Page:Hound of Baskervilles.djvu/220

 you trouble to tell it sooner rather than later. Come, now! No lies! What were you doing at that window?”

The fellow looked at us in a helpless way, and he wrung his hands together like one who is in the last extremity of doubt and misery.

“I was doing no harm, sir. I was holding a candle to the window.”

“And why were you holding a candle to the window?”

“Don’t ask me, Sir Henry—don’t ask me! I give you my word, sir, that it is not my secret, and that I cannot tell it. If it concerned no one but myself I would not try to keep it from you.”

A sudden idea occurred to me, and I took the candle from the window-sill, where the butler had placed it.

“He must have been holding it as a signal,” said I. “Let us see if there is any answer.”

I held it as he had done, and stared out into the darkness of the night. Vaguely