Page:The Valley of Fear.pdf/46



OW for a moment I will ask leave to remove my own insignificant personality, and to describe events which occurred before we arrived upon the scene by the light of knowledge which came to us afterward. Only in this way can I make the reader appreciate the people concerned and the strange setting in which their fate was cast.

The village of Birlstone is a small and very ancient cluster of half-timbered cottages on the northern border of the county of Sussex. For centuries it had remained unchanged; but within the last few years its picturesque appearance and situation have attracted a number of well-to-do residents, whose villas peep out from the woods around. These woods are locally supposed to be [44]