dissolute and idle. He has always been a
wastrel, a profligate."

"But that's no reason you should keep on after him the way you do. I've
watched you from the beginning. The first thing you did when you
returned from college and found him working on the plantation as outside
_luna_ was to fire him--you with your millions, and he with his sixty
dollars a month."

"Not the first thing," Percival Ford said judicially, in a tone he was
accustomed to use in committee meetings. "I gave him his warning. The
superintendent said he was a capable _luna_. I had no objection to him
on that ground. It was what he did outside working hours. He undid my
work faster than I could build it up. Of what use were the Sunday
schools, the night schools, and the sewing classes, when in the evenings
there was Joe Garland with his infernal and eternal tum-tumming of guitar
and _ukulele_, his strong drink, and his _hula_ dancing? After I warned
him, I came upon him--I shall never forget it--came upon him, down at the
cabins. It was evening. I could hear the _hula_ songs before I saw the
scene. And when I did see it, there were the girls, shameless in the
moonlight and dancing--the girls upon whom I had worked to teach clean
living and right conduct. And there were three girls there, I remember,
just graduated from the mission school. Of course I discharged Joe
Garland. I know it was the same at Hilo. People said I went out of my
way when I persuaded Mason and Fitch to discharge him. But it was the
missionaries who requested me to do so. He was undoing their work by his
reprehensible example."

"Afterwards, when he got on the railroad, your railroad, he was
discharged without cause," Kennedy challenged.

"Not so," was the quick answer. "I had him into my private office and
talked with him for half an hour."

"You discharged him for inefficiency?"

"For immoral living, if you please."

Dr. Kennedy laughed with a grating sound. "Who the devil gave it to you
to be judge and jury? Does landlordism give you control of the immortal
souls of those that toil for you? I have been your physician. Am I to
expect tomorrow your ukase that I give up Scotch and soda or your
patronage? Bah! Ford, you take life too seriously. Besides, when Joe
got into that smuggling scrape (he wasn't in your employ, either), and he
sent word to you, asked you to pay his fine, you left him to do his six
months' hard labour on the reef. Don't for