"Now, father, I can hunt with you and go bat shooting in the deep forests. You know I can sell their beautiful soft skins to travellers." Alila's grandmother and mother were pleased, too. They liked the idea because the hemp is gathered throughout the year and can be sold from time to time, whenever there is need of money. But when the women thought of the bands of brigands who hide in the mountain passes, they began to fear. Many were the stories they had heard of these robbers and their sudden attacks in the night-time on people in lonely houses. "You need not worry," said Alila's father, "for these wild robbers seldom harm poor people; and they never kill unless they are obliged to do so. I believe they are not as terrible as they are often described." CHAPTER XI. THE NEW HOME. SO it came to pass that Alila went to a new home. It was not hard work to get ready, for there was little to move. The old buffalo that had grown up with his young master was able to carry on his broad back everything owned by the entire family. He could easily have taken more, too! The women rode on ponies and the men walked beside the buffalo. No one seemed to feel sad, although it had been an easy, happy life on the little farm and the sugar planter had always been kind. Their fellow workmen were Tagals like themselves; they would find many Chinese labourers on the hemp plantation, at least they had been told so. But they did not care for that. There are many Chinamen in the Philippines, and they agree very well with their Tagal neighbours and the people of the many other tribes. Alila has a cousin married to a Chinese merchant in Manila and some time he is going to visit her. As they journeyed onward they passed a party of Americans. Alila's mother called: "Come nearer to me, my child. Stay by my side." She had a fear of white faces of which she could not rid herself. The Spaniards had been cruel to her people, she well knew. And now that these others from far-away lands had taken the power from the Spaniards, she felt that they, too, would be hard and unkind. Poor ignorant mother! She did not understand that it meant such different things,--schools for _all_ children instead of a very few; work for any one who desired it; better care for the sick in the cities; fewer taxes for all. Yes, all these and many other good things would be done by the Americans to make Alila and Alila's children live more wisely and therefore more happily. When the sun was setting that night, the hemp plantation could be plainly seen. It was a beautiful sight, those rows of small trees with their large, glossy leaves, shut in by woods of a larger growth. The plant from which is made what is called Manila hemp belongs to the same family as the banana and the plantain. The leaves all of them look so much alike it would be hard for us to tell the difference.