some if his adventures was always a privilege which entailed
discretion and reticence upon me. 

It was, then, with considerable surprise that I received a
telegram from Homes last Tuesday--he has never been known to
write where a telegram would serve--in the following terms: 

Why not tell them of the Cornish horror--strangest case I have
handled. 

I have no idea what backward sweep of memory had brought the
matter fresh to his mind, or what freak had caused him to desire
that I should recount it; but I hasten, before another cancelling
telegram may arrive, to hunt out the notes which give me the
exact details of the case and to lay the narrative before my
readers. 

It was, then, in the spring of the year 1897 that Holmes's iron
constitution showed some symptoms of giving way in the face of
constant hard work of a most exacting kind, aggravated, perhaps,