to hear of all
his belongings being scattered."

"It is all right," Pola explained. "Tupuola said to the village, 'Come
and loot. I have broken the law and I will pay the forfeit.'"

"How did he break the law?" I asked.

"When the high-chief Loia, your brother of the four eyes, stopped the
night at Tanugamanono, on his way to the shark fishing, he stayed with
Tupuola, so of course it was chiefly to kill a pig in his honor."

"But it was against the law. My brother would not have liked it, and
Tupuola must have felt badly to know his house was to be looted."

"He would have felt worse," said Pola, "to have acted unchiefly to a
friend."

We never would have known of the famine in Tanugamanono if it had not
been for Pola. The hurricane had blown off all the young nuts from the
cocoanut palms and the fruit from the breadfruit trees, while the taro
was not yet ripe. We passed the village daily. The chief was my
brother's dear friend; the girls often came up to decorate the place for
a dinner party, but we had no hint of any distress in the village.

One morning I gave Pola two large ship's biscuits from the pantry.

"Be not angry," said Pola, "but I prefer to carry these home."

"Eat them," I said, "and I will give you more."

Before leaving that night he came to remind me of this. I was swinging
in a hammock reading a novel when Pola came to kiss my hand and bid me
good night.

"_Love_," I said, "_Talofa_."

"_Soifua_," Pola replied, "may you sleep;" and then he added, "Be not
angry, but the biscuits----"

"Are you hungry?" I asked. "Didn't you have your dinner?"

"Oh, yes, plenty of pea-soupo" (a general name for anything in tins);
"but you said, in your high-chief kindness, that if I ate the two
biscuits you would give me more to take home."

"And you ate them?"

He hesitated a perceptible moment, and then said:

"Yes, I ate them."

He looked so glowing and sweet, leaning forward to beg a favor, that I
suddenly pulled him to me by his bare, brown shoulders for a kiss. He
fell against the hammock and two large round ship's biscuits slipped
from under his _lava-lava_.

"Oh, Pola!" I cried, reproachfully. It cut me to the heart that he
should lie to me.

He picked them up in silence, repressing the tears that stood in his big
black eyes, and turned to go. I felt there was something strange in
this, one of those mysterious Samoan affairs that had so often baffled
me.

"I will give you two more bisc