ement when I found along with the package another
small one containing a letter from Poljensio.

The letter, if I had chosen to put it among my specimens, would
have ranked, I am sure, among the greatest curiosities of the whole
collection. Poljensio was not a scholar. His accomplishments lay
in the line of diving and swimming; in gathering pearls, and such
things as that. He never would have wasted his time in struggling
with pen and paper, now, if the nature of the correspondence had
not been such that he could not safely entrust it to any one else;
and the full comprehension of the remarkable document, written in the
mingled native and Spanish languages, with which he had favored me,
was not vouchsafed to me at the first reading, or the second.

Translated, and made as nearly coherent as possible, it ran about
like this:

"I stole the pearls. I only took half, so not too much" (scrimmage,
fuss, row, trouble,--the native word he used meant no one of these
exactly, and yet included them all) "would be made. I was tired of
working so hard, and the sharks, and not getting anything for it but
shells. I made up my mind I would do it soon after I went to work for
you. I went diving after that only that I be not suspected. I knew
all of us native people would be searched, but I thought he would
pass you by. So that night, after I had got the pearls, I swam out to
your house, climbed up through the floor, and hid the bag in a place
where I would know. Then, one day, when I packed a fine big shell,
I hid the bag in it, and marked the box. When we got to Manila I
stole the box. I sorrow to make you this bad time, but have no other
way. I take good care of box, though, after I take pearls out, to
bring it here with me, and now I send it back. I sell all the pearls
here but one, to China merchant, for money enough to make me always a
rich man. I don't think I go back to Palawan. One pearl I save back,
and send you with this letter, to remember by it Poljensio."

That was what was in the package with the letter. The pearl he had
saved; this one which I wear.

As I said in the first place, I am ready give it up when I can find
a man who has a better claim to it than I have. My right of ownership
in the gem is not, I confess, very substantial; but whose is it?

It was not the "Gobernadorcillo's," for he was only an agent; and
besides that he left Palawan not long after I did, as I have found
out by inquiry, and I cannot learn