d about everywhere, lookin' as
though a punkin-vine had climbed up into 'em and hung half-ripe punkins
off of every bough; beside lots of other trees that the natives set
great store by, and live on the fruit of 'em; and flyin' through all,
such pretty birds as you never see except in them parts; but one brown
thrasher'd beat the whole on 'em singin'; fact is, they run to feathers;
they don't sing none.

"It was as sightly a country as ever Adam and Eve had to themselves;
but it wa'n't home. Howsomever, after a while the savages took to me
mightily. I was allers handy with tools, and by good luck I'd come off
with two jack-knives and a loose awl in my jacket-pocket, so I could
beat 'em all at whittlin'; and I made figgers on their bows an'
pipe-stems, of things they never see,--roosters, and horses, Miss Buel's
old sleigh, and the Albany stage, driver'n' all, and our yoke of oxen
a-ploughin',--till nothin' would serve them but I should have a house o'
my own, and be married to their king's daughter; so I did.

"Well, Doctor, you kinder wonder I forgot Hetty Buel. I didn't forget
her, but I knew she wa'n't to be had anyhow; I thought I was in for
life; and Wailua was the prettiest little craft that ever you set eyes
on, as straight as a spar, and as kindly as a Christian; and besides, I
had to, or I'd have been killed, and broiled, and eaten, whether or no!
And then in that 'are latitude it a'n't just the way 'tis here; you
don't work; you get easy, and lazy, and sleepy; somethin' in the air
kind of hushes you up; it makes you sweat to think, and you're too hazy
to, if it didn't; and you don't care for nothing much but food and
drink. I hadn't no spunk left; so I married her after their fashion, and
I liked her well enough; and she was my wife, after all.

"I tell ye, Doctor, it goes a gret way with men-folks to think
anything's their'n, and nobody else's. But when I married her, I took
the chain with Hetty Buel's ring off my neck, and put 'em in a shell,
and buried the shell under my doorway. I couldn't have Wailua touch
that.

"So there I lived fifteen long year, as it might be, in a kind of a
curus dream, doin' nothin' much, only that when I got to know the tongue
them savages spoke, little by little I got pretty much the steerin' o'
the hull crew, till by-'n'-by some of 'em got jealous, and plotted and
planned to kill me, because the king, Wailua's father, was gettin' old,
and they thought I wanted to be king whe