46918 I remembered the case well, for it was one in which Holmes had taken an interest on account of the peculiar ferocity of the crime and the wanton brutality which had marked all the actions of the assassin.
46919 The commutation of his death sentence had been due to some doubts as to his complete sanity, so atrocious was his conduct.
46920 Our wagonette had topped a rise and in front of us rose the huge expanse of the moor, mottled with gnarled and craggy cairns and tors.
46921 A cold wind swept down from it and set us shivering.
46922 Somewhere there, on that desolate plain, was lurking this fiendish man, hiding in a burrow like a wild beast, his heart full of malignancy against the whole race which had cast him out.
46923 It needed but this to complete the grim suggestiveness of the barren waste, the chilling wind, and the darkling sky.
46924 Even Baskerville fell silent and pulled his overcoat more closely around him.
46925 We had left the fertile country behind and beneath us.
46926 We looked back on it now, the slanting rays of a low sun turning the streams to threads of gold and glowing on the red earth new turned by the plough and the broad tangle of the woodlands.
46927 The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders.
46928 Now and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled and roofed with stone, with no creeper to break its harsh outline.
46929 Suddenly we looked down into a cup-like depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm.
46930 Two high, narrow towers rose over the trees.