And then I have another reason: many years ago a
chance paragraph in a newspaper caught my attention, and focussed in an
instant the vagrant thoughts and half-formed fancies of many idle and
speculative hours into a certain hypothesis. I saw at once that I was
treading on a thin crust; my theory was wild and fantastic in the
extreme, and I would not for any consideration have written a hint of it
for publication. But I thought that in the company of scientific men
like myself, men who knew the course of discovery, and were aware that
the gas that blazes and flares in the gin-palace was once a wild
hypothesis; I thought that with such men as these I might hazard my
dream--let us say Atlantis, or the philosopher's stone, or what you
like--without danger of ridicule. I found I was grossly mistaken; my
friends looked blankly at me and at one another, and I could see
something of pity, and something also of insolent contempt, in the
glances they exchanged. One of them called on me next day, and hinted
that I must be suffering from overwork and brain exhaustion. 'In plain
terms,' I said, 'you think I am going mad. I think not;' and I showed
him out with some little appearance of heat. Since that day I vowed that
I would never whisper the nature of my theory to any living soul; to no
one but yourself have I ever shown the contents of that drawer. After
all, I may be following a rainbow; I may have been misled by the play of
coincidence; but as I stand here in this mystic hush and silence amidst
the woods and wild hills, I am more than ever sure that I am hot on the
scent. Come, it is time we went in." To me in all this there was something both of wonder and excitement; I
knew how in his ordinary work Professor Gregg moved step by step,
testing every inch of the way, and never venturing on assertion without
proof that was impregnable. Yet I divined more from his glance and the
vehemence of his tone than from the spoken word that he had in his every
thought the vision of the almost incredible continually with him; and I,
who was with some share of imagination no little of a sceptic, offended
at a hint of the marvellous, could not help asking myself whether he was
cherishing a monomania, and barring out from this one subject all the
scientific method of his other life. Yet, with, this image of mystery haunting my thoughts, I surrendered
wholly to the charm of the country. Above the faded house on the
hillside began the great forest; a long dark line seen from the opposing
hills, stretching above the river for many a mile from north to south,
and yielding in the north to even wilder country, barren and savage
hills, and ragged common land, a territory all strange and unvisited,
and more unknown to Englishmen than the very heart of Africa. The space
of a couple of steep fields alone separated the house from the wood, and
the children were delighted to follow me up the long alleys of
undergrowth, between smooth pleached walls of shining beech, to the
highest point in the wood, whence one looked on one side across the
river and the rise and fall of the country to the great western mountain
wall, and on the other, over the surge and dip of the myriad trees of
the forest, over level meadows and the shining yellow sea to the faint
coast beyond. I used to sit at this point on the warm sunlit turf which
marked the track of the Roman Road, while the two children raced about
hunting for the whinberries that grew here and there on the banks. Here
beneath the deep blue sky and the great clouds rolling, like olden
galleons with sails full-bellied, from the sea to the hills, as I
listened to the whispered charm of the great and ancient wood, I lived
solely for delight, and only remembered strange things when we would
return to the house, and find Professor Gregg either shut up in the
little room he had made his study, or else pacing the terrace with the
look, patient and enthusiastic, of the determined seeker. One morning, some eight or nine days after our arrival, I looked out of
my window and saw the whole landscape transmuted before me. The clouds
had dipped low and hidden the mountain in the west, and a southern wind
was driving the rain in shifting pillars up the valley, and the little
brooklet that burst the hill below the house now raged, a red torrent,
down to the river. We were perforce obliged to keep snug within doors,
and when I had attended to my pupils, I sat down in the morning-room
where the ruins of a library still encumbered an old-fashioned bookcase. I had inspected the shelves once or twice, but their contents had failed
to attract me; volumes of eighteenth century sermons, an old book on
farriery, a collection of "Poems" by "persons of quality," Prideaux's
"Connection," and an odd volume of Pope were the boundaries of the
library, and there seemed little doubt that everything of interest or
value had been removed. Now, however, in desperation, I began to
re-examine the musty sheepskin and calf bindings, and found, much to my
delight, a fine old quarto printed by the Stephani, containing the three
books of Pomponius Mela, "De Situ Orbis," and other of the ancient
geographers. I knew enough of Latin to steer my way through an ordinary
sentence, and I soon became absorbed in the odd mixture of fact and
fancy; light shining on a little of the space of the world, and beyond
mist and shadow and awful forms. Glancing over the clear-printed pages,
my attention was caught by the heading of a chapter in Solinus, and I
read the words:--

MIRA DE INTIMIS GENTIBUS LIBYAE, DE LAPIDE
             HEXECONTALITHO. "The wonders of the people that inhabit the inner parts of Libya, and of
the stone called Sixtystone." The odd title attracted me and I read on:--

"Gens ista avia et secreta habitat, in montibus horrendis foeda
mysteria celebrat. De hominibus nihil aliud illi præferunt quam
figuram, ab humano ritu prorsus exulant, oderunt deum lucis. Stridunt
potius quam loquuntur; vox absona nec sine horrore auditur. Lapide
quodam gloriantur, quem Hexecontalithon vocant, dicunt enim hunc lapidem
sexaginta notas ostendere. Cujus lapidis nomen secretum ineffabile
colunt: quod Ixaxar." "This folk," I translated to myself, "dwells in remote and secret
places, and celebrates foul mysteries on savage hills. Nothing have they
in common with men save the face, and the customs of humanity are wholly
strange to them; and they hate the sun. They hiss rather than speak;
their voices are harsh, and not to be heard without fear. They boast of
a certain stone, which they call Sixtystone; for they say that it
displays sixty characters. And this stone has a secret unspeakable name;
which is Ixaxar." I laughed at the queer inconsequence of all this, and thought it fit for
Sinbad the Sailor or other of the supplementary Nights. When I saw
Professor Gregg in the course of the day, I told him of my find in the
bookcase, and the fantastic rubbish I had been reading.