In Direst Peril

It is not often that an honorable man commits a theft and yet leaves no stain upon his honor. It can happen still less often that a man of honor robs the lady he loves and honors above all womankind, and wins her hand in marriage by the act. Yet before we were married I robbed my wife of forty thousand pounds, breaking into her house to steal it; and here-now that we are both old-she is still so proud of me for having done that, that she must needs make me tell the story. A better writer would have done it better, but my wife has polished my rough phrases; and, at any rate, the plain truth about the strangest things which have happened in my knowledge is here set plainly down. (Signed) John Fyffe, (Late acting) General of Division under General Garibaldi. IN DIREST PERIL I have told my wife quite plainly that in my opinion I am as little fitted by nature for the task she has laid upon my shoulders as any man alive. I have spent a great part of my life in action; and though the later part of it has been quieter and more peaceful than the earlier, and though I have enjoyed opportunities of study which I never had before, I am still anything but a bookish man, and I am not at all confident about such essential matters as grammar and spelling. The history I am called upon to tell is one which, if it were put into the hands of a professed man of letters, might be made unusually interesting. I am sure of that, for in a life of strange adventure I have encountered nothing so strange. But, for my own part, the utmost I can do is to tell the thing as it happened as nearly as I can, and if I cannot command those graces of style which would come naturally to a practised pen, I can only ask that the reader will dispense with them. The natural beginning of the story is that I fell in love with the lady who has now for eight-and-thirty blessed and happy years been my wife. It may be that I may not again find opportunity to say one thing that should be said. That lady is a pearl among women; and I am prouder of having fallen in love…