“How do they kill?”

“Well, strychnine gives awful pain and convulsions—­makes the back into an arch; opium sends you to sleep; prussic acid stops the action of the heart; and so on.”

“What is that?” asked Leam, pointing to the small phial with its snake-like spiral label.

“Prussic acid—­awfully strong.  Two drops of that would kill the strongest man in a moment.”

“In a moment?” asked Learn.

“Yes:  he would fall dead directly.”

“Would it be painful?”

“No, not at all, I believe.”

“Show it me,” said Learn.

He took the bottle from the shelf.  It was a sixty-minim bottle, quite full, stoppered and secured.

She held out her hand for it, and he gave it to her.  “Two drops!” mused Leam.

“Yes, two drops,” returned Alick.

“How many drops are here?”

“Sixty.”

“Is it nasty?”

“No—­like very strong bitter almonds or cherry-water; only in excess,” he said.  “Here is some cherry-water.  Will you have a little in some water?  It is not nasty, and it will not hurt you.”

“No,” said Leam with an offended air:  “I do not want your horrid stuff.”

“It would not hurt you, and it is really rather nice,” returned Alick apologetically.

“It is horrid,” said Learn.

“Well, perhaps you are better without it,” Alick answered, quietly taking the bottle of prussic acid from her hands and replacing it on the shelf, well barricaded by phials and pots.

“You should not have taken it till I gave it you,” said Leam proudly.  “You are rude.”

From this time the laboratory had the strangest fascination for Leam.  She was never tired of going there, never tired of asking questions, all bearing on the subject of poisons, which seemed to have possessed her.  Alick, unsuspecting, glad to teach, glad to see her interest awakened in anything he did or knew, in his own honest simplicity utterly unable to imagine that things could turn wrong on such a matter, told her all she asked and a great deal more; and still Leam’s eyes wandered ever to the shelf where the little phial of thirty deaths was enclosed within its barricades.

One day while they were there Mrs. Corfield called Alick.

“Wait for me, I shall not be long,” he said to Leam, and went out to his mother.

As he turned Learnm’s eyes went again to that small phial of death on the shelf.

“Take it, Leama! take it, my heart!” she heard her mother whisper.

“Yes, mamma,” she said aloud; and leaping like a young panther on the bench, reached to the shelf and thrust the little bottle in her hair.  She did not know why she took it:  she had no motive, no object.  It was mamma who told her—­so her unconscious desire translated itself—­but she had no clear understanding why.  It was instinct, vague but powerful, lying at the back of her mind, unknown to herself that it was there; and all of which she was conscious was a desire to possess that bottle of poison, and not to let them know here that she had taken it.