ksgiving?"

"I don't know. All women, too!"

The young American woman and the officer who was her escort halted
their horses to watch better the group of people of whom they had been
speaking. The officer was a lieutenant of the American forces stationed
in Zamboanga, the oldest and most important city in Mindanao, the
headquarters of the United States military district in the Philippines
known as the Department of Mindanao and Jolo. The young woman was
the daughter of one of the older officers of the department, just
come to Zamboanga the day before, and in this morning's ride having
her first chance to see the strange old city to which her father had
been transferred from Manila a few weeks before.

In the course of this ride the young people had reached Fort Pilar, at
one end of the town, a weather-beaten old fortification built years and
years before by the Spaniards as a protection against their implacable
foes, the Moros, who waged continual warfare against them from the
southern islands of the archipelago. Circling the stone walls of the
fort the riders had come upon a group of as many as fifty Visayan
women kneeling on the ground, their faces turned devoutly toward a
stone tablet let into the walls.

An American soldier was doing sentry duty not far away. "Wait here,
Miss Allenthorne," Lieutenant Chickering said, "and I'll find out
from that man over there what they are doing. He's been here long
enough so that probably he knows by this time." The officer cantered
his pony over to the sentry's station. The American girl, left to
herself, slipped down from her pony, and hooking the bridle rein into
her elbow, walked a little nearer to the women. They did not seem to
mind her in the least, and one of them--a handsome young woman near
her--when she looked up and saw that the stranger was an American,
smiled, and said something in a language which Miss Allenthorne did
not understand; but from the expression on her face the American felt
sure that what the woman said was meant as a welcome.

Something which this Visayan woman did a moment later excited Miss
Allenthorne's curiosity to a still higher pitch. The native woman drew
a small photograph from the folds of her "camisa," and kissed it. Then
she put it down on the ground between herself and the wall, and turned
to the tablet above it a face lighted with a radiance which any woman
seeing would have known could have come from love alone. When she had
finishe