“Who are you, then?”

“My name is Sherlock Holmes.”

“Good Lord!”

“You have heard of me, I see.  I will represent the official police until their arrival.  Here, you!” he shouted to a frightened groom, who had appeared at the edge of the glade.  “Come here.  Take this note as hard as you can ride to Farnham.”  He scribbled a few words upon a leaf from his notebook.  “Give it to the superintendent at the police-station.  Until he comes, I must detain you all under my personal custody.”

The strong, masterful personality of Holmes dominated the tragic scene, and all were equally puppets in his hands.  Williamson and Carruthers found themselves carrying the wounded Woodley into the house, and I gave my arm to the frightened girl.  The injured man was laid on his bed, and at Holmes’s request I examined him.  I carried my report to where he sat in the old tapestry-hung dining-room with his two prisoners before him.

“He will live,” said I.

“What!” cried Carruthers, springing out of his chair.  “I’ll go upstairs and finish him first.  Do you tell me that that angel, is to be tied to Roaring Jack Woodley for life?”

“You need not concern yourself about that,” said Holmes.  “There are two very good reasons why she should, under no circumstances, be his wife.  In the first place, we are very safe in questioning Mr. Williamson’s right to solemnize a marriage.”

“I have been ordained,” cried the old rascal.

“And also unfrocked.”

“Once a clergyman, always a clergyman.”

“I think not.  How about the license?”

“We had a license for the marriage.  I have it here in my pocket.”

“Then you got it by trick.  But, in any case a forced marriage is no marriage, but it is a very serious felony, as you will discover before you have finished.  You’ll have time to think the point out during the next ten years or so, unless I am mistaken.  As to you, Carruthers, you would have done better to keep your pistol in your pocket.”

“I begin to think so, Mr. Holmes, but when I thought of all the precaution I had taken to shield this girl—­for I loved her, Mr. Holmes, and it is the only time that ever I knew what love was—­it fairly drove me mad to think that she was in the power of the greatest brute and bully in South Africa—­a man whose name is a holy terror from Kimberley to Johannesburg.  Why, Mr. Holmes, you’ll hardly believe it, but ever since that girl has been in my employment I never once let her go past this house, where I knew the rascals were lurking, without following her on my bicycle, just to see that she came to no harm.  I kept my distance from her, and I wore a beard, so that she should not recognize me, for she is a good and high-spirited girl, and she wouldn’t have stayed in my employment long if she had thought that I was following her about the country roads.”

“Why didn’t you tell her of her danger?”