"
Stanley Hopkins gave a cry of joy.
"Thank you, sir. That will, indeed, be a weight off my mind. "
Holmes shook his finger at the inspector.
"It would have been an easier task a week ago," said he.
"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.
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