hine."

And then he passed slowly out.

Lupton could only see that as the outside wrappings of _fala_ leaves
fell off they revealed a black substance, when Mr. Brown quickly placed
it in the bosom of his shirt.

*****

"And sure enough," continued Lupton, knocking the ashes from his pipe
out upon the crumbling stones of the old marae, and speaking in, for
him, strangely softened tones, "the poor chap did die that night,
leastways at _kalaga moa_ (cockcrow), and then he refilled his pipe in
silence, gazing the while away out to the North-West Point."

*****

"What a curious story!" began the supercargo, after an interval of some
minutes, when he saw that Lupton, usually one of the merriest-hearted
wanderers that rove to and fro in Polynesia, seemed strangely silent and
affected, and had turned his face from him.

He waited in silence till the trader chose to speak again. Away to
the westward, made purple by the sunset haze of the tropics, lay the
ever-hovering spume-cloud of the reef of North-West Point--the loved
haunt of Lupton's guest--and the muffled boom of the ceaseless surf
deepened now and then as some mighty roller tumbled and crashed upon the
flat ledges of blackened reef.

*****

At last the trader turned again to the supercargo, almost restored to
his usual equanimity. "I'm a pretty rough case, Mr.------, and not much
given to any kind of sentiment or squirming, but I would give half I'm
worth to have him back again. He sort of got a pull on my feelin's the
first time he ever spoke to me, and as the days went on, I took to him
that much that if he'd a wanted to marry my little Teremai I'd have
given her to him cheerful. Not that we ever done much talkin', but he'd
sit night after night and make me talk, and when I'd spun a good hour's
yarn he'd only say, 'Thank you, Lupton, good-night,' and give a smile
all round to us, from old Mameri to the youngest _tama_, and go to bed.
And yet he did a thing that'll go hard agin' him, I fear."

"Ah," said Trenton, "and so he told you at the last--I mean his reason
for coming to die at Mururea."

"No, he didn't. He only told me something; Peese told me the rest. And
he laughed when he told me," and the dark-faced trader struck his hand
on his knee. "Peese would laugh if he saw his mother crucified."

"Was Peese back here again, then?" inquired Trenton.

"Yes, two months ago. He hove-to outside, and came ashore in a canoe.
Said he wanted to hear how his de