this fermenting vegetation joined in mocking chorus.

The Maestro felt a vague blush welling up from the innermost recesses of
his being.

"I'm going to get that kid," he muttered darkly, "if I have to wait
till--the coming of Common Sense to the Manila office! By gum, he's the
Struggle for Attendance personified!"

He sat down on the bank and waited. This did not prove interesting. The
animals of the ditch creaked on; the caribao bubbled up the water with
his deep content; above, the abandoned kite went through strange
acrobatics and wailed as if in pain. The Maestro dipped his hand into
the water; it was lukewarm. "No hope of a freeze-out," he murmured
pensively.

Behind, the pony began to pull at the reins.

"Yes, little horse, I'm tired, too. Well," he said apologetically, "I
hate to get energetic, but there are circumstances which----"

The end of his sentence was lost, for he had whisked out the big Colt's
dissuader of ladrones, that hung on his belt, and was firing. The six
shots went off like a bunch of fire-crackers, but far from at random,
for a regular circle boiled up around the dozing caribao. The disturbed
animal snorted, and again a discreet "cluck-cluck" rose in the sudden,
astounded silence.

"This," said the Maestro, as he calmly introduced fresh cartridges into
the chambers of his smoking weapon, "is what might be called an
application of western solutions to eastern difficulties."

Again he brought his revolver down, but he raised it without shooting
and replaced it in its holster. From beneath the caribao's rotund belly,
below the surface, an indistinct form shot out; cleaving the water like
a polliwog it glided for the bank, and then a black, round head emerged
at the feet of the Maestro.

"All right, bub; we'll go to school now," said the latter, nodding to
the dripping figure as it rose before him.

He lifted the sullen brownie and straddled him forward of the saddle,
then proceeded to mount himself, when the Capture began to display
marked agitation. He squirmed and twisted, turned his head back and up,
and finally a grunt escaped him.

"El volador."

"The kite, to be sure; we mustn't forget the kite," acquiesced the
Maestro graciously. He pulled up the anchoring stick and laboriously,
beneath the hostilely critical eye of the Capture, he hauled in the line
till the screeching, resisting flying-machine was brought to earth. Then
he vaulted into the saddle.

The double weight wa