other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up

around the man who first finds himself master of his own establishment, were

sufficient to absorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of

society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street,

buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine

and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen

nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and

occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in

following out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries which had been

abandoned as hopeless by the official police.