o his trust.

The party could not retrace their steps over the mountains, owing to
the weakened condition of the prisoners and the lack of food. Their
only chance for self-preservation and a possible return to civilization
lay in carrying out Gilmore's designs to build bamboo rafts and float
down the river to the sea. This was done. In going over rapids and
water-falls, many rafts were destroyed and new ones had to be built.

Two of the boys got the measles. The raft on which one of them,
Private Day, was being transported, got smashed on the rocks and he
was thrown into the water. He took cold and died the next day. His
comrades took his body with them and did not bury it until they finally
reached the little town of Ambulug, at the mouth of the stream they
had been following, on the northern coast of Luzon. There, amid a
simple but impressive ceremony, it was buried in the church-yard of
the cathedral to await the resurrection morn.

At Ambulug the Americans secured ox-carts drawn by caribous and drove
along the beach to the city of Aparri, at the mouth of the Cagayan
river. Here they were met by a detachment of American Marines who
took them aboard a war-ship, lying out to sea, which carried them
around the northwest promontory of Luzon to the city of Vigan on the
western coast, at which place they had been imprisoned for so long.

Here they met General Young who shook hands with each of them;
congratulated the rescued and complimented the rescuers.

CHAPTER X.

DEATH OF GENERAL LAWTON.

After the battle of Baler, Marie and a few native soldiers hastened
westward in advance of the prisoners, to San Isidro to notify Aguinaldo
who had moved his headquarters to that place, that the Americans were
advancing northward in great numbers and that nothing could impede
their progress. This information had previously been conveyed to the
Filipino general from other sources, so that Marie found him in his
so-called congress packed up and ready to move,--a thing they were
forced to do a few days after the American prisoners arrived. She
accompanied them for several long, tedious months, acting as cook for
the expedition and serving in other capacities--none of them seeming
to her to be ample reward for all she had done.

Early in the coming fall, Marie, tired of Aguinaldo's game of
hide-and-go-seek, and anxious to find out about her mother and to get
into more fighting, if there be a chance, made her way back