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‘”Now, then, let the elders come!”–and as I said the words there was a gathering sound of crunching snow outside, and then a vision of stooping forms filing in at the door–the elders.

‘My father formally accused the prisoner, and detailed the happenings of the night. He said that the watchman was outside the door, and that in the house were none but the family and the stranger. “Would the family steal their own property?” He paused. The elders sat silent many minutes; at last, one after another said to his neighbour, “This looks bad for the stranger”–sorrowful words for me to hear. Then my father sat down. O miserable, miserable me! At that very moment I could have proved my darling innocent, but I did not know it!

‘The chief of the court asked:

‘”Is there any here to defend the prisoner?”

‘I rose and said:

‘”Why should he steal that hook, or any or all of them? In another day he would have been heir to the whole!”

I stood waiting. There was a long silence, the steam from the many breaths rising about me like a fog. At last one elder after another nodded his head slowly several times, and muttered, “There is force in what the child has said.” Oh, the heart-lift that was in those words!– so transient, but, oh, so precious! I sat down.

‘”If any would say further, let him speak now, or after hold his peace,” said the chief of the court.

‘My father rose and said:

‘”In the night a form passed by me in the gloom, going toward the treasury and presently returned. I think, now, it was the stranger.”

‘Oh, I was like to swoon! I had supposed that that was my secret; not the grip of the great Ice God himself could have dragged it out of my heart. The chief of the court said sternly to my poor Kalula:

‘”Speak!”

‘Kalula hesitated, then answered:

‘”It was I. I could not sleep for thinking of the beautiful hooks. I went there and kissed them and fondled them, to appease my spirit and drown it in a harmless joy, then I put them back. I may have dropped one, but I stole none.”

‘Oh, a fatal admission to make in such a place! There was an awful hush. I knew he had pronounced his own doom, and that all was over. On every face you could see the words hieroglyphed: “It is a confession!–and paltry, lame, and thin.”

‘I sat drawing in my breath in faint gasps–and waiting. Presently, I heard the solemn words I knew were coming; and each word, as it came, was a knife in my heart:

‘”It is the command of the court that the accused be subjected to the trial by water.”

‘Oh, curses be upon the head of him who brought “trial by water” to our land! It came, generations ago, from some far country that lies none knows where. Before that our fathers used augury and other unsure methods of trial, and doubtless some poor guilty creatures escaped with their lives sometimes; but it is not so with trial by water, which is an invention by wiser men than we poor ignorant savages are. By it the innocent are proved innocent, without doubt or question, for they drown; and the guilty are proven guilty with the same certainty, for they do not drown. My heart was breaking in my bosom, for I said, “He is innocent, and he will go down under the waves and I shall never see him more.”

‘I never left his side after that. I mourned in his arms all the precious hours, and he poured out the deep stream of his love upon me, and oh, I was so miserable and so happy! At last, they tore him from me, and I followed sobbing after them, and saw them fling him into the sea– then I covered my face with my hands. Agony? Oh, I know the deepest deeps of that word!