riage and disappearance. It was quite easy for Dane, whose ties were casual and whose correspondence was irregular. He departed for Auckland in the middle of December, gave the paper for which he wrote his real address in confidence, but told men he chanced to meet that he was heading for the South Island and a summer about the Otago Sounds, gave a Wellington address for his mail, which was to be redirected from there back to the Otamatea, and then he doubled by devious ways back on his tracks to his home, and began a series of night journeys to prepare the camp he had visioned in his mind.
Valerie’s intriguing had involved two reliable friends, Viva and Ned Landon, who, as luck would have it, were wandering in the Far North above the Hokianga harbour out of the reach of telegrams and regular mails. She gave out that she was to go with them on a riding and walking tour, and so it was that when Bob saw her off one morning in the direction of Tangiteroria he had no suspicion that she would get no further than the old mission station. He only wondered if Dane too were up in the North somewhere. Valerie had arranged for her mail to go to the Bay of Islands and to be redirected from there to the Otamatea. And she had taken the extra precaution of telling her family that she was too tired to write letters and that they could expect news when they got it.
II
Dane had at least had his own way about the choice of a spot. Valerie had begged merely that it be somewhere by the sea. And he had chosen a place he had discovered the summer before while cruising about the two beautiful rivers that run with the Wairoa into the Kaipara harbour on the northern side, chosen it not only for
