Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FIRST PERIOD. LOSS OF THE DIAMOND (1848). The Events related by QdbrUl Betteredge, house-steward in the Service of Julia, Lady Verinder. CHAPTER L In the first part of Robinson Crusoe, at page one hundred and twenty-nine, you will find it thus -written : " Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning a Work before we count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go through with it." Only yesterday I opened my Robinson Crusoe at that place. Only this morning (May twenty-first, eighteen hundred and fifty) came my lady's nephew, Mr. Franklin Blake, aud held a short conversation with me, as follows: " Betteredge," says Mr. Franklin," I have been to the lawyer's about some family matters; and, among other things, we have been talking of the loss of the Indian Diamond, in my aunt's house in Yorkshire, two years since. The lawyer thinks, as I think, that the whole story ought, in the interests of truth, to be placed on record in writing—and the sooner the better." Not perceiving his drift yet, and thinking it always desirable for the sake of peace and quietness to be on the lawyer's side, I said I thought so too. Mr. Franklin went on: "In this matter of the Diamond," he said, "the characters of innocent people have suffered under suspicion already— as you know. The memories of innocent people may suffer, hereafter, for want of a record of the facts to which those who come after us can appeal. There can be no doubt that this strange family story of ours ought to be told. And I think, Betteredge, the lawyer and I together have hit on the right way of telling it." Very satisfactory to both of them, no doubt. But I failed to aee what I myself bad to do with it, so far, " We have certain events to relate," Mr. Franklin proceed ed; " an... - from Amzon