had a drink, and he bade me good-day, and said
he was going to sit with Taloi awhile, before they took her away. He
sent the native women out of the bedroom, and the next minute I heard a
shot. He'd done it, right enough. Right through his brain, poor chap. I
can tell you he thought a lot of that girl of his. There's the two
graves, over there by that FETAU tree. Here's his stock-list and bag of
cash and keys. Would you mind giving me that pair of rubber sea-boots
he left?"

A BASKET OF BREAD-FRUIT

It was in Steinberger's time [Colonel Steinberger, who in 1874 succeeded
in forming a government in Samoa]. A trader had come up to Apia in his
boat from the end of Savaii, the largest of the Samoan Group, and was on
his way home again, when the falling tide caused him to stop awhile at
Mulinu'u Point, about two miles from Apia. Here he designed to smoke and
talk, and drink kava at the great camp with some hospitable native
acquaintances, during the rising of the water. Soon he was taking his
ease on a soft mat, watching the bevy of AUA LUMA [The local girls] making
a bowl of kava.

Now this trader lived at Falealupo, at the extreme westerly end of
Savaii; but the Samoans, by reason of its isolation and extremity, have
for ages called it by another name--an unprintable one--and so some of
the people present began to jest with the trader for living in such a
place. He fell in with their humour, and said that if those present
would find for him a wife, a girl unseared by the breath of scandal, he
would leave Falealupo for Safune, where he had bought land.

"Malie!" said an old dame, with one eye and white hair, "the
PAPALAGI [foreigner] is inspired to speak wisdom to-night; for at Safune
grow the sweetest nuts and the biggest taro and bread-fruit; and lo! here
among the kava-chewers is a young maid from Safune--mine own
grand-daughter Salome. And against her name can no one in Samoa laugh in
the hollow of his hand," and the old creature, amid laughter and cries of
ISA! E LE MA LE LO MATUA (The old woman is without shame), crept over to
the trader, and, with one skinny hand on his knee, gazed steadily into his
face with her one eye.

* * * * *

The trader looked at the girl--at Salome. She had, at her grandmother's
speech, turned her head aside, and taking the "chaw" of kava-root from
her pretty mouth, dissolved into shame-faced tears. The trader was a
man of quick perceptions, and he made up his mind to do in e