king of the strange things of Sululand,
talked as men do who find surpassing interest in the little and the
big things of their work; and Terry listened as they deliberately drew
him within their circle.

It was a dinner deserving of the time given up to it. Following a
vegetable soup the Moro bore in a great lapu-lapu, fresh from the
Straits: if you have never tasted the flaky substance of a
lapu-lapu,--don't! For once you do, you will be forever impatient of
the quality of all other fish. Roast duck followed, with sweet corn,
camotes, tart roselle sauce, a papaya salad, an ice, and pili nuts;
all perfectly prepared, and flawlessly served by the expressionless
Moro boy who moved noiselessly about the snowy table.

"I want to brag a little, Governor," Wade said as he and the Major
lighted cigars over a second cup of black coffee. "Everything we ate
to-night--with the exception of such things as salt and pepper and
cream,--was the product of this farm. You will be able to report at
the end of the year that we are eighty per cent self-supporting."

Pressed by the Governor, Wade explained to Terry his system of
handling the six hundred Moro inmates. He stopped midway in a graphic
account of three prisoners whom he had sent out with instructions to
fetch in a runaway convict dead or alive.

"I didn't ask you down here to talk you to death!" he apologized.

"But what happened?" insisted the Major. "Did the three skip too?"

Wade glared at him. "Skip? My trusties? I guess not! They came in last
night after dark, after being gone in the interior for three weeks,
carrying a gunnysack. I was sitting out here, so they came right up
and without a word emptied the sack on the veranda floor. They had
stayed out till they got him--his head rolled out of the sack and
landed right under where you're sitting, Major. Then the three walked
over to the prison gate and reported in."

A moment later the Major moved his chair.

The Governor had been quietly studying Terry. "How did the Philippines
first impress you?" he asked. "About as you anticipated?"

Terry hesitated, then responded to the authority of the kindly eyes:
"No, sir. I had read enough typical stories of the tropics to absorb
an atmosphere, but I did not find it. You know what I mean, sir: all
that stuff about _dulce far niente_, manana, gin-soaked
beach-combers,--that sort of thing. But I don't find it, sir. I find a
spirit of hustle, of getting things done despite o