re treacherous if his ancestors
had sprung from tigers' wombs. A Moro boy, employed for years by one
of my American acquaintances at Iligan, rewarded his master recently
by cutting his throat at night. As superstitious as he is fanatic and
uncivilized, the Moro is a failure as a member of the human race. Even
the children are the incarnation of the fiend. There was that boy
at Iligan who worked at the officer's club, and who hung over the
roulette-wheel like a perfect devil, crowing with demoniac glee when
he was lucky. These are our latest citizens--this batch of serpents'
eggs hatched out in human form; and those who have seen the Moro in
his native home will tell you that, whatever his latent possibilities
may be, he can not yet be dealt with as a man.

Chapter VIII.

In a Visayan Village.

The fountain on the corner, where the brown, barefooted girls with
bamboo water-tubes would gather at the noon hour and at supper-time,
was shaded in the heat of the day by a mimosa-tree. The _Calle de la
Paz y Buen Viaje_ (Street of Peace and a Good Journey), flanked by
sentinel-like bonga-trees and hedged in by a bamboo fence, stretches
away through the banana-groves toward the fantastic mountains. A
puffing carabao comes down the long street, dragging the heavy stalks
of newly-cut bamboo. The pig that has been rooting in the grass,
looks up, and, seeing what is coming, bolts with staccato grunts
unceremoniously through the bamboo fence.

In the little drygoods-store across the street, Felicidad, the
dusky-eyed proprietress, has gone to sleep while waiting for a
customer. She has discarded her _chinelas_ and her _pina_ yoke. Her
brown arms resting on the table pillow her unconscious head. Her
listless fingers clasp a half-smoked cigarette.

The stock of _La Aurora_ is a comprehensive one, including printed
cotton goods from China, red and green belts with nickel fastenings,
uncomfortable-looking Spanish shoes, a bottle of quinine sulphate
tablets, an assortment of perfumery and jewelry, rosaries and
crucifixes, towels and handkerchiefs, and dainty _pina_ fabrics. The
arrival of the _Americano_ is the signal for the neighbors and the
neighbors' children, having nothing in particular to do, to flock
around. The Filipino curiosity again!

On the next corner, where the wooden Atlas braces up the balcony,
the _Chino_ store is sheltered from the sun by curtains of alternate
blue and white. Here _Chino_ Santiago, in h