ome and clever
at work. Of course he thought so, for he was in love with her.

"Well, I suppose the Lieutenant was flush, or felt generous, or perhaps
something had happened to put him in an unusually serene frame of
mind. He handed over fifteen dollars, and told Pedro to go and buy
the girl and marry her; which he did, and has been the happiest man
alive ever since. He is really grateful, too, and there isn't another
officer in the service that is waited on as Lieutenant Day is. The
funniest part of it all is, though, that he just found out a day or
two ago, that in his gratitude Pedro had stolen one of his master's
photographs to give to the Visayan girl he had married, so that she
could see what their benefactor looked like, and she has been going out
with it every day to an altar, or shrine, or something of that sort in
the wall of an old fort here, where the native women go to worship,
to pray to the saint there to shower all kinds of blessings on the
American Senor who brought all this happiness to her and her husband.

"The boys have guyed Day so much about it, since they found it out,
that he swears he will discharge the man, and have him hauled up for
stealing the picture into the bargain. If he does, the woman will be
likely to think that there is something the matter with the saint,
I reckon, or that her prayers havn't found favour."

For once the wicker walls of a bamboo house had a merit all their
own. At least that was what a certain young woman thought, when she
could not help hearing this conversation in the room in which she
had shut herself for the afternoon.

That night at dinner Miss Grace Allenthorne, was so radiant that even
her father noticed it.

"What have you been doing, Grace?" he said. "What's the reason you
feel so well, tonight? I havn't seen you look so fine for a month."

"Oh, nothing, father," said the girl. "I don't know of any special
reason. I think that you just imagine it."

Which was, of course, a very wrong thing for her to say; for she knew
perfectly well what the reason was.

While they were still at table a messenger came post haste for General
Allenthorne, with word that he was wanted at once at headquarters. He
was absent nearly all night.

In the morning it was known that an outpost in the northern part of
the island had been surprised and almost captured. The enemy was still
in force about the place and threatening it. A loyal native had crept
through the lines t