"That is intelligible," said Hypatia, with a sigh; "but I must say I cannot help sympathizing with the Maori Rangatira, in the spirit of the Douglas at Tantallon moralizing over Marmion—
' " 'Tis pity of him, too!" he cried; "Bold can he speak and fairly ride. I warrant him a warrior tried." '
"Do not forget the poor wahines," said Mrs. Summers. "Like all women in these affairs of state, they seem to have the worst of it. Think of them at Orakau, marching out of their blood-stained pah in the midst of a hail of bullets, hungry, thirsty, perhaps wounded, and yet, without doubt, they joined in the defiant shout of 'Akore, akore, akore!'"
"It was glorious," said Hypatia. "I could have wished to have been there. It has immortalized them, as well as the warriors among whom they fought. It will re-echo through the ages long after the pahs are grass-grown, or perhaps made into tea-gardens for the coming race."
"That reminds me that it must be lunch-time," interposed Mrs. Summers, gently; and, with a half-reproachful gaze, the indignant advocate subsided, and retired to her chamber.
Matters went on calmly and peacefully in this lodge in the wilderness, disturbed but from time to time with war rumours and tidings of siege or skirmish. Occasionally a burst of weeping and dolorous long-drawn lamentation in the Maori camp told that a friend or kinsman had been added to the death-roll. Then a former convert or pupil would stagger in, wounded almost to the death, to be tended, and cured, if such were possible, for no slightly wounded combatant ever taxed the warm welcome of the Mikonaree and his household. They were either sent away rejoicing in their new-found strength and ability to level a musket once more at the marauding pakeha, or, in other case, were laid to rest in the mission graveyard, comforted by the thought that the Burial Service would be read over them by the good pakeha whom they had learned to trust and revere.
Sometimes, when hope had departed, and they began to count their remaining hours, they returned to the lessons which had been with such care instilled into them in the old peaceful days of the earlier missions. They placed their trust in the mediation of Him whom they connected with their conversion, and recalled the weekly services and baptismal vows, happy in the unshaken faith of youth, and passing away to spirit-land without doubt or fear.
At other times, the warrior, roused to frenzy by pain or despair, would solemnly renounce the stranger's God and all His ways, and quit this life, so incomprehensible to him, chanting the ancient war-song of his ancestors, and electing to follow them to the Maori heaven by the stormy path of the reinga.
A chance newspaper—for, of course, all mail-carrying had been stopped, as well as their irregular intelligence department—brought them the news of the greater and the lesser world from time to time. In one of these latter distributors of hopes and fears they came across these alarming head-lines:—