My host--he was a minister of some religious body, a man of worthy but prosaic mind--expressed surprise that a 'wild romance' should absorb me so much.

I answered that those who have wide experience of the hard facts of life often find interest in romance.

Had he known what were the hard facts to which I alluded, I wonder what that excellent person would have said?
"I see that you carried out your part of the business well and faithfully.

Every instruction has been obeyed, nothing has been added or taken away.

Therefore, to you, to whom some twenty years ago I entrusted the beginning of the history, I wish to entrust its end also.