d find it beyond you."

"It has been a most remarkable experience."

"That bandage tells of adventures," said I. "Won't you tell us what has
happened?"

"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."

The 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.

"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 Scotch-woman. What have you here,
Watson?"

"Ham and eggs," I answered.

"Good! What are you going to take, Mr. Phelps--curried fowl or eggs, or
will you help yourself?"

"Thank you. I can eat nothing," said Phelps.

"Oh, come! Try the dish before you."

"Thank you, I would really rather not."

"Well, then," said Holmes, with a mischievous twinkle, "I suppose that
you have no objection to helping me?"

Phelps 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 arm-chair so limp and exhausted with his own
emotions that we had to pour brandy down his throat to keep him from
fainting.

"There! there!" said Holmes, soothing, 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."

Phelps seized his hand and kissed it. "God bless you!" he cried. "You
have saved my honor."

"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."

Phelps thrust away the precious document into the innermost pocket of
his coat.

"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."

Sherlock Holmes swallowed a cup of coffee, and turned