toward Binalbagan.

"I didn't reach the pueblo that night, however. Only a mile from it I
plunged out of the moonlight into the pitch darkness of a hollow lane
cutting through Don Jaime's hacienda. Banana palms were growing thick to
right and left; the way was narrow and deep--it was a fine place for
cutthroats, but that avocation had lost much of its romantic charm from
the fact that, not three weeks before, an actual cutthroating had taken
place, a Chinese merchant having been boloed by _tusilanes_. Well, I was
trotting through, my right hand somewhat close to my holster, when from
the right, close, there came a soft, reiterated chopping noise. I pulled
up my pony. The sound kept up--a discreet, persistent chopping; then I
saw, up above, the moonlit top of a palm shuddering, though all about it
the others remained motionless, petrified as if of solid silver. It was
a very simple thing after all: some one in there was cutting down a palm
to get bananas, an occupation very common in the Philippines, and very
pacific, in spite of the ominous air given to it by the gigantic bolo
used. However, something prompted me to draw the midnight harvester out.

"'Heh, _ladron_, what are you doing there?' I shouted in dialect.

"'There was a most sudden silence. The chopping ceased, the palm stopped
vibrating. A vague form bounded down the lane, right up against my
horse's nose, rolled over, straightened up again, and vanished into the
darkness ahead. Unconsciously I spurred on after it. For a hundred yards
I galloped with nothing in sight. Then I caught a rapid view of the
thing as it burst through a shaft of moonlight piercing the glade, and
it showed as a man, a grotesque figure of a man in loose white
pantaloons. He was frightened, horribly frightened, all hunched up with
the frenzy to escape. An indistinct bundle was on his right shoulder.
Like a curtain the dark snapped shut behind him again, but I urged on
with a wild hallo, my blood all a-tingle with the exultation of the
chase. I gained--he must have been a lamentable runner, for my poor
little pony was staggering under my tumultuous weight. I could hear him
pant and sob a few yards in advance; then he came into sight, a dim,
loping whiteness ahead. Suddenly the bundle left his shoulder; something
rolled along the ground under my horse's hoofs--and I was standing on
my head in a soft, oozy place. I was mad, furiously mad. I picked myself
up, went back a few yards, and tak