sherlock holmes was transformed when he was hot upon such a scent as this. men who had only known the quiet thinker and logician of baker street would have failed to recognise him. his face flushed and darkened. his brows were drawn into two hard black lines, while his eyes shone out from beneath them with a steely glitter. his face was bent downward, his shoulders bowed, his lips compressed, and the veins stood out like whipcord in his long, sinewy neck. his nostrils seemed to dilate with a purely animal lust for the chase, and his mind was so absolutely concentrated upon the matter before him that a question or remark fell unheeded upon his ears, or, at the most, only provoked a quick, impatient snarl in reply. swiftly and silently he made his way along the track which ran through the meadows, and so by way of the woods to the boscombe pool. it was damp, marshy ground, as is all that district, and there were marks of many feet, both upon the path and amid the short grass which bounded it on either side. sometimes holmes would hurry on, sometimes stop dead, and once he made quite a little detour into the meadow. lestrade and i walked behind him, the detective indifferent and contemptuous, while i watched my friend with the interest which sprang from the conviction that every one of his actions was directed towards a definite end.