This, then, I pondered, was the end of it all, of life
and strife and striving and love, the weary spirits of these long-
gone ones to be invoked by fat old women and mangy sorcerers, the
bones of them to be esteemed of collectors and betted on horse-
races and ace-fulls or to be sold for cash and invested in sugar
stocks.
"For me it was illumination. I learned there in the burial-cave
the great lesson. And to Ahuna I said: 'The spear headed with the
long bone of Keola I shall take for my own. Never shall I sell it.
I shall keep it always.'
"'And for what purpose?' he demanded. And I replied: 'That the
contemplation of it may keep my hand sober and my feet on earth
with the knowledge that few men are fortunate enough to have as
much of a remnant of themselves as will compose a spearhead when
they are three centuries dead.'
"And Ahuna bowed his head, and praised my wisdom of judgment. But
at that moment the long-rotted olona-cord broke and the pitiful
woman's bones of Laulani shed from my clasp and clattered on the
rocky floor.
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