s anything but a deer track.

Another short path led us to a cleared space in the forest in which a
long, low house of bamboo and thatch had been built. A herd of deer
was feeding near the house. Those directly in our path moved lazily
out of the way. The others did not stir. I knew then why the deer
that I had seen as I had come up the mountain were so tame.

A broad porch was built against one side of the house, and under
this were hung fibre hammocks. The woman pointed me to one of these
hammocks, and leaving me there went into the house. When she came
back she brought two gourds filled with some kind of home-made wine,
and two wooden cups. The girl, coming just behind her, brought a
basket of fruit which the woman took from her and placed upon a bamboo
stand beside my hammock. Then, filling one of the cups from a gourd,
she drank half its contents and set the cup down, fixing her eyes on
mine as she did so.

I knew enough of native customs by this time to understand what
this meant. If I took the cup which she had drunk from, and drank,
I was a guest of the house, and bound in honor to do it no harm. If
I poured wine from the other gourd into another cup and drank, I was
under obligations as a guest only while I was under the roof.

I took the cup from the table and drank the half portion of wine
which she had left in it.

"Thank you," the woman said. "I will trust you."

Then, sitting on a bamboo stool near my hammock, she began to
talk. Only, at times, as she told me her story, she would rise and
walk up and down the porch, as if she could tell some things easier
walking than when sitting still.

Much of what she told me I shall not write down here; but enough for
an understanding of the strange things which followed.

"My home was once in ----," she said, naming one of the most important
towns in the island. "My father was a Spanish officer, rich, proud
and powerful. My mother was a Visayan woman. When I was little more
than a girl, my parents married me to a Spanish officer much older
than myself. So far as I knew then what love was, I thought I loved
him. Afterward, I came to know.

"Among the prisoners brought into my husband's care there came one
day a Moro, whose life, for some reason, had been spared longer than
was the lot of most prisoners. I told myself, the first time I saw
this man, that he was the noblest looking man I had ever seen, and
since that time I have never seen his equal. Chance m