Silver Tongue was standing in the front of his shop having an altercation with the Chief Justice about a ham (for he did a little in groceries as well as baked) as we hove in sight and began to file down the lane to Papalangi Mativa's quarters behind the Southern Cross Bakery. I suppose Silver Tongue thought our man was hurt, or something, for he came running after us with a bottle of square-face and a packet of first aid to the wounded, elbowing his way excitedly through the crowd to where we had deposited To'oto'o at the feet of Papalangi Mativa. He was the most astonished baker in the South Seas as he saw who lay there in the jumble of beef and biscuit, and for a moment was too stupefied to let out a word.
I don't mean to go into the speech-making part of the performance, for what between Seumanutafa and Papalangi Mativa, and the talking-man Sasa had lent me for the occasion, and a divinity student who happened along, and somebody who said he was Fale Upolu and spoke for the entire Group, and an aged _faipule_ from the Union Islands who seemed to have some kind of a grievance about his father's head, and the Chief Justice who had to butt in with the capitation tax--we were kept there a matter of three hours or more, until at last the principals officially made it up, To'oto'o was forgiven, and everything ended happily.
"Now, Silver Tongue," I said as the meeting dispersed, "we'll consider that head affair canceled, and if you'll come over to my house to-night I dare say you'll find Rosalie sitting on the front veranda!"
"And do you for a moment think," he said with a strange, writhen smile, "dat all dis talk and domfoolery will a gruel murder undo, and the young man cut off in his brime restore? Weel those lips, so gold in death, stir, think you, in the box where we laid him? Will my dead wife's family be less bereaved because of two kegs of peef and three tins of biscuit, or Rosalie's family less disgraced because her uncle was triced through the streets like a big? No, Gaptain Branscombe, I'm only a poor paker, but I'd count myself a traidor to my family were I to dake a murderess for my pride!"
"I meant niece of a murderer," he returned.
I was too speechless with indignation to utter another word. In the course of sixty years on this planet I've seen many kinds of men, and I've learned to detect in some a certain look about the eyes--a curious light and a far-away dreaminess of expression--that seems always the sign or mark of an unflinching obstinacy. I remember that self-same look on Brand's face as we lay all flattened on the water tanks of the _Moroa_, and he blew the main deck off the ship together with three hundred human beings; and I guess the Christian martyrs had it, too, when lions tore them to pieces and bulls kited them on their horns in the Colosseum. Anyway, it was as plain as daylight that I had lost my time and money in bothering about Oppenstedt, and that I might as well give him up as the most incorrigible, stiff-necked, self-opinionated, blunder-headed ass and lunatic this side of Muggin.