before I found you if this is how you look after
undergoing a month of American cruelty."

He ran on in this train, not giving the dusky soldier-merchant a
chance to answer, but all the time studying the face and taking in
every line of the splendid specimen of a Tagalo before him.

Benito was taller than the average of his tribe. His muscular limbs
showed a strength and athletic training that would be the envy of any
Yale man or West Pointer. His back was as straight as the proverbial
ramrod and as supple as the leaf of the cocoanut palm. His eyes were
brown, and fairly danced with good nature and intelligence. They
were frank, too, an unusual thing with a native. All in all, he was
a perfect model of the physical man in bronze.

He placed his tray, laden with the luxuries he had cried, on a
box near by, and seated himself in such a natural and easy manner,
making himself so perfectly at home, that Sever's feeling of surprise
at the action, soon changed into one of amusement over the unusual
familiarity of a Tagalo toward a hated "Yankee." But he was to find
out that this compatriot of Aguinaldo was unusual in many ways.

After talking over his experiences at the First Reserve Hospital at
Manila, Sever asked his guest what he intended doing.

Benito replied that his future was undecided. While in Manila he had
seen Juanita, and they had decided that he should seek the Capitan and
ask his advice. That was how he happened to be peddling along the line.

"You don't intend to return to the army again?" asked Sever.

On receiving an emphatic negative answer, the Captain continued:
"How did you happen to cast your fortunes with the insurgents in the
first place, and why were you so terror-stricken when first discovered
after you had been wounded?"

Benito's answer to this double query was lengthy, but in effect
he said: His father had been a captain in the Corps d'Elite,
Aguinaldo's body-guard, during the Filipino insurrection against
Spanish rule. Hoodwinked and misguided by the juntas as to the designs
of the Americans, he continued in the service after the Spaniards
had been driven out. During the outbreak against the Americans
on February 5, 1899, he was killed. Shortly afterward he received
word that he must take his father's place. He knew what it meant to
refuse to enter the insurrectionist service after having once been
notified. Fearing assassination should he refuse, he at once joined
his father's regimen