time in months, the stone had flashed
forth its strange light; and as a result its owner would do nothing
which would place him in any danger which he could avoid.

"I thought of all the strange stories I had read and heard of meteors
falling from the sky, and of phosphoric rocks, and of little known
chemical elements which were mysteriously sensitive to certain
atmospheric conditions, and wondered if Perico's stone could be any
of these. All my requests to be allowed to see the wonderful stone,
however, proved fruitless, Perico was obdurate. There was a tradition
that it must not be looked at by daylight, he said, and that the eyes
of no one but its owner should gaze upon it.

"And so, for eight beautiful days of magnificent hunting weather,
that aggravating heathen stone kept us idle there in the midst of the
Mindoro forest. I could not go alone, and Perico simply would not go
so long as the stone glowed at night, as, he informed me each morning,
it had done. It was in vain that I fretted, and offered him twice,
and four times, and, finally--with a desire to see how much in earnest
the man really was--ten times his regular wages if he would go with me
for just one hunt. He simply would not stir out of the camp, until,
on the morning of the ninth day, he met me with a cheerful face,
and said, 'Senor, we will hunt today. The stone is black once more.'

"And hunt we did,--that day, and many more--for the stone remained
accommodatingly dark after that--and we had good luck, too.

"When I came back to Manila I brought Perico with me. He had begun
to have serious trouble with one of his eyes, which threatened to
render him unable to follow the work of hunting of which he was so
fond. I tried to make him believe that this was the danger of which
he claimed he had been warned by the stone, but he would not agree to
this, saying that his 'anting-anting' always foretold only a violent
death, or some serious bodily injury. In Manila I had him see that Jose
Rizal who afterwards became so prominent in the political troubles of
the islands, and who had such a tragic later history. Senor Rizal,
who had studied in Europe, was a skillful oculist, and an operation
which he performed on Perico's eye was entirely successful. I kept
the old man with me until he was fully recovered, and then sent him
back to his native island. Before he went, he thanked me over and
over again for what I had done, and kept telling me that some time
he w