"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, señor; he very funny; he has no muchachos; not one muchacho has he.'
"'Well, he probably has canned provisions sent him.'
"'No, señor; the cargadores they say that never never have they carried anything for him. He does not eat.'