ll certainly all be murdered,
unless you deal sharply with them.'

A leading Maori chief of the district went away, to be out of the serious
trouble which, he feared, might arise at any moment. The Governor sent
after him the message: 'The manner in which to meet difficulty is not to
flee from it, and you must come back. I relied upon you to behave with
sense and courage, and I'm confident you will still bear me out in that
view.' The chief did return, but said Sir George, 'He upbraided me as
being, to all appearance, a Governor quite unable to deal with such a
problem as confronted me.' This was an exquisite turning of the tables.

'Why,' argued the old Maori, 'could you not at once have hanged the
natives who were arrested? If you had done that, everybody's mind would
have been at rest, but, as things are, nobody feels safe. We imagine that
we may be blamed for the crime, while the English can have no confidence
so long as no person has been punished. You see at what we have arrived.'

Any spark might now fire the bracken, and it was the task of Sir George
to prevent that. His despatches and blue-books, fodder for the browse of
Downing Street, had to wait upon this other business, which would not
even go into them. Not unless there was a crash, during a moment's want
of vigilance, or by lack of perfectly deft management. The greater empire
making, it is evident, was not to have to write any blue-books. None were
written, for the tension between European and Maori healed in the hands
of the patient doctor. It turned out that a Van Diemen's Land convict was
the villain of that remote New Zealand drama.

Patoune, an influential Maori chief, had been zealous in the unfathoming
of the mystery, and mentioning that, Sir George Grey was led to say,
'Some time before his death Patoune rowed over from Auckland to my island
at Kawau. Seeing the boat coming, I walked down to the shore to meet its
occupant and conduct him indoors, where he had a long conversation. On
leaving he spoke, "Yes, I wanted to be with you once more, before I go
the way of all men. I have had my last fallen-out tooth set in a walking-
stick, which pray accept, a mark of our friendship." As you can suppose,
this affected me deeply. A piece of bone is a kind of Maori talisman, and
Patoune meant his tooth to bring luck to me. He thought my carrying it
about with me, might one day save me from misfortune.'

The incidents of governing are incongruous; they j