IV.

In the talks that followed Cannell heard the story of the valley and its people. The old warrior head of the little clan was Kahu (“The Hawk”). Most of his immediate relatives had fallen in the war, and all his land went to. the pakeha, by the law of the Strong Arm. In his anger and grief he had gathered a remnant of his hapu and taken to the bush, as his tribe sometimes had done before him, in stress of invasion. So here in the glen called Whanga-mahue, which means “Lost Valley,” by the side of the little mountain lake, Roto-kohu, he had pitched his camp and he intended to die here. Roto-kohu is “ Misty Lake,” It was not the first time a broken tribe had taken refuge beside it In the intertribal wars fugitives from lost battles had camped here, living on the teeming birds and other bush foods.

Kahu, had he liked, could have joined his kinsmen in the unconquered country to the south of the confiscation line. But the proud old hero would have none of that. Here, with fewer than a score of his nearest of kin, he would live forgotten. “I have taken a new name,” he said. “My name now is Iwikore—The Man Without a Tribe.”