"
"Right!" said I. "Right on both points! But I confess that I
don't see how you arrived at it. It was a sudden impulse upon my
part, and I have mentioned it to no one."
"It is simplicity itself," he remarked, chuckling at my
surprise,--"so absurdly simple that an explanation is
superfluous; and yet it may serve to define the limits of
observation and of deduction. Observation tells me that you have
a little reddish mould adhering to your instep. Just opposite
the Seymour Street Office they have taken up the pavement and
thrown up some earth which lies in such a way that it is
difficult to avoid treading in it in entering. The earth is of
this peculiar reddish tint which is found, as far as I know,
nowhere else in the neighborhood. So much is observation. The
rest is deduction."
"How, then, did you deduce the telegram?"
"Why, of course I knew that you had not written a letter, since I
sat opposite to you all morning. I see also in your open desk
there that you have a sheet of stamps and a thick bundle of post-
cards. What could you go into the post-office for, then, but to
send a wire? Eliminate all other factors, and the one which
remains must be the truth.
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