and continuing some time after Taönui had
withdrawn the flute from his mouth. It ceased.

"Tis good!" said the king, addressing his
flute, with a haughty, self-willed, purblind,
patronising air; " thou hast played well this
evening!"

He immediately received a tremendous kick
on the shin, as if from some gigantic bony foot
—but no one was visible. That it was a kick
from a leg of some kind or other, he had
reasons for knowing of too acute a kind to
doubt for a moment. Where was the assailant?
He turned round and round. There
was nobody—nothing!

The king walked, or rather limped, towards
his house very slowly. He presently met a
chief. He was about to ask—but suddenly
checked himself. The chief began a brief
conversation with him on a new method of
preparing the ground for kumeras (a sort of
kidney potato), and then passed on. Not a
word about seeing anybody with a skeleton
leg—nor of the prodigious blowing of the pah-
trumpet, which seemed at the time to shake
the whole village.

The king met another chief, who, on seeing
him, advanced with an air of more excitement
than is usual with these dignified rangatiras
(men of high rank), and Taönui drew himself
up, to hear what he would say. The chief
informed him that the Australian kangaroos,
which had been long expected as a present to
him from a powerful chief living on the
western sea coast, had arrived only an hour
ago, and were all in good health, and likely to
thrive, and give him a capital breed. Not a
syllable about seeing any apparition with a
skeleton leg and foot—nor of the roaring
noise of the village war-horn.

Arrived at home, the queen met Taönui
beneath the broad red and white verandah of
his royal house, where she had been busily
engaged in preparing him an excellent supper
after his hunting excursion, as she had
supposed it. " Here," said she, ' are kumeras,
cooked with slices of deliciously stale shark"
(only considered eatable when very " gamey "),
"burnt fern-root, and mussels kept hot a long
while for you. What do you say? But I have
more than this. Here, are maize-cakes, hinau
cakes, bacon, and a leaf-full of roasted ghost-
moths. What do you say? Still no word.
Are not these enough for you?"

"Have you nothing else to speak about?"
demanded the king, out of all patience.
"Have you nothing else to tell me?"

"I can get you very quickly the heart of a
fine young nikau palm-tree," said the queen,
in alarm at his manner; "also some buttermilk
and wild turnips. Oh, I see—it's the
kangaroos. Yes—they have arrived."

Taõnui could endure it no longer, and
stamped upon the ground. " Who blew the
pah-trumpet?" bellowed he in the poor
queen's ear—" and why was it blown?—tell
me that! " His other wives, and the women
and slaves of his household, all came rushing
out to the verandah. " Tell me that!" he
continued to say, "tell me who did it, and why!
tell me, all of you! any one! somebody!"

Nobody spoke. They all stood looking at
each other. Nobody had heard it.

Inarticulate with the perplexity of his rage,
Taönui glared all round at the assembled
group,—and continued to do so, till gradually
the sense of being bewitched came upon him,
and his passion began to subside into a strange
confusion with himself. What he had seen,
and heard, and felt, were all very real to him;
yet nobody else .appeared to have the least
cognisance of it. Where were their senses—
or, what had happened to his? As to his
having caused the wonderful music of his own
free will, if he had still wilfully endeavoured
to persuade himself of that, he, at least, knew
very well that he had not kicked his own
shins. That violent blow came out of the air
—out of nothing—but not from nobody. It
was of no use to try and conceal his condition
from himself any longer. He could not
harden himself against so many odds.

From this point, the king's haughty and
vindictive spirit began to topple on its
barbaric elevation, and he felt most bitterly the
want of human sympathy and friendly advice.
He even once thought of opening his mind to
the queen; which he might have done without
any disgrace, because the estimation in
which women were held by his people was
by no means so low as is common with savage
tribes; but this very natural and sensible
thought was destroyed by his pride almost as
soon as it had glanced across him. He refused
to see or speak with any one for some days;
he even would not go and look at the kangaroos.
Finally he determined to call a council
of the oldest and wisest chiefs of Mokau, and
relate to them all that had happened.

Meanwhile, he retained enough of his
tyrannical and revengeful feeling to give
orders that his son Waipata, as he had em-
braced Christianity, should instantly leave the
pah of his fathers, and go and dwell on the
coast, near one of the missionary stations;
directing, at the same time, that Teöra should
be taken to a lonely and deserted house, once
celebrated in accordance with its horrid name,
viz. ,kai tangata, or Eat-man House. A supply
of food and water for a certain period were to
be placed within, and the door was then to be
fastened, and Teöra left to her fate. As for
old Kaitemata, he took no steps against
her for the present.

There was no sort of doubt about the love
that existed between Teöra and Waipata.
They had roved away together for several
hours every day while the king was secluded
in his moody state at home—a proceeding
undoubtedly opposed to New Zealand notions
of propriety; but their circumstances were
peculiar. They were now seated in the depths
of a great forest, at the mossy foot of a lofty
totara tree, with the foliage of which the flowering
clematis had mingled, and ascending to the