We arrived in the great courtyard at about seven o'clock in the evening. HOLES slipped from my side, entered the house, and after a few moments returned to my side. We then clanged the bell, and demanded to see his lordship. In a few moments Lord TOCHTACHIE appeared, surrounded by kilted retainers, bearing torches, and intoning in unison the mournful sporan of the clan. It was a weird and awful sight. But HOLES, unemotional as ever, advanced at once to the haughty Scotchman, before whose eye half a county was accustomed to tremble, and, without any ado, addressed him thus: "My Lord, your march has been stolen. Nay, do not interrupt me. Your guards are careless, but not criminal--of that I can assure you. Here is the stolen property; I restore it to you without cost." At this moment the cart rumbled up, and ere the peer had time to utter a word, it had discharged its contents into the middle of the yard. HOLES went on, but in a lower voice, so as to be heard only by Lord TOCHTACHIE: "The guilty party, my Lord, is your honoured father-in-law. He dare not, he cannot, deny it. He is, I know, blind and deaf and dumb. These qualities do not, however, exclude the possibility of crime. I have just found these pieces of granite in his morning-room. The proof is complete."
At this moment a shot was heard in the Castle, and directly afterwards a frightened butler rushed up to his lordship and whispered to him. "Ha! say you so?" almost screamed Lord TOCHTACHIE. "That amounts to a confession. Mr. HOLES," he continued, "you have indeed rendered me a service. My unfortunate, but guilty father-in-law has shot and missed himself through the head. But in any ease the honour of the house is, I know, safe in your hands."
I need hardly say that HOLES has never violated his lordship's confidence, and the Daffshire peasants still speculate amongst themselves upon the tortuous mystery of the march which was stolen and restored.
NOTE.--There is no proof positive given by any eye-witness whose veracity is unimpeachable of the death of the great amateur detective as it has been described in the _Strand Magazine_ for this month. _Where is the merry Swiss boy who delivered the note and disappeared?_ What was the symbolic meaning of the alpenstock with the hook at the end, left on the rock? Why, that he had _not_ "taken his hook." PICKLOCK HOLES has disappeared, but so have a great many other people. That he will turn up again no student of detective history and of the annals of crime can possibly doubt. Is it not probable that he has only dropped out of the _Strand Magazine_? And is it not equally probable that under some alias he will re-appear elsewhere?