illain! See how he has treated me!"
She shot her arms out from her sleeves, and we saw with horror that they
were all mottled with bruises. "But this is nothing--nothing! It is my
mind and soul that he has tortured and defiled. I could endure it all,
ill-usage, solitude, a life of deception, everything, as long as I could
still cling to the hope that I had his love, but now I know that in
this also I have been his dupe and his tool." She broke into passionate
sobbing as she spoke.

"You bear him no good will, madam," said Holmes. "Tell us then where we
shall find him. If you have ever aided him in evil, help us now and so
atone."

"There is but one place where he can have fled," she answered. "There is
an old tin mine on an island in the heart of the mire. It was there that
he kept his hound and there also he had made preparations so that he
might have a refuge. That is where he would fly."

The fog-bank lay like white wool against the window. Holmes held the
lamp towards it.

"See," said he. "No one could find his way into the Grimpen Mire
tonight."

She laughed and clapped her hands. Her eyes and teeth gleamed with
fierce merriment.

"He may find his way in, but never out," she cried. "How can he see the
guiding wands tonight? We planted them together, he and I, to mark the
pathway through the mire. Oh, if I could only have plucked them out
today. Then indeed you would have had him at your mercy!"

It was evident to us that all pursuit was in vain until the fog had
lifted. Meanwhile we left Lestrade in possession of the house while
Holmes and I went back with the baronet to Baskerville Hall. The story
of the Stapletons could no longer be withheld from him, but he took
the blow bravely when he learned the truth about the woman whom he had
loved. But the shock of the night's adventures had shattered his nerves,
and before morning he lay delirious in a high fever under the care of
Dr. Mortimer. The two of them were destined to travel together round the
world before Sir Henry had become once more the hale, hearty man that he
had been before he became master of that ill-omened estate.

And now I come rapidly to the conclusion of this singular narrative, in
which I have tried to make the reader share those dark fears and vague
surmises which clouded our lives so long and ended in so tragic a
manner. On the morning after the death of the hound the fog had lifted
and we were guided by Mrs. Stapleton to the point whe