class="pnext">"I'm glad it's turned up," said Peters, "and I hope the Doctor's will."

Then he and I went off, and I congratulated him.

"You've got a nerve of iron," I said.

"Yes," he said, "and I shall want it."

Then he told me there was nothing like this in Sherlock Holmes, and that the whole piece of detective work was a failure, and rather a painful failure to him.

"I don't mind the licking, and so on," he said, "but it's the inner disgrace."

"It was a very natural mistake," I said, to cheer him up.

"Yes," he said; "but detectives of the first class don't make natural mistakes—nor any other sort either. It's the disappointment of coming such a howler over a simple felony that is so hard. At least, of course, it's not a felony at all."

"If it is, you did it," I said; "and now of course you'll chuck away the pencil-sharpener and sit tight about it?"

But he shook his head.

"No, Maydew. Of course I could evade the consequences with ease, if I liked. But I have decided to give this back to the Doctor and tell him the whole story," said Peters.

"Sherlock Holmes would never have done that," I said.

"No, he wouldn't," admitted Peters. "Because why? Because he'd never have been such a fool as to be deluded by a false clue. He knew a true clue from a false, as well as we know a nice smell from a nasty one."

"Well," I said, "if you take my advice for once, you'll do this: You'll leave that thing on the Doctor's desk in a prominent place next time you're in there alone, and you'll bury the rest in your brain. Holmes buried scores of things in his brain. What's the sense of going out of your way to get a licking?"

"If I told him the truth, I don't believe he would lick me," said Peters. But I jolly soon showed him that was rot. In fact, Watson never talked so straight to Holmes as I did to Peters then.

"My dear chap," I said, "you go to the Doctor and say, 'Here's your pencil-sharpener, sir; I saw it on your mantelpiece and thought you'd stolen it from Pratt, who has one exactly like it. So I took it to give to Pratt, but his has turned up since.' Well, what would happen then? Any fool could tell you."

All the same Peters went up next day at the appointed time, and, curiously enough, James was in the study waiting for the Doctor too. The muddle that followed was explained to me by Peters afterwards.

Me and James began to talk; then James said to Peters, "I am here, Peters, about a very queer and sad thing, and it is evidently Providence that has sent you here now."

And Peters said, "No, it isn't. I am here about a very queer thing too, and it may also turn out to be sad—for me."

Then James, who was excited to a very great amount, said these strange words—

"I had come to confess that it was me killed your guinea-pig! I couldn't hide it any more. It's haunting me—not the pig, but the killing of it. I hoped, and even prayed in my prayers, that you might detect me, but you didn't. Then I wrote home for ten shillings for a debt of honour, and put it in your desk, and disguised the spelling—but still I was haunted by it. And now, as you are here, I confess it openly to you that I killed your beautiful, kind-hearted pig, and I hope you'll forgive me for doing a beastly, blackguard thing. And if you can't forgive it, I'll tell the Doctor and get flogged rather than go on like this; because it's haunting me."

Peters said, "How did you do it?"

And James said, "With poison from the laboratory mixed in his bran."

And Peters was so much rejoiced when he heard this, that he forgave the worm, James, on the spot.

"That is where sending the stomach to Somerset House would have come in," said Peters; "but as I was not in a position to do this, I do not so much feel the slur of not having discovered you were the criminal."

He forgave James freely. Then he said—

"You may be amused to know that I am also here about a crime. I thought I'd found one out and, instead of that, I've jolly well committed a crime myself. In fact, it's about the queerest thing, really, that has ever happened in the annals of crime."

Then he told the story of the pencil-sharpener to James, and showed James the pencil-sharpener to prove it. James actually had the pencil-sharpener in his hand, when who should come in—not the Doctor—but the matron, with the extraordinary news that the mother of Peters was just arrived and had to see him at once! This was so awfully surprising to Peters that he went straight away to the drawing-room and left the pencil-sharpener with James; and in the drawing-room were the Doctor and Peters's mother, who, after all, had merely come to tell him that his uncle was dead. But far more important things than that happened in the study, because when Peters arrived to see his mother, the Doctor, having said something about bearing the shocks of life with manly fortitude, went off to his study, and there, of course, was James waiting for him.

And what James did we heard afterwards. First, on thinking it over, he began to doubt why he should confess about the guinea-pig to the Doctor, now that Peters had utterly forgiven him. And he speedily decided that there was no occasion to do so. But then, out of gratitude to Peters, he determined to carry through the delicate task of getting the pencil-sharpener back to the Doctor. And he did. He told the Doctor that he had taken the thing, because he thought it was Pratt's. He said he felt sure Pratt must have left it in the study by mistake. But he didn't say anything about thinking the Doctor had stolen it, and, in fact, was so jolly cunning altogether that he never got into a row at all. The Doctor ended up by remarking that Pratt's having one was a curious coincidence, and he said to James, "As for you, boy James, you stand acquitted of everything but too much zeal. Zeal, however——" and then he talked a lot of stuff about zeal, which James did not remember.

I said privately to Peters afterwards—

"How would Holmes have acted if this had happened to him?"

And Peters said, "For once I can see as clear as mud what Sherlock would have done. He would have said, 'I think in this extraordinary case, Watson, we may safely let well alone.'"

And that's what Peters did.