"
"Yes," said Roscoe. "Nature seems to have made it for Boldrick. He uses
it as a storehouse."
"Who watches it while he is away?" she said. "There is no door to the
place, of course."
Roscoe smiled enigmatically. "Men do not steal up here: that is the
unpardonable crime; any other may occur and go unpunished; not it."
The thought seemed to strike Mrs. Falchion. "I might have known!" she
said. "It is the same in the South Seas among the natives--Samoans,
Tongans, Fijians, and others. You can--as you know, Mr. Roscoe,"--her
voice had a subterranean meaning,--"travel from end to end of those
places, and, until the white man corrupts them, never meet with a case of
stealing; you will find them moral too in other ways until the white man
corrupts them. But sometimes the white man pays for it in the end."
Her last words were said with a kind of dreaminess, as though they had no
purpose; but though she sat now idly looking into the valley beneath, I
could see that her eyes had a peculiar glance, which was presently turned
on Roscoe, then withdrawn again. On him the effect was so far disturbing
that he became a little pale, but I noticed that he met her glance
unflinchingly and then looked at me, as if to see in how far I had been
affected by her speech.
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