49289 Meanwhile we left Lestrade in possession of the house, while Holmes and I went back with the baronet to Baskerville Hall.
49290 The story of the Stapletons could no longer be withheld from him, but he took the blow bravely when he learned the truth about the woman whom he had loved.
49291 But the shock of the night's adventures had shattered his nerves, and before morning he lay delirious in a high fever, under the care of Dr Mortimer.
49292 The two of them were destined to travel together round the world before Sir Henry had become once more the hale, hearty man that he had been before he became master of that ill-omened estate.
49293 And now I come rapidly to the conclusion of this singular narrative, in which I have tried to make the reader share those dark fears and vague surmises which clouded our lives so long, and ended in so tragic a manner.
49294 On the morning after the death of the hound the fog had lifted and we were guided by Mrs Stapleton to the point where they had found a pathway through the bog.
49295 It helped us to realize the horror of this woman's life when we saw the eagerness and joy with which she laid us on her husband's track.
49296 We left her standing upon the thin peninsula of firm, peaty soil which tapered out into the widespread bog.
49297 From the end of it a small wand planted here and there showed where the path zig-zagged from tuft to tuft of rushes among those green-scummed pits and foul quagmires which barred the way to the stranger.
49298 Rank reeds and lush, slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay and a heavy miasmatic vapour into our faces, while a false step plunged us more than once thigh-deep into the dark, quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations around our feet.
49299 Its tenacious grip plucked at our heels as we walked, and when we sank into it it was as if some malignant hand was tugging us down into those obscene depths, so grim and purposeful was the clutch in which it held us.
49300 Once only we saw a trace that someone had passed that perilous way before us.
49301 From amid a tuft of cotton-grass which bore it up out of the slime some dark thing was projecting.
49302 Holmes sank to his waist as he stepped from the path to seize it, and had we not been there to drag him out he could never have set his foot upon firm land again.