I am a stranger and friendless

It made the cold chills creep over me! I stopped and said, a little faintly: "Maybe I didn't hear you just right. Say it again -- and say it slow. What year was it?" "513." "513! You don't look it! Come, my boy, I am a stranger and friendless; be honest and honorable with me. Are you in your right mind?" He said he was. "Are these other people in their right minds?" He said they were. "And this isn't an asylum? I mean, it isn't a place where they cure crazy people?" He said it wasn't. "Well, then," I said, "either I am a lunatic, or something just as awful has happened. Now tell me, honest and true, where am I?" "IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT." I waited a minute, to let that idea shudder its way home, and then said: "And according to your notions, what year is it now?" "528 -- nineteenth of June." I felt a mournful sinking at the heart, and muttered: "I shall never see my friends again -- never, never again. They will not be born for more than thirteen hundred years yet." I seemed to believe the boy, I didn't know why. SOMETHING in me seemed to believe him -- my consciousness, as you may say; but my reason didn't. My reason straightway began to clamor; that was natural. I didn't know how to go about satisfying it, because I knew that the testimony of men wouldn't serve -- my reason would say they were lunatics, and throw out their evidence. But all of a sudden I stumbled on the very thing, just by luck.