In these desperate circumstances a bright thought struck him; he would, by a bold and ingenious device, give the _tapu_ the slip. He ran to the back of the house, made with some difficulty a hole in the padded _raupo_ wall, and squeezed his head through it. The elastic wall of _raupo_ closed again around his neck; the _tapu_ was fairly beaten! No one could say he was _in_ the house. He was certainly more out than in, and there, seemingly hanging from or stuck against the wall, remained for hours, with open mouth and wondering eyes, this brazen head, till at last the shades of night obstructing its vision, a rustling noise in the wall of flags and reeds announced the departure of my bodyless admirer. Some of the forms of the _tapu_ were not to be played with, and were of a most virulent kind. Of this kind was the _tapu_ of those who handled the dead, or conveyed the body to its last resting-place. This _tapu_ was, in fact, the uncleanness of the old Jewish law, and lasted about the same time, and was removed in almost the same way. It was a most serious affair. The person who came under this form of the _tapu_ was cut off from all contact, and almost all communication with the human race. He could not enter any house, or come in contact with any person or thing, without utterly bedeviling them. He could not even touch food with his hands, which had become so frightfully _tapu_ or unclean as to be quite useless. Food would be placed for him on the ground, and he would then sit or kneel down, and, with his hands carefully held behind his back, would gnaw it in the best way he could. In some cases he would be fed by another person, who, with outstretched arm, would manage to do it without touching the _tapu'd_ individual; but this feeder was subjected to many and severe restrictions, not much less onerous than those to which the other was subject. In almost every populous native village there was a person who, probably for the sake of immunity from labour, or from being good for nothing else, took up the undertaking business as a regular profession, and, in consequence, was never for a moment, for years together, clear of the horrid inconveniences of the _tapu_, as well as its dangers. One of these people might be easily recognized, after a little experience, even by a pakeha. Old, withered, haggard, clothed in the most miserable rags, daubed all over from head to foot with red paint (the native funereal colour), made of stinking shark oil and red ochre mixed, keeping always at a distance, silent and solitary, often half insane, he might be seen sitting motionless all day at a distance, forty or fifty yards from the common path or thoroughfare of the village. There, under the "lee" of a bush, or tuft of flax, gazing silently, and with "lack-lustre eye," on the busy doings of the Maori world, of which he was hardly to be called a member. Twice a day some food would be thrown on the ground before him, to gnaw as best he