had been a plot by her nearest relations. They
got rid of the trouble and expense of keeping her, and the bother of
borrowing in person, whenever in need of trifles in the grocery line.
Borrowing recommenced with her dismissal; but the teacher put a full
stop to it, as far as he was concerned. Then August, egged on by her
aunt, sent a blackguardly letter to the teacher's wife; the sick sister,
by the way, who had been nursed and supplied with food by her all along,
was in it, and said she was glad August sent the letter, and it served
the schoolmistress right. The teacher went up to the pa once more; an
hour later, August in person, accompanied, as usual, by a relation
or two, delivered at the cottage an abject apology in writing, the
composition of which would have discouraged the most enthusiastic
advocate of higher education for the lower classes.

Then various petty annoyances were tried. The teacher is firmly
convinced that certain animal-like sounds round the house at night were
due to August's trying to find out whether his wife was as likely to be
haunted as the Maoris were. He didn't dream of such a thing at the time,
for he did not believe that one of them had the pluck to venture out
after dark. But savage superstition must give way to savage hate.
The girl's last "try-on" was to come down to the school fence, and
ostentatiously sharpen a table-knife on the wires, while she scowled
murderously in the direction of the schoolmistress, who was hanging out
her washing. August looked, in her dark, bushy, Maori hair, a thoroughly
wild savage. Her father had murdered her mother under particularly
brutal circumstances, and the daughter took after her father.

The teacher called her and said: "Now, look here, my lady, the best
thing you can do is to drop that nonsense at once" (she had dropped the
knife in the ferns behind her), "for we're the wrong sort of people
to try it on with. Now you get out of this and tell your aunt--she's
sneaking there in the flax--what I tell you, and that she'd better clear
out of this quick, or I'll have a policeman out and take the whole
gang into town in an hour. Now be off, and shut that gate behind you,
carefully, and fasten it." She did, and went.

The worst of it was that the August romance copy was useless. Her lies
were even less reliable and picturesque than the common Jones Alley hag
lie. Then the teacher thought of the soft fool he'd been, and that made
him wild. He looked l