"It pleases me to find you in good humor at last. I will return to-morrow evening and resume the reading of my manuscript. In the meantime take good exercise, eat heartily, and become more cheerful." He rose and bowed himself out. THE OLD MAN CONTINUES HIS MANUSCRIPT. CHAPTER XLIV. THE FATHOMLESS ABYSS.--THE EDGE OF THE EARTH SHELL. Promptly at eight o'clock the next evening the old man entered my room. He did not allude to the occurrences of the previous evening, and for this considerate treatment I felt thankful, as my part in those episodes had not been enviable. He placed his hat on the table, and in his usual cool and deliberate manner, commenced reading as follows: For a long time thereafter we journeyed on in silence, now amid stately stone pillars, then through great cliff openings or among gigantic formations that often stretched away like cities or towns dotted over a plain, to vanish in the distance. Then the scene changed, and we traversed magnificent avenues, bounded by solid walls which expanded into lofty caverns of illimitable extent, from whence we found ourselves creeping through narrow crevices and threading winding passages barely sufficient to admit our bodies. For a considerable period I had noted the absence of water, and as we passed from grotto to temple reared without hands, it occurred to me that I could not now observe evidence of water erosion in the stony surface over which we trod, and which had been so abundant before we reached the lake. My guide explained by saying in reply to my thought question, that we were beneath the water line. He said that liquids were impelled back towards the earth's surface from a point unnoticed by me, but long since passed. Neither did I now experience hunger nor thirst, in the slightest degree, a circumstance which my guide assured me was perfectly natural in view of the fact that there was neither waste of tissue nor consumption of heat in my present organism. [Illustration: "WITH FEAR AND TREMBLING I CREPT ON MY KNEES TO HIS SIDE."] At last I observed far in the distance a slanting sheet of light that, fan-shaped, stood as a barrier across the way; beyond it neither earth nor earth's surface appeared. As we approached, the distinctness of its outline disappeared, and when we came nearer, I found that it streamed into the space above, from what appeared to be a crevice or break in the earth that stretched across our pathway, and was apparently limitless and bottomless. "Is this another hallucination?" I queried. "No; it is a reality. Let us advance to the brink."