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"

"You arouse my curiosity," said I. "But why did you
say just now that there were very particular reasons
why I should study this case?"

"Because it was the first in which I was ever
engaged."

I had often endeavored to elicit from my companion
what had first turned his mind in the direction of
criminal research, but had never caught him before in
a communicative humor. Now he sat forward in this
arm-chair and spread out the documents upon his knees.
Then he lit his pipe and sat for some time smoking and
turning them over.

"You never heard me talk of Victor Trevor?" he asked.
"He was the only friend I made during the two years I
was at college. I was never a very sociable fellow,
Watson, always rather fond of moping in my rooms and
working out my own little methods of thought, so that
I never mixed much with the men of my year. Bar
fencing and boxing I had few athletic tastes, and then
my line of study was quite distinct from that of the
other fellows, so that we had no points of contact at
all. Trevor was the only man I knew, and that only
through the accident of his bull terrier freezing on
to my ankle one morning as I went down to chapel.

"It was a prosaic way of forming a friendship, but it
was effective. I was laid by the heels for ten days,
but Trevor used to come in to inquire after me. At
first it was only a minute's chat, but soon his visits
lengthened, and before the end of the term we were
close friends. He was a hearty, full-blooded fellow,
full of spirits and energy, the very opposite to me in
most respects, but we had some subjects in common, and
it was a bond of union when I found that he was as
friendless as I. Finally, he invited me down to his
father's place at Donnithorpe, in Norfolk, and I
accepted his hospitality for a month of the long
vacation.

"Old Trevor was evidently a man of some wealth and
consideration, a J.P., and a landed proprietor.
Donnithorpe is a little hamlet just to the north of
Langmere, in the country of the Broads. The house was
an old-fashioned, wide-spread, oak-beamed brick
building, with a fine lime-lined avenue leading up to
it. There was excellent wild-duck shooting in the
fens, remarkably good fishing, a small but select
library, taken over, as I understood, from a former
occupant, and a tolerable cook, so that he would be a
fastidious man who could not put in a pleasant month
there.

"Trevor senior was a widower, and my friend his only
son.

"There had been a daughter, I heard, but she had died
of diphtheria while on a visit to Birmingham. The
father interested me extremely. He was a man of
little culture, but with a considerable amount of rude
strength, both physically and mentally. He knew
hardly any books, but he had traveled far, had seen
much of the world. And had remembered all that he had
learned. In person he was a thick-set, burly man with
a shock of grizzled hair, a brown, weather-beaten
face, and blue eyes which were keen to the verge of

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