Page:John Uri Lloyd - Etidorhpa.djvu/160

 == INTERLUDE—THE STORY INTERRUPTED. ==

MY UNBIDDEN GUEST PROVES HIS STATEMENT AND REFUTES MY PHILOSOPHY.
Let the reader who has followed this strange story which I am directed to title "The End of Earth," and who, in imagination, has traversed the cavernous passages of the underworld and listened to the conversation of those two personages who journeyed towards the secrets of the Beyond, return now to upper earth, and once more enter my secluded lodgings, the home of Llewellen Drury, him who listened to the aged guest and who claims your present attention. Remember that I relate a story within a story. That importunate guest of mine, of the glittering knife and the silvery hair, like another Ancient Mariner, had constrained me to listen to his narrative, as he read it aloud to me from the manuscript. I patiently heard chapter after chapter, generally with pleasure, often with surprise, sometimes with incredulity, or downright dissent. Much of the. narrative, I must say,—yes, most of it, appeared possible, if not probable, as taken in its connected sequence. The scientific sections were not uninteresting; the marvels of the fungus groves, the properties of the inner light, I was not disinclined to accept as true to natural laws; but when The—Man—Who—Did—It came to tell of the intra-earth salt deposits, and to explain the cause of the disappearance of lakes that formerly existed underground, and their simultaneous replacement by beds of salt, my credulity was overstrained.

"Permit me to interrupt your narrative," I remarked, and then in response to my request the venerable guest laid down his paper.

"Well?" he said, interrogatively.