The Project Gutenberg EBook of In Direst Peril, by David Christie Murray

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Title: In Direst Peril

Author: David Christie Murray

Release Date: August 1, 2007 [EBook #22205]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN DIREST PERIL ***

Produced by David Widger

IN DIREST PERIL

By David Christie Murray

AUTHOR OF "TIME'S REVENGES" "A WASTED CRIME" ETC.

1894

PREFACE

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

CHAPTER I

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