good spree, though, the night he left, an’ there! I declare I could almost feel sorry for them men, it’s so hard to ’a counted on a thing as didn’t never mean to be there, like that there spree. For no sooner was the constable’s boat safe round the Head, than I’m blessed if Morris’s barn wasn’t found to be on fire, too—just too late to save it—an’ the kegs inside of it! Well, that just about settled them men. They begun for to think, like the natives, that Taipo was in it; an’ they didn’t trouble to build ’em no more Houses at Home; ’stead o’ that, they begun to drop away out o’ the Bay theirselves. By that time, for one thing, you see, the most o’ the big timber was down, an’ the settlers was beginnin’ for to settle straight. We didn’t begrudge ’em their journey, you may be sure. . . . An’ who did burn down them places really? H’m . . . Well . . . whoever it was knew better than to let a secret like that out in front of their teeth; but between you an’ me an’ that there doorpost, I’ve always had a taste of a suspicion that there peace-lovin’ Taipo was very much the same shape as my dear good mother!
“After them men was gone, the Bay was another place. We’d begun to get on a bit, things was more comfortable, the land was getting clear, an’ everyone was friends. It was like one big family. We’d all the same aims an’ purposes, you see; an’ we all had only each other to look to for help, an’ sympathy, an’ amusement, an’ everythin’. Martin, he had a medicine chest, so he was doctor; an’ Burns, he used to read us the Bible of a Sunday, an’ do the buryin’—there was a baby or two died. Seems to me, lookin’ back, that there wasn’t half the spite
