bles from their garden, of eggs from
their poultry, and of milk, butter, and cheese from their cows. While
salt meat was the staple of their food, it was varied occasionally by
chicken, ducks, or a goose, while a sheep now and then afforded a week's
supply of fresh meat.

Mr. Renshaw had not altogether abandoned his original idea. He had
already learnt something of the Maori language from his studies on the
voyage, and he rapidly acquired a facility of speaking it from his
conversations with the two natives permanently employed on the farm. One
of these was a man of some forty years old named Wetini, the other was a
lad of sixteen, his son, whose name was Whakapanakai, but as this name
was voted altogether too long for conversational purposes he was
re-christened Jack.

Wetini spoke but a few words of English, but Jack, who had been educated
at one of the mission schools, spoke it fluently. They, with Wetini's
wife, inhabited a small hut situated at the edge of the wood, at a
distance of about two hundred yards from the house. It was Mr. Renshaw's
custom to stroll over there of an evening, and seating himself by the
fire, which however hot the weather the natives always kept burning, he
would converse with Wetini upon the manners and customs, the religious
beliefs and ceremonies, of his people.

In these conversations Jack at first acted as interpreter, but it was
not many weeks before Mr. Renshaw gained such proficiency in the tongue
that such assistance was no longer needed.

But the period of peace and tranquillity at The Glade was but a short
one. Wilfrid learnt from Jack, who had attached himself specially to
him, that there were reports among the natives that the prophet Te Ua
was sending out missionaries all over the island. This statement was
true. Te Ua had sent out four sub-prophets with orders to travel among
the tribes and inform them that Te Ua had been appointed by an angel as
a prophet, that he was to found a new religion to be called Pai Marire,
and that legions of angels waited the time when, all the tribes having
been converted, a general rising would take place, and the Pakeha be
annihilated by the assistance of these angels, after which a knowledge
of all languages and of all the arts and sciences would be bestowed upon
the Pai Marire.

Had Te Ua's instructions been carried out, and his agents travelled
quietly among the tribes, carefully abstaining from all open hostility
to the whites until t