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 may lie within the scope of his special experience. He is, indeed, the very last person I should like to have upon my trail had I committed a murder."

I laughed.

"You think he'd run you down?"

"If I left a sign or a track behind me, he would. He is a most skilled and minute observer, and you must not forget that the speciality of a Sherlock Holmes is the everyday routine of a woodsman. Observation and deduction are part and parcel of his daily existence. He literally reads as he runs. The floor of the forest is his page. And when a crime is committed in the woods, these facts are very fortunate."

"In what way?"

"My dear James, have you never given any consideration to the markedly different circumstances which surround the wide subject of crime and its detection, where the locality is shifted from a populous or even settled country to the loneliness of some wild region? In the midst of a city, any crime of magnitude is very frequently discovered within a few hours of its committal."