ll the water shoaled again. In late
afternoon we took on a supply of sugar cane, and chewed affably all
the rest of the way.

At first I had been nervous, but my native friends were quite
unconcerned. So remembering that Heaven protects the insane and the
imbecile, and regarding them as the former and myself as the latter,
I ceased to speculate on the probabilities of another incarnation.

We consumed six hours in a journey normally accomplished in two, and
night overtook us in a labyrinth of water lanes above whose forested
swamps the outlines of a stern old church were magnified in the
gloom. One by one the stars sprang mysteriously into view in the soft
void overhead, and somehow--marvellously--we found our destination. A
group of friends and servants flared their torches on the bank, and we
dragged our stiffened limbs to them. It was too dark to see where we
were going, until we stumbled almost into a lighted doorway and found
the company awaiting us. Owing to the delay in our arrival, the wedding
was deferred till the next morning, but the ball was about to open.

Food was given us, and after a freshening up and a change of raiment
we joined the reunion, which was in full swing. The prospective
husband and wife were enjoying their usual state of effacement, but
I discovered them finally. I talked with the insurrecto and found
him a man of ability.

I left the ball, exhausted, at one o'clock, but those indefatigable
people kept it up all night. I awoke at dawn to find the floor
occupied by about twenty yawning maidens who were merely resting,
for there was no time for a nap. We dressed in the cool dawn breeze
and went out in time to see the morning mists rise from a broad oval
of rice and maize fields, and hang themselves in ever-changing folds
on the sides of the purple mountains beyond.

But for the character of the vegetation that rimmed the arable land,
and the bare green shoulders of the hills, streaked here and there
with pink clayey ravines, it might have been a peaceful sunrise in
middle America. The homelike atmosphere was accentuated by the roofs
of a town and by a church spire, still silvered with mist, half a mile
away. We tramped across the fields to our objective point. As madrina,
I walked with the bride, but conversation did not thrive because she
spoke little Spanish, and I less Visayan.

Carabaos sniffed at us as we passed, and people crowded their windows
to look. We crossed a slough upon a