nd it. I must ask you to excuse me if I enter into
no details in offering this short explanation. Although the persons
concerned in my narrative have ceased to exist, it is necessary to
observe all due delicacy toward their memories. Who they were, and how
I became acquainted with them, are matters of no moment. The interest
of the story, such as it is, stands in no need, in this instance, of any
assistance from personal explanations."

With those words I addressed myself to my task, and read as follows:

BROTHER GRIFFITH'S STORY of THE FAMILY SECRET.

CHAPTER I.

WAS it an Englishman or a Frenchman who first remarked that every family
had a skeleton in its cupboard? I am not learned enough to know, but I
reverence the observation, whoever made it. It speaks a startling truth
through an appropriately grim metaphor--a truth which I have discovered
by practical experience. Our family had a skeleton in the cupboard, and
the name of it was Uncle George.

I arrived at the knowledge that this skeleton existed, and I traced it
to the particular cupboard in which it was hidden, by slow degrees. I
was a child when I first began to suspect that there was such a thing,
and a grown man when I at last discovered that my suspicions were true.

My father was a doctor, having an excellent practice in a large country
town. I have heard that he married against the wishes of his family.
They could not object to my mother on the score of birth, breeding, or
character--they only disliked her heartily. My grandfather, grandmother,
uncles, and aunts all declared that she was a heartless, deceitful
woman; all disliked her manners, her opinions, and even the expression
of her face--all, with the exception of my father's youngest brother,
George.

George was the unlucky member of our family. The rest were all clever;
he was slow in capacity. The rest were all remarkably handsome; he was
the sort of man that no woman ever looks at twice. The rest succeeded
in life; he failed. His profession was the same as my father's, but he
never got on when he started in practice for himself. The sick poor,
who could not choose, employed him, and liked him. The sick rich, who
could--especially the ladies--declined to call him in when they could
get anybody else. In experience he gained greatly by his profession; in
money and reputation he gained nothing.

There are very few of us, however dull and unattractive we may be to
outward appearance