"Your presumption astounds me."

"I will leave it to yourself."

He took a hand-gla.s.s from the table and held it behind my head.

"Now, do you see the reflection?"

"No; the gla.s.s is behind me."

"Ah, yes; and so is the back of your head."

"Look," I said, pointing to the great mirror on the bureau; "look, there is the reflection of the back of my head."

"No; it is the reflection of the reflection in my hand-gla.s.s."

"You have tricked me; you quibble!"

"Well," he said, ignoring my remark; "what do you believe?"

"I believe what others have seen, and what I can do."

"Excluding myself as to what others have seen," he said facetiously.

"Perhaps," I answered, relenting somewhat.

"Has any man of your acquaintance seen the middle of Africa?"

"No."

"The center of the earth?"

"No."

"The opposite side of the moon?"

"No."

"The soul of man?"

"No."

"Heat, light, electricity?"

"No."

"Then you do not believe that Africa has a midland, the earth a center, the moon an opposite side, man a soul, force an existence?"

"You distort my meaning."

"Well, I ask questions in accord with your suggestions, and you defeat yourself. You have now only one point left. You believe only what _you_ can do?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "FLOWERS AND STRUCTURES BEAUTIFUL, INSECTS GORGEOUS."]

"Yes."

"I will rest this case on one statement, then, and you may be the judge."

"Agreed."

"You can not do what any child in Cincinnati can accomplish. I a.s.sert that any other man, any other woman in the city can do more than you can. No cripple is so helpless, no invalid so feeble as not, in this respect, to be your superior."

"You insult me," I again retorted, almost viciously.

"Do you dispute the a.s.sertion seriously?"

"Yes."

"Well, let me see you kiss your elbow."

Involuntarily I twisted my arm so as to bring the elbow towards my mouth, then, as I caught the full force of his meaning, the ridiculous result of my pa.s.sionate wager came over me, and I laughed aloud. It was a change of thought from the sublime to the ludicrous.

The white-haired guest smiled in return, and kindly said:

"It pleases me to find you in good humor at last. I will return to-morrow evening and resume the reading of my ma.n.u.script. In the meantime take good exercise, eat heartily, and become more cheerful."

He rose and bowed himself out.

THE OLD MAN CONTINUES HIS Ma.n.u.sCRIPT.

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE FATHOMLESS ABYSS.--THE EDGE OF THE EARTH Sh.e.l.l.

Promptly at eight o'clock the next evening the old man entered my room.

He did not allude to the occurrences of the previous evening, and for this considerate treatment I felt thankful, as my part in those episodes had not been enviable. He placed his hat on the table, and in his usual cool and deliberate manner, commenced reading as follows:

For a long time thereafter we journeyed on in silence, now amid stately stone pillars, then through great cliff openings or among gigantic formations that often stretched away like cities or towns dotted over a plain, to vanish in the distance. Then the scene changed, and we traversed magnificent avenues, bounded by solid walls which expanded into lofty caverns of illimitable extent, from whence we found ourselves creeping through narrow crevices and threading winding pa.s.sages barely sufficient to admit our bodies. For a considerable period I had noted the absence of water, and as we pa.s.sed from grotto to temple reared without hands, it occurred to me that I could not now observe evidence of water erosion in the stony surface over which we trod, and which had been so abundant before we reached the lake. My guide explained by saying in reply to my thought question, that we were beneath the water line. He said that liquids were impelled back towards the earth's surface from a point unnoticed by me, but long since pa.s.sed. Neither did I now experience hunger nor thirst, in the slightest degree, a circ.u.mstance which my guide a.s.sured me was perfectly natural in view of the fact that there was neither waste of tissue nor consumption of heat in my present organism.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WITH FEAR AND TREMBLING I CREPT ON MY KNEES TO HIS SIDE."]

At last I observed far in the distance a slanting sheet of light that, fan-shaped, stood as a barrier across the way; beyond it neither earth nor earth's surface appeared. As we approached, the distinctness of its outline disappeared, and when we came nearer, I found that it streamed into the s.p.a.ce above, from what appeared to be a crevice or break in the earth that stretched across our pathway, and was apparently limitless and bottomless.