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Was it
from Mr. Wilder that he learned so extraordinary a device?"
The Duke stood in thought for a moment, with a look of
intense surprise on his face. Then he opened a door and showed
us into a large room furnished as a museum. He led the way to a
glass case in a corner, and pointed to the inscription.
"These shoes," it ran, "were dug up in the moat of Holdemesse
Hall. They are for the use of horses, but they are shaped below
with a cloven foot of iron, so as to throw pursuers off the track.
They are supposed to have belonged to some of the marauding
Barons of Holdernesse in the Middle Ages."
Holmes opened the case, and moistening his finger he passed
it along the shoe. A thin film of recent mud was left upon his
skin.
"Thank you," said he, as he replaced the glass. "It is the
second most interesting object that I have seen in the North."
"And the first?"
Holmes folded up his check and placed it carefully in his
notebook. "I am a poor man," said he, as he patted it affection-
ately, and thrust it into the depths of his inner pocket.


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