“A kaitaka of kiwi feathers,” he replied, with a readiness that assured me he could recall it perfectly. “She also had huia feathers in her hair, sandals on her feet, and a small heitiki[19] hung round her neck.”

I pictured the little mite as a kind of “pakeha Maori” chieftainess travelling south in the arms of a band of cannibals, but as safe as, perhaps even safer than, a well-guarded child in a Christian family, for was she not under the word of protection of the ariki Te Makawawa? Under such conditions she might have journeyed through the Uriwera, entering it in childhood and emerging at womanhood, without so much as a hair of her head being harmed.

“What was she like to look at?” I asked again.

Tiki made an expressive gesture of admiration with his hands.

“He Pakeha! She was like a rising star. The young wild swan was not more beautiful. When it was my turn to carry the little maiden I had strange feelings, and when she looked at me with her dark eyes a waiariki[20] sprang up in my heart—ah! she had the eyes of a witch, pakeha, but her words were like the sweet hymns of our ancestress Paré. My heart flies out of my breast, like a bird into the south, to search for the little white maiden beyond the snowy peaks there in the distance.”

“But she is not a little maiden now,” I said. “If she is alive she is grown up—almost a woman. And quite possibly she may have left this land to cross the Ocean of Kiwa.”

“Ah! wherever she is she will be like the graceful nikau palm among the trees of the valley, and her laugh will be like running water. I remember her laugh, pakeha! and her lips! they were as red as the titoki berry in its sheath, but they will be blue with the tatoo now, if she is almost a woman!”

“I should hope not,” I said, laughing. “They will still be as red as the cherry, or as the titoki berry in its sheath, if you like that better.”

“But her black hair will fall upon her shoulders, and she will wear a kaitaka like our maidens,” he persisted.

I did not wish to damp his ardour in the search for ‘the little maiden,’ so I said, “Perhaps—we shall see!”