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"Would you like to hear the story of their past?" he asked suddenly.

"Their—their past—did you say?" I blurted out, unable to interpret the meaning of his query.

"Yes, their past. That's what I said," he repeated in the same low tone. "Especially that of the old man with the white hair."

"But—but I don't understand," I began, pinching myself to make sure that I was awake, and feeling the pain. "Do —do you mean—the story of his past—since his youth?"

"Exactly," he replied emphatically with an odd smile. "Since the day he was only twenty-five years old." And with these words I suddenly found myself yearning desperately to hear the whole tale.

"By all means tell me the story," I urged impatiently, sitting on the edge of my seat. "Tell it to me in full detail."

Thereupon, the old man smiled again and launched into the following story:

"I remember it all very vividly," he began, "even to the precise day my elder brother turned into that!' Ile nodded toward the tablet. "It was on the evening of April 27, in 1895____ But let me start from the beginning.

"My brother and I were born the sons of a draper, living in the Nihonbashi district of downtown Tokyo. The time of which I speak was not long after they had built in Asakusa Park that twelve-story tower known as the Junikai which, until its destruction in the Great Earthquake, was a marvel of architecture for all provincial visitors to the capital. Almost every day my brother used to go and visit the tower, for he was of a very curious disposition and loved all things of foreign origin. These binoculars—yes, the ones you used—were but one example of this peculiar craze of his. He bought the binoculars at a small curio shop located in Yokohama's Chinatown. I remember my brother telling me that they had once belonged to the master of some foreign ship, and that he had paid a tidy sum for them."

Every time he said "my brother," the old man either looked or pointed at the other old man in the pasted rag picture, as if to emphasize his presence there. I soon realized that he identified the memories of his real brother with the white-haired old man in the picture, and hence talked as if the picture also were alive and listening to his story. Strangely enough, the fact did not strike me as being at all unusual. During those moments both of us must have been living in some strange domain far beyond the operations of the laws of nature.

"Did you ever go up the Junikai?" the old man's voice droned on. "No? What a pity. It was quite a strange building, I must say. I often used to wonder what sort of a wizard had built it. It was said to have been designed by an Italian architect.

"I must explain that in those days Asakusa Park was even more of a show place than it is now. At nearly every turn there was one attraction after another. To cite but a few, there was the Spider Man, a sword-dance show by a group of young girls, a noted circus entertainer with his favorite feat of dancing atop a ball, and peep shows galore. Then there was also the Puzzle Labyrinth, where you could easily get lost in a maze of paths partitioned by knitted bamboo screens.

"And finally, of course, there was the Tower, built of brick, rising abruptly from the center of the district. It was a dizzy two hundred and sixteen feet high—almost half a city block—and its octagonal top was shaped like a Chinese cap. Wherever you happened to be in Tokyo you could almost always see the Junikai.

"In the spring of 1895, not long after my brother had bought the binoculars, a strange thing happened to him. My father even thought that my brother was going mad, and worried about him constantly. As for myself, because I loved my brother deeply, I too could not help being sorely puzzled over his strange behavior. For days on end my brother took little food, hardly spoke a word to his family, and shut himself up in his room most of the time when he was at home.

"Before long he became thinner and thinner, while his face turned deadly pale, with