He examined it again, and, after comparing my letters with those on the
sovereigns, said: "Pray tell me, now, what you have written here, and
explain why you write in two different ways?"

I told him, as well as I could, why letters of one form were used to
stamp on gold and other substances, and of a different form for writing.
Then, with a modest blush, I read the words of the sentence: "In
different parts of the world men have different customs, and write
different letters; but alike to all men in all places, a lie is
hateful."

"Smith," he said, addressing me in an impressive manner, but happily not
to charge me with a third and bigger lie, "I have lived long in the
world, and the knowledge others possess concerning it is mine also. It
is common knowledge that in the hotter and colder regions men are
compelled to live differently, owing to the conditions they are placed
in; but we know that everywhere they have the same law of right and
wrong inscribed on the heart, and, as you have said, hate a lie; also
that they all speak the same language; and until this moment I also
believed that they wrote in similar characters. You, however, have now
succeeded in convincing me that this is not the case; that in some
obscure valley, cut off from all intercourse by inaccessible mountains,
or in some small, unknown island of the sea, a people may exist--ah, did
you not tell me that you came from an island?"

"Yes, my home was on an island," I answered.

"So I imagined. An island of which no report has ever reached us, where
the people, isolated from their fellows, have in the course of many
centuries changed their customs--even their manner of writing. Although