dness
and charity on the country side, and was noted for the leniency of his
sentences from the bench.

[Illustration: "TREVOR USED TO COME IN TO INQUIRE AFTER ME."]

"One evening, shortly after my arrival, we were sitting over a glass of
port after dinner, when young Trevor began to talk about those habits of
observation and inference which I had already formed into a system,
although I had not yet appreciated the part which they were to play in
my life. The old man evidently thought that his son was exaggerating in
his description of one or two trivial feats which I had performed.

"'Come now, Mr. Holmes,' said he, laughing good-humouredly, 'I'm an
excellent subject, if you can deduce anything from me.'

"'I fear there is not very much,' I answered. 'I might suggest that you
have gone about in fear of some personal attack within the last twelve
months.'

"The laugh faded from his lips and he stared at me in great surprise.

"'Well, that's true enough,' said he. 'You know, Victor,' turning to his
son, 'when we broke up that poaching gang, they swore to knife us; and
Sir Edward Hoby has actually been attacked. I've always been on my guard
since then, though I have no idea how you know it.'

"'You have a very handsome stick,' I answered. 'By the inscription, I
observed that you had not had it more than a year. But you have taken
some pains to bore the head of it and pour melted lead into the hole, so
as to make it a formidable weapon. I argued that you would not take such
precautions unless you had some danger to fear.'

"'Anything else?' he asked, smiling.

"'You have boxed a good deal in your youth.'

"'Right again. How did you know it? Is my nose knocked a little out of
the straight?'

"'No,' said I. 'It is your ears. They have the peculiar flattening and
thickening which marks the boxing man.'

"'Anything else?'

"'You have done a great deal of digging, by your callosities.'

"'Made all my money at the gold-fields.'

"'You have been in New Zealand.'

"'Right again.'

"'You have visited Japan.'

"'Quite true.'

"'And you have been most intimately associated with someone whose
initials were J. A., and whom you afterwards were eager to entirely
forget.'

"Mr. Trevor stood slowly up, fixed his large blue eyes upon me with a
strange, wild stare, and then pitched forward with his face among the
nutshells which strewed the cloth, in a dead faint.

"You can imagine, Watson, how shocked both his so