the
native name of the dead millionaire. "You be careful. One time I
baked bread in Taaoa. My oven was near his plantation. I saw that
girl come into the woods and take off her dress. She had a mirror to
see her back, and I looked, and the sun shone bright. What she saw,
I saw--a patch of white. She is a leper, that rich girl."

His eyes were full of hate.

"You don't like her," I said. "Why?"

"Why? Why?" he screamed. "Because her father was an accursed villian.
He was always kissing the dirty hands of the priests. He used to
give his workmen opium to make them work faster, and then he would
go to church. He made his money, yes. He was damn hypocrite. And now
his daughter, with all that rotten money, is a leper. I tell
everybody what I saw. Everybody here knows it but you. Everybody
will know it in Tahiti if she goes there."

The man was like a snake to me. I threw away the glass he had drunk
from. And yet--was it idle curiosity, or was it fear of being shut
away in the valley outside Papeite by the quarantine officers, that
made her ask me that question about the segregation of lepers?

Liha-Liha had spent thirty years making money. He had coined the
sweat and blood and lives of a thousand Marquesans into a golden
fortune, and he had left behind him that fortune, a marble tomb, and
Mlle. N----.

CHAPTER XXIV

A journey to Nuka-hiva; story of the celebration of the fete of Joan
of Arc, and the miracles of the white horse and the girl.

Pere Victorien said that I must not leave the Marquesas before I
visited the island of Nuka-hiva seventy miles to the northward and
saw there in Tai-o-hae, the capital of the northern group of islands,
a real saint.

"A wonderful servant of Christ," he said, "Pere Simeon Delmas. He is
very old, and has been there since the days of strife. He has not
been away from the islands for fifty years, but God preserves him for
His honor and service. Pere Simeon would be one of the first in our
order were he in Europe, but he is a martyr and wishes to earn his
crown in these islands and die among his charges. He is a saint, as
truly as the blessed ones of old.

"It was he who planned the magnificent celebration of the feast of
Joan of Arc some years ago, and as to miracles, I truly believe that
the keeping safe of the white horse during the terrible storm and
perhaps even the preservation of a maiden worthy to appear in the
armor of the Maid, are miracles as veritable as the