Having purchased my "estate," I set up housekeeping. My house was a good commodious _raupo_ building; and as I had a princely income of a few hundred a year "in trade," I kept house in a very magnificent and hospitable style. I kept always eight stout paid Maori retainers, the pay being one fig of tobacco per week, and their potatoes, which was about as much more. Their duties were not heavy; being chiefly to amuse themselves fishing, wrestling, shooting pigeons, or pig-hunting, with an occasional pull in the boat when I went on a water excursion. Besides these paid retainers, there was always about a dozen hangers-on, who considered themselves a part of the establishment, and who, no doubt, managed to live at my expense; but as that expense was merely a few hundredweight of potatoes a week, and an odd pig now and then, it was not perceptible in the good old times. Indeed these hangers-on, as I call them, were necessary; for now and then, in those brave old times, little experiments would be made by certain Maori gentlemen of freebooting propensities, and who were in great want of "British manufactures," to see what could be got by bullying "the pakeha," and to whom a good display of physical force was the only argument worth notice. These gentry generally came from a long distance, made a sudden appearance, and, thanks to my faithful retainers, who, as a matter of course, were all bound to fight for me, though I should have found it hard to get much _work_ out of them, made as sudden a retreat, though on one or two occasions, when my standing army were accidentally absent, I had to do battle single-handed. I think I have promised somewhere that I would perform a single combat for the amusement of the ladies, and so I may as well do it now as at any other time. I shall, therefore, recount a little affair I had with one of these gentry, as it is indeed quite necessary I should, if I am to give any true idea of "the good old times." I must, however, protest against the misdeeds of a few ruffians--human wolves--being charged against the whole of their countrymen. At the time I am speaking of, the only restraint on such people was the fear of retaliation, and the consequence was, that often a dare-devil savage would run a long career of murder, robbery, and outrage before meeting with a check, simply from the terror he inspired, and the "luck" which often accompanies outrageous daring. At a time, however, and in a country like New Zealand, where every man was a fighting man or nothing, these desperadoes, sooner or later, came to grief, being at last invariably shot, or run through the body, by some sturdy freeholder, whose rights they had invaded. I had two friends staying with me, young men who had come to see me from the neighbouring colonies, and to take a summer tour in New Zealand; and it so happened that no less than three times during my absence from home, and when I had taken almost all my people along with me, my castle had been