It is Gentle Annie.
Between the sobs which rack her, she is speaking.
“While he lived for weeks in this dripping hole, I lodged comfortably and entertained murderers! Vile woman, defiled by hands stained with blood! despised, loathed, shunned by every man, woman, or child that knows me. Yet he did not despise me, though I shall despise myself for ever, and for ever, and for ever. And he is gone—the only one who could have raised me to my better self.”
Rising from the ground, she takes the candle, and gropes her way out of the cave into the pure light of the Sun.
In a common Maori whare, built of raupo leaves and rushes, sits a dusky maiden, filled with bitterness and grief. Outside the low doorway, stand Scarlett and his wife.
Forbidden to enter, they beg the surly occupant to come out to them. But the only answer is a sentence of Maori, growled from an angry mouth.
“But, Amiria, we have ridden all the way from Timber Town to see you,” pleads the silvery voice of Rose Scarlett.
“Then you can ride back to Timber Town. I didn’t ask you to come.”
“Amiria,” says Jack; his voice stern and hard, “if you insult my wife, you insult me. Have not you and she been friends since you were children?”
Amiria emerges from her hut. On her head is a man’s hat, and round her body is wrapped a gaudy but dirty blanket.