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Holmes laughed softly to himself and stretched himself out upon

the cushioned seat. "Both you and the coroner have been at some

pains," said he, "to single out the very strongest points in the

young man's favour. Don't you see that you alternately give him

credit for having too much imagination and too little? Too

little, if he could not invent a cause of quarrel which would

give him the sympathy of the jury; too much, if he evolved from

his own inner consciousness anything so outre as a dying

reference to a rat, and the incident of the vanishing cloth. No,

sir, I shall approach this case from the point of view that what

this young man says is true, and we shall see whither that

hypothesis will lead us. And now here is my pocket Petrarch, and

not another word shall I say of this case until we are on the

scene of action. We lunch at Swindon, and I see that we shall be

there in twenty minutes."