delight.

In spite of his severity, Skim had a soft heart, and when all dressed
in white and gold, he would go up to visit Senor Roa and his daughters;
while the girls would play duets on the piano, Skim, with a little
chocolate baby under either arm, would sing in an insinuating voice
one of his good old cowboy songs, regardless of the fact that he was
not in tune with his accompaniment. He always appeared on Sundays
cleanly shaven and immaculate in white, and when the girls went
by his house to church, their dusky arms glowing among the gauze,
appealed to him and made him sad.

No one could ever contradict Skim, though he couldn't even write
his own name legibly. His monthly reports were actually works of
art. "Seenyor Inspekter of constabulery," he would write, "i hav the
honner to indite the following report. i hav bin having trubel with the
moros. They was too boats of them and they had a canon in the bow. i
faired three shots and too of them fell down but they al paddeled aeway
so fast i coodnt catch them." And again: "On wensday the first instant
i went on a hike of seven miles. i captured three ladrones four bolos,
one old gun and too durks." Then after practicing his signature for
half an hour on margins of books or any kind of paper he could find,
he used to sign his document with a tremendous flourish.

I rather miss the rock thrown at my blinds at 4 o'clock A. M. A little
catlike sergeant, a _mestizo_, is in charge of the constabulary,
and the men are glad. No longer does the huge six-footer, with his
army Colt's, stalk through the village streets. The other day I got a
note from Skim: "i dont think i ain't never going to come back there
eny moar," he wrote above the most successful signature that I had
ever seen. A few months later Skim was badly crippled in a fight with
robbers. He was sent to Manila to the civil hospital. On his discharge
he was promoted, and he now wears three bars on his shoulder-straps. He
has been shot three times since then, and he has written, "If i dont
get kilt no more, i dont think that i wont come back."

To-day the constabulary is well organized. They have distinguished
themselves time and again in battle-line. They have put down the
lingering sparks of the rebellion. They look smart in their brand-new
uniforms and russet boots. But it was only a year or two ago that
Skim had crowded their uncivilized feet into the clumsy army shoe, and
knocked them around like puppets