very summit, it fell down on all sides in snowy
chains and garlands. A wreath of the white
starry blossoms of this odorous creeper were
bound round the dark tresses of the young girl,
and fell with them over her shoulders and
bosom. Around grew the mighty trees
indigenous to the country, having, like the tree
beneath which they sat, their own luxuriant
foliage enwoven with bright and elegant
parasitical plants rising to their very topmost
crowns and pinnacles, and often hanging down
in beautiful festoons, and gracefully swaying
wreaths. One old and decayed tree, a grandsire
of the woods, was visible among the
others; but even his hoary sides, and broken
mouldering bark, were clothed with mosses and
orchids, and his dark hollows were filled
with scarlet fungi. Beneath all this there
was a prodigious undergrowth, among which
appeared the tree fern, the nikau palm, the
wild fuchsia—with its double set of flowers,
one green and purple, the other purple and
red, the pollen on the anthers of the former
being of the most brilliant cobalt blue—shrubs
and plants, some of yellow-tinted leaves,
others of the darkest purple-green, almost
like glossy black; while here and there lay
fallen trunks, some nearly overgrown with
grasses and lichens, and others with the
exquisitely-scented horopito, straggling about in
clusters of trumpet-shaped blossoms, varying
from the deepest crimson to the most delicate
pinky white. One opening through the foliage
admitted a peep beyond, which consisted of a
series of gentle hills, enclosed again at no
great distance by the circling belt of the
great forest; but the whole of these hills were
covered with the wild cabbage in blossom,
and presented beneath the sun one entire
surface of shining gold.

In this equally magnificent and lovely scene
of nature's profusion, sat Teöra and Waipata
discoursing, in accents of love, the leading
truths of that religion of deep-hearted
humanity which they had so recently adopted
in place of their native creed of ignorance and
cruel passions.

These happy hours, however, were soon to
be at an end. Even in this deep solitude the
emissaries of Taönui very speedily discovered
them, and they were immediately disposed of,
according to his directions—Waipata being
sent to the sea-coast, and Teöra fastened up
in Eat-man House, with the means of
prolonging existence only for a certain time.

The day appointed for the council of chiefs
having arrived, Taönui attired himself in the
most imposing manner for the occasion. Over
his large, bony shoulders he threw his ample
war-cloak of dogs'-hair interwoven with flax,
flung aside, however, in such a manner as
to display the rich tattooing of his chest and
limbs, over which all sorts of lines, devices,
and grotesque figures had been engraved in
purple and black lines. His close-cropped
black hair was adorned with a bunch of the
feathers of the kaka, or brown parrot, indigenous
to New Zealand, to which he had added,
for this important occasion, a blossom of the
warrator, a large flower of a deep crimson
colour. Bound his neck he wore a mighty
necklace of boars'-tusks, while his ears were
adorned with costly specimens of the teeth of
the tiger-shark. Those parts of his legs which
were not tattooed, he had painted with kokoiwai,
a sort of red ochre; but Taönui carefully
avoided all covering or ornament on his feet,
lest he should in any degree obscure or injure
the effect of the six toes with which nature
had especially honoured each foot,—a distinction,
however, enjoyed by two or three other
great chiefs in New Zealand at that period,
and also at the present day.

The most eminent among the Mokaurie
chiefs assembled as the king had commanded,
and retiring to a forest they all seated
themselves in a circle and began to smoke. At
length the king stood up in the midst, and
began a speech, in which he related the
wonders and offensive performances of the
flute, up to the period of the thunder-march
in the vicinity of the ruined mausoleum.
Seeing, or fancying he saw, doubts mingled
with surprise in the grave features of the elder
chiefs, Taönui paused. A long silence ensued.

One of the oldest chiefs then proposed that
the king should immediately play upon the
flute as before, that they might be the better
able to judge of the effect.

With this request the king immediately
complied, and he distinctly heard the grand
death-march, as before. "There!" said the
king, with a look of grizzly satisfaction. But
nobody else had heard it. He played again,
and heard the march. Nobody else heard it.
The chiefs all looked at each other, and then at
the king.

Taönui, now getting quite desperate, went
on with passionate energy and volubility to
narrate the rest of the events, till he came to
describe the prodigious sounds that issued
from the pah-trumpet; whereupon the chiefs
began to exchange significant glances with
each other, and some of them even touched
their heads and nodded, clearly indicating their
opinion that the king had gone mad. Secretly
as all this was done, Taönui had, in part,
observed it, or rather become conscious of it,
and snatching up the flute he was about to
blow with all his strength, in the wild hope
of producing some terrible result which should,
at least, compel them to believe his tale, when
a loud cry of women was heard to issue from
the pah, followed by the actual blowing of the
pah-trumpet in signal of alarm.

The council was broken up in an instant,
and Taönui, with all the chiefs, hurried out of
the forest and flew towards the pah. At the
outer stockade, beyond the last range of stiles
and fences with which the king's pah was
fortified, they met the queen and all Taönui's
household, together with many boys and a
score of yelping dogs. The cause of this—
and which the queen and a dozen voices in