'When a shout went up, on the discovery of the fire,' Sir George laughed in recollection, 'my guest fancied that his prophecy about the Maoris had come true. He looked out of his bedroom window, saw Maoris about, and assured himself that an attack on us had begun. He barricaded his door with a chest of drawers, the chairs, whatever he could lay hands on. Being a man of military training he prepared for a desperate siege, and this so effectively, that I believe he had, on learning the real state of matters, to escape the fire by crawling through the window. Afterwards, the Governor had a critic the fewer, of his olive branch to the Maoris. X 'TWIXT NIGHT AND MORN Night and morning in the far south were vividly reflected to Sir George Grey in tales of Rauparaha and Rangihaeta, Maori chieftains, and of Siapo, Loyalty Islander. Before his arrival in New Zealand, the Maoris had been divorced from their cannibal practices. Yet, the horrid traffic was not remote, if he were to accept a lasting rumour of Rauparaha and Rangihaeta. The pair were making their own war stir for him, and must be tackled. It was earlier that, sitting on a hillside in friendly converse, they sent a slave girl for a pail of water. As she tripped off to do their bidding, Rauparaha, the story was, shot her through the back for a meal. No doubt cannibalism among the Maoris had thriven on the absence of animal meat, for New Zealand was peculiar in that respect. Its one large creature of the lower world was the moa, of which Sir George said 'It was akin to the ostrich, but no European, I believe, ever saw it alive.' Governor Grey and Bishop Selwyn were out together on a walking expedition, and it was Easter Sunday. 'Christ has risen!' Selwyn reverently welcomed the day, and his companion joined, 'Indeed He has.' They were communing in that spirit when a bundle of letters, sent from Auckland to intercept them, was brought into the tent. One to Selwyn bore the news of the death of Siapo, who had become a Christian under his teaching, and who was being educated with other natives, at his seminary in Auckland. The Bishop, overcome with grief, burst into tears; then broke some moments of silence with the words, 'Why, you have not shed a single tear!' 'No,' said Sir George, 'I have been so wrapped in thought that I could not weep. I have been thinking of the prophecy that men of every race were to be assembled in the kingdom of heaven. I have tried to imagine the wonder and joy prevailing there, at the coming of Siapo, the first Christian of his race. He would be glad evidence that another people of the world, had been added to the teaching of Christ.'