e, he sees food, fire, and wife on his hearthstone.
Presently I put out the torchlight, and then went back to my couch and
sat down, the bowl shining like a star before me.

There and then a purpose came to me--something which would keep my
brain from wandering, my nerves from fretting and wearing, for a time
at least. I determined to write to my dear Alixe the true history of my
life, even to the point--and after--of this thing which now was bringing
me to so ill a pass. But I was in darkness, I had no paper, pens, nor
ink. After a deal of thinking I came at last to the solution. I would
compose the story, and learn it by heart, sentence by sentence, as I so
composed it.

So there and then I began to run back over the years of my life, even to
my first remembrances, that I might see it from first to last in a sort
of whole and with a kind of measurement. But when I began to dwell upon
my childhood, one little thing gave birth to another swiftly, as you may
see one flicker in the heaven multiply and break upon the mystery of
the dark, filling the night with clusters of stars. As I thought, I kept
drawing spears of the dungeon corn between my fingers softly (they had
come to be like comrades to me), and presently there flashed upon me the
very first memory of my life. It had never come to me before, and I knew
now that it was the beginning of conscious knowledge: for we can never
know till we can remember. When a child remembers what it sees or feels,
it has begun life.

I put that recollection into the letter which I wrote Alixe, and it
shall be set down forthwith and in little space, though it took me so
very many days and weeks to think it out, to give each word a fixed
place, so that it should go from my mind no more. Every phrase of that
story as I told it is as fixed as stone in my memory. Yet it must not be
thought I can give it all here. I shall set down only a few things, but
you shall find in them the spirit of the whole. I will come at once to
the body of the letter.

VI. MORAY TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE

"...I would have you know of what I am and whence I came, though I have
given you glimpses in the past. That done, I will make plain why I am
charged with this that puts my life in danger, which would make you
blush that you ever knew me if it were true. And I will show you first
a picture as it runs before me, sitting here, the corn of my dungeon
garden twining in my fingers:--

"A multiplyin