ything in the path."

The hand gave a tug at mine, and I followed. We were in absolute
darkness. Sometimes the frond of a giant fern brushed against my
cheek, or the sharp-pointed leaf of a palm stung my face, but that
was all. The girl led us steadily onward through the forest.

"Stop!" she said, once, "and look back."

I turned my face in the direction from which we had come. A ray of
light shone in the darkness, and quickly became a blaze. It was my
house on fire. With the light of the fire came the sound of savage
cries, the shouts of the men watching with poised spears about the
burning house. In the dim light which the fire cast where we stood,
I could make out the forms of my two companions. A black cloth bound
around the girl's head hid her white hair. In the dark, her eyes,
so blank in the day light, glowed like two stars. She held her mother
by the hand, and the older woman's other hand grasped mine. I looked
at the girl, and thought of Nydia, leading the fugitives from out
Pompeii to safety.

Before the light of the fire had died, we were on our way again. It
seemed to me as if we walked in the darkness of the forest for hours;
but after a little we were following a beaten track. At times the
girl told us to step over a tree fallen across the path, or warned
us that we were to cross a stream. At last we came out on the hard
sand of the ocean beach, and reached the water's edge. Freed from
the forest's shade the darkness was less dense. I could make out the
surface of the water, and out on it a little way some dark object. The
girl spoke to her mother in their native tongue.

"There is a 'banca,'" the woman said, pointing out over the water to
the boat. "No matter whose it is. Swim out to it, pull up the anchor,
and before day comes you can be safe."

I tried to thank her.

"I am glad we could do it," she said, simply. "I am glad if we could
do good."

Then they left me; and went back up the beach into the darkness.

WITH WHAT MEASURE YE METE

"The story of the tax collector of Siargao reminds me of an official
of that rank whom I once knew," said a fellow naturalist whom I
once met at a club in Manila, and with whom I had been exchanging
experiences. "It was when I was gathering specimens in Negros. They
were a bad lot, those collectors, a set of money-grabbers of the
worst kind, but, bad as they were, they had a hard time, too.

"If they did not make their pile, out of the poor native