Crossword-Solution: HOROEKA 7 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 14

But it was impossible to doubt that they were speaking truth when, in answer to Hugh's anxious questioning, they declared that no _pakeha_ (white man) had been near the _kainga_, and that they had seen nothing of Horoeka, their _tohunga_, since noon that day.

But a fierce speech of Horoeka's presently told the painfully interested eavesdropper that nothing less than death, attended by heathenish and gruesome ceremonies, would expiate the boy's outrage on the _tapu_-tree, in the _tohunga's_ opinion.

When he went on to assure them that the _pakehas_ would be unable to prove that the boy had not lost himself and perished in the bush, they withdrew all opposition to Horoeka's bloodthirsty demands, though these were rather dictated by his own crack-brained fancy than by Maori custom and tradition.

Horoeka, stepping out into the _marae_ to fetch his victim to the sacrifice, was just in time to see that victim disappearing round the corner of his prison-house.

Presently the brothers, lying low in a dense tangle of ferns and creepers, saw a number of the younger men, headed by Horoeka, streaming down the track leading to the lake.