ouse, Don very close at my heels.

"Graves," I said, "surely a taboo by a lot of fool islanders hasn't
upset you. There's something on your mind. Bad news?"

"Oh, no," he said. "She's coming. It's other things. I'll tell you by
and by--everything. Don't mind me. I'm all right. Listen to the wind in
the grass. That sound day and night is enough to put a man off his
feed."

"You say you found something very curious back there in the grass?"

"I found, among other things, a stone monolith. It's fallen down, but
it's almost as big as the Flatiron Building in New York. It's ancient as
days--all carved--it's a sort of woman, I think. But we'll go back one
day and have a look at it. Then, of course, I saw all the different
kinds of grasses in the world--they'd interest you more--but I'm such a
punk botanist that I gave up trying to tell 'em apart. I like the
flowers best--there's millions of 'em--down among the grass.... I tell
you, old man, this island is the greatest curiosity-shop in the whole
world."

He unlocked the door of his house and stood aside for me to go in first.

"Shut up, Don!"

The dog growled savagely, but I banged him with my open hand across the
snout, and he quieted down and followed into the house, all tense and
watchful.

On the shelf where Graves kept his books, with its legs hanging over,
was what I took to be an idol of some light brownish wood--say
sandalwood, with a touch of pink. But it was the most lifelike and
astounding piece of carving I ever saw in the islands or out of them. It
was about a foot high, and represented a Polynesian woman in the prime
of life, say, fifteen or sixteen years old, only the features were finer
and cleaner carved. It was a nude, in an attitude of easy repose--the
legs hanging, the toes dangling--the hands resting, palms downward, on
the blotter, the trunk relaxed. The eyes, which were a kind of steely
blue, seemed to have been made, depth upon depth, of some wonderful
translucent enamel, and to make his work still more realistic the artist
had planted the statuette's eyebrows, eyelashes, and scalp with real
hair, very soft and silky, brown on the head and black for the lashes
and eyebrows. The thing was so lifelike that it frightened me. And when
Don began to growl like distant thunder I didn't blame him. But I leaned
over and caught him by the collar, because it was evident that he wanted
to get at that statuette and destroy it.

When I looked up the statu