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.

"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."

"You know," I answered with some emotion, for I have never seen so much
of Holmes's heart before, "that it is my greatest joy and privilege to
help you."

He 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?"

"None whatever."

"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 mis