ngue. "It's a lie!"

"Scanlon himself was at the battle," I went on, "and he saw the whole
thing and was a witness to Tautala getting the seven dollars, and he
made To'oto'o pony up four dollars more as the price of his own
secrecy."

"Four dollars," ejaculated Scanlon. "That's right, Captain Branscombe.
Four dollars!"

"So, if you are angry with anybody," I said, "you ought to be angry
with Tautala. All To'oto'o did was to buy a little cheap notoriety for
eleven dollars and a music box."

I never saw a man so stung in all my life as Oppenstedt. The eyes seemed
to start from his head, and he glared at To'oto'o as though he could
have strangled him. Tautala was quite forgotten in the intensity of his
indignation toward Rosalie's uncle. You see, he had been hating To'oto'o
ferociously for six months, and couldn't switch off at a moment's notice
on an absolute stranger like Tautala. Besides, his hatred for To'oto'o
had become a kind of monomania with him, and now here I was telling him
what a fool he had made of himself, and proving it with two witnesses
and a music box. No wonder that he was staggered.

"Now, old fellow," I said, "we'll call bygones bygones, and maybe you'll
let us see a little more of you than we've been doing lately."

"You mean Rosalie, of gourse," he said, snapping the words like a mad
dog.

"Yes, Rosalie," I said.

"Gaptain Branscombe," he said, his face convulsed with passion, "that
gossumate liar and hybocrite has made such a thing impossible. Far rader
would I lay me in the grave--far rader would I have wild horses on me
trample--than that I should indermarry with a family and bossibly
betaint my innocent kinder with the plood of so shogging and
unprincibled a liar. A man so lost to shame, so beplunged in cowardice
and deceit that he couldn't his own heads cut off, but must buy dem of
others, and faunt himself a hero while honest worth bassed unnoticed and
bushed aside."

"It was honest worth that chopped off the head of your father-in-law's
aunt's son!" I said.

"Gaptain," he returned, "there are oggasions when in condrast to a
liar--to a golossal liar--to one who has made a peeziness of systematic
deception--a murderer is a shentlemans!"

"Oh, you villain baker!" cried Sasa, joining in. "You make _tongafiti_.
You never want marry the girl at all. All the time you say something
different. Oh, you bad mans, you break girls' hearts--and serve you
right somebody cut your head off!"