*I John Fothergill West, student of law in the University of St. Andrews, have endeavou­red in the ensuing pages to lay my statement befo­re the public in a concise and business-like fashion.
It is not my wish to achieve literary success, nor have I any desire by the graces of my style, or by the artistic ordering of my incidents, to throw a deeper shadow over the strange passages of which I shall have to speak. My highest ambition is that tho­se who know something of the matter should, after reading my account, be able to conscientiously in­dorse it without finding a single paragraph in which I have either added to or detracted from the truth.*