said he, “what have you been doing?” 

 “That’s what I want to find out,” said I. 

 “O, you can’t be,” said he; “it ain’t possible. However, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Just to put your mind at rest, I’ll go round and find out for sure. Just you waltz in and talk to Papa.” 

 “Thank you,” I said, “I’d rather stay right out here on the verandah. Your house is so close.” 

 “I’ll call Papa out here, then,” says he. 

 “My dear fellow,” I says, “I wish you wouldn’t. The fact is, I don’t take to Mr. Randall.” 

 Case laughed, took a lantern from the store, and set out into the village. He was gone perhaps a quarter of an hour, and he looked mighty serious when he came back. 

 “Well,” said he, clapping down the lantern on the verandah steps, “I would never have believed it. I don’t know where the impudence of these Kanakas ’ll go next; they seem to have lost all idea of respect for whites. What we want is a man-of-war—a German, if we could—they know how to manage Kanakas.” 

 “I am tabooed, then?” I cried. 

 “Something of the sort,” said he. “It’s the worst thing of the kind I’ve heard of yet. But I’ll stand by you, Wiltshire, man to man. You come round here to-morrow about nine, and we’ll have it out with the chiefs. They’re afraid of me, or they used to be; but their heads are so big by now, I don’t know what to think. Understand me, Wiltshire; I don’t count this your quarrel,” he went on, with a great deal of resolution, “I count it all of our quarrel, I count it the White Man’s Quarrel, and I’ll stand to it through thick and thin, and there’s my hand on it.” 

 “Have you found out what’s the reason?” I asked. 

 “Not yet,” said Case. “But we’ll fix them down to-morrow.” 

 Altogether I was pretty well pleased with his attitude, and almost more the next day, when we met to go before the chiefs, to see him so stern and resolved. The chiefs awaited us in one of their big oval houses, which was marked out to us from a long way off by the crowd about the eaves, a hundred strong if there was one—men, women, and children. Many of the men were on their way to work and wore green wreaths, and it put me in thoughts of the 1st of May at home. This crowd opened and 

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