45975    The latter question he put to me several times, and always with a voice which vibrated with excitement.

45976    'I can well remember driving up to his house in the evening, some three weeks before the fatal event.

45977    He chanced to be at his hall door.

45978    I had descended from my gig and was standing in front of him, when I saw his eyes fix themselves over my shoulder, and stare past me with an expression of the most dreadful horror.

45979    I whisked round and had just time to catch a glimpse of something which I took to be a large black calf passing at the head of the drive.

45980    So excited and alarmed was he that I was compelled to go down to the spot where the animal had been and look around for it.

45981    It was gone, however, and the incident appeared to make the worst impression upon his mind.

45982    I stayed with him all the evening, and it was on that occasion, to explain the emotion which he had shown, that he confided to my keeping that narrative which I read to you when first I came.

45983    I mention this small episode because it assumes some importance in view of the tragedy which followed, but I was convinced at the time that the matter was entirely trivial and that his excitement had no justification.

45984    'It was at my advice that Sir Charles was about to go to London.

45985    His heart was, I knew, affected, and the constant anxiety in which he lived, however chimerical the cause of it might be, was evidently having a serious effect upon his health.

45986    I thought that a few months among the distractions of town would send him back a new man.

45987    Mr Stapleton, a mutual friend who was much concerned at his state of health, was of the same opinion.

45988    At the last instant came this terrible catastrophe.

45989    'On the night of Sir Charles's death Barrymore the butler, who made the discovery, sent Perkins the groom on horseback to me, and as I was sitting up late I was able to reach Baskerville Hall within an hour of the event.