hated him as much as he
despised Amona, and would have liked to have kicked him, as he would
have liked to have kicked or strangled any one who knew the secret of
his wife's death and his child's lameness. And three people in Samoa did
know it--Amona, the Niue cook, Dr. Eckhardt, and Denison. Armitage has
been dead now these five-and-twenty years--died, as he deserved to
die, alone and friendless in an Australian bush hospital out in the
God-forsaken Never-Never country, and when Denison heard of his death,
he looked at the gentle wife's dim, faded photograph, and wondered if
the Beast saw her sweet, sad face in his dying moments. He trusted
not; for in her eyes would have shown only the holy light of love
and forgiveness--things which a man like Armitage could not have
understood--even then.

She had been married three years when she came with him to Samoa to live
on Solo-Solo Plantation, in a great white-painted bungalow, standing
amid a grove of breadfruit and coco-palms, and overlooking the sea
to the north, east, and west; to the south was the dark green of the
mountain-forest.

"Oh! I think it is the fairest, sweetest picture in the world," she said
to Denison the first time he met her. She was sitting on the verandah
with her son in her lap, and as she spoke she pressed her lips to his
soft little cheek and caressed the tiny hands. "So different from where
I was born and lived all my life--on the doll, sun-baked plains of the
Riverina--isn't it, my pet?"

"I am glad that you like the place, Mrs. Armitage," the supercargo said
as he looked at the young, girlish face and thought that she, too, with
her baby, made a fair, sweet picture. How she loved the child! And how
the soft, grey-blue eyes would lose their sadness when the little one
turned its face up to hers and smiled! How came it, he wondered, that
such a tender, flower-like woman was mated to such a man as Armitage!

Long after she was dead, Denison heard the story--one common enough.
Her father, whose station adjoined that of Armitage, got into financial
difficulties, went to Armitage for help, and practically sold his
daughter to the Beast for a couple of thousand pounds. Very likely such
a man would have sold his daughter's mother as well if he wanted money.

* * * * *

As they sat talking, Armitage rode up, half-drunk as usual. He was a big
man, good-looking.

"Hallo, Nell! Pawing the damned kid as usual! Why the hell don't you let
one of the g