ge, of
the Aohanga Maoris.

"It looks as if we had run our fox to earth," cried Fred exultingly, as
they made for the gateway of the high wooden stockade--relic of the old
fighting days--which surrounded the _kainga_.

The Maoris within the _kainga_ met them with sullen looks, for their
soreness of feeling over the Government surveys now going on in their
district had made them unfriendly to white faces. But it was impossible
to doubt that they were speaking truth when, in answer to Hugh's anxious
questioning, they declared that no _pakeha_ (white man) had been near
the _kainga_, and that they had seen nothing of Horoeka, their
_tohunga_, since noon that day. They suggested indifferently that the
white boy must have lost himself in the bush, and, at the same time,
gave a sullen refusal to assist in searching for him.

Before the two young men wrathfully turned their backs on the _kainga_,
Hugh, who had a very fair knowledge of the Maori tongue, warned the
natives that the _pakeha_ law would punish them severely if they
knowingly allowed his young brother to be harmed. But they only replied
with insolent laughter.

For the next two hours Hugh and Fred desperately scoured the bush,
shouting aloud at intervals on the off-chance that Dick might hear and
be able to send them some guiding cry in answer. But the only result of
their labours was that they nearly got "bushed" themselves, and at last
the fall of night made the absurdity of further search clear to them.

Groping their way back to their broken-up camp, they lighted the lantern
and got together a meal of sorts. But Hugh Jervois could not eat while
racked by the horrible uncertainty of his brother's fate, and he waited
impatiently for the moon to rise to let him renew his apparently
hopeless quest.

Then, while Fred Elliot was speeding on a seven miles' tramp round the
shore of the lake to the surveyors' camp to invoke the aid of the only
other white men in that remote part of the country, Hugh Jervois had
made his way to the Maori _kainga_. "It's my best chance of finding
Dick," he had said to Fred. "Horoeka is sure to have returned to the
_kainga_ by this time, and, by cunning or by force, I'll get out of that
crazy ruffian what he has done with my brother."

Reconnoitring the _kainga_ in the light of the risen moon Hugh
stealthily approached the palisade surrounding it. This was very old and
broken in many places, and, peering through a hole in it, the you