However, my total innocence of any intentional allusion to private matters whereof I was entirely ignorant was set clear at once by an explanatory letter; and so no harm resulted.

In the case of "Heart" similarly, I invented the bankruptcy of a certain Austral Bank, which at the time of my tale's publication had no existence,--the very name having been taken some years after.

This is another instance of the literary perils to which imaginative authors may be subject; for _litera scripta manet_, especially if in printer's ink, and, for aught I know, that offhand word might be held a continuous libel.

For all else, by way of notice, the stories speak for themselves; as, Covetousness was the text for "The Crock of Gold," while Concealment and False Witness are severally the _morale_ of "The Twins" and "Heart." I once meditated ten tales, on the Ten Commandments, these three being an instalment; and I mentally sketched my fourth upon Idolatry, "The Prior of Marrick," but nothing came of it.

The Decalogue hangs together as a whole, and cannot be cut into ten distinct subjects without reference to one another.
In the chapter headed "The find of the Heartless," I find a manuscript note perhaps worth printing here: "If I had been gifted with the true prophetic power, hereabouts should my heartless hero have stumbled on a big nugget of gold (I wrote before the Australian gold discovery), even as the shrewd Defoe invented for his Robinson Crusoe in Juan Fernandez, where gold has not yet been found, though it may be.