Page:James Hopper--Caybigan.djvu/275

Rh But below the waist was ruin. He had been ham-strung. His legs were folded flaccidly beneath the trunk, the calf against the thigh—powerless things which, as he dragged himself on his hands, trailed limply behind as if some ignoble, useless attachment of the great body above.

It was not often that he courted this humiliation. Usually he was in his nipa hut in the coconuts, silent and alone. But regularly, a little before noon, he dragged himself to his station in front of the store of Gong Ah Deam, merchant and usurer, and there, leaning against the wall, he watched and waited for the coming of the mañangetes. There was something tragic about the man, a singular dignity of woe, and as he crouched there, that quality made him appear as tall as those about him. He never spoke, and an awe—partly superstitious, I think—kept a vacant circle around him.

One day that man told me his story. He told it to me in hoarse whispers, impelled by some torturing desire to unburden himself, in front of the store of Gong Ah Deam, there, awaiting the coming of the tuba-carriers.

"I was one of them, señor," he said, pointing with his chin toward the far vista where the tuba-men would presently appear; "I was a mañangete; yes,