"Well, at last we have got all the facts," Major Stanleigh sighed
with satisfaction when the _Sylph_ was heading back to Port Charlotte.
Muloa, lying astern, we were no longer watching. Leavitt, at the
water's edge, had waved us a last good-by and had then abruptly
turned back into the forest, very likely to go clambering like a
demented goat up the flanks of his beloved volcano and to resume
poking about in its steaming fissures--an occupation of which he
never tired.
"The evidence is conclusive, don't you think?--the grave,
Farquharson's personal effects, those pages of the poor devil's diary."
I nodded assent. In my capacity as owner of the _Sylph_ I had merely
undertaken to furnish Major Stanleigh with passage to Muloa and back,
but the events of the last three days had made me a party to the
many conferences, and I was now on terms of something like intimacy
with the rather stiff and pompous English gentleman. How far I was
from sharing his real confidence I was to discover later when Eleanor
Stanleigh gave me hers.
"My wife and niece will be much relieved to hear all this--a family
matter, you understand, Mr. Barnaby," he had said to me when we
landed. "I should like to present you to them before we leave Port
Charlotte for home.
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