lips. "I lofe dem like my fader," he would say in his deep, fluty voice,
and the conversation was seldom carried further. When it was--by some
one ill advised enough to do so--Silver Tongue would flare up, and
recall with flashing eyes and a face crimson with indignation the
ten-year debt of gratitude he owed his dead wife's _ainga_.

Indeed, if Silver Tongue had a fault it was a certain moroseness and
fierceness of temper, a readiness and even an apparent pleasure in
taking offense, that made him somewhat of a solitary in our midst and
threw him more than ever on the companionship of his own Kanakas; so
that at night, when one had occasion to seek him out, he was usually to
be found on the mats of his native house, smoking his pipe or playing
_sweepy_ with his bulky father-in-law, Papalangi Mativa. I doubt if he
had another intimate in Apia besides myself, and though I must confess
we often disagreed, and once or twice approached the verge of
estrangement, I was too much his friend and too mindful of the old days
on the _Ransom_ to let such trifles come between us.

I was, besides, Rosalie's friend as well, for old Clyde, her father, had
died in my arms at Nonootch, and with his last breath had consigned her
to my care. This obligation, rendered sacred by an association that
extended back to the days of Steinberg and Bully Hayes, when in the
_Moroa_ and the _Eugenie_ we had slept under the same mats and had
played our part together in the stirring times of Stewart and the great
Atuona Plantation--this obligation, I say, I met easily enough so long
as Rosalie was a child and safe in the convent at Savalalo. But when she
grew to womanhood and went to live with her relations in their shanty
near the Firm, I began to experience some anxiety in regard to her. Her
relations, to begin with, were not at all the kind of natives I liked.
They had been too long the hangers-on of the Firm, and had seen too much
of a low class of whites to be the proper guardians of a very pretty
half-caste of eighteen. They had an ugly name, besides--but I won't be
censorious--and it may have been all beach talk. But they were certainly
a whining, begging lot, the girls bold and the men impudent and saucy,
and I never saw Rosalie in their midst but it made me heartsick for her
future.

I did the little I could, and let it be pretty well understood about the
beach that the man who played fast and loose with her would have to
reckon with old Capta