nded their request to the doctor to
remain at Te Ariri till he returned, although inwardly he swore at them
both for a pair of "blithering idiots." And as he drove away to the
station he congratulated himself on the fact that while his fiancee
had a "touch of the tar-brush," as he expressed it, in her descent, her
English bringing-up and society training under her worldly-minded but
rather brainless aunt had led her to accept him as her future husband
without difficulty.

For the next two days Dr. Rauparaha had much writing to do, and passed
his mornings and afternoons in the quiet library. Sometimes, as he
wrote, a shadow would flit across the wide, sunlit veranda, and Helen
Torringley would flit by, nodding pleasantly to him through the windows.
Only two or three times had he met her alone since he came to Te Ariri,
and walked with her through the grounds, listening with a strange
pleasure to her low, tender voice, and gazing into the deep, dark eyes,
that shone with softest lustre from out the pale, olive face, set in a
wealth of wavy jet-black hair. For Helen Torringley was, like himself,
of mixed blood. Her mother, who had died in her infancy, was a South
American quadroon, born in Lima, and all the burning, quick passions
and hot temperament of her race were revealed in her daughter's every
graceful gesture and inflexion of her clear voice.

*****

It was late in the afternoon, and Dr. Rauparaha, pushing his papers
wearily away from him, rose from his seat. His work was finished.
To-morrow he would bid these new friends goodbye--this proud English
lady and her beautiful, sweet-voiced niece--the girl whose dark eyes and
red lips had come into his day-dreams and visions of the night. And just
then she came to the library door, carrying in her hand a portfolio.

"Are you very busy, Dr. Rauparaha?" she said, as she entered and stood
before him.

"Busy! No, Miss Torringley. Are these the sketches you told me Colonel
Torringley made when he was in New Zealand?" and as he extended his hand
for the book, the hot blood surged to his sallow forehead.

"Yes, they were all drawn by my father. I found them about a year since
in the bottom of one of his trunks. He died ten years ago."

Slowly the young man turned them over one by one. Many of them were
drawings of outposts, heads of native chiefs, &c. At last he came
to one, somewhat larger than the others. It depicted the assault and
capture of a Maori _pah_, standing