and children hysterical, they crowded around the pair in a confidence
that was pitiful.

Frightened beyond a white man's conception by the midnight visitation
of ladrones within a half-mile of their village, cowed, witless, they
were reassured merely by the uniforms the two riders wore--the
red-piped uniform of the small, scattered force of five thousand
Filipinos, who, ably officered, highly trained, intrepid, have never
tasted defeat: have wiped out every murderous band that raised
treacherous hand and then, outlawry scotched, have turned the power of
their discipline against the scourges of diseases, floods, cattle
plagues, typhoons. Unsung, unwept, they have carried on, their motto
Service and their goal Success.

Terry, patient, reassuring, lingered till he had overcome their
immediate fears, left them content with their faith in the protection
he promised them. Hurrying on, Terry and his Sergeant shortly came to
Ledesma's well kept plantation, and Terry turned his pony over to the
Sergeant and approached the big bamboo house.

Ledesma, gray-haired, distinguished looking, bearing his grief with
Tagalog stoicism, greeted him with the finished courtesy of the
Spanish tradition and led him up the precarious slatted steps into the
house. It was a house of desolation.

The mother lay moaning wretchedly upon the cane bottom of the carved
mahogany bed which, with four chairs, a round table and a talking
machine made up the furniture of the main room. Ledesma's son, a lad
of eight, sat big-eyed and solemn near an open window, not fully
understanding the blow that had fallen but vaguely frightened by his
mother's lamentations.

The Tagalog, dignified in his suffering, answered Terry's brief
interrogations intelligently but as he had been out on the gulf with
his fishermen during the raid he had little to offer. Terry turned to
the sobbing mother and in a few minutes she had quieted sufficiently
to tell her story. He grew paler and grimmer as she dramatized the
terror of the midnight entrance of the ominous shadows, the noiseless
gliding of bare feet, the vicious whispered threats, the cries of the
girl as they bore her away into the night and the long wait for
Ledesma's return. Finishing her story, she sank back upon the great
bed, moaning and muttering incoherently.

Ledesma elaborated her story with details she had told him. She had
recognized neither shadowed forms nor whispering voices of any of the
four who ha