"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.
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."