iful
villas and ze countrie?"

"You weren't asked to," I retorted. "Nobody wanted it."

"Zat does not mattaire. Ze signor will pay for ze cicerone."

"I'll see you hanged first."

"Zen we shall see."

He turned his mules to the side of the road next the precipice. I caught
a glimpse of an ugly knife in the handkerchief round his waist. In a
moment I had whipped out my revolver, and levelled it straight for his
head. My word, how startled he was!

"Now drive on," I said.

He did, without a word, but turning as white as a sheet,--and made his
old mules fly as if they'd got Vesuvius a foot behind them all the way.
I kept my revolver ready till we came to Meta, after which there are
plenty of houses.

When we drew up at the hotel I gave him his seven francs, and told him
to think himself lucky that I didn't hand him over to the police. He had
partly recovered by then, and had the cheek to grin and say--

"Ah, ze signor ees a genteelman,--he will give a poor Italiano a
_pourboire_."

But I didn't.

I've often wondered since if he really meant to do for me. Anyhow, my
revolver saved me, and was worth a dormouse.

V

THE TAPU-TREE

"The fish is just about cooked," announced Fred Elliot, peering into the
big "billy" slung over their camp fire. "Now, if Dick would only hurry
up with the water for the tea, I'd have supper ready in no time."

"I wish supper were over and we well on our way to the surveyor's camp
at the other side of the lake," was the impatient rejoinder of Hugh
Jervois, Dick's big brother. "This place isn't healthy for us after what
happened to-day." And he applied himself still more vigorously to his
task of putting into marching order the tent and various other
accessories of their holiday "camping out" beside a remote and rarely
visited New Zealand lake.

"But surely that Maori Johnny wouldn't dare to do any of us a mischief
in cold blood?" cried Fred.

"The police aren't exactly within coo-ee in these wilds, and you must
remember that your Maori Johnny happens to be Horoeka the _tohunga_
(tohunga = wizard priest), who has got the Aohanga Maoris at his beck
and call. The surveyors say he is stirring up his tribe to make trouble
over the survey of the Ngotu block, and they had some hair-raising
stories to tell me of his superstitious cruelty. He is really
half-crazed with fanaticism, they say, and if you bump up against any of
his rotten notions, he'll stick at nothing in the way