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"Now, Watson," said Hol his hands, "we have half an hour to ourselves Let us ood use of it My case is, as I have told you, almost complete; but we must not err on the side of over-confidence Si deeper underlying it"

"Si of the air of a clinical professor expounding to his class "Just sit in the corner there, that your footprints may not complicate matters Noork! In the first place, how did these folk coo? The door has not been opened since last night How of the ?" He carried the la his observations aloud the while, but addressing them to himself rather than to me "Window is snibbed on the inner side Fraes at the side Let us open it No water-pipe near Roof quite out of reach Yet a ht Here is the print of a foot in mould upon the sill And here is a circular ain by the table See here, Watson! This is really a very pretty demonstration"

I looked at the round, well-defined muddy discs "This is not a foot much more valuable to us It is the impression of a wooden stump You see here on the sill is the boot-mark, a heavy boot with the broad metal heel, and beside it is the ed man"

"Quite so But there has been some one else,--a very able and efficient ally Could you scale that wall, doctor?"

I looked out of the openThe le of the house We were a good sixty feet from the round, and, look where I would, I could see no foothold, nor as much as a crevice in the brick-work

"It is absolutely impossible," I answered

"Without aid it is so But suppose you had a friend up here who lowered you this good stout rope which I see in the corner, securing one end of it to this great hook in the wall Then, I think, if you were an activeand all You would depart, of course, in the same fashion, and your ally would draw up the rope, untie it froet away in the way that he originally ca the rope, "that our wooden-legged friend, though a fair climber, was not a professional sailor His hands were far from horny My lens discloses more than one blood-ather that he slipped doith such velocity that he took the skin off his hand"