found in the case.

As I raised my hand to take it out, I remembered that there was a
shorter way to discovery than this. The nightgown itself would reveal
the truth, for, in all probability, the nightgown was marked with its
owner's name.

I took it up from the sand, and looked for the mark.

I found the mark, and read--MY OWN NAME.

There were the familiar letters which told me that the nightgown
was mine. I looked up from them. There was the sun; there were the
glittering waters of the bay; there was old Betteredge, advancing nearer
and nearer to me. I looked back again at the letters. My own name.
Plainly confronting me--my own name.

"If time, pains, and money can do it, I will lay my hand on the thief
who took the Moonstone."--I had left London, with those words on my
lips. I had penetrated the secret which the quicksand had kept from
every other living creature. And, on the unanswerable evidence of the
paint-stain, I had discovered Myself as the Thief.

CHAPTER IV

I have not a word to say about my own sensations.

My impression is that the shock inflicted on me completely suspended my
thinking and feeling power. I certainly could not have known what I was
about when Betteredge joined me--for I have it on his authority that I
laughed, when he asked what was the matter, and putting the nightgown
into his hands, told him to read the riddle for himself.

Of what was said between us on the beach, I have not the faintest
recollection. The first place in which I can now see myself again
plainly is the plantation of firs. Betteredge and I are walking back
together to the house; and Betteredge is telling me that I shall be able
to face it, and he will be able to face it, when we have had a glass of
grog.

The scene shifts from the plantation, to Betteredge's little
sitting-room. My resolution not to enter Rachel's house is forgotten.
I feel gratefully the coolness and shadiness and quiet of the room.
I drink the grog (a perfectly new luxury to me, at that time of day),
which my good old friend mixes with icy-cold water from the well. Under
any other circumstances, the drink would simply stupefy me. As things
are, it strings up my nerves. I begin to "face it," as Betteredge has
predicted. And Betteredge, on his side, begins to "face it," too.

The picture which I am now presenting of myself, will, I suspect,
be thought a very strange one, to say the least of it. Placed in a
situation which may, I t