ng,' said she, 'and he always
was, ever since he was a young man.'

"'You knew him at that time?' said I.

"'Yes, I knew him well, in fact, he was an old suitor of mine. Thank
heaven that I had the sense to turn away from him and to marry a
better, if poorer, man. I was engaged to him, Mr. Holmes, when I heard a
shocking story of how he had turned a cat loose in an aviary, and I was
so horrified at his brutal cruelty that I would have nothing more to
do with him.' She rummaged in a bureau, and presently she produced a
photograph of a woman, shamefully defaced and mutilated with a knife.
'That is my own photograph,' she said. 'He sent it to me in that state,
with his curse, upon my wedding morning.'

"'Well,' said I, 'at least he has forgiven you now, since he has left
all his property to your son.'

"'Neither my son nor I want anything from Jonas Oldacre, dead or alive!'
she cried, with a proper spirit. 'There is a God in heaven, Mr. Holmes,
and that same God who has punished that wicked man will show, in His own
good time, that my son's hands are guiltless of his blood.'

"Well, I tried one or two leads, but could get at nothing which would
help our hypothesis, and several points which would make against it. I
gave it up at last and off I went to Norwood.

"This place, Deep Dene House, is a big modern villa of staring brick,
standing back in its own grounds, with a laurel-clumped lawn in front
of it. To the right and some distance back from the road was the
timber-yard which had been the scene of the fire. Here's a rough plan
on a leaf of my notebook. This window on the left is the one which opens
into Oldacre's room. You can look into it from the road, you see. That
is about the only bit of consolation I have had to-day. Lestrade was
not there, but his head constable did the honours. They had just found a
great treasure-trove. They had spent the morning raking among the ashes
of the burned wood-pile, and besides the charred organic remains they
had secured several discoloured metal discs. I examined them with
care, and there was no doubt that they were trouser buttons. I even
distinguished that one of them was marked with the name of 'Hyams,' who
was Oldacres tailor. I then worked the lawn very carefully for signs and
traces, but this drought has made everything as hard as iron. Nothing
was to be seen save that some body or bundle had been dragged through
a low privet hedge which is in a line with the wood-pile.