ht beneath the palms. Europa went to meet him, and they came
to the house together.

As I am a living man that enormous animal, uncanny looking creature,
walked up to me and shook hands. The Conjure man had not spoken to him,
that was certain. If any one had told him to do this it must have been
Europa. The demands of politeness satisfied, the strange couple went
to the farther side of the verandah and squatted down in the shade.

"Can you talk with them?" I suddenly made bold to ask.

"Who told you I could?" the Conjure man inquired sharply.

"Filipe," I said.

But his question was the only answer my question ever received.

Later, when I said it was time for me to start for home, he set me out
a meal of fruit and boiled rice. I quite expected to hear him order
Europa to wait on the table, but he did not, and when I came away,
and he came with me down the mountain as far as the "carabaos" track,
the two big apes stayed on the verandah as if to guard the house.

When we parted at the foot of the mountain, although I am sure he
had enjoyed my visit, my strange host did not ask me to come again,
and when he gently declined my invitation for him to come and see me,
I did not repeat it. I had a feeling that it would do no good to urge
him, and that if a time ever came when he wanted to see me again he
would make the wish known to me of his own accord.

It was not more than a month after my visit to the mountain home
that the Spanish tax collector came for his semi-annual harvest. The
boat which brought him would call for him a month later, and in
the intervening time he would have got together all the property
which could be squeezed or beaten out of the miserable natives. This
particular man had been there before, and I heartily disliked him,
as the worst of his kind I had yet seen. Inasmuch as he represented
the government to which I also had to pay taxes and was, except for
the Padre, about the only white man I saw unless it was when some of
our own agents came to Siargao, I felt disgusted when I saw that this
man had returned. He brought with him, on this trip, as a servant,
a good-for-nothing native who had gone away with him six months
before to save his neck from the just wrath of his own people for a
crime which he had committed. Secure in the protection afforded by
his employer's position, and the squad of Tagalog soldiers sent to
help in collecting the taxes, this man had the effrontery to come
back and s