A Study In Scarletby Arthur Conan DoyleCHAPTER I.MR.SHERLOCK HOLMES.IN the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of theUniversity of London,and proceeded to Netley to go through the courseprescribed for surgeons in the army.Having completed my studies there,I was duly attached to the FifthNorthumberland Fusiliers as Assistant Surgeon.The regiment was stationed in India at the time,and before I could join it,the second Afghan war had broken out.On landing at Bombay,I learned that my corps had advanced through thepasses,and was already deep in the enemy's country.I followed,however,with many other officers who were in the same situation asmyself,and succeeded in reaching Candahar in safety,where I found myregiment,and at once entered upon my new duties.The campaign brought honours and promotion to many,but for me it hadnothing but misfortune and disaster.I was removed from my brigadeand attached to the Berkshires,with whom I served at the fatal battle ofMaiwand.There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet,whichshattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery.I should have falleninto the hands of the murderous Ghazis had it not been for the devotionand courage shown by Murray,my orderly,who threw me across apack-horse,and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines.Worn with pain,and weak from the prolonged hardships which I hadundergone,I was removed,with a great train of wounded sufferers,to thebase hospital at Peshawar.Here I rallied,and had already improved sofar as to be able to walk about the wards,and even to bask a little uponthe verandah,when I was struck down by enteric fever,that curse of ourIndian possessions.For months my life was despaired of,and when atlast I came to myself and became convalescent,I was so weak andemaciated that a medical board determined that not a day should be lostin sending me back to England.I was dispatched,accordingly,in the troopship "Orontes,"and landed amonth later on Portsmouth jetty,with my health irretrievably ruined,butwith permission from a paternal government to spend the next ninemonths in attempting to improve it.I had neither kith nor kin in England,and was therefore as free as air--oras free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit aman to be.Under such circumstances,I naturally gravitated to London,that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empireare irresistibly drained.There I stayed for some time at a private hotelin the Strand,leading a comfortless,meaningless existence,and spendingsuch money as I had,considerably more freely than I ought.Soalarming did the state of my finances become,that I soon realized that Imust either leave the metropolis and rusticate somewhere in the country,or that I must make a complete alteration in my style of living.Choosing the latter alternative,I began by making up my mind to leavethe hotel,and to take up my quarters in some less pretentious and lessexpensive domicile.On the very day that I had come to this conclusion,I was standing at theCriterion Bar,when some one tapped me on the shoulder,and turninground I recognized young Stamford,who had been a dresser under me atBarts.The sight of a friendly face in the great wilderness of London is apleasant thing indeed to a lonely man.In old days Stamford had never