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prevent the greatest piece of folly that ever was
conceived."
    "Folly!" said the doctor.
    "Is what this paper says, the truth?" rejoined Kennedy,
holding out the copy of the Daily Telegraph, mentioned above.
    "Ah! that's what you mean, is it? These newspapers
are great tattlers! But, sit down, my dear Dick."
    "No, I won't sit down!—Then, you really intend to
attempt this journey?"
    "Most certainly! all my preparations are getting along
finely, and I—"
    "Where are your traps? Let me have a chance at
them! I'll make them fly! I'll put your preparations in
fine order." And so saying, the gallant Scot gave way to
a genuine explosion of wrath.
    "Come, be calm, my dear Dick!" resumed the doctor.
"You're angry at me because I did not acquaint you with
my new project."
    "He calls this his new project!"
    "I have been very busy," the doctor went on, without
heeding the interruption; "I have had so much to look
after! But rest assured that I should not have started
without writing to you."
    "Oh, indeed! I'm highly honored."
    "Because it is my intention to take you with me."
    Upon this, the Scotchman gave a leap that a wild goat
would not have been ashamed of among his native crags.
    "Ah! really, then, you want them to send us both to
Bedlam!"
    "I have counted positively upon you, my dear Dick,
and I have picked you out from all the rest."
    Kennedy stood speechless with amazement.
    "After listening to me for ten minutes," said the doctor,
"you will thank me!"
    "Are you speaking seriously?"
    "Very seriously."
    "And suppose that I refuse to go with you?"
    "But you won't refuse."
    "But, suppose that I were to refuse?"
    "Well, I'd go alone."
    "Let us sit down," said Kennedy, "and talk without
excitement. The moment you give up jesting about it,
we can discuss the thing."
    "Let us discuss it, then, at breakfast, if you have no
objections, my dear Dick."
    The two friends took their seats opposite to each other,
at a little table with a plate of toast and a huge tea-urn
before them.
    "My dear Samuel," said the sportsman, "your project
is insane! it is impossible! it has no resemblance to
anything reasonable or practicable!"
    "That's for us to find out when we shall have tried it!"
    "But trying it is exactly what you ought not to attempt."
    "Why so, if you please?"
    "Well, the risks, the difficulty of the thing."
    "As for difficulties," replied Ferguson, in a serious
tone, "they were made to be overcome; as for risks and
dangers, who can flatter himself that he is to escape them?
Every thing in life involves danger; it may even be
dangerous to sit down at one's own table, or to
put one's hat on one's own head. Moreover, we must
look upon what is to occur as having already occurred,
and see nothing but the present in the future, for the
future is but the present a little farther on."
    "There it is!" exclaimed Kennedy, with a shrug.
"As great a fatalist as ever!"
    "Yes! but in the good sense of the word. Let us not
trouble ourselves, then, about what fate has in store for us,
and let us not forget our good old English proverb: 'The
man who was born to be hung will never be drowned!'"
    There was no reply to make, but that did not prevent
Kennedy from resuming a series of arguments which may
be readily conjectured, but which were too long for us to
repeat.
    "Well, then," he said, after an hour's discussion, "if
you are absolutely determined to make this trip across the
African continent—if it is necessary for your happiness,
why not pursue the ordinary routes?"
    "Why?" ejaculated the doctor, growing animated.
"Because, all attempts to do so, up to this time, have
utterly failed. Because, from Mungo Park, assassinated
on the Niger, to Vogel, who disappeared in the Wadai
country; from Oudney, who died at Murmur, and Clapperton,
lost at Sackatou, to the Frenchman Maizan, who was cut to
pieces; from Major Laing, killed by the Touaregs, to Roscher,
from Hamburg, massacred in the beginning of 1860, the names
of victim after victim have been inscribed