A Study in Scarlet (Serial Edition Cover) — page 178: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

170 A STUDY IN SCARLET. pily, I have always laid great stress upon it, and much practice has made it second nature to me. I saw the heavy foot-marks of the constables, but I saw also the tracks of the two men who had first passed through the garden. It was easy to tell that they had been before the others, because in places their marks had been en- tirely obliterated by the others coming upon the top of | them. In this way my second link was formed, which told me that the nocturnal visitors were two in number, one remarkable for his height (as I calculated from the length of his stride) and the other fashionably dressed, to judge from the small and elegant impression left by his boots. “*On entering the house this last inference was con- firmed. My well-booted man lay before me. The tali one, then, had done the murder, if murder there was. There was no wound upon the dead man’s person, but the agitated expression upon his face assured me that he had foreseen his fate before it came upon him. Men who die from heart disease or any sudden natural cause never by any chance exhibit agitation upon their feat- ures. Having sniffed the dead man’s lips, I detected a slightly sour smell, and I came to the conclusion that he had had poison forced upon him. Again, I argued that it had been forced upon him, from the hatred and fear expressed upon his face. By the method of exclu- sion I had arrived at this result, for no other hypothesis Gomicbooks.com —