count the best thing in the world. But it could not be
helped. The risk was worth while. A great discovery, the
opportunity of a lifetime, yes, of an age, perhaps of many
ages, came to me. I simply could not throw it away. I must
use it, make the best of it, at any danger, at any cost. You
shall judge for yourself whether I was right or wrong. But you
must judge fairly, without haste, without prejudice. I ask you
to make me one promise. You will suspend judgment, you will say
nothing, you will keep my secret, until you have been with me
three times at the place where I am now taking you."

By this time it was clear to me that I had to do with a
case lying far outside of the common routine of life;
something subtle, abnormal, hard to measure, in which a clear
and careful estimate would be necessary. If Keene was
labouring under some strange delusion, some disorder of mind,
how could I estimate its nature or extent, without time and
study, perhaps without expert advice? To wait a little would
be prudent, for his sake as well as for the sake of others.
If there was some extraordinary, reality behind his mysterious
hints, it would need patience and skill to test it. I gave
him the promise for which he asked.

At once, as if relieved, he sprang up, and crying, "Come
on, follow me!" began to make his way up the bed of the brook.
It was one of the wildest walks that I have ever taken. He
turned aside for no obstacles; swamps, masses of interlacing
alders, close-woven thickets of stiff young spruces,
chevaux-de-frise of dead trees where wind-falls had mowed down
the forest, walls of lichen-crusted rock, landslides where heaps