INTERLUDE.—THE STORY INTERRUPTED.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
A CHALLENGE.—MY UNBIDDEN GUEST ACCEPTS IT.
The white-haired reader, in whom I had now become deeply interested, no longer an unwelcome stranger, suspended his reading, laid down his manuscript, and looking me in the face, asked:
"Are you a believer?"
"No," I promptly answered.
"What part of the narrative do you question?"
"All of it."
"Have you not already investigated some of the statements I previously made?" he queried.
"Yes," I said; "but you had not then given utterance to. such preposterous expressions."
"Is not the truth, the truth?" he answered.
"You ask me to believe impossibilities," I replied. "Name one."
"You yourself admit," I said warmly, "that you were incredulous, and shook your head when your guide asserted that the bottom of the ocean might be as porous as a sieve, and still hold water. A fountain can not rise above its source."
"It often does, however," he replied.
"I do not believe you," I said boldly. "And, furthermore, I assert that you might as reasonably ask me to believe that I can see my own brain, as to accept your fiction regarding the production of light, miles below the surface of the earth."
"I can make your brain visible to you, and if you dare to accompany me, I will carry you beneath the surface of the earth and prove my other statement," he said. "Come!" He arose and grasped my arm.
I hesitated.
