whenever a reasonable explanation comes to sight as to why a thing appears to be but is not true, this makes for greater trust in the truth.

Is he not the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid, a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it?

It was easier to know it than to explain why I knew it.

I should have more faith. I ought to know by this time that when a fact appears to be opposed to a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation.

I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over Lestrade's facts.

A slow and heavy step, which had been heard upon the stairs and in the passage, paused immediately outside the door. Then there was a loud and authoritative tap.

Let me run over the principal steps. We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind, which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations.

I believe you are a wizard, Mr. Holmes.

It would be superfluous to drive us mad, my dear Watson, said he. A candid observer would certainly declare that we were so already before we embarked upon so wild an experiment.

I think Mr. Holmes had not quite got over his illness yet. He's been behaving very queerly, and he is very much excited." "I don't think you need alarm yourself," said I. "I have usually found that there was method in his madness." "Some folks might say there was madness in his method," muttered the Inspector.

Sherlock Holmes had listened with the utmost intentness to the statement of the unhappy schoolmaster. His drawn brows and the deep furrow between them showed that he needed no exhortation to concentrate all his attention upon a problem which, apart from the tremendous interests involved must appeal so directly to his love of the complex and the unusual. He now drew out his notebook and jotted down one or two memoranda.

It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts.