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The authority in Holmes's voice had its effect upon the bearers.

Peters had suddenly vanished into the house, and they obeyed these new orders.

"Quick, Watson, quick! Here is a screw-driver!" he shouted as the coffin was replaced upon the table.

"Here's one for you, my man! A sovereign if the lid comes off in a minute! Ask no questions-work away! That's good! Another! And another! Now pull all together! It's giving! It's giving! Ah, that does it at last."

With a united effort we tore off the coffin-lid.

As we did so there came from the inside a stupefying and overpowering smell of chloroform.

A body lay within, its head all wreathed in cotton-wool, which had been soaked in the narcotic.

Holmes plucked it off and disclosed the statuesque face of a handsome and spiritual woman of middle age.

In an instant he had passed his arm round the figure and raised her to a sitting position.

"Is she gone, Watson? Is there a spark left? Surely we are not too late!"

For half an hour it seemed that we were.

What with actual suffocation, and what with the poisonous fumes of the chloroform, the Lady Frances seemed to have passed the last point of recall.

And then, at last, with artificial respiration, with injected ether, and with every device that science could suggest, some flutter of life, some quiver of the eyelids, some dimming of a mirror, spoke of the slowly returning life.

A cab had driven up, and Holmes, parting the blind, looked out at it.

"Here is Lestrade with his warrant," said he.

"He will find that his birds have flown.

And here," he added as a heavy step hurried along the passage, "is someone who has a better right to nurse this lady than we have.

Good morning, Mr. Green; I think that the sooner we can move the Lady Frances the better.

Meanwhile, the funeral may proceed, and the poor old woman who still lies in that coffin may go to her last resting-place alone."

"Should you care to add the case to your annals, my dear Watson," said Holmes that evening, "it can only be as an example of that temporary eclipse to which even the best-balanced mind may be exposed.

Such slips are common to all mortals, and the greatest is he who can recognize and repair them.

To this modified credit I may, perhaps, make some claim.

My night was haunted by the thought that somewhere a clue, a strange sentence, a curious observation, had come under my notice and had been too easily dismissed.

Then, suddenly, in the gray of the morning, the words came back to me.

It was the remark of the undertaker's wife, as reported by Philip Green.

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