night with its throbbing stars, holds the soul in a dread that cannot be crushed down, because cause it cannot be explained. That dread had been with Roddy since Murray spoke to Ormond on the Lion hilltop. Six times he had held his courage between his teeth and taken the track to Pipi’s whare. Six times it had failed him, and sent him back. Last night he had crept to the window and watched Pipi a half-hour by the fire blaze. This night Pipi had gone to the township, and Roddy had come up in the added knowledge gained by that watching.
Slowly he pushed the door open. It creaked, and a smell of rancid fish came out. Roddy struck a match, and went in and dropped the latch behind him. The whare was low and very dirty. It sloped from a ridge pole, and roof and sides were of split twisted flax and raupo. Pipi’s sleeping mat lay by the fireplace which he had built of kerosene tins, and a carved Maori head with a greenstone tiki slung round the neck stood on a pole. Round the forehead where the tattoo lines were set in spirals was bound Murray’s red necktie.
Roddy stood still and looked at it. To tear the thing off and run away home with it seemed simple utterly—when the township lights and noise were round him. But the lonely Fighting Hill with its traditions of blood and hate; the rub of the flax leaves without the door; the
