Sherlock Holmes, suffering from boredom due to a want of cases, returns home from a walk with Dr. Watson in the early spring of 1888 to find he has missed a visitor, but that the caller has left his pipe behind. From it, Holmes deduces that he was disturbed of mind (because he forgot the pipe); that he valued it highly (because he had repaired, rather than replaced, it when it was broken); that he was muscular, left-handed, had excellent teeth, was careless in his habits and was well-off.