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This fellow may be very clever," I said to myself, "but he is certainly very conceited."

"There are no crimes and no criminals in these days," he said, querulously. "What is the use of having brains. in our profession? I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it."

I was still annoyed at his bumptious style of conversation. I thought it best to change the topic.

"I wonder what that fellow is looking for?” I asked, pointing to a stalwart, plainly dressed individual who was walking slowly down the other side of the street, looking anxiously at the numbers. He had a large blue envelope in his hand, and was evidently the bearer of a message.

"You mean the retired sergeant of marines," said Sherlock Holmes.

"Brag and bounce!" thought I to myself. "He knows that I cannot verify his guess."

The thought had hardly passed through my mind. when the man whom. we were watching caught sight of the number on our door, and ran rapidly across the roadway. We heard a loud knock, a deep voice below, and heavy steps ascending the stair.

"For Mr. Sherlock Holmes," he said, stepping into the room and handing my friend the letter.

Here was an opportunity of taking the conceit out of him. He little thought of this when he made that random shot.

"May I ask, my lad," I said blandly, "what you trade may be?"

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Commissionaire, sir," he said gruffly. "Uniform away for repairs."

"And you were?" I asked, with a slightly malicious glance at my companion.

"A sergeant, sir; Royal Marine Light Infantry, sir. No answer? Right sir."

He clicked his heels together, raised his hand in a salute, and was gone.- Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

A TRIP TO WINCHESTER.

By eleven o'clock the next day we were well upon our way to the old English capital. Holmes had been buried in the morning papers all the way down, but after we had passed the Hampshire border he threw them down, and began to admire the scenery. It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was 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 country-side, away to the rolling hills around Aldershot, the little red and gray 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 a 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 country-side."

"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 as that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbors, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is 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, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser: Had this lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I should never have had a fear for her. It is the five miles of country which makes the danger. personally threatened."

Still, it is clear that she is not

"No. If she can come to Winchester to meet us she can get away."

Quite so. She has her freedom."

"What can be the matter, then? Can you suggest no explanation?"

"I have devised seven separate explanations, each of which would cover the facts as far as we know them. But which of these is correct can only be determined by the fresh information which we shall no doubt find waiting for us. Well, there is the tower of the cathedral, and we shall soon learn all that Miss Hunter has to tell." The "Black Swan" is an inn of repute in the High Street, at no distance from the station, and there we found the young lady waiting for us. She had engaged a sitting-room, and our lunch awaited

us upon the table.

"I am so delighted that you have come," she said, earnestly. "It is so very kind of you both; but indeed I do not know what I should do. Your advice will be altogether invaluable to me."

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Pray tell us what has happened to you."

"I will do so, and I must be quick, for I have promised Mr. Rucastle to be back before three. I got this leave to come into town this morning, though he little knew for what purpose."

"Let us have everything in its due order." Holmes VOL. VIII.-18

thrust his long thin legs out toward the fire and composed himself to listen.

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In the first place, I may say that I have met, on the whole, with no actual ill-treatment from Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle. It is only fair to them to say that. But I cannot understand them, and I am not easy in my mind about them."

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What can you not understand?"

"Their reasons for their conduct. But you shall have it all just as it occurred. When I came down, Mr. Rucastle met me here, and drove me in his dog-cart to the Copper Beeches. It is, as he said, beautifully situated, but it is not beautiful in itself, for it is a large square block of a house, whitewashed, but all stained and streaked with damp and bad weather. There are grounds round it, woods on three sides, and on the fourth a field which slopes down to the Southampton High-road, which curves past about a hundred yards from the front door. This ground in front belongs to the house, but the woods all round are part of Lord Southerton's preserves. A clump of copper beeches immediately in front of the hall door has given its name to the place.

"I was driven over by my employer, who was as amiable as ever, and was introduced by him that evening to his wife and the child. There was no truth, Mr. Holmes, in the conjecture which seemed to us to be probable in your rooms at Baker street. Mrs. Rucastle is not mad. I found her to be a silent, pale-faced woman, much younger than her husband, not more than thirty, I should think, while he can hardly be less than forty-five. From their conversation I have gathered that they have been married about seven years, that he was a widower, and that his only child by the first wife was the daughter who has gone to Philadelphia. Mr. Rucastle told me in private that the reason why she had left them was that she had an unreasoning aversion to her step-mother. As the daughter could not have been less than twenty, I can quite imagine that her position must have been uncomfortable with her father's young wife.- Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Dr. Doyle's popularity was largely increased upon the appearance in 1905 of his later Sherlock Holmes stories, and he is more widely read in the United States than in Great Britain.

D

RACHMANN, HOLGER HENRIK HERHOLDT,

a Danish poet and novelist; born at Copenhagen, October 9, 1846. He was educated in his native city; and between 1866 and 1870, he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, achieving some success in marine views as a student of Sörensen. Under the guidance of Georg Brandes, he abandoned painting and devoted himself to literature; and in 1872 he published a collection of poems entitled Digte, followed by a volume of sketches called Med Kul og Kridt. As is well said by Professor Kittredge, of Harvard, in an article written for Johnson's Cyclopædia,

at the beginning of his career he was intensely radical; but his sentiments have undergone some modifications. He has travelled much, and made himself intimately acquainted with the life of many conditions of men. The restlessness of the last part of the nineteenth century is in him combined with a remarkable poetic genius, which, though manifesting itself in very different degrees in his various works, has already given them the position of classics." In 1875 appeared his Dæmpede Melodier, illustrated by the poet himself. Then followed Sange ved Havet (1877); Prindsessen og det Halve Kongerige (The Princess and the Half of the Kingdom (1878); Ranker og