Each of these would furnish a
narrative, but on the whole I am of opinion that none of them
unites so many singular points of interest as the episode of
Yoxley Old Place, which includes not only the lamentable death
of young Willoughby Smith, but also those subsequent develop-
ments which threw so curious a light upon the causes of the
crime.
It was a wild, tempestuous night, towards the close of Novem-
ber. Holmes and I sat together in silence all the evening, he
engaged with a powerful lens deciphering the remains of the
original inscription upon a palimpsest, I deep in a recent treatise
upon surgery. Outside the wind howled down Baker Street,
while the rain beat fiercely against the windows. It was strange
there, in the very depths of the town, with ten miles of man's
handiwork on every side of us, to feel the iron grip of Nature,
and to be conscious that to the huge elemental forces all London
was no more than the molehills that dot the fields. I walked to
the window, and looked out on the deserted street. The occa-
sional lamps gleamed on the expanse of muddy road and shining
pavement.
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