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."

Alighting at the small wayside station, we drove for some miles through
the remains of widespread woods, which were once part of that
great forest which for so long held the Saxon invaders at bay--the
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.

Stanley 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.

The 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.

"Someone has been tampering with it," he said.

There 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.

"Someone has tried to force this also. Whoever it was has failed to make
his way i