If you hear that I am gone, do not pity, but congratulate Your unfortunate friend, JOHN BERTHIER HEATHERSTONE.
I threw aside the letter and picked up the roll of blue foolscap which contained the solution of the mystery.

It was all ragged and frayed at the inner edge, with traces of gum and thread still adhering to it, to show that it had been torn out of a strongly bound volume.

The ink with which it had been written was faded somewhat, but across the head of the first page was inscribed in bold, clear characters, evidently of later date than the rest: "Journal of Lieutenant J.B.Heatherstone in the Thull Valley during the autumn of 1841," and then underneath: This extract contains some account of the events of the first week of October of that year, including the skirmish of the Terada ravine and the death of the man Ghoolab Shah.
I have the narrative lying before me now, and I copy it verbatim.

If it contains some matter which has no direct bearing upon the question at issue, I can only say that I thought it better to publish what is irrelevant than by cutting and clipping to lay the whole statement open to the charge of having been tampered with..