INTRODUCTION


As one looks over any period of one's life, it appears behind one as
a shining maze of brilliant colour with spots in it here and there of
brighter or darker hue. Each spot represents a period of time when our
happiness has glowed brighter or waned; sometimes it is a day, more
often it is a night. Looking back now, over a stretch of my existence
I see many such spots gleaming brightly; they are nights of colour.
The history of many of these is too sacred to be written, but there
are Five Nights, which, though not the dearest to my memory, have yet
stamped themselves and their colour on it for ever. And the record of
these five nights is contained in the following pages.

TREVOR LONSDALE.




PART ONE

THE GOLD NIGHT