"'You would,' said I. 'It's the sort of man you are, you Farrell. The next thing, you'll be capable of wondering if I didn't. . . . Pah! and _you_ call _me_ Satan!' I spat. 'Now, take hold on your fool head and think. For _her_ sake I grant you ease of that suspicion, though in dealing with you it would be priceless to me. Think what a peck of torture I'm letting run to waste, as that waterfall yonder runs to waste in its basin. But it wouldn't be true. Your wife was an angel. Drink that comfort--drink it into every cranny of your soul. . . . And now hold your head again. I loved Santa, I tell you.' "'You let her die,' he muttered sullenly. "'Think, you fool--think!' I commanded. 'If she had lived, you would have died, and she would be sitting where you are sitting at this moment, and I here, and the moon swimming above us two--Would you have had it so?' "'My God!' he blurted, wiping the back of a hand across his eyes. 'This is too much for me. . . .' "I stood and picked up the engineering tool. 'For me, too,' said I, 'it is enough. . . . Now come and choose the spot, and I will fall to my part of the work.' "But to this he demurred, saying vaguely that he was upset; that the spot for the grave must be chosen with care and by daylight; that he must first finish the coffin, and then take some rest. There would be time enough after we had breakfasted. "I believed that I understood. . . . He wished to wash and wind the body. So at dawn--by which time the coffin was ready--I told him that he should be alone for a couple of hours, and went up the hill again in the first light, to prospect. Again I tried to whistle the dog after me: but this time he refused even to budge. "I climbed no farther than before; that is, a little beyond the ridge. For it gave upon a wide undulating valley to the slopes of the second crater, which again partly overlapped the cone of the third or highest. To descend and cross this first vale would cost from two to three hours' hard walking, and my design was merely to con the prospect for sign of those inhabitants to whom the dog must belong. For he was little more than a puppy in age. Also, though lean, he was not at all emaciated: but the traces of rabbit-dung on the slopes told that a deserted dog might manage to sustain life here. Also it promised that the island was inhabited, and by white men, for rabbits are not indigenous anywhere in the South Pacific. They must be brought. "I studied the hollow and searched it with my binoculars for some while: but without picking up any trace of mankind. Far below me a sizable stream here showed itself through the tropical vegetation as it hurried down to a hidden cove. The wide ocean spread southward to my right. Of how far the island might stretch beyond the taller and more distant cone I could make no guess.