shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, which

set an edge to a man’s energy. All over the countryside, away to the

rolling hills around Aldershot, the little red and grey roofs of the

farm-steadings peeped out from amid the light green of the new foliage.


“Are they not fresh and beautiful?” I cried with all the enthusiasm

of a man fresh from the fogs of Baker Street.


But Holmes shook his head gravely.


“Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one of the curses

of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference

to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are

impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to

me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be

committed there.”


“Good heavens!” I cried. “Who would associate crime with

these dear old homesteads?”


“They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson,

founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not

present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful

countryside.”


“You horrify me!”


“But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in

the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the

scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard’s blow, does not

beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole

machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it

going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at

these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor

ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish

cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such

places, and none the wiser. Had this lady who appeals to us for help gone to