een me during the day, and supposed that I
had spent the whole of it abroad. From this account it was plain, that
Ludlow had returned for no other purpose but to remove this book out of
my reach. But if he had a double key to this door, what should hinder
his having access, by the same means, to every other locked up place in
the house?

This suggestion made me start with terror. Of so obvious a means for
possessing a knowledge of every thing under his roof, I had never been
till this moment aware. Such is the infatuation which lays our most
secret thoughts open to the world's scrutiny. We are frequently in
most danger when we deem ourselves most safe, and our fortress is taken
sometimes through a point, whose weakness nothing, it should seem, but
the blindest stupidity could overlook.

My terrors, indeed, quickly subsided when I came to recollect that there
was nothing in any closet or cabinet of mine which could possibly
throw light upon subjects which I desired to keep in the dark. The more
carefully I inspected my own drawers, and the more I reflected on the
character of Ludlow, as I had known it, the less reason did there appear
in my suspicions; but I drew a lesson of caution from this circumstance,
which contributed to my future safety.

From this incident I could not but infer Ludlow's unwillingness to let
me so far into his geographical secret, as well as the certainty of
that suspicion, which had very early been suggested to my thoughts, that
Ludlow's plans of civilization had been carried into practice in some
unvisited corner of the world. It was strange, however, that he should
betray himself by such an inadvertency. One who talked so confidently of
his own powers, to unveil any secret of mine, and, at the same time, to
conceal his own transactions, had surely committed an unpardonable error
in leaving this important document in my way. My reverence, indeed,
for Ludlow was such, that I sometimes entertained the notion that this
seeming oversight was, in truth, a regular contrivance to supply me
with a knowledge, of which, when I came maturely to reflect, it was
impossible for me to make any ill use. There is no use in relating what
would not be believed; and should I publish to the world the existence
of islands in the space allotted by Ludlow's maps to these _incognitae_,
what would the world answer? That whether the space described was sea or
land was of no importance. That the moral and political condi