their veins, how in some islands of the
Western seas there are bats which hang on the trees all day, and those
who have seen describe as like giant nuts or pods, and that when the
sailors sleep on the deck, because that it is hot, flit down on them
and then, and then in the morning are found dead men, white as even
Miss Lucy was?"

"Good God, Professor!" I said, starting up. "Do you mean to tell me
that Lucy was bitten by such a bat, and that such a thing is here in
London in the nineteenth century?"

He waved his hand for silence, and went on, "Can you tell me why the
tortoise lives more long than generations of men, why the elephant
goes on and on till he have sees dynasties, and why the parrot never
die only of bite of cat of dog or other complaint? Can you tell me
why men believe in all ages and places that there are men and women
who cannot die? We all know, because science has vouched for the
fact, that there have been toads shut up in rocks for thousands of
years, shut in one so small hole that only hold him since the youth of
the world. Can you tell me how the Indian fakir can make himself to
die and have been buried, and his grave sealed and corn sowed on it,
and the corn reaped and be cut and sown and reaped and cut again, and
then men come and take away the unbroken seal and that there lie the
Indian fakir, not dead, but that rise up and walk amongst them as
before?"

Here I interrupted him. I was getting bewildered. He so crowded on
my mind his list of nature's eccentricities and possible
impossibilities that my imagination was getting fired. I had a dim
idea that he was teaching me some lesson, as long ago he used to do in
his study at Amsterdam. But he used them to tell me the thing, so
that I could have the object of thought in mind all the time. But now
I was without his help, yet I wanted to follow him, so I said,

"Professor, let me be your pet student again. Tell me the thesis, so
that I may apply your knowledge as you go on. At present I am going
in my mind from point to point as a madman, and not a sane one,
follows an idea. I feel like a novice lumbering through a bog in a
midst, jumping from one tussock to another in the mere blind effort to
move on without knowing where I am going."

"That is a good image," he said. "Well, I shall tell you. My thesis
is this, I want you to believe."

"To believe what?"

"To believe in things that you cannot. Let me illustrate. I heard
o