Seeing he was in earnest I promised to do my best, and was curious enough to ask him whither his thoughts wandered during those abstracted moments.
“I can scarcely tell you,” he said. Presently he asked, speaking with hesitation, “I suppose you never feel that under certain circumstances—circumstances which you cannot explain—you might be able to see things which are invisible to others?”
“To see things. What things?”
“Things, as I said, which no one else can see. You must know there are people who possess this power.”
“I know that certain people have asserted they possess what they call second-sight; but the assertion is too absurd to waste time in refuting.”
“Yet,” said Carriston dreamily, “I know that if I did not strive to avoid it some such power would come to me.”
“You are too ridiculous, Carriston,” I said. “Some people see what others don’t because they have longer sight. You may, of course, imagine anything. But your eyes—handsome eyes they are, too—contain certain properties, known as humors and lenses, therefore in order to see—”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted Carriston; “I know exactly all you are going to say. You, a man of science, ridicule everything which breaks what you are pleased to call the law of Nature. Yet take all the unaccountable tales told. Nine hundred and ninety-nine you expose to scorn or throw grave doubt upon, yet the thousandth rests on evidence which cannot be upset or disputed. The possibility of that one proves the possibility of all.”
“Not at all; but enough for your argument,” I said, amused at the boy’s wild talk.