ike a fool, and was one to a great extent, but it
wasn't good policy to take him for one.

Strange to say, he and others had reason to believe that August
respected him, and liked him rather than otherwise; but she hated his
wife, who had been kind to her, as only a savage can hate. The younger
pupils told the teacher, cheerfully and confidently, that August said
she'd cut Mrs. Lorrens' throat the first chance she got. Next week the
aunt sent down to ask if the teacher could sell her a bar of soap, and
sent the same old shilling; he was tired of seeing it stuck out in front
of him, so he took it, put it in his pocket, and sent the soap. This
must have discouraged them, for the borrowing industry petered out. He
saw the aunt later on, and she told him, cheerfully, that August was
going to live with a half-caste in a certain house in town.

Poor August! For she was only a tool after all. Her "romance" was
briefly as follows:--She went, per off-hand Maori arrangement, as
'housekeeper' in the hut of a labourer at a neighbouring saw-mill. She
stayed three months, for a wonder; at the expiration of which time she
put on her hat and explained that she was tired of stopping there, and
was going home. He said, 'All right, Sarah, wait a while and I'll take
you home.' At the door of her aunt's house he said, 'Well, good-bye,
Sarah,' and she said, in her brooding way, 'Good-bye, Jim.' And that was
all.

As the last apparent result of August's mischief-making, her brother
or someone one evening rode up to the cottage, drunk and inclined to
bluster. He was accompanied by a friend, also drunk, who came to see the
fun, and was ready to use his influence on the winning side. The teacher
went inside, brought out his gun, and slipped two cartridges in.
"I've had enough of this," he said. "Now then, be off, you insolent
blackguards, or I'll shoot you like rabbits. Go!" and he snapped his jaw
and the breech of his gun together. As they rode off, the old local hawk
happened to soar close over a dead lamb in the fern at the corner of the
garden, and the teacher, who had been "laying" for him a long time, let
fly both barrels at him, without thinking. When he turned, there was
only a cloud of dust down the track.

. . . . .

The teacher taught that school for three years thereafter, without a
hitch. But he went no more on Universal Brotherhood lines. And, for
years after he had gone, his name was spoken of with great respect b