all on the day
that Sir Henry's new servants are ready to take over the Hall."

"But about this stranger," said I. "Can you tell me anything about
him? What did Selden say? Did he find out where he hid, or what he was
doing?"

"He saw him once or twice, but he is a deep one and gives nothing away.
At first he thought that he was the police, but soon he found that he
had some lay of his own. A kind of gentleman he was, as far as he could
see, but what he was doing he could not make out."

"And where did he say that he lived?"

"Among the old houses on the hillside--the stone huts where the old folk
used to live."

"But how about his food?"

"Selden found out that he has got a lad who works for him and brings all
he needs. I dare say he goes to Coombe Tracey for what he wants."

"Very good, Barrymore. We may talk further of this some other time."
When the butler had gone I walked over to the black window, and I looked
through a blurred pane at the driving clouds and at the tossing outline
of the wind-swept trees. It is a wild night indoors, and what must it
be in a stone hut upon the moor. What passion of hatred can it be which
leads a man to lurk in such a place at such a time! And what deep and
earnest purpose can he have which calls for such a trial! There, in that
hut upon the moor, seems to lie the very centre of that problem which
has vexed me so sorely. I swear that another day shall not have passed
before I have done all that man can do to reach the heart of the
mystery.

Chapter 11. The Man on the Tor

The extract from my private diary which forms the last chapter has
brought my narrative up to the eighteenth of October, a time when these
strange events began to move swiftly towards their terrible conclusion.
The incidents of the next few days are indelibly graven upon my
recollection, and I can tell them without reference to the notes made
at the time. I start them from the day which succeeded that upon which
I had established two facts of great importance, the one that Mrs. Laura
Lyons of Coombe Tracey had written to Sir Charles Baskerville and made
an appointment with him at the very place and hour that he met his
death, the other that the lurking man upon the moor was to be found
among the stone huts upon the hillside. With these two facts in my
possession I felt that either my intelligence or my courage must be
deficient if I could not throw some further light upon these dark
places.