nd with averted face she rose from the table and walked to
the window.

For a moment or two she stood there irresolutely, and then with the
colour mantling her brow she came over to him.

"I must ask _your_ pardon now. I forgot that--that--that----"

"That I have Maori blood in my veins. Yes, I have, my father was a
Pakeha Maori,{*} my mother a woman of one of the Waikato tribes. She
died when I was very young." Then, in a curiously strained voice, he
said: "Miss Torringley, may I ask a favour of you? Will you give me that
sketch?"

* A white man who had adopted Maori life and customs.

She moved quickly to the table, and untied the portfolio again.

"Which, Dr. Rauparaha? The last----"

"Yes," he interrupted, with sudden fierceness, "the Last Shot at
Maungatabu."

She took it out and came over to him. "Take it, if you wish it; take
them all, if you care for them. No one but myself ever looks at them....
And now, after what you have told me, I shall never want to look at them
again."

"Thank you," he said, in softer tones, as he took the picture from her.
"I only wish for this one. It will help to keep my memory green--when I
return to my mother's people."

"Ah," she said, in a pained voice, "don't say that. I wish I had never
asked you to look at it. I have read the papers, and know how the Maori
people must feel, and I am sorry, oh! so sorry, that I have unthinkingly
aroused what must surely be painful memories to you."

"Do not think of it, Miss Torringley. Such things always will be. So
long as we live, breathe, and have our being, so long will the strong
oppress and slay the weak; so long will the accursed earth-hunger of
a great Christian nation be synonymous for bloodshed, murder, and
treachery; so long will she hold out with one hand to the children
of Ham the figure of Christ crucified, and preach of the benefits of
civilisation; while with the other she sweeps them away with the Maxim
gun; so long will such things as the 'Last Shot at Maungatabu'--the
murder of women and children, always be."

With bated breath she listened to the end, and then murmured--

"It is terrible to think of, an unjust warfare. Were any women and
children killed at Maungatabu?"

"Yes," he almost shouted back, "many were shot as they crossed the
swamp. And when they gained the fern two more were killed by that last
shell--a woman and child--my mother and my sister!"

He turned away again to the window, but not s