. I shall
ever remember our pleasant relations on board my humble little trading
vessel," cried the renowned Peese, who, from former associations, had a
way of drifting into the Spanish tongue--and prisons and fetters--which
latter he once wore for many a weary day on the cruiser _Hernandez
Pizarro_ on his way to the gloomy prison of Manilla.

The boat had barely traversed half the distance to the shore ere the
brigantine's anchor was hove-up and at her bows, and then Peese, with
his usual cool assurance, beat her through the intricate passage and
stood out into the long roll of the Pacific.

*****

When Lupton, with his "walking bone bag," as he mentally called the
stranger, entered his house, Mameri, his bulky native wife, uttered an
exclamation of pity, and placing a chair before him uttered the simple
word of welcome _Iorana!_ and the daughters, with wonder-lit star-like
eyes, knelt beside their father's chair and whispered, "Who is he,
Farani?"

And Lupton could only answer, "I don't know, and won't ask. Look to him
well."

He never did ask. One afternoon nearly a year afterwards, as Lupton and
Trenton, the supercargo of the _Marama_ sat on an old native _marae_ at
Arupahi, the Village of Four Houses, he told the strange story of his
sick guest.

*****

The stranger had at first wished to have a house built for himself, but
Lupton's quiet place and the shy and reserved natures of his children
made him change his intention and ask Lupton for a part of his house. It
was given freely--where are there more generous-hearted men than these
world-forgotten, isolated traders?--and here the Silent Man, as the
people of Mururea called him, lived out the few months of his life. That
last deceptive stage of his insidious disease had given him a fictitious
strength. On many occasions, accompanied by the trader's children, he
would walk to the north point of the low-lying island, where the cloudy
spume of the surge was thickest and where the hollow and resonant crust
of the black reef was perforated with countless air-holes, through which
the water hissed and roared, and shot high in air, to fall again in
misty spray.

And here, with dreamy eyes, he would sit under the shade of a clump of
young cocoanuts, and watch the boil and tumble of the surf, whilst the
children played with and chased each other about the clinking sand.
Sometimes he would call them to him--Farani the boy, and Teremai and
Lorani, the sweet-voiced