rave. "The story is not over yet, I
fear," said he. "You may find worse dangers than the English law, or
even than your enemies from America. I see trouble before you, Mr.
Douglas. You'll take my advice and still be on your guard."

And now, my long-suffering readers, I will ask you to come away with me
for a time, far from the Sussex Manor House of Birlstone, and far also
from the year of grace in which we made our eventful journey which ended
with the strange story of the man who had been known as John Douglas.
I wish you to journey back some twenty years in time, and westward some
thousands of miles in space, that I may lay before you a singular and
terrible narrative--so singular and so terrible that you may find it
hard to believe that even as I tell it, even so did it occur.

Do not think that I intrude one story before another is finished. As
you read on you will find that this is not so. And when I have detailed
those distant events and you have solved this mystery of the past, we
shall meet once more in those rooms on Baker Street, where this, like so
many other wonderful happenings, will find its end.

Part 2--The Scowrers

Chapter 1--The Man

It was the fourth of February in the year 1875. It had been a severe
winter, and the snow lay deep in the gorges of the Gilmerton Mountains.
The steam ploughs had, however, kept the railroad open, and the evening
train which connects the long line of coal-mining and iron-working
settlements was slowly groaning its way up the steep gradients which
lead from Stagville on the plain to Vermissa, the central township which
lies at the head of Vermissa Valley. From this point the track sweeps
downward to Bartons Crossing, Helmdale, and the purely agricultural
county of Merton. It was a single track railroad; but at every
siding--and they were numerous--long lines of trucks piled with coal and
iron ore told of the hidden wealth which had brought a rude population
and a bustling life to this most desolate corner of the United States of
America.

For desolate it was! Little could the first pioneer who had traversed
it have ever imagined that the fairest prairies and the most lush water
pastures were valueless compared to this gloomy land of black crag and
tangled forest. Above the dark and often scarcely penetrable woods upon
their flanks, the high, bare crowns of the mountains, white snow, and
jagged rock towered upon each flank, leaving a long, winding,