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 promise to love me and be my bride.” Pata promised the handsome stream god, and he then led her to a dell where copious streams gushed out from a grotto of white rock clear as pearl. Pata filled her water-vessels, and returned to her village.

As the slave-maiden handed the largest calabash to her master she saw by the ominous scowl upon his countenance that he intended to slay her, and that the hand raised to take the drinking-vessel revealed a weapon concealed beneath his garments. Swiftly as a startled wood-pigeon she turned and fled along the narrow path she had travelled just before; after her rushed the bulky form of her savage master, who pursued her on and on till she had arrived at the royal home of the “Shadow of Rongo.” Farther the angry man did not dare to follow her, and indeed before long had to bow in allegiance before his hand-maiden raised by circumstances to the exercise of queenly power.