"Ah! I thought that would startle you and fix your attention. Yes, there's a murder in my tale, coming presently. Listen!
"Brail, his name was; the only name I ever knew him by. He was a short, thickset man, a beggar to work, no matter what he was at. He professed to be English, but there was evidently some foreign blood in him, for his skin was darker than ours. His black bristling beard came up nearly to his eyes, and gave him a formidably ferocious look. He was reserved and silent, though civil enough to me in a general way. I gathered little by little, and at various times, that there was a bond of old standing between Karl and this man. Though he was a paid labourer, just as I was myself, yet it seemed that they had known one another for years. It could hardly be friendship as that is ordinarily understood; for Brail was a disagreeable companion at the best of times, and he and Karl were for ever snapping and snarling at each other. I concluded that the latent savagery which was in each, though differently manifested, formed a sort of tie between them.
"This Brail had a sullen hang-dog expression, and, at times, a fierce gleam in his scowling eyes that I did not like. Neither did Tama-te-Whiti, the old Maori chief, who was my very good friend in those days, as he has ever remained since. Tama used to visit Hapuakohe sometimes, and I well recollect his aversion for Brail. After speaking with him, Tama would often turn to me with an expression of profound contempt, and hiss out, 'kakino tangata!' I never really knew anything of the former relations of Karl and this man. I formed a theory from various little things that reached me, which may be true or may not. I imagine that Brail had been a convict, possibly a runaway and bushranger in Australia; that Karl, induced by some old-time regard for him, had aided him to escape to New Zealand, and had found him an asylum with himself. Something like this seems probable.
"Brail possessed a dog, which I must specially mention. It was one of those big yellow, shaggy-haired curs that are of the original Maori breed. This beast was trained into a very fair sheep-dog, and did its work along with the colleys belonging to the farm. It was the one thing upon earth that Brail seemed really to love, but even in this he showed his half-barbarous nature; for he would sometimes beat and kick the poor cur in the most brutal way, and again would caress and fondle it like a child. Whatever he did to it the dog never left him. It could scarcely be called obedient, but night or day, waking or sleeping, it never left its master. The animal was intelligent enough, and had that curious likeness to Brail that one may notice a dog often gets for its master. But he prided himself that the dog had some tincture of human nature in it. He had bought it, when a year old, from a Maori woman, at the price of two plugs of tobacco; and it seems that this woman had suckled the whelp herself, in its early infancy, having lost a new-born child of her own. You know that this peculiar custom of giving suck to young puppies is not an uncommon thing among Maori women. Brail's dog, as you will see by-and-by, had certainly acquired some super-canine qualities, but whether from its human foster-mother or from the teachings of its master, I cannot tell.