e chance the ball slightly grazed my clothes
without wounding me. Alila, knowing I had no fire-arms, hearing the
report, thought I was killed. He ran up to the top of the steps, and
found me enveloped in a cloud of smoke, with my dagger in my hand,
trying to find my enemy, who seeing me still standing erect, after he
had shot at me, thought, no doubt, I had about me some anten-anten--a
certain diabolic incantation that, according to the Indian belief,
makes a man invulnerable to all sorts of fire-arms. The bandit was
frightened, jumped out of a window, and ran away as fast as he could
across the forest.

Alila could not believe what had happened to me; he felt all over
my body, in order to convince himself that the ball had not passed
through me. When he was quite sure that I had not received a wound,
he said to me:

"Master, if you had not had the anten-anten about you you would have
been killed."

My Indians always believed I was possessed of this secret, as well
as of many others. For instance, when they often saw me go for
twenty-four, even for thirty-six hours, without eating or drinking,
they became persuaded that I could live in that manner for an
indefinite period; and one day, a good Tagalese padre, in whose
house I chanced to be, almost went upon his knees while begging me
to communicate to him the power I possessed, as he said, to live
without food.

The Tagals have retained all their old superstitions. However, thanks
to the Spaniards, they are all Christians; but they understand that
religion nearly in the way that children do. They believe that to
attend on Sundays and festival days at the Divine offices, and to go
to confession and to communion once a year, is sufficient for the
remission of all their sins. A little anecdote that occurred to me
will show how far they understand evangelical charity.

One day two young Indians stole some poultry from one of their
neighbours, and they came to sell them to my major-domo for about
sixpence. I had them called before me, to administer a lecture, and
to punish them. With the utmost simplicity they made me this answer:

"It is true, master, we have done wrong, but we could not do otherwise;
we are to go to communion to-morrow, and we had not money enough to
get a cup of chocolate."

It is a custom with them to take a cup of chocolate after communion,
and it was considered by them a greater sin to miss taking that than
to commit the trifling theft of whic