vages when we get close enough to send them a
raking volley. I hope they're lined up so that we can give them a flank
fire before the scoundrels know that we're on the ground at all."

Two miles covered, then a third was left behind.

Now, a nervous or too eager commander might have hurried his men over
the remaining ground, but Prescott, at West Point, had been taught the
value of cool, deliberate work.

It was noticeable, however, that now the men marched along with more
spirit and swing. Those who may have been secretly nervous were at least
certain that soon their suspense would be over. A few minutes, and they
would be engaged in something more definite than merely tramping in the
direction of danger.

Suddenly Corporal Cotter halted his men, and the same gesture was
visible at the head of the column behind.

"Softly," whispered Lieutenant Prescott, but his gesture carried further
than did his voice. The main column closed slowly up with the "point."

"I couldn't go further, sir, without running into those fellows yonder,"
whispered the corporal. "I didn't know that you would want me to do it."

Cotter pointed through the rows of trees to a clearing beyond.

In the center of the clearing stood a little building--plainly the
schoolhouse in which the few white children on the plantation and
probably many native children of the neighborhood were taught, five days
in the week, by some clear-eyed Yankee schoolma'am furnished by Uncle
Sam's Government.

Seven Moros were visible at or close to the schoolhouse. All of them
were armed. One fellow was hurrying up with a can of oil, which, while
the soldiers waited and watched, he sprinkled over the woodwork of the
doorway, carrying a trail of the oil inside the building.

"That's a Filipino estimate of the value of education," whispered
Lieutenant Prescott savagely to his sergeant.

But then something happened that made Hal Overton boil with indignation.

Just as the fellow had finished scattering the oil and was about to
strike a match, one of the other Moros seized the fellow's arm, then
pointed up to the flag pole over the front of the building.

All of the brown rascals began to chuckle. Then one of them climbed up.
With a keen-edged creese he cut the Flag loose, hurling it down to the
ground.

Now began an orgy of derision. First the Moros spat upon the Flag; then,
howling gleefully, they commenced to dance upon it. Every now and then
one of the brown me