not have been here to plead.

"That's about all, Major, except as to what manner of folk these
Hillmen are, and that you will learn better for yourself."

The Major rose and stepped to the door where they could survey the
village, unseen by the brown people who now swarmed the hard-packed
clearing. They were a squat race. The men, G-stringed, displayed the
same powerful physique that had marked the warrior who had conducted
the Major, the women were clad in a single width of homespun cotton
which draped from waist to knee and passed up over breast and back to
knot at the right shoulder. Men, women and children were all long
haired, and marked alike with broad, high cheek-boned faces flattened
across the bridge of the nose. Their slightly thickened lips and
widened nostrils were offset by large, intelligent eyes. They were
grouped about the fires which burned in the center of the village, the
women tending the pots which steamed over the coals. The fresh hide of
a buck lay in the center of the ring of fires amid heaps of yams and
unthreshed rice.

"Community cooking," explained Terry. "The young men hunt, the older
ones farm, the girls weave and the old women cook. The scheme works
out well in such a simple manner of living. Such government as they
have is a blending of a little democracy with strong patriarchism. The
old chief, Ohto, lets them have their own way about the little
things, but when he speaks it is the law."

"How numerous are they?"

"Six or eight thousand. This is the largest of nine villages scattered
around the crown of the mountain. Ohto rules them all."

He pointed to a wide lane leading through the fringe of woods into
another and smaller clearing a few hundred feet south.

"That is where Ohto lives. No one approaches his house unless sent
for. You--we--are to have an audience with him to-night. He set the
time at moonrise."

"A husky lot," commented the Major. "They're bigger than the Bogobos,
and lighter skinned--but they sure don't get much chance to tan in
these woods!"

"They're a wild lot, Major, but you'll like them."

They saw a woman leave the circle of fires and approach their hut
bearing two crude dishes. She hesitated near the door, nervously
searching the newcomer with timid black eyes, but reassured by Terry's
low word she climbed the bamboo steps and laid before them a supper of
venison, yams and boiled rice, then scampered out with a twinkle of
brown legs.

While they