"Very good," replied the gentleman, "then here it is: Counting five thousand backward will either restore your loss of memory, or, as I have taken care to warn you gravely in advance, cause you to go insane. It must be done rapidly, and in a given space of time. In my belief the remedy is by far worse than the malady. I feel, somehow, as though I ought not to have told you about it."
"Nonsense," said Lester. "You need have little fear of my trying it."
He thought of it, however, as the cab rolled rapidly along.
"I wonder if harm would result from my trying it?" he mused. "I have unusually strong nerves, and—and, if anything disastrous should come of it, there is not one soul on the wide earth that would be injured. There is no mother to weep, no fair young sister to grieve, no father or brother to be bowed down with sorrow. I am alone in the world. My foolhardiness would injure only myself—only myself."
He had been thinking so deeply that he had not noted the flight of time, nor that the street lamps had grown fewer and far between, at last ceasing altogether, and that they were traveling a country road. Suddenly the vehicle came to a stop. The driver jumped from his box and opened the door with a jerk, remarking:
"This is the place."
Lester alighted, looking about him in a rather mystified manner, but before he could make the inquiry that rose to his lips the driver hastened to say:
"The path that leads to the house, which is just beyond that clump of trees, is so narrow that we cannot drive there. We will have to walk. It is but a short distance. You will see the house at the first turn in the path."
And as the man uttered the words he gave a peculiar cough.
"Who is the person who sent for me?" Lester queried, stopping short. The man made an evasive answer, which aroused his suspicions that all was not as it should be.