As for the danger of his being murdered, and the precautions devised to preserve his life and his piece of crystal, this was the nineteenth century, and any man in his senses had only to apply to the police.

The Colonel had been a notorious opium-eater for years past; and, if the only way of getting at the valuable papers he possessed was by accepting a matter of opium as a matter of fact, my father was quite willing to take the ridiculous responsibility imposed on him--all the more readily that it involved no trouble to himself.

The Diamond and the sealed instructions went into his banker's strong-room, and the Colonel's letters, periodically reporting him a living man, were received and opened by our family lawyer, Mr.Bruff, as my father's representative.

No sensible person, in a similar position, could have viewed the matter in any other way.
Nothing in this world, Betteredge, is probable unless it appeals to our own trumpery experience; and we only believe in a romance when we see it in a newspaper." It was plain to me from this, that Mr.Franklin thought his father's notion about the Colonel hasty and wrong.
"What is your own private opinion about the matter, sir ?" I asked.
"Let's finish the story of the Colonel first," says Mr.Franklin.

"There is a curious want of system, Betteredge, in the English mind; and your question, my old friend, is an instance of it.