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<h1> THE MYSTERY OF CLOOMBER </h1>
<h2> By Arthur Conan Doyle </h2>
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<h2> CHAPTER I. THE HEGIRA OF THE WESTS FROM EDINBURGH </h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Should I attain this result, I shall rest amply satisfied with the outcome
of my first, and probably my last, venture in literature.</p>
<p>It was my intention to write out the sequence of events in due order,
depending on trustworthy hearsay when I was describing that which was
beyond my own personal knowledge. I have now, however, through the kind
cooperation of friends, hit upon a plan which promises to be less onerous
to me and more satisfactory to the reader. This is nothing less than to
make use of the various manuscripts which I have by me bearing upon the
subject, and to add to them the first-hand evidence contributed by those
who had the best opportunities of knowing Major-General J. B.
Heatherstone.</p>
<p>In pursuance of this design I shall lay before the public the testimony of
Israel Stakes, formerly coachman at Cloomber Hall, and of John Easterling,
F.R.C.P. Edin., now practising at Stranraer, in Wigtownshire. To these I
shall add a verbatim account extracted from the journal of the late John
Berthier Heatherstone, of the events which occurred in the Thul Valley in
the autumn of '41 towards the end of the first Afghan War, with a
description of the skirmish in the Terada defile, and of the death of the
man Ghoolab Shah.</p>
<p>To myself I reserve the duty of filling up all the gaps and chinks which
may be left in the narrative. By this arrangement I have sunk from the
position of an author to that of a compiler, but on the other hand my work
has ceased to be a story and has expanded into a series of affidavits.</p>
<p>My Father, John Hunter West, was a well known Oriental and Sanskrit
scholar, and his name is still of weight with those who are interested in
such matters. He it was who first after Sir William Jones called attention
to the great value of early Persian literature, and his translations from
the Hafiz and from Ferideddin Atar have earned the warmest commendations
from the Baron von Hammer-Purgstall, of Vienna, and other distinguished
Continental critics.</p>
<p>In the issue of the <i>Orientalisches Scienzblatt</i> for January, 1861,
he is described as <i>"Der beruhmte und sehr gelhernte Hunter West von
Edinburgh"</i>—a passage which I well remember that he cut out and
stowed away, with a pardonable vanity, among the most revered family
archives.</p>
<p>He had been brought up to be a solicitor, or Writer to the Signet, as it
is termed in Scotland, but his learned hobby absorbed so much of his time
that he had little to devote to the pursuit of his profession.</p>
<p>When his clients were seeking him at his chambers in George Street, he was
buried in the recesses of the Advocates' Library, or poring over some
mouldy manuscript at the Philosophical Institution, with his brain more
exercised over the code which Menu propounded six hundred years before the
birth of Christ than over the knotty problems of Scottish law in the
nineteenth century. Hence it can hardly be wondered at that as his
learning accumulated his practice dissolved, until at the very moment when
he had attained the zenith of his celebrity he had also reached the nadir
of his fortunes.</p>
<p>There being no chair of Sanscrit in any of his native universities, and no
demand anywhere for the only mental wares which he had to dispose of, we
should have been forced to retire into genteel poverty, consoling
ourselves with the aphorisms and precepts of Firdousi, Omar Khayyam, and
others of his Eastern favourites, had it not been for the kindness and
liberality of his half-brother William Farintosh, the Laird of Branksome,
in Wigtownshire.</p>
<p>This William Farintosh was the proprietor of a landed estate, the acreage
which bore, unfortunately, a most disproportional relation to its value,
for it formed the bleakest and most barren tract of land in the whole of a
bleak and barren shire. As a bachelor, however, his expenses had been
small, and he had contrived from the rents of his scattered cottages, and
the sale of the Galloway nags, which he bred upon the moors, not only to
live as a laird should, but to put by a considerable sum in the bank.</p>
<p>We had heard little from our kinsman during the days of our comparative
prosperity, but just as we were at our wit's end, there came a letter like
a ministering angel, giving us assurance of sympathy and succour. In it
the Laird of Branksome told us that one of his lungs had been growing
weaker for some time, and that Dr. Easterling, of Stranraer, had strongly
advised him to spend the few years which were left to him in some more
genial climate. He had determined, therefore to set out for the South of
Italy, and he begged that we should take up our residence at Branksome in
his absence, and that my father should act as his land steward and agent
at a salary which placed us above all fear of want.</p>
<p>Our mother had been dead for some years, so that there were only myself,
my father, and my sister Esther to consult, and it may be readily imagined
that it did not take us long to decide upon the acceptance of the laird's
generous offer. My father started for Wigtown that very night, while
Esther and I followed a few days afterwards, bearing with us two
potato-sacksful of learned books, and such other of our household effects
that were worth the trouble and expense of transport.</p>
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