and ammunition, both, were stored in the great stone churches. Knives, bolos and pistols were hidden in every house. Through the clergy, in some instances, and foreign residents in others, the statement was set afloat that every American officer's residence was mapped and marked, that the Tagals were told off by name--so many for each house in proportion to the number of American inmates--and day after day, awaiting the signal for their bloody work, these native devotees greeted with servile bows and studied the habits of the officers they were designated to fall upon in their sleep and slay without mercy. Even women and children were not to be spared; and many a woman, hearing this grewsome story, trembled in her terror. For a time, in dread of this new peril, Nita Frost almost forgot the other; but not so Margaret. She scoffed and scouted the rumor of Filipino outbreak. She laughed at Frost, who all too evidently believed in it, and was in hourly trepidation. He begged that the guard at his quarters might be doubled, and was totally unnerved when told it might even have to be reduced. Not so Mrs. Frank. She made friends with the stalwart sergeant commanding; always had hot coffee and sandwiches ready for the midnight relief; made it a point to learn the name of each successive noncommissioned officer in charge, and had a winsome smile and word for the sentries as she passed. It wasn't Filipino aggression that she feared. The men wondered why she should so urgently bid them see that no strangers--Americans--were allowed within the massive gates. There were tramps, even in Manila, she said. When the sisters drove, their natty little Filipino team flashed through the lanes and streets at top speed, the springy Victoria bounding at their heels to the imminent peril of the cockaded hats of the dusky coach and footman, if not even to the seats of those trim, white-coated, big-buttoned, top-booted, impassive little Spanish-bred servitors. The carriage stopped only at certain designated points, and only then when a group of officers stood ready to greet them. Not once had they been menaced by any one nor approached by any man even faintly resembling poor Latrobe; and Witchie Garrison was beginning to take heart and look upon that threatening letter as a mad piece of "bluff" when one day the unexpected happened.