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 in a Noah's ark. Skim, if you ever get hold of these few pages written in your honor, here's my compliments and my best wishes for another bar upon your shoulder-straps, and--yes, here's hoping that you "won't get killed no more." II. Last Days at Oroquieta. I had been visiting the teachers at El Salvador, who occupied a Spanish convent, with a broad veranda looking out upon the blue sea and a grove of palms. It was a country of bare hills, which reminded one somewhat of Colorado. _Nipa_ jungles bristled at the mouths of rivers, and the valleys were verdant with dense mango copses. We made our first stop on the way from Cagayan on Sunday morning at a village situated in a prairie, where a drove of native ponies had been tethered near the _nipa_ church. The roads were alive with people who had been attending services or who were on the way to the next cock-fight. Falling in with a loquacious native, who supplied us with a store of mangoes, we rode on, and reached Tag-nipa or El Salvador late in the afternoon.