natives come as far up the mountain
as this, and it was easy for us to frighten them so that no one has
dared to come since then. You are the only living person who knows
our secret. Shall we know that it is to be safe with you?"

For answer I filled the wooden cup from the gourd again, drank half
the contents, and handed the cup to her to drink the rest.

"I thank you," she said. "My life has had enough of sin and suffering
in it so that I have hoped it may not have more of either.

"I would not have you think that I am complaining," she said hastily,
a moment later, as if she was afraid I would get that impression. "I
am not. I do not regret one day of my life. My hands are stained with
what people call crime, and my heart knows all the weight which grief
can lay upon a heart; but the joy of my life while my husband lived
paid for it all. To have been loved by him as I was loved, was well
worth crime and grief."

"Why do you not go away from here?" I asked. "Why not leave this
country entirely, and go to some new land where you would be free
from danger? I will help you to get away."

"We know nothing of other lands," she said. "We should be helpless
there. We are better here." "Besides," a moment later, "his grave,"
pointing out toward the trees, "is here."

It had grown dark as we talked; the thick, dead darkness of a
Philippine forest night. The deer on the ground outside the porch
had lain down and curled their heads around beside them and gone
to sleep. Enormous bats flew past the house. We could not see them,
but we felt the air which their huge wings set in motion. The woman
lighted a little torch of "viao" nuts. Elena came out of the house,
walked across the porch and disappeared in the darkness, going toward
the forest.

"Ought she to go?" I asked. "Will she not be lost, or hurt?"

"Did you not understand it all?" the girl's mother said. "She is
blind only in the day time. At night she sees as readily as you and
I do by day."

In a few minutes the girl came back with her hands filled with fresh
picked fruit. She gave me this, and her mother brought out from the
house such simple food as she could provide.

"You will sleep here, tonight," she said, and left me.

The next day I went to the top of the mountain, and after that, by
making two trips to my camp, brought up all the articles which had
been left there, including some blankets a gun and ammunition, some
food and some medicines. These I as