49315    But no slightest sign of them ever met our eyes.

49316    If the earth told a true story, then Stapleton never reached that island of refuge towards which he struggled through the fog upon that last night.

49317    Somewhere in the heart of the great Grimpen Mire, down in the foul slime of the huge morass which had sucked him in, this cold and cruel-hearted man is for ever buried.

49318    Many traces we found of him in the bog-girt island where he had hid his savage ally.

49319    A huge driving-wheel and a shaft half-filled with rubbish showed the position of an abandoned mine.

49320    Beside it were the crumbling remains of the cottages of the miners, driven away, no doubt, by the foul reek of the surrounding swamp.

49321    In one of these a staple and chain, with a quantity of gnawed bones, showed where the animal had been confined.

49322    A skeleton with a tangle of brown hair adhering to it lay among the débris.

49323    'A dog!' said Holmes.

49324    'By Jove, a curly-haired spaniel.

49325    Poor Mortimer will never see his pet again.

49326    Well, I do not know that this place contains any secret which we have not already fathomed.

49327    He could hide his hound, but he could not hush its voice, and hence came those cries which even in daylight were not pleasant to hear.

49328    On an emergency he could keep the hound in the outhouse at Merripit, but it was always a risk, and it was only on the supreme day, which he regarded as the end of all his efforts, that he dared do it.

49329    This paste in the tin is no doubt the luminous mixture with which the creature was daubed.