The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-10-29

- HAVE some papers here,'
 ffT said my friend Sherlock
 Holmes, as we sat one win
 ters 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 extraordi- nary case of the Gloria Scott. and this is the message which struck Justice of the Peace Trevor dead with horror when he read it''
 He had picked from a drawer httle tarnished cylinder,Aand undoing the tape, he handed me a short note scrawed up- on a half-sheet of slate-gray paper
 "The supply of game for London is going steadily up.' it ran. "'Iead-keeper Hudson, we believe has been now told to receive all orders for fly paper and for preservation of your hen-phesants life"
 As glanced up form reading this enig- nautical message, saw Holmes chuckling at the expression upon my face.
 You look a little bewildered,' said he.
 .I cannot see how such message as this could inspire horror. It seems to me to be rather grotesque than otherwise" ''very likely. Yet the fact remains that the reader was a fine, robust old man, was knocked clean down by it as if il had been the butt end of a pistol"
 You arose my curiosity" said I. But why did you say just now that there were very particular reasons why 1 should study this case?'
 Because 1t was the first Tn which was ever engaged.
 I had often endeavored to elicit from my companion what had first turned his mind in the direction of criminal research, but had never caught him before In communicative humor. Now he sat for ward in his arm chair and spread out the documents upon his knees. Then he llt his pipe and sat for some time smoking and turning them over.
 You never heard me talk of Victor Trevor?" he asked He was the only friend I made during the two years l was at college. I was never a very soeiaole fellow, Watson, always rather fond Of moping in my rooms and working out my own little methods of thought, so that never mixed much with the men of my year. Bar fencing and boxing l 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 con- tact at all. Trevor was the only man knew, and that only through the accident of his bull terrier freezing on to my ankle one morning as I went down to chapel.
 Ut was a prosaic way of forming Friendship, but it was effective. l was laid by the heels for ten days, and Trevor used to come in to inquire after me. At ar~t % r,.fKa nEot hut his visites heightened 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 bond of union when I found that he was as friendless as I. Finally, he invited me down to his fathers place at Donnithrope. in Norfolk and I accepted his hospitali- fly for a month of the long vacation. .s"Old Trevor was evidently a man of some wealth and consideration, a J. F., and a land proprietor Donnithrope is a little hamlet just to the north of Lang mere, in the country of the Broads The house was an old-fashioned widespread, oak-beamed brick building, with a fine 1me-lned avenue leading up to it. There was excellent wild-duck shooting in the fens, remarkably good fishing, small but select library. taken over, as l un- derstood, 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.