The Maestro dashed to a solution. "All right," he said, cheerily. "I caught him; guess I can give him a name. Call him--Isidro de los Maestros." And thus it was that the urchin went down on the school records, and on the records of life afterward. Now well pleased with himself, the Maestro, as is the wont of men in such state, sought for further enjoyment. "Ask him," he said, teasingly, pointing with his chin at the newly-baptised but still unregenerate little savage, "why he came out of the ditch." "He says he was afraid that you would steal the kite," answered the Assistant, after some linguistic sparring. "Eh?" ejaculated the surprised Maestro. And in his mind there framed a picture of himself riding along the road with a string between his fingers; and, following in the upper layers of air, a buzzing kite; and, down in the dust of the highway, an urchin trudging wistfully after the kite, drawn on irresistibly, in spite of his better judgment, on and on, horrified but fascinated, up to the yawning school-door. It would have been the better way. "I ought to go and soak my head," murmured the Maestro, pensively. This was check number one, but others came in quick succession. For, the morning after this incident, the Maestro did not find Isidro among the weird, wild crowd gathered into the annex (a transformed sugar storehouse) by the last raid of the Municipal Police. Neither was Isidro there the next day, nor the next. And it was not till a week had passed that the Maestro discovered, with an inward blush of shame, that his much-longed-for pupil was living in the little hut behind his own house. There would have been nothing shameful in the overlooking--there were seventeen other persons sharing the same abode--were it not that the nipa front of this human hive had been blown away by the last baguio, leaving an unobstructed view of the interior, if it might be called such. As it was, the Municipal Police was mobilised at the urgent behest of the Maestro. Its "cabo," flanked by two privates armed with old German needle-guns, besieged the home and, after an interesting game of hide-and-go-seek, Isidro was finally caught by one arm and one ear, and ceremoniously marched to school. And there the Maestro asked him why he had not been attending. "No hay pantalones," (there are no pants), Isidro answered, dropping his eyes modestly to the ground. This was check number two, and unmistakably so, for was it not a fact that a civil commission, overzealous in its civilising ardour, had passed a law commanding that everyone should wear, when in public, "at least one garment, preferably trousers"?