“Just look up the trains in Bradshaw,” said he, and turned back to his chemical studies.

The summons was a brief and urgent one.

“Please be at the Black Swan Hotel at Winchester at midday to-morrow,” it said.  “Do come!  I am at my wit’s end.  Hunter.”

“Will you come with me?” asked Holmes, glancing up.

“I should wish to.”

“Just look it up, then.”

“There is a train at half-past nine,” said I, glancing over my Bradshaw.  “It is due at Winchester at 11:30.”

“That will do very nicely.  Then perhaps I had better postpone my analysis of the acetones, as we may need to be at our best in the morning.”

By eleven o’clock the next day we were well upon our way to the old English capital.  Holmes had been buried in the morning papers all the way down, but after we had passed the Hampshire border he threw them down and began to admire the scenery.  It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east.  The sun was shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, which set an edge to a man’s energy.  All over the countryside, away to the rolling hills around Aldershot, the little red and grey roofs of the farm-steadings peeped out from amid the light green of the new foliage.

“Are they not fresh and beautiful?” I cried with all the enthusiasm of a man fresh from the fogs of Baker Street.

But Holmes shook his head gravely.

“Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject.  You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty.  I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.”

“Good heavens!” I cried.  “Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?”

“They always fill me with a certain horror.  It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”

“You horrify me!”

“But the reason is very obvious.  The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish.  There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard’s blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock.  But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law.  Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.  Had this lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I should never have had a fear for her.  It is the five miles of country which makes the danger.  Still, it is clear that she is not personally threatened.”