“Why a fire?” he asked once. “Had they always a fire in this small room on a spring evening?”

Mortimer 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.

My 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.”

It 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.

“It won’t do, 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 — all else will come.

“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.

“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 — having obtained a sample print — to pick out his track among others and to follow his movements. He appears to have walked away swiftly in the direction of the vicarage.

On one of her bad days she went out alone to walk in the wood, ponderously, heeding nothing, not even noticing where she was. The report of a gun not far off startled and angered her.

Then, as she went, she heard voices, and recoiled. People! She didn’t want people. But her quick ear caught another sound, and she roused; it was a child sobbing. At once she attended; someone was ill–treating a child. She strode swinging down the wet drive, her sullen resentment uppermost. She felt just prepared to make a scene.

Turning the corner, she saw two figures in the drive beyond her: the keeper, and a little girl in a purple coat and moleskin cap, crying.

‘Ah, shut it up, tha false little bitch!’ came the man’s angry voice, and the child sobbed louder.

Constance strode nearer, with blazing eyes. The man turned and looked at her, saluting coolly, but he was pale with anger.

‘What’s the matter? Why is she crying?’ demanded Constance, peremptory but a little breathless.

A faint smile like a sneer came on the man’s face. ‘Nay, yo mun ax ‘er,’ he replied callously, in broad vernacular.

Connie felt as if he had hit her in the face, and she changed colour. Then she gathered her defiance, and looked at him, her dark blue eyes blazing rather vaguely.

‘I asked YOU,’ she panted.

He gave a queer little bow, lifting his hat. ‘You did, your Ladyship,’ he said; then, with a return to the vernacular: ‘but I canna tell yer.’ And he became a soldier, inscrutable, only pale with annoyance.

Connie turned to the child, a ruddy, black–haired thing of nine or ten. ‘What is it, dear? Tell me why you’re crying!’ she said, with the conventionalized sweetness suitable. More violent sobs, self–conscious. Still more sweetness on Connie’s part.

‘There, there, don’t you cry! Tell me what they’ve done to you!’...an intense tenderness of tone. At the same time she felt in the pocket of her knitted jacket, and luckily found a sixpence.

‘Don’t you cry then!’ she said, bending in front of the child. ‘See what I’ve got for you!’

Sobs, snuffles, a fist taken from a blubbered face, and a black shrewd eye cast for a second on the sixpence. Then more sobs, but subduing. ‘There, tell me what’s the matter, tell me!’ said Connie, putting the coin into the child’s chubby hand, which closed over it.

‘It’s the...it’s the...pussy!’

Shudders of subsiding sobs.

‘What pussy, dear?’

After a silence the shy fist, clenching on sixpence, pointed into the bramble brake.

‘There!’

Connie looked, and there, sure enough, was a big black cat, stretched out grimly, with a bit of blood on it.

‘Oh!’ she said in repulsion.

‘A poacher, your Ladyship,’ said the man satirically.

She glanced at him angrily. ‘No wonder the child cried,’ she said, ‘if you shot it when she was there. No wonder she cried!’