seen crouching on the damp floor.

It is Gentle Annie.

Between the sobs which rack her, she is speaking.

"While he lived for weeks in this dripping hole, I lodged comfortably
and entertained murderers! Vile woman, defiled by hands stained with
blood! despised, loathed, shunned by every man, woman, or child that
knows me. Yet _he_ did not despise me, though I shall despise myself for
ever, and for ever, and for ever. And he is gone--the only one who could
have raised me to my better self."

Rising from the ground, she takes the candle, and gropes her way out of
the cave into the pure light of the Sun.

In a common Maori _whare_, built of _raupo_ leaves and rushes, sits a
dusky maiden, filled with bitterness and grief. Outside the low doorway,
stand Scarlett and his wife.

Forbidden to enter, they beg the surly occupant to come out to them. But
the only answer is a sentence of Maori, growled from an angry mouth.

"But, Amiria, we have ridden all the way from Timber Town to see you,"
pleads the silvery voice of Rose Scarlett.

"Then you can ride back to Timber Town. I didn't ask you to come."

"Amiria," says Jack; his voice stern and hard, "if you insult my wife,
you insult me. Have not you and she been friends since you were
children?"

Amiria emerges from her hut. On her head is a man's hat, and round her
body is wrapped a gaudy but dirty blanket.

"Listen to what I say." The same well-moulded, dusky face is there, the
same upright bearing, the same musical voice, but the tone is hard, and
the look forbidding. "I learnt all the _Pakeha_ ways; I went to their
school; I can speak their tongue; I have learnt their _ritenga_: and I
say these _Pakeha_ things are good for the _Pakeha_, but for the Maori
they are bad. The white man is one, the Maori is one. Let the white man
keep to his customs, and let the Maori keep to his. Let the white marry
white, and let the brown marry brown. That is all. Take your wife with
you, and think of me no more. I am a Maori _wahine_, I have become a
woman of the tribe. My life is in the _pa_, yours is in the town. Now
go. I want to see you no more." So saying she disappears inside the hut.

Scarlett draws himself to his full height, and stands, contemplating the
sea. Then his eye catches a fleck of white at his side; and he turns, to
see his wife drying the tears which cannot be restrained.

He takes her by the hand, and leads her through the little crowd of
natives standing r