he knowledge was
instinctive, that this must be the Conjure man of Siargao, but I was
dumbfounded to find him, not, as I had supposed, a native, but a white
man, as surely as I am one. Before I could pull myself together enough
to speak to him, he spoke to me, in Spanish, calling me by name.

"You see I know your name," he said, and then added, as if he saw
the question in my eyes, "Yes, it was I who brought the monkey to
your house. I knew so long as he was there no man or woman on this
island would molest you.

"You wonder why I did it? Because in all the time you have been here,
and in all your going about the island, you have never cruelly killed
the animals, as most white men do who come here. The creatures of the
forest are all I have had to love, for many years, and I have liked
you because you have spared them. How I happened to come here first,
and why I have stayed here all these years, is nothing to you. Quite
likely you would not be so comfortable here alone with me if you
knew. Anyway, you are not to know. You are alone, you see. Your servant
took good care to get out of the way when he knew that I was coming."

"How did you know my name," I made out to ask, "and so much about me?"

"The natives have told me much of you, when they have been to me
for medicines, which they are too thickheaded to see for themselves,
although they grow beneath their feet. Then I have seen you many times
myself, when you have been in the forest, and had no idea that I,
or any one, for that matter, was watching you."

"Why do I see you now, then?" I asked.

"Because the desire to speak once more to a white man grew too strong
to be resisted. Because you happened to come, to-day, near my home,
to which," he added, with a very courteous inclination of his head,
"I hope that you will be so good as to accompany me."

I wish that I could describe that strange home so that others could
see it as I did.

Imagine a big, broad house, thatched, and built of bamboo, like all
of those in Siargao, that the earthquakes need not shake them down,
but built, in this case, upon the ground. A man to whom even the snakes
of the forest were submissive, as they were to this man, had no need
to perch in trees, as the rest of us must do, in order to sleep in
safety. Above the house the plumy tops of a group of great palm trees
waved in the air. Birds, more beautiful than any I had ever seen
on the island, flirted their brilliant feathers in th