“Signore,” he began, “only show _me_ my man, and----” Mr Holmes interrupted him, rising. “I will do my best,” he said. “But this is very sad.” He went out, and we did not see him again until dinner-time, when he turned up--rather late, to Dr Watson’s obvious annoyance--and luminous, so to speak, with preoccupation. He smoked a heavy pipe, filled with tobacco of a peculiarly pungent brand, throughout the meal, but ate very little--an abstinence which was fully compensated by his friend, who, not to misjudge him, appeared to think a good deal of his food, and eyed every dish interestedly as it was put on the table. The fare, proving exhilarating, moved the doctor, even, to some ill-timed levity; for when Mr Holmes at dessert slipped, apparently in a fit of abstraction, the nutcrackers into his pocket, he asked him banteringly if he hadn’t better send the dishful of nuts after them. Mr Holmes was very angry, and demanded to know how, after all these years of their acquaintance, he had learned no better than to question him openly as to the meaning of any action of his however seemingly uncalled for. “For what do you exist, my dear Watson,” he said, with an infinite but perfectly gentlemanly irony, “but as a screen of vulgar commonplace between me and the public. You are not here to expose my methods, but to cover them.” The doctor was completely, and rightly, set down; though it is only fair to him to admit that Mr Holmes afterwards confessed to us in private that the act had been an involuntary one on his part, due, no doubt, to some association of ideas between the implements, and his recognition of the fact that he had here a particularly hard nut to crack. He left us again after dinner; and, seeing him well out of the room, the doctor, presumably in a spit of resentment, took the occasion to tap his own head significantly. “He has never been,” he murmured, “quite the man he was since that fall.” If this admission, or insinuation served to “give us pause,” our spirits were to be reassured in a few hours by the return of Mr Holmes in a great state of suppressed excitement. “Give me a foot-rule,” he said. “I believe my theory was correct and that I am on his tracks.” His enthusiasm communicated itself to us all. “Great heavens, sir!” said Mr Shapter. “Do you mean to say you believe him to be really in hiding at the farm?” “I lend myself to no positive assertion, my dear sir,” answered the other, with a smile. “I state, only, that I have come upon a number of footmarks about the house that were not there this afternoon. They may be his; they may not be. A great deal depends upon the postulate. But nothing can be lost, at least, by following them up; and that is my sole present intention. I shall be absent, probably, during the greater part of the night, and even, it may be, well into to-morrow morning. See that the door is left on the latch.”