"Well, these two loved. From what Peters tells me, the episode of Romeo
and Juliet sinks into insignificance by the side of the story of their
love. With leisure and with opportunity to love, for several months
these young people enjoyed an earthly heaven which it is rarely indeed
the lot of a young couple to enjoy. But alas! and alas! True as in the
days when moonlight fell amid the palaces of Babylon and Nineveh is the
old poetic expression--its truth older than Shakespeare, older than
historic man--that 'The course of true love never did run smooth.'

"It seems that among the so-called criminal exiles to the Volcanic
Mountains was a young man of good family, who had known--and of course
loved--Lilama. And I will say in passing that the youths who comprised
this class would, the larger part of them, never have been exiles, if
Hili-li had required a standing army, or had even not forbidden by law
the more rough and dangerous games to be played--I allude to some very
rough sports and pastimes, in which bones were frequently broken--games
which these youths and preceding generations of youths had initiated and
developed. But there was in Hili-li, aside from boating, no allowable
means for the gratification of that desire to contend with danger which
is inherent in manly youths the world over. Hence these young men were
by their very nature compelled to violate laws thus unnatural, and, as
generally happens, in doing so they went to extremes. The young
Hili-lite to whom I have alluded had been for more than a year with the
exiles. His name was Ahpilus. Lilama did not reciprocate his love. She
had known him from infancy, and for her there was no romance in poor
Ahpilus. But the young Hili-lite was madly infatuated with her, and it
seems by later developments that his enforced absence from her had
driven him almost, if not wholly, insane.

"Thus stood matters about three months after the arrival in Hili-li of