r rites.

I hate to ask you to come but your influence among them is
so great that it seems justifiable to ask it.

If you do come, bring your mosquito net--don't fail to do
this. The disease is mosquito-borne, and fatal if untreated.
The temperature runs are terrific--highest I ever saw.

MERCHANT.

Terry rode out of Davao at seven o'clock, bound for Dalag. Within a
mile he overtook Lindsey, who had spent the night in town. They rode
together several miles to where the trail, soaked with the night's
rain, forked toward Lindsey's plantation: the sun shone white hot, the
earth steamed through its mat of decayed vegetation.

They drew rein at the fork, dismounted. Lindsey broke the silence in
which they had ridden following Terry's brief explanation of his
mission.

"Terry," he said, "you're too young for all this worry."

Terry's face relaxed into a slow grin: "Lindsey, how old are you?"

"But your work is different--and you are different, Terry."

Terry's bantering grin gave way to a smile of singular sweetness, the
queer smile which deepened the depression at the corner of his mouth.

"Lindsey, I know what you mean, I think.... All my friends--"

He paused, gently discouraging his pony from its persistent nibbling
at his arm. Lindsey waited, hoping he would continue, but Terry looked
away, idly studying the thickly planted hemp fields that extended from
the fork to Lindsey's house, a mile distant. The still wet leaves
flaunted on great stalks fifteen feet above the wonderfully fertile
soil.

"Lindsey, I wonder if you really appreciate what you are doing in
taming a soil that was wild in jungle ages before Pharaoh's time, and
making it useful to man."

He pointed to the huge plant nearest them; "The fibers in those
stalks--I can see them, woven into a rope that may warp a steamer to
dock in Tripoli or Hoboken or Archangel: or fashioned by happy
Japanese fingers into braided hats to cover lovely heads in Picadilly
or Valparaiso or Montreal: or woven into a cord which will fly a kite
for some tousle-headed boy in Michigan or for a slant-eyed urchin on
the banks of the Yang-Tse Kiang: or, somewhere, it may be looped into
ugliest knot by a grim figure standing on a scaffold--though I hope
not!"

Lindsey had listened in curious wonderment to this conception of his
work. He thought it over, laughed.

"Well, maybe that's what you see,