Meanwhile, I feast upon this thought, that at the same time and from the one Heart came forth those wondrous Words and precious Tears.

CHAPTER XXV.

FATHER AND SON.

NEXT day the long looked for Aurora came, and suspense was exchanged for joy indescribable-so Percy Wakefield says, and he could both sorrow and enjoy to the fullest extent.

The reading of letters from home fairly took away my dear friend's appetite, and I have known him go a whole day without eating more than a couple of biscuits, so absorbed was he in the hand-writing and printed papers which had come from England and Happy Island.

But I also noticed, particularly, that what pleased him most, and rendered him perfectly deaf to all that was passing around him, were letters, several sheets in length, and written in a queer hand-writing, of which I could not make out a word. It might just as well have been a collection of spider's legs, which it certainly did resemble.

The morning was spent in greetings, and in the delight of Pombuana's heart, sambeeree.

In the afternoon the vessel worked up the coast as far as Matambala, and my people soon took the place of the Uri, who did not like to trust themselves on board ship when the sails were drawing.

Off Lalo, a man named Aroha presented Percy with his little son, whom I knew well. This pretty, graceful, little fellow, Riroto-a little prince, Mr. Carter calls him—was the pet and idol of his father and two uncles, or three fathers, as we should say. His mother was dead; and the three men—fighting men, who gloried in slaughter and head-hunting-were as tender

A MOTHERLY FATHER.

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as women in their care of this only son of theirs. They hung their choicest ornaments about his neck and on his wrists. They had already bought his little shield and his little future wife, although he could not have been more than eight years old. He was what they lived for; and all the village and the neighbourhood—it was on the narrow flat beside the sea, and a day's journey from the hill-perched Rotas-joined in the petting of Riroto.

They had heard of Percy's fame, which had been loudly sounded by Vili, and Nola, and Rogani, who had once lived and were still liked in Lalo; especially since they had been hunted by the Uri Great Ones. And so here was Aroha, with his hand on Riroto's shoulder, giving him, together with a beautiful ebony spear, into Mr. Wakefield's care.

"And his forbidden food is the White Pig: see that he does not eat thereof, Rogani," said the anxious parent, as Rogani showed Riroto to the Bishop and his friends.

I cannot tell you of all the "nursery instructions," as Percy calls them, which the motherly father gave to ensure the little frightened fellow's being taken care of on board ship. His going at all was owing to Rogani's influence, and to his being there to look after him, together, I suppose, with my being at Happy Island,

The decks were cleared before sunset, and the tired, hot, and iron-stained visitors went below to their well-earned tea.

When Mr. Wakefield came on deck afterwards, mopping himself with a towel, and gasping-in the fresh cool air, he was rather annoyed to see a man still on board, who stood blubbering by the bulwarks. It was Aroha. His heart had failed him, and he had come back for Riroto. He could not part with him, he said, and blubbered very piteously. Mr. Wakefield, of course, did not know all the particulars I have told you, and spoke roughly to poor Aroha, thinking that his tears were some more of the crocodile kind, which fathers had shed so often in part

ing with their boys, and had so invariably dried up on receipt of a pipeful of tobacco, or whatever it was they thought they could get.

The idea of giving up Riroto, too, such a promising little lad of just the right age, "a second Pomo," as he calls him, was most disappointing; and he held on to one of his skinny arms, while his father pulled at the other.

You see, you don't give us savages credit for having tender feelings. Even Mr. Wakefield could not quite believe it.

"They have shut the shutter against me," said Aroha hopelessly, "have Mono and Piku, because I came back without the boy; and they will not let me in until they hear his voice! what am I to do?"

"Give them this hatchet, and these pipes and tobacco, and tell them, the boy will be better off with us, we are not going to kill him; you are not the only man who has let his son go."

So, at last, after many embraces, and just as Percy says he was about to yield, Aroha dropped down into the canoe and went ashore, shouting and waving farewells, which gradually faded with the canoe and its paddler, into silence and the night.

The Bishop and Mr. Wakefield, and kind old Captain Dermott, who was childless, comforted and soothed the little stranger, and then he was handed over to Rogani's special care.

"Poor little mite! how terribly sick he was!" writes Percy, "he seemed so small to face such a sea of troubles."

Riroto died of gastric fever in Percy's arms, on the fourteenth day after he reached Happy Island. He raved incessantly for two days and nights, during which Percy, Rogani, and I never left him, keeping his head cool with vinegar and water, and doing all we could to relieve his pain; but the light of his little life sank out at midnight, like fire among thorns, just as the wick of the candle by which I had been reading in Mr. Wakefield's room fell down and died in its socket.

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Next morning I was called out of the school to go into the room where the little corpse lay. By the bedside knelt my compassionate friend looking for the last time into the pitiful peaceful face. As I came up he stroked the smooth cold forehead, saying so sadly and tenderly:

"My poor little boy! My poor little boy! God has taken you home."

Riroto was better off.-But what would Aroha, Mono, and Piku say?

We sewed his body up in canvas and placed a beautiful bunch of white azaleas on his breast. He was buried across the valley ⚫ on a sunny bank, where a small garden had been made for the reception of these seeds sown in corruption, to be raised in incorruption; God's Garden, as we were taught to call it.

A neat plain stone marks his early grave, which is always bright with flowers; and on the stone, beneath his name, in our own mother tongue, are the simple words, "WE WEEP AND WAIT."

CHAPTER XXVI.

EXCITEMENT.

I NOW hurry on to the great crisis of my life.

On our arrival off Pombuana next year, a most unusual thing happened. Instead of our old-fashioned Pombuana welcome, not a single canoe put off to us all along the coast. More wonderful still: when Captain Dermott, much against his will, but in obedience to the Bishop's orders, made a bold tack in shore—although Mr. Wakefield and I could plainly make out the little stranded log of wood upon which we used to sit, together with all the smaller features of the place-not a single dusky human form beclouded the glare of the white coral sand, nor could our glasses detect any hiders or peepers

among the trees. This was amazing. Were they all dead and buried?

There was a consultation among my friends as to whether it would be safe to land; for this absence of people is always a dangerous sign. But Percy Wakefield knew neither doubt nor fear. He was perfectly sure that no harm would be done to him by his friends.

"What do you think, Pomo?" asked he.

"That is your affair," I answered, with my native dread of responsibility.

"What do you think?" repeated my Namesake, in his determined tone; for these silly ways of ours always irritated him : our shyness being always ready at the wrong time, and, like your policemen, as I have heard Percy say, never to be found when wanted.

"If they recognise you they wont harm you," said I; “but your friend Toroa-who could tell what he might do?"

"Well, Wakefield, will you lower or not?" asked the Bishop. "Lower, most decidedly," was the determined answer.

And we lowered. As we pulled in, we did distinguish one man peeping from behind a new barricade in front of the Kiala a person who knew he could not be made out by our naked eyes, but who had left telescopes out of his reckoning.

Slowly he became the centre of a small group of cautious figures but there were neither women nor children (another bad sign); nor was Malagai among them.

We landed: Percy, Rogani, and I, in our own little boat (which would render us independent of canoes); while the Bishop and his crew followed in one of the Aurora's surf-boats, and awaited the result of our inquiries, before they stept ashore. The mention of Rogani's name reminds me that he had been baptised during the winter. He was christened Arthur.

My people were in a very excited state. Percy remarks that they looked as if they had all been drinking heavily, so