In answer to this, I can only state that I am acting under orders, and that those orders have been given to me (as I understand) in the interests of truth.  I am forbidden to tell more in this narrative than I knew myself at the time.  Or, to put it plainer, I am to keep strictly within the limits of my own experience, and am not to inform you of what other persons told me—­for the very sufficient reason that you are to have the information from those other persons themselves, at first hand.  In this matter of the Moonstone the plan is, not to present reports, but to produce witnesses.  I picture to myself a member of the family reading these pages fifty years hence.  Lord! what a compliment he will feel it, to be asked to take nothing on hear-say, and to be treated in all respects like a Judge on the bench.

At this place, then, we part—­for the present, at least—­after long journeying together, with a companionable feeling, I hope, on both sides.  The devil’s dance of the Indian Diamond has threaded its way to London; and to London you must go after it, leaving me at the country-house.  Please to excuse the faults of this composition—­my talking so much of myself, and being too familiar, I am afraid, with you.  I mean no harm; and I drink most respectfully (having just done dinner) to your health and prosperity, in a tankard of her ladyship’s ale.  May you find in these leaves of my writing, what Robinson Crusoe found in his experience on the desert island—­namely, “something to comfort yourselves from, and to set in the Description of Good and Evil, on the Credit Side of the Account.”—­Farewell.

The end of the first period.

SECOND PERIOD

THE DISCOVERY OF THE TRUTH (1848-1849)

The events related in several narratives.

FIRST NARRATIVE

Contributed by miss Clack; niece of the late sir John Verinder

CHAPTER I

I am indebted to my dear parents (both now in heaven) for having had habits of order and regularity instilled into me at a very early age.

In that happy bygone time, I was taught to keep my hair tidy at all hours of the day and night, and to fold up every article of my clothing carefully, in the same order, on the same chair, in the same place at the foot of the bed, before retiring to rest.  An entry of the day’s events in my little diary invariably preceded the folding up.  The “Evening Hymn” (repeated in bed) invariably followed the folding up.  And the sweet sleep of childhood invariably followed the “Evening Hymn.”