matches for counters. _Merci, merci, Monsieur l'Administrateur!_ You
are very good. Please, will you give me now the note to Ah You?"

As he limped away with it, the governor poured me an inch of absinthe.

"_Sapristi!_" he exclaimed. "O Lalala! O, la, la, la!" He burst into
laughter. "He will play ze bloff?"

I spent that evening with Kriech, the German trader of Taka-Uka.
Over our Hellaby beef and Munich beer we talked of copra and the
beautiful girls of Buda-Pesth, of the contemplated effort of the
French government to monopolize the island trade by subsidizing a
corporation, and of the incident of the afternoon.

"The _Herr Doktor_ is new," said Kriech, with a wag of his head.
"That O Lalala! I have heard that that poker iss very dansherous.
That Prince Hanoi of Papeite lose his tam headt to a Chinaman.
Something comes of this foolishnesses!"

At midnight I had again gained the House of the Golden Bed and had
lain down to sleep when on the breeze from up the valley there came
a strangely familiar sound to my upper ear. I sat up, listening. In
the dark silence, with no wind to rustle the breadfruit and
cocoanut-trees, and only the brook faintly murmuring below, I heard
a low babble of voices. No word was distinguishable, not even the
language, yet curiously the sound had a rhythm that I knew.

I have heard from a distance preaching in many languages. Though
only the cadences, the pauses, and rhythm reached me, I had no
difficulty in knowing their origin and meaning. Thought casts the