foster-brother could do to raise the money from them for my ransom. The sulky dogs would rather have three twists of a rack, or the thumbikins for an hour, than pay out a denier for their own feudal father and liege lord. Yet there is not one of them but hath an old stocking full of gold pieces hid away in a snug corner.\"\n\n\"Why do they not buy food then?\" asked Sir Nigel. \"By St. Paul! it seemed to me their bones were breaking through their skin.\"\n\n\"It is their grutching and grumbling which makes them thin. We have a saying here, Sir Nigel, that if you pummel Jacques Bonhomme he will pat you, but if you pat him he will pummel you. Doubtless you find it so in England.\"\n\n\"Ma foi, no!\" said Sir Nigel. \"I have two Englishmen of this class in my train, who are at this instant, I make little doubt, as full of your wine as any cask in your cellar. He who pummelled them might come by such a pat as he would be likely to remember.\"\n\n\"I cannot understand it,\" quoth the seneschal, \"for the English knights and nobles whom I have met were not men to brook the insolence of the base born.\"\n\n\"Perchance, my fair lord, the poor folk are sweeter and of a better countenance in England,\" laughed the Lady Rochefort. \"Mon Dieu! you cannot conceive to yourself how ugly they are! Without hair, without teeth, all twisted and bent; for me, I cannot think how the good God ever came to make such people. I cannot bear it, I, and so my trusty Raoul goes ever before me with a cudgel to drive them from my path.\"\n\n\"Yet they have souls, fair lady, they have souls!\" murmured the chaplain, a white-haired man with a weary, patient face.\n\n\"So I have heard you tell them,\" said the lord of the castle; \"and for myself, father, though I am a true son of holy Church, yet I think that you were better employed in saying your mass and in teaching the children of my men-at-arms, than in going over the country-side to put ideas in these folks' heads which would never have been there but for you. I have heard that you have said to them that their souls are as good as ours, and that it is likely that in another life they may stand as high as the oldest blood of Auvergne. For my part, I believe that there are so many worthy knights and gallant gentlemen in heaven who know how such things should be arranged, that there is little fear that we shall find ourselves mixed up with base roturiers and swine-herds. Tell your beads, father, and con your psalter, but do not come between me and those whom the king has given to me!\"\n\n\"God help them!\" cried the old priest. \"A higher King than yours has given them to me, and I tell you here in your own castle hall, Sir Tristram de Rochefort, that you have sinned deeply in your dealings with these poor folk, and that the hour will come, and may even now be at hand, when God's hand will be heavy upon you for what you have done.\" He rose as he spoke, and walked slowly from the room.\n\n\"Pest take him!\" cried the French knight. \"Now, what is a man to do with a priest, Sir Bertrand?\u2014for one can neither fight him like a man nor coax him like a woman.\"\n\n\"Ah, Sir Bertrand knows, the naughty one!\" cried the Lady Rochefort. \"Have we not all heard how he went to Avignon and squeezed fifty thousand crowns out of the Pope.\"\n\n\"Ma foi!\" said Sir Nigel, looking with a mixture of horror and admiration at Du Guesclin. \"Did not your heart sink within you? Were you not smitten with fears? Have you not felt a curse hang over you?\"\n\n\"I have not observed it,\" said the Frenchman carelessly. \"But by Saint Ives! Tristram, this chaplain of yours seems to me to be a worthy man, and you should give heed to his words, for though I care nothing for the curse of a bad pope, it would be a grief to me to have aught but a blessing from a good priest.\"\n\n\"Hark to that, my fair lord,\" cried the Lady Rochefort. \"Take heed, I pray thee, for I do not wish to have a blight cast over me, nor a palsy of the limbs. I remember that once before you angered Father Stephen, and my tire-woman said that I lost more hair in seven days than ever before in a month.\"\n\n\"If that be sign of sin, then, by Saint Paul! I have much upon my soul,\" said Sir Nigel, amid a general laugh. \"But in very truth, Sir Tristram, if I may venture a word of counsel, I should advise that you make your peace with this good man.\"\n\n\"He shall have four silver candlesticks,\" said the seneschal moodily. \"And yet I would that he would leave the folk alone. You cannot conceive in your mind how stubborn and brainless they are. Mules and pigs are full of reason beside them. God He knows that I have had great patience with them. It was but last week that, having to raise some money, I called up to the castle Jean Goubert, who, as all men know, has a casketful of gold pieces hidden away in some hollow tree. I give you my word that I did not so much as lay a stripe upon his fool's back, but after speaking with him, and telling him how needful the money was to me, I left him for the night to think over the matter in my dungeon. What think you that the dog did? Why, in the morning we found that he had made a rope from strips of his leathern jerkin, and had hung himself to the bar of the window.\"\n\n\"For me, I cannot conceive such wickedness!\" cried the lady.\n\n\"And there was Gertrude Le Boeuf, as fair a maiden as eye could see, but as bad and bitter as the rest of them. When young Amory de Valance was here last Lammastide he looked kindly upon the girl, and even spoke of taking her into his service. What does she do, with her dog of a father? Why, they tie themselves together and leap into the Linden Pool, where the water is five spears'-lengths deep. I give you my word that it was a great grief to young Amory, and it was days ere he could cast it from his mind. But how can one serve people who are so foolish and so ungrateful?\"\n\nWhilst the Seneschal of Villefranche had been detailing the evil doings of his tenants, Alleyne had been unable to take his eyes from the face of Lady Tiphaine. She had lain back in her chair, with drooping eyelids and bloodless face, so that he had feared at first her journey had weighed heavily upon her, and that the strength was ebbing out of her. Of a sudden, however, there came a change, for a dash of bright color flickered up on to either cheek, and her lids were slowly raised again upon eyes which sparkled with such lustre as Alleyne had never seen in human eyes before, while their gaze was fixed intently, not on the company, but on the dark tapestry which draped the wall. So transformed and so ethereal was her expression, that Alleyne, in his loftiest dream of archangel or of seraph, had never pictured so sweet, so womanly, and yet so wise a face. Glancing at Du Guesclin, Alleyne saw that he also was watching his wife closely, and from the twitching of his features, and the beads upon his brick-colored brow, it was easy to see that he was deeply agitated by the change which he marked in her.\n\n\"How is it with you, lady?\" he asked at last, in a tremulous voice.\n\nHer eyes remained fixed intently upon the wall, and there was a long pause ere she answered him. Her voice, too, which had been so clear and ringing, was now low and muffled as that of one who speaks from a distance.\n\n\"All is very well with me, Bertrand,\" said she. \"The blessed hour of sight has come round to me again.\"\n\n\"I could see it come! I could see it come!\" he exclaimed, passing his fingers through his hair with the same perplexed expression as before.\n\n\"This is untoward, Sir Tristram,\" he said at last. \"And I scarce know in what words to make it clear to you, and to your fair wife, and to Sir Nigel Loring, and to these other stranger knights. My tongue is a blunt one, and fitter to shout word of command than to clear up such a matter as this, of which I can myself understand little. This, however, I know, that my wife is come of a very sainted race, whom God hath in His wisdom endowed with wondrous powers, so that Tiphaine Raquenel was known throughout Brittany ere ever I first saw her at Dinan. Yet these powers are ever used for good, and they are the gift of God and not of the devil, which is the difference betwixt white magic and black.\"\n\n\"Perchance it would be as well that we should send for Father Stephen,\" said Sir Tristram.\n\n\"It would be best that he should come,\" cried the Hospitaller.\n\n\"And bring with him a flask of holy water,\" added the knight of Bohemia.\n\n\"Not so, gentlemen,\" answered Sir Bertrand. \"It is not needful that this priest should be called, and it is in my mind that in asking for this ye cast some slight shadow or slur upon the good name of my wife, as though it were still doubtful whether her power came to her from above or below. If ye have indeed such a doubt I pray that you will say so, that we may discuss the matter in a fitting way.\"\n\n\"For myself,\" said Sir Nigel, \"I have heard such words fall from the lips of this lady that I am of the opinion that there is no woman, save only one, who can be in any way compared to her in beauty and in goodness. Should any gentleman think otherwise, I should deem it great honor to run a small course with him, or debate the matter in whatever way might be most pleasing to him.\"\n\n\"Nay, it would ill become me to cast a slur upon a lady who is both my guest and the wife of my comrade-in-arms,\" said the Seneschal of Villefranche. \"I have perceived also that on her mantle there is marked a silver cross, which is surely sign enough that there is nought of evil in these strange powers which you say that she possesses.\"\n\nThis argument of the seneschal's appealed so powerfully to the Bohemian and to the Hospitaller that they at once intimated that their objections had been entirely overcome, while even the Lady Rochefort, who had sat shivering and crossing herself, ceased to cast glances at the door, and allowed her fears to turn to curiosity.\n\n\"Among the gifts which have been vouchsafed to my wife,\" said Du Guesclin, \"there is the wondrous one of seeing into the future; but it comes very seldom upon her, and goes as quickly, for none can command it. The blessed hour of sight, as she hath named it, has come but twice since I have known her, and I can vouch for it that all that she hath told me was true, for on the evening of the Battle of Auray she said that the morrow would be an ill day for me and for Charles of Blois. Ere the sun had sunk again he was dead, and I the prisoner of Sir John Chandos. Yet it is not every question that she can answer, but only those\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"Bertrand, Bertrand!\" cried the lady in the same mutterings far-away voice, \"the blessed hour passes. Use it, Bertrand, while you may.\"\n\n\"I will, my sweet. Tell me, then, what fortune comes upon me?\"\n\n\"Danger, Bertrand\u2014deadly, pressing danger\u2014which creeps upon you and you know it not.\"\n\nThe French soldier burst into a thunderous laugh, and his green eyes twinkled with amusement. \"At what time during these twenty years would not that have been a true word?\" he cried. \"Danger is in the air that I breathe. But is this so very close, Tiphaine?\"\n\n\"Here\u2014now\u2014close upon you!\" The words came out in broken, strenuous speech, while the lady's fair face was writhed and drawn like that of one who looks upon a horror which strikes, the words from her lips. Du Guesclin gazed round the tapestried room, at the screens, the tables, the abace, the credence, the buffet with its silver salver, and the half-circle of friendly, wondering faces. There was an utter stillness, save for the sharp breathing of the Lady Tiphaine and for the gentle soughing of the wind outside, which wafted to their ears the distant call upon a swine-herd's horn.\n\n\"The danger may bide,\" said he, shrugging his broad shoulders. \"And now, Tiphaine, tell us what will come of this war in Spain.\"\n\n\"I can see little,\" she answered, straining her eyes and puckering her brow, as one who would fain clear her sight. \"There are mountains, and dry plains, and flash of arms and shouting of battle-cries. Yet it is whispered to me that by failure you will succeed.\"\n\n\"Ha! Sir Nigel, how like you that?\" quoth Bertrand, shaking his head. \"It is like mead and vinegar, half sweet, half sour. And is there no question which you would ask my lady?\"\n\n\"Certes there is. I would fain know, fair lady, how all things are at Twynham Castle, and above all how my sweet lady employs herself.\"\n\n\"To answer this I would fain lay hand upon one whose thoughts turn strongly to this castle which you have named. Nay, my Lord Loring, it is whispered to me that there is another here who hath thought more deeply of it than you.\"\n\n\"Thought more of mine own home?\" cried Sir Nigel. \"Lady, I fear that in this matter at least you are mistaken.\"\n\n\"Not so, Sir Nigel. Come hither, young man, young English squire with the gray eyes! Now give me your hand, and place it here across my brow, that I may see that which you have seen. What is this that rises before me? Mist, mist, rolling mist with a square black tower above it. See it shreds out, it thins, it rises, and there lies a castle in green plain, with the sea beneath it, and a great church within a bow-shot. There are two rivers which run through the meadows, and between them lie the tents of the besiegers.\"\n\n\"The besiegers!\" cried Alleyne, Ford, and Sir Nigel, all three in a breath.\n\n\"Yes, truly, and they press hard upon the castle, for they are an exceeding multitude and full of courage. See how they storm and rage against the gate, while some rear ladders, and others, line after line, sweep the walls with their arrows. They are many leaders who shout and beckon, and one, a tall man with a golden beard, who stands before the gate stamping his foot and hallooing them on, as a pricker doth the hounds. But those in the castle fight bravely. There is a woman, two women, who stand upon the walls, and give heart to the men-at-arms. They shower down arrows, darts and great stones. Ah! they have struck down the tall leader, and the others give back. The mist thickens and I can see no more.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" said Sir Nigel, \"I do not think that there can be any such doings at Christchurch, and I am very easy of the fortalice so long as my sweet wife hangs the key of the outer bailey at the head of her bed. Yet I will not deny that you have pictured the castle as well as I could have done myself, and I am full of wonderment at all that I have heard and seen.\"\n\n\"I would, Lady Tiphaine,\" cried the Lady Rochefort, \"that you would use your power to tell me what hath befallen my golden bracelet which I wore when hawking upon the second Sunday of Advent, and have never set eyes upon since.\"\n\n\"Nay, lady,\" said du Guesclin, \"it does not befit so great and wondrous a power to pry and search and play the varlet even to the beautiful chatelaine of Villefranche. Ask a worthy question, and, with the blessing of God, you shall have a worthy answer.\"\n\n\"Then I would fain ask,\" cried one of the French squires, \"as to which may hope to conquer in these wars betwixt the English and ourselves.\"\n\n\"Both will conquer and each will hold its own,\" answered the Lady Tiphaine.\n\n\"Then we shall still hold Gascony and Guienne?\" cried Sir Nigel.\n\nThe lady shook her head. \"French land, French blood, French speech,\" she answered. \"They are French, and France shall have them.\"\n\n\"But not Bordeaux?\" cried Sir Nigel excitedly.\n\n\"Bordeaux also is for France.\"\n\n\"But Calais?\"\n\n\"Calais too.\"\n\n\"Woe worth me then, and ill hail to these evil words! If Bordeaux and Calais be gone, then what is left for England?\"\n\n\"It seems indeed that there are evil times coming upon your country,\" said Du Guesclin. \"In our fondest hopes we never thought to hold Bordeaux. By Saint Ives! this news hath warmed the heart within me. Our dear country will then be very great in the future, Tiphaine?\"\n\n\"Great, and rich, and beautiful,\" she cried. \"Far down the course of time I can see her still leading the nations, a wayward queen among the peoples, great in war, but greater in peace, quick in thought, deft in action, with her people's will for her sole monarch, from the sands of Calais to the blue seas of the south.\"\n\n\"Ha!\" cried Du Guesclin, with his eyes flashing in triumph, \"you hear her, Sir Nigel?\u2014and she never yet said word which was not sooth.\"\n\nThe English knight shook his head moodily. \"What of my own poor country?\" said he. \"I fear, lady, that what you have said bodes but small good for her.\"\n\nThe lady sat with parted lips, and her breath came quick and fast. \"My God!\" she cried, \"what is this that is shown me? Whence come they, these peoples, these lordly nations, these mighty countries which rise up before me? I look beyond, and others rise, and yet others, far and farther to the shores of the uttermost waters. They crowd! They swarm! The world is given to them, and it resounds with the clang of their hammers and the ringing of their church bells. They call them many names, and they rule them this way or that but they are all English, for I can hear the voices of the people. On I go, and onwards over seas where man hath never yet sailed, and I see a great land under new stars and a stranger sky, and still the land is England. Where have her children not gone? What have they not done? Her banner is planted on ice. Her banner is scorched in the sun. She lies athwart the lands, and her shadow is over the seas. Bertrand, Bertrand! we are undone for the buds of her bud are even as our choicest flower!\" Her voice rose into a wild cry, and throwing up her arms she sank back white and nerveless into the deep oaken chair.\n\n\"It is over,\" said Du Guesclin moodily, as he raised her drooping head with his strong brown hand. \"Wine for the lady, squire! The blessed hour of sight hath passed.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE BRUSHWOOD MEN CAME TO THE CHATEAU OF VILLEFRANCHE.", + "text": "It was late ere Alleyne Edricson, having carried Sir Nigel the goblet of spiced wine which it was his custom to drink after the curling of his hair, was able at last to seek his chamber. It was a stone-flagged room upon the second floor, with a bed in a recess for him, and two smaller pallets on the other side, on which Aylward and Hordle John were already snoring. Alleyne had knelt down to his evening orisons, when there came a tap at his door, and Ford entered with a small lamp in his hand. His face was deadly pale, and his hand shook until the shadows flickered up and down the wall.\n\n\"What is it, Ford?\" cried Alleyne, springing to his feet.\n\n\"I can scarce tell you,\" said he, sitting down on the side of the couch, and resting his chin upon his hand. \"I know not what to say or what to think.\"\n\n\"Has aught befallen you, then?\"\n\n\"Yes, or I have been slave to my own fancy. I tell you, lad, that I am all undone, like a fretted bow-string. Hark hither, Alleyne! it cannot be that you have forgotten little Tita, the daughter of the old glass-stainer at Bordeaux?\"\n\n\"I remember her well.\"\n\n\"She and I, Alleyne, broke the lucky groat together ere we parted, and she wears my ring upon her finger. 'Caro mio,' quoth she when last we parted, 'I shall be near thee in the wars, and thy danger will be my danger.' Alleyne, as God is my help, as I came up the stairs this night I saw her stand before me, her face in tears, her hands out as though in warning\u2014I saw it, Alleyne, even as I see those two archers upon their couches. Our very finger-tips seemed to meet, ere she thinned away like a mist in the sunshine.\"\n\n\"I would not give overmuch thought to it,\" answered Alleyne. \"Our minds will play us strange pranks, and bethink you that these words of the Lady Tiphaine Du Guesclin have wrought upon us and shaken us.\"\n\nFord shook his head. \"I saw little Tita as clearly as though I were back at the Rue des Apotres at Bordeaux,\" said he.\n\n\"But the hour is late, and I must go.\"\n\n\"Where do you sleep, then?\"\n\n\"In the chamber above you. May the saints be with us all!\" He rose from the couch and left the chamber, while Alleyne could hear his feet sounding upon the winding stair. The young squire walked across to the window and gazed out at the moonlit landscape, his mind absorbed by the thought of the Lady Tiphaine, and of the strange words that she had spoken as to what was going forward at Castle Twynham. Leaning his elbows upon the stonework, he was deeply plunged in reverie, when in a moment his thoughts were brought back to Villefranche and to the scene before him.\n\nThe window at which he stood was in the second floor of that portion of the castle which was nearest to the keep. In front lay the broad moat, with the moon lying upon its surface, now clear and round, now drawn lengthwise as the breeze stirred the waters. Beyond, the plain sloped down to a thick wood, while further to the left a second wood shut out the view. Between the two an open glade stretched, silvered in the moonshine, with the river curving across the lower end of it.\n\nAs he gazed, he saw of a sudden a man steal forth from the wood into the open clearing. He walked with his head sunk, his shoulders curved, and his knees bent, as one who strives hard to remain unseen. Ten paces from the fringe of trees he glanced around, and waving his hand he crouched down, and was lost to sight among a belt of furze-bushes. After him there came a second man, and after him a third, a fourth, and a fifth stealing across the narrow open space and darting into the shelter of the brushwood. Nine-and-seventy Alleyne counted of these dark figures flitting across the line of the moonlight. Many bore huge burdens upon their backs, though what it was that they carried he could not tell at the distance. Out of the one wood and into the other they passed, all with the same crouching, furtive gait, until the black bristle of trees had swallowed up the last of them.\n\nFor a moment Alleyne stood in the window, still staring down at the silent forest, uncertain as to what he should think of these midnight walkers. Then he bethought him that there was one beside him who was fitter to judge on such a matter. His fingers had scarce rested upon Aylward's shoulder ere the bowman was on his feet, with his hand outstretched to his sword.\n\n\"Qui va?\" he cried. \"Hola! mon petit. By my hilt! I thought there had been a camisade. What then, mon gar.?\"\n\n\"Come hither by the window, Aylward,\" said Alleyne. \"I have seen four-score men pass from yonder shaw across the glade, and nigh every man of them had a great burden on his back. What think you of it?\"\n\n\"I think nothing of it, mon camarade! There are as many masterless folk in this country as there are rabbits on Cowdray Down, and there are many who show their faces by night but would dance in a hempen collar if they stirred forth in the day. On all the French marches are droves of outcasts, reivers, spoilers, and draw-latches, of whom I judge that these are some, though I marvel that they should dare to come so nigh to the castle of the seneschal. All seems very quiet now,\" he added, peering out of the window.\n\n\"They are in the further wood,\" said Alleyne.\n\n\"And there they may bide. Back to rest, mon petit; for, by my hilt! each day now will bring its own work. Yet it would be well to shoot the bolt in yonder door when one is in strange quarters. So!\" He threw himself down upon his pallet and in an instant was fast asleep.\n\nIt might have been about three o'clock in the morning when Alleyne was aroused from a troubled sleep by a low cry or exclamation. He listened, but, as he heard no more, he set it down as the challenge of the guard upon the walls, and dropped off to sleep once more. A few minutes later he was disturbed by a gentle creaking of his own door, as though some one were pushing cautiously against it, and immediately afterwards he heard the soft thud of cautious footsteps upon the stair which led to the room above, followed by a confused noise and a muffled groan. Alleyne sat up on his couch with all his nerves in a tingle, uncertain whether these sounds might come from a simple cause\u2014some sick archer and visiting leech perhaps\u2014or whether they might have a more sinister meaning. But what danger could threaten them here in this strong castle, under the care of famous warriors, with high walls and a broad moat around them? Who was there that could injure them? He had well-nigh persuaded himself that his fears were a foolish fancy, when his eyes fell upon that which sent the blood cold to his heart and left him gasping, with hands clutching at the counterpane.\n\nRight in front of him was the broad window of the chamber, with the moon shining brightly through it. For an instant something had obscured the light, and now a head was bobbing up and down outside, the face looking in at him, and swinging slowly from one side of the window to the other. Even in that dim light there could be no mistaking those features. Drawn, distorted and blood-stained, they were still those of the young fellow-squire who had sat so recently upon his own couch. With a cry of horror Alleyne sprang from his bed and rushed to the casement, while the two archers, aroused by the sound, seized their weapons and stared about them in bewilderment. One glance was enough to show Edricson that his fears were but too true. Foully murdered, with a score of wounds upon him and a rope round his neck, his poor friend had been cast from the upper window and swung slowly in the night wind, his body rasping against the wall and his disfigured face upon a level with the casement.\n\n\"My God!\" cried Alleyne, shaking in every limb. \"What has come upon us? What devil's deed is this?\"\n\n\"Here is flint and steel,\" said John stolidly. \"The lamp, Aylward! This moonshine softens a man's heart. Now we may use the eyes which God hath given us.\"\n\n\"By my hilt!\" cried Aylward, as the yellow flame flickered up, \"it is indeed young master Ford, and I think that this seneschal is a black villain, who dare not face us in the day but would murther us in our sleep. By the twang of string! if I do not soak a goose's feather with his heart's blood, it will be no fault of Samkin Aylward of the White Company.\"\n\n\"But, Aylward, think of the men whom I saw yesternight,\" said Alleyne. \"It may not be the seneschal. It may be that others have come into the castle. I must to Sir Nigel ere it be too late. Let me go, Aylward, for my place is by his side.\"\n\n\"One moment, mon gar. Put that steel headpiece on the end of my yew-stave. So! I will put it first through the door; for it is ill to come out when you can neither see nor guard yourself. Now, camarades, out swords and stand ready! Hola, by my hilt! it is time that we were stirring!\"\n\nAs he spoke, a sudden shouting broke forth in the castle, with the scream of a woman and the rush of many feet. Then came the sharp clink of clashing steel, and a roar like that of an angry lion\u2014\"Notre Dame Du Guesclin! St. Ives! St. Ives!\" The bow-man pulled back the bolt of the door, and thrust out the headpiece at the end of the bow. A clash, the clatter of the steel-cap upon the ground, and, ere the man who struck could heave up for another blow, the archer had passed his sword through his body. \"On, camarades, on!\" he cried; and, breaking fiercely past two men who threw themselves in his way, he sped down the broad corridor in the direction of the shouting.\n\nA sharp turning, and then a second one, brought them to the head of a short stair, from which they looked straight down upon the scene of the uproar. A square oak-floored hall lay beneath them, from which opened the doors of the principal guest-chambers. This hall was as light as day, for torches burned in numerous sconces upon the walls, throwing strange shadows from the tusked or antlered heads which ornamented them. At the very foot of the stair, close to the open door of their chamber, lay the seneschal and his wife: she with her head shorn from her shoulders, he thrust through with a sharpened stake, which still protruded from either side of his body. Three servants of the castle lay dead beside them, all torn and draggled, as though a pack of wolves had been upon them. In front of the central guest-chamber stood Du Guesclin and Sir Nigel, half-clad and unarmored, with the mad joy of battle gleaming in their eyes. Their heads were thrown back, their lips compressed, their blood-stained swords poised over their right shoulders, and their left feet thrown out. Three dead men lay huddled together in front of them: while a fourth, with the blood squirting from a severed vessel, lay back with updrawn knees, breathing in wheezy gasps. Further back\u2014all panting together, like the wind in a tree\u2014there stood a group of fierce, wild creatures, bare-armed and bare-legged, gaunt, unshaven, with deep-set murderous eyes and wild beast faces. With their flashing teeth, their bristling hair, their mad leapings and screamings, they seemed to Alleyne more like fiends from the pit than men of flesh and blood. Even as he looked, they broke into a hoarse yell and dashed once more upon the two knights, hurling themselves madly upon their sword-points; clutching, scrambling, biting, tearing, careless of wounds if they could but drag the two soldiers to earth. Sir Nigel was thrown down by the sheer weight of them, and Sir Bertrand with his thunderous war-cry was swinging round his heavy sword to clear a space for him to rise, when the whistle of two long English arrows, and the rush of the squire and the two English archers down the stairs, turned the tide of the combat. The assailants gave back, the knights rushed forward, and in a very few moments the hall was cleared, and Hordle John had hurled the last of the wild men down the steep steps which led from the end of it.\n\n\"Do not follow them,\" cried Du Guesclin. \"We are lost if we scatter. For myself I care not a denier, though it is a poor thing to meet one's end at the hands of such scum; but I have my dear lady here, who must by no means be risked. We have breathing-space now, and I would ask you, Sir Nigel, what it is that you would counsel?\"\n\n\"By St. Paul!\" answered Sir Nigel, \"I can by no means understand what hath befallen us, save that I have been woken up by your battle-cry, and, rushing forth, found myself in the midst of this small bickering. Harrow and alas for the lady and the seneschal! What dogs are they who have done this bloody deed?\"\n\n\"They are the Jacks, the men of the brushwood. They have the castle, though I know not how it hath come to pass. Look from this window into the bailey.\"\n\n\"By heaven!\" cried Sir Nigel, \"it is as bright as day with the torches. The gates stand open, and there are three thousand of them within the walls. See how they rush and scream and wave! What is it that they thrust out through the postern door? My God! it is a man-at-arms, and they pluck him limb from limb like hounds on a wolf. Now another, and yet another. They hold the whole castle, for I see their faces at the windows. See, there are some with great bundles on their backs.\"\n\n\"It is dried wood from the forest. They pile them against the walls and set them in a blaze. Who is this who tries to check them? By St. Ives! it is the good priest who spake for them in the hall. He kneels, he prays, he implores! What! villains, would ye raise hands against those who have befriended you? Ah, the butcher has struck him! He is down! They stamp him under their feet! They tear off his gown and wave it in the air! See now, how the flames lick up the walls! Are there none left to rally round us? With a hundred men we might hold our own.\"\n\n\"Oh, for my Company!\" cried Sir Nigel. \"But where is Ford, Alleyne?\"\n\n\"He is foully murdered, my fair lord.\"\n\n\"The saints receive him! May he rest in peace! But here come some at last who may give us counsel, for amid these passages it is ill to stir without a guide.\"\n\nAs he spoke, a French squire and the Bohemian knight came rushing down the steps, the latter bleeding from a slash across his forehead.\n\n\"All is lost!\" he cried. \"The castle is taken and on fire, the seneschal is slain, and there is nought left for us.\"\n\n\"On the contrary,\" quoth Sir Nigel, \"there is much left to us, for there is a very honorable contention before us, and a fair lady for whom to give our lives. There are many ways in which a man might die, but none better than this.\"\n\n\"You can tell us, Godfrey,\" said Du Guesclin to the French squire: \"how came these men into the castle, and what succors can we count upon? By St. Ives! if we come not quickly to some counsel we shall be burned like young rooks in a nest.\"\n\nThe squire, a dark, slender stripling, spoke firmly and quickly, as one who was trained to swift action. \"There is a passage under the earth into the castle,\" said he, \"and through it some of the Jacks made their way, casting open the gates for the others. They have had help from within the walls, and the men-at-arms were heavy with wine: they must have been slain in their beds, for these devils crept from room to room with soft step and ready knife. Sir Amory the Hospitaller was struck down with an axe as he rushed before us from his sleeping-chamber. Save only ourselves, I do not think that there are any left alive.\"\n\n\"What, then, would you counsel?\"\n\n\"That we make for the keep. It is unused, save in time of war, and the key hangs from my poor lord and master's belt.\"\n\n\"There are two keys there.\"\n\n\"It is the larger. Once there, we might hold the narrow stair; and at least, as the walls are of a greater thickness, it would be longer ere they could burn them. Could we but carry the lady across the bailey, all might be well with us.\"\n\n\"Nay; the lady hath seen something of the work of war,\" said Tiphaine coming forth, as white, as grave, and as unmoved as ever. \"I would not be a hamper to you, my dear spouse and gallant friend. Rest assured of this, that if all else fail I have always a safeguard here\"\u2014drawing a small silver-hilted poniard from her bosom\u2014\"which sets me beyond the fear of these vile and blood-stained wretches.\"\n\n\"Tiphaine,\" cried Du Guesclin, \"I have always loved you; and now, by Our Lady of Rennes! I love you more than ever. Did I not know that your hand will be as ready as your words I would myself turn my last blow upon you, ere you should fall into their hands. Lead on, Godfrey! A new golden pyx will shine in the minster of Dinan if we come safely through with it.\"\n\nThe attention of the insurgents had been drawn away from murder to plunder, and all over the castle might be heard their cries and whoops of delight as they dragged forth the rich tapestries, the silver flagons, and the carved furniture. Down in the courtyard half-clad wretches, their bare limbs all mottled with blood-stains, strutted about with plumed helmets upon their heads, or with the Lady Rochefort's silken gowns girt round their loins and trailing on the ground behind them. Casks of choice wine had been rolled out from the cellars, and starving peasants squatted, goblet in hand, draining off vintages which De Rochefort had set aside for noble and royal guests. Others, with slabs of bacon and joints of dried meat upon the ends of their pikes, held them up to the blaze or tore at them ravenously with their teeth. Yet all order had not been lost amongst them, for some hundreds of the better armed stood together in a silent group, leaning upon their rude weapons and looking up at the fire, which had spread so rapidly as to involve one whole side of the castle. Already Alleyne could hear the crackling and roaring of the flames, while the air was heavy with heat and full of the pungent whiff of burning wood." + }, + { + "title": "HOW FIVE MEN HELD THE KEEP OF VILLEFRANCHE.", + "text": "Under the guidance of the French squire the party passed down two narrow corridors. The first was empty, but at the head of the second stood a peasant sentry, who started off at the sight of them, yelling loudly to his comrades. \"Stop him, or we are undone!\" cried Du Guesclin, and had started to run, when Aylward's great war-bow twanged like a harp-string, and the man fell forward upon his face, with twitching limbs and clutching fingers. Within five paces of where he lay a narrow and little-used door led out into the bailey. From beyond it came such a Babel of hooting and screaming, horrible oaths and yet more horrible laughter, that the stoutest heart might have shrunk from casting down the frail barrier which faced them.\n\n\"Make straight for the keep!\" said Du Guesclin, in a sharp, stern whisper. \"The two archers in front, the lady in the centre, a squire on either side, while we three knights shall bide behind and beat back those who press upon us. So! Now open the door, and God have us in his holy keeping!\"\n\nFor a few moments it seemed that their object would be attained without danger, so swift and so silent had been their movements. They were half-way across the bailey ere the frantic, howling peasants made a movement to stop them. The few who threw themselves in their way were overpowered or brushed aside, while the pursuers were beaten back by the ready weapons of the three cavaliers. Unscathed they fought their way to the door of the keep, and faced round upon the swarming mob, while the squire thrust the great key into the lock.\n\n\"My God!\" he cried, \"it is the wrong key.\"\n\n\"The wrong key!\"\n\n\"Dolt, fool that I am! This is the key of the castle gate; the other opens the keep. I must back for it!\" He turned, with some wild intention of retracing his steps, but at the instant a great jagged rock, hurled by a brawny peasant, struck him full upon the ear, and he dropped senseless to the ground.\n\n\"This is key enough for me!\" quoth Hordle John, picking up the huge stone, and hurling it against the door with all the strength of his enormous body. The lock shivered, the wood smashed, the stone flew into five pieces, but the iron clamps still held the door in its position. Bending down, he thrust his great fingers under it, and with a heave raised the whole mass of wood and iron from its hinges. For a moment it tottered and swayed, and then, falling outward, buried him in its ruin, while his comrades rushed into the dark archway which led to safety.\n\n\"Up the steps, Tiphaine!\" cried Du Guesclin. \"Now round, friends, and beat them back!\" The mob of peasants had surged in upon their heels, but the two trustiest blades in Europe gleamed upon that narrow stair, and four of their number dropped upon the threshold. The others gave back, and gathered in a half circle round the open door, gnashing their teeth and shaking their clenched hands at the defenders. The body of the French squire had been dragged out by them and hacked to pieces. Three or four others had pulled John from under the door, when he suddenly bounded to his feet, and clutching one in either hand dashed them together with such force that they fell senseless across each other upon the ground. With a kick and a blow he freed himself from two others who clung to him, and in a moment he was within the portal with his comrades.\n\nYet their position was a desperate one. The peasants from far and near had been assembled for this deed of vengeance, and not less than six thousand were within or around the walls of the Chateau of Villefranche. Ill armed and half starved, they were still desperate men, to whom danger had lost all fears: for what was death that they should shun it to cling to such a life as theirs? The castle was theirs, and the roaring flames were spurting through the windows and flickering high above the turrets on two sides of the quadrangle. From either side they were sweeping down from room to room and from bastion to bastion in the direction of the keep. Faced by an army, and girt in by fire, were six men and one woman; but some of them were men so trained to danger and so wise in war that even now the combat was less unequal than it seemed. Courage and resource were penned in by desperation and numbers, while the great yellow sheets of flame threw their lurid glare over the scene of death.\n\n\"There is but space for two upon a step to give free play to our sword-arms,\" said Du Guesclin. \"Do you stand with me, Nigel, upon the lowest. France and England will fight together this night. Sir Otto, I pray you to stand behind us with this young squire. The archers may go higher yet and shoot over our heads. I would that we had our harness, Nigel.\"\n\n\"Often have I heard my dear Sir John Chandos say that a knight should never, even when a guest, be parted from it. Yet it will be more honor to us if we come well out of it. We have a vantage, since we see them against the light and they can scarce see us. It seems to me that they muster for an onslaught.\"\n\n\"If we can but keep them in play,\" said the Bohemian, \"it is likely that these flames may bring us succor if there be any true men in the country.\"\n\n\"Bethink you, my fair lord,\" said Alleyne to Sir Nigel, \"that we have never injured these men, nor have we cause of quarrel against them. Would it not be well, if but for the lady's sake, to speak them fair and see if we may not come to honorable terms with them?\"\n\n\"Not so, by St. Paul!\" cried Sir Nigel. \"It does not accord with mine honor, nor shall it ever be said that I, a knight of England, was ready to hold parley with men who have slain a fair lady and a holy priest.\"\n\n\"As well hold parley with a pack of ravening wolves,\" said the French captain. \"Ha! Notre Dame Du Guesclin! Saint Ives! Saint Ives!\"\n\nAs he thundered forth his war-cry, the Jacks who had been gathering before the black arch of the gateway rushed in madly in a desperate effort to carry the staircase. Their leaders were a small man, dark in the face, with his beard done up in two plaits, and another larger man, very bowed in the shoulders, with a huge club studded with sharp nails in his hand. The first had not taken three steps ere an arrow from Aylward's bow struck him full in the chest, and he fell coughing and spluttering across the threshold. The other rushed onwards, and breaking between Du Guesclin and Sir Nigel he dashed out the brains of the Bohemian with a single blow of his clumsy weapon. With three swords through him he still struggled on, and had almost won his way through them ere he fell dead upon the stair. Close at his heels came a hundred furious peasants, who flung themselves again and again against the five swords which confronted them. It was cut and parry and stab as quick as eye could see or hand act. The door was piled with bodies, and the stone floor was slippery with blood. The deep shout of Du Guesclin, the hard, hissing breath of the pressing multitude, the clatter of steel, the thud of falling bodies, and the screams of the stricken, made up such a medley as came often in after years to break upon Alleyne's sleep. Slowly and sullenly at last the throng drew off, with many a fierce backward glance, while eleven of their number lay huddled in front of the stair which they had failed to win.\n\n\"The dogs have had enough,\" said Du Guesclin.\n\n\"By Saint Paul! there appear to be some very worthy and valiant persons among them,\" observed Sir Nigel. \"They are men from whom, had they been of better birth, much honor and advancement might be gained. Even as it is, it is a great pleasure to have seen them. But what is this that they are bringing forward?\"\n\n\"It is as I feared,\" growled Du Guesclin. \"They will burn us out, since they cannot win their way past us. Shoot straight and hard, archers; for, by St. Ives! our good swords are of little use to us.\"\n\nAs he spoke, a dozen men rushed forward, each screening himself behind a huge fardel of brushwood. Hurling their burdens in one vast heap within the portal, they threw burning torches upon the top of it. The wood had been soaked in oil, for in an instant it was ablaze, and a long, hissing, yellow flame licked over the heads of the defenders, and drove them further up to the first floor of the keep. They had scarce reached it, however, ere they found that the wooden joists and planks of the flooring were already on fire. Dry and worm-eaten, a spark upon them became a smoulder, and a smoulder a blaze. A choking smoke filled the air, and the five could scarce grope their way to the staircase which led up to the very summit of the square tower.\n\nStrange was the scene which met their eyes from this eminence. Beneath them on every side stretched the long sweep of peaceful country, rolling plain, and tangled wood, all softened and mellowed in the silver moonshine. No light, nor movement, nor any sign of human aid could be seen, but far away the hoarse clangor of a heavy bell rose and fell upon the wintry air. Beneath and around them blazed the huge fire, roaring and crackling on every side of the bailey, and even as they looked the two corner turrets fell in with a deafening crash, and the whole castle was but a shapeless mass, spouting flames and smoke from every window and embrasure. The great black tower upon which they stood rose like a last island of refuge amid this sea of fire but the ominous crackling and roaring below showed that it would not be long ere it was engulfed also in the common ruin. At their very feet was the square courtyard, crowded with the howling and dancing peasants, their fierce faces upturned, their clenched hands waving, all drunk with bloodshed and with vengeance. A yell of execration and a scream of hideous laughter burst from the vast throng, as they saw the faces of the last survivors of their enemies peering down at them from the height of the keep. They still piled the brushwood round the base of the tower, and gambolled hand in hand around the blaze, screaming out the doggerel lines which had long been the watchword of the Jacquerie:\n\n\u2003Cessez, cessez, gens d'armes et pietons,\n\n\u2003De piller et manger le bonhomme\n\n\u2003Qui de longtemps Jacques Bonhomme\n\n\u2003Se nomme.\n\nTheir thin, shrill voices rose high above the roar of the flames and the crash of the masonry, like the yelping of a pack of wolves who see their quarry before them and know that they have well-nigh run him down.\n\n\"By my hilt!\" said Aylward to John, \"it is in my mind that we shall not see Spain this journey. It is a great joy to me that I have placed my feather-bed and other things of price with that worthy woman at Lyndhurst, who will now have the use of them. I have thirteen arrows yet, and if one of them fly unfleshed, then, by the twang of string! I shall deserve my doom. First at him who flaunts with my lady's silken frock. Clap in the clout, by God! though a hand's-breadth lower than I had meant. Now for the rogue with the head upon his pike. Ha! to the inch, John. When my eye is true, I am better at rovers than at long-butts or hoyles. A good shoot for you also, John! The villain hath fallen forward into the fire. But I pray you, John, to loose gently, and not to pluck with the drawing-hand, for it is a trick that hath marred many a fine bowman.\"\n\nWhilst the two archers were keeping up a brisk fire upon the mob beneath them, Du Guesclin and his lady were consulting with Sir Nigel upon their desperate situation.\n\n\"'Tis a strange end for one who has seen so many stricken fields,\" said the French chieftain. \"For me one death is as another, but it is the thought of my sweet lady which goes to my heart.\"\n\n\"Nay, Bertrand, I fear it as little as you,\" said she. \"Had I my dearest wish, it would be that we should go together.\"\n\n\"Well answered, fair lady!\" cried Sir Nigel. \"And very sure I am that my own sweet wife would have said the same. If the end be now come, I have had great good fortune in having lived in times when so much glory was to be won, and in knowing so many valiant gentlemen and knights. But why do you pluck my sleeve, Alleyne?\"\n\n\"If it please you, my fair lord, there are in this corner two great tubes of iron, with many heavy balls, which may perchance be those bombards and shot of which I have heard.\"\n\n\"By Saint Ives! it is true,\" cried Sir Bertrand, striding across to the recess where the ungainly, funnel-shaped, thick-ribbed engines were standing. \"Bombards they are, and of good size. We may shoot down upon them.\"\n\n\"Shoot with them, quotha?\" cried Aylward in high disdain, for pressing danger is the great leveller of classes. \"How is a man to take aim with these fool's toys, and how can he hope to do scath with them?\"\n\n\"I will show you,\" answered Sir Nigel; \"for here is the great box of powder, and if you will raise it for me, John, I will show you how it may be used. Come hither, where the folk are thickest round the fire. Now, Aylward, crane thy neck and see what would have been deemed an old wife's tale when we first turned our faces to the wars. Throw back the lid, John, and drop the box into the fire!\"\n\nA deafening roar, a fluff of bluish light, and the great square tower rocked and trembled from its very foundations, swaying this way and that like a reed in the wind. Amazed and dizzy, the defenders, clutching at the cracking parapets for support, saw great stones, burning beams of wood, and mangled bodies hurtling past them through the air. When they staggered to their feet once more, the whole keep had settled down upon one side, so that they could scarce keep their footing upon the sloping platform. Gazing over the edge, they looked down upon the horrible destruction which had been caused by the explosion. For forty yards round the portal the ground was black with writhing, screaming figures, who struggled up and hurled themselves down again, tossing this way and that, sightless, scorched, with fire bursting from their tattered clothing. Beyond this circle of death their comrades, bewildered and amazed, cowered away from this black tower and from these invincible men, who were most to be dreaded when hope was furthest from their hearts.\n\n\"A sally, Du Guesclin, a sally!\" cried Sir Nigel. \"By Saint Paul! they are in two minds, and a bold rush may turn them.\" He drew his sword as he spoke and darted down the winding stairs, closely followed by his four comrades. Ere he was at the first floor, however, he threw up his arms and stopped. \"Mon Dieu!\" he said, \"we are lost men!\"\n\n\"What then?\" cried those behind him.\n\n\"The wail hath fallen in, the stair is blocked, and the fire still rages below. By Saint Paul! friends, we have fought a very honorable fight, and may say in all humbleness that we have done our devoir, but I think that we may now go back to the Lady Tiphaine and say our orisons, for we have played our parts in this world, and it is time that we made ready for another.\"\n\nThe narrow pass was blocked by huge stones littered in wild confusion over each other, with the blue choking smoke reeking up through the crevices. The explosion had blown in the wall and cut off the only path by which they could descend. Pent in, a hundred feet from earth, with a furnace raging under them and a ravening multitude all round who thirsted for their blood, it seemed indeed as though no men had ever come through such peril with their lives. Slowly they made their way back to the summit, but as they came out upon it the Lady Tiphaine darted forward and caught her husband by the wrist.\n\n\"Bertrand,\" said she, \"hush and listen! I have heard the voices of men all singing together in a strange tongue.\"\n\nBreathless they stood and silent, but no sound came up to them, save the roar of the flames and the clamor of their enemies.\n\n\"It cannot be, lady,\" said Du Guesclin. \"This night hath over wrought you, and your senses play you false. What men ere there in this country who would sing in a strange tongue?\"\n\n\"Hola!\" yelled Aylward, leaping suddenly into the air with waving hands and joyous face. \"I thought I heard it ere we went down, and now I hear it again. We are saved, comrades! By these ten finger-bones, we are saved! It is the marching song of the White Company. Hush!\"\n\nWith upraised forefinger and slanting head, he stood listening. Suddenly there came swelling up a deep-voiced, rollicking chorus from somewhere out of the darkness. Never did choice or dainty ditty of Provence or Languedoc sound more sweetly in the ears than did the rough-tongued Saxon to the six who strained their ears from the blazing keep:\n\n\u2003We'll drink all together\n\n\u2003To the gray goose feather\n\n\u2003And the land where the gray goose flew.\n\n\"Ha, by my hilt!\" shouted Aylward, \"it is the dear old bow song of the Company. Here come two hundred as tight lads as ever twirled a shaft over their thumbnails. Hark to the dogs, how lustily they sing!\"\n\nNearer and clearer, swelling up out of the night, came the gay marching lilt:\n\n\u2003What of the bow?\n\n\u2003The bow was made in England.\n\n\u2003Of true wood, of yew wood,\n\n\u2003The wood of English bows;\n\n\u2003For men who are free\n\n\u2003Love the old yew-tree\n\n\u2003And the land where the yew tree grows.\n\n\u2003What of the men?\n\n\u2003The men were bred in England,\n\n\u2003The bowmen, the yeomen,\n\n\u2003The lads of the dale and fell,\n\n\u2003Here's to you and to you,\n\n\u2003To the hearts that are true,\n\n\u2003And the land where the true hearts dwell.\n\n\"They sing very joyfully,\" said Du Guesclin, \"as though they were going to a festival.\"\n\n\"It is their wont when there is work to be done.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" quoth Sir Nigel, \"it is in my mind that they come too late, for I cannot see how we are to come down from this tower.\"\n\n\"There they come, the hearts of gold!\" cried Aylward. \"See, they move out from the shadow. Now they cross the meadow. They are on the further side of the moat. Hola camarades, hola! Johnston, Eccles, Cooke, Harward, Bligh! Would ye see a fair lady and two gallant knights done foully to death?\"\n\n\"Who is there?\" shouted a deep voice from below. \"Who is this who speaks with an English tongue?\"\n\n\"It is I, old lad. It is Sam Aylward of the Company; and here is your captain, Sir Nigel Loring, and four others, all laid out to be grilled like an Easterling's herrings.\"\n\n\"Curse me if I did not think that it was the style of speech of old Samkin Aylward,\" said the voice, amid a buzz from the ranks. \"Wherever there are knocks going there is Sammy in the heart of it. But who are these ill-faced rogues who block the path? To your kennels, canaille! What! you dare look us in the eyes? Out swords, lads, and give them the flat of them! Waste not your shafts upon such runagate knaves.\"\n\nThere was little fight left in the peasants, however, still dazed by the explosion, amazed at their own losses and disheartened by the arrival of the disciplined archers. In a very few minutes they were in full flight for their brushwood homes, leaving the morning sun to rise upon a blackened and blood-stained ruin, where it had left the night before the magnificent castle of the Seneschal of Auvergne. Already the white lines in the east were deepening into pink as the archers gathered round the keep and took counsel how to rescue the survivors.\n\n\"Had we a rope,\" said Alleyne, \"there is one side which is not yet on fire, down which we might slip.\"\n\n\"But how to get a rope?\"\n\n\"It is an old trick,\" quoth Aylward. \"Hola! Johnston, cast me up a rope, even as you did at Maupertuis in the war time.\"\n\nThe grizzled archer thus addressed took several lengths of rope from his comrades, and knotting them firmly together, he stretched them out in the long shadow which the rising sun threw from the frowning keep. Then he fixed the yew-stave of his bow upon end and measured the long, thin, black line which it threw upon the turf.\n\n\"A six-foot stave throws a twelve-foot shadow,\" he muttered. \"The keep throws a shadow of sixty paces. Thirty paces of rope will be enow and to spare. Another strand, Watkin! Now pull at the end that all may be safe. So! It is ready for them.'\n\n\"But how are they to reach it?\" asked the young archer beside him.\n\n\"Watch and see, young fool's-head,\" growled the old bowman. He took a long string from his pouch and fastened one end to an arrow.\n\n\"All ready, Samkin?\"\n\n\"Ready, camarade.\"\n\n\"Close to your hand then.\" With an easy pull he sent the shaft flickering gently up, falling upon the stonework within a foot of where Aylward was standing. The other end was secured to the rope, so that in a minute a good strong cord was dangling from the only sound side of the blazing and shattered tower. The Lady Tiphaine was lowered with a noose drawn fast under the arms, and the other five slid swiftly down, amid the cheers and joyous outcry of their rescuers." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE COMPANY TOOK COUNSEL ROUND THE FALLEN TREE.", + "text": "\"Where is Sir Claude Latour?\" asked Sir Nigel, as his feet touched ground.\n\n\"He is in camp, near Montpezat, two hours' march from here, my fair lord,\" said Johnston, the grizzled bowman who commanded the archers.\n\n\"Then we shall march thither, for I would fain have you all back at Dax in time to be in the prince's vanguard.\"\n\n\"My lord,\" cried Alleyne, joyfully, \"here are our chargers in the field, and I see your harness amid the plunder which these rogues have left behind them.\"\n\n\"By Saint Ives! you speak sooth, young squire,\" said Du Guesclin. \"There is my horse and my lady's jennet. The knaves led them from the stables, but fled without them. Now, Nigel, it is great joy to me to have seen one of whom I have often heard. Yet we must leave you now, for I must be with the King of Spain ere your army crosses the mountains.\"\n\n\"I had thought that you were in Spain with the valiant Henry of Trastamare.\"\n\n\"I have been there, but I came to France to raise succor for him. I shall ride back, Nigel, with four thousand of the best lances of France at my back, so that your prince may find he hath a task which is worthy of him. God be with you, friend, and may we meet again in better times!\"\n\n\"I do not think,\" said Sir Nigel, as he stood by Alleyne's side looking after the French knight and his lady, \"that in all Christendom you will meet with a more stout-hearted man or a fairer and sweeter dame. But your face is pale and sad, Alleyne! Have you perchance met with some hurt during the ruffle?\"\n\n\"Nay, my fair lord, I was but thinking of my friend Ford, and how he sat upon my couch no later than yesternight.\"\n\nSir Nigel shook his head sadly. \"Two brave squires have I lost,\" said he. \"I know not why the young shoots should be plucked, and an old weed left standing, yet certes there must be come good reason, since God hath so planned it. Did you not note, Alleyne, that the Lady Tiphaine did give us warning last night that danger was coming upon us?\"\n\n\"She did, my lord.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul! my mind misgives me as to what she saw at Twynham Castle. And yet I cannot think that any Scottish or French rovers could land in such force as to beleaguer the fortalice. Call the Company together, Aylward; and let us on, for it will be shame to us if we are not at Dax upon the trysting day.\"\n\nThe archers had spread themselves over the ruins, but a blast upon a bugle brought them all back to muster, with such booty as they could bear with them stuffed into their pouches or slung over their shoulders. As they formed into ranks, each man dropping silently into his place, Sir Nigel ran a questioning eye over them, and a smile of pleasure played over his face. Tall and sinewy, and brown, clear-eyed, hard-featured, with the stern and prompt bearing of experienced soldiers, it would be hard indeed for a leader to seek for a choicer following. Here and there in the ranks were old soldiers of the French wars, grizzled and lean, with fierce, puckered features and shaggy, bristling brows. The most, however, were young and dandy archers, with fresh English faces, their beards combed out, their hair curling from under their close steel hufkens, with gold or jewelled earrings gleaming in their ears, while their gold-spangled baldrics, their silken belts, and the chains which many of them wore round their thick brown necks, all spoke of the brave times which they had had as free companions. Each had a yew or hazel stave slung over his shoulder, plain and serviceable with the older men, but gaudily painted and carved at either end with the others. Steel caps, mail brigandines, white surcoats with the red lion of St. George, and sword or battle-axe swinging from their belts, completed this equipment, while in some cases the murderous maule or five-foot mallet was hung across the bowstave, being fastened to their leathern shoulder-belt by a hook in the centre of the handle. Sir Nigel's heart beat high as he looked upon their free bearing and fearless faces.\n\nFor two hours they marched through forest and marshland, along the left bank of the river Aveyron; Sir Nigel riding behind his Company, with Alleyne at his right hand, and Johnston, the old master bowman, walking by his left stirrup. Ere they had reached their journey's end the knight had learned all that he would know of his men, their doings and their intentions. Once, as they marched, they saw upon the further bank of the river a body of French men-at-arms, riding very swiftly in the direction of Villefranche.\n\n\"It is the Seneschal of Toulouse, with his following,\" said Johnston, shading his eyes with his hand. \"Had he been on this side of the water he might have attempted something upon us.\"\n\n\"I think that it would be well that we should cross,\" said Sir Nigel. \"It were pity to balk this worthy seneschal, should he desire to try some small feat of arms.\"\n\n\"Nay, there is no ford nearer than Tourville,\" answered the old archer. \"He is on his way to Villefranche, and short will be the shrift of any Jacks who come into his hands, for he is a man of short speech. It was he and the Seneschal of Beaucaire who hung Peter Wilkins, of the Company, last Lammastide; for which, by the black rood of Waltham! they shall hang themselves, if ever they come into our power. But here are our comrades, Sir Nigel, and here is our camp.\"\n\nAs he spoke, the forest pathway along which they marched opened out into a green glade, which sloped down towards the river. High, leafless trees girt it in on three sides, with a thick undergrowth of holly between their trunks. At the farther end of this forest clearing there stood forty or fifty huts, built very neatly from wood and clay, with the blue smoke curling out from the roofs. A dozen tethered horses and mules grazed around the encampment, while a number of archers lounged about: some shooting at marks, while others built up great wooden fires in the open, and hung their cooking kettles above them. At the sight of their returning comrades there was a shout of welcome, and a horseman, who had been exercising his charger behind the camp, came cantering down to them. He was a dapper, brisk man, very richly clad, with a round, clean-shaven face, and very bright black eyes, which danced and sparkled with excitement.\n\n\"Sir Nigel!\" he cried. \"Sir Nigel Loring, at last! By my soul we have awaited you this month past. Right welcome, Sir Nigel! You have had my letter?\"\n\n\"It was that which brought me here,\" said Sir Nigel. \"But indeed, Sir Claude Latour, it is a great wonder to me that you did not yourself lead these bowmen, for surely they could have found no better leader?\"\n\n\"None, none, by the Virgin of L'Esparre!\" he cried, speaking in the strange, thick Gascon speech which turns every v into a b. \"But you know what these islanders of yours are, Sir Nigel. They will not be led by any save their own blood and race. There is no persuading them. Not even I, Claude Latour Seigneur of Montchateau, master of the high justice, the middle and the low, could gain their favor. They must needs hold a council and put their two hundred thick heads together, and then there comes this fellow Aylward and another, as their spokesmen, to say that they will disband unless an Englishman of good name be set over them. There are many of them, as I understand, who come from some great forest which lies in Hampi, or Hampti\u2014I cannot lay my tongue to the name. Your dwelling is in those parts, and so their thoughts turned to you as their leader. But we had hoped that you would bring a hundred men with you.\"\n\n\"They are already at Dax, where we shall join them,\" said Sir Nigel. \"But let the men break their fast, and we shall then take counsel what to do.\"\n\n\"Come into my hut,\" said Sir Claude. \"It is but poor fare that I can lay before you\u2014milk, cheese, wine, and bacon\u2014yet your squire and yourself will doubtless excuse it. This is my house where the pennon flies before the door\u2014a small residence to contain the Lord of Montchateau.\"\n\nSir Nigel sat silent and distrait at his meal, while Alleyne hearkened to the clattering tongue of the Gascon, and to his talk of the glories of his own estate, his successes in love, and his triumphs in war.\n\n\"And now that you are here, Sir Nigel,\" he said at last, \"I have many fine ventures all ready for us. I have heard that Montpezat is of no great strength, and that there are two hundred thousand crowns in the castle. At Castelnau also there is a cobbler who is in my pay, and who will throw us a rope any dark night from his house by the town wall. I promise you that you shall thrust your arms elbow-deep among good silver pieces ere the nights are moonless again; for on every hand of us are fair women, rich wine, and good plunder, as much as heart could wish.\"\n\n\"I have other plans,\" answered Sir Nigel curtly; \"for I have come hither to lead these bowmen to the help of the prince, our master, who may have sore need of them ere he set Pedro upon the throne of Spain. It is my purpose to start this very day for Dax upon the Adour, where he hath now pitched his camp.\"\n\nThe face of the Gascon darkened, and his eyes flashed with resentment, \"For me,\" he said, \"I care little for this war, and I find the life which I lead a very joyous and pleasant one. I will not go to Dax.\"\n\n\"Nay, think again, Sir Claude,\" said Sir Nigel gently; \"for you have ever had the name of a true and loyal knight. Surely you will not hold back now when your master hath need of you.\"\n\n\"I will not go to Dax,\" the other shouted.\n\n\"But your devoir\u2014your oath of fealty?\"\n\n\"I say that I will not go.\"\n\n\"Then, Sir Claude, I must lead the Company without you.\"\n\n\"If they will follow,\" cried the Gascon with a sneer. \"These are not hired slaves, but free companions, who will do nothing save by their own good wills. In very sooth, my Lord Loring, they are ill men to trifle with, and it were easier to pluck a bone from a hungry bear than to lead a bowman out of a land of plenty and of pleasure.\"\n\n\"Then I pray you to gather them together,\" said Sir Nigel, \"and I will tell them what is in my mind; for if I am their leader they must to Dax, and if I am not then I know not what I am doing in Auvergne. Have my horse ready, Alleyne; for, by St. Paul! come what may, I must be upon the homeward road ere mid-day.\"\n\nA blast upon the bugle summoned the bowmen to counsel, and they gathered in little knots and groups around a great fallen tree which lay athwart the glade. Sir Nigel sprang lightly upon the trunk, and stood with blinking eye and firm lips looking down at the ring of upturned warlike faces.\n\n\"They tell me, bowmen,\" said he, \"that ye have grown so fond of ease and plunder and high living that ye are not to be moved from this pleasant country. But, by Saint Paul! I will believe no such thing of you, for I can readily see that you are all very valiant men, who would scorn to live here in peace when your prince hath so great a venture before him. Ye have chosen me as a leader, and a leader I will be if ye come with me to Spain; and I vow to you that my pennon of the five roses shall, if God give me strength and life, be ever where there is most honor to be gained. But if it be your wish to loll and loiter in these glades, bartering glory and renown for vile gold and ill-gotten riches, then ye must find another leader; for I have lived in honor, and in honor I trust that I shall die. If there be forest men or Hampshire men amongst ye, I call upon them to say whether they will follow the banner of Loring.\"\n\n\"Here's a Romsey man for you!\" cried a young bowman with a sprig of evergreen set in his helmet.\n\n\"And a lad from Alresford!\" shouted another.\n\n\"And from Milton!\"\n\n\"And from Burley!\"\n\n\"And from Lymington!\"\n\n\"And a little one from Brockenhurst!\" shouted a huge-limbed fellow who sprawled beneath a tree.\n\n\"By my hilt! lads,\" cried Aylward, jumping upon the fallen trunk, \"I think that we could not look the girls in the eyes if we let the prince cross the mountains and did not pull string to clear a path for him. It is very well in time of peace to lead such a life as we have had together, but now the war-banner is in the wind once more, and, by these ten finger-bones! if he go alone, old Samkin Aylward will walk beside it.\"\n\nThese words from a man as popular as Aylward decided many of the waverers, and a shout of approval burst from his audience.\n\n\"Far be it from me,\" said Sir Claude Latour suavely, \"to persuade you against this worthy archer, or against Sir Nigel Loring; yet we have been together in many ventures, and perchance it may not be amiss if I say to you what I think upon the matter.\"\n\n\"Peace for the little Gascon!\" cried the archers. \"Let every man have his word. Shoot straight for the mark, lad, and fair play for all.\"\n\n\"Bethink you, then,\" said Sir Claude, \"that you go under a hard rule, with neither freedom nor pleasure\u2014and for what? For sixpence a day, at the most; while now you may walk across the country and stretch out either hand to gather in whatever you have a mind for. What do we not hear of our comrades who have gone with Sir John Hawkwood to Italy? In one night they have held to ransom six hundred of the richest noblemen of Mantua. They camp before a great city, and the base burghers come forth with the keys, and then they make great spoil; or, if it please them better, they take so many horse-loads of silver as a composition; and so they journey on from state to state, rich and free and feared by all. Now, is not that the proper life for a soldier?\"\n\n\"The proper life for a robber!\" roared Hordle John, in his thundering voice.\n\n\"And yet there is much in what the Gascon says,\" said a swarthy fellow in a weather-stained doublet; \"and I for one would rather prosper in Italy than starve in Spain.\"\n\n\"You were always a cur and a traitor, Mark Shaw,\" cried Aylward. \"By my hilt! if you will stand forth and draw your sword I will warrant you that you will see neither one nor the other.\"\n\n\"Nay, Aylward,\" said Sir Nigel, \"we cannot mend the matter by broiling. Sir Claude, I think that what you have said does you little honor, and if my words aggrieve you I am ever ready to go deeper into the matter with you. But you shall have such men as will follow you, and you may go where you will, so that you come not with us. Let all who love their prince and country stand fast, while those who think more of a well-lined purse step forth upon the farther side.\"\n\nThirteen bowmen, with hung heads and sheepish faces, stepped forward with Mark Shaw and ranged themselves behind Sir Claude. Amid the hootings and hissings of their comrades, they marched off together to the Gascon's hut, while the main body broke up their meeting and set cheerily to work packing their possessions, furbishing their weapons, and preparing for the march which lay before them. Over the Tarn and the Garonne, through the vast quagmires of Armagnac, past the swift-flowing Losse, and so down the long valley of the Adour, there was many a long league to be crossed ere they could join themselves to that dark war-cloud which was drifting slowly southwards to the line of the snowy peaks, beyond which the banner of England had never yet been seen." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE ARMY MADE THE PASSAGE OF RONCESVALLES.", + "text": "The whole vast plain of Gascony and of Languedoc is an arid and profitless expanse in winter save where the swift-flowing Adour and her snow-fed tributaries, the Louts, the Oloron and the Pau, run down to the sea of Biscay. South of the Adour the jagged line of mountains which fringe the skyline send out long granite claws, running down into the lowlands and dividing them into \"gaves\" or stretches of valley. Hillocks grow into hills, and hills into mountains, each range overlying its neighbor, until they soar up in the giant chain which raises its spotless and untrodden peaks, white and dazzling, against the pale blue wintry sky.\n\nA quiet land is this\u2014a land where the slow-moving Basque, with his flat biretta-cap, his red sash and his hempen sandals, tills his scanty farm or drives his lean flock to their hillside pastures. It is the country of the wolf and the isard, of the brown bear and the mountain-goat, a land of bare rock and of rushing water. Yet here it was that the will of a great prince had now assembled a gallant army; so that from the Adour to the passes of Navarre the barren valleys and wind-swept wastes were populous with soldiers and loud with the shouting of orders and the neighing of horses. For the banners of war had been flung to the wind once more, and over those glistening peaks was the highway along which Honor pointed in an age when men had chosen her as their guide.\n\nAnd now all was ready for the enterprise. From Dax to St. Jean Pied-du-Port the country was mottled with the white tents of Gascons, Aquitanians and English, all eager for the advance. From all sides the free companions had trooped in, until not less than twelve thousand of these veteran troops were cantoned along the frontiers of Navarre. From England had arrived the prince's brother, the Duke of Lancaster, with four hundred knights in his train and a strong company of archers. Above all, an heir to the throne had been born in Bordeaux, and the prince might leave his spouse with an easy mind, for all was well with mother and with child.\n\nThe keys of the mountain passes still lay in the hands of the shifty and ignoble Charles of Navarre, who had chaffered and bargained both with the English and with the Spanish, taking money from the one side to hold them open and from the other to keep them sealed. The mallet hand of Edward, however, had shattered all the schemes and wiles of the plotter. Neither entreaty nor courtly remonstrance came from the English prince; but Sir Hugh Calverley passed silently over the border with his company, and the blazing walls of the two cities of Miranda and Puenta de la Reyna warned the unfaithful monarch that there were other metals besides gold, and that he was dealing with a man to whom it was unsafe to lie. His price was paid, his objections silenced, and the mountain gorges lay open to the invaders. From the Feast of the Epiphany there was mustering and massing, until, in the first week of February\u2014three days after the White Company joined the army\u2014the word was given for a general advance through the defile of Roncesvalles. At five in the cold winter's morning the bugles were blowing in the hamlet of St. Jean Pied-du-Port, and by six Sir Nigel's Company, three hundred strong, were on their way for the defile, pushing swiftly in the dim light up the steep curving road; for it was the prince's order that they should be the first to pass through, and that they should remain on guard at the further end until the whole army had emerged from the mountains. Day was already breaking in the east, and the summits of the great peaks had turned rosy red, while the valleys still lay in the shadow, when they found themselves with the cliffs on either hand and the long, rugged pass stretching away before them.\n\nSir Nigel rode his great black warhorse at the head of his archers, dressed in full armor, with Black Simon bearing his banner behind him, while Alleyne at his bridle-arm carried his blazoned shield and his well-steeled ashen spear. A proud and happy man was the knight, and many a time he turned in his saddle to look at the long column of bowmen who swung swiftly along behind him.\n\n\"By Saint Paul! Alleyne,\" said he, \"this pass is a very perilous place, and I would that the King of Navarre had held it against us, for it would have been a very honorable venture had it fallen to us to win a passage. I have heard the minstrels sing of one Sir Roland who was slain by the infidels in these very parts.\"\n\n\"If it please you, my fair lord,\" said Black Simon, \"I know something of these parts, for I have twice served a term with the King of Navarre. There is a hospice of monks yonder, where you may see the roof among the trees, and there it was that Sir Roland was slain. The village upon the left is Orbaiceta, and I know a house therein where the right wine of Jurancon is to be bought, if it would please you to quaff a morning cup.\"\n\n\"There is smoke yonder upon the right.\"\n\n\"That is a village named Les Aldudes, and I know a hostel there also where the wine is of the best. It is said that the innkeeper hath a buried treasure, and I doubt not, my fair lord, that if you grant me leave I could prevail upon him to tell us where he hath hid it.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, Simon,\" said Sir Nigel curtly, \"I pray you to forget these free companion tricks. Ha! Edricson, I see that you stare about you, and in good sooth these mountains must seem wondrous indeed to one who hath but seen Butser or the Portsdown hill.\"\n\nThe broken and rugged road had wound along the crests of low hills, with wooded ridges on either side of it over which peeped the loftier mountains, the distant Peak of the South and the vast Altabisca, which towered high above them and cast its black shadow from left to right across the valley. From where they now stood they could look forward down a long vista of beech woods and jagged rock-strewn wilderness, all white with snow, to where the pass opened out upon the uplands beyond. Behind them they could still catch a glimpse of the gray plains of Gascony, and could see her rivers gleaming like coils of silver in the sunshine. As far as eye could see from among the rocky gorges and the bristles of the pine woods there came the quick twinkle and glitter of steel, while the wind brought with it sudden distant bursts of martial music from the great host which rolled by every road and by-path towards the narrow pass of Roncesvalles. On the cliffs on either side might also be seen the flash of arms and the waving of pennons where the force of Navarre looked down upon the army of strangers who passed through their territories.\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" said Sir Nigel, blinking up at them, \"I think that we have much to hope for from these cavaliers, for they cluster very thickly upon our flanks. Pass word to the men, Aylward, that they unsling their bows, for I have no doubt that there are some very worthy gentlemen yonder who may give us some opportunity for honorable advancement.\"\n\n\"I hear that the prince hath the King of Navarre as hostage,\" said Alleyne, \"and it is said that he hath sworn to put him to death if there be any attack upon us.\"\n\n\"It was not so that war was made when good King Edward first turned his hand to it,\" said Sir Nigel sadly. \"Ah! Alleyne, I fear that you will never live to see such things, for the minds of men are more set upon money and gain than of old. By Saint Paul! it was a noble sight when two great armies would draw together upon a certain day, and all who had a vow would ride forth to discharge themselves of it. What noble spear-runnings have I not seen, and even in an humble way had a part in, when cavaliers would run a course for the easing of their souls and for the love of their ladies! Never a bad word have I for the French, for, though I have ridden twenty times up to their array, I have never yet failed to find some very gentle and worthy knight or squire who was willing to do what he might to enable me to attempt some small feat of arms. Then, when all cavaliers had been satisfied, the two armies would come to hand-strokes, and fight right merrily until one or other had the vantage. By Saint Paul! it was not our wont in those days to pay gold for the opening of passes, nor would we hold a king as hostage lest his people come to thrusts with us. In good sooth, if the war is to be carried out in such a fashion, then it is grief to me that I ever came away from Castle Twynham, for I would not have left my sweet lady had I not thought that there were deeds of arms to be done.\"\n\n\"But surely, my fair lord,\" said Alleyne, \"you have done some great feats of arms since we left the Lady Loring.\"\n\n\"I cannot call any to mind,\" answered Sir Nigel.\n\n\"There was the taking of the sea-rovers, and the holding of the keep against the Jacks.\"\n\n\"Nay, nay,\" said the knight, \"these were not feats of arms, but mere wayside ventures and the chances of travel. By Saint Paul! if it were not that these hills are over-steep for Pommers, I would ride to these cavaliers of Navarre and see if there were not some among them who would help me to take this patch from mine eye. It is a sad sight to see this very fine pass, which my own Company here could hold against an army, and yet to ride through it with as little profit as though it were the lane from my kennels to the Avon.\"\n\nAll morning Sir Nigel rode in a very ill-humor, with his Company tramping behind him. It was a toilsome march over broken ground and through snow, which came often as high as the knee, yet ere the sun had begun to sink they had reached the spot where the gorge opens out on to the uplands of Navarre, and could see the towers of Pampeluna jutting up against the southern skyline. Here the Company were quartered in a scattered mountain hamlet, and Alleyne spent the day looking down upon the swarming army which poured with gleam of spears and flaunt of standards through the narrow pass.\n\n\"Hola, mon gar.,\" said Aylward, seating himself upon a boulder by his side. \"This is indeed a fine sight upon which it is good to look, and a man might go far ere he would see so many brave men and fine horses. By my hilt! our little lord is wroth because we have come peacefully through the passes, but I will warrant him that we have fighting enow ere we turn our faces northward again. It is said that there are four-score thousand men behind the King of Spain, with Du Guesclin and all the best lances of France, who have sworn to shed their heart's blood ere this Pedro come again to the throne.\"\n\n\"Yet our own army is a great one,\" said Alleyne.\n\n\"Nay, there are but seven-and-twenty thousand men. Chandos hath persuaded the prince to leave many behind, and indeed I think that he is right, for there is little food and less water in these parts for which we are bound. A man without his meat or a horse without his fodder is like a wet bow-string, fit for little. But voila, mon petit, here comes Chandos and his company, and there is many a pensil and banderole among yonder squadrons which show that the best blood of England is riding under his banners.\"\n\nWhilst Aylward had been speaking, a strong column of archers had defiled through the pass beneath them. They were followed by a banner-bearer who held high the scarlet wedge upon a silver field which proclaimed the presence of the famous warrior. He rode himself within a spear's-length of his standard, clad from neck to foot in steel, but draped in the long linen gown or parement which was destined to be the cause of his death. His plumed helmet was carried behind him by his body-squire, and his head was covered by a small purple cap, from under which his snow-white hair curled downwards to his shoulders. With his long beak-like nose and his single gleaming eye, which shone brightly from under a thick tuft of grizzled brow, he seemed to Alleyne to have something of the look of some fierce old bird of prey. For a moment he smiled, as his eye lit upon the banner of the five roses waving from the hamlet; but his course lay for Pampeluna, and he rode on after the archers.\n\nClose at his heels came sixteen squires, all chosen from the highest families, and behind them rode twelve hundred English knights, with gleam of steel and tossing of plumes, their harness jingling, their long straight swords clanking against their stirrup-irons, and the beat of their chargers' hoofs like the low deep roar of the sea upon the shore. Behind them marched six hundred Cheshire and Lancashire archers, bearing the badge of the Audleys, followed by the famous Lord Audley himself, with the four valiant squires, Dutton of Dutton, Delves of Doddington, Fowlehurst of Crewe, and Hawkestone of Wainehill, who had all won such glory at Poictiers. Two hundred heavily-armed cavalry rode behind the Audley standard, while close at their heels came the Duke of Lancaster with a glittering train, heralds tabarded with the royal arms riding three deep upon cream-colored chargers in front of him. On either side of the young prince rode the two seneschals of Aquitaine, Sir Guiscard d'Angle and Sir Stephen Cossington, the one bearing the banner of the province and the other that of Saint George. Away behind him as far as eye could reach rolled the far-stretching, unbroken river of steel\u2014rank after rank and column after column, with waving of plumes, glitter of arms, tossing of guidons, and flash and flutter of countless armorial devices. All day Alleyne looked down upon the changing scene, and all day the old bowman stood by his elbow, pointing out the crests of famous warriors and the arms of noble houses. Here were the gold mullets of the Pakingtons, the sable and ermine of the Mackworths, the scarlet bars of the Wakes, the gold and blue of the Grosvenors, the cinque-foils of the Cliftons, the annulets of the Musgraves, the silver pinions of the Beauchamps, the crosses of the Molineaux, the bloody chevron of the Woodhouses, the red and silver of the Worsleys, the swords of the Clarks, the boars'-heads of the Lucies, the crescents of the Boyntons, and the wolf and dagger of the Lipscombs. So through the sunny winter day the chivalry of England poured down through the dark pass of Roncesvalles to the plains of Spain.\n\nIt was on a Monday that the Duke of Lancaster's division passed safely through the Pyrenees. On the Tuesday there was a bitter frost, and the ground rung like iron beneath the feet of the horses; yet ere evening the prince himself, with the main battle of his army, had passed the gorge and united with his vanguard at Pampeluna. With him rode the King of Majorca, the hostage King of Navarre, and the fierce Don Pedro of Spain, whose pale blue eyes gleamed with a sinister light as they rested once more upon the distant peaks of the land which had disowned him. Under the royal banners rode many a bold Gascon baron and many a hot-blooded islander. Here were the high stewards of Aquitaine, of Saintonge, of La Rochelle, of Quercy, of Limousin, of Agenois, of Poitou, and of Bigorre, with the banners and musters of their provinces. Here also were the valiant Earl of Angus, Sir Thomas Banaster with his garter over his greave, Sir Nele Loring, second cousin to Sir Nigel, and a long column of Welsh footmen who marched under the red banner of Merlin. From dawn to sundown the long train wound through the pass, their breath reeking up upon the frosty air like the steam from a cauldron.\n\nThe weather was less keen upon the Wednesday, and the rear-guard made good their passage, with the bombards and the wagon-train. Free companions and Gascons made up this portion of the army to the number of ten thousand men. The fierce Sir Hugh Calverley, with his yellow mane, and the rugged Sir Robert Knolles, with their war-hardened and veteran companies of English bowmen, headed the long column; while behind them came the turbulent bands of the Bastard of Breteuil, Nandon de Bagerant, one-eyed Camus, Black Ortingo, La Nuit and others whose very names seem to smack of hard hands and ruthless deeds. With them also were the pick of the Gascon chivalry\u2014the old Duc d'Armagnac, his nephew Lord d'Albret, brooding and scowling over his wrongs, the giant Oliver de Clisson, the Captal de Buch, pink of knighthood, the sprightly Sir Perducas d'Albret, the red-bearded Lord d'Esparre, and a long train of needy and grasping border nobles, with long pedigrees and short purses, who had come down from their hillside strongholds, all hungering for the spoils and the ransoms of Spain. By the Thursday morning the whole army was encamped in the Vale of Pampeluna, and the prince had called his council to meet him in the old palace of the ancient city of Navarre." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE COMPANY MADE SPORT IN THE VALE OF PAMPELUNA.", + "text": "Whilst the council was sitting in Pampeluna the White Company, having encamped in a neighboring valley, close to the companies of La Nuit and of Black Ortingo, were amusing themselves with sword-play, wrestling, and shooting at the shields, which they had placed upon the hillside to serve them as butts. The younger archers, with their coats of mail thrown aside, their brown or flaxen hair tossing in the wind, and their jerkins turned back to give free play to their brawny chests and arms, stood in lines, each loosing his shaft in turn, while Johnston, Aylward, Black Simon, and half-a-score of the elders lounged up and down with critical eyes, and a word of rough praise or of curt censure for the marksmen. Behind stood knots of Gascon and Brabant crossbowmen from the companies of Ortingo and of La Nuit, leaning upon their unsightly weapons and watching the practice of the Englishmen.\n\n\"A good shot, Hewett, a good shot!\" said old Johnston to a young bowman, who stood with his bow in his left hand, gazing with parted lips after his flying shaft. \"You see, she finds the ring, as I knew she would from the moment that your string twanged.\"\n\n\"Loose it easy, steady, and yet sharp,\" said Aylward. \"By my hilt! mon gar., it is very well when you do but shoot at a shield, but when there is a man behind the shield, and he rides at you with wave of sword and glint of eyes from behind his vizor, you may find him a less easy mark.\"\n\n\"It is a mark that I have found before now,\" answered the young bowman.\n\n\"And shall again, camarade, I doubt not. But hola! Johnston, who is this who holds his bow like a crow-keeper?\"\n\n\"It is Silas Peterson, of Horsham. Do not wink with one eye and look with the other, Silas, and do not hop and dance after you shoot, with your tongue out, for that will not speed it upon its way. Stand straight and firm, as God made you. Move not the bow arm, and steady with the drawing hand!\"\n\n\"I' faith,\" said Black Simon, \"I am a spearman myself, and am more fitted for hand-strokes than for such work as this. Yet I have spent my days among bowmen, and I have seen many a brave shaft sped. I will not say but that we have some good marksmen here, and that this Company would be accounted a fine body of archers at any time or place. Yet I do not see any men who bend so strong a bow or shoot as true a shaft as those whom I have known.\"\n\n\"You say sooth,\" said Johnston, turning his seamed and grizzled face upon the man-at-arms. \"See yonder,\" he added, pointing to a bombard which lay within the camp: \"there is what hath done scath to good bowmanship, with its filthy soot and foolish roaring mouth. I wonder that a true knight, like our prince, should carry such a scurvy thing in his train. Robin, thou red-headed lurden, how oft must I tell thee not to shoot straight with a quarter-wind blowing across the mark?\"\n\n\"By these ten finger-bones! there were some fine bowmen at the intaking of Calais,\" said Aylward. \"I well remember that, on occasion of an outfall, a Genoan raised his arm over his mantlet, and shook it at us, a hundred paces from our line. There were twenty who loosed shafts at him, and when the man was afterwards slain it was found that he had taken eighteen through his forearm.\"\n\n\"And I can call to mind,\" remarked Johnston, \"that when the great cog 'Christopher,' which the French had taken from us, was moored two hundred paces from the shore, two archers, little Robin Withstaff and Elias Baddlesmere, in four shots each cut every strand of her hempen anchor-cord, so that she well-nigh came upon the rocks.\"\n\n\"Good shooting, i' faith rare shooting!\" said Black Simon. \"But I have seen you, Johnston, and you, Samkin Aylward, and one or two others who are still with us, shoot as well as the best. Was it not you, Johnston, who took the fat ox at Finsbury butts against the pick of London town?\"\n\nA sunburnt and black-eyed Brabanter had stood near the old archers, leaning upon a large crossbow and listening to their talk, which had been carried on in that hybrid camp dialect which both nations could understand. He was a squat, bull-necked man, clad in the iron helmet, mail tunic, and woollen gambesson of his class. A jacket with hanging sleeves, slashed with velvet at the neck and wrists, showed that he was a man of some consideration, an under-officer, or file-leader of his company.\n\n\"I cannot think,\" said he, \"why you English should be so fond of your six-foot stick. If it amuse you to bend it, well and good; but why should I strain and pull, when my little moulinet will do all for me, and better than I can do it for myself?\"\n\n\"I have seen good shooting with the prod and with the latch,\" said Aylward, \"but, by my hilt! camarade, with all respect to you and to your bow, I think that is but a woman's weapon, which a woman can point and loose as easily as a man.\"\n\n\"I know not about that,\" answered the Brabanter, \"but this I know, that though I have served for fourteen years, I have never yet seen an Englishman do aught with the long-bow which I could not do better with my arbalest. By the three kings! I would even go further, and say that I have done things with my arbalest which no Englishman could do with his long-bow.\"\n\n\"Well said, mon gar.,\" cried Aylward. \"A good cock has ever a brave call. Now, I have shot little of late, but there is Johnston here who will try a round with you for the honor of the Company.\"\n\n\"And I will lay a gallon of Jurancon wine upon the long-bow,\" said Black Simon, \"though I had rather, for my own drinking, that it were a quart of Twynham ale.\"\n\n\"I take both your challenge and your wager,\" said the man of Brabant, throwing off his jacket and glancing keenly about him with his black, twinkling eyes. \"I cannot see any fitting mark, for I care not to waste a bolt upon these shields, which a drunken boor could not miss at a village kermesse.\"\n\n\"This is a perilous man,\" whispered an English man-at-arms, plucking at Aylward's sleeve. \"He is the best marksman of all the crossbow companies and it was he who brought down the Constable de Bourbon at Brignais, I fear that your man will come by little honor with him.\"\n\n\"Yet I have seen Johnston shoot these twenty years, and I will not flinch from it. How say you, old war-hound, will you not have a flight shot or two with this springald?\"\n\n\"Tut, tut, Aylward,\" said the old bowman. \"My day is past, and it is for the younger ones to hold what we have gained. I take it unkindly of thee, Samkin, that thou shouldst call all eyes thus upon a broken bowman who could once shoot a fair shaft. Let me feel that bow, Wilkins! It is a Scotch bow, I see, for the upper nock is without and the lower within. By the black rood! it is a good piece of yew, well nocked, well strung, well waxed, and very joyful to the feel. I think even now that I might hit any large and goodly mark with a bow like this. Turn thy quiver to me, Aylward. I love an ash arrow pierced with cornel-wood for a roving shaft.\"\n\n\"By my hilt! and so do I,\" cried Aylward. \"These three gander-winged shafts are such.\"\n\n\"So I see, comrade. It has been my wont to choose a saddle-backed feather for a dead shaft, and a swine-backed for a smooth flier. I will take the two of them. Ah! Samkin, lad, the eye grows dim and the hand less firm as the years pass.\"\n\n\"Come then, are you not ready?\" said the Brabanter, who had watched with ill-concealed impatience the slow and methodic movements of his antagonist.\n\n\"I will venture a rover with you, or try long-butts or hoyles,\" said old Johnston. \"To my mind the long-bow is a better weapon than the arbalest, but it may be ill for me to prove it.\"\n\n\"So I think,\" quoth the other with a sneer. He drew his moulinet from his girdle, and fixing it to the windlass, he drew back the powerful double cord until it had clicked into the catch. Then from his quiver he drew a short, thick quarrel, which he placed with the utmost care upon the groove. Word had spread of what was going forward, and the rivals were already surrounded, not only by the English archers of the Company, but by hundreds of arbalestiers and men-at-arms from the bands of Ortingo and La Nuit, to the latter of which the Brabanter belonged.\n\n\"There is a mark yonder on the hill,\" said he; \"mayhap you can discern it.\"\n\n\"I see something,\" answered Johnston, shading his eyes with his hand; \"but it is a very long shoot.\"\n\n\"A fair shoot\u2014a fair shoot! Stand aside, Arnaud, lest you find a bolt through your gizzard. Now, comrade, I take no flight shot, and I give you the vantage of watching my shaft.\"\n\nAs he spoke he raised his arbalest to his shoulder and was about to pull the trigger, when a large gray stork flapped heavily into view skimming over the brow of the hill, and then soaring up into the air to pass the valley. Its shrill and piercing cries drew all eyes upon it, and, as it came nearer, a dark spot which circled above it resolved itself into a peregrine falcon, which hovered over its head, poising itself from time to time, and watching its chance of closing with its clumsy quarry. Nearer and nearer came the two birds, all absorbed in their own contest, the stork wheeling upwards, the hawk still fluttering above it, until they were not a hundred paces from the camp. The Brabanter raised his weapon to the sky, and there came the short, deep twang of his powerful string. His bolt struck the stork just where its wing meets the body, and the bird whirled aloft in a last convulsive flutter before falling wounded and flapping to the earth. A roar of applause burst from the crossbowmen; but at the instant that the bolt struck its mark old Johnston, who had stood listlessly with arrow on string, bent his bow and sped a shaft through the body of the falcon. Whipping the other from his belt, he sent it skimming some few feet from the earth with so true an aim that it struck and transfixed the stork for the second time ere it could reach the ground. A deep-chested shout of delight burst from the archers at the sight of this double feat, and Aylward, dancing with joy, threw his arms round the old marksman and embraced him with such vigor that their mail tunics clanged again.\n\n\"Ah! camarade,\" he cried, \"you shall have a stoup with me for this! What then, old dog, would not the hawk please thee, but thou must have the stork as well. Oh, to my heart again!\"\n\n\"It is a pretty piece of yew, and well strung,\" said Johnston with a twinkle in his deep-set gray eyes. \"Even an old broken bowman might find the clout with a bow like this.\"\n\n\"You have done very well,\" remarked the Brabanter in a surly voice. \"But it seems to me that you have not yet shown yourself to be a better marksman than I, for I have struck that at which I aimed, and, by the three kings! no man can do more.\"\n\n\"It would ill beseem me to claim to be a better marksman,\" answered Johnston, \"for I have heard great things of your skill. I did but wish to show that the long-bow could do that which an arbalest could not do, for you could not with your moulinet have your string ready to speed another shaft ere the bird drop to the earth.\"\n\n\"In that you have vantage,\" said the crossbowman. \"By Saint James! it is now my turn to show you where my weapon has the better of you. I pray you to draw a flight shaft with all your strength down the valley, that we may see the length of your shoot.\"\n\n\"That is a very strong prod of yours,\" said Johnston, shaking his grizzled head as he glanced at the thick arch and powerful strings of his rival's arbalest. \"I have little doubt that you can overshoot me, and yet I have seen bowmen who could send a cloth-yard arrow further than you could speed a quarrel.\"\n\n\"So I have heard,\" remarked the Brabanter; \"and yet it is a strange thing that these wondrous bowmen are never where I chance to be. Pace out the distances with a wand at every five score, and do you, Arnaud, stand at the fifth wand to carry back my bolts to me.\"\n\nA line was measured down the valley, and Johnston, drawing an arrow to the very head, sent it whistling over the row of wands.\n\n\"Bravely drawn! A rare shoot!\" shouted the bystanders.\n\n\"It is well up to the fourth mark.\"\n\n\"By my hilt! it is over it,\" cried Aylward. \"I can see where they have stooped to gather up the shaft.\"\n\n\"We shall hear anon,\" said Johnston quietly, and presently a young archer came running to say that the arrow had fallen twenty paces beyond the fourth wand.\n\n\"Four hundred paces and a score,\" cried Black Simon. \"I' faith, it is a very long flight. Yet wood and steel may do more than flesh and blood.\"\n\nThe Brabanter stepped forward with a smile of conscious triumph, and loosed the cord of his weapon. A shout burst from his comrades as they watched the swift and lofty flight of the heavy bolt.\n\n\"Over the fourth!\" groaned Aylward. \"By my hilt! I think that it is well up to the fifth.\"\n\n\"It is over the fifth!\" cried a Gascon loudly, and a comrade came running with waving arms to say that the bolt had pitched eight paces beyond the mark of the five hundred.\n\n\"Which weapon hath the vantage now?\" cried the Brabanter, Strutting proudly about with shouldered arbalest, amid the applause of his companions.\n\n\"You can overshoot me,\" said Johnston gently.\n\n\"Or any other man who ever bent a long-bow,\" cried his victorious adversary.\n\n\"Nay, not so fast,\" said a huge archer, whose mighty shoulders and red head towered high above the throng of his comrades. \"I must have a word with you ere you crow so loudly. Where is my little popper? By sainted Dick of Hampole! it will be a strange thing if I cannot outshoot that thing of thine, which to my eyes is more like a rat-trap than a bow. Will you try another flight, or do you stand by your last?\"\n\n\"Five hundred and eight paces will serve my turn,\" answered the Brabanter, looking askance at this new opponent.\n\n\"Tut, John,\" whispered Aylward, \"you never were a marksman. Why must you thrust your spoon into this dish?\"\n\n\"Easy and slow, Aylward. There are very many things which I cannot do, but there are also one or two which I have the trick of. It is in my mind that I can beat this shoot, if my bow will but hold together.\"\n\n\"Go on, old babe of the woods!\" \"Have at it, Hampshire!\" cried the archers laughing.\n\n\"By my soul! you may grin,\" cried John. \"But I learned how to make the long shoot from old Hob Miller of Milford.\" He took up a great black bow, as he spoke, and sitting down upon the ground he placed his two feet on either end of the stave. With an arrow fitted, he then pulled the string towards him with both hands until the head of the shaft was level with the wood. The great bow creaked and groaned and the cord vibrated with the tension.\n\n\"Who is this fool's-head who stands in the way of my shoot?\" said he, craning up his neck from the ground.\n\n\"He stands on the further side of my mark,\" answered the Brabanter, \"so he has little to fear from you.\"\n\n\"Well, the saints assoil him!\" cried John. \"Though I think he is over-near to be scathed.\" As he spoke he raised his two feet, with the bowstave upon their soles, and his cord twanged with a deep rich hum which might be heard across the valley. The measurer in the distance fell flat upon his face, and then jumping up again, he began to run in the opposite direction.\n\n\"Well shot, old lad! It is indeed over his head,\" cried the bowmen.\n\n\"Mon Dieu!\" exclaimed the Brabanter, \"who ever saw such a shoot?\"\n\n\"It is but a trick,\" quoth John. \"Many a time have I won a gallon of ale by covering a mile in three flights down Wilverley Chase.\"\n\n\"It fell a hundred and thirty paces beyond the fifth mark,\" shouted an archer in the distance.\n\n\"Six hundred and thirty paces! Mon Dieu! but that is a shoot! And yet it says nothing for your weapon, mon gros camarade, for it was by turning yourself into a crossbow that you did it.\"\n\n\"By my hilt! there is truth in that,\" cried Aylward. \"And now, friend, I will myself show you a vantage of the long-bow. I pray you to speed a bolt against yonder shield with all your force. It is an inch of elm with bull's hide over it.\"\n\n\"I scarce shot as many shafts at Brignais,\" growled the man of Brabant; \"though I found a better mark there than a cantle of bull's hide. But what is this, Englishman? The shield hangs not one hundred paces from me, and a blind man could strike it.\" He screwed up his string to the furthest pitch, and shot his quarrel at the dangling shield. Aylward, who had drawn an arrow from his quiver, carefully greased the head of it, and sped it at the same mark.\n\n\"Run, Wilkins,\" quoth he, \"and fetch me the shield.\"\n\nLong were the faces of the Englishmen and broad the laugh of the crossbowmen as the heavy mantlet was carried towards them, for there in the centre was the thick Brabant bolt driven deeply into the wood, while there was neither sign nor trace of the cloth-yard shaft.\n\n\"By the three kings!\" cried the Brabanter, \"this time at least there is no gainsaying which is the better weapon, or which the truer hand that held it. You have missed the shield, Englishman.\"\n\n\"Tarry a bit! tarry a bit, mon gar.!\" quoth Aylward, and turning round the shield he showed a round clear hole in the wood at the back of it. \"My shaft has passed through it, camarade, and I trow the one which goes through is more to be feared than that which bides on the way.\"\n\nThe Brabanter stamped his foot with mortification, and was about to make some angry reply, when Alleyne Edricson came riding up to the crowds of archers.\n\n\"Sir Nigel will be here anon,\" said he, \"and it is his wish to speak with the Company.\"\n\nIn an instant order and method took the place of general confusion. Bows, steel caps, and jacks were caught up from the grass. A long cordon cleared the camp of all strangers, while the main body fell into four lines with under-officers and file-leaders in front and on either flank. So they stood, silent and motionless, when their leader came riding towards them, his face shining and his whole small figure swelling with the news which he bore.\n\n\"Great honor has been done to us, men,\" cried he: \"for, of all the army, the prince has chosen us out that we should ride onwards into the lands of Spain to spy upon our enemies. Yet, as there are many of us, and as the service may not be to the liking of all, I pray that those will step forward from the ranks who have the will to follow me.\"\n\nThere was a rustle among the bowmen, but when Sir Nigel looked up at them no man stood forward from his fellows, but the four lines of men stretched unbroken as before. Sir Nigel blinked at them in amazement, and a look of the deepest sorrow shadowed his face.\n\n\"That I should live to see the day!\" he cried, \"What! not one\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"My fair lord,\" whispered Alleyne, \"they have all stepped forward.\"\n\n\"Ah, by Saint Paul! I see how it is with them. I could not think that they would desert me. We start at dawn tomorrow, and ye are to have the horses of Sir Robert Cheney's company. Be ready, I pray ye, at early cock-crow.\"\n\nA buzz of delight burst from the archers, as they broke their ranks and ran hither and thither, whooping and cheering like boys who have news of a holiday. Sir Nigel gazed after them with a smiling face, when a heavy hand fell upon his shoulder.\n\n\"What ho! my knight-errant of Twynham!\" said a voice, \"You are off to Ebro, I hear; and, by the holy fish of Tobias! you must take me under your banner.\"\n\n\"What! Sir Oliver Buttesthorn!\" cried Sir Nigel. \"I had heard that you were come into camp, and had hoped to see you. Glad and proud shall I be to have you with me.\"\n\n\"I have a most particular and weighty reason for wishing to go,\" said the sturdy knight.\n\n\"I can well believe it,\" returned Sir Nigel; \"I have met no man who is quicker to follow where honor leads.\"\n\n\"Nay, it is not for honor that I go, Nigel.\"\n\n\"For what then?\"\n\n\"For pullets.\"\n\n\"Pullets?\"\n\n\"Yes, for the rascal vanguard have cleared every hen from the country-side. It was this very morning that Norbury, my squire, lamed his horse in riding round in quest of one, for we have a bag of truffles, and nought to eat with them. Never have I seen such locusts as this vanguard of ours. Not a pullet shall we see until we are in front of them; so I shall leave my Winchester runagates to the care of the provost-marshal, and I shall hie south with you, Nigel, with my truffles at my saddle-bow.\"\n\n\"Oliver, Oliver, I know you over-well,\" said Sir Nigel, shaking his head, and the two old soldiers rode off together to their pavilion." + }, + { + "title": "HOW SIR NIGEL HAWKED AT AN EAGLE.", + "text": "To the south of Pampeluna in the kingdom of Navarre there stretched a high table-land, rising into bare, sterile hills, brown or gray in color, and strewn with huge boulders of granite. On the Gascon side of the great mountains there had been running streams, meadows, forests, and little nestling villages. Here, on the contrary, were nothing but naked rocks, poor pasture, and savage, stone-strewn wastes. Gloomy defiles or barrancas intersected this wild country with mountain torrents dashing and foaming between their rugged sides. The clatter of waters, the scream of the eagle, and the howling of wolves the only sounds which broke upon the silence in that dreary and inhospitable region.\n\nThrough this wild country it was that Sir Nigel and his Company pushed their way, riding at times through vast defiles where the brown, gnarled cliffs shot up on either side of them, and the sky was but a long winding blue slit between the clustering lines of box which fringed the lips of the precipices; or, again leading their horses along the narrow and rocky paths worn by the muleteers upon the edges of the chasm, where under their very elbows they could see the white streak which marked the gave which foamed a thousand feet below them. So for two days they pushed their way through the wild places of Navarre, past Fuente, over the rapid Ega, through Estella, until upon a winter's evening the mountains fell away from in front of them, and they saw the broad blue Ebro curving betwixt its double line or homesteads and of villages. The fishers of Viana were aroused that night by rough voices speaking in a strange tongue, and ere morning Sir Nigel and his men had ferried the river and were safe upon the land of Spain.\n\nAll the next day they lay in a pine wood near to the town of Logrono, resting their horses and taking counsel as to what they should do. Sir Nigel had with him Sir William Felton, Sir Oliver Buttesthorn, stout old Sir Simon Burley, the Scotch knight-errant, the Earl of Angus, and Sir Richard Causton, all accounted among the bravest knights in the army, together with sixty veteran men-at-arms, and three hundred and twenty archers. Spies had been sent out in the morning, and returned after nightfall to say that the King of Spain was encamped some fourteen miles off in the direction of Burgos, having with him twenty thousand horse and forty-five thousand foot.\n\nA dry-wood fire had been lit, and round this the leaders crouched, the glare beating upon their rugged faces, while the hardy archers lounged and chatted amid the tethered horses, while they munched their scanty provisions.\n\n\"For my part,\" said Sir Simon Burley, \"I am of opinion that we have already done that which we have come for. For do we not now know where the king is, and how great a following he hath, which was the end of our journey.\"\n\n\"True,\" answered Sir William Felton, \"but I have come on this venture because it is a long time since I have broken a spear in war, and, certes, I shall not go back until I have run a course with some cavalier of Spain. Let those go back who will, but I must see more of these Spaniards ere I turn.\"\n\n\"I will not leave you, Sir William,\" returned Sir Simon Burley; \"and yet, as an old soldier and one who hath seen much of war, I cannot but think that it is an ill thing for four hundred men to find themselves between an army of sixty thousand on the one side and a broad river on the other.\"\n\n\"Yet,\" said Sir Richard Causton, \"we cannot for the honor of England go back without a blow struck.\"\n\n\"Nor for the honor of Scotland either,\" cried the Earl of Angus. \"By Saint Andrew! I wish that I may never set eyes upon the water of Leith again, if I pluck my horse's bridle ere I have seen this camp of theirs.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul! you have spoken very well,\" said Sir Nigel, \"and I have always heard that there were very worthy gentlemen among the Scots, and fine skirmishing to be had upon their border. Bethink you, Sir Simon, that we have this news from the lips of common spies, who can scarce tell us as much of the enemy and of his forces as the prince would wish to hear.\"\n\n\"You are the leader in this venture, Sir Nigel,\" the other answered, \"and I do but ride under your banner.\"\n\n\"Yet I would fain have your rede and counsel, Sir Simon. But, touching what you say of the river, we can take heed that we shall not have it at the back of us, for the prince hath now advanced to Salvatierra, and thence to Vittoria, so that if we come upon their camp from the further side we can make good our retreat.\"\n\n\"What then would you propose?\" asked Sir Simon, shaking his grizzled head as one who is but half convinced.\n\n\"That we ride forward ere the news reach them that we have crossed the river. In this way we may have sight of their army, and perchance even find occasion for some small deed against them.\"\n\n\"So be it, then,\" said Sir Simon Burley; and the rest of the council having approved, a scanty meal was hurriedly snatched, and the advance resumed under the cover of the darkness. All night they led their horses, stumbling and groping through wild defiles and rugged valleys, following the guidance of a frightened peasant who was strapped by the wrist to Black Simon's stirrup-leather. With the early dawn they found themselves in a black ravine, with others sloping away from it on either side, and the bare brown crags rising in long bleak terraces all round them.\n\n\"If it please you, fair lord,\" said Black Simon, \"this man hath misled us, and since there is no tree upon which we may hang him, it might be well to hurl him over yonder cliff.\"\n\nThe peasant, reading the soldier's meaning in his fierce eyes and harsh accents dropped upon his knees, screaming loudly for mercy.\n\n\"How comes it, dog?\" asked Sir William Felton in Spanish. \"Where is this camp to which you swore that you would lead us?\"\n\n\"By the sweet Virgin! By the blessed Mother of God!\" cried the trembling peasant, \"I swear to you that in the darkness I have myself lost the path.\"\n\n\"Over the cliff with him!\" shouted half a dozen voices; but ere the archers could drag him from the rocks to which he clung Sir Nigel had ridden up and called upon them to stop.\n\n\"How is this, sirs?\" said he. \"As long as the prince doth me the honor to entrust this venture to me, it is for me only to give orders; and, by Saint Paul! I shall be right blithe to go very deeply into the matter with any one to whom my words may give offence. How say you, Sir William? Or you, my Lord of Angus? Or you, Sir Richard?\"\n\n\"Nay, nay, Nigel!\" cried Sir William. \"This base peasant is too small a matter for old comrades to quarrel over. But he hath betrayed us, and certes he hath merited a dog's death.\"\n\n\"Hark ye, fellow,\" said Sir Nigel. \"We give you one more chance to find the path. We are about to gain much honor, Sir William, in this enterprise, and it would be a sorry thing if the first blood shed were that of an unworthy boor. Let us say our morning orisons, and it may chance that ere we finish he may strike upon the track.\"\n\nWith bowed heads and steel caps in hand, the archers stood at their horse's heads, while Sir Simon Burley repeated the Pater, the Ave, and the Credo. Long did Alleyne bear the scene in mind\u2014the knot of knights in their dull leaden-hued armor, the ruddy visage of Sir Oliver, the craggy features of the Scottish earl, the shining scalp of Sir Nigel, with the dense ring of hard, bearded faces and the long brown heads of the horses, all topped and circled by the beetling cliffs. Scarce had the last deep \"amen\" broken from the Company, when, in an instant, there rose the scream of a hundred bugles, with the deep rolling of drums and the clashing of cymbals, all sounding together in one deafening uproar. Knights and archers sprang to arms, convinced that some great host was upon them; but the guide dropped upon his knees and thanked Heaven for its mercies.\n\n\"We have found them, caballeros!\" he cried. \"This is their morning call. If ye will but deign to follow me, I will set them before you ere a man might tell his beads.\"\n\nAs he spoke he scrambled down one of the narrow ravines, and, climbing over a low ridge at the further end, he led them into a short valley with a stream purling down the centre of it and a very thick growth of elder and of box upon either side. Pushing their way through the dense brushwood, they looked out upon a scene which made their hearts beat harder and their breath come faster.\n\nIn front of them there lay a broad plain, watered by two winding streams and covered with grass, stretching away to where, in the furthest distance, the towers of Burgos bristled up against the light blue morning sky. Over all this vast meadow there lay a great city of tents\u2014thousands upon thousands of them, laid out in streets and in squares like a well-ordered town. High silken pavilions or colored marquees, shooting up from among the crowd of meaner dwellings, marked where the great lords and barons of Leon and Castile displayed their standards, while over the white roofs, as far as eye could reach, the waving of ancients, pavons, pensils, and banderoles, with flash of gold and glow of colors, proclaimed that all the chivalry of Iberia were mustered in the plain beneath them. Far off, in the centre of the camp, a huge palace of red and white silk, with the royal arms of Castile waiving from the summit, announced that the gallant Henry lay there in the midst of his warriors.\n\nAs the English adventurers, peeping out from behind their brushwood screen, looked down upon this wondrous sight they could see that the vast army in front of them was already afoot. The first pink light of the rising sun glittered upon the steel caps and breastplates of dense masses of slingers and of crossbowmen, who drilled and marched in the spaces which had been left for their exercise. A thousand columns of smoke reeked up into the pure morning air where the faggots were piled and the camp-kettles already simmering. In the open plain clouds of light horse galloped and swooped with swaying bodies and waving javelins, after the fashion which the Spanish had adopted from their Moorish enemies. All along by the sedgy banks of the rivers long lines of pages led their masters' chargers down to water, while the knights themselves lounged in gayly-dressed groups about the doors of their pavilions, or rode out, with their falcons upon their wrists and their greyhounds behind them, in quest of quail or of leveret.\n\n\"By my hilt! mon gar.!\" whispered Aylward to Alleyne, as the young squire stood with parted lips and wondering eyes, gazing down at the novel scene before him, \"we have been seeking them all night, but now that we have found them I know not what we are to do with them.\"\n\n\"You say sooth, Samkin,\" quoth old Johnston. \"I would that we were upon the far side of Ebro again, for there is neither honor nor profit to be gained here. What say you, Simon?\"\n\n\"By the rood!\" cried the fierce man-at-arms, \"I will see the color of their blood ere I turn my mare's head for the mountains. Am I a child, that I should ride for three days and nought but words at the end of it?\"\n\n\"Well said, my sweet honeysuckle!\" cried Hordle John. \"I am with you, like hilt to blade. Could I but lay hands upon one of those gay prancers yonder, I doubt not that I should have ransom enough from him to buy my mother a new cow.\"\n\n\"A cow!\" said Aylward. \"Say rather ten acres and a homestead on the banks of Avon.\"\n\n\"Say you so? Then, by our Lady! here is for yonder one in the red jerkin!\"\n\nHe was about to push recklessly forward into the open, when Sir Nigel himself darted in front of him, with his hand upon his breast.\n\n\"Back!\" said he. \"Our time is not yet come, and we must lie here until evening. Throw off your jacks and headpieces, least their eyes catch the shine, and tether the horses among the rocks.\"\n\nThe order was swiftly obeyed, and in ten minutes the archers were stretched along by the side of the brook, munching the bread and the bacon which they had brought in their bags, and craning their necks to watch the ever-changing scene beneath them. Very quiet and still they lay, save for a muttered jest or whispered order, for twice during the long morning they heard bugle-calls from amid the hills on either side of them, which showed that they had thrust themselves in between the outposts of the enemy. The leaders sat amongst the box-wood, and took counsel together as to what they should do; while from below there surged up the buzz of voices, the shouting, the neighing of horses, and all the uproar of a great camp.\n\n\"What boots it to wait?\" said Sir William Felton. \"Let us ride down upon their camp ere they discover us.\"\n\n\"And so say I,\" cried the Scottish earl; \"for they do not know that there is any enemy within thirty long leagues of them.\"\n\n\"For my part,\" said Sir Simon Burley, \"I think that it is madness, for you cannot hope to rout this great army; and where are you to go and what are you to do when they have turned upon you? How say you, Sir Oliver Buttesthorn?\"\n\n\"By the apple of Eve!\" cried the fat knight, \"it appears to me that this wind brings a very savory smell of garlic and of onions from their cooking-kettles. I am in favor of riding down upon them at once, if my old friend and comrade here is of the same mind.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" said Sir Nigel, \"I have a plan by which we may attempt some small deed upon them, and yet, by the help of God, may be able to draw off again; which, as Sir Simon Burley hath said, would be scarce possible in any other way.\"\n\n\"How then, Sir Nigel?\" asked several voices.\n\n\"We shall lie here all day; for amid this brushwood it is ill for them to see us. Then when evening comes we shall sally out upon them and see if we may not gain some honorable advancement from them.\"\n\n\"But why then rather than now?\"\n\n\"Because we shall have nightfall to cover us when we draw off, so that we may make our way back through the mountains. I would station a score of archers here in the pass, with all our pennons jutting forth from the rocks, and as many nakirs and drums and bugles as we have with us, so that those who follow us in the fading light may think that the whole army of the prince is upon them, and fear to go further. What think you of my plan, Sir Simon?\"\n\n\"By my troth! I think very well of it,\" cried the prudent old commander. \"If four hundred men must needs run a tilt against sixty thousand, I cannot see how they can do it better or more safely.\"\n\n\"And so say I,\" cried Felton, heartily. \"But I wish the day were over, for it will be an ill thing for us if they chance to light upon us.\"\n\nThe words were scarce out of his mouth when there came a clatter of loose stones, the sharp clink of trotting hoofs, and a dark-faced cavalier, mounted upon a white horse, burst through the bushes and rode swiftly down the valley from the end which was farthest from the Spanish camp. Lightly armed, with his vizor open and a hawk perched upon his left wrist, he looked about him with the careless air of a man who is bent wholly upon pleasure, and unconscious of the possibility of danger. Suddenly, however, his eyes lit upon the fierce faces which glared out at him from the brushwood. With a cry of terror, he thrust his spurs into his horse's sides and dashed for the narrow opening of the gorge. For a moment it seemed as though he would have reached it, for he had trampled over or dashed aside the archers who threw themselves in his way; but Hordle John seized him by the foot in his grasp of iron and dragged him from the saddle, while two others caught the frightened horse.\n\n\"Ho, ho!\" roared the great archer. \"How many cows wilt buy my mother, if I set thee free?\"\n\n\"Hush that bull's bellowing!\" cried Sir Nigel impatiently. \"Bring the man here. By St. Paul! it is not the first time that we have met; for, if I mistake not, it is Don Diego Alvarez, who was once at the prince's court.\"\n\n\"It is indeed I,\" said the Spanish knight, speaking in the French tongue, \"and I pray you to pass your sword through my heart, for how can I live\u2014I, a caballero of Castile\u2014after being dragged from my horse by the base hands of a common archer?\"\n\n\"Fret not for that,\" answered Sir Nigel. \"For, in sooth, had he not pulled you down, a dozen cloth-yard shafts had crossed each other in your body.\"\n\n\"By St. James! it were better so than to be polluted by his touch,\" answered the Spaniard, with his black eyes sparkling with rage and hatred. \"I trust that I am now the prisoner of some honorable knight or gentleman.\"\n\n\"You are the prisoner of the man who took you, Sir Diego,\" answered Sir Nigel. \"And I may tell you that better men than either you or I have found themselves before now prisoners in the hands of archers of England.\"\n\n\"What ransom, then, does he demand?\" asked the Spaniard.\n\nBig John scratched his red head and grinned in high delight when the question was propounded to him. \"Tell him,\" said he, \"that I shall have ten cows and a bull too, if it be but a little one. Also a dress of blue sendall for mother and a red one for Joan; with five acres of pasture-land, two scythes, and a fine new grindstone. Likewise a small house, with stalls for the cows, and thirty-six gallons of beer for the thirsty weather.\"\n\n\"Tut, tut!\" cried Sir Nigel, laughing. \"All these things may be had for money; and I think, Don Diego, that five thousand crowns is not too much for so renowned a knight.\"\n\n\"It shall be duly paid him.\"\n\n\"For some days we must keep you with us; and I must crave leave also to use your shield, your armor, and your horse.\"\n\n\"My harness is yours by the law of arms,\" said the Spaniard, gloomily.\n\n\"I do but ask the loan of it. I have need of it this day, but it shall be duly returned to you. Set guards, Aylward, with arrow on string, at either end of the pass; for it may happen that some other cavaliers may visit us ere the time be come.\" All day the little band of Englishmen lay in the sheltered gorge, looking down upon the vast host of their unconscious enemies. Shortly after mid-day, a great uproar of shouting and cheering broke out in the camp, with mustering of men and calling of bugles. Clambering up among the rocks, the companions saw a long rolling cloud of dust along the whole eastern skyline, with the glint of spears and the flutter of pennons, which announced the approach of a large body of cavalry. For a moment a wild hope came upon them that perhaps the prince had moved more swiftly than had been planned, that he had crossed the Ebro, and that this was his vanguard sweeping to the attack.\n\n\"Surely I see the red pile of Chandos at the head of yonder squadron!\" cried Sir Richard Causton, shading his eyes with his hand.\n\n\"Not so,\" answered Sir Simon Burley, who had watched the approaching host with a darkening face. \"It is even as I feared. That is the double eagle of Du Guesclin.\"\n\n\"You say very truly,\" cried the Earl of Angus. \"These are the levies of France, for I can see the ensigns of the Marshal d'Andreghen, with that of the Lord of Antoing and of Briseuil, and of many another from Brittany and Anjou.\"\n\n\"By St. Paul! I am very glad of it,\" said Sir Nigel. \"Of these Spaniards I know nothing; but the French are very worthy gentlemen, and will do what they can for our advancement.\"\n\n\"There are at the least four thousand of them, and all men-at-arms,\" cried Sir William Felton. \"See, there is Bertrand himself, beside his banner, and there is King Henry, who rides to welcome him. Now they all turn and come into the camp together.\"\n\nAs he spoke, the vast throng of Spaniards and of Frenchmen trooped across the plain, with brandished arms and tossing banners. All day long the sound of revelry and of rejoicing from the crowded camp swelled up to the ears of the Englishmen, and they could see the soldiers of the two nations throwing themselves into each other's arms and dancing hand-in-hand round the blazing fires. The sun had sunk behind a cloud-bank in the west before Sir Nigel at last gave word that the men should resume their arms and have their horses ready. He had himself thrown off his armor, and had dressed himself from head to foot in the harness of the captured Spaniard.\n\n\"Sir William,\" said he, \"it is my intention to attempt a small deed, and I ask you therefore that you will lead this outfall upon the camp. For me, I will ride into their camp with my squire and two archers. I pray you to watch me, and to ride forth when I am come among the tents. You will leave twenty men behind here, as we planned this morning, and you will ride back here after you have ventured as far as seems good to you.\"\n\n\"I will do as you order, Nigel; but what is it that you propose to do?\"\n\n\"You will see anon, and indeed it is but a trifling matter. Alleyne, you will come with me, and lead a spare horse by the bridle. I will have the two archers who rode with us through France, for they are trusty men and of stout heart. Let them ride behind us, and let them leave their bows here among the bushes for it is not my wish that they should know that we are Englishmen. Say no word to any whom we may meet, and, if any speak to you, pass on as though you heard them not. Are you ready?\"\n\n\"I am ready, my fair lord,\" said Alleyne.\n\n\"And I,\" \"And I,\" cried Aylward and John.\n\n\"Then the rest I leave to your wisdom, Sir William; and if God sends us fortune we shall meet you again in this gorge ere it be dark.\"\n\nSo saying, Sir Nigel mounted the white horse of the Spanish cavalier, and rode quietly forth from his concealment with his three companions behind him, Alleyne leading his master's own steed by the bridle. So many small parties of French and Spanish horse were sweeping hither and thither that the small band attracted little notice, and making its way at a gentle trot across the plain, they came as far as the camp without challenge or hindrance. On and on they pushed past the endless lines of tents, amid the dense swarms of horsemen and of footmen, until the huge royal pavilion stretched in front of them. They were close upon it when of a sudden there broke out a wild hubbub from a distant portion of the camp, with screams and war-cries and all the wild tumult of battle. At the sound soldiers came rushing from their tents, knights shouted loudly for their squires, and there was mad turmoil on every hand of bewildered men and plunging horses. At the royal tent a crowd of gorgeously dressed servants ran hither and thither in helpless panic for the guard of soldiers who were stationed there had already ridden off in the direction of the alarm. A man-at-arms on either side of the doorway were the sole protectors of the royal dwelling.\n\n\"I have come for the king,\" whispered Sir Nigel; \"and, by Saint Paul! he must back with us or I must bide here.\"\n\nAlleyne and Aylward sprang from their horses, and flew at the two sentries, who were disarmed and beaten down in an instant by so furious and unexpected an attack. Sir Nigel dashed into the royal tent, and was followed by Hordle John as soon as the horses had been secured. From within came wild screamings and the clash of steel, and then the two emerged once more, their swords and forearms reddened with blood, while John bore over his shoulder the senseless body of a man whose gay surcoat, adorned with the lions and towers of Castile, proclaimed him to belong to the royal house. A crowd of white-faced sewers and pages swarmed at their heels, those behind pushing forwards, while the foremost shrank back from the fierce faces and reeking weapons of the adventurers. The senseless body was thrown across the spare horse, the four sprang to their saddles, and away they thundered with loose reins and busy spurs through the swarming camp.\n\nBut confusion and disorder still reigned among the Spaniards for Sir William Felton and his men had swept through half their camp, leaving a long litter of the dead and the dying to mark their course. Uncertain who were their attackers, and unable to tell their English enemies from their newly-arrived Breton allies, the Spanish knights rode wildly hither and thither in aimless fury. The mad turmoil, the mixture of races, and the fading light, were all in favor of the four who alone knew their own purpose among the vast uncertain multitude. Twice ere they reached open ground they had to break their way through small bodies of horses, and once there came a whistle of arrows and singing of stones about their ears; but, still dashing onwards, they shot out from among the tents and found their own comrades retreating for the mountains at no very great distance from them. Another five minutes of wild galloping over the plain, and they were all back in their gorge, while their pursuers fell back before the rolling of drums and blare of trumpets, which seemed to proclaim that the whole army of the prince was about to emerge from the mountain passes.\n\n\"By my soul! Nigel,\" cried Sir Oliver, waving a great boiled ham over his head, \"I have come by something which I may eat with my truffles! I had a hard fight for it, for there were three of them with their mouths open and the knives in their hands, all sitting agape round the table, when I rushed in upon them. How say you, Sir William, will you not try the smack of the famed Spanish swine, though we have but the brook water to wash it down?\"\n\n\"Later, Sir Oliver,\" answered the old soldier, wiping his grimed face. \"We must further into the mountains ere we be in safety. But what have we here, Nigel?\"\n\n\"It is a prisoner whom I have taken, and in sooth, as he came from the royal tent and wears the royal arms upon his jupon, I trust that he is the King of Spain.\"\n\n\"The King of Spain!\" cried the companions, crowding round in amazement.\n\n\"Nay, Sir Nigel,\" said Felton, peering at the prisoner through the uncertain light, \"I have twice seen Henry of Transtamare, and certes this man in no way resembles him.\"\n\n\"Then, by the light of heaven! I will ride back for him,\" cried Sir Nigel.\n\n\"Nay, nay, the camp is in arms, and it would be rank madness. Who are you, fellow?\" he added in Spanish, \"and how is it that you dare to wear the arms of Castile?\"\n\nThe prisoner was bent recovering the consciousness which had been squeezed from him by the grip of Hordle John. \"If it please you,\" he answered, \"I and nine others are the body-squires of the king, and must ever wear his arms, so as to shield him from even such perils as have threatened him this night. The king is at the tent of the brave Du Guesclin, where he will sup to night. But I am a caballero of Aragon, Don Sancho Penelosa, and, though I be no king, I am yet ready to pay a fitting price for my ransom.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul! I will not touch your gold,\" cried Sir Nigel. \"Go back to your master and give him greeting from Sir Nigel Loring of Twynham Castle, telling him that I had hoped to make his better acquaintance this night, and that, if I have disordered his tent, it was but in my eagerness to know so famed and courteous a knight. Spur on, comrades! for we must cover many a league ere we can venture to light fire or to loosen girth. I had hoped to ride without this patch to-night, but it seems that I must carry it yet a little longer.\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW SIR NIGEL TOOK THE PATCH FROM HIS EYE.", + "text": "It was a cold, bleak morning in the beginning of March, and the mist was drifting in dense rolling clouds through the passes of the Cantabrian mountains. The Company, who had passed the night in a sheltered gully, were already astir, some crowding round the blazing fires and others romping or leaping over each other's backs for their limbs were chilled and the air biting. Here and there, through the dense haze which surrounded them, there loomed out huge pinnacles and jutting boulders of rock: while high above the sea of vapor there towered up one gigantic peak, with the pink glow of the early sunshine upon its snow-capped head. The ground was wet, the rocks dripping, the grass and evergreens sparkling with beads of moisture; yet the camp was loud with laughter and merriment, for a messenger had ridden in from the prince with words of heart-stirring praise for what they had done, and with orders that they should still abide in the forefront of the army.\n\nRound one of the fires were clustered four or five of the leading men of the archers, cleaning the rust from their weapons, and glancing impatiently from time to time at a great pot which smoked over the blaze. There was Aylward squatting cross-legged in his shirt, while he scrubbed away at his chain-mail brigandine, whistling loudly the while. On one side of him sat old Johnston, who was busy in trimming the feathers of some arrows to his liking; and on the other Hordle John, who lay with his great limbs all asprawl, and his headpiece balanced upon his uplifted foot. Black Simon of Norwich crouched amid the rocks, crooning an Eastland ballad to himself, while he whetted his sword upon a flat stone which lay across his knees; while beside him sat Alleyne Edricson, and Norbury, the silent squire of Sir Oliver, holding out their chilled hands towards the crackling faggots.\n\n\"Cast on another culpon, John, and stir the broth with thy sword-sheath,\" growled Johnston, looking anxiously for the twentieth time at the reeking pot.\n\n\"By my hilt!\" cried Aylward, \"now that John hath come by this great ransom, he will scarce abide the fare of poor archer lads. How say you, camarade? When you see Hordle once more, there will be no penny ale and fat bacon, but Gascon wines and baked meats every day of the seven.\"\n\n\"I know not about that,\" said John, kicking his helmet up into the air and catching it in his hand. \"I do but know that whether the broth be ready or no, I am about to dip this into it.\"\n\n\"It simmers and it boils,\" cried Johnston, pushing his hard-lined face through the smoke. In an instant the pot had been plucked from the blaze, and its contents had been scooped up in half a dozen steel headpieces, which were balanced betwixt their owners' knees, while, with spoon and gobbet of bread, they devoured their morning meal.\n\n\"It is ill weather for bows,\" remarked John at last, when, with a long sigh, he drained the last drop from his helmet. \"My strings are as limp as a cow's tail this morning.\"\n\n\"You should rub them with water glue,\" quoth Johnston. \"You remember, Samkin, that it was wetter than this on the morning of Crecy, and yet I cannot call to mind that there was aught amiss with our strings.\"\n\n\"It is in my thoughts,\" said Black Simon, still pensively grinding his sword, \"that we may have need of your strings ere sundown. I dreamed of the red cow last night.\"\n\n\"And what is this red cow, Simon?\" asked Alleyne.\n\n\"I know not, young sir; but I can only say that on the eve of Cadsand, and on the eve of Crecy, and on the eve of Nogent, I dreamed of a red cow; and now the dream has come upon me again, so I am now setting a very keen edge to my blade.\"\n\n\"Well said, old war-dog!\" cried Aylward. \"By my hilt! I pray that your dream may come true, for the prince hath not set us out here to drink broth or to gather whortle-berries. One more fight, and I am ready to hang up my bow, marry a wife, and take to the fire corner. But how now, Robin? Whom is it that you seek?\"\n\n\"The Lord Loring craves your attendance in his tent,\" said a young archer to Alleyne.\n\nThe squire rose and proceeded to the pavilion, where he found the knight seated upon a cushion, with his legs crossed in front of him and a broad ribbon of parchment laid across his knees, over which he was poring with frowning brows and pursed lips.\n\n\"It came this morning by the prince's messenger,\" said he, \"and was brought from England by Sir John Fallislee, who is new come from Sussex. What make you of this upon the outer side?\"\n\n\"It is fairly and clearly written,\" Alleyne answered, \"and it signifies To Sir Nigel Loring, Knight Constable of Twynham Castle, by the hand of Christopher, the servant of God at the Priory of Christchurch.\"\n\n\"So I read it,\" said Sir Nigel. \"Now I pray you to read what is set forth within.\"\n\nAlleyne turned to the letter, and, as his eyes rested upon it, his face turned pale and a cry of surprise and grief burst from his lips.\n\n\"What then?\" asked the knight, peering up at him anxiously. \"There is nought amiss with the Lady Mary or with the Lady Maude?\"\n\n\"It is my brother\u2014my poor unhappy brother!\" cried Alleyne, with his hand to his brow. \"He is dead.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul! I have never heard that he had shown so much love for you that you should mourn him so.\"\n\n\"Yet he was my brother\u2014the only kith or kin that I had upon earth. Mayhap he had cause to be bitter against me, for his land was given to the abbey for my upbringing. Alas! alas! and I raised my staff against him when last we met! He has been slain\u2014and slain, I fear, amidst crime and violence.\"\n\n\"Ha!\" said Sir Nigel. \"Read on, I pray you.\"\n\n\"'God be with thee, my honored lord, and have thee in his holy keeping. The Lady Loring hath asked me to set down in writing what hath befallen at Twynham, and all that concerns the death of thy ill neighbor the Socman of Minstead. For when ye had left us, this evil man gathered around him all outlaws, villeins, and masterless men, until they were come to such a force that they slew and scattered the king's men who went against them. Then, coming forth from the woods, they laid siege to thy castle, and for two days they girt us in and shot hard against us, with such numbers as were a marvel to see. Yet the Lady Loring held the place stoutly, and on the second day the Socman was slain\u2014by his own men, as some think\u2014so that we were delivered from their hands; for which praise be to all the saints, and more especially to the holy Anselm, upon whose feast it came to pass. The Lady Loring, and the Lady Maude, thy fair daughter, are in good health; and so also am I, save for an imposthume of the toe-joint, which hath been sent me for my sins. May all the saints preserve thee!'\"\n\n\"It was the vision of the Lady Tiphaine,\" said Sir Nigel, after a pause. \"Marked you not how she said that the leader was one with a yellow beard, and how he fell before the gate. But how came it, Alleyne, that this woman, to whom all things are as crystal, and who hath not said one word which has not come to pass, was yet so led astray as to say that your thoughts turned to Twynham Castle even more than my own?\"\n\n\"My fair lord,\" said Alleyne, with a flush on his weather-stained cheeks, \"the Lady Tiphaine may have spoken sooth when she said it; for Twynham Castle is in my heart by day and in my dreams by night.\"\n\n\"Ha!\" cried Sir Nigel, with a sidelong glance.\n\n\"Yes, my fair lord; for indeed I love your daughter, the Lady Maude; and, unworthy as I am, I would give my heart's blood to serve her.\"\n\n\"By St. Paul! Edricson,\" said the knight coldly, arching his eyebrows, \"you aim high in this matter. Our blood is very old.\"\n\n\"And mine also is very old,\" answered the squire.\n\n\"And the Lady Maude is our single child. All our name and lands centre upon her.\"\n\n\"Alas! that I should say it, but I also am now the only Edricson.\"\n\n\"And why have I not heard this from you before, Alleyne? In sooth, I think that you have used me ill.\"\n\n\"Nay, my fair lord, say not so; for I know not whether your daughter loves me, and there is no pledge between us.\"\n\nSir Nigel pondered for a few moments, and then burst out a-laughing. \"By St. Paul!\" said he, \"I know not why I should mix in the matter; for I have ever found that the Lady Maude was very well able to look to her own affairs. Since first she could stamp her little foot, she hath ever been able to get that for which she craved; and if she set her heart on thee, Alleyne, and thou on her, I do not think that this Spanish king, with his three-score thousand men, could hold you apart. Yet this I will say, that I would see you a full knight ere you go to my daughter with words of love. I have ever said that a brave lance should wed her; and, by my soul! Edricson, if God spare you, I think that you will acquit yourself well. But enough of such trifles, for we have our work before us, and it will be time to speak of this matter when we see the white cliffs of England once more. Go to Sir William Felton, I pray you, and ask him to come hither, for it is time that we were marching. There is no pass at the further end of the valley, and it is a perilous place should an enemy come upon us.\"\n\nAlleyne delivered his message, and then wandered forth from the camp, for his mind was all in a whirl with this unexpected news, and with his talk with Sir Nigel. Sitting upon a rock, with his burning brow resting upon his hands, he thought of his brother, of their quarrel, of the Lady Maude in her bedraggled riding-dress, of the gray old castle, of the proud pale face in the armory, and of the last fiery words with which she had sped him on his way. Then he was but a penniless, monk-bred lad, unknown and unfriended. Now he was himself Socman of Minstead, the head of an old stock, and the lord of an estate which, if reduced from its former size, was still ample to preserve the dignity of his family. Further, he had become a man of experience, was counted brave among brave men, had won the esteem and confidence of her father, and, above all, had been listened to by him when he told him the secret of his love. As to the gaining of knighthood, in such stirring times it was no great matter for a brave squire of gentle birth to aspire to that honor. He would leave his bones among these Spanish ravines, or he would do some deed which would call the eyes of men upon him.\n\nAlleyne was still seated on the rock, his griefs and his joys drifting swiftly over his mind like the shadow of clouds upon a sunlit meadow, when of a sudden he became conscious of a low, deep sound which came booming up to him through the fog. Close behind him he could hear the murmur of the bowmen, the occasional bursts of hoarse laughter, and the champing and stamping of their horses. Behind it all, however, came that low-pitched, deep-toned hum, which seemed to come from every quarter and to fill the whole air. In the old monastic days he remembered to have heard such a sound when he had walked out one windy night at Bucklershard, and had listened to the long waves breaking upon the shingly shore. Here, however, was neither wind nor sea, and yet the dull murmur rose ever louder and stronger out of the heart of the rolling sea of vapor. He turned and ran to the camp, shouting an alarm at the top of his voice.\n\nIt was but a hundred paces, and yet ere he had crossed it every bowman was ready at his horse's head, and the group of knights were out and listening intently to the ominous sound.\n\n\"It is a great body of horse,\" said Sir William Felton, \"and they are riding very swiftly hitherwards.\"\n\n\"Yet they must be from the prince's army,\" remarked Sir Richard Causton, \"for they come from the north.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" said the Earl of Angus, \"it is not so certain; for the peasant with whom we spoke last night said that it was rumored that Don Tello, the Spanish king's brother, had ridden with six thousand chosen men to beat up the prince's camp. It may be that on their backward road they have come this way.\"\n\n\"By St. Paul!\" cried Sir Nigel, \"I think that it is even as you say, for that same peasant had a sour face and a shifting eye, as one who bore us little good will. I doubt not that he has brought these cavaliers upon us.\"\n\n\"But the mist covers us,\" said Sir Simon Burley. \"We have yet time to ride through the further end of the pass.\"\n\n\"Were we a troop of mountain goats we might do so,\" answered Sir William Felton, \"but it is not to be passed by a company of horsemen. If these be indeed Don Tello and his men, then we must bide where we are, and do what we can to make them rue the day that they found us in their path.\"\n\n\"Well spoken, William!\" cried Sir Nigel, in high delight. \"If there be so many as has been said, then there will be much honor to be gained from them and every hope of advancement. But the sound has ceased, and I fear that they have gone some other way.\"\n\n\"Or mayhap they have come to the mouth of the gorge, and are marshalling their ranks. Hush and hearken! for they are no great way from us.\"\n\nThe Company stood peering into the dense fog-wreath, amidst a silence so profound that the dripping of the water from the rocks and the breathing of the horses grew loud upon the ear. Suddenly from out the sea of mist came the shrill sound of a neigh, followed by a long blast upon a bugle.\n\n\"It is a Spanish call, my fair lord,\" said Black Simon. \"It is used by their prickers and huntsmen when the beast hath not fled, but is still in its lair.\"\n\n\"By my faith!\" said Sir Nigel, smiling, \"if they are in a humor for venerie we may promise them some sport ere they sound the mort over us. But there is a hill in the centre of the gorge on which we might take our stand.\"\n\n\"I marked it yesternight,\" said Felton, \"and no better spot could be found for our purpose, for it is very steep at the back. It is but a bow-shot to the left, and, indeed, I can see the shadow of it.\"\n\nThe whole Company, leading their horses, passed across to the small hill which loomed in front of them out of the mist. It was indeed admirably designed for defence, for it sloped down in front, all jagged and boulder-strewn, while it fell away in a sheer cliff of a hundred feet or more. On the summit was a small uneven plateau, with a stretch across of a hundred paces, and a depth of half as much again.\n\n\"Unloose the horses!\" said Sir Nigel. \"We have no space for them, and if we hold our own we shall have horses and to spare when this day's work is done. Nay, keep yours, my fair sirs, for we may have work for them. Aylward, Johnston, let your men form a harrow on either side of the ridge. Sir Oliver and you, my Lord Angus, I give you the right wing, and the left to you, Sir Simon, and to you, Sir Richard Causton. I and Sir William Felton will hold the centre with our men-at-arms. Now order the ranks, and fling wide the banners, for our souls are God's and our bodies the king's, and our swords for Saint George and for England!\"\n\nSir Nigel had scarcely spoken when the mist seemed to thin in the valley, and to shred away into long ragged clouds which trailed from the edges of the cliffs. The gorge in which they had camped was a mere wedge-shaped cleft among the hills, three-quarters of a mile deep, with the small rugged rising upon which they stood at the further end, and the brown crags walling it in on three sides. As the mist parted, and the sun broke through, it gleamed and shimmered with dazzling brightness upon the armor and headpieces of a vast body of horsemen who stretched across the barranca from one cliff to the other, and extended backwards until their rear guard were far out upon the plain beyond. Line after line, and rank after rank, they choked the neck of the valley with a long vista of tossing pennons, twinkling lances, waving plumes and streaming banderoles, while the curvets and gambades of the chargers lent a constant motion and shimmer to the glittering, many-colored mass. A yell of exultation, and a forest of waving steel through the length and breadth of their column, announced that they could at last see their entrapped enemies, while the swelling notes of a hundred bugles and drums, mixed with the clash of Moorish cymbals, broke forth into a proud peal of martial triumph. Strange it was to these gallant and sparkling cavaliers of Spain to look upon this handful of men upon the hill, the thin lines of bowmen, the knots of knights and men-at-arms with armor rusted and discolored from long service, and to learn that these were indeed the soldiers whose fame and prowess had been the camp-fire talk of every army in Christendom. Very still and silent they stood, leaning upon their bows, while their leaders took counsel together in front of them. No clang of bugle rose from their stern ranks, but in the centre waved the leopards of England, on the right the ensign of their Company with the roses of Loring, and on the left, over three score of Welsh bowmen, there floated the red banner of Merlin with the boars'-heads of the Buttesthorns. Gravely and sedately they stood beneath the morning sun waiting for the onslaught of their foemen.\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" said Sir Nigel, gazing with puckered eye down the valley, \"there appear to be some very worthy people among them. What is this golden banner which waves upon the left?\"\n\n\"It is the ensign of the Knights of Calatrava,\" answered Felton.\n\n\"And the other upon the right?\"\n\n\"It marks the Knights of Santiago, and I see by his flag that their grand-master rides at their head. There too is the banner of Castile amid yonder sparkling squadron which heads the main battle. There are six thousand men-at-arms with ten squadrons of slingers as far as I may judge their numbers.\"\n\n\"There are Frenchmen among them, my fair lord,\" remarked Black Simon. \"I can see the pennons of De Couvette, De Brieux, Saint Pol, and many others who struck in against us for Charles of Blois.\"\n\n\"You are right,\" said Sir William, \"for I can also see them. There is much Spanish blazonry also, if I could but read it. Don Diego, you know the arms of your own land. Who are they who have done us this honor?\"\n\nThe Spanish prisoner looked with exultant eyes upon the deep and serried ranks of his countrymen.\n\n\"By Saint James!\" said he, \"if ye fall this day ye fall by no mean hands, for the flower of the knighthood of Castile ride under the banner of Don Tello, with the chivalry of Asturias, Toledo, Leon, Cordova, Galicia, and Seville. I see the guidons of Albornez, Cacorla, Rodriguez, Tavora, with the two great orders, and the knights of France and of Aragon. If you will take my rede you will come to a composition with them, for they will give you such terms as you have given me.\"\n\n\"Nay, by Saint Paul! it were pity if so many brave men were drawn together, and no little deed of arms to come of it. Ha! William, they advance upon us; and, by my soul! it is a sight that is worth coming over the seas to see.\"\n\nAs he spoke, the two wings of the Spanish host, consisting of the Knights of Calatrava on the one side and of Santiago upon the other, came swooping swiftly down the valley, while the main body followed more slowly behind. Five hundred paces from the English the two great bodies of horse crossed each other, and, sweeping round in a curve, retired in feigned confusion towards their centre. Often in bygone wars had the Moors tempted the hot-blooded Spaniards from their places of strength by such pretended flights, but there were men upon the hill to whom every ruse an trick of war were as their daily trade and practice. Again and even nearer came the rallying Spaniards, and again with cry of fear and stooping bodies they swerved off to right and left, but the English still stood stolid and observant among their rocks. The vanguard halted a long bow shot from the hill, and with waving spears and vaunting shouts challenged their enemies to come forth, while two cavaliers, pricking forward from the glittering ranks, walked their horses slowly between the two arrays with targets braced and lances in rest like the challengers in a tourney.\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" cried Sir Nigel, with his one eye glowing like an ember, \"these appear to be two very worthy and debonair gentlemen. I do not call to mind when I have seen any people who seemed of so great a heart and so high of enterprise. We have our horses, Sir William: shall we not relieve them of any vow which they may have upon their souls?\"\n\nFelton's reply was to bound upon his charger, and to urge it down the slope, while Sir Nigel followed not three spears'-lengths behind him. It was a rugged course, rocky and uneven, yet the two knights, choosing their men, dashed onwards at the top of their speed, while the gallant Spaniards flew as swiftly to meet them. The one to whom Felton found himself opposed was a tall stripling with a stag's head upon his shield, while Sir Nigel's man was broad and squat with plain steel harness, and a pink and white torse bound round his helmet. The first struck Felton on the target with such force as to split it from side to side, but Sir William's lance crashed through the camail which shielded the Spaniard's throat, and he fell, screaming hoarsely, to the ground. Carried away by the heat and madness of fight, the English knight never drew rein, but charged straight on into the array of the knights of Calatrava. Long time the silent ranks upon the hill could see a swirl and eddy deep down in the heart of the Spanish column, with a circle of rearing chargers and flashing blades. Here and there tossed the white plume of the English helmet, rising and falling like the foam upon a wave, with the fierce gleam and sparkle ever circling round it until at last it had sunk from view, and another brave man had turned from war to peace.\n\nSir Nigel, meanwhile, had found a foeman worthy of his steel for his opponent was none other than Sebastian Gomez, the picked lance of the monkish Knights of Santiago, who had won fame in a hundred bloody combats with the Moors of Andalusia. So fierce was their meeting that their spears shivered up to the very grasp, and the horses reared backwards until it seemed that they must crash down upon their riders. Yet with consummate horsemanship they both swung round in a long curvet, and then plucking out their swords they lashed at each other like two lusty smiths hammering upon an anvil. The chargers spun round each other, biting and striking, while the two blades wheeled and whizzed and circled in gleams of dazzling light. Cut, parry, and thrust followed so swiftly upon each other that the eye could not follow them, until at last coming thigh to thigh, they cast their arms around each other and rolled off their saddles to the ground. The heavier Spaniard threw himself upon his enemy, and pinning him down beneath him raised his sword to slay him, while a shout of triumph rose from the ranks of his countrymen. But the fatal blow never fell, for even as his arm quivered before descending, the Spaniard gave a shudder, and stiffening himself rolled heavily over upon his side, with the blood gushing from his armpit and from the slit of his vizor. Sir Nigel sprang to his feet with his bloody dagger in his left hand and gazed down upon his adversary, but that fatal and sudden stab in the vital spot, which the Spaniard had exposed by raising his arm, had proved instantly mortal. The Englishman leaped upon his horse and made for the hill, at the very instant that a yell of rage from a thousand voices and the clang of a score of bugles announced the Spanish onset.\n\nBut the islanders were ready and eager for the encounter. With feet firmly planted, their sleeves rolled back to give free play to their muscles, their long yellow bowstaves in their left hands, and their quivers slung to the front, they had waited in the four-deep harrow formation which gave strength to their array, and yet permitted every man to draw his arrow freely without harm to those in front. Aylward and Johnston had been engaged in throwing light tufts of grass into the air to gauge the wind force, and a hoarse whisper passed down the ranks from the file-leaders to the men, with scraps of advice and admonition.\n\n\"Do not shoot outside the fifteen-score paces,\" cried Johnston. \"We may need all our shafts ere we have done with them.\"\n\n\"Better to overshoot than to undershoot,\" added Aylward. \"Better to strike the rear guard than to feather a shaft in the earth.\"\n\n\"Loose quick and sharp when they come,\" added another. \"Let it be the eye to the string, the string to the shaft, and the shaft to the mark. By Our Lady! their banners advance, and we must hold our ground now if ever we are to see Southampton Water again.\"\n\nAlleyne, standing with his sword drawn amidst the archers, saw a long toss and heave of the glittering squadrons. Then the front ranks began to surge slowly forward, to trot, to canter, to gallop, and in an instant the whole vast array was hurtling onward, line after line, the air full of the thunder of their cries, the ground shaking with the beat of their hoots, the valley choked with the rushing torrent of steel, topped by the waving plumes, the slanting spears and the fluttering banderoles. On they swept over the level and up to the slope, ere they met the blinding storm of the English arrows. Down went the whole ranks in a whirl of mad confusion, horses plunging and kicking, bewildered men falling, rising, staggering on or back, while ever new lines of horsemen came spurring through the gaps and urged their chargers up the fatal slope. All around him Alleyne could hear the stern, short orders of the master-bowmen, while the air was filled with the keen twanging of the strings and the swish and patter of the shafts. Right across the foot of the hill there had sprung up a long wall of struggling horses and stricken men, which ever grew and heightened as fresh squadrons poured on the attack. One young knight on a gray jennet leaped over his fallen comrades and galloped swiftly up the hill, shrieking loudly upon Saint James, ere he fell within a spear-length of the English line, with the feathers of arrows thrusting out from every crevice and joint of his armor. So for five long minutes the gallant horsemen of Spain and of France strove ever and again to force a passage, until the wailing note of a bugle called them back, and they rode slowly out of bow-shot, leaving their best and their bravest in the ghastly, blood-mottled heap behind them.\n\nBut there was little rest for the victors. Whilst the knights had charged them in front the slingers had crept round upon either flank and had gained a footing upon the cliffs and behind the outlying rocks. A storm of stones broke suddenly upon the defenders, who, drawn up in lines upon the exposed summit, offered a fair mark to their hidden foes. Johnston, the old archer, was struck upon the temple and fell dead without a groan, while fifteen of his bowmen and six of the men-at-arms were struck down at the same moment. The others lay on their faces to avoid the deadly hail, while at each side of the plateau a fringe of bowmen exchanged shots with the slingers and crossbowmen among the rocks, aiming mainly at those who had swarmed up the cliffs, and bursting into laughter and cheers when a well-aimed shaft brought one of their opponents toppling down from his lofty perch.\n\n\"I think, Nigel,\" said Sir Oliver, striding across to the little knight, \"that we should all acquit ourselves better had we our none-meat, for the sun is high in the heaven.\"\n\n\"By Saint Paul!\" quoth Sir Nigel, plucking the patch from his eye, \"I think that I am now clear of my vow, for this Spanish knight was a person from whom much honor might be won. Indeed, he was a very worthy gentleman, of good courage, and great hardiness, and it grieves me that he should have come by such a hurt. As to what you say of food, Oliver, it is not to be thought of, for we have nothing with us upon the hill.\"\n\n\"Nigel!\" cried Sir Simon Burley, hurrying up with consternation upon his face, \"Aylward tells me that there are not ten-score arrows left in all their sheaves. See! they are springing from their horses, and cutting their sollerets that they may rush upon us. Might we not even now make a retreat?\"\n\n\"My soul will retreat from my body first!\" cried the little knight. \"Here I am, and here I bide, while God gives me strength to lift a sword.\"\n\n\"And so say I!\" shouted Sir Oliver, throwing his mace high into the air and catching it again by the handle.\n\n\"To your arms, men!\" roared Sir Nigel. \"Shoot while you may, and then out sword, and let us live or die together!\"" + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE WHITE COMPANY CAME TO BE DISBANDED.", + "text": "Then up rose from the hill in the rugged Cantabrian valley a sound such as had not been heard in those parts before, nor was again, until the streams which rippled amid the rocks had been frozen by over four hundred winters and thawed by as many returning springs. Deep and full and strong it thundered down the ravine, the fierce battle-call of a warrior race, the last stern welcome to whoso should join with them in that world-old game where the stake is death. Thrice it swelled forth and thrice it sank away, echoing and reverberating amidst the crags. Then, with set faces, the Company rose up among the storm of stones, and looked down upon the thousands who sped swiftly up the slope against them. Horse and spear had been set aside, but on foot, with sword and battle-axe, their broad shields slung in front of them, the chivalry of Spain rushed to the attack.\n\nAnd now arose a struggle so fell, so long, so evenly sustained, that even now the memory of it is handed down amongst the Cantabrian mountaineers and the ill-omened knoll is still pointed out by fathers to their children as the \"Altura de los Inglesos,\" where the men from across the sea fought the great fight with the knights of the south. The last arrow was quickly shot, nor could the slingers hurl their stones, so close were friend and foe. From side to side stretched the thin line of the English, lightly armed and quick-footed, while against it stormed and raged the pressing throng of fiery Spaniards and of gallant Bretons. The clink of crossing sword-blades, the dull thudding of heavy blows, the panting and gasping of weary and wounded men, all rose together in a wild, long-drawn note, which swelled upwards to the ears of the wondering peasants who looked down from the edges of the cliffs upon the swaying turmoil of the battle beneath them. Back and forward reeled the leopard banner, now borne up the slope by the rush and weight of the onslaught, now pushing downwards again as Sir Nigel, Burley, and Black Simon with their veteran men-at arms, flung themselves madly into the fray. Alleyne, at his lord's right hand, found himself swept hither and thither in the desperate struggle, exchanging savage thrusts one instant with a Spanish cavalier, and the next torn away by the whirl of men and dashed up against some new antagonist. To the right Sir Oliver, Aylward, Hordle John, and the bowmen of the Company fought furiously against the monkish Knights of Santiago, who were led up the hill by their prior\u2014a great, deep-chested man, who wore a brown monastic habit over his suit of mail. Three archers he slew in three giant strokes, but Sir Oliver flung his arms round him, and the two, staggering and straining, reeled backwards and fell, locked in each other's grasp, over the edge of the steep cliff which flanked the hill. In vain his knights stormed and raved against the thin line which barred their path: the sword of Aylward and the great axe of John gleamed in the forefront of the battle and huge jagged pieces of rock, hurled by the strong arms of the bowmen, crashed and hurtled amid their ranks. Slowly they gave back down the hill, the archers still hanging upon their skirts, with a long litter of writhing and twisted figures to mark the course which they had taken. At the same instant the Welshmen upon the left, led on by the Scotch earl, had charged out from among the rocks which sheltered them, and by the fury of their outfall had driven the Spaniards in front of them in headlong flight down the hill. In the centre only things seemed to be going ill with the defenders. Black Simon was down\u2014dying, as he would wish to have died, like a grim old wolf in its lair with a ring of his slain around him. Twice Sir Nigel had been overborne, and twice Alleyne had fought over him until he had staggered to his feet once more. Burley lay senseless, stunned by a blow from a mace, and half of the men-at-arms lay littered upon the ground around him. Sir Nigel's shield was broken, his crest shorn, his armor cut and smashed, and the vizor torn from his helmet; yet he sprang hither and thither with light foot and ready hand, engaging two Bretons and a Spaniard at the same instant\u2014thrusting, stooping, dashing in, springing out\u2014while Alleyne still fought by his side, stemming with a handful of men the fierce tide which surged up against them. Yet it would have fared ill with them had not the archers from either side closed in upon the flanks of the attackers, and pressed them very slowly and foot by foot down the long slope, until they were on the plain once more, where their fellows were already rallying for a fresh assault.\n\nBut terrible indeed was the cost at which the last had been repelled. Of the three hundred and seventy men who had held the crest, one hundred and seventy-two were left standing, many of whom were sorely wounded and weak from loss of blood. Sir Oliver Buttesthorn, Sir Richard Causton, Sir Simon Burley, Black Simon, Johnston, a hundred and fifty archers, and forty-seven men-at-arms had fallen, while the pitiless hail of stones was already whizzing and piping once more about their ears, threatening every instant to further reduce their numbers.\n\nSir Nigel looked about him at his shattered ranks, and his face flushed with a soldier's pride.\n\n\"By St. Paul!\" he cried, \"I have fought in many a little bickering, but never one that I would be more loth to have missed than this. But you are wounded, Alleyne?\"\n\n\"It is nought,\" answered his squire, stanching the blood which dripped from a sword-cut across his forehead.\n\n\"These gentlemen of Spain seem to be most courteous and worthy people. I see that they are already forming to continue this debate with us. Form up the bowmen two deep instead of four. By my faith! some very brave men have gone from among us. Aylward, you are a trusty soldier, for all that your shoulder has never felt accolade, nor your heels worn the gold spurs. Do you take charge of the right; I will hold the centre, and you, my Lord of Angus, the left.\"\n\n\"Ho! for Sir Samkin Aylward!\" cried a rough voice among the archers, and a roar of laughter greeted their new leader.\n\n\"By my hilt!\" said the old bowman, \"I never thought to lead a wing in a stricken field. Stand close, camarades, for, by these finger-bones! we must play the man this day.\"\n\n\"Come hither, Alleyne,\" said Sir Nigel, walking back to the edge of the cliff which formed the rear of their position. \"And you, Norbury,\" he continued, beckoning to the squire of Sir Oliver, \"do you also come here.\"\n\nThe two squires hurried across to him, and the three stood looking down into the rocky ravine which lay a hundred and fifty feet beneath them.\n\n\"The prince must hear of how things are with us,\" said the knight. \"Another onfall we may withstand, but they are many and we are few, so that the time must come when we can no longer form line across the hill. Yet if help were brought us we might hold the crest until it comes. See yonder horses which stray among the rocks beneath us?\"\n\n\"I see them, my fair lord.\"\n\n\"And see yonder path which winds along the hill upon the further end of the valley?\"\n\n\"I see it.\"\n\n\"Were you on those horses, and riding up yonder track, steep and rough as it is, I think that ye might gain the valley beyond. Then on to the prince, and tell him how we fare.\"\n\n\"But, my fair lord, how can we hope to reach the horses?\" asked Norbury.\n\n\"Ye cannot go round to them, for they would be upon ye ere ye could come to them. Think ye that ye have heart enough to clamber down this cliff?\"\n\n\"Had we but a rope.\"\n\n\"There is one here. It is but one hundred feet long, and for the rest ye must trust to God and to your fingers. Can you try it, Alleyne?\"\n\n\"With all my heart, my dear lord, but how can I leave you in such a strait?\"\n\n\"Nay, it is to serve me that ye go. And you, Norbury?\"\n\nThe silent squire said nothing, but he took up the rope, and, having examined it, he tied one end firmly round a projecting rock. Then he cast off his breastplate, thigh pieces, and greaves, while Alleyne followed his example.\n\n\"Tell Chandos, or Calverley, or Knolles, should the prince have gone forward,\" cried Sir Nigel. \"Now may God speed ye, for ye are brave and worthy men.\"\n\nIt was, indeed, a task which might make the heart of the bravest sink within him. The thin cord dangling down the face of the brown cliff seemed from above to reach little more than half-way down it. Beyond stretched the rugged rock, wet and shining, with a green tuft here and there thrusting out from it, but little sign of ridge or foothold. Far below the jagged points of the boulders bristled up, dark and menacing. Norbury tugged thrice with all his strength upon the cord, and then lowered himself over the edge, while a hundred anxious faces peered over at him as he slowly clambered downwards to the end of the rope. Twice he stretched out his foot, and twice he failed to reach the point at which he aimed, but even as he swung himself for a third effort a stone from a sling buzzed like a wasp from amid the rocks and struck him full upon the side of his head. His grasp relaxed, his feet slipped, and in an instant he was a crushed and mangled corpse upon the sharp ridges beneath him.\n\n\"If I have no better fortune,\" said Alleyne, leading Sir Nigel aside. \"I pray you, my dear lord, that you will give my humble service to the Lady Maude, and say to her that I was ever her true servant and most unworthy cavalier.\"\n\nThe old knight said no word, but he put a hand on either shoulder, and kissed his squire, with the tears shining in his eyes. Alleyne sprang to the rope, and sliding swiftly down, soon found himself at its extremity. From above it seemed as though rope and cliff were well-nigh touching, but now, when swinging a hundred feet down, the squire found that he could scarce reach the face of the rock with his foot, and that it was as smooth as glass, with no resting-place where a mouse could stand. Some three feet lower, however, his eye lit upon a long jagged crack which slanted downwards, and this he must reach if he would save not only his own poor life, but that of the eight-score men above him. Yet it were madness to spring for that narrow slit with nought but the wet, smooth rock to cling to. He swung for a moment, full of thought, and even as he hung there another of the hellish stones sang through his curls, and struck a chip from the face of the cliff. Up he clambered a few feet, drew up the loose end after him, unslung his belt, held on with knee and with elbow while he spliced the long, tough leathern belt to the end of the cord: then lowering himself as far as he could go, he swung backwards and forwards until his hand reached the crack, when he left the rope and clung to the face of the cliff. Another stone struck him on the side, and he heard a sound like a breaking stick, with a keen stabbing pain which shot through his chest. Yet it was no time now to think of pain or ache. There was his lord and his eight-score comrades, and they must be plucked from the jaws of death. On he clambered, with his hand shuffling down the long sloping crack, sometimes bearing all his weight upon his arms, at others finding some small shelf or tuft on which to rest his foot. Would he never pass over that fifty feet? He dared not look down and could but grope slowly onwards, his face to the cliff, his fingers clutching, his feet scraping and feeling for a support. Every vein and crack and mottling of that face of rock remained forever stamped upon his memory. At last, however, his foot came upon a broad resting-place and he ventured to cast a glance downwards. Thank God! he had reached the highest of those fatal pinnacles upon which his comrade had fallen. Quickly now he sprang from rock to rock until his feet were on the ground, and he had his hand stretched out for the horse's rein, when a sling-stone struck him on the head, and he dropped senseless upon the ground.\n\nAn evil blow it was for Alleyne, but a worse one still for him who struck it. The Spanish slinger, seeing the youth lie slain, and judging from his dress that he was no common man, rushed forward to plunder him, knowing well that the bowmen above him had expended their last shaft. He was still three paces, however, from his victim's side when John upon the cliff above plucked up a huge boulder, and, poising it for an instant, dropped it with fatal aim upon the slinger beneath him. It struck upon his shoulder, and hurled him, crushed and screaming, to the ground, while Alleyne, recalled to his senses by these shrill cries in his very ear, staggered on to his feet, and gazed wildly about him. His eyes fell upon the horses, grazing upon the scanty pasture, and in an instant all had come back to him\u2014his mission, his comrades, the need for haste. He was dizzy, sick, faint, but he must not die, and he must not tarry, for his life meant many lives that day. In an instant he was in his saddle and spurring down the valley. Loud rang the swift charger's hoofs over rock and reef, while the fire flew from the stroke of iron, and the loose stones showered up behind him. But his head was whirling round, the blood was gushing from his brow, his temple, his mouth. Ever keener and sharper was the deadly pain which shot like a red-hot arrow through his side. He felt that his eye was glazing, his senses slipping from him, his grasp upon the reins relaxing. Then with one mighty effort, he called up all his strength for a single minute. Stooping down, he loosened the stirrup-straps, bound his knees tightly to his saddle-flaps, twisted his hands in the bridle, and then, putting the gallant horse's head for the mountain path, he dashed the spurs in and fell forward fainting with his face buried in the coarse, black mane.\n\nLittle could he ever remember of that wild ride. Half conscious, but ever with the one thought beating in his mind, he goaded the horse onwards, rushing swiftly down steep ravines over huge boulders, along the edges of black abysses. Dim memories he had of beetling cliffs, of a group of huts with wondering faces at the doors, of foaming, clattering water, and of a bristle of mountain beeches. Once, ere he had ridden far, he heard behind him three deep, sullen shouts, which told him that his comrades had set their faces to the foe once more. Then all was blank, until he woke to find kindly blue English eyes peering down upon him and to hear the blessed sound of his country's speech. They were but a foraging party\u2014a hundred archers and as many men-at-arms\u2014but their leader was Sir Hugh Calverley, and he was not a man to bide idle when good blows were to be had not three leagues from him. A scout was sent flying with a message to the camp, and Sir Hugh, with his two hundred men, thundered off to the rescue. With them went Alleyne, still bound to his saddle, still dripping with blood, and swooning and recovering, and swooning once again. On they rode, and on, until, at last, topping a ridge, they looked down upon the fateful valley. Alas! and alas! for the sight that met their eyes.\n\nThere, beneath them, was the blood-bathed hill, and from the highest pinnacle there flaunted the yellow and white banner with the lions and the towers of the royal house of Castile. Up the long slope rushed ranks and ranks of men exultant, shouting, with waving pennons and brandished arms. Over the whole summit were dense throngs of knights, with no enemy that could be seen to face them, save only that at one corner of the plateau an eddy and swirl amid the crowded mass seemed to show that all resistance was not yet at an end. At the sight a deep groan of rage and of despair went up from the baffled rescuers, and, spurring on their horses, they clattered down the long and winding path which led to the valley beneath.\n\nBut they were too late to avenge, as they had been too late to save. Long ere they could gain the level ground, the Spaniards, seeing them riding swiftly amid the rocks, and being ignorant of their numbers, drew off from the captured hill, and, having secured their few prisoners, rode slowly in a long column, with drum-beating and cymbal-clashing, out of the valley. Their rear ranks were already passing out of sight ere the new-comers were urging their panting, foaming horses up the slope which had been the scene of that long drawn and bloody fight.\n\nAnd a fearsome sight it was that met their eyes! Across the lower end lay the dense heap of men and horses where the first arrow-storm had burst. Above, the bodies of the dead and the dying\u2014French, Spanish, and Aragonese\u2014lay thick and thicker, until they covered the whole ground two and three deep in one dreadful tangle of slaughter. Above them lay the Englishmen in their lines, even as they had stood, and higher yet upon the plateau a wild medley of the dead of all nations, where the last deadly grapple had left them. In the further corner, under the shadow of a great rock, there crouched seven bowmen, with great John in the centre of them\u2014all wounded, weary, and in sorry case, but still unconquered, with their blood-stained weapons waving and their voices ringing a welcome to their countrymen. Alleyne rode across to John, while Sir Hugh Calverley followed close behind him.\n\n\"By Saint George!\" cried Sir Hugh, \"I have never seen signs of so stern a fight, and I am right glad that we have been in time to save you.\"\n\n\"You have saved more than us,\" said John, pointing to the banner which leaned against the rock behind him.\n\n\"You have done nobly,\" cried the old free companion, gazing with a soldier's admiration at the huge frame and bold face of the archer. \"But why is it, my good fellow, that you sit upon this man.\"\n\n\"By the rood! I had forgot him,\" John answered, rising and dragging from under him no less a person than the Spanish caballero, Don Diego Alvarez. \"This man, my fair lord, means to me a new house, ten cows, one bull\u2014if it be but a little one\u2014a grindstone, and I know not what besides; so that I thought it well to sit upon him, lest he should take a fancy to leave me.\"\n\n\"Tell me, John,\" cried Alleyne faintly: \"where is my dear lord, Sir Nigel Loring?\"\n\n\"He is dead, I fear. I saw them throw his body across a horse and ride away with it, but I fear the life had gone from him.\"\n\n\"Now woe worth me! And where is Aylward?\"\n\n\"He sprang upon a riderless horse and rode after Sir Nigel to save him. I saw them throng around him, and he is either taken or slain.\"\n\n\"Blow the bugles!\" cried Sir Hugh, with a scowling brow. \"We must back to camp, and ere three days I trust that we may see these Spaniards again. I would fain have ye all in my company.\"\n\n\"We are of the White Company, my fair lord,\" said John.\n\n\"Nay, the White Company is here disbanded,\" answered Sir Hugh solemnly, looking round him at the lines of silent figures, \"Look to the brave squire, for I fear that he will never see the sun rise again.\"" + }, + { + "title": "OF THE HOME-COMING TO HAMPSHIRE.", + "text": "It was a bright July morning four months after that fatal fight in the Spanish barranca. A blue heaven stretched above, a green rolling plain undulated below, intersected with hedgerows and flecked with grazing sheep. The sun was yet low in the heaven, and the red cows stood in the long shadow of the elms, chewing the cud and gazing with great vacant eyes at two horsemen who were spurring it down the long white road which dipped and curved away back to where the towers and pinnacles beneath the flat-topped hill marked the old town of Winchester.\n\nOf the riders one was young, graceful, and fair, clad in plain doublet and hosen of blue Brussels cloth, which served to show his active and well-knit figure. A flat velvet cap was drawn forward to keep the glare from his eyes, and he rode with lips compressed and anxious face, as one who has much care upon his mind. Young as he was, and peaceful as was his dress, the dainty golden spurs which twinkled upon his heels proclaimed his knighthood, while a long seam upon his brow and a scar upon his temple gave a manly grace to his refined and delicate countenance. His comrade was a large, red-headed man upon a great black horse, with a huge canvas bag slung from his saddle-bow, which jingled and clinked with every movement of his steed. His broad, brown face was lighted up by a continual smile, and he looked slowly from side to side with eyes which twinkled and shone with delight. Well might John rejoice, for was he not back in his native Hampshire, had he not Don Diego's five thousand crowns rasping against his knee, and above all was he not himself squire now to Sir Alleyne Edricson, the young Socman of Minstead lately knighted by the sword of the Black Prince himself, and esteemed by the whole army as one of the most rising of the soldiers of England.\n\nFor the last stand of the Company had been told throughout Christendom wherever a brave deed of arms was loved, and honors had flowed in upon the few who had survived it. For two months Alleyne had wavered betwixt death and life, with a broken rib and a shattered head; yet youth and strength and a cleanly life were all upon his side, and he awoke from his long delirium to find that the war was over, that the Spaniards and their allies had been crushed at Navaretta, and that the prince had himself heard the tale of his ride for succor and had come in person to his bedside to touch his shoulder with his sword and to insure that so brave and true a man should die, if he could not live, within the order of chivalry. The instant that he could set foot to ground Alleyne had started in search of his lord, but no word could he hear of him, dead or alive, and he had come home now sad-hearted, in the hope of raising money upon his estates and so starting upon his quest once more. Landing at London, he had hurried on with a mind full of care, for he had heard no word from Hampshire since the short note which had announced his brother's death.\n\n\"By the rood!\" cried John, looking around him exultantly, \"where have we seen since we left such noble cows, such fleecy sheep, grass so green, or a man so drunk as yonder rogue who lies in the gap of the hedge?\"\n\n\"Ah, John,\" Alleyne answered wearily, \"it is well for you, but I never thought that my home-coming would be so sad a one. My heart is heavy for my dear lord and for Aylward, and I know not how I may break the news to the Lady Mary and to the Lady Maude, if they have not yet had tidings of it.\"\n\nJohn gave a groan which made the horses shy. \"It is indeed a black business,\" said he. \"But be not sad, for I shall give half these crowns to my old mother, and half will I add to the money which you may have, and so we shall buy that yellow cog wherein we sailed to Bordeaux, and in it we shall go forth and seek Sir Nigel.\"\n\nAlleyne smiled, but shook his head. \"Were he alive we should have had word of him ere now,\" said he. \"But what is this town before us?\"\n\n\"Why, it is Romsey!\" cried John. \"See the tower of the old gray church, and the long stretch of the nunnery. But here sits a very holy man, and I shall give him a crown for his prayers.\"\n\nThree large stones formed a rough cot by the roadside, and beside it, basking in the sun, sat the hermit, with clay-colored face, dull eyes, and long withered hands. With crossed ankles and sunken head, he sat as though all his life had passed out of him, with the beads slipping slowly through his thin, yellow fingers. Behind him lay the narrow cell, clay-floored and damp, comfortless, profitless and sordid. Beyond it there lay amid the trees the wattle-and-daub hut of a laborer, the door open, and the single room exposed to the view. The man ruddy and yellow-haired, stood leaning upon the spade wherewith he had been at work upon the garden patch. From behind him came the ripple of a happy woman's laughter, and two young urchins darted forth from the hut, bare-legged and towsy, while the mother, stepping out, laid her hand upon her husband's arm and watched the gambols of the children. The hermit frowned at the untoward noise which broke upon his prayers, but his brow relaxed as he looked upon the broad silver piece which John held out to him.\n\n\"There lies the image of our past and of our future,\" cried Alleyne, as they rode on upon their way. \"Now, which is better, to till God's earth, to have happy faces round one's knee, and to love and be loved, or to sit forever moaning over one's own soul, like a mother over a sick babe?\"\n\n\"I know not about that,\" said John, \"for it casts a great cloud over me when I think of such matters. But I know that my crown was well spent, for the man had the look of a very holy person. As to the other, there was nought holy about him that I could see, and it would be cheaper for me to pray for myself than to give a crown to one who spent his days in digging for lettuces.\"\n\nEre Alleyne could answer there swung round the curve of the road a lady's carriage drawn by three horses abreast with a postilion upon the outer one. Very fine and rich it was, with beams painted and gilt, wheels and spokes carved in strange figures, and over all an arched cover of red and white tapestry. Beneath its shade there sat a stout and elderly lady in a pink cote-hardie, leaning back among a pile of cushions, and plucking out her eyebrows with a small pair of silver tweezers. None could seem more safe and secure and at her ease than this lady, yet here also was a symbol of human life, for in an instant, even as Alleyne reined aside to let the carriage pass, a wheel flew out from among its fellows, and over it all toppled\u2014carving, tapestry and gilt\u2014in one wild heap, with the horses plunging, the postilion shouting, and the lady screaming from within. In an instant Alleyne and John were on foot, and had lifted her forth all in a shake with fear, but little the worse for her mischance.\n\n\"Now woe worth me!\" she cried, \"and ill fall on Michael Easover of Romsey! for I told him that the pin was loose, and yet he must needs gainsay me, like the foolish daffe that he is.\"\n\n\"I trust that you have taken no hurt, my fair lady,\" said Alleyne, conducting her to the bank, upon which John had already placed a cushion.\n\n\"Nay, I have had no scath, though I have lost my silver tweezers. Now, lack-a-day! did God ever put breath into such a fool as Michael Easover of Romsey? But I am much beholden to you, gentle sirs. Soldiers ye are, as one may readily see. I am myself a soldier's daughter,\" she added, casting a somewhat languishing glance at John, \"and my heart ever goes out to a brave man.\"\n\n\"We are indeed fresh from Spain,\" quoth Alleyne.\n\n\"From Spain, say you? Ah! it was an ill and sorry thing that so many should throw away the lives that Heaven gave them. In sooth, it is bad for those who fall, but worse for those who bide behind. I have but now bid farewell to one who hath lost all in this cruel war.\"\n\n\"And how that, lady?\"\n\n\"She is a young damsel of these parts, and she goes now into a nunnery. Alack! it is not a year since she was the fairest maid from Avon to Itchen, and now it was more than I could abide to wait at Romsey Nunnery to see her put the white veil upon her face, for she was made for a wife and not for the cloister. Did you ever, gentle sir, hear of a body of men called 'The White Company' over yonder?\"\n\n\"Surely so,\" cried both the comrades.\n\n\"Her father was the leader of it, and her lover served under him as squire. News hath come that not one of the Company was left alive, and so, poor lamb, she hath\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"Lady!\" cried Alleyne, with catching breath, \"is it the Lady Maude Loring of whom you speak?\"\n\n\"It is, in sooth.\"\n\n\"Maude! And in a nunnery! Did, then, the thought of her father's death so move her?\"\n\n\"Her father!\" cried the lady, smiling. \"Nay; Maude is a good daughter, but I think it was this young golden-haired squire of whom I have heard who has made her turn her back upon the world.\"\n\n\"And I stand talking here!\" cried Alleyne wildly. \"Come, John, come!\"\n\nRushing to his horse, he swung himself into the saddle, and was off down the road in a rolling cloud of dust as fast as his good steed could bear him.\n\nGreat had been the rejoicing amid the Romsey nuns when the Lady Maude Loring had craved admission into their order\u2014for was she not sole child and heiress of the old knight, with farms and fiefs which she could bring to the great nunnery? Long and earnest had been the talks of the gaunt lady abbess, in which she had conjured the young novice to turn forever from the world, and to rest her bruised heart under the broad and peaceful shelter of the church. And now, when all was settled, and when abbess and lady superior had had their will, it was but fitting that some pomp and show should mark the glad occasion. Hence was it that the good burghers of Romsey were all in the streets, that gay flags and flowers brightened the path from the nunnery to the church, and that a long procession wound up to the old arched door leading up the bride to these spiritual nuptials. There was lay-sister Agatha with the high gold crucifix, and the three incense-bearers, and the two-and-twenty garbed in white, who cast flowers upon either side of them and sang sweetly the while. Then, with four attendants, came the novice, her drooping head wreathed with white blossoms, and, behind, the abbess and her council of older nuns, who were already counting in their minds whether their own bailiff could manage the farms of Twynham, or whether a reeve would be needed beneath him, to draw the utmost from these new possessions which this young novice was about to bring them.\n\nBut alas! for plots and plans when love and youth and nature, and above all, fortune are arrayed against them. Who is this travel-stained youth who dares to ride so madly through the lines of staring burghers? Why does he fling himself from his horse and stare so strangely about him? See how he has rushed through the incense-bearers, thrust aside lay-sister Agatha, scattered the two-and-twenty damosels who sang so sweetly\u2014and he stands before the novice with his hands outstretched, and his face shining, and the light of love in his gray eyes. Her foot is on the very lintel of the church, and yet he bars the way\u2014and she, she thinks no more of the wise words and holy rede of the lady abbess, but she hath given a sobbing cry and hath fallen forward with his arms around her drooping body and her wet cheek upon his breast. A sorry sight this for the gaunt abbess, an ill lesson too for the stainless two-and-twenty who have ever been taught that the way of nature is the way of sin. But Maude and Alleyne care little for this. A dank, cold air comes out from the black arch before them. Without, the sun shines bright and the birds are singing amid the ivy on the drooping beeches. Their choice is made, and they turn away hand-in-hand, with their backs to the darkness and their faces to the light.\n\nVery quiet was the wedding in the old priory church at Christchurch, where Father Christopher read the service, and there were few to see save the Lady Loring and John, and a dozen bowmen from the castle. The Lady of Twynham had drooped and pined for weary months, so that her face was harsher and less comely than before, yet she still hoped on, for her lord had come through so many dangers that she could scarce believe that he might be stricken down at last. It had been her wish to start for Spain and to search for him, but Alleyne had persuaded her to let him go in her place. There was much to look after, now that the lands of Minstead were joined to those of Twynham, and Alleyne had promised her that if she would but bide with his wife he would never come back to Hampshire again until he had gained some news, good or ill, of her lord and lover.\n\nThe yellow cog had been engaged, with Goodwin Hawtayne in command, and a month after the wedding Alleyne rode down to Bucklershard to see if she had come round yet from Southampton. On the way he passed the fishing village of Pitt's Deep, and marked that a little creyer or brig was tacking off the land, as though about to anchor there. On his way back, as he rode towards the village, he saw that she had indeed anchored, and that many boats were round her, bearing cargo to the shore.\n\nA bow-shot from Pitt's Deep there was an inn a little back from the road, very large and widespread, with a great green bush hung upon a pole from one of the upper windows. At this window he marked, as he rode up, that a man was seated who appeared to be craning his neck in his direction. Alleyne was still looking up at him, when a woman came rushing from the open door of the inn, and made as though she would climb a tree, looking back the while with a laughing face. Wondering what these doings might mean, Alleyne tied his horse to a tree, and was walking amid the trunks towards the inn, when there shot from the entrance a second woman who made also for the trees. Close at her heels came a burly, brown-faced man, who leaned against the door-post and laughed loudly with his hand to his side, \"Ah, mes belles!\" he cried, \"and is it thus you treat me? Ah, mes petites! I swear by these finger-bones that I would not hurt a hair of your pretty heads; but I have been among the black paynim, and, by my hilt! it does me good to look at your English cheeks. Come, drink a stoup of muscadine with me, mes anges, for my heart is warm to be among ye again.\"\n\nAt the sight of the man Alleyne had stood staring, but at the sound of his voice such a thrill of joy bubbled up in his heart that he had to bite his lip to keep himself from shouting outright. But a deeper pleasure yet was in store. Even as he looked, the window above was pushed outwards, and the voice of the man whom he had seen there came out from it. \"Aylward,\" cried the voice, \"I have seen just now a very worthy person come down the road, though my eyes could scarce discern whether he carried coat-armor. I pray you to wait upon him and tell him that a very humble knight of England abides here, so that if he be in need of advancement, or have any small vow upon his soul, or desire to exalt his lady, I may help him to accomplish it.\"\n\nAylward at this order came shuffling forward amid the trees, and in an instant the two men were clinging in each other's arms, laughing and shouting and patting each other in their delight; while old Sir Nigel came running with his sword, under the impression that some small bickering had broken out, only to embrace and be embraced himself, until all three were hoarse with their questions and outcries and congratulations.\n\nOn their journey home through the woods Alleyne learnt their wondrous story: how, when Sir Nigel came to his senses, he with his fellow-captive had been hurried to the coast, and conveyed by sea to their captor's castle; how upon the way they had been taken by a Barbary rover, and how they exchanged their light captivity for a seat on a galley bench and hard labor at the pirate's oars; how, in the port at Barbary, Sir Nigel had slain the Moorish captain, and had swum with Aylward to a small coaster which they had taken, and so made their way to England with a rich cargo to reward them for their toils. All this Alleyne listened to, until the dark keep of Twynham towered above them in the gloaming, and they saw the red sun lying athwart the rippling Avon. No need to speak of the glad hearts at Twynham Castle that night, nor of the rich offerings from out that Moorish cargo which found their way to the chapel of Father Christopher.\n\nSir Nigel Loring lived for many years, full of honor and laden with every blessing. He rode no more to the wars, but he found his way to every jousting within thirty miles; and the Hampshire youth treasured it as the highest honor when a word of praise fell from him as to their management of their horses, or their breaking of their lances. So he lived and so he died, the most revered and the happiest man in all his native shire.\n\nFor Sir Alleyne Edricson and for his beautiful bride the future had also naught but what was good. Twice he fought in France, and came back each time laden with honors. A high place at court was given to him, and he spent many years at Windsor under the second Richard and the fourth Henry\u2014where he received the honor of the Garter, and won the name of being a brave soldier, a true-hearted gentleman, and a great lover and patron of every art and science which refines or ennobles life.\n\nAs to John, he took unto himself a village maid, and settled in Lyndhurst, where his five thousand crowns made him the richest franklin for many miles around. For many years he drank his ale every night at the \"Pied Merlin,\" which was now kept by his friend Aylward, who had wedded the good widow to whom he had committed his plunder. The strong men and the bowmen of the country round used to drop in there of an evening to wrestle a fall with John or to shoot a round with Aylward; but, though a silver shilling was to be the prize of the victory, it has never been reported that any man earned much money in that fashion. So they lived, these men, in their own lusty, cheery fashion\u2014rude and rough, but honest, kindly and true. Let us thank God if we have outgrown their vices. Let us pray to God that we may ever hold their virtues. The sky may darken, and the clouds may gather, and again the day may come when Britain may have sore need of her children, on whatever shore of the sea they be found. Shall they not muster at her call?" + } + ] + }, + { + "title": "The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard", + "author": "Arthur Conan Doyle", + "genres": [ + "adventure", + "historical fiction" + ], + "tags": [ + "" + ], + "chapters": [ + { + "title": "HOW THE BRIGADIER CAME TO THE CASTLE OF GLOOM", + "text": "You do very well, my friends, to treat me with some little reverence, for in honouring me you are honouring both France and yourselves. It is not merely an old, grey-moustached officer whom you see eating his omelette or draining his glass, but it is a fragment of history. In me you see one of the last of those wonderful men, the men who were veterans when they were yet boys, who learned to use a sword earlier than a razor, and who during a hundred battles had never once let the enemy see the colour of their knapsacks. For twenty years we were teaching Europe how to fight, and even when they had learned their lesson it was only the thermometer, and never the bayonet, which could break the Grand Army down. Berlin, Naples, Vienna, Madrid, Lisbon, Moscow\u2014we stabled our horses in them all. Yes, my friends, I say again that you do well to send your children to me with flowers, for these ears have heard the trumpet calls of France, and these eyes have seen her standards in lands where they may never be seen again.\n\nEven now, when I doze in my arm-chair, I can see those great warriors stream before me\u2014the green-jacketed chasseurs, the giant cuirassiers, Poniatowsky's lancers, the white-mantled dragoons, the nodding bearskins of the horse grenadiers. And then there comes the thick, low rattle of the drums, and through wreaths of dust and smoke I see the line of high bonnets, the row of brown faces, the swing and toss of the long, red plumes amid the sloping lines of steel. And there rides Ney with his red head, and Lefebvre with his bulldog jaw, and Lannes with his Gascon swagger; and then amidst the gleam of brass and the flaunting feathers I catch a glimpse of him, the man with the pale smile, the rounded shoulders, and the far-off eyes. There is an end of my sleep, my friends, for up I spring from my chair, with a cracked voice calling and a silly hand outstretched, so that Madame Titaux has one more laugh at the old fellow who lives among the shadows.\n\nAlthough I was a full Chief of Brigade when the wars came to an end, and had every hope of soon being made a General of Division, it is still rather to my earlier days that I turn when I wish to talk of the glories and the trials of a soldier's life. For you will understand that when an officer has so many men and horses under him, he has his mind full of recruits and remounts, fodder and farriers, and quarters, so that even when he is not in the face of the enemy, life is a very serious matter for him. But when he is only a lieutenant or a captain he has nothing heavier than his epaulettes upon his shoulders, so that he can clink his spurs and swing his dolman, drain his glass and kiss his girl, thinking of nothing save of enjoying a gallant life. That is the time when he is likely to have adventures, and it is often to that time that I shall turn in the stories which I may have for you. So it will be tonight when I tell you of my visit to the Castle of Gloom; of the strange mission of Sub-Lieutenant Duroc, and of the horrible affair of the man who was once known as Jean Carabin, and afterwards as the Baron Straubenthal.\n\nYou must know, then, that in the February of 1807, immediately after the taking of Danzig, Major Legendre and I were commissioned to bring four hundred remounts from Prussia into Eastern Poland.\n\nThe hard weather, and especially the great battle at Eylau, had killed so many of the horses that there was some danger of our beautiful Tenth of Hussars becoming a battalion of light infantry. We knew, therefore, both the Major and I, that we should be very welcome at the front. We did not advance very rapidly, however, for the snow was deep, the roads detestable, and we had but twenty returning invalids to assist us. Besides, it is impossible, when you have a daily change of forage, and sometimes none at all, to move horses faster than a walk. I am aware that in the story-books the cavalry whirls past at the maddest of gallops; but for my own part, after twelve campaigns, I should be very satisfied to know that my brigade could always walk upon the march and trot in the presence of the enemy. This I say of the hussars and chasseurs, mark you, so that it is far more the case with cuirassiers or dragoons.\n\nFor myself I am fond of horses, and to have four hundred of them, of every age and shade and character, all under my own hands, was a very great pleasure to me. They were from Pomerania for the most part, though some were from Normandy and some from Alsace, and it amused us to notice that they differed in character as much as the people of those provinces. We observed also, what I have often proved since, that the nature of a horse can be told by his colour, from the coquettish light bay, full of fancies and nerves, to the hardy chestnut, and from the docile roan to the pig-headed rusty-black. All this has nothing in the world to do with my story, but how is an officer of cavalry to get on with his tale when he finds four hundred horses waiting for him at the outset? It is my habit, you see, to talk of that which interests myself and so I hope that I may interest you.\n\nWe crossed the Vistula opposite Marienwerder, and had got as far as Riesenberg, when Major Legendre came into my room in the post-house with an open paper in his hand.\n\n'You are to leave me,' said he, with despair upon his face.\n\nIt was no very great grief to me to do that, for he was, if I may say so, hardly worthy to have such a subaltern. I saluted, however, in silence.\n\n'It is an order from General Lasalle,' he continued; 'you are to proceed to Rossel instantly, and to report yourself at the headquarters of the regiment.'\n\nNo message could have pleased me better. I was already very well thought of by my superior officers. It was evident to me, therefore, that this sudden order meant that the regiment was about to see service once more, and that Lasalle understood how incomplete my squadron would be without me. It is true that it came at an inconvenient moment, for the keeper of the post-house had a daughter\u2014one of those ivory-skinned, black-haired Polish girls\u2014with whom I had hoped to have some further talk. Still, it is not for the pawn to argue when the fingers of the player move him from the square; so down I went, saddled my big black charger, Rataplan, and set off instantly upon my lonely journey.\n\nMy word, it was a treat for those poor Poles and Jews, who have so little to brighten their dull lives, to see such a picture as that before their doors! The frosty morning air made Rataplan's great black limbs and the beautiful curves of his back and sides gleam and shimmer with every gambade. As for me, the rattle of hoofs upon a road, and the jingle of bridle chains which comes with every toss of a saucy head, would even now set my blood dancing through my veins. You may think, then, how I carried myself in my five-and-twentieth year\u2014I, Etienne Gerard, the picked horseman and surest blade in the ten regiments of hussars. Blue was our colour in the Tenth\u2014a sky-blue dolman and pelisse with a scarlet front\u2014and it was said of us in the army that we could set a whole population running, the women towards us, and the men away. There were bright eyes in the Riesenberg windows that morning which seemed to beg me to tarry; but what can a soldier do, save to kiss his hand and shake his bridle as he rides upon his way?\n\nIt was a bleak season to ride through the poorest and ugliest country in Europe, but there was a cloudless sky above, and a bright, cold sun, which shimmered on the huge snowfields. My breath reeked into the frosty air, and Rataplan sent up two feathers of steam from his nostrils, while the icicles drooped from the side-irons of his bit. I let him trot to warm his limbs, while for my own part I had too much to think of to give much heed to the cold. To north and south stretched the great plains, mottled over with dark clumps of fir and lighter patches of larch. A few cottages peeped out here and there, but it was only three months since the Grand Army had passed that way, and you know what that meant to a country. The Poles were our friends, it was true, but out of a hundred thousand men, only the Guard had waggons, and the rest had to live as best they might. It did not surprise me, therefore, to see no signs of cattle and no smoke from the silent houses. A weal had been left across the country where the great host had passed, and it was said that even the rats were starved wherever the Emperor had led his men.\n\nBy midday I had got as far as the village of Saalfeldt, but as I was on the direct road for Osterode, where the Emperor was wintering, and also for the main camp of the seven divisions of infantry, the highway was choked with carriages and carts. What with artillery caissons and waggons and couriers, and the ever-thickening stream of recruits and stragglers, it seemed to me that it would be a very long time before I should join my comrades. The plains, however, were five feet deep in snow, so there was nothing for it but to plod upon our way. It was with joy, therefore, that I found a second road which branched away from the other, trending through a fir-wood towards the north. There was a small auberge at the cross-roads, and a patrol of the Third Hussars of Conflans\u2014the very regiment of which I was afterwards colonel\u2014were mounting their horses at the door. On the steps stood their officer, a slight, pale young man, who looked more like a young priest from a seminary than a leader of the devil-may-care rascals before him.\n\n'Good-day, sir,' said he, seeing that I pulled up my horse.\n\n'Good-day,' I answered. 'I am Lieutenant Etienne Gerard, of the Tenth.'\n\nI could see by his face that he had heard of me. Everybody had heard of me since my duel with the six fencing masters. My manner, however, served to put him at his ease with me.\n\n'I am Sub-Lieutenant Duroc, of the Third,' said he.\n\n'Newly joined?' I asked.\n\n'Last week.'\n\nI had thought as much, from his white face and from the way in which he let his men lounge upon their horses. It was not so long, however, since I had learned myself what it was like when a schoolboy has to give orders to veteran troopers. It made me blush, I remember, to shout abrupt commands to men who had seen more battles than I had years, and it would have come more natural for me to say, 'With your permission, we shall now wheel into line,' or, 'If you think it best, we shall trot.' I did not think the less of the lad, therefore, when I observed that his men were somewhat out of hand, but I gave them a glance which stiffened them in their saddles.\n\n'May I ask, monsieur, whether you are going by this northern road?' I asked.\n\n'My orders are to patrol it as far as Arensdorf,' said he.\n\n'Then I will, with your permission, ride so far with you,' said I. 'It is very clear that the longer way will be the faster.'\n\nSo it proved, for this road led away from the army into a country which was given over to Cossacks and marauders, and it was as bare as the other was crowded. Duroc and I rode in front, with our six troopers clattering in the rear. He was a good boy, this Duroc, with his head full of the nonsense that they teach at St Cyr, knowing more about Alexander and Pompey than how to mix a horse's fodder or care for a horse's feet. Still, he was, as I have said, a good boy, unspoiled as yet by the camp. It pleased me to hear him prattle away about his sister Marie and about his mother in Amiens. Presently we found ourselves at the village of Hayenau. Duroc rode up to the post-house and asked to see the master.\n\n'Can you tell me,' said he, 'whether the man who calls himself the Baron Straubenthal lives in these parts?'\n\nThe postmaster shook his head, and we rode upon our way. I took no notice of this, but when, at the next village, my comrade repeated the same question, with the same result, I could not help asking him who this Baron Straubenthal might be.\n\n'He is a man,' said Duroc, with a sudden flush upon his boyish face, 'to whom I have a very important message to convey.'\n\nWell, this was not satisfactory, but there was something in my companion's manner which told me that any further questioning would be distasteful to him. I said nothing more, therefore, but Duroc would still ask every peasant whom we met whether he could give him any news of the Baron Straubenthal.\n\nFor my own part I was endeavouring, as an officer of light cavalry should, to form an idea of the lay of the country, to note the course of the streams, and to mark the places where there should be fords. Every step was taking us farther from the camp round the flanks of which we were travelling. Far to the south a few plumes of grey smoke in the frosty air marked the position of some of our outposts. To the north, however, there was nothing between ourselves and the Russian winter quarters. Twice on the extreme horizon I caught a glimpse of the glitter of steel, and pointed it out to my companion. It was too distant for us to tell whence it came, but we had little doubt that it was from the lance-heads of marauding Cossacks.\n\nThe sun was just setting when we rode over a low hill and saw a small village upon our right, and on our left a high black castle, which jutted out from amongst the pine-woods. A farmer with his cart was approaching us\u2014a matted-haired, downcast fellow, in a sheepskin jacket.\n\n'What village is this?' asked Duroc.\n\n'It is Arensdorf,' he answered, in his barbarous German dialect.\n\n'Then here I am to stay the night,' said my young companion. Then, turning to the farmer, he asked his eternal question, 'Can you tell me where the Baron Straubenthal lives?'\n\n'Why, it is he who owns the Castle of Gloom,' said the farmer, pointing to the dark turrets over the distant fir forest.\n\nDuroc gave a shout like the sportsman who sees his game rising in front of him. The lad seemed to have gone off his head\u2014his eyes shining, his face deathly white, and such a grim set about his mouth as made the farmer shrink away from him. I can see him now, leaning forward on his brown horse, with his eager gaze fixed upon the great black tower.\n\n'Why do you call it the Castle of Gloom?' I asked.\n\n'Well, it's the name it bears upon the countryside,' said the farmer. 'By all accounts there have been some black doings up yonder. It's not for nothing that the wickedest man in Poland has been living there these fourteen years past.'\n\n'A Polish nobleman?' I asked.\n\n'Nay, we breed no such men in Poland,' he answered.\n\n'A Frenchman, then?' cried Duroc.\n\n'They say that he came from France.'\n\n'And with red hair?'\n\n'As red as a fox.'\n\n'Yes, yes, it is my man,' cried my companion, quivering all over in his excitement. 'It is the hand of Providence which has led me here. Who can say that there is not justice in this world? Come, Monsieur Gerard, for I must see the men safely quartered before I can attend to this private matter.'\n\nHe spurred on his horse, and ten minutes later we were at the door of the inn of Arensdorf, where his men were to find their quarters for the night.\n\nWell, all this was no affair of mine, and I could not imagine what the meaning of it might be. Rossel was still far off, but I determined to ride on for a few hours and take my chance of some wayside barn in which I could find shelter for Rataplan and myself. I had mounted my horse, therefore, after tossing off a cup of wine, when young Duroc came running out of the door and laid his hand upon my knee.\n\n'Monsieur Gerard,' he panted, 'I beg of you not to abandon me like this!'\n\n'My good sir,' said I, 'if you would tell me what is the matter and what you would wish me to do, I should be better able to tell you if I could be of any assistance to you.'\n\n'You can be of the very greatest,' he cried. 'Indeed, from all that I have heard of you, Monsieur Gerard, you are the one man whom I should wish to have by my side tonight.'\n\n'You forget that I am riding to join my regiment.'\n\n'You cannot, in any case, reach it tonight. Tomorrow will bring you to Rossel. By staying with me you will confer the very greatest kindness upon me, and you will aid me in a matter which concerns my own honour and the honour of my family. I am compelled, however, to confess to you that some personal danger may possibly be involved.'\n\nIt was a crafty thing for him to say. Of course, I sprang from Rataplan's back and ordered the groom to lead him back into the stables.\n\n'Come into the inn,' said I, 'and let me know exactly what it is that you wish me to do.'\n\nHe led the way into a sitting-room, and fastened the door lest we should be interrupted. He was a well-grown lad, and as he stood in the glare of the lamp, with the light beating upon his earnest face and upon his uniform of silver grey, which suited him to a marvel, I felt my heart warm towards him. Without going so far as to say that he carried himself as I had done at his age, there was at least similarity enough to make me feel in sympathy with him.\n\n'I can explain it all in a few words,' said he. 'If I have not already satisfied your very natural curiosity, it is because the subject is so painful a one to me that I can hardly bring myself to allude to it. I cannot, however, ask for your assistance without explaining to you exactly how the matter lies.\n\n'You must know, then, that my father was the well-known banker, Christophe Duroc, who was murdered by the people during the September massacres. As you are aware, the mob took possession of the prisons, chose three so-called judges to pass sentence upon the unhappy aristocrats, and then tore them to pieces when they were passed out into the street. My father had been a benefactor of the poor all his life. There were many to plead for him. He had the fever, too, and was carried in, half-dead, upon a blanket. Two of the judges were in favour of acquitting him; the third, a young Jacobin, whose huge body and brutal mind had made him a leader among these wretches, dragged him, with his own hands, from the litter, kicked him again and again with his heavy boots, and hurled him out of the door, where in an instant he was torn limb from limb under circumstances which are too horrible for me to describe. This, as you perceive, was murder, even under their own unlawful laws, for two of their own judges had pronounced in my father's favour.\n\n'Well, when the days of order came back again, my elder brother began to make inquiries about this man. I was only a child then, but it was a family matter, and it was discussed in my presence. The fellow's name was Carabin. He was one of Sansterre's Guard, and a noted duellist. A foreign lady named the Baroness Straubenthal having been dragged before the Jacobins, he had gained her liberty for her on the promise that she with her money and estates should be his. He had married her, taken her name and title, and escaped out of France at the time of the fall of Robespierre. What had become of him we had no means of learning.\n\n'You will think, doubtless, that it would be easy for us to find him, since we had both his name and his title. You must remember, however, that the Revolution left us without money, and that without money such a search is very difficult. Then came the Empire, and it became more difficult still, for, as you are aware, the Emperor considered that the 18th Brumaire brought all accounts to a settlement, and that on that day a veil had been drawn across the past. None the less, we kept our own family story and our own family plans.\n\n'My brother joined the army, and passed with it through all Southern Europe, asking everywhere for the Baron Straubenthal. Last October he was killed at Jena, with his mission still unfulfilled. Then it became my turn, and I have the good fortune to hear of the very man of whom I am in search at one of the first Polish villages which I have to visit, and within a fortnight of joining my regiment. And then, to make the matter even better, I find myself in the company of one whose name is never mentioned throughout the army save in connection with some daring and generous deed.'\n\nThis was all very well, and I listened to it with the greatest interest, but I was none the clearer as to what young Duroc wished me to do.\n\n'How can I be of service to you?' I asked.\n\n'By coming up with me.'\n\n'To the Castle?'\n\n'Precisely.'\n\n'When?'\n\n'At once.'\n\n'But what do you intend to do?'\n\n'I shall know what to do. But I wish you to be with me, all the same.'\n\nWell, it was never in my nature to refuse an adventure, and, besides, I had every sympathy with the lad's feelings. It is very well to forgive one's enemies, but one wishes to give them something to forgive also. I held out my hand to him, therefore.\n\n'I must be on my way for Rossel tomorrow morning, but tonight I am yours,' said I.\n\nWe left our troopers in snug quarters, and, as it was but a mile to the Castle, we did not disturb our horses. To tell the truth, I hate to see a cavalry man walk, and I hold that just as he is the most gallant thing upon earth when he has his saddle-flaps between his knees, so he is the most clumsy when he has to loop up his sabre and his sabre-tasche in one hand and turn in his toes for fear of catching the rowels of his spurs. Still, Duroc and I were of the age when one can carry things off, and I dare swear that no woman at least would have quarrelled with the appearance of the two young hussars, one in blue and one in grey, who set out that night from the Arensdorf post-house. We both carried our swords, and for my own part I slipped a pistol from my holster into the inside of my pelisse, for it seemed to me that there might be some wild work before us.\n\nThe track which led to the Castle wound through a pitch-black fir-wood, where we could see nothing save the ragged patch of stars above our heads. Presently, however, it opened up, and there was the Castle right in front of us, about as far as a carbine would carry. It was a huge, uncouth place, and bore every mark of being exceedingly old, with turrets at every corner, and a square keep on the side which was nearest to us. In all its great shadow there was no sign of light save from a single window, and no sound came from it. To me there was something awful in its size and its silence, which corresponded so well with its sinister name. My companion pressed on eagerly, and I followed him along the ill-kept path which led to the gate.\n\nThere was no bell or knocker upon the great iron-studded door, and it was only by pounding with the hilts of our sabres that we could attract attention. A thin, hawk-faced man, with a beard up to his temples, opened it at last. He carried a lantern in one hand, and in the other a chain which held an enormous black hound. His manner at the first moment was threatening, but the sight of our uniforms and of our faces turned it into one of sulky reserve.\n\n'The Baron Straubenthal does not receive visitors at so late an hour,' said he, speaking in very excellent French.\n\n'You can inform Baron Straubenthal that I have come eight hundred leagues to see him, and that I will not leave until I have done so,' said my companion. I could not myself have said it with a better voice and manner.\n\nThe fellow took a sidelong look at us, and tugged at his black beard in his perplexity.\n\n'To tell the truth, gentlemen,' said he, 'the Baron has a cup or two of wine in him at this hour, and you would certainly find him a more entertaining companion if you were to come again in the morning.'\n\nHe had opened the door a little wider as he spoke, and I saw by the light of the lamp in the hall behind him that three other rough fellows were standing there, one of whom held another of these monstrous hounds. Duroc must have seen it also, but it made no difference to his resolution.\n\n'Enough talk,' said he, pushing the man to one side. 'It is with your master that I have to deal.'\n\nThe fellows in the hall made way for him as he strode in among them, so great is the power of one man who knows what he wants over several who are not sure of themselves. My companion tapped one of them upon the shoulder with as much assurance as though he owned him.\n\n'Show me to the Baron,' said he.\n\nThe man shrugged his shoulders, and answered something in Polish. The fellow with the beard, who had shut and barred the front door, appeared to be the only one among them who could speak French.\n\n'Well, you shall have your way,' said he, with a sinister smile. 'You shall see the Baron. And perhaps, before you have finished, you will wish that you had taken my advice.'\n\nWe followed him down the hall, which was stone-flagged and very spacious, with skins scattered upon the floor, and the heads of wild beasts upon the walls. At the farther end he threw open a door, and we entered.\n\nIt was a small room, scantily furnished, with the same marks of neglect and decay which met us at every turn. The walls were hung with discoloured tapestry, which had come loose at one corner, so as to expose the rough stonework behind. A second door, hung with a curtain, faced us upon the other side. Between lay a square table, strewn with dirty dishes and the sordid remains of a meal. Several bottles were scattered over it. At the head of it, and facing us, there sat a huge man with a lion-like head and a great shock of orange-coloured hair. His beard was of the same glaring hue; matted and tangled and coarse as a horse's mane. I have seen some strange faces in my time, but never one more brutal than that, with its small, vicious, blue eyes, its white, crumpled cheeks, and the thick, hanging lip which protruded over his monstrous beard. His head swayed about on his shoulders, and he looked at us with the vague, dim gaze of a drunken man. Yet he was not so drunk but that our uniforms carried their message to him.\n\n'Well, my brave boys,' he hiccoughed. 'What is the latest news from Paris, eh? You're going to free Poland, I hear, and have meantime all become slaves yourselves\u2014slaves to a little aristocrat with his grey coat and his three-cornered hat. No more citizens either, I am told, and nothing but monsieur and madame. My faith, some more heads will have to roll into the sawdust basket some of these mornings.'\n\nDuroc advanced in silence, and stood by the ruffian's side.\n\n'Jean Carabin,' said he.\n\nThe Baron started, and the film of drunkenness seemed to be clearing from his eyes.\n\n'Jean Carabin,' said Duroc, once more.\n\nHe sat up and grasped the arms of his chair.\n\n'What do you mean by repeating that name, young man?' he asked.\n\n'Jean Carabin, you are a man whom I have long wished to meet.'\n\n'Supposing that I once had such a name, how can it concern you, since you must have been a child when I bore it?'\n\n'My name is Duroc.'\n\n'Not the son of\u2014\u2014?'\n\n'The son of the man you murdered.'\n\nThe Baron tried to laugh, but there was terror in his eyes.\n\n'We must let bygones be bygones, young man,' he cried. 'It was our life or theirs in those days: the aristocrats or the people. Your father was of the Gironde. He fell. I was of the mountain. Most of my comrades fell. It was all the fortune of war. We must forget all this and learn to know each other better, you and I.' He held out a red, twitching hand as he spoke.\n\n'Enough,' said young Duroc. 'If I were to pass my sabre through you as you sit in that chair, I should do what is just and right. I dishonour my blade by crossing it with yours. And yet you are a Frenchman, and have even held a commission under the same flag as myself. Rise, then, and defend yourself!'\n\n'Tut, tut!' cried the Baron. 'It is all very well for you young bloods\u2014'\n\nDuroc's patience could stand no more. He swung his open hand into the centre of the great orange beard. I saw a lip fringed with blood, and two glaring blue eyes above it.\n\n'You shall die for that blow.'\n\n'That is better,' said Duroc.\n\n'My sabre!' cried the other. 'I will not keep you waiting, I promise you!' and he hurried from the room.\n\nI have said that there was a second door covered with a curtain. Hardly had the Baron vanished when there ran from behind it a woman, young and beautiful. So swiftly and noiselessly did she move that she was between us in an instant, and it was only the shaking curtains which told us whence she had come.\n\n'I have seen it all,' she cried. 'Oh, sir, you have carried yourself splendidly.' She stooped to my companion's hand, and kissed it again and again ere he could disengage it from her grasp.\n\n'Nay, madame, why should you kiss my hand?' he cried.\n\n'Because it is the hand which struck him on his vile, lying mouth. Because it may be the hand which will avenge my mother. I am his step-daughter. The woman whose heart he broke was my mother. I loathe him, I fear him. Ah, there is his step!' In an instant she had vanished as suddenly as she had come. A moment later, the Baron entered with a drawn sword in his hand, and the fellow who had admitted us at his heels.\n\n'This is my secretary,' said he. 'He will be my friend in this affair. But we shall need more elbow-room than we can find here. Perhaps you will kindly come with me to a more spacious apartment.'\n\nIt was evidently impossible to fight in a chamber which was blocked by a great table. We followed him out, therefore, into the dimly-lit hall. At the farther end a light was shining through an open door.\n\n'We shall find what we want in here,' said the man with the dark beard. It was a large, empty room, with rows of barrels and cases round the walls. A strong lamp stood upon a shelf in the corner. The floor was level and true, so that no swordsman could ask for more. Duroc drew his sabre and sprang into it. The Baron stood back with a bow and motioned me to follow my companion. Hardly were my heels over the threshold when the heavy door crashed behind us and the key screamed in the lock. We were taken in a trap.\n\nFor a moment we could not realize it. Such incredible baseness was outside all our experiences. Then, as we understood how foolish we had been to trust for an instant a man with such a history, a flush of rage came over us, rage against his villainy and against our own stupidity. We rushed at the door together, beating it with our fists and kicking with our heavy boots. The sound of our blows and of our execrations must have resounded through the Castle. We called to this villain, hurling at him every name which might pierce even into his hardened soul. But the door was enormous\u2014such a door as one finds in mediaeval castles\u2014made of huge beams clamped together with iron. It was as easy to break as a square of the Old Guard. And our cries appeared to be of as little avail as our blows, for they only brought for answer the clattering echoes from the high roof above us. When you have done some soldiering, you soon learn to put up with what cannot be altered. It was I, then, who first recovered my calmness, and prevailed upon Duroc to join with me in examining the apartment which had become our dungeon.\n\nThere was only one window, which had no glass in it, and was so narrow that one could not so much as get one's head through. It was high up, and Duroc had to stand upon a barrel in order to see from it.\n\n'What can you see?' I asked.\n\n'Fir-woods and an avenue of snow between them,' said he. 'Ah!' he gave a cry of surprise.\n\nI sprang upon the barrel beside him. There was, as he said, a long, clear strip of snow in front. A man was riding down it, flogging his horse and galloping like a madman. As we watched, he grew smaller and smaller, until he was swallowed up by the black shadows of the forest.\n\n'What does that mean?' asked Duroc.\n\n'No good for us,' said I. 'He may have gone for some brigands to cut our throats. Let us see if we cannot find a way out of this mouse-trap before the cat can arrive.'\n\nThe one piece of good fortune in our favour was that beautiful lamp. It was nearly full of oil, and would last us until morning. In the dark our situation would have been far more difficult. By its light we proceeded to examine the packages and cases which lined the walls. In some places there was only a single line of them, while in one corner they were piled nearly to the ceiling. It seemed that we were in the storehouse of the Castle, for there were a great number of cheeses, vegetables of various kinds, bins full of dried fruits, and a line of wine barrels. One of these had a spigot in it, and as I had eaten little during the day, I was glad of a cup of claret and some food. As to Duroc, he would take nothing, but paced up and down the room in a fever of anger and impatience. 'I'll have him yet!' he cried, every now and then. 'The rascal shall not escape me!'\n\nThis was all very well, but it seemed to me, as I sat on a great round cheese eating my supper, that this youngster was thinking rather too much of his own family affairs and too little of the fine scrape into which he had got me. After all, his father had been dead fourteen years, and nothing could set that right; but here was Etienne Gerard, the most dashing lieutenant in the whole Grand Army, in imminent danger of being cut off at the very outset of his brilliant career. Who was ever to know the heights to which I might have risen if I were knocked on the head in this hole-and-corner business, which had nothing whatever to do with France or the Emperor? I could not help thinking what a fool I had been, when I had a fine war before me and everything which a man could desire, to go off on a hare-brained expedition of this sort, as if it were not enough to have a quarter of a million Russians to fight against, without plunging into all sorts of private quarrels as well.\n\n'That is all very well,' I said at last, as I heard Duroc muttering his threats. 'You may do what you like to him when you get the upper hand. At present the question rather is, what is he going to do to us?'\n\n'Let him do his worst!' cried the boy. 'I owe a duty to my father.'\n\n'That is mere foolishness,' said I. 'If you owe a duty to your father, I owe one to my mother, which is to get out of this business safe and sound.'\n\nMy remark brought him to his senses.\n\n'I have thought too much of myself!' he cried. 'Forgive me, Monsieur Gerard. Give me your advice as to what I should do.'\n\n'Well,' said I, 'it is not for our health that they have shut us up here among the cheeses. They mean to make an end of us if they can. That is certain. They hope that no one knows that we have come here, and that none will trace us if we remain. Do your hussars know where you have gone to?'\n\n'I said nothing.'\n\n'Hum! It is clear that we cannot be starved here. They must come to us if they are to kill us. Behind a barricade of barrels we could hold our own against the five rascals whom we have seen. That is, probably, why they have sent that messenger for assistance.'\n\n'We must get out before he returns.'\n\n'Precisely, if we are to get out at all.'\n\n'Could we not burn down this door?' he cried.\n\n'Nothing could be easier,' said I. 'There are several casks of oil in the corner. My only objection is that we should ourselves be nicely toasted, like two little oyster p\u00e2t\u00e9s.'\n\n'Can you not suggest something?' he cried, in despair. 'Ah, what is that?'\n\nThere had been a low sound at our little window, and a shadow came between the stars and ourselves. A small, white hand was stretched into the lamplight. Something glittered between the fingers.\n\n'Quick! quick!' cried a woman's voice.\n\nWe were on the barrel in an instant.\n\n'They have sent for the Cossacks. Your lives are at stake. Ah, I am lost! I am lost!'\n\nThere was the sound of rushing steps, a hoarse oath, a blow, and the stars were once more twinkling through the window. We stood helpless upon the barrel with our blood cold with horror. Half a minute afterwards we heard a smothered scream, ending in a choke. A great door slammed somewhere in the silent night.\n\n'Those ruffians have seized her. They will kill her,' I cried.\n\nDuroc sprang down with the inarticulate shouts of one whose reason has left him. He struck the door so frantically with his naked hands that he left a blotch of blood with every blow.\n\nHere is the key!' I shouted, picking one from the floor. 'She must have thrown it in at the instant that she was torn away.'\n\nMy companion snatched it from me with a shriek of joy. A moment later he dashed it down upon the boards. It was so small that it was lost in the enormous lock. Duroc sank upon one of the boxes with his head between his hands. He sobbed in his despair. I could have sobbed, too, when I thought of the woman and how helpless we were to save her.\n\nBut I am not easily baffled. After all, this key must have been sent to us for a purpose. The lady could not bring us that of the door, because this murderous step-father of hers would most certainly have it in his pocket. Yet this other must have a meaning, or why should she risk her life to place it in our hands? It would say little for our wits if we could not find out what that meaning might be.\n\nI set to work moving all the cases out from the wall, and Duroc, gaining new hope from my courage, helped me with all his strength. It was no light task, for many of them were large and heavy. On we went, working like maniacs, slinging barrels, cheeses, and boxes pell-mell into the middle of the room. At last there only remained one huge barrel of vodka, which stood in the corner. With our united strength we rolled it out, and there was a little low wooden door in the wainscot behind it. The key fitted, and with a cry of delight we saw it swing open before us. With the lamp in my hand, I squeezed my way in, followed by my companion.\n\nWe were in the powder-magazine of the Castle\u2014a rough, walled cellar, with barrels all round it, and one with the top staved in in the centre. The powder from it lay in a black heap upon the floor. Beyond there was another door, but it was locked.\n\n'We are no better off than before,' cried Duroc. 'We have no key.'\n\n'We have a dozen!' I cried.\n\n'Where?'\n\nI pointed to the line of powder barrels.\n\n'You would blow this door open?'\n\n'Precisely.'\n\n'But you would explode the magazine.'\n\nIt was true, but I was not at the end of my resources.\n\n'We will blow open the store-room door,' I cried.\n\nI ran back and seized a tin box which had been filled with candles. It was about the size of my busby\u2014large enough to hold several pounds of powder. Duroc filled it while I cut off the end of a candle. When we had finished, it would have puzzled a colonel of engineers to make a better petard. I put three cheeses on the top of each other and placed it above them, so as to lean against the lock. Then we lit our candle-end and ran for shelter, shutting the door of the magazine behind us.\n\nIt is no joke, my friends, to be among all those tons of powder, with the knowledge that if the flame of the explosion should penetrate through one thin door our blackened limbs would be shot higher than the Castle keep. Who could have believed that a half-inch of candle could take so long to burn? My ears were straining all the time for the thudding of the hoofs of the Cossacks who were coming to destroy us. I had almost made up my mind that the candle must have gone out when there was a smack like a bursting bomb, our door flew to bits, and pieces of cheese, with a shower of turnips, apples, and splinters of cases, were shot in among us. As we rushed out we had to stagger through an impenetrable smoke, with all sorts of d\u00e9bris beneath our feet, but there was a glimmering square where the dark door had been. The petard had done its work.\n\nIn fact, it had done more for us than we had even ventured to hope. It had shattered gaolers as well as gaol. The first thing that I saw as I came out into the hall was a man with a butcher's axe in his hand, lying flat upon his back, with a gaping wound across his forehead. The second was a huge dog, with two of its legs broken, twisting in agony upon the floor. As it raised itself up I saw the two broken ends flapping like flails. At the same instant I heard a cry, and there was Duroc, thrown against the wall, with the other hound's teeth in his throat. He pushed it off with his left hand, while again and again he passed his sabre through its body, but it was not until I blew out its brains with my pistol that the iron jaws relaxed, and the fierce, bloodshot eyes were glazed in death.\n\nThere was no time for us to pause. A woman's scream from in front\u2014a scream of mortal terror\u2014told us that even now we might be too late. There were two other men in the hall, but they cowered away from our drawn swords and furious faces. The blood was streaming from Duroc's neck and dyeing the grey fur of his pelisse. Such was the lad's fire, however, that he shot in front of me, and it was only over his shoulder that I caught a glimpse of the scene as we rushed into the chamber in which we had first seen the master of the Castle of Gloom.\n\nThe Baron was standing in the middle of the room, his tangled mane bristling like an angry lion. He was, as I have said, a huge man with enormous shoulders; and as he stood there, with his face flushed with rage and his sword advanced, I could not but think that, in spite of all his villainies, he had a proper figure for a grenadier. The lady lay cowering in a chair behind him. A weal across one of her white arms and a dog-whip upon the floor were enough to show that our escape had hardly been in time to save her from his brutality. He gave a howl like a wolf as we broke in, and was upon us in an instant, hacking and driving, with a curse at every blow.\n\nI have already said that the room gave no space for swordsmanship. My young companion was in front of me in the narrow passage between the table and the wall, so that I could only look on without being able to aid him. The lad knew something of his weapon, and was as fierce and active as a wild cat, but in so narrow a space the weight and strength of the giant gave him the advantage. Besides, he was an admirable swordsman. His parade and riposte were as quick as lightning. Twice he touched Duroc upon the shoulder, and then, as the lad slipped on a lunge, he whirled up his sword to finish him before he could recover his feet. I was quicker than he, however, and took the cut upon the pommel of my sabre.\n\n'Excuse me,' said I, 'but you have still to deal with Etienne Gerard.'\n\nHe drew back and leaned against the tapestry-covered wall, breathing in little, hoarse gasps, for his foul living was against him.\n\n'Take your breath,' said I. 'I will await your convenience.'\n\n'You have no cause of quarrel against me,' he panted.\n\n'I owe you some little attention,' said I, 'for having shut me up in your store-room. Besides, if all other were wanting, I see cause enough upon that lady's arm.'\n\n'Have your way, then!' he snarled, and leaped at me like a madman. For a minute I saw only the blazing blue eyes, and the red glazed point which stabbed and stabbed, rasping off to right or to left, and yet ever back at my throat and my breast. I had never thought that such good sword-play was to be found at Paris in the days of the Revolution. I do not suppose that in all my little affairs I have met six men who had a better knowledge of their weapon. But he knew that I was his master. He read death in my eyes, and I could see that he read it. The flush died from his face. His breath came in shorter and in thicker gasps. Yet he fought on, even after the final thrust had come, and died still hacking and cursing, with foul cries upon his lips, and his blood clotting upon his orange beard. I who speak to you have seen so many battles, that my old memory can scarce contain their names, and yet of all the terrible sights which these eyes have rested upon, there is none which I care to think of less than of that orange beard with the crimson stain in the centre, from which I had drawn my sword-point.\n\nIt was only afterwards that I had time to think of all this. His monstrous body had hardly crashed down upon the floor before the woman in the corner sprang to her feet, clapping her hands together and screaming out in her delight. For my part I was disgusted to see a woman take such delight in a deed of blood, and I gave no thought as to the terrible wrongs which must have befallen her before she could so far forget the gentleness of her sex. It was on my tongue to tell her sharply to be silent, when a strange, choking smell took the breath from my nostrils, and a sudden, yellow glare brought out the figures upon the faded hangings.\n\n'Duroc, Duroc!' I shouted, tugging at his shoulder. 'The Castle is on fire!'\n\nThe boy lay senseless upon the ground, exhausted by his wounds. I rushed out into the hall to see whence the danger came. It was our explosion which had set alight to the dry frame-work of the door. Inside the store-room some of the boxes were already blazing. I glanced in, and as I did so my blood was turned to water by the sight of the powder barrels beyond, and of the loose heap upon the floor. It might be seconds, it could not be more than minutes, before the flames would be at the edge of it. These eyes will be closed in death, my friends, before they cease to see those crawling lines of fire and the black heap beyond.\n\nHow little I can remember what followed. Vaguely I can recall how I rushed into the chamber of death, how I seized Duroc by one limp hand and dragged him down the hall, the woman keeping pace with me and pulling at the other arm. Out of the gateway we rushed, and on down the snow-covered path until we were on the fringe of the fir forest. It was at that moment that I heard a crash behind me, and, glancing round, saw a great spout of fire shoot up into the wintry sky. An instant later there seemed to come a second crash, far louder than the first. I saw the fir trees and the stars whirling round me, and I fell unconscious across the body of my comrade." + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 2", + "text": "It was some weeks before I came to myself in the post-house of Arensdorf, and longer still before I could be told all that had befallen me. It was Duroc, already able to go soldiering, who came to my bedside and gave me an account of it. He it was who told me how a piece of timber had struck me on the head and laid me almost dead upon the ground. From him, too, I learned how the Polish girl had run to Arensdorf, how she had roused our hussars, and how she had only just brought them back in time to save us from the spears of the Cossacks who had been summoned from their bivouac by that same black-bearded secretary whom we had seen galloping so swiftly over the snow. As to the brave lady who had twice saved our lives, I could not learn very much about her at that moment from Duroc, but when I chanced to meet him in Paris two years later, after the campaign of Wagram, I was not very much surprised to find that I needed no introduction to his bride, and that by the queer turns of fortune he had himself, had he chosen to use it, that very name and title of the Baron Straubenthal, which showed him to be the owner of the blackened ruins of the Castle of Gloom." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE BRIGADIER SLEW THE BROTHERS OF AJACCIO", + "text": "When the Emperor needed an agent he was always very ready to do me the honour of recalling the name of Etienne Gerard, though it occasionally escaped him when rewards were to be distributed. Still, I was a colonel at twenty-eight, and the chief of a brigade at thirty-one, so that I have no reason to be dissatisfied with my career. Had the wars lasted another two or three years I might have grasped my b\u00e2ton, and the man who had his hand upon that was only one stride from a throne. Murat had changed his hussar's cap for a crown, and another light cavalry man might have done as much. However, all those dreams were driven away by Waterloo, and, although I was not able to write my name upon history, it is sufficiently well known by all who served with me in the great wars of the Empire.\n\nWhat I want to tell you tonight is about the very singular affair which first started me upon my rapid upward course, and which had the effect of establishing a secret bond between the Emperor and myself.\n\nThere is just one little word of warning which I must give you before I begin. When you hear me speak, you must always bear in mind that you are listening to one who has seen history from the inside. I am talking about what my ears have heard and my eyes have seen, so you must not try to confute me by quoting the opinions of some student or man of the pen, who has written a book of history or memoirs. There is much which is unknown by such people, and much which never will be known by the world. For my own part, I could tell you some very surprising things were it discreet to do so. The facts which I am about to relate to you tonight were kept secret by me during the Emperor's lifetime, because I gave him my promise that it should be so, but I do not think that there can be any harm now in my telling the remarkable part which I played.\n\nYou must know, then, that at the time of the Treaty of Tilsit I was a simple lieutenant in the 10th Hussars, without money or interest. It is true that my appearance and my gallantry were in my favour, and that I had already won a reputation as being one of the best swordsmen in the army; but amongst the host of brave men who surrounded the Emperor it needed more than this to insure a rapid career. I was confident, however, that my chance would come, though I never dreamed that it would take so remarkable a form.\n\nWhen the Emperor returned to Paris, after the declaration of peace in the year 1807, he spent much of his time with the Empress and the Court at Fontainebleau. It was the time when he was at the pinnacle of his career. He had in three successive campaigns humbled Austria, crushed Prussia, and made the Russians very glad to get upon the right side of the Niemen. The old Bulldog over the Channel was still growling, but he could not get very far from his kennel. If we could have made a perpetual peace at that moment, France would have taken a higher place than any nation since the days of the Romans. So I have heard the wise folk say, though for my part I had other things to think of. All the girls were glad to see the army back after its long absence, and you may be sure that I had my share of any favours that were going. You may judge how far I was a favourite in those days when I say that even now, in my sixtieth year\u2014but why should I dwell upon that which is already sufficiently well known?\n\nOur regiment of hussars was quartered with the horse chasseurs of the guard at Fontainebleau. It is, as you know, but a little place, buried in the heart of the forest, and it was wonderful at this time to see it crowded with Grand Dukes and Electors and Princes, who thronged round Napoleon like puppies round their master, each hoping that some bone might be thrown to him. There was more German than French to be heard in the street, for those who had helped us in the late war had come to beg for a reward, and those who had opposed us had come to try and escape their punishment.\n\nAnd all the time our little man, with his pale face and his cold, grey eyes, was riding to the hunt every morning, silent and brooding, all of them following in his train, in the hope that some word would escape him. And then, when the humour seized him, he would throw a hundred square miles to that man, or tear as much off the other, round off one kingdom by a river, or cut off another by a chain of mountains. That was how he used to do business, this little artilleryman, whom we had raised so high with our sabres and our bayonets. He was very civil to us always, for he knew where his power came from. We knew also, and showed it by the way in which we carried ourselves. We were agreed, you understand, that he was the finest leader in the world, but we did not forget that he had the finest men to lead.\n\nWell, one day I was seated in my quarters playing cards with young Morat, of the horse chasseurs, when the door opened and in walked Lasalle, who was our Colonel. You know what a fine, swaggering fellow he was, and the sky-blue uniform of the Tenth suited him to a marvel. My faith, we youngsters were so taken by him that we all swore and diced and drank and played the deuce whether we liked it or no, just that we might resemble our Colonel! We forgot that it was not because he drank or gambled that the Emperor was going to make him the head of the light cavalry, but because he had the surest eye for the nature of a position or for the strength of a column, and the best judgment as to when infantry could be broken, or whether guns were exposed, of any man in the army. We were too young to understand all that, however, so we waxed our moustaches and clicked our spurs and let the ferrules of our scabbards wear out by trailing them along the pavement in the hope that we should all become Lasalles. When he came clanking into my quarters, both Morat and I sprang to our feet.\n\n'My boy,' said he, clapping me on the shoulder, 'the Emperor wants to see you at four o'clock.'\n\nThe room whirled round me at the words, and I had to lean my hands upon the edge of the card-table.\n\n'What?' I cried. 'The Emperor!'\n\n'Precisely,' said he, smiling at my astonishment.\n\n'But the Emperor does not know of my existence, Colonel,' I protested. 'Why should he send for me?'\n\n'Well, that's just what puzzles me,' cried Lasalle, twirling his moustache. 'If he wanted the help of a good sabre, why should he descend to one of my lieutenants when he might have found all that he needed at the head of the regiment? However,' he added, clapping me on the shoulder again in his hearty fashion, 'every man has his chance. I have had mine, otherwise I should not be Colonel of the Tenth. I must not grudge you yours. Forwards, my boy, and may it be the first step towards changing your busby for a cocked hat.'\n\nIt was but two o'clock, so he left me, promising to come back and to accompany me to the palace. My faith, what a time I passed, and how many conjectures did I make as to what it was that the Emperor could want of me! I paced up and down my little room in a fever of anticipation. Sometimes I thought that perhaps he had heard of the guns which we had taken at Austerlitz; but, then, there were so many who had taken guns at Austerlitz, and two years had passed since the battle. Or it might be that he wished to reward me for my affair with the aide-de-camp of the Russian Emperor. But then again a cold fit would seize me, and I would fancy that he had sent for me to reprimand me. There were a few duels which he might have taken in ill part, and there were one or two little jokes in Paris since the peace.\n\nBut, no! I considered the words of Lasalle. 'If he had need of a brave man,' said Lasalle.\n\nIt was obvious that my Colonel had some idea of what was in the wind. If he had not known that it was to my advantage, he would not have been so cruel as to congratulate me. My heart glowed with joy as this conviction grew upon me, and I sat down to write to my mother and to tell her that the Emperor was waiting, at that very moment, to have my opinion upon a matter of importance. It made me smile as I wrote it to think that, wonderful as it appeared to me, it would probably only confirm my mother in her opinion of the Emperor's good sense.\n\nAt half-past three I heard a sabre come clanking against every step of my wooden stair. It was Lasalle, and with him was a lame gentleman, very neatly dressed in black with dapper ruffles and cuffs. We did not know many civilians, we of the army, but, my word, this was one whom we could not afford to ignore! I had only to glance at those twinkling eyes, the comical, upturned nose, and the straight, precise mouth, to know that I was in the presence of the one man in France whom even the Emperor had to consider.\n\n'This is Monsieur Etienne Gerard, Monsieur de Talleyrand,' said Lasalle.\n\nI saluted, and the statesman took me in from the top of my panache to the rowel of my spur, with a glance that played over me like a rapier point.\n\n'Have you explained to the lieutenant the circumstances under which he is summoned to the Emperor's presence?' he asked, in his dry, creaking voice.\n\nThey were such a contrast, these two men, that I could not help glancing from one to the other of them: the black, sly politician, and the big, sky-blue hussar with one fist on his hip and the other on the hilt of his sabre. They both took their seats as I looked, Talleyrand without a sound, and Lasalle with a clash and a jingle like a prancing charger.\n\n'It's this way, youngster,' said he, in his brusque fashion; 'I was with the Emperor in his private cabinet this morning when a note was brought in to him. He opened it, and as he did so he gave such a start that it fluttered down on to the floor. I handed it up to him again, but he was staring at the wall in front of him as if he had seen a ghost. \"Fratelli dell' Ajaccio,\" he muttered; and then again, \"Fratelli dell' Ajaccio.\" I don't pretend to know more Italian than a man can pick up in two campaigns, and I could make nothing of this. It seemed to me that he had gone out of his mind; and you would have said so also, Monsieur de Talleyrand, if you had seen the look in his eyes. He read the note, and then he sat for half an hour or more without moving.'\n\n'And you?' asked Talleyrand.\n\n'Why, I stood there not knowing what I ought to do. Presently he seemed to come back to his senses.\n\n'\"I suppose, Lasalle,\" said he, \"that you have some gallant young officers in the Tenth?\"\n\n'\"They are all that, sire,\" I answered.\n\n'\"If you had to pick one who was to be depended upon for action, but who would not think too much\u2014you understand me, Lasalle\u2014which would you select?\" he asked.\n\n'I saw that he needed an agent who would not penetrate too deeply into his plans.\n\n'\"I have one,\" said I, \"who is all spurs and moustaches, with never a thought beyond women and horses.\"\n\n'\"That is the man I want,\" said Napoleon. \"Bring him to my private cabinet at four o'clock.\"\n\n'So, youngster, I came straight away to you at once, and mind that you do credit to the 10th Hussars.'\n\nI was by no means flattered by the reasons which had led to my Colonel's choice, and I must have shown as much in my face, for he roared with laughter and Talleyrand gave a dry chuckle also.\n\n'Just one word of advice before you go, Monsieur Gerard,' said he: 'you are now coming into troubled waters, and you might find a worse pilot than myself. We have none of us any idea as to what this little affair means, and, between ourselves, it is very important for us, who have the destinies of France upon our shoulders, to keep ourselves in touch with all that goes on. You understand me, Monsieur Gerard?'\n\nI had not the least idea what he was driving at, but I bowed and tried to look as if it was clear to me.\n\n'Act very guardedly, then, and say nothing to anybody,' said Talleyrand. 'Colonel de Lasalle and I will not show ourselves in public with you, but we will await you here, and we will give you our advice when you have told us what has passed between the Emperor and yourself. It is time that you started now, for the Emperor never forgives unpunctuality.'\n\nOff I went on foot to the palace, which was only a hundred paces off. I made my way to the ante-chamber, where Duroc, with his grand new scarlet and gold coat, was fussing about among the crowd of people who were waiting. I heard him whisper to Monsieur de Caulaincourt that half of them were German Dukes who expected to be made Kings, and the other half German Dukes who expected to be made paupers. Duroc, when he heard my name, showed me straight in, and I found myself in the Emperor's presence.\n\nI had, of course, seen him in camp a hundred times, but I had never been face to face with him before. I have no doubt that if you had met him without knowing in the least who he was, you would simply have said that he was a sallow little fellow with a good forehead and fairly well-turned calves. His tight white cashmere breeches and white stockings showed off his legs to advantage. But even a stranger must have been struck by the singular look of his eyes, which could harden into an expression which would frighten a grenadier. It is said that even Auguereau, who was a man who had never known what fear was, quailed before Napoleon's gaze, at a time, too, when the Emperor was but an unknown soldier. He looked mildly enough at me, however, and motioned me to remain by the door. De Meneval was writing to his dictation, looking up at him between each sentence with his spaniel eyes.\n\n'That will do. You can go,' said the Emperor, abruptly. Then, when the secretary had left the room, he strode across with his hands behind his back, and he looked me up and down without a word. Though he was a small man himself, he was very fond of having fine-looking fellows about him, and so I think that my appearance gave him pleasure. For my own part, I raised one hand to the salute and held the other upon the hilt of my sabre, looking straight ahead of me, as a soldier should.\n\n'Well, Monsieur Gerard,' said he, at last, tapping his forefinger upon one of the brandebourgs of gold braid upon the front of my pelisse, 'I am informed that you are a very deserving young officer. Your Colonel gives me an excellent account of you.'\n\nI wished to make a brilliant reply, but I could think of nothing save Lasalle's phrase that I was all spurs and moustaches, so it ended in my saying nothing at all. The Emperor watched the struggle which must have shown itself upon my features, and when, finally, no answer came he did not appear to be displeased.\n\n'I believe that you are the very man that I want,' said he. 'Brave and clever men surround me upon every side. But a brave man who\u2014\u2014' He did not finish his sentence, and for my own part I could not understand what he was driving at. I contented myself with assuring him that he could count upon me to the death.\n\n'You are, as I understand, a good swordsman?' said he.\n\n'Tolerable, sire,' I answered.\n\n'You were chosen by your regiment to fight the champion of the Hussars of Chambarant?' said he.\n\nI was not sorry to find that he knew so much of my exploits.\n\n'My comrades, sire, did me that honour,' said I.\n\n'And for the sake of practice you insulted six fencing masters in the week before your duel?'\n\n'I had the privilege of being out seven times in as many days, sire,' said I.\n\n'And escaped without a scratch?'\n\n'The fencing master of the 23rd Light Infantry touched me on the left elbow, sire.'\n\n'Let us have no more child's play of the sort, monsieur,' he cried, turning suddenly to that cold rage of his which was so appalling. 'Do you imagine that I place veteran soldiers in these positions that you may practise quarte and tierce upon them? How am I to face Europe if my soldiers turn their points upon each other? Another word of your duelling, and I break you between these fingers.'\n\nI saw his plump white hands flash before my eyes as he spoke, and his voice had turned to the most discordant hissing and growling. My word, my skin pringled all over as I listened to him, and I would gladly have changed my position for that of the first man in the steepest and narrowest breach that ever swallowed up a storming party. He turned to the table, drank off a cup of coffee, and then when he faced me again every trace of this storm had vanished, and he wore that singular smile which came from his lips but never from his eyes.\n\n'I have need of your services, Monsieur Gerard,' said he. 'I may be safer with a good sword at my side, and there are reasons why yours should be the one which I select. But first of all I must bind you to secrecy. Whilst I live what passes between us today must be known to none but ourselves.'\n\nI thought of Talleyrand and of Lasalle, but I promised.\n\n'In the next place, I do not want your opinions or conjectures, and I wish you to do exactly what you are told.'\n\nI bowed.\n\n'It is your sword that I need, and not your brains. I will do the thinking. Is that clear to you?'\n\n'Yes, sire.'\n\n'You know the Chancellor's Grove, in the forest?'\n\nI bowed.\n\n'You know also the large double fir-tree where the hounds assembled on Tuesday?'\n\nHad he known that I met a girl under it three times a week, he would not have asked me. I bowed once more without remark.\n\n'Very good. You will meet me there at ten o'clock tonight.'\n\nI had got past being surprised at anything which might happen. If he had asked me to take his place upon the imperial throne I could only have nodded my busby.\n\n'We shall then proceed into the wood together,' said the Emperor. 'You will be armed with a sword, but not with pistols. You must address no remark to me, and I shall say nothing to you. We will advance in silence. You understand?'\n\n'I understand, sire.'\n\n'After a time we shall see a man, or more probably two men, under a certain tree. We shall approach them together. If I signal to you to defend me, you will have your sword ready. If, on the other hand, I speak to these men, you will wait and see what happens. If you are called upon to draw, you must see that neither of them, in the event of there being two, escapes from us. I shall myself assist you.'\n\n'Sire,' I cried, 'I have no doubt that two would not be too many for my sword; but would it not be better that I should bring a comrade than that you should be forced to join in such a struggle?'\n\n'Ta, ta, ta,' said he. 'I was a soldier before I was an Emperor. Do you think, then, that artillerymen have not swords as well as the hussars? But I ordered you not to argue with me. You will do exactly what I tell you. If swords are once out, neither of these men is to get away alive.'\n\n'They shall not, sire,' said I.\n\n'Very good. I have no more instructions for you. You can go.'\n\nI turned to the door, and then an idea occurring to me I turned.\n\n'I have been thinking, sire\u2014' said I.\n\nHe sprang at me with the ferocity of a wild beast. I really thought he would have struck me.\n\n'Thinking!' he cried. 'You, you! Do you imagine I chose you out because you could think? Let me hear of your doing such a thing again! You, the one man\u2014but, there! You meet me at the fir-tree at ten o'clock.'\n\nMy faith, I was right glad to get out of the room. If I have a good horse under me, and a sword clanking against my stirrup-iron, I know where I am. And in all that relates to green fodder or dry, barley and oats and rye, and the handling of squadrons upon the march, there is no one who can teach me very much. But when I meet a Chamberlain and a Marshal of the Palace, and have to pick my words with an Emperor, and find that everybody hints instead of talking straight out, I feel like a troop-horse who has been put in a lady's cal\u00e8che. It is not my trade, all this mincing and pretending. I have learned the manners of a gentleman, but never those of a courtier. I was right glad then to get into the fresh air again, and I ran away up to my quarters like a schoolboy who has just escaped from the seminary master.\n\nBut as I opened the door, the very first thing that my eye rested upon was a long pair of sky-blue legs with hussar boots, and a short pair of black ones with knee breeches and buckles. They both sprang up together to greet me.\n\n'Well, what news?' they cried, the two of them.\n\n'None,' I answered.\n\n'The Emperor refused to see you?'\n\n'No, I have seen him.'\n\n'And what did he say?'\n\n'Monsieur de Talleyrand,' I answered, 'I regret to say that it is quite impossible for me to tell you anything about it. I have promised the Emperor.'\n\n'Pooh, pooh, my dear young man,' said he, sidling up to me, as a cat does when it is about to rub itself against you. 'This is all among friends, you understand, and goes no farther than these four walls. Besides, the Emperor never meant to include me in this promise.'\n\n'It is but a minute's walk to the palace, Monsieur de Talleyrand,' I answered; 'if it would not be troubling you too much to ask you to step up to it and bring back the Emperor's written statement that he did not mean to include you in this promise, I shall be happy to tell you every word that passed.'\n\nHe showed his teeth at me then like the old fox that he was.\n\n'Monsieur Gerard appears to be a little puffed up,' said he. 'He is too young to see things in their just proportion. As he grows older he may understand that it is not always very discreet for a subaltern of cavalry to give such very abrupt refusals.'\n\nI did not know what to say to this, but Lasalle came to my aid in his downright fashion.\n\n'The lad is quite right,' said he. 'If I had known that there was a promise I should not have questioned him. You know very well, Monsieur de Talleyrand, that if he had answered you, you would have laughed in your sleeve and thought as much about him as I think of the bottle when the burgundy is gone. As for me, I promise you that the Tenth would have had no room for him, and that we should have lost our best swordsman if I had heard him give up the Emperor's secret.'\n\nBut the statesman became only the more bitter when he saw that I had the support of my Colonel.\n\n'I have heard, Colonel de Lasalle,' said he, with an icy dignity, 'that your opinion is of great weight upon the subject of light cavalry. Should I have occasion to seek information about that branch of the army, I shall be very happy to apply to you. At present, however, the matter concerns diplomacy, and you will permit me to form my own views upon that question. As long as the welfare of France and the safety of the Emperor's person are largely committed to my care, I will use every means in my power to secure them, even if it should be against the Emperor's own temporary wishes. I have the honour, Colonel de Lasalle, to wish you a very good-day!'\n\nHe shot a most unamiable glance in my direction, and, turning upon his heel, he walked with little, quick, noiseless steps out of the room.\n\nI could see from Lasalle's face that he did not at all relish finding himself at enmity with the powerful Minister. He rapped out an oath or two, and then, catching up his sabre and his cap, he clattered away down the stairs. As I looked out of the window I saw the two of them, the big blue man and the limping black one, going up the street together. Talleyrand was walking very rigidly, and Lasalle was waving his hands and talking, so I suppose he was trying to make his peace.\n\nThe Emperor had told me not to think, and I endeavoured to obey him. I took up the cards from the table where Morat had left them, and I tried to work out a few combinations at \u00e9cart\u00e9. But I could not remember which were trumps, and I threw them under the table in despair. Then I drew my sabre and practised giving point until I was weary, but it was all of no use at all. My mind would work, in spite of myself. At ten o'clock I was to meet the Emperor in the forest. Of all extraordinary combinations of events in the whole world, surely this was the last which would have occurred to me when I rose from my couch that morning. But the responsibility\u2014- the dreadful responsibility! It was all upon my shoulders. There was no one to halve it with me. It made me cold all over. Often as I have faced death upon the battle-field, I have never known what real fear was until that moment. But then I considered that after all I could but do my best like a brave and honourable gentleman, and above all obey the orders which I had received, to the very letter. And, if all went well, this would surely be the foundation of my fortunes. Thus, swaying between my fears and my hopes, I spent the long, long evening until it was time to keep my appointment.\n\nI put on my military overcoat, as I did not know how much of the night I might have to spend in the woods, and I fastened my sword outside it. I pulled off my hussar boots also, and wore a pair of shoes and gaiters, that I might be lighter upon my feet. Then I stole out of my quarters and made for the forest, feeling very much easier in my mind, for I am always at my best when the time of thought has passed and the moment for action arrived.\n\nI passed the barracks of the Chasseurs of the Guards, and the line of cafes all filled with uniforms. I caught a glimpse as I went by of the blue and gold of some of my comrades, amid the swarm of dark infantry coats and the light green of the Guides. There they sat, sipping their wine and smoking their cigars, little dreaming what their comrade had on hand. One of them, the chief of my squadron, caught sight of me in the lamplight, and came shouting after me into the street. I hurried on, however, pretending not to hear him, so he, with a curse at my deafness, went back at last to his wine bottle.\n\nIt is not very hard to get into the forest at Fontainebleau. The scattered trees steal their way into the very streets, like the tirailleurs in front of a column. I turned into a path, which led to the edge of the woods, and then I pushed rapidly forward towards the old fir-tree. It was a place which, as I have hinted, I had my own reasons for knowing well, and I could only thank the Fates that it was not one of the nights upon which L\u00e9onie would be waiting for me. The poor child would have died of terror at sight of the Emperor. He might have been too harsh with her\u2014and worse still, he might have been too kind.\n\nThere was a half moon shining, and, as I came up to our trysting-place, I saw that I was not the first to arrive. The Emperor was pacing up and down, his hands behind him and his face sunk somewhat forward upon his breast. He wore a grey great-coat with a capote over his head. I had seen him in such a dress in our winter campaign in Poland, and it was said that he used it because the hood was such an excellent disguise. He was always fond, whether in the camp or in Paris, of walking round at night, and overhearing the talk in the cabarets or round the fires. His figure, however, and his way of carrying his head and his hands were so well known that he was always recognized, and then the talkers would say whatever they thought would please him best.\n\nMy first thought was that he would be angry with me for having kept him waiting, but as I approached him, we heard the big church clock of Fontainebleau clang out the hour of ten. It was evident, therefore, that it was he who was too soon, and not I too late. I remembered his order that I should make no remark, so contented myself with halting within four paces of him, clicking my spurs together, grounding my sabre, and saluting. He glanced at me, and then without a word he turned and walked slowly through the forest, I keeping always about the same distance behind him. Once or twice he seemed to me to look apprehensively to right and to left, as if he feared that someone was observing us. I looked also, but although I have the keenest sight, it was quite impossible to see anything except the ragged patches of moonshine between the great black shadows of the trees. My ears are as quick as my eyes, and once or twice I thought that I heard a twig crack; but you know how many sounds there are in a forest at night, and how difficult it is even to say what direction they come from.\n\nWe walked for rather more than a mile, and I knew exactly what our destination was, long before we got there. In the centre of one of the glades, there is the shattered stump of what must at some time have been a most gigantic tree. It is called the Abbot's Beech, and there are so many ghostly stories about it, that I know many a brave soldier who would not care about mounting sentinel over it. However, I cared as little for such folly as the Emperor did, so we crossed the glade and made straight for the old broken trunk. As we approached, I saw that two men were waiting for us beneath it.\n\nWhen I first caught sight of them they were standing rather behind it, as if they were not anxious to be seen, but as we came nearer they emerged from its shadow and walked forward to meet us. The Emperor glanced back at me, and slackened his pace a little so that I came within arm's length of him. You may think that I had my hilt well to the front, and that I had a very good look at these two people who were approaching us.\n\nThe one was tall, remarkably so, and of very spare frame, while the other was rather below the usual height, and had a brisk, determined way of walking. They each wore black cloaks, which were slung right across their figures, and hung down upon one side, like the mantles of Murat's dragoons. They had flat black caps, like those I have since seen in Spain, which threw their faces into darkness, though I could see the gleam of their eyes from beneath them. With the moon behind them and their long black shadows walking in front, they were such figures as one might expect to meet at night near the Abbot's Beech. I can remember that they had a stealthy way of moving, and that as they approached, the moonshine formed two white diamonds between their legs and the legs of their shadows.\n\nThe Emperor had paused, and these two strangers came to a stand also within a few paces of us. I had drawn up close to my companion's elbow, so that the four of us were facing each other without a word spoken. My eyes were particularly fixed upon the taller one, because he was slightly the nearer to me, and I became certain as I watched him that he was in the last state of nervousness. His lean figure was quivering all over, and I heard a quick, thin panting like that of a tired dog. Suddenly one of them gave a short, hissing signal. The tall man bent his back and his knees like a diver about to spring, but before he could move, I had jumped with drawn sabre in front of him. At the same instant the smaller man bounded past me, and buried a long poniard in the Emperor's heart.\n\nMy God! the horror of that moment! It is a marvel that I did not drop dead myself. As in a dream, I saw the grey coat whirl convulsively round, and caught a glimpse in the moonlight of three inches of red point which jutted out from between the shoulders. Then down he fell with a dead man's gasp upon the grass, and the assassin, leaving his weapon buried in his victim, threw up both his hands and shrieked with joy. But I\u2014I drove my sword through his midriff with such frantic force, that the mere blow of the hilt against the end of his breast-bone sent him six paces before he fell, and left my reeking blade ready for the other. I sprang round upon him with such a lust for blood upon me as I had never felt, and never have felt, in all my days. As I turned, a dagger flashed before my eyes, and I felt the cold wind of it pass my neck and the villain's wrist jar upon my shoulder. I shortened my sword, but he winced away from me, and an instant afterwards was in full flight, bounding like a deer across the glade in the moonlight.\n\nBut he was not to escape me thus. I knew that the murderer's poniard had done its work. Young as I was, I had seen enough of war to know a mortal blow. I paused but for an instant to touch the cold hand.\n\n'Sire! Sire!' I cried, in an agony; and then as no sound came back and nothing moved, save an ever-widening dark circle in the moonlight, I knew that all was indeed over. I sprang madly to my feet, threw off my great-coat, and ran at the top of my speed after the remaining assassin.\n\nAh, how I blessed the wisdom which had caused me to come in shoes and gaiters! And the happy thought which had thrown off my coat. He could not get rid of his mantle, this wretch, or else he was too frightened to think of it. So it was that I gained upon him from the beginning. He must have been out of his wits, for he never tried to bury himself in the darker parts of the woods, but he flew on from glade to glade, until he came to the heath-land which leads up to the great Fontainebleau quarry. There I had him in full sight, and knew that he could not escape me. He ran well, it is true\u2014ran as a coward runs when his life is the stake. But I ran as Destiny runs when it gets behind a man's heels. Yard by yard I drew in upon him. He was rolling and staggering. I could hear the rasping and crackling of his breath. The great gulf of the quarry suddenly yawned in front of his path, and glancing at me over his shoulder, he gave a shriek of despair. The next instant he had vanished from my sight.\n\nVanished utterly, you understand. I rushed to the spot, and gazed down into the black abyss. Had he hurled himself over? I had almost made up my mind that he had done so, when a gentle sound rising and falling came out of the darkness beneath me. It was his breathing once more, and it showed me where he must be. He was hiding in the tool-house.\n\nAt the edge of the quarry and beneath the summit there is a small platform upon which stands a wooden hut for the use of the labourers. It was into this, then, that he had darted. Perhaps he had thought, the fool, that, in the darkness, I would not venture to follow him. He little knew Etienne Gerard. With a spring I was on the platform, with another I was through the doorway, and then, hearing him in the corner, I hurled myself down upon the top of him.\n\nHe fought like a wild cat, but he never had a chance with his shorter weapon. I think that I must have transfixed him with that first mad lunge, for, though he struck and struck, his blows had no power in them, and presently his dagger tinkled down upon the floor. When I was sure that he was dead, I rose up and passed out into the moonlight. I climbed on to the heath again, and wandered across it as nearly out of my mind as a man could be.\n\nWith the blood singing in my ears, and my naked sword still clutched in my hand, I walked aimlessly on until, looking round me, I found that I had come as far as the glade of the Abbot's Beech, and saw in the distance that gnarled stump which must ever be associated with the most terrible moment of my life. I sat down upon a fallen trunk with my sword across my knees and my head between my hands, and I tried to think about what had happened and what would happen in the future.\n\nThe Emperor had committed himself to my care. The Emperor was dead. Those were the two thoughts which clanged in my head, until I had no room for any other ones. He had come with me and he was dead. I had done what he had ordered when living. I had revenged him when dead. But what of all that? The world would look upon me as responsible. They might even look upon me as the assassin. What could I prove? What witnesses had I? Might I not have been the accomplice of these wretches? Yes, yes, I was eternally dishonoured\u2014the lowest, most despicable creature in all France. This, then, was the end of my fine military ambitions\u2014of the hopes of my mother. I laughed bitterly at the thought. And what was I to do now? Was I to go into Fontainebleau, to wake up the palace, and to inform them that the great Emperor had been murdered within a pace of me? I could not do it\u2014no, I could not do it! There was but one course for an honourable gentleman whom Fate had placed in so cruel a position. I would fall upon my dishonoured sword, and so share, since I could not avert, the Emperor's fate. I rose with my nerves strung to this last piteous deed, and as I did so, my eyes fell upon something which struck the breath from my lips. The Emperor was standing before me!\n\nHe was not more than ten yards off, with the moon shining straight upon his cold, pale face. He wore his grey overcoat, but the hood was turned back, and the front open, so that I could see the green coat of the Guides, and the white breeches. His hands were clasped behind his back, and his chin sunk forward upon his breast, in the way that was usual with him.\n\n'Well,' said he, in his hardest and most abrupt voice, 'what account do you give of yourself?'\n\nI believe that, if he had stood in silence for another minute, my brain would have given way. But those sharp military accents were exactly what I needed to bring me to myself. Living or dead, here was the Emperor standing before me and asking me questions. I sprang to the salute.\n\n'You have killed one, I see,' said he, jerking his head towards the beech.\n\n'Yes, sire.'\n\n'And the other escaped?'\n\n'No, sire, I killed him also.'\n\n'What!' he cried. 'Do I understand that you have killed them both?' He approached me as he spoke with a smile which set his teeth gleaming in the moonlight.\n\n'One body lies there, sire,' I answered. 'The other is in the tool-house at the quarry.'\n\n'Then the Brothers of Ajaccio are no more,' he cried, and after a pause, as if speaking to himself: 'The shadow has passed me for ever.' Then he bent forward and laid his hand upon my shoulder.\n\n'You have done very well, my young friend,' said he. 'You have lived up to your reputation.'\n\nHe was flesh and blood, then, this Emperor. I could feel the little, plump palm that rested upon me. And yet I could not get over what I had seen with my own eyes, and so I stared at him in such bewilderment that he broke once more into one of his smiles.\n\n'No, no, Monsieur Gerard,' said he, 'I am not a ghost, and you have not seen me killed. You will come here, and all will be clear to you.'\n\nHe turned as he spoke, and led the way towards the great beech stump.\n\nThe bodies were still lying upon the ground, and two men were standing beside them. As we approached I saw from the turbans that they were Roustem and Mustafa, the two Mameluke servants. The Emperor paused when he came to the grey figure upon the ground, and turning back the hood which shrouded the features, he showed a face which was very different from his own.\n\n'Here lies a faithful servant who has given up his life for his master,' said he. 'Monsieur de Goudin resembles me in figure and in manner, as you must admit.'\n\nWhat a delirium of joy came upon me when these few words made everything clear to me. He smiled again as he saw the delight which urged me to throw my arms round him and to embrace him, but he moved a step away, as if he had divined my impulse.\n\n'You are unhurt?' he asked.\n\n'I am unhurt, sire. But in another minute I should in my despair\u2014\u2014'\n\n'Tut, tut!' he interrupted. 'You did very well. He should himself have been more on his guard. I saw everything which passed.'\n\n'You saw it, sire!'\n\n'You did not hear me follow you through the wood, then? I hardly lost sight of you from the moment that you left your quarters until poor De Goudin fell. The counterfeit Emperor was in front of you and the real one behind. You will now escort me back to the palace.'\n\nHe whispered an order to his Mamelukes, who saluted in silence and remained where they were standing. For my part, I followed the Emperor with my pelisse bursting with pride. My word, I have always carried myself as a hussar should, but Lasalle himself never strutted and swung his dolman as I did that night. Who should clink his spurs and clatter his sabre if it were not I\u2014I, Etienne Gerard\u2014the confidant of the Emperor, the chosen swordsman of the light cavalry, the man who slew the would-be assassins of Napoleon? But he noticed my bearing and turned upon me like a blight.\n\n'Is that the way you carry yourself on a secret mission?' he hissed, with that cold glare in his eyes. 'Is it thus that you will make your comrades believe that nothing remarkable has occurred? Have done with this nonsense, monsieur, or you will find yourself transferred to the sappers, where you would have harder work and duller plumage.'\n\nThat was the way with the Emperor. If ever he thought that anyone might have a claim upon him, he took the first opportunity to show him the gulf that lay between. I saluted and was silent, but I must confess to you that it hurt me after all that had passed between us. He led on to the palace, where we passed through the side door and up into his own cabinet. There were a couple of grenadiers at the staircase, and their eyes started out from under their fur caps, I promise you, when they saw a young lieutenant of hussars going up to the Emperor's room at midnight. I stood by the door, as I had done in the afternoon, while he flung himself down in an arm-chair, and remained silent so long that it seemed to me that he had forgotten all about me. I ventured at last upon a slight cough to remind him.\n\n'Ah, Monsieur Gerard,' said he, 'you are very curious, no doubt, as to the meaning of all this?'\n\n'I am quite content, sire, if it is your pleasure not to tell me,' I answered.\n\n'Ta, ta, ta,' said he impatiently. 'These are only words. The moment that you were outside that door you would begin making inquiries about what it means. In two days your brother officers would know about it, in three days it would be all over Fontainebleau, and it would be in Paris on the fourth. Now, if I tell you enough to appease your curiosity, there is some reasonable hope that you may be able to keep the matter to yourself.'\n\nHe did not understand me, this Emperor, and yet I could only bow and be silent.\n\n'A few words will make it clear to you,' said he, speaking very swiftly and pacing up and down the room. 'They were Corsicans, these two men. I had known them in my youth. We had belonged to the same society\u2014Brothers of Ajaccio, as we called ourselves. It was founded in the old Paoli days, you understand, and we had some strict rules of our own which were not infringed with impunity.'\n\nA very grim look came over his face as he spoke, and it seemed to me that all that was French had gone out of him, and that it was the pure Corsican, the man of strong passions and of strange revenges, who stood before me. His memory had gone back to those early days of his, and for five minutes, wrapped in thought, he paced up and down the room with his quick little tiger steps. Then with an impatient wave of his hands he came back to his palace and to me.\n\n'The rules of such a society,' he continued, 'are all very well for a private citizen. In the old days there was no more loyal brother than I. But circumstances change, and it would be neither for my welfare nor for that of France that I should now submit myself to them. They wanted to hold me to it, and so brought their fate upon their own heads. These were the two chiefs of the order, and they had come from Corsica to summon me to meet them at the spot which they named. I knew what such a summons meant. No man had ever returned from obeying one. On the other hand, if I did not go, I was sure that disaster would follow. I am a brother myself, you remember, and I know their ways.'\n\nAgain there came that hardening of his mouth and cold glitter of his eyes.\n\n'You perceive my dilemma, Monsieur Gerard,' said he. 'How would you have acted yourself, under such circumstances?'\n\n'Given the word to the l0th Hussars, sire,' I cried. 'Patrols could have swept the woods from end to end, and brought these two rascals to your feet.'\n\nHe smiled, but he shook his head.\n\n'I had very excellent reasons why I did not wish them taken alive,' said he. 'You can understand that an assassin's tongue might be as dangerous a weapon as an assassin's dagger. I will not disguise from you that I wished to avoid scandal at all cost. That was why I ordered you to take no pistols with you. That also is why my Mamelukes will remove all traces of the affair, and nothing more will be heard about it. I thought of all possible plans, and I am convinced that I selected the best one. Had I sent more than one guard with De Goudin into the woods, then the brothers would not have appeared. They would not change their plans nor miss their chance for the sake of a single man. It was Colonel Lasalle's accidental presence at the moment when I received the summons which led to my choosing one of his hussars for the mission. I selected you, Monsieur Gerard, because I wanted a man who could handle a sword, and who would not pry more deeply into the affair than I desired. I trust that, in this respect, you will justify my choice as well as you have done in your bravery and skill.'\n\n'Sire,' I answered, 'you may rely upon it.'\n\n'As long as I live,' said he, 'you never open your lips upon this subject.'\n\n'I dismiss it entirely from my mind, sire. I will efface it from my recollection as if it had never been. I will promise you to go out of your cabinet at this moment exactly as I was when I entered it at four o'clock.'\n\n'You cannot do that,' said the Emperor, smiling. 'You were a lieutenant at that time. You will permit me, Captain, to wish you a very good-night.'" + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE BRIGADIER HELD THE KING", + "text": "Here, upon the lapel of my coat, you may see the ribbon of my decoration, but the medal itself I keep in a leathern pouch at home, and I never venture to take it out unless one of the modern peace generals, or some foreigner of distinction who finds himself in our little town, takes advantage of the opportunity to pay his respects to the well-known Brigadier Gerard. Then I place it upon my breast, and I give my moustache the old Marengo twist which brings a grey point into either eye. Yet with it all I fear that neither they, nor you either, my friends, will ever realize the man that I was. You know me only as a civilian\u2014with an air and a manner, it is true\u2014but still merely as a civilian. Had you seen me as I stood in the doorway of the inn at Alamo, on the 1st of July, in the year 1810, you would then have known what the hussar may attain to.\n\nFor a month I had lingered in that accursed village, and all on account of a lance-thrust in my ankle, which made it impossible for me to put my foot to the ground. There were three besides myself at first: old Bouvet, of the Hussars of Bercheny, Jacques Regnier, of the Cuirassiers, and a funny little voltigeur captain whose name I forget; but they all got well and hurried on to the front, while I sat gnawing my fingers and tearing my hair, and even, I must confess, weeping from time to time as I thought of my Hussars of Conflans, and the deplorable condition in which they must find themselves when deprived of their colonel. I was not a chief of brigade yet, you understand, although I already carried myself like one, but I was the youngest colonel in the whole service, and my regiment was wife and children to me. It went to my heart that they should be so bereaved. It is true that Villaret, the senior major, was an excellent soldier; but still, even among the best there are degrees of merit.\n\nAh, that happy July day of which I speak, when first I limped to the door and stood in the golden Spanish sunshine! It was but the evening before that I had heard from the regiment. They were at Pastores, on the other side of the mountains, face to face with the English\u2014not forty miles from me by road. But how was I to get to them? The same thrust which had pierced my ankle had slain my charger. I took advice both from Gomez, the landlord, and from an old priest who had slept that night in the inn, but neither of them could do more than assure me that there was not so much as a colt left upon the whole countryside.\n\nThe landlord would not hear of my crossing the mountains without an escort, for he assured me that El Cuchillo, the Spanish guerilla chief, was out that way with his band, and that it meant a death by torture to fall into his hands. The old priest observed, however, that he did not think a French hussar would be deterred by that, and if I had had any doubts, they would of course have been decided by his remark.\n\nBut a horse! How was I to get one? I was standing in the doorway, plotting and planning, when I heard the clink of shoes, and, looking up, I saw a great bearded man, with a blue cloak frogged across in military fashion, coming towards me. He was riding a big black horse with one white stocking on his near fore-leg.\n\n'Halloa, comrade!' said I, as he came up to me.\n\n'Halloa!' said he.\n\n'I am Colonel Gerard, of the Hussars,' said I. 'I have lain here wounded for a month, and I am now ready to rejoin my regiment at Pastores.'\n\n'I am Monsieur Vidal, of the commissariat,' he answered, 'and I am myself upon my way to Pastores. I should be glad to have your company, Colonel, for I hear that the mountains are far from safe.'\n\n'Alas,' said I, 'I have no horse. But if you will sell me yours, I will promise that an escort of hussars shall be sent back for you.'\n\nHe would not hear of it, and it was in vain that the landlord told him dreadful stories of the doings of El Cuchillo, and that I pointed out the duty which he owed to the army and to the country. He would not even argue, but called loudly for a cup of wine. I craftily asked him to dismount and to drink with me, but he must have seen something in my face, for he shook his head; and then, as I approached him with some thought of seizing him by the leg, he jerked his heels into his horse's flanks, and was off in a cloud of dust.\n\nMy faith! it was enough to make a man mad to see this fellow riding away so gaily to join his beef-barrels, and his brandy-casks, and then to think of my five hundred beautiful hussars without their leader. I was gazing after him with bitter thoughts in my mind, when who should touch me on the elbow but the little priest whom I have mentioned.\n\n'It is I who can help you,' he said. 'I am myself travelling south.'\n\nI put my arms about him and, as my ankle gave way at the same moment, we nearly rolled upon the ground together.\n\n'Get me to Pastores,' I cried, 'and you shall have a rosary of golden beads.' I had taken one from the Convent of Spiritu Santo. It shows how necessary it is to take what you can when you are upon a campaign, and how the most unlikely things may become useful.\n\n'I will take you,' he said, in very excellent French, 'not because I hope for any reward, but because it is my way always to do what I can to serve my fellow-man, and that is why I am so beloved wherever I go.'\n\nWith that he led me down the village to an old cow-house, in which we found a tumble-down sort of diligence, such as they used to run early in this century, between some of our remote villages. There were three old mules, too, none of which were strong enough to carry a man, but together they might draw the coach. The sight of their gaunt ribs and spavined legs gave me more delight than the whole two hundred and twenty hunters of the Emperor which I have seen in their stalls at Fontainebleau. In ten minutes the owner was harnessing them into the coach, with no very good will, however, for he was in mortal dread of this terrible Cuchillo. It was only by promising him riches in this world, while the priest threatened him with perdition in the next, that we at last got him safely upon the box with the reins between his fingers. Then he was in such a hurry to get off, out of fear lest we should find ourselves in the dark in the passes, that he hardly gave me time to renew my vows to the innkeeper's daughter. I cannot at this moment recall her name, but we wept together as we parted, and I can remember that she was a very beautiful woman. You will understand, my friends, that when a man like me, who has fought the men and kissed the women in fourteen separate kingdoms, gives a word of praise to the one or the other, it has a little meaning of its own.\n\nThe little priest had seemed a trifle grave when we kissed good-bye, but he soon proved himself the best of companions in the diligence. All the way he amused me with tales of his little parish up in the mountains, and I in my turn told him stories about the camp; but, my faith, I had to pick my steps, for when I said a word too much he would fidget in his seat and his face would show the pain that I had given him. And of course it is not the act of a gentleman to talk in anything but a proper manner to a religious man, though, with all the care in the world, one's words may get out of hand sometimes.\n\nHe had come from the north of Spain, as he told me, and was going to see his mother in a village of Estremadura, and as he spoke about her little peasant home, and her joy in seeing him, it brought my own mother so vividly to my thoughts that the tears started to my eyes. In his simplicity he showed me the little gifts which he was taking to her, and so kindly was his manner that I could readily believe him when he said he was loved wherever he went. He examined my own uniform with as much curiosity as a child, admiring the plume of my busby, and passing his fingers through the sable with which my dolman was trimmed. He drew my sword, too, and then when I told him how many men I had cut down with it, and set my finger on the notch made by the shoulder-bone of the Russian Emperor's aide-de-camp, he shuddered and placed the weapon under the leathern cushion, declaring that it made him sick to look at it.\n\nWell, we had been rolling and creaking on our way whilst this talk had been going forward, and as we reached the base of the mountains we could hear the rumbling of cannon far away upon the right. This came from Massena, who was, as I knew, besieging Ciudad Rodrigo. There was nothing I should have wished better than to have gone straight to him, for if, as some said, he had Jewish blood in his veins, he was the best Jew that I have heard of since Joshua's time. If you were in sight of his beaky nose and bold, black eyes, you were not likely to miss much of what was going on. Still, a siege is always a poor sort of a pick-and-shovel business, and there were better prospects with my hussars in front of the English. Every mile that passed, my heart grew lighter and lighter, until I found myself shouting and singing like a young ensign fresh from St Cyr, just to think of seeing all my fine horses and my gallant fellows once more.\n\nAs we penetrated the mountains the road grew rougher and the pass more savage. At first we had met a few muleteers, but now the whole country seemed deserted, which is not to be wondered at when you think that the French, the English, and the guerillas had each in turn had command over it. So bleak and wild was it, one great brown wrinkled cliff succeeding another, and the pass growing narrower and narrower, that I ceased to look out, but sat in silence, thinking of this and that, of women whom I had loved and of horses which I had handled. I was suddenly brought back from my dreams, however, by observing the difficulties of my companion, who was trying with a sort of brad-awl, which he had drawn out, to bore a hole through the leathern strap which held up his water-flask. As he worked with twitching fingers the strap escaped his grasp, and the wooden bottle fell at my feet. I stooped to pick it up, and as I did so the priest silently leaped upon my shoulders and drove his brad-awl into my eye!\n\nMy friends, I am, as you know, a man steeled to face every danger. When one has served from the affair of Zurich to that last fatal day of Waterloo, and has had the special medal, which I keep at home in a leathern pouch, one can afford to confess when one is frightened. It may console some of you, when your own nerves play you tricks, to remember that you have heard even me, Brigadier Gerard, say that I have been scared. And besides my terror at this horrible attack, and the maddening pain of my wound, there was a sudden feeling of loathing such as you might feel were some filthy tarantula to strike its fangs into you.\n\nI clutched the creature in both hands, and, hurling him on to the floor of the coach, I stamped on him with my heavy boots. He had drawn a pistol from the front of his soutane, but I kicked it out of his hand, and again I fell with my knees upon his chest. Then, for the first time, he screamed horribly, while I, half blinded, felt about for the sword which he had so cunningly concealed. My hand had just lighted upon it, and I was dashing the blood from my face to see where he lay that I might transfix him, when the whole coach turned partly over upon its side, and my weapon was jerked out of my grasp by the shock.\n\nBefore I could recover myself the door was burst open, and I was dragged by the heels on to the road. But even as I was torn out on to the flint stones, and realized that thirty ruffians were standing around me, I was filled with joy, for my pelisse had been pulled over my head in the struggle and was covering one of my eyes, and it was with my wounded eye that I was seeing this gang of brigands. You see for yourself by this pucker and scar how the thin blade passed between socket and ball, but it was only at that moment, when I was dragged from the coach, that I understood that my sight was not gone for ever. The creature's intention, doubtless, was to drive it through into my brain, and indeed he loosened some portion of the inner bone of my head, so that I afterwards had more trouble from that wound than from any one of the seventeen which I have received.\n\nThey dragged me out, these sons of dogs, with curses and execrations, beating me with their fists and kicking me as I lay upon the ground. I had frequently observed that the mountaineers wore cloth swathed round their feet, but never did I imagine that I should have so much cause to be thankful for it. Presently, seeing the blood upon my head, and that I lay quiet, they thought that I was unconscious, whereas I was storing every ugly face among them into my memory, so that I might see them all safely hanged if ever my chance came round. Brawny rascals they were, with yellow handkerchiefs round their heads, and great red sashes stuffed with weapons. They had rolled two rocks across the path, where it took a sharp turn, and it was these which had torn off one of the wheels of the coach and upset us. As to this reptile, who had acted the priest so cleverly and had told me so much of his parish and his mother, he, of course, had known where the ambuscade was laid, and had attempted to put me beyond all resistance at the moment when we reached it.\n\nI cannot tell you how frantic their rage was when they drew him out of the coach and saw the state to which I had reduced him. If he had not got all his deserts, he had, at least, something as a souvenir of his meeting with Etienne Gerard, for his legs dangled aimlessly about, and though the upper part of his body was convulsed with rage and pain, he sat straight down upon his feet when they tried to set him upright. But all the time his two little black eyes, which had seemed so kindly and so innocent in the coach, were glaring at me like a wounded cat, and he spat, and spat, and spat in my direction. My faith! when the wretches jerked me on to my feet again, and when I was dragged off up one of the mountain paths, I understood that a time was coming when I was to need all my courage and resource. My enemy was carried upon the shoulders of two men behind me, and I could hear his hissing and his reviling, first in one ear and then in the other, as I was hurried up the winding track.\n\nI suppose that it must have been for an hour that we ascended, and what with my wounded ankle and the pain from my eye, and the fear lest this wound should have spoiled my appearance, I have made no journey to which I look back with less pleasure. I have never been a good climber at any time, but it is astonishing what you can do, even with a stiff ankle, when you have a copper-coloured brigand at each elbow and a nine-inch blade within touch of your whiskers.\n\nWe came at last to a place where the path wound over a ridge, and descended upon the other side through thick pine-trees into a valley which opened to the south. In time of peace I had little doubt that the villains were all smugglers, and that these were the secret paths by which they crossed the Portuguese frontier. There were many mule-tracks, and once I was surprised to see the marks of a large horse where a stream had softened the track. These were explained when, on reaching a place where there was a clearing in the fir wood, I saw the animal itself haltered to a fallen tree. My eyes had hardly rested upon it, when I recognized the great black limbs and the white near fore-leg. It was the very horse which I had begged for in the morning.\n\nWhat, then, had become of Commissariat Vidal? Was it possible that there was another Frenchman in as perilous a plight as myself? The thought had hardly entered my head when our party stopped and one of them uttered a peculiar cry. It was answered from among the brambles which lined the base of a cliff at one side of a clearing, and an instant later ten or a dozen more brigands came out from amongst them, and the two parties greeted each other. The new-comers surrounded my friend of the brad-awl with cries of grief and sympathy, and then, turning upon me, they brandished their knives and howled at me like the gang of assassins that they were. So frantic were their gestures that I was convinced that my end had come, and was just bracing myself to meet it in a manner which should be worthy of my past reputation, when one of them gave an order and I was dragged roughly across the little glade to the brambles from which this new band had emerged.\n\nA narrow pathway led through them to a deep grotto in the side of the cliff. The sun was already setting outside, and in the cave itself it would have been quite dark but for a pair of torches which blazed from a socket on either side. Between them there was sitting at a rude table a very singular-looking person, whom I saw instantly, from the respect with which the others addressed him, could be none other than the brigand chief who had received, on account of his dreadful character, the sinister name of El Cuchillo.\n\nThe man whom I had injured had been carried in and placed upon the top of a barrel, his helpless legs dangling about in front of him, and his cat's eyes still darting glances of hatred at me. I understood, from the snatches of talk which I could follow between the chief and him, that he was the lieutenant of the band, and that part of his duties was to lie in wait with his smooth tongue and his peaceful garb for travellers like myself. When I thought of how many gallant officers may have been lured to their death by this monster of hypocrisy, it gave me a glow of pleasure to think that I had brought his villainies to an end\u2014though I feared it would be at the price of a life which neither the Emperor nor the army could well spare.\n\nAs the injured man still supported upon the barrel by two comrades, was explaining in Spanish all that had befallen him, I was held by several of the villains in front of the table at which the chief was seated, and had an excellent opportunity of observing him. I have seldom seen any man who was less like my idea of a brigand, and especially of a brigand with such a reputation that in a land of cruelty he had earned so dark a nickname. His face was bluff and broad and bland, with ruddy cheeks and comfortable little tufts of side-whiskers, which gave him the appearance of a well-to-do grocer of the Rue St Antoine. He had not any of those flaring sashes or gleaming weapons which distinguished his followers, but on the contrary he wore a good broadcloth coat like a respectable father of a family, and save for his brown leggings there was nothing to indicate a life among the mountains. His surroundings, too, corresponded with himself, and beside his snuff-box upon the table there stood a great brown book, which looked like a commercial ledger. Many other books were ranged along a plank between two powder-casks, and there was a great litter of papers, some of which had verses scribbled upon them. All this I took in while he, leaning indolently back in his chair, was listening to the report of his lieutenant. Having heard everything, he ordered the cripple to be carried out again, and I was left with my three guards, waiting to hear my fate. He took up his pen, and tapping his forehead with the handle of it, he pursed up his lips and looked out of the corner of his eyes at the roof of the grotto.\n\n'I suppose,' said he at last, speaking very excellent French, 'that you are not able to suggest a rhyme for the word Covilha.'\n\nI answered him that my acquaintance with the Spanish language was so limited that I was unable to oblige him.\n\n'It is a rich language,' said he, 'but less prolific in rhymes than either the German or the English. That is why our best work has been done in blank verse, a form of composition which is capable of reaching great heights. But I fear that such subjects are somewhat outside the range of a hussar.'\n\nI was about to answer that if they were good enough for a guerilla, they could not be too much for the light cavalry, but he was already stooping over his half-finished verse. Presently he threw down the pen with an exclamation of satisfaction, and declaimed a few lines which drew a cry of approval from the three ruffians who held me. His broad face blushed like a young girl who receives her first compliment.\n\n'The critics are in my favour, it appears,' said he; 'we amuse ourselves in our long evenings by singing our own ballads, you understand. I have some little facility in that direction, and I do not at all despair of seeing some of my poor efforts in print before long, and with \"Madrid\" upon the title-page, too. But we must get back to business. May I ask what your name is?'\n\n'Etienne Gerard.'\n\n'Rank?'\n\n'Colonel.'\n\n'Corps?'\n\n'The Third Hussars of Conflans.'\n\n'You are young for a colonel.'\n\n'My career has been an eventful one.'\n\n'Tut, that makes it the sadder,' said he, with his bland smile.\n\nI made no answer to that, but I tried to show him by my bearing that I was ready for the worst which could befall me.\n\n'By the way, I rather fancy that we have had some of your corps here,' said he, turning over the pages of his big brown register. 'We endeavour to keep a record of our operations. Here is a heading under June 24th. Have you not a young officer named Soubiron, a tall, slight youth with light hair?'\n\n'Certainly.'\n\n'I see that we buried him upon that date.'\n\n'Poor lad!' I cried. 'And how did he die?'\n\n'We buried him.'\n\n'But before you buried him?'\n\n'You misunderstand me, Colonel. He was not dead before we buried him.'\n\n'You buried him alive!'\n\nFor a moment I was too stunned to act. Then I hurled myself upon the man, as he sat with that placid smile of his upon his lips, and I would have torn his throat out had the three wretches not dragged me away from him. Again and again I made for him, panting and cursing, shaking off this man and that, straining and wrenching, but never quite free. At last, with my jacket torn nearly off my back and blood dripping from my wrists, I was hauled backwards in the bight of a rope and cords passed round my ankles and my arms.\n\n'You sleek hound!' I cried. 'If ever I have you at my sword's point, I will teach you to maltreat one of my lads. You will find, you bloodthirsty beast, that my Emperor has long arms, and though you lie here like a rat in its hole, the time will come when he will tear you out of it, and you and your vermin will perish together.'\n\nMy faith, I have a rough side to my tongue, and there was not a hard word that I had learned in fourteen campaigns which I did not let fly at him; but he sat with the handle of his pen tapping against his forehead and his eyes squinting up at the roof as if he had conceived the idea of some new stanza. It was this occupation of his which showed me how I might get my point into him.\n\n'You spawn!' said I; 'you think that you are safe here, but your life may be as short as that of your absurd verses, and God knows that it could not be shorter than that.'\n\nAh, you should have seen him bound from his chair when I said the words. This vile monster, who dispensed death and torture as a grocer serves out his figs, had one raw nerve then which I could prod at pleasure. His face grew livid, and those little bourgeois side-whiskers quivered and thrilled with passion.\n\n'Very good, Colonel. You have said enough,' he cried, in a choking voice. 'You say that you have had a very distinguished career. I promise you also a very distinguished ending. Colonel Etienne Gerard of the Third Hussars shall have a death of his own.'\n\n'And I only beg,' said I, 'that you will not commemorate it in verse.' I had one or two little ironies to utter, but he cut me short by a furious gesture which caused my three guards to drag me from the cave.\n\nOur interview, which I have told you as nearly as I can remember it, must have lasted some time, for it was quite dark when we came out, and the moon was shining very clearly in the heavens. The brigands had lighted a great fire of the dried branches of the fir-trees; not, of course, for warmth, since the night was already very sultry, but to cook their evening meal. A huge copper pot hung over the blaze, and the rascals were lying all round in the yellow glare, so that the scene looked like one of those pictures which Junot stole out of Madrid. There are some soldiers who profess to care nothing for art and the like, but I have always been drawn towards it myself, in which respect I show my good taste and my breeding. I remember, for example, that when Lefebvre was selling the plunder after the fall of Danzig, I bought a very fine picture, called 'Nymphs Surprised in a Wood,' and I carried it with me through two campaigns, until my charger had the misfortune to put his hoof through it.\n\nI only tell you this, however, to show you that I was never a mere rough soldier like Rapp or Ney. As I lay in that brigands' camp, I had little time or inclination to think about such matters. They had thrown me down under a tree, the three villains squatting round and smoking their cigarettes within hands' touch of me. What to do I could not imagine. In my whole career I do not suppose that I have ten times been in as hopeless a situation. 'But courage,' thought I. 'Courage, my brave boy! You were not made a Colonel of Hussars at twenty-eight because you could dance a cotillon. You are a picked man, Etienne; a man who has come through more than two hundred affairs, and this little one is surely not going to be the last.' I began eagerly to glance about for some chance of escape, and as I did so I saw something which filled me with great astonishment.\n\nI have already told you that a large fire was burning in the centre of the glade. What with its glare, and what with the moonlight, everything was as clear as possible. On the other side of the glade there was a single tall fir-tree which attracted my attention because its trunk and lower branches were discoloured, as if a large fire had recently been lit underneath it. A clump of bushes grew in front of it which concealed the base. Well, as I looked towards it, I was surprised to see projecting above the bush, and fastened apparently to the tree, a pair of fine riding boots with the toes upwards. At first I thought that they were tied there, but as I looked harder I saw that they were secured by a great nail which was hammered through the foot of each. And then, suddenly, with a thrill of horror, I understood that these were not empty boots; and moving my head a little to the right, I was able to see who it was that had been fastened there, and why a fire had been lit beneath the tree. It is not pleasant to speak or to think of horrors, my friends, and I do not wish to give any of you bad dreams tonight\u2014but I cannot take you among the Spanish guerillas without showing you what kind of men they were, and the sort of warfare that they waged. I will only say that I understood why Monsieur Vidal's horse was waiting masterless in the grove, and that I hoped he had met this terrible fate with sprightliness and courage, as a good Frenchman ought.\n\nIt was not a very cheering sight for me, as you can imagine. When I had been with their chief in the grotto I had been so carried away by my rage at the cruel death of young Soubiron, who was one of the brightest lads who ever threw his thigh over a charger, that I had never given a thought to my own position. Perhaps it would have been more politic had I spoken the ruffian fair, but it was too late now. The cork was drawn and I must drain the wine. Besides, if the harmless commissariat man were put to such a death, what hope was there for me, who had snapped the spine of their lieutenant? No, I was doomed in any case, and it was as well perhaps that I should have put the best face on the matter. This beast could bear witness that Etienne Gerard had died as he had lived, and that one prisoner at least had not quailed before him. I lay there thinking of the various girls who would mourn for me, and of my dear old mother, and of the deplorable loss which I should be, both to my regiment and to the Emperor, and I am not ashamed to confess to you that I shed tears as I thought of the general consternation which my premature end would give rise to.\n\nBut all the time I was taking the very keenest notice of everything which might possibly help me. I am not a man who would lie like a sick horse waiting for the farrier sergeant and the pole-axe. First I would give a little tug at my ankle cords, and then another at those which were round my wrists, and all the time that I was trying to loosen them I was peering round to see if I could find something which was in my favour. There was one thing which was very evident. A hussar is but half formed without a horse, and there was my other half quietly grazing within thirty yards of me. Then I observed yet another thing. The path by which we had come over the mountains was so steep that a horse could only be led across it slowly and with difficulty, but in the other direction the ground appeared to be more open, and to lead straight down into a gently-sloping valley. Had I but my feet in yonder stirrups and my sabre in my hand, a single bold dash might take me out of the power of these vermin of the rocks.\n\nI was still thinking it over and straining with my wrists and my ankles, when their chief came out from his grotto, and after some talk with his lieutenant, who lay groaning near the fire, they both nodded their heads and looked across at me. He then said some few words to the band, who clapped their hands and laughed uproariously. Things looked ominous, and I was delighted to feel that my hands were so far free that I could easily slip them through the cords if I wished. But with my ankles I feared that I could do nothing, for when I strained it brought such pain into my lance-wound that I had to gnaw my moustache to keep from crying out. I could only lie still, half-free and half-bound, and see what turn things were likely to take.\n\nFor a little I could not make out what they were after. One of the rascals climbed up a well-grown fir-tree upon one side of the glade, and tied a rope round the top of the trunk. He then fastened another rope in the same fashion to a similar tree upon the other side. The two loose ends were now dangling down, and I waited with some curiosity, and just a little trepidation also, to see what they would do next. The whole band pulled upon one of the ropes until they had bent the strong young tree down into a semi-circle, and they then fastened it to a stump, so as to hold it so. When they had bent the other tree down in a similar fashion, the two summits were within a few feet of each other, though, as you understand, they would each spring back into their original position the instant that they were released. I already saw the diabolical plan which these miscreants had formed.\n\n'I presume that you are a strong man, Colonel,' said the chief, coming towards me with his hateful smile.\n\n'If you will have the kindness to loosen these cords,' I answered, 'I will show you how strong I am.'\n\n'We were all interested to see whether you were as strong as these two young saplings,' said he. 'It is our intention, you see, to tie one end of each rope round your ankles and then let the trees go. If you are stronger than the trees, then, of course, no harm would be done; if, on the other hand, the trees are stronger than you, why, in that case, Colonel, we may have a souvenir of you upon each side of our little glade.'\n\nHe laughed as he spoke, and at the sight of it the whole forty of them laughed also. Even now if I am in my darker humour, or if I have a touch of my old Lithuanian ague, I see in my sleep that ring of dark, savage faces, with their cruel eyes, and the firelight flashing upon their strong white teeth.\n\nIt is astonishing\u2014and I have heard many make the same remark\u2014how acute one's senses become at such a crisis as this. I am convinced that at no moment is one living so vividly, so acutely, as at the instant when a violent and foreseen death overtakes one. I could smell the resinous fagots, I could see every twig upon the ground, I could hear every rustle of the branches, as I have never smelled or seen or heard save at such times of danger. And so it was that long before anyone else, before even the time when the chief had addressed me, I had heard a low, monotonous sound, far away indeed, and yet coming nearer at every instant. At first it was but a murmur, a rumble, but by the time he had finished speaking, while the assassins were untying my ankles in order to lead me to the scene of my murder, I heard, as plainly as ever I heard anything in my life, the clinking of horseshoes and the jingling of bridle-chains, with the clank of sabres against stirrup-irons. Is it likely that I, who had lived with the light cavalry since the first hair shaded my lip, would mistake the sound of troopers on the march?\n\n'Help, comrades, help!' I shrieked, and though they struck me across the mouth and tried to drag me up to the trees, I kept on yelling, 'Help me, my brave boys! Help me, my children! They are murdering your colonel!'\n\nFor the moment my wounds and my troubles had brought on a delirium, and I looked for nothing less than my five hundred hussars, kettle-drums and all, to appear at the opening of the glade.\n\nBut that which really appeared was very different to anything which I had conceived. Into the clear space there came galloping a fine young man upon a most beautiful roan horse. He was fresh-faced and pleasant-looking, with the most debonair bearing in the world and the most gallant way of carrying himself\u2014a way which reminded me somewhat of my own. He wore a singular coat which had once been red all over, but which was now stained to the colour of a withered oak-leaf wherever the weather could reach it. His shoulder-straps, however, were of golden lace, and he had a bright metal helmet upon his head, with a coquettish white plume upon one side of its crest. He trotted his horse up the glade, while behind him rode four cavaliers in the same dress\u2014all clean-shaven, with round, comely faces, looking to me more like monks than dragoons. At a short, gruff order they halted with a rattle of arms, while their leader cantered forward, the fire beating upon his eager face and the beautiful head of his charger. I knew, of course, by the strange coats that they were English. It was the first sight that I had ever had of them, but from their stout bearing and their masterful way I could see at a glance that what I had always been told was true, and that they were excellent people to fight against.\n\n'Well, well, well!' cried the young officer, in sufficiently bad French, 'what game are you up to here? Who was that who was yelling for help, and what are you trying to do to him?'\n\nIt was at that moment that I learned to bless those months which Obriant, the descendant of the Irish kings, had spent in teaching me the tongue of the English. My ankles had just been freed, so that I had only to slip my hands out of the cords, and with a single rush I had flown across, picked up my sabre where it lay by the fire, and hurled myself on to the saddle of poor Vidal's horse. Yes, for all my wounded ankle, I never put foot to stirrup, but was in the seat in a single bound. I tore the halter from the tree, and before these villains could so much as snap a pistol at me I was beside the English officer.\n\n'I surrender to you, sir,' I cried; though I daresay my English was not very much better than his French. 'If you will look at that tree to the left you will see what these villains do to the honourable gentlemen who fall into their hands.'\n\nThe fire had flared up at that moment, and there was poor Vidal exposed before them, as horrible an object as one could see in a nightmare. 'Godam!' cried the officer, and 'Godam!' cried each of the four troopers, which is the same as with us when we cry 'Mon Dieu!' Out rasped the five swords, and the four men closed up. One, who wore a sergeant's chevrons, laughed and clapped me on the shoulder.\n\n'Fight for your skin, froggy,' said he.\n\nAh, it was so fine to have a horse between my thighs and a weapon in my grip. I waved it above my head and shouted in my exultation. The chief had come forward with that odious smiling face of his.\n\n'Your excellency will observe that this Frenchman is our prisoner,' said he.\n\n'You are a rascally robber,' said the Englishman, shaking his sword at him. 'It is a disgrace to us to have such allies. By my faith, if Lord Wellington were of my mind we would swing you up on the nearest tree.'\n\n'But my prisoner?' said the brigand, in his suave voice.\n\n'He shall come with us to the British camp.'\n\n'Just a word in your ear before you take him.'\n\nHe approached the young officer, and then turning as quick as a flash, he fired his pistol in my face. The bullet scored its way through my hair and burst a hole on each side of my busby. Seeing that he had missed me, he raised the pistol and was about to hurl it at me when the English sergeant, with a single back-handed cut, nearly severed his head from his body. His blood had not reached the ground, nor the last curse died on his lips, before the whole horde was upon us, but with a dozen bounds and as many slashes we were all safely out of the glade, and galloping down the winding track which led to the valley.\n\nIt was not until we had left the ravine far behind us and were right out in the open fields that we ventured to halt, and to see what injuries we had sustained. For me, wounded and weary as I was, my heart was beating proudly, and my chest was nearly bursting my tunic to think that I, Etienne Gerard, had left this gang of murderers so much by which to remember me. My faith, they would think twice before they ventured again to lay hands upon one of the Third Hussars. So carried away was I that I made a small oration to these brave Englishmen, and told them who it was that they had helped to rescue. I would have spoken of glory also, and of the sympathies of brave men, but the officer cut me short.\n\n'That's all right,' said he. 'Any injuries, Sergeant?'\n\n'Trooper Jones's horse hit with a pistol bullet on the fetlock.'\n\n'Trooper Jones to go with us. Sergeant Halliday, with troopers Harvey and Smith, to keep to the right until they touch the vedettes of the German Hussars.'\n\nSo these three jingled away together, while the officer and I, followed at some distance by the trooper whose horse had been wounded, rode straight down in the direction of the English camp. Very soon we had opened our hearts, for we each liked the other from the beginning. He was of the nobility, this brave lad, and he had been sent out scouting by Lord Wellington to see if there were any signs of our advancing through the mountains. It is one advantage of a wandering life like mine, that you learn to pick up those bits of knowledge which distinguish the man of the world. I have, for example, hardly ever met a Frenchman who could repeat an English title correctly. If I had not travelled I should not be able to say with confidence that this young man's real name was Milor the Hon. Sir Russell, Bart., this last being an honourable distinction, so that it was as the Bart that I usually addressed him, just as in Spanish one might say 'the Don.'\n\nAs we rode beneath the moonlight in the lovely Spanish night, we spoke our minds to each other, as if we were brothers. We were both of an age, you see, both of the light cavalry also (the Sixteenth Light Dragoons was his regiment), and both with the same hopes and ambitions. Never have I learned to know a man so quickly as I did the Bart. He gave me the name of a girl whom he had loved at a garden called Vauxhall, and, for my own part, I spoke to him of little Coralie, of the Opera. He took a lock of hair from his bosom, and I a garter. Then we nearly quarrelled over hussar and dragoon, for he was absurdly proud of his regiment, and you should have seen him curl his lip and clap his hand to his hilt when I said that I hoped it might never be its misfortune to come in the way of the Third. Finally, he began to speak about what the English call sport, and he told such stories of the money which he had lost over which of two cocks could kill the other, or which of two men could strike the other the most in a fight for a prize, that I was filled with astonishment. He was ready to bet upon anything in the most wonderful manner, and when I chanced to see a shooting star he was anxious to bet that he would see more than me, twenty-five francs a star, and it was only when I explained that my purse was in the hands of the brigands that he would give over the idea.\n\nWell, we chatted away in this very amiable fashion until the day began to break, when suddenly we heard a great volley of musketry from somewhere in front of us. It was very rocky and broken ground, and I thought, although I could see nothing, that a general engagement had broken out. The Bart laughed at my idea, however, and explained that the sound came from the English camp, where every man emptied his piece each morning so as to make sure of having a dry priming.\n\n'In another mile we shall be up with the outposts,' said he.\n\nI glanced round at this, and I perceived that we had trotted along at so good a pace during the time that we were keeping up our pleasant chat, that the dragoon with the lame horse was altogether out of sight. I looked on every side, but in the whole of that vast rocky valley there was no one save only the Bart and I\u2014both of us armed, you understand, and both of us well mounted. I began to ask myself whether after all it was quite necessary that I should ride that mile which would bring me to the British outposts.\n\nNow, I wish to be very clear with you on this point, my friends, for I would not have you think that I was acting dishonourably or ungratefully to the man who had helped me away from the brigands. You must remember that of all duties the strongest is that which a commanding officer owes to his men. You must also bear in mind that war is a game which is played under fixed rules, and when these rules are broken one must at once claim the forfeit. If, for example, I had given a parole, then I should have been an infamous wretch had I dreamed of escaping. But no parole had been asked of me. Out of over-confidence, and the chance of the lame horse dropping behind, the Bart had permitted me to get upon equal terms with him. Had it been I who had taken him, I should have used him as courteously as he had me, but, at the same time, I should have respected his enterprise so far as to have deprived him of his sword, and seen that I had at least one guard beside myself. I reined up my horse and explained this to him, asking him at the same time whether he saw any breach of honour in my leaving him.\n\nHe thought about it, and several times repeated that which the English say when they mean 'Mon Dieu.'\n\n'You would give me the slip, would you?' said he.\n\n'If you can give no reason against it.'\n\n'The only reason that I can think of,' said the Bart, 'is that I should instantly cut your head off if you were to attempt it.'\n\n'Two can play at that game, my dear Bart,' said I.\n\n'Then we'll see who can play at it best,' he cried, pulling out his sword.\n\nI had drawn mine also, but I was quite determined not to hurt this admirable young man who had been my benefactor.\n\n'Consider,' said I, 'you say that I am your prisoner. I might with equal reason say that you are mine. We are alone here, and though I have no doubt that you are an excellent swordsman, you can hardly hope to hold your own against the best blade in the six light cavalry brigades.'\n\nHis answer was a cut at my head. I parried and shore off half of his white plume. He thrust at my breast. I turned his point and cut away the other half of his cockade.\n\n'Curse your monkey-tricks!' he cried, as I wheeled my horse away from him.\n\n'Why should you strike at me?' said I. 'You see that I will not strike back.'\n\n'That's all very well,' said he; 'but you've got to come along with me to the camp.'\n\n'I shall never see the camp,' said I.\n\n'I'll lay you nine to four you do,' he cried, as he made at me, sword in hand.\n\nBut those words of his put something new into my head. Could we not decide the matter in some better way than fighting? The Bart was placing me in such a position that I should have to hurt him, or he would certainly hurt me. I avoided his rush, though his sword-point was within an inch of my neck.\n\n'I have a proposal,' I cried. 'We shall throw dice as to which is the prisoner of the other.'\n\nHe smiled at this. It appealed to his love of sport.\n\n'Where are your dice?' he cried.\n\n'I have none.'\n\n'Nor I. But I have cards.'\n\n'Cards let it be,' said I.\n\n'And the game?'\n\n'I leave it to you.'\n\n'\u00c9cart\u00e9, then\u2014the best of three.'\n\nI could not help smiling as I agreed, for I do not suppose that there were three men in France who were my masters at the game. I told the Bart as much as we dismounted. He smiled also as he listened.\n\n'I was counted the best player at Watier's,' said he. 'With even luck you deserve to get off if you beat me.'\n\nSo we tethered our two horses and sat down one on either side of a great flat rock. The Bart took a pack of cards out of his tunic, and I had only to see him shuffle to convince me that I had no novice to deal with. We cut, and the deal fell to him.\n\nMy faith, it was a stake worth playing for. He wished to add a hundred gold pieces a game, but what was money when the fate of Colonel Etienne Gerard hung upon the cards? I felt as though all those who had reason to be interested in the game\u2014my mother, my hussars, the Sixth Corps d'Arm\u00e9e, Ney, Massena, even the Emperor himself\u2014were forming a ring round us in that desolate valley. Heavens, what a blow to one and all of them should the cards go against me! But I was confident, for my \u00e9cart\u00e9 play was as famous as my swordsmanship, and save old Bouvet of the Hussars of Bercheny, who won seventy-six out of one hundred and fifty games off me, I have always had the best of a series.\n\nThe first game I won right off, though I must confess that the cards were with me, and that my adversary could have done no more. In the second, I never played better and saved a trick by a finesse, but the Bart voled me once, marked the king, and ran out in the second hand. My faith, we were so excited that he laid his helmet down beside him and I my busby.\n\n'I'll lay my roan mare against your black horse,' said he.\n\n'Done!' said I.\n\n'Sword against sword.'\n\n'Done!' said I.\n\n'Saddle, bridle, and stirrups!' he cried.\n\n'Done!' I shouted.\n\nI had caught this spirit of sport from him. I would have laid my hussars against his dragoons had they been ours to pledge.\n\nAnd then began the game of games. Oh, he played, this Englishman\u2014he played in a way that was worthy of such a stake. But I, my friends, I was superb! Of the five which I had to make to win, I gained three on the first hand. The Bart bit his moustache and drummed his hands, while I already felt myself at the head of my dear little rascals. On the second, I turned the king, but lost two tricks\u2014and my score was four to his two. When I saw my next hand I could not but give a cry of delight. 'If I cannot gain my freedom on this,' thought I, 'I deserve to remain for ever in chains.'\n\nGive me the cards, landlord, and I will lay them out on the table for you.\n\nHere was my hand: knave and ace of clubs, queen and knave of diamonds, and king of hearts. Clubs were trumps, mark you, and I had but one point between me and freedom. He knew it was the crisis, and he undid his tunic. I threw my dolman on the ground. He led the ten of spades. I took it with my ace of trumps. One point in my favour. The correct play was to clear the trumps, and I led the knave. Down came the queen upon it, and the game was equal. He led the eight of spades, and I could only discard my queen of diamonds. Then came the seven of spades, and the hair stood straight up on my head. We each threw down a king at the final. He had won two points, and my beautiful hand had been mastered by his inferior one. I could have rolled on the ground as I thought of it. They used to play very good \u00e9cart\u00e9 at Watier's in the year '10. I say it\u2014I, Brigadier Gerard.\n\nThe last game was now four all. This next hand must settle it one way or the other. He undid his sash, and I put away my sword-belt. He was cool, this Englishman, and I tried to be so also, but the perspiration would trickle into my eyes. The deal lay with him, and I may confess to you, my friends, that my hands shook so that I could hardly pick my cards from the rock. But when I raised them, what was the first thing that my eyes rested upon? It was the king, the king, the glorious king of trumps! My mouth was open to declare it when the words were frozen upon my lips by the appearance of my comrade.\n\nHe held his cards in his hand, but his jaw had fallen, and his eyes were staring over my shoulder with the most dreadful expression of consternation and surprise. I whisked round, and I was myself amazed at what I saw.\n\nThree men were standing quite close to us\u2014fifteen m\u00e8tres at the farthest. The middle one was of a good height, and yet not too tall\u2014about the same height, in fact, that I am myself. He was clad in a dark uniform with a small cocked hat, and some sort of white plume upon the side. But I had little thought of his dress. It was his face, his gaunt cheeks, his beak-like nose, his masterful blue eyes, his thin, firm slit of a mouth which made one feel that this was a wonderful man, a man of a million. His brows were tied into a knot, and he cast such a glance at my poor Bart from under them that one by one the cards came fluttering down from his nerveless fingers. Of the two other men, one, who had a face as brown and hard as though it had been carved out of old oak, wore a bright red coat, while the other, a fine portly man with bushy side-whiskers, was in a blue jacket with gold facings. Some little distance behind, three orderlies were holding as many horses, and an escort of dragoons was waiting in the rear.\n\n'Heh, Crauford, what the deuce is this?' asked the thin man.\n\n'D'you hear, sir?' cried the man with the red coat. 'Lord Wellington wants to know what this means.'\n\nMy poor Bart broke into an account of all that had occurred, but that rock-face never softened for an instant.\n\n'Pretty fine, 'pon my word, General Crauford,' he broke in. 'The discipline of this force must be maintained, sir. Report yourself at headquarters as a prisoner.'\n\nIt was dreadful to me to see the Bart mount his horse and ride off with hanging head. I could not endure it. I threw myself before this English General. I pleaded with him for my friend. I told him how I, Colonel Gerard, would witness what a dashing young officer he was. Ah, my eloquence might have melted the hardest heart; I brought tears to my own eyes, but none to his. My voice broke, and I could say no more.\n\n'What weight do you put on your mules, sir, in the French service?' he asked. Yes, that was all this phlegmatic Englishman had to answer to these burning words of mine. That was his reply to what would have made a Frenchman weep upon my shoulder.\n\n'What weight on a mule?' asked the man with the red coat.\n\n'Two hundred and ten pounds,' said I.\n\n'Then you load them deucedly badly,' said Lord Wellington. 'Remove the prisoner to the rear.'\n\nHis dragoons closed in upon me, and I\u2014I was driven mad, as I thought that the game had been in my hands, and that I ought at that moment to be a free man. I held the cards up in front of the General.\n\n'See, my lord!' I cried; 'I played for my freedom and I won, for, as you perceive, I hold the king.'\n\nFor the first time a slight smile softened his gaunt face.\n\n'On the contrary,' said he, as he mounted his horse, 'it is I who won, for, as you perceive, my King holds you.'" + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE KING HELD THE BRIGADIER", + "text": "Murat was undoubtedly an excellent cavalry officer, but he had too much swagger, which spoils many a good soldier. Lasalle, too, was a very dashing leader, but he ruined himself with wine and folly. Now I, Etienne Gerard, was always totally devoid of swagger, and at the same time I was very abstemious, except, maybe, at the end of a campaign, or when I met an old comrade-in-arms. For these reasons I might, perhaps, had it not been for a certain diffidence, have claimed to be the most valuable officer in my own branch of the Service. It is true that I never rose to be more than a chief of brigade, but then, as everyone knows, no one had a chance of rising to the top unless he had the good fortune to be with the Emperor in his early campaigns. Except Lasalle, and Labau, and Drouet, I can hardly remember any one of the generals who had not already made his name before the Egyptian business. Even I, with all my brilliant qualities, could only attain the head of my brigade, and also the special medal of honour, which I received from the Emperor himself, and which I keep at home in a leathern pouch.\n\nBut though I never rose higher than this, my qualities were very well known to those who had served with me, and also to the English. After they had captured me in the way which I described to you the other night, they kept a very good guard over me at Oporto, and I promise you that they did not give such a formidable opponent a chance of slipping through their fingers. It was on the 10th of August that I was escorted on board the transport which was to take us to England, and behold me before the end of the month in the great prison which had been built for us at Dartmoor!\n\n'L'h\u00f4tel Fran\u00e7ais, et Pension,' we used to call it, for you understand that we were all brave men there, and that we did not lose our spirits because we were in adversity.\n\nIt was only those officers who refused to give their parole who were confined at Dartmoor, and most of the prisoners were seamen, or from the ranks. You ask me, perhaps, why it was that I did not give this parole, and so enjoy the same good treatment as most of my brother officers. Well, I had two reasons, and both of them were sufficiently strong.\n\nIn the first place, I had so much confidence in myself, that I was quite convinced that I could escape. In the second, my family, though of good repute, has never been wealthy, and I could not bring myself to take anything from the small income of my mother. On the other hand, it would never do for a man like me to be outshone by the bourgeois society of an English country town, or to be without the means of showing courtesies and attentions to those ladies whom I should attract. It was for these reasons that I preferred to be buried in the dreadful prison of Dartmoor. I wish now to tell you of my adventures in England, and how far Milor Wellington's words were true when he said that his King would hold me.\n\nAnd first of all I may say that if it were not that I have set off to tell you about what befell myself, I could keep you here until morning with my stories about Dartmoor itself, and about the singular things which occurred there. It was one of the very strangest places in the whole world, for there, in the middle of that great desolate waste, were herded together seven or eight thousand men\u2014warriors, you understand, men of experience and courage. Around there were a double wall and a ditch, and warders and soldiers; but, my faith! you could not coop men like that up like rabbits in a hutch! They would escape by twos and tens and twenties, and then the cannon would boom, and the search parties run, and we, who were left behind, would laugh and dance and shout 'Vive l'Empereur' until the warders would turn their muskets upon us in their passion. And then we would have our little mutinies, too, and up would come the infantry and the guns from Plymouth, and that would set us yelling 'Vive l'Empereur' once more, as though we wished them to hear us in Paris. We had lively moments at Dartmoor, and we contrived that those who were about us should be lively also.\n\nYou must know that the prisoners there had their own Courts of Justice, in which they tried their own cases, and inflicted their own punishments. Stealing and quarrelling were punished\u2014but most of all treachery. When I came there first there was a man, Meunier, from Rheims, who had given information of some plot to escape. Well, that night, owing to some form or other which had to be gone through, they did not take him out from among the other prisoners, and though he wept and screamed, and grovelled upon the ground, they left him there amongst the comrades whom he had betrayed. That night there was a trial with a whispered accusation and a whispered defence, a gagged prisoner, and a judge whom none could see. In the morning, when they came for their man with papers for his release, there was not as much of him left as you could put upon your thumb-nail. They were ingenious people, these prisoners, and they had their own way of managing.\n\nWe officers, however, lived in a separate wing, and a very singular group of people we were. They had left us our uniforms, so that there was hardly a corps which had served under Victor, or Massena, or Ney, which was not represented there, and some had been there from the time when Junot was beaten at Vimiera. We had chasseurs in their green tunics, and hussars, like myself, and blue-coated dragoons, and white-fronted lancers, and voltigeurs, and grenadiers, and the men of the artillery and engineers. But the greater part were naval officers, for the English had had the better of us upon the seas. I could never understand this until I journeyed myself from Oporto to Plymouth, when I lay for seven days upon my back, and could not have stirred had I seen the eagle of the regiment carried off before my eyes. It was in perfidious weather like this that Nelson took advantage of us.\n\nI had no sooner got into Dartmoor than I began to plan to get out again, and you can readily believe that, with wits sharpened by twelve years of warfare, it was not very long before I saw my way.\n\nYou must know, in the first place, that I had a very great advantage in having some knowledge of the English language. I learned it during the months that I spent before Danzig, from Adjutant Obriant, of the Regiment Irlandais, who was sprung from the ancient kings of the country. I was quickly able to speak it with some facility, for I do not take long to master anything to which I set my mind. In three months I could not only express my meaning, but I could use the idioms of the people. It was Obriant who taught me to say 'Be jabers,' just as we might say 'Ma foi'; and also 'The curse of Crummle!' which means 'Ventre bleu!' Many a time I have seen the English smile with pleasure when they have heard me speak so much like one of themselves.\n\nWe officers were put two in a cell, which was very little to my taste, for my room-mate was a tall, silent man named Beaumont, of the Flying Artillery, who had been taken by the English cavalry at Astorga.\n\nIt is seldom I meet a man of whom I cannot make a friend, for my disposition and manners are\u2014as you know them. But this fellow had never a smile for my jests, nor an ear for my sorrows, but would sit looking at me with his sullen eyes, until sometimes I thought that his two years of captivity had driven him crazy. Ah, how I longed that old Bouvet, or any of my comrades of the hussars, was there, instead of this mummy of a man. But such as he was I had to make the best of him, and it was very evident that no escape could be made unless he were my partner in it, for what could I possibly do without him observing me? I hinted at it, therefore, and then by degrees I spoke more plainly, until it seemed to me that I had prevailed upon him to share my lot.\n\nI tried the walls, and I tried the floor, and I tried the ceiling, but though I tapped and probed, they all appeared to be very thick and solid. The door was of iron, shutting with a spring lock, and provided with a small grating, through which a warder looked twice in every night. Within there were two beds, two stools, two washstands\u2014nothing more. It was enough for my wants, for when had I had as much during those twelve years spent in camps? But how was I to get out? Night after night I thought of my five hundred hussars, and had dreadful nightmares, in which I fancied that the whole regiment needed shoeing, or that my horses were all bloated with green fodder, or that they were foundered from bogland, or that six squadrons were clubbed in the presence of the Emperor. Then I would awake in a cold sweat, and set to work picking and tapping at the walls once more; for I knew very well that there is no difficulty which cannot be overcome by a ready brain and a pair of cunning hands.\n\nThere was a single window in our cell, which was too small to admit a child. It was further defended by a thick iron bar in the centre. It was not a very promising point of escape, as you will allow, but I became more and more convinced that our efforts must be directed towards it. To make matters worse, it only led out into the exercise yard, which was surrounded by two high walls. Still, as I said to my sullen comrade, it is time to talk of the Vistula when you are over the Rhine. I got a small piece of iron, therefore, from the fittings of my bed, and I set to work to loosen the plaster at the top and the bottom of the bar. Three hours I would work, and then leap into my bed upon the sound of the warder's step. Then another three hours, and then very often another yet, for I found that Beaumont was so slow and clumsy at it that it was on myself only that I could rely.\n\nI pictured to myself my Third of Hussars waiting just outside that window, with kettle-drums and standards and leopard-skin schabraques all complete. Then I would work like a madman, until my iron was crusted with blood, as if with rust. And so, night by night, I loosened that stony plaster, and hid it away in the stuffing of my pillow, until the hour came when the iron shook; and then with one good wrench it came off in my hand, and my first step had been made towards freedom.\n\nYou will ask me what better off I was, since, as I have said, a child could not have fitted through the opening. I will tell you. I had gained two things\u2014a tool and a weapon. With the one I might loosen the stone which flanked the window. With the other I might defend myself when I had scrambled through. So now I turned my attention to that stone, and I picked and picked with the sharpened end of my bar until I had worked out the mortar all round. You understand, of course, that during the day I replaced everything in its position, and that the warder was never permitted to see a speck upon the floor. At the end of three weeks I had separated the stone, and had the rapture of drawing it through, and seeing a hole left with ten stars shining through it, where there had been but four before. All was ready for us now, and I had replaced the stone, smearing the edges of it round with a little fat and soot, so as to hide the cracks where the mortar should have been. In three nights the moon would be gone, and that seemed the best time for our attempt.\n\nI had now no doubt at all about getting into the yards, but I had very considerable misgivings as to how I was to get out again. It would be too humiliating, after trying here, and trying there, to have to go back to my hole again in despair, or to be arrested by the guards outside, and thrown into those damp underground cells which are reserved for prisoners who are caught in escaping. I set to work, therefore, to plan what I should do. I have never, as you know, had the chance of showing what I could do as a general. Sometimes, after a glass or two of wine, I have found myself capable of thinking out surprising combinations, and have felt that if Napoleon had intrusted me with an army corps, things might have gone differently with him. But however that may be, there is no doubt that in the small stratagems of war, and in that quickness of invention which is so necessary for an officer of light cavalry, I could hold my own against anyone. It was now that I had need of it, and I felt sure that it would not fail me.\n\nThe inner wall which I had to scale was built of bricks, 12ft. high, with a row of iron spikes, 3in. apart upon the top. The outer I had only caught a glimpse of once or twice, when the gate of the exercise yard was open. It appeared to be about the same height, and was also spiked at the top. The space between the walls was over twenty feet, and I had reason to believe that there were no sentries there, except at the gates. On the other hand, I knew that there was a line of soldiers outside. Behold the little nut, my friends, which I had to open with no crackers, save these two hands.\n\nOne thing upon which I relied was the height of my comrade Beaumont. I have already said that he was a very tall man, six feet at least, and it seemed to me that if I could mount upon his shoulders, and get my hands upon the spikes, I could easily scale the wall. Could I pull my big companion up after me? That was the question, for when I set forth with a comrade, even though it be one for whom I bear no affection, nothing on earth would make me abandon him. If I climbed the wall and he could not follow me, I should be compelled to return to him. He did not seem to concern himself much about it, however, so I hoped that he had confidence in his own activity.\n\nThen another very important matter was the choice of the sentry who should be on duty in front of my window at the time of our attempt. They were changed every two hours to insure their vigilance, but I, who watched them closely each night out of my window, knew that there was a great difference between them. There were some who were so keen that a rat could not cross the yard unseen, while others thought only of their own ease, and could sleep as soundly leaning upon a musket as if they were at home upon a feather bed. There was one especially, a fat, heavy man, who would retire into the shadow of the wall and doze so comfortably during his two hours, that I have dropped pieces of plaster from my window at his very feet, without his observing it. By good luck, this fellow's watch was due from twelve to two upon the night which we had fixed upon for our enterprise.\n\nAs the last day passed, I was so filled with nervous agitation that I could not control myself, but ran ceaselessly about my cell, like a mouse in a cage. Every moment I thought that the warder would detect the looseness of the bar, or that the sentry would observe the unmortared stone, which I could not conceal outside, as I did within. As for my companion, he sat brooding upon the end of his bed, looking at me in a sidelong fashion from time to time, and biting his nails like one who is deep in thought.\n\n'Courage, my friend!' I cried, slapping him upon the shoulder. 'You will see your guns before another month be past.'\n\n'That is very well,' said he. 'But whither will you fly when you get free?'\n\n'To the coast,' I answered. 'All comes right for a brave man, and I shall make straight for my regiment.'\n\n'You are more likely to make straight for the underground cells, or for the Portsmouth hulks,' said he.\n\n'A soldier takes his chances,' I remarked. 'It is only the poltroon who reckons always upon the worst.'\n\nI raised a flush in each of his sallow cheeks at that, and I was glad of it, for it was the first sign of spirit which I had ever observed in him. For a moment he put his hand out towards his water-jug, as though he would have hurled it at me, but then he shrugged his shoulders and sat in silence once more, biting his nails, and scowling down at the floor. I could not but think, as I looked at him, that perhaps I was doing the Flying Artillery a very bad service by bringing him back to them.\n\nI never in my life have known an evening pass as slowly as that one. Towards nightfall a wind sprang up, and as the darkness deepened it blew harder and harder, until a terrible gale was whistling over the moor. As I looked out of my window I could not catch a glimpse of a star, and the black clouds were flying low across the heavens. The rain was pouring down, and what with its hissing and splashing, and the howling and screaming of the wind, it was impossible for me to hear the steps of the sentinels. 'If I cannot hear them,' thought I, 'then it is unlikely that they can hear me'; and I waited with the utmost impatience until the time when the inspector should have come round for his nightly peep through our grating. Then having peered through the darkness, and seen nothing of the sentry, who was doubtless crouching in some corner out of the rain, I felt that the moment was come. I removed the bar, pulled out the stone, and motioned to my companion to pass through.\n\n'After you, Colonel,' said he.\n\n'Will you not go first?' I asked.\n\n'I had rather you showed me the way.'\n\n'Come after me, then, but come silently, as you value your life.'\n\nIn the darkness I could hear the fellow's teeth chattering, and I wondered whether a man ever had such a partner in a desperate enterprise. I seized the bar, however, and mounting upon my stool, I thrust my head and shoulders into the hole. I had wriggled through as far as my waist, when my companion seized me suddenly by the knees, and yelled at the top of his voice: 'Help! Help! A prisoner is escaping!'\n\nAh, my friends, what did I not feel at that moment! Of course, I saw in an instant the game of this vile creature. Why should he risk his skin in climbing walls when he might be sure of a free pardon from the English for having prevented the escape of one so much more distinguished than himself? I had recognized him as a poltroon and a sneak, but I had not understood the depth of baseness to which he could descend. One who has spent his life among gentlemen and men of honour does not think of such things until they happen.\n\nThe blockhead did not seem to understand that he was lost more certainly than I. I writhed back in the darkness, and seizing him by the throat, I struck him twice with my iron bar. At the first blow he yelped as a little cur does when you tread upon its paw. At the second, down he fell with a groan upon the floor. Then I seated myself upon my bed, and waited resignedly for whatever punishment my gaolers might inflict upon me.\n\nBut a minute passed and yet another, with no sound save the heavy, snoring breathing of the senseless wretch upon the floor. Was it possible, then, that amid the fury of the storm his warning cries had passed unheeded? At first it was but a tiny hope, another minute and it was probable, another and it was certain. There was no sound in the corridor, none in the courtyard. I wiped the cold sweat from my brow, and asked myself what I should do next.\n\nOne thing seemed certain. The man on the floor must die. If I left him I could not tell how short a time it might be before he gave the alarm. I dare not strike a light, so I felt about in the darkness until my hand came upon something wet, which I knew to be his head. I raised my iron bar, but there was something, my friends, which prevented me from bringing it down. In the heat of fight I have slain many men\u2014men of honour, too, who had done me no injury. Yet here was this wretch, a creature too foul to live, who had tried to work me so great a mischief, and yet I could not bring myself to crush his skull in. Such deeds are very well for a Spanish partida\u2014or for that matter a sansculotte of the Faubourg St Antoine\u2014but not for a soldier and a gentleman like me.\n\nHowever, the heavy breathing of the fellow made me hope that it might be a very long time before he recovered his senses. I gagged him, therefore, and bound him with strips of blanket to the bed, so that in his weakened condition there was good reason to think that, in any case, he might not get free before the next visit of the warder. But now again I was faced with new difficulties, for you will remember that I had relied upon his height to help me over the walls. I could have sat down and shed tears of despair had not the thought of my mother and of the Emperor come to sustain me. 'Courage!' said I. 'If it were anyone but Etienne Gerard he would be in a bad fix now; that is a young man who is not so easily caught.'\n\nI set to work therefore upon Beaumont's sheet as well as my own, and by tearing them into strips and then plaiting them together, I made a very excellent rope. This I tied securely to the centre of my iron bar, which was a little over a foot in length. Then I slipped out into the yard, where the rain was pouring and the wind screaming louder than ever. I kept in the shadow of the prison wall, but it was as black as the ace of spades, and I could not see my own hand in front of me. Unless I walked into the sentinel I felt that I had nothing to fear from him. When I had come under the wall I threw up my bar, and to my joy it stuck the very first time between the spikes at the top. I climbed up my rope, pulled it after me, and dropped down on the other side. Then I scaled the second wall, and was sitting astride among the spikes upon the top, when I saw something twinkle in the darkness beneath me. It was the bayonet of the sentinel below, and so close was it (the second wall being rather lower than the first) that I could easily, by leaning over, have unscrewed it from its socket. There he was, humming a tune to himself, and cuddling up against the wall to keep himself warm, little thinking that a desperate man within a few feet of him was within an ace of stabbing him to the heart with his own weapon. I was already bracing myself for the spring when the fellow, with an oath, shouldered his musket, and I heard his steps squelching through the mud as he resumed his beat. I slipped down my rope, and, leaving it hanging, I ran at the top of my speed across the moor.\n\nHeavens, how I ran! The wind buffeted my face and buzzed in my nostrils. The rain pringled upon my skin and hissed past my ears. I stumbled into holes. I tripped over bushes. I fell among brambles. I was torn and breathless and bleeding. My tongue was like leather, my feet like lead, and my heart beating like a kettle-drum. Still I ran, and I ran, and I ran.\n\nBut I had not lost my head, my friends. Everything was done with a purpose. Our fugitives always made for the coast. I was determined to go inland, and the more so as I had told Beaumont the opposite. I would fly to the north, and they would seek me in the south. Perhaps you will ask me how I could tell which was which on such a night. I answer that it was by the wind. I had observed in the prison that it came from the north, and so, as long as I kept my face to it, I was going in the right direction.\n\nWell, I was rushing along in this fashion when, suddenly, I saw two yellow lights shining out of the darkness in front of me. I paused for a moment, uncertain what I should do. I was still in my hussar uniform, you understand, and it seemed to me that the very first thing that I should aim at was to get some dress which should not betray me. If these lights came from a cottage, it was probable enough that I might find what I wanted there. I approached, therefore, feeling very sorry that I had left my iron bar behind; for I was determined to fight to the death before I should be retaken.\n\nBut very soon I found that there was no cottage there. The lights were two lamps hung upon each side of a carriage, and by their glare I saw that a broad road lay in front of me. Crouching among the bushes, I observed that there were two horses to the equipage, that a small post-boy was standing at their heads, and that one of the wheels was lying in the road beside him. I can see them now, my friends: the steaming creatures, the stunted lad with his hands to their bits, and the big, black coach, all shining with the rain, and balanced upon its three wheels. As I looked, the window was lowered, and a pretty little face under a bonnet peeped out from it.\n\n'What shall I do?' the lady cried to the post-boy, in a voice of despair. 'Sir Charles is certainly lost, and I shall have to spend the night upon the moor.'\n\n'Perhaps I can be of some assistance to madame,' said I, scrambling out from among the bushes into the glare of the lamps. A woman in distress is a sacred thing to me, and this one was beautiful. You must not forget that, although I was a colonel, I was only eight-and-twenty years of age.\n\nMy word, how she screamed, and how the post-boy stared! You will understand that after that long race in the darkness, with my shako broken in, my face smeared with dirt, and my uniform all stained and torn with brambles, I was not entirely the sort of gentleman whom one would choose to meet in the middle of a lonely moor. Still, after the first surprise, she soon understood that I was her very humble servant, and I could even read in her pretty eyes that my manner and bearing had not failed to produce an impression upon her.\n\n'I am sorry to have startled you, madame,' said I. 'I chanced to overhear your remark, and I could not refrain from offering you my assistance.' I bowed as I spoke. You know my bow, and can realize what its effect was upon the lady.\n\n'I am much indebted to you, sir,' said she. 'We have had a terrible journey since we left Tavistock. Finally, one of our wheels came off, and here we are helpless in the middle of the moor. My husband, Sir Charles, has gone on to get help, and I much fear that he must have lost his way.'\n\nI was about to attempt some consolation, when I saw beside the lady a black travelling coat, faced with astrakhan, which her companion must have left behind him. It was exactly what I needed to conceal my uniform. It is true that I felt very much like a highway robber, but then, what would you have? Necessity has no law, and I was in an enemy's country.\n\n'I presume, madame, that this is your husband's coat,' I remarked. 'You will, I am sure, forgive me, if I am compelled to\u2014' I pulled it through the window as I spoke.\n\nI could not bear to see the look of surprise and fear and disgust which came over her face.\n\n'Oh, I have been mistaken in you!' she cried. 'You came to rob me, then, and not to help me. You have the bearing of a gentleman, and yet you steal my husband's coat.'\n\n'Madame,' said I, 'I beg that you will not condemn me until you know everything. It is quite necessary that I should take this coat, but if you will have the goodness to tell me who it is who is fortunate enough to be your husband, I shall see that the coat is sent back to him.'\n\nHer face softened a little, though she still tried to look severe. 'My husband,' she answered, 'is Sir Charles Meredith, and he is travelling to Dartmoor Prison, upon important Government business. I only ask you, sir, to go upon your way, and to take nothing which belongs to him.'\n\n'There is only one thing which belongs to him that I covet,' said I.\n\n'And you have taken it from the carriage,' she cried.\n\n'No,' I answered. 'It still remains there.'\n\nShe laughed in her frank English way.\n\n'If, instead of paying me compliments, you were to return my husband's coat\u2014' she began.\n\n'Madame,' I answered, 'what you ask is quite impossible. If you will allow me to come into the carriage, I will explain to you how necessary this coat is to me.'\n\nHeaven knows into what foolishness I might have plunged myself had we not, at this instant, heard a faint halloa in the distance, which was answered by a shout from the little post-boy. In the rain and the darkness, I saw a lantern some distance from us, but approaching rapidly.\n\n'I am sorry, madame, that I am forced to leave you,' said I. 'You can assure your husband that I shall take every care of his coat.' Hurried as I was, I ventured to pause a moment to salute the lady's hand, which she snatched through the window with an admirable pretence of being offended at my presumption. Then, as the lantern was quite close to me, and the post-boy seemed inclined to interfere with my flight, I tucked my precious overcoat under my arm, and dashed off into the darkness.\n\nAnd now I set myself to the task of putting as broad a stretch of moor between the prison and myself as the remaining hours of darkness would allow. Setting my face to the wind once more, I ran until I fell from exhaustion. Then, after five minutes of panting among the heather, I made another start, until again my knees gave way beneath me. I was young and hard, with muscles of steel, and a frame which had been toughened by twelve years of camp and field. Thus I was able to keep up this wild flight for another three hours, during which I still guided myself, you understand, by keeping the wind in my face. At the end of that time I calculated that I had put nearly twenty miles between the prison and myself. Day was about to break, so I crouched down among the heather upon the top of one of those small hills which abound in that country, with the intention of hiding myself until nightfall. It was no new thing for me to sleep in the wind and the rain, so, wrapping myself up in my thick warm cloak, I soon sank into a doze.\n\nBut it was not a refreshing slumber. I tossed and tumbled amid a series of vile dreams, in which everything seemed to go wrong with me. At last, I remember, I was charging an unshaken square of Hungarian Grenadiers, with a single squadron upon spent horses, just as I did at Elchingen. I stood in my stirrups to shout 'Vive l'Empereur!' and as I did so, there came the answering roar from my hussars, 'Vive l'Empereur!' I sprang from my rough bed, with the words still ringing in my ears, and then, as I rubbed my eyes, and wondered if I were mad, the same cry came again, five thousand voices in one long-drawn yell. I looked out from my screen of brambles, and saw in the clear light of morning the very last thing that I should either have expected or chosen.\n\nIt was Dartmoor Prison! There it stretched, grim and hideous, within a furlong of me. Had I run on for a few more minutes in the dark, I should have butted my shako against the wall. I was so taken aback at the sight, that I could scarcely realize what had happened. Then it all became clear to me, and I struck my head with my hands in my despair. The wind had veered from north to south during the night, and I, keeping my face always towards it, had run ten miles out and ten miles in, winding up where I had started. When I thought of my hurry, my falls, my mad rushing and jumping, all ending in this, it seemed so absurd, that my grief changed suddenly to amusement, and I fell among the brambles, and laughed, and laughed, until my sides were sore. Then I rolled myself up in my cloak and considered seriously what I should do.\n\nOne lesson which I have learned in my roaming life, my friends, is never to call anything a misfortune until you have seen the end of it. Is not every hour a fresh point of view? In this case I soon perceived that accident had done for me as much as the most profound cunning. My guards naturally commenced their search from the place where I had taken Sir Charles Meredith's coat, and from my hiding-place I could see them hurrying along the road to that point. Not one of them ever dreamed that I could have doubled back from there, and I lay quite undisturbed in the little bush-covered cup at the summit of my knoll. The prisoners had, of course, learned of my escape, and all day exultant yells, like that which had aroused me in the morning, resounded over the moor, bearing a welcome message of sympathy and companionship to my ears. How little did they dream that on the top of that very mound, which they could see from their windows, was lying the comrade whose escape they were celebrating? As for me\u2014I could look down upon this poor herd of idle warriors, as they paced about the great exercise yard, or gathered in little groups, gesticulating joyfully over my success. Once I heard a howl of execration, and I saw Beaumont, his head all covered with bandages, being led across the yard by two of the warders. I cannot tell you the pleasure which this sight gave me, for it proved that I had not killed him, and also that the others knew the true story of what had passed. They had all known me too well to think that I could have abandoned him.\n\nAll that long day I lay behind my screen of bushes, listening to the bells which struck the hours below.\n\nMy pockets were filled with bread which I had saved out of my allowance, and on searching my borrowed overcoat I came upon a silver flask, full of excellent brandy and water, so that I was able to get through the day without hardship. The only other things in the pockets were a red silk handkerchief, a tortoise-shell snuff-box, and a blue envelope, with a red seal, addressed to the Governor of Dartmoor Prison. As to the first two, I determined to send them back when I should return the coat itself.\n\nThe letter caused me more perplexity, for the Governor had always shown me every courtesy, and it offended my sense of honour that I should interfere with his correspondence. I had almost made up my mind to leave it under a stone upon the roadway within musket-shot of the gate. This would guide them in their search for me, however, and so, on the whole, I saw no better way than just to carry the letter with me in the hope that I might find some means of sending it back to him. Meanwhile I packed it safely away in my inner-most pocket.\n\nThere was a warm sun to dry my clothes, and when night fell I was ready for my journey. I promise you that there were no mistakes this time. I took the stars for my guides, as every hussar should be taught to do, and I put eight good leagues between myself and the prison. My plan now was to obtain a complete suit of clothes from the first person whom I could waylay, and I should then find my way to the north coast, where there were many smugglers and fishermen who would be ready to earn the reward which was paid by the Emperor to those who brought escaping prisoners across the Channel. I had taken the panache from my shako so that it might escape notice, but even with my fine overcoat I feared that sooner or later my uniform would betray me. My first care must be to provide myself with a complete disguise.\n\nWhen day broke, I saw a river upon my right and a small town upon my left\u2014the blue smoke reeking up above the moor. I should have liked well to have entered it, because it would have interested me to see something of the customs of the English, which differ very much from those of other nations. Much as I should have wished, however, to have seen them eat their raw meat and sell their wives, it would have been dangerous until I had got rid of my uniform. My cap, my moustache, and my speech would all help to betray me. I continued to travel towards the north therefore, looking about me continually, but never catching a glimpse of my pursuers.\n\nAbout midday I came to where, in a secluded valley, there stood a single small cottage without any other building in sight. It was a neat little house, with a rustic porch and a small garden in front of it, with a swarm of cocks and hens. I lay down among the ferns and watched it, for it seemed to be exactly the kind of place where I might obtain what I wanted. My bread was finished, and I was exceedingly hungry after my long journey; I determined, therefore, to make a short reconnaissance, and then to march up to this cottage, summon it to surrender, and help myself to all that I needed. It could at least provide me with a chicken and with an omelette. My mouth watered at the thought.\n\nAs I lay there, wondering who could live in this lonely place, a brisk little fellow came out through the porch, accompanied by another older man, who carried two large clubs in his hands. These he handed to his young companion, who swung them up and down, and round and round, with extraordinary swiftness. The other, standing beside him, appeared to watch him with great attention, and occasionally to advise him. Finally he took a rope, and began skipping like a girl, the other still gravely observing him. As you may think, I was utterly puzzled as to what these people could be, and could only surmise that the one was a doctor, and the other a patient who had submitted himself to some singular method of treatment.\n\nWell, as I lay watching and wondering, the older man brought out a great-coat, and held it while the other put it on and buttoned it to his chin. The day was a warmish one, so that this proceeding amazed me even more than the other. 'At least,' thought I, 'it is evident that his exercise is over'; but, far from this being so, the man began to run, in spite of his heavy coat, and as it chanced, he came right over the moor in my direction. His companion had re-entered the house, so that this arrangement suited me admirably. I would take the small man's clothing, and hurry on to some village where I could buy provisions. The chickens were certainly tempting, but still there were at least two men in the house, so perhaps it would be wiser for me, since I had no arms, to keep away from it.\n\nI lay quietly then among the ferns. Presently I heard the steps of the runner, and there he was quite close to me, with his huge coat, and the perspiration running down his face. He seemed to be a very solid man\u2014but small\u2014so small that I feared that his clothes might be of little use to me. When I jumped out upon him he stopped running, and looked at me in the greatest astonishment.\n\n'Blow my dickey,' said he, 'give it a name, guv'nor! Is it a circus, or what?'\n\nThat was how he talked, though I cannot pretend to tell you what he meant by it.\n\n'You will excuse me, sir,' said I, 'but I am under the necessity of asking you to give me your clothes.'\n\n'Give you what?' he cried.\n\n'Your clothes.'\n\n'Well, if this don't lick cock-fighting!' said he. 'What am I to give you my clothes for?'\n\n'Because I need them.'\n\n'And suppose I won't?'\n\n'Be jabers,' said I, 'I shall have no choice but to take them.'\n\nHe stood with his hands in the pockets of his great-coat, and a most amused smile upon his square-jawed, clean-shaven face.\n\n'You'll take them, will you?' said he. 'You're a very leery cove, by the look of you, but I can tell you that you've got the wrong sow by the ear this time. I know who you are. You're a runaway Frenchy, from the prison yonder, as anyone could tell with half an eye. But you don't know who I am, else you wouldn't try such a plant as that. Why, man, I'm the Bristol Bustler, nine stone champion, and them's my training quarters down yonder.'\n\nHe stared at me as if this announcement of his would have crushed me to the earth, but I smiled at him in my turn, and looked him up and down, with a twirl of my moustache.\n\n'You may be a very brave man, sir,' said I, 'but when I tell you that you are opposed to Colonel Etienne Gerard, of the Hussars of Conflans, you will see the necessity of giving up your clothes without further parley.'\n\n'Look here, mounseer, drop it!' he cried; 'this'll end by your getting pepper.'\n\n'Your clothes, sir, this instant!' I shouted, advancing fiercely upon him.\n\nFor answer he threw off his heavy great-coat, and stood in a singular attitude, with one arm out, and the other across his chest, looking at me with a curious smile. For myself, I knew nothing of the methods of fighting which these people have, but on horse or on foot, with arms or without them, I am always ready to take my own part. You understand that a soldier cannot always choose his own methods, and that it is time to howl when you are living among wolves. I rushed at him, therefore, with a warlike shout, and kicked him with both my feet. At the same moment my heels flew into the air, I saw as many flashes as at Austerlitz, and the back of my head came down with a crash upon a stone. After that I can remember nothing more.\n\nWhen I came to myself I was lying upon a truckle-bed, in a bare, half-furnished room. My head was ringing like a bell, and when I put up my hand, there was a lump like a walnut over one of my eyes. My nose was full of a pungent smell, and I soon found that a strip of paper soaked in vinegar was fastened across my brow. At the other end of the room this terrible little man was sitting with his knee bare, and his elderly companion was rubbing it with some liniment. The latter seemed to be in the worst of tempers, and he kept up a continual scolding, which the other listened to with a gloomy face.\n\n'Never heard tell of such a thing in my life,' he was saying. 'In training for a month with all the weight of it on my shoulders, and then when I get you as fit as a trout, and within two days of fighting the likeliest man on the list, you let yourself into a by-battle with a foreigner.'\n\n'There, there! Stow your gab!' said the other, sulkily. 'You're a very good trainer, Jim, but you'd be better with less jaw.'\n\n'I should think it was time to jaw,' the elderly man answered. 'If this knee don't get well before next Wednesday, they'll have it that you fought a cross, and a pretty job you'll have next time you look for a backer.'\n\n'Fought a cross!' growled the other. 'I've won nineteen battles, and no man ever so much as dared to say the word \"cross\" in my hearin'. How the deuce was I to get out of it when the cove wanted the very clothes off my back?'\n\n'Tut, man; you knew that the beak and the guards were within a mile of you. You could have set them on to him as well then as now. You'd have got your clothes back again all right.'\n\n'Well, strike me!' said the Bustler. 'I don't often break my trainin', but when it comes to givin' up my clothes to a Frenchy who couldn't hit a dint in a pat o' butter, why, it's more than I can swaller.'\n\n'Pooh, man, what are the clothes worth? D'you know that Lord Rufton alone has five thousand pounds on you? When you jump the ropes on Wednesday, you'll carry every penny of fifty thousand into the ring. A pretty thing to turn up with a swollen knee and a story about a Frenchman!'\n\n'I never thought he'd ha' kicked,' said the Bustler.\n\n'I suppose you expected he'd fight Broughton's rules, and strict P.R.? Why, you silly, they don't know what fighting is in France.'\n\n'My friends,' said I, sitting up on my bed, 'I do not understand very much of what you say, but when you speak like that it is foolishness. We know so much about fighting in France, that we have paid our little visit to nearly every capital in Europe, and very soon we are coming to London. But we fight like soldiers, you understand, and not like gamins in the gutter. You strike me on the head. I kick you on the knee. It is child's play. But if you will give me a sword, and take another one, I will show you how we fight over the water.'\n\nThey both stared at me in their solid, English way.\n\n'Well, I'm glad you're not dead, mounseer,' said the elder one at last. 'There wasn't much sign of life in you when the Bustler and me carried you down. That head of yours ain't thick enough to stop the crook of the hardest hitter in Bristol.'\n\n'He's a game cove, too, and he came for me like a bantam,' said the other, still rubbing his knee. 'I got my old left-right in, and he went over as if he had been pole-axed. It wasn't my fault, mounseer. I told you you'd get pepper if you went on.'\n\n'Well, it's something to say all your life, that you've been handled by the finest light-weight in England,' said the older man, looking at me with an expression of congratulation upon his face. 'You've had him at his best, too\u2014in the pink of condition, and trained by Jim Hunter.'\n\n'I am used to hard knocks,' said I, unbuttoning my tunic, and showing my two musket wounds. Then I bared my ankle also, and showed the place in my eye where the guerilla had stabbed me.\n\n'He can take his gruel,' said the Bustler.\n\n'What a glutton he'd have made for the middle-weights,' remarked the trainer; 'with six months' coaching he'd astonish the fancy. It's a pity he's got to go back to prison.'\n\nI did not like that last remark at all. I buttoned up my coat and rose from the bed.\n\n'I must ask you to let me continue my journey,' said I.\n\n'There's no help for it, mounseer,' the trainer answered. 'It's a hard thing to send such a man as you back to such a place, but business is business, and there's a twenty pound reward. They were here this morning, looking for you, and I expect they'll be round again.'\n\nHis words turned my heart to lead.\n\n'Surely, you would not betray me!' I cried. 'I will send you twice twenty pounds on the day that I set foot upon France. I swear it upon the honour of a French gentleman.'\n\nBut I only got head-shakes for a reply. I pleaded, I argued, I spoke of the English hospitality and the fellowship of brave men, but I might as well have been addressing the two great wooden clubs which stood balanced upon the floor in front of me. There was no sign of sympathy upon their bull-faces.\n\n'Business is business, mounseer,' the old trainer repeated. 'Besides, how am I to put the Bustler into the ring on Wednesday if he's jugged by the beak for aidin' and abettin' a prisoner of war? I've got to look after the Bustler, and I take no risks.'\n\nThis, then, was the end of all my struggles and strivings. I was to be led back again like a poor silly sheep who has broken through the hurdles. They little knew me who could fancy that I should submit to such a fate. I had heard enough to tell me where the weak point of these two men was, and I showed, as I have often showed before, that Etienne Gerard is never so terrible as when all hope seems to have deserted him. With a single spring I seized one of the clubs and swung it over the head of the Bustler.\n\n'Come what may,' I cried, 'you shall be spoiled for Wednesday.'\n\nThe fellow growled out an oath, and would have sprung at me, but the other flung his arms round him and pinned him to the chair.\n\n'Not if I know it, Bustler,' he screamed. 'None of your games while I am by. Get away out of this, Frenchy. We only want to see your back. Run away, run away, or he'll get loose!'\n\nIt was good advice, I thought, and I ran to the door, but as I came out into the open air my head swam round and I had to lean against the porch to save myself from falling. Consider all that I had been through, the anxiety of my escape, the long, useless flight in the storm, the day spent amid wet ferns, with only bread for food, the second journey by night, and now the injuries which I had received in attempting to deprive the little man of his clothes. Was it wonderful that even I should reach the limits of my endurance?\n\nI stood there in my heavy coat and my poor battered shako, my chin upon my chest, and my eyelids over my eyes. I had done my best, and I could do no more. It was the sound of horses' hoofs which made me at last raise my head, and there was the grey-moustached Governor of Dartmoor Prison not ten paces in front of me, with six mounted warders behind him!\n\n'So, Colonel,' said he, with a bitter smile, 'we have found you once more.'\n\nWhen a brave man has done his utmost, and has failed, he shows his breeding by the manner in which he accepts his defeat. For me, I took the letter which I had in my pocket, and stepping forward, I handed it with such grace of manner as I could summon to the Governor.\n\n'It has been my misfortune, sir, to detain one of your letters,' said I.\n\nHe looked at me in amazement, and beckoned to the warders to arrest me. Then he broke the seal of the letter. I saw a curious expression come over his face as he read it.\n\n'This must be the letter which Sir Charles Meredith lost,' said he.\n\n'It was in the pocket of his coat.'\n\n'You have carried it for two days?'\n\n'Since the night before last.'\n\n'And never looked at the contents?'\n\nI showed him by my manner that he had committed an indiscretion in asking a question which one gentleman should not have put to another.\n\nTo my surprise he burst out into a roar of laughter.\n\n'Colonel,' said he, wiping the tears from his eyes, 'you have really given both yourself and us a great deal of unnecessary trouble. Allow me to read the letter which you carried with you in your flight.'\n\nAnd this was what I heard:\u2014\n\n'On receipt of this you are directed to release Colonel Etienne Gerard, of the 3rd Hussars, who has been exchanged against Colonel Mason, of the Horse Artillery, now in Verdun.'\n\nAnd as he read it, he laughed again, and the warders laughed, and the two men from the cottage laughed, and then, as I heard this universal merriment, and thought of all my hopes and fears, and my struggles and dangers, what could a debonair soldier do but lean against the porch once more, and laugh as heartily as any of them? And of them all was it not I who had the best reason to laugh, since in front of me I could see my dear France, and my mother, and the Emperor, and my horsemen; while behind lay the gloomy prison, and the heavy hand of the English King?" + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE BRIGADIER TOOK THE FIELD AGAINST THE MARSHAL MILLEFLEURS", + "text": "Massena was a thin, sour little fellow, and after his hunting accident he had only one eye, but when it looked out from under his cocked hat there was not much upon a field of battle which escaped it. He could stand in front of a battalion, and with a single sweep tell you if a buckle or a gaiter button were out of place. Neither the officers nor the men were very fond of him, for he was, as you know, a miser, and soldiers love that their leaders should be free-handed. At the same time, when it came to work they had a very high respect for him, and they would rather fight under him than under anyone except the Emperor himself, and Lannes, when he was alive. After all, if he had a tight grasp upon his money-bags, there was a day also, you must remember, when that same grip was upon Zurich and Genoa. He clutched on to his positions as he did to his strong box, and it took a very clever man to loosen him from either.\n\nWhen I received his summons I went gladly to his headquarters, for I was always a great favourite of his, and there was no officer of whom he thought more highly. That was the best of serving with those good old generals, that they knew enough to be able to pick out a fine soldier when they saw one. He was seated alone in his tent, with his chin upon his hand, and his brow as wrinkled as if he had been asked for a subscription. He smiled, however, when he saw me before him.\n\n'Good day, Colonel Gerard.'\n\n'Good day, Marshal.'\n\n'How is the Third of Hussars?'\n\n'Seven hundred incomparable men upon seven hundred excellent horses.'\n\n'And your wounds\u2014are they healed?'\n\n'My wounds never heal, Marshal,' I answered.\n\n'And why?'\n\n'Because I have always new ones.'\n\n'General Rapp must look to his laurels,' said he, his face all breaking into wrinkles as he laughed. 'He has had twenty-one from the enemy's bullets, and as many from Larrey's knives and probes. Knowing that you were hurt, Colonel, I have spared you of late.'\n\n'Which hurt me most of all.'\n\n'Tut, tut! Since the English got behind these accursed lines of Torres Vedras, there has been little for us to do. You did not miss much during your imprisonment at Dartmoor. But now we are on the eve of action.'\n\n'We advance?'\n\n'No, retire.'\n\nMy face must have shown my dismay. What, retire before this sacred dog of a Wellington\u2014he who had listened unmoved to my words, and had sent me to his land of fogs? I could have sobbed as I thought of it.\n\n'What would you have?' cried Massena impatiently. 'When one is in check, it is necessary to move the king.'\n\n'Forwards,' I suggested.\n\nHe shook his grizzled head.\n\n'The lines are not to be forced,' said he. 'I have already lost General St. Croix and more men than I can replace. On the other hand, we have been here at Santarem for nearly six months. There is not a pound of flour nor a jug of wine on the countryside. We must retire.'\n\n'There are flour and wine in Lisbon,' I persisted.\n\n'Tut, you speak as if an army could charge in and charge out again like your regiment of hussars. If Soult were here with thirty thousand men\u2014but he will not come. I sent for you, however, Colonel Gerard, to say that I have a very singular and important expedition which I intend to place under your direction.'\n\nI pricked up my ears, as you can imagine. The Marshal unrolled a great map of the country and spread it upon the table. He flattened it out with his little, hairy hands.\n\n'This is Santarem,' he said pointing.\n\nI nodded.\n\n'And here, twenty-five miles to the east, is Almeixal, celebrated for its vintages and for its enormous Abbey.'\n\nAgain I nodded; I could not think what was coming.\n\n'Have you heard of the Marshal Millefleurs?' asked Massena.\n\n'I have served with all the Marshals,' said I, 'but there is none of that name.'\n\n'It is but the nickname which the soldiers have given him,' said Massena. 'If you had not been away from us for some months, it would not be necessary for me to tell you about him. He is an Englishman, and a man of good breeding. It is on account of his manners that they have given him his title. I wish you to go to this polite Englishman at Almeixal.'\n\n'Yes, Marshal.'\n\n'And to hang him to the nearest tree.'\n\n'Certainly, Marshal.'\n\nI turned briskly upon my heels, but Massena recalled me before I could reach the opening of his tent.\n\n'One moment, Colonel,' said he; 'you had best learn how matters stand before you start. You must know, then, that this Marshal Millefleurs, whose real name is Alexis Morgan, is a man of very great ingenuity and bravery. He was an officer in the English Guards, but having been broken for cheating at cards, he left the army. In some manner he gathered a number of English deserters round him and took to the mountains. French stragglers and Portuguese brigands joined him, and he found himself at the head of five hundred men. With these he took possession of the Abbey of Almeixal, sent the monks about their business, fortified the place, and gathered in the plunder of all the country round.'\n\n'For which it is high time he was hanged,' said I, making once more for the door.\n\n'One instant!' cried the Marshal, smiling at my impatience. 'The worst remains behind. Only last week the Dowager Countess of La Ronda, the richest woman in Spain, was taken by these ruffians in the passes as she was journeying from King Joseph's Court to visit her grandson. She is now a prisoner in the Abbey, and is only protected by her\u2014\u2014'\n\n'Grandmotherhood,' I suggested.\n\n'Her power of paying a ransom,' said Massena. 'You have three missions, then: To rescue this unfortunate lady; to punish this villain; and, if possible, to break up this nest of brigands. It will be a proof of the confidence which I have in you when I say that I can only spare you half a squadron with which to accomplish all this.'\n\nMy word, I could hardly believe my ears! I thought that I should have had my regiment at the least.\n\n'I would give you more,' said he, 'but I commence my retreat today, and Wellington is so strong in horse that every trooper becomes of importance. I cannot spare you another man. You will see what you can do, and you will report yourself to me at Abrantes not later than tomorrow night.'\n\nIt was very complimentary that he should rate my powers so high, but it was also a little embarrassing. I was to rescue an old lady, to hang an Englishman, and to break up a band of five hundred assassins\u2014all with fifty men. But after all, the fifty men were Hussars of Conflans, and they had an Etienne Gerard to lead them. As I came out into the warm Portuguese sunshine my confidence had returned to me, and I had already begun to wonder whether the medal which I had so often deserved might not be waiting for me at Almeixal.\n\nYou may be sure that I did not take my fifty men at hap-hazard. They were all old soldiers of the German wars, some of them with three stripes, and most of them with two. Oudet and Papilette, two of the best sub-officers in the regiment, were at their head. When I had them formed up in fours, all in silver grey and upon chestnut horses, with their leopard skin shabracks and their little red panaches, my heart beat high at the sight. I could not look at their weather-stained faces, with the great moustaches which bristled over their chin-straps, without feeling a glow of confidence, and, between ourselves, I have no doubt that that was exactly how they felt when they saw their young Colonel on his great black war-horse riding at their head.\n\nWell, when we got free of the camp and over the Tagus, I threw out my advance and my flankers, keeping my own place at the head of the main body. Looking back from the hills above Santarem, we could see the dark lines of Massena's army, with the flash and twinkle of the sabres and bayonets as he moved his regiments into position for their retreat. To the south lay the scattered red patches of the English outposts, and behind the grey smoke-cloud which rose from Wellington's camp\u2014thick, oily smoke, which seemed to our poor starving fellows to bear with it the rich smell of seething camp-kettles. Away to the west lay a curve of blue sea flecked with the white sails of the English ships.\n\nYou will understand that as we were riding to the east, our road lay away from both armies. Our own marauders, however, and the scouting parties of the English, covered the country, and it was necessary with my small troop that I should take every precaution. During the whole day we rode over desolate hill-sides, the lower portions covered by the budding vines, but the upper turning from green to grey, and jagged along the skyline like the back of a starved horse. Mountain streams crossed our path, running west to the Tagus, and once we came to a deep, strong river, which might have checked us had I not found the ford by observing where houses had been built opposite each other upon either bank. Between them, as every scout should know, you will find your ford. There was none to give us information, for neither man nor beast, nor any living thing except great clouds of crows, was to be seen during our journey.\n\nThe sun was beginning to sink when we came to a valley clear in the centre, but shrouded by huge oak trees upon either side. We could not be more than a few miles from Almeixal, so it seemed to me to be best to keep among the groves, for the spring had been an early one and the leaves were already thick enough to conceal us. We were riding then in open order among the great trunks, when one of my flankers came galloping up.\n\n'There are English across the valley, Colonel,' he cried, as he saluted.\n\n'Cavalry or infantry?'\n\n'Dragoons, Colonel,' said he; 'I saw the gleam of their helmets, and heard the neigh of a horse.'\n\nHalting my men I hastened to the edge of the wood. There could be no doubt about it. A party of English cavalry was travelling in a line with us, and in the same direction. I caught a glimpse of their red coats and of their flashing arms glowing and twinkling among the tree-trunks. Once, as they passed through a small clearing, I could see their whole force, and I judged that they were of about the same strength as my own\u2014a half squadron at the most.\n\nYou who have heard some of my little adventures will give me credit for being quick in my decisions, and prompt in carrying them out. But here I must confess that I was in two minds. On the one hand there was the chance of a fine cavalry skirmish with the English. On the other hand, there was my mission at the Abbey of Almeixal, which seemed already to be so much above my power. If I were to lose any of my men, it was certain that I should be unable to carry out my orders. I was sitting my horse, with my chin in my gauntlet, looking across at the rippling gleams of light from the further wood, when suddenly one of these red-coated Englishmen rode out from the cover, pointing at me and breaking into a shrill whoop and halloa as if I had been a fox. Three others joined him, and one who was a bugler sounded a call, which brought the whole of them into the open. They were, as I had thought, a half squadron, and they formed a double line with a front of twenty-five, their officer\u2014the one who had whooped at me\u2014at their head.\n\nFor my own part, I had instantly brought my own troopers into the same formation, so that there we were, hussars and dragoons, with only two hundred yards of grassy sward between us. They carried themselves well, those red-coated troopers, with their silver helmets, their high white plumes, and their long, gleaming swords; while, on the other hand, I am sure that they would acknowledge that they had never looked upon finer light horsemen than the fifty hussars of Conflans who were facing them. They were heavier, it is true, and they may have seemed the smarter, for Wellington used to make them burnish their metal work, which was not usual among us. On the other hand, it is well known that the English tunics were too tight for the sword-arm, which gave our men an advantage. As to bravery, foolish, inexperienced people of every nation always think that their own soldiers are braver than any others. There is no nation in the world which does not entertain this idea. But when one has seen as much as I have done, one understands that there is no very marked difference, and that although nations differ very much in discipline, they are all equally brave\u2014except that the French have rather more courage than the rest.\n\nWell, the cork was drawn and the glasses ready, when suddenly the English officer raised his sword to me as if in a challenge, and cantered his horse across the grassland. My word, there is no finer sight upon earth than that of a gallant man upon a gallant steed! I could have halted there just to watch him as he came with such careless grace, his sabre down by his horse's shoulder, his head thrown back, his white plume tossing\u2014youth and strength and courage, with the violet evening sky above and the oak trees behind. But it was not for me to stand and stare. Etienne Gerard may have his faults, but, my faith, he was never accused of being backward in taking his own part. The old horse, Rataplan, knew me so well that he had started off before ever I gave the first shake to the bridle.\n\nThere are two things in this world that I am very slow to forget: the face of a pretty woman, and the legs of a fine horse. Well, as we drew together, I kept on saying, 'Where have I seen those great roan shoulders? Where have I seen that dainty fetlock?' Then suddenly I remembered, and as I looked up at the reckless eyes and the challenging smile, whom should I recognize but the man who had saved me from the brigands and played me for my freedom\u2014he whose correct title was Milor the Hon. Sir Russell Bart!\n\n'Bart!' I shouted.\n\nHe had his arm raised for a cut, and three parts of his body open to my point, for he did not know very much about the use of the sword. As I brought my hilt to the salute he dropped his hand and stared at me.\n\n'Halloa!' said he. 'It's Gerard!' You would have thought by his manner that I had met him by appointment. For my own part, I would have embraced him had he but come an inch of the way to meet me.\n\n'I thought we were in for some sport,' said he. 'I never dreamed that it was you.'\n\nI found this tone of disappointment somewhat irritating. Instead of being glad at having met a friend, he was sorry at having missed an enemy.\n\n'I should have been happy to join in your sport, my dear Bart,' said I. 'But I really cannot turn my sword upon a man who saved my life.'\n\n'Tut, never mind about that.'\n\n'No, it is impossible. I should never forgive myself.'\n\n'You make too much of a trifle.'\n\n'My mother's one desire is to embrace you. If ever you should be in Gascony\u2014\u2014'\n\n'Lord Wellington is coming there with 60,000 men.'\n\n'Then one of them will have a chance of surviving,' said I, laughing. 'In the meantime, put your sword in your sheath!'\n\nOur horses were standing head to tail, and the Bart put out his hand and patted me on the thigh.\n\n'You're a good chap, Gerard,' said he. 'I only wish you had been born on the right side of the Channel.'\n\n'I was,' said I.\n\n'Poor devil!' he cried, with such an earnestness of pity that he set me laughing again. 'But look here, Gerard,' he continued; 'this is all very well, but it is not business, you know. I don't know what Massena would say to it, but our Chief would jump out of his riding-boots if he saw us. We weren't sent out here for a picnic\u2014either of us.'\n\n'What would you have?'\n\n'Well, we had a little argument about our hussars and dragoons, if you remember. I've got fifty of the Sixteenth all chewing their carbine bullets behind me. You've got as many fine-looking boys over yonder, who seem to be fidgeting in their saddles. If you and I took the right flanks we should not spoil each other's beauty\u2014though a little blood-letting is a friendly thing in this climate.'\n\nThere seemed to me to be a good deal of sense in what he said. For the moment Mr Alexis Morgan and the Countess of La Ronda and the Abbey of Almeixal went right out of my head, and I could only think of the fine level turf and of the beautiful skirmish which we might have.\n\n'Very good, Bart,' said I. 'We have seen the front of your dragoons. We shall now have a look at their backs.'\n\n'Any betting?' he asked.\n\n'The stake,' said I, 'is nothing less than the honour of the Hussars of Conflans.'\n\n'Well, come on!' he answered. 'If we break you, well and good\u2014if you break us, it will be all the better for Marshal Millefleurs.'\n\nWhen he said that I could only stare at him in astonishment.\n\n'Why for Marshal Millefleurs?' I asked.\n\n'It is the name of a rascal who lives out this way. My dragoons have been sent by Lord Wellington to see him safely hanged.'\n\n'Name of a name!' I cried. 'Why, my hussars have been sent by Massena for that very object.'\n\nWe burst out laughing at that, and sheathed our swords. There was a whirr of steel from behind us as our troopers followed our example.\n\n'We are allies!' he cried.\n\n'For a day.'\n\n'We must join forces.'\n\n'There is no doubt of it.'\n\nAnd so, instead of fighting, we wheeled our half squadrons round and moved in two little columns down the valley, the shakos and the helmets turned inwards, and the men looking their neighbours up and down, like old fighting dogs with tattered ears who have learned to respect each other's teeth. The most were on the broad grin, but there were some on either side who looked black and challenging, especially the English sergeant and my own sub-officer Papilette. They were men of habit, you see, who could not change all their ways of thinking in a moment. Besides, Papilette had lost his only brother at Busaco. As for the Bart and me, we rode together at the head and chatted about all that had occurred to us since that famous game of \u00e9cart\u00e9 of which I have told you.\n\nFor my own part, I spoke to him of my adventures in England. They are a very singular people, these English. Although he knew that I had been engaged in twelve campaigns, yet I am sure that the Bart thought more highly of me because I had had an affair with the Bristol Bustler. He told me, too, that the Colonel who presided over his court-martial for playing cards with a prisoner acquitted him of neglect of duty, but nearly broke him because he thought that he had not cleared his trumps before leading his suit. Yes, indeed, they are a singular people.\n\nAt the end of the valley the road curved over some rising ground before winding down into another wider valley beyond. We called a halt when we came to the top; for there, right in front of us, at the distance of about three miles, was a scattered, grey town, with a single enormous building upon the flank of the mountain which overlooked it. We could not doubt that we were at last in sight of the Abbey that held the gang of rascals whom we had come to disperse. It was only now, I think, that we fully understood what a task lay in front of us, for the place was a veritable fortress, and it was evident that cavalry should never have been sent out upon such an errand.\n\n'That's got nothing to do with us,' said the Bart; Wellington and Massena can settle that between them.'\n\n'Courage!' I answered. 'Pir\u00e9 took Leipzig with fifty hussars.'\n\n'Had they been dragoons,' said the Bart, laughing, 'he would have had Berlin. But you are senior officer; give us a lead, and we'll see who will be the first to flinch.'\n\n'Well,' said I, 'whatever we do must be done at once, for my orders are to be on my way to Abrantes by tomorrow night. But we must have some information first, and here is someone who should be able to give it to us.'\n\nThere was a square, whitewashed house standing by the roadside, which appeared, from the bush hanging over the door, to be one of those wayside tabernas which are provided for the muleteers. A lantern was hung in the porch, and by its light we saw two men, the one in the brown habit of a Capuchin monk, and the other girt with an apron, which showed him to be the landlord. They were conversing together so earnestly that we were upon them before they were aware of us. The innkeeper turned to fly, but one of the Englishmen seized him by the hair, and held him tight.\n\n'For mercy's sake, spare me,' he yelled. 'My house has been gutted by the French and harried by the English, and my feet have been burned by the brigands. I swear by the Virgin that I have neither money nor food in my inn, and the good Father Abbot, who is starving upon my doorstep, will be witness to it.'\n\n'Indeed, sir,' said the Capuchin, in excellent French, 'what this worthy man says is very true. He is one of the many victims to these cruel wars, although his loss is but a feather-weight compared to mine. Let him go,' he added, in English, to the trooper, 'he is too weak to fly, even if he desired to.'\n\nIn the light of the lantern I saw that this monk was a magnificent man, dark and bearded, with the eyes of a hawk, and so tall that his cowl came up to Rataplan's ears. He wore the look of one who had been through much suffering, but he carried himself like a king, and we could form some opinion of his learning when we each heard him talk our own language as fluently as if he were born to it.\n\n'You have nothing to fear,' said I, to the trembling innkeeper. 'As to you, father, you are, if I am not mistaken, the very man who can give us the information which we require.'\n\n'All that I have is at your service, my son. But,' he added, with a wan smile, 'my Lenten fare is always somewhat meagre, and this year it has been such that I must ask you for a crust of bread if I am to have the strength to answer your questions.'\n\nWe bore two days' rations in our haversacks, so that he soon had the little he asked for. It was dreadful to see the wolfish way in which he seized the piece of dried goat's flesh which I was able to offer him.\n\n'Time presses, and we must come to the point,' said I. 'We want your advice as to the weak points of yonder Abbey, and concerning the habits of the rascals who infest it.'\n\nHe cried out something which I took to be Latin, with his hands clasped and his eyes upturned. 'The prayer of the just availeth much,' said he, 'and yet I had not dared to hope that mine would have been so speedily answered. In me you see the unfortunate Abbot of Almeixal, who has been cast out by this rabble of three armies with their heretical leader. Oh! to think of what I have lost!' his voice broke, and the tears hung upon his lashes.\n\n'Cheer up, sir,' said the Bart. 'I'll lay nine to four that we have you back again by tomorrow night.'\n\nIt is not of my own welfare that I think,' said he, 'nor even of that of my poor, scattered flock. But it is of the holy relics which are left in the sacrilegious hands of these robbers.'\n\n'It's even betting whether they would ever bother their heads about them,' said the Bart. 'But show us the way inside the gates, and we'll soon clear the place out for you.'\n\nIn a few short words the good Abbot gave us the very points that we wished to know. But all that he said only made our task more formidable. The walls of the Abbey were forty feet high. The lower windows were barricaded, and the whole building loopholed for musketry fire. The gang preserved military discipline, and their sentries were too numerous for us to hope to take them by surprise. It was more than ever evident that a battalion of grenadiers and a couple of breaching pieces were what was needed. I raised my eyebrows, and the Bart began to whistle.\n\n'We must have a shot at it, come what may,' said he.\n\nThe men had already dismounted, and, having watered their horses, were eating their suppers. For my own part I went into the sitting-room of the inn with the Abbot and the Bart, that we might talk about our plans.\n\nI had a little cognac in my sauve vie, and I divided it among us\u2014just enough to wet our moustaches.\n\n'It is unlikely,' said I, 'that those rascals know anything about our coming. I have seen no signs of scouts along the road. My own plan is that we should conceal ourselves in some neighbouring wood, and then, when they open their gates, charge down upon them and take them by surprise.'\n\nThe Bart was of opinion that this was the best that we could do, but, when we came to talk it over, the Abbot made us see that there were difficulties in the way.\n\n'Save on the side of the town, there is no place within a mile of the Abbey where you could shelter man or horse,' said he. 'As to the townsfolk, they are not to be trusted. I fear, my son, that your excellent plan would have little chance of success in the face of the vigilant guard which these men keep.'\n\n'I see no other way,' answered I. 'Hussars of Conflans are not so plentiful that I can afford to run half a squadron of them against a forty-foot wall with five hundred infantry behind it.'\n\n'I am a man of peace,' said the Abbot, 'and yet I may, perhaps, give a word of counsel. I know these villains and their ways. Who should do so better, seeing that I have stayed for a month in this lonely spot, looking down in weariness of heart at the Abbey which was my own? I will tell you now what I should myself do if I were in your place.'\n\n'Pray tell us, father,' we cried, both together.\n\n'You must know that bodies of deserters, both French and English, are continually coming in to them, carrying their weapons with them. Now, what is there to prevent you and your men from pretending to be such a body, and so making your way into the Abbey?'\n\nI was amazed at the simplicity of the thing, and I embraced the good Abbot. The Bart, however, had some objections to offer.\n\n'That is all very well,' said he, 'but if these fellows are as sharp as you say, it is not very likely that they are going to let a hundred armed strangers into their crib. From all I have heard of Mr Morgan, or Marshal Millefleurs, or whatever the rascal's name is, I give him credit for more sense than that.'\n\n'Well, then,' I cried, 'let us send fifty in, and let them at daybreak throw open the gates to the other fifty, who will be waiting outside.'\n\nWe discussed the question at great length and with much foresight and discretion. If it had been Massena and Wellington instead of two young officers of light cavalry, we could not have weighed it all with more judgment. At last we agreed, the Bart and I, that one of us should indeed go with fifty men, under pretence of being deserters, and that in the early morning he should gain command of the gate and admit the others. The Abbot, it is true, was still of opinion that it was dangerous to divide our force, but finding that we were both of the same mind, he shrugged his shoulders and gave in.\n\n'There is only one thing that I would ask,' said he. 'If you lay hands upon this Marshal Millefleurs\u2014this dog of a brigand\u2014what will you do with him?'\n\n'Hang him,' I answered.\n\n'It is too easy a death,' cried the Capuchin, with a vindictive glow in his dark eyes. 'Had I my way with him\u2014but, oh, what thoughts are these for a servant of God to harbour!' He clapped his hands to his forehead like one who is half demented by his troubles, and rushed out of the room.\n\nThere was an important point which we had still to settle, and that was whether the French or the English party should have the honour of entering the Abbey first. My faith, it was asking a great deal of Etienne Gerard that he should give place to any man at such a time! But the poor Bart pleaded so hard, urging the few skirmishes which he had seen against my four-and-seventy engagements, that at last I consented that he should go. We had just clasped hands over the matter when there broke out such a shouting and cursing and yelling from the front of the inn, that out we rushed with our drawn sabres in our hands, convinced that the brigands were upon us.\n\nYou may imagine our feelings when, by the light of the lantern which hung from the porch, we saw a score of our hussars and dragoons all mixed in one wild heap, red coats and blue, helmets and busbies, pommelling each other to their hearts' content. We flung ourselves upon them, imploring, threatening, tugging at a lace collar, or at a spurred heel, until, at last, we had dragged them all apart. There they stood, flushed and bleeding, glaring at each other, and all panting together like a line of troop horses after a ten-mile chase. It was only with our drawn swords that we could keep them from each other's throats. The poor Capuchin stood in the porch in his long brown habit, wringing his hands and calling upon all the saints for mercy.\n\nHe was, indeed, as I found upon inquiry, the innocent cause of all the turmoil, for, not understanding how soldiers look upon such things, he had made some remark to the English sergeant that it was a pity that his squadron was not as good as the French. The words were not out of his mouth before a dragoon knocked down the nearest hussar, and then, in a moment, they all flew at each other like tigers. We would trust them no more after that, but the Bart moved his men to the front of the inn, and I mine to the back, the English all scowling and silent, and our fellows shaking their fists and chattering, each after the fashion of their own people.\n\nWell, as our plans were made, we thought it best to carry them out at once, lest some fresh cause of quarrel should break out between our followers. The Bart and his men rode off, therefore, he having first torn the lace from his sleeves, and the gorget and sash from his uniform, so that he might pass as a simple trooper. He explained to his men what it was that was expected of them, and though they did not raise a cry or wave their weapons as mine might have done, there was an expression upon their stolid and clean-shaven faces which filled me with confidence. Their tunics were left unbuttoned, their scabbards and helmets stained with dirt, and their harness badly fastened, so that they might look the part of deserters, without order or discipline. At six o'clock next morning they were to gain command of the main gate of the Abbey, while at that same hour my hussars were to gallop up to it from outside. The Bart and I pledged our words to it before he trotted off with his detachment. My sergeant, Papilette, with two troopers, followed the English at a distance, and returned in half an hour to say that, after some parley, and the flashing of lanterns upon them from the grille, they had been admitted into the Abbey.\n\nSo far, then, all had gone well. It was a cloudy night with a sprinkling of rain, which was in our favour, as there was the less chance of our presence being discovered. My vedettes I placed two hundred yards in every direction, to guard against a surprise, and also to prevent any peasant who might stumble upon us from carrying the news to the Abbey. Oudin and Papilette were to take turns of duty, while the others with their horses had snug quarters in a great wooden granary. Having walked round and seen that all was as it should be, I flung myself upon the bed which the innkeeper had set apart for me, and fell into a dreamless sleep.\n\nNo doubt you have heard my name mentioned as being the beau-ideal of a soldier, and that not only by friends and admirers like our fellow-townsfolk, but also by old officers of the great wars who have shared the fortunes of those famous campaigns with me. Truth and modesty compel me to say, however, that this is not so. There are some gifts which I lack\u2014very few, no doubt\u2014but, still, amid the vast armies of the Emperor there may have been some who were free from those blemishes which stood between me and perfection. Of bravery I say nothing. Those who have seen me in the field are best fitted to speak about that. I have often heard the soldiers discussing round the camp-fires as to who was the bravest man in the Grand Army. Some said Murat, and some said Lasalle, and some Ney; but for my own part, when they asked me, I merely shrugged my shoulders and smiled. It would have seemed mere conceit if I had answered that there was no man braver than Brigadier Gerard. At the same time, facts are facts, and a man knows best what his own feelings are. But there are other gifts besides bravery which are necessary for a soldier, and one of them is that he should be a light sleeper. Now, from my boyhood onwards, I have been hard to wake, and it was this which brought me to ruin upon that night.\n\nIt may have been about two o'clock in the morning that I was suddenly conscious of a feeling of suffocation. I tried to call out, but there was something which prevented me from uttering a sound. I struggled to rise, but I could only flounder like a hamstrung horse. I was strapped at the ankles, strapped at the knees, and strapped again at the wrists. Only my eyes were free to move, and there at the foot of my couch, by the light of a Portuguese lamp, whom should I see but the Abbot and the innkeeper!\n\nThe latter's heavy, white face had appeared to me when I looked upon it the evening before to express nothing but stupidity and terror. Now, on the contrary, every feature bespoke brutality and ferocity. Never have I seen a more dreadful-looking villain. In his hand he held a long, dull-coloured knife. The Abbot, on the other hand, was as polished and as dignified as ever. His Capuchin gown had been thrown open, however, and I saw beneath it a black, frogged coat, such as I have seen among the English officers. As our eyes met he leaned over the wooden end of the bed and laughed silently until it creaked again.\n\n'You will, I am sure, excuse my mirth, my dear Colonel Gerard,' said he. 'The fact is, that the expression upon your face when you grasped the situation was just a little funny. I have no doubt that you are an excellent soldier, but I hardly think that you are fit to measure wits with the Marshal Millefleurs, as your fellows have been good enough to call me. You appear to have given me credit for singularly little intelligence, which argues, if I may be allowed to say so, a want of acuteness upon your own part. Indeed, with the single exception of my thick-headed compatriot, the British dragoon, I have never met anyone who was less competent to carry out such a mission.'\n\nYou can imagine how I felt and how I looked, as I listened to this insolent harangue, which was all delivered in that flowery and condescending manner which had gained this rascal his nickname. I could say nothing, but they must have read my threat in my eyes, for the fellow who had played the part of the innkeeper whispered something to his companion.\n\n'No, no, my dear Chenier, he will be infinitely more valuable alive,' said he. 'By the way, Colonel, it is just as well that you are a sound sleeper, for my friend here, who is a little rough in his ways, would certainly have cut your throat if you had raised any alarm. I should recommend you to keep in his good graces, for Sergeant Chenier, late of the 7th Imperial Light Infantry, is a much more dangerous person than Captain Alexis Morgan, of His Majesty's foot-guards.'\n\nChenier grinned and shook his knife at me, while I tried to look the loathing which I felt at the thought that a soldier of the Emperor could fall so low.\n\n'It may amuse you to know,' said the Marshal, in that soft, suave voice of his, 'that both your expeditions were watched from the time that you left your respective camps. I think that you will allow that Chenier and I played our parts with some subtlety. We had made every arrangement for your reception at the Abbey, though we had hoped to receive the whole squadron instead of half. When the gates are secured behind them, our visitors will find themselves in a very charming little mediaeval quadrangle, with no possible exit, commanded by musketry fire from a hundred windows. They may choose to be shot down; or they may choose to surrender. Between ourselves, I have not the slightest doubt that they have been wise enough to do the latter. But since you are naturally interested in the matter, we thought that you would care to come with us and to see for yourself. I think I can promise you that you will find your titled friend waiting for you at the Abbey with a face as long as your own.'\n\nThe two villains began whispering together, debating, as far as I could hear, which was the best way of avoiding my vedettes.\n\n'I will make sure that it is all clear upon the other side of the barn,' said the Marshal at last. 'You will stay here, my good Chenier, and if the prisoner gives any trouble you will know what to do.'\n\nSo we were left together, this murderous renegade and I\u2014he sitting at the end of the bed, sharpening his knife upon his boot in the light of the single smoky little oil-lamp. As to me, I only wonder now, as I look back upon it, that I did not go mad with vexation and self-reproach as I lay helplessly upon the couch, unable to utter a word or move a finger, with the knowledge that my fifty gallant lads were so close to me, and yet with no means of letting them know the straits to which I was reduced. It was no new thing for me to be a prisoner; but to be taken by these renegades, and to be led into their Abbey in the midst of their jeers, befooled and out-witted by their insolent leaders\u2014that was indeed more than I could endure. The knife of the butcher beside me would cut less deeply than that.\n\nI twitched softly at my wrists, and then at my ankles, but whichever of the two had secured me was no bungler at his work. I could not move either of them an inch. Then I tried to work the handkerchief down over my mouth, but the ruffian beside me raised his knife with such a threatening snarl that I had to desist. I was lying still looking at his bull neck, and wondering whether it would ever be my good fortune to fit it for a cravat, when I heard returning steps coming down the inn passage and up the stair. What word would the villain bring back? If he found it impossible to kidnap me, he would probably murder me where I lay. For my own part, I was indifferent which it might be, and I looked at the doorway with the contempt and defiance which I longed to put into words. But you can imagine my feelings, my dear friends, when, instead of the tall figure and dark, sneering face of the Capuchin, my eyes fell upon the grey pelisse and huge moustaches of my good little sub-officer, Papilette!\n\nThe French soldier of those days had seen too much to be ever taken by surprise. His eyes had hardly rested upon my bound figure and the sinister face beside me before he had seen how the matter lay.\n\n'Sacred name of a dog!' he growled, and out flashed his great sabre. Chenier sprang forward at him with his knife, and then, thinking better of it, he darted back and stabbed frantically at my heart. For my own part, I had hurled myself off the bed on the side opposite to him, and the blade grazed my side before ripping its way through blanket and sheet. An instant later I heard the thud of a heavy fall, and then almost simultaneously a second object struck the floor\u2014something lighter but harder, which rolled under the bed. I will not horrify you with details, my friends. Suffice it that Papilette was one of the strongest swordsmen in the regiment, and that his sabre was heavy and sharp. It left a red blotch upon my wrists and my ankles, as it cut the thongs which bound me.\n\nWhen I had thrown off my gag, the first use which I made of my lips was to kiss the sergeant's scarred cheeks. The next was to ask him if all was well with the command. Yes, they had had no alarms. Oudin had just relieved him, and he had come to report. Had he seen the Abbot? No, he had seen nothing of him. Then we must form a cordon and prevent his escape. I was hurrying out to give the orders, when I heard a slow and measured step enter the door below, and come creaking up the stairs.\n\nPapilette understood it all in an instant. 'You are not to kill him,' I whispered, and thrust him into the shadow on one side of the door; I crouched on the other. Up he came, up and up, and every footfall seemed to be upon my heart. The brown skirt of his gown was not over the threshold before we were both on him, like two wolves on a buck. Down we crashed, the three of us, he fighting like a tiger, and with such amazing strength that he might have broken away from the two of us. Thrice he got to his feet, and thrice we had him over again, until Papilette made him feel that there was a point to his sabre. He had sense enough then to know that the game was up, and to lie still while I lashed him with the very cords which had been round my own limbs.\n\n'There has been a fresh deal, my fine fellow,' said I, 'and you will find that I have some of the trumps in my hand this time.'\n\n'Luck always comes to the aid of a fool,' he answered. 'Perhaps it is as well, otherwise the world would fall too completely into the power of the astute. So, you have killed Chenier, I see. He was an insubordinate dog, and always smelt abominably of garlic. Might I trouble you to lay me upon the bed? The floor of these Portuguese tabernas is hardly a fitting couch for anyone who has prejudices in favour of cleanliness.'\n\nI could not but admire the coolness of the man, and the way in which he preserved the same insolent air of condescension in spite of this sudden turning of the tables. I dispatched Papilette to summon a guard, whilst I stood over our prisoner with my drawn sword, never taking my eyes off him for an instant, for I must confess that I had conceived a great respect for his audacity and resource.\n\n'I trust,' said he, 'that your men will treat me in a becoming manner.'\n\n'You will get your deserts\u2014you may depend upon that.'\n\n'I ask nothing more. You may not be aware of my exalted birth, but I am so placed that I cannot name my father without treason, nor my mother without a scandal. I cannot claim Royal honours, but these things are so much more graceful when they are conceded without a claim. The thongs are cutting my skin. Might I beg you to loosen them?'\n\n'You do not give me credit for much intelligence,' I remarked, repeating his own words.\n\n'Touch\u00e9,' he cried, like a pinked fencer. 'But here come your men, so it matters little whether you loosen them or not.'\n\nI ordered the gown to be stripped from him and placed him under a strong guard. Then, as morning was already breaking, I had to consider what my next step was to be. The poor Bart and his Englishmen had fallen victims to the deep scheme which might, had we adopted all the crafty suggestions of our adviser, have ended in the capture of the whole instead of the half of our force. I must extricate them if it were still possible. Then there was the old lady, the Countess of La Ronda, to be thought of. As to the Abbey, since its garrison was on the alert it was hopeless to think of capturing that. All turned now upon the value which they placed upon their leader. The game depended upon my playing that one card. I will tell you how boldly and how skilfully I played it.\n\nIt was hardly light before my bugler blew the assembly, and out we trotted on to the plain. My prisoner was placed on horseback in the very centre of the troops. It chanced that there was a large tree just out of musket-shot from the main gate of the Abbey, and under this we halted. Had they opened the great doors in order to attack us, I should have charged home upon them; but, as I had expected, they stood upon the defensive, lining the long wall and pouring down a torrent of hootings and taunts and derisive laughter upon us. A few fired their muskets, but finding that we were out of reach they soon ceased to waste their powder. It was the strangest sight to see that mixture of uniforms, French, English, and Portuguese, cavalry, infantry, and artillery, all wagging their heads and shaking their fists at us.\n\nMy word, their hubbub soon died away when we opened our ranks, and showed whom we had got in the midst of us! There was silence for a few seconds, and then such a howl of rage and grief! I could see some of them dancing like mad-men upon the wall. He must have been a singular person, this prisoner of ours, to have gained the affection of such a gang.\n\nI had brought a rope from the inn, and we slung it over the lower bough of the tree.\n\n'You will permit me, monsieur, to undo your collar,' said Papilette, with mock politeness.\n\n'If your hands are perfectly clean,' answered our prisoner, and set the whole half-squadron laughing.\n\nThere was another yell from the wall, followed by a profound hush as the noose was tightened round Marshal Millefleurs' neck. Then came a shriek from a bugle, the Abbey gates flew open, and three men rushed out waving white cloths in their hands. Ah, how my heart bounded with joy at the sight of them. And yet I would not advance an inch to meet them, so that all the eagerness might seem to be upon their side. I allowed my trumpeter, however, to wave a handkerchief in reply, upon which the three envoys came running towards us. The Marshal, still pinioned, and with the rope round his neck, sat his horse with a half smile, as one who is slightly bored and yet strives out of courtesy not to show it. If I were in such a situation I could not wish to carry myself better, and surely I can say no more than that.\n\nThey were a singular trio, these ambassadors. The one was a Portuguese ca\u00e7adore in his dark uniform, the second a French chasseur in the lightest green, and the third a big English artilleryman in blue and gold. They saluted, all three, and the Frenchman did the talking.\n\n'We have thirty-seven English dragoons in our hands,' said he. 'We give you our most solemn oath that they shall all hang from the Abbey wall within five minutes of the death of our Marshal.'\n\n'Thirty-seven!' I cried. 'You have fifty-one.'\n\n'Fourteen were cut down before they could be secured.'\n\n'And the officer?'\n\n'He would not surrender his sword save with his life. It was not our fault. We would have saved him if we could.'\n\nAlas for my poor Bart! I had met him but twice, and yet he was a man very much after my heart. I have always had a regard for the English for the sake of that one friend. A braver man and a worse swordsman I have never met.\n\nI did not, as you may think, take these rascals' word for anything. Papilette was dispatched with one of them, and returned to say that it was too true. I had now to think of the living.\n\n'You will release the thirty-seven dragoons if I free your leader?'\n\n'We will give you ten of them.'\n\n'Up with him!' I cried.\n\n'Twenty,' shouted the chasseur.\n\n'No more words,' said I. 'Pull on the rope!'\n\n'All of them,' cried the envoy, as the cord tightened round the Marshal's neck.\n\n'With horses and arms?'\n\nThey could see that I was not a man to jest with.\n\n'All complete,' said the chasseur, sulkily.\n\n'And the Countess of La Ronda as well?' said I.\n\nBut here I met with firmer opposition. No threats of mine could induce them to give up the Countess. We tightened the cord. We moved the horse. We did all but leave the Marshal suspended. If once I broke his neck the dragoons were dead men. It was as precious to me as to them.\n\n'Allow me to remark,' said the Marshal, blandly, 'that you are exposing me to a risk of a quinsy. Do you not think, since there is a difference of opinion upon this point, that it would be an excellent idea to consult the lady herself? We would neither of us, I am sure, wish to override her own inclinations.'\n\nNothing could be more satisfactory. You can imagine how quickly I grasped at so simple a solution. In ten minutes she was before us, a most stately dame, with her grey curls peeping out from under her mantilla. Her face was as yellow as though it reflected the countless doubloons of her treasury.\n\n'This gentleman,' said the Marshal, 'is exceedingly anxious to convey you to a place where you will never see us more. It is for you to decide whether you would wish to go with him, or whether you prefer to remain with me.'\n\nShe was at his horse's side in an instant. 'My own Alexis,' she cried, 'nothing can ever part us.'\n\nHe looked at me with a sneer upon his handsome face.\n\n'By the way, you made a small slip of the tongue, my dear Colonel,' said he. 'Except by courtesy, no such person exists as the Dowager Countess of La Ronda. The lady whom I have the honour to present to you is my very dear wife, Mrs Alexis Morgan\u2014or shall I say Madame la Mar\u00e8chale Millefleurs?'\n\nIt was at this moment that I came to the conclusion that I was dealing with the cleverest, and also the most unscrupulous, man whom I had ever met. As I looked upon this unfortunate old woman my soul was filled with wonder and disgust. As for her, her eyes were raised to his face with such a look as a young recruit might give to the Emperor.\n\n'So be it,' said I at last; 'give me the dragoons and let me go.'\n\nThey were brought out with their horses and weapons, and the rope was taken from the Marshal's neck.\n\n'Good-bye, my dear Colonel,' said he. 'I am afraid that you will have rather a lame account to give of your mission, when you find your way back to Massena, though, from all I hear, he will probably be too busy to think of you. I am free to confess that you have extricated yourself from your difficulties with greater ability than I had given you credit for. I presume that there is nothing which I can do for you before you go?'\n\n'There is one thing.'\n\n'And that is?'\n\n'To give fitting burial to this young officer and his men.'\n\n'I pledge my word to it.'\n\n'And there is one other.'\n\n'Name it.'\n\n'To give me five minutes in the open with a sword in your hand and a horse between your legs.'\n\n'Tut, tut!' said he. 'I should either have to cut short your promising career, or else to bid adieu to my own bonny bride. It is unreasonable to ask such a request of a man in the first joys of matrimony.'\n\nI gathered my horsemen together and wheeled them into column.\n\n'Au revoir,' I cried, shaking my sword at him. 'The next time you may not escape so easily.'\n\n'Au revoir,' he answered. 'When you are weary of the Emperor, you will always find a commission waiting for you in the service of the Marshal Millefleurs.'" + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE BRIGADIER PLAYED FOR A KINGDOM", + "text": "It has sometimes struck me that some of you, when you have heard me tell these little adventures of mine, may have gone away with the impression that I was conceited. There could not be a greater mistake than this, for I have always observed that really fine soldiers are free from this failing. It is true that I have had to depict myself sometimes as brave, sometimes as full of resource, always as interesting; but, then, it really was so, and I had to take the facts as I found them. It would be an unworthy affectation if I were to pretend that my career has been anything but a fine one. The incident which I will tell you tonight, however, is one which you will understand that only a modest man would describe. After all, when one has attained such a position as mine, one can afford to speak of what an ordinary man might be tempted to conceal.\n\nYou must know, then, that after the Russian campaign the remains of our poor army were quartered along the western bank of the Elbe, where they might thaw their frozen blood and try, with the help of the good German beer, to put a little between their skin and their bones. There were some things which we could not hope to regain, for I daresay that three large commissariat fourgons would not have sufficed to carry the fingers and the toes which the army had shed during that retreat. Still, lean and crippled as we were, we had much to be thankful for when we thought of our poor comrades whom we had left behind, and of the snowfields\u2014the horrible, horrible snowfields. To this day, my friends, I do not care to see red and white together. Even my red cap thrown down upon my white counterpane has given me dreams in which I have seen those monstrous plains, the reeling, tortured army, and the crimson smears which glared upon the snow behind them. You will coax no story out of me about that business, for the thought of it is enough to turn my wine to vinegar and my tobacco to straw.\n\nOf the half-million who crossed the Elbe in the autumn of the year '12 about forty thousand infantry were left in the spring of '13. But they were terrible men, these forty thousand: men of iron, eaters of horses, and sleepers in the snow; filled, too, with rage and bitterness against the Russians. They would hold the Elbe until the great army of conscripts, which the Emperor was raising in France, should be ready to help them to cross it once more.\n\nBut the cavalry was in a deplorable condition. My own hussars were at Borna, and when I paraded them first, I burst into tears at the sight of them. My fine men and my beautiful horses\u2014it broke my heart to see the state to which they were reduced. 'But, courage,' I thought, 'they have lost much, but their Colonel is still left to them.' I set to work, therefore, to repair their disasters, and had already constructed two good squadrons, when an order came that all colonels of cavalry should repair instantly to the dep\u00f4ts of the regiments in France to organize the recruits and the remounts for the coming campaign.\n\nYou will think, doubtless, that I was over-joyed at this chance of visiting home once more. I will not deny that it was a pleasure to me to know that I should see my mother again, and there were a few girls who would be very glad at the news; but there were others in the army who had a stronger claim. I would have given my place to any who had wives and children whom they might not see again. However, there is no arguing when the blue paper with the little red seal arrives, so within an hour I was off upon my great ride from the Elbe to the Vosges. At last I was to have a period of quiet. War lay behind my mare's tail and peace in front of her nostrils. So I thought, as the sound of the bugles died in the distance, and the long, white road curled away in front of me through plain and forest and mountain, with France somewhere beyond the blue haze which lay upon the horizon.\n\nIt is interesting, but it is also fatiguing, to ride in the rear of an army. In the harvest time our soldiers could do without supplies, for they had been trained to pluck the grain in the fields as they passed, and to grind it for themselves in their bivouacs. It was at that time of year, therefore, that those swift marches were performed which were the wonder and the despair of Europe. But now the starving men had to be made robust once more, and I was forced to draw into the ditch continually as the Coburg sheep and the Bavarian bullocks came streaming past with waggon loads of Berlin beer and good French cognac. Sometimes, too, I would hear the dry rattle of the drums and the shrill whistle of the fifes, and long columns of our good little infantry men would swing past me with the white dust lying thick upon their blue tunics. These were old soldiers drawn from the garrisons of our German fortresses, for it was not until May that the new conscripts began to arrive from France.\n\nWell, I was rather tired of this eternal stopping and dodging, so that I was not sorry when I came to Altenburg to find that the road divided, and that I could take the southern and quieter branch. There were few wayfarers between there and Greiz, and the road wound through groves of oaks and beeches, which shot their branches across the path. You will think it strange that a Colonel of hussars should again and again pull up his horse in order to admire the beauty of the feathery branches and the little, green, new-budded leaves, but if you had spent six months among the fir trees of Russia you would be able to understand me.\n\nThere was something, however, which pleased me very much less than the beauty of the forests, and that was the words and looks of the folk who lived in the woodland villages. We had always been excellent friends with the Germans, and during the last six years they had never seemed to bear us any malice for having made a little free with their country. We had shown kindnesses to the men and received them from the women, so that good, comfortable Germany was a second home to all of us. But now there was something which I could not understand in the behaviour of the people. The travellers made no answer to my salute; the foresters turned their heads away to avoid seeing me; and in the villages the folk would gather into knots in the roadway and would scowl at me as I passed. Even women would do this, and it was something new for me in those days to see anything but a smile in a woman's eyes when they were turned upon me.\n\nIt was in the hamlet of Schmolin, just ten miles out of Altenburg, that the thing became most marked. I had stopped at the little inn there just to damp my moustache and to wash the dust out of poor Violette's throat. It was my way to give some little compliment, or possibly a kiss, to the maid who served me; but this one would have neither the one nor the other, but darted a glance at me like a bayonet-thrust. Then when I raised my glass to the folk who drank their beer by the door they turned their backs on me, save only one fellow, who cried, 'Here's a toast for you, boys! Here's to the letter T!' At that they all emptied their beer mugs and laughed; but it was not a laugh that had good-fellowship in it.\n\nI was turning this over in my head and wondering what their boorish conduct could mean, when I saw, as I rode from the village, a great T new carved upon a tree. I had already seen more than one in my morning's ride, but I had given no thought to them until the words of the beer-drinker gave them an importance. It chanced that a respectable-looking person was riding past me at the moment, so I turned to him for information.\n\n'Can you tell me, sir,' said I, 'what this letter T is?'\n\nHe looked at it and then at me in the most singular fashion. 'Young man,' said he, 'it is not the letter N.' Then before I could ask further he clapped his spurs into his horses ribs and rode, stomach to earth, upon his way.\n\nAt first his words had no particular significance in my mind, but as I trotted onwards Violette chanced to half turn her dainty head, and my eyes were caught by the gleam of the brazen N's at the end of the bridle-chain. It was the Emperor's mark. And those T's meant something which was opposite to it. Things had been happening in Germany, then, during our absence, and the giant sleeper had begun to stir. I thought of the mutinous faces that I had seen, and I felt that if I could only have looked into the hearts of these people I might have had some strange news to bring into France with me. It made me the more eager to get my remounts, and to see ten strong squadrons behind my kettle-drums once more.\n\nWhile these thoughts were passing through my head I had been alternately walking and trotting, as a man should who has a long journey before, and a willing horse beneath, him. The woods were very open at this point, and beside the road there lay a great heap of fagots. As I passed there came a sharp sound from among them, and, glancing round, I saw a face looking out at me\u2014a hot, red face, like that of a man who is beside himself with excitement and anxiety. A second glance told me that it was the very person with whom I had talked an hour before in the village.\n\n'Come nearer!' he hissed. 'Nearer still! Now dismount and pretend to be mending the stirrup leather. Spies may be watching us, and it means death to me if I am seen helping you.'\n\n'Death!' I whispered. 'From whom?'\n\n'From the Tugendbund. From Lutzow's night-riders. You Frenchmen are living on a powder magazine, and the match has been struck that will fire it.'\n\n'But this is all strange to me,' said I, still fumbling at the leathers of my horse. 'What is this Tugendbund?'\n\n'It is the secret society which has planned the great rising which is to drive you out of Germany, just as you have been driven out of Russia.'\n\n'And these T's stand for it?'\n\n'They are the signal. I should have told you all this in the village, but I dared not be seen speaking with you. I galloped through the woods to cut you off, and concealed both my horse and myself.'\n\n'I am very much indebted to you,' said I, 'and the more so as you are the only German that I have met today from whom I have had common civility.'\n\n'All that I possess I have gained through contracting for the French armies,' said he. 'Your Emperor has been a good friend to me. But I beg that you will ride on now, for we have talked long enough. Beware only of Lutzow's night-riders!'\n\n'Banditti?' I asked.\n\n'All that is best in Germany,' said he. 'But for God's sake ride forwards, for I have risked my life and exposed my good name in order to carry you this warning.'\n\nWell, if I had been heavy with thought before, you can think how I felt after my strange talk with the man among the fagots. What came home to me even more than his words was his shivering, broken voice, his twitching face, and his eyes glancing swiftly to right and left, and opening in horror whenever a branch cracked upon a tree. It was clear that he was in the last extremity of terror, and it is possible that he had cause, for shortly after I had left him I heard a distant gunshot and a shouting from somewhere behind me. It may have been some sportsman halloaing to his dogs, but I never again heard of or saw the man who had given me my warning.\n\nI kept a good look-out after this, riding swiftly where the country was open, and slowly where there might be an ambuscade. It was serious for me, since 500 good miles of German soil lay in front of me; but somehow I did not take it very much to heart, for the Germans had always seemed to me to be a kindly, gentle people, whose hands closed more readily round a pipe-stem than a sword-hilt\u2014not out of want of valour, you understand, but because they are genial, open souls, who would rather be on good terms with all men. I did not know then that beneath that homely surface there lurks a devilry as fierce as, and far more persistent than, that of the Castilian or the Italian.\n\nAnd it was not long before I had shown to me that there was something more serious abroad than rough words and hard looks. I had come to a spot where the road runs upwards through a wild tract of heath-land and vanishes into an oak wood. I may have been half-way up the hill when, looking forward, I saw something gleaming under the shadow of the tree-trunks, and a man came out with a coat which was so slashed and spangled with gold that he blazed like a fire in the sunlight. He appeared to be very drunk, for he reeled and staggered as he came towards me. One of his hands was held up to his ear and clutched a great red handkerchief, which was fixed to his neck.\n\nI had reined up the mare and was looking at him with some disgust, for it seemed strange to me that one who wore so gorgeous a uniform should show himself in such a state in broad daylight. For his part, he looked hard in my direction and came slowly onwards, stopping from time to time and swaying about as he gazed at me. Suddenly, as I again advanced, he screamed out his thanks to Christ, and, lurching forwards, he fell with a crash upon the dusty road. His hands flew forward with the fall, and I saw that what I had taken for a red cloth was a monstrous wound, which had left a great gap in his neck, from which a dark blood-clot hung, like an epaulette upon his shoulder.\n\n'My God!' I cried, as I sprang to his aid. 'And I thought that you were drunk!'\n\n'Not drunk, but dying,' said he. 'But thank Heaven that I have seen a French officer while I have still strength to speak.'\n\nI laid him among the heather and poured some brandy down his throat. All round us was the vast countryside, green and peaceful, with nothing living in sight save only the mutilated man beside me.\n\n'Who has done this?' I asked, 'and what are you? You are French, and yet the uniform is strange to me.'\n\n'It is that of the Emperor's new guard of honour. I am the Marquis of Ch\u00e2teau St Arnaud, and I am the ninth of my blood who has died in the service of France. I have been pursued and wounded by the night-riders of Lutzow, but I hid among the brushwood yonder, and waited in the hope that a Frenchman might pass. I could not be sure at first if you were friend or foe, but I felt that death was very near, and that I must take the chance.'\n\n'Keep your heart up, comrade,' said I; 'I have seen a man with a worse wound who has lived to boast of it.'\n\n'No, no,' he whispered; 'I am going fast.' He laid his hand upon mine as he spoke, and I saw that his finger-nails were already blue. 'But I have papers here in my tunic which you must carry at once to the Prince of Saxe-Felstein, at his Castle of Hof. He is still true to us, but the Princess is our deadly enemy. She is striving to make him declare against us. If he does so, it will determine all those who are wavering, for the King of Prussia is his uncle and the King of Bavaria his cousin. These papers will hold him to us if they can only reach him before he takes the last step. Place them in his hands tonight, and, perhaps, you will have saved all Germany for the Emperor. Had my horse not been shot, I might, wounded as I am\u2014\u2014' He choked, and the cold hand tightened into a grip, which left mine as bloodless as itself. Then, with a groan, his head jerked back, and it was all over with him.\n\nHere was a fine start for my journey home. I was left with a commission of which I knew little, which would lead me to delay the pressing needs of my hussars, and which at the same time was of such importance that it was impossible for me to avoid it. I opened the Marquis's tunic, the brilliance of which had been devised by the Emperor in order to attract those young aristocrats from whom he hoped to raise these new regiments of his Guard. It was a small packet of papers which I drew out, tied up with silk, and addressed to the Prince of Saxe-Felstein. In the corner, in a sprawling, untidy hand, which I knew to be the Emperor's own, was written: 'Pressing and most important.' It was an order to me, those four words\u2014an order as clear as if it had come straight from the firm lips with the cold grey eyes looking into mine. My troopers might wait for their horses, the dead Marquis might lie where I had laid him amongst the heather, but if the mare and her rider had a breath left in them the papers should reach the Prince that night.\n\nI should not have feared to ride by the road through the wood, for I have learned in Spain that the safest time to pass through a guerilla country is after an outrage, and that the moment of danger is when all is peaceful. When I came to look upon my map, however, I saw that Hof lay further to the south of me, and that I might reach it more directly by keeping to the moors. Off I set, therefore, and had not gone fifty yards before two carbine shots rang out of the brushwood and a bullet hummed past me like a bee. It was clear that the night-riders were bolder in their ways than the brigands of Spain, and that my mission would have ended where it had begun if I had kept to the road.\n\nIt was a mad ride, that\u2014a ride with a loose rein, girth-deep in heather and in gorse, plunging through bushes, flying down hill-sides, with my neck at the mercy of my dear little Violette. But she\u2014she never slipped, she never faltered, as swift and as surefooted as if she knew that her rider carried the fate of all Germany beneath the buttons of his pelisse. And I\u2014I had long borne the name of being the best horseman in the six brigades of light cavalry, but I never rode as I rode then. My friend the Bart had told me of how they hunt the fox in England, but the swiftest fox would have been captured by me that day. The wild pigeons which flew overhead did not take a straighter course than Violette and I below. As an officer, I have always been ready to sacrifice myself for my men, though the Emperor would not have thanked me for it, for he had many men, but only one\u2014well, cavalry leaders of the first class are rare.\n\nBut here I had an object which was indeed worth a sacrifice, and I thought no more of my life than of the clods of earth that flew from my darling's heels.\n\nWe struck the road once more as the light was failing, and galloped into the little village of Lobenstein. But we had hardly got upon the cobblestones when off came one of the mare's shoes, and I had to lead her to the village smithy. His fire was low, and his day's work done, so that it would be an hour at the least before I could hope to push on to Hof. Cursing at the delay, I strode into the village inn and ordered a cold chicken and some wine to be served for my dinner. It was but a few miles to Hof, and I had every hope that I might deliver my papers to the Prince on that very night, and be on my way for France next morning with despatches for the Emperor in my bosom. I will tell you now what befell me in the inn of Lobenstein.\n\nThe chicken had been served and the wine drawn, and I had turned upon both as a man may who has ridden such a ride, when I was aware of a murmur and a scuffling in the hall outside my door. At first I thought that it was some brawl between peasants in their cups, and I left them to settle their own affairs. But of a sudden there broke from among the low, sullen growl of the voices such a sound as would send Etienne Gerard leaping from his death-bed. It was the whimpering cry of a woman in pain. Down clattered my knife and my fork, and in an instant I was in the thick of the crowd which had gathered outside my door.\n\nThe heavy-cheeked landlord was there and his flaxen-haired wife, the two men from the stables, a chambermaid, and two or three villagers. All of them, women and men, were flushed and angry, while there in the centre of them, with pale cheeks and terror in her eyes, stood the loveliest woman that ever a soldier would wish to look upon. With her queenly head thrown back, and a touch of defiance mingled with her fear, she looked as she gazed round her like a creature of a different race from the vile, coarse-featured crew who surrounded her. I had not taken two steps from my door before she sprang to meet me, her hand resting upon my arm and her blue eyes sparkling with joy and triumph.\n\n'A French soldier and gentleman!' she cried. 'Now at last I am safe.'\n\n'Yes, madam, you are safe,' said I, and I could not resist taking her hand in mine in order that I might reassure her. 'You have only to command me,' I added, kissing the hand as a sign that I meant what I was saying.\n\n'I am Polish,' she cried; 'the Countess Palotta is my name. They abuse me because I love the French. I do not know what they might have done to me had Heaven not sent you to my help.'\n\nI kissed her hand again lest she should doubt my intentions. Then I turned upon the crew with such an expression as I know how to assume. In an instant the hall was empty.\n\n'Countess,' said I, 'you are now under my protection. You are faint, and a glass of wine is necessary to restore you.' I offered her my arm and escorted her into my room, where she sat by my side at the table and took the refreshment which I offered her.\n\nHow she blossomed out in my presence, this woman, like a flower before the sun! She lit up the room with her beauty. She must have read my admiration in my eyes, and it seemed to me that I also could see something of the sort in her own. Ah! my friends, I was no ordinary-looking man when I was in my thirtieth year. In the whole light cavalry it would have been hard to find a finer pair of whiskers. Murat's may have been a shade longer, but the best judges are agreed that Murat's were a shade too long. And then I had a manner. Some women are to be approached in one way and some in another, just as a siege is an affair of fascines and gabions in hard weather and of trenches in soft. But the man who can mix daring with timidity, who can be outrageous with an air of humility, and presumptuous with a tone of deference, that is the man whom mothers have to fear. For myself, I felt that I was the guardian of this lonely lady, and knowing what a dangerous man I had to deal with, I kept strict watch upon myself. Still, even a guardian has his privileges, and I did not neglect them.\n\nBut her talk was as charming as her face. In a few words she explained that she was travelling to Poland, and that her brother who had been her escort had fallen ill upon the way. She had more than once met with ill-treatment from the country folk because she could not conceal her good-will towards the French. Then turning from her own affairs she questioned me about the army, and so came round to myself and my own exploits. They were familiar to her, she said, for she knew several of Poniatowski's officers, and they had spoken of my doings. Yet she would be glad to hear them from my own lips. Never have I had so delightful a conversation. Most women make the mistake of talking rather too much about their own affairs, but this one listened to my tales just as you are listening now, ever asking for more and more and more. The hours slipped rapidly by, and it was with horror that I heard the village clock strike eleven, and so learned that for four hours I had forgotten the Emperor's business.\n\n'Pardon me, my dear lady,' I cried, springing to my feet, 'but I must go on instantly to Hof.'\n\nShe rose also, and looked at me with a pale, reproachful face. 'And me?' she said. 'What is to become of me?'\n\n'It is the Emperor's affair. I have already stayed far too long. My duty calls me, and I must go.'\n\n'You must go? And I must be abandoned alone to these savages? Oh, why did I ever meet you? Why did you ever teach me to rely upon your strength?' Her eyes glazed over, and in an instant she was sobbing upon my bosom.\n\nHere was a trying moment for a guardian! Here was a time when he had to keep a watch upon a forward young officer. But I was equal to it. I smoothed her rich brown hair and whispered such consolations as I could think of in her ear, with one arm round her, it is true, but that was to hold her lest she should faint. She turned her tear-stained face to mine. 'Water,' she whispered. 'For God's sake, water!'\n\nI saw that in another moment she would be senseless. I laid the drooping head upon the sofa, and then rushed furiously from the room, hunting from chamber to chamber for a carafe. It was some minutes before I could get one and hurry back with it. You can imagine my feelings to find the room empty and the lady gone.\n\nNot only was she gone, but her cap and silver-mounted riding switch which had lain upon the table were gone also. I rushed out and roared for the landlord. He knew nothing of the matter, had never seen the woman before, and did not care if he never saw her again. Had the peasants at the door seen anyone ride away? No, they had seen nobody. I searched here and searched there, until at last I chanced to find myself in front of a mirror, where I stood with my eyes staring and my jaw as far dropped as the chin-strap of my shako would allow.\n\nFour buttons of my pelisse were open, and it did not need me to put my hand up to know that my precious papers were gone. Oh! the depth of cunning that lurks in a woman's heart. She had robbed me, this creature, robbed me as she clung to my breast. Even while I smoothed her hair, and whispered kind words into her ear, her hands had been at work beneath my dolman. And here I was, at the very last step of my journey, without the power of carrying out this mission which had already deprived one good man of his life, and was likely to rob another one of his credit. What would the Emperor say when he heard that I had lost his despatches? Would the army believe it of Etienne Gerard? And when they heard that a woman's hand had coaxed them from me, what laughter there would be at mess-table and at camp-fire! I could have rolled upon the ground in my despair.\n\nBut one thing was certain\u2014all this affair of the fracas in the hall and the persecution of the so-called Countess was a piece of acting from the beginning. This villainous innkeeper must be in the plot. From him I might learn who she was and where my papers had gone. I snatched my sabre from the table and rushed out in search of him. But the scoundrel had guessed what I would do, and had made his preparations for me. It was in the corner of the yard that I found him, a blunderbuss in his hands and a mastiff held upon a leash by his son. The two stable-hands, with pitchforks, stood upon either side, and the wife held a great lantern behind him, so as to guide his aim.\n\n'Ride away, sir, ride away!' he cried, with a crackling voice. 'Your horse is at the door, and no one will meddle with you if you go your way; but if you come against us, you are alone against three brave men.'\n\nI had only the dog to fear, for the two forks and the blunderbuss were shaking about like branches in a wind. Still, I considered that, though I might force an answer with my sword-point at the throat of this fat rascal, still I should have no means of knowing whether that answer was the truth. It would be a struggle, then, with much to lose and nothing certain to gain. I looked them up and down, therefore, in a way that set their foolish weapons shaking worse than ever, and then, throwing myself upon my mare, I galloped away with the shrill laughter of the landlady jarring upon my ears.\n\nI had already formed my resolution. Although I had lost my papers, I could make a very good guess as to what their contents would be, and this I would say from my own lips to the Prince of Saxe-Felstein, as though the Emperor had commissioned me to convey it in that way. It was a bold stroke and a dangerous one, but if I went too far I could afterwards be disavowed. It was that or nothing, and when all Germany hung on the balance the game should not be lost if the nerve of one man could save it.\n\nIt was midnight when I rode into Hof, but every window was blazing, which was enough it itself, in that sleepy country, to tell the ferment of excitement in which the people were. There was hooting and jeering as I rode through the crowded streets, and once a stone sang past my head, but I kept upon my way, neither slowing nor quickening my pace, until I came to the palace. It was lit from base to battlement, and the dark shadows, coming and going against the yellow glare, spoke of the turmoil within. For my part, I handed my mare to a groom at the gate, and striding in I demanded, in such a voice as an ambassador should have, to see the Prince instantly, upon business which would brook no delay.\n\nThe hall was dark, but I was conscious as I entered of a buzz of innumerable voices, which hushed into silence as I loudly proclaimed my mission. Some great meeting was being held then\u2014a meeting which, as my instincts told me, was to decide this very question of war and peace. It was possible that I might still be in time to turn the scale for the Emperor and for France. As to the major-domo, he looked blackly at me, and showing me into a small ante-chamber he left me. A minute later he returned to say that the Prince could not be disturbed at present, but that the Princess would take my message.\n\nThe Princess! What use was there in giving it to her? Had I not been warned that she was German in heart and soul, and that it was she who was turning her husband and her State against us?\n\n'It is the Prince that I must see,' said I.\n\n'Nay, it is the Princess,' said a voice at the door, and a woman swept into the chamber. 'Von Rosen, you had best stay with us. Now, sir, what is it that you have to say to either Prince or Princess of Saxe-Felstein?'\n\nAt the first sound of the voice I had sprung to my feet. At the first glance I had thrilled with anger. Not twice in a lifetime does one meet that noble figure, that queenly head, and those eyes as blue as the Garonne, and as chilling as her winter waters.\n\n'Time presses, sir!' she cried, with an impatient tap of her foot. 'What have you to say to me?'\n\n'What have I to say to you?' I cried. 'What can I say, save that you have taught me never to trust a woman more? You have ruined and dishonoured me for ever.'\n\nShe looked with arched brows at her attendant.\n\n'Is this the raving of fever, or does it come from some less innocent cause?' said she. 'Perhaps a little blood-letting\u2014'\n\n'Ah, you can act!' I cried. 'You have shown me that already.'\n\n'Do you mean that we have met before?'\n\n'I mean that you have robbed me within the last two hours.'\n\n'This is past all bearing,' she cried, with an admirable affectation of anger. 'You claim, as I understand, to be an ambassador, but there are limits to the privileges which such an office brings with it.'\n\n'You brazen it admirably,' said I. 'Your Highness will not make a fool of me twice in one night.' I sprang forward and, stooping down, caught up the hem of her dress. 'You would have done well to change it after you had ridden so far and so fast,' said I.\n\nIt was like the dawn upon a snow-peak to see her ivory cheeks flush suddenly to crimson.\n\n'Insolent!' she cried. 'Call the foresters and have him thrust from the palace'\n\n'I will see the Prince first.'\n\n'You will never see the Prince. Ah! Hold him, Von Rosen, hold him.'\n\nShe had forgotten the man with whom she had to deal\u2014was it likely that I would wait until they could bring their rascals? She had shown me her cards too soon. Her game was to stand between me and her husband. Mine was to speak face to face with him at any cost. One spring took me out of the chamber. In another I had crossed the hall. An instant later I had burst into the great room from which the murmur of the meeting had come. At the far end I saw a figure upon a high chair under a da\u00efs. Beneath him was a line of high dignitaries, and then on every side I saw vaguely the heads of a vast assembly. Into the centre of the room I strode, my sabre clanking, my shako under my arm.\n\n'I am the messenger of the Emperor,' I shouted. 'I bear his message to His Highness the Prince of Saxe-Felstein.'\n\nThe man beneath the da\u00efs raised his head, and I saw that his face was thin and wan, and that his back was bowed as though some huge burden was balanced between his shoulders.\n\n'Your name, sir?' he asked.\n\n'Colonel Etienne Gerard, of the Third Hussars.'\n\nEvery face in the gathering was turned upon me, and I heard the rustle of the innumerable necks and saw countless eyes without meeting one friendly one amongst them. The woman had swept past me, and was whispering, with many shakes of her head and dartings of her hands, into the Prince's ear. For my own part I threw out my chest and curled my moustache, glancing round in my own debonair fashion at the assembly. They were men, all of them, professors from the college, a sprinkling of their students, soldiers, gentlemen, artisans, all very silent and serious. In one corner there sat a group of men in black, with riding-coats drawn over their shoulders. They leaned their heads to each other, whispering under their breath, and with every movement I caught the clank of their sabres or the clink of their spurs.\n\n'The Emperor's private letter to me informs me that it is the Marquis Ch\u00e2teau St Arnaud who is bearing his despatches,' said the Prince.\n\n'The Marquis has been foully murdered,' I answered, and a buzz rose up from the people as I spoke. Many heads were turned, I noticed, towards the dark men in the cloaks.\n\n'Where are your papers?' asked the Prince.\n\n'I have none.'\n\nA fierce clamour rose instantly around me. 'He is a spy! He plays a part!' they cried. 'Hang him!' roared a deep voice from the corner, and a dozen others took up the shout. For my part, I drew out my handkerchief and nicked the dust from the fur of my pelisse. The Prince held out his thin hands, and the tumult died away.\n\n'Where, then, are your credentials, and what is your message?'\n\n'My uniform is my credential, and my message is for your private ear.'\n\nHe passed his hand over his forehead with the gesture of a weak man who is at his wits' end what to do. The Princess stood beside him with her hand upon his throne, and again whispered in his ear.\n\n'We are here in council together, some of my trusty subjects and myself,' said he. 'I have no secrets from them, and whatever message the Emperor may send to me at such a time concerns their interests no less than mine.'\n\nThere was a hum of applause at this, and every eye was turned once more upon me. My faith, it was an awkward position in which I found myself, for it is one thing to address eight hundred hussars, and another to speak to such an audience on such a subject. But I fixed my eyes upon the Prince, and tried to say just what I should have said if we had been alone, shouting it out, too, as though I had my regiment on parade.\n\n'You have often expressed friendship for the Emperor,' I cried. 'It is now at last that this friendship is about to be tried. If you will stand firm, he will reward you as only he can reward. It is an easy thing for him to turn a Prince into a King and a province into a power. His eyes are fixed upon you, and though you can do little to harm him, you can ruin yourself. At this moment he is crossing the Rhine with two hundred thousand men. Every fortress in the country is in his hands. He will be upon you in a week, and if you have played him false, God help both you and your people. You think that he is weakened because a few of us got the chilblains last winter. Look there!' I cried, pointing to a great star which blazed through the window above the Prince's head. 'That is the Emperor's star. When it wanes, he will wane\u2014but not before.'\n\nYou would have been proud of me, my friends, if you could have seen and heard me, for I clashed my sabre as I spoke, and swung my dolman as though my regiment was picketed outside in the courtyard. They listened to me in silence, but the back of the Prince bowed more and more as though the burden which weighed upon it was greater than his strength. He looked round with haggard eyes.\n\n'We have heard a Frenchman speak for France,' said he. 'Let us have a German speak for Germany.'\n\nThe folk glanced at each other, and whispered to their neighbours. My speech, as I think, had its effect, and no man wished to be the first to commit himself in the eyes of the Emperor. The Princess looked round her with blazing eyes, and her clear voice broke the silence.\n\n'Is a woman to give this Frenchman his answer?' she cried. 'Is it possible, then, that among the night-riders of Lutzow there is none who can use his tongue as well as his sabre?'\n\nOver went a table with a crash, and a young man had bounded upon one of the chairs. He had the face of one inspired\u2014pale, eager, with wild hawk eyes, and tangled hair. His sword hung straight from his side, and his riding-boots were brown with mire.\n\n'It is Korner!' the people cried. 'It is young Korner, the poet! Ah, he will sing, he will sing.'\n\nAnd he sang! It was soft, at first, and dreamy, telling of old Germany, the mother of nations, of the rich, warm plains, and the grey cities, and the fame of dead heroes. But then verse after verse rang like a trumpet-call. It was of the Germany of now, the Germany which had been taken unawares and overthrown, but which was up again, and snapping the bonds upon her giant limbs. What was life that one should covet it? What was glorious death that one should shun it? The mother, the great mother, was calling. Her sigh was in the night wind. She was crying to her own children for help. Would they come? Would they come? Would they come?\n\nAh, that terrible song, the spirit face and the ringing voice! Where were I, and France, and the Emperor? They did not shout, these people\u2014they howled. They were up on the chairs and the tables. They were raving, sobbing, the tears running down their faces. Korner had sprung from the chair, and his comrades were round him with their sabres in the air. A flush had come into the pale face of the Prince, and he rose from his throne.\n\n'Colonel Gerard,' said he, 'you have heard the answer which you are to carry to your Emperor. The die is cast, my children. Your Prince and you must stand or fall together.'\n\nHe bowed to show that all was over, and the people with a shout made for the door to carry the tidings into the town. For my own part, I had done all that a brave man might, and so I was not sorry to be carried out amid the stream. Why should I linger in the palace? I had had my answer and must carry it, such as it was. I wished neither to see Hof nor its people again until I entered it at the head of a vanguard. I turned from the throng, then, and walked silently and sadly in the direction in which they had led the mare.\n\nIt was dark down there by the stables, and I was peering round for the hostler, when suddenly my two arms were seized from behind. There were hands at my wrists and at my throat, and I felt the cold muzzle of a pistol under my ear.\n\n'Keep your lips closed, you French dog,' whispered a fierce voice. 'We have him, captain.'\n\n'Have you the bridle?'\n\n'Here it is.'\n\n'Sling it over his head.'\n\nI felt the cold coil of leather tighten round my neck. An hostler with a stable lantern had come out and was gazing upon the scene. In its dim light I saw stern faces breaking everywhere through the gloom, with the black caps and dark cloaks of the night-riders.\n\n'What would you do with him, captain?' cried a voice.\n\n'Hang him at the palace gate.'\n\n'An ambassador?'\n\n'An ambassador without papers.'\n\n'But the Prince?'\n\n'Tut, man, do you not see that the Prince will then be committed to our side? He will be beyond all hope of forgiveness. At present he may swing round tomorrow as he has done before. He may eat his words, but a dead hussar is more than he can explain.'\n\n'No, no, Von Strelitz, we cannot do it,' said another voice.\n\n'Can we not? I shall show you that!' and there came a jerk on the bridle which nearly pulled me to the ground. At the same instant a sword flashed and the leather was cut through within two inches of my neck.\n\n'By Heaven, Korner, this is rank mutiny,' cried the captain. 'You may hang yourself before you are through with it.'\n\n'I have drawn my sword as a soldier and not as a brigand,' said the young poet. 'Blood may dim its blade, but never dishonour. Comrades, will you stand by and see this gentleman mishandled?'\n\nA dozen sabres flew from their sheaths, and it was evident that my friends and my foes were about equally balanced. But the angry voices and the gleam of steel had brought the folk running from all parts.\n\n'The Princess!' they cried. 'The Princess is coming!'\n\nAnd even as they spoke I saw her in front of us, her sweet face framed in the darkness. I had cause to hate her, for she had cheated and befooled me, and yet it thrilled me then and thrills me now to think that my arms have embraced her, and that I have felt the scent of her hair in my nostrils. I know not whether she lies under her German earth, or whether she still lingers, a grey-haired woman in her Castle of Hof, but she lives ever, young and lovely, in the heart and memory of Etienne Gerard.\n\n'For shame!' she cried, sweeping up to me, and tearing with her own hands the noose from my neck. 'You are fighting in God's own quarrel, and yet you would begin with such a devil's deed as this. This man is mine, and he who touches a hair of his head will answer for it to me.'\n\nThey were glad enough to slink off into the darkness before those scornful eyes. Then she turned once more to me.\n\n'You can follow me, Colonel Gerard,' she said. 'I have a word that I would speak to you.'\n\nI walked behind her to the chamber into which I had originally been shown. She closed the door, and then looked at me with the archest twinkle in her eyes.\n\n'Is it not confiding of me to trust myself with you?' said she. 'You will remember that it is the Princess of Saxe-Felstein and not the poor Countess Palotta of Poland.'\n\n'Be the name what it might,' I answered, 'I helped a lady whom I believed to be in distress, and I have been robbed of my papers and almost of my honour as a reward.'\n\n'Colonel Gerard,' said she, 'we have been playing a game, you and I, and the stake was a heavy one. You have shown by delivering a message which was never given to you that you would stand at nothing in the cause of your country. My heart is German and yours is French, and I also would go all lengths, even to deceit and to theft, if at this crisis I could help my suffering fatherland. You see how frank I am.'\n\n'You tell me nothing that I have not seen.'\n\n'But now that the game is played and won, why should we bear malice? I will say this, that if ever I were in such a plight as that which I pretended in the inn of Lobenstein, I should never wish to meet a more gallant protector or a truer-hearted gentleman than Colonel Etienne Gerard. I had never thought that I could feel for a Frenchman as I felt for you when I slipped the papers from your breast.'\n\n'But you took them, none the less.'\n\n'They were necessary to me and to Germany. I knew the arguments which they contained and the effect which they would have upon the Prince. If they had reached him all would have been lost.'\n\n'Why should your Highness descend to such expedients when a score of these brigands, who wished to hang me at your castle gate, would have done the work as well?'\n\n'They are not brigands, but the best blood of Germany,' she cried, hotly. 'If you have been roughly used, you will remember the indignities to which every German has been subjected, from the Queen of Prussia downwards. As to why I did not have you waylaid upon the road, I may say that I had parties out on all sides, and that I was waiting at Lobenstein to hear of their success. When instead of their news you yourself arrived I was in despair, for there was only the one weak woman betwixt you and my husband. You see the straits to which I was driven before I used the weapon of my sex.'\n\n'I confess that you have conquered me, your Highness, and it only remains for me to leave you in possession of the field.'\n\n'But you will take your papers with you.' She held them out to me as she spoke. 'The Prince has crossed the Rubicon now, and nothing can bring him back. You can return these to the Emperor, and tell him that we refused to receive them. No one can accuse you then of having lost your despatches. Good-bye, Colonel Gerard, and the best I can wish you is that when you reach France you may remain there. In a year's time there will be no place for a Frenchman upon this side of the Rhine.'\n\nAnd thus it was that I played the Princess of Saxe-Felstein with all Germany for a stake, and lost my game to her. I had much to think of as I walked my poor, tired Violette along the highway which leads westward from Hof. But amid all the thoughts there came back to me always the proud, beautiful face of the German woman, and the voice of the soldier-poet as he sang from the chair. And I understood then that there was something terrible in this strong, patient Germany\u2014this mother root of nations\u2014and I saw that such a land, so old and so beloved, never could be conquered. And as I rode I saw that the dawn was breaking, and that the great star at which I had pointed through the palace window was dim and pale in the western sky." + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE BRIGADIER WON HIS MEDAL", + "text": "The Duke of Tarentum, or Macdonald, as his old comrades prefer to call him, was, as I could perceive, in the vilest of tempers. His grim, Scotch face was like one of those grotesque door-knockers which one sees in the Faubourg St Germain. We heard afterwards that the Emperor had said in jest that he would have sent him against Wellington in the South, but that he was afraid to trust him within the sound of the pipes. Major Charpentier and I could plainly see that he was smouldering with anger.\n\n'Brigadier Gerard of the Hussars,' said he, with the air of the corporal with the recruit.\n\nI saluted.\n\n'Major Charpentier of the Horse Grenadiers.'\n\nMy companion answered to his name.\n\n'The Emperor has a mission for you.'\n\nWithout more ado he flung open the door and announced us.\n\nI have seen Napoleon ten times on horseback to once on foot, and I think that he does wisely to show himself to the troops in this fashion, for he cuts a very good figure in the saddle. As we saw him now he was the shortest man out of six by a good hand's breadth, and yet I am no very big man myself, though I ride quite heavy enough for a hussar. It is evident, too, that his body is too long for his legs. With his big, round head, his curved shoulders, and his clean-shaven face, he is more like a Professor at the Sorbonne than the first soldier in France. Every man to his taste, but it seems to me that, if I could clap a pair of fine light cavalry whiskers, like my own, on to him, it would do him no harm. He has a firm mouth, however, and his eyes are remarkable. I have seen them once turned on me in anger, and I had rather ride at a square on a spent horse than face them again. I am not a man who is easily daunted, either.\n\nHe was standing at the side of the room, away from the window, looking up at a great map of the country which was hung upon the wall. Berthier stood beside him, trying to look wise, and just as we entered, Napoleon snatched his sword impatiently from him and pointed with it on the map. He was talking fast and low, but I heard him say, 'The valley of the Meuse,' and twice he repeated 'Berlin.' As we entered, his aide-de-camp advanced to us, but the Emperor stopped him and beckoned us to his side.\n\n'You have not yet received the cross of honour, Brigadier Gerard?' he asked.\n\nI replied that I had not, and was about to add that it was not for want of having deserved it, when he cut me short in his decided fashion.\n\n'And you, Major?' he asked.\n\n'No, sire.'\n\n'Then you shall both have your opportunity now.'\n\nHe led us to the great map upon the wall and placed the tip of Berthier's sword on Rheims.\n\n'I will be frank with you, gentlemen, as with two comrades. You have both been with me since Marengo, I believe?' He had a strangely pleasant smile, which used to light up his pale face with a kind of cold sunshine. 'Here at Rheims are our present headquarters on this the 14th of March. Very good. Here is Paris, distant by road a good twenty-five leagues. Blucher lies to the north, Schwarzenberg to the south.' He prodded at the map with the sword as he spoke.\n\n'Now,' said he, 'the further into the country these people march, the more completely I shall crush them. They are about to advance upon Paris. Very good. Let them do so. My brother, the King of Spain, will be there with a hundred thousand men. It is to him that I send you. You will hand him this letter, a copy of which I confide to each of you. It is to tell him that I am coming at once, in two days' time, with every man and horse and gun to his relief. I must give them forty-eight hours to recover. Then straight to Paris! You understand me, gentlemen?'\n\nAh, if I could tell you the glow of pride which it gave me to be taken into the great man's confidence in this way. As he handed our letters to us I clicked my spurs and threw out my chest, smiling and nodding to let him know that I saw what he would be after. He smiled also, and rested his hand for a moment upon the cape of my dolman. I would have given half my arrears of pay if my mother could have seen me at that instant.\n\n'I will show you your route,' said he, turning back to the map. 'Your orders are to ride together as far as Bazoches. You will then separate, the one making for Paris by Oulchy and Neuilly, and the other to the north by Braine, Soissons, and Senlis. Have you anything to say, Brigadier Gerard?'\n\nI am a rough soldier, but I have words and ideas. I had begun to speak about glory and the peril of France when he cut me short.\n\n'And you, Major Charpentier?'\n\n'If we find our route unsafe, are we at liberty to choose another?' said he.\n\n'Soldiers do not choose, they obey.' He inclined his head to show that we were dismissed, and turned round to Berthier. I do not know what he said, but I heard them both laughing.\n\nWell, as you may think, we lost little time in getting upon our way. In half an hour we were riding down the High Street of Rheims, and it struck twelve o'clock as we passed the Cathedral. I had my little grey mare, Violette, the one which Sebastiani had wished to buy after Dresden. It is the fastest horse in the six brigades of light cavalry, and was only beaten by the Duke of Rovigo's racer from England. As to Charpentier, he had the kind of horse which a horse grenadier or a cuirassier would be likely to ride: a back like a bedstead, you understand, and legs like the posts. He is a hulking fellow himself, so that they looked a singular pair. And yet in his insane conceit he ogled the girls as they waved their handkerchiefs to me from the windows, and he twirled his ugly red moustache up into his eyes, just as if it were to him that their attention was addressed.\n\nWhen we came out of the town we passed through the French camp, and then across the battle-field of yesterday, which was still covered both by our own poor fellows and by the Russians. But of the two the camp was the sadder sight. Our army was thawing away. The Guards were all right, though the young guard was full of conscripts. The artillery and the heavy cavalry were also good if there were more of them, but the infantry privates with their under officers looked like schoolboys with their masters. And we had no reserves. When one considered that there were 80,000 Prussians to the north and 150,000 Russians and Austrians to the south, it might make even the bravest man grave.\n\nFor my own part, I confess that I shed a tear until the thought came that the Emperor was still with us, and that on that very morning he had placed his hand upon my dolman and had promised me a medal of honour. This set me singing, and I spurred Violette on, until Charpentier had to beg me to have mercy on his great, snorting, panting camel. The road was beaten into paste and rutted two feet deep by the artillery, so that he was right in saying that it was not the place for a gallop.\n\nI have never been very friendly with this Charpentier; and now for twenty miles of the way I could not draw a word from him. He rode with his brows puckered and his chin upon his breast, like a man who is heavy with thought. More than once I asked him what was on his mind, thinking that, perhaps, with my quicker intelligence I might set the matter straight. His answer always was that it was his mission of which he was thinking, which surprised me, because, although I had never thought much of his intelligence, still it seemed to me to be impossible that anyone could be puzzled by so simple and soldierly a task.\n\nWell, we came at last to Bazoches, where he was to take the southern road and I the northern. He half turned in his saddle before he left me, and he looked at me with a singular expression of inquiry in his face.\n\n'What do you make of it, Brigadier?' he asked.\n\n'Of what?'\n\n'Of our mission.'\n\n'Surely it is plain enough.'\n\n'You think so? Why should the Emperor tell us his plans?'\n\n'Because he recognized our intelligence.'\n\nMy companion laughed in a manner which I found annoying.\n\n'May I ask what you intend to do if you find these villages full of Prussians?' he asked.\n\n'I shall obey my orders.'\n\n'But you will be killed.'\n\n'Very possibly.'\n\nHe laughed again, and so offensively that I clapped my hand to my sword. But before I could tell him what I thought of his stupidity and rudeness he had wheeled his horse, and was lumbering away down the other road. I saw his big fur cap vanish over the brow of the hill, and then I rode upon my way, wondering at his conduct. From time to time I put my hand to the breast of my tunic and felt the paper crackle beneath my fingers. Ah, my precious paper, which should be turned into the little silver medal for which I had yearned so long. All the way from Braine to Sermoise I was thinking of what my mother would say when she saw it.\n\nI stopped to give Violette a meal at a wayside auberge on the side of a hill not far from Soissons\u2014a place surrounded by old oaks, and with so many crows that one could scarce hear one's own voice. It was from the innkeeper that I learned that Marmont had fallen back two days before, and that the Prussians were over the Aisne. An hour later, in the fading light, I saw two of their vedettes upon the hill to the right, and then, as darkness gathered, the heavens to the north were all glimmering from the lights of a bivouac.\n\nWhen I heard that Blucher had been there for two days, I was much surprised that the Emperor should not have known that the country through which he had ordered me to carry my precious letter was already occupied by the enemy. Still, I thought of the tone of his voice when he said to Charpentier that a soldier must not choose, but must obey. I should follow the route he had laid down for me as long as Violette could move a hoof or I a finger upon her bridle. All the way from Sermoise to Soissons, where the road dips up and down, curving among fir woods, I kept my pistol ready and my sword-belt braced, pushing on swiftly where the path was straight, and then coming slowly round the corners in the way we learned in Spain.\n\nWhen I came to the farmhouse which lies to the right of the road just after you cross the wooden bridge over the Crise, near where the great statue of the Virgin stands, a woman cried to me from the field, saying that the Prussians were in Soissons. A small party of their lancers, she said, had come in that very afternoon, and a whole division was expected before midnight. I did not wait to hear the end of her tale, but clapped spurs into Violette, and in five minutes was galloping her into the town.\n\nThree Uhlans were at the mouth of the main street, their horses tethered, and they gossiping together, each with a pipe as long as my sabre. I saw them well in the light of an open door, but of me they could have seen only the flash of Violette's grey side and the black flutter of my cloak. A moment later I flew through a stream of them rushing from an open gateway. Violette's shoulder sent one of them reeling, and I stabbed at another but missed him. Pang, pang, went two carbines, but I had flown round the curve of the street, and never so much as heard the hiss of the balls. Ah, we were great, both Violette and I. She lay down to it like a coursed hare, the fire flying from her hoofs. I stood in my stirrups and brandished my sword. Someone sprang for my bridle. I sliced him through the arm, and I heard him howling behind me. Two horsemen closed upon me. I cut one down and outpaced the other. A minute later I was clear of the town, and flying down a broad white road with the black poplars on either side. For a time I heard the rattle of hoofs behind me, but they died and died until I could not tell them from the throbbing of my own heart. Soon I pulled up and listened, but all was silent. They had given up the chase.\n\nWell, the first thing that I did was to dismount and to lead my mare into a small wood through which a stream ran. There I watered her and rubbed her down, giving her two pieces of sugar soaked in cognac from my flask. She was spent from the sharp chase, but it was wonderful to see how she came round with a half-hour's rest. When my thighs closed upon her again, I could tell by the spring and the swing of her that it would not be her fault if I did not win my way safe to Paris.\n\nI must have been well within the enemy's lines now, for I heard a number of them shouting one of their rough drinking songs out of a house by the roadside, and I went round by the fields to avoid it. At another time two men came out into the moonlight (for by this time it was a cloudless night) and shouted something in German, but I galloped on without heeding them, and they were afraid to fire, for their own hussars are dressed exactly as I was. It is best to take no notice at these times, and then they put you down as a deaf man.\n\nIt was a lovely moon, and every tree threw a black bar across the road. I could see the countryside just as if it were daytime, and very peaceful it looked, save that there was a great fire raging somewhere in the north. In the silence of the night-time, and with the knowledge that danger was in front and behind me, the sight of that great distant fire was very striking and awesome. But I am not easily clouded, for I have seen too many singular things, so I hummed a tune between my teeth and thought of little Lisette, whom I might see in Paris. My mind was full of her when, trotting round a corner, I came straight upon half-a-dozen German dragoons, who were sitting round a brushwood fire by the roadside.\n\nI am an excellent soldier. I do not say this because I am prejudiced in my own favour, but because I really am so. I can weigh every chance in a moment, and decide with as much certainty as though I had brooded for a week. Now I saw like a flash that, come what might, I should be chased, and on a horse which had already done a long twelve leagues. But it was better to be chased onwards than to be chased back. On this moonlit night, with fresh horses behind me, I must take my risk in either case; but if I were to shake them off, I preferred that it should be near Senlis than near Soissons.\n\nAll this flashed on me as if by instinct, you understand. My eyes had hardly rested on the bearded faces under the brass helmets before my rowels had touched Violette, and she was off with a rattle like a pas-de-charge. Oh, the shouting and rushing and stamping from behind us! Three of them fired and three swung themselves on to their horses. A bullet rapped on the crupper of my saddle with a noise like a stick on a door. Violette sprang madly forward, and I thought she had been wounded, but it was only a graze above the near fore-fetlock. Ah, the dear little mare, how I loved her when I felt her settle down into that long, easy gallop of hers, her hoofs going like a Spanish girl's castanets. I could not hold myself. I turned on my saddle and shouted and raved, 'Vive l'Empereur!' I screamed and laughed at the gust of oaths that came back to me.\n\nBut it was not over yet. If she had been fresh she might have gained a mile in five. Now she could only hold her own with a very little over. There was one of them, a young boy of an officer, who was better mounted than the others. He drew ahead with every stride. Two hundred yards behind him were two troopers, but I saw every time that I glanced round that the distance between them was increasing. The other three who had waited to shoot were a long way in the rear.\n\nThe officer's mount was a bay\u2014a fine horse, though not to be spoken of with Violette; yet it was a powerful brute, and it seemed to me that in a few miles its freshness might tell. I waited until the lad was a long way in front of his comrades, and then I eased my mare down a little\u2014a very, very little, so that he might think he was really catching me. When he came within pistol-shot of me I drew and cocked my own pistol, and laid my chin upon my shoulder to see what he would do. He did not offer to fire, and I soon discerned the cause. The silly boy had taken his pistols from his holsters when he had camped for the night. He wagged his sword at me now and roared some threat or other. He did not seem to understand that he was at my mercy. I eased Violette down until there was not the length of a long lance between the grey tail and the bay muzzle.\n\n'Rendezvous!' he yelled.\n\n'I must compliment monsieur upon his French,' said I, resting the barrel of my pistol upon my bridle-arm, which I have always found best when shooting from the saddle. I aimed at his face, and could see, even in the moonlight, how white he grew when he understood that it was all up with him. But even as my finger pressed the trigger I thought of his mother, and I put my ball through his horse's shoulder. I fear he hurt himself in the fall, for it was a fearful crash, but I had my letter to think of, so I stretched the mare into a gallop once more.\n\nBut they were not so easily shaken off, these brigands. The two troopers thought no more of their young officer than if he had been a recruit thrown in the riding-school. They left him to the others and thundered on after me. I had pulled up on the brow of a hill, thinking that I had heard the last of them; but, my faith, I soon saw there was no time for loitering, so away we went, the mare tossing her head and I my shako, to show what we thought of two dragoons who tried to catch a hussar. But at this moment, even while I laughed at the thought, my heart stood still within me, for there at the end of the long white road was a black patch of cavalry waiting to receive me. To a young soldier it might have seemed the shadow of the trees, but to me it was a troop of hussars, and, turn where I could, death seemed to be waiting for me.\n\nWell, I had the dragoons behind me and the hussars in front. Never since Moscow have I seemed to be in such peril. But for the honour of the brigade I had rather be cut down by a light cavalryman than by a heavy. I never drew bridle, therefore, or hesitated for an instant, but I let Violette have her head. I remember that I tried to pray as I rode, but I am a little out of practice at such things, and the only words I could remember were the prayer for fine weather which we used at the school on the evening before holidays. Even this seemed better than nothing, and I was pattering it out, when suddenly I heard French voices in front of me. Ah, mon Dieu, but the joy went through my heart like a musket-ball. They were ours\u2014our own dear little rascals from the corps of Marmont. Round whisked my two dragoons and galloped for their lives, with the moon gleaming on their brass helmets, while I trotted up to my friends with no undue haste, for I would have them understand that though a hussar may fly, it is not in his nature to fly very fast. Yet I fear that Violette's heaving flanks and foam-spattered muzzle gave the lie to my careless bearing.\n\nWho should be at the head of the troop but old Bouvet, whom I saved at Leipzig! When he saw me his little pink eyes filled with tears, and, indeed, I could not but shed a few myself at the sight of his joy. I told him of my mission, but he laughed when I said that I must pass through Senlis.\n\n'The enemy is there,' said he. 'You cannot go.'\n\n'I prefer to go where the enemy is,' I answered.\n\n'But why not go straight to Paris with your despatch? Why should you choose to pass through the one place where you are almost sure to be taken or killed?'\n\n'A soldier does not choose\u2014he obeys,' said I, just as I had heard Napoleon say it.\n\nOld Bouvet laughed in his wheezy way, until I had to give my moustachios a twirl and look him up and down in a manner which brought him to reason.\n\n'Well', said he, 'you had best come along with us, for we are all bound for Senlis. Our orders are to reconnoitre the place. A squadron of Poniatowski's Polish Lancers are in front of us. If you must ride through it, it is possible that we may be able to go with you.'\n\nSo away we went, jingling and clanking through the quiet night until we came up with the Poles\u2014fine old soldiers all of them, though a trifle heavy for their horses. It was a treat to see them, for they could not have carried themselves better if they had belonged to my own brigade. We rode together, until in the early morning we saw the lights of Senlis. A peasant was coming along with a cart, and from him we learned how things were going there.\n\nHis information was certain, for his brother was the Mayor's coachman, and he had spoken with him late the night before. There was a single squadron of Cossacks\u2014or a polk, as they call it in their frightful language\u2014quartered upon the Mayor's house, which stands at the corner of the market-place, and is the largest building in the town. A whole division of Prussion infantry was encamped in the woods to the north, but only the Cossacks were in Senlis. Ah, what a chance to avenge ourselves upon these barbarians, whose cruelty to our poor countryfolk was the talk at every camp fire.\n\nWe were into the town like a torrent, hacked down the vedettes, rode over the guard, and were smashing in the doors of the Mayor's house before they understood that there was a Frenchman within twenty miles of them. We saw horrid heads at the windows\u2014heads bearded to the temples, with tangled hair and sheepskin caps, and silly, gaping mouths. 'Hourra! Hourra!' they shrieked, and fired with their carbines, but our fellows were into the house and at their throats before they had wiped the sleep out of their eyes. It was dreadful to see how the Poles flung themselves upon them, like starving wolves upon a herd of fat bucks\u2014for, as you know, the Poles have a blood feud against the Cossacks. The most were killed in the upper rooms, whither they had fled for shelter, and the blood was pouring down into the hall like rain from a roof. They are terrible soldiers, these Poles, though I think they are a trifle heavy for their horses. Man for man, they are as big as Kellerman's cuirassiers. Their equipment is, of course, much lighter, since they are without the cuirass, back-plate, and helmet.\n\nWell, it was at this point that I made an error\u2014a very serious error it must be admitted. Up to this moment I had carried out my mission in a manner which only my modesty prevents me from describing as remarkable. But now I did that which an official would condemn and a soldier excuse.\n\nThere is no doubt that the mare was spent, but still it is true that I might have galloped on through Senlis and reached the country, where I should have had no enemy between me and Paris. But what hussar can ride past a fight and never draw rein? It is to ask too much of him. Besides, I thought that if Violette had an hour of rest I might have three hours the better at the other end. Then on the top of it came those heads at the windows, with their sheepskin hats and their barbarous cries. I sprang from my saddle, threw Violette's bridle over a rail-post, and ran into the house with the rest. It is true that I was too late to be of service, and that I was nearly wounded by a lance-thrust from one of these dying savages. Still, it is a pity to miss even the smallest affair, for one never knows what opportunity for advancement may present itself. I have seen more soldierly work in outpost skirmishes and little gallop-and-hack affairs of the kind than in any of the Emperor's big battles.\n\nWhen the house was cleared I took a bucket of water out for Violette, and our peasant guide showed me where the good Mayor kept his fodder. My faith, but the little sweetheart was ready for it. Then I sponged down her legs, and leaving her still tethered I went back into the house to find a mouthful for myself, so that I should not need to halt again until I was in Paris.\n\nAnd now I come to the part of my story which may seem singular to you, although I could tell you at least ten things every bit as queer which have happened to me in my lifetime. You can understand that, to a man who spends his life in scouting and vedette duties on the bloody ground which lies between two great armies, there are many chances of strange experiences. I'll tell you, however, exactly what occurred.\n\nOld Bouvet was waiting in the passage when I entered, and he asked me whether we might not crack a bottle of wine together. 'My faith, we must not be long,' said he. 'There are ten thousand of Theilmann's Prussians in the woods up yonder.'\n\n'Where is the wine?' I asked.\n\n'Ah, you may trust two hussars to find where the wine is,' said he, and taking a candle in his hand, he led the way down the stone stairs into the kitchen.\n\nWhen we got there we found another door, which opened on to a winding stair with the cellar at the bottom. The Cossacks had been there before us, as was easily seen by the broken bottles littered all over it. However, the Mayor was a bon-vivant, and I do not wish to have a better set of bins to pick from. Chambertin, Graves, Alicant, white wine and red, sparkling and still, they lay in pyramids peeping coyly out of sawdust. Old Bouvet stood with his candle looking here and peeping there, purring in his throat like a cat before a milk-pail. He had picked upon a Burgundy at last, and had his hand outstretched to the bottle when there came a roar of musketry from above us, a rush of feet, and such a yelping and screaming as I have never listened to. The Prussians were upon us!\n\nBouvet is a brave man: I will say that for him. He flashed out his sword and away he clattered up the stone steps, his spurs clinking as he ran. I followed him, but just as we came out into the kitchen passage a tremendous shout told us that the house had been recaptured.\n\n'It is all over,' I cried, grasping at Bouvet's sleeve.\n\n'There is one more to die,' he shouted, and away he went like a madman up the second stair. In effect, I should have gone to my death also had I been in his place, for he had done very wrong in not throwing out his scouts to warn him if the Germans advanced upon him. For an instant I was about to rush up with him, and then I bethought myself that, after all, I had my own mission to think of, and that if I were taken the important letter of the Emperor would be sacrificed. I let Bouvet die alone, therefore, and I went down into the cellar again, closing the door behind me.\n\nWell, it was not a very rosy prospect down there either. Bouvet had dropped the candle when the alarm came, and I, pawing about in the darkness, could find nothing but broken bottles. At last I came upon the candle, which had rolled under the curve of a cask, but, try as I would with my tinderbox, I could not light it. The reason was that the wick had been wet in a puddle of wine, so suspecting that this might be the case, I cut the end off with my sword. Then I found that it lighted easily enough. But what to do I could not imagine. The scoundrels upstairs were shouting themselves hoarse, several hundred of them from the sound, and it was clear that some of them would soon want to moisten their throats. There would be an end to a dashing soldier, and of the mission and of the medal. I thought of my mother and I thought of the Emperor. It made me weep to think that the one would lose so excellent a son and the other the best light cavalry officer he ever had since Lasalle's time. But presently I dashed the tears from my eyes. 'Courage!' I cried, striking myself upon the chest. 'Courage, my brave boy. Is it possible that one who has come safely from Moscow without so much as a frost-bite will die in a French wine-cellar?' At the thought I was up on my feet and clutching at the letter in my tunic, for the crackle of it gave me courage.\n\nMy first plan was to set fire to the house, in the hope of escaping in the confusion. My second to get into an empty wine-cask. I was looking round to see if I could find one, when suddenly, in the corner, I espied a little low door, painted of the same grey colour as the wall, so that it was only a man with quick sight who would have noticed it. I pushed against it, and at first I imagined that it was locked. Presently, however, it gave a little, and then I understood that it was held by the pressure of something on the other side. I put my feet against a hogshead of wine, and I gave such a push that the door flew open and I came down with a crash upon my back, the candle flying out of my hands, so that I found myself in darkness once more. I picked myself up and stared through the black archway into the gloom beyond.\n\nThere was a slight ray of light coming from some slit or grating. The dawn had broken outside, and I could dimly see the long, curving sides of several huge casks, which made me think that perhaps this was where the Mayor kept his reserves of wine while they were maturing. At any rate, it seemed to be a safer hiding-place than the outer cellar, so gathering up my candle, I was just closing the door behind me, when I suddenly saw something which filled me with amazement, and even, I confess, with the smallest little touch of fear.\n\nI have said that at the further end of the cellar there was a dim grey fan of light striking downwards from somewhere near the roof. Well, as I peered through the darkness, I suddenly saw a great, tall man skip into this belt of daylight, and then out again into the darkness at the further end. My word, I gave such a start that my shako nearly broke its chin-strap! It was only a glance, but, none the less, I had time to see that the fellow had a hairy Cossack cap on his head, and that he was a great, long-legged, broad-shouldered brigand, with a sabre at his waist. My faith, even Etienne Gerard was a little staggered at being left alone with such a creature in the dark.\n\nBut only for a moment. 'Courage!' I thought. 'Am I not a hussar, a brigadier, too, at the age of thirty-one, and the chosen messenger of the Emperor?' After all, this skulker had more cause to be afraid of me than I of him. And then suddenly I understood that he was afraid\u2014horribly afraid. I could read it from his quick step and his bent shoulders as he ran among the barrels, like a rat making for its hole. And, of course, it must have been he who had held the door against me, and not some packing-case or wine-cask as I had imagined. He was the pursued then, and I the pursuer. Aha, I felt my whiskers bristle as I advanced upon him through the darkness! He would find that he had no chicken to deal with, this robber from the North. For the moment I was magnificent.\n\nAt first I had feared to light my candle lest I should make a mark of myself, but now, after cracking my shin over a box, and catching my spurs in some canvas, I thought the bolder course the wiser. I lit it, therefore, and then I advanced with long strides, my sword in my hand. 'Come out, you rascal!' I cried. 'Nothing can save you. You will at last meet with your deserts.'\n\nI held my candle high, and presently I caught a glimpse of the man's head staring at me over a barrel. He had a gold chevron on his black cap, and the expression of his face told me in an instant that he was an officer and a man of refinement.\n\n'Monsieur,' he cried, in excellent French, 'I surrender myself on a promise of quarter. But if I do not have your promise, I will then sell my life as dearly as I can.'\n\n'Sir,' said I, 'a Frenchman knows how to treat an unfortunate enemy. Your life is safe.' With that he handed his sword over the top of the barrel, and I bowed with the candle on my heart. 'Whom have I the honour of capturing?' I asked.\n\n'I am the Count Boutkine, of the Emperor's own Don Cossacks,' said he. 'I came out with my troop to reconnoitre Senlis, and as we found no sign of your people we determined to spend the night here.'\n\n'And would it be an indiscretion,' I asked, 'if I were to inquire how you came into the back cellar?'\n\n'Nothing more simple,' said he. 'It was our intention to start at early dawn. Feeling chilled after dressing, I thought that a cup of wine would do me no harm, so I came down to see what I could find. As I was rummaging about, the house was suddenly carried by assault so rapidly that by the time I had climbed the stairs it was all over. It only remained for me to save myself, so I came down here and hid myself in the back cellar, where you have found me.'\n\nI thought of how old Bouvet had behaved under the same conditions, and the tears sprang to my eyes as I contemplated the glory of France. Then I had to consider what I should do next. It was clear that this Russian Count, being in the back cellar while we were in the front one, had not heard the sounds which would have told him that the house was once again in the hands of his own allies. If he should once understand this the tables would be turned, and I should be his prisoner instead of he being mine. What was I to do? I was at my wits' end, when suddenly there came to me an idea so brilliant that I could not but be amazed at my own invention.\n\n'Count Boutkine,' said I, 'I find myself in a most difficult position.'\n\n'And why?' he asked.\n\n'Because I have promised you your life.'\n\nHis jaw dropped a little.\n\n'You would not withdraw your promise?' he cried.\n\n'If the worst comes to the worst I can die in your defence,' said I; 'but the difficulties are great.'\n\n'What is it, then?' he asked.\n\n'I will be frank with you,' said I. 'You must know that our fellows, and especially the Poles, are so incensed against the Cossacks that the mere sight of the uniform drives them mad. They precipitate themselves instantly upon the wearer and tear him limb from limb. Even their officers cannot restrain them.'\n\nThe Russian grew pale at my words and the way in which I said them.\n\n'But this is terrible,' said he.\n\n'Horrible!' said I. 'If we were to go up together at this moment I cannot promise how far I could protect you.'\n\n'I am in your hands,' he cried. 'What would you suggest that we should do? Would it not be best that I should remain here?'\n\n'That worst of all.'\n\n'And why?'\n\n'Because our fellows will ransack the house presently, and then you would be cut to pieces. No, no, I must go and break it to them. But even then, when once they see that accursed uniform, I do not know what may happen.'\n\n'Should I then take the uniform off?'\n\n'Excellent!' I cried. 'Hold, we have it! You will take your uniform off and put on mine. That will make you sacred to every French soldier.'\n\n'It is not the French I fear so much as the Poles.'\n\n'But my uniform will be a safeguard against either.'\n\n'How can I thank you?' he cried. 'But you\u2014what are you to wear?'\n\n'I will wear yours.'\n\n'And perhaps fall a victim to your generosity?'\n\n'It is my duty to take the risk,' I answered; 'but I have no fears. I will ascend in your uniform. A hundred swords will be turned upon me. \"Hold!\" I will shout, \"I am the Brigadier Gerard!\" Then they will see my face. They will know me. And I will tell them about you. Under the shield of these clothes you will be sacred.'\n\nHis fingers trembled with eagerness as he tore off his tunic. His boots and breeches were much like my own, so there was no need to change them, but I gave him my hussar jacket, my dolman, my shako, my sword-belt, and my sabre-tasche, while I took in exchange his high sheepskin cap with the gold chevron, his fur-trimmed coat, and his crooked sword. Be it well understood that in changing the tunics I did not forget to change my thrice-precious letter also from my old one to my new.\n\n'With your leave,' said I, 'I shall now bind you to a barrel.'\n\nHe made a great fuss over this, but I have learned in my soldiering never to throw away chances, and how could I tell that he might not, when my back was turned, see how the matter really stood, and break in upon my plans? He was leaning against a barrel at the time, so I ran six times round it with a rope, and then tied it with a big knot behind. If he wished to come upstairs he would, at least, have to carry a thousand litres of good French wine for a knapsack. I then shut the door of the back cellar behind me, so that he might not hear what was going forward, and tossing the candle away I ascended the kitchen stair.\n\nThere were only about twenty steps, and yet, while I came up them, I seemed to have time to think of everything that I had ever hoped to do. It was the same feeling that I had at Eylau when I lay with my broken leg and saw the horse artillery galloping down upon me. Of course, I knew that if I were taken I should be shot instantly as being disguised within the enemy's lines. Still, it was a glorious death\u2014in the direct service of the Emperor\u2014and I reflected that there could not be less than five lines, and perhaps seven, in the Moniteur about me. Palaret had eight lines, and I am sure that he had not so fine a career.\n\nWhen I made my way out into the hall, with all the nonchalance in my face and manner that I could assume, the very first thing that I saw was Bouvet's dead body, with his legs drawn up and a broken sword in his hand. I could see by the black smudge that he had been shot at close quarters. I should have wished to salute as I went by, for he was a gallant man, but I feared lest I should be seen, and so I passed on.\n\nThe front of the hall was full of Prussian infantry, who were knocking loopholes in the wall, as though they expected that there might be yet another attack. Their officer, a little man, was running about giving directions. They were all too busy to take much notice of me, but another officer, who was standing by the door with a long pipe in his mouth, strode across and clapped me on the shoulder, pointing to the dead bodies of our poor hussars, and saying something which was meant for a jest, for his long beard opened and showed every fang in his head. I laughed heartily also, and said the only Russian words that I knew. I learned them from little Sophie, at Wilna, and they meant: 'If the night is fine we shall meet under the oak tree, but if it rains we shall meet in the byre.' It was all the same to this German, however, and I have no doubt that he gave me credit for saying something very witty indeed, for he roared laughing, and slapped me on my shoulder again. I nodded to him and marched out of the hall-door as coolly as if I were the commandant of the garrison.\n\nThere were a hundred horses tethered about outside, most of them belonging to the Poles and hussars. Good little Violette was waiting with the others, and she whinnied when she saw me coming towards her. But I would not mount her. No. I was much too cunning for that. On the contrary, I chose the most shaggy little Cossack horse that I could see, and I sprang upon it with as much assurance as though it had belonged to my father before me. It had a great bag of plunder slung over its neck, and this I laid upon Violette's back, and led her along beside me. Never have you seen such a picture of the Cossack returning from the foray. It was superb.\n\nWell, the town was full of Prussians by this time. They lined the side-walks and pointed me out to each other, saying, as I could judge from their gestures, 'There goes one of those devils of Cossacks. They are the boys for foraging and plunder.'\n\nOne or two officers spoke to me with an air of authority, but I shook my head and smiled, and said, 'If the night is fine we shall meet under the oak tree, but if it rains we shall meet in the byre,' at which they shrugged their shoulders and gave the matter up. In this way I worked along until I was beyond the northern outskirt of the town. I could see in the roadway two lancer vedettes with their black and white pennons, and I knew that when I was once past these I should be a free man once more. I made my pony trot, therefore, Violette rubbing her nose against my knee all the time, and looking up at me to ask how she had deserved that this hairy doormat of a creature should be preferred to her. I was not more than a hundred yards from the Uhlans when, suddenly, you can imagine my feelings when I saw a real Cossack coming galloping along the road towards me.\n\nAh, my friend, you who read this, if you have any heart, you will feel for a man like me, who had gone through so many dangers and trials, only at this very last moment to be confronted with one which appeared to put an end to everything. I will confess that for a moment I lost heart, and was inclined to throw myself down in my despair, and to cry out that I had been betrayed. But, no; I was not beaten even now. I opened two buttons of my tunic so that I might get easily at the Emperor's message, for it was my fixed determination when all hope was gone to swallow the letter and then die sword in hand. Then I felt that my little, crooked sword was loose in its sheath, and I trotted on to where the vedettes were waiting. They seemed inclined to stop me, but I pointed to the other Cossack, who was still a couple of hundred yards off, and they, understanding that I merely wished to meet him, let me pass with a salute.\n\nI dug my spurs into my pony then, for if I were only far enough from the lancers I thought I might manage the Cossack without much difficulty. He was an officer, a large, bearded man, with a gold chevron in his cap, just the same as mine. As I advanced he unconsciously aided me by pulling up his horse, so that I had a fine start of the vedettes. On I came for him, and I could see wonder changing to suspicion in his brown eyes as he looked at me and at my pony, and at my equipment. I do not know what it was that was wrong, but he saw something which was as it should not be. He shouted out a question, and then when I gave no answer he pulled out his sword. I was glad in my heart to see him do so, for I had always rather fight than cut down an unsuspecting enemy. Now I made at him full tilt, and, parrying his cut, I got my point in just under the fourth button of his tunic. Down he went, and the weight of him nearly took me off my horse before I could disengage. I never glanced at him to see if he were living or dead, for I sprang off my pony and on to Violette, with a shake of my bridle and a kiss of my hand to the two Uhlans behind me. They galloped after me, shouting, but Violette had had her rest, and was just as fresh as when she started. I took the first side road to the west and then the first to the south, which would take me away from the enemy's country. On we went and on, every stride taking me further from my foes and nearer to my friends. At last, when I reached the end of a long stretch of road, and looking back from it could see no sign of any pursuers, I understood that my troubles were over.\n\nAnd it gave me a glow of happiness, as I rode, to think that I had done to the letter what the Emperor had ordered. What would he say when he saw me? What could he say which would do justice to the incredible way in which I had risen above every danger? He had ordered me to go through Sermoise, Soissons, and Senlis, little dreaming that they were all three occupied by the enemy. And yet I had done it. I had borne his letter in safety through each of these towns. Hussars, dragoons, lancers, Cossacks, and infantry\u2014I had run the gauntlet of all of them, and had come out unharmed.\n\nWhen I had got as far as Dammartin I caught a first glimpse of our own outposts. There was a troop of dragoons in a field, and of course I could see from the horsehair crests that they were French. I galloped towards them in order to ask them if all was safe between there and Paris, and as I rode I felt such a pride at having won my way back to my friends again, that I could not refrain from waving my sword in the air.\n\nAt this a young officer galloped out from among the dragoons, also brandishing his sword, and it warmed my heart to think that he should come riding with such ardour and enthusiasm to greet me. I made Violette caracole, and as we came together I brandished my sword more gallantly than ever, but you can imagine my feelings when he suddenly made a cut at me which would certainly have taken my head off if I had not fallen forward with my nose in Violette's mane. My faith, it whistled just over my cap like an east wind. Of course, it came from this accursed Cossack uniform which, in my excitement, I had forgotten all about, and this young dragoon had imagined that I was some Russian champion who was challenging the French cavalry. My word, he was a frightened man when he understood how near he had been to killing the celebrated Brigadier Gerard.\n\nWell, the road was clear, and about three o'clock in the afternoon I was at St Denis, though it took me a long two hours to get from there to Paris, for the road was blocked with commissariat waggons and guns of the artillery reserve, which was going north to Marmont and Mortier. You cannot conceive the excitement which my appearance in such a costume made in Paris, and when I came to the Rue de Rivoli I should think I had a quarter of a mile of folk riding or running behind me. Word had got about from the dragoons (two of whom had come with me), and everybody knew about my adventures and how I had come by my uniform. It was a triumph\u2014men shouting and women waving their handkerchiefs and blowing kisses from the windows.\n\nAlthough I am a man singularly free from conceit, still I must confess that, on this one occasion, I could not restrain myself from showing that this reception gratified me. The Russian's coat had hung very loose upon me, but now I threw out my chest until it was as tight as a sausage-skin. And my little sweetheart of a mare tossed her mane and pawed with her front hoofs, frisking her tail about as though she said, 'We've done it together this time. It is to us that commissions should be intrusted.' When I kissed her between the nostrils as I dismounted at the gate of the Tuileries, there was as much shouting as if a bulletin had been read from the Grand Army.\n\nI was hardly in costume to visit a King; but, after all, if one has a soldierly figure one can do without all that. I was shown up straight away to Joseph, whom I had often seen in Spain. He seemed as stout, as quiet, and as amiable as ever. Talleyrand was in the room with him, or I suppose I should call him the Duke of Benevento, but I confess that I like old names best. He read my letter when Joseph Buonaparte handed it to him, and then he looked at me with the strangest expression in those funny little, twinkling eyes of his.\n\n'Were you the only messenger?' he asked.\n\n'There was one other, sir,' said I. 'Major Charpentier, of the Horse Grenadiers.'\n\n'He has not yet arrived,' said the King of Spain.\n\n'If you had seen the legs of his horse, sire, you would not wonder at it,' I remarked.\n\n'There may be other reasons,' said Talleyrand, and he gave that singular smile of his.\n\nWell, they paid me a compliment or two, though they might have said a good deal more and yet have said too little. I bowed myself out, and very glad I was to get away, for I hate a Court as much as I love a camp. Away I went to my old friend Chaubert, in the Rue Miromesnil, and there I got his hussar uniform, which fitted me very well. He and Lisette and I supped together in his rooms, and all my dangers were forgotten. In the morning I found Violette ready for another twenty-league stretch. It was my intention to return instantly to the Emperor's headquarters, for I was, as you may well imagine, impatient to hear his words of praise, and to receive my reward.\n\nI need not say that I rode back by a safe route, for I had seen quite enough of Uhlans and Cossacks. I passed through Meaux and Ch\u00e2teau Thierry, and so in the evening I arrived at Rheims, where Napoleon was still lying. The bodies of our fellows and of St Prest's Russians had all been buried, and I could see changes in the camp also. The soldiers looked better cared for; some of the cavalry had received remounts, and everything was in excellent order. It was wonderful what a good general can effect in a couple of days.\n\nWhen I came to the headquarters I was shown straight into the Emperor's room. He was drinking coffee at a writing-table, with a big plan drawn out on paper in front of him. Berthier and Macdonald were leaning, one over each shoulder, and he was talking so quickly that I don't believe that either of them could catch a half of what he was saying. But when his eyes fell upon me he dropped the pen on to the chart, and he sprang up with a look in his pale face which struck me cold.\n\n'What the deuce are you doing here?' he shouted. When he was angry he had a voice like a peacock.\n\n'I have the honour to report to you, sire,' said I, 'that I have delivered your despatch safely to the King of Spain.'\n\n'What!' he yelled, and his two eyes transfixed me like bayonets. Oh, those dreadful eyes, shifting from grey to blue, like steel in the sunshine. I can see them now when I have a bad dream.\n\n'What has become of Charpentier?' he asked.\n\n'He is captured,' said Macdonald.\n\n'By whom?'\n\n'The Russians.'\n\n'The Cossacks?'\n\n'No, a single Cossack.'\n\n'He gave himself up?'\n\n'Without resistance.'\n\n'He is an intelligent officer. You will see that the medal of honour is awarded to him.'\n\nWhen I heard those words I had to rub my eyes to make sure that I was awake.\n\n'As to you,' cried the Emperor, taking a step forward as if he would have struck me, 'you brain of a hare, what do you think that you were sent upon this mission for? Do you conceive that I would send a really important message by such a hand as yours, and through every village which the enemy holds? How you came through them passes my comprehension; but if your fellow-messenger had had but as little sense as you, my whole plan of campaign would have been ruined. Can you not see, coglione, that this message contained false news, and that it was intended to deceive the enemy whilst I put a very different scheme into execution?'\n\nWhen I heard those cruel words and saw the angry, white face which glared at me, I had to hold the back of a chair, for my mind was failing me and my knees would hardly bear me up. But then I took courage as I reflected that I was an honourable gentleman, and that my whole life had been spent in toiling for this man and for my beloved country.\n\n'Sire,' said I, and the tears would trickle down my cheeks whilst I spoke, 'when you are dealing with a man like me you would find it wiser to deal openly. Had I known that you had wished the despatch to fall into the hands of the enemy, I would have seen that it came there. As I believed that I was to guard it, I was prepared to sacrifice my life for it. I do not believe, sire, that any man in the world ever met with more toils and perils than I have done in trying to carry out what I thought was your will.'\n\nI dashed the tears from my eyes as I spoke, and with such fire and spirit as I could command I gave him an account of it all, of my dash through Soissons, my brush with the dragoons, my adventure in Senlis, my rencontre with Count Boutkine in the cellar, my disguise, my meeting with the Cossack officer, my flight, and how at the last moment I was nearly cut down by a French dragoon. The Emperor, Berthier, and Macdonald listened with astonishment on their faces. When I had finished Napoleon stepped forward and he pinched me by the ear.\n\n'There, there!' said he. 'Forget anything which I may have said. I would have done better to trust you. You may go.'\n\nI turned to the door, and my hand was upon the handle, when the Emperor called upon me to stop.\n\n'You will see,' said he, turning to the Duke of Tarentum, 'that Brigadier Gerard has the special medal of honour, for I believe that if he has the thickest head he has also the stoutest heart in my army.'" + }, + { + "title": "HOW THE BRIGADIER WAS TEMPTED BY THE DEVIL", + "text": "The spring is at hand, my friends. I can see the little green spear-heads breaking out once more upon the chestnut trees, and the cafe tables have all been moved into the sunshine. It is more pleasant to sit there, and yet I do not wish to tell my little stories to the whole town. You have heard my doings as a lieutenant, as a squadron officer, as a colonel, as the chief of a brigade. But now I suddenly become something higher and more important. I become history.\n\nIf you have read of those closing years of the life of the Emperor which were spent in the Island of St Helena, you will remember that, again and again, he implored permission to send out one single letter which should be unopened by those who held him. Many times he made this request, and even went so far as to promise that he would provide for his own wants and cease to be an expense to the British Government if it were granted to him. But his guardians knew that he was a terrible man, this pale, fat gentleman in the straw hat, and they dared not grant him what he asked. Many have wondered who it was to whom he could have had anything so secret to say. Some have supposed that it was to his wife, and some that it was to his father-in-law; some that it was to the Emperor Alexander, and some to Marshal Soult. What will you think of me, my friends, when I tell you it was to me\u2014to me, the Brigadier Gerard\u2014that the Emperor wished to write? Yes, humble as you see me, with only my 100 francs a month of half-pay between me and hunger, it is none the less true that I was always in the Emperor's mind, and that he would have given his left hand for five minutes' talk with me. I will tell you tonight how this came about.\n\nIt was after the Battle of F\u00e9re-Champenoise where the conscripts in their blouses and their sabots made such a fine stand, that we, the more long-headed of us, began to understand that it was all over with us. Our reserve ammunition had been taken in the battle, and we were left with silent guns and empty caissons. Our cavalry, too, was in a deplorable condition, and my own brigade had been destroyed in the charge at Craonne. Then came the news that the enemy had taken Paris, that the citizens had mounted the white cockade; and finally, most terrible of all, that Marmont and his corps had gone over to the Bourbons. We looked at each other and asked how many more of our generals were going to turn against us. Already there were Jourdan, Marmont, Murat, Bernadotte, and Jomini\u2014though nobody minded much about Jomini, for his pen was always sharper than his sword. We had been ready to fight Europe, but it looked now as though we were to fight Europe and half of France as well.\n\nWe had come to Fontainebleau by a long, forced march, and there we were assembled, the poor remnants of us, the corps of Ney, the corps of my cousin Gerard, and the corps of Macdonald: twenty-five thousand in all, with seven thousand of the guard. But we had our prestige, which was worth fifty thousand, and our Emperor, who was worth fifty thousand more. He was always among us, serene, smiling, confident, taking his snuff and playing with his little riding-whip. Never in the days of his greatest victories have I admired him as much as I did during the Campaign of France.\n\nOne evening I was with a few of my officers, drinking a glass of wine of Suresnes. I mention that it was wine of Suresnes just to show you that times were not very good with us. Suddenly I was disturbed by a message from Berthier that he wished to see me. When I speak of my old comrades-in-arms, I will, with your permission, leave out all the fine foreign titles which they had picked up during the wars. They are excellent for a Court, but you never heard them in the camp, for we could not afford to do away with our Ney, our Rapp, or our Soult\u2014names which were as stirring to our ears as the blare of our trumpets blowing the reveille. It was Berthier, then, who sent to say that he wished to see me.\n\nHe had a suite of rooms at the end of the gallery of Francis the First, not very far from those of the Emperor. In the ante-chamber were waiting two men whom I knew well: Colonel Despienne, of the 57th of the line, and Captain Tremeau, of the Voltigeurs. They were both old soldiers\u2014Tremeau had carried a musket in Egypt\u2014and they were also both famous in the army for their courage and their skill with weapons. Tremeau had become a little stiff in the wrist, but Despienne was capable at his best of making me exert myself. He was a tiny fellow, about three inches short of the proper height for a man\u2014he was exactly three inches shorter than myself\u2014but both with the sabre and with the small-sword he had several times almost held his own against me when we used to exhibit at Verron's Hall of Arms in the Palais Royal. You may think that it made us sniff something in the wind when we found three such men called together into one room. You cannot see the lettuce and dressing without suspecting a salad.\n\n'Name of a pipe!' said Tremeau, in his barrack-room fashion. 'Are we then expecting three champions of the Bourbons?'\n\nTo all of us the idea appeared not improbable. Certainly in the whole army we were the very three who might have been chosen to meet them.\n\n'The Prince of Neufch\u00e2tel desires to speak with the Brigadier Gerard,' said a footman, appearing at the door.\n\nIn I went, leaving my two companions consumed with impatience behind me. It was a small room, but very gorgeously furnished. Berthier was seated opposite to me at a little table, with a pen in his hand and a note-book open before him. He was looking weary and slovenly\u2014very different from that Berthier who used to give the fashion to the army, and who had so often set us poorer officers tearing our hair by trimming his pelisse with fur one campaign, and with grey astrakhan the next. On his clean-shaven, comely face there was an expression of trouble, and he looked at me as I entered his chamber in a way which had in it something furtive and displeasing.\n\n'Chief of Brigade Gerard!' said he.\n\n'At your service, your Highness!' I answered.\n\n'I must ask you, before I go further, to promise me, upon your honour as a gentleman and a soldier, that what is about to pass between us shall never be mentioned to any third person.'\n\nMy word, this was a fine beginning! I had no choice but to give the promise required.\n\n'You must know, then, that it is all over with the Emperor,' said he, looking down at the table and speaking very slowly, as if he had a hard task in getting out the words. 'Jourdan at Rouen and Marmont at Paris have both mounted the white cockade, and it is rumoured that Talleyrand has talked Ney into doing the same. It is evident that further resistance is useless, and that it can only bring misery upon our country. I wish to ask you, therefore, whether you are prepared to join me in laying hands upon the Emperor's person, and bringing the war to a conclusion by delivering him over to the allies?'\n\nI assure you that when I heard this infamous proposition put forward by the man who had been the earliest friend of the Emperor, and who had received greater favours from him than any of his followers, I could only stand and stare at him in amazement. For his part he tapped his pen-handle against his teeth, and looked at me with a slanting head.\n\n'Well?' he asked.\n\n'I am a little deaf on one side,' said I, coldly. 'There are some things which I cannot hear. I beg that you will permit me to return to my duties.'\n\n'Nay, but you must not be headstrong,' rising up and laying his hand upon my shoulder. 'You are aware that the Senate has declared against Napoleon, and that the Emperor Alexander refuses to treat with him.'\n\n'Sir,' I cried, with passion, 'I would have you know that I do not care the dregs of a wine-glass for the Senate or for the Emperor Alexander either.'\n\n'Then for what do you care?'\n\n'For my own honour and for the service of my glorious master, the Emperor Napoleon.'\n\n'That is all very well,' said Berthier, peevishly, shrugging his shoulders. 'Facts are facts, and as men of the world, we must look them in the face. Are we to stand against the will of the nation? Are we to have civil war on the top of all our misfortunes? And, besides, we are thinning away. Every hour comes the news of fresh desertions. We have still time to make our peace, and, indeed, to earn the highest regard, by giving up the Emperor.'\n\nI shook so with passion that my sabre clattered against my thigh.\n\n'Sir,' I cried, 'I never thought to have seen the day when a Marshal of France would have so far degraded himself as to put forward such a proposal. I leave you to your own conscience; but as for me, until I have the Emperor's own order, there shall always be the sword of Etienne Gerard between his enemies and himself.'\n\nI was so moved by my own words and by the fine position which I had taken up, that my voice broke, and I could hardly refrain from tears. I should have liked the whole army to have seen me as I stood with my head so proudly erect and my hand upon my heart proclaiming my devotion to the Emperor in his adversity. It was one of the supreme moments of my life.\n\n'Very good,' said Berthier, ringing a bell for the lackey. 'You will show the Chief of Brigade Gerard into the salon.'\n\nThe footman led me into an inner room, where he desired me to be seated. For my own part, my only desire was to get away, and I could not understand why they should wish to detain me. When one has had no change of uniform during a whole winter's campaign, one does not feel at home in a palace.\n\nI had been there about a quarter of an hour when the footman opened the door again, and in came Colonel Despienne. Good heavens, what a sight he was! His face was as white as a guardsman's gaiters, his eyes projecting, the veins swollen upon his forehead, and every hair of his moustache bristling like those of an angry cat. He was too angry to speak, and could only shake his hands at the ceiling and make a gurgling in his throat. 'Parricide! Viper!' those were the words that I could catch as he stamped up and down the room.\n\nOf course it was evident to me that he had been subjected to the same infamous proposals as I had, and that he had received them in the same spirit. His lips were sealed to me, as mine were to him, by the promise which we had taken, but I contented myself with muttering 'Atrocious! Unspeakable!'\u2014so that he might know that I was in agreement with him.\n\nWell, we were still there, he striding furiously up and down, and I seated in the corner, when suddenly a most extraordinary uproar broke out in the room which we had just quitted. There was a snarling, worrying growl, like that of a fierce dog which has got his grip. Then came a crash and a voice calling for help. In we rushed, the two of us, and, my faith, we were none too soon.\n\nOld Tremeau and Berthier were rolling together upon the floor, with the table upon the top of them. The Captain had one of his great, skinny yellow hands upon the Marshal's throat, and already his face was lead-coloured, and his eyes were starting from their sockets. As to Tremeau, he was beside himself, with foam upon the corners of his lips, and such a frantic expression upon him that I am convinced, had we not loosened his iron grip, finger by finger, that it would never have relaxed while the Marshal lived. His nails were white with the power of his grasp.\n\n'I have been tempted by the devil!' he cried, as he staggered to his feet. 'Yes, I have been tempted by the devil!'\n\nAs to Berthier, he could only lean against the wall, and pant for a couple of minutes, putting his hands up to his throat and rolling his head about. Then, with an angry gesture, he turned to the heavy blue curtain which hung behind his chair.\n\nThe curtain was torn to one side and the Emperor stepped out into the room. We sprang to the salute, we three old soldiers, but it was all like a scene in a dream to us, and our eyes were as far out as Berthier's had been. Napoleon was dressed in his green-coated chasseur uniform, and he held his little, silver-headed switch in his hand. He looked at us each in turn, with a smile upon his face\u2014that frightful smile in which neither eyes nor brow joined\u2014and each in turn had, I believe, a pringling on his skin, for that was the effect which the Emperor's gaze had upon most of us. Then he walked across to Berthier and put his hand upon his shoulder.\n\n'You must not quarrel with blows, my dear Prince,' said he; 'they are your title to nobility.' He spoke in that soft, caressing manner which he could assume. There was no one who could make the French tongue sound so pretty as the Emperor, and no one who could make it more harsh and terrible.\n\n'I believe he would have killed me,' cried Berthier, still rolling his head about.\n\n'Tut, tut! I should have come to your help had these officers not heard your cries. But I trust that you are not really hurt!' He spoke with earnestness, for he was in truth very fond of Berthier\u2014more so than of any man, unless it were of poor Duroc.\n\nBerthier laughed, though not with a very good grace.\n\n'It is new for me to receive my injuries from French hands,' said he.\n\n'And yet it was in the cause of France,' returned the Emperor. Then, turning to us, he took old Tremeau by the ear. 'Ah, old grumbler,' said he, 'you were one of my Egyptian grenadiers, were you not, and had your musket of honour at Marengo. I remember you very well, my good friend. So the old fires are not yet extinguished! They still burn up when you think that your Emperor is wronged. And you, Colonel Despienne, you would not even listen to the tempter. And you, Gerard, your faithful sword is ever to be between me and my enemies. Well, well, I have had some traitors about me, but now at last we are beginning to see who are the true men.'\n\nYou can fancy, my friends, the thrill of joy which it gave us when the greatest man in the whole world spoke to us in this fashion. Tremeau shook until I thought he would have fallen, and the tears ran down his gigantic moustache. If you had not seen it, you could never believe the influence which the Emperor had upon those coarse-grained, savage old veterans.\n\n'Well, my faithful friends,' said he, 'if you will follow me into this room, I will explain to you the meaning of this little farce which we have been acting. I beg, Berthier, that you will remain in this chamber, and so make sure that no one interrupts us.'\n\nIt was new for us to be doing business, with a Marshal of France as sentry at the door. However, we followed the Emperor as we were ordered, and he led us into the recess of the window, gathering us around him and sinking his voice as he addressed us.\n\n'I have picked you out of the whole army,' said he, 'as being not only the most formidable but also the most faithful of my soldiers. I was convinced that you were all three men who would never waver in your fidelity to me. If I have ventured to put that fidelity to the proof, and to watch you while attempts were at my orders made upon your honour, it was only because, in the days when I have found the blackest treason amongst my own flesh and blood, it is necessary that I should be doubly circumspect. Suffice it that I am well convinced now that I can rely upon your valour.'\n\n'To the death, sire!' cried Tremeau, and we both repeated it after him.\n\nNapoleon drew us all yet a little closer to him, and sank his voice still lower.\n\n'What I say to you now I have said to no one\u2014not to my wife or my brothers; only to you. It is all up with us, my friends. We have come to our last rally. The game is finished, and we must make provision accordingly.'\n\nMy heart seemed to have changed to a nine-pounder ball as I listened to him. We had hoped against hope, but now when he, the man who was always serene and who always had reserves\u2014when he, in that quiet, impassive voice of his, said that everything was over, we realized that the clouds had shut for ever, and the last gleam gone. Tremeau snarled and gripped at his sabre, Despienne ground his teeth, and for my own part I threw out my chest and clicked my heels to show the Emperor that there were some spirits which could rise to adversity.\n\n'My papers and my fortune must be secured,' whispered the Emperor. 'The whole course of the future may depend upon my having them safe. They are our base for the next attempt\u2014for I am very sure that these poor Bourbons would find that my footstool is too large to make a throne for them. Where am I to keep these precious things? My belongings will be searched\u2014so will the houses of my supporters. They must be secured and concealed by men whom I can trust with that which is more precious to me than my life. Out of the whole of France, you are those whom I have chosen for this sacred trust.\n\n'In the first place, I will tell you what these papers are. You shall not say that I have made you blind agents in the matter. They are the official proof of my divorce from Josephine, of my legal marriage to Marie Louise, and of the birth of my son and heir, the King of Rome. If we cannot prove each of these, the future claim of my family to the throne of France falls to the ground. Then there are securities to the value of forty millions of francs\u2014an immense sum, my friends, but of no more value than this riding-switch when compared to the other papers of which I have spoken. I tell you these things that you may realize the enormous importance of the task which I am committing to your care. Listen, now, while I inform you where you are to get these papers, and what you are to do with them.\n\n'They were handed over to my trusty friend, the Countess Walewski, at Paris, this morning. At five o'clock she starts for Fontainebleau in her blue berline. She should reach here between half-past nine and ten. The papers will be concealed in the berline, in a hiding-place which none know but herself. She has been warned that her carriage will be stopped outside the town by three mounted officers, and she will hand the packet over to your care. You are the younger man, Gerard, but you are of the senior grade. I confide to your care this amethyst ring, which you will show the lady as a token of your mission, and which you will leave with her as a receipt for her papers.\n\n'Having received the packet, you will ride with it into the forest as far as the ruined dove-house\u2014the Colombier. It is possible that I may meet you there\u2014but if it seems to me to be dangerous, I will send my body-servant, Mustapha, whose directions you may take as being mine. There is no roof to the Colombier, and tonight will be a full moon. At the right of the entrance you will find three spades leaning against the wall. With these you will dig a hole three feet deep in the north-eastern corner\u2014that is, in the corner to the left of the door, and nearest to Fontainebleau. Having buried the papers, you will replace the soil with great care, and you will then report to me at the palace.'\n\nThese were the Emperor's directions, but given with an accuracy and minuteness of detail such as no one but himself could put into an order. When he had finished, he made us swear to keep his secret as long as he lived, and as long as the papers should remain buried. Again and again he made us swear it before he dismissed us from his presence.\n\nColonel Despienne had quarters at the 'Sign of the Pheasant,' and it was there that we supped together. We were all three men who had been trained to take the strangest turns of fortune as part of our daily life and business, yet we were all flushed and moved by the extraordinary interview which we had had, and by the thought of the great adventure which lay before us. For my own part, it had been my fate three several times to take my orders from the lips of the Emperor himself, but neither the incident of the Ajaccio murderers nor the famous ride which I made to Paris appeared to offer such opportunities as this new and most intimate commission.\n\n'If things go right with the Emperor,' said Despienne, 'we shall all live to be marshals yet.'\n\nWe drank with him to our future cocked hats and our b\u00e2tons.\n\nIt was agreed between us that we should make our way separately to our rendezvous, which was to be the first milestone upon the Paris road. In this way we should avoid the gossip which might get about if three men who were so well known were to be seen riding out together. My little Violette had cast a shoe that morning, and the farrier was at work upon her when I returned, so that my comrades were already there when I arrived at the trysting-place. I had taken with me not only my sabre, but also my new pair of English rifled pistols, with a mallet for knocking in the charges. They had cost me a hundred and fifty francs at Trouvel's, in the Rue de Rivoli, but they would carry far further and straighter than the others. It was with one of them that I had saved old Bouvet's life at Leipzig.\n\nThe night was cloudless, and there was a brilliant moon behind us, so that we always had three black horsemen riding down the white road in front of us. The country is so thickly wooded, however, that we could not see very far. The great palace clock had already struck ten, but there was no sign of the Countess. We began to fear that something might have prevented her from starting.\n\nAnd then suddenly we heard her in the distance. Very faint at first were the birr of wheels and the tat-tat-tat of the horses' feet. Then they grew louder and clearer and louder yet, until a pair of yellow lanterns swung round the curve, and in their light we saw the two big brown horses tearing along the high, blue carriage at the back of them. The postilion pulled them up panting and foaming within a few yards of us. In a moment we were at the window and had raised our hands in a salute to the beautiful pale face which looked out at us.\n\n'We are the three officers of the Emperor, madame,' said I, in a low voice, leaning my face down to the open window. 'You have already been warned that we should wait upon you.'\n\nThe Countess had a very beautiful, cream-tinted complexion of a sort which I particularly admire, but she grew whiter and whiter as she looked up at me. Harsh lines deepened upon her face until she seemed, even as I looked at her, to turn from youth into age.\n\n'It is evident to me,' she said, 'that you are three impostors.'\n\nIf she had struck me across the face with her delicate hand she could not have startled me more. It was not her words only, but the bitterness with which she hissed them out.\n\n'Indeed, madame,' said I. 'You do us less than justice. These are the Colonel Despienne and Captain Tremeau. For myself, my name is Brigadier Gerard, and I have only to mention it to assure anyone who has heard of me that\u2014\u2014'\n\n'Oh, you villains!' she interrupted. 'You think that because I am only a woman I am very easily to be hoodwinked! You miserable impostors!'\n\nI looked at Despienne, who had turned white with anger, and at Tremeau, who was tugging at his moustache.\n\n'Madame,' said I, coldly, 'when the Emperor did us the honour to intrust us with this mission, he gave me this amethyst ring as a token. I had not thought that three honourable gentlemen would have needed such corroboration, but I can only confute your unworthy suspicions by placing it in your hands.'\n\nShe held it up in the light of the carriage lamp, and the most dreadful expression of grief and of horror contorted her face.\n\n'It is his!' she screamed, and then, 'Oh, my God, what have I done? What have I done?'\n\nI felt that something terrible had befallen. 'Quick, madame, quick!' I cried. 'Give us the papers!'\n\n'I have already given them.'\n\n'Given them! To whom?'\n\n'To three officers.'\n\n'When?'\n\n'Within the half-hour.'\n\n'Where are they?'\n\n'God help me, I do not know. They stopped the berline, and I handed them over to them without hesitation, thinking that they had come from the Emperor.'\n\nIt was a thunder-clap. But those are the moments when I am at my finest.\n\n'You remain here,' said I, to my comrades. 'If three horsemen pass you, stop them at any hazard. The lady will describe them to you. I will be with you presently.' One shake of the bridle, and I was flying into Fontainebleau as only Violette could have carried me. At the palace I flung myself off, rushed up the stairs, brushed aside the lackeys who would have stopped me, and pushed my way into the Emperor's own cabinet. He and Macdonald were busy with pencil and compasses over a chart. He looked up with an angry frown at my sudden entry, but his face changed colour when he saw that it was I.\n\n'You can leave us, Marshal,' said he, and then, the instant the door was closed: 'What news about the papers?'\n\n'They are gone!' said I, and in a few curt words I told him what had happened. His face was calm, but I saw the compasses quiver in his hand.\n\n'You must recover them, Gerard!' he cried. 'The destinies of my dynasty are at stake. Not a moment is to be lost! To horse, sir, to horse!'\n\n'Who are they, sire?'\n\n'I cannot tell. I am surrounded with treason. But they will take them to Paris. To whom should they carry them but to the villain Talleyrand? Yes, yes, they are on the Paris road, and may yet be overtaken. With the three best mounts in my stables and\u2014\u2014'\n\nI did not wait to hear the end of the sentence. I was already clattering down the stairs. I am sure that five minutes had not passed before I was galloping Violette out of the town with the bridle of one of the Emperor's own Arab chargers in either hand. They wished me to take three, but I should have never dared to look my Violette in the face again. I feel that the spectacle must have been superb when I dashed up to my comrades and pulled the horses on to their haunches in the moonlight.\n\n'No one has passed?'\n\n'No one.'\n\n'Then they are on the Paris road. Quick! Up and after them!'\n\nThey did not take long, those good soldiers. In a flash they were upon the Emperor's horses, and their own left masterless by the roadside. Then away we went upon our long chase, I in the centre, Despienne upon my right, and Tremeau a little behind, for he was the heavier man. Heavens, how we galloped! The twelve flying hoofs roared and roared along the hard, smooth road. Poplars and moon, black bars and silver streaks, for mile after mile our course lay along the same chequered track, with our shadows in front and our dust behind. We could hear the rasping of bolts and the creaking of shutters from the cottages as we thundered past them, but we were only three dark blurs upon the road by the time that the folk could look after us. It was just striking midnight as we raced into Corbail; but an hostler with a bucket in either hand was throwing his black shadow across the golden fan which was cast from the open door of the inn.\n\n'Three riders!' I gasped. 'Have they passed?'\n\n'I have just been watering their horses,' said he. 'I should think they\u2014\u2014'\n\n'On, on, my friends!' and away we flew, striking fire from the cobblestones of the little town. A gendarme tried to stop up, but his voice was drowned by our rattle and clatter. The houses slid past, and we were out on the country road again, with a clear twenty miles between ourselves and Paris. How could they escape us, with the finest horses in France behind them? Not one of the three had turned a hair, but Violette was always a head and shoulders to the front. She was going within herself too, and I knew by the spring of her that I had only to let her stretch herself, and the Emperor's horses would see the colour of her tail.\n\n'There they are!' cried Despienne.\n\n'We have them!' growled Tremeau.\n\n'On, comrades, on!' I shouted, once more.\n\nA long stretch of white road lay before us in the moonlight. Far away down it we could see three cavaliers, lying low upon their horses' necks. Every instant they grew larger and clearer as we gained upon them. I could see quite plainly that the two upon either side were wrapped in mantles and rode upon chestnut horses, whilst the man between them was dressed in a chasseur uniform and mounted upon a grey. They were keeping abreast, but it was easy enough to see from the way in which he gathered his legs for each spring that the centre horse was far the fresher of the three. And the rider appeared to be the leader of the party, for we continually saw the glint of his face in the moonshine as he looked back to measure the distance between us. At first it was only a glimmer, then it was cut across with a moustache, and at last when we began to feel their dust in our throats I could give a name to my man.\n\n'Halt, Colonel de Montluc!' I shouted. 'Halt, in the Emperor's name!'\n\nI had known him for years as a daring officer and an unprincipled rascal. Indeed, there was a score between us, for he had shot my friend, Treville, at Warsaw, pulling his trigger, as some said, a good second before the drop of the handkerchief.\n\nWell, the words were hardly out of my mouth when his two comrades wheeled round and fired their pistols at us. I heard Despienne give a terrible cry, and at the same instant both Tremeau and I let drive at the same man. He fell forward with his hands swinging on each side of his horse's neck. His comrade spurred on to Tremeau, sabre in hand, and I heard the crash which comes when a strong cut is met by a stronger parry. For my own part I never turned my head, but I touched Violette with the spur for the first time and flew after the leader. That he should leave his comrades and fly was proof enough that I should leave mine and follow.\n\nHe had gained a couple of hundred paces, but the good little mare set that right before we could have passed two milestones. It was in vain that he spurred and thrashed like a gunner driver on a soft road. His hat flew off with his exertions, and his bald head gleamed in the moonshine. But do what he might, he still heard the rattle of the hoofs growing louder and louder behind him. I could not have been twenty yards from him, and the shadow head was touching the shadow haunch, when he turned with a curse in his saddle and emptied both his pistols, one after the other, into Violette.\n\nI have been wounded myself so often that I have to stop and think before I can tell you the exact number of times. I have been hit by musket balls, by pistol bullets, and by bursting shells, besides being pierced by bayonet, lance, sabre, and finally by a brad-awl, which was the most painful of any. Yet out of all these injuries I have never known the same deadly sickness as came over me when I felt the poor, silent, patient creature, which I had come to love more than anything in the world except my mother and the Emperor, reel and stagger beneath me. I pulled my second pistol from my holster and fired point-blank between the fellow's broad shoulders. He slashed his horse across the flank with his whip, and for a moment I thought that I had missed him. But then on the green of his chasseur jacket I saw an ever-widening black smudge, and he began to sway in his saddle, very slightly at first, but more and more with every bound, until at last over he went, with his foot caught in the stirrup, and his shoulders thud-thud-thudding along the road, until the drag was too much for the tired horse, and I closed my hand upon the foam-spattered bridle-chain. As I pulled him up it eased the stirrup leather, and the spurred heel clinked loudly as it fell.\n\n'Your papers!' I cried, springing from my saddle. 'This instant!'\n\nBut even as I said, it, the huddle of the green body and the fantastic sprawl of the limbs in the moonlight told me clearly enough that it was all over with him. My bullet had passed through his heart, and it was only his own iron will which had held him so long in the saddle. He had lived hard, this Montluc, and I will do him justice to say that he died hard also.\n\nBut it was the papers\u2014always the papers\u2014of which I thought. I opened his tunic and I felt in his shirt. Then I searched his holsters and his sabre-tasche. Finally I dragged off his boots, and undid his horse's girth so as to hunt under the saddle. There was not a nook or crevice which I did not ransack. It was useless. They were not upon him.\n\nWhen this stunning blow came upon me I could have sat down by the roadside and wept. Fate seemed to be fighting against me, and that is an enemy from whom even a gallant hussar might not be ashamed to flinch. I stood with my arm over the neck of my poor wounded Violette, and I tried to think it all out, that I might act in the wisest way. I was aware that the Emperor had no great respect for my wits, and I longed to show him that he had done me an injustice. Montluc had not the papers. And yet Montluc had sacrificed his companions in order to make his escape. I could make nothing of that. On the other hand, it was clear that, if he had not got them, one or other of his comrades had. One of them was certainly dead. The other I had left fighting with Tremeau, and if he escaped from the old swordsman he had still to pass me. Clearly, my work lay behind me.\n\nI hammered fresh charges into my pistols after I had turned this over in my head. Then I put them back in the holsters, and I examined my little mare, she jerking her head and cocking her ears the while, as if to tell me that an old soldier like herself did not make a fuss about a scratch or two. The first shot had merely grazed her off-shoulder, leaving a skin-mark, as if she had brushed a wall. The second was more serious. It had passed through the muscle of her neck, but already it had ceased to bleed. I reflected that if she weakened I could mount Montluc's grey, and meanwhile I led him along beside us, for he was a fine horse, worth fifteen hundred francs at the least, and it seemed to me that no one had a better right to him than I.\n\nWell, I was all impatience now to get back to the others, and I had just given Violette her head, when suddenly I saw something glimmering in a field by the roadside. It was the brass-work upon the chasseur hat which had flown from Montluc's head; and at the sight of it a thought made me jump in the saddle. How could the hat have flown off? With its weight, would it not have simply dropped? And here it lay, fifteen paces from the roadway! Of course, he must have thrown it off when he had made sure that I would overtake him. And if he threw it off\u2014I did not stop to reason any more, but sprang from the mare with my heart beating the pas-de-charge. Yes, it was all right this time. There, in the crown of the hat was stuffed a roll of papers in a parchment wrapper bound round with yellow ribbon. I pulled it out with the one hand and, holding the hat in the other, I danced for joy in the moonlight. The Emperor would see that he had not made a mistake when he put his affairs into the charge of Etienne Gerard.\n\nI had a safe pocket on the inside of my tunic just over my heart, where I kept a few little things which were dear to me, and into this I thrust my precious roll. Then I sprang upon Violette, and was pushing forward to see what had become of Tremeau, when I saw a horseman riding across the field in the distance. At the same instant I heard the sound of hoofs approaching me, and there in the moonlight was the Emperor upon his white charger, dressed in his grey overcoat and his three-cornered hat, just as I had seen him so often upon the field of battle.\n\n'Well!' he cried, in the sharp, sergeant-major way of his. 'Where are my papers?'\n\nI spurred forward and presented them without a word. He broke the ribbon and ran his eyes rapidly over them. Then, as we sat our horses head to tail, he threw his left arm across me with his hand upon my shoulder. Yes, my friends, simple as you see me, I have been embraced by my great master.\n\n'Gerard,' he cried, 'you are a marvel!'\n\nI did not wish to contradict him, and it brought a flush of joy upon my cheeks to know that he had done me justice at last.\n\n'Where is the thief, Gerard?' he asked.\n\n'Dead, sire.'\n\n'You killed him?'\n\n'He wounded my horse, sire, and would have escaped had I not shot him.'\n\n'Did you recognize him?'\n\n'De Montluc is his name, sire\u2014a Colonel of Chasseurs.'\n\n'Tut,' said the Emperor. 'We have got the poor pawn, but the hand which plays the game is still out of our reach.' He sat in silent thought for a little, with his chin sunk upon his chest. 'Ah, Talleyrand, Talleyrand,' I heard him mutter, 'if I had been in your place and you in mine, you would have crushed a viper when you held it under your heel. For five years I have known you for what you are, and yet I have let you live to sting me. Never mind, my brave,' he continued, turning to me, 'there will come a day of reckoning for everybody, and when it arrives, I promise you that my friends will be remembered as well as my enemies.'\n\n'Sire,' said I, for I had had time for thought as well as he, 'if your plans about these papers have been carried to the ears of your enemies, I trust you do not think that it was owing to any indiscretion upon the part of myself or of my comrades.'\n\n'It would be hardly reasonable for me to do so,' he answered, 'seeing that this plot was hatched in Paris, and that you only had your orders a few hours ago.'\n\n'Then how\u2014\u2014?'\n\n'Enough,' he cried, sternly. 'You take an undue advantage of your position.'\n\nThat was always the way with the Emperor. He would chat with you as with a friend and a brother, and then when he had wiled you into forgetting the gulf which lay between you, he would suddenly, with a word or with a look, remind you that it was as impassable as ever. When I have fondled my old hound until he has been encouraged to paw my knees, and I have then thrust him down again, it has made me think of the Emperor and his ways.\n\nHe reined his horse round, and I followed him in silence and with a heavy heart. But when he spoke again his words were enough to drive all thought of myself out of my mind.\n\n'I could not sleep until I knew how you had fared,' said he. 'I have paid a price for my papers. There are not so many of my old soldiers left that I can afford to lose two in one night.'\n\nWhen he said 'two' it turned me cold.\n\n'Colonel Despienne was shot, sire,' I stammered.\n\n'And Captain Tremeau cut down. Had I been a few minutes earlier, I might have saved him. The other escaped across the fields.'\n\nI remembered that I had seen a horseman a moment before I had met the Emperor. He had taken to the fields to avoid me, but if I had known, and Violette been unwounded, the old soldier would not have gone unavenged. I was thinking sadly of his sword-play, and wondering whether it was his stiffening wrist which had been fatal to him, when Napoleon spoke again.\n\n'Yes, Brigadier,' said he, 'you are now the only man who will know where these papers are concealed.'\n\nIt must have been imagination, my friends, but for an instant I may confess that it seemed to me that there was a tone in the Emperor's voice which was not altogether one of sorrow. But the dark thought had hardly time to form itself in my mind before he let me see that I was doing him an injustice.\n\n'Yes, I have paid a price for my papers,' he said, and I heard them crackle as he put his hand up to his bosom. 'No man has ever had more faithful servants\u2014no man since the beginning of the world.'\n\nAs he spoke we came upon the scene of the struggle. Colonel Despienne and the man whom we had shot lay together some distance down the road, while their horses grazed contentedly beneath the poplars. Captain Tremeau lay in front of us upon his back, with his arms and legs stretched out, and his sabre broken short off in his hand. His tunic was open, and a huge blood-clot hung like a dark handkerchief out of a slit in his white shirt. I could see the gleam of his clenched teeth from under his immense moustache.\n\nThe Emperor sprang from his horse and bent down over the dead man.\n\n'He was with me since Rivoli,' said he, sadly. 'He was one of my old grumblers in Egypt.'\n\nAnd the voice brought the man back from the dead. I saw his eyelids shiver. He twitched his arm, and moved the sword-hilt a few inches. He was trying to raise it in salute. Then the mouth opened, and the hilt tinkled down on to the ground.\n\n'May we all die as gallantly,' said the Emperor, as he rose, and from my heart I added 'Amen.'\n\nThere was a farm within fifty yards of where we were standing, and the farmer, roused from his sleep by the clatter of hoofs and the cracking of pistols, had rushed out to the roadside. We saw him now, dumb with fear and astonishment, staring open-eyed at the Emperor. It was to him that we committed the care of the four dead men and of the horses also. For my own part, I thought it best to leave Violette with him and to take De Montluc's grey with me, for he could not refuse to give me back my own mare, whilst there might be difficulties about the other. Besides, my little friend's wound had to be considered, and we had a long return ride before us.\n\nThe Emperor did not at first talk much upon the way. Perhaps the deaths of Despienne and Tremeau still weighed heavily upon his spirits. He was always a reserved man, and in those times, when every hour brought him the news of some success of his enemies or defection of his friends, one could not expect him to be a merry companion. Nevertheless, when I reflected that he was carrying in his bosom those papers which he valued so highly, and which only a few hours ago appeared to be for ever lost, and when I further thought that it was I, Etienne Gerard, who had placed them there, I felt that I had deserved some little consideration. The same idea may have occurred to him, for when we had at last left the Paris high road, and had entered the forest, he began of his own accord to tell me that which I should have most liked to have asked him.\n\n'As to the papers,' said he, 'I have already told you that there is no one now, except you and me, who knows where they are to be concealed. My Mameluke carried the spades to the pigeon-house, but I have told him nothing. Our plans, however, for bringing the packet from Paris have been formed since Monday. There were three in the secret, a woman and two men. The woman I would trust with my life; which of the two men has betrayed us I do not know, but I think that I may promise to find out.'\n\nWe were riding in the shadow of the trees at the time, and I could hear him slapping his riding-whip against his boot, and taking pinch after pinch of snuff, as was his way when he was excited.\n\n'You wonder, no doubt,' said he, after a pause, 'why these rascals did not stop the carriage at Paris instead of at the entrance to Fontainebleau.'\n\nIn truth, the objection had not occurred to me, but I did not wish to appear to have less wits than he gave me credit for, so I answered that it was indeed surprising.\n\n'Had they done so they would have made a public scandal, and run a chance of missing their end. Short of taking the berline to pieces, they could not have discovered the hiding-place. He planned it well\u2014he could always plan well\u2014and he chose his agents well also. But mine were the better.'\n\nIt is not for me to repeat to you, my friends, all that was said to me by the Emperor as we walked our horses amid the black shadows and through the moon-silvered glades of the great forest. Every word of it is impressed upon my memory, and before I pass away it is likely that I will place it all upon paper, so that others may read it in the days to come. He spoke freely of his past, and something also of his future; of the devotion of Macdonald, of the treason of Marmont, of the little King of Rome, concerning whom he talked with as much tenderness as any bourgeois father of a single child; and, finally, of his father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, who would, he thought, stand between his enemies and himself. For myself, I dared not say a word, remembering how I had already brought a rebuke upon myself; but I rode by his side, hardly able to believe that this was indeed the great Emperor, the man whose glance sent a thrill through me, who was now pouring out his thoughts to me in short, eager sentences, the words rattling and racing like the hoofs of a galloping squadron. It is possible that, after the word-splittings and diplomacy of a Court, it was a relief to him to speak his mind to a plain soldier like myself.\n\nIn this way the Emperor and I\u2014even after years it sends a flush of pride into my cheeks to be able to put those words together\u2014the Emperor and I walked our horses through the Forest of Fontainebleau, until we came at last to the Colombier. The three spades were propped against the wall upon the right-hand side of the ruined door, and at the sight of them the tears sprang to my eyes as I thought of the hands for which they were intended. The Emperor seized one and I another.\n\n'Quick!' said he. 'The dawn will be upon us before we get back to the palace.'\n\nWe dug the hole, and placing the papers in one of my pistol holsters to screen them from the damp, we laid them at the bottom and covered them up. We then carefully removed all marks of the ground having been disturbed, and we placed a large stone upon the top. I dare say that since the Emperor was a young gunner, and helped to train his pieces against Toulon, he had not worked so hard with his hands. He was mopping his forehead with his silk handkerchief long before we had come to the end of our task.\n\nThe first grey cold light of morning was stealing through the tree trunks when we came out together from the old pigeon-house. The Emperor laid his hand upon my shoulder as I stood ready to help him to mount.\n\n'We have left the papers there,' said he, solemnly, 'and I desire that you shall leave all thought of them there also. Let the recollection of them pass entirely from your mind, to be revived only when you receive a direct order under my own hand and seal. From this time onwards you forget all that has passed.'\n\n'I forget it, sire,' said I.\n\nWe rode together to the edge of the town, where he desired that I should separate from him. I had saluted, and was turning my horse, when he called me back.\n\n'It is easy to mistake the points of the compass in the forest,' said he. 'Would you not say that it was in the north-eastern corner that we buried them?'\n\n'Buried what, sire?'\n\n'The papers, of course,' he cried, impatiently.\n\n'What papers, sire?'\n\n'Name of a name! Why, the papers that you have recovered for me.'\n\n'I am really at a loss to know what your Majesty is talking about.'\n\nHe flushed with anger for a moment, and then he burst out laughing.\n\n'Very good, Brigadier!' he cried. 'I begin to believe that you are as good a diplomatist as you are a soldier, and I cannot say more than that.'" + }, + { + "title": "Chapter 10", + "text": "So that was my strange adventure in which I found myself the friend and confident agent of the Emperor. When he returned from Elba he refrained from digging up the papers until his position should be secure, and they still remained in the corner of the old pigeon-house after his exile to St Helena. It was at this time that he was desirous of getting them into the hands of his own supporters, and for that purpose he wrote me, as I afterwards learned, three letters, all of which were intercepted by his guardians. Finally, he offered to support himself and his own establishment\u2014which he might very easily have done out of the gigantic sum which belonged to him\u2014if they would only pass one of his letters unopened. This request was refused, and so, up to his death in '21, the papers still remained where I have told you. How they came to be dug up by Count Bertrand and myself, and who eventually obtained them, is a story which I would tell you, were it not that the end has not yet come.\n\nSome day you will hear of those papers, and you will see how, after he has been so long in his grave, that great man can still set Europe shaking. When that day comes, you will think of Etienne Gerard, and you will tell your children that you have heard the story from the lips of the man who was the only one living of all who took part in that strange history\u2014the man who was tempted by Marshal Berthier, who led that wild pursuit upon the Paris road, who was honoured by the embrace of the Emperor, and who rode with him by moonlight in the Forest of Fontainebleau. The buds are bursting and the birds are calling, my friends. You may find better things to do in the sunlight than listening to the stories of an old, broken soldier. And yet you may well treasure what I say, for the buds will have burst and the birds sung in many seasons before France will see such another ruler as he whose servants we were proud to be." + } + ] + } +] \ No newline at end of file