king his hat from his face, bent his head.

Presently the scanty congregation came slowly forth. Some, as they
passed the white man and Lita, tried to smile a greeting to them, though
every brown face was wet with tears. Last of all came Ioane, the Samoan
teacher, short, square-built, with deep sunken earnest eyes bent to
the ground, his right arm supporting his wife, whose slender frame was
shaken with the violence of her grief for those three of her heart
whom 'He had taken.' Wallis, followed by Lita, stepped down from his
verandah, and held out his hand. The teacher pressed it in silence, and,
unable now to speak, walked slowly on. Lita, her dark, oval face still
hot with anger, drew back and made no sign, though Eline, the teacher's
wife, murmured as she passed,--'Nay, be not angry, Lita; for death is
near to us all.'

* * * * *

As they returned to the house, Ransom, the old trader from Avatulalo,
the next village to that in which Wallis lived, met them at the gate.
He was a man of sixty or thereabout--grey, dirty, dishevelled and half
drunk.

'I want you and Lita to come back with me,' he said slowly, holding to
the palings of the fence, and moving his head from side to side; 'you
must come... 'you must come, or'--with sudden frenzy--'by God, I'll put
a firestick into your house; I will, by blazes, I will! Curse you, Tom
Wallis, and your damned, Sydney-white-duck-suit-respectability, and your
damned proud quarter-caste Portugee woman, who you ain't married to, as
I was to mine--bad as she was. Put up your hands you--'

Wallis gripped him firmly but kindly by the wrists, and forced him into
a seat.

'What's the matter with you, Ransom? Only drunk and fightable as usual?
or are you being chased by pink snakes with tiger's heads again, eh?
There, sit quiet, old man. Where is Addie?'

For a few moments the old man made no answer; then he rose, and placing
his trembling hands on Wallis's chest said brokenly,--

'God help me, Tom! She's a-dyin'... an' I'm near drunk. She was took bad
this mornin', an' has been callin' for the teacher an' Lita-- an' I'd
as lief go to hell as to ask a damned Kanaka mission'ry to come an' talk
Gospel an' Heaven to a child o' mine--not in my own house, anyway. It
ain't right or proper. But she kep' on a-pesterin' me, an' at last I
said I would come an' arst him... an' while I was waitin' outside the
church I hears the damned feller a-prayin' and sayi