‘I consider this is really the heart of England,’ said Clifford to Connie, as he sat there in the dim February sunshine.

‘Do you?’ she said, seating herself in her blue knitted dress, on a stump by the path.

‘I do! this is the old England, the heart of it; and I intend to keep it intact.’

‘Oh yes!’ said Connie. But, as she said it she heard the eleven–o’clock hooters at Stacks Gate colliery. Clifford was too used to the sound to notice.

‘I want this wood perfect...untouched. I want nobody to trespass in it,’ said Clifford.

There was a certain pathos. The wood still had some of the mystery of wild, old England; but Sir Geoffrey’s cuttings during the war had given it a blow. How still the trees were, with their crinkly, innumerable twigs against the sky, and their grey, obstinate trunks rising from the brown bracken! How safely the birds flitted among them! And once there had been deer, and archers, and monks padding along on asses. The place remembered, still remembered.

Clifford sat in the pale sun, with the light on his smooth, rather blond hair, his reddish full face inscrutable.

‘I mind more, not having a son, when I come here, than any other time,’ he said.

‘But the wood is older than your family,’ said Connie Connie gently.

‘Quite!’ said Clifford. ‘But we’ve preserved it. Except for us it would go...it would be gone already, like the rest of the forest. One must preserve some of the old England!’

‘Must one?’ said Connie. ‘If it has to be preserved, and preserved against the new England? It’s sad, I know.’

‘If some of the old England isn’t preserved, there’ll be no England at all,’ said Clifford. ‘And we who have this kind of property, and the feeling for it, must preserve it.’

There was a sad pause. ‘Yes, for a little while,’ said Connie.

‘For a little while! It’s all we can do. We can only do our bit. I feel every man of my family has done his bit here, since we’ve had the place. One may go against convention, but one must keep up tradition.’ Again there was a pause.

‘What tradition?’ asked Connie.

‘The tradition of England! of this!’

‘Yes,’ she said slowly.

‘That’s why having a son helps; one is only a link in a chain,’ he said.

Connie was not keen on chains, but she said nothing. She was thinking of the curious impersonality of his desire for a son.

‘I’m sorry we can’t have a son,’ she said.

He looked at her steadily, with his full, pale–blue eyes.

‘It would almost be a good thing if you had a child by another man, he said. ‘If we brought it up at Wragby, it would belong to us and to the place. I don’t believe very intensely in fatherhood. If we had the child to rear, it would be our own, and it would carry on. Don’t you think it’s worth considering?’

“Absolutely!” said I. “And now that you have explained it, I confess that I am as amazed as before.”

“It was very superficial, my dear Watson, I assure you. I should not have intruded it upon your attention had you not shown some incredulity the other day. But I have in my hands here a little problem which may prove to be more difficult of solution than my small essay in thought reading. Have you observed in the paper a short paragraph referring to the remarkable contents of a packet sent through the post to Miss Cushing, of Cross Street, Croydon?”

“No, I saw nothing.”

“Ah! then you must have overlooked it. Just toss it over to me. Here it is, under the financial column. Perhaps you would be good enough to read it aloud.”

I picked up the paper which he had thrown back to me and read the paragraph indicated. It was headed “A Gruesome Packet.”

“Miss Susan Cushing, living at Cross Street, Croydon, has been made the victim of what must be regarded as a peculiarly revolting practical joke unless some more sinister meaning should prove to be attached to the incident. At two o’clock yesterday afternoon a small packet, wrapped in brown paper, was handed in by the postman. A cardboard box was inside, which was filled with coarse salt. On emptying this, Miss Cushing was horrified to find two human ears, apparently quite freshly severed. The box had been sent by parcel post from Belfast upon the morning before. There is no indication as to the sender, and the matter is the more mysterious as Miss Cushing, who is a maiden lady of fifty, has led a most retired life, and has so few acquaintances or correspondents that it is a rare event for her to receive anything through the post. Some years ago, however, when she resided at Penge, she let apartments in her house to three young medical students, whom she was obliged to get rid of on account of their noisy and irregular habits. The police are of opinion that this outrage may have been perpetrated upon Miss Cushing by these youths, who owed her a grudge and who hoped to frighten her by sending her these relics of the dissecting-rooms. Some probability is lent to the theory by the fact that one of these students came from the north of Ireland, and, to the best of Miss Cushing’s belief, from Belfast. In the meantime, the matter is being actively investigated, Mr. Lestrade, one of the very smartest of our detective officers, being in charge of the case.”

“So much for the Daily Chronicle,” said Holmes as I finished reading. “Now for our friend Lestrade. I had a note from him this morning, in which he says:

“I think that this case is very much in your line. We have every hope of clearing the matter up, but we find a little difficulty in getting anything to work upon. We have, of course, wired to the Belfast post-office, but a large number of parcels were handed in upon that day, and they have no means of identifying this particular one, or of remembering the sender. The box is a half-pound box of honeydew tobacco and does not help us in any way. The medical student theory still appears to me to be the most feasible, but if you should have a few hours to spare I should be very happy to see you out here. I shall be either at the house or in the police-station all day.