The following day the Chinaman came over and asked where Leong Sing was. We said we did not know. Then said he, "he is dead for his hat is lying beside the charcoal kiln and it looks as if he had fallen in and been consumed." We went over to see and things did have that appearance, as the roof had fallen in and the pit was a mass of flame. The Chinaman must have taken the rejection of his suit very much to heart to have destroyed himself by such a horrid route.
That same day Shenandoah rode off to Makawao on Lani's horse and reported the death of Leong Sing and swore out a complaint charging Frank Willoughby with the murder.
A constable came over and took Frank away and when the coroner's inquest was held the jury returned a verdict: "died by the hands of some one unknown to us." At the examination before the magistrate Shenandoah and Joe Edwards both swore to having repeatedly heard Frank Willoughby threaten to kill the Chinaman and the magistrate held Frank without bail to be tried by the next Circuit Court at Lahaina. He was taken off over the mountains by a policeman. Joe Edwards skipped out for fear he might be also arrested, for his threats were as pronounced as Frank's.
When Frank and the guard got into Lahaina he sent for an old friend of his father's who was practicing law there and he persuaded the Circuit Judge to accept bail as there had been no body found and no cause for the calling of a coroner's jury and that the magistrate merely acted on the hearsay of a pair who were jealous of the prisoner.
Frank went home with Farwell and the latter advised him to return home to New York saying that he had frequently written to him advising such a course and his parents were exceedingly anxious about him. Frank refused to skip his bail and determined to stand trial like a man.
Within two weeks the Chinaman, Leong Sing, came in with his uncle who had gone to search into the matter and Frank was ordered discharged. The Chinaman had felt so heartbroken that he had wandered away up the ravine and climbed up on a ridge and kept on walking until he met a heavy shower and as it is pretty cold up there he turned to go back. Unfortunately he did not take the same ridge down, a thing likely enough to occur, as he had walked so far as to have passed the heads of several ravines, and keeping too much to the right had brought up the following night at Halehaku, some six miles from his point of departure. The natives took care of him and in a few days he was enabled to get a horse and return to camp to the agreeable surprise of the rest of us.
Frank took Mr. Farwell's advice and went straight home to New York. Years afterwards we were riding from Waihee to Lahaina by way of Kahakuloa and arriving at the latter village we felt as if some fish and poi would taste good. It was a dilapidated looking place and the shanties were hardly improvements on pigsties, but we decided that it was better to eat there than to risk going farther and finding none.
We stopped at the best looking shanty and were told they would prepare us some opihi, a shell fish abundant on the rocks there, the sale of which is about the only source of livelihood of the few inhabitants.
Imagine our surprise when we were called to eat to find that our hostess was none other than Lani and that Shenandoah was our host and that their eleven little black offsprings were the kids we saw perched on the fence.
Lani was an old fagged out woman without any traces of the belle she had been, and Shenandoah was blacker and uglier than ever. "Apples of Sodom," said my friend, and we paid for our opihi and poi and departed."