Franklin!" he said "You're trying to
account for how you got the paint on your nightgown, without knowing it
yourself. It won't do, sir. You're miles away still from getting at the
truth. Walk in your sleep? You never did such a thing in your life!"
Here again, I felt that Betteredge must be right. Neither at home nor
abroad had my life ever been of the solitary sort. If I had been a
sleep-walker, there were hundreds on hundreds of people who must have
discovered me, and who, in the interest of my own safety, would have
warned me of the habit, and have taken precautions to restrain it.
Still, admitting all this, I clung--with an obstinacy which was surely
natural and excusable, under the circumstances--to one or other of
the only two explanations that I could see which accounted for the
unendurable position in which I then stood. Observing that I was not yet
satisfied, Betteredge shrewdly adverted to certain later events in the
history of the Moonstone; and scattered both my theories to the wind at
once and for ever.
"Let's try it another way, sir," he said. "Keep your own opinion, and
see how far it will take you towards finding out the truth.
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