drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new problem. I rang the

bell and was shown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own.


His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think, to see

me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me to an

armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case and a

gasogene in the corner. Then he stood before the fire and looked me over in his

singular introspective fashion.


“Wedlock suits you,” he remarked. “I think, Watson, that you

have put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you.”


“Seven!” I answered.


“Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, I

fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not tell me that you

intended to go into harness.”


“Then, how do you know?”


“I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting yourself

very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant

girl?”


“My dear Holmes,” said I, “this is too much. You would

certainly have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true that

I had a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful mess, but as I

have changed my clothes I can’t imagine how you deduce it. As to Mary

Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has given her notice, but there, again,

I fail to see how you work it out.”


He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long, nervous hands together.


“It is simplicity itself,” said he; “my eyes tell me that on

the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather

is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by

someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to

remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had

been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant