eft you'll
have some fine sport."

"Father," said the elder girl, in her pretty, halting English, as she
picked up her gun, "don' you think Mr. Denison would like to see ol'
Mary? We hav' been tell him so much about her. Don' you think we might
stop there and let Mr. Denison have some talk with her?"

"Ay, ay, my girl. Yes; go and see the poor old thing. I'm sure she'll be
delighted. You'll like her, Mr. Denison. She's as fine an old woman as
ever breathed. But don't take that basket of food with you, Kate. She'd
feel awfully insulted if you did not eat in her house."

The girls obeyed, much to their brother's satisfaction, inasmuch as the
basket was rather heavy, and also awkward to carry through the mountain
forest. In a few minutes the four started, and Hester, as she stepped
out beside Denison, said that she was glad he was visiting old Mary.
"You see," she said, "she hav' not good eyesight now, and so she cannot
now come an' see us as she do plenty times before."

"I'm glad I shall see her," said the young man; "she must be a good old
soul."

"Oh, yes," broke in Kate, "she _is_ good and brave, an' we all love her.
Every one _mus_' love her. She hav' known us since we were born, and
when our mother died in Samoa ten years ago old Mary was jus' like a
second mother to us. An' my father tried so hard to get her to come and
live with us; but no, she would not, not even fo' us. So she went back
to her house in the mountain, because she says she wants to die there.
Ah, you will like her... and she will tell you how she saved the ship
when her husband was killed, and about many, many things."

*****

Two hours later Denison and his friends emerged out upon cultivated
ground at the foot of the mountain, on which stood three or four native
houses, all neatly enclosed by low stone walls formed of coral slabs.
In front of the village a crystal stream poured swiftly and noisily over
its rocky bed on its way seaward, and on each thickly wooded bank the
stately boles of some scores of graceful coco-palms rose high above the
surrounding foliage. Except for the hum of the brawling stream and the
cries of birds, the silence was unbroken, and only two or three small
children, who were playing under the shade of a breadfruit-tree, were
visible. But these, as they heard the sound of the visitors' voices,
came towards them shouting out to their elders within the huts that
"four white people with guns" had come. In a moment some