"Pray God there is not!" she said, bending over him, and bathing his forehead. "My father says he never knew old Tiro-hanga's medical knowledge to fail. He says you only want time to be as well as ever. How many wounds has he not recovered from?"
"I should be more than willing to believe him," said the sick man. "But why am I so wretchedly weak? I feel as if I would like to die and be done with it, if I am to lie here for weeks and months. But I am a beast to complain, after all your goodness, child," he went on to say, as the girl's eyes filled with tears. "Please forgive me; I am weak in mind as well as body."
"Is my love nothing to you?" she cried, with sudden passion. "My life, my life—for it hangs on yours? If you die, I die also. I swear I will follow you to the reinga, as my mother would have said. I will not remain behind. Do not doubt of that."
As she spoke she moved nearer to his couch, and, throwing herself on her knees at his side, took his hand in both of hers, and, bowing her face upon his breast, burst into a tempest of sobs, which shook every portion of her frame.
Massinger, touched and partly alarmed by her grief, tried by all the means in his power to soothe her, smoothing her abundant hair the while, as it flowed over him in a cascade of rippling wavelets.
"My darling, my darling!" he said, "I owe my life to you, and it shall be spent in proving my love and devotion. You must not despair, you who are so brave. I am afraid you are not an Ariki, after all, but only a woman—the best, the bravest, the dearest, in the world. This is only a passing faintness. We shall live to spend many a glad year together."
"It is I who am weak," she said, lifting her tear-stained face, and essaying to smile as she drew back the long silken tresses from her brow. "Something seemed at that moment to warn me that I should never live to claim your love. I have often felt it. But, if your life is spared for long years to come, I shall not mourn. No, no! But you will never forget your poor Erena, who loved you—loved, yes, you will never know how much!"
As she spoke her last words, she rose to her feet, pressed one lingering, passionate kiss upon his forehead, and was gone.
With the dawn the tohunga arrived. This important and mysterious personage, of which one was always to be found in the larger sections of a tribe, combined the offices of priest and sorcerer with the more practical profession of the physician. Unquestionably, his knowledge of simples and general surgery was far from despicable. By incantations and spells, it was thought in the tribe that he had foreknowledge of the death or otherwise of his patients. As a soothsayer he had now used the powerful spell of the "withered twigs." Chanting a karakia, with a sudden jerk he broke off from the tree two of equal size and length. The piece he held in his left hand snapped off short. The longer twig remained in his right.