“Oh,” and I paused for further enlightenment.

“It was this way. I remember it perfectly, you know. I was somewhere,—somewhere up North——”

“Canada?”

“I don’t know—I don’t know.” He shook his head uncertainly. “But I know it was up North where it’s always cold.”

Perhaps the man had been an Arctic explorer.

“Iceland?” I said, “Greenland?”

“Maybe,” and he looked uninterested. “But,” here he brightened a little, “anyway, I fell through the earth. I fell in there, wherever it was, and came on down, down through the earth till I came out at the other end.”

“You mean, you fell through a section or segment of the globe? As if, say, you fell in at London and came out at the Cape of Good Hope!”

“That’s the idea! Only I fell out here in New York.”

“And you fell in?”