succeeded in giving an air of reality to a story which has truth,
at any rate, to recommend it. I must ask you to excuse me if I
enter into no details in offering this short explanation.
Although the persons concerned in my narrative have ceased to
exist, it is necessary to observe all due delicacy toward their
memories. Who they were, and how I became acquainted with them,
are matters of no moment. The interest of the story, such as it
is, stands in no need, in this instance, of any assistance from
personal explanations."

With those words I addressed myself to my task, and read as
follows:

BROTHER GRIFFITH'S STORY

of

THE FAMILY SECRET.

CHAPTER I.

WAS it an Englishman or a Frenchman who first remarked that every
family had a skeleton in its cupboard? I am not learned enough to
know, but I reverence the observation, whoever made it. It speaks
a startling truth through an appropriately grim metaphor--a truth
which I have discovered by practical experience. Our family had a
skeleton in the cupboard, and the name of it was Uncle George.

I arrived at the knowledge that this skeleton existed, and I
traced it to the particular cupboard in which it was hidden, by