"Among my visitors at that time was Moses. He had heard of me, and came to
see what manner of man I was. We became very well acquainted. He was a man
anxious to obtain information, and he asked me questions which embarrassed
me very much; but I do not know that he suspected I had lived beyond the
ordinary span of life. There are a good many traditions about this visit
of Moses, some of which are extant at the present day; but these, of
course, are the result of what might be called cumulative imagination.
Many of them are of Moslem origin, and the great Arabian historian Tabari
has related some of them.

[Illustration: "MOSES ASKED EMBARRASSING QUESTIONS."]

"I learned a great deal while I lived in this cave, both from scholars and
from nature; but at last new generations arose who did not honor or even
respect me, and by some I was looked upon as a fraudulent successor to the
old prophet of whom their ancestors had told them, and so I thought it
prudent to leave."

My interest in this man's extraordinary tissue of retrospection was
increasing, and I felt that I must not doubt nor deny; to do so would
be to break the spell, to close the book.

"Did it not sometimes fill you with horror to think that you must live
forever?" I asked.

"Yes," he answered, "that has happened to me; but such feelings have long,
long passed away. If you could have lived as I have, and had seen the
world change from what it was when I was young to what it is now, you
would understand how a man of my disposition, a man of my overpowering