of vengeance. As
you saw yourself, he'd have killed Dick this afternoon hadn't we two
been there to chip in."

"There's no doubt about that," allowed Fred. "It was no end unlucky that
he should have caught Dick in the very act."

"Oh, if I had only come in time to prevent the youngster hacking out his
name on that tree of all trees in the bush," groaned Hugh. "The most
tremendously _tapu_ (tapu = sacred) thing in all New Zealand, in the
Aohanga Maoris' eyes!"

"But how was Dick to know?" urged Fred. "It just looked like any other
tree; and who was to guess the meaning of the rubbishy bits of sticks
and stones lying at the bottom of it? Oh, it's just too beastly that for
such a trifle we've got to skip out of this jolly place! And there are
those monster trout in the bay below almost fighting to be first on
one's hook! And there's----"

"I say, what on earth _can_ be keeping Dick?" broke in Hugh with
startling abruptness. "Suppose that Maori ruffian----" and a sudden fear
sent him racing down the bush-covered slope with Fred Elliot at his
heels.

"Dick! Coo-ee! Dick!" Their voices woke echoes in the silent bush, but
no answer came to them. And there was no Dick at the little spring
trickling into the lake.

But the boy's hat lay on the ground beside his upturned "billy," and
the fern about the spring looked as if it had been much trampled upon.

"There has been a struggle here," said Hugh Jervois, his face showing
white beneath its tan. Stooping, he picked up a scrap of dyed flax and
held it out to Fred Elliot.

"It's a bit of the fringe of the mat Horoeka was wearing this
afternoon," he said quietly. "The Maori must have stolen on Dick while
he was filling his 'billy,' and carried him off. A thirteen-year-old boy
would be a mere baby in the hands of that big, strong savage, and he
could easily stifle his cries."

"He would not dare to harm Dick!" cried Fred passionately.

Dick's brother said nothing, but his eyes eagerly searched the trampled
ground and the undergrowth about the spring.

"Look! There is where the scoundrel has gone back into the bush with
Dick," he cried. "The trail is distinct." And he dashed forward into the
dense undergrowth, followed by Fred.

The trail was of the shortest and landed them on a well-beaten Maori
track leading up through the bush.

The two young men, following this track at a run, found that it brought
them, at the end of a mile or so, to the chief _kainga_, or villa