I stooped under the rude lintel, and there he sat upon a stone outside, his grey eyes dancing with amusement as they fell upon my astonished features.
Just as Holmes enjoyed trumping Watson's deductions about the walking stick at the beginning of the story, now he revels in his friend's astonishment.

"…for when I see the stub of a cigarette marked Bradley, Oxford Street, I know that my friend Watson is in the neighbourhood."
This imaginary tobacconist's shop would have been located just a few blocks from Baker Street.

I was still rather raw over the deception which had been practised upon me, but the warmth of Holmes's praise drove my anger from my mind.
Holmes often hurts Watson's feelings by withholding information from him. Later, Holmes has a logical explanation for his deception, and Watson always forgives him. For information about an interesting made-for-TV version of Hound (2003) that explores this dynamic in depth, see below.

When I learned that the missing man was devoted to entomology the identification was complete.
It is ironic that Stapleton's one harmless passion leads to his downfall.

And a new sound mingled with it, a deep, muttered rumble, musical and yet menacing, rising and falling like the low, constant murmur of the sea.
Holmes and Watson hear the hound before they see it. The hound is an elusive presence in the story—this authorial choice makes the beast more frightening and formidable when it finally does appear.

Illustrators of Hound must decide what conception of the hound will have maximum impact. Is it better to represent him as a monster, or to leave him a shadowy presence? Filmmakers face the same dilemma.

Above right, the cover illustration for the first complete edition of Hound shows the animal in silhouette against the moon. The stylish, art-deco cover sports a red background with gold tracery and questions marks. The interior illustrations by Sidney Paget had appeared in the original Strand Magazine series. This edition was published in England by Georges Newnes, owner of The Strand Magazine, in 1902.

There could be no doubt about the beetling forehead, the sunken animal eyes.
Again, Watson emphasizes Selden"s "beetling"—or Neanderthal—brow and his "animal" eyes to show that he is a "born" criminal. Perhaps this is one reason that Holmes and Watson neglect to take much trouble over Selden"s corpse, while, if it had been Sir Henry"s body, they might have considered carrying it to the hall.

"My difficulty is the more formidable of the two, for I think that we shall very shortly get an explanation of yours, while mine may remain for ever a mystery."
Holmes is right: Watson"s question is answered a few paragraphs later, while Holmes"s own "difficulty" must wait until the end of the story for its explanation.

"Sufficient for tomorrow is the evil thereof…."
Holmes paraphrases the King James New Testament: "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (Matthew 6:34).

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Hound on Film

Out of perhaps 250 films involving Holmes in some capacity or other, The Hound of the Baskervilles has been made into feature films at least 20 times since 1914, not counting the many television versions. Each version has its own quirks; a few have little or no relationship to the book. Multiple versions exist in English, German, French, Italian, and Russian. British silent film actor Eille Norwood, who has the distinction of having made more Holmes films than anyone (47, in all), starred in a 1921 silent version of Hound. His Holmes, forced to speak only through caption cards, was also slow-moving and deliberate, because Norwood saw Holmes as a man who could not be rattled. (Our modern Holmeses, such as Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett, tend to be much more highly strung.) Norwood's films were set in post-World-War-I England, not in Victorian times, as Conan Doyle would have preferred. Aside from that small quibble, he enjoyed Norwood"s performances, and once gave him a Holmesian dressing gown as a gift, which Norwood wore in the films. Filmed on location in Dartmoor, the Norwood Hound featured over-the-top acting, typical of the silent film era, plus a hound whose jowls were—none too successfully—made to look fiery with scratches on the film.