I took it up from the sand, and looked for the mark.

I found the mark, and read—­my own name.

There were the familiar letters which told me that the nightgown was mine.  I looked up from them.  There was the sun; there were the glittering waters of the bay; there was old Betteredge, advancing nearer and nearer to me.  I looked back again at the letters.  My own name.  Plainly confronting me—­my own name.

“If time, pains, and money can do it, I will lay my hand on the thief who took the Moonstone.”—­I had left London, with those words on my lips.  I had penetrated the secret which the quicksand had kept from every other living creature.  And, on the unanswerable evidence of the paint-stain, I had discovered Myself as the Thief.

CHAPTER IV

I have not a word to say about my own sensations.

My impression is that the shock inflicted on me completely suspended my thinking and feeling power.  I certainly could not have known what I was about when Betteredge joined me—­for I have it on his authority that I laughed, when he asked what was the matter, and putting the nightgown into his hands, told him to read the riddle for himself.

Of what was said between us on the beach, I have not the faintest recollection.  The first place in which I can now see myself again plainly is the plantation of firs.  Betteredge and I are walking back together to the house; and Betteredge is telling me that I shall be able to face it, and he will be able to face it, when we have had a glass of grog.

The scene shifts from the plantation, to Betteredge’s little sitting-room.  My resolution not to enter Rachel’s house is forgotten.  I feel gratefully the coolness and shadiness and quiet of the room.  I drink the grog (a perfectly new luxury to me, at that time of day), which my good old friend mixes with icy-cold water from the well.  Under any other circumstances, the drink would simply stupefy me.  As things are, it strings up my nerves.  I begin to “face it,” as Betteredge has predicted.  And Betteredge, on his side, begins to “face it,” too.

The picture which I am now presenting of myself, will, I suspect, be thought a very strange one, to say the least of it.  Placed in a situation which may, I think, be described as entirely without parallel, what is the first proceeding to which I resort?  Do I seclude myself from all human society?  Do I set my mind to analyse the abominable impossibility which, nevertheless, confronts me as an undeniable fact?  Do I hurry back to London by the first train to consult the highest authorities, and to set a searching inquiry on foot immediately?  No.  I accept the shelter of a house which I had resolved never to degrade myself by entering again; and I sit, tippling spirits and water in the company of an old servant, at ten o’clock in the morning.  Is this the conduct that might have been expected