"We scarcely spoke at all. There was no need for words, for each of us understood the other so well. When I stripped the body bare, preparatory to laying it in its final resting-place, Karl simply nodded. He knew, without my telling him, why I did so. He comprehended that, in after time, if those bones were ever laid bare, there would be no vestiges of clothes or tell-tale buttons to give a clue to the remains. It might be supposed, in such a case, they were those of some slain warrior of Ngatewhatua or Ngapuhi. "And then we gathered together every fragment of the dead man's property, and laid the things in his hut, and heaped up dead wood and dry brush, and set fire to the pile, and watched the bonfire blaze to ashes. And we scattered the ashes in a raupo swamp, and quietly went home. "Anxious we were for some time after, but there was little reason for us to be so. The Maoris knew that Brail had intended leaving, and were not surprised when we said he had gone. I myself had conveyed a message from him to the storekeeper at Helensville, stating that he was looking for another job. What easier than to tell them there that he had swagged it through the bush to the east coast settlements? What simpler than to answer inquiries for him in that direction, by saying he had gone south? But no one ever cared to make close inquiry after him. The few who knew him did not like him. Poor wretch! ruffian as he was, I felt some pity for him; he, lying buried in the bush, friendless, unloved except by a dog as unlovable as he had been himself. "As regards that dog, Karl had told me he had killed it, though he seemed somewhat confused about the matter when I thought of it and questioned him. He said that, after he had struck down Brail, his mind was so overwhelmed with the sudden horror of the affair, that he only faintly recollected what followed immediately. He fancied the dog attacked him; at any rate, he was sure he had chopped at it or stabbed it with his knife, and he distinctly remembered throwing its dead carcase to one side. So the matter was dismissed, it being merely a passing matter of surprise to me that I had not noticed the dog's body at the time. Yet I felt no call to go and look for it subsequently. "Months flew by, and the thought of the unlucky affair was becoming less and less burdensome to us. Shearing time had come and gone, and the Maoris and one or two men from the settlements, who had come up to help us with it, had departed. Karl went down to Auckland in the cutter he had chartered to transfer the season's wool there. It would be the first time he had seen his betrothed since Brail's death. Ever since then he had been moody and depressed in spirits, melancholy and unlike himself. But the soft feminine influence had a vast soothing power over his mind, and he returned to Hapuakohe cheerful and happy. Care seemed no longer to weigh him down.