The children soon recovered from their fright and began to reappear at the doors of the houses, from which now also came the men and women of the settlement. In a few moments we were surrounded by a circle of human beings at once so repulsive and so pitiable that its graphic vividness can never be accurately portrayed. The old man referred to above, having put on a pair of snow-white pantaloons, appeared now at the doorway of his hut, followed a few moments later by his wife who had evidently clothed herself in the best raiment she had. At a call from the old man, all the men, women, and children in the settlement came out of their huts and stood in a line before us. The old man was spokesman and in his native visayan tongue made a heart-rending appeal for aid which we were powerless to give. Attention was called to a leper woman, apparently about twenty-five years of age, whose face had been attacked by the disease and whose appearance was truly pathetic. Upon her hip was a child about a year and a half old and, strange to say, the child showed as yet no signs whatever of the disease. What an indissoluble enigma is life! Here in a little cluster of grass huts in a secluded nook of a secluded island of an all but secluded archipelago was gathered together a little community of wretched natives, driven by their loathsomeness from association with others even of the same half-savage race. Yet here, men and women loved and were married, by mutual trust if not by law, and children were born of the union to live forever under the unspeakable horror that overshadowed the unfortunate parents. Love, hatred, sorrow, and joy--every passion that enters into the complex structure of the human heart even here, in this scene of sadness and despair, was playing apparently as freely as where misfortune and disease had never crossed the portals of life. CHAPTER IX. A "HIKE." We were lounging lazily in our hammocks at Jimamaylan one evening in April. Supper was just ended, and the soldiers in the post were collected in groups here and there spinning yarns to pass away the time, when a Filipino clad only in a loin cloth came down the street at a steadily swinging run and stopped in front of the sentry. He brought the announcement that a band of ladrones had just burned a sugar mill and were advancing to sack a barrio about fifteen miles away. The invitation of the commanding officer to go on a "hike" was eagerly accepted, and, in ten minutes after the message was given, the troops were on the march followed by two adventurous pedagogues.