ght when I've licked him into shape," he said. "He's a
good dog and he loves his master."

Mackintosh silently, without a movement of his long, sallow face,
laughed long and heartily.

But his hatred was not blind; on the contrary, it was peculiarly
clear-sighted, and he judged Walker's capabilities with precision. He
ruled his small kingdom with efficiency. He was just and honest. With
opportunities to make money he was a poorer man than when he was first
appointed to his post, and his only support for his old age was the
pension which he expected when at last he retired from official life.
His pride was that with an assistant and a half-caste clerk he was able
to administer the island more competently than Upolu, the island of
which Apia is the chief town, was administered with its army of
functionaries. He had a few native policemen to sustain his authority,
but he made no use of them. He governed by bluff and his Irish humour.

"They insisted on building a jail for me," he said. "What the devil do I
want a jail for? I'm not going to put the natives in prison. If they do
wrong I know how to deal with them."

One of his quarrels with the higher authorities at Apia was that he
claimed entire jurisdiction over the natives of his island. Whatever
their crimes he would not give them up to courts competent to deal with
them, and several times an angry correspondence had passed between him
and the Governor at Upolu. For he looked upon the natives as his
children. And that was the amazing thing about this coarse, vulgar,
selfish man; he loved the island on which he had lived so long with
passion, and he had for the natives a strange rough tenderness which was
quite wonderful.

He loved to ride about the island on his old grey mare and he was never
tired of its beauty. Sauntering along the grassy roads among the coconut
trees he would stop every now and then to admire the loveliness of the
scene. Now and then he would come upon a native village and stop while
the head man brought him a bowl of _kava_. He would look at the little
group of bell-shaped huts with their high thatched roofs, like beehives,
and a smile would spread over his fat face. His eyes rested happily on
the spreading green of the bread-fruit trees.

"By George, it's like the garden of Eden."

Sometimes his rides took him along the coast and through the trees he
had a glimpse of the wide sea, empty, with never a sail to disturb the
loneliness; sometime