"Quite so; at the gold-mines, where, as I understand, Mr. Turner made his money.
"Yes, certainly."
"Thank you. Miss Turner. You have been of material assistance to me."
"You will tell me if you have any news to-morrow. No doubt you will go to the prison to see James. Oh, if you do, Mr. Holmes, do tell him that I know him to be innocent."
"I will, Miss Turner."
"I must go home now, for dad is very ill, and he misses me so if I leave him. Good-bye, and God help you in your undertaking." She hurried from the room as impulsively as she had entered, and we heard the wheels of her carriage rattle off down the street.
"I am ashamed of you. Holmes," said Lestrade, with dignity, after a few minutes' silence. "Why should you raise up hopes which you are bound to disappoint? I am not over-tender of heart, but I call it cruel."
"I think that I see my way to clearing James McCarthy," said Holmes. "Have you an order to see him in prison."
"Yes, but only for you and me."
"Then I shall reconsider my resolution about going out. We have still time to take a train to Hereford and see him to-night?"
"Ample."
"Then let us do so. Watson, I fear that you will find it very slow, but I shall only be away a couple of hours."
I walked down to the station with them, and then wandered through the streets of the little town, finally returning to the hotel, where I lay upon the sofa and tried to interest myself in a yellow-backed novel. The puny plot of the story was so thin, however, when compared to the deep mystery through which we were groping, and I found my attention wander so continually from the fiction to the fact, that I at last flung it across the room, and gave myself up entirely to a consideration of the events of the day. Supposing that this unhappy young
