thy spot he has chosen to live in."

"Why does he stay there?"

I explained about the volcano. "You can have no idea what an
obsession it is with him. There isn't a square foot of its steaming,
treacherous surface that he hasn't been over, mapping new fissures,
poking into old lava-beds, delving into the crater itself on
favourable days--"

"Isn't it dangerous?"

"In a way, yes. The volcano itself is harmless enough. It smokes
unpleasantly now and then, splutters and rumbles as if about to
obliterate all creation, but for all its bluster it only manages to
spill 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 candour, 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,