CHAPTER IV.
THE NEW HOME.
The sun had risen when Edwin and the coach man started on their way to the ford. With Whero running by the horse's head for a guide, the dangers of the bush were avoided, and they rode back faster than they came. The gloom had vanished from the forest. The distant hills were painted with violet, pink, and gold. Sunbeams danced on scarlet creepers and bright-hued berries, and sparkled in a thousand frosted spiders' webs nestling in the forks of the trees. Whero led them to the road, and there they parted. "If food runs low," he said, "I shall go to school. With all our winter stores carried away it must; I know it."
"Don't try starving before schooling," said Ottley, cheerily. "Watch for me as I come back with the coach, and I'll take you down to Cambridge and on to the nearest government school.—Not the Cambridge you and I were talking of, Edwin, but a little township in the bush which borrows the grand old name.—You will love it for a while, Whero; you tried it once."
"And I'll try it again," he answered, with a smile. "There is a lot more that I want to know about—why the water boils through the earth here and not everywhere. We love our mud-hole and our boiling spring, and you are afraid of them."
"They are such awful places," said Edwin, as Whero turned back among the trees and left them, not altogether envious of a Maori's patrimony. "It is such a step from fairy-land to Sodom and Gomorrah," persisted Edwin, reverting to Nga-Hepé's legends.
"Don't talk," interrupted Ottley. "There is an awful place among these hills which goes by that name, filled with sulphurous smoke and hissing mud. The men who made that greenstone club would have finished last night's work by hurling Nga-Hepé into its chasms. Thank God, that day is done. We have overcome the cannibal among them; and as we draw their young lads down to our schools, it will never revive." They rode on, talking, to the gate of the ford-house.
"I shall be late getting off," exclaimed Ottley, as he saw the household was astir. He gave the bridle to Edwin and leaped down. The boy was in no hurry to follow. He lingered outside, just to try if he could sit his powerful steed and manage him single-handed. When he rode through the gate at last, Ottley was coming out of the stable as intent upon his own affairs as if nothing had occurred.
Breakfast was half-way through. The passengers were growing impatient. One or two strangers had been added to their number. The starting of the coach was the grand event of the day. Mrs. Hirpington was engrossed, and Edwin's entrance passed unquestioned. His appetite was sharpened by his morning ride across the bush, and he was working away with knife and fork when the coach began to fill.
"If ever you find your way to Bowen's Run, you will not be forgotten," said the genial colonist, as he shook hands with the young Lees and wished them all success in their new home.