‘My father rose and said:
‘“In the night a form passed by me in the gloom, going toward the treasury and presently returned. I think, now, it was the stranger.”
‘Oh, I was like to swoon! I had supposed that that was my secret; not the grip of the great Ice God himself could have dragged it out of my heart. The chief of the court said sternly to my poor Kalula:
‘“Speak!”
‘Kalula hesitated, then answered:
‘“It was I. I could not sleep for thinking of the beautiful hooks. I went there and kissed them and fondled them, to appease my spirit and drown it in a harmless joy, then I put them back. I may have dropped one, but I stole none.”
‘Oh, a fatal admission to make in such a place! There was an awful hush. I knew he had pronounced his own doom, and that all was over. On every face you could see the words hieroglyphed: “It is a confession!—and paltry, lame, and thin.”
‘I sat drawing in my breath in faint gasps—and waiting. Presently, I heard the solemn words I knew were coming; and each word, as it came, was a knife in my heart:
‘“It is the command of the court that the accused be subjected to the trial by water.”
‘Oh, curses be upon the head of him who brought “trial by water” to our land! It came, generations ago, from some far country that lies none knows where. Before that our fathers used augury and other unsure methods of trial, and doubtless some poor guilty creatures escaped with their lives sometimes; but it is not so with trial by water, which is an invention by wiser men than we poor ignorant savages are. By it the innocent are proved innocent, without doubt or question, for they drown; and the guilty are proven guilty with the same certainty, for they do not drown. My heart was breaking in my bosom, for I said, “He is innocent, and he will go down under the waves and I shall never see him more.”