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Silver Tongue loved Rosalie, and Rosalie loved Silver Tongue, and ever since they had first met at the Taufusi Club dance their friends had seen the inevitable finish of their acquaintance. They were invited everywhere together, and the affair had progressed from the first or furtive stage to the secondary or solemn Sunday drive about the Eleele Sa.

Behind Apia, on the edge of the Taufusi swamp, was a small collection of huts, jumbled together in squalor and dirt, with pigs dozing in the ooze and slatternly women beating out siapo in the shade.

Then the war came, with the Tuamasanga in an uproar from end to end, every young man being called to arms, and troops pouring in from Tutuila and the westward to join in the onslaught against Mataafa. The Taufusi people, as foreigners, were not liable to the levy except for two striplings by way of rent, both of whom were subscribed with unwillingness, though neither was O'olo.

Our Lord in the desert was not more tempted by the kingdoms of the world than he at that moment by Evanitalina, who was offering herself in all her young beauty for his delight. But resolutely he put the devil behind him, saying: "I will not have thee stoop to me, so that persons shall mock at thy choice, and the parable of the pearl and the nameless-animal shall be repeated in the Taufusi swamp.

O'olo spent his two dollars in riot and debauchery, and when released from prison fell into greater evil, so that his communion-ticket was withdrawn, and those who missed taro, or chickens, or run-wild daughters used to say darkeningly: "Lo, it is that Taufusi Tongan," and sought to waylay him with an ax.