Holmes, of course, was a man of the city, used to the crowded pleasures of London, and he was inclined to view the countryside as an unfortunate mistake of nature. Villages of all sorts he found equally wanting, and under normal circumstances he would never have deigned to set foot in so rude a hamlet as Hinckley. But when he was engrossed in an investigation, all such prejudices vanished. In such a situation, the place where he happened to be was always the most interesting place in the world, and so he took in the sights of Hinckley, however uninspiring they might be, with a keen and probing
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