statement were evidently not assumed, He believed every word that he
uttered. I knew not what to think. Of course my friend might be insane,
though he betrayed none of the ordinary symptoms of mania; but, however
that might be, there was the banjo, a witness whose silent testimony
there was no gainsaying. The more I meditated on the matter the more
inconceivable did it appear. Two hundred years--twenty-four hours;
these were the terms of the proposed equation. Ken and the banjo both
affirmed that the equation had been made; all worldly knowledge and
experience affirmed it to be impossible. "What was the explanation?
What is time? What is life? I felt myself beginning to doubt the
reality of all things. And so this was the mystery which my friend had
been brooding over since his return from abroad. No wonder it had
changed him. More to be wondered at was it that it had not changed him
more.

"Can you tell me the whole story?" I demanded at length.

Ken quaffed another draught from his glass of whisky and water and
rubbed his hand through his thick brown beard. "I have never spoken to
any one of it heretofore," he said, "and I had never meant to speak of
it. But I'll try and give you some idea of what it was. You know me
better than any one else; you'll understand the thing as far as it can
ever be understood, and perhaps I may be relieved of some of the
oppression it has caused me. For it is rather a ghastly memory to
grapple with alone, I can tell you."

Hereupon, without further preface, Ken related the following tale. He
was, I may observe in passing, a naturally fine narrator. There were
deep, lingering tones in his voice, and he could strikingly enhance the
comic or pathetic effect of a sentence by dwelling here and there upon