A whisper of awe rustled through the surrounding ranks. Ignorant of firearms, they thought the young American wielded some uncanny power with his black weapon. Already distinguished as the first white man to set his foot upon Apo, he was now regarded with a feeling akin to worship.

Ohto was silent, lost in a protracted, inscrutable study of Terry's face. At last the old man turned on his heels to sweep the circle of his people for confirmation of his surmise. Satisfied, he raised his hand for silence.

"There has been worry ... doubt ... among you—who should take up Ohto's burden when he lets it fall ... soon. You are entering new times, will meet new and strange things. To Ohto it seems best that he leave his people under the guidance of a young and strong and kind chief who knows all these strange things ... one who can lead you safely into the new life. What say you, my people? Who shall sit in Ohto's chair when he is gone?"

For a moment the multitude was silent as the significance of Ohto's query sank into their slow minds, then a murmur of approval rose among them, swelled into a deafening shout of acclamation.

"The pale white man! The pale white man!"

Terry understood. Uncertain, he turned to the Major, but Ohto interrupted by addressing him directly.

"You have heard. When Ohto leaves—and it can not be long—he leaves his people in your hands. You will be patient, kindly, gentle, with them. That Ohto knows ... it is written in your face."

As Terry slowly bowed his head slightly in acceptance of the trust, the delighted Hillmen stirred, whispered to each other. The hum of voices grew louder but was instantly hushed by the dramatic gesture with which Ohto extended his arm toward a low cotton tree that stood at the edge of the woods. The thousand eager heads turned almost as one.

Upon a slender leafless branch which extended at right angles from the trunk of a kapok tree two large gray wood pigeons had perched side by side in the close communion of mated birds, heedless of the host below them. Unafraid, tired, content with what the day had brought them in the lowlands, they were happy in safe return together to their mountain home.

In the hush which followed recognition by the throng, the limocons moved closer to each other, wing brushed wing, sleepy lids lowered over soft eyes to shut out the crimson glory of the dying sun. Then the little throats throbbed as they voiced gratitude to their Creator in gentle, low pitched notes, lilting with the joy of life, plaintive with the brevity of its span.

The sweet song died with the day, and as dusk reached down in brief embrace of tropic earth, the birds winged side by side into the darkening forest.

Peace settled upon the face of the old man who had made decision vitally affecting the welfare of the people over whom he had ruled for two generations. The limocons had sung in the East. His fathers were pleased with him.

A shout of fierce joy burst from the Hillmen. Then the women surrounded the dainty white girl and bore her off to prepare for the long ceremony with which the Hill People give in marriage. And the two friends walked through the woods, arm in arm, silent, profoundly humble.



CHAPTER XVII

"SUS-MARIE-HOSEP!"

Terry was happily engaged in remaking the Major's old pack for his own use when the Major entered the torchlit shack. It lacked an hour till dawn. Outside, the main clearing was dark, but the big fires which illuminated the surrounding trees revealed the excited natives still celebrating Ahma's nuptials in the clearing around Ohto's house.

Terry straightened up from his task and studied the face of his friend: fatigue and happiness had softened the serious lines that had given the Major an appearance of age beyond his years.

"Major, isn't the ceremony finished yet?"

"No, it takes forty-eight hours to get married up here—and only two hours to get buried! But a month ago I would have said that it was about the correct ratio, at that."

Terry grinned as he finished the pack and threw it on the floor near the door, then sat beside the Major on the cot.

"Major, I want to send up a gift for Ahma by the first runner the postoffice people send through. It's hard to decide what to give her, because she is entirely different from other girls, and the usual bridal gifts would hardly do. Can't you help me out?"

For a minute the Major pondered heavily: "How about a mirror? She is twenty years old and has never seen her own reflection."

"Just the thing! Enter the civilizing influence of vanity in the Hill Country!"

Terry drew a notebook from his shirt pocket. "Major, I have jotted down a list of things we are going to need for this work up here. I thought it would be better if I had a definite program to submit to the Governor, with estimate of appropriations necessary, and so on. First I listed those things you will need in order to build and furnish your house: cook stoves, lamps, dishes, window glass, and so on. I think I have included everything, so just run over those things you will need to begin this work."

For an hour earnestly they discussed the problems the Major would confront pending Terry's return to take up the work. They listed a wide variety of needs—pigs, chickens, medicines, books, tools, seeds: contingent upon the Governor's approval, they outlined several months of planting, trail making, establishment of regular communication with the lowlands, selection of school teachers, of a health officer—all of the varied instruments needed for the initial work of elevating the tribesmen out of their barbarism.

Dawn had dimmed their torches when they finished. For a while they sat silent, Terry happy in the outcome of this strange adventure in the Hills, the Major thrilling with the joy that had come to him.

The Major broke the silence: "Terry, I AM a chump! All this time I've forgotten to tell you that a captain's commission is waiting your acceptance in Zamboanga!"

He went on, slowly: "Are you sure that you can come back here for a year—after your honeymoon? Maybe she—your wife—won't wish to come."

"Yes, she will." Terry was confident. "It will be for only one year, and then—"

"And then what?" the Major demanded after a while.

"Then—back home, among my own people. I left home foolishly, Major. I was restless—looking for a dragon to slay. But I have had a year in which to think—and I see things differently. During the time I was sick up here I—I ... well, I know now that a man need not cross the world to find service: he can be just as useful in preventing bunions as in—as in such lucky ventures as this."

"Preventing bunions?" The Major was puzzled.

But Terry did not answer. He had risen to finish his preparations for the journey down.

"Just one more thing, Terry. You promised to tell me how you started that little avalanche—the 'sign.'"

Something of the serenity faded from Terry's face as he turned to explain: "I had been up there several times, and had noticed a deep crevice that split the platform from the parent rock. It would have fallen within a few months. I carried up some softwood wedges, drove them into the fault, poured in a lot of water and expansion did the rest."

The Major visualized the toil and peril of lugging heavy logs up the spiral trail at night. "Why didn't you let me help?" he demanded.

"Well, Ahma kept guard for me, and that was enough. If I had been caught I could probably have talked myself out of the scrape, but it might have gone harder with you. Luckily the timbers I used for wedges were buried in the slide."

The Major's face clouded swiftly: "Say, Terry! That scoundrel Pud-Pud said that he saw you that night—he can ruin the thing yet if he talks!"

Terry shook his head, a little sorrowfully: "No, Pud-Pud will never talk to anybody about anything again. I got to Ohto too late: they had already executed sentence."

"What did they do with him?"

"Shot him full of darts and turned him loose in the Dark Forest. So I confessed to Ohto that I contrived the 'sign.' Of course I made him understand that you had nothing to do with the—trickery."

"What did he say—what is he going to do about it?" The Major was anxious.

"He had known about it all the time—his men have trailed every step we have taken, watched everything we have done."

A slow blush mounted the Major's rugged features as he thought of the possibility that secret onlookers had witnessed his meeting with Ahma just before the wedding ceremony when he had sought to teach her the White Man's customs of caress. The flush persisted as he turned to Terry.

"There's one thing I forgot to ask you to buy for me. I want a good talking machine, with plenty of records." He paused, then continued abstractedly: "She can keep it in her house."

Terry looked up in astonishment. "In her house? Aren't you both going to live in the same house?"

"No. Not till you send a missionary up here to marry us. I don't figure that two days of savage rites constitutes a marriage—but I'm going to have a deuce of a time trying to explain it to Ahma!"

Terry nodded sympathetically and walked the springy floor a dozen times, nonplussed by the Major's dilemma. Pausing in his preoccupation before the open window he noted vaguely that the nuptial fires were yellowing before the approach of dawn: a moment and he started violently as the solution struck him and he whirled upon the dejected groom with beaming countenance.

"Say!" he shouted, "I'm certainly not going down with you two only half-married—she a bride and you not a groom! You forget that as Senior Inspector of Constabulary I am an ex-officio Justice of the Peace! Come on!"

He lifted the Major by the arm and shot him through the doorway with an exuberant shove that left him no alternative save a jarring leap to the ground. Terry landed beside him as light as a cat, and catching him by the elbow he hurried him on through the woods and into the fading light of the big fires that burned before Ohto's house.

Terry, his eyes dancing joyously, broke up the dance with which a hundred Hill People were keeping the ceremonial pot boiling, and despatched two women to fetch the bride, who had sought a brief respite from the interminable ritual. Shortly Ahma appeared before them, her dark eyes shadowed with fatigue, but radiant with exaltation.

Understanding from Terry's few words that the Major desired that they be united also in accordance with the rites of his own people, she stepped quietly before Terry and took the Major's outstretched hand. The crowd of natives, who had crowded about them, waited the alien ritual curiously.

Ahma was clad in the white costume in which the Major had first seen her. A scarlet hibiscus blossom, the Hillmen's nuptial flower, was thrust in her black hair, but there was no other addition to her scant covering.

Possessed of a sudden spirit of banter Terry turned to the Major: "Before I begin, Major, I wish to congratulate you upon having won to the bliss of matrimony without violating that bachelor formula which you so often boasted."

"What formula?"

Terry's voice deepened in mimicry: "'No petticoats for mine!'"

A moment he enjoyed the Major's embarrassment, then composed himself to the business in hand, happy, confident.

But—the competent Terry fumbled. Swept away in the exuberance of having found a way out for the Major, he had forgotten that, never having exercised his legal privilege of joining in marriage in a province where all of the natives were either Catholic or Mohammedan, he was wanting in the phraseology the ceremony demanded.

Vainly he sought inspiration in a sky chill with the pale lights of daybreak. He shuffled his feet nervously, scowled at the ring of brown-skinned spectators, looked at his watch. As the sweat of worry appeared upon his white forehead he drew his handkerchief and wiped his face vigorously, then blew his nose resoundingly. This last device seemed to serve.

He turned to the serene couple who waited patiently: "Do you, John Bronner, take this woman, Ahma—Ahma of the Hills, to be your lawful wedded wife, to love and cherish and to—er—provide for?"

"I do," said the Major. He was proud of Terry—trust the Constabulary to see a thing through!

Terry was triumphant in his success. He unconsciously drew up his slim, muscular figure as he turned to the bride, focussing his gaze upon the blossom in the waves of jet locks that tumbled smoothly about the downcast head.

"And do you, Ahma of the Hills, take this man, John Bronner, to be your wedded lawful husband, to love and to—er—care for when he—er—is sick?"

She caught the groom's whispered instructions and grasped the wonderful import of the unknown words that Terry had spoken. Twice her silent lips formed the two words of response in soundless practice, then she looked up squarely into Terry's eyes and pronounced them.

"I do."

Either the clear voice was too rich with gladness, or else she should not have turned the starry eyes so suddenly upon him. Lost for a long moment in the splendor of the vision opened up to him, he forced himself back to the duty of the minute. But he was off the track again.

He floundered for an opening. Bits of biblical and legal phrases raced through his tortured brain, but none seemed appropriate to this situation. The haunt of the dark eyes obscured his vision, the limpid "I do," filled his ears. "I do." The significance of the words brought him back to the point of interruption, and he turned to them, desperate, vague.

"You do? You do, eh—you both do ... well, ... join hands! I do say and declare this twenty-third day of January that you are man and wife in accord with the law of this land, and now—"

He glared at the grinning beneficiary of the service, and finished: "And now—and now what I—what God and I have joined let no man put asunder ... till death do us part ... so help me God, Amen!"

In an agony of torment he ripped through the crowd and raced to the shack, where the Major joined him after taking Ahma into Ohto's house. It was now broad daylight, and the huts were emptying of the crowd waking to take up the burden of fiesta.

Terry buckled up his pack, joining in the Major's mirth.

"But you are married all right. I will send you up a certificate as soon as I reach Zamboanga, all signed and sealed and everything."

They became serious in thought of imminent separation. Now that the time had come Terry dreaded leaving his friend alone in the Hills.

"I will relieve you in three months, Major," he said.

"You needn't hurry—don't forget I'm on a honeymoon, too!"

Terry hesitated, then risked the question that had been bothering him: "After we come—what are you going to do? Will Ahma be ready to go below?"

"No, she will not. I am figuring on leaving her here a few months—your wife can teach her to—to dress, and all that. And I can't take her away so long as Ohto lives. After that, I want to take her to the States. She learns fast, Terry,—and I want her to see Europe—she will learn a lot there, too!"

The old woman brought them their breakfast. The Major hurried through the meal and left to secure a guide to take Terry down, explaining that he would join him in the woods. Terry ate under the sorrowing eyes of the faithful woman, and when he finished he presented her with the only gaud that remained to him, the gold medallion from his fob. She scurried out to display it, the proudest woman, save one, in all the Hills.

Slinging the pack across his shoulders he turned for a last look at the little hut that had sheltered him. Within its cramped walls he had suffered, had known grave peril, and great joy. A hint of the old wistfulness flickered about the corner of his mouth, then he left the hut and strode through the clearing into the woods, halting to wave cheerfully at the Hillmen who somberly watched the departure of their future chief.

He dipped over the edge of the plateau and found the Major awaiting him with Ahma and the young warrior who was to guide him down. From where they stood at the edge of a wide glade they could see far down over the tops of the trees that matted the slope. In the clear morning air the mists which gleamed over the distant Gulf shone white as billowed snow. There lay Davao! Davao, then Zamboanga, then—! A fiercely glad light blazed in Terry's gray eyes, then darkened in anticipation of leaving the Major alone and with that melancholy with which all men face the knowledge that even as Life turns the pages of existence into its happiest chapter, she closes each finished page forever.

The Major spoke first. "This guide knows the shortest route. He will take you safe past all the man traps—you should sleep but one night on the trail. Give my regards to Lindsey, Sears,—everybody."

Ahma looked from one to the other, not quite understanding what they said, but understanding fully what they did not say. That showed in the face of each.

"Major, I have never said anything about your—how I feel about your risking the Hills to search for me, when it meant almost certain death."

Death!... For an instant the Major again stood helpless in the dark woods behind Lindsey's plantation embraced in coils of steel that quivered, and heard the crash of delivering shots.... He searched the white face, in which the lines of suffering from a chivalrously contracted fever still lingered. An extraordinary warm cataract suddenly obscured his vision.

"Sus-marie-hosep!" he spluttered. "Good-by."

Their hands gripped hard in an abiding friendship, then Terry turned to Ahma doubtfully, at a loss as to how to bid adieu to this creature of the Hills who knew so few of the white man's words or usages. He found, too, a source of embarrassment in her new capacity of wife. As she gazed up at him he looked away in boyish confusion.

The Major grasped the situation and addressed her very slowly in English: "Ahma, say good-by to him."

As she nodded brightly, understanding, the Major turned to Terry as proud as Punch: "You see—she is learning fast! Can't you imagine her, all dressed up and everything, in Europe?"

Terry focussed his eyes safely upon the white line that marked the part in her hair, and carefully pronounced each English word.

"Ahma, I am leaving for a while. Understand?"

She bobbed the dark head: "I do," she said.

The memories wrought by the limpid "I do" were a bit unsettling. He addressed the jet locks again: "Good-by."

She looked at the capable hand he extended toward her, puzzled at the gesture, then looked at the Major. He said a single word in dialect and her small white teeth glistened in a smile of comprehension. She approached close to Terry.

"I know. You say—good-night. I know how—to good-night."

Her concentration upon the unaccustomed pronunciations was bewitching. To relieve the strain of embarrassment he felt in her closeness to him, he turned to the grinning Major.

"As you say—she does learn quickly," he offered, rather vaguely.

She came closer still. "Yes, I know—how to—good-night!" she trilled: "Good-night is kiss!"

She called it "Keez" but Terry understood. If he did not then he did an instant later when he felt the clasp of warm round arms, the molding pressure of a soft form and the swift impress of full sensitive lips.

Loosed, he straightened up. His blush was explosive. Bewildered, he shrugged the light pack higher on his shoulders and gestured his readiness to the warrior who had stood watching the inexplicable ways of these strange white folk.

Following the Hillman, Terry set off across the glade. Midway down the green sward he wheeled.

"I should say she DOES learn fast!" he called. "You won't need to take HER to Europe!"

The two stood watching him as he followed the powerful little savage. As the forest swallowed up the slim form the Major blinked rapidly, and gripped the little hand he held.

"Sus-marie-hosep!" he exclaimed huskily. "But won't they be glad to see him in Davao! And in Zamboanga!"



CHAPTER XVIII

THE FOX SKIN

Terry pushed the hardy Hillman to his limit, so that when night fell they were far down among the foothills, the Dark Forest behind them. At daylight the Hillman was proudly mounting homeward, Terry's belt tightly buckled about his naked trunk. The white man's last dispensable possession had gone as a reward for the service.

Terry's joyous urge carried him swiftly, so that in an hour he dropped out of the foothills and into the heat of the jungled lowlands. At noon he climbed Sears' steps and dropped into a porch chair, his clothes wet with perspiration and torn by contact with brush and thorn, for he had cut straight through the woods.

He had nearly emptied Sears' water bottle when he saw the big planter coming out of a wonderful growth of hemp. Sears advanced slowly, deep in thought, not looking up till he had mounted the last step. At sight of Terry's grinning features he recoiled violently, then as the lad rose, he jumped forward to wring his hand furiously. Incapable of coherent speech for several minutes, he at last mastered his vocal cords.

"Man! I thought you were a ghost!" he cried.

Terry sketched his journey into the Hills, and added a brief account of the experiences he and the Major had undergone. Learning that the Major was also safe, Sears called a Bogobo boy and issued instructions that sent him scurrying into one of the Bogobo huts. In a few minutes he returned bearing a small agong and striker.

Under Sears' directions he hung it upon a pole in front of the house and struck it sharply, again and again. As the deep notes carried out through the still, hot woods Sears motioned to him to desist and turned to Terry.

"Listen!" he exclaimed, intent, his hand on Terry's shoulder.

In a moment another agong, somewhere close to the south, sounded several times, then another further away, then another, another. Soon the noon stillness of the brush pulsed with the mystic multi-tones of scores of far agongs rung from plantations. Slowly the murmur grew as hundreds of agongs rung by Bogobos in the foothills took up the signal, flooding the hemplands with a glad, bronze chorus.

Sears gripped Terry's shoulder hard, his eyes brimming.

"That's the signal we fixed up," he said. "Welcome home!"

He hovered over Terry, questioning, commenting, incredulous over the Major's marriage, overjoyed that the quinine he had given Terry had been a factor in his recovery. After lunch Terry borrowed Sears' best pony and rode away with the planter's profane benedictions in his ears.

He rode hard, but each familiar landmark, each twist in trail, each sight of river, each expanse of glistening hemp plants, thrilled him with a sense of homecoming. Once, drawing up to cool and water his pony, he caught the sparkle of the sunny Gulf, his nostrils sensed its tang, and with the surge of thanksgiving for the wonderful good fortune that had attended him, he first realized the strain of the past weeks.

Great as was his hurry to reach Davao—an hour's tardiness might mean the loss of the weekly steamer—he spent a half-hour with Lindsey, who had ridden out to the trail in the hope of intercepting him. From Lindsey he learned more of the suspense that had hung over the Gulf since his disappearance, the deep anxiety that had spread among the Bogobos and silenced every agong in the foothills.

"And Terry—the night the Giant Agong rang up there—we most went crazy!"

"We wondered if you heard it, Lindsey."

"Heard it! Heard it? It reached clear over on the East Coast. Boynton heard it over there."

Terry pressed on. Three miles below he found Casey was out to meet him, and further on, Burns. At four o'clock he dismounted to greet some Bogobos whom he overtook on the trail. Pushing Sears' little brown hard, he rode into Davao at five o'clock.

The plaza was crowded. Warned of his coming by the agong chorus, the whole town had turned out, Americans, Filipinos, Chinese, several Spaniards and Moros. The sleepy, dusty square waked to their noisy welcome.

"El Solitario!! El Conquistador del Malabanan!"

Laughing, misty eyed with the warmth of their greeting, he stood in the center of the jostling crowd, shaking hands, calling each white, native and Mongolian by name. Then the Macabebes claimed him and swept him into the privacy of the cuartel.

The jealous Matak had waited till Terry entered the house that his welcome might be unshared.

"Master, I know you come back. All time I know," he assured him gravely, then looked him over and sent out for the barber. Solemn and efficient as ever, he hustled his master under the shower, helped him into the first starched clothes he had known in five weeks, then went into the kitchen to frighten the cook into greater haste in preparation of dinner.

Barber shears, soap and clean linens restored Terry to his usual nattiness, and he delighted the cook with the zest with which he approached a good dinner after the weeks of the crude and undiversified fare of the Hillmen. Halfway through dinner he beckoned to Matak who stood with folded arms near the kitchen door as matter of fact as though the routine of the household had never been disturbed.

"Matak, when is the mail boat due?"

"She come this morning, go noontime."

And this was the twenty-fourth. Terry's keen disappointment was apparent to the watchful Moro.

"Master, you want go to Zamboanga?" he said.

"Yes. I must go as soon as possible, Matak."

"Take little boat Major come in. She still here."

Terry jumped up from the dinner table and hurried to the dock and found the speedboat tied up alongside. After a hurried conference with Adams he raced back to the house, where the forehanded Matak was already packing his bags. Terry added a steamer trunk which held his civilian clothes, and as dusk fell master and man stepped aboard the frail craft. Adams was ready. A sharp thrust of foot quickened the engine into life, and they swung in a short circle. Straightening, motors roaring, the stern sucked deep as they sped in swift flight into the south.

From his seat in the stern Terry watched the light fade out of the western sky. The stars invaded the deserted field and dimly outlined the rim of the mountains, a smooth line save where Apo reared high in the west. For a moment the dark peak seemed lonely to him, but he knew that the Major was happy on the pine clad height.... After Ohto's passing, his own responsibility, the guidance of a child-tribe, would be a heavy one ... a year of that, perhaps, and then—but first ... his heart throbbed in vivid realization of all that awaited him in Zamboanga.

Adams hovered about his engines, happy in Terry's return and in this opportunity to render him service. Matak stretched out on a cross seat, unhappy in the deafening roar of the motors and the rhythmic rise and fall of the speeding craft in the smooth landswells.

As they rounded Sarangani in the middle of the calm moonlit night Adams left the cockpit long enough to cover Terry with a thick blanket, for he had succumbed to the monotonous chorus of the motors and the lull of the bewitching night at sea.

As the calm weather held, Adams steered straight for Zamboanga, putting out to sea in the little motorboat. When Terry woke Basilan was in sight, and at five o'clock they rushed down the tidal current of the Straits and eased into the slip alongside the dock.

Adams, grimy, worn with his long vigil, grinned contentedly under Terry's warm thanks. Leaving Matak to secure a bullcart to transport his luggage to the Major's house Terry hurried down the dock and entered the Government Building. The clerks had left for the day but at Terry's knock the Governor himself threw wide the door.

Profound thankfulness lit Mason's intellectual face. Grasping Terry's hand he led him into the office.

"And the Major?" he questioned.

"Well—and very happy, sir!"

Keen-eyed, observant, in the moment of welcome the Governor had sensed the new Terry, read the new contentment and confidence manifest in his face and bearing.

In a few minutes Terry had sketched his experiences to his eager auditor. The Governor contented himself with a bare outline, though his eyes glistened. The Hills opened!

"Captain Terry," he said, "come in to-morrow and tell me the details—I will give you the entire morning. To-morrow I will try to tell you how happy I am in your safe return, and in the service you have rendered this Government."

He rose, beaming with the news it was his privilege to impart.

"You had best run along now, Captain. You will find three anxious—friends—awaiting you at the Major's house. They expected to arrive to-morrow but caught the transport and docked yesterday. They will be relieved to see you, for I had to tell them something of the uncertainty we felt regarding your—whereabouts. Take my car, and run along!"

And Terry ran along! He flew down the steps and into the automobile and in three minutes was leaping up the stairway into the Major's house.

Ellis, fatter, somehow absurd in tropic whites, met him at the entrance. Meeting halfway around the world from where they had parted, choking with the end of the dread suspense into which the Governor's guarded references to Terry's disappearance had plunged him, Ellis' big heart thumped in glad relief, but true to the traditions of his lifetime environment he strove to repress it, to appear as casual as though they had been in daily association. Pumping Terry's hand spasmodically, he measured the ecstatic lad with extravagant care, studied him from crown to heel.

"Dick, how do you do it?" he asked.

"Do what, Ellis?" Terry's voice was unsteady, too.

"Keep so fit in this oven of a country—you're as hard as nails!"

Terry's unsteady laugh rang through the big bungalow: "Go on, you fakir—you're crying right now!"

Ellis was. He turned away as Susan rushed out of an adjoining room. Laughing, sobbing, she threw herself upon her brother, held him away to study his appearance, hugged him tighter, pouring out a volume of questions she offered him no opportunity to answer.

Five minutes, and she recovered sufficient reason to catch the significance of Ellis' vehement gestures toward the second of the row of four bedrooms that opened off the sala. Understanding, she left Terry and followed Ellis into their room, closing the door with a bang intended as a signal to another who listened.

Terry waited, idly stroking the long frond of an air plant that hung in the wide window near where he stood. He wondered, vaguely, that he should be so collected, almost unconcerned, in the face of what awaited him. He saw the door open slowly, wider, then arrest as if the hand on the knob had faltered, and in the instant his self-possession deserted him.

His heart skipped a beat, then accelerated into a heavy thumping that seemed to fill the room with pulsing muffled roar. He moistened his lips as the door moved again, opened wide.

Deane stepped into the room, pale, her wide blue eyes fixed upon him. Slender, rounded, white of arm and throat, she had fulfilled gloriously all of the fair promise of her youth. The rich heritage of womanhood had stamped the softly curved form and the sweetly pensive face. Virginal, she was a mother of men.

He faced her from the window, powerless to move, to speak, but there was that in his eyes that made words unnecessary. Scarce breathing, atremble, she saw the steady gray eyes blaze with a light no other had ever seen, ever would see.

To him she suddenly became unreal, and his mind reverted to another hour when they had stood facing each other. Again she stood before him in the dimlit hall, sobbing, and with the memory came a surging realization of what he might have lost. Unconsciously his last words to her, spoken that Christmas night, sprang brokenly to his lips as he held out his arms:

"Don't wait, Deane-girl, don't wait."

With the sudden deepening of the wistful lines of his mouth she felt a burning rush of tears, and at his words she crossed to him, starry eyed, full red lips aquiver.

There never was a merrier party of four than theirs that night. The questions flew back and forth, answers clipped short by new and more pressing queries. Ellis and Susan were full of the newcomers' interest in the country, its peoples and customs. Deane, quieter, was interested most in Terry's work, in Davao, in the story of the Hills. Terry learned of the home friends. Father Jennings, Doctor Mather, Mr. Hunter, a score of others, had sent messages to him. Deane had brought special greetings from his friends on the Southside, and a garish picture of little Richard Terry Ricorro. Half of her larger trunk was filled with silver and linens which had poured in when news of the purpose of her journey had sifted through Crampville.

They were seated on the cool veranda at coffee when the Governor's car drew up outside the gate, and the chauffeur entered with a note.

Dear Captain Terry:

This car is yours throughout the stay of your—will not the word "family" soon properly cover all three of them?

Please use it freely. I have another entirely suited for my present needs.

I am very happy to-night, happy in your safe return and in the achievement you have wrought in the name of the Government it is my unmerited privilege to head. And this happiness will be the greater for knowing that you are driving through this glorious evening by the side of her who came so far to join her life with yours.

MASON.

After Terry had read the note aloud Deane added her pleas to his that Susan and Ellis should share the car with them. But they would have none of it. When Susan wavered, Ellis became emphatic.

So the two rode through the tropic night alone, that night and during the glorious evenings that followed for a week. They came to know every village along the ribboned roads, each grove of tall palms, each stretch of beach where smooth highways ran along the coast. She loved the island empire.

They talked as such do talk. The third night, as they rolled through the moonlight down the San Ramon road, he found courage to broach the one subject he had hesitated to mention.

"The Governor wants me to stay a year," he faltered. "A year up in the Hills."

She had expected it, was ready. She looked full up at him, and in the soft light her lovely face shone with a strange beauty that humbled him.

"Dick, 'and thy people shall be my people.'"

* * * * *

They planned their house in the Hills, bought and stored picturesque odds and ends of furniture and fittings; brasses, embroideries, carved teak: and he outlined their honeymoon, which was to be a three-months' ramble through Japan, the magic lover's land. They arranged no exact itinerary, just a wandering through Miajima, Kyoto, Nikko,—a score of out of the way places.

The mornings he spent with the enthusiastic Governor, planning, discussing. Two tons of supplies went out to the Major the fourth day.

"I put in an assortment of presents for him to give to the Hillmen," the Governor told him. "And plenty of matches—you say they went wild over those he packed up. They will be rich!"

"Governor, the Hillmen are the richest people I have ever seen."

The Governor was puzzled: "How?"

"They have everything they want. Land for the clearing, a spear, cotton growing wild on trees for such clothes as they wear, meat in the forest, bamboo to cut for shelter against wind and rain, upland rice springing up from barely scratched soils. No social striving, no politics, no taxes. All their wants are satisfied—was Croesus as rich?"

"Then you do not believe in civilizing them—it means introducing new wants—some of which they never will satisfy!"

"Yes, I do, Governor. Civilization means doctors, less suffering, longer life: schools and books: agriculture and better diet: commerce and clothes: churches, and morality—and soap!"

The day came when Terry and Deane drove down the San Ramon road where the Governor had preceded them, with Ellis and Susan and a score of the new friends they had made in Zamboanga. Wade had insisted that his spacious bungalow be the scene of their wedding.

Even before he had wrought the house into a fairy-land of palm and cadena and hibiscus the great flowered sweeps of lawn and grove set by the sea had been an ideal setting. Ellis, given his choice of functions, had elected to officiate as best man, so the Governor was happy in giving the bride away. Susan cried, as matrons of honor always do, as she stood with them in the fret-work of shadows under the palms which stirred gently in the off-sea breeze.

None of those most concerned remembered many of the details of the evening, excepting Matak, who met there a young Moro maid and found her fair.

They returned to Zamboanga under enchanting stars, and at nine o'clock they saw Ellis and Susan leave, for they were returning home at once through the Suez, taking steamer first for Borneo and Java. Their own boat left an hour later for Manila, Hong Kong and Nagasaki.

Bidding Ellis good-by, Terry woke from the dream in which he had moved through the afternoon.

"Ellis, do not sell the shoe store. We may be home in a year, and I'll want to pitch into something."

"But you'd never fool with that after—after all this over here!"

Terry laughed happily: "You never can tell, Ellis. I am learning lessons every day!"

Later, Ellis sought to dry Susan's tears. "Dick, you're a fine lover! After all these years of search for things for Deane you failed to give her a wedding gift!"

Terry flushed miserably, for it was true. But Deane thrilled the more happily for the utter absorption in her that had expelled all other things from his mind: she knew that Susan had prompted him to both engagement and wedding rings.

From the pier they watched Ellis and Susan at the rail till the altering course of the brilliantly lighted steamer swept them from sight.

An hour later their own liner carried them northward through the dark Straits.

The deck was deserted, dark. They sat close, in long steamer chairs, watching the mysterious coastline of Mindanao, the shadowy masses of distant mountains that seemed less substance than opaque obstruction of the warm, starry sky. Neither spoke. It was the hour of fullest gratitude, of mutual dedication. The night about them was filled with that humming heard only on a big ship plowing through a calm sea after sundown, the drone of light winds through lofty rigging, the heavy slipping of displaced water, the muffled roar of great engines throbbing in the deep hold.

Eight bells rang the midnight hour. Deane rose, whispering that she had a few things to unpack, bidding him come in ten minutes. Leaning over him, she smoothed his hair lightly with her two hands, curling about her fingers the obstinate scalp lock that always would stand forth from his crown. Reaching up, he took her cool hands and held them tightly against his cheeks. Releasing her, he watched the progress of the buoyant form down the long deck, his soul lit with the flame that warms all mankind.

The moon, in its last quarter, peered over the dark rim of the mountains. When its lower tip cleared, he rose.

When he joined her in their stateroom, her eyes filled happily as she watched the fine, white face.

The fox skin lay on the cabin floor before her berth.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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[Transcriber's Notes:

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other inconsistencies. The transcriber made the following changes to the text to correct obvious errors:

1. p. 70, "Sear interrupted" changed to "Sears interrupted" 2. p. 81, "wierd-shaped" changed to "weird-shaped" 3. p. 96, "guaged" changed to "gauged" 4. p. 189, "move toward the fringe" changed to "moved toward the fringe" 5. p. 200, "spit into two factions" changed to "split into two factions" 6. p. 207, "beneath their eerie" changed to "beneath their aerie" 7. p. 219, "the swind swept crag" changed to "the wind swept crag"

End of Transcriber's Notes]