they’d a-left Home, if their old houses was really like that; an’ mother, she used to wish more than enough they’d a-stayed there; for the noise they’d make at night in that quiet place, where mostly there was nothin’ but the lappin’ o’ the sea, and the morepork callin’, you couldn’t ha’ believed,—an’ o’ course there was fights as well. The Maoris used to say when they heard them noises, that it was Taipo (that’s the devil, you know), an’ I reckon they was about right.
“Well, but at last, one night after they’d all cleared out, that there ‘Old House at Home,’ it got burnt down; an’ nobody ever rightly knew how, only them as done it. The men was no-ways daunted, though; soon as ever they could, they gets down more liquor an’ puts up another shanty, an’ that they christened in raw rum, ‘The New House at Home.’ But the very first night of their carousin’ in it, there’s a note gets thrown in at the door a-tellin’ em, how, if it didn’t behave itself no better than the Old, the New House at Home was a-goin’ to be burnt down too—an’, my word, if it wasn’t! no more than a couple o’ nights later. My! the men was mad. Why, they even got the constable down from Town, for to see into it—an’ a new novelty it must ha’ been to most of ’em, I’ll warrant, to be playin’ hounds with the constable, ’stead o’ hare. But, bless you! he never found out nothin’ no more than they, an’ pretty soon he went back.
“Morris, he’d a-lent them his barn for to house the liquor as had come down from Town with the constable, an’ to drink it in too; only you may be sure the drinkin’ was quite polite so long as the constable stayed. They was a-reckonin’ on a real
