Strangest, perhaps, of all these possibilities for fiction is the
anting-anting, at once a mysterious power to protect its possessor
and the outward symbol of the protection. No more curious fetich
can be found in the history of folk-lore. A button, a coin, a bit of
paper with unintelligible words scribbled upon it, a bone, a stone,
a garment, anything, almost--often a thing of no intrinsic value--its
owner has been known to walk up to the muzzle of a loaded musket or
rush upon the point of a bayonet with a confidence so sublime as to
silence ridicule and to command admiration if not respect.

The Editor.

CONTENTS

The Anting-Anting of Captain Von Tollig 1
The Cave in the Side of Coron 21
The Conjure Man of Siargao 41
Mrs. Hannah Smith, Nurse 65
The Fifteenth Wife 93
"Our Lady of Pilar" 113
A Question of Time 131
The Spirit of Mount Apo 153
With What Measure Ye Mete 179
Told at the Club 195
Pearls of Sulu 211

ANTING-ANTING STORIES

THE ANTING-ANTING OF CAPTAIN VON TOLLIG

There had been a battle between the American forces and the Tagalogs,
and the natives had been driven back. The stone church of Santa Maria,
around which the engagement had been hottest, and far beyond which
the native lines had now been driven, had been turned into a hospital
for the wounded Tagalogs left by their comrades on the field. Beneath
a broad thatched shed behind the church lay the bodies of the dead,
stiff and still under the coverings of cocoanut-fibre cloth thrown
hastily over them. The light of a full tropic moon threw the shadow
of the roof over them like a soft, brown velvet pall. They were to
be buried between day-break and sunrise, that the men who buried them
might escape the heat of the day.

The American picket lines had been posted a quarter of a mile beyond
the church, near which no other guards had been placed. Not long after
midnight a surgeon, one of the two men left on duty in the church,
happened to look out through a broken windo