n souls together. So the days drifted on and months came
and went, and it seemed all over for good between Rosalie and Silver
Tongue. Then that labor captain turned up again, him I had had trouble
with before, a black-eyed, fierce, handsome little fellow, who was
hotter than ever after my girl. Rosalie was just in the humor to do
something awful, for she was desperately unhappy, with spells of wild
gayety between, and a recklessness about herself that frightened me more
than I can tell. She laughed in my face when I warned her about the
labor captain, and told me straight out she was only a half-caste and it
didn't matter what became of her. And from the way she carried on and
got herself talked about from one end of the beach to the other, it
began to look as though she meant what she said. Altogether I felt
pretty blue about her, and savage enough against Silver Tongue to
have--Well, what on earth could I do? What could anybody do? Why had God
ever made such a silly ass of a baker?

One day I got a note from Sasa French that took me up to Malifa at a
tearing run. Scanlon, the half-caste policeman, was there, and when I
had listened to his story I threw my hat in the air and shouted like a
boy, and Sasa and I waltzed up and down the veranda to the petrifaction
of two missionary ladies who happened to be passing in tow of some
square-toes from the Home Society. Sasa and I plumped into a buggy, and
with Scanlon on horseback pounding behind us we made all sail for
Seumanutafa's. Bidding him follow, we then raced off to Mulinu'u, where,
sure enough, we found a young man named Tautala in one of the houses,
who brought out the music box and very soon satisfied me as to the truth
of what Scanlon had said. Then at a slower pace, so that Tautala might
keep up with us, we walked to To'oto'o's house and taxed him with the
whole business!

At first he made some show of denying it, but what could he say with
Scanlon and Tautala in risen witness against him? He tried to refuse to
come with us (which would have spoiled everything), until Scanlon took a
hand in the fray and let his imagination run riot about the law, which,
as he was the official representative of it and wore a pewter star on
his breast, soon settled To'oto'o's half-hearted objections. If anything
else were wanted, it was the arrival at this juncture of Seumanutafa at
the head of a dozen retainers, who added the finishing stroke to the
little resistance To'oto'o had