w towards the shed, and
in the shadow, against the open moonlight-flooded field beyond,
saw something moving. Looking close he could make out the slim,
brown figure of a native passing swiftly from one covered form to
another, and turning back the cocoanut-fibre cloth to look at each
dead man's face.

Calling the man who was working with him the surgeon pointed out the
man beneath the shed to him. "That fellow has no business there," he
said, "He has slipped through the lines in some way. He may be a spy,
but even if he is not, he is here for no good. We must capture him."

"All right," was the answer. "You go around the church one way,
and I will come the other."

When the surgeon, outside the hospital, reached a place where he could
see the shed again, the Tagalog had ceased his search. He had found
the body he was looking for, and sunk down on his knees beside it was
searching for something in the clothing which covered the dead man's
breast. A moment later he had seen the men stealing towards him from
the church, had cleared the open space beneath the shed at a leap,
and was off in the moonlight, running towards the outposts. The
surgeons swore; and one fired a shot after him from his revolver.

"Might as well shoot at the shadow of that palm tree," the one who had
shot said. "Anyway it will wake up the pickets, and they may catch him.

"What do you suppose he was after?" he added.

"Don't know," said his companion. "You wait, and I'll get a lantern
and we will see."

The lantern's light showed the clothing parted over a dead man's body,
and the fragment of a leather thong which had gone about his neck,
with broken ends. Whatever had been fastened to the thong was gone,
carried away by the Tagalog when he had fled.

The next morning a prisoner was brought to headquarters. "The picket
who caught him, sir," the officer who brought the prisoner reported,
"said he heard a shot near the church where the wounded natives are;
and then this man came running from that way."

The surgeons who had been on night duty at the hospital were sent for,
and their story heard.

"Search the man," said the officer in command.

The native submitted to the ordeal in sullen silence, and made no
protest, when, from some place within his clothing, there was taken a
small, dirty leather bag from which two broken ends of leather thong
still hung. Only his eyes followed the officer's hands wolfishly,
as they untied the string whic