f he did dream; logical in his madness,
if he were mad. And this was his story as first I read it:--

"Having well considered the warning which is the superscription of
this record, you have determined to continue this narrative, I do
not doubt; for I judge you to be a man who, having tasted the
succulent dish of curiosity, will not put it away until you have
eaten your fill. I will tell you, therefore, such a part of my life
as you should know when you come to ask yourself the question, 'Is
this man a fool or an imbecile, a crack-brained faddist or the
victim of hallucination?' This question should arise at a later
stage, and I beg you not to put it until you have read every word
that I have written here.

"I was born in Liverpool, thirty-three years ago, and was educated for
a very few years at the well-known institute in that city. They taught
me there that consciousness of ignorance which is half an education;
and being the son of a man who starved on a fine ability for modelling
things in clay, and plaster-moulding, I went out presently to make my
living. First to America, you doubt not, to get the experience of
coming home again; then to the Cape, to watch other men dig diamonds;
to Rome, to Naples, to Genoa, that I might know what it was to want
food; to South America as an able seaman; to Australia in the
stoke-hole of a South Sea liner; home again to my poor father, who lay
dead when I reached Liverpool.

"I was twenty-two years old then, and glutted with life. I had no
relation living that I knew of; no friend who was not also a plain
acquaintance. By what chance it was I cannot tell, but I drifted like a
living log into the detective force of my city, and after working up
for a few years through the grades, they put me on the landing stage at
Liverpool to watch the men who wished to emigrate because they had no
opinion of the police force here. It was miserable employment, but
educating, for it taught me to read faces that were disguised, old men
became beardless, young men made old at the touch of a _coiffeur_. I
suppose I had more than common success, for when I had been so employed
for five years, I was sent to London by our people and there commanded
to go to the Admiralty and get new instructions. Regard this, please,
as the first mark in this record I am making. Of my work for our own
people I may not tell even you, since I engaged upon it under solemn
bond of