was hammering on the door outside, and
crying on the natives to come and beat it in, and singing out it was a
soul he wished to save, and that. He was in a rare taking, was the
priest. But what would you have? Johnny had slipped his cable: no more
Johnny in the market; and the administration racket clean played out.
Next thing, word came to Randall the priest was praying upon Johnny's
grave. Papa was pretty full, and got a club, and lit out straight for
the place, and there was Galoshes on his knees, and a lot of natives
looking on. You wouldn't think Papa cared that much about anything,
unless it was liquor; but he and the priest stuck to it two hours,
slanging each other in native, and every time Galoshes tried to kneel
down Papa went for him with the club. There never were such larks in
Falesa. The end of it was that Captain Randall was knocked over with
some kind of a fit or stroke, and the priest got in his goods after all.
But he was the angriest priest you ever heard of, and complained to the
chiefs about the outrage, as he called it. That was no account, for our
chiefs are Protestant here; and, anyway, he had been making trouble
about the drum for morning school, and they were glad to give him a
wipe. Now he swears old Randall gave Adams poison or something, and when
the two meet they grin at each other like baboons."

He told the story as natural as could be, and like a man that enjoyed
the fun; though, now I come to think of it after so long, it seems
rather a sickening yarn. However, Case never set up to be soft, only to
be square and hearty, and a man all round; and, to tell the truth, he
puzzled me entirely.

I went home and asked Uma if she were a Popey, which I had made out to
be the native word for Catholics.

"_E le ai!_" says she. She always used the native when she meant "no"
more than usually strong, and, indeed, there's more of it. "No good
Popey," she added.

Then I asked her about Adams and the priest, and she told me much the
same yarn in her own way. So that I was left not much further on, but
inclined, upon the whole, to think the bottom of the matter was the row
about the sacrament, and the poisoning only talk.

The next day was a Sunday, when there was no business to be looked for.
Uma asked me in the morning if I was going to "pray"; I told her she bet
not, and she stopped home herself with no more words. I thought this
seemed unlike a native, and a native woman, and a woman that had ne