_faipule_ from the Union Islands who seemed to have some
kind of a grievance about his father's head, and the Chief Justice who
had to butt in with the capitation tax--we were kept there a matter of
three hours or more, until at last the principals officially made it up,
To'oto'o was forgiven, and everything ended happily.

"Now, Silver Tongue," I said as the meeting dispersed, "we'll consider
that head affair canceled, and if you'll come over to my house to-night
I dare say you'll find Rosalie sitting on the front veranda!"

"And do you for a moment think," he said with a strange, writhen smile,
"dat all dis talk and domfoolery will a gruel murder undo, and the young
man cut off in his brime restore? Weel those lips, so gold in death,
stir, think you, in the box where we laid him? Will my dead wife's
family be less bereaved because of two kegs of peef and three tins of
biscuit, or Rosalie's family less disgraced because her uncle was triced
through the streets like a big? No, Gaptain Branscombe, I'm only a poor
paker, but I'd count myself a traidor to my family were I to dake a
murderess for my pride!"

"Rosalie isn't a murderess," I said.

"I meant niece of a murderer," he returned.

I was too speechless with indignation to utter another word. In the
course of sixty years on this planet I've seen many kinds of men, and
I've learned to detect in some a certain look about the eyes--a curious
light and a far-away dreaminess of expression--that seems always the
sign or mark of an unflinching obstinacy. I remember that self-same look
on Brand's face as we lay all flattened on the water tanks of the
_Moroa_, and he blew the main deck off the ship together with three
hundred human beings; and I guess the Christian martyrs had it, too,
when lions tore them to pieces and bulls kited them on their horns in
the Colosseum. Anyway, it was as plain as daylight that I had lost my
time and money in bothering about Oppenstedt, and that I might as well
give him up as the most incorrigible, stiff-necked, self-opinionated,
blunder-headed ass and lunatic this side of Muggin.

I gave him a wide berth after this, and took the other side of the
street when I saw him coming; while he, for his part, would have
cheerfully run a mile for the chance of avoiding me. I had cares of my
own, too, about this time, what with the loss of the _Daisy Walker_, and
my libel suit with Grevsmuhl, and other things to think about than that
of bringing twi