47908    I am conscious myself of a weight at my heart and a feeling of impending danger - ever-present, which is the more terrible because I am unable to define it.

47909    And have I not cause for such a feeling?

47910    Consider the long sequence of incidents which have all pointed to some sinister influence which is at work around us.

47911    There is the death of the last occupant of the Hall, fulfilling so exactly the conditions of the family legend, and there are the repeated reports from peasants of the appearance of a strange creature upon the moor.

47912    Twice I have with my own ears heard the sound which resembled the distant, baying of a hound.

47913    It is incredible, impossible, that it should really be outside the ordinary laws of Nature.

47914    A spectral hound which leaves material footmarks and fills the air with its howling is surely not to be thought of.

47915    Stapleton may fall in with such a superstition, and Mortimer also, but if I have one quality upon earth it is common sense, and nothing will persuade me to believe in such a thing.

47916    To do so would be to descend to the level of these poor peasants who are not content with a mere fiend-dog, but must needs describe him with hell-fire shooting from his mouth and eyes.

47917    Holmes would not listen to such fancies, and I am his agent.

47918    But facts are facts, and I have twice heard this crying upon the moor.

47919    Suppose that there were really some huge hound loose upon it, that would go far to explain everything.

47920    But where could such a hound lie concealed, where did it get its food, where did it come from, how was it that no one saw it by day?

47921    It must be confessed that the natural explanation offers almost as many difficulties as the other.

47922    And always, apart from the hound, there was the fact of the human agency in London, the man in the cab, and the letter which warned Sir Henry against the moor.