Don’t Put the Cart Before the Horse
Holmes and I were taking a stroll down a country lane when we came across a most surprising sight. A tree on the right-hand side of the road had been torn from its roots by a recent storm, and had fallen onto a tree on the left-hand side of the road so that it hung across the road. Worse still, a horse and carriage had attempted to pass under the fallen tree but had clearly underestimated how tall the carriage was, and the carriage was now quite perfectly wedged beneath the fallen tree, unable to move either forwards or backwards.
Naturally, Holmes and I went to try and help. Even the combined strength of the two of us and the driver could shift neither the tree nor the carriage, and the driver was in any case loath to risk either damaging the carriage directly, or risk dislodging the tree from its resting place and causing it to crush the carriage.
Luckily, however, Holmes was able to make a very simple suggestion to enable the driver to get his carriage out from under the tree.
What was it?