readers may retain some recollection of what was called at the
time "The Cornish Horror," though a most imperfect account of the
matter reached the London press. Now, after thirteen years, I
will give the true details of this inconceivable affair to the
public.

I have said that scattered towers marked the villages which
dotted this part of Cornwall. The nearest of these was the
hamlet of Tredannick Wollas, where the cottages of a couple of
hundred inhabitants clustered round an ancient, moss-grown
church. The vicar of the parish, Mr. Roundhay, was something of
an archaeologist, and as such Holmes had made his acquaintance.
He was a middle-aged man, portly and affable, with a considerable
fund of local lore. At his invitation we had taken tea at the
vicarage and had come to know, also, Mr. Mortimer Tregennis, an
independent gentleman, who increased the clergyman's scanty
resources by taking rooms in his large, straggling house. The
vicar, being a bachelor, was glad to come to such an arrangement,
though he had little in common with his lodger, who was a thin,
dark, spectacled man, with a stoop which gave the impression of
actual, physical deformity. I remember that during our short
visit we found the vicar garrulous, but his lodger strangely
reticent, a sad-faced, introspective man, sitting with averted
eyes, brooding apparently upon his own affairs.

These were the two men who entered abruptly into our little
sitting-room on Tuesday, March the 16th, shortly after our
breakfast hour, as we were smoking together, preparatory to our
daily excursion upon the moors.