e with his chin
thrown forward in that mournful, stork-like way--I should have gone
back.

"With him, I must say, the _camisa_ did not mean all that I have
suggested, not the sort of degradation of which it is the symbol in
other men. The most extravagant imagination could not have linked him
with anything that smacked of romance, romance however sordid. His
vices, I had sized it, would come rather from an excess of calculation
than from a lack of it. No, that _camisa_ was just a sign of his
meanness, his prodigious meanness. And of that I was soon given an
extraordinary example.

"I had with me a young fellow named Ledesma, whom I was training to be
assistant _maestro_. He was very bright, thirsty to learn, and extremely
curious of us white men. I don't believe that the actions of one of
them, for fifty miles around, ever escaped him, and every day he came to
me with some talk, some rumor, some gossip about my fellow-exiles which
he would relate to me with those strange interrogative inflections that
he had brought from his native dialect into English--as if perpetually
he were seeking explanation, confirmation. One morning he said to me:
'The _maestro_ Miller, he does not eat.'

"'No?' I answered, absent-mindedly.

"'No, he never eats,' he reiterated authoritatively, although that
peculiar Visayan inflection of which I have spoken gave him the air of
asking a question.

"'Oh, I suppose he does,' I said, carelessly.

"'He does not eat,' he repeated. 'Every one in Binalbagan say so. Since
he there, he has not bought anything at the store.'

"'His _muchachos_ bring him chicken,' I suggested.

"No, senor; he very funny; he has no _muchachos_; not one _muchacho_ has
he.'

"'Well, he probably has canned provisions sent him.'

"'No, senor; the _cargadores_ they say that never never have they
carried anything for him. He does not eat.'

"'Very well,' I concluded, somewhat amused; 'he does not eat.'

"The boy was silent for a minute, then, 'Senor Maestro,' he asked with
suspicious ingenuousness 'can Americans live without eating?'

"So that I was not able to drop the subject as easily as I wished. And
coming to a forced consideration of it, I found that my anxiety to do so
was not very beautiful after all. A picture came to me--that of Miller
on his bamboo platform before his door, gazing mournfully after me, his
chin thrown forward. It did not leave me the day long, and at sundown I
saddled up and trotted off