"Not a whiff. Our land-breeze is absolutely of no kin, for it begins this side of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. You see, the land radiates its heat quicker than the sea, and so, at night, the land breathes over the sea. In the day the land becomes warmer than the sea, and the sea breathes over the land . . . Listen! Here comes the land-breath now, the mountain wind." I could hear it coming, rustling softly through the coffee trees, stirring the monkey-pods, and sighing through the sugar-cane. On the _lanai_ the hush still reigned. Then it came, the first feel of the mountain wind, faintly balmy, fragrant and spicy, and cool, deliciously cool, a silken coolness, a wine-like coolness--cool as only the mountain wind of Kona can be cool. "Do you wonder that I lost my heart to Kona eighteen years ago?" he demanded. "I could never leave it now. I think I should die. It would be terrible. There was another man who loved it, even as I. I think he loved it more, for he was born here on the Kona coast. He was a great man, my best friend, my more than brother. But he left it, and he did not die." "Love?" I queried. "A woman?" Cudworth shook his head. "Nor will he ever come back, though his heart will be here until he dies." He paused and gazed down upon the beachlights of Kailua. I smoked silently and waited. "He was already in love . . . with his wife. Also, he had three children, and he loved them. They are in Honolulu now. The boy is going to college." "Some rash act?" I questioned, after a time, impatiently. He shook his head. "Neither guilty of anything criminal, nor charged with anything criminal. He was the Sheriff of Kona." "You choose to be paradoxical," I said. "I suppose it does sound that way," he admitted, "and that is the perfect hell of it." He looked at me searchingly for a moment, and then abruptly took up the tale. "He was a leper. No, he was not born with it--no one is born with it; it came upon him. This man--what does it matter? Lyte Gregory was his name. Every _kamaina_ knows the story. He was straight American stock, but he was built like the chieftains of old Hawaii. He stood six feet three. His stripped weight was two hundred and twenty pounds, not an ounce of which was not clean muscle or bone. He was the strongest man I have ever seen. He was an athlete and a giant. He was a god. He was my friend. And his heart and his soul were as big and as fine as his body.