left to care for my old father,
It is not that I am a coward, but that I wait.'

"I expect that I should have felt myself in duty bound to expostulate
with him, upon harbouring such a state of mind as that, regardless
of what my own private opinion in the matter may have been, had it
not been that before I could decide just what I wanted to say, a man
had come to my house to tell me that the mail steamer from Manila,
which came to the island only once in two months was come in sight.

"The coming of that particular steamer was of special interest to me,
as it was to bring me a stock of supplies; and Pedro and I went down
to the dock at once.

"I remember that invoice in particular, because it brought me a
supply of chloroform, a drug, which I had been out of, and for which
I was anxiously waiting. Two months before, a native from far back
in the forest had brought me a fine live ape. I could not keep him
alive,--that is not after I left the island,--and I wanted his skin
and skeleton for the museum, but I hated to mar the beauty of the
specimen by a wound. That night with Pedro's help I put him quietly
out of the way, with the help of the chloroform.

"Afterwards the thought came back to me that as we took away the
cone and cotton, when I was sure the animal was dead, Pedro said,
'Senor, how like a man he looks.'

"Several weeks later the residents of Dumaguete were thrown into
intense if subdued excitement by the news that the Gobernadorcillo
was dead. Apparently well as usual the night before, he had been
found dead in hie bed in the morning, in the room in the 'gobierno'
in which he slept. If he had been killed on the street, or found
stabbed, or shot, in his room, the commotion would not have been so
great. Such things as that had happened in Negros more than once,
to other officials. But this man was simply dead.

"The 'teniente primero,' who, as next in authority, took charge of
affairs upon the death of his superior, sent a man during the day
to ask me if I would come to the tribunal. He was a very decent man,
or would have been, I think, under a different executive. Naturally
he was anxious, under the circumstances, as to his own standing with
the authorities at Cebu, and he asked for my evidence, if necessary,
as that of one of the few foreigners in the place.

"In company with him I visited the late governor's room in the
'gobierno.' It was a large room, like all of those in the palace,
as the executi