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.

49303    He held an old black boot in the air.

49304    'Meyers, Toronto', was printed on the leather inside.

49305    'It is worth a mud bath,' said he.

49306    'It is our friend Sir Henry's missing boot.'

49307    'Thrown there by Stapleton in his flight.'

49308    'Exactly.

49309    He retained it in his hand after using it to set the hound upon his track.