Business Methods.

Harata listened, with a doubting mind. Her experience of Compton tallied with that of most other Maoris on the coast. The land on which the pakeha lived had been theirs. His method was to lend them a little money and take a mortgage over land to which a clear title had been established in the Land Court, where Compton often acted as agent for the tribe. Bit by bit he had added to his acres, until the choicest parts of the tribal land were now his.

The original owners had only a vague idea of the process by which they had been separated from their old homes. There were recollections of grand sprees, some fine clothes, a smart buggy, a tangi or so.

Harata knew all about that. She had needed money urgently for the expenses of the customary hospitality to mourners when one of her young relatives died. Compton, like the Irish village “gombeen man” was always ready to oblige. The transaction was perfectly satisfactory to the financier. Harata received and spent her fifty pounds; Compton presently secured a full title to land worth ten times as much; no, nearer twenty times. Everything had been legal, perfectly legal; not the slightest ground for complaint or appeal to any authority. But Harata realised, helplessly, that she had been swindled. All her Maori wisdom availed nothing against the commercial cunning of the white man.

“Now,” Compton coaxed, “you'll let me have Panirau, won't you. Only for three days, I promise you. Just for the sake of the mother and the child. It will be a boy, I hope, and your tiki will help it to be a fine big strong man like me”—and Compton laughed and expanded his lungs and slapped himself on the chest.

Harata's scornful lips and narrowed eyes said as plainly as words: “Maminga! Tinihanga!” which is to say, in the pakeha vernacular, “Humbug.”

But the Maori resistance, as usual, was broken down by the persistence of the pakeha appeal. When Compton rode home that evening the precious pounamu Panirau was in his pocket— and he intended it to remain there, or in his safe, until he had mailed it securely to a great museum whose discriminating directors paid well for the Maori artifacts supplied by so successful an agent as Compton.

The collector had not really intended to use the tiki in the way he had described to Harata. No, he would get Panirau off to London by registered and well-insured packet without delay. But as he greeted his wife a thought struck him: “Why not? It can't do any harm.”