18903    I stood for a minute or two to collect myself, for I was dazed with the horror of the thing.

18904    Then I began to think of Holmes's own methods and to try to practise them in reading this tragedy.

18905    It was, alas! only too easy to do.

18906    During our conversation we had not gone to the end of the path, and the Alpine-stock marked the place where we had stood.

18907    The blackish soil is kept for ever soft by the incessant drift of spray, and a bird would leave its tread upon it.

18908    Two lines of footmarks were clearly marked along the farther end of the path, both leading away from me.

18909    There were none returning.

18910    A few yards from the end the soil was all ploughed up into a patch of mud, and the brambles and ferns which fringed the chasm were torn and bedraggled.

18911    I lay upon my face and peered over, with the spray spouting up all around me.

18912    It had darkened since I left, and now I could only see here and there the glistening of moisture upon the black walls, and far away down at the end of the shaft the gleam of the broken water.

18913    I shouted; but only that same half-human cry of the fall was borne back to my ears.

18914    But it was destined that I should after all have a last word of greeting from my friend and comrade.

18915    I have said that his Alpine-stock had been left leaning against a rock which jutted on to the path.

18916    From the top of this boulder the gleam of something bright caught my eye, and, raising my hand, I found that it came from the silver cigarette-case which he used to carry.

18917    As I took it up a small square of paper, upon which it had lain, fluttered down on to the ground.