ited as I was, I noticed
that his face was set in an angry scowl.

"'You can't pay for him, now,' he said. 'No one can pay for him now.'

"'I'll teach them,' he added, a moment later, 'See that!' holding up
his left arm, about the wrist of which I saw a handkerchief was bound,
fresh stained with blood.

"'Go on!' he cried, to the man with the rod.

"At first I could not find out what had happened. Then a soldier
told me.

"The man had been brought in like a snared animal, held by the jungle
ropes, each thorn of which was agony. When he had cried out that he
was unjustly tortured, the Governor himself had dragged the clinging
hooks from out his flesh, and had called him a name which to the
Visayan means deathly insult if it be not resented.

"At which Pedro's brother, snatching a knife which was hidden inside
his clothing, struck at the Governor and wounded him in the arm,
before he could be caught by the soldiers, disarmed, and bound down
on the bench.

"And all the time I had been learning this, the blows of the flog-man
had been falling, laid on with an artistic cruelty across the other
welts.

"I could not bear it. At the risk of destroying my chances to be
allowed to finish my work in the island, perhaps even at the risk of
putting my own life in danger, I tried once more.

"'Unless you stop,' I cried, 'I will report you to your government.'

"The 'Gobernadorcillo' looked at me a moment, and almost smiled--a
smile which showed his teeth at the sides of his mouth.

"'Please yourself.' he said. 'But unless you like what I am doing I
would suggest that you step out.'

"The man died that night, in the prison beneath the tribunal.

"I kept my word, and wrote a full account of the whole affair to the
Governor-general at Manila. It was weeks before I received a curt
note in reply, saying that the general government made it a rule not
to interfere with the local jurisdiction of its subordinates.

"Pedro never spoke to me of his brother's death but once. There was
in his nature much of the same grim courage which had enabled his
brother to bear the awful pain of that day upon the whipping bench
without a cry.

"'Senor,' Pedro said one day, quite suddenly, 'I would not have
you think me a coward, that I do not avenge my brother's death. I
would have killed the Governor at once, or now, or any day, openly,
glad to have him know how and why, and glad to die for the deed,
only that now there is no one but me