In one of his discourses upon the art of narrative, whether of fiction or fact, my dear father remarks on the difficulties pertaining to narration in the first person. "For it invariably happens," he says, "that some portion of those events to which the narrator is party, or which directly affects his subsequent actions, will be enacted while he is absent, but which must nevertheless be described by him in order that the sequence of the tale be fully comprehended by the reader. Nevertheless the events so recorded must perforce be obtained at secondhand, and suffer to a certain degree in their quality of convincingness by reason of their losing direct contact with the author; and however credible the witness from whom the facts are obtained, they must naturally take a certain color from his own personality, and hence a deplorable lack of continuity occurs, which greatly weakens the credibility of the tale." Very interesting, too, and eminently correct, though I confess that the paragraph, while perfectly familiar to me because of my diligent study of my dear father's writings, was never so clear to me as when I came upon a practical application of it in my own experience; a thought which has very likely occurred to more than one person who has had some sudden occasion to perceive the fundamental truth of a familiar copy-book axiom, such as "Honesty is the best policy," if you understand me. But I digress--or rather, what I mean is this: That while I undertook the writing of this chronicle in order to refute a false impression which the newspapers had created regarding the name of Talbot, and also to retrieve the fair and unsullied name of the Peggs, I find to my dismay that as I reach the crux of the whole matter, I was not actually present at some of the most important events with which my narrative has to deal, and that I must therefore rely on Peaches' account of it. That she was fairly accurate in her statement I feel reasonably certain; but I must confess to some chagrin at missing the best part of the story. It seems to have been my fortune through life to take an active part merely through inadvertence. And yet I scarcely perceive how I could very well have been there when it happened. Two elements intervened to prevent it--an overwhelming desire for the sleep of which I had been deprived for the best part of two nights, and the natural desire on Peaches' part that she have privacy for what she was about to do. Which, of course, did not develop until after the departure of the police inspector and his henchmen.