PROLOGUE

It is a cause of very great regret to me that this task has taken
so much longer a time than I had expected for its completion. It
is now many months--over a year, in fact--since I wrote to
Georgetown announcing my intention of publishing, IN A VERY FEW
MONTHS, the whole truth about Mr. Abel. Hardly less could have
been looked for from his nearest friend, and I had hoped that the
discussion in the newspapers would have ceased, at all events,
until the appearance of the promised book. It has not been so;
and at this distance from Guiana I was not aware of how much
conjectural matter was being printed week by week in the local
press, some of which must have been painful reading to Mr. Abel's
friends. A darkened chamber, the existence of which had never
been suspected in that familiar house in Main Street, furnished
only with an ebony stand on which stood a cinerary urn, its
surface ornamented with flower and leaf and thorn, and winding
through it all the figure of a serpent; an inscription, too, of
seven short words which no one could understand or rightly
interpret; and finally the disposal of the mysterious ashes--that
was all there was relating to an untold chapter in a man's life
for imagination to work on. Let us hope that now, at last, the
romance-weaving will come to an end. It was, however, but
natural that the keenest curiosity should have been excited; not
only because of that peculiar and indescribable charm of the man,
which all recognized and which won all hearts, but also because
of that hidden chapter--that sojourn in the desert, about which
he preserved silence. It was felt in a vague way by his
intimates that he had met with unusual experiences which had