CHAPTER XXII.—(Continued.)

Waikato Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 2018, 13 June 1885, Page 5 (Supplement)

CHAPTER XXll.—(Continued.)

From that day I have been comparatively comfortable. I have servants and attendants, and have steadily worked up a party adverse to Aranoah. For years, however, it was no inconsiderable that I was unable to do anything ; I was glad enough to escape from the enemy. But of late Aranoah has so withdrawn himself from the people, while imposing increasingly heavier tasks upon them, and restricting their pleasures of that slowly bjt surely I have been gaining adherents. He lives so entirely on the Happy Isle that he has no opportunity of becoming aware of what is going on. I wanted but you to join ; that completes the circle, and settles his doom. Ho will suffer as I was to have suffered. " What a wonderful story," cried Paranos. •' The great god Karatara exists ; this is proof of it, notwithstanding Aranoah's religion. Then I am your son. Where is my mother buried ? " " I will show you to-morrow,', said his father. "As to the delay that has taken place, it has simply been caused by my desire to wait until everything is ready. We have to be prepared for everything. In a few days at the most we can proceed to work ; the fruit will be ripe." " This World whence you come," asked Paranoa, " what is it like ? Are there many in it as beautiful as Orinora ? " " Do not trouble yourself with that World," aaid Henry; "you will never see it. Take one more draught. Two nighta from this we meet for the last time as we are now. After that the island will be ours." Very little passed between the two after this, aave some instructions Henry gave hia Eon, some of them very minute. Light o( heart, and exhilarated with the pine apple Spirit, Paranoa mounted the latter and disappeared. Long into that night Henry Allan sat in his cave, sipping his liquor and communing with his own evil soul. Ilad an artist been there his face would have made a famous picture. It was full of evil satisfaction occasionally, and made hideous by the worst passions. "At last," said Henry, as he walked up and down the cays, " the hour has come. How often have I despaired of it. How truo it is that everything comes to those who wait. And have I not waited and suffered 1 To think, too, that in the man's destruction I can i ivoke the sons— probably the heirs— of these t to men who, with him, I hated most in the world, who destroyed me— William Gifford and Dugald Forbes. How strangely, how wonderfully all this has come about. If I beliaved the rubbish I teach, and these fools credit, I would think the God of Evil, Karat ira, had, though tardily, assisted his worshipper. A few days and my enemies will ' bi swept into the whirlpool, and at one blow I will make up for the sufferings of a lifet me. Then I will be Sultan and Ituler of this island, free to do as I will. I am old, but I feel as if this would restore to me my youth. I cannot fail now. Perhaps I may even find a means to leave the island, to enjoy once mow the pleasures I loved so well, that I ever remember with regret. What have I not missed by this imprisonment ? But it will be made up to me. What fools these islanders are ; how I laugh at them. For the fantasy of license, of freedom, they are ready to destroy the man who has made men of them, who has given them comforts they never dreamed of ; who raised them from a degradation like that of beasts. How like this isifind is to the great world I loved so well ; how these people resemble men with white akim mul finer intellects ! Freedom is the dream of m/in ; the dream that others use to enslave him. They think I will be indulgent, that the golden *gc will return when I am reetored. Fools ! theii golden age will become oie of iron, their garlands of flowers fetters of jjfceel!"