ting his cunning ways and love of aromatic pork from our huis and tangis. However, to get back to the tale of those great days, I must relate the circumstances that led to it. I remember it well, as it was the week of my fifteenth birthday. Hemi Heiwari was my uncle. My mother Maria, his youngest sister, had married the local postmaster. As we were now living in Auckland, to please my tupunas my mother always sent me to spend my school holidays with her people. My sisters and brothers were loved by my mother's family, yet they never forgave her for marrying Father, who was a Pakeha. It used to take a whole day and most of the night to get to Rangiheke; in those days we didn't have the good highways of today. They were mostly unmetalled and plain mud. Well, a couple of years after the Second World War, or maybe a little later, there came to my uncle's district a minister of God who didn't wear a stiff white collar but dressed like any other man, except of course that he always wore a black tie and a spotlessly white shirt. He was a slightly built fair-haired person, who used to speak like the announcers from the BBC when they told us the war news. Ruihi used to say that he was very cultured. His eyes were deep and like the colour of the sky on a fine day. Travelling with him was Huia, one of our many cousins, who spoke to us all in Maori, telling my mother's people how good and kind this man was. ‘Ai! he had better be different’, said my old grandfather slyly as he smoked his ancient pipe. There was laughter from his old kaumatua friends, who had all gathered at Uncle Hemi's home. ‘Why isn't he like the others?’ queried old Whetumarama. ‘I certainly hope he isn't like the school teacher we had before.’ She scratched her long grey unplaited hair, adding as an afterthought, ‘You know, the one the police took away, for using …’ ‘Heoi ano te korero pena’, shouted her eldest daughter, who had gone to Queen Victoria in Auckland, and was classed as very educated by the people of the district. ‘Yes, yes, all these Pakehas are very different’, said Whetumarama rather quietly, sorry that her daughter had interrupted her choice piece of gossip. ‘That's what one gets for going without things to educate one's children. As soon as they get a bit of the Pakeha's matauranga they become very cheeky. Why, if I had said that to my mother, I would have been whipped till my body was black and blue.’ She muttered to herself. Then loudly, ‘Ai, all these Pakehas are surely different’, while her hands scratched all the more. ‘Aue e tama ma, you must listen to me’, cried cousin Huia in desperation. Huia, I secretly thought, was already fancying herself as a prophetess and saviour of our tribe. The cause of it all, Pastor Elliot, calmly sat reading his Bible. He looked to me like the holy picture of God that a Catholic priest had given Rangi, who had hung it in his fly-spotted kitchen. ‘Yes, do you know why this minister is different?’ The speaker paused. ‘I'll tell you why. His church keeps the seventh day as the Sabbath Day.’ ‘Ho, ho, but you foolish woman do you think we are all heathens. Of course we all keep ourselves holy on Sunday the Sabbath,’ spoke up Wikitoria, Whetumarama's educated daughter. ‘Yes, but if you look in the Bible, you will find that the Good Book says that we must keep the seventh day, which is the Lord's day.’ ‘Well now, what's different about that?’ cried Whetumarama, jumping up. ‘Ah, here is a calendar, will you count the days please James’, said Huia, looking straight at me. ‘Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.’ ‘No! No! Sunday is the first day of the week, look can't you see, so you must start from it.’ ‘Well, strange it may be but it's true,’ spoke Ruihi quietly for the first time. Now that she had showed them something, and was sure of her ground now, Huia became bolder. ‘And not only that, but they don't believe in eating pork, shellfish, or fish without scales, and they don't drink tea or partake of any liquor or alcohol whatsoever.’ ‘Aue! He aha te tangata nei’, sharply cried Hinewai, her fingers caressing her moko. ‘Whoever heard of such rubbish! Why, I've given birth to sixteen children and reared them all on such food. Yes, yes, and have they not given me a bunch of happy mokopunas? Many is the time your parents and I have sat beside the hangi savouring the white meat and the crisp crackle skin of some slaughtered poaka.’ ‘Perhaps this Minister has a special kind of meat that he gives her’, maliciously cried a young girl not much older than I. ‘Ha ha! Ho, ho!’ laughed the others. ‘Perhaps so.’ ‘Turi turi e hoa ma!’ shouted my uncle for silence. ‘I have decided that I will study these things with Pastor Elliot, for if his way of teaching can change the wayward life of our