He dressed, expecting the customary summons to the Book and the Case. None came. He took breakfast and opened the paper. For three weeks he had been unable to read the paper at all. Now, to his surprise, he approached it with all his customary interest. Nothing was suggested to his mind as to the book. He went into the study, he again opened the drawer; he was not afraid, though no compulsion obliged him, to take out the book: since he was not constrained, as before, to open it, he put it back again. He remarked that the loathing with which he had regarded it only the day before was gone. In fact, he heeded the book no longer: it was like the dead body of a demon which could do no more harm.
He turned to the papers on his writing-table; there were the unfinished sheets of his article lying piled up with notes and papers in neglect. He took them up with a new-born delight and the anticipation of the pleasure of finishing the thing; he wondered how he had been able to suspend his work for so long. There was a pile letters, the unopened, unanswered letters of the last three weeks; he hurriedly tore them open: some of them, at least, must be answered without delay.
All this time he was not forgetful of the Discovery. That was now made: it was complete. Strange! It did not look so horrible after four-and-twenty hours. It seemed as if the discovery was the long-looked for answer to the mystery which explained everything.
He sat down, his mind clear once more, and tried to make out the steps by which the truth had been recovered. To give his thoughts words, “We started with two assumptions, both of which were false; and both made it impossible to find the truth. The first of these was the assumption that the two were fast and firm friends, whereas they were for the moment at variance on some serious affair--so much at variance that on one occasion at least before the last, one of them had become like a madman in his rage. The second was the assumption that the Squire had turned and gone home at the entrance of the wood. Both at the inquest and the trial that had been taken for granted. Now, the boy had simply said that they went into the wood together, and that one had come out alone.