alternative, but he did not like the feeling of running away in the moment of peril.

"Can't I help you, though I am only a boy?" he asked.

"Yes," answered Hepé's wife, as she almost pushed him out of the door in her desperation; "take this."

She lifted up a heavy bag from the corner of the whare, and put it into his hands. Whero had untied the horse, and was pointing to the distant pah, from which the yells proceeded.

A band of armed men, brandishing clubs and spears, were leading off the war-dance. Their numbers were swelling. The word of fear went round from lip to lip, "The tana is coming!"

The tana is the band of armed men sent by the chief to carry out this act of savage despotism. They had been on the watch for Nga-Hepé. They had seen him riding through the pah. All hope of getting him out of the way was over.

Father and mother joined in the last despairing desire to send off Whero, their little lord and first-born, of whom the Maoris make so much, and treat with so much deference. They never dreamed of ordering him to go. A freeborn Maori brooks no control even in childhood. But their earnest entreaties prevailed. He got up before Edwin. He would not ride behind him, not he, to save his life. He yielded for the sake of the horse he loved so well. He thought he might get it back from the young pakeha, but who could wrest it from the grasp of the tana? Perhaps Nga-Hepé shared the hope. The noble horse was dear to father and son.

"Oh, I am so sorry for you!" said Edwin as he guessed the truth; "and so will father be, I'm sure." He stopped in sudden silence as another terrific yell echoed back by lake and tree.

He felt the good horse quiver as they plunged into the safe shelter of the bush, leaving Hepé leaning on his club on the threshold of his whare.

Edwin's first care now was to get to Mr. Hirpington's as fast as he could. But his desire to press on met with no sympathy from his companion, who knew not how to leave the spot until his father's fate was decided. He had backed the horse into the darkest shadow of the trees, and here he wanted to lie in ambush and watch; for the advancing warriors were surrounding the devoted whare, and the shrieking women were flying from it into the bush.

How could Edwin stop him when Whero would turn back to meet his mother? The rendezvous of the fugitives was a tall karaka tree—a forest king rearing its giant stem full seventy feet above the mossy turf. A climbing plant, ablaze with scarlet flowers, had wreathed itself among the branches, and hung in long festoons which swept the ground. The panting women flung themselves down, and dropped their heavy burdens at its root; for all had snatched up the nearest thing which came to hand as they ran out. One had wrapped the child she carried in a fishing-net; another drew from beneath the folds of the English counterpane she was wearing the long knife that had been lying on the floor by the dish of shark; while Whero's mother, shaking her wealth of uncombed hair about her like a natural veil, concealed in her arms a ponderous axe.

The big black horse gave a loving whinny as he recognized their footsteps, and turning of his own accord, cantered up to them as they began to raise the death-wail—doing tangi as they call it—over the outcast children crying for the untasted supper, on which the invaders were feasting.

"May it choke the pigs!" muttered Whero, raising himself in the stirrups and catching at the nearest bough, he gave it a shake, which sent a shower of the karaka nuts tumbling down upon the little black heads and fighting fists. The women stopped their wail to crack and eat. The horse bent down his head to claim a share, and the children scrambled to their feet to scoop the sweet kernel from the opened shell. The hungry boys were forced to join them, and Edwin found to his surprise that leaf and nut alike were good and wholesome food. They ate in silence and fear, as the wild woods rang with the shouts of triumph and derision as the rough work of confiscation went forward in the whare.

With the much-needed food Edwin's energy was returning. He gave back the bag to Whero's mother, assuring her if her son would only guide him to the road he could find his own way to the ford.

"Let us all go farther into the bush," said the oldest woman of the group, "before the tana comes out. The bush they cannot take from us, and all we need the most the bush will provide."

The weight of the bag he had carried convinced Edwin it was full of money.

Whero's mother was looking about for a place where she could hide it; so they wandered on until the sun shone brightly between the opening trees, and they stepped out upon an unexpected clearing.

"The road! the road!" cried Whero, pointing to the gleam of water in the distance, and the dark roof of the house by the ford, half buried in the white blossom of the acacia grove beside it.

"All right!" exclaimed Edwin joyfully. "You need go no farther."

He took the bridle from Whero, and turned the horse's head towards the ford, loath to say farewell to his strange companions. As he went at a steady trot along the road, he could not keep from looking back. He saw they were burying the bag of treasure where two white pines grew near together, and the wild strawberries about their roots were ripening in the sun. The road, a mere clearing in the forest, lay straight before him. As Nga-Hepé had said, an hour's ride brought him to Mr. Hirpington's door.

The house was large and low, built entirely of corrugated iron. It was the only spot of ugliness in the whole landscape. A grassy bank higher than Edwin's head surrounded the home enclosure, and lovely white-winged pigeons were hovering over the yellow gorse, which formed an impenetrable wall on the top of the bank. A gate stood open, and by its side some rough steps cut in the rock led down to the riverbed, through a tangle of reeds and bulrushes. Like most New Zealand rivers, the bed was ten times wider than the stream, and the stretch of mud on either side increased the difficulties of the crossing.

Edwin rode up to the gate and dismounted, drew the bridle through the ring in the post, and entered a delightful garden, where peach and almond and cherry trees brought back a thought of home. The ground was terraced towards the house, which was built on a jutting rock, to be out of the reach of winter floods. Honeysuckle and fuchsia, which Edwin had only known in their dwarfed condition in England, rose before him as stately trees, tall as an English elm, eclipsing all the white and gold of the acacias and laburnums, which sheltered the end of the house.

The owner, spade in hand, was at work among his flower-beds. His dress was as rough as the navvy's, and Edwin, who had studied Mr. Hirpington's photograph so often, asked himself if this man, so brown and brawny and broad, could be his father's friend?

"Please, I'm Edwin Lee," said the boy bluntly. "Is Mr. Hirpington at home?"

The spade was thrown aside, and a hand all smeared with garden mould grasped his own, and a genial voice exclaimed, "Yes, Hirpington is here, bidding you heartily welcome! But how came you, my lad, to forerun the coach?"

Then Edwin poured into sympathetic ears the tale of their disaster, adding earnestly, "I thought I had