Among other scientific appliances at Steel’s Corner was a small off-kind of laboratory for Alick and his mother, to prevent their troubling the doctor and to enable them to help him when necessary:  it was an auxiliary fitted up in what was rightfully the stick-house.  The sticks had had to make way for retorts and crucibles, and as yet no harm had come of it, though the servants said they lived in terror of their lives, and the neighbors expected daily to hear that the inmates of Steel’s Corner had been blown into the air.  Into this evil-smelling and unbeautiful place Leam was introduced with infinite reluctance on her own part.  The bad smell made her sick, she said, turning round disdainfully on Alick, and she did not wonder now at anything he might say or do if he could bear to live in such a horrid place as this.

When he showed off a few simple experiments to amuse her—­made crystal trees, a shower of snow, a heavy stone out of two empty-looking bottles, spilt mercury and set her to gather it up again, showed her prisms, and made her look through a bit of tourmaline, and in every way conceivable to him strewed the path of learning with flowers—­then she began to feel a little interest in the place and left off making wry faces at the dirt and the smells.

One day when she was there her eye caught a very small phial with a few letters like a snake running spirally round it.

“What is that funny little bottle?” she asked, pointing it out.  “What does it say?”

“Poison,” said Alick.

“What is poison?” she asked.

“Do you mean what it is? or what it does?” he returned.

“Both.  You are stupid,” said Leam.

“What it does is to kill people, but I cannot tell you all in a breath what it is, for it is so many things.”

“How does it kill people?” At her question Leam turned suddenly round on him, her eyes full of a strange light.

“Some poisons kill in one way and some in another,” answered Alick.

Leam pondered for a few moments; then she asked, “How much poison is there in the world?”

“An immense deal,” said Alick:  “I cannot possibly tell you how much.”

“And it all kills?”

“Yes, it all kills, else it is not poison.”

“And every one?”

“Yes, every one if enough is taken.”

“What is enough?” she asked, still so serious, so intent.

Alick laughed.  “That depends on the material,” he said.  “One grain of some and twenty of others.”

“Don’t laugh,” said Leam with her Spanish dignity:  “I am serious.  You should not laugh when I am serious.”

“I did not mean to offend you,” faltered Alick humbly.  “Will you forgive me?”

“Yes,” said Leam superbly, “if you will not laugh again.  Tell me about poison.”

“What can I tell you?  I scarcely know what it is you want to hear.”

“What is poison?”

“Strychnine, opium, prussic acid, belladonna, aconite—­oh, thousands of things.”