legend which Dr.
Mortimer has read to us, and avoid the moor in those hours of
darkness when the powers of evil are exalted."

I looked back at the platform when we had left it far behind, and
saw the tall, austere figure of Holmes standing motionless and
gazing after us.

The journey was a swift and pleasant one, and I spent it in
making the more intimate acquaintance of my two companions and in
playing with Dr. Mortimer's spaniel. In a very few hours the
brown earth had become ruddy, the brick had changed to granite,
and red cows grazed in well-hedged fields where the lush grasses
and more luxuriant vegetation spoke of a richer, if a damper,
climate. Young Baskerville stared eagerly out of the window, and
cried aloud with delight as he recognized the familiar features
of the Devon scenery.

"I've been over a good part of the world since I left it, Dr.
Watson," said he; "but I have never seen a place to compare with
it."

"I never saw a Devonshire man who did not swear by his county," I
remarked.

"It depends upon the breed of men quite as much as on the
county," said Dr. Mortimer. "A glance at our friend here reveals
the rounded head of the Celt, which carries inside it the Celtic
enthusiasm and power of attachment. Poor Sir Charles's head was
of a very rare type, half Gaelic, half Ivernian in its
characteristics. But you were very young when you last saw
Baskerville Hall, were you not?"

"I was a boy in my 'teens at the time of my father's death, and
had never seen the Hall, for he lived in a little cottage on the
South Coast. Thence I went straight to a friend in America. I
tell you it is all as new to me as it is to Dr. Watson, and I'm
as keen as possible to see the moor."

"Are you? Then your wish is easily granted, for there is your
first sight of the moor," said Dr. Mortimer, pointing out of the
carriage window.

Over the green squares of the fields and the low curve of a wood
there rose in the distance a gray, melancholy hill, with a
strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance, like some
fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time,
his eyes fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much
it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the
men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so
deep. There he sat, with his tweed suit and his American accent,
in the corner of a prosaic railway-carriage, and yet as I looked
at his dark and expre