ng man
saw a group of women and children lounging about the cooking-place in
the centre of the _marae_ or open space around which the _whares_ (huts)
were ranged. From the biggest of those _whares_ came the sound of men's
voices, one at a time, in loud and eager talk. At once Hugh realised
that a council was being held in the _whare-runanga_, the assembly-hall
of the village, and he instinctively divined that the subjects under
discussion were poor little Dick's "crime" and his punishment, past or
to come.

Noiselessly skirting the palisade, Hugh came to a gap big enough to let
him squeeze through. Then he crept along between the palisade and the
backs of the scattered _whares_--very cautiously, for he dreaded being
seen by the group about the fire--until at last he stood behind the big
_whare-runanga_. With his ear glued to its wall he listened to the
excited speeches being delivered within, and to sounds indicating that
drinking was also going on--whisky supplied from some illicit still,
doubtless.

To his unspeakable thankfulness the young man gathered from the chance
remarks of one of the speakers that Dick, alive and uninjured, had been
brought by Horoeka into the _kainga_ at nightfall, and was now shut up
in one of the _whares_. But a fierce speech of Horoeka's presently told
the painfully interested eavesdropper that nothing less than death,
attended by heathenish and gruesome ceremonies, would expiate the boy's
outrage on the _tapu_-tree, in the _tohunga's_ opinion.

The other Maori speakers would evidently have been satisfied to seek
satisfaction in the shape of a money-compensation from the offender's
family, or the paternally minded New Zealand Government. But, half-mad
though he was, Horoeka's influence with his fellow-tribesmen was very
great. The rude eloquence with which he painted the terrible evils that
would certainly fall on them and theirs if the violation of so mighty a
_tapu_ was not avenged in blood, very soon had its effect on his
superstitious hearers.

When he went on to assure them that the _pakehas_ would be unable to
prove that the boy had not lost himself and perished in the bush, they
withdrew all opposition to Horoeka's bloodthirsty demands, though these
were rather dictated by his own crack-brained fancy than by Maori custom
and tradition. Presently, indeed, it became evident to Hugh that, what
with drink and their _tohunga's_ wild oratory, the men were working
themselves up into a