When this dreadful news was broken to the girl she had a violent fit of weeping, then hysterics, then a long fainting spell, and sank into a decline so swift that the parents were in despair. Neighbors flocked in to offer condolences and comforts; a priest received the young woman's confession and performed the last rites; the doctor plied his patient with drugs, fomentations, and stimulants; father, mother, and friends groaned, prayed, and tore their hair. All the time the poor creature sank steadily, the color left her face, her breath grew labored, and as night fell the doctor's warning was fulfilled,--she was dead. In a single day the fame of this wonderful physician spread through all the city, and people flocked to his lodging with money and diseases. He was dazzled at the prospect of riches. After three or four years of this kind of thing, if the tax man did not hear too much of his success, he could return to Spain and live in comfortable retirement. Alas! for human hopes, he returned sooner than he had intended. A few days after the death of his first patient somebody asked how he forecast her fate so exactly. "It was easy enough,--she spat blood," he answered. "Are you sure it was blood?" "Certainly. It was red." "Ah, senor, every one spits red in Manila." "Bah!" "Oh, it is true! Everybody chews the buyo leaf, which is like the betel of India, that you have heard of, just as everybody smokes in Luzon. The juice of the buyo is red." Then the doctor realized that he had killed his patient by making her believe she was doomed to die, and with the earnings of his brief career in the Philippines he bought a passage back to Spain in the same ship that had carried him to the East. So, if you hear that a person is ill, but if your informant winks and says that he is spitting red, you may believe that the invalid will be out after a good sleep and a little bromide. The Widow Velarde's Husband