a trickle or two of fresh lava down its sides--just tamely
subsides after deluging Leavitt with a shower of cinders and ashes. But
Leavitt won't leave it alone. He goes poking into the very crater, half
strangling himself in its poisonous fumes, scorching the shoes off his
feet, and once, I believe, he lost most of his hair and eyebrows--a
narrow squeak. He throws his head back and laughs at any word of
caution. To my notion, it's foolhardy to push a scientific curiosity to
that extreme."

"Is it, then, just scientific curiosity?" mused Miss Stanleigh.

Something in her tone made me stop short. Her eyes had lifted to
mine--almost appealingly, I fancied. Her innocence, her candor, her warm
beauty, which was like a pale phosphorescence in the starlit
darkness--all had their potent effect upon me in that moment. I felt
impelled to a sudden burst of confidence.

"At times I wonder. I've caught a look in his eyes, when he's been down
on his hands and knees, staring into some infernal vent-hole--a look
that is--well, uncanny, as if he were peering into the bowels of the
earth for something quite outside the conceptions of science. You might
think that volcano had worked some spell over him, turned his mind. He
prattles to it or storms at it as if it were a living creature. Queer,
yes; and he's impressive, too, with a sort of magnetic personality that
attracts and repels you violently at the same time. He's like a cake of
ice dipped in alcohol and set aflame. I can't describe him. When he
talks----"

"Does he talk about himself?"

I had to confess that he had told us practically not a word. He had
discussed everything under heaven in his brilliant, erratic way, with a
fleer of cynicism toward it all, but he had left himself out completely.
He had given us Farquharson with relish, and in infinite detail, from
the time the poor fellow first turned up in Muloa, put ashore by a
native craft. Talking about Farquharson was second only to his delight
in talking about volcanoes. And the result for me had been innumerable
vivid but confused impressions of the young Englishman who had by chance
invaded Leavitt's solitude and had lingered there, held by some
attraction, until he sickened and died. It was like a jumbled mosaic
put together again by inexpert hands.

"Did you get the impression that the two men had very much in common?"

"Quite the contrary," I answered. "But Major Stanleigh should know----"

"My uncle never met M