Donahue was certainly a very bad man. She did not think she had ever met any one much worse. Perhaps the badness, balanced against the whiteness, might swing down the scale. At any rate....
"Hear me, Sona!" she said, in a voice of command. "I have bought you to-night, and you belong to me. There will be more to pay by-and-by if you do as I tell you. But I would warn you to be careful, for you will not find it pleasant lying on the shore down there, with your inside hanging out like a gutted fish, and the crabs coming running to eat you before you are dead, as you will if you make any mistakes. Listen, then, very carefully."
"I listen, I listen!" cried Sona.
CHAPTER XIV
HOW THE WITCH-DOCTOR GOT HIS MONEY BACK
When the trader's wife came in next morning with Vaiti's cup of tea, she was touched to see how deeply her pretty lodger was sleeping.
"Poor young dear," said the good woman, "lying there so sweet and innocent, sleeping like a baby! It's only the good heart that rests like that. I don't believe a word of the silly lies they tell about her. Here, dear, wake up," she called gently. "Your good papa is ever so much better this morning, and looking for you to come in. And it is Sunday morning, and a nice cool day."
"Thank you, Mrs. Smith," said Vaiti politely, broad awake at once. "May I asking you one little hot water? I like get up and go to turch."
Church, attended for reasons religious or otherwise, was not one of the amusements patronised by the nameless white man of the bush. Indeed, his amusements, such as they were, were so far confined to the native villages of the interior that very few of the other whites had seen him. He was not good for trade, having no money and possessing no credit—that was all they knew, or for the most part wanted to know, about him.
There was all the more astonishment, therefore, in the shanty owned by the Mua trader, away up in the bush, when the unknown man walked into the store that Sunday night, and demanded some tobacco, at the same time showing a sovereign he held in his hand. He was dressed in a pitiful mass of rags, none too clean, but he looked well pleased with himself, and was more than half drunk. Fortune had apparently found him out at last.