"'Certainly it is,' he responded; 'but you must make some allowance for perspective. The back of your head is a trifle less than twenty-four thousand miles from the end of your nose the way you were looking at it.'"
"You mean to say—" began the lieutenant, as the doctor paused to chalk his cue.
"Never mind what I mean to say," said the doctor. "Reflect upon what I have said."
"But the man and the telescope—what became of them?" asked the lieutenant.
"I was about to tell you that. The old fellow who had made this marvellous glass, which to two eyes that he knew of, and to only two, would work as was desired, feeling that he was about to die, had come to me to offer the glass for sale on two considerations. One was a consideration of $25. The other was that I would leave no stone unturned to discover a possible third person younger than myself with an eye similar to those we had, to whom at my death the glass should be transmitted, exacting from him the promise that he too would see that it was passed along in the same manner into the hands of posterity. I was also to acquaint the world with the story of the glass and the name of its inventor to the fullest extent possible."
"And you, of course, accepted?"
"I did," said the doctor; "but having no money in my pocket, I went down into the house to borrow it of my wife, and upon my return to the roof, found no trace of the glass, the old man, or the roof either."
"What!" cried the lieutenant. "Are you crazy?"
"No," smiled the doctor. "Not at all. For the moment I reached the roof of the house, I opened my eyes, and found myself still swinging in the hammock under the trees."
"And the moral?" queried the lieutenant. "You promised a moral, or I should not have listened."