.

Death on the Moor.
For a moment or two I sat breathless, hardly able to believe my ears.
Then my senses and my voice came back to me, while a crushing weight of responsibility seemed in an instant to be lifted from my soul.

That cold, incisive, ironical voice could belong to but one man in all the world.
"Holmes!" I cried--"Holmes!" "Come out," said he, "and please be careful with the revolver." I stooped under the rude lintel, and there he sat upon a stone outside, his gray eyes dancing with amusement as they fell upon my astonished features.

He was thin and worn, but clear and alert, his keen face bronzed by the sun and roughened by the wind.

In his tweed suit and cloth cap he looked like any other tourist upon the moor, and he had contrived, with that catlike love of personal cleanliness which was one of his characteristics, that his chin should be as smooth and his linen as perfect as if he were in Baker Street.
"I never was more glad to see anyone in my life," said I as I wrung him by the hand.
"Or more astonished, eh ?" "Well, I must confess to it." "The surprise was not all on one side, I assure you.